of Poseidôn, or of Phorbas,[312]—is Augeas, whom we find mentioned
in the Iliad as king of the Epeians or Eleians. Nestôr gives a long
and circumstantial narrative of his own exploits at the head of his
Pylian countrymen against his neighbors the Epeians and their king
Augeas, whom he defeated with great loss, slaying Mulios, the king’s
son-in-law, and acquiring a vast booty.[313] Augeas was rich in all
sorts of rural wealth, and possessed herds of cattle so numerous, that
the dung of the animals accumulated in the stable or cattle enclosures
beyond all power of endurance. Eurystheus, as an insult to Hêraklês,
imposed upon him the obligation of cleansing this stable: the hero,
disdaining to carry off the dung upon his shoulders, turned the
course of the river Alpheios through the building, and thus swept the
encumbrance away.[314] But Augeas, in spite of so signal a service,
refused to Hêraklês the promised reward, though his son Phyleus
protested against such treachery, and when he found that he could not
induce his father to keep faith, retired in sorrow and wrath to the
island of Dulichiôn.[315] To avenge the deceit practised upon him,
Hêraklês invaded Elis; but Augeas had powerful auxiliaries, especially
his nephews, the two Molionids (sons of Poseidôn by Molionê, the wife
of Aktôr), Eurytos and Kteatos. These two miraculous brothers, of
transcendent force, grew together,—having one body, but two heads and
four arms.[316] Such was their irresistible might, that Hêraklês was
defeated and repelled from Elis: but presently the Eleians sent the two
Molionid brothers as _Theôri_ (sacred envoys) to the Isthmian games,
and Hêraklês, placing himself in ambush at Kleônæ, surprised and killed
them as they passed through. For this murderous act the Eleians in
vain endeavored to obtain redress both at Corinth and at Argos; which
is assigned as the reason for the self-ordained exclusion, prevalent
throughout all the historical age, that no Eleian athlête would ever
present himself as a competitor at the Isthmian games.[317] The
Molionids being thus removed, Hêraklês again invaded Elis, and killed
Augeas along with his children,—all except Phyleus, whom he brought
over from Dulichiôn, and put in possession of his father’s kingdom.
According to the more gentle narrative which Pausanias adopts, Augeas
was not killed, but pardoned at the request of Phyleus.[318] He was
worshipped as a hero[319] even down to the time of that author.
[312] Apollodôr. ii. 5, 5; Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 172. In all
probability, the old legend made Augeas the son of the god
Hêlios: Hêlios, Augeas and Agamêdê are a triple series parallel
to the Corinthian genealogy, Hêlios, Æêtês and Mêdia; not to
mention that the etymology of Augeas connects him with Hêlios.
Theocritus (xx. 55) designates him as the son of the god Hêlios,
through whose favor his cattle are made to prosper and multiply
with such astonishing success (xx. 117).
[313] Iliad, xi. 670-760; Pherekyd. Fragm. 57, Didot.
[314] Diodôr. iv. 13. Ὕβρεως ἕνεκεν Εὐρυσθεὺς προσέταξε καθᾶραι·
ὁ δὲ Ἡρακλῆς τὸ μὲν τοῖς ὤμοις ἐξενεγκεῖν αὐτὴν ἀπεδοκίμασεν,
ἐκκλίνων τὴν ἐκ τῆς ὕβρεως αἰσχύνην, etc. (Pausan. v. 1. 7;
Apollodôr. ii. 5, 5).
It may not be improper to remark that this fable indicates a
purely pastoral condition, or at least a singularly rude state
of agriculture; and the way in which Pausanias recounts it goes
even beyond the genuine story: ὡς καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῆς χώρας αὐτῷ ἤδη
διατελεῖν ἀργὰ ὄντα ὑπὸ τῶν βοσκημάτων τῆς κόπρου. The slaves
of Odysseus however know what use to make of the dung heaped
before his outer fence (Odyss. xvii. 299); not so the purely
carnivorous and pastoral Cyclôps (Odyss. ix. 329). The stabling
into which the cattle go from their pasture, is called κόπρος in
Homer,—Ἐλθούσας ἐς κόπρον, ἐπὴν βοτανῆς κορέσωνται (Odyss. x.
411): compare Iliad, xviii. 575—Μυκηθμῷ δ᾽ ἀπὸ κόπρου ἐπεσσεύοντο
πέδονδε.
The Augeas of Theocritus has abundance of wheat-land and
vineyard, as well as cattle: he ploughs his land three or four
times, and digs his vineyard diligently (xx. 20-32).
[315] The wrath and retirement of Phyleus is mentioned in the
Iliad (ii. 633), but not the cause of it.
[316] These singular properties were ascribed to them both in
the Hesiodic poems and by Pherekydês (Schol. Ven. ad II. xi.
715-750, et ad II. xxiii. 638), but not in the Iliad. The poet
Ibykus (Fragm. 11, Schneid. ap. Athenæ. ii. 57) calls them ἅλικας
ἰσοκεφάλους, ἐνιγυίους, Ἀμφοτέρους γεγαῶτας ἐν ὠέῳ ἀργυρέῳ.
There were temples and divine honors to Zeus Moliôn (Lactantius.
de Falsâ Religione, i. 22).
[317] Pausan. v. 2, 4. The inscription cited by Pausanias
proves that this was the reason assigned by the Eleian athlêtes
themselves for the exclusion; but there were several different
stories.
[318] Apollodôr. ii. 7, 2. Diodôr. iv. 33. Pausan. v. 2, 2; 3,
2. It seems evident from these accounts that the genuine legend
represented Hêraklês as having been defeated by the Molionids:
the unskilful evasions both of Apollodôrus and Diodôrus betray
this. Pindar (Olymp. xi. 25-50) gives the story without any
flattery to Hêraklês.
[319] Pausan. v. 4, 1.
It was on occasion of this conquest of Elis, according to the old mythe
which Pindar has ennobled in a magnificent ode, that Hêraklês first
consecrated the ground of Olympia, and established the Olympic games.
Such at least was one of the many fables respecting the origin of that
memorable institution.[320]
[320] The Armenian copy of Eusebius gives a different genealogy
respecting Elis and Pisa: Aëthlius, Epeius, Endymiôn, Alexinus;
next Œnomaus and Pêlops, then Hêraklês. Some counted ten
generations, others _three_, between Hêraklês and Iphitus, who
renewed the discontinued Olympic games (see Armen. Euseb. copy c.
xxxii. p. 140).
Phyleus, after having restored order in Elis, retired again to
Dulichiôn, and left the kingdom to his brother Agasthenês, which again
brings us into the Homeric series. For Polyxenos, son of Agasthenês, is
one of the four commanders of the Epeian forty ships in the Iliad, in
conjunction with the two sons of Eurytos and Kteatos, and with Diôrês
son of Amarynceus. Megês, the son of Phyleus, commands the contingent
from Dulichiôn and the Echinades.[321] Polyxenos returns safe from
Troy, is succeeded by his son Amphimachos,—named after the Epeian chief
who had fallen before Troy,—and he again by another Eleios, in whose
time the Dôrians and the Hêrakleids invade Peloponnêsus.[322] These two
names, barren of actions or attributes, are probably introduced by the
genealogists whom Pausanias followed, to fill up the supposed interval
between the Trojan war and the Dôrian invasion.
[321] Iliad, ii. 615-630.
[322] Pausan. v. 3, 4.
We find the ordinary discrepancies in respect to the series and the
members of this genealogy. Thus some called Epeios son of Aëthlius,
others son of Endymiôn:[323] a third pedigree, which carries the
sanction of Aristotle and is followed by Conôn, designated Eleios,
the first settler of Elis, as son of Poseidôn and Eurypylê, daughter
of Endymiôn, and Epeios and Alexis as the two sons of Eleios.[324]
And Pindar himself, in his ode to Epharmostus the Locrian, introduces
with much emphasis another king of the Epeians named Opus, whose
daughter, pregnant by Zeus, was conveyed by that god to the old and
childless king Locrus: the child when born, adopted by Locrus and named
Opus, became the eponymous hero of the city so called in Locris.[325]
Moreover Hekatæus the Milesian not only affirmed (contrary both to the
Iliad and the Odyssey) that the Epeians and the Eleians were different
people, but also added that the Epeians had assisted Hêraklês in his
expedition against Augeas and Elis; a narrative very different from
that of Apollodôrus and Pausanias, and indicating besides that he must
have had before him a genealogy varying from theirs.[326]
[323] Schol. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 86.
[324] Schol. Ven. ad II. xi. 687; Conôn, Narrat. xv. ap. Scriptt.
Mythogr. West p. 130.
[325] Pindar, Olymp. ix. 62: Schol. _ibid._ 86. Ὀποῦντος ἠν
θυγάτηρ Ἠλείων βασιλέως, ἣν Ἀριστοτέλης Καμβύσην καλεῖ.
[326] Ἑκαταῖος δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος ἑτέρους λέγει τῶν Ἠλείων τοὺς
Ἐπείους· τῷ γοῦν Ἡρακλεῖ συστρατεῦσαι τοὺς Ἐπείους καὶ συνανελεῖν
αὐτῷ τόν τε Αὐγέαν καὶ τὴν Ἦλιν (Hekat. ap. Strab. viii. p. 341).
It has already been mentioned that Ætôlus, son of Endymiôn, quitted
Peloponnêsus in consequence of having slain Apis.[327] The country
on the north of the Corinthian gulf, between the rivers Euênus and
Achelôus, received from him the name of Ætôlia instead of that of
Kurêtis: he acquired possession of it after having slain Dôrus,
Laodokus and Polypœtes, sons of Apollo and Phthia, by whom he had been
well received. He had by his wife Pronoê (the daughter of Phorbas) two
sons, Pleurôn and Kalydôn, and from them the two chief towns in Ætôlia
were named.[328] Pleurôn married Xanthippê, daughter of Dôrus, and
had for his son Agênôr, from whom sprang Portheus, or Porthaôn, and
Demonikê: Euênos and Thestius were children of the latter by the god
Arês.[329]
[327] Ephorus said that Ætôlus had been expelled by Salmôneus
king of the Epeians and Pisatæ (ap. Strabo. viii. p. 357):
he must have had before him a different story and different
genealogy from that which is given in the text.
[328] Apollodôr. i. 7, 6. Dôrus, son of Apollo and Phthia,
killed by Ætôlus, after having hospitably received him, is here
mentioned. Nothing at all is known of this; but the conjunction
of names is such as to render it probable that there was some
legend connected with them: possibly the assistance given by
Apollo to the Kurêtes against the Ætôlians, and the death of
Meleager by the hand of Apollo, related both in the Eoiai and the
Minyas (Pausan. x. 31, 2), may have been grounded upon it. The
story connects itself with what is stated by Apollodôrus about
Dôrus son of Hellên (see _supra_, p. 136).
[329] According to the ancient genealogical poet Asius, Thestius
was son of Agênôr the son of Pleurôn (Asii Fragm. 6, p. 413,
ed. Marktsch.). Compare the genealogy of Ætôlia and the general
remarks upon it, in Brandstäter, Geschichte des Ætol. Landes,
etc., Berlin, 1844, p. 23 _seq._
Portheus had three sons, Agrius, Melas and Œneus: among the offspring
of Thestius were Althæa and Lêda,[330]—names which bring us to a period
of interest in the legendary history. Lêda marries Tyndareus and
becomes mother of Helena and the Dioskuri: Althæa marries Œneus, and
has, among other children, Meleager and Deianeira; the latter being
begotten by the god Dionysus, and the former by Arês.[331] Tydeus also
is his son, the father of Diomêdês: warlike eminence goes hand in hand
with tragic calamity among the members of this memorable family.
[330] Respecting Lêda, see the statements of Ibykus, Pherekydês,
Hellanikus, etc. (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 146). The reference to
the Corinthiaca of Eumêlus is curious: it is a specimen of the
matters upon which these old genealogical poems dwelt.
[331] Apollodôr. i. 8, 1; Euripidês, Meleager, Frag. 1. The three
sons of Portheus are named in the Iliad (xiv. 116) as living at
Pleurôn and Kalydôn. The name Œneus doubtless brings Dionysus
into the legend.
We are fortunate enough to find the legend of Althæa and Meleager set
forth at considerable length in the Iliad, in the speech addressed by
Phœnix to appease the wrath of Achilles. Œneus, king of Kalydôn, in the
vintage sacrifices which he offered to the gods, omitted to include
Artemis: the misguided man either forgot her or cared not for her;[332]
and the goddess, provoked by such an insult, sent against the vineyards
of Œneus a wild boar, of vast size and strength, who tore up the trees
by the root and laid prostrate all their fruit. So terrible was this
boar, that nothing less than a numerous body of men could venture to
attack him: Meleager, the son of Œneus, however, having got together a
considerable number of companions, partly from the Kurêtes of Pleurôn,
at length slew him. But the anger of Artemis was not yet appeased, and
she raised a dispute among the combatants respecting the possession of
the boar’s head and hide,—the trophies of victory. In this dispute,
Meleager slew the brother of his mother Althæa, prince of the Kurêtes
of Pleurôn: these Kurêtes attacked the Ætôlians of Kalydôn in order
to avenge their chief. So long as Meleager contended in the field
the Ætôlians had the superiority. But he presently refused to come
forth, indignant at the curses imprecated upon him by his mother: for
Althæa, wrung with sorrow for the death of her brother, flung herself
upon the ground in tears, beat the earth violently with her hands,
and implored Hadês and Persephonê to inflict death upon Meleager,—a
prayer which the unrelenting Erinnys in Erebus heard but too well.
So keenly did the hero resent this behavior of his mother, that he
kept aloof from the war; and the Kurêtes not only drove the Ætôlians
from the field, but assailed the walls and gates of Kalydôn, and were
on the point of overwhelming its dismayed inhabitants. There was no
hope of safety except in the arm of Meleager; but Meleager lay in his
chamber by the side of his beautiful wife Kleopatra, the daughter of
Idas, and heeded not the necessity. While the shouts of expected
victory were heard from the assailants at the gates, the ancient men
of Ætôlia and the priests of the gods earnestly besought Meleager to
come forth,[333] offering him his choice of the fattest land in the
plain of Kalydôn. His dearest friends, his father Œneus, his sisters,
and even his mother herself added their supplications, but he remained
inflexible. At length the Kurêtes penetrated into the town and began to
burn it: at this last moment, Kleopatra his wife addressed to him her
pathetic appeal, to avert from her and from his family the desperate
horrors impending over them all. Meleager could no longer resist: he
put on his armor, went forth from his chamber, and repelled the enemy.
But when the danger was over, his countrymen withheld from him the
splendid presents which they had promised, because he had rejected
their prayers, and had come forth only when his own haughty caprice
dictated.[334]
[332] Ἢ λάθετ᾽, ἢ οὐκ ἐνόησεν· ἀάσατο δὲ μέγα θυμῷ. (Iliad,
ix. 533). The destructive influence of Atê is mentioned
before, v. 502. The piety of Xenophôn reproduces this ancient
circumstance,—Οἴνεως δ᾽ ἐν γήρᾳ ἐπιλαθομένου τῆς θεοῦ, etc. (De
Venat. c. i.)
[333] These priests formed the Chorus in the Meleager of
Sophoklês (Schol. ad Iliad. _ib._ 575).
[334] Iliad, ix. 525-595.
Such is the legend of Meleager in the Iliad: a verse in the second book
mentions simply the death of Meleager, without farther details, as a
reason why Thoas appeared in command of the Ætôlians before Troy.[335]
Though the circumstance is indicated only indirectly, there seems
little doubt that Homer must have conceived the death of the hero as
brought about by the maternal curse: the unrelenting Erinnys executed
to the letter the invocations of Althæa, though she herself must have
been willing to retract them.
[335] Iliad, ii. 642.
Later poets both enlarged and altered the fable. The Hesiodic Eoiai,
as well as the old poem called the Minyas, represented Meleager as
having been slain by Apollo, who aided the Kurêtes in the war; and
the incident of the burning brand, though quite at variance with
Homer, is at least as old as the tragic poet Phrynichus, earlier than
Æschylus.[336] The Mœræ, or Fates, presenting themselves to Althæa
shortly after the birth of Meleager, predicted that the child would
die so soon as the brand then burning on the fire near at hand should
be consumed. Althæa snatched it from the flames and extinguished it,
preserving it with the utmost care, until she became incensed against
Meleager for the death of her brother. She then cast it into the fire,
and as soon as it was consumed the life of Meleager was brought to a
close.
[336] Pausan. x. 31. 2. The Πλευρώνιαι, a lost tragedy of
Phrynichus.
We know, from the sharp censure of Pliny, that Sophoklês heightened
the pathos of this subject by his account of the mournful death
of Meleager’s sisters, who perished from excess of grief. They
were changed into the birds called Meleagrides, and their
never-ceasing tears ran together into amber.[337] But in the hands
of Euripidês—whether originally through him or not,[338] we cannot
tell—Atalanta became the prominent figure and motive of the piece,
while the party convened to hunt the Kalydônian boar was made to
comprise all the distinguished heroes from every quarter of Greece.
In fact, as Heyne justly remarks, this event is one of the four
aggregate dramas of Grecian heroic life,[339] along with the Argonautic
expedition, the siege of Thêbes, and the Trojan war. To accomplish
the destruction of the terrific animal which Artemis in her wrath had
sent forth, Meleager assembled not merely the choice youth among the
Kurêtes and Ætôlians (as we find in the Iliad), but an illustrious
troop, including Kastôr and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus, Pêleus and
Telamôn, Thêseus and Peirithous, Ankæus and Kêpheus, Jasôn, Amphiaraus,
Admêtus, Eurytiôn and others. Nestôr and Phœnix, who appear as old men
before the walls of Troy, exhibited their early prowess as auxiliaries
to the suffering Kalydônians.[340] Conspicuous amidst them all stood
the virgin Atalanta, daughter of the Arcadian Schœneus; beautiful
and matchless for swiftness of foot, but living in the forest as a
huntress and unacceptable to Aphroditê.[341] Several of the heroes were
slain by the boar, others escaped by various stratagems: at length
Atalanta first shot him in the back, next Amphiaraus in the eye, and,
lastly, Meleager killed him. Enamoured of the beauty of Atalanta,
Meleager made over to her the chief spoils of the animal, on the plea
that she had inflicted the first wound. But his uncles, the brothers
of Thestius, took them away from her, asserting their rights as next
of kin,[342] if Meleager declined to keep the prize for himself: the
latter, exasperated at this behavior, slew them. Althæa, in deep sorrow
for her brothers and wrath against her son, is impelled to produce the
fatal brand which she had so long treasured up, and consign it to the
flames.[343] The tragedy concludes with the voluntary death both of
Althæa and Kleopatra.
[337] Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2, 11.
[338] There was a tragedy of Æschylus called Ἀταλάντη, of which
nothing remains (Bothe, Æschyli Fragm. ix. p. 18).
Of the more recent dramatic writers, several selected Atalanta as
their subject (See Brandstäter, Geschichte Ætoliens, p. 65).
[339] There was a poem of Stesichorus, Συόθηραι (Stesichor.
Fragm. 15. p. 72).
[340] The catalogue of these heroes is in Apollodôr. i. 8, 2;
Ovid, Metamor. viii. 300; Hygin. fab. 173. Euripidês, in his play
of Meleager, gave an enumeration and description of the heroes
(see Fragm. 6 of that play, ed. Matth.). Nestôr, in this picture
of Ovid, however, does not appear quite so invincible as in his
own speeches in the Iliad. The mythographers thought it necessary
to assign a reason why Hêraklês was _not_ present at the
Kalydônian adventure: he was just at that time in servitude with
Omphalê in Lydia (Apollod. ii. 6, 3). This seems to have been the
idea of Ephorus, and it is much in his style of interpretation
(see Ephor. Fragm. 9. ed. Didot.).
[341] Euripid. Meleag. Fragm. vi. Matt.—
Κύπριδος δὲ μίσημ᾽, Ἀρκὰς Ἀταλάντη, κύνας
Καὶ τόξ᾽ ἔχουσα, etc.
There was a drama “Meleager” both of Sophoklês and Euripidês: of
the former hardly any fragments remain,—a few more of the latter.
[342] Hyginus, fab. 229.
[343] Diodôr, iv. 34. Apollôdorus (i. 8; 2-4) gives first the
usual narrative, including Atalanta; next, the Homeric narrative
with some additional circumstances, but not including either
Atalanta or the fire-brand on which Meleager’s life depended. He
prefaces the latter with the words οἱ δέ φασι, etc. Antoninus
Liberalis gives this second narrative only, without Atalanta,
from Nicander (Narrat. 2).
The Latin scenic poet, Attius, had devoted one of his tragedies
to this subject, taking the general story as given by Euripidês:
“Remanet gloria apud me: exuvias dignavi Atalantæ dare,” seems
to be the speech of Meleager. (Attii Fragm. 8, ap. Poet. Scen.
Lat. ed. Bothe, p. 215). The readers of the Æneid will naturally
think of the swift and warlike virgin Camilla, as the parallel of
Atalanta.
Interesting as the Arcadian huntress, Atalanta, is in herself, she is
an intrusion, and not a very convenient intrusion, into the Homeric
story of the Kalydônian boar-hunt, wherein another female Kleopatra,
already occupied the foreground.[344] But the more recent version
became accredited throughout Greece, and was sustained by evidence
which few persons in those days felt any inclination to controvert.
For Atalanta carried away with her the spoils and head of the boar
into Arcadia; and there for successive centuries hung the identical
hide and the gigantic tusks of three feet in length, in the temple
of Athênê Alea at Tegea. Kallimachus mentions them as being there
preserved, in the third century before the Christian æra;[345] but the
extraordinary value set upon them is best proved by the fact that the
emperor Augustus took away the tusks from Tegea, along with the great
statue of Athênê Alea, and conveyed them to Rome, to be there preserved
among the public curiosities. Even a century and a half afterwards,
when Pausanias visited Greece, the skin worn out with age was shown
to him, while the robbery of the tusks had not been forgotten. Nor
were these relics of the boar the only memento preserved at Tegea of
the heroic enterprise. On the pediment of the temple of Athênê Alea,
unparalleled in Peloponnêsus for beauty and grandeur, the illustrious
statuary Skopas had executed one of his most finished reliefs,
representing the Kalydônian hunt. Atalanta and Meleager were placed in
the front rank of the assailants, and Ankæus, one of the Tegean heroes,
to whom the tusks of the boar had proved fatal,[346] was represented
as sinking under his death-wound into the arms of his brother Epochos.
And Pausanias observes, that the Tegeans, while they had manifested
the same honorable forwardness as other Arcadian communities in the
conquest of Troy, the repulse of Xerxês, and the battle of Dipæ against
Sparta—might fairly claim to themselves, through Ankæus and Atalanta,
that they alone amongst all Arcadians had participated in the glory of
the Kalydônian boar-hunt.[347] So entire and unsuspecting is the faith
both of the Tegeans and of Pausanias in the past historical reality
of this romantic adventure. Strabo indeed tries to transform the
romance into something which has the outward semblance of history, by
remarking that the quarrel respecting the boar’s head and hide cannot
have been the real cause of war between the Kurêtes and the Ætôlians;
the true ground of dispute (he contends) was probably the possession
of a portion of territory.[348] His remarks on this head are analogous
to those of Thucydidês and other critics, when they ascribe the Trojan
war, not to the rape of Helen, but to views of conquest or political
apprehensions. But he treats the general fact of the battle between
the Kurêtes and the Ætôlians, mentioned in the Iliad, as something
unquestionably real and historical—recapitulating at the same time a
variety of discrepancies on the part of different authors, but not
giving any decision of his own respecting their truth or falsehood.
[344] The narrative of Apollodôrus reads awkwardly—Μελέαγρος
ἔχων γυναῖκα Κλεοπάτραν, βουλόμενος δὲ καὶ ἐξ Ἀταλάντης
τεκνοποιήσασθαι, etc. (i. 8, 2).
[345] Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dian. 217.—
Οὔ μιν ἐπικλητοὶ Καλυδώνιοι ἀγρευτῆρες
Μέμφονται κάπροιο· τὰ γὰρ σημήϊα νίκης
Ἀρκαδίην εἰσῆλθεν, ἔχει δ᾽ ἔτι θηρὸς ὀδόντας.
[346] See Pherekyd. Frag. 81, ed. Didot.
[347] Pausan. viii. 45, 4; 46, 1-3; 47, 2. Lucian, adv. Indoctum,
c. 14. t. iii. p. 111, Reiz.
The officers placed in charge of the public curiosities or
wonders at Rome (οἱ ἐπὶ τοῖς θαύμασιν) affirmed that one of the
tusks had been accidentally broken in the voyage from Greece: the
other was kept in the temple of Bacchus in the Imperial Gardens.
It is numbered among the memorable exploits of Thêseus that he
vanquished and killed a formidable and gigantic sow, in the
territory of Krommyôn near Corinth. According to some critics,
this Krommyônian sow was the mother of the Kalydônian boar
(Strabo, viii. p. 380).
[348] Strabo, x. p. 466. Πολέμου δ᾽ ἐμπεσόντος τοῖς Θεστιάδαις
πρὸς Οἰνέα καὶ Μελέαγρον, ὁ μὲν Ποιητὴς, ἀμφὶ συὸς κεφαλῇ καὶ
δέρματι, κατὰ τὴν περὶ τοῦ κάπρου μυθολογίαν· ὡς δὲ τὸ εἰκὸς,
περὶ μέρους τῆς χώρας, etc. This remark is also similar to Mr.
Payne Knight’s criticism on the true causes of the Trojan war,
which were (he tells us) of a political character, independent of
Helen and her abduction (Prolegom. ad Homer. c. 53).
In the same manner as Atalanta was intruded into the Kalydônian hunt,
so also she seems to have been introduced into the memorable funeral
games celebrated after the decease of Pelias at Iôlkos, in which she
had no place at the time when the works on the chest of Kypselus were
executed.[349] But her native and genuine locality is Arcadia; where
her race-course, near to the town of Methydrion, was shown even in
the days of Pausanias.[350] This race-course had been the scene of
destruction for more than one unsuccessful suitor. For Atalanta,
averse to marriage, had proclaimed that her hand should only be won
by the competitor who could surpass her in running: all who tried and
failed were condemned to die, and many were the persons to whom her
beauty and swiftness, alike unparalleled, had proved fatal. At length
Meilaniôn, who had vainly tried to win her affections by assiduous
services in her hunting excursions, ventured to enter the perilous
lists. Aware that he could not hope to outrun her except by stratagem,
he had obtained by the kindness of Aphroditê, three golden apples from
the garden of the Hesperides, which he successively let fall near
to her while engaged in the race. The maiden could not resist the
temptation of picking them up, and was thus overcome: she became the
wife of Meilaniôn and the mother of the Arcadian Parthenopæus, one of
the seven chiefs who perished in the siege of Thêbes.[351]
[349] Compare Apollodôr. iii. 9, 2, and Pausan. v. 17, 4. She is
made to _wrestle_ with Pêleus at these funeral games, which seems
foreign to her character.
[350] Pausan. viii. 35, 8.
[351] Respecting the varieties in this interesting story,
see Apollod. iii. 9, 2; Hygin. f. 185; Ovid, Metam. x.
560-700; Propert. i. 1, 20; Ælian, V. H. xiii. i. Μειλανίωνος
σωφρονέστερος. Aristophan. Lysistrat. 786 and Schol. In the
ancient representation on the chest of Kypselus (Paus. v. 19, 1),
Meilaniôn was exhibited standing near Atalanta, who was holding a
fawn: no match or competition in running was indicated.
There is great discrepancy in the naming and patronymic
description of the parties in the story. Three different persons
are announced as fathers of Atalanta, Schœneus, Jasus and
Mænalos; the successful lover in Ovid (and seemingly in Euripidês
also) is called Hippomenês, not Meilaniôn. In the Hesiodic poems
Atalanta was daughter of Schœneus; Hellanikus called her daughter
of Jasus. See Apollodôr. _l. c._; Kallimach. Hymn to Dian. 214,
with the note of Spanheim; Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 150; Schol.
Theocr. Idyll. iii. 40; also the ample commentary of Bachet de
Meziriac, Sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, vol. i. p. 366. Servius (ad
Virg. Eclog. vi. 61; Æneid, iii. 113) calls Atalanta a native of
Scyros.
Both the ancient scholiasts (see Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 769) and
the modern commentators, Spanheim and Heyne, seek to escape this
difficulty by supposing two Atalantas,—an Arcadian and a Bœôtian:
assuming the principle of their conjecture to be admissible, they
ought to suppose at least three.
Certainly, if personages of the Grecian mythes are to be treated
as historically real, and their adventures as so many exaggerated
and miscolored facts, it will be necessary to repeat the process
of multiplying entities to an infinite extent. And this is one
among the many reasons for rejecting the fundamental supposition.
But when we consider these personages as purely legendary, so
that an historical basis can neither be affirmed nor denied
respecting them, we escape the necessity of such inconvenient
stratagems. The test of identity is then to be sought in the
attributes, not in the legal description,—in the predicates, not
in the subject. Atalanta, whether born of one father or another,
whether belonging to one place or another, is beautiful, cold,
repulsive, daring, swift of foot and skilful with the bow,—these
attributes constitute her identity. The Scholiast on Theocritus
(iii. 40), in vindicating his supposition that there were two
Atalantas, draws a distinction founded upon this very principle:
he says that the Bœôtian Atalanta was τοξοτὶς, and the Arcadian
Atalanta δρομαία. But this seems an over-refinement: both the
shooting and the running go to constitute an accomplished
huntress.
In respect to Parthenopæus, called by Euripidês and by so many
others the son of Atalanta, it is of some importance to add,
that Apollodôrus, Aristarchus, and Antimachus, the author of the
Thebaid, assigned to him a pedigree entirely different,—making
him an Argeian, the son of Talaos and Lysimachê, and brother of
Adrastus. (Apollodôr. i. 9, 13; Aristarch. ap. Schol. Soph. Œd.
Col. 1320; Antimachus ap. Schol. Æschyl. Sep. Theb. 532; and
Schol. Supplem. ad Eurip. Phœniss. t. viii. p. 461, ed. Matth.
Apollodôrus is in fact inconsistent with himself in another
passage).
We have yet another female in the family of Œneus, whose name the
legend has immortalized. His daughter Deianeira was sought in marriage
by the river Achelôus, who presented himself in various shapes,
first as a serpent and afterwards as a bull. From the importunity of
this hateful suitor she was rescued by the arrival of Hêraklês, who
encountered Achelôus, vanquished him and broke off one of his horns,
which Achelôus ransomed by surrendering to him the horn of Amaltheia,
endued with the miraculous property of supplying the possessor with
abundance of any food or drink which he desired. Hêraklês was rewarded
for his prowess by the possession of Deianeira, and he made over the
horn of Amaltheia as his marriage-present to Œneus.[352] Compelled
to leave the residence of Œneus in consequence of having in a fit of
anger struck the youthful attendant Eunomus, and involuntarily killed
him,[353] Hêraklês retired to Trachin, crossing the river Euênus at the
place where the Centaur Nessus was accustomed to carry over passengers
for hire. Nessus carried over Deianeira, but when he had arrived on
the other side, began to treat her with rudeness, upon which Hêraklês
slew him with an arrow tinged by the poison of the Lernæan hydra. The
dying Centaur advised Deianeira to preserve the poisoned blood which
flowed from his wound, telling her that it would operate as a philtre
to regain for her the affections of Hêraklês, in case she should ever
be threatened by a rival. Some time afterwards the hero saw and loved
the beautiful Iolê, daughter of Eurytos, king of Œchalia: he stormed
the town, killed Eurytos, and made Iolê his captive. The misguided
Deianeira now had recourse to her supposed philtre: she sent as a
present to Hêraklês a splendid tunic, imbued secretly with the poisoned
blood of the Centaur. Hêraklês adorned himself with the tunic on the
occasion of offering a solemn sacrifice to Zeus on the promontory of
Kênæon in Eubœa: but the fatal garment, when once put on, clung to him
indissolubly, burnt his skin and flesh, and occasioned an agony of pain
from which he was only relieved by death. Deianeira slew herself in
despair at this disastrous catastrophe.[354]
[352] Sophokl. Trachin. 7. The horn of Amaltheia was described by
Pherekydês (Apollod. ii. 7, 5); see also Strabo, x. p. 458 and
Diodôr. iv. 35, who cites an interpretation of the fables (οἱ
εἰκάζοντες ἐξ αὐτῶν τἀληθές) to the effect that it was symbolical
of an embankment of the unruly river by Hêraklês, and consequent
recovery of very fertile land.
[353] Hellanikus (ap. Athen. ix. p. 410) mentioning this
incident, in two different works, called the attendant by two
different names.
[354] The beautiful drama of the Trachiniæ has rendered this
story familiar: compare Apollod. ii. 7, 7. Hygin. f. 36. Diodôr.
iv. 36-37.
The capture of Œchalia (Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις) was celebrated in a
very ancient epic poem by Kreophylos, of the Homeric and not of
the Hesiodic character: it passed with many as the work of Homer
himself. (See Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Græcor. p. 8. Welcker, Der
Epische Cyclus, p. 229). The same subject was also treated in
the Hesiodic Catalogue, or in the Eoiai (see Hesiod, Fragm. 129,
ed. Marktsch.): the number of the children of Eurytos was there
enumerated.
This exploit seems constantly mentioned as the last performed by
Hêraklês, and as immediately preceding his death or apotheosis on
Mount Œta: but whether the legend of Deianeira and the poisoned
tunic be very old, we cannot tell.
The tale of the death of Iphitos, son of Eurytos, by Hêraklês, is
as ancient as the Odyssey (xxi. 19-40): but it is there stated,
that Eurytos dying left his memorable bow to his son Iphitos (the
bow is given afterwards by Iphitos to Odysseus, and is the weapon
so fatal to the suitors),—a statement not very consistent with
the story that Œchalia was taken and Eurytos slain by Hêraklês.
It is plain that these were distinct and contradictory legends.
Compare Soph. Trachin. 260-285 (where Iphitos dies before
Eurytos), not only with the passage just cited from the Odyssey,
but also with Pherekydês, Fragm. 34, Didot.
Hyginus (f. 33) differs altogether in the parentage of Deianeira:
he calls her daughter of Dexamenos: his account of her marriage
with Hêraklês is in every respect at variance with Apollodôrus.
In the latter, Mnêsimachê is the daughter of Dexamenos; Hêraklês
rescues her from the importunities of the Centaur Eurytiôn (ii.
5, 5).
We have not yet exhausted the eventful career of Œneus and his
family—ennobled among the Ætôlians especially, both by religious
worship and by poetical eulogy—and favorite themes not merely in some
of the Hesiodic poems, but also in other ancient epic productions,
the Alkmæênis and the Cyclic Thêbais.[355] By another marriage, Œneus
had for his son Tydeus, whose poetical celebrity is attested by the
many different accounts given both of the name and condition of his
mother. Tydeus, having slain his cousins, the sons of Melas, who were
conspiring against Œneus, was forced to become an exile, and took
refuge at Argos with Adrastus, whose daughter Deipylê he married. The
issue of this marriage was Diomêdês, whose brilliant exploits in the
siege of Troy were not less celebrated than those of his father at the
siege of Thêbes. After the departure of Tydeus, Œneus was deposed by
the sons of Agrios, and fell into extreme poverty and wretchedness,
from which he was only rescued by his grandson Diomêdês, after the
conquest of Troy.[356] The sufferings of this ancient warrior, and
the final restoration and revenge by Diomêdês, were the subject of a
lost tragedy of Euripidês, which even the ridicule of Aristophanês
demonstrates to have been eminently pathetic.[357]
[355] See the references in Apollod. i, 8, 4-5. Pindar, Isthm.
iv. 32. Μελέταν δὲ σοφισταῖς Διὸς ἕκατι πρόσβαλον σεβιζόμενοι Ἐν
μὲν Αἰτωλῶν θυσίαισι φαενναῖς Οἰνεΐδαι κρατεροὶ, etc.
[356] Hekat. Fragm. 341, Didot. In this story Œneus is connected
with the first discovery of the vine and the making of wine
(οἶνος): compare Hygin. f. 129, and Servius ad Virgil. Georgic.
i. 9.
[357] See Welcker (Griechisch. Tragöd. ii. p. 583) on the lost
tragedy called Œneus.
Though the genealogy just given of Œneus is in part Homeric, and
seems to have been followed generally by the mythographers, yet
we find another totally at variance with it in Hekatæus, which he
doubtless borrowed from some of the old poets: the simplicity of the
story annexed to it seems to attest its antiquity. Orestheus, son of
Deukaliôn, first passed into Ætôlia, and acquired the kingdom: he
was father of Phytios, who was father of Œneus. Ætôlus was son of
Œneus.[358]
[358] Timoklês, Comic. ap. Athenæ. vii. p. 223.—
Γέρων τις ἀτυχεῖ; κατέμαθεν τὸν Οἰνέα.
Ovid. Heroid. ix. 153.—
“Heu! devota domus! Solio sedet Agrios alto
Œnea desertum nuda senecta premit.”
The account here given is in Hyginus (f. 175): but it is in many
points different both from Apollodôrus (i. 8, 6; Pausan. ii.
25) and Pherekydês (Fragm. 83, Didot). It seems to be borrowed
from the lost tragedy of Euripidês. Compare Schol. ad Aristoph.
Acharn. 417. Antonin. Liberal. c. 37. In the Iliad, Œneus is dead
before the Trojan war (ii. 641).
The account of Ephorus again is different (ap. Strabo. x. p.
462); he joins Alkmæôn with Diomêdês: but his narrative has the
air of a tissue of quasi-historical conjectures, intended to
explain the circumstance that the Ætôlian Diomêdês is king of
Argos during the Trojan war.
Pausanias and Apollodôrus affirm that Œneus was buried at Œnoê
between Argos and Mantineia, and they connect the name of this
place with him. But it seems more reasonable to consider him as
the eponymous hero of Œniadæ in Ætôlia.
The original migration of Ætolus from Elis to Ætôlia—and the
subsequent establishment in Elis of Oxylus, his descendant in the
tenth generation, along with the Dôrian invaders of Peloponnêsus—were
commemorated by two inscriptions, one in the agora of Elis, the other
in that of the Ætôlian chief town, Thermum, engraved upon the statues
of Ætôlus and Oxylus,[359] respectively.
[359] Ephor. Fragm. 29. Didot ap. Strab. x.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PELOPIDS.
Among the ancient legendary genealogies, there was none which figured
with greater splendor, or which attracted to itself a higher degree
of poetical interest and pathos, than that of the Pelopids—Tantalus,
Pelops, Atreus and Thyestês, Agamemnôn and Menelaus and Ægisthus, Helen
and Klytæmnêstra, Orestês and Elektra and Hermionê. Each of these
characters is a star of the first magnitude in the Grecian hemisphere:
each name suggests the idea of some interesting romance or some
harrowing tragedy: the curse which taints the family from the beginning
inflicts multiplied wounds at every successive generation. So, at
least, the story of the Pelopids presents itself, after it had been
successively expanded and decorated by epic, lyric and tragic poets. It
will be sufficient to touch briefly upon events with which every reader
of Grecian poetry is more or less familiar, and to offer some remarks
upon the way in which they were colored and modified by different
Grecian authors.
Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnêsus: to find an
eponym for every conspicuous local name was the invariable turn of
Grecian retrospective fancy. The name Peloponnêsus is not to be found
either in the Iliad or the Odyssey, nor any other denomination which
can be attached distinctly and specially to the entire peninsula. But
we meet with the name in one of the most ancient post-Homeric poems of
which any fragments have been preserved—the Cyprian Verses—a poem which
many (seemingly most persons) even of the contemporaries of Herodotus
ascribed to the author of the Iliad, though Herodotus contradicts the
opinion.[360] The attributes by which the Pelopid Agamemnôn and his
house are marked out and distinguished from the other heroes of the
Iliad, are precisely those which Grecian imagination would naturally
seek in an eponymus—superior wealth, power, splendor and regality.
Not only Agamemnôn himself, but his brother Menelaus, is “more of a
king” even than Nestôr or Diomêdês. The gods have not given to the
king of the “much-golden” Mykênæ greater courage, or strength, or
ability, than to various other chiefs; but they have conferred upon
him a marked superiority in riches, power and dignity, and have thus
singled him out as the appropriate leader of the forces.[361] He enjoys
this preëminence as belonging to a privileged family and as inheriting
the heaven-descended sceptre of Pelops, the transmission of which is
described by Homer in a very remarkable way. The sceptre was made “by
Hêphæstos, who presented it to Zeus; Zeus gave it to Hermês, Hermês
to the charioteer Pelops; Pelops gave it to Atreus, the ruler of
men; Atreus at his death left it to Thyestês, the rich cattle-owner;
Thyestês in his turn left it to his nephew Agamemnôn to carry, that he
might hold dominion over many islands and over all Argos.”[362]
[360] Hesiod. ii. 117. Fragment. Epicc. Græc. Düntzer, ix.
Κύπρια, 8.—
Αἶψα τε Λυγκεὺς
Ταΰγετον προσέβαινε ποσὶν ταχέεσσι πεποιθὼς,
Ἀκρότατον δ᾽ ἀναβὰς διεδέρκετο νῆσον ἅπασαν
Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος.
Also the Homeric Hymn. Apoll. 419, 430, and Tyrtæus, Fragm. 1.—
(~Εὐνομία~)—Εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεθα.
The Schol. ad Iliad, ix. 246, intimates that the name
Πελοπόννησος occurred in one or more of the Hesiodic epics.
[361] Iliad, ix. 37. Compare ii. 580. Diomêdês addresses
Agamemnôn—
Σοὶ δὲ διάνδιχα δῶκε Κρόνου παῖς ἀγκυλομήτεω·
Σκήπτρῳ μέν τοι δῶκε τετιμῆσθαι περὶ πάντων·
Ἀλκὴν δ᾽ οὔ τοι δῶκεν, ὅ,τε κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον.
A similar contrast is drawn by Nestôr (Il. i. 280) between
Agamemnôn and Achilles. Nestôr says to Agamemnôn (Il. ix. 69)—
Ἀτρείδη, σὺ μὲν ἄρχε· σὺ γὰρ ~βασιλεύτατός~ ἐσσι.
And this attribute attaches to Menelaus as well as to his
brother. For when Diomêdês is about to choose his companion
for the night expedition into the Trojan camp, Agamemnôn thus
addresses him (x. 232):
Τὸν μὲν δὴ ἕταρόν γ᾽ αἱρήσεαι, ὅν κ᾽ ἐθέλῃσθα
Φαινομένων τὸν ἄριστον, ἐπεὶ μεμάασί γε πολλοί·
Μηδὲ σύ γ᾽ αἰδόμενος σῇσι φρεσὶ, τὸν μὲν ἀρείω
Καλλείπειν, σὺ δὲ χείρον᾽ ὀπάσσεαι αἰδοῖ εἴκων
Ἐς γενεὴν ὁρόων, εἰ καὶ βασιλεύτερός ἐστιν.
Ὡς ἔφατ᾽, ἔδδεισε δὲ περὶ ξανθῷ Μενελάῳ.
[362] Iliad, ii. 101.
We have here the unrivalled wealth and power of the “king of men,
Agamemnôn,” traced up to his descent from Pelops, and accounted for,
in harmony with the recognized epical agencies, by the present of
the special sceptre of Zeus through the hands of Hermês; the latter
being the wealth-giving god, whose blessing is most efficacious
in furthering the process of acquisition, whether by theft or by
accelerated multiplication of flocks and herds.[363] The wealth and
princely character of the Atreids were proverbial among the ancient
epic poets. Paris not only carries away Hellen, but much property along
with her:[364] the house of Menelaus, when Têlemachus visits it in the
Odyssey, is so resplendent with gold and silver and rare ornament,[365]
as to strike the beholder with astonishment and admiration. The
attributes assigned to Tantalus, the father of Pelops, are in
conformity with the general idea of the family—superhuman abundance
and enjoyments, and intimate converse with the gods, to such a degree
that his head is turned, and he commits inexpiable sin. But though
Tantalus himself is mentioned, in one of the most suspicious passages
of the Odyssey (as suffering punishment in the under-world), he is
not announced, nor is any one else announced, as father of Pelops,
unless we are to construe the lines in the Iliad as implying that the
latter was son of Hermês. In the conception of the author of the Iliad,
the Pelopids are, if not of divine origin, at least a mortal breed
specially favored and ennobled by the gods—beginning with Pelops, and
localized at Mykênæ. No allusion is made to any connection of Pelops
either with Pisa or with Lydia.
[363] Iliad, xiv. 491. Hesiod. Theog. 444. Homer, Hymn. Mercur.
526-568, Ὄλβου καὶ πλούτου δώσω περικάλλεα ῥάβδον. Compare
Eustath. ad Iliad. xvi. 182.
[364] Iliad, iii. 72; vii. 363. In the Hesiodic Eoiai was the
following couplet (Fragm. 55. p. 43, Düntzer):—
Ἁλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος Αἰακίδῃσιν,
Νοῦν δ᾽ Ἀμυθαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ᾽ Ἀτρείδῃσι.
Again, Tyrtæus, Fragm. 9, 4.—
Οὐδ᾽ εἰ Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος βασιλεύτερος εἴη, etc.
[365] Odyss. iv. 45-71.
The legend which connected Tantalus and Pelops with Mount Sipylus
may probably have grown out of the Æolic settlements at Magnêsia and
Kymê. Both the Lydian origin and the Pisatic sovereignty of Pelops
are adapted to times later than the Iliad, when the Olympic games had
acquired to themselves the general reverence of Greece, and had come to
serve as the religious and recreative centre of the Peloponnêsus—and
when the Lydian and Phrygian heroic names, Midas and Gygês, were the
types of wealth and luxury, as well as of chariot driving, in the
imagination of a Greek. The inconsiderable villages of the Pisatid
derived their whole importance from the vicinity of Olympia: they are
not deemed worthy of notice in the Catalogue of Homer. Nor could the
genealogy which connected the eponym of the entire peninsula with
Pisa have obtained currency in Greece unless it had been sustained
by preëstablished veneration for the locality of Olympia. But if the
sovereign of the humble Pisa was to be recognized as forerunner of the
thrice-wealthy princes of Mykênæ, it became necessary to assign some
explanatory cause of his riches. Hence the supposition of his being
an immigrant, son of a wealthy Lydian named Tantalus, who was the
offspring of Zeus and Ploutô. Lydian wealth and Lydian chariot-driving
rendered Pelops a fit person to occupy his place in the legend, both
as ruler of Pisa and progenitor of the Mykenæan Atreids. Even with the
admission of these two circumstances there is considerable difficulty,
for those who wish to read the legends as consecutive history, in
making the Pelopids pass smoothly and plausibly from Pisa to Mykênæ.
I shall briefly recount the legends of this great heroic family as they
came to stand in their full and ultimate growth, after the localization
of Pelops at Pisa had been tacked on as a preface to Homer’s version of
the Pelopid genealogy.
Tantalus, residing near Mount Sipylus in Lydia, had two children,
Pelops and Niobê. He was a man of immense possessions and preëminent
happiness, above the lot of humanity: the gods communicated with him
freely, received him at their banquets, and accepted of his hospitality
in return. Intoxicated with such prosperity, Tantalus became guilty of
gross wickedness. He stole nectar and ambrosia from the table of the
gods, and revealed their secrets to mankind: he killed and served up to
them at a feast his own son Pelops. The gods were horror-struck when
they discovered the meal prepared for them: Zeus restored the mangled
youth to life, and as Dêmêtêr, then absorbed in grief for the loss
of her daughter Persephonê, had eaten a portion of the shoulder, he
supplied an ivory shoulder in place of it. Tantalus expiated his guilt
by exemplary punishment. He was placed in the under-world, with fruit
and water seemingly close to him, yet eluding his touch as often as
he tried to grasp them and leaving his hunger and thirst incessant and
unappeased.[366] Pindar, in a very remarkable passage, finds this old
legend revolting to his feelings: he rejects the tale of the flesh of
Pelops having been served up and eaten, as altogether unworthy of the
gods.[367]
[366] Diodôr. iv. 77. Hom. Odyss. xi. 582. Pindar gives a
different version of the punishment inflicted on Tantalus: a vast
stone was perpetually impending over his head, and threatening to
fall (Olymp. i. 56; Isthm. vii. 20).
[367] Pindar, Olymp. i. 45. Compare the sentiment of Iphigeneia
in Euripidês, Iph. Taur. 387.
Niobê, the daughter of Tantalus, was married to Amphiôn, and had a
numerous and flourishing offspring of seven sons and seven daughters.
Though accepted as the intimate friend and companion of Lêtô, the
mother of Apollo and Artemas,[368] she was presumptuous enough to
triumph over that goddess, and to place herself on a footing of higher
dignity, on account of the superior number of her children. Apollo
and Artemas avenged this insult by killing all the sons and all the
daughters: Niobê, thus left a childless and disconsolate mother, wept
herself to death, and was turned into a rock, which the later Greeks
continued always to identify on Mount Sipylus.[369]
[368] Sapphô (Fragm. 82, Schneidewin)—
Λατὼ καὶ Νιόβα μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἦσαν ἑταῖραι.
Sapphô assigned to Niobê eighteen children (Aul. Gell. N. A. iv.
Δ. xx. 7); Hesiod gave twenty; Homer twelve (Apollod. iii. 5).
The Lydian historian Xanthus gave a totally different version
both of the genealogy and of the misfortunes of Niobê (Parthen.
Narr. 33).
[369] Ovid, Metam. vi. 164-311. Pausan. i. 21, 5; viii. 2, 3.
Some authors represented Pelops as not being a Lydian, but a king
of Paphlagônia; by others it was said that Tantalus, having become
detested from his impieties, had been expelled from Asia by Ilus the
king of Troy,—an incident which served the double purpose of explaining
the transit of Pelops to Greece, and of imparting to the siege of
Troy by Agamemnôn the character of retribution for wrongs done to his
ancestor.[370] When Pelops came over to Greece, he found Œnomaus,
son of the god Arês and Harpinna, in possession of the principality
of Pisa, immediately bordering on the district of Olympia. Œnomaus,
having been apprized by an oracle that death would overtake him if he
permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to give her in
marriage except to some suitor who should beat him in a chariot-race
from Olympia to the isthmus of Corinth;[371] the ground here selected
for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves attention, inasmuch as
it is a line drawn from the assumed centre of Peloponnêsus to its
extremity, and thus comprises the whole territory with which Pelops
is connected as eponym. Any suitor overmatched in the race was doomed
to forfeit his life; and the fleetness of the Pisan horses, combined
with the skill of the charioteer Myrtilus, had already caused thirteen
unsuccessful competitors to perish by the lance of Œnomaus.[372] Pelops
entered the lists as a suitor: his prayers moved the god Poseidôn to
supply him with a golden chariot and winged horses; or according to
another story, he captivated the affections of Hippodameia herself,
who persuaded the charioteer Myrtilus to loosen the wheels of Œnomaus
before he started, so that the latter was overturned and perished in
the race. Having thus won the hand of Hippodameia, Pelops became Prince
of Pisa.[373] He put to death the charioteer Myrtilus, either from
indignation at his treachery to Œnomaus,[374] or from jealousy on the
score of Hippodameia: but Myrtilus was the son of Hermês, and though
Pelops erected a temple in the vain attempt to propitiate that god,
he left a curse upon his race which future calamities were destined
painfully to work out.[375]
[370] Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 358, and Schol.; Ister. Fragment. 59,
Dindorf; Diodôr. iv. 74.
[371] Diodôr. iv. 74.
[372] Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodic
Eoiai.
[373] Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and
Œnomaus was represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia: the
horses of the former were given as having wings (Pausan. v. 17,
4). Pherekydês gave the same story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect.
504).
[374] It is noted by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact,
that no mules were ever bred in the Eleian territory: an Eleian
who wished to breed a mule sent his mare for the time out of
the region. The Eleians themselves ascribed this phænomenon to
a disability brought on the land by a curse from the lips of
Œnomaus (Herod. iv. 30; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 303).
[375] Paus. v. 1, 1; Sophok. Elektr. 508; Eurip. Orest. 985, with
Schol., Plato, Kratyl. p. 395.
Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia: Pittheus, Trœzen and
Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic cities so called, are said
to have been among them: Atreus and Thyestês were also his sons, and
his daughter Nikippê married Sthenelus of Mykênæ, and became the
mother of Eurystheus.[376] We hear nothing of the principality of
Pisa afterwards: the Pisatid villages became absorbed into the larger
aggregate of Elis, after a vain struggle to maintain their separate
right of presidency over the Olympic festival. But the legend ran that
Pelops left his name to the whole peninsula: according to Thucydidês,
he was enabled to do this because of the great wealth which he had
brought with him from Lydia into a poor territory. The historian leaves
out all the romantic interest of the genuine legends—preserving only
this one circumstance, which, without being better attested than the
rest, carries with it, from its commonplace and prosaic character, a
pretended historical plausibility.[377]
[376] Apollod. ii. 4, 5. Pausan. ii. 30, 8; 26, 3; v. 8, 1.
Hesiod. ap. Schol. ad Iliad. xx. 116.
[377] Thucyd. i. 5.
Besides his numerous issue by Hippodameia, Pelops had an illegitimate
son named Chrysippus, of singular grace and beauty, towards whom he
displayed so much affection as to rouse the jealousy of Hippodameia
and her sons. Atreus and Thyestês conspired together to put Chrysippus
to death, for which they were banished by Pelops and retired to
Mykênæ,[378]—an event which brings us into the track of the Homeric
legend. For Thucydidês, having found in the death of Chrysippus a
suitable ground for the secession of Atreus from Pelops, conducts him
at once to Mykênæ, and shows a train of plausible circumstances to
account for his having mounted the throne. Eurystheus, king of Mykênæ,
was the maternal nephew of Atreus: when he engaged in any foreign
expedition, he naturally entrusted the regency to his uncle; the
people of Mykênæ thus became accustomed to be governed by him, and he
on his part made efforts to conciliate them, so that when Eurystheus
was defeated and slain in Attica, the Mykênæan people, apprehensive
of an invasion from the Hêrakleids, chose Atreus as at once the most
powerful and most acceptable person for his successor.[379] Such
was the tale which Thucydidês derived “from those who had learnt
ancient Peloponnêsian matters most clearly from their forefathers.”
The introduction of so much sober and quasi-political history,
unfortunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly
poetical legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it.
[378] We find two distinct legends respecting Chrysippus: his
abduction by Laius king of Thêbes, on which the lost drama
of Euripidês called Chrysippus turned (see Welcker, Griech.
Tragödien, ii. p. 536), and his death by the hands of his
half-brothers. Hyginus (f. 85) blends the two together.
[379] Thucyd. i. 9. λέγουσι δὲ οἱ τὰ Πελοποννησίων σαφέστατα
μνήμῃ παρὰ τῶν πρότερον δεδεγμένοι. According to Hellanikus,
Atreus the elder son returns to Pisa after the death of Pelops
with a great army, and makes himself master of his father’s
principality (Hellanik. ap Schol. ad Iliad, ii. 105). Hellanikus
does not seem to have been so solicitous as Thucydidês to
bring the story into conformity with Homer. The circumstantial
genealogy given in Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 5. makes Atreus and
Thyestês reside during their banishment at Makestus in Triphylia:
it is given without any special authority, but may perhaps come
from Hellanikus.
Atreus and Thyestês are known in the Iliad only as successive
possessors of the sceptre of Zeus, which Thyestês at his death
bequeathes to Agamemnôn. The family dissensions among this fated
race commence, in the Odyssey, with Agamemnôn the son of Atreus, and
Ægisthus the son of Thyestês. But subsequent poets dwelt upon an
implacable quarrel between the two fathers. The cause of the bitterness
was differently represented: some alleged that Thyestês had intrigued
with the Krêtan Aeropê, the wife of his brother; other narratives
mentioned that Thyestês procured for himself surreptitiously the
possession of a lamb with a golden fleece, which had been designedly
introduced among the flocks of Atreus by the anger of Hermês, as a
cause of enmity and ruin to the whole family.[380] Atreus, after a
violent burst of indignation, pretended to be reconciled, and invited
Thyestês to a banquet, in which he served up to him the limbs of his
own son, and the father ignorantly partook of the fatal meal. Even the
all-seeing Hêlios is said to have turned back his chariot to the east
in order that he might escape the shocking spectacle of this Thyestêan
banquet: yet the tale of Thyestêan revenge—the murder of Atreus
perpetrated by Ægisthus, the incestuous offspring of Thyestês by his
daughter Pelopia—is no less replete with horrors.[381]
[380] Æschyl. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608; Hygin. 86; Attii Fragm.
19. This was the story of the old poem entitled Alkmæônis;
seemingly also of Pherekydês, though the latter rejected the
story that Hermês had produced the golden lamb with the special
view of exciting discord between the two brothers, in order to
avenge the death of Myrtilus by Pelops (see Schol. ad Eurip.
Orest. 996).
A different legend, alluded to in Soph. Aj. 1295 (see Schol. _ad
loc._), recounted that Aeropê had been detected by her father
Katreus in unchaste commerce with a low-born person; he entrusted
her in his anger to Nauplius, with directions to throw her into
the sea: Nauplius however not only spared her life, but betrothed
her to Pleisthenês, father of Agamemnôn and son of Atreus.
The tragedy entitled _Atreus_ of the Latin poet Attius, seems to
have brought out, with painful fidelity, the harsh and savage
features of this family legend (see Aul. Gell. xiii. 2, and the
fragments of Attius now remaining, together with the tragedy
called Thyestês, of Seneca).
[381] Hygin. fab. 87-88.
Homeric legend is never thus revolting. Agamemnôn and Menelaus are
known to us chiefly with their Homeric attributes, which have not been
so darkly overlaid by subsequent poets as those of Atreus and Thyestês.
Agamemnôn and Menelaus are affectionate brothers: they marry two
sisters, the daughters of Tyndareus king of Sparta, Klytæmnêstra and
Helen; for Helen, the real offspring of Zeus, passes as the daughter of
Tyndareus.[382] The “king of men” reigns at Mykênæ; Menelaus succeeds
Tyndareus at Sparta. Of the rape of Helen, and the siege of Troy
consequent upon it, I shall speak elsewhere: I now touch only upon
the family legends of the Atreids. Menelaus, on his return from Troy
with the recovered Helen, is driven by storms far away to the distant
regions of Phœnicia and Egypt, and is exposed to a thousand dangers
and hardships before he again sets foot in Peloponnêsus. But at length
he reaches Sparta, resumes his kingdom, and passes the rest of his
days in uninterrupted happiness and splendor: being moreover husband
of the godlike Helen and son-in-law of Zeus, he is even spared the
pangs of death. When the fulness of his days is past he is transported
to the Elysian fields, there to dwell along with “the golden-haired
Rhadamanthus” in a delicious climate and in undisturbed repose.[383]
[382] So we must say, in conformity to the ideas of antiquity:
compare Homer, Iliad, xvi. 176 and Herodot. vi. 53.
[383] Hom. Odyss. iii. 280-300; iv. 83-560.
Far different is the fate of the king of men, Agamemnôn. During his
absence, the unwarlike Ægisthus, son of Thyestês, had seduced his
wife Klytæmnêstra, in spite of the special warning of the gods, who,
watchful over this privileged family, had sent their messenger Hermês
expressly to deter him from the attempt.[384] A venerable bard had been
left by Agamemnôn as the companion and monitor of his wife, and so long
as that guardian was at hand, Ægisthus pressed his suit in vain. But he
got rid of the bard by sending him to perish in a desert island, and
then won without difficulty the undefended Klytæmnêstra. Ignorant of
what had passed, Agamemnôn returned from Troy victorious and full of
hope to his native country; but he had scarcely landed when Ægisthus
invited him to a banquet, and there with the aid of the treacherous
Klytæmnêstra, in the very hall of festivity and congratulation,
slaughtered him and his companions “like oxen tied to the manger.” His
concubine Kassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, perished along
with him by the hand of Klytæmnêstra herself.[385] The boy Orestês, the
only male offspring of Agamemnôn, was stolen away by his nurse, and
placed in safety at the residence of the Phokian Strophius.
[384] Odyss. i. 38; iii. 310.—ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσθοιο.
[385] Odyss. iii. 260-275; iv. 512-537; xi. 408. Deinias in his
Argolica, and other historians of that territory, fixed the
precise day of the murder of Agamemnôn,—the thirteenth of the
month Gamêliôn (Schol. ad Sophokl. Elektr. 275).
For seven years Ægisthus and Klytæmnêstra reigned in tranquillity at
Mykênæ on the throne of the murdered Agamemnôn. But in the eighth year
the retribution announced by the gods overtook them: Orestês, grown to
manhood, returned and avenged his father by killing Ægisthus, according
to Homer; subsequent poets add, his mother also. He recovered the
kingdom of Mykênæ, and succeeded Menelaus in that of Sparta. Hermionê,
the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was sent into the realm of the
Myrmidons in Thessaly, as the bride of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles,
according to the promise made by her father during the siege of
Troy.[386]
[386] Odyss. iii. 306; iv. 9
Here ends the Homeric legend of the Pelopids, the final act
of Orestês being cited as one of unexampled glory.[387] Later
poets made many additions: they dwelt upon his remorse and
hardly-earned pardon for the murder of his mother, and upon his
devoted friendship for Pylades; they wove many interesting tales,
too, respecting his sisters Iphigeneia and Elektra and his cousin
Hermionê,—names which have become naturalized in every climate
and incorporated with every form of poetry.
[387] Odyss. i. 299.
These poets did not at all scruple to depart from Homer, and to give
other genealogies of their own, with respect to the chief persons
of the Pelopid family. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Agamemnôn is son
of Atreus: in the Hesiodic Eoiai and in Stesichorus, he is son of
Pleisthenês the son of Atreus.[388] In Homer, he is specially marked
as reigning at Mykênæ; but Stesichorus, Simonidês and Pindar[389]
represented him as having both resided and perished at Sparta or at
Amyklæ. According to the ancient Cyprian Verses, Helen was represented
as the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis: in one of the Hesiodic poems
she was introduced as an Oceanic nymph, daughter of Oceanus and
Têthys.[390] The genealogical discrepancies, even as to the persons of
the principal heroes and heroines, are far too numerous to be cited,
nor is it necessary to advert to them, except as they bear upon the
unavailing attempt to convert such legendary parentage into a basis of
historical record or chronological calculation.
[388] Hesiod. Fragm. 60. p. 44, ed. Düntzer; Stesichor. Fragm.
44, Kleine. The Scholiast ad Soph. Elektr. 539, in reference to
another discrepancy between Homer and the Hesiodic poems about
the children of Helen, remarks that we ought not to divert our
attention from that which is moral and salutary to ourselves in
the poets (τὰ ἠθικὰ καὶ χρήσιμα ἡμῖν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι), in order
to cavil at their genealogical contradictions.
Welcker in vain endeavors to show that Pleisthenês was originally
introduced as the father of Atreus, not as his son (Griech.
Tragöd. p. 678).
[389] Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 46. Ὅμηρος ἐν Μυκήναις φησὶ τὰ
βασιλεῖα τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος· Στησίχορος δὲ καὶ Σιμωνίδης, ἐν
Λακεδαιμονίᾳ. Pindar, Pyth. xi. 31; Nem. viii. 21. Stêsichorus
had composed an Ὀρέστεια, copied in many points from a still more
ancient lyric Oresteia by Xanthus: compare Athen. xii. p. 513,
and Ælian, V. H. iv. 26.
[390] Hesiod, ap. Schol. ad Pindar, Nem. x. 150.
The Homeric poems probably represent that form of the legend,
respecting Agamemnôn and Orestês, which was current and popular among
the Æolic colonists. Orestês was the great heroic chief of the Æolic
emigration; he, or his sons, or his descendants, are supposed to have
conducted the Achæans to seek a new home, when they were no longer
able to make head against the invading Dôrians: the great families at
Tenedos and other Æolic cities even during the historical æra, gloried
in tracing back their pedigrees to this illustrious source.[391] The
legends connected with the heroic worship of these mythical ancestors
form the basis of the character and attributes of Agamemnôn and his
family, as depicted in Homer, in which Mykênæ appears as the first
place in Peloponnêsus, and Sparta only as the second: the former the
special residence of “the king of men;” the latter that of his younger
and inferior brother, yet still the seat of a member of the princely
Pelopids, and moreover the birth-place of the divine Helen. Sparta,
Argos and Mykênæ are all three designated in the Iliad by the goddess
Hêrê as her favorite cities;[392] yet the connection of Mykênæ with
Argos, though the two towns were only ten miles distant, is far less
intimate than the connection of Mykênæ with Sparta. When we reflect
upon the very peculiar manner in which Homer identifies Hêrê with the
Grecian host and its leader,—for she watches over the Greeks with the
active solicitude of a mother, and her antipathy against the Trojans
is implacable to a degree which Zeus cannot comprehend,[393]—and when
we combine this with the ancient and venerated Hêræon, or temple of
Hêrê, near Mykênæ, we may partly explain to ourselves the preëminence
conferred upon Mykênæ in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Hêræon was situated
between Argos and Mykênæ; in later times its priestesses were named and
its affairs administered by the Argeians: but as it was much nearer
to Mykênæ than to Argos, we may with probability conclude that it
originally belonged to the former, and that the increasing power of
the latter enabled them to usurp to themselves a religious privilege
which was always an object of envy and contention among the Grecian
communities. The Æolic colonists doubtless took out with them in their
emigration the divine and heroic legends, as well as the worship and
ceremonial rites, of the Hêræon; and in those legends the most exalted
rank would be assigned to the close-adjoining and administering city.
[391] See the ode of Pindar addressed to Aristagoras of Tenedos
(Nem. xi. 35; Strabo, xiii. p. 582). There were Penthilids at
Mitylênê, from Penthilus, son of Orestês (Aristot. Polit v. 8,
13, Schneid.).
[392] Iliad, iv. 52. Compare Euripid. Hêrakleid. 350
[393] Iliad, iv. 31. Zeus says to Hêrê,—
Δαιμονίη, τί νύ σε Πρίαμος, Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες
Τόσσα κακὰ ῥέζεσκον ὅτ᾽ ἀσπερχὲς μενεαίνεις
Ἰλίου ἐξαλάπαξαι ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον;
Εἰ δὲ σύ γ᾽, εἰσελθοῦσα πύλας καὶ τείχεα μακρὰ,
Ὠμὸν βεβρώθοις Πρίαμον Πριάμοιό τε παῖδας,
Ἄλλους τε Τρῶας, τότε κεν χόλον ἐξακέσαιο.
Again, xviii. 358,—
ἦ ῥά νυ σεῖο
Ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐγένοντο καρηκομόωντες Ἀχαιοί.
Mykênæ maintained its independence even down to the Persian invasion.
Eighty of its heavy-armed citizens, in the ranks of Leonidas at
Thermopylæ, and a number not inferior at Platæa, upheld the splendid
heroic celebrity of their city during a season of peril, when the more
powerful Argos disgraced itself by a treacherous neutrality. Very
shortly afterwards Mykênæ was enslaved and its inhabitants expelled by
the Argeians. Though this city so long maintained a separate existence,
its importance had latterly sunk to nothing, while that of the Dôrian
Argos was augmented very much, and that of the Dôrian Sparta still more.
The name of Mykênæ is imperishably enthroned in the Iliad and Odyssey;
but all the subsequent fluctuations of the legend tend to exalt
the glory of other cities at its expense. The recognition of the
Olympic games as the grand religious festival of Peloponnêsus gave
vogue to that genealogy which connected Pelops with Pisa or Elis and
withdrew him from Mykênæ. Moreover, in the poems of the great Athenian
tragedians, Mykênæ is constantly confounded and treated as one with
Argos. If any one of the citizens of the former, expelled at the time
of its final subjugation by the Argeians, had witnessed at Athens a
drama of Æschylus, Sophoklês, or Euripidês, or the recital of an ode
of Pindar, he would have heard with grief and indignation the city of
his oppressors made a partner in the heroic glories of his own.[394]
But the great political ascendency acquired by Sparta contributed still
farther to degrade Mykênæ, by disposing subsequent poets to treat the
chief of the Grecian armament against Troy as having been a Spartan.
It has been already mentioned that Stêsichorus, Simonidês and Pindar
adopted this version of the legend: we know that Zeus Agamemnôn, as
well as the hero Menelaus, was worshipped at the Dôrian Sparta,[395]
and the feeling of intimate identity, as well as of patriotic pride,
which had grown up in the minds of the Spartans connected with the
name of Agamemnôn, is forcibly evinced by the reply of the Spartan
Syagrus to Gelôn of Syracuse at the time of the Persian invasion of
Greece. Gelôn was solicited to lend his aid in the imminent danger of
Greece before the battle of Salamis: he offered to furnish an immense
auxiliary force, on condition that the supreme command should be
allotted to him. “Loudly indeed would the Pelopid Agamemnôn cry out
(exclaimed Syagrus in rejecting this application), if he were to learn
that the Spartans had been deprived of the headship by Gelôn and the
Syracusans.”[396] Nearly a century before this event, in obedience to
the injunctions of the Delphian oracle, the Spartans had brought back
from Tegea to Sparta the bones of “the Lacônian Orestês,” as Pindar
denominates him:[397] the recovery of these bones was announced to them
as the means of reversing a course of ill-fortune, and of procuring
victory in their war against Tegea.[398] The value which they set upon
this acquisition, and the decisive results ascribed to it, exhibit a
precise analogy with the recovery of the bones of Theseus from Skyros
by the Athenian Cimôn shortly after the Persian invasion.[399] The
remains sought were those of a hero properly belonging to their own
soil, but who had died in a foreign land, and of whose protection and
assistance they were for that reason deprived. And the superhuman
magnitude of the bones, which were contained in a coffin seven cubits
long, is well suited to the legendary grandeur of the son of Agamemnôn.
[394] See the preface of Dissen to the tenth Nem. of Pindar.
[395] Clemens Alexandr. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 24. Ἀγαμέμνονα γοῦν
τινα Δία ἐν Σπάρτῃ τιμᾶσθαι Στάφυλος ἱστορεῖ. See also Œnomaus
ap. Euseb. Præparat. Evangel. v. 28.
[396] Herodot. vii. 159. Ἦ κε μέγ᾽ οἰμώξειεν ὁ Πελοπίδης
Ἀγαμέμνων, πυθόμενος Σπαρτιήτας ἀπαραιρῆσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ὑπὸ
Γέλωνός τε καὶ τῶν Συρακουσίων: compare Homer, Iliad, vii. 125.
See what appears to be an imitation of the same passage in
Josephus, De Bello Judaico, iii. 8, 4. Ἦ μεγάλα γ᾽ ἂν στενάξειαν
οἱ πάτριοι νόμοι, etc.
[397] Pindar. Pyth. xi. 16.
[398] Herodot. i 68.
[399] Plutarch. Thêseus, c. 36, Cimôn, c. 8; Pausan. iii. 3, 6.
CHAPTER VIII.
LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES.
The earliest names in Lacônian genealogy are, an autochthonous Lelex
and a Naiad nymph Kleochareia. From this pair sprung a son Eurôtas,
and from him a daughter Sparta, who became the wife of Lacedæmôn, son
of Zeus and Taygetê, daughter of Atlas. Amyklas, son of Lacedæmôn,
had two sons, Kynortas and Hyacinthus—the latter a beautiful youth,
the favorite of Apollo, by whose hand he was accidentally killed
while playing at quoits: the festival of the Hyacinthia, which the
Lacedæmônians generally, and the Amyklæans with special solemnity,
celebrated throughout the historical ages, was traced back to this
legend. Kynortas was succeeded by his son Periêrês, who married
Gorgophonê, daughter of Perseus, and had a numerous issue—Tyndareus,
Ikarius, Aphareus, Leukippus, and Hippokoon. Some authors gave the
genealogy differently, making Periêrês, son of Æolus, to be the father
of Kynortas, and Œbalus son of Kynortas, from whom sprung Tyndareus,
Ikarius and Hippokoon.[400]
[400] Compare Apollod. iii. 10, 4. Pausan. iii. 1, 4.
Both Tyndareus and Ikarius, expelled by their brother Hippokoon, were
forced to seek shelter at the residence of Thestius, king of Kalydôn,
whose daughter, Lêda, Tyndareus espoused. It is numbered among the
exploits of the omnipresent Hêraklês, that he slew Hippokoon and his
sons, and restored Tyndareus to his kingdom, thus creating for the
subsequent Hêrakleidan kings a mythical title to the throne. Tyndareus,
as well as his brothers, are persons of interest in legendary
narrative: he is the father of Kastôr, of Timandra, married to Echemus,
the hero of Tegea,[401] and of Klytæmnêstra, married to Agamemnôn.
Pollux and the ever-memorable Helen are the offspring of Lêda by Zeus.
Ikarius is the father of Penelopê, wife of Odysseus: the contrast
between her behavior and that of Klytæmnêstra and Helen became the more
striking in consequence of their being so nearly related. Aphareus is
the father of Idas and Lynkeus, while Leukippus has for his daughters,
Phœbê and Ilaëira. According to one of the Hesiodic poems, Kastôr and
Pollux were both sons of Zeus by Lêda, while Helen was neither daughter
of Zeus nor of Tyndareus, but of Oceanus and Têthys.[402]
[401] Hesiod. ap Schol. Pindar, Olymp. xi. 79.
[402] Hesiod. ap. Schol. Pindar, Nem. x. 150. Fragm. Hesiod.
Düntzer, 58. p. 44. Tyndareus was worshipped as a god at
Lacedæmôn (Varro ap. Serv. ad Virgil. Æneid. viii. 275).
The brothers Kastôr and (Polydeukês, or) Pollux are no less
celebrated for their fraternal affection than for their great bodily
accomplishments: Kastôr, the great charioteer and horse-master; Pollux,
the first of pugilists. They are enrolled both among the hunters of the
Kalydônian boar and among the heroes of the Argonautic expedition, in
which Pollux represses the insolence of Amykus, king of the Bebrykes,
on the coast of Asiatic Thrace—the latter, a gigantic pugilist, from
whom no rival has ever escaped, challenges Pollux, but is vanquished
and killed in the fight.[403]
[403] Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 1-96. Apollod. i. 9, 20. Theocrit. xxii.
26-133. In the account of Apollônius and Apollôdorus, Amykus is
slain in the contest; in that of Theocritus he is only conquered
and forced to give in, with a promise to renounce for the future
his brutal conduct; there were several different narratives. See
Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 106.
The two brothers also undertook an expedition into Attica, for the
purpose of recovering their sister Helen, who had been carried off by
Thêseus in her early youth, and deposited by him at Aphidna, while
he accompanied Perithous to the under-world, in order to assist his
friend in carrying off Persephonê. The force of Kastôr and Pollux was
irresistible, and when they re-demanded their sister, the people of
Attica were anxious to restore her: but no one knew where Thêseus had
deposited his prize. The invaders, not believing in the sincerity of
this denial, proceeded to ravage the country, which would have been
utterly ruined, had not Dekelus, the eponymus of Dekeleia, been able to
indicate Aphidna as the place of concealment. The autochthonous Titakus
betrayed Aphidna to Kastôr and Pollux, and Helen was recovered: the
brothers in evacuating Attica, carried away into captivity Æthra,
the mother of Thêseus. In after-days, when Kastôr and Pollux, under
the title of the Dioskuri, had come to be worshipped as powerful
gods, and when the Athenians were greatly ashamed of this act of
Thêseus—the revelation made by Dekelus was considered as entitling him
to the lasting gratitude of his country, as well as to the favorable
remembrance of the Lacedæmônians, who maintained the Dekeleians in
the constant enjoyment of certain honorary privileges at Sparta,[404]
and even spared that dême in all their invasions of Attica. Nor is
it improbable that the existence of this legend had some weight in
determining the Lacedæmônians to select Dekelia as the place of their
occupation during the Peleponnêsian war.
[404] Diodôr. ix. 63. Herod. iv. 73. Δεκελέων δὲ τῶν τότε
ἐργασαμένων ἔργον χρήσιμον ἐς τὸν πάντα χρόνον, ὡς αὐτοὶ Ἀθηναῖοι
λέγουσι. According to other authors, it was Akadêmus who made the
revelation, and the spot called Akadêmia, near Athens, which the
Lacedæmônians spared in consideration of this service (Plutarch,
Thêseus, 31, 32, 33, where he gives several different versions of
this tale by Attic writers, framed with the view of exonerating
Thêseus). The recovery of Helen and the captivity of Æthra were
represented on the ancient chest of Kypselus, with the following
curious inscription:
Τυνδαρίδα Ἑλέναν φέρετον, Αἴθραν δ᾽ Ἀθέναθεν
Ἕλκετον.
Pausan. v. 19, 1.
The fatal combat between Kastôr and Polydeukês on the one side, and
Idas and Lynkeus on the other, for the possession of the daughters of
Leukippus, was celebrated by more than one ancient poet, and forms the
subject of one of the yet remaining Idylls of Theocritus. Leukippus
had formally betrothed his daughters to Idas and Lynkeus; but the
Tyndarids, becoming enamored of them, outbid their rivals in the value
of the customary nuptial gifts, persuaded the father to violate his
promise, and carried off Phoebê and Ilaëira as their brides. Idas and
Lynkeus pursued them and remonstrated against the injustice: according
to Theocritus, this was the cause of the combat. But there was another
tale, which seems the older, and which assigns a different cause to the
quarrel. The four had jointly made a predatory incursion into Arcadia,
and had driven off some cattle, but did not agree about the partition
of the booty—Idas carried off into Messênia a portion of it which the
Tyndarids claimed as their own. To revenge and reimburse themselves,
the Tyndarids invaded Messênia, placing themselves in ambush in the
hollow of an ancient oak. But Lynkeus, endued with preternatural powers
of vision, mounted to the top of Taygetus, from whence, as he could see
over the whole Peleponnêsus, he detected them in their chosen place
of concealment. Such was the narrative of the ancient Cyprian Verses.
Kastôr perished by the hand of Idas, Lynkeus by that of Pollux. Idas,
seizing a stone pillar from the tomb of his father Aphareus, hurled
it at Pollux, knocked him down and stunned him; but Zeus, interposing
at the critical moment for the protection of his son, killed Idas
with a thunderbolt. Zeus would have conferred upon Pollux the gift
of immortality, but the latter could not endure existence without
his brother: he entreated permission to share the gift with Kastôr,
and both were accordingly permitted to live, but only on every other
day.[405]
[405] Cypria Carm. Fragm. 8. p. 13, Düntzer. Lycophrôn, 538-566
with Schol. Apollod. iii. 11, 1. Pindar, Nem. x. 55-90.
ἑτερήμερον ἀθανασίαν: also Homer, Odyss. xi. 302, with the
Commentary of Nitzsch, vol. iii. p. 245.
The combat thus ends more favorably to the Tyndarids; but
probably the account least favorable to them is the oldest, since
their dignity went on continually increasing, until at last they
became great deities.
The Dioskuri, or sons of Zeus,—as the two Spartan heroes, Kastôr and
Pollux, were denominated,—were recognized in the historical days of
Greece as gods, and received divine honors. This is even noticed
in a passage of the Odyssey,[406] which is at any rate a very old
interpolation, as well as in one of the Homeric hymns. What is yet more
remarkable is, that they were invoked during storms at sea, as the
special and all-powerful protectors of the endangered mariner, although
their attributes and their celebrity seem to be of a character so
dissimilar. They were worshipped throughout most parts of Greece, but
with preëminent sanctity at Sparta.
[406] Odyss. xxi. 15. Diodôr. xv. 66.
Kastôr and Pollux being removed, the Spartan genealogy passes from
Tyndareus to Menelaus, and from him to Orestês.
Originally it appears that Messênê was a name for the western portion
of Lacônia, bordering on what was called Pylos: it is so represented
in the Odyssey, and Ephorus seems to have included it amongst the
possessions of Orestês and his descendants. Throughout the whole
duration of the Messênico-Dôrian kingdom, there never was any town
called Messênê: the town was first founded by Epameinondas, after the
battle of Leuctra. The heroic genealogy of Messênia starts from the
same name as that of Lacônia—from the autochthonous Lelex: his younger
son, Polykaôn, marries Messênê, daughter of the Argeian Triopas, and
settles the country. Pausanias tells us that the posterity of this pair
occupied the country for five generations; but he in vain searched the
ancient genealogical poems to find the names of their descendants.[407]
To them succeeded Periêrês, son of Æolus; and Aphareus and Leukippus,
according to Pausanias, were sons of Periêrês. Idas and Lynkeus are
the only heroes, distinguished for personal exploits and memorable
attributes, belonging to Messênia proper. They are the counterpart of
the Dioskuri, and were interesting persons in the old legendary poems.
Marpêssa was the daughter of Euênus, and wooed by Apollo: nevertheless
Idas[408] carried her off by the aid of a winged chariot which he
had received from Poseidôn, Euênus pursued them, and when he arrived
at the river Lykormas, he found himself unable to overtake them: his
grief caused him to throw himself into the river, which ever afterwards
bore his name. Idas brought Marpêssa safe to Messênia, and even when
Apollo there claimed her of him, he did not fear to risk a combat with
the god. But Zeus interfered as mediator, and permitted the maiden to
choose which of the two she preferred. She attached herself to Idas,
being apprehensive that Apollo would desert her in her old age: on the
death of her husband she slew herself. Both Idas and Lynkeus took part
in the Argonautic expedition and in the Kalydônian boar-hunt.[409]
[407] Pausan. iv. 2, 1.
[408] Iliad, ix. 553. Simonidês had handled this story in
detail (Schol. Ven. II. ix. p. 553). Bacchylidês (ap. Schol.
Pindar. Isthm. iv. 92) celebrated in one of his poems the
competition among many eager suitors for the hand of Marpêssa,
under circumstances similar to the competition for Hippodameia,
daughter of Œnomaus. Many unsuccessful suitors perished by the
hand of Euênus: their skulls were affixed to the wall of the
temple of Poseidôn.
[409] Apollod. i. 7, 9. Pausan. iv. 2, 5. Apollônius Rhodius
describes Idas as full of boast and self-confidence, heedless of
the necessity of divine aid. Probably this was the character of
the brothers in the old legend, as the enemies of the Dioskuri.
The wrath of the Dioskuri against Messênia was treated, even in
the historical times, as the grand cause of the subjection of the
Messênians by the Spartans: that wrath had been appeased at the
time when Epameinondas reconstituted Messênê (Pausan. iv. 27, 1).
Aphareus, after the death of his sons, founded the town of Arênê, and
made over most part of his dominions to his kinsman Nêleus, with whom
we pass into the Pylian genealogy.
CHAPTER IX.
ARCADIAN GENEALOGY.
The Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, whom both
Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, though Akusilaus the
Argeian represented him as brother of Argos and son of Zeus by Niobê,
daughter of Phorôneus: this logographer wished to establish a community
of origin between the Argeians and the Arcadians.
Lykaôn son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different wives,
fifty sons, the most savage, impious and wicked of mankind: Mænalus
was the eldest of them. Zeus, in order that he might himself become
a witness of their misdeeds, presented himself to them in disguise.
They killed a child and served it up to him for a meal; but the god
overturned the table and struck dead with thunder Lykaôn and all his
fifty sons, with the single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom
he spared at the earnest intercession of the goddess Gæa (the Earth).
The town near which the table was overturned received the name of
Trapezus (Tabletown).
This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type as that of
the ants in Ægina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, and may probably
belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pausanias tells us a story in
many respects different, which was represented to him in Arcadia as
the primitive local account, and which becomes the more interesting,
as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go
to illustrate the same point—the ferocity of Lykaôn’s character, as
well as the cruel rites which he practised. The latter was the first
who established the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykæus: he offered
up a child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar.
Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a
wolf.[410]
[410] Apollodôr. iii. 8, 1. Hygin. fab. 176. Eratosthen.
Catasterism. 8. Pausan. viii. 2, 2-3. A different story
respecting the immolation of the child is in Nikolaus Damask.
Frag. p. 41, Orelli. Lykaôn is mentioned as the first founder
of the temple of Zeus Lykæus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662;
but nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its
consequences. In the historical times, the festival and
solemnities of the Lykæa do not seem to have been distinguished
materially from the other agônes of Greece (Pindar, Olymp. xiii.
104; Nem. x. 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals in the
army of Cyrus the younger, celebrated the solemnity with great
magnificence in the march through Asia Minor (Xen. Anab. i. 2,
10). But the fable of the human sacrifice, and the subsequent
transmutation of the person who had eaten human food into a wolf,
continued to be told in connection with them (Plato, de Republic.
viii. c. 15. p. 417). Compare Pliny, H. N. viii. 34. This passage
of Plato seems to afford distinct indication that the practice
of offering human victims at the altar of the Lykæan Zeus was
neither prevalent nor recent, but at most only traditional and
antiquated; and it therefore limits the sense or invalidates the
authority of the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos, c. 5.
“Of the truth of this narrative (observes Pausanias) I feel persuaded:
it has been repeated by the Arcadians from old times, and it carries
probability along with it. For the men of that day, from their justice
and piety, were guests and companions at table with the gods, who
manifested towards them approbation when they were good, and anger
if they behaved ill, in a palpable manner: indeed at that time there
were some, who having once been men, became gods, and who yet retain
their privileges as such—Aristæus, the Krêtan Britomartis, Hêraklês
son of Alkmêna, Amphiaraus the son of Oiklês, and Pollux and Kastôr
besides. We may therefore believe that Lykaôn became a wild beast, and
that Niobê, the daughter of Tantalus, became a stone. But in my time,
wickedness having enormously increased, so as to overrun the whole
earth and all the cities in it, there are no farther examples of men
exalted into gods, except by mere title and from adulation towards the
powerful: moreover the anger of the gods falls tardily upon the wicked,
and is reserved for them after their departure from hence.”
Pausanias then proceeds to censure those who, by multiplying false
miracles in more recent times, tended to rob the old and genuine
miracles of their legitimate credit and esteem. The passage illustrates
forcibly the views which a religious and instructed pagan took of his
past time—how inseparably he blended together in it gods and men, and
how little he either recognized or expected to find in it the naked
phænomena and historical laws of connection which belonged to the world
before him. He treats the past as the province of legend, the present
as that of history; and in doing this he is more sceptical than the
persons with whom he conversed, who believed not only in the ancient,
but even in the recent and falsely reported miracles. It is true that
Pausanias does not always proceed consistently with this position: he
often rationalizes the stories of the past, as if he expected to find
historical threads of connection; and sometimes, though more rarely,
accepts the miracles of the present. But in the present instance he
draws a broad line of distinction between present and past, or rather
between what is recent and what is ancient: his criticism is, in the
main, analogous to that of Arrian in regard to the Amazons—denying
their existence during times of recorded history, but admitting it
during the early and unrecorded ages.
In the narrative of Pausanias, the sons of Lykaôn, instead of perishing
by thunder from Zeus, become the founders of the various towns in
Arcadia. And as that region was subdivided into a great number of small
and independent townships, each having its own eponym, so the Arcadian
heroic genealogy appears broken up and subdivided. Pallas, Orestheus,
Phigalus, Trapezeus, Mænalus, Mantinêus, and Tegeatês, are all numbered
among the sons of Lykaôn, and are all eponyms of various Arcadian
towns.[411]
[411] Paus. viii. 3. Hygin. fab. 177.
The legend respecting Kallistô and Arkas, the eponym of Arcadia
generally, seems to have been originally quite independent of and
distinct from that of Lykaôn. Eumêlus, indeed, and some other poets
made Kallistô daughter of Lykaôn; but neither Hesiod, nor Asius, nor
Pherekydês, acknowledged any relationship between them.[412] The
beautiful Kallistô, companion of Artemis in the chase, had bound
herself by a vow of chastity. Zeus, either by persuasion or by force,
obtained a violation of the vow, to the grievous displeasure both of
Hêrê and Artemis. The former changed Kallistô into a bear, the latter
when she was in that shape killed her with an arrow. Zeus gave to the
unfortunate Kallistô a place among the stars, as the constellation of
the Bear: he also preserved the child Arkas, of which she was pregnant
by him, and gave it to the Atlantid nymph Maia to bring up.[413]
[412] Apollod. iii. 8, 2.
[413] Pausan. viii. 3, 2. Apollod. iii. 8, 2. Hesiod. apud
Eratosthen. Catasterism. 1. Fragm. 182, Marktsch. Hygin. f. 177.
Arkas, when he became king, obtained from Triptolemus and communicated
to his people the first rudiments of agriculture; he also taught them
to make bread, to spin, and to weave. He had three sons—Azan, Apheidas,
and Elatus: the first was the eponym of Azania, the northern region
of Arcadia; the second was one of the heroes of Tegea; the third was
father of Ischys (rival of Apollo for the affections of Korônis), as
well as of Æpytus and Kyllên: the name of Æpytus among the heroes of
Arcadia is as old as the Catalogue in the Iliad.[414]
[414] Homer, Iliad, ii. 604. Pind. Olymp. vi. 44-63.
The tomb of Æpytus, mentioned in the Iliad, was shown to
Pausanias between Pheneus and Stymphalus (Pausan. viii. 16, 2).
Æpytus was a cognomen of Hermês (Pausan. viii. 47, 3).
The hero Arkas was worshipped at Mantineia, under the special
injunction of the Delphian oracle (Pausan. viii. 9, 2).
Aleus, son of Apheidas and king of Tegea, was the founder of the
celebrated temple and worship of Athênê Alea in that town. Lykurgus and
Kêpheus were his sons, Augê his daughter, who was seduced by Hêraklês,
and secretly bore to him a child: the father, discovering what had
happened, sent Augê to Nauplius to be sold into slavery: Teuthras,
king of Mysia in Asia Minor, purchased her and made her his wife: her
tomb was shown at Pergamus on the river Kaïkus even in the time of
Pausanias.[415]
[415] Pausan. viii. 4, 6. Apollod. iii. 9, 1. Diodôr. iv. 33.
A separate legend respecting Augê and the birth of Têlephus was
current at Tegea, attached to the temple, statue, and cognomen of
Eileithyia in the Tegeatic agora (Pausan. viii. 48, 5).
Hekatæus seems to have narrated in detail the adventures of Augê
(Pausan. viii. 4, 4; 47, 3. Hekatæ. Fragm. 345, Didot.).
Euripidês followed a different story about Augê and the birth of
Têlephus in his lost tragedy called Augê (See Strabo, xiii. p.
615). Respecting the Μυσοὶ of Æschylus, and the two lost dramas,
Ἀλεαδαὶ and Μυσοὶ of Sophoklês, little can be made out. (See
Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. p. 53, 408-414).
The child Têlephus, exposed on Mount Parthenius, was wonderfully
sustained by the milk of a doe: the herdsmen of Korythus brought him
up, and he was directed by the Delphian oracle to go and find his
parents in Mysia. Teuthras adopted him, and he succeeded to the throne:
in the first attempt of the army of Agamemnôn against Troy, on which
occasion they mistook their point and landed in Mysia, his valor
signally contributed to the repulse of the Greeks, though he was at
last vanquished and desperately wounded by the spear of Achilles—by
whom however he was afterwards healed, under the injunction of the
oracle, and became the guide of the Greeks in their renewed attack upon
the Trojans.[416]
[416] Têlephus and his exploits were much dwelt upon in the lost
old epic poem, the Cyprian Verses. See argument of that poem ap.
Düntzer, Ep. Fragm. p. 10. His exploits were also celebrated by
Pindar (Olymp. ix. 70-79); he is enumerated along with Hectôr,
Cycnus, Memnôn, the most distinguished opponents of Achilles
(Isthm. iv. 46). His birth, as well as his adventures, became
subjects with most of the great Attic tragedians.
From Lykurgus,[417] the son of Aleus and brother of Augê, we pass to
his son Ankæus, numbered among the Argonauts, finally killed in the
chase of the Kalydônian boar, and father of Agapenôr, who leads the
Arcadian contingent against Troy,—(the adventurers of his niece, the
Tegeatic huntress Atalanta, have already been touched upon),—then
to Echemus, son of Aëropus and grandson of the brother of Lykurgus,
Kêpheus. Echemus is the chief heroic ornament of Tegea. When Hyllus,
the son of Hêraklês, conducted the Hêrakleids on their first expedition
against Peloponnêsus, Echemus commanded the Tegean troops who assembled
along with the other Peloponnêsians at the isthmus of Corinth to repel
the invasion: it was agreed that the dispute should be determined
by single combat, and Echemus, as the champion of Peloponnêsus,
encountered and killed Hyllus. Pursuant to the stipulation by which
they had bound themselves, the Hêrakleids retired, and abstained for
three generations from pressing their claim upon Peloponnêsus. This
valorous exploit of their great martial hero was cited and appealed to
by the Tegeates before the battle of Platæa, as the principal evidence
of their claim to the second post in the combined army, next in point
of honor to that of the Lacedæmônians, and superior to that of the
Athenians: the latter replied to them by producing as counter-evidence
the splendid heroic deeds of Athens,—the protection of the Hêrakleids
against Eurystheus, the victory over the Kadmeians of Thêbes, and the
complete defeat of the Amazons in Attica.[418] Nor can there be any
doubt that these legendary glories were both recited by the speakers,
and heard by the listeners, with profound and undoubting faith, as well
as with heart-stirring admiration.
[417] There were other local genealogies of Tegea deduced from
Lykurgus: Bôtachus, eponym of the Dême Bôtachidæ at that place,
was his grandson (Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. v. Βωταχίδαι).
[418] Herodot. ix. 27. Echemus is described by Pindar (Ol. xi.
69) as gaining the prize of wrestling in the fabulous Olympic
games, on their first establishment by Hêraklês. He also found
a place in the Hesiodic Catalogue as husband of Timandra, the
sister of Helen and Klytæmnêstra (Hesiod, Fragm. 105, p. 318,
Marktscheff.).
One other person there is—Ischys, son of Elatus and grandson of
Arkas—in the fabulous genealogy of Arcadia whom it would be improper to
pass over, inasmuch as his name and adventures are connected with the
genesis of the memorable god or hero Æsculapius, or Asklêpius. Korônis,
daughter of Phlegyas, and resident near the lake Bœbëis in Thessaly,
was beloved by Apollo and became pregnant by him: unfaithful to the
god, she listened to the propositions of Ischys son of Elatus, and
consented to wed him: a raven brought to Apollo the fatal news, which
so incensed him that he changed the color of the bird from white, as it
previously had been, into black.[419] Artemis, to avenge the wounded
dignity of her brother, put Korônis to death; but Apollo preserved the
male child of which she was about to be delivered, and consigned it to
the Centaur Cheirôn to be brought up. The child was named Asklêpius or
Æsculapius, and acquired, partly from the teaching of the beneficent
leech Cheirôn, partly from inborn and superhuman aptitude, a knowledge
of the virtues of herbs and a mastery of medicine and surgery, such
as had never before been witnessed. He not only cured the sick, the
wounded, and the dying, but even restored the dead to life. Kapaneus,
Eriphylê, Hippolytus, Tyndareus and Glaukus were all affirmed by
different poets and logographers to have been endued by him with a new
life.[420] But Zeus now found himself under the necessity of taking
precautions lest mankind, thus unexpectedly protected against sickness
and death, should no longer stand in need of the immortal gods: he
smote Asklêpius with thunder and killed him. Apollo was so exasperated
by this slaughter of his highly-gifted son, that he killed the Cyclôpes
who had fabricated the thunder, and Zeus was about to condemn him to
Tartarus for doing so; but on the intercession of Latôna he relented,
and was satisfied with imposing upon him a temporary servitude in the
house of Admêtus at Pheræ.
[419] Apollodôr. iii. 10, 3; Hesiod, Fragm. 141-142,
Marktscheff.; Strab. ix. p. 442; Pherekydês, Fragm. 8; Akusilaus,
Fragm. 25, Didot.
Τῷ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἄγγελος ἦλθε κόραξ, ἱερῆς ἀπὸ δαιτὸς
Πυθὼ ἐς ἠγαθέην, καὶ ῥ᾽ ἔφρασεν ἔργ᾽ ἀΐδηλα
Φοίβῳ ἀκερσεκόμῃ, ὅτι Ἴσχυς γῆμε Κόρωνιν
Εἰλατίδης, Φλεγύαο διογνήτοιο θύγατρα. (Hesiod, Fr.)
The change of the color of the crow is noticed both in Ovid,
Metamorph. ii. 632, in Antonin. Liberal. c. 20, and in Servius ad
Virgil. Æneid. vii. 761, though the name “_Corvo_ custode ejus”
is there printed with a capital letter, as if it were a man named
_Corvus_.
[420] Schol. Eurip. Alkêst. 1; Diodôr. iv. 71; Apollodôr. iii.
10, 3; Pindar, Pyth. iii. 59; Sextus Empiric. adv. Grammatic. i.
12. p. 271. Stesichorus named Eriphylê—the Naupaktian verses,
Hippolytus—(compare Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. vii. 761);
Panyasis, Tyndareus; a proof of the popularity of this tale among
the poets. Pindar says that Æsculapius was “tempted by gold” to
raise a man from the dead, and Plato (Legg. iii. p. 408) copies
him: this seems intended to afford some color for the subsequent
punishment. “Mercede id captum (observes Boeckh. ad Pindar. _l.
c._) Æsculapium fecisse recentior est fictio; Pindari fortasse
ipsius, quem tragici secuti sunt: haud dubie a medicorum avaris
moribus profecta, qui Græcorum medicis nostrisque communes
sunt.” The rapacity of the physicians (granting it to be ever
so well-founded, both then and now) appears to me less likely
to have operated upon the mind of Pindar, than the disposition
to extenuate the cruelty of Zeus, by imputing guilty and sordid
views to Asklêpius. Compare the citation from Dikæarchus,
_infrà_, p. 249, note 1.
Asklêpius was worshipped with very great solemnity at Trikka, at Kôs,
at Knidus, and in many different parts of Greece, but especially at
Epidaurus, so that more than one legend had grown up respecting the
details of his birth and adventures: in particular, his mother was
by some called Arsinoê. But a formal application had been made on
this subject (so the Epidaurians told Pausanias) to the oracle of
Delphi, and the god in reply acknowledged that Asklêpius was his son
by Korônis.[421] The tale above recounted seems to have been both the
oldest and the most current. It is adorned by Pindar in a noble ode,
wherein however he omits all mention of the raven as messenger—not
specifying who or what the spy was from whom Apollo learnt the
infidelity of Korônis. By many this was considered as an improvement in
respect of poetical effect, but it illustrates the mode in which the
characteristic details and simplicity of the old fables[422] came to be
exchanged for dignified generalities, adapted to the altered taste of
society.
[421] Pausan. ii. 26, where several distinct stories are
mentioned, each springing up at some one or other of the
sanctuaries of the god: quite enough to justify the idea of these
Æsculapii (Cicero, N. D. iii. 22).
Homer, Hymn ad Æsculap. 2. The tale briefly alluded to in the
Homeric Hymn. ad Apollin. 209. is evidently different: Ischys is
there the companion of Apollo, and Korônis is an Arcadian damsel.
Aristidês, the fervent worshipper of Asklêpius, adopted the story
of Korônis, and composed hymns on the γάμον Κορωνίδος καὶ γένεσιν
τοῦ θεοῦ (Orat. 23. p. 463, Dind.).
[422] See Pindar, Pyth. iii. The Scholiast puts a construction
upon Pindar’s words which is at any rate far-fetched, if indeed
it be at all admissible: he supposes that Apollo knew the fact
from his own omniscience, without any informant, and he praises
Pindar for having thus transformed the old fable. But the words
οὐδ᾽ ἔλαθε σκόπον seem certainly to imply some informant: to
suppose that σκόπον means the god’s own mind, is a strained
interpretation.
Machaôn and Podaleirius, the two sons of Asklêpius, command the
contingent from Trikka, in the north-west region of Thessaly, at
the siege of Troy by Agamemnôn.[423] They are the leeches of the
Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs.
Their medical renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem
of Arktinus, the Iliu-Persis, wherein the one was represented as
unrivalled in surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting
and appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed
the glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide
of Ajax.[424]
[423] Iliad, ii. 730. The Messênians laid claim to the sons of
Asklêpius as their heroes, and tried to justify the pretension by
a forced construction of Homer (Pausan. iii. 4, 2).
[424] Arktinus, Epicc. Græc. Fragm. 2. p. 22, Düntzer. The
Ilias Minor mentioned the death of Machaôn by Eurypylus, son of
Têlephus (Fragm. 5. p. 19, Düntzer).
Galen appears uncertain whether Asklêpius (as well as Dionysus) was
originally a god, or whether he was first a man and then became
afterwards a god;[425] but Apollodôrus professed to fix the exact
date of his apotheosis.[426] Throughout all the historical ages the
descendants of Asklêpius were numerous and widely diffused. The many
families or gentes called Asklêpiads, who devoted themselves to the
study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt near the
temples of Asklêpius whither sick and suffering men came to obtain
relief—all recognized the god not merely as the object of their common
worship, but also as their actual progenitor. Like Solôn, who reckoned
Nêleus and Poseidôn as his ancestors, or the Milêsian Hekatæus, who
traced his origin through fifteen successive links to a god—like
the privileged gens at Pêlion in Thessaly,[427] who considered the
wise Centaur Cheirôn as their progenitor, and who inherited from him
their precious secrets respecting the medicinal herbs of which their
neighborhood was full,—Asklêpiads, even of the later times, numbered
and specified all the intermediate links which separated them from
their primitive divine parent. One of these genealogies has been
preserved to us, and we may be sure that there were many such, as
the Asklêpiads were found in many different places.[428] Among them
were enrolled highly instructed and accomplished men, such as the
great Hippocratês and the historian Ktêsias, who prided themselves on
the divine origin of themselves and their gens[429]—so much did the
legendary element pervade even the most philosophical and positive
minds of historical Greece. Nor can there be any doubt that their
means of medical observation must have been largely extended by
their vicinity to a temple so much frequented by the sick, who came
in confident hopes of divine relief, and who, whilst they offered
up sacrifice and prayer to Æsculapius, and slept in his temple in
order to be favored with healing suggestions in their dreams, might,
in case the god withheld his supernatural aid, consult his living
descendants.[430] The sick visitors at Kôs, or Trikka, or Epidaurus,
were numerous and constant, and the tablets usually hung up to record
the particulars of their maladies, the remedies resorted to, and the
cures operated by the god, formed both an interesting decoration of the
sacred ground and an instructive memorial to the Asklêpiads.[431]
[425] Ἀσκληπιός γέ τοι καὶ Διόνυσος, εἴτ᾽ ἄνθρωποι πρότερον ἤστην
εἴτε καὶ ἀρχῆθεν θεοί (Galen, Protreptic. 9. t. 1. p. 22, Kühn.).
Pausanias considers him as θεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς (ii. 26, 7). In the
important temple at Smyrna he was worshipped as Ζεὺς Ἀσκληπιός
(Aristidês, Or. 6. p. 64; Or. 23. p. 456, Dind.).
[426] Apollodôr. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 381; see Heyne,
Fragment. Apollodôr. p. 410. According to Apollodôrus, the
apotheosis of Hêraklês and of Æsculapius took place at the same
time, thirty-eight years after Hêraklês began to reign at Argos.
[427] About Hekatæus, Herodot. ii. 143; about Solôn, Diogen.
Laërt. Vit. Platon. init.
A curious fragment, preserved from the lost works of Dikæarchus,
tells us of the descendants of the Centaur Cheirôn at the town of
Pêlion, or perhaps at the neighboring town of Dêmêtrias,—it is
not quite certain which, perhaps at both (see Dikæarch. Fragment.
ed. Fuhr, p. 408). Ταύτην δὲ τὴν δύναμιν ἓν τῶν πολιτῶν οἶδε
γένος, ὁ δὴ λέγεται Χείρωνος ἀπόγονον εἶναι· παραδίδωσι δὲ καὶ
δείκνυσι πατὴρ υἱῷ, καὶ οὕτως ἡ δύναμις φυλάσσεται, ὡς οὐδεὶς
ἄλλος οἶδε τῶν πολιτῶν· οὐχ ὅσιον δὲ τοὺς ἐπισταμένους τὰ φάρμακα
μισθοῦ τοῖς καμνοῦσι βοηθεῖν, ἀλλὰ προῖκα.
Plato, de Republ. iii. 4 (p. 391). Ἀχιλλεὺς ὑπὸ τῷ σοφωτάτῳ
Χείρωνι τεθραμμένος. Compare Xenophôn, De Venat. c. 1.
[428] See the genealogy at length in Le Clerc, Historie de
la Médecine, lib. ii. c. 2. p. 78, also p. 287; also Littré,
Introduction aux Œuvres Complètes d’Hippocrate, t. i. p. 35.
Hippocratês was the seventeenth from Æsculapius.
Theopompus the historian went at considerable length into the
pedigree of the Asklêpiads of Kôs and Knidus, tracing them up
to Podaleirius and his first settlement at Syrnus in Karia (see
Theopomp. Fragm. 111, Didot): Polyanthus of Kyrênê composed
a special treatise περὶ τῆς τῶν Ἀσκληπιαδῶν γενέσεως (Sextus
Empiric. adv. Grammat. i. 12. p. 271); see Stephan. Byz. v. Κῶς,
and especially Aristidês, Orat. vii. _Asclêpiadæ_. The Asklêpiads
were even reckoned among the Ἀρχηγέται of Rhodes, jointly with
the Hêrakleids (Aristidês, Or. 44, ad Rhod. p. 839, Dind.).
In the extensive sacred enclosure at Epidaurus stood the
statues of Asklêpius and his wife Epionê (Pausan. ii. 29, 1):
two daughters are coupled with him by Aristophanês, and he was
considered especially εὔπαις (Plutus, 654); Jaso, Panakeia and
Hygieia are named by Aristidês.
[429] Plato, Protagor. c. 6 (p. 311). Ἱπποκράτη τὸν Κῶον, τὸν
τῶν Ἀσκληπιαδῶν; also Phædr. c. 121. (p. 270). About Ktêsias,
Galen, Opp. t. v. p. 652, Basil.; and Bahrt, Fragm. Ktêsiæ, p. 20.
Aristotle (see Stahr. Aristotelia, i. p. 32) and Xenophôn, the
physician of the emperor Claudius, were both Asklêpiads (Tacit.
Annal. xii. 61). Plato, de Republ. iii. 405, calls them τοὺς
κομψοὺς Ἀσκληπιάδας.
Pausanias, a distinguished physician at Gela in Sicily, and
contemporary of the philosopher Empedoklês, was also an
Asklêpiad: see the verses of Empedoklês upon him, Diogen. Laërt.
viii. 61.
[430] Strabo, viii. p. 374; Aristophan. Vesp. 122; Plutus,
635-750; where the visit to the temple of Æsculapius is described
in great detail, though with a broad farcical coloring.
During the last illness of Alexander the Great, several of his
principal officers slept in the temple of Serapis, in the hope
that remedies would be suggested to them in their dreams (Arrian,
vii. 26).
Pausanias, in describing the various temples of Asklêpius which
he saw, announces as a fact quite notorious and well-understood,
“Here cures are wrought by the god” (ii. 36, 1; iii. 26, 7; vii.
27, 4): see Suidas, v. Ἀρίσταρχος. The Orations of Aristidês,
especially the 6th and 7th, _Asklêpius and the Asklêpiadæ_,
are the most striking manifestations of faith and thanksgiving
towards Æsculapius, as well as attestations of his extensive
working throughout the Grecian world; also Orat. 23 and 25, Ἱερῶν
Λόγος, 1 and 3; and Or. 45 (De Rhetoricâ, p. 22. Dind.), αἵ τ᾽ ἐν
Ἀσκληπιοῦ τῶν ἀεὶ διατριβόντων ἀγελαὶ, etc.
[431] Pausan. ii. 27, 3; 36, 1. Ταύταις ἐγγεγραμμένα ἐστὶ καὶ
ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν ὀνόματα ἀκεσθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ, πρόσετι
δὲ καὶ νόσημα, ὅ,τι ἕκαστος ἐνόσησε, καὶ ὅπως ἰάθη,—the cures are
wrought by the god himself.
The genealogical descent of Hippocratês and the other Asklêpiads
from the god Asklêpius is not only analogous to that of Hekatæus and
Solôn from their respective ancestoral gods, but also to that of the
Lacedæmônian kings from Hêraklês, upon the basis of which the whole
supposed chronology of the ante-historical times has been built, from
Eratosthenês and Apollodôrus down to the chronologers of the present
century.[432] I shall revert to this hereafter.
[432] “Apollodôrus ætatem Herculis pro cardine chronologiæ
habuit” (Heyne, ad Apollodôr. Fragm. p. 410).