Authors: Robert Graves

The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (51 page)

BOOK: The Greek Myths, Volume 1

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2
. Hyginus:
Fabula
200.

3
. Polyaenus: vi. 52; Hyginus:
Fabula
201; Suidas
sub
Sisyphus; Sophocles:
Ajax
190; Scholiast on Sophocles’s
Philoctetes
417.

4
. Apollodorus: i. 9. 3; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
vii. 393; Eumelus, quoted by Pausanias: ii. 3. 8; Homer:
Iliad
vi. 153; Scholiast on Aristophanes’s
Acarnanians
390; Scholiast on Sophocles’s
Ajax
190; Tzetzes:
On Lycophron
980; Ovid:
Heroides
xii. 203; Horace:
Satires
ii. 17. 12.

5
. Hyginus:
Fabula
60.

6
. Pausanias: ii. 5.1.

7
. Theognis: 712 ff.; Eustathius on Homer’s
Iliad
pp. 487, 631, and 1702.

8
. Servius on Virgil’s
Aeneid
vi. 616; Scholiast on Statius’s
Thebaid
ii. 380; Hyginus:
Fabula
38.

9
. Scholiast on Homer’s
Iliad
i. 180; Pausanias: x. 31. 3; Ovid:
Metamorphoses
iv. 459; Homer:
Odyssey
xi. 593–600.

10
. Ovid:
Fasti
i. 175–6; Eumelus, quoted by Pausanias: ii. 2. 2.

1
. ‘Sisyphus’, though the Greeks understood it to mean ‘very wise’, is spelt
Sesephus
by Hesychius, and is thought to be a Greek variant of Tesup, the Hittite Sun-god, identical with Atabyrius the Sun-god of Rhodes (see
42.
4
and
93.
1
), whose sacred animal was a bull. Bronze statuettes and reliefs of this bull, dating from the fourteenth century
B
.
C
., have been found, marked with a sceptre and two disks on the flank, and with a trefoil on the haunch. Raids on the Sun-god’s marked cattle are a commonplace in Greek myth: Odysseus’s companions made them (see 170.
u
), so also did Alcyoneus, and his contemporary, Heracles (see 132.
d
and
w
). But Autolycus’s use of magic in his theft from Sisyphus recalls the story of Jacob and Laban (
Genesis
xxix and xxx). Jacob, like Autolycus, had the gift of turning cattle to whatever colour he wanted, and thus diminished Laban’s flocks. The cultural connexion between Corinth and Canaan, which is shown in the myths of Nisus (see
91.
1
), Oedipus (see 105.
1
and
7
), Alcathous (see 110.
2
), and Melicertes (see
70.
2
), may be Hittite. Alcyoneus also came from Corinth.

2
. Sisyphus’s ‘shameless stone’ was originally a sun-disk, and the hill up which he rolled it is the vault of Heaven; this made a familiar enough icon. The existence of a Corinthian Sun cult is well established: Helius and Aphrodite are said to have held the acropolis in succession, and shared a temple there (Pausanias: ii. 4. 7). Moreover, Sisyphus is invariably placed next to Ixion in Tartarus, and Ixion’s fire-wheel is a symbol of the sun. This explains why the people of Ephyra sprang from mushrooms, mushrooms were the ritual tinder of Ixion’s fire-wheel (see
63.
2
), and the Sun-god demanded human burnt sacrifices to inaugurate his year. Anticleia’s seduction has been deduced perhaps from a picture showing Helius’s marriage to Aphrodite; and the mythographer’s hostility towards Sisyphus voices Hellenic disgust at the strategic planting of non-Hellenic settlements on the narrow isthmus separating the Peloponnese from Attica. His outwitting of Hades probably refers to a sacred king’s refusal to abdicate at the end of his reign (see 170.
1
). To judge from the sun-bull’s markings, he contrived to rule for two Great Years, represented by the sceptre and the sun-disks, and obtained the Triple-goddess’s
assent, represented by the trefoil. Hypsipylon, Odysseus’s nickname, is the masculine form of Hypsipyle: a title, probably, of the Moon-goddess (see 106.
3
).

3
. Sisyphus and Neleus were probably buried at strategic points on the Isthmus as a charm against invasion (see
101.
3
and 146.
2
). A lacuna occurs in Hyginus’s account of Sisyphus’s revenge on Salmoneus; I have supplied a passage (
para. e, above
) which makes sense of the story.

4
. Peirene, the spring on the citadel of Corinth where Bellerophon took Pegasus to drink (see
75.
c
), had no efflux and never failed (Pausanias: ii. 5. 1; Strabo: vii. 6. 21). Peirene was also the name of a fountain outside the city gate, on the way from the market-place to Lechaeum, where Peirene (‘of the osiers’) – whom the mythographers describe as the daughter of Achelous, or of Oebalus (Pausanias:
loc. cit
.); or of Asopus and Metope (Diodorus Siculus: iv. 72) – was said to have been turned into a spring when she wept for her son Cenchrias (‘spotted serpent’), whom Artemis had unwittingly killed. ‘Corinthian bronze’ took its characteristic colour from being plunged red-hot into this spring (Pausanias: ii. 3. 3).

5
. One of the seven Pleiads disappeared in early Classical times, and her absence had to be explained (see
41.
6
).

6
. A question remains: was the double-S really the monogram of Sisyphus? The icon illustrating the myth probably showed him examining the tracks of the stolen sheep and cattle which, since they ‘parted the hoof’, were formalized as CƆ. This sign stood for SS in the earliest Greek script, and could also be read as the conjoined halves of the lunar month and all that these implied – waxing and waning, increase and decline, blessing and cursing. Animals which ‘parted the hoof’ were self-dedicated to the Moon – they are the sacrifices ordained at the New Moon Festivals in
Leviticus
– and the SS will therefore have referred to Selene the Moon,
alias
Aphrodite, rather than to Sisyphus, who as Sun-king merely held her sacred herd in trust (see
42.
1
). The figure CƆ, representing the full moon (as distinguished from O, representing the simple sun-disk) was marked on each flank of the sacred cow which directed Cadmus to the site of Thebes (see
58.
f
).

SALMONEUS AND TYRO

S
ALMONEUS
, a son, or grandson, of Aeolus and Enarete, reigned for a time in Thessaly before leading an Aeolian colony to the eastern confines
of Elis, where he built the city of Salmonia near the source of the river Enipeus, a tributary of the Alpheius.
¹Salmoneus was hated by his subjects, and went so far in his royal insolence as to transfer Zeus’s sacrifices to his own altars, and announce that he was Zeus. He even drove through the streets of Salmonia, dragging brazen cauldrons, bound with hide, behind his chariot to simulate Zeus’s thunder, and hurling oaken torches into the air; some of these, as they fell, scorched his unfortunate subjects, who were expected to mistake them for lightning. One fine day Zeus punished Salmoneus by hurling a real thunderbolt, which not only destroyed him, chariot and all, but burned down the entire city.
²

b
. Alcidice, Salmoneus’s wife, had died many years before, in giving birth to a beautiful daughter named Tyro. Tyro was under the charge of her stepmother Sidero, and treated with great cruelty as the cause of the family’s expulsion from Thessaly; having killed the two sons she bore to her evil uncle Sisyphus. She now fell in love with the river Enipeus, and haunted its banks day after day, weeping for loneliness. But the River-god, although amused and even flattered by her passion, would not show her the least encouragement.

c
. Poseidon decided to take advantage of this ridiculous situation. Disguising himself as the River-god, he invited Tyro to join him at the confluence of the Enipeus and the Alpheius; and there threw her into a magic sleep, while a dark wave rose up like a mountain and curled its crest to screen his knavery. When Tyro awoke, and found herself ravished, she was aghast at the deception; but Poseidon laughed as he told her to be off home and keep quiet about what had happened. Her reward, he said, would be fine twins, sons of a better father than a mere river-god.
³

d
. Tyro contrived to keep her secret until she bore the promised twins, but then, unable to face Sidero’s anger, exposed them on a mountain. A passing horse-herd took them home with him, but not before his brood-mare had kicked the elder in the face. The horse-herd’s wife reared the boys, giving the bruised one to the mare for suckling and calling him Pelias; the other, whom she called Neleus, took his savage nature from the bitch which served as his foster-mother. But some say that the twins were found floating down the Enipeus in a wooden ark. As soon as Pelias and Neleus discovered their mother’s name and learned how unkindly she had been treated, they set out to avenge her. Sidero took refuge in the temple of Hera; but Pelias struck
her down as she clung to the horns of the altar. This was the first of many insults that he offered the goddess.
⁴

e
. Tyro later married her uncle Cretheus, founder of Iolcus, to whom she bore Aeson, father of Jason the Argonaut; he also adopted Pelias and Neleus as his sons.
⁵

f
. After Cretheus’s death, the twins came to blows: Pelias seized the throne of Iolcus, exiled Neleus, and kept Aeson a prisoner in the palace. Neleus led Cretheus’s grandsons Melampus and Bias with a mixed company of Achaeans, Phthiotians, and Aeolians to the land of Messene, where he drove the Lelegans out of Pylus, and raised the city to such a height of fame that he is now acclaimed as its founder. He married Chloris; but all their twelve children, except Nestor, were eventually killed by Heracles.
⁶