The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (55 page)

4
. Hesiod:
Catalogue of Women
; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 1; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 68; Servius on Virgil’s
Eclogues
vi. 48.

5
. Apollodorus: ii. 2. 1–2; Bacchylides:
Epinicia
x. 40–112; Herodotus: ix. 34; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 68; Pausanias: ii. 18. 4; iv. 36. 3; v. 5. 5 and viii. 18. 3; Scholiast on Pindar’s
Nemean Odes
ix. 13.

1
. It was a common claim of wizards that their ears had been licked by serpents, which were held to be incarnate spirits of oracular heroes (‘The Language of Animals’ by J. R. Frazer,
Archaeological Review
i, 1888), and that they were thus enabled to understand the language of birds and insects (see 105.
g
and 158.
p
). Apollo’s priests appear to have been more than usually astute in claiming prophesy by this means.

2
. Iphiclus’s disability is factual rather than mythical: the rust of the gelding-knife would be an appropriate psychological cure for impotence caused by a sudden fright, and in accordance with the principles of sympathetic magic. Apollodorus describes the tree into which the knife was thrust as an oak, but it is more likely to have been the wild pear-tree sacred to the White Goddess of the Peloponnese (see
74.
6
), which fruits in May, the month of enforced chastity; Phylacus had insulted the goddess by wounding her tree. The wizard’s claim to have been told of the treatment by vultures – important birds in augury (see 119.
i
) – would strengthen the belief in its efficacy. Pero’s name has been interpreted as meaning ‘maimed or deficient’, a reference to Iphiclus’s disability, which is the main point of the story, rather than as meaning ‘leather bag’, a reference to her control of the winds (see
36.
1
).

3
. It appears that ‘Melampus’, a leader of Aeolians from Pylus, seized part of Argolis from the Canaanite settlers who called themselves Sons of Abas (the Semitic word for ‘father’), namely the god Melkarth (see
70.
5
), and instituted a double kingdom. His winning of the cattle from Phylacus (‘guardian’), who has an unsleeping dog, recalls Heracles’s Tenth Labour, and the myth is similarly based on the Hellenic custom of buying a bride with the proceeds of a cattle raid (see 132.
1
).

4
. ‘Proetus’ seems to be another name for Ophion, the Demiurge (see
1.
a
). The mother of his daughters was Stheneboea, the Moon-goddess as cow – namely Io, who was maddened in much the same way (see
56.
a
) – and their names are titles of the same goddess in her destructive capacity as Lamia (see
61.
1
), and as Hippolyte, whose wild mares tore
the sacred king to pieces at the end of his reign (see
71.
a
). But the orgy for which the Moon-priestesses dressed as mares should be distinguished from the rain-making gadfly dance for which they dressed as heifers (see
56.
1
); and from the autumn goat-cult revel, when they tore children and animals to pieces under the toxic influence of mead, wine, or ivy-beer (see
27.
2
). The Aeolians’ capture of the goddess’s shrine at Lusi, recorded here in mythic form, will have put an end to the wild-mare orgies; Demeter’s rape by Poseidon (see
16.
5
) records the same event. Libations poured to the Serpent-goddess in an Arcadian shrine between Sicyon and Lusi may account for the story of Iphinoë’s death.

5
. The official recognition at Delphi, Corinth, Sparta, and Athens of Dionysus’s ecstatic wine cult, given many centuries later, was aimed at the discouragement of all earlier, more primitive, rites; and seems to have put an end to cannibalism and ritual murder, except in the wilder parts of Greece. At Patrae in Achaea, for instance, Artemis Tridaria (‘threefold assigner of lots’) had required the annual sacrifice of boys and girls, their heads wreathed with ivy and corn, at her harvest orgies. This custom, said to atone for the desecration of the sanctuary by two lovers, Melanippus and Comaetho priestess of Artemis, was ended by the arrival of a chest containing an image of Dionysus, brought by Eurypylus (see 160.
x
) from Troy (Pausanias: vii. 19. 1–3).

6
.
Melampodes
(‘black feet’), is a common Classical name for the Egyptians (see
60.
5
); and these stories of how Melampus understood what birds or insects were saying are likely to be of African, not Aeolian, origin.

73

PERSEUS

A
BAS
, King of Argolis and grandson of Danaus, was so renowned a warrior that, after he died, rebels against the royal House could be put to flight merely by displaying his shield. He married Aglaia, to whose twin sons, Proetus and Acrisius, he bequeathed his kingdom, bidding them rule alternately. Their quarrel, which began in the womb, became more bitter than ever when Proetus lay with Acrisius’s daughter Danaë, and barely escaped alive.
¹
Since Acrisius now refused to give up the throne at the end of his term, Proetus fled to the court of Iobates, King of Lycia, whose daughter Stheneboea, or Anteia, he married;
returning presently at the head of a Lycian army to support his claims to the succession. A bloody battle was fought, but since neither side gained the advantage, Proetus and Acrisius reluctantly agreed to divide the kingdom between them. Acrisius’s share was to be Argos and its environs; Proetus’s was to be Tiryns, the Heraeum (now part of Mycenae), Midea, and the coast of Argolis.
²

b
. Seven gigantic Cyclopes, called Gasterocheires, because they earned their living as masons, accompanied Proetus from Lycia, and fortified Tiryns with massive walls, using blocks of stone so large that a mule team could not have stirred the least of them.
³

c
. Acrisius, who was married to Aganippe, had no sons, but only this one daughter Danaë whom Proteus had seduced; and, when he asked an oracle how to procure a male heir, was told: ‘You will have no sons, and your grandson must kill you.’ To forestall this fate, Acrisius imprisoned Danaë in a dungeon with brazen doors, guarded by savage dogs; but, despite these precautions, Zeus came upon her in a shower of gold, and she bore him a son named Perseus. When Acrisius learned of Danaë’s condition, he would not believe that Zeus was the father, and suspected his brother Proetus of having renewed his intimacy with her; but, not daring to kill his own daughter, locked her and the infant Perseus in a wooden ark, which he cast into the sea. This ark was washed towards the island of Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys netted it, hauled it ashore, broke it open and found both Danaë and Perseus still alive. He took them at once to his brother, King Polydectes, who reared Perseus in his own house.
⁴

d
. Some years passed and Perseus, grown to manhood, defended Danaë against Polydectes who, with his subjects’ support, had tried to force marriage upon her. Polydectes then assembled his friends and, pretending that he was about to sue for the hand of Hippodameia, daughter of Pelops, asked them to contribute one horse apiece as his love-gift. ‘Seriphos is only a small island,’ he said, ‘but I do not wish to cut a poor figure beside the wealthy suitors from the mainland. Will you be able to help me, noble Perseus?’

‘Alas,’ answered Perseus, ‘I possess no horse, nor any gold to buy one. But if you intend to marry Hippodameia, and not my mother, I will contrive to win whatever gift you name.’ He added rashly: ‘Even the Gorgon Medusa’s head, if need be.’

e
. ‘That would indeed please me more than any horse in the world,’ replied Polydectes at once.
⁵
Now, the Gorgon Medusa had serpents for
hair, huge teeth, protruding tongue, and altogether so ugly a face that all who gazed at it were petrified with fright.

f
. Athene overheard the conversation at Seriphos and, being a sworn enemy of Medusa’s, for whose frightful appearance she had herself been responsible, accompanied Perseus on his adventure. First she led him to the city of Deicterion in Samos, where images of all the three Gorgons are displayed, thus enabling him to distinguish Medusa from her immortal sisters Stheno and Euryale; then she warned him never to look at Medusa directly, but only at her reflection, and presented him with a brightly-polished shield.

g
. Hermes also helped Perseus, giving him an adamantine sickle with which to cut off Medusa’s head. But Perseus still needed a pair of winged sandals, a magic wallet to contain the decapitated head, and the dark helmet of invisibility which belonged to Hades. All these things were in the care of the Stygian Nymphs, from whom Perseus had to fetch them; but their whereabouts were known only to the Gorgons’ sisters, the three swan-like Graeae, who had a single eye and tooth among the three of them. Perseus accordingly sought out the Graeae on their thrones at the foot of Mount Atlas. Creeping up behind them, he snatched the eye and tooth, as they were being passed from one sister to another, and would not return either until he had been told where the Stygian Nymphs lived.
⁶

h
. Perseus then collected the sandals, wallet, and helmet from the nymphs, and flew westwards to the Land of the Hyperboreans, where he found the Gorgons asleep, among rain-worn shapes of men and wild beasts pertrified by Medusa. He fixed his eyes on the reflection in the shield, Athene guided his hand, and he cut off Medusa’s head with one stroke of the sickle; whereupon, to his surprise, the winged horse Pegasus, and the warrior Chrysaor grasping a golden falchion, sprang fully-grown from her dead body. Perseus was unaware that these had been begotten on Medusa by Poseidon in one of Athene’s temples, but decided not to antagonize them further. Hurriedly thrusting the head into his wallet, he took flight; and though Stheno and Euryale, awakened by their new nephews, rose to pursue him, the helmet made Perseus invisible, and he escaped safely southward.
⁷

i
. At sunset, Perseus alighted near the palace of the Titan Atlas to whom, as a punishment for his inhospitality, he showed the Gorgon’s head and thus transformed him into a mountain; and on the following day turned eastward and flew across the Libyan desert, Hermes helping
him to carry the weighty head. By the way he dropped the Graeae’s eye and tooth into Lake Triton; and some drops of Gorgon blood fell on the desert sand, where they bred a swarm of venomous serpents, one of which later killed Mopsus the Argonaut.
⁸

j
. Perseus paused for refreshment at Chemmis in Egypt, where he is still worshipped, and then flew on. As he rounded the coast of Philistia to the north, he caught sight of a naked woman chained to a sea-cliff, and instantly fell in love with her. This was Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus, the Ethiopian King of Joppa, and Cassiopeia.
⁹
Cassiopeia had boasted that both she and her daughter were more beautiful than the Nereids, who complained of this insult to their protector Poseidon. Poseidon sent a flood and a female sea-monster to devastate Philistia; and when Cepheus consulted the Oracle of Ammon, he was told that his only hope of deliverance lay in sacrificing Andromeda to the monster. His subjects had therefore obliged him to chain her to a rock, naked except for certain jewels, and leave her to be devoured.

k
. As Perseus flew towards Andromeda, he saw Cepheus and Cassiopeia watching anxiously from the shore near by, and alighted beside them for a hurried consultation. On condition that, if he rescued her, she should be his wife and return to Greece with him, Perseus took to the air again, grasped his sickle and, diving murderously from above, beheaded the approaching monster, which was deceived by his shadow on the sea. He had drawn the Gorgon’s head from the wallet, lest the monster might look up, and now laid it face downwards on a bed of leaves and sea-weed (which instantly turned to coral), while he cleansed his hands of blood, raised three altars and sacrified a calf, a cow, and a bull to Hermes, Athene, and Zeus respectively.
¹⁰