perplexities experienced by those who wished to introduce a regular
chronological arrangement into these legendary events, has led both
in ancient and in modern times to the supposition of two kings
named Minôs, one the grandson of the other,—Minôs I., the son of
Zeus, lawgiver and judge,—Minôs II., the thalassokrat,—a gratuitous
conjecture, which, without solving the problem required, only adds
one to the numerous artifices employed for imparting the semblance of
history to the disparate matter of legend. The Krêtans were at all
times, from Homer downward, expert and practised seamen. But that they
were ever united under one government, or ever exercised maritime
dominion in the Ægean is a fact which we are neither able to affirm
nor to deny. The Odyssey, in so far as it justifies any inference at
all, points against such a supposition, since it recognizes a great
diversity both of inhabitants and of languages in the island, and
designates Minôs as king specially of Knôssus: it refutes still more
positively the idea that Minôs put down piracy, which the Homeric
Krêtans as well as others continue to practise without scruple.
Herodotus, though he in some places speaks of Minôs as a person
historically cognizable, yet in one passage severs him pointedly from
the generation of man. The Samian despot “Polykratês (he tells us) was
the first person who aspired to nautical dominion, excepting Minôs
of Knôssus, and others before him (if any such there ever were) who
may have ruled the sea; but Polykratês is the first of that which is
called _the generation of man_ who aspired with much chance of success
to govern Iônia and the islands of the Ægean.”[544] Here we find it
manifestly intimated that Minôs did not belong to the generation of
man, and the tale given by the historian respecting the tremendous
calamities which the wrath of the departed Minôs inflicted on Krête
confirms the impression. The king of Knôssus is a god or a hero, but
not a man; he belongs to legend, not to history. He is the son as
well as the familiar companion of Zeus; he marries the daughter of
Hêlios, and Ariadnê is numbered among his offspring. To this superhuman
person are ascribed the oldest and most revered institutions of the
island, religious and political, together with a period of supposed
ante-historical dominion. That there is much of Krêtan religious ideas
and practice embodied in the fables concerning Minôs can hardly be
doubted: nor is it improbable that the tale of the youths and maidens
sent from Athens may be based in some expiatory offerings rendered to
a Krêtan divinity. The orgiastic worship of Zeus, solemnized by the
armed priests with impassioned motions and violent excitement, was
of ancient date in that island, as well as the connection with the
worship of Apollo both at Delphi and at Dêlos. To analyze the fables
and to elicit from them any trustworthy particular facts, appears to
me a fruitless attempt. The religious recollections, the romantic
invention, and the items of matter of fact, if any such there be, must
forever remain indissolubly amalgamated as the poet originally blended
them, for the amusement or edification of his auditors. Hoeckh, in his
instructive and learned collection of facts respecting ancient Krête,
construes the mythical genealogy of Minôs to denote a combination
of the orgiastic worship of Zeus, indigenous among the Eteokrêtes,
with the worship of the moon imported from Phœnicia, and signified by
the names Europê, Pasiphaê, and Ariadnê.[545] This is specious as a
conjecture, but I do not venture to speak of it in terms of greater
confidence.
[544] Herodot. iii. 122. Πολυκράτης γὰρ ἐστὶ πρῶτος τῶν ἡμεῖς
ἴδμεν Ἑλλήνων, ὃς θαλασσοκρατέειν ἐπενοήθη, παρὲξ Μίνωός τε τοῦ
Κνωσσίου, καὶ εἰ δή τις ἄλλος πρότερος τούτου ἦρξε τῆς θαλάττης·
~τῆς δὲ ἀνθρωπηΐης λεγομένης γενεῆς~ Πολυκράτης ἐστὶ πρῶτος
ἐλπίδας πολλὰς ἔχων Ἰωνίης τε καὶ νήσων ἄρξειν.
The expression exactly corresponds to that of Pausanias, ix. 5,
1, ἐπὶ τῶν καλουμένων Ἡρώων, for the age preceding the ἀνθρωπηΐη
γενέη; also viii. 2. 1, ἐς τὰ ἀνωτέρω τοῦ ἀνθρώπων γένους.
[545] Hoeckh, Kreta, vol. ii. pp. 56-67. K. O. Müller also
(Dorier. ii. 2, 14) puts a religious interpretation upon these
Kreto-Attic legends, but he explains them in a manner totally
different from Hoeckh.
From the connection of religious worship and legendary tales between
Krête and various parts of Asia Minor,—the Trôad, the coast of Milêtus
and Lykia, especially between Mount Ida in Krête and Mount Ida in
Æôlis,—it seems reasonable to infer an ethnographical kindred or
relationship between the inhabitants anterior to the period of Hellenic
occupation. The tales of Krêtan settlement at Minoa and Engyiôn on
the south-western coast of Sicily, and in Iapygia on the Gulf of
Tarentum, conduct us to a similar presumption, though the want of
evidence forbids our tracing it farther. In the time of Herodotus, the
Eteokrêtes, or aboriginal inhabitants of the island, were confined to
Polichna and Præsus; but in earlier times, prior to the encroachments
of the Hellênes, they had occupied the larger portion, if not the whole
of the island. Minôs was originally their hero, subsequently adopted by
the immigrant Hellênes,—at least Herodotus considers him as barbarian,
not Hellenic.[546]
[546] Herodot. i. 173.
CHAPTER XIII.
ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.
The ship Argô was the theme of many songs during the oldest periods
of the Grecian epic, even earlier than the Odyssey. The king Æêtês,
from whom she is departing, the hero Jasôn, who commands her, and the
goddess Hêrê, who watches over him, enabling the Argô to traverse
distances and to escape dangers which no ship had ever before
encountered, are all circumstances briefly glanced at by Odysseus in
his narrative to Alkinous. Moreover, Eunêus, the son of Jasôn and
Hypsipylê, governs Lemnos during the siege of Troy by Agamemnôn, and
carries on a friendly traffic with the Grecian camp, purchasing from
them their Trojan prisoners.[547]
[547] Odyss. xii. 69.—
Οἴη δὴ κείνη γε παρέπλει ποντόπορος νῆυς,
Ἀργὼ πασιμέλουσα, παρ᾽ Αἰήταο πλέουσα·
Καὶ νύ κε τὴν ἔνθ᾽ ὦκα βάλεν μεγάλας ποτὶ πέτρας,
Ἀλλ᾽ Ἥρη παρέπεμψεν, ἐπεὶ φίλος ἦεν Ἰήσων.
See also Iliad, vii. 470.
The legend of Halus in Achaia Phthiôtis, respecting the religious
solemnities connected with the family of Athamas and Phryxus (related
in a previous chapter), is also interwoven with the voyage of the
Argonauts; and both the legend and the solemnities seem evidently of
great antiquity. We know further, that the adventures of the Argô were
narrated not only by Hesiod and in the Hesiodic poems, but also by
Eumêlus and the author of the Naupactian verses—by the latter seemingly
at considerable length.[548] But these poems are unfortunately lost,
nor have we any means of determining what the original story was; for
the narrative, as we have it, borrowed from later sources, is enlarged
by local tales from the subsequent Greek colonies—Kyzikus, Heraklêia,
Sinopê, and others.
[548] See Hesiod, Fragm. _Catalog._ Fr. 6. p. 33, Düntz.;
_Eoiai_, Frag. 36. p. 39; Frag. 72. p. 47. Compare Schol. ad
Apollôn. Rhod. i. 45; ii. 178-297, 1125; iv. 254-284. Other
poetical sources—
The old epic poem _Ægimius_, Frag. 5. p. 57, Düntz.
_Kinæthôn_ in the _Hêraklêia_ touched upon the death of Hylas
near Kius in Mysia (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 1357).
The epic poem _Naupactia_, Frag. 1 to 6, Düntz. p. 61.
_Eumêlus_, Frag. 2, 3, 5, p. 65, Düntz.
_Epimenidês_, the Krêtan prophet and poet, composed a poem in
6500 lines, Ἀργοῦς ναυπηγίαν τε, καὶ Ἰάσονος εἰς Κόλχους ἀποπλοῦν
(Diogen. Laër. i. 10, 5), which is noticed more than once in the
Scholia on Apollônius, on subjects connected with the poem (ii.
1125; iii. 42). See Mimnerm. Frag. 10, Schneidewin, p. 15.
_Antimachus_, in his poem _Lydê_, touched upon the Argonautic
expedition, and has been partially copied by Apollônius Rhod.
(Schol. Ap. Rh. i. 1290; ii. 296: iii. 410; iv. 1153).
The logographers Pherekydês and Hekatæus seem to have related the
expedition at considerable length.
The Bibliothek der alten Literatur und Kunst (Göttingen, 1786,
2tes Stück, p. 61) contains an instructive Dissertation by
Groddeck, Ueber die Argonautika, a summary of the various
authorities respecting this expedition.
Jasôn, commanded by Pelias to depart in quest of the golden fleece
belonging to the speaking ram which had carried away Phryxus and
Hellê, was encouraged by the oracle to invite the noblest youth
of Greece to his aid, and fifty of the most distinguished amongst
them obeyed the call. Hêraklês, Thêseus, Telamôn and Pêleus, Kastôr
and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus—Zêtês and Kalaïs, the winged sons of
Boreas—Meleager, Amphiaraus, Kêpheus, Laertês, Autolykus, Menœtius,
Aktôr, Erginus, Euphêmus, Ankæus, Pœas, Periklymenus, Augeas, Eurytus,
Admêtus, Akastus, Kæneus, Euryalus, Pêneleôs and Lêitus, Askalaphus and
Ialmenus, were among them. Argus the son of Phryxus, directed by the
promptings of Athênê, built the ship, inserting in the prow a piece of
timber from the celebrated oak of Dodona, which was endued with the
faculty of speech:[549] Tiphys was the steersman, Idmôn the son of
Apollo and Mopsus accompanied them as prophets, while Orpheus came to
amuse their weariness and reconcile their quarrels with his harp.[550]
[549] Apollôn. Rhod. i. 525; iv. 580. Apollodôr. i. 9, 16.
Valerius Flaccus (i. 300) softens down the speech of the ship
Argô into a dream of Jasôn. Alexander Polyhistor explained what
wood was used (Plin. H. N. xiii. 22).
[550] Apollônius Rhodius, Apollodôrus, Valerius Flaccus, the
Orphic Argonautica, and Hyginus, have all given Catalogues of
the Argonautic heroes (there was one also in the lost tragedy
called Λήμνιαι of Sophoklês, see Welcker Gr. Trag. i. 327):
the discrepancies among them are numerous and irreconcilable.
Burmann, in the Catalogus Argonautarum, prefixed to his edition
of Valerius Flaccus, has discussed them copiously. I transcribe
one or two of the remarks of this conscientious and laborious
critic, out of many of a similar tenor, on the impracticability
of a fabulous chronology. Immediately before the first article,
_Acastus_—“Neque enim in ætatibus Argonautarum ullam rationem
temporum constare, neque in stirpe et stemmate deducenda ordinem
ipsum naturæ congruere videbam. Nam et huic militiæ adscribi
videbam Heroas, qui per naturæ leges et ordinem fati eo usque
vitam extrahere non potuêre, ut aliis ab hac expeditione
remotis Heroum militiis nomina dedisse narrari deberent a
Poetis et Mythologis. In idem etiam tempus avos et Nepotes
conjici, consanguineos ætate longe inferiores prioribus ut
æquales adjungi, concoquere vix posse videtur.”—Art. _Ancæus_:
“Scio objici posse, si seriem illam majorem respiciamus,
hunc Ancæum simul cum proavo suo Talao in eandem profectum
fuisse expeditionem. Sed similia exempla in aliis occurrent,
et in fabulis rationem temporum non semper accuratam licet
deducere.”—Art. _Jasôn_: “Herculi enim jam provectâ ætate
adhæsit Theseus juvenis, et in Amazoniâ expeditione socius fuit,
interfuit huic expeditioni, venatui apri Calydonii, et rapuit
Helenam, quæ circa Trojanum bellum maxime floruit: quæ omnia si
Theseus tot temporum intervallis distincta egit, secula duo vel
tria vixisse debuit. Certe Jason Hypsipylem neptem Ariadnes, nec
videre, nec Lemni cognoscere potuit.”—Art. _Meleager_: “Unum
est quod alicui longum ordinem majorum recensenti scrupulum
movere possit: nimis longum intervallum inter Æolum et Meleagrum
intercedere, ut potuerit interfuisse huic expeditioni: cum
nonus fere numeretur ab Æolo, et plurimi ut Jason, Argus, et
alii tertiâ tantum ab Æolo generatione distent. Sed sæpe jam
notavimus, frustra temporum concordiam in fabulis quæri.”
Read also the articles _Castôr and Pollux_, _Nestôr Pêleus_,
_Staphylus_, etc.
We may stand excused for keeping clear of a chronology which is
fertile only in difficulties, and ends in nothing but illusions.
First they touched at the island of Lêmnos, in which at that time there
were no men; for the women, infuriated by jealousy and ill-treatment,
had put to death their fathers, husbands and brothers. The Argonauts,
after some difficulty, were received with friendship, and even admitted
into the greatest intimacy. They staid some months, and the subsequent
population of the island was the fruit of their visit. Hypsipylê, the
queen of the island, bore to Jasôn two sons.[551]
[551] Apollodôr. i. 9, 17; Apollôn. Rhod. i. 609-915; Herodot.
iv. 145. Theocritus (Idyll, xiii. 29) omits all mention of
Lêmnos, and represents the Argô as arriving on the third day
from Iôlkos at the Hellespont. Diodôrus (iv. 41) also leaves out
Lêmnos.
They then proceeded onward along the coast of Thrace, up the
Hellespont, to the southern coast of the Propontis, inhabited by the
Doliones and their king Kyzikus. Here they were kindly entertained, but
after their departure were driven back to the same spot by a storm; and
as they landed in the dark, the inhabitants did not know them. A battle
took place, in which the chief, Kyzikus, was killed by Jasôn; whereby
much grief was occasioned as soon as the real facts became known.
After Kyzikus had been interred with every demonstration of mourning
and solemnity, the Argonauts proceeded along the coast of Mysia.[552]
In this part of the voyage they left Hêraklês behind. For Hylas, his
favorite youthful companion, had been stolen away by the nymphs of a
fountain, and Hêraklês, wandering about in search of him, neglected
to return. At last he sorrowfully retired, exacting hostages from the
inhabitants of the neighboring town of Kius that they would persist in
the search.[553]
[552] Apollôn. Rhod. 940-1020; Apollodôr. i. 9, 18.
[553] Apollodôr. i. 9, 19. This was the religious legend,
explanatory of a ceremony performed for many centuries by the
people of Prusa: they ran round the lake Askanias shouting and
clamoring for Hylas—“ut littus Hyla, Hyla omne sonaret.” (Virgil,
Eclog.) ... “in cujus memoriam adhuc solemni cursatione lacum
populus circuit et Hylam voce clamat.” Solinus, c. 42.
There is endless discrepancy as to the concern of Hêraklês with
the Argonautic expedition. A story is alluded to in Aristotle
(Politic, iii. 9) that the ship Argô herself refused to take him
on board, because he was so much superior in stature and power
to all the other heroes—οὐ γὰρ ἐθέλειν αὐτὸν ἄγειν τὴν Ἀργὼ μετὰ
τῶν ἄλλων, ὡς ὑπερβάλλοντα πολὺ τῶν πλωτήρων. This was the story
of Pherekydês (Fr. 67, Didot) as well as of Antimachus (Schol.
Apoll. Rhod. i. 1290): it is probably a very ancient portion of
the legend, inasmuch as it ascribes to the ship sentient powers,
in consonance with her other miraculous properties. The etymology
of Aphetæ in Thessaly was connected with the tale of Hêraklês
having there been put on shore from the Argô (Herodot. vii. 193):
Ephorus said that he staid away voluntarily from fondness for
Omphalê (Frag. 9, Didot). The old epic poet Kinæthôn said that
Hêraklês had placed the Kian hostages at Trachin, and that the
Kians ever afterwards maintained a respectful correspondence with
that place (Schol. Ap. Rh. i. 1357). This is the explanatory
legend connected with some existing custom, which we are unable
further to unravel.
They next stopped in the country of the Bebrykians, where the
boxing contest took place between the king Amykus and the Argonaut
Pollux:[554] they then proceeded onward to Bithynia, the residence of
the blind prophet Phineus. His blindness had been inflicted by Poseidôn
as a punishment for having communicated to Phryxus the way to Kolchis.
The choice had been allowed to him between death and blindness, and he
had preferred the latter.[555] He was also tormented by the harpies,
winged monsters who came down from the clouds whenever his table
was set, snatched the food from his lips and imparted to it a foul
and unapproachable odor. In the midst of this misery, he hailed the
Argonauts as his deliverers—his prophetic powers having enabled him
to foresee their coming. The meal being prepared for him, the harpies
approached as usual, but Zêtês and Kalaïs, the winged sons of Boreas,
drove them away and pursued them. They put forth all their speed, and
prayed to Zeus to be enabled to overtake the monsters; when Hermês
appeared and directed them to desist, the harpies being forbidden
further to molest Phineus,[556] and retiring again to their native
cavern in Krête.[557]
[554] See above, chap. viii. p. 169.
[555] Such was the old narrative of the Hesiodic Catalogue and
Eoiai. See Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 181-296.
[556] This again was the old Hesiodic story (Schol. Apoll. Rhod.
ii. 296),—
Ἐνθ᾽ οἵγ᾽ εὔχεσθον Αἰνηΐῳ ὑψιμέδοντι.
Apollodôrus (i. 9, 21), Apollônius (178-300), and Valerius Flacc.
(iv. 428-530) agree in most of the circumstances.
[557] Such was the fate of the harpies as given in the old
Naupaktian Verses (See Fragm. Ep. Græc. Düntzer, Naupakt. Fr. 2.
p. 61).
The adventure of the Argonauts with Phineus is given by Diodôrus
in a manner totally different (Diodôr. iv. 44): he seems to
follow Dionysius of Mitylênê (see Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 207).
Phineus, grateful for the relief afforded to him by the Argonauts,
forewarned them of the dangers of their voyage and of the precautions
necessary for their safety; and through his suggestions they were
enabled to pass through the terrific rocks called Symplêgades. These
were two rocks which alternately opened and shut, with a swift and
violent collision, so that it was difficult even for a bird to fly
through during the short interval. When the Argô arrived at the
dangerous spot, Euphêmus let loose a dove. which flew through and just
escaped with the loss of a few feathers of her tail. This was a signal
to the Argonauts, according to the prediction of Phineus, that they
might attempt the passage with confidence. Accordingly they rowed with
all their might, and passed safely through: the closing rocks, held
for a moment asunder by the powerful arms of Athênê just crushed the
ornaments at the stern of their vessel. It had been decreed by the
gods, that so soon as any ship once got through, the passage should
forever afterwards be safe and easy to all. The rocks became fixed in
their separate places, and never again closed.[558]
[558] Apollodôr. i. 9, 22. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 310-615.
After again halting on the coast of the Mariandynians, where their
steersman Tiphys died, as well as in the country of the Amazons,
and after picking up the sons of Phryxus, who had been cast away by
Poseidôn in their attempt to return from Kolchis to Greece, they
arrived in safety at the river Phasis and the residence of Æêtês. In
passing by Mount Caucasus, they saw the eagle which gnawed the liver
of Prometheus nailed to the rock, and heard the groans of the sufferer
himself. The sons of Phryxus were cordially welcomed by their mother
Chalciopê.[559] Application was made to Æêtês, that he would grant to
the Argonauts, heroes of divine parentage and sent forth by the mandate
of the gods, possession of the golden fleece: their aid in return was
proffered to him against any or all of his enemies. But the king was
wroth, and peremptorily refused, except upon conditions which seemed
impracticable.[560] Hêphæstos had given him two ferocious and untamable
bulls, with brazen feet, which breathed fire from their nostrils:
Jasôn was invited, as a proof both of his illustrious descent and
of the sanction of the gods to his voyage, to harness these animals
to the yoke, so as to plough a large field and sow it with dragon’s
teeth.[561] Perilous as the condition was, each one of the heroes
volunteered to make the attempt. Idmôn especially encouraged Jasôn to
undertake it,[562] and the goddesses Hêrê and Aphroditê made straight
the way for him.[563] Mêdea, the daughter of Æêtês and Eidyia, having
seen the youthful hero in his interview with her father, had conceived
towards him a passion which disposed her to employ every means for his
salvation and success. She had received from Hekatê preëminent magical
powers, and she prepared for Jasôn the powerful Prometheian unguent,
extracted from an herb which had grown where the blood of Promêtheus
dropped. The body of Jasôn having been thus pre-medicated, became
invulnerable[564] either by fire or by warlike weapons. He undertook
the enterprise, yoked the bulls without suffering injury, and ploughed
the field: when he had sown the dragon’s teeth, armed men sprung out of
the furrows. But he had been forewarned by Mêdea to cast a vast rock
into the midst of them, upon which they began to fight with each other,
so that he was easily enabled to subdue them all.[565]
[559] Apollodôr. i. 9, 23. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 850-1257.
[560] Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 320-385.
[561] Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 410. Apollodôr. i. 9, 23.
[562] This was the story of the Naupaktian Verses (Schol.
Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 515-525): Apollônius and others altered it.
Idmôn, according to them, died in the voyage before the arrival
at Kolchis.
[563] Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 50-200. Valer. Flacc. vi. 440-480.
Hygin. fab. 22.
[564] Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 835. Apollodôr. i. 9, 23. Valer. Flacc
vii. 356 Ovid, Epist. xii. 15.
“Isset anhelatos non præmedicatus in ignes
Immemor Æsonides, oraque adunca boum.”
[565] Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 1230-1400.
The task prescribed had thus been triumphantly performed. Yet Æêtês not
only refused to hand over the golden fleece, but even took measures for
secretly destroying the Argonauts and burning their vessel. He designed
to murder them during the night after a festal banquet; but Aphroditê,
watchful for the safety of Jasôn,[566] inspired the Kolchian king at
the critical moment with an irresistible inclination for his nuptial
bed. While he slept, the wise Idmôn counselled the Argonauts to make
their escape, and Mêdea agreed to accompany them.[567] She lulled to
sleep by a magic potion the dragon who guarded the golden fleece,
placed that much-desired prize on board the vessel, and accompanied
Jasôn with his companions in their flight, carrying along with her the
young Apsyrtus, her brother.[568]
[566] The Naupaktian Verses stated this (see the Fragm. 6, ed.
Düntzer, p. 61, ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 59-86).
[567] Such was the story of the Naupaktian Verses (See Fragm. 6.
p 61 Düntzer ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 59, 86, 87).
[568] Apollodôr. i. 9, 23. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 220.
Pherekydês said that Jasôn killed the dragon (Fr. 74, Did.).
Æêtês, profoundly exasperated at the flight of the Argonauts with his
daughter, assembled his forces forthwith, and put to sea in pursuit
of them. So energetic were his efforts that he shortly overtook the
retreating vessel, when the Argonauts again owed their safety to the
stratagem of Mêdea. She killed her brother Apsyrtus, cut his body in
pieces and strewed the limbs round about in the sea. Æêtês on reaching
the spot found these sorrowful traces of his murdered son; but while he
tarried to collect the scattered fragments, and bestow upon the body
an honorable interment, the Argonauts escaped.[569] The spot on which
the unfortunate Apsyrtus was cut up received the name of Tomi.[570]
This fratricide of Mêdea, however, so deeply provoked the indignation
of Zeus, that he condemned the Argô and her crew to a trying voyage,
full of hardship and privation, before she was permitted to reach home.
The returning heroes traversed an immeasurable length both of sea and
of river: first up the river Phasis into the ocean which flows round
the earth—then following the course of that circumfluous stream until
its junction with the Nile,[571] they came down the Nile into Egypt,
from whence they carried the Argô on their shoulders by a fatiguing
land-journey to the lake Tritônis in Libya. Here they were rescued from
the extremity of want and exhaustion by the kindness of the local god
Tritôn, who treated them hospitably, and even presented to Euphêmus a
clod of earth, as a symbolical promise that his descendants should one
day found a city on the Libyan shore. The promise was amply redeemed
by the flourishing and powerful city of Kyrênê,[572] whose princes the
Battiads boasted themselves as lineal descendants of Euphêmus.
[569] This is the story of Apollodôrus (i. 9, 24), who seems
to follow Pherekydês (Fr. 73, Didot). Apollônius (iv. 225-480)
and Valerius Flaccus (viii. 262 _seq._) give totally different
circumstances respecting the death of Apsyrtus; but the narrative
of Pherekydês seems the oldest: so revolting a story as that of
the cutting up of the little boy cannot have been imagined in
later times.
Sophoklês composed two tragedies on the adventures of Jasôn and
Mêdea, both lost—the Κολχίδες and the Σκύθαι. In the former he
represented the murder of the child Apsyrtus as having taken
place in the house of Æêtês: in the latter he introduced the
mitigating circumstance, that Apsyrtus was the son of Æêtês by a
different mother from Mêdea (Schol. Apollôn Rhod. iv. 223).
[570] Apollodôr. i. 9, 24, τὸν τόπον προσηγόρευσε Τόμους. Ovid.
Trist. iii. 9. The story that Apsyrtus was cut in pieces, is the
etymological legend explanatory of the name Tomi.
There was however a place called Apsarus, on the southern coast
of the Euxine, west of Trapezus, where the tomb of Apsyrtus was
shown, and where it was affirmed that he had been put to death.
He was the eponymus of the town, which was said to have been once
called Apsyrtus, and only corrupted by a barbarian pronunciation
(Arrian. Periplus, Euxin. p. 6; Geogr. Min. v. 1). Compare
Procop. Bell. Goth. iv. 2.
Strabo connects the death of Apsyrtus with the Apsyrtides,
islands off the coast of Illyria, in the Adriatic (vii p. 315).
[571] The original narrative was, that the Argô returned by
navigating the circumfluous ocean. This would be almost certain,
even without positive testimony, from the early ideas entertained
by the Greeks respecting geography; but we know further that
it was the representation of the Hesiodic poems, as well as of
Mimnermus, Hekatæus and Pindar, and even of Antimachus. Schol.
Parisina Ap. Rhod. iv. 254. Ἑκαταῖος δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος διὰ τοῦ
Φάσιδος ἀνελθεῖν φησὶν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν Ὠκεανόν· διὰ δὲ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ
κατελθεῖν εἰς τὸν Νεῖλον· ἐκ δὲ τοῦ Νείλου εἰς τὴν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς
θάλασσαν. Ἡσίοδος δὲ καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐν Πυθιονίκαις καὶ Ἀντίμαχος
ἐν Λυδῇ διὰ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ φασὶν ἐλθεῖν αὐτοὺς εἰς Λιβύην· εἶτα
βαστάσαντας τὴν Ἀργὼ εἰς τὸ ἡμέτερον ἀφικέσθαι πέλαγος. Compare
the Schol. Edit. ad iv. 259.
[572] See the fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar, and Apollôn. Rhod.
iv. 1551-1756.
The tripod of Jasôn was preserved by the Euesperitæ in Libya,
Diod. iv. 56: but the legend, connecting the Argonauts with
the lake Tritônis in Libya, is given with some considerable
differences in Herodotus, iv. 179.
Refreshed by the hospitality of Tritôn, the Argonauts found themselves
again on the waters of the Mediterranean in their way homeward. But
before they arrived at Iôlkos they visited Circê, at the island of Ææa,
where Mêdea was purified for the murder of Apsyrtus: they also stopped
at Korkyra, then called Drepanê, where Alkinous received and protected
them. The cave in that island where the marriage of Mêdea with Jasôn
was consummated, was still shown in the time of the historian Timæus,
as well as the altars to Apollo which she had erected, and the rites
and sacrifices which she had first instituted.[573] After leaving
Korkyra, the Argô was overtaken by a perilous storm near the island of
Thêra. The heroes were saved from imminent peril by the supernatural
aid of Apollo, who, shooting from his golden bow an arrow which pierced
the waves like a track of light, caused a new island suddenly to spring
up in their track and present to them a port of refuge. The island was
called Anaphê; and the grateful Argonauts established upon it an altar
and sacrifices in honor of Apollo Æglêtês, which were ever afterwards
continued, and traced back by the inhabitants to this originating
adventure.[574]
[573] Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 1153-1217. Timæus, Fr. 7-8, Didot.
Τίμαιος ἐν Κερκύρᾳ λέγων γενέσθαι τοὺς γάμους, καὶ περὶ τῆς
θυσίας ἱστορεῖ, ἔτι καὶ νῦν λέγων ἄγεσθαι αὐτὴν κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν,
Μηδείας πρῶτον θυσάσης ἐν τῷ τοῦ Απολλῶνος ἱερῷ. Καὶ Βωμοὺς δέ
φησι μνημεῖα τῶν γάμων ἱδρύσασθαι συνεγγὺς μὲν τῆς θαλάσσης, οὐ
μακρὰν δὲ τῆς πόλεως. Ὀνομάζουσι δὲ τὸν μὲν, Νυμφῶν· τὸν δὲ,
Νηρηΐδων.
[574] Apollodôr. i. 9, 25. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 1700-1725.
On approaching the coast of Krête, the Argonauts were prevented
from landing by Talôs, a man of brass, fabricated by Hêphæstos, and
presented by him to Minôs for the protection of the island.[575] This
vigilant sentinel hurled against the approaching vessel fragments of
rock, and menaced the heroes with destruction. But Mêdea deceived
him by a stratagem and killed him; detecting and assailing the one
vulnerable point in his body. The Argonauts were thus enabled to land
and refresh themselves. They next proceeded onward to Ægina, where
however they again experienced resistance before they could obtain
water—then along the coast of Eubœa and Locris back to Iôlkos in the
gulf of Pagasæ, the place from whence they had started. The proceedings
of Pelias during their absence, and the signal revenge taken upon him
by Mêdea after their return, have already been narrated in a preceding
section.[576] The ship Argô herself, in which the chosen heroes of
Greece had performed so long a voyage and braved so many dangers, was
consecrated by Jasôn to Poseidôn at the isthmus of Corinth. According
to another account, she was translated to the stars by Athênê, and
became a constellation.[577]
[575] Some called Talôs a remnant of the brazen race of men
(Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1641).
[576] Apollodôr. i. 9, 26. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 1638.
[577] Diodôr. iv. 53. Eratosth. Catasterism. c. 35.
Traces of the presence of the Argonauts were found not only in the
regions which lay between Iôlkos and Kolchis, but also in the western
portion of the Grecian world—distributed more or less over all the
spots visited by Grecian mariners or settled by Grecian colonists, and
scarcely less numerous than the wanderings of the dispersed Greeks
and Trojans after the capture of Troy. The number of Jasonia, or
temples for the heroic worship of Jasôn, was very great, from Abdêra
in Thrace,[578] eastward along the coast of the Euxine, to Armenia
and Media. The Argonauts had left their anchoring-stone on the coast
of Bebrykia, near Kyzikus, and there it was preserved during the
historical ages in the temple of the Jasonian Athênê.[579] They had
founded the great temple of the Idæan mother on the mountain Dindymon,
near Kyzikus, and the Hieron of Zeus Urios on the Asiatic point at the
mouth of the Euxine, near which was also the harbor of Phryxus.[580]
Idmôn, the prophet of the expedition, who was believed to have died
of a wound by a wild boar on the Mariandynian coast, was worshipped
by the inhabitants of the Pontic Hêrakleia with great solemnity, as
their Heros Poliuchus, and that too by the special direction of the
Delphian god. Autolykus, another companion of Jasôn, was worshipped
as Œkist by the inhabitants of Sinopê. Moreover, the historians of
Hêrakleia pointed out a temple of Hekatê in the neighboring country of
Paphlagonia, first erected by Mêdea;[581] and the important town of
Pantikapæon, on the European side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, ascribed
its first settlement to a son of Æêtês.[582] When the returning ten
thousand Greeks sailed along the coast, called the Jasonian shore,
from Sinopê to Hêrakleia, they were told that the grandson of Æêtês
was reigning king of the territory at the mouth of the Phasis, and the
anchoring-places where the Argô had stopped were specially pointed
out to them.[583] In the lofty regions of the Moschi, near Kolchis,
stood the temple of Leukothea, founded by Phryxus, which remained
both rich and respected down to the times of the kings of Pontus, and
where it was an inviolable rule not to offer up a ram.[584] The town
of Dioskurias, north of the river Phasis, was believed to have been
hallowed by the presence of Kastôr and Pollux in the Argô, and to have
received from them its appellation.[585] Even the interior of Mêdea and
Armenia was full of memorials of Jasôn and Mêdea and their son Mêdus,
or of Armenus the son of Jasôn, from whom the Greeks deduced not only
the name and foundation of the Medes and Armenians, but also the great
operation of cutting a channel through the mountains for the efflux
of the river Araxes, which they compared to that of the Peneius in
Thessaly.[586] And the Roman general Pompey, after having completed
the conquest and expulsion of Mithridatês, made long marches through
Kolchis into the regions of Caucasus, for the express purpose of
contemplating the spots which had been ennobled by the exploits of the
Argonauts, the Dioskuri and Hêraklês.[587]
[578] Strabo. xi. p. 526-531.
[579] Apollôn. Rhod. i. 955-960, and the Scholia.
There was in Kyzikus a temple of Apollo under different
ἐπικλήσεις; some called it the temple of the Jasonian Apollo.
Another anchor however was preserved in the temple of Rhea on the
banks of the Phasis, which was affirmed to be the anchor of the
ship Argô. Arrian saw it there, but seems to have doubted its
authenticity (Periplus, Euxin. Pont. p. 9. Geogr. Min. v. 1).
[580] Neanthês ap. Strabo. i. p. 45. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 1125, and
Schol. Steph. Byz. v. Φρίξος.
Apollônius mentions the fountain called Jasoneæ, on the hill
of Dindymon. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 532, and the citations from
Timosthenês and Herodôrus in the Scholia. See also Appian.
Syriac. c. 63.
[581] See the historians of Hêrakleia, Nymphis and Promathidas,
Fragm. Orelli, pp. 99, 100-104. Schol. ad Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 247.
Strabo, xii. p. 546. Autolykus, whom he calls companion of Jasôn,
was, according to another legend, comrade of Hêraklês in his
expedition against the Amazons.
[582] Stephan. Byz. v. Παντικαπαῖον, Eustath. ad Dionys.
Periêgêt. 311.
[583] Xenophôn, Anabas. vi. 2, 1; v. 7, 37.
[584] Strabo, xi. p. 499.
[585] Appian, Mithridatic. c. 101.
[586] Strabo, xi. p. 499, 503, 526, 531; i. p. 45-48. Justin,
xlii. 3, whose statements illustrate the way in which men found a
present home and application for the old fables,—“Jason, primus
humanorum post Herculem et Liberum, qui reges Orientis fuisse
traduntur, eam cœli plagam domuisse dicitur. Cum Albanis fœdus
percussit, qui Herculem ex Italiâ ab Albano monte, cum, Geryone
extincto, armenta ejus per Italiam duceret, secuti dicuntur;
quique, memores Italicæ originis, exercitum Cn. Pompeii bello
Mithridatico fratres consalutavêre. Itaque Jasoni totus fere
Oriens, ut conditori, divinos honores templaque constituit; quæ
Parmenio, dux Alexandri Magni, post multos annos dirui jussit, ne
cujusquam nomen in Oriente venerabilius quam Alexandri esset.”
The Thessalian companions of Alexander the Great, placed by his
victories in possession of rich acquisitions in these regions,
pleased themselves by vivifying and multiplying all these
old fables, proving an ancient kindred between the Medes and
Thessalians. See Strabo, xi. p. 530. The temples of Jasôn were
τιμώμενα σφόδρα ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων (_ib._ p. 526).
The able and inquisitive geographer Eratosthenês was among those
who fully believed that Jasôn had left his ships in the Phasis,
and had undertaken a land expedition into the interior country,
in which he had conquered Media and Armenia (Strabo, i. p. 48).
[587] Appian, Mithridatic. 103: τοὺς Κόλχους ἐπήει, καθ᾽ ἰστορίαν
τῆς Ἀργοναυτῶν καὶ Διοσκούρων καὶ Ἡρακλέους ἐπιδημίας, καὶ
μάλιστα τὸ πάθος ἰδεῖν ἐθέλων, ὃ Προμηθεῖ φασὶ γενέσθαι περὶ τὸ
Καύκασον ὄρος. The lofty crag of Caucasus called Strobilus, to
which Promêtheus had been attached, was pointed out to Arrian
himself in his Periplus (p. 12. Geogr. Minor vol. i.).
In the west, memorials either of the Argonauts or of the pursuing
Kolchians were pointed out in Korkyra, in Krête, in Epirus near the
Akrokeraunian mountains, in the islands called Apsyrtides near the
Illyrian coast, at the bay of Caieta as well as at Poseidônia on the
southern coast of Italy, in the island of Æthalia or Elba, and in
Libya.[588]
[588] Strabo, i. pp. 21, 45, 46; v. 224-252. Pompon. Mel. ii. 3.
Diodôr. iv. 56. Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 656. Lycophron, 1273.—
Τύρσιν μακεδνὰς ἀμφὶ Κιρκαίου νάπας
Ἀργοῦς τε κλεινὸν ὅρμον Αἰήτην μέγαν.
Such is a brief outline of the Argonautic expedition, one of the most
celebrated and widely-diffused among the ancient tales of Greece. Since
so many able men have treated it as an undisputed reality, and even
made it the pivot of systematic chronological calculations, I may here
repeat the opinion long ago expressed by Heyne, and even indicated by
Burmann, that the process of dissecting the story, in search of a basis
of fact, is one altogether fruitless.[589] Not only are we unable to
assign the date or identify the crew, or decipher the log-book, of the
Argô, but we have no means of settling even the preliminary question,
whether the voyage be matter of fact badly reported, or legend from
the beginning. The widely-distant spots in which the monuments of the
voyage were shown, no less than the incidents of the voyage itself,
suggests no other parentage than epical fancy. The supernatural and the
romantic not only constitute an inseparable portion of the narrative,
but even embrace all the prominent and characteristic features; if they
do not comprise the whole, and if there be intermingled along with
them any sprinkling of historical or geographical fact,—a question
to us indeterminable,—there is at least no solvent by which it can
be disengaged, and no test by which it can be recognized. Wherever
the Grecian mariner sailed, he carried his religious and patriotic
mythes along with him. His fancy and his faith were alike full of
the long wanderings of Jasôn, Odysseus, Perseus, Hêraklês, Dionysus,
Triptolemus or Iô; it was pleasing to him in success, and consoling
to him in difficulty, to believe that their journeys had brought them
over the ground which he was himself traversing. There was no tale
amidst the wide range of the Grecian epic more calculated to be popular
with the seaman, than the history of the primæval ship Argô and her
distinguished crew, comprising heroes from all parts of Greece, and
especially the Tyndarids Kastôr and Pollux, the heavenly protectors
invoked during storm and peril. He localized the legend anew wherever
he went, often with some fresh circumstances suggested either by his
own adventures or by the scene before him. He took a sort of religious
possession of the spot, connecting it by a bond of faith with his
native land, and erecting in it a temple or an altar with appropriate
commemorative solemnities. The Jasonium thus established, and indeed
every visible object called after the name of the hero, not only served
to keep alive the legend of the Argô in the minds of future comers or
inhabitants, but was accepted as an obvious and satisfactory proof that
this marvellous vessel had actually touched there in her voyage.
[589] Heyne, Observ. ad Apollodôr. i. 9, 16. p. 72. “Mirum in
modum fallitur, qui in his commentis certum fundum historicum
vel geographicum aut exquirere studet, aut se reperisse, atque
historicam vel geographicam aliquam doctrinam, systema nos
dicimus, inde procudi posse, putat,” etc.
See also the observations interspersed in Burmann’s Catalogus
Argonautarum, prefixed to his edition of Valerius Flaccus.
The Persian antiquarians whom Herodotus cites at the beginning
of his history (i. 2-4—it is much to be regretted that Herodotus
did not inform us who they were, and whether they were the same
as those who said that Perseus was an Assyrian by birth and
had become a Greek, vi. 54), joined together the abductions of
Iô and of Eurôpê, of Mêdea and of Helen, as pairs of connected
proceedings, the second injury being a retaliation for the
first,—they drew up a debtor and creditor account of abductions
between Asia and Europe. The Kolchian king (they said) had sent a
herald to Greece to ask for his satisfaction for the wrong done
to him by Jasôn and to re-demand his daughter Mêdea; but he was
told in reply that the Greeks had received no satisfaction for
the previous rape of Iô.
There was some ingenuity in thus binding together the old
fables, so as to represent the invasions of Greece by Darius and
Xerxês as retaliations for the unexpiated destruction wrought by
Agamemnôn.
The epic poets, building both on the general love of fabulous incident
and on the easy faith of the people, dealt with distant and unknown
space in the same manner as with past and unrecorded time. They created
a mythical geography for the former, and a mythical history for the
latter. But there was this material difference between the two: that
while the unrecorded time was beyond the reach of verification, the
unknown space gradually became trodden and examined. In proportion as
authentic local knowledge was enlarged, it became necessary to modify
the geography, or shift the scene of action, of the old mythes; and
this perplexing problem was undertaken by some of the ablest historians
and geographers of antiquity,—for it was painful to them to abandon any
portion of the old epic, as if it were destitute of an ascertainable
basis of truth.
Many of these fabulous localities are to be found in Homer and Hesiod,
and the other Greek poets and logographers,—Erytheia, the garden of
the Hesperides, the garden of Phœbus,[590] to which Boreas transported
the Attic maiden Orithyia, the delicious country of the Hyperboreans,
the Elysian plain,[591] the fleeting island of Æolus, Thrinakia,
the country of the Æthiopians, the Læstrygones, the Kyklôpes, the
Lotophagi, the Sirens, the Cimmerians and the Gorgons,[592] etc. These
are places which (to use the expression of Pindar respecting the
Hyperboreans) you cannot approach either by sea or by land:[593] the
wings of the poet alone can carry you thither. They were not introduced
into the Greek mind by incorrect geographical reports, but, on the
contrary, had their origin in the legend, and passed from thence
into the realities of geography,[594] which they contributed much to
pervert and confuse. For the navigator or emigrant, starting with an
unsuspicious faith in their real existence, looked out for them in
his distant voyages, and constantly fancied that he had seen or heard
of them, so as to be able to identify their exact situation. The most
contradictory accounts indeed, as might be expected, were often given
respecting the latitude and longitude of such fanciful spots, but this
did not put an end to the general belief in their real existence.
[590] Sophokl. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.—
Ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἔσχατα χθονὸς,
Νυκτός τε πηγὰς οὐρανοῦ τ᾽ ἀναπτυχὰς,
Φοίβου τε παλαιὸν κῆπον.
[591] Odyss. iv. 562. The Islands of the Blessed, in Hesiod, are
near the ocean (Opp. Di. 169).
[592] Hesiod, Theogon. 275-290. Homer, Iliad, i. 423. Odyss. i.
23; ix 86-206; x 4-83; xii. 135. Mimnerm. Fragm. 13, Schneidewin.
[593] Pindar, Pyth. x. 29.—
Ναυσὶ δ᾽ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἂν εὕροις
Ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.
Παρ᾽ οἷς ποτε Περσεὺς ἐδαίσατο λαγετὰς, etc.
Hesiod, and the old epic poem called the Epigoni, both mentioned
the Hyperboreans (Herod. iv. 32-34).
[594] This idea is well stated and sustained by Völcker
(Mythische Geographie der Griechen und Römer, cap. i. p. 11),
and by Nitzsch in his Comments on the Odyssey—Introduct. Remarks
to b. ix. p. xii.-xxxiii. The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of
the History of Orchomenos, by O. Müller, are also full of good
remarks on the geography of the Argonautic voyage (pp. 274-299).
The most striking evidence of this disposition of the Greeks is
to be found in the legendary discoveries of Alexander and his
companions, when they marched over the untrodden regions in the
east of the Persian empire (see Arrian, Hist. Al. v. 3: compare
Lucian. Dialog. Mortuor. xiv. vol. i. p. 212. Tauch) because
these ideas were first broached at a time when geographical
science was sufficiently advanced to canvass and criticize them.
The early settlers in Italy, Sicily and the Euxine, indulged
their fanciful vision without the fear of any such monitor: there
was no such thing as a map before the days of Anaximander, the
disciple of Thalês.
In the present advanced state of geographical knowledge, the story of
that man who after reading Gulliver’s Travels went to look in his
map for Lilliput, appears an absurdity. But those who fixed the exact
locality of the floating island of Æolus or the rocks of the Sirens
did much the same,[595] and, with their ignorance of geography and
imperfect appreciation of historical evidence, the error was hardly to
be avoided. The ancient belief which fixed the Sirens on the islands
of Sirenusæ off the coast of Naples—the Kyklôpes, Erytheia, and the
Læstrygones in Sicily—the Lotophagi on the island of Mêninx[596] near
the Lesser Syrtis—the Phæakians at Korkyra—and the goddess Circê at the
promontory of Circeium—took its rise at a time when these regions were
first Hellenized and comparatively little visited. Once embodied in the
local legends, and attested by visible monuments and ceremonies, it
continued for a long time unassailed; and Thucydidês seems to adopt it,
in reference to Korkyra and Sicily before the Hellenic colonization, as
matter of fact generally unquestionable,[597] though little avouched as
to details. But when geographical knowledge became extended, and the
criticism upon the ancient epic was more or less systematized by the
literary men of Alexandria and Pergamus, it appeared to many of them
impossible that Odysseus could have seen so many wonders, or undergone
such monstrous dangers, within limits so narrow, and in the familiar
track between the Nile and the Tiber. The scene of his weather-driven
course was then shifted further westward. Many convincing evidences
were discovered, especially by Asklepiadês of Myrlea, of his having
visited various places in Ibêria:[598] several critics imagined that
he had wandered about in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Strait of
Gibraltar,[599] and they recognized a section of Lotophagi on the
coast of Mauritania, over and above those who dwelt on the island of
Mêninx.[600] On the other hand, Eratosthenês and Apollodôrus treated
the places visited by Odysseus as altogether unreal, for which
scepticism they incurred much reproach.[601]
[595] See Mr. Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer. c. 49. Compare
Spohn—“de extremâ Odysseæ parte”—p. 97.
[596] Strabo. xvii. p. 834. An altar of Odysseus was shown upon
this island, as well as some other evidences (σύμβολα) of his
visit to the place.
Apollônius Rhodius copies the Odyssey in speaking of the island
of Thrinakia and the cattle of Helios (iv. 965, with Schol.). He
conceives Sicily as Thrinakia, a name afterwards exchanged for
Trinakria. The Scholiast ad Apoll. (1. c.) speaks of Trinax king
of Sicily. Compare iv. 291 with the Scholia.
[597] Thucyd. i. 25-vi. 2. These local legends appear in the eyes
of Strabo convincing evidence (i. p. 23-26),—the tomb of the
siren Parthenopê at Naples, the stories at Cumæ and Dikæarchia
about the νεκυομαντεῖον of Avernus, and the existence of places
named after Baius and Misênus, the companions of Odysseus, etc.
[598] Strabo, iii. p. 150-157. Οὐ γὰρ μόνον οἱ κατὰ τὴν
Ἰταλίαν καὶ Σικελίαν τόποι καὶ ἄλλοι τινὲς τῶν τοιούτων
σημεῖα ὑπογράφουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰβηρίᾳ Ὀδύσσεια πόλις
δείκνυται, καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς ἱερὸν, καὶ ἄλλα μύρια ἴχνη τῆς τε ἐκείνου
πλάνης, καὶ ἄλλων τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ πολέμου περιγενομένων (I
adopt Grosskurd’s correction of the text from γενομένων to
περιγενομένων, in the note to his German translation of Strabo).
Asklepiadês (of Myrlea in Bithynia, about 170 B. C.) resided
some time in Turditania, the south-western region of Spain along
the Guadalquivir, as a teacher of Greek literature (παιδεύσας τὰ
γραμματικὰ), and composed a periegesis of the Iberian tribes,
which unfortunately has not been preserved. He made various
discoveries in archæology, and successfully connected his old
legends with several portions of the territory before him. His
discoveries were,—1. In the temple of Athênê, at this Iberian
town of Odysseia, there were shields and beaks of ships affixed
to the walls, monuments of the visit of Odysseus himself. 2.
Among the Kallæki, in the northern part of Portugal, several of
the companions of Teukros had settled and left descendants: there
were in that region two Grecian cities, one called Hellenês,
the other called Amphilochi; for Amphilochus also, the son of
Amphiaraus, had died in Iberia, and many of his soldiers had
taken up their permanent residence in the interior. 3. Many new
inhabitants had come into Iberia with the expedition of Hêraklês;
some also after the conquest of Messênê by the Lacedæmonians. 4.
In Cantabria, on the north. coast of Spain, there was a town and
region of Lacedæmonian colonists. 5. In the same portion of the
country there was the town of Opsikella, founded by Opsikellas,
one of the companions of Antenôr in his emigration from Troy
(Strabo, iii. p. 157).
This is a specimen of the manner in which the seeds of Grecian
mythus came to be distributed over so large a surface. To an
ordinary Greek reader, these legendary discoveries of Asklepiadês
would probably be more interesting than the positive facts
which he communicated respecting the Iberian tribes; and his
Turditanian auditors would be delighted to hear—while he was
reciting and explaining to them the animated passage of the
Iliad, in which Agamemnôn extols the inestimable value of the bow
of Teukros (viii. 281)—that the heroic archer and his companions
had actually set foot in the Iberian peninsula.
[599] This was the opinion of Kratês of Mallus, one of the
most distinguished of the critics on Homer: it was the subject
of an animated controversy between him and Aristarchus (Aulus
Gellius, N. A. xiv. 6; Strabo, iii. p. 157). See the instructive
treatise of Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis, c. v. § 4. p. 251.
Much controversy also took place among the critics respecting
the ground which Menelaus went over in his wanderings (Odyss.
iv.). Kratês affirmed that he had circumnavigated the southern
extremity of Africa and gone to India: the critic Aristonikus,
Strabo’s contemporary, enumerated all the different opinions
(Strabo, i. p. 38).
[600] Strabo, iii. p. 157.
[601] Strabo, i. p. 22-44; vii. p. 299.
The fabulous island of Erytheia,—the residence of the three headed
Geryôn with his magnificent herd of oxen, under the custody of the
two-headed dog Orthrus, and described by Hesiod, like the garden of
the Hesperides, as extra-terrestrial, on the farther side of the
circumfluous ocean;—this island was supposed by the interpreters of
Stesichorus the poet to be named by him off the south-western region
of Spain called Tartêssus, and in the immediate vicinity of Gadês. But
the historian Hekatæus, in his anxiety to historicize the old fable,
took upon himself to remove Erytheia from Spain nearer home to Epirus.
He thought it incredible that Hêraklês should have traversed Europe
from east to west, for the purpose of bringing the cattle of Geryôn to
Eurystheus at Mykênæ, and he pronounced Geryôn to have been a king of
Epirus, near the Gulf of Ambrakia. The oxen reared in that neighborhood
were proverbially magnificent, and to get them even from thence and
bring them to Mykênæ (he contended) was no inconsiderable task. Arrian,
who cites this passage from Hekatæus, concurs in the same view,—an
illustration of the license with which ancient authors fitted on their
fabulous geographical names to the real earth, and brought down the
ethereal matter of legend to the lower atmosphere of history.[602]
[602] Stesichori Fragm. ed. Kleine; Geryonis, Fr. 5. p. 60; ap.
Strabo. iii. p. 148; Herodot. iv. 8. It seems very doubtful
whether Stesichorus meant to indicate any neighboring island as
Erytheia, if we compare Fragm. 10. p. 67 of the Geryonis, and the
passages of Athenæus and Eustathius there cited. He seems to have
adhered to the old fable, placing Erytheia on the opposite side
of the ocean-stream, for Hêraklês crosses the ocean to get to it.
Hekatæus, ap. Arrian. Histor. Alex. ii. 16. Skylax places
Erytheia, “whither Geryôn is said to have come to feed his oxen,”
in the Kastid territory near the Greek city of Apollônia on the
Ionic Gulf, northward of the Keraunian mountains. There were
splendid cattle consecrated to Hêlios near Apollônia, watched
by the citizens of the place with great care (Herodot. ix. 93;
Skylax, c. 26).
About Erytheia, Cellerius observes (Geogr. Ant. ii. 1, 227),
“Insula Erytheia, quam veteres adjungunt Gadibus, vel demersa
est, vel in scopulis quærenda, vel pars est ipsarum Gadium, neque
hodie ejus formæ aliqua, uti descripta est, fertur superesse.” To
make the disjunctive catalogue complete, he ought to have added,
“or it never really existed,”—not the least probable supposition
of all.
Both the track and the terminus of the Argonautic voyage appear in the
most ancient epic as little within the conditions of reality, as the
speaking timbers or the semi-divine crew of the vessel. In the Odyssey,
Æêtês and Circê (Hesiod names Mêdea also) are brother and sister,
offspring of Hêlios. The Ææan island, adjoining the circumfluous ocean,
“where the house and dancing-ground of Eôs are situated, and where
Hêlios rises,” is both the residence of Circê and of Æêtês, inasmuch
as Odysseus, in returning from the former, follows the same course as
the Argô had previously taken in returning from the latter.[603] Even
in the conception of Mimnermus, about 600 B. C., Æa still retained
its fabulous attributes in conjunction with the ocean and Hêlios,
without having been yet identified with any known portion of the
solid earth;[604] and it was justly remarked by Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis
in antiquity[605] (though Strabo vainly tries to refute him), that
neither Homer nor Mimnermus designates Kolchis either as the residence
of Æêtês, or as the terminus of the Argonautic voyage. Hesiod carried
the returning Argonauts through the river Phasis into the ocean. But
some of the poems ascribed to Eumêlus were the first which mentioned
Æêtês and Kolchis, and interwove both of them into the Corinthian
mythical genealogy.[606] These poems seem to have been composed
subsequent to the foundation of Sinopê, and to the commencement of
Grecian settlement on the Borysthenês, between the years 600 and 500 B.
C. The Greek mariners who explored and colonized the southern coast of
the Euxine, found at the extremity of their voyage the river Phasis and
its barbarous inhabitants: it was the easternmost point which Grecian
navigation (previous to the time of Alexander the Great) ever attained,
and it was within sight of the impassable barrier of Caucasus.[607]
They believed, not unnaturally, that they had here found “the house of
Eôs (the morning) and the rising place of the sun,” and that the river
Phasis, if they could follow it to its unknown beginning, would conduct
them to the circumfluous ocean. They gave to the spot the name of Æa,
and the fabulous and real title gradually became associated together
into one compound appellation,—the Kolchian Æa, or Æa of Kolchis.[608]
While Kolchis was thus entered on the map as a fit representative for
the Homeric “house of the morning,” the narrow strait of the Thracian
Bosporus attracted to itself the poetical fancy of the Symplêgades,
or colliding rocks, through which the heaven-protected Argô had been
the first to pass. The powerful Greek cities of Kyzikus, Hêrakleia and
Sinopê, each fertile in local legends, still farther contributed to
give this direction to the voyage; so that in the time of Hekatæus it
had become the established belief that the Argô had started from Iôlkos
and gone to Kolchis.
[603] Hesiod, Theogon. 956-992; Homer, Odyss. xii. 3-69.—
Νῆσον ἐς Αἰαίην, ὅθι τ᾽ Ἠοῦς ἠριγενείης
Οἴκια καὶ χόροι εἰσὶ, καὶ ἀντολαὶ ἠελίοιο.
[604] Mimnerm. Fragm. 10-11, Schneidewin; Athenæ. vii. p. 277.—
Οὐδέ κοτ᾽ ἂν μέγα κῶας ἀνήγαγεν αὐτὸς Ἰήσων
Ἐξ Αἴης τελέσας ἀλγινόεσσαν ὁδὸν,
Ὑβρίστῃ Πελίῃ τελέων χαλεπῆρες ἄεθλον,
Οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἐπ᾽ Ὠκεανοῦ καλὸν ἵκοντο ῥόον.
· · · · ·
Αἰήταο πόλιν, τόθι τ᾽ ὠκέος Ἠελίοιο
Ἀκτῖνες χρυσέῳ κείαται ἐν θαλάμῳ,
Ὠκεανοῦ παρὰ χείλεσ᾽, ἵν᾽ ὤχετο θεῖος Ἰήσων.
[605] Strabo, i. p. 45-46. Δημήτριος ὁ Σκήψιος ... πρὸς Νεάνθη
τὸν Κυζικηνὸν ~φιλοτιμοτέρως~ ἀντιλέγων, εἰπόντα, ὅτι οἱ
Ἀργοναῦται πλέοντες εἰς Φᾶσιν τὸν ὑφ᾽ Ὁμήρου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων
ὁμολογούμενον πλοῦν, ἱδρύσαντο τὰ τῆς Ἰδαίας μητρὸς ἱερὰ ἐπὶ
Κύζικον ... ~ἀρχήν φησὶ μηδ᾽ εἰδέναι τὴν εἰς Φᾶσιν ἀποδημίαν τοῦ
Ἰάσονος Ὅμηρον~. Again, p. 46, παραλαβὼν μάρτυρα Μίμνερμον, ὃς ἐν
τῷ Ὠκεανῷ ποιήσας οἴκησιν Αἰήτου, etc.
The adverb φιλοτιμοτέρως reveals to us the municipal rivalry
and contention between the small town Skêpsis and its powerful
neighbor Kyzikus, respecting points of comparative archæology.
[606] Eumêlus, Fragm. Εὐρωπία 7, Κορινθιακὰ 2-5. pp. 63-68,
Düntzer.
[607] Arrian, Periplus Pont. Euxin. p. 12; ap. Geogr. Minor. vol.
i. He saw the Caucasus from Dioskurias.
[608] Herodot i. 2; vii. 193-197. Eurip. Mêd. 2. Valer. Flacc. v.
51.
Æêtês thus received his home from the legendary faith and fancy
of the eastern Greek navigators: his sister Circê, originally his
fellow-resident, was localized by the western. The Hesiodic and other
poems, giving expression to the imaginative impulses of the inhabitants
of Cumæ and other early Grecian settlers in Italy and Sicily,[609] had
referred the wanderings of Odysseus to the western or Tyrrhenian sea,
and had planted the Cyclôpes, the Læstrygones, the floating island of
Æolus, the Lotophagi, the Phæacians, etc., about the coast of Sicily,
Italy, Libya, and Korkyra. In this way the Ææan island,—the residence
of Circê, and the extreme point of the wanderings of Odysseus, from
whence he passes only to the ocean and into Hadês—came to be placed in
the far west, while the Æa of Æêtês was in the far east,—not unlike our
East and West Indies. The Homeric brother and sister were separated and
sent to opposite extremities of the Grecian terrestrial horizon.[610]
[609] Strabo, i. p. 23. Völcker (Ueber Homerische Geographie,
v. 66) is instructive upon this point, as upon the geography
of the Greek poets generally. He recognizes the purely
mythical character of Æa in Homer and Hesiod, but he tries to
prove—unsuccessfully, in my judgment—that Homer places Æêtês in
the east, while Circê is in the west, and that Homer refers the
Argonautic voyage to the Euxine Sea.
[610] Strabo (or Polybius, whom he has just been citing) contends
that Homer knew the existence of Æêtês in Kolchis, and of Circê
at Circeium, as historical persons, as well as the voyage of
Jasôn to Æa as an historical fact. Upon this he (Homer) built
a superstructure of fiction (προσμύθευμα): he invented the
brotherhood between them, and he placed both the one and the
other in the exterior ocean (συγγενείας τε ἔπλασε τῶν οὕτω
διῳκισμένων, καὶ ἐξωκεανισμὸν ἀμφοῖν, i. p. 20); perhaps also
Jasôn might have wandered as far as Italy, as evidences (σημεῖά
τινα) are shown that he did (_ib._).
But the idea that Homer conceived Æêtês in the extreme east and
Circê in the extreme west, is not reconcilable with the Odyssey.
The supposition of Strabo is alike violent and unsatisfactory.
Circê was worshipped as a goddess at Circeii (Cicero, Nat. Deor.
iii. 19). Hesiod, in the Theogony, represents the two sons of
Circê by Odysseus as reigning over all the warlike Tyrrhenians
(Theog. 1012), an undefined western sovereignty. The great
Mamilian gens at Tusculum traced their descent to Odysseus and
Circê (Dionys. Hal. iv. 45).
The track from Iôlkos to Kolchis, however, though plausible as far as
it went, did not realize all the conditions of the genuine fabulous
voyage: it did not explain the evidences of the visit of these
maritime heroes which were to be found in Libya, in Krêtê in Anaphê,
in Korkyra, in the Adriatic Gulf, in Italy and in Æthalia. It became
necessary to devise another route for them in their return, and the
Hesiodic narrative was (as I have before observed), that they came back
by the circumfluous ocean; first going up the river Phasis into the
circumfluous ocean; following that deep and gentle stream until they
entered the Nile, and came down its course to the coast of Libya. This
seems also to have been the belief of Hekatæus.[611] But presently
several Greeks (and Herodotus among them) began to discard the idea of
a circumfluous ocean-stream, which had pervaded their old geographical
and astronomical fables, and which explained the supposed easy
communication between one extremity of the earth and another. Another
idea was then started for the returning voyage of the Argonauts.
It was supposed that the river Ister, or Danube, flowing from the
Rhipæan mountains in the north-west of Europe, divided itself into two
branches, one of which fell into the Euxine Sea, and the other into the
Adriatic.
[611] See above, p. 239. There is an opinion cited from Hekatæus
in Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284. contrary to this, which is given
by the same scholiast on iv. 259. But, in spite of the remarks
of Klausen (ad. Fragment. Hekatæi, 187. p. 98), I think that the
Schol. ad. iv. 284 has made a mistake in citing Hekatæus; the
more so as the scholiast, as printed from the Codex Parisinus,
cites the same opinion without mentioning Hekatæus. According
to the old Homeric idea, the ocean stream flowed all round the
earth, and was the source of all the principal rivers which
flowed into the great internal sea, or Mediterranean (see
Hekatæus, Fr. 349; Klausen, ap. Arrian. ii. 16, where he speaks
of the Mediterranean as the μεγάλη θάλασσα). Retaining this old
idea of the ocean-stream, Hekatæus would naturally believe that
the Phasis joined it: nor can I agree with Klausen (ad Fr. 187)
that this implies a degree of ignorance too gross to impute to
him.
The Argonauts, fleeing from the pursuit of Æêtês, had been obliged to
abandon their regular course homeward, and had gone from the Euxine
Sea up the Ister; then passing down the other branch of that river,
they had entered into the Adriatic, the Kolchian pursuers following
them. Such is the story given by Apollônius Rhodius from Timagêtus,
and accepted even by so able a geographer as Eratosthenês—who preceded
him by one generation, and who, though sceptical in regard to the
localities visited by Odysseus, seems to have been a firm believer in
the reality of the Argonautic voyage.[612] Other historians again,
among whom was Timæus, though they considered the ocean as an
outer sea, and no longer admitted the existence of the old Homeric
ocean-stream, yet imagined a story for the return-voyage of the
Argonauts somewhat resembling the old tale of Hesiod and Hekatæus.
They alleged that the Argô, after entering into the Palus Mæotis, had
followed the upward course of the river Tanais; that she had then been
carried overland and launched in a river which had its mouth in the
ocean or great outer sea. When in the ocean, she had coasted along
the north and west of Europe until she reached Gadês and the Strait
of Gibraltar, where she entered into the Mediterranean, and there
visited the many places specified in the fable. Of this long voyage,
in the outer sea to the north and west of Europe, many traces were
affirmed to exist along the coast of the ocean.[613] There was again
a third version, according to which the Argonauts came back as they
went, through the Thracian Bosporus and the Hellespont. In this way
geographical plausibility was indeed maintained, but a large portion of
the fabulous matter was thrown overboard.[614]
[612] Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 287; Schol. ad iv. 284; Pindar, Pyth.
iv. 447, with Schol.; Strabo, i. p. 46-57; Aristot. Mirabil.
Auscult. c. 105. Altars were shown in the Adriatic, which had
been erected both by Jasôn and by Mêdea (_ib._).
Aristotle believed in the forked course of the Ister, with one
embouchure in the Euxine and another in the Adriatic: he notices
certain fishes called τρίχιαι, who entered the river (like the
Argonauts) from the Euxine, went up it as far as the point of
bifurcation and descended into the Adriatic (Histor. Animal.
viii. 15). Compare Ukert, Geographie der Griech. und Römer, vol.
iii. p. 145-147, about the supposed course of the Ister.
[613] Diodôr. iv. 56; Timæus, Fragm. 53. Göller. Skymnus the
geographer also adopted this opinion (Schol. Apoll. Rhod.
284-287). The pseudo-Orpheus in the poem called Argonautica seems
to give a jumble of all the different stories.
[614] Diodôr. iv. 49. This was the tale both of Sophoklês and of
Kallimachus (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284).
See the Dissertation of Ukert, Beylage iv. vol. i. part 2, p. 320
of his Geographie der Griechen und Römer, which treats of the
Argonautic voyage at some length; also J. H. Voss, Alte Weltkunde
über die Gestalt der Erde, published in the second volume of the
Kritische Blätter, pp. 162, 314-326; and Forbiger, Handbuch der
Alten Geographie-Einleitung, p. 8.
Such were the various attempts made to reconcile the Argonautic
legend with enlarged geographical knowledge and improved historical
criticism. The problem remained unsolved, but the faith in the legend
did not the less continue. It was a faith originally generated at
a time when the unassisted narrative of the inspired poet sufficed
for the conviction of his hearers; it consecrated one among the
capital exploits of that heroic and superhuman race, whom the Greek
was accustomed at once to look back upon as his ancestors and to
worship conjointly with his gods: it lay too deep in his mind either
to require historical evidence for its support, or to be overthrown
by geographical difficulties as they were then appreciated. Supposed
traces of the past event, either preserved in the names of places, or
embodied in standing religious customs with their explanatory comments,
served as sufficient authentication in the eyes of the curious
inquirer. And even men trained in a more severe school of criticism
contented themselves with eliminating the palpable contradictions
and softening down the supernatural and romantic events, so as to
produce an Argonautic expedition of their own invention as the true
and accredited history. Strabo, though he can neither overlook nor
explain the geographical impossibilities of the narrative, supposes
himself to have discovered the basis of actual fact, which the original
poets had embellished or exaggerated. The golden fleece was typical
of the great wealth of Kolchis, arising from gold-dust washed down by
the rivers; and the voyage of Jasôn was in reality an expedition at
the head of a considerable army, with which he plundered this wealthy
country and made extensive conquests in the interior.[615] Strabo has
nowhere laid down what he supposes to have been the exact measure and
direction of Jasôn’s march, but he must have regarded it as very long,
since he classes Jasôn with Dionysus and Hêraklês, and emphatically
characterizes all the three as having traversed wider spaces of ground
than any moderns could equal.[616] Such was the compromise which a
mind like that of Strabo made with the ancient legends. He shaped or
cut them down to the level of his own credence, and in this waste of
historical criticism, without any positive evidence, he took to himself
the credit of greater penetration than the literal believers, while he
escaped the necessity of breaking formally with the bygone heroic world.
[615] Strabo, i. p. 45. He speaks here of the voyage of Phryxus,
as well as that of Jasôn, as having been a military undertaking
(στρατεία): so again, iii. p. 149, he speaks of the military
expedition of Odysseus—ἡ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως στρατία, and ἡ Ἡρακλέους
στρατία (_ib._). Again xi. p. 498. Οἱ μῦθοι, αἰνιττόμενοι τὴν
Ἰάσονος στρατείαν προελθόντος μέχρι καὶ Μηδίας· ἔτι δὲ πρότερον
τὴν Φρίξου. Compare also Justin, xlii. 2-3; Tacit. Annal. vi. 34.
Strabo cannot speak of the old fables with literal fidelity: he
unconsciously transforms them into quasi-historical incidents of
his own imagination. Diodôrus gives a narrative of the same kind,
with decent substitutes for the fabulous elements (iv. 40-47-56).
[616] Strabo, i. p. 48. The far-extending expeditions undertaken
in the eastern regions by Dionysus and Hêraklês were constantly
present to the mind of Alexander the Great as subjects of
comparison with himself: he imposed upon his followers perilous
and trying marches, from anxiety to equal or surpass the alleged
exploits of Semiramis, Cyrus, Perseus, and Hêraklês. (Arrian, v.
2, 3; vi. 24, 3; vii. 10, 12. Strabo, iii. p. 171; xv. p. 686;
xvii. p. 81).
CHAPTER XIV.
LEGENDS OF THEBES.
The Bϙtians generally, throughout the historical age, though well
endowed with bodily strength and courage,[617] are represented as
proverbially deficient in intelligence, taste and fancy. But the
legendary population of Thêbes, the Kadmeians, are rich in mythical
antiquities, divine as well as heroic. Both Dionysus and Hêraklês
recognize Thêbes as their natal city. Moreover, the two sieges of
Thêbes by Adrastus, even taken apart from Kadmus, Antiopê, Amphiôn and
Zethus, etc., are the most prominent and most characteristic exploits,
next to the siege of Troy, of that preëxisting race of heroes who lived
in the imagination of the historical Hellênes.
[617] The eponym Bœôtus is son of Poseidôn and Arnê (Euphorion
ap. Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 507). It was from Arnê in Thessaly
that the Bϙtians were said to have come, when they invaded
and occupied Bœôtia. Euripidês made him son of Poseidôn and
Melanippê. Another legend recited Bœôtus and Hellên as sons of
Poseidôn and Antiopê (Hygin. f. 157-186).
The Tanagræan poetess Korinna (the rival of Pindar, whose
compositions in the Bϙtian dialect are unfortunately lost)
appears to have dwelt upon this native Bϙtian genealogy: she
derived the Ogygian gates of Thêbes from Ogygus, son of Bœôtus
(Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 1178), also the Fragments of Korinna
in Schneidewin’s edition, fr. 2. p. 432.
It is not Kadmus, but the brothers Amphiôn and Zethus, who are given
to us in the Odyssey as the first founders of Thêbes and the first
builders of its celebrated walls. They are the sons of Zeus by Antiopê,
daughter of Asôpus. The scholiasts who desire to reconcile this tale
with the more current account of the foundation of Thêbes by Kadmus,
tell us that after the death of Amphiôn and Zethus, Eurymachus, the
warlike king of the Phlegyæ, invaded and ruined the newly-settled
town, so that Kadmus on arriving was obliged to re-found it.[618] But
Apollodôrus, and seemingly the older logographers before him, placed
Kadmus at the top, and inserted the two brothers at a lower point
in the series. According to them, Bêlus and Agenôr were the sons of
Epaphus, son of the Argeian Iô, by Libya. Agenôr went to Phœnicia and
there became king: he had for his offspring Kadmus, Phœnix, Kilix,
and a daughter Eurôpa; though in the Iliad Eurôpa is called daughter
of Phœnix.[619] Zeus fell in love with Eurôpa, and assuming the shape
of a bull, carried her across the sea upon his back from Egypt to
Krête, where she bore to him Minôs, Rhadamanthus and Sarpêdôn. Two out
of the three sons sent out by Agenôr in search of their lost sister,
wearied out by a long-protracted as well as fruitless voyage, abandoned
the idea of returning home: Kilix settled in Kilikia, and Kadmus
in Thrace.[620] Thasus, the brother or nephew of Kadmus, who had
accompanied them in the voyage, settled and gave name to the island of
Phasus.
[618] Homer, Odyss. xi. 262, and Eustath. _ad loc._ Compare
Schol. ad Iliad. xiii. 301.
[619] Iliad, xiv. 321. Iô is κερόεσσα προμάτωρ of the Thêbans.
Eurip. Phœniss. 247-676.
[620] Apollodôr. ii. 1, 3; iii. 1, 8. In the Hesiodic poems
(ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 178), Phœnix was recognized as son
of Agenôr. Pherekydês also described both Phœnix and Kadmus as
sons of Agenôr (Pherekyd. Fragm. 40, Didot). Compare Servius
ad. Virgil. Æneid. 1. 338. Pherekydês expressly mentioned
Kilix (Apollod. _ib._). Besides the Εὐρώπεια of Stesichorus
(see Stesichor. Fragm. xv. p. 73, ed. Kleine), there were
several other ancient poems on the adventures of Europa; one in
particular by Eumêlus (Schol. ad Iliad. vi. 138), which however
can hardly be the same as the τὰ ἔπη τὰ εἰς Εὐρώπην alluded to by
Pausanias (ix. 5, 4). See Wüllner de Cyclo Epico, p. 57 (Münster
1825).
Both Herodotus and Euripidês represent Kadmus as an emigrant from
Phœnicia, conducting a body of followers in quest of Eurôpa. The
account of Apollodôrus describes him as having come originally from
Libya or Egypt to Phœnicia: we may presume that this was also the
statement of the earlier logographers Pherekydês and Hellanikus. Conôn,
who historicizes and politicizes the whole legend, seems to have found
two different accounts; one connecting Kadmus with Egypt, another
bringing him from Phœnicia. He tries to melt down the two into one, by
representing that the Phœnicians, who sent out Kadmus, had acquired
great power in Egypt—that the seat of their kingdom was the Egyptian
Thêbes—that Kadmus was despatched, under pretence indeed of finding
his lost sister, but really on a project of conquest—and that the name
Thêbes, which he gave to his new establishment in Bœôtia, was borrowed
from Thêbes in Egypt, his ancestorial seat.[621]
[621] Conôn, Narrat. 37. Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all
is the tone of unbounded self-confidence with which Conôn winds
up this tissue of uncertified suppositions—περὶ μὲν Κάδμου καὶ
Θηβῶν οἰκίσεως οὗτος ὁ ἀληθὴς λόγος· τὸ δὲ ἄλλο μῦθος καὶ γοητεία
ἀκοῆς.
Kadmus went from Thrace to Delphi to procure information respecting
his sister Eurôpa, but the god directed him to take no further trouble
about her; he was to follow the guidance of a cow, and to found a
city on the spot where the animal should lie down. The condition was
realized on the site of Thêbes. The neighboring fountain Areia was
guarded by a fierce dragon, the offspring of Arês, who destroyed all
the persons sent to fetch water. Kadmus killed the dragon, and at
the suggestion of Athênê sowed his teeth in the earth:[622] there
sprang up at once the armed men called the Sparti, among whom he flung
stones, and they immediately began to assault each other until all
were slain except five. Arês, indignant at this slaughter, was about to
kill Kadmus; but Zeus appeased him, condemning Kadmus to an expiatory
servitude of eight years, after which he married Harmonia, the
daughter of Arês and Aphroditê—presenting to her the splendid necklace
fabricated by the hand of Hêphæstos, which had been given by Zeus to
Eurôpa.[623] All the gods came to the Kadmeia, the citadel of Thêbes,
to present congratulations and gifts at these nuptials, which seem to
have been hardly less celebrated in the mythical world than those of
Pêleus and Thetis. The issue of the marriage was one son, Polydôrus,
and four daughters, Autonoê, Inô, Semelê and Agavê.[624]
[622] Stesichor. (Fragm. 16; Kleine) ap. Schol. Eurip. Phœniss.
680. The place where the heifer had lain down was still shown in
the time of Pausanias (ix. 12, 1).
Lysimachus, a lost author who wrote Thebaïca, mentioned Eurôpa
as having come with Kadmus to Thêbes, and told the story in many
other respects very differently (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iii. 1179).
[623] Apollodôr. iii. 4, 1-3. Pherekydês gave this account of
the necklace, which seems to imply that Kadmus must have found
his sister Eurôpa. The narrative here given is from Hellanikus;
that of Pherekydês differed from it in some respects: compare
Hellanik. Fragm. 8 and 9, and Pherekyd. Frag. 44. The resemblance
of this story with that of Jasôn and Æêtês (see above, chap.
xiii. p. 237) will strike everyone. It is curious to observe how
the old logographer Pherekydês explained this analogy in his
narrative; he said that Athênê had given half the dragon’s teeth
to Kadmus and half to Æêtês (see Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13).
[624] Hesiod, Theogon. 976. Leukothea, the sea-goddess, daughter
of Kadmus, is mentioned in the Odyssey, v. 334; Diodôr. iv. 2.
From the five who alone survived of the warriors sprung from the
dragon’s teeth, arose five great families or gentes in Thêbes; the
oldest and noblest of its inhabitants, coeval with the foundation of
the town. They were called Sparti, and their name seems to have given
rise, not only to the fable of the sowing of the teeth, but also to
other etymological narratives.[625]
[625] Eurip. Phœniss. 680, with the Scholia; Pherekydês, Fragm.
44; Androtiôn, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13. Dionysius (?)
called the Sparti an ἔθνος Βοιωτίας (Schol. Phœniss. 1. c).
Even in the days of Plutarch, there were persons living who
traced their descent to the Sparti of Thêbes (Plutarch, Ser. Num.
Vindict. p. 563).
All the four daughters of Kadmus are illustrious in fabulous history.
Inô, wife of Athamas, the son of Æolus, has already been included among
the legends of the Æolids. Semelê became the mistress of Zeus, and
inspired Hêrê with jealousy. Misguided by the malicious suggestions of
that goddess, she solicited Zeus to visit her with all the solemnity
and terrors which surrounded him when he approached Hêrê herself.
The god unwillingly consented, and came in his chariot in the midst
of thunder and lightning, under which awful accompaniments the mortal
frame of Semelê perished. Zeus, taking from her the child of which she
was pregnant, sewed it into his own thigh: after the proper interval
the child was brought out and born, and became the great god Dionysus
or Bacchus. Hermês took him to Inô and Athamas to receive their
protection. Afterwards, however, Zeus having transformed him into a kid
to conceal him from the persecution of Hêrê, the nymphs of the mountain
Nysa became his nurses.[626]
[626] Apollodôr. iii. 4, 2-9; Diodôr. iv. 2.
Autonoê, the third daughter of Kadmus, married the pastoral hero or god
Aristæus, and was mother of Aktæôn, a devoted hunter and a favorite
companion of the goddess Artemis. She however became displeased with
him—either because he looked into a fountain while she was bathing
and saw her naked—or according to the legend set forth by the poet
Stesichorus, because he loved and courted Semelê—or according to
Euripidês, because he presumptuously vaunted himself as her superior in
the chase. She transformed him into a stag, so that his own dogs set
upon and devoured him. The rock upon which Aktæôn used to sleep when
fatigued with the chase, and the spring whose transparent waters had
too clearly revealed the form of the goddess, were shown to Pausanias
near Platæa, on the road to Megara.[627]
[627] See Apollodôr. iii. 4, 3; Stesichor. Fragm. xvii. Kleine;
Pausan. ix. 2, 3; Eurip. Bacch. 337; Diodôr. iv. 81. The old
logographer Akusilaus copied Stesichorus.
Upon this well-known story it is unnecessary to multiply
references. I shall however briefly notice the remarks made upon
it by Diodôrus and by Pausanias, as an illustration of the manner
in which the literary Greeks of a later day dealt with their old
national legends.
Both of them appear implicitly to believe the fact, that Aktæôn
was devoured by his own dogs, but they differ materially in the
explanation of it.
Diodôrus accepts and vindicates the miraculous interposition
of the displeased goddess to punish Aktæôn, who, according
to one story, had boasted of his superiority in the chase to
Artemis,—according to another story, had presumed to solicit the
goddess in marriage, emboldened by the great numbers of the feet
of animals slain in the chase which he had hung up as offerings
in her temple. “It is not improbable (observes Diodôrus) that
the goddess was angry on both these accounts. For whether Aktæôn
abused these hunting presents so far as to make them the means
of gratifying his own desires towards one unapproachable in
wedlock, or whether he presumed to call himself an abler hunter
than her with whom the gods themselves will not compete in this
department,—in either case the wrath of the goddess against him
was just and legitimate (ὁμολογουμένην καὶ δικαίαν ὀργὴν ἔσχε
πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ θεός). With perfect propriety therefore (Καθόλου δὲ
πιθανῶς) was he transformed into an animal such as those he had
hunted, and torn to pieces by the very dogs who had killed them.”
(Didot. iv. 80.)
Pausanias, a man of exemplary piety, and generally less inclined
to scepticism than Diodôrus, thinks the occasion unsuitable for
a miracle or special interference. Having alluded to the two
causes assigned for the displeasure of Artemis (they are the two
first-mentioned in my text, and distinct from the two noticed
by Diodôrus), he proceeds to say, “But I believe that the dogs
of Aktæôn went mad, without the interference of the goddess: in
this state of madness they would have torn in pieces without
distinction any one whom they met (Paus. ix. 2, 3. ἐγὼ δὲ ἄνευ
θεοῦ πείθομαι νόσον λύσσαν ἐπιβαλεῖν τοῦ Ἀκταίωνος τοὺς κύνας).”
He retains the truth of the final catastrophe, but rationalizes
it, excluding the special intervention of Artemis.
Agavê, the remaining daughter of Kadmus, married Echiôn, one of the
Sparti. The issue of these nuptials was Pentheus, who, when Kadmus
became old succeeded him as king of Thêbes. In his reign Dionysus
appeared as a god, the author or discoverer of the vine with all its
blessings. He had wandered over Asia, India and Thrace, at the head of
an excited troop of female enthusiasts—communicating and inculcating
everywhere the Bacchic ceremonies, and rousing in the minds of women
that impassioned religious emotion which led them to ramble in solitary
mountains at particular seasons, there to give vent to violent
fanatical excitement, apart from the men, clothed in fawn-skins and
armed with the thyrsus. The obtrusion of a male spectator upon these
solemnities was esteemed sacrilegious. Though the rites had been
rapidly disseminated and fervently welcomed in many parts of Thrace,
yet there were some places in which they had been obstinately resisted
and their votaries treated with rudeness; especially by Lykurgus, king
of the Edonian Thracians, upon whom a sharp and exemplary punishment
was inflicted by Dionysus.
Thêbes was the first city of Greece to which Dionysus came, at the
head of his Asiatic troop of females, to obtain divine honors and
to establish his peculiar rites in his native city. The venerable
Kadmus, together with his daughters and the prophet Teiresias, at once
acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and began to offer their
worship and praise to him along with the solemnities which he enjoined.
But Pentheus vehemently opposed the new ceremonies, reproving and
maltreating the god who introduced them: nor was his unbelief at all
softened by the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection
and for that of his followers. His mother Agavê, with her sisters, and
a large body of other women from Thêbes, had gone out from Thêbes to
Mount Kithærôn to celebrate their solemnities under the influence of
the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus followed to watch them, and there
the punishment due to his impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of
the god having robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the
purpose of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this
position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agavê, mad and
bereft of consciousness, made herself the foremost in this assault, and
carried back in triumph to Thêbes the head of her slaughtered son. The
aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmonia, retired among the Illyrians, and
at the end of their lives were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting
them to be transferred to the Elysian fields.[628]
[628] Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4; Theocrit. Idyll. xxvi. Eurip. Bacch.
_passim_. Such is the tragical plot of this memorable drama. It
is a striking proof of the deep-seated reverence of the people
of Athens for the sanctity of the Bacchic ceremonies, that they
could have borne the spectacle of Agavê on the stage with her
dead son’s head, and the expressions of triumphant sympathy in
her action on the part of the Chorus (1168), Μάκαιρ᾽ Ἀγαύη! This
drama, written near the close of the life of Euripidês, and
exhibited by his son after his death (Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 67,),
contains passages strongly inculcating the necessity of implicit
deference to ancestorial authority in matters of religion, and
favorably contrasting the uninquiring faith of the vulgar with
the dissenting and inquisitive tendencies of superior minds: see
v. 196; compare vv. 389 and 422.—
Οὐδὲν σοφιζόμεσθα τοῖσι δαίμοσιν.
Πατρίους παραδοχὰς, ἅς θ᾽ ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ
Κεκτήμεθ᾽, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος,
Οὐδ᾽ ἢν δι᾽ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρένων.
Such reproofs “insanientis sapientiæ” certainly do not fall in
with the plot of the drama itself, in which Pentheus appears as
a Conservative, resisting the introduction of the new religious
rites. Taken in conjunction with the emphatic and submissive
piety which reigns through the drama, they countenance the
supposition of Tyrwhitt, that Euripidês was anxious to repel the
imputations, so often made against him, of commerce with the
philosophers and participation in sundry heretical opinions.
Pacuvius in his Pentheus seems to have closely copied Euripidês;
see Servius ad Virg. Æneid. iv. 469.
The old Thespis had composed a tragedy on the subject of
Pentheus: Suidas, Θέσπις; also Æschylus; compare his Eumenidês,
25.
According to Apollodôrus (iii. 5, 5), Labdakus also perished in a
similar way to Pentheus, and from the like impiety,—ἐκείνῳ φρονῶν
παραπλήσια.
Polydôrus and Labdakus successively became kings of Thêbes: the latter
at his death left an infant son, Laius, who was deprived of his throne
by Lykus. And here we approach the legend of Antiopê, Zêthus and
Amphiôn, whom the fabulists insert at this point of the Thêban series.
Antiopê is here the daughter of Nykteus, the brother of Lykus. She is
deflowered by Zeus, and then, while pregnant, flies to Epôpeus king of
Sikyôn: Nykteus dying entreats his brother to avenge the injury, and
Lykus accordingly invades Sikyôn, defeats and kills Epôpeus, and brings
back Antiopê prisoner to Thêbes. In her way thither, in a cave near
Eleutheræ, which was shown to Pausanias,[629] she is delivered of the
twin sons of Zeus—Amphiôn and Zêthus—who, exposed to perish, are taken
up and nourished by a shepherd, and pass their youth amidst herdsmen,
ignorant of their lofty descent.
[629] Pausan. i. 38, 9.
Antiopê is conveyed to Thêbes, where, after undergoing a long
persecution from Lykus and his cruel wife Dirkê, she at length escapes,
and takes refuge in the pastoral dwelling of her sons, now grown to
manhood. Dirkê pursues and requires her to be delivered up; but the
sons recognize and protect their mother, taking an ample revenge upon
her persecutors. Lykus is slain, and Dirkê is dragged to death, tied to
the horns of a bull.[630] Amphiôn and Zêthus, having banished Laius,
become kings of Thêbes. The former, taught by Hermês, and possessing
exquisite skill on the lyre, employs it in fortifying the city, the
stones of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to
the rhythm of his song.[631]
[630] For the adventures of Antiopê and her sons, see Apollodôr.
iii. 5; Pausan. ii. 6, 2; ix. 5, 2.
The narrative given respecting Epôpeus in the ancient Cyprian
verses seems to have been very different from this, as far as we
can judge from the brief notice in Proclus’s Argument,—ὡς Ἐπωπεὺς
φθείρας τὴν Λυκούργου (Λύκου) γυναῖκα ἐξεπορθήθη: it approaches
more nearly to the story given in the seventh fable of Hyginus,
and followed by Propertius (iii. 15); the eighth fable of Hyginus
contains the tale of Antiopê as given by Euripidês and Ennius.
The story of Pausanias differs from both.
The Scholiast ad Apollôn. Rhod. i. 735. says that there were
two persons named Antiopê; one, daughter of Asôpus, the other,
daughter of Nykteus. Pausanias is content with supposing one
only, really the daughter of Nykteus, but there was a φήμη
that she was daughter of Asôpus (ii. 6, 2). Asius made Antiopê
daughter of Asôpus, and mother (both by Zeus and by Epôpeus: such
a junction of divine and human paternity is of common occurrence
in the Greek legends) of Zêthus and Amphiôn (ap. Paus. 1. c).
The contradictory versions of the story are brought together,
though not very perfectly, in Sterk’s Essay De Labdacidarum
Historiâ, p. 38-43 (Leyden, 1829).
[631] This story about the lyre of Amphiôn is not noticed in
Homer, but it was narrated in the ancient ἔπη ἐς Εὐρώπην which
Pausanias had read: the wild beasts as well as the stones were
obedient to his strains (Paus. ix. 5, 4). Pherekydês also
recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). The tablet of
inscription (Ἀναγραφὴ) at Sikyôn recognized Amphiôn as the first
composer of poetry and harp-music (Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3. p.
1132).
Zêthus marries Aêdôn, who, in the dark and under a fatal mistake, kills
her son Itylus: she is transformed into a nightingale, while Zêthus
dies of grief.[632] Amphiôn becomes the husband of Niobê, daughter
of Tantalus, and the father of a numerous offspring, the complete
extinction of which by the hands of Apollo and Artemis has already been
recounted in these pages.
[632] The tale of the wife and son of Zêthus is as old as the
Odyssey (xix. 525). Pausanias adds the statement that Zêthus died
of grief (ix. 5, 5; Pherekydês, Fragm. 102, Did.). Pausanias,
however, as well as Apollodôrus, tells us that Zêthus married
Thêbê, from whom the name Thêbes was given to the city. To
reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zêthus and Amphiôn with
those of Kadmus, as founders of Thêbes, Pausanias supposes that
the latter was the original settler of the hill of the Kadmeia,
while the two former extended the settlement to the lower city
(ix. 5, 1-3).
Here ends the legend of the beautiful Antiopê and her twin sons—the
rude and unpolished, but energetic, Zêthus—and the refined and amiable,
but dreamy, Amphiôn. For so Euripidês, in the drama of Antiopê
unfortunately lost, presented the two brothers, in affectionate union
as well as in striking contrast.[633] It is evident that the whole
story stood originally quite apart from the Kadmeian family, and so
the rudiments of it yet stand in the Odyssey; but the logographers, by
their ordinary connecting artifices, have opened a vacant place for it
in the descending series of Thêban mythes. And they have here proceeded
in a manner not usual with them. For whereas they are generally fond
of multiplying entities, and supposing different historical personages
of the same name, in order to introduce an apparent smoothness in
the chronology—they have here blended into one person Amphiôn the
son of Antiopê and Amphiôn the father of Chlôris, who seem clearly
distinguished from each other in the Odyssey. They have further
assigned to the same person all the circumstances of the legend of
Niobê, which seems to have been originally framed quite apart from the
sons of Antiopê.
[633] See Valckenaer. Diatribe in Eurip. Reliq. cap. 7, p. 58;
Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. ii. p. 811. There is a striking
resemblance between the Antiopê of Euripidês and the Tyrô of
Sophoklês in many points.
Plato in his Gorgias has preserved a few fragments, and a
tolerably clear general idea of the characters of Zêthus and
Amphiôn (Gorg. 90-92); see also Horat. Epist. i. 18, 42.
Both Livius and Pacuvius had tragedies on the scheme of this of
Euripidês, the former seemingly a translation.
Amphiôn and Zêthus being removed, Laius became king of Thêbes. With
him commences the ever-celebrated series of adventures of Œdipus and
his family. Laius forewarned by the oracle that any son whom he might
beget would kill him, caused Œdipus as soon as he was born to be
exposed on Mount Kithærôn. Here the herdsmen of Polybus king of Corinth
accidentally found him and conveyed him to their master, who brought
him up as his own child. In spite of the kindest treatment, however,
Œdipus when he grew up found himself exposed to taunts on the score of
his unknown parentage, and went to Delphi to inquire of the god the
name of his real father. He received for answer an admonition not to
go back to his country; if he did so, it was his destiny to kill his
father and become the husband of his mother. Knowing no other country
but Corinth, he accordingly determined to keep away from that city,
and quitted Delphi by the road towards Bœôtia and Phôkis. At the exact
spot where the roads leading to these two countries forked, he met
Laius in a chariot drawn by mules, when the insolence of one of the
attendants brought on an angry quarrel, in which Œdipus killed Laius,
not knowing him to be his father. The exact place where this event
happened, called the Divided Way[634], was memorable in the eyes of
all literary Greeks, and is specially adverted to by Pausanias in his
periegesis.
[634] See the description of the locality in K. O. Müller
(Orchomenos, c. i. p. 37).
The tombs of Laius and his attendant were still seen there in the
days of Pausanias (x. 5, 2).
On the death of Laius, Kreôn, the brother of Jokasta, succeeded
to the kingdom of Thêbes. At this time the country was under the
displeasure of the gods, and was vexed by a terrible monster, with
the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion,
called the Sphinx[635]—sent by the wrath of Hêrê and occupying the
neighboring mountain of Phikium. The Sphinx had learned from the
Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thêbans to resolve: on
every occasion of failure she took away one of the citizens and ate
him up. Still no person could solve the riddle; and so great was the
suffering occasioned, that Kreôn was obliged to offer both the crown
and the nuptials of his sister Jokasta to any one who could achieve
the salvation of the city. At this juncture Œdipus arrived and solved
the riddle: upon which the Sphinx immediately threw herself from the
acropolis and disappeared. As a recompense for this service, Œdipus was
made king of Thêbes, and married Jokasta, not aware that she was his
mother.
[635] Apollodôr. iii. 5, 8. An author named Lykus, in his work
entitled _Thêbaïca_, ascribed this visitation to the anger of
Dionysus (Schol. Hesiod, Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or _Phix_,
from the Bϙtian Mount Phikium) is as old as the Hesiodic
Theogony,—Φῖκ᾽ ὀλόην τέκε, Καδμείοισιν ὄλεθρον (Theog. 326).
These main tragical circumstances—that Œdipus had ignorantly killed
his father and married his mother—belong to the oldest form of the
legend as it stands in the Odyssey. The gods (it is added in that poem)
quickly made the facts known to mankind. Epikasta (so Jokasta is here
called) in an agony of sorrow hanged herself: Œdipus remained king of
the Kadmeians, but underwent many and great miseries, such as the
Erinnyes, who avenge an injured mother, inflict.[636] A passage in the
Iliad implies that he died at Thêbes, since it mentions the funeral
games which were celebrated there in honor of him. His misfortunes
were recounted by Nestôr, in the old Cyprian verses, among the stories
of aforetime.[637] A fatal curse hung both upon himself and upon his
children, Eteoklês, Polynikês, Antigonê and Ismênê. According to
that narrative which the Attic tragedians have rendered universally
current, they were his children by Jokasta, the disclosure of her true
relationship to him having been very long deferred. But the ancient
epic called Œdipodia, treading more closely in the footsteps of Homer,
represented him as having after her death married a second wife,
Euryganeia, by whom the four children were born to him: and the painter
Onatas adopted this story in preference to that of Sophoklês.[638]
[636] Odyss. xi. 270. Odysseus, describing what he saw in the
under-world, says,—
Μητέρα τ᾽ Οἰδιπόδαο ἴδον, καλὴν Ἐπικάστην,
Ἣ μέγα ἔργον ἔρεξεν αἰδρεΐῃσι νόοιο,
Γημαμένη ᾧ υἱεῖ· ὁ δ᾽ ὃν πατέρ᾽ ἐξεναρίξας
Γῆμεν· ἄφαρ δ᾽ ἀνάπυστα θεοὶ θέσαν ἀνθρώποισι.
Ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν ἐν Θήβῃ πολυηράτῳ ἄλγεα πάσχων,
Καδμείων ἤνασσε, θεῶν ὀλοὰς διὰ βουλάς·
Ἡ δ᾽ ἔβη εἰς Αἰδάο πυλάρταο κρατεροῖο
Ἁψαμένη βρόχον αἰπὺν ἀφ᾽ ὑψήλοιο μελάθρου,
Ὧ ἄχεϊ σχομένη· τῷ δ᾽ ἄλγεα κάλλιπ᾽ ὀπίσσω
Πολλὰ μάλ᾽, ὅσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν.
[637] Iliad, xxiii. 680, with the scholiast who cites Hesiod.
Proclus, Argum. ad Cypria, ap. Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Græc. p. 10.
Νέστωρ δὲ ἐν παρεκβάσει διηγεῖται ... καὶ τὰ περὶ Οἰδίπουν, etc.
[638] Pausan. ix. 5, 5. Compare the narrative from Peisander in
Schol. ad Eurip. Phœniss. 1773; where, however, the blindness
of Œdipus seems to be unconsciously interpolated out of the
tragedians. In the old narrative of the Cyclic Thêbaïs, Œdipus
does not seem to be represented as blind (Leutsch, Thebaidis
Cyclici Reliquiæ, Götting. 1830, p. 42).
Pherekydês (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 52) tells us that Œdipus
had three children by Jokasta, who were all killed by Erginus
and the Minyæ (this must refer to incidents in the old poems
which we cannot now recover); then the four celebrated children
by Euryganeia; lastly, that he married a third wife, Astymedusa.
Apollodôrus follows the narrative of the tragedians, but alludes
to the different version about Euryganeia,—εἰσὶ δ᾽ οἵ φασιν, etc.
(iii. 5, 8).
Hellanikus (ap. Schol. Eur. Phœniss. 59) mentioned the
self-inflicted blindness of Œdipus; but it seems doubtful whether
this circumstance was included in the narrative of Pherekydês.
The disputes of Eteoklês and Polynikês for the throne of their father
gave occasion not only to a series of tragical family incidents,
but also to one of the great quasi-historical events of legendary
Greece—the two sieges of Thêbes by Adrastus, king of Argos. The two
ancient epic poems called the Thêbaïs and the Epigoni (if indeed both
were not parts of one very comprehensive poem) detailed these events
at great length, and as it appears, with distinguished poetical merit;
for Pausanias pronounces the Cyclic Thêbaïs (so it was called by the
subsequent critics to distinguish it from the more modern Thêbaïs of
Antimachus) inferior only to the Iliad and Odyssey; and the ancient
elegiac poet Kallinus treated it as an Homeric composition.[639] Of
this once-valued poem we unfortunately possess nothing but a few
scanty fragments. The leading points of the legend are briefly glanced
at in the Iliad; but our knowledge of the details is chiefly derived
from the Attic tragedians, who transformed the narratives of their
predecessors at pleasure, and whose popularity constantly eclipsed and
obliterated the ancient version. Antimachus of Kolophôn, contemporary
with Euripidês, in his long epic, probably took no less liberties
with the old narrative. His Thêbaïd never became generally popular,
but it exhibited marks of study and elaboration which recommended it
to the esteem of the Alexandrine critics, and probably contributed to
discredit in their eyes the old cyclic poem.
[639] Pausan. ix. 9. 3. Ἐποιήθη δὲ ἐς τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον καὶ ἔπη,
Θηβαΐς· τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην,
ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι. Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ
ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταῦτα ἔγνωσαν· ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά
γε Ἰλιάδα καὶ τὰ ἔπη τὰ ἐς Ὀδυσσέα ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα. The name in
the text of Pausanias stands Καλαῖνος, an unknown person: most of
the critics recognize the propriety of substituting Καλλῖνος, and
Leutsch and Welcker have given very sufficient reasons for doing
so.
The Ἀμφιάρεω ἐξελασία ἐς Θέβας, alluded to in the
pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, seems to be the description of a
special passage in this Thêbaïs.
The logographers, who gave a continuous history of this siege of
Thêbes, had at least three preëxisting epic poems—the Thêbaïs, the
Œdipodia, and the Alkmæônis,—from which they could borrow. The subject
was also handled in some of the Hesiodic poems, but we do not know to
what extent.[640] The Thêbaïs was composed more in honor of Argos than
of Thêbes, as the first line of it, one of the few fragments still
preserved, betokens.[641]
[640] Hesiod, ap. Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 680, which passage does
not seem to me so much at variance with the incidents stated in
other poets as Leutsch imagines.
[641] Ἄργος ἄειδε, θεὰ, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν ἄνακτες (see Leutsch,
_ib._ c. 4. p. 29).
SIEGES OF THEBES.
The legend, about to recount fraternal dissension of the most
implacable kind, comprehending in its results not only the immediate
relations of the infuriated brothers, but many chosen companions of the
heroic race along with them, takes its start from the paternal curse of
Œdipus, which overhangs and determines all the gloomy sequel.
Œdipus, though king of Thêbes and father of four children by Euryganeia
(according to the Œdipodia), has become the devoted victim of the
Erinnyes, in consequence of the self-inflicted death of his mother,
which he has unconsciously caused, as well as of his unintentional
parricide. Though he had long forsworn the use of all the ornaments and
luxuries which his father had inherited from his kingly progenitors,
yet when through age he had come to be dependent upon his two sons,
Polynikês one day broke through this interdict, and set before him
the silver table and the splendid wine-cup of Kadmus, which Laius had
always been accustomed to employ. The old king had no sooner seen these
precious appendages of the regal life of his father, than his mind was
overrun by a calamitous phrenzy, and he imprecated terrible curses on
his sons, predicting that there would be bitter and endless warfare
between them. The goddess Erinnys heard and heeded him; and he repeated
the curse again on another occasion, when his sons, who had always
been accustomed to send to him the shoulder of the victims sacrificed
on the altar, caused the buttock to be served to him in place of
it.[642] He resented this as an insult, and prayed the gods that they
might perish each by the hand of the other. Throughout the tragedians
as well as in the old epic, the paternal curse, springing immediately
from the misguided Œdipus himself, but remotely from the parricide
and incest with which he has tainted his breed, is seen to domineer
over the course of events—the Erinnys who executes that curse being
the irresistible, though concealed, agent. Æschylus not only preserves
the fatal efficiency of the paternal curse, but even briefly glances
at the causes assigned for it in the Thêbaïs, without superadding any
new motives. In the judgment of Sophoklês, or of his audience, the
conception of a father cursing his sons upon such apparently trifling
grounds was odious; and that great poet introduced many aggravating
circumstances, describing the old blind father as having been
barbarously turned out of doors by his sons to wander abroad in exile
and poverty. Though by this change he rendered his poem more coherent
and self-justifying, yet he departed, from the spirit of the old
legend, according to which Œdipus has contracted by his unconscious
misdeeds an incurable taint destined to pass onward to his progeny.
His mind is alienated, and he curses them, not because he has suffered
seriously by their guilt, but because he is made the blind instrument
of an avenging Erinnys for the ruin of the house of Laius.[643]
[642] Fragm. of the Thêbaïs, ap. Athenæ. xii. p. 465, ὅτι αὐτῷ
παρέθηκαν ἐκπώματα ἃ ἀπηγορεύκει, λέγων οὕτως·
Αὐτὰρ ὁ διογένης ἥρως ξανθὸς Πολυνείκης
Πρῶτα μὲν Οἰδίποδι καλὴν παρέθηκε τράπεζαν
Ἀργυρέην Κάδμοιο θεόφρονος· αὐταρ ἔπειτα
Χρύσεον ἔμπλησεν καλὸν δέπας ἥδεος οἴνου·
Αὐτὰρ ὅγ᾽ ὡς φράσθη παρακείμενα πατρὸς ἑοῖο
Τιμήεντα γέρα, μέγα οἱ κακὸν ἔμπεσε θυμῷ.
Αἶψα δὲ παισὶν ἑοῖσι μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπαρὰς
Ἀργαλέας ἠρᾶτο· θεὸν δ᾽ οὐ λάνθαν᾽ Ἐριννύν·
Ὡς οὐ οἱ πατρῷα γ᾽ ἐνὶ φιλότητι δάσαιντο,
Εἶεν δ᾽ αμφοτέροις αἰεὶ πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε.
See Leutsch, Thebaid. Cycl. Reliq. p. 38.
The other fragment from the same Thêbaïs is cited by the Schol.
ad Soph. Œdip. Colon. 1378.—
Ἴσχιον ὡς ἐνόησε, χαμαὶ βάλεν, εἶπέ τε μῦθον·
Ὦ μοι ἐγὼ, παῖδές μοι ὀνειδείοντες ἔπεμψαν.
Εὐκτο Διῒ βασιλῆϊ καὶ ἄλλοις ἀθανάτοισι,
Χερσὶν ὑπ᾽ ἀλλήλων καταβήμεναι Ἄϊδος εἴσω.
Τὰ δὲ παραπλήσια τῷ ἐποποιῷ καὶ Αἴσχυλος ἐν τοῖς Ἕπτα ἐπι Θήβας.
In spite of the protest of Schutz, in his note, I think that the
scholiast has understood the words ἐπίκοτος τροφᾶς (Sept. ad
Theb. 787) in their plain and just meaning.
[643] The curses of Œdipus are very frequently and emphatically
dwelt upon both by Æschylus and Sophoklês (Sept. ad Theb. 70-586,
655-697, etc.; Œdip. Colon. 1293-1378). The former continues the
same point of view as the Thêbaïs, when he mentions—
... Τὰς περιθύμους
Κατάρας βλαψίφρονος Οἰδιπόδα (727);
or, λόγου τ᾽ ἄνοια καὶ φρενῶν Ἐριννύς (Soph. Antig. 584).
The Scholiast on Sophoklês (Œd. Col. 1378) treats the cause
assigned by the ancient Thêbaïs for the curse vented by Œdipus as
trivial and ludicrous.
The Ægeids at Sparta, who traced their descent to Kadmus,
suffered from terrible maladies which destroyed the lives of
their children; an oracle directed them to appease the Erinnyes
of Laius and Œdipus by erecting a temple, upon which the maladies
speedily ceased (Herodot. iv.).
After the death of Œdipus and the celebration of his funeral games,
at which amongst others, Argeia, daughter of Adrastus (afterwards the
wife of Polynikês), was present,[644] his two sons soon quarrelled
respecting the succession. The circumstances are differently related;
but it appears that, according to the original narrative, the wrong and
injustice was on the part of Polynikês, who, however, was obliged to
leave Thêbes and to seek shelter with Adrastus, king of Argos. Here he
met Tydeus, a fugitive, at the same time, from Ætôlia: it was dark when
they arrived, and a broil ensued between the two exiles, but Adrastus
came out and parted them. He had been enjoined by an oracle to give his
two daughters in marriage to a lion and a boar, and he thought this
occasion had now arrived, inasmuch as one of the combatants carried on
his shield a lion, the other a boar. He accordingly gave Deipylê in
marriage to Tydeus, and Argeia to Polynikês: moreover, he resolved to
restore by armed resistance both his sons-in-law to their respective
countries.[645]
[644] Hesiod. ap. Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 680.
[645] Apollodôr. iii. 5, 9; Hygin. f. 69; Æschyl. Sept. ad Theb.
573. Hyginus says that Polynikês came clothed in the skin of a
lion, and Tydeus in that of a boar; perhaps after Antimachus, who
said that Tydeus had been brought up by swineherds (Antimach.
Fragm. 27, ed. Düntzer; ap. Schol. Iliad. iv. 400). Very
probably, however, the old Thêbaïs compared Tydeus and Polynikês
to a lion and a boar, on account of their courage and fierceness;
a simile quite in the Homeric character. Mnaseas gave the words
of the oracle (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 411).
On proposing the expedition to the Argeian chiefs around him he
found most of them willing auxiliaries; but Amphiaräus—formerly his
bitter opponent, but now reconciled to him, and husband of his sister
Eriphylê—strongly opposed him.[646] He denounced the enterprise
as unjust and contrary to the will of the gods. Again, being of a
prophetic stock, descended from Melampus, he foretold the certain
death both of himself and of the principal leaders, should they
involve themselves as accomplices in the mad violence of Tydeus or
the criminal ambition of Polynikês. Amphiaräus, already distinguished
both in the Kalydônian boar-hunt and in the funeral games of Pelias,
was in the Thêban war the most conspicuous of all the heroes, and
absolutely indispensable to its success. But his reluctance to engage
in it was invincible, nor was it possible to prevail upon him except
through the influence of his wife Eriphylê. Polynikês, having brought
with him from Thêbes the splendid robe and necklace given by the
gods to Harmonia on her marriage with Kadmus, offered it as a bribe
to Eriphylê, on condition that she would influence the determination
of Amphiaräus. The sordid wife, seduced by so matchless a present,
betrayed the lurking-place of her husband, and involved him in the
fatal expedition.[647] Amphiaräus, reluctantly dragged forth, and
foreknowing the disastrous issue of the expedition both to himself and
to his associates, addressed his last injunctions, at the moment of
mounting his chariot, to his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus, commanding
Alkmæôn to avenge his approaching death by killing the venal Eriphylê,
and by undertaking a second expedition against Thêbes.
[646] See Pindar, Nem. ix. 30, with the instructive Scholium.
[647] Apollodôr. iii. 6, 2. The treachery of “the hateful
Eriphylê” is noticed in the Odyssey, xi. 327: Odysseus sees her
in the under-world along with the many wives and daughters of the
heroes.