I have found the light of your pyre, your tomb.
I will end there the grief and the anguish of life.
Oh, sweet death to die with the dear dead I love.
She leaped down to the blazing pyre and went with her husband to the world below.
Peace came to the mothers, with the knowledge that at last their children’s spirits were at rest. Not so to the young sons of the dead men. They vowed as they watched the pyre burn that when they were grown they would take vengeance upon Thebes. “Our fathers sleep in the tomb, but the wrong done to them can never sleep,” they said. Ten years later they marched to Thebes. They were victorious; the conquered Thebans fled and their city was leveled to the ground. Teiresias the prophet perished during the flight. All that was left of the old Thebes was Harmonia’s necklace, which was taken to Delphi and for hundreds of years shown to the pilgrims there. The sons of the seven champions, although they succeeded where their fathers failed, were always called the Epigoni, “the After-Born,” as if they had come into the world too late, after all great deeds had been done. But when Thebes fell, the Greek ships had not yet sailed to the Trojan land; and the son of Tydeus, Diomedes, was to be famed as one of the most glorious of the warriors who fought before the walls of Troy.
CHAPTER III
The Royal House of Athens
I have taken the Procne and Philomela story from Ovid. He tells it better than anyone else, but even so he is sometimes inconceivably bad. He describes in fifteen long lines (which I omit) exactly how Philomela’s tongue was cut out and what it looked like as it lay “palpitating” on the earth where Tereus had flung it. The Greek poets were not given to such details, but the Latin had no manner of objection to them. I have followed Ovid, too, for the most part in the stories of Procris and Orithyia, taking a few details from Apollodorus. The tale of Creüsa and Ion is the subject of a play of Euripides, one of the many plays in which he tried to show the Athenians what the gods of the myths really were when judged by the ordinary human standards of mercy, honor, self-control. Greek mythology was full of stories such as that of the rape of Europa, in which never a suggestion was allowed that the deity in question had acted somewhat less than divinely. In his version of the story of Creüsa Euripides said to his audience, “Look at your Apollo, the sun-bright Lord of the Lyre, the pure God of Truth. This is what he did. He brutally forced a helpless young girl and then he abandoned her.” The end of Greek mythology was at hand when such plays drew full houses in Athens.
THIS family was especially marked, even among the other remarkable mythological families, by the very peculiar happenings which visited its members. There is nothing stranger told in any story than some of the events in their lives.
CECROPS
The first King of Attica was named Cecrops. He had no human ancestor and he was himself only half human.
Cecrops, lord and hero,
Born of a dragon,
Dragon-shaped below.
He was the person usually held to be responsible for Athena’s becoming the protector of Athens. Poseidon, too, wanted the city, and to show how great a benefactor he could be, he struck open the rock of the Acropolis with his trident so that salt water leaped forth from the cleft and subsided into a deep well. But Athena did still better. She made an olive tree grow there, the most prized of all the trees of Greece.
The gray-gleaming olive
Athena showed to men,
The glory of shining Athens,
Her crown from on high.
In return for this good gift Cecrops, who had been made arbiter, decided that Athens was hers. Poseidon was greatly angered and punished the people by sending a disastrous flood.
In one story of this contest between the two deities, woman’s suffrage plays a part. In those early days, we are told, women voted as well as men. All the women voted for the goddess, and all the men for the god. There was one more woman than there were men, so Athena won. But the men, along with Poseidon, were greatly chagrined at this female triumph; and while Poseidon proceeded to flood the land the men decided to take the vote away from the women. Nevertheless, Athena kept Athens.
Most writers say that these events happened before the Deluge, and that the Cecrops who belonged to the famous Athenian family was not the ancient half-dragon, half-human creature but an ordinary man, important only because of his relatives. He was the son of a distinguished king, a nephew of two well-known mythological heroines, and the brother of three. Above all, he was the great-grandfather of Athens’ hero, Theseus.
His father, King Erechtheus of Athens, was usually said to be the king in whose reign Demeter came to Eleusis and agriculture began. He had two sisters, Procne and Philomela, noted for their misfortunes. Their story was tragic in the extreme.
PROCNE AND PHILOMELA
Procne, the elder of the two, was married to Tereus of Thrace, a son of Ares, who proved to have inherited all his father’s detestable qualities. The two had a son, Itys, and when he was five years old Procne, who had all this while been living in Thrace separated from her family, begged Tereus to let her invite her sister Philomela to visit her. He agreed, and said he would go to Athens himself and escort her. But as soon as he set eyes on the girl he fell in love with her. She was beautiful as a nymph or a naiad. He easily persuaded her father to allow her to go back with him, and she herself was happy beyond words at the prospect. All went well on the voyage, but when they disembarked and started overland for the palace, Tereus told Philomela that he had received news of Procne’s death and he forced her into a pretended marriage. Within a very short time, however, she learned the truth, and she was ill-advised enough to threaten him. She would surely find means to let the world know what he had done, she told him, and he would be an outcast among men. She aroused both his fury and his fear. He seized her and cut out her tongue. Then he left her in a strongly guarded place and went to Procne with a story that Philomela had died on the journey.
Philomela’s case looked hopeless. She was shut up; she could not speak; in those days there was no writing. It seemed that Tereus was safe. However, although people then could not write, they could tell a story without speaking because they were marvelous craftsmen, such as have never been known since. A smith could make a shield which showed on its surface a lion-hunt, two lions devouring a bull while herdsmen urged their dogs on to attack them. Or he could depict a harvest scene, a field with reapers and sheaf-binders, and a vineyard teeming with clusters of grapes which youths and maidens gathered into baskets while one of them played on a shepherd’s pipe to cheer their labors. The women were equally remarkable in their kind of work. They could weave, into the lovely stuffs they made, forms so lifelike anyone could see what tale they illustrated. Philomela accordingly turned to her loom. She had a greater motive to make clear the story she wove than any artist ever had. With infinite pains and surpassing skill she produced a wondrous tapestry on which the whole account of her wrongs was unfolded. She gave it to the old woman who attended her and signified that it was for the Queen.
Proud of bearing so beautiful a gift the aged creature carried it to Procne, who was still wearing deep mourning for her sister and whose spirit was as mournful as her garments. She unrolled the web. There she saw Philomela, her very face and form, and Tereus equally unmistakable. With horror she read what had happened, all as plain to her as if in print. Her deep sense of outrage helped her to self-control. Here was no room for tears or for words, either. She bent her whole mind to delivering her sister and devising a fit punishment for her husband. First, she made her way to Philomela, doubtless through the old woman messenger, and when she had told her, who could not speak in return, that she knew all, she took her back to the palace. There while Philomela wept, Procne thought. “Let us weep hereafter,” she told her sister. “I am prepared for any deed that will make Tereus pay for what he has done to you.” At this moment her little son Itys, ran into the room and suddenly as she looked at him it seemed to her that she hated him. “H
ow like your father you are,” she said slowly, and with the words her plan was clear to her. She killed the child with one stroke of the dagger. She cut the little dead body up, put the limbs in a kettle over the fire, and served them to Tereus that night for supper. She watched him as he ate; then she told him what he had feasted on.
In his first sickening horror he could not move, and the two sisters were able to flee. Near Daulis, however, he overtook them, and was about to kill them when suddenly the gods turned them into birds, Procne into a nightingale and Philomela into a swallow, which, because her tongue was cut out, only twitters and can never sing. Procne,
The bird with wings of brown,
Musical nightingale,
Mourns forever; O Itys, child,
Lost to me, lost.
Of all the birds her song is sweetest because it is saddest. She never forgets the son she killed.
The wretched Tereus too was changed into a bird, an ugly bird with a huge beak, said sometimes to be a hawk.
The Roman writers who told the story somehow got the sisters confused and said that the tongueless Philomela was the nightingale, which was obviously absurd. But so she is always called in English poetry.
PROCRIS AND CEPHALUS
The niece of these unfortunate women was Procris, and she was almost as unfortunate as they. She was married very happily to Cephalus, a grandson of the King of the Winds, Aeolus; but they had been married only a few weeks when Cephalus was carried off by no less a personage than Aurora herself, the Goddess of the Dawn. He was a lover of the chase and used to rise early to track the deer. So it happened that many a time as the day broke Dawn saw the young hunter, and finally she fell in love with him. But Cephalus loved Procris. Not even the radiant goddess could make him faithless. Procris alone was in his heart. Enraged at this obstinate devotion which none of her wiles could weaken, Aurora at last dismissed him and told him to go back to his wife, but to make sure that she had been as true to him during his absence as he to her.
This malicious suggestion drove Cephalus mad with jealousy. He had been so long away and Procris was so beautiful…. He decided that he could never rest satisfied unless he proved to himself beyond all doubt that she loved him alone and would not yield to any other lover. Accordingly, he disguised himself. Some say that Aurora helped him, but at all events, the disguise was so good that when he went back to his home no one recognized him. It was comforting to see that the whole household was longing for his return, but his purpose held firm. When he was admitted to Procris’ presence, however, her manifest grief, her sad face and subdued manner, came near to making him give up the test he had planned. He did not do so, however; he could not forget Aurora’s mocking words. He began at once to try to get Procris to fall in love with him, a stranger, as she supposed him to be. He made passionate love to her, always reminding her, too, that her husband had forsaken her. Nevertheless for a long time he could not move her. To all his pleas she made the same answer, “I belong to him. Wherever he is I keep my love for him.”
But one day when he was pouring out petitions, persuasions, promises, she hesitated. She did not give in; she only did not firmly oppose him, but that was enough for Cephalus. He cried out, “O false and shameless woman, I am your husband. By my own witness you are a traitor.” Procris looked at him. Then she turned and without a word left him and the house, too. Her love for him seemed turned into hate; she loathed the whole race of men and she went to the mountains to live alone. Cephalus, however, had quickly come to his senses and realized the poor part he had played. He searched everywhere for her until he found her. Then he humbly begged her forgiveness.
She could not give it to him at once, she had resented too deeply the deception he had practised upon her. In the end, however, he won her back and they spent some happy years together. Then one day they went hunting, as they often did. Procris had given Cephalus a javelin that never failed to strike what it was aimed at. The husband and wife, reaching the woods, separated in search of game. Cephalus looking keenly around saw something move in the thicket ahead and threw the javelin. It found the mark. Procris was there and she sank to the ground dead, pierced to the heart.
ORITHYIA AND BOREAS
One of the sisters of Procris was Orithyia. Boreas, the North Wind, fell in love with her, but her father, Erechtheus, and the people of Athens, too, were opposed to his suit. Because of Procne’s and Philomela’s sad fate and the fact that the wicked Tereus came from the North, they had conceived a hatred for all who lived there and they refused to give the maiden to Boreas. But they were foolish to think they could keep what the great North Wind wanted. One day when Orithyia was playing with her sisters on the bank of a river, Boreas swept down in a great gust and carried her away. The two sons she bore him, Zetes and Calais, went on the Quest of the Golden Fleece with Jason.
Once Socrates, the great Athenian teacher, who lived hundreds of years, thousands, perhaps, after the mythological stories were first told, went on a walk with a young man he was fond of named Phaedrus. They talked as they wandered idly on and Phaedrus asked, “Is not the place somewhere near here where Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the Ilissus?”
“That is the story,” Socrates answered.
“Do you suppose this is the exact spot?” Phaedrus wondered. “The little stream is delightfully clear and bright. I can fancy that there might be maidens playing near.”
“I believe,” replied Socrates, “the spot is about a quarter of a mile lower down, and there is, I think, some sort of altar to Boreas there.”
“Tell me, Socrates,” said Phaedrus. “Do you believe the story?”
“The wise are doubtful,” Socrates returned, “and I should not be singular if I too doubted.”
This conversation took place in the last part of the fifth century B.C. The old stories had begun by then to lose their hold on men’s minds.
CREÜSA AND ION
Creüsa was the sister of Procris and Orithyia, and she too was an unfortunate woman. One day when she was hardly more than a child she was gathering crocuses on a cliff where there was a deep cave. Her veil, which she had used for a basket, was full of the yellow blooms and she had turned to go home when she was caught up in the arms of a man who had appeared from nowhere, as if the invisible had suddenly become visible. He was divinely beautiful, but in her agony of terror she never noticed what he was like. She screamed for her mother, but there was no help for her. Her abductor was Apollo himself. He carried her off to the dark cave.
God though he was she hated him, especially when the time came for her child to be born and he showed her no sign, gave her no aid. She did not dare tell her parents. The fact that the lover was a god and could not be resisted was, as many stories show, not accepted as an excuse. A girl ran every risk of being killed if she confessed.
When Creüsa’s time had come she went all alone to that same dark cave, and there her son was born. There, too, she left him to die. Later, driven by an agony of longing to know what had happened to him, she went back. The cave was empty and no bloodstains could be seen anywhere. The child had certainly not been killed by a wild animal. Also, what was very strange, the soft things she had wrapped him in, her veil and a cloak woven by her own hands, were gone. She wondered fearfully if a great eagle or vulture had entered and had carried all away in its cruel talons, the clothing with the baby. It seemed the only possible explanation.
After a time she was married. King Erechtheus, her father, rewarded with her hand a foreigner who had helped him in a war. This man, Xuthus by name, was a Greek, to be sure, but he did not belong to Athens or to Attica, and he was considered a stranger and an alien, and as such was so looked down on that when he and Creüsa had no children the Athenians did not think it a misfortune. Xuthus did, however. He more than Creüsa passionately desired a son. They went accordingly to Delphi, the Greeks’ refuge in time of trouble, to ask the god if they could hope for a child.
Creüsa, leaving he
r husband in the town with one of the priests, went on up to the sanctuary by herself. She found in the outer court a beautiful lad in priestly attire intent on purifying the sacred place with water from a golden vessel, singing as he worked a hymn of praise to the god. He looked at the lovely stately lady with kindness and she at him, and they began to talk. He told her that he could see that she was highly born and blessed by good fortune. She answered bitterly, “Good fortune! Say, rather, sorrow that makes life insupportable.” All her misery was in the words, her terror and her pain of long ago, her grief for her child, the burden of the secret she had carried through the years. But at the wonder in the boy’s eyes she collected herself and asked him who he was, so young and yet seemingly so dedicated to this high service in Greece’s holy of holies. He told her that his name was Ion, but that he did not know where he had come from. The Pythoness, Apollo’s priestess and prophetess, had found him one morning, a little baby, lying on the temple stairway, and had brought him up as tenderly as a mother. Always he had been happy, working joyfully in the temple, proud to serve not men, but gods.
He ventured then to question her. Why, he asked her gently, was she so sad, her eyes wet with tears? That was not the way pilgrims to Delphi came, but rejoicing to approach the pure shrine of Apollo, the God of Truth.
“Apollo!” Creüsa said. “No! I do not approach him.” Then, in answer to Ion’s startled reproachful look, she told him that she had come on a secret errand to Delphi. Her husband was here to ask if he might hope for a son, but her purpose was to find out what had been the fate of a child who was the son of… She faltered, and was silent. Then she spoke quickly, “… of a friend of mine, a wretched woman whom this Delphic holy god of yours wronged. And when the child was born that he forced her to bear, she abandoned it. It must be dead. Years ago it happened. But she longs to be sure, and to know how it died. So I am here to ask Apollo for her.”