Greek Mythology

JOHN PINSENT
iREEK
Mythology was woven closely into the febrtc
and arts of ancient Greece.
Most of the drama, poetry, painting
of the Hie
and sculpture of the Qreeks is based on stories

of gods and heroes and of the mortal men
and women with whom they dealt. The myths
nf the early Qreek peoples had a religious
"' quasl-sclenllfic meaning and formed
ihF- essential background and cultural heritage
"I
later Qreek civilisations. They played
nn important part
Ihal
in
the creation of the glory
wai Gropre
The author, in addition to narrating familiar

and lesser-known stories, traces
the development of particular myths from
the most primitive times to the sophisticated
civilisation that formed the Qolden Age
ui Greece He shows that Qreek mythology
wiis a dynamic expression of the people's
'nscious or subconscious desires not a static
unvarying canon of stories. The richness
'if
Greek myths may be accounted for paniy
dv the widely scattered places In which
ihey developed
on the Qreek mainland,
on the Aegean Islands and in the Greek colonies
of southern Italy. Some of the myths can be
traced back to earlier nature religions.
Others can be explained in terms of modern
r
psychological theory
The stories
Greek mythology have been

artists even since
they first gained currency. This book contains
of
a superb selection
the best examples
of Qreek vase paintings, sculpture and
architecture, many of which have not before
been reproduced In books designed
of
a source of Inspiration to
for the general reader.
The author, John Pinsant, who has
made
Is
a special study of this subject.
lecturer In
Qreek
at the
University
of Liverpool
24 pages
Over 100
in
colour
illustrations In black
and white
Index
Front jacket: Heracles wrestling with
the sea-monster Triton
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GREEK MYTHOLOGY
MYT
IL
ini
JOHN PINSENT
PAULHAMLYN
LONDON NEW YORK SYDNEY TORONTO
coiDUR plate;
13
Bronze Core
17
Temple
Temple
Temple
20
24
38
38
42
42
42
of Apollo,
46
Heracles bringing Cerberus

to Eurystheus
62
66
Athena Promachos
71
Bellerophon and the Chimaera

The Calydonian Boar hunt
Caeneus slain by the Centaurs
Atalanta at the hunt
Man and Centaur
Corinth
at Selinus
of Aphaea, Aegina
Dionysus on a goat
Female statuette from Locri
Hermes and fertility goddess
Wind shown as a running figure

Athena on coin of Syracuse
76
80
81
84
Delphi
The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited
Copyright (C) 1969 John Pinsent
London/New York/Sydney/Toronto
Hamlyn House, Feltham
All rights reserved

Printed in Italy by
Middlesex, England
O.G.A.M. Verona
97
101
101
105
108
123
126
130
130
Amazons
in
battle
Three-bodied serpent man

Medea and Pelias
Theseus leaving Ariadne on Naxos
The sacred site at Olympus
The judgement of Paris

Temple at Agrigento
Achilles receiving his armour
The blinding of Polyphemus
ontent:
THE CHILDREN OF
14
lo
54
The
The
56
Battle of
57
Death of Heracles
99
100
16
The daughters of Danaus

Cadmus
The daughters of Cadmus
The birth of Dionysus
58
ATHENS
lOZ
Midas
Orpheus
63
Tereus and Procne
102
The apotheosis of Dionysus
63
INTRODUCTION
The
ancient sources
THE ORIGINS OF THE
WORLD
The creation myth

The succession myth
The birth of Zeus
The Titans
Typhon
22
THE FAMILY OF THE GODS
29
Zeus and Hera
29
Ares and Aphrodite
51
Athena
Poseidon
16
16
23
10
53
94
quests of Heracles
95
gods and giants
58
63
27
32
exploits of Heracles
THE CHILDREN OF AEOLUS
65
Athamas
65
Pelias
68
THESEUS
104
Crete
104
exploits of Theseus
Theseus and Hippolytus
106
The
Sisyphus
69
THE TROJAN WAR
Endymion
69
Tantalus
no
no
THE MONSTER-KILLERS
Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes
112
70
Leda
112
Bellerophon
70
Achilles
114
Perseus
72
Demeter
3 3
Leto, Apollo and Artemis
35
Orion
36
Trojan stories
Otus and Ephialtes
37
THE GREAT EXPLOITS
77
Hephaestus
57
Communal exploits
77
The judgement of
The sack of Troy
Hermes
39
Pan
40
Nymphs
40
107
77
117
119
THE END OF THE HEROES
129
The death of Agamemnon
131
Melampus
Admetus
79
Jason and the Argonauts
82
Odysseus
Neoptolemus
79
114
Paris
EARLY MAN
45
THEBES
87
The
The Five Ages
45
Prometheus
47
Oedipus
The Seven against Thebes
89
FURTHER READING
Pandora
48
Deucalion
49
HERACLES
93
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
137
Lycaon
49
Amphitryon
93
The
51
Birth of Heracles
94
INDEX
158
flood
return of the Heraclids
LIST
135
136
t^y
'd
iK?-'^
/X-i
INTRODUCTION
seductions and
There is a great deal of Greek mythology, and this book does not contain it all.
Almost all Greek art and literature either
took its subjects from mythology or
made reference to it. The Greeks told stories about the family life of the gods, and
they had a myth about the creation of the
world and how the present dynasty of
the gods came to power; but most of
their mythology is concerned with the
heroic world. This world joined on to
the historical world of the Greeks in
time. It came to an end with the return
icides,
of the children of Heracles to the Pelo-
is
ponnese, the mythological equivalent of
enchanter. Success brings
the Dorian invasion,
of
when
Greek-speaking
Greece and
the last
peoples
settled in Boeotia
wave
entered
and Sparta.
quarrels,
exiles,
illegitimate births,
many of them
taking
Greek
mythology has its share of monsters,
but the humanist outlook of the Greeks
place
inside
the
family
circle.
generally rejected magic. In other re-
myths do resemble fairy tales.

is not, however, an explanaOne of the commonest of such
spects the
A
tion.
label
motifs
is
the tale of the
goes on a journey to a
he
is
set a
number of
young man who

country where
far
tasks or quests in
order to win the hand of a maiden
who
the daughter either of a king or of an
dom
sometimes
him
the king-
of the death
at the cost
of the enchanter, and he lives happily

ever
after.
traced their descent
This pattern recurs in Greek mythol-
back to these children of Heracles.

For the Greeks, heroic mythology
logy with some significant differences.
They constructed
because of a family quarrel or homicide,
human
sometimes provoked by a step-mother.
The Spartan kings
was ancient
history.
genealogies which related
all
the
The young man
usually
leaves
home
personages of the myths, and prepared
The
schematic mythological handbooks to
of death at the hands of his daughter's
explain references in the older authors.
husband, and himself engages in a con-
In the earlier periods, writers
father of the princess
is
often afraid
In other cases
test
with her
improve and even invent myths,

doubtless maintaining that they were
his
daughter's son that represents the
simply telling for the
son of
felt free
to
truth.
first
time the real
Their inventions, however, tended
threat,
suitors.
and the
a
god,
child,
is
it is
be
miraculously
preserved and often suckled by wild
Such patterns are the first thing that

Greek mythology.
The second is the extraordinary character of its content. It is all about hom-
beasts. In the
end he brings about
his
grandfather's death after having acquired
way.
doubt that these
a bride in the usual
There
is little
Museum.
LEFT
Mount Olympus
in Thessaly,
the seat of the gods.
to follow the patterns of existing myths.
strikes the student of
Centaur. Olympia
almost always the
exposed (occasionally
with his mother) to
ABOVE
The young Apollo. The central

of the western pediment of the
fifth century temple of Zeus at
Olympia was Apollo, subduing a
stories
fig
INTRODUCTION
RIGHT
Bronze Core. This six-inch statuette of
about 480 BC was very possibly
identified as a goddess by some
emblem, now lost, in the right hand.
more probable perhaps that it

represented the donor perpetually
offering whatever it was she held.
Traces of silver inlay remain on the
fringe of her dress as she holds it
It is
aside.
At
development
this stage in the
of the art drapery is beautifully handled

to suggest clearly the human form
beneath, a technique which was more
easily handled in bronze than in stone.
British
ABOVE
Bull-leaping. This
bronze
famous Minoan
statuette, until recently in the
Spencer-Churchill collection, is part of

the meagre evidence for the Cretan
sport of bull-leaping which has left
Greek mythology in the

story of Theseus and the Minotaur.
its
trace in
In
all
figure
representations the
is
shown very
human
small and the
bull large, but this figure
had
its
feet
on the back of the bull

and might be in the act of landing
from a back somersault after seizing
firmly
the horns of the bull
and being tossed
upwards. Though just possible, the

manoeuvre must have been extremely
dangerous and the suspicion must
remain that the death of the victim
was the intention, which might be
avoided for a while by a skilful
performer. Some of the representations
may indeed show goring. This figure
is
clearly female, a bride of the
god
mother of the Minotaur,

and perhaps Europa, who is shown
in Greek art as carried off by a very
like Pasiphae,
sedate Zeus-bull. British
Museum.
Museum.
continue to be told because they satisfy
period either by a
some psychological need
their daughter's
in the
minds
of their hearers. Psychological explanausually Freudian, can be
tions,
found
many myths and some have been
for
proposed in
this
book. But the familiar-
ity
of the pattern sometimes obscures
its
chief characteristic: that sons never
inherit
from
Many
fathers.
of the more
unpleasant features of the myths
new
consort or by
who
was, of
course, completely unrelated to
them by
blood.
husband,
Some myths
suggest that the
king impersonated a god

also appear as
who might
an animal, and that in the
end he was made immortal by sacrifice,

a fate which he could sometimes avoid
by the sacrifice of his son.
into
If this state of affairs ever prevailed
place if they are seen as descriptions of
was during, and perhaps

Mycenaean period and
its immediate predecessor, after Greekspeaking people had entered Greece
about 1900 B.C. It was never congenial
to the Greeks, and never seems to have
been accepted by the Dorians, who
The
entered Greece about 1000 B.C.
Dorians perhaps brought with them a
new form of social organisation, based
upon the small nuclear family, in which
fall
what inheritance in the female line looked

like
people
to
who
themselves prac-
tised patrilinear succession.
some support
finds
sis
This hypothe-
in the
Greek heroes who marry
number of
their brother's
daughter.
The study of mythology seems
to
encourage the pursuit of extravagant

speculations that
dence.
not
It
for
is
the
go
far
beyond the eviand novelist,
for the poet

scholar,
goddesses everywhere.
to
see
None
mother-
the less
it
in
Greece
it
early during, the
an autocratic father rules over his wife
and the children of the marriage.
The
seems possible that some of the Greek

myths do preserve traces of a period in
which kings owed their title to marriage
of family are reflected in some of the
with
Greece,
queen, and were liable
violently
overthrown
at
the
to be
end of
tensions that arise in this type
myths and in the

especially
Anthropologists
literature
in
of
classical
Greek tragedy.
call this a 'guilt culture',
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
poem
which moral sanctions are enforced

by an internalised super-ego based on
which
the child's experience of
book, because they seem best to account
over their inheritance. His father had
some of the
Greek myths.
returned from Asia Minor to Boeotia,
in
its
father.
It
superseded a 'shame culture' characterof the extended family, in which the

child is brought up in an atmosphere of
istic
by its brothers and

and cousins, learning to rely enupon the approval and disapproval
diffused benevolence
sisters
tirely
of its peers. In such a culture

their rapidly
men project
changing emotions upon
world of gods, and feel neither responsibility nor guilt themselves. This type of
culture
is
reflected in the
Homeric
epics,
and the Greeks always retained elements

of
it.
It
too
is
reflected in
some of
the
myths.
It is
explanations of this kind, psycho-
logical, anthropological
and sociological,
are tentatively suggested, along
with others
more
for
traditional,
peculiarities
in
this
of the
The ancient sources

1
The
Iliad
and the
Odyssey, the oldest
surviving works of Greek literature, are
both popularly attributed to one man,

Homer, but the Odyssey is probably a
good
deal later than the Iliad.
Both
are
organisations of older traditional material,
carried
about 800
out in Asia Minor from
B. c.
onwards, but much of the
Days, a didactic
brother, with
whom
addressed to his
he had quarrelled
where there seems to have been a school

of epic poetry especially devoted to
lists and catalogues. The mythological
poem, the Theogony, is generally attributed to Hesiod, but seems rather to be
the work of one of his successors, who
starts the poem with an account of his
graduation in the
poetical
school
of
Hesiod, perhaps as early as the eighth

century.
5
Pindar's
Victory Odes, addressed to
winners in the Olympic and other Greek
mythological material they contain was
games,
humanised to suit contemporary taste.

Hesiod is the author of the Works and
2
poetry with mythological content.
made
are
the
only
surviving
lyric
He
use, in the first half of the fifth
LEFT
Zeus brandishing a thunderbolt.
This 6-inch statuette from Dodona
almost exactly reproduces the pose
of the 'Poseidon' of very much
the same date, about 460 BC.
The
single difference
is
that the short
heavy thunderbolt (which identifies

Zeus) is thrown with a bent arm,
unlike the longer javelin. Dodona
was the site of a very ancient
oracular shrine of Zeus the thunder
god, who gave omens by the rustling
of the leaves of the sacred oak tree.

Thunderstorms are extremely common
on the mountains of north-western
Greece, and the oak tree is more
frequently struck by lightning than
any other
tree.
Former
State
Museums,
Berlin.
RIGHT
Snow on Mount
Parnassus, late
climate of
spring.
The Mediterranean
Greece
is
characterised by a wet
winter, which provides most of the

water required for plant growth,
a short beautiful spring, and a long
arid summer. Some of the hills are high
enough for the winter rain to remain
as snow, even as late as early May,
when the corn is in the ear though
not yet ripe. Deciduous trees are rare,
especially now that goats have turned
much of the hills into scrub. Plutarch
tells us that the women used to lead
a winter procession into Parnassus in
honour of Dionysus, and that one
winter they were all overwhelmed
by the heavy snows.
INTRODUCTION
local
any of the many modern translations of

these works. The Victorian translations
of the Iliad by Lang, Leaf and Myers
expur-
ceremonies and myths, which are ex-
and of the Odyssey by Butcher and Lang
gated or invented myths to accord with
tremely valuable, since they represent
preserve the flavour of the original.
his lofty ethical principles.
the beliefs and practice of the ordinary

treat-
And the annotated translation of

Apollodorus made for the Loeb Library
of myth-
by Sir James G. Frazer deserves special

mention. Frazer's theories, to be found
century, of the mythological traditions
known
Homeric poets and gathered together by their epic successors and

to the
earlier lyric poets.
The
fifth
He sometimes
great Athenian tragedians of the
century, Aeschylus, Sophocles
and
took their plots from the

same sources as Pindar and used them
to express their views of the nature of
Euripides,
the world and
its
gods. Sometimes they
used aetiological myths, which explain
drawing his material

from Athenian and Alexandrian geneaplaces he visited,
logical studies.
Greeks,
less
He
also reports
affected
ments of myth.
Apollodorus wrote
6
ological
logically,
of mythology, and
is
institution.
in-
cases,
suit their
own purposes.
Pausanias wrote a literary and
artistic
guidebook to Greece in about ad 170.
He
told the mythical history of
all
the
geneaIt is
the
only complete surviving Greek account
summary, extremely
a Library
about the same date.
its
vented myths to
literary
information, arranged
a particular ritual
by an account of
They too modified and
by
all
however,
its
therefore,
useful.
stories are
though
In
some
based on
tragic or invented Alexandrian versions
of the myth, and
it
should therefore be
treated with caution.

It
would be invidious
in the Golden Bough, are
ionable;
nowadays unfash-
translation
still
con-
good sense on mythology.

There is no good modern mythological dictionary in
English. The old
three volume Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Biography and Mythology, edited by
William Smith in 1876, is still more extains a lot of
haustive
to single out
but his
than
the
late
H.
J.
Rose's
useful Handbook of Greek Mythology.
Ji/i(gjmiiiiiiii
OF THE WORLD
When
primitive peoples ask questions
Ocean, from which the sun
normally answer them in one of two
golden bowl, presumably on Ocean, are
as
carpenter makes
wood, or they begot

his children.
These
it
chair
out of
as a father begets
are primitive answers
with strong psychological overtones, because the disquiet, which these answers
superior beings, and are visited by the
immortals. Such are the blameless Ethiopians in the south and the virtuous
perboreans
much myth and literature is effective.
live
Ocean
the I/iad to 'Ocean, the source of the
'Ocean,
all
who
made
has been
things'.
The
idea that
the source
all
things
arose out of water can be paralleled in
other cosmogonies.
first
there were
Chaos and Earth. From Chaos came

Erebus and Night; from Night the
Ether (upper air) and Day. Earth first
produced the Sea, then Ocean, and
then the Titans, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion,
lapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis,
Mnemos-
may have been
It
Ocean, rather than Poseidon, the later

god of the sea, who first bore the Homertitle
ic
for
it
'earth-holder,
shaker of earth':
Ocean surrounds the
earth and keeps
in place, so that like the earth
of Norse
mythology he could
also cause
it
snake
easily
to quake.
yne, Phoebe, Tethys, and finally Cronus.
Many
of these figures are nothing more
than personifications: Themis

vine Ordinance;
16
that
Hy-
gods, and mother Tethys,' and one to
It is at this level
In Hesiod's cosmogony,
south-west corner.
who
north,
given in those terms.
The creation myth
the columns survived, to make Corinth

one of the most impressive sites of
antiquity. Seven still remain at the
the
beyond the North Wind.

There are traces in Homer
of
the height of Corinthian commercial

power, to the Roman conquest of
146 BC when it was burnt out. But
in
once played a larger role in an alternative

cosmology. There are two references in
that
chief
returning every night in a
sets,
from a
primitive level of the mind, and is
therefore best satisfied by an answer
are given to settle, itself stems
Temple of Apollo, Corinth. This, the

temple of the city, survived from
about 540 BC, when it was built at
and into
which he
ways. Either the gods made the world
Aphrodite with goat. Gela, on the

south coast of Sicily, was the most
powerful city in Sicily at the turn
of the sixth century. The clay
plaque found there shows that, as in all
the Greek colonies of the west,
the worship of the goddess was
apparently more important than
that of the gods. The figure is identified
as Aphrodite by the he-goat, one of
her sacred animals. Ashmolean Museum.
rises
about the creation of the world they
is
The succession myth
di-
Mnemosyne is Memory,
mother of the Muses; Hyperion, 'he

that goes over', is the sun; and Phoebe,
'shining', is the moon. Oceanus is distinguished from Pontus, the sea. He is the
stream which girdles the circular earth
and beyond which man cannot sail because there is nothing there except Hades. Those who live on the streams of
It is after this
schematic creation myth
becomes more naturaland has psychological overtones

derived perhaps from the 'primal scene'
of parental intercourse as witnessed by
that the Theogony

istic,
the child, as well as from the infant fear
of its huge and capricious parents armed,

as it is not, with gnashing teeth. Children
can be observed to take an ambiguous
J
y
^mm
\
-"*<!^
v^Tt'*^'***
;ii^
..
THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD
The Ludovisi Throne, named after

the papal family on whose estates
was found, with its pair, the Boston
Throne, is one of the most mysterious
ancient works of art that have survived
from the middle of the fifth century.
It seems to have decorated an altar
used in the cult of Persephone
it
in southern Italy. Rejuvenation,
or the triumph of love over age, is

the theme of the reliefs. The relief
shown seems to represent the Return
of the Maiden, either from the sea,

suggested by the pebbles on which
the attendants stand, modestly veiling
the lower limbs of the goddess,
or from a ritual bath, or from the
underworld. Museo dei Thermi, Rome.
pleasure
in
parents,
who
biting
games with
their
pretend to eat them up,
and these reactions illuminate the myth

of Cronus and Uranus, 'Heaven', and
Gaia, 'Earth'.
Uranus hated
his
children
and
as
soon as each was born he hid him away

in a hiding place of Earth and would
not
let
him come
into the light.
The
huge Earth groaned
in pain
an
made adamant,
and called upon her
and devised
evil trick. First she
and from
it
a sickle,
take vengeance on their

lewd father for his evil treatment of
them. Only the youngest, Cronus of the
bent counsel, had the courage to respond, and promised to do the deed.
Earth took him into her bed, with the
sickle in his hand. When Uranus rechildren
to
turned, bringing night, he lay

in desire,
upon Earth
and she was stretched out be-
neath him. Cronus reached out with his

left
hand and seized
his right
his father,
and with
he castrated him with the sickle
and flung the parts behind him with

averted eyes. Blood gushed forth upon
Earth, and from
in due course she
it
bore the Furies and the Giants, and the
Ash nymphs, from whom
the gods
made
men.
But the parts fell on the sea, and from
the bloody foam was made a maiden,
and first she sailed to Cythera and then
to Cyprus. There the fair goddess stepped
from the sea, and grass grew under
the third race of men, the Bronze
and gods and men call her

is, 'Foam born'. This
is a piece of folk etymology for there is
another and in some ways more plausiher soft
feet,
Aphrodite, that
ble account of her genealogy in the Iliad.
Uranus
called his
ers': for in their
strained to
sons Titans, 'Strain-
wantonness they had
do so great
The Ash nymphs
a deed.
are there because
an ash plantation can, by suitable management and regular if not annual

cutting
down, be made
of tough,
straight,
to yield a supply
strong
stems
for
spear hafts, like the ashy stem of Peleus
which only
his
son Achilles could wield.
race of spear-using heroes
be made from the same
might well
wood
as their

LEFT
Aphrodite
at the bath.
Greek
sculpture, intended for public display,
two main types,

naked male figure and a draped
female. The former developed into
early settled for
such free statues of athletes as the

'Poseidon' from Artemisium; the
latter into statues
of goddesses
represented in terracotta by the

Aphrodite bearing Eros. Not until
the fourth century did Praxiteles
introduce the nude or semi-nude statue
of the goddess, though female nudity
appears earlier on small bronzes

and vases for domestic use. This
eighteen-inch marble statuette from
the beginning of the first century BC
reproduces a famous life-size bronze

of the third century, which showed
the goddess at the bath doing up,
or letting down, her hair. It has an
almost Victorian charm lacking in some
of the larger statues of this type.
Rhodes Museum.
This family in some way
weapons, and the regular pruning may

have contributed something to the myth
Ea
of castration.
to destroy them, against her will.
There are
the
parallels to this
Near East
myth
in
in the second millennium.
from about 1200 b. c.

Minor;
these contain a Succession Myth, as it
is generally called, taken over from the
Texts
survive
from the
Hittite capital in Asia
Hurrians of south-eastern Asia Minor.

This
tells
how Anu
the sky
after
which Kumarbi strove with him,
chased him to heaven, bit off his genitals
and swallowed them, but spat out part

from which a god Tamisu and the river
Tigris were born.
similar story, but earlier,
pre-
is
served in various fragments from the

official text
Year
are
used
Festival.
In
at the
New
who
god
is
is
do not come until later: in the

Hittite it is not mentioned and appears
depicted in the humanised form

fifth century,
of the middle of the
to be prior to the story.
and bears a small figure of a winged

Eros to identify her, just as Athena
The resemblance
to the
Greek myth
and extends also to

the myth of the overthrow of Cronus by
Zeus. Various theories have been put
is
certainly close,
how and when direct or indiborrowing might have taken place,

either during the Mycenaean period of
forward
rect
the Bronze
the
eighth
Age
before 1200 B.C.
century,
the
or in
'orientalising
Tethys in the alternative cosmogony of

the Iliad mentioned above strongly sug-
their great-grandson
ABOVE
Votive statuette of Aphrodite, one
foot high. The little city of Medma,
on the western coast of the toe
of Italy, was founded from Locri.
Like its mother-city, it seems to have
had a cult of a goddess, to judge
from this statuette. The goddess
earth
and
initiate a
the mingled waters of their parents.
the sky
They
and Ea cast a magic spell

upon Apsu, stripped him of his regalia
and his strength, and slew him. In this
version the separation of heaven and
Anu
who
all
resolved
remain inside
Apsu, god of the fresh water, and
genealogy of gods
Apsu
Greek art. There can be little

doubt that versions of earlier and eastern
stories were known to the tellers of
versions of the Greek cosmogonies and
have influenced them. Oceanus and
Babylonian
this the first divine pair
Tiamat, the sea goddess,
his son.
silent
fell
god over-
threw Alalu and reigned for nine years,
is
disturbed Tiamat, and
period' of
is
often depicted with a Victory.

Nazionale, Reggio.
Museo
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The
latest
of the three temples which
the people of Selinus constructed on

the bluff overlooking their city and its
harbour from the east. The first was

built about 530 BC, not long after the
archaic temple C in the city itself, and
was almost immediately followed by a
grandiose plan for another temple to
the north. This was abandoned at the
beginning of the fifth century, when
Selinus joined the Carthaginians in the
campaign
that led to their defeat in 480.
one surviving,
change of government and
the re-establishment of links with
mainland Greece, and especially with
Olympia. For the temple has some
affinities with that of Zeus at Olympia,
and the metopes of Zeus and Hera,
Artemis and Actaeon, and Heracles
ibis temple, the only
may mark
and the Amazon exhibit the

authentic and severe Greek classical
Apsu and Tiamat. Their estrangement suggests the separation of heaven

and earth which is often felt as implicit
gest
of Uranus.
in the mutilation
The castration of Anu by Kumarbi,

and the generation of a god and of the
Tigris
the
in
myth
Hittite
similarly
toilet-boxes
on
which were presumably
bought by or for women. The little

girl, running to be greeted by love,
is met by attendants who will bind her
hair and dress. She can be certainly
identified from other similar
treatments where the participants
are named as Aphrodite being
welcomed by the Hours after arriving
at Cyprus. Such a treatment is
exceptional: Aphrodite was normally
for the Greeks a dread goddess, who
might punish a young man like
Hippolytus for rejecting her.
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Fletcher Fund, 1959.
When
the
innocuously as a magic sleep and the
Rhea was sent by Gaia and Uranus to

Crete where she had the child in a cave
of the regalia. But Earth plays no
near Lyctus and gave Cronus a stone
part in either of these other versions,
to swallow.
Greek
version owes the strong human and
psychological overtones which give it a
to explain
quality quite lacking in those others.
outwit him in order that Zeus might do
The Oedipal element in the Greek

myth is so strong as to suggest that it
the bidding of the Furies that sprang
his children.
goddesses, perhaps the Earth mother,
chology of the
of the myth
is
east,
but the psy-
stories is purely
obscured in what appears
as
which the
Zeus.
child succeeds in supplanting
the father in his mother's bed with her
connivance. Hesiod does not say
and son were so
why
hostile: in fact
they are rivals for the love of the mother.
Such
the explanation that can be
is
given at one level of the myth: others

not excluded.
with the
sickle,
however well
For Uranus
is
cut
an instrument which
suited
the purpose
for
legitimately suggest that the story
has been also influenced by stories of

the annual sacrifice of the corn or
with
its
explanation
The
As always
its
Greek myth,
complicated history, no one
representative.
may
birth of
in
contain
all
the truth.
Zeus
The overtones so strong in the first part

of the Greek succession myth are abfrom the second. This time the
is Zeus, high god of
the Greeks, and any suggestion of mutilation has been completely suppressed,
sent
successful victor
or perhaps
displaced to
generation,
where
it
the previous
could
safely
be
were indeed
legends that the reign of Zeus was not
entirely secure, and that he feared he
might be supplanted in his turn. But
attributed to Uranus. There
their proverbial fame

by pointing out the tomb of
and also acquired
rather as a classical Oedipal fantasy, in
may
to
Greek.
The elements may have been
borrowed from the
are
in his turn hated
They advised Rhea how
of the cosmological significance
from the nuclear
the guilt culture derived
father
brings in Uranus and Gaia
why Cronus
from the blood of Uranus. Fate is thus

invoked to remove the responsibility
of parricide from Zeus. The birth of
Zeus took place in Crete because the
Cretans gave the name of Zeus to the
young consort of one of their mother-
family.
Much
The poet
to her presence that the
it is
can have arisen only in the period of
to sentimentality, especially
he swallowed, knowing that he would
be supplanted by his son.
edited out of the Babylonian to appear
and
with a realism sometimes descending
The Theogony tells how Rhea bore

Cronus a number of children - Hestia,
Demeter, Hera and Hades, all of whom
youngest, Zeus, was going to be born,
theft
painter treated mythological subjects
averting this
fate.
may have been
suggest the Greek, and
Aphrodite arriving at Cyprus. A group

of painters working from 475 bc
in the workshop of the Penthesilea
he always succeeded in
liars
The name Zeus
is firmly Greek, and

must have been Greeks in Crete,
and not Minoans, who made the identification. But the cave near Lyctus was
superseded after the Bronze Age. This
story must go back to that period when
Greeks were in Crete in the Mycenaean
age, though they were clearly ready to
modify the position and fate of their
chief god into the dying consort of the
Cretan goddess. The infant Zeus was
fed by the milk of Amalthea the goat
and on the honey of bees, w^hile his
cradle was hung on a tree 'that it might
be found neither in heaven nor in earth
nor in the sea'. His cries were drowned
by the armed dance of the Young Men,
the Curetes, who clashed their arms in
so
it
Cretan
ritual.
Zeus grew- rapidly and Earth helped

him to overthrow Cronus. Cronus vomited up his children and last of all the
stone, which Zeus set at Delphi. Again
the help of the mother is enlisted to
rescue the son, but the machinery is
left
perhaps
deliberately
obscure.
On
the analogy of the Babylonian myth, in
which
it is
at this
point that
Marduk son
body of Tiamat to make

heaven and earth, it might be supposed
of Ea
splits
the

that
Zeus
open
slit
hero.
tale
In
who
weather god
his father like a fairy
Hittite version
the
is
the
the equivalent of
Zeus is still inside Kumarbi, where he

was engendered by the swallowed genitals of Anu. For some reason Kumarbi
swallows a stone, after which the god
emerges to engage in battle.
Once again
the
differences
are
as
The Greek
attention upon the
striking as the similarities.
myth concentrates its

stone, which is identified
stone of Delphi.
versions
this
as the sacred
According to other
was the navel stone of
earth (metaphorically rather than
liter-
which marked its dead centre. Zeus

sent two eagles flying, one from the east
and one from the west: they met over
ally)
Delphi.
It is
natural for
men
to think of
own
land as the centre of the earth,

and Delphi was becoming an important
their
cult centre at the time of the
The Titans
One
final
parallel
exists
between the
Greek cosmological myths and those of

the Near East. This is the need for the
newly triumphant god to defend his
position first against gods and then
against monsters sent up against him
by Earth. The former are found only
in the Greek and Hittite myths: in the
Greek the gods are the Titans, who
presumably resented the overthrow of
their brother Cronus. But the battle,
which lasted ten years, may have started
as a revolt of the younger gods. They
expelled the Titans from Olympus, for
the possession of which the battle was
fought in the plains of Thessaly.
At this stage Earth was still on the side
of Zeus and advised him that he could
defeat the Titans with the help of the
three Cyclops
and the three Hundred-
handers, her children by Uranus
inferior vase
Cronus and Rhea. Though a rather

by one of the later
mannerists, the Nausicaa painter,
serves to identify the subject without
working from 450 bc, it is of great

interest as one of the only two
doubt. There was a sanctuary

of Cronus and Rhea in Athens on the
Ilissus near Helicon. A cake with
twelve knobs on it was offered to
Cronus at the beginning of April.
of the myth. The other

is by an earlier painter of the same
school. In both there is no doubt
that what is being presented to the male
figure, who greets it with horror
rather than joy, is not a baby but
illustrations
even though it is here given

rough human profile. The scene
a stone
Rogers Fund, 1906.
who
had never been released. So, it seems,

was Oceanus, to whom Rhea entrusted
Hera at this time, according to the alternative 'cosmogony'. This
if
in this version
is
explicable
Oceanus played the
part of Uranus.
It is
common
motif in myth that

completed
a great enterprise cannot be
without the presence of a Helper, often

specially endowed with particular talents
or
weapons. The Hundred-banders
>J^_

Zeus and Typhon. In the
last
half
of the sixth century a distinctive

school of vase painting developed,
probably in Etruria, though the artists
were Greeks from Euboean colonies

in Sicily. Their mythological
illustrations are strong
Zeus
with
is
and
vivid.
Typhon
Typhon is shown
attacking the giant
a thunderbolt.
huge figure with a bestial face

and pointed ears, wings and a double
serpent below the waist. The poets
were able to make his description even
more fantastic, attributing to him a
hundred serpent heads under his
as a
shoulders. Zeus' left leg
is
restored.
Antikensammlungen, Munich.
Temple of Aphaea, Aegina. The goddess

Aphaea seems to have been a form of
the pre-Greek mother-goddess, and
in myth she was associated with
Artemis. Her temple lay on the main
mountain range of the island, at its
north-east end, and gives views of the
island of Salamis to the north. The
classical town of Aegina lay on the
west of the island, looking to
Epidaurus, and the isolation of the
temple, appropriate to a nature goddess,
has preserved the building. The temple
was built about 510 bc, just before the
struggle of the Aeginetans with the
expanding Athenians. The goddess
seems later to have been identified in
cult with Athena, either to symbolise
the link between the two cities or at
the desire of a pro- Athenian party.
played this role in the battle of the Titans,
golden apples. At
a later stage Atlas
was
and
between them
identified
with the mountain that
still
hundred rocks at a time

which enabled them to rout and pursue
the Titans to Tartarus. There they
guarded them for Zeus, though there
is a nasty suspicion that the Hundtedhanders were prisoners as well as
bears his
name
was
it
their ability
to hurl three
warders.
is
to be regarded as a
flat
ed by Ocean,
circular earth surround-
Tartarus,
which seems
bottom of the underworld,

at the west. For the
underworld is always reached from
to be the
approaches earth
the west, the region of the setting sun,

rather than
ically
from any other of the theoret-
possible points
of the compass.
Atlas stood in the west in the sea that

is
beyond Ocean, and
after
him.
He
is
caUed Atlantic
bore on his shoulders
the heaven or the two pillars

which kept apart earth and heaven.
There too the Hesperides guarded the
either
acles at the Straits
Africa, just
of Gibraltar. Atlas
was said to have been turned into stone

by the Gorgon's head, but not by Perseus
since
Heracles,
sent
him
Perseus'
for
the
great-
golden
apples.
divided into two equal hemi-
spheres by a
North
were taken over by Her-
as his pillars
grandson,
Since the world

sphere,
in
As early as
the Odyssey the underworld
has four great rivers,
all
suitably
named.
Most important is Styx, 'Hateful', which

was identified with an icy waterfall
Arcadia, presumably one of the
underworld entrances. By Styx the gods
swore their most binding oath, to break
which entailed keeping silence for a
year and exile for nine (eight years by
our reckoning: this is a great year, when
in
all
the stars and planets return to their
original position, a period that recurs
in
Greek myth and
ritual).
Probably
Styx was once the only river of Hades,

since Cocytus, 'Wailing for the dead',
25
The temple of Poseidon on
the
south-east tip of Attica, a sea mark

for any ship sailing by the Cyclades,
seems to have been designed by the

who built the temple of
Hephaestus. All these temples formed
part of Pericles' plan to mark
out Athens as the centre of the
league of island states. This
view shows five of the nine restored
columns of the southern side of the
temple, which have been set up on a
modern artificial base and look west
along the southern coast of Attica and
across the Saronic Gulf in
the direction of Aegina.
architect
is
said to
two
rivers
pain;
like
be
its
are
but the
tributary.
The
other
Acheron {Achos means

white
poplar,
acherois,
the white willow, seems to have
been sacred to Persephone) and Pyriphlegethon, 'burning with the pyre'.
The
fifth
river
Lethe,
first
in Aristo-
phanes, seems to be associated with reincarnation and a spring of
memory.
Typhon
Earth was shocked by the punishment
of her sons the Titans, and, as she had
done once before, shifted her allegiance.

She bore a youngest son Typhoeus,
or Typhon, a serpent man who might
be expected to continue the succession.
Against
the
first
Typhon Zeus employed
for
time the thunder and lightning
and cut out the sinews from

feet, disabling him and
putting him in a cave in Cilicia where
he hid the sinews in a bearskin guarded
by a serpent woman Delphyna. But
sickle
Zeus' hands and
Hermes
who
stole
them and revived Zeus,

winged chariot
flew to heaven in a
and pursued Typhon again to Mount

Nysa (which recurs in the legend of
Dionysus) where the fates weakened
him by giving him mortal food. Only
then could Zeus drive him to Etna by
way of Thrace where his blood marked
the Bloody Mountain, Haemus.
The Greeks certainly explained volcanoes as the work
of fire-breathing
monsters imprisoned under the earth.
The
theft
of Zeus' sinews
in the Hittite
is
paralleled
myth of the encounter
with the dragon lUuyankas,
who
takes
had made him, and
the god's heart and eyes. His son gets
pinned him under the volcano Etna.

But the victory may not have been as
them back by marrying the dragon's
easy as the Theogony suggests.
The version
of Apollodorus says that Typhon was
born in Cilicia, where he fathered monsters on the Gorgon's sister, the snake
from the Greek version, where the task

is performed by the Thief God. Also
in the Hittite, the giant Ullikummi is
only countered by sawing off his legs
woman
with the
that the Cyclopes
Echidna: their children were
daughter. This fairy tale motif
bronze
cutter
that
is
absent
severed
Orthus, the monstrous hound of three-
earth
bodied Geryon, Cerberus, the Hydra

and the Chimaera. Zeus pursued him
All this suggests a version of the succession
myth with
adamantine sickle, probably the one with which

Cronus mutilated Uranus, where he
results
altered
to the borders of Syria with an
grappled with him.
Typhon got
the
to
and heaven in the beginning.
the
contest
to
the persons
make
surviving god,
it
and the
applicable
who wins
and even survives
the
castration.
Zeus and Hera. The Greek
city
of
Selinus in the extreme south-west of

Sicily
owed
its
prosperity to
its
links
with Carthage. From the end of

the sixth century it built an impressive
series of temples which have been
preserved by their isolation. The
mid-fifth century temple E seems to
have been dedicated to Hera. The
metopes were placed not in the open
28
on
bride: the Sacred Marriage has been
RIGHT
The Sacred Marriage of Zeus and Hera.
The German excavations in the
sanctuary of Hera on Samos,
which started in the 1930s, revealed
some of the few surviving Greek
wooden statues, though it has not
always been possible to save them from
disintegration. The late sixth century
humanised. Museo Nazionale, Palermo.
bridal pair,
the facade but
on the ends of
cella. They
the
interior building, the
show encounters between male and

female gods and heroes: the female
heads, arms and feet are of marble
carved by a different and superior
sculptor.
On
Hera unveils
this
metope the goddess

Zeus as a
herself for
now
lost,
probably
THE FAMILY OF
TH:
way Zeus broke the succession

and established his rule. There are,
however, persistent hints in the myths
both that Zeus feared in his turn being
overthrown by his son and also that
some of the gods tried to cast him
down. The world was then divided
myth Dione, the mother of Aphrodite.

Dione's name is the exact counterpart
between the three sons of Cronus, Zeus,

Poseidon and Hades. In the Theogony,
it is Zeus who assigns the blessed gods
their honours. In the Iliad Poseidon
describes the division of the patrimony
for the wife of the chief god.
In this
cycle
among
has
he
the three sons of a father
retired
is
from
active
life,
who
though
is no
not necessarily dead. There
trace either of primogeniture (succession
own and of the Latin Juno.

But generally in mythology Zeus'
consort is Hera. Her name seems to be
the feminine of 'hero' and to mean
of his
This
'the lady'.
had
is
of her
a cult
unquestionably a
a perfectly proper title
But Hera
Argos and is
survival of one of the
own
indigenous mother-goddesses of Greece.
As such, she is closely assciated with

young heroes such as, originally, Heracles, who is named after her 'glory
of Hera', and also
Jason.
of the eldest son) or of ultimogeniture
jealous wife resentful of her husband's
amours and bastards
There are indeed traces in Greek

mythology of what may be called the
Indo-European family of the gods:
that is, of a family of gods organised
upon patriarchal principles. But among
Greeks it is complicated by assimilation
developed legend, Heracles was one).

Indeed, in an amusing passage of the
religious
systems
indigenous
to
Greece.
Iliad,
Zeus
(of
when
they were
still young and in the house of their
parents, before Zeus overthrew
Cronus and claimed the sovereignty.
Attention is focused on the breasts
of the goddess, as in the terracotta
protome of Persephone or Demeter

on page 35.
The word Zeus
list
goddesses.
Hera to bed, saying
invites
This
is
in
first
the
connected with the
part of the Latin Jupiter and with
word
for day.
He is
the sky
god of the
bright sky, but also of the storm, and

is armed with the thunderbolt. He
might be expected to have an exactly
equivalent consort, and so he has in one
so
fact
part
of a
Boeotian catalogue of what the Odyssey

calls 'wives and daughters of heroes',
is
effect
of a
Don
not intended.
Some
is
in the
more than any of a

of seven women, two of them
Juan
Zeus and Hera
whom,
that he loves her
and the mildly comic
of the divine couple
Otherwise,
she appears almost exclusively as the
(succession of the youngest son).
to
represents the Sacred Marriage,

but in a style which suggests the love
in
who were assimiand daughters of the
of the gods
lated to the sons
divine
Indo-European monogamous
family had already mothers, if not fathers, of their own, and the former they
retained when their paternity was taken
over by
Zeus. Similarly
many
heroes
had a respectable pedigree ending in
oife*^-i:^
The Twelve Olympians. As the

expanding Greek cities absorbed
their smaller neighbours together
with the local cults, they set up an
official state cult of the Twelve
Olympians to express this new sense
of unity.
An
early fifth century
come from Tarentum,

shows that the cult also spread to the
Greek colonies in Sicily and
southern Italy founded at the end of
relief, said
to
rich
the eighth century. Apollo with his

lyre leads the procession with Artemis
and her bow. Then comes Zeus

with the thunderbolt, Athena with
her owl, Poseidon with the trident,
Hera, Hades and Persephone who
carries the ears of corn, helmetted
Ares with Aphrodite holding a flower,
Hermes in cap and with his wand,
the caduceus, and finally a figure
with a basket who is probably Demeter.
Persephone and Hades. The Greek colony

on the toe of Italy, was
the site of an important cult of
Persephone. A large number of
votive plaques all produced
between 480 and 450 bc were found
at Locri,
in a
number of
pits.
All bear subjects related to the
mysteries. Persephone is shown

enthroned with Hades though she
clearly the more important figure.
Museo Nazionale, Reggio.
is
^.
>M^
vi.r
'^
V>'
I
'ii^-
an ancestress, possible a mark of an

earlier society in which a man might
in a
quite normally call himself Parthenius,
Ares gave Aphrodite many gifts,

and she shamed the bed of her lord
Hephaestus. But the Sun, who sees
everything, told him what was going
on, and in anger he went to his forge
and made chains like spiders' webs,
quite invisible, which he hung from the
bedposts as a kind of net, with a device
for letting them down. Then he announced his intention of going off to
Lemnos, the seat of his cult. He was no
sooner out of the house than Ares was
'unmarried woman's son'. But in most

cases, paternity
The god
is
was taken over by
a god.
often said to cast the maiden
into a deep sleep before possessing her,
which might suggest some

of drugs
to a
in a rite of
god or
some
in
ritual
use
sacred marriage
cases to his repre-
sentative.
The amours of Zeus

either
ritual
or
thus
genealogy
reflect
or
both.
But in the monogamous Indo-European

family a wife was not expected to tolerate
her husband's concubines or bastards,
when this social

projected upon heaven
and
was
produced a
structure
it
shrewish Hera.
Ares and Aphrodite
The
were in
is
and Hera
and only one of them
legitimate issue of Zeus

fact three,
member
of the divine family. This
Ares, god of war,
who
is
seems to have
been in some way Thracian and to

have presented to his sons savage maneating mares for their chariots. He appears
famous story
as
the
discomfited
lover of Aphrodite.
in,
would not mind
Hermes
replied that he
even
the goddesses looked on. But
if
Poseidon was not amused, and called

on Hephaestus to loose them, offering
to stand surety for the fine that
Ares
would have to pay for his conduct.

Ares went off to Thrace, but Aphrodite
where are her grove
and smoking altar, and there the Graces
bathed her and anointed her with oil,
immortal oil, and they put on her
to Cyprus, to Paphos,
lovely clothes, a
wonder
to see.
crying:
bed let us turn',

which Aphrodite responded
with alacrity. Down came the net and
back came Hephaestus, again warned
by the Sun. In anger, he summoned
father Zeus and the other gods, claiming
that he was made a laughing stock by
Aphrodite because he was lame. The
male gods came, but the female ones
stayed at home for shame. And Homeric
laughter arose among them at the sight
of the poetic justice by which the
tortoise had caught the hare. Apollo
said to Hermes, 'would you be willing.
'Hither, dear, to the
burdened with heavy chains, to sleep

in
a bed with golden Aphrodite?
call
Athena
to
Hera and Poseidon
are often associated
with Athena as not overfriendly
critics
of Zeus. Athena, Like Hera,
is
not a
name but
Athenian
a title. It
means
'the
one' and refers to another manifestation
of
the
pre-Greek
worshipped,
as
she
mother-goddess
to be
continued
worshipped, in the Parthenon on the

at Athens, She was, however,
Acropolis
quite literally absorbed by Zeus, who by

pure thought brought her to birth from
his
forehead, fully armed in his
own
magic goat-skin, the aegis, though

Hephaestus cleft his head with an axe
to effect the delivery.
The
story,
as
old as the
Theogonj,
Zeus loved Metis ('counsel':

a personification) but was warned by
Earth that his son by her would supplant
him and so he swallowed her. Athena
was the child of this union. This is
said that
not the only myth in which Zeus appears

in the role
of Cronus. But the story
of Athena's birth in fact reflects the

resentment felt in a patriarchal society
for
woman's one indispensable
function,
actually bearing the legitimate children
of the father. At
least,
they cry, the father-
god could have children by himself

without the intervention of the mother.
In human terms they devised the physiological theory that the child
plete in the
is
com-
male seed, and that the
no greater than
which also they
mother's contribution
is
that of the earth in
sowed seed. Psychologically, of course,

Athena is the virginal and unmarried
warrior daughter as typical of the Indoas it may have
been of the warrior society which that
European divine family

reflects.
Poseidon
hostility
between Poseidon,
Hera and Athena on the one hand and
Zeus on the other is found in the story
of how Hera, Poseidon and Athena
Actual
bound Zeus. Thetis the sea nymph

released him and brought the hundredhanded Briareus, or Aegaeon, to help
him. This story seems to bear traces
of
Bronze
perhaps of Poseidon.
The seven-foot-high statue was
recovered in 1928 from the sea off
Artemisium, the cape on the northwestern tip of Euboea where the
Persians were defeated in a storm
in 480 BC. Presumably a treasure ship
statue,
carrying art treasures to
Rome
was wrecked on the same treacherous
The
not Attic. It
has been associated with the Aeginetan
Onatas, who made the statue of
Hermes with the ram at Olympia.
The subject used to be talcen as Zeus
with the thunderbolt; now it is more
frequently believed to be Poseidon
with the trident. But the trident
is used for stabbing (as in the coin
of Paestum opposite), and
coast.
statue
is
appears rather to be hurling

a spear. It might represent an
idealised warrior rather than a god.
National Museum, Athens.
this statue
an
succession
alternative
myth.
Common to both is the presence of Briareus as Zeus' Helper, and there can be
little
doubt that Thetis
for Tethys (the

iants)
who
two
played in
cosmology the
this
role taken
standard version.
It
here standing
is
are linguistic varalternative
by Gaia in the
should follow that
Ocean played the part taken by Uranus

and if so Poseidon may stand for him
here, and the binding for the hiding
away of Uranus' children.
Certainly
Poseidon
the father of Briareus,
seems
who
is
to
be
here given
an alternative name that links him with
Aegean Sea, and he may, like Atlas,

have been the giant that stands in the
the
and holds the world. If, then, in

Poseidon is Oceanus/Uranus, Zeus, who is never referred to by
sea
this version,
name
must stand in the place

what was presumably
myth of single supplanting. As it is
that
in
of Cronus
a
it,
in
told in the Iliad, however,
it is
a tale of
between the Olympian gods. But

the terms in which it is told seem to
go back to an older mythology.
rivalry
Demeter
Like his
titles,
'earth-holder, shaker of
seems to
name of Poseidon points

some such original role. It
mean 'Husband of Da' where
Da,
Ge and
earth',
also
the
to
like
name of
Da
the
reappears
Gaia,
a pre-Greek
is
mother-goddess
the
as
first
Earth.
of
syllable
Demeter, 'Da mother', who is in Greek

religion the goddess of agriculture and
a sister of Zeus. Demeter had a daughter,
Persephone by name but often called

simply Core, 'girl'. Zeus was her father,
and exercising his paternal rights he
gave her in marriage to Hades. Gaia
approved the marriage and sent up

flowers that tempted Persephone down
a secluded valley which either led
directly to Hades or where Hades raped
her (flowers are the proper accompaniment of a sacred marriage, and Gaia
had specially created the narcissus,

which like Core spends the winter in the
earth) and from where he carried her
off.
Demeter heard the scream which

her daughter gave, and sought her over
the whole world, bearing the
used in her
woman
king's
she
ritual.
torches
In the shape of an old
came
Eleusis,
to
and the
daughters received her kindly,
and brought her into the house to be

nurse to their infant brother Demophoon.
But in her sorrow she would not enter

the
house,
but
stood
grieving
until
lambe made her smile with obscene

jests and set her on a chair. But she
refused wine, asking instead for a gruel
of flour and pennyroyal. She stayed and
nursed
Demophoon,
with ambrosia and

in the
fire,
until
at
anointing
one night
Metaneira caught her

her.
Thus Metaneira
him
night putting him
at
it
lost
mother
and struck
his
the
gift
of
immortality for her son, and Demeter
ABOVE
Obverse of
stater
of Paestum, 550 so.
The Italian town of Paestum was

named after Poseidon and the Greek
form of the name is Poseidonia. The
god was always shown on the coinage
together with the first three letters
of his name reading upwards.
BELOW
The birth of Athena was naturally
a popular subject among Athenian
vase painters. Some versions show
Hephaestus cleaving the head of Zeus
with an axe, but this, which belongs
to a group E close to the master
Exekias, and working about 560 BC,
shows Athena received into the family
of Olympus despite her unorthodox
birth. Zeus with a decorative
thunderbolt sits on a stool, under
He
almost always bearded, though

not well indicated here.
He holds the trident, a fishing spear,
not to be thrown but for stabbing
down into the water. Over his shoulders
he wears what may be a net.
that
is
is
Museum.
British
which
is
a space
and
a small sphinx,
filler.
To
the
left
simply
are
Hermes
bearded Apollo with the lyre.

To the right are Ares dressed as a
hoplite with Corinthian helmet
fully on his head and a goddess who
is perhaps Artemis, as Apollo's
sister, or Aphrodite, Ares' lover.
Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Pierce Fund.
a
BELOW
RIGHT
This early sixth

century statue from Megara Hyblaea
Artemis. This gold votive plaque

from Rhodes of the seventh century
Fertility goddess.
Sicily
was painstakingly reconstructed
from 956 fragments. It is a powerful

representation of the fertility goddess
who was, in one form or another, the
chief deity of the Greek colonies in
Sicily. Here the goddess is firmly
maternal, and suckling twins. She is
Demeter, therefore, rather than
Persephone, although the twins may
suggest a cult of Leto, mother
of Apollo and Artemis. Museo
Archeologico Nazionale, Syracuse.
in
B.C.
shows
oriental influences.
The
goddess is depicted winged, and with

a head out of proportion to the body.
The type is a variant of the Mistress
of Wild Beasts, for here the lions have
been tamed and overcome by the goddess.
She is presumably Artemis, though the
Mistress is a pre-Greek goddess.
The pomegranate flowers hanging from
the plaque suggest that in Rhodes she
retained some of the attributes of a
fertility
goddess. Ashmolean
Museum.
BELOW
Persephone or Demeter. Big half
were made
in large quantities in Boeotia during
the fifth century and placed in graves.
An almost identical figure, possibly
from the same mould, was found at
Delphi where it may have been
a dedication. The type is archaic, and
may derive from a cult statue wearing
the characteristic hat. The pose indicates
a mother-goddess, holding a
pomegranate bud in her left hand,
either Persephone or Demeter as
protectress of the dead. Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Perkins Collection.
figures, called prototnes,

Delphi. Apollo and Artemis saved their
mother by shooting Tityus with their

is found in Hades being
punished by two vultures, which sit
either side of him and gnaw his liver.
Another of the great sinners punished
in. Hades, Ixion, is also there for an
attempt on a goddess, Hera. But the
birth and fate of Tityus strongly suggest
the Titans, and his story seems to be
arrows, and he
another misplaced piece of a succession
myth.
Orion
Even more
Reverse of stater of Pheneus, about
}6o BC. The people of the small
Arcadian city of Pheneus, in an isolated
and often flooded valley in the

north-east towards the Corinthian
gulf, had always worshipped Hermes
the
god of
the flocks as their chief god,
and dedicated a statue of him

at Olympia in the fifth century
bearing a ram. When the Thebans
defeated the Spartans and set up
Megalopolis as the federal city of
Arcadia, the Pheneans put Hermes
on their coins, but added the figure
Obverse of
stater
from Croton, about
420 EC. The Italian colony of Croton,

at the western end of the gulf of
Tarentum, was founded at the direct
instance of Delphi, the clearing house
Greek geographical
knowledge, and so always showed
the oracular tripod of Apollo on
its coins. The tripod is ornamented
with two twisted garlands, and on
for early
Apollo
and the coiled python which he shot
when he took over the shrine from
either side appear the infant
Earth. British
Museum.
of Poseidon,
is
the story of the
who
gave him the power
of going through the sea, like Atlas and
one version of his birth,

Poseidon and other gods begot him by
making water on a hide, which was then
buried for nine months. This tale is
Briareus. In
an example of folk-etymology (urine

Orion). Orion became a mighty Boeotian
hunter,
'Pomegranate'
Hades
of Areas, their ancestor, whom Hermes

reared when Callisto bore him
to Zeus. British Museum.
curious
beautiful giant Orion, an earthborn child
and
had
who was
for rivalling Hera,
fore have been
kind
wife
called
down to
and may theresent
of local
Per-
sephone.
Then Orion went to Chios and wooed

the daughter of Oenopion, the 'winefaced',
BELOW
which grows from her head
Artemis and nymphs. Outside Athens

there had been, at the very beginning
Mistress of Beasts, later identified

with Artemis. The two female figures
under her protection are therefore
of the sixth century, a technique

of relief decoration of very large
storage pots. From the neck of such
a vase found and very likely made
at Thebes comes this model of a
goddess, clearly identified by the two
lions who flank her and bv the vine
the
as the
nymphs of Artemis, though
they
give the goddess a very maternal

appearance. She wears the same kind
of head-dress as Demeter in the
Boeotian protome on page 35. National
Museum, Athens.
who made him drunk and
blinded
him, perhaps for raping her before marriage. Orion went perhaps to Lemnos,
where he picked up,
if
Hephaestus did
not give him, a boy, the original 'pigmy
on the shoulder of a giant', who guided

him to the sunrise, where he got back
his sight. Orion rushed back to be revenged on Oenopion, who escaped him
by hiding in a brazen house under the
ground made by Hephaestus. Then
Dawn loved him, and carried him to
Delos, where Artemis slew him with
her soft darts. But in some versions it
was Artemis whom he loved, or one of
her nymphs.
There are a large number of primitive
ritual
elements in this story or stories,
and many of them recur

Blinding
is
in other myths.
often a literary substitute for
and there seems little doubt

Orion was originally the male fig-
castration,
that
number of fertility rites, in

some of which his female partner may
have been originally Artemis. The stoure in a
known
of Orion are
ries
only from
allu-
sions and late sources, so that the various
elements in them cannot easily be disin detail. But the water-
entangled
walking giant where the sun rises

certainly from a succession myth.
is
Otus and Ephialtes
Some of
the characteristics of Orion are
shared by Otus and Ephialtes, whose

mother, a figure in the heroic genealo-
bore them to Poseidon. At nine
gies,
years of age they were nine cubits broad
and nine fathoms tall, and they tried to

pile Ossa on Olympus and Pelium on
Ossa to scale heaven. They were slain
by Apollo,
for they put Ares into a
bronze
from which Hermes
jar,
stole
him. The object of their quest was, it

seems, Hera and Artemis, and in less
Apolline versions Artemis killed them
a hind ran between them at
which they fired, and hit one another.
Otus and Ephialtes seem also to
have been figures in a fertility cult, particularly associated with the island Nax-
herself;
os.
They
floor,
sons
are
of the threshing
or of a garden or vineyard
(a/oe)
and their female partners seem to have

been identified with Hera and Artemis.
The manner of their death shows them
to have been hunters, and perhaps to
have met some ritual death which relieved everybody else of responsibility.
Hephaestus
In one version of the myth of the birth
of Apollo, Hera was said to have borne
Typhon spontaneously
in revenge for
the birth of Athena. This story
commonly
god of
is
more
of Hephaestus, a
told
eastern origin
who
fire
has been in-
corporated as an Olympian of the second

generation and, since the Greeks learnt
metal working from the East, as the

divine smith.
As
as a blind child
such, he
is
lame. For
can be apprenticed bard,
so a lame one can
work
at
the smithy,
where he does not have to move about

much and where the compensating overdevelopment of arms and shoulders is
an advantage. The loss of an eye, from
sparks,
smiths,
is
another occupational hazard of
which may be the origin of the
one-eyed Cyclops.
ABOVE
Orion crossing the sea. Etruscan
bronzeware was famous even in Greece,
to which it may have been exported
in exchange for Attic painted vases.
Women were important in Etruscan
society, which may account for
the large production of finely decorated
mirrors, from the sixth century
onwards. An archaic example, perhaps
century, shows
naked youth running
across the sea, indicated by a shoal
of fishes. The youth is Orion, the
from the
late sixth
a beautiful
beautiful hunter,
who
has this special
power. British Museum.
BELOW
The bronze youth or Kouros from
the Piraeus of about 530 bc, /eft, is an
example of the nude standing figure
with one leg advanced and arms by
the side: the majesty of the head shows
why such figures were earlier identified
as Apollo: rather, the god was
sometimes depicted in the form of an
admired youth. The charioteer at
Delphi,
right, sixty
years later
470 BC shows the same type,

exceptionally clothed, adapted to a
in
statue
commemorating
a victory in
the chariot race. National
Athens; Delphi Museum.
Museum,
LEFT
Dionysus on
RIGHT
a goat. A popular type

of terracotta statuette, especially
in the fourth century and later,
is a god or goddess in association with
a possibly sacred animal.
The
connection of Dionysus with the goat

may be ancient. He sometimes wears
a goat skin himself and goats were
sacrificed to
him
in
some
rituals.
But his satyrs were always in Attica

regarded as horses not as goats,
and the explanation of tragedy as
'goat song' is not entirely satisfactory.
58
Whatever the connection, however,

it was enough for later artists,
who
developed the type of the

youthful Dionysus to the point of
Early fourth century seven-inch

found in a tomb at Locri in
the hand of a female skeleton.
statuette
tambourine originally belonged

and is not the result of a mend
seems to
If the
effeminacy, a charge already brought

against the god and his devotees
to
by Euripides in the Bacchae. But

Greeks did not underestimate the
have three arms) it may identify a

Maenad and have some religious
the
power of a deity who became more

and more associated with all ecstatic
states, and not only those induced
by the religious use of wine.
British
Museum.
it
in antiquity (since the figure
from the Mysteries. But

it might be a
ornament buried
with a young and perhaps unmarried
significance
the pose
is
not wild, and
doll or favourite
woman. Museo Nazionale, Reggio.

Apollo and Artemis as helmeted
archers, the former with the animal
skin often worn by monster slayers,
drive off the giant Tityus from their
mother Leto whom he attempted to
rape. Tityus,
who
is
represented as a
man' with his body covered with

hair, has been shot in the eye. Hermes,
in winged boots, stands by, and for
'wild
decorative purposes the artist has given

the same boots to Apollo. The
is one of a group made
Athens in the early sixth century
for the Etruscan market to cater for the
taste there for vigorous and often
gory scenes from mythology. Louvre.
amphora
in
In Homer, however, Hephaestus
is
the regular son of Zeus and Hera, just
Athena
perhaps
as
was
the
regular
He was born lame, and a

told in the Iliad how Hera cast
daughter.
story
is
is Maia, a nymph, though

name 'mother' suggests a mothergoddess whose original young consort
Hermes might have been. He sometimes
appears as a god of the flocks of sheep,
the rainbow,
the messenger of the
mes' mother
Iris,
her
gods, as in other mythologies.
Argos, where he stands in
But
hymn
the
the
to
first
is
day
concerned only with
is
in the Ufe
of
this
precocious
who
him out of heaven and he was kept for

a great year (eight years) by Thetis. The
especially in
an intimate relation with the house of
'born at
story has slightly sinister overtones, not
Atreus, and in Arcadia where he was
lyre.
only of exposure of unwanted children
born.
At evening he
trickster
hexameter
century
sixth
Hermes
dawn
midday played the
at
stole the
oxen of
far-
shooting Apollo'.
con-
This association with the 'luck of the
cerned, of the primitive succession myth.
was as
one period extremely popular, one of
flocks' extended to all forms of luck,

and Hermes was the god of all forms of
magic and trickery, which the Greeks at
first admired rather than condemned.
Perhaps because these were the characteristics especially of travelling men, or
made during
simply by identification with some other
old he found a tortoise, the shell of
now unknown
which, he saw
but
It
also, as often
is
one version, Hephaeswas to be the god who overthrew
looks as
tus
where Thetis
if,
in
Zeus: indeed, in a myth attested only
on vase
paintings,
on which
the things that Hephaestus

his
it
absence was a magic throne with
which he took his revenge. For Hera

sat on it, and could not be released
until Dionysus made Hephaestus drunk
and persuaded him to return in triumph,
riding on a donkey, in order to set free
his
mother.
Hermes
The
last
Hermes:
of the Homeric Olympians

for
Dionysus
is
is
not mentioned
in either the Iliad or Odyssey, except for
few allusions, and is in any case

unique in having a mortal mother who
a very
comes
in the heroic genealogies. Her-
deity,
Hermes was
also
the spirit of the piles of stones with
which Greek travellers marked paths,

boundaries and holy places.
As a traveller and trickster, Hermes
loved to accompany men, and to escort
them. He used a magic rod to stupefy
men while he practiced magic and deception. He used it also on the special
escort duty which he carried out as
'Psychopompus',
Souls' to
the
'Conductor
the underworld.
When
of
Her-
mes became the general herald and

messenger of the gods the rod became
his
badge of
office.
He
has this role
already in the Odjssey; but in the Iliad,
Hermes was born

Cyllene
visited his
sleep held
in a cave
on Mount
where Zeus had

night 'when sweet
Arcadia,
in
mother at
white-armed Hera', but
his cradle at
noon
left
already determined to
seek the cattle of Apollo. At the thresh-
at once,
could be made
a lyre. So he
went back into the cave and made the
first lyre, on which he proceeded to sing
into the sounding
of his
The
own
box of
birth.
theft
of
the
cattle
was thus
sun went down, the

appropriate time: for Hermes had spent
postponed
until the
the afternoon planning sheer guile in

his heart, the sort
who
of things that
men
are deceivers practise in the season
of black night.
He
'cut out' (a
Greek
metaphor as well) fifty of Apollo's cows

from Pieria, where the gods' cattle were
stalled every night, and drove them
backwards over the sand to Triphyhan

Pylos in the neighbourhood of Olympia
where
have been
Pan
in the north-western Peloponnese,
the
may
story
located.
He
originally
himself improvised a kind
of snow-shoe out of twigs, further to
confuse his tracks or perhaps originally

to
make walking
on
easier
soft sand.
Hermes, lying closely swaddled

on a kind of wheeled couch, denies to
Apollo, in the presence of his mother
Maia and his father Zeus (who
make up a very human family group),
some cattle.
shown hidden in
that he has stolen
The
the
cattle are
mouth of which
is
a cave,
covered by
an olive tree up which a hare has

succeeded in running. The vase
seems directly inspired by the sixth
century Hymn to Hermes. Louvre.
doubt that myths of

reflect the changing
different periods
status of cults.
clothes in the cradle.
nians neglected him.
thus able to claim,
when
to Sparta to ask for help.
he met Pan,
is
in a
Hymn
truth of the oath,
literal
ceive himself
cal
by
false inferences, is typi-
of an early state of society, and was
much admired by
the
early
Greeks.
Zeus however reconciled the two gods:

Hermes returned the cattle and gave
and promised neither to

bow (as in some versions he
Apollo the
steal his
lyre
who
On
why
asked
the
related to 'pasture'),
is
described
son of Hermes by the
as
bride of the Arcadian Dryops, and as

'goatfooted, two-horned, noisy, laugh-
which suggests that Hermes had

assumed the form not of a mortal but
of a goat. Pan seems in fact to be a more
primitive form of that Arcadian god of
the flocks who also evolved into Hermes. His form resembles that of the
goat-satyrs who attended Dionysus and
formed the chorus of the comic play
ing',
that followed the three tragedies of an

Athenian trilogy (the word 'tragedy' has
been explained as 'goat song' - with
some
plausibility).
like
the
common on
animal
But these goat-satyrs,
horse-satyrs
feet,
vases, have
who are more

human and not
perhaps because they are
firmly derived
from dancers impersonat-
had done already) nor to usurp his position as oracular mouthpiece of Zeus. In
return Apollo sent Hermes to his own
ing animals.
elementary teachers of divination:
satyrs are always associated with
'For there are
born
some Holy women,
sisters,
unmarried, rejoicing in swift wings,
on
three:
their heads they are sprin-
kled with white,
and they dwell
in their houses
under
a herd
while
in
Elizabethan
madrigals
nymphs,
Maenads, the wild

Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus over
the hills taming snakes and tearing wild
animals in their frenzy. Many Greek
vases show Maenads fleeing from satyrs,
their
proper prey
repelling
is
them with
the thyrsus (a large
of prophecy which as
less
commonly, yielding
to them.
boy
still
a child
The hymn
to
practised.
Hermes has indeed
been interpreted sociologically as recording a reconciliation between the old

established cult of Apollo,
in
Though
pine cone set upon a stick of fennel) or,
the fold of Parnassus

far off teachers
way
the Athe-
Pan, the 'Feeder' (of the flocks: the
was not himself responsible,

nor had he seen anybody else. Unsatisfied, Apollo haled him off to Olympus
and accused him before Zeus, who of
course knew the truth. But Hermes
swore, quite correctly, that he had not
driven the cows home, nor had he set foot
on the threshold (which he had been at
while encouraging an opponent to de-
historically attested in a
is
nians despatched the runner Philippides
word
cern for the
The
famous story which incidentally shows

the reahty of Greek faith in their myths.
Before the battle of Marathon the Athe-
Apollo taxed him with the theft next
pains to avoid treading on). This con-
no
do
introduction of the cult of Pan at Athens,

for example,
day, that he
infant
that particular analysis
valid in this case, there can be
There he sacrificed two oxen, making

fire by means of fire-sticks (perhaps another local story of the origin of fire), and
hid away the rest. Then he went back
to Cyllene and entered the cave through
the keyhole in the form of a mist, and
wrapped himself up again in swaddling
He was
The
Whether or not
is
which grew
importance with the increasing power
Nymphs
Pan on the other hand is associated with
the nymphs, with whom he often shares
a dedication, especially of a cave.
nymphs seem
These
to be local manifestations
whom
of the Delphic oracle, and the newer cult
of the early goddesses some of
of Hermes, which appealed to a lower
were upgraded into Olympians including

Hera and Athena. Like Artemis, whom
social class in sixth century Athens.

Statuette of Hermes. Pious Greeks
dedicated small bronze statues up to
a foot high in their shrines in gratitude
for favours received or in hopes
of those to come. Sometimes the male
or female figures may represent the
donor: sometimes they are clearly

the god. The winged boots and the
traveller's hat and staff, now lost,
identify Hermes. He is shown in the
archaic style of the end of the sixth
century (though the statuette may
be later) as a bearded man. The ram
also identifies him as god of the herds,
perhaps the characteristic by which
he won the gratitude of the Spartan
dedicator. Museum of Fine Arts,
symbolism of south
Italian terracotta plaques and figures is
very mysterious, and this early fifth
century plaque from Locri (about 470-
The
religious
460 Bc)
still
explanation.
certainly
awaits authoritative
The figure on the right
Hermes,
travelling hat,
in
bears a bird, possibly a
is
sy,
dove or
a hen,
that the plaque
The
is
in
some way
identified as Aphrodite, or at
because brides
just
The
not clear.
inspired Pythia
Delphi, the various Sibyls, and even

all
which they
to the natural objects with
was famous in antiquity for its wine

and oil. Both the vine and the olive
flourish in poor soil and are
spoiled by too much rain.
prosperity seems to
have enabled the inhabitants to strike
and
was used as an
early coinage,
running figure
emblem
at the
century.
It is
long
is
men grow
old, the deer
is
four
raven grows old,
we
nymphs with
In
mean
this
passage the generation
a period of a
hundred
may
years, the
Even in this long life most nymphs

were happy in having no mythological
history. But Charon of Lampsacus, a
fifth century mythographer and histo-
type can just possibly be explained
rian, told a story
its
defeat.
The spring Arethusa was
seen as a nymph who fled from

the river Alpheus at Olympia in
the Peloponnese. Alpheus pursued
her under the sea and their waters
mingled in a freshwater spring.
British
Museum.
could not recall even

her favours.
granted Rhoe-
of prophecy,
which she
when he spurned
So she blinded him
in
The Greek cosmogony with which

least in the literary
much
of a deliberate piece of
its
and some
sources can be pointed to with
some degree of certainty. The process of

myth making is always the same: the
spirit in which it is done, however, va-
The author of the Theogony claimed a

high moral purpose in his language, he
was inspired by the Muses. He told his
:
fine plaits,
Latin saeculum, the time of the longest
myths seriously and they can be shown

have satisfied deep psychological
needs in himself and in his hearers. Charon of Lampsacus seems to be more of
an entertainer, telling the sort of marto
and romantic story that his auHe may, Uke his

younger contemporary Herodotus, have
vellous
dience liked to hear.
thousand years.
perhaps in the course
of his Persian history

and
nymph
ries greatly.
and ten phoenixes
drachma pieces were issued which seem

to show Athena surrounded by the
dolphins normal on Syracusan coins.
The signature of the artist,
Euaenetus, is on the helmet. The
to signify the threat
gift
that of Cassandra
like
of
lives nine ravens:
showing the Syracusan
cus the
how
crow
human life, which would make the life

of a nymph very nearly a hundred
nymph helmeted
something
in reverse,
story telling as that of Charon,
and writers of Greece and

coinage was always superb. After
the defeat of the Athenian expedition
to Syracuse in 412 bc, some four
type,
inal
'Nine generations lives the chattering
but the phoenix
normal Arethusa
is,
least as
how
daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus'.
as a variant of the
it
suggests a literary treatment of an orig-
'counting rhyme' form:
after three deers the
its
Charon's story, attractive though
told in a Hesiodic fragment of traditional
very long lived;
crows,
artists
not recorded in
was concerned is, at

form which alone
survives and which was quoted there, at
as
to attract the best
is
are told to account for his blindness.
the previous section
Museum.
it
Dryad
him
That was what happened to Tiresias,

nymph's son, though different stories
of them are immortal, only, like the
beginning of the fifth

probably a wind bearing
garlands, perhaps Boreas the
North-East wind which gaVe an easy
run into the Thessalian gulf.
Boreas was important for trade, but
could also wreck ships on the
treacherous lee shore of Euboea.
always enabled
revenge.
this
BOTTOM RIGHT
The wealth and power of Syracuse
offended
the
Naiads with fresh water and Nereids,

daughters of Nereus, with the sea. None
Sibyls,
The consequent
good
trees, especially oaks,
with those of other

off the coast
north of Euboea
whereat
rudely;
blinded him. Whether she also gave

the fragment.
is
to visit her (there
between bees and nymphs

already in the Odyssey, and some prophetic priestesses were called 'bees'). But
when it came, Rhoecus was in the middle
of a game of draughts and spoke to it
the gift of prophecy
filled with some kind of

power or because nymphs were
BOTTOM LEFT
The island of Peparethus
him when
tell
divine
regarded as in some sense 'brides of the

god'. Nymphs were classified according
Nazionale,
to
a connection
were held to be
were associated Oreads with the mountains, Meliae with ash groves, Dryads
of Thessaly
British
called brides 'nymphs',
such unfortunates as Cassandra, were
Taranto.
a very
The Greeks
at
been
any rate
the south Italian goddess of fertility

and death who has some of her
Museo
also be prophetic inspir-
but whether this was
seized,
central figure has
characteristics.
which may
ation.
come
is
supposed to be the brides of those they
and the other holds an ointment jar.

Since Psyche is the soul, it seems
funerary.
promised him, and said that a bee should
as a severe
bearded figure surely as the Escorter of

Souls. The little chariot which he enters
is drawn by young male and female
figures, both perhaps winged, who have
been identified as Eros and Psyche. One
liltely
course) asked for her favours, which she
and like her and Pan,

they are dangerous to encounter. Pan
causes irrational wild fear in the noonday
silence of a deserted mountain side: the
nymphs can cause madness, nympholeptures of the wild,
winged boots and
shown
they continued to attend, they are crea-
cus of Cnidos, being for
certain
Rhoe-
some reason
possessed a firm faith in 'the divine'
but
which
got for 'the mythological' the bad reputation that led Thucydides to expel it
explicitly from his scientific history. A
he
is
great
not committed to his
many myths,
stories,
unfortunately, sur-
in
vive only in versions which have been
for saving her
embellishment which began as early as

the fifth century, even though it is
especially typical of learned Alexandrian
Nineveh, saw an oak in danger of

faUing and bade his slaves prop it up.
Its Dryad appeared to him, thanked him
life
(which in
this story
bound up with her tree), and offered

him anything he liked to ask. He (of
is
subjected
poetry.
to
this
kind
of
romantic
s^^
*-*<.^^j
fe
f*-*-
iARLY MAN
The Tholos
at
Delphi.
On
There does not seem to have been any
the
left-hand side of the road approaching

Delphi from the east, just inside
the
town
wall,
was the sanctuary of
Athena before the temple,
that
is,
temple of Apollo. It
had been a shrine of the mothergoddess in the Mycenaean period.
A temple of Athena was built in place
of it (on the extreme left of
the picture) in 600 BC, and replaced
in front of the
in 500 BC.
after excavation.
west end of the
On
in 1905
the safer
site a circular
building,
which the Greeks called a Tholos,

was built in the fourth century
by an architect named Theodorus. He
applied the conventions
of temple building to a shape which
had been used for domestic buildings
first
and was
where
men met together to deliberate and
to eat. The round table solved
problems of precedence and unified
the gathering. There was an
from the
man
in
Greek mythology. There is a late tradition that Prometheus made man out of
clay, into which Athena breathed life and
spirit, and this is rather doubtfully attributed to Hesiod. The earlier Greeks
seem simply to have supposed that men,
and animals, arose spontane-
like plants
ously from the earth. Such 'earth-born'
The surviving columns
were destroyed by a landslide
canonical story of the creation of
earliest period,
men
are
to
said
dynasties -
all
have founded many
those in fact of which
the heroic genealogy did not start with
god, and even when it did the mortal

mother sometimes belongs to such an
a
such building
perhaps on the same
three
at
These
columns were reconstructed
excavation for decorative
effect.
Men
found
after
himself,
common
is
really part
combined
He
of his
which he
with
the
observation of the elderly that
sons are not half the
were.
men
their fathers
imagines a steady degeneration
in terms of the four metals in
use, gold, silver,
common
bronze and iron. This
scheme was at first purely symbolic:

Hesiod knew himself to be living in the
age of Iron because mens' hearts were
hard as iron. He knew too that he was
living in a guilt culture: for in this age,
he
says,
shame
morality in a
culture.
As
authority of the peer group breaks

in
changing
no moral
strong
the
down
social conditions, there are
restraints
until
'internalised'
the
as
on the actions of the
Super-ego has been

conscience, the moral
sanction of a guilt culture.
But Hesiod was also living in an age

and
weapons, but which knew itself to have
succeeded an age in which bronze was
used at least for the latter. The bronze
that habitually used iron for tools
may appear
tion of the
But Hesiod systematised these races of

men in a moral fable. His story of the
Five Ages of
group, are the forces preserving
this
this
The Five Ages
reaction to the hard times in
Delphi,
site.
Nemesis, the righteous indignation of
men, however, were already degenerate,

and notorious for their violence. Though
'earth-born' family.
especially favoured for places
earlier
the disapproval of his peer group, and
Aidos and Nemesis
Aidos, the shame that a
man
left earth.
feels before
do
a fair, if harsh, descrip-
Homeric heroes,
for Hesiod, for
it
whom
would not
these were
and better than his contempoSo he interrupted his scheme of

generations, and interposed them as a
fourth race between the bronze and the
juster
raries.
iron.
The first race, then, that the immortals

made was of gold. They were in the
time of Cronus, and they lived like gods,
without labour and pain. They did not
from old age, but died as if

and the earth bore fruit for
them of her own accord in ungrudging
suffer
falling asleep,
quantity.
this
race
under the
Now
they
that the earth has hidden
are
spirits,
good ones
earth, guardians of mortal
and givers of wealth.
men
fe
4
tn
^^,
V:
EARLY MAN
tempting for those who know the

golden hoards of the Mycenean
1600 B.C.
shaft graves (from about
It is
rich
memory
onwards) to see here some
this period, especially since at least
of
one
they eat corn, but their stout minds were
How,
of adamant, and strong and violent they
the Theogony.
slew one another and went
down
Formerly
to
mouldy hall of dank Hades, nameless. They were then the object of no
the
as such, he cheated
Zeus
men and gods
is
told in
ate together
(and specially favoured mortals such as

Tantalus continued to be admitted to the
golden age, Virgil's 'reign of Saturn',

who was identified with Cronus, may
roic
heroes were meat eaters, as befits a cattle
when they were

Prometheus slaughtered a
great ox, and divided it into two heaps.
In one he put the meat and the offal
be explained largely as a compensation

fantasy for the hard times of the present
breeding aristocracy Homeric banquets
inside the hide, covering
period.
drink'. Classical
of the tombs was fitted with a funnel for

cult libations.
The second
But the
race
belief in a past
was of
They
silver.
worse than the golden race,

them in form and mind.
None the less they were long lived: a
child was suckled for a hundred years.
were
far
quite unlike
But when they were fully grown their

life was short: for in wanton violence
they could not keep their hands off
each other, and refused to worship the
gods or do them
them
sacrifice.
in his wrath.
None
So Zeus hid
too are called 'blessed ones under the
continuous honours.
likely that in
great shift that took place between he-
and
classical
Greece.
The Homeric
are
of 'meats in profusion and sweet
staple
Greeks
ate
bread as a
with olives, cheese, pickled
garlic to make it go down.

Homeric heroes themselves
fish
and
for
Hesiod the intrusive fourth race of men,

who died in war, some at Thebes fighting for the sheep of Oedipus, and some
at Troy. At their death they went to the
Isles of the Blest, the golden age all
now
over again but
located far off in
space and not in time.
but they
It
seems
both these cases there
is
'Never', then cries Hesiod, 'ought

to have been
among
the
fifth
men
but either die before or be born
after-
wards,
separated,
stomach and
the race of iron,
when
it
with
intestines, so that it
the
looked
But he made a
a nasty small heap.
pile
of the bones and covered them with the

a great big heap.
Zeus complained
two heaps were not the same size,

so Prometheus generously let him choose
which he would have. Deceived, Zeus
the
chose the larger.

burnt on the
From
that time
men
of the gods the fat
altars
and the bones, and the
rest
they kept
for themselves.
Hesiod of course claims that Zeus

was not really deceived, and that his
wrath was excited by the intention to
deceive. This sophistication shows that
the story
is
now
of the gods). But
feasts
fat,
are
the less they
earth', second-class it is true,
receive
but their eating habits reflect the
cult:
is
older than Hesiod: but he
right in seeing that the story explains
the sacrificial ritual of his day. It
an
reference to the earth burials of these
for
Greek cultures in Homer and in

Hesiod cremation was the rule, and the
dead are witless and twittering ghosts
and never the objects of cult, which was
never by day
aetiological myth.
toil and woe, nor

by night from being worn'.
the fat and the bones were burnt was
earlier
is
they cease from
The
real reason
is
why
family and has led to the departure of
was originally a sacred meal

which men either ate the god in the
form of his sacred animal, or shared a
meal with the god who was believed to
be present. They consumed or used all
provided their spears but their houses,
Shame and
the useful parts of the animal: the rest
arms and tools were bronze. Nor did
told a different
The
in fact
third race of bronze
made out of
at
But
reserved for these buried heroes.
his chief
concern
is
not for cares and
men were
labour, but for the injustice that divides
which
the ash stems
Indignation. Earlier he had
myth
to account not for
the injustice of the world but for

evils.
Heracles bringing Cerberus to

Eurystheus. This fine example of the
highly coloured and slightly comic
painting of the Ionian emigrant
who decorated vases at Caere was
discovered unbroken, presumably in
the tomb in which it was buried with
its owner. The artist has chosen to
show Eurystheus cowering
Chief
among
these, for Hesiod,
its
is
Athena. All three heads are shown

by this literal minded painter, each
distinguished by colour. Nine snakes
grow from him, to indicate his infernal
origin, three for each head.
One snake survives in later two-headed
representations. Louvre.
was burnt because it was holy. When

the gods were conceived of as living
up in heaven, they were believed to take
pleasure in the sweet savour of a burnt
work.
offering,
and indeed
The holocaust was
Prometheus
the
to live off the
smoke.
introduced, at which
whole victim was burnt for the god,

it became necessary to explain why,
the regular sacrifice, the gods were
Zeus limited the fruitfulness of the earth,

angry because he had been cheated by
the Titan Prometheus, son of lapetus
and
and brother of Atlas. Like Atlas he is

eventually punished by being shackled
to a mountain in the Caucasus while his
liver is gnawed by an eagle. He is
of the Trickster was invoked, and the
in a
monster
Heracles has brought back. This motif
is more usually combined with the
exploit of the Erymanthian boar.
Cerberus is more often shown being
enticed by Heracles with the help of
large pot before the latest
that sacrifice
thus one of the giants
writhings
cause
whose tortured
earthquakes.
But the
Greeks very early took his name to

mean 'Forethought' and gave him a
brother 'Afterthought', Epimetheus, and
in many respects he behaves like the first
man. Clever, with his brother FooUsh.
in
given the worse part. The folk

deceit takes
story of
way
it
its
how
tale
motif
compUcated
came to be the
place in the
the world
is.
For in
retaliation
Zeus either hid
fire
away or witheld it from the ash trees

from which men extract it by fire sticks,
which they rub together until the hidden
revealed.
fire is
good
But Prometheus, like a

it from heaven
culture hero, stole
where
it
can be seen in sun and
stars.
and from which
He
carried
it
it
descends in lightning.
away, as
men
did, in the
hollow stem of a dried fennel, stopped

up with clay at either end so that the
pith should not smoulder away too
to look after your
sons, divide your inheritance
when you
are dead.
Hesiod, in the Works and Days, says
woman was named Pandora,

and Epimetheus accepted her although
Prometheus had warned him to accept
no gifts from Zeus.
The name Pandora, which Hesiod explains by the gifts with which she was
endowed, shows that the story is based
upon religious ritual. For Pandora is the
Giver of All, that is, the Earth goddess,
and a vase painting, as so often, preserves
a different and perhaps a more primitive
form of the myth. It shows Epimetheus,
armed with a hammer or possibly a double axe, releasing from some kind of
underground chamber a Pandora who is
rising from the earth. This motif, which
that the
quickly.
Pandora
But Zeus still had a trick in hand. He
had Hephaestus make a clay figure like
a maiden, equipped with all kinds of
monstrous guile, and Athena dressed
her, and Zeus gave her to foolish
Epimetheus, who accepted her. For the
poet of the Theogony, in the tradition of
Greek misogyny, there

than the race of
is
no greater
women, who
evil
are like
drones in the hive, consuming a man's
you cannot cheat Zeus:

one thing worse than a wife,
and that is not having one. For then
substance. But
for there
you have no children
old age, and your relatives, and not your
is
suggests the return of Persephone, recurs
among other places, the Peace, of

Aristophanes, where the hero Trygaeus,
in,
the
man
of the Vintage, releases Peace
from the subterranean chamber in which

War has imprisoned her, and thereby
regains his youth.
This suggests that Pandora was once

a
blessing rather than an evil,
return released
men from
whose
the starvation
which they were reduced. Indeed

Hesiod goes on to tell the well known
story by which Pandora was not herself
to
the evil, but simply the cause

evils
came upon the
earth,
by which
admittedly
through
her feminine curiosity. For

Epimetheus had, or Pandora brought
with her, a great storage
jar,
like those
which were all the

evils that might attack man. Presumably
Zeus, benevolent in this version, had
bottled them up and men were still
living in the Golden Age. But Woman
found
in Cnossus, in
LEFT
vase in the severe classical style
of about 450 BC depicting a ritual

version of the myth of Pandora. She
rises from the earth to be the bride of
Epimetheus, as a Love hovers over
her. Epimetheus' hammer is not
a smith's hammer but the type that
might be used to break open a prison
or to break clods of earth. Hermes,
as a young man with all his attributes
including the winged hat, brings a
flower from Zeus, perhaps to symbolise
the charms of Pandora, but
appropriate too if she is the returning
spring. It is hardly a charm, as was
the flower moly which Hermes gave to
Odysseus to protect him from the wiles

of Circe. Ashmolean Museum.
RIGHT
The little temple of Athena Nike
('Victory') stands on the site of an old
Mycenaean bastion which covered
the entrance to the Acropolis and
enabled the defenders to throw
at the unprotected right side of the
attackers. It was an appropriate
site for such a shrine, and as
early as 449 BC there were plans to
build a temple to commemorate
the role of the goddess in the
victories of the Persian War.
But they interfered with Pericles'
designs for the Propylaea and were
not carried out until 421, with the
Erechtheum and in the same Ionic
style. It is in fact the most
prominent building on the restored
Acropolis. It looks west over the
Areopagus and Pnyx, the two assembly
hills of Athens.
EARLY MAN
took out the bung,
just as the
compa-
nions of Odysseus undid the goat-skin

which held all the contrary winds, and
out they
lip
the
all
of the
woman
But Hope clung to the

and did not get out, for
got.
jar
put back the bung before
The flood is variously

Some ingeniously connected
Deucalion
The mythical chronology of

ries
of the creation of
certain
clearly
man
is
these stoquite un-
and inconsistent. For Pandora is

supposed to be the first woman,
regarded as a blessing by the Greeks for
and yet men already existed in the reign

of Cronus. But at this stage they join
while desire pushes them from behind,
on
Hope was
she could get out.
not always
:
it
them on from in front to commit

of folly. But the point of view may
leads
acts
have shifted rapidly, as
is
possible in
myths, and the traditional explanation

may be right, that Hope has stayed with
men and
alone reconciles
them
evil plight. Diseases originally
and
gave
audible
approach, so that
warning
men could
to their
had voices
of
their
avoid them.
But now Zeus, angry for some reason

with men, has taken away their voices,
and they can attack men without warning
by day and night.
to
the
heroic
genealogies
of the
fate
tice',
who begged
to drive the chariot of
his father the sun, but, failing to control

it,
plunged to
his death: his
In the course of his erratic career
Baltic.
Phaethon came too near the
throwing over their shoulders the bones

of their mother, that is, the stones of
the earth, which became men and women
according to whether Deucalion or
the pretext of putting out the
sembles that for people
(/aas
and
re-
/aos).
mourning
were turned into poplars dripping

amber tears into the Po, the southern end
of the over-land amber route from the
sisters
and Pandora is said to be Pyrrha, who

was the wife of Deucalion, 'the Greek
Noah' who alone survived the flood
with which Zeus destroyed the men of
Bronze. They re-peopled the earth by
etymology, since the Greek word
with the
of Phaethon, the 'sorcerer's appren-
Greeks. For the daughter of Epimetheus
Pyrrha threw them. The stones are folk
motivated.
it
earth,
and
besides, presumably, turning the negroes
black, he set
it
on
fire.
This gave Zeus
the excuse to destroy the Bronze
men
by deluging the earth with rain under

fire
started
by Phaethon.
Lycaon
Others said that the flood was occasioned by the impiety of Lycaon, king
of
Arcadia,
Pelasgia
which was
after
then
Lycaon's
earthborn Pelasgus. 'The
called
father,
men
the
of those
days', Pausanias says, 'were guests
and
shared the same table with the gods for
and they openly
their justice
and
met
gods' hands with honour,
piety,
him. Then he overwhelmed the earth
lucky enough to hand over the post to a
with
successor.
rain.
This
another
is
aetiological
myth,
gruesome ceremonies
which survived on Mount Lycaeus ap-
explaining
the
parently to the time of Pausanias,
who
The
was in fact a rain-maker:

was a spring on Mount Lycaeus which flowed in summer as well
priest
for there
as
winter (which
is
When
not true of all springs

there
was
a drought,
says that they sacrificed there in secret to
in Greece).
good, and those who

had done wrong similarly with wrath'.
But then Zeus visited the Arcadians in
the guise of a work-man, and wanting
Lycaean Zeus, but
the priest agitated the surface of this
whether it really was Zeus, either

Lycaon or his fifty sons mixed with the
since
at the
those
who were
to test
flesh
of the sacrifice the entrails of a baby.
'officiously to
was not to my
and has been fron
the rites of the sacrifice

taste
be as
let it
it is
the beginning'. It
then,
one
was believed
man
at
form for nine years or for ever

were-wolf was probably the
place
named
after
it
Trapezus,
and blasted with thunderbolts the sons

of Lycaon, all but the youngest, Nyctimus, who was saved when Earth caught
hold of Zeus' right hand and appeased
sacrifice
at the sacrifice the
during
portion that had in
the baby's entrails, -and he
become
if
human flesh. The

man who ate
that period he tasted
Lycaon into
at the
the
that ever
turned into a wolf, and remained in that
This so angered Zeus that he turned

a wolf, overturned the table
pry into
it
may have
the wolf-priest of Zeus until
when, unless the

distribution was fixed, he might be
the
next
sacrifice,
spring with an oak branch, whereupon

a mist arose,
which
which turned into a cloud,

and brought rain
attracted others
to Arcadia. It
fore, that
is
not surprising, there-
Lycaon's
sacrifice
produced
flood.
The poor and
inhospitable hills of
Arcadia were always the most primitive

part of Greece. There are
tive survivals in the
many
myth and
primi-
the cere-
mony, which may have started as the

regular sacrifice and ritual cannibalism
of a sacred king impersonating the god:
EARLY MAN
later
sacrifice.
years, another great year) before landing
of rain magic in the story of the flood.

Flood myths are not, however, confined
by Lycaon
him
is
(as the
sometimes said
to have been his son), uhimately to
be
succeeded by the youngest son of his

mother. Eventually the sacral kingship
was down-graded to a priesthood, and

an unwanted baby substituted for the
sacrifice. There are many traces of this
type of ritual in other Greek myths,
which
will be
noted in their place.
The flood
Deucalion,
however, lived
in
Phthia,
was and which has some claims to be

the original home of many Greek traditions.
When
the rains came, Deucalion
was advised by
the
hills
is
Prometheus to
which he floated for
his father
build a chest in
Mycenae
one of the two great Bronze

Argos. Though
overlooked by two taller
fortified sites in
site is
the top of Mount Parnassus
which was
submerged and to
which the inhabitants of Lycoreia, 'Wolf
on
apparently
never
Mountain', claimed to have been led to

safety
by
the
these were out of range of
Two royal grave

have been discovered. The
one shown, surrounded by a continuous
roofed passage-way of thin upright
ancient weapons.
circles
blocks, contains the famous Shaft
Graves which, when opened by

Schliemann, were full of gold.
RIGHT
The temple of Hephaestus
at
Athens
popularly called the Theseum.

It owes this name to the four metopes,
two on each side at the east end,
which depicted exploits of Theseus,
is still
early assumption that the

Athenians would have commemorated
their great founder. But temples
were built only to gods, and in fact
the ten metopes of the east end
showed ten labours of Heracles. The
temple overlooked the market place,
from which it was designed to be seen
and to an
and from where this

photograph was taken. It stood
by the quarter of the smiths and
bronzeworkers, whose patrons
were Hephaestus and Athena. Built
about 449 bc, it is the oldest
at its best
temple built entirely of marble.
howling
of
(sacred?)
and though they may also be

memories of real local inundations, such
as the famous one that buried Ur under
to Greece,
twelve feet of
silt,
may
they
wolves. Similarly the Megarians claimed
reflect the infantile fantasies
their founder Megarus, son of

Zeus and a local Sithnid water-nymph,
had been led to the summit of the nearest
mountain by the cry of cranes. Others
brought the chest to rest on a mountain
learning bladder control,
that
in Thessaly,
Thessaly, where the original Hellas
Age
relics
nine days and nights (perhaps originally
baby
sacrificed
in
There seem to be some
he invested his son with the sover-
eignty and sacrificed
perhaps the original
site,
on Mount Athos, or even on Mount

Etna in Sicily. But the fame of Delphi
and Parnassus naturally made it the
canonical
site.
The motif of escape in a floating chest

recurs in the myth of Perseus and Danae,
and might reflect a ritual way of avoiding
equally
of the child
who
fears that
he may drown the world in an uncontrollable flood, and his relief when he
realises that the
world has been deliv-
ered from this awful
fate.
myth can be explained
As
always, the
in different terms
at different levels.
The descent of Athamas, the son of

Aeolus, the son of Hellen, the son of
Deucalion and Pyrrha, shows how these
timeless creation myths join on to the
heroic genealogies of the Greeks, which
must be
dealt with next.
THE CHILDREN OF
Genealogical interest
many
typical of very
is
primitive societies, and important
questions of status, precedence and propownership may depend upon the
erty
The
accurate establishment of descent.
Maori
chiefs of the
century
could
end of the nineteenth
recite
pedigrees,
their
apparently quite accurately, right back

to the Polynesian invasion of New Zea-
been made to
establish a genealogical chronology of
the pre-Dorian period by using the
land.
Attempts
have
There were then kings or nobles in

neighbourhood of Troy who claimed
descent from Aeneas, and for this reason
(they were perhaps potential patrons of
epic poetry) Aeneas had to survive the
fighting at Troy and its fall. It was his
the
which made him such
survival
a con-
number of doubton the way to Italy,
venient ancestor for a
Greek cities
where he was already known in the
fifth century, and ultimately for the
fully
Romans when
they wished, perhaps after
who
could claim de-
Homeric pedigrees.
defeating Pyrrhus,
But these pedigrees were not only

preserved in the metrical formulae of
scent
ABOVE
Hermes and Argus. The painting
shows a naked Hermes, identified
only as a traveller with hat on his baclc,
attacking with a sword a naked
unarmed Argus, who has only one
hexameter poetry they were also continued into the historic period. For many
royal and noble families in Greece and
heroic ancestor.
Asia Minor traced their descent from
process was carried out for the heroes in

the sixth and fifth centuries, when the
over his body. To the

right the bull can only be Zeus,
unless it simply represents Argus'
characteristic of cowherd. Museum
Trojan
social prerogatives of aristocratic birth
battle
were being challenged. These logogra-
face but eyes all
fiir
Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.
Homeric heroes on both the Greek and

side. Aeneas is twice rescued in
by the gods, once by Aphrodite
from Diomede and once from Achilles
by Poseidon. In the first case Aphrodite
an image of him to be fought

over, which suggests that he may have
been killed in the original tradition. But
substitutes
Europa and the bull. The city of Selinus

was finally sacked in 409 BC
second Poseidon gives an
explicit
from
standing
among
into people,
invent their
sons.
Now
the might of Aeneas shall lord
over
the
Trojans,
children's children,
him'.
and
who
it
so
shall
his
shall
come
after
similar
respect-
genealogy by turning places and tribes
loved him above
other
them from the surviving and
lish
his
able historians Herodotus and Thucydides, started the practice of filling out a
motive for his intervention, 'that the

race of Dardanus might not perish to
destruction without seed: for Cronides
all
with
phers, as they are called to distinguish
by the Carthaginians, in support

of Segesta, another Sicilian settlement.
destroying an old mid-sixth century
limestone temple to provide stone.
A metope, which was recovered almost
undamaged, shows Zeus, in the form
of a bull, carrying off Europa to Crete
over a sea symbolised by dolphins.
Museo Nazionale, Palermo.
Greeks
of Boeotian poetry.
in the
hastily repaired the fortifications,
the
Systematised catalogues were characteristic
in Sicily
They
Achilles, to establish their
and did
their best to estab-
consistent relation between dif-
ferent mythological figures.
and dramatists
are, for
still
own
felt
But the poets
quite
traditions,
free
to
and there
example, several quite different
accounts of the fate of
Haemon and An-
tigone.
The Alexandrian
scholars continued
THE CHILDREN OF
10
the
work of
systematisation,
and on the
basis of their efforts Eratosthenes calcu-
lated the date of the Sack of
equivalent of
scholarship
1 1
84
lies
b. c.
Troy
as the
This Alexandrian
behind
the
extensive
genealogies in ApoUodorus. But com-
was never obtained:

and contradictions abounded,
and loose ends were left. That is why
the emperor Tiberius could quite seriously ask his scholarly friends, the Greek
'grammarians' 'Who was Hecuba's mother?' and 'What song the Sirens sang,
or what name Achilles assumed when
he hid himself among the women?'.
Some genealogies went very far back
plete consistency
variants
and are linked with the two great centres

of Mycenaean Greece, Boeotian Thebes
and Argive Mycenae. Both Cadmus,
founder of Thebes, and Danaus,
who
became ruler of Argos (the foundation

of Mycenae was reserved for a descendant, Perseus), are represented as immigrants from Phoenicia and Egypt respectively. But both are provided with
respectable Greek antecedents through
their great common ancestress lo, and
Danaus is certainly the eponym of the
Danaans,
another
and
also
tribe
name
who
have provided
for the Greeks in the Iliad
seem to have been known to
the Egyptians.
lo
lo was priestess at the Heraeum, the
famous and ancient shrine of Hera at
Argos, being the daughter of the local
THE CHILDREN OF
river Inachus
(though she was also proartificial genealogy
vided with a long
which gave eponyms and
many
a history to
of the places in the whole Pelo-
ponnese). Zeus loved her, and she was
turned into a heifer, either by Zeus, to
Head of
Terracotta antefixes
Italian temples had a
religious purpose as well as the practical
one of concealing the ends of the tiles
lo.
Greek and
and protecting the wooden
roofs.
They
also
protected the building spiritually,

either by depicting a deity, such as
the Dioscuri, or by frightening off evil
spirits
with a gorgon mask, a
favourite early subject. In the fourth
century the heads of other mythological

characters were used. The head of lo
from Tarentum preserves traces of the
type from which it is derived in the
round
face, the curly hair
horns. Metropolitan
Rogers Fund, 1910.
and the
Museum
of Art,
frequently appear and disap-
pear in this form, and there was a legend
Zeus himself seduced Hera first in

form of a cuckoo, as he did Leda in
the form of a swan.
that
the
This then explains the appearance of
form of
Hermes
conceal her from Hera after he had lain
Zeus
in the
with her in the form of a cloud or had

covered the place with a cloud to hide
made
to kill Argus, rather than exercise
marriage of Sky-father and
a bird.
is
his traditional craftiness, to explain his
which may
title
Argeiphontes,
Earth-mother, or by Hera, to keep her
mean
'slayer
from Zeus, who therefore assumed the

form of a bull.
At some stage lo was tethered to an
olive tree in the grove of the Mycenaeans and guarded by the All-seeing
Argus, who himself wore a bull's hide
and had eyes all over his body, and (in
some versions) two faces. Zeus, in the
form of a hawk or a woodpecker, guided
Hermes to the spot. Hermes charmed
Argus, with the music of the pipe though
perhaps originally with his magic rod,
and stole lo away from Argus, whom he
slew with the cast of a stone. Then Hera
essarily originally of this
sent a gadfly
which drove lo by a cirEgypt she

bore her son and called him Epaphus,
either because by a touch (which is what
the word means) Zeus restored her to
her real shape, or because she had con-
Poseidon;
cuitous route to Egypt. In
Phoenicia and Belus (Ba'al) married a
this sacred
in
Homer
in
10
ceived simply at a touch.
Almost
all
amours of Zeus
the
ritual as well as
difficult to see
genealogy and
how
the
reflect
it is
not
myth of lo could
be explained in terms of the
ritual
of the
Argive Heraeum. There are clear traces in

myth of a bull cult of Zeus, who assumed
that
form to abduct Europa, and of

Hera herself,
the identification of lo with
who
retains in
Homer
the traditional
really
of Argus', though not nec-
Argus.
The Egyptian connection has sometimes been taken seriously, and
it is
true
Greek contacts with

Egypt seem to be implied by the Hovery
that
early
meric references to Egyptian Thebes,
which ceased to be the

in about 1400 b. c.
some
capital of
Egypt
More probably
at
stage the Greeks were impressed
by the Egyptian bull cult of Apis, and

the cow goddess Isis, with whom they
identified lo. Her son Epaphus provided
ancestors for
tions.
many of
the eastern na-
His daughter Libya bore twins to

of these
Agenor went
to
daughter of the Nile and also begot

twins, Egyptus and Danaus.
Human
twins have always excited suand in some parts of England

used to be taken as proof of the wife's
infidelity. In Greece the second husband
implied in this view was taken to be a
god, and one of the pair is sometimes
perstition,
mortal: alternatively, only a god is strong

enough to beget two sons at once.
Twins therefore occur very frequently in
Greek mythology not all of them have
divine parents, for some may reflect the
institution of dual kingship which sur:
at Sparta in the historical period.
epithet normally translated as 'ox-eyed'
vived
but probably originally meaning 'cow-
behind the myth,
Dual kingship may have been a device for reconciling two systems of inheritance. Two brothers marry two unre-
and might have been preceded by the
lated heiresses, each thus acquiring title
faced'.
The mating of the
sacred heifer might
ritual slaughter
decessor,
who
lie
of the
sacred bull to a
new
bull's pre-
turns up as Argus in his
bull hide.
of this, of course, was

any of the Greek narrators of
the developed myth, who simply repeated
the traditional elements in any order
Nothing
known
to
that suited them,
from other
and included elements

Some Mycenaean
rituals.
monuments suggest
god
the descent of a
that they visualised

as a bird.
The gods
to a
kingdom
in the female Hne. In each
succeeding generation the son of one

house marries the daughter of the other,
so that the
kingdoms
are
exchanged
gularly, but each grandfather
is
re-
succeed-
ed by his grandson in the male line.

This grandson often appears in the stories,
somewhat
inconsistently,
daughter's son, though by
strict
as
his
matri-
linear succession he should be the grand-
daughter's
husband.
This
hypothesis
THE CHILDREN OF
10
(for that is
all
has the merit of
is)
it
providing a single simple explanation

for a
number of the more puzzling
tural features of the stories,
complete pattern
in any
struc-
though the
found
rarely if ever
is
one myth.
from Gortyna,
500 BC. The Cretan cities marked
their coinage with symbols taken from
the mythical past of their land, which
also had a live ritual significance.
stater
The water-loving willow-tree

suggests that the local Europa was,
Helen in Rhodes, a tree goddess,
visited by Zeus, as Leda was, in the
form of a bird, but an eagle and not a
like
swan. Here, as so often,

from the literary myth.
ritual diverges
on the Acropolis, but

well sounded like the
sea when the south-west wind blew and
there was the mark of a trident on a
near-by rock. But Athena created the
olive and was awarded the land. These
created a spring
of
salt
water.
The
may
contests
The daughters of Danaus
Obverse of
reported for Attica: there too Poseidon
legitimately be taken to
reflect conflict
Danaus and Egyptus had each the traditional fifty children, Egyptus sons and
Danaus daughters. A marriage was proposed between the two, but either Danaus or his daughters rejected it and
fled to Argos, where the Argives accepted Danaus as king after Apollo sent a
wolf to kill an Argive bull as an omen.
The sons of Egyptus pursued their brides
across the sea, and Danaus feigned
between the patriarchal

and earlier moth-
religion of the Greeks
er-goddesses.
It
is
not clear
why Danaus
or his
daughters were so opposed to marriage
with their cousins, which was approved
he found his daughters husbands by giv-
by Greek law for reasons of inheritance.

It might be a reminiscence of Egyptian
brother-sister marriage, of which the
Greeks did disapprove. But perhaps it
was marriage and not children that the
Danaids objected to, and perhaps they
killed their husbands after intercourse
and not to preserve their virginity. The
suggestion that Danaus quarrelled with
Egyptus over the kingdom is the trans-
ing them away as prizes in a foot-race.
ference of a
But after their death these Danaids were

punished in Hades: they had to carry
water in sieves to fill a leaking pot. But
one Danaid refused to kill her husband,
of twins, but cannot provide sufficient
consent to the marriage, but ordered his

daughters to
marriage
husbands on the
and bring him their
kill their
night
heads, which he buried separately.
who
Lynceus,
eventually
Then
became king
number of
for the
not very
first
motivation.
similar motif
race for brides: there
one winner
who
is
is
the foot-
normally only
supplants his father-in-
law, the situation of Hypermnestra and
Lynceus. Elements in their story were
Danaus.
after
common motif in the history
recurrent motifs appear
connected with landmarks in Argos and
time in this story, though
with various
with some mo-
of the heads
clearly, together
The separate burial

may simply be a device to
rituals.
it. The Greeks

punishment after
account for the existence of two sepa-
death until the time of Plato, except for
be magic, to lay their ghosts or to protect
few notable sinners, including the DaBut the form of their punishment
suggests that they were originally spring-
the land.
that are peculiar to
tifs
not
did
believe
in
naids.
nymphs, or priestesses with magical

powers for finding springs. One of them,
Amymone,
appears
as
exercising
just
When
Poseidon and Hera

contended for the land of Argos, Inachus adjudged it to Hera, and Poseidon
that power.
in
anger dried up
naus sent
all
Amymone
the springs. Dato
draw water on
She occupied her search

by hunting, and throwing at a deer hit
a sleeping satyr. Poseidon saved her from
their arrival.
the satyr's advances, only to press

his
own. In
on her
return, he revealed to her the
perennial springs of Lerna, important in

the
summer drought of Greece.
similar contest between Poseidon

and the mother-goddess of the land is
rate
'tombs of the
suitors'.
Or
it
might
Danaus then was Linked with Argos

in this way, like his great ancestress lo.
The other branch of
lo's
descendants
was brought to Crete and to Thebes,

and retained the bull cult which in Argos
seems to have been superseded by that
of the wolf god Apollo Lyceius, whose
intervention secured Danaus the kingdom. Agenor became king of Tyre,
where Europa and Cadmus were either
his children or grand-children. Zeus
loved Europa, and came for her in the
form of
where a
a bull, carrying her off to Crete
bull cult
is
copiously illustrated.
The monuments seem to show bull-leaping, but this may be a euphemistic way
of referring to goring. The name Europa, 'broad-faced',
is
quite appropriate for
THE CHILDREN OF
Cadmus, with
set
of the Greek tribes that came to

Thebes seems to have followed the same
custom, and it is the cow which has
led to the association with Europa.
Cadmus himself was associated with
One
Cadmus
his
mother and brothers,
out to look for Europa, and settled
in various places to
which they gave
their
snakes and with Ares.
Cadmea was
names. Cadmus himself followed

cow, later said to be marked on the
flank with a moon, until it lay down:
there he founded a city - the Cadmea,
the citadel of the later Thebes.
The Del-
phic oracle claimed that he was following
its
advice: but the Italic ver sacrum,
or sacred spring, provides a close par-
This was a device for dealing with
allel.
over-population in the poor but empty

hill
country of central
often
all
Italy.
Every so
human and aniwere vowed to the god.
the live births,
mal, of a year
The spring on
the
sacred to Ares, and, as such
springs often are, was guarded by a snake
(not a dragon
the Greek dracon
is
fierce
and mythical but still a snake). Cadmus

killed it and sowed its teeth in the earth,
from which armed men sprang up, who
fell
to fighting, either spontaneously or
when Cadmus
cast a stone
among them.
Five survived, the ancestors of the Theban aristocracy, who called themselves
Sparti,
'sown men', and
clearly prided
autochthonous,
themselves
on
earth born.
Cadmus served Ares
being
for a wife,
10
and whose wedding the gods
attended.
Harmonia
Aphrodite
is
like
one of the attendants on
Hebe ('youth'),
the
Hours
(actually plural of Hore, season of spring
or youth) and Graces.
with a divine dowry,

necklace, the latter
Harmonia came
a
robe
and a
made by Hephaestus
and containing irresistible love-charms.

Like the golden apple 'for the fairest',
which appeared at the wedding of Peleus
and Thetis, it did not bring good luck.

At the end of their lives Cadmus and
Harmonia left Thebes and led a tribe
called Eel-men to victory against the
lUyrians, of whom they became the king
and queen, being turned into great serpents. That is to say they were identified,
following an
great year to atone for killing his snake,
probably not before the time of Euripides, with the snake gods of an Illyrian
ox or other sacred animal, which they

sacrificed at the new tribal centre, which
or possibly to win his daughter Har-
tribe.
was therefore called Bovianum, 'Oxton'.
of the mortals
When
they came to maturity, they went
out to found a
Cadmus and
potters
new
tribe,
the serpent.
working
in
The
Paestum
local
in the
fourth century produced some fine

large vases with mythological
subjects. Python, about 340 BC,
produced this copy of an earlier vase
showing Cadmus killing the serpent
which guarded the sacred spring on the
site of Thebes. But he has added
the huge pile of stones with one of
which Cadmus, whose cap marks him
as a foreigner, kills the snake. In his
other hand he holds the water pot.

The figure above the mirror is
probably Harmonia, admiring the
necklace she was given when she
became Cadmus's bride. Hermes and

Pan are introduced as spectators.
Louvre.
monia. For Cadmus,
who
is
for a
In
fact, as deified ancestors,
they
like Peleus, is
received offerings as snakes, very likely
allowed a
in
one
goddess
Thebes
itself.
LEFT
Death of Actaeon. The Pan painter,
a master of the severe style of Attic
vase painting about 460 bc, was able
to depict with intensity the terrifying
heartlessness of the gods as they were
conceived in the fifth century and in
Greek tragedy.' There is no trace of
the original ritual. Artemis points
her plague arrows at the offending
Actaeon, who is merely identified by
the hounds, since he is dying already.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierce Fund.
RIGHT
Death of Actaeon. Almost contemporary
with the Pan painter's vase is a metope
of the same scene from Temple E
at Selinus. But the spirit of the work
is quite different, because the very
young Artemis looks on at the automatic
consequence of her violated privacy
with horrified compassion for her
victim. The transformation of Actaeon
into a stag is suggested by the horns
which are indicated above him,
and the dogs are
Museo
The daughters of Cadmus
The
birth of Dionysus
of a man, a bull or a goat. Impersona-
of the god or his sacred animals,
tion,
Cadmus' daughters appear
Onl)'
stories
in the
of the next generation at Thebes.
Their names were Autonoe, Ino, Semele

and Agave. Autonoe married Aristaeus,
who presides over beekeeping and olive-growing and sends

a rustic deity
winds in the sum-
forty days of cooling
mer.
He was
the son of a Thessalian
whom
Apollo loved when he

saw her wrestling with a lion: later he
was said to have carried her to Libya
where the city of Cyrene was named
after her. Their son, Actaeon, was a
mighty hunter of the type of Orion. He
Ino also has Thessalian connections, for

she married Athamas, one of the sons
whom
of Aeolus, with
linked.
is
The
fate
two
was
the
The Phrygian god was particularly

god of the vine: for wine induces
name
nysus, and which led to the rapid spread
that
Cadmus,
for her
of the Phrygian earth-mother,
Zemelo, and she
the ecstatic sense of release
of the
cult, especially
cult
boasting that he was a better hunter
the fate of being ritually torn to pieces
peculiar divine status
by Maenads, which was once the
fact that
than Artemis.
her and
is
He
his
also
own hounds
wanted to marry
therefore the male consort in
a fertility rite,
who
ends up by being
ritually torn to pieces.
But when Arte-
mis becomes the virgin huntress his

is
58
fate
punishment for seeing her naked.
god whose
the
is.
is
fate
of
substitute or surrogate he
For Dionysus
is
blend of the Thra-
cian and Phrygian gods of vegetation
and
fertility,
who
were
ritually torn to
pieces by their worshippers in the
form
among women.
compensated for the hard times and
for
was devoured by
which was
experienced by the worshippers of Dio-
one of the Phrygian

elements in the cult of an originally
Thracian god. Agave was the mother,
by one of the sown men, of Pentheus,
whose name seems to mean 'man of
sorrows'. For his opposition to the
Bacchic worship of Dionysus he suffered
huntress,
and the germ
of drama.
was
sisters
a part of the ritual
god Dionysus. Semele is

mother: but she was not originally
the daughter of
is
her
story of the other
that of the
his
naturistically treated.
Nazionale, Palermo.
cial
It
so-
tensions of the guilt culture of the
dark ages of Greece after the end of
Mycenaean
apparently
culture.
know
The Mycenaeans did

god called Dionysus,
but the rapid expansion of his ecstatic
was almost
pians
a
he
who
mortal
is
is
certainly later,
is
and
the only one of the

said to
his
reflected in the
Olym-
have been born of
woman.
Greek gods were born: but it is

almost the definition of Greek divinity
that the gods are ageless and immortal.
All
p.
I"
'
'
nwii# wi.
i
i|i iiJii<iig|
4jpyiitt j|iiiiiiy.
i
i i
0J> ;
t l|ijj>>..,ffl|**
i, l
W|p|
iii
I'
1^
.V
i-
THE CHILDREN OF
all
be.
men would wish
that
10
themselves to
'dying god', perfectly at
home
in
Thrace or Phrygia, was a theological

impossibihty in Greece. So the myths of
Dicnysus are
who
human
of
full
suffer his fate for
surrogates
him. Their stories
and those of other dying heroes were

enacted in his honour at the dramatic
festivals
of Athens.
Semele, Dionysus' mother, was loved
by Zeus, who promised to grant her

whatever she might ask, perhaps out of
pleasure in her pregnancy. Semele asked
him to appear to her in his divine form
she may have been put up to this by
who
Hera,
appears as the jealous wife,
or perhaps she was merely following the
by which the reigning pair
early practice
imitated (or impersonated, or were held
Zeus and Hera.

Such mortal presumption shocked the
later Greeks, and was always punished
by the gods jealous of their prerogatives.
So when Zeus, who could not escape
from his promise, appeared to Semele
she was consumed by the fire of his
to be incarnations of)
Her tomb continued

may have contained a
thunderbolt.
smoulder:
it
marking the place
flame
cred
to
sa-
where
lightning had struck.
But Zeus snatched his unborn son

from his mother's womb and sewed him
into his own thigh, from where in due
course he was born. Like the tale of the
birth of Athens, this is a male myth expressing resentment and jealousy of wom-
name
name of Zeus, and
an's role in childbirth. Dionysus'
certainly contains the

it
is
may mean 'son
of Zeus', just as Athena
the 'daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus'.
His mother
the
myth,
is
of no great importance in
unlike
other
mother-god-
desses.
The newly born Dionysus was put

out to nurse,
first
with Ino, his mother's
who dressed him in girl's clothes

common custom to avert the evil eye,
sister,
(a
but here said to be intended to hide the

child
from Hera), then with the nymphs
of the legendary
in the
form of
like that
Mount Nysa, sometimes
a kid. This story
is
very
of the infancy of Zeus, on which
might conceivably have been based.

But two strange stories in Pausanias sug-
it
gest a ritual.
The
inhabitants of Prasiae
on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese

said that the dead Semele and the infant
THE CHILDREN OF
Death of Actaeon.
Only some twenty years after the
treatment by the Pan painter, that
of the Lycaon painter shows an increase
in sensationalism which may owe
something to drama. Artemis no longer
but stands by in a ritual pose
with a torch while Zeus gives
approval from the other side. But the
Dionysus were
Perseus.
Actaeon, with horns like Pan, tries to

defend himself with his spears. The
hounds may even have been figments
of his imagination. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.
They buried Semele, and Ino
appeared in her wanderings to nurse
Dionysus.
acts,
hounds are maddened by Lyssa,

Madness, who appears as a character
in the Heraclei Mad of Euripides, and
up by the sea in a
Danae and the infant
cast
chest, like that of
similar chest, with an
Dionysus in
lian,
it,
was given
image of
to a Thessa-
Eurypylus, as his share of the spoils
of Troy. The image drove him mad, and

he made his way to Patrae, where he put
an end to the annual sacrifice of a bridal
pair to Artemis and became a hero at
the annual festival of Dionysus. These
suggest a regular ritual at which
stories
an infant Dionysus was brought to land

in a chest, and then nursed.
It was in Phrygia that Dionysus discovered the vine, and taught
make wine from
From
it.
men
to
there he set
out to convert the world, punishing
Hermes and
those
Hermes, recognised by his travelling

cloak and hat, magic staff, and what
look like formalised wings on his
boots, holds the infant Dionysus, who
reaches out towards a Maenad with
a thyrsus. The nurses of Dionysus play
a part in many ritual myths. In
narrative mythology they were localised
on Mount Nysa in Asia Minor, with
which the name of the god was
connected, and are described as nymphs.
British
who
refused to accept him. This
the infant Dionysus.
pattern
ritual
women who went
one.
The
out into the
rout of
hills
was
normal part of the cult of Dionysus.

They may have been taking out the old
year and bringing in the new one, a
type of ceremony well attested in Eua
rope.
real
But the
may also reflect

new and socially
The first such story
stories
opposition to a
disruptive religion.
is
Museum.
is
told in the Iliad. Lycurgus attacked
the nurses of Dionysus,
who
fled into
the sea where Thetis protected him.
The
gods punished Lycurgus with blindness
and a short
Here the
life.
ritual role
of the 'nurses'
who have
found the new baby and brought him
back. Dionysus flees into the sea because
in other rituals it was from there that he
is
The capture of Silenus was a popular

Greek vase painting, but
subject in
clear
they are the Maenads
came. As in the story of his infancy,

there are reminiscences of the succession
representations of the actual event are

rare. This late sixth century vase
myth, with Thetis playing the grandmother role that she did for Zeus in
by the Achelous painter
the story of Briareus.
dramatic.
The
is
highly
Silenus (not in any
of the vases identified as the fat

old Pappa Silenus but as a regular
horse satyr) is taken by two hunters
armed with two throwing spears
in the very act of drinking at the
fountain running with wine, which
stands before a stylised olive tree. It is
possible that a genre scene 'Hunters
surprise a satyr' preceded its association
with Midas and later moralisation,
though an earlier vase shows a bound
satyr brought before the king.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers
Fund, 1949.
The
Iliad has as usual suppressed the
gorier details of the fate of Lycurgus.
He went mad and
attacked his son with
an axe, thinking he was pruning a vine.
was made
fruitful again when Lycurgus was torn
to pieces by horses on Mount Pangaeus.
Doubtless he was ritually eaten, and
pieces of him strewn on the fields,
though the horses seem to come from
the ritual of the Thracian Ares, whose
sons, like the Thracian Diomede, often
The land became
barren, and
Death of Orpheus. The work of the

Achilles painter reflects the serene
of Periclean sculpture. It freezes
into calm the action of a violent
style
subject, the death of
Orpheus.
severe Thracian woman, identified

by the tattoos on her left forearm,
prevents the dying Orpheus from

destroying his lyre or striking her with
runs down
it. Blood from a spear thrust
his right side. There is no hint of
ritual tearing
down
or of the head floating

Museum of Fine Arts,
the river.
Boston, Special Fund.
10
THE CHILDREN OF
lO
The goddess Athena
as
Defender of
the City, Promachos, she

for
who
fights
naturally associated strongly
it, is
with Athens, the city from which

the goddess in fact talces her name.
Pericles set up a colossal bronze
statue of the goddess in this
pose beside the Parthenon as part
of his redevelopment of the Acropolis.
It was reproduced in large
numbers of small votive statues of
varying date and competence, and
copied over much of the Greek and
Roman world. In her left hand she
holds a hoplite shield, almost
horizontal to keep the opponent at as
great a distance as possible, while
she threatens him with the stabbing
spear held in the right. The goddess
dispenses with the breastplate, instead of
which she sometimes wears the
aegis, or divine goatskin with the
gorgon's head. But she is normally
helmeted. This version, in which the
high plume suggests Italy, has
a certain coarse strength about it.
British
Museum.
man-eating mares. The other eleclearly describe the Thracian veg-
own
ments
The son
etation
cult.
Dryas,
'tree-man',
shows Dionysus
is
also
called
and an Attic vase

worshipped in this
form.
But the best known story is that of Dionysus' return to his birth-place, Thebes.
Rejected
there,
Dionysus
maddened
and drove them to Mount

Cithaeron, where they routed the troops
sent against them. Pentheus imprisoned
women
the
the effeminate male leader of the Bac-
chantes (who
is
clearly distinguished
Dionysus in the play), or he

he did - in fact they caught a
from
thought
bull.
The
leader escaped, and persuaded Pentheus

to put on women's dress and spy on the
Bacchantes on the mountains.
To do
he climbed a pine tree, which the

Bacchantes uprooted and then tore him
this
by his mother AgShe returned in triumph with the

head of her son as a trophy, only to come
ritually to pieces, led
ave.
to herself
Greek
and learn the sad lesson of
all
tragedies: mortal submission to
the will of the stronger gods.
In Attica the worship of Dionysus
was
easily
but the
assimilated to a local cult,
ritual
death could not be avoided.
Icarius gladly accepted the gift of the
THE CHILDREN OF
and
vine,
in the
proper missionary
spirit
gave wine to some shepherds, who in

ignorance drank it unmixed like water
(the Greeks normally diluted it with at
three parts of water). In their
madness, the shepherds, thinking they
least
Dionysus, and Orpheus
is
always re-
presented as one of his followers. His
chronology varies, but

husband of one of the daughters of Cadmus, appears in one of his
stories. Orpheus was the son of Calliope,
mythological
Aristaeus,
muse of
were poisoned, killed Icarius, whose

daughter hanged herself when she found
his body. This story explains the Athenian festival, paralleled in Italy, at which
the
small images were set swinging in the
lyre,
epic poetry (for his verses
were in hexameters, like the I/iad and

the Odyssey and the Boeotian poems of
the school of Hesiod). He had a magic
branches of trees in the heat of summer,
with which he charmed trees and

rivers as well as the wild beasts: even
when Erigone,
stones gathered round
the daughter 'born in
the spring', had been killed by the hot
which sounds
summer's drought.
of stone
Midas
loved
whom Aristaeus also loved and

her wedding.
encountered both Midas and Orpheus.
to death. Inconsolate,
is
kind of King of Fairyland in
the
world.
His
man
kingdom was
settled as Phrygia, to
where
in
finally
his fabulous
rose-gardens were transferred from their
To
original place in Macedonia.
rose-gardens Silenus
turned aside, the
man with
eldest of the satyrs, a fat old
the snub nose and
these
low forehead which
was the Greek convention for such wild

and lustful creatures. He fell asleep in
Midas' garden, where a fountain had
been filled with wine to catch him. Midas
feasted him, and returned him to Dio-
ran from
As she
snake and was stung
him she trod upon
popular Greek fables, the richest
nymph,
chased
In the course of his travels Dionysus
Midas
wood
Eurydice,
at
Orpheus followed
her to Hades, and charmed Persephone
into letting Eurydice go, on condition
that he did not look behind him until
he got her safely on the earth. Of course
he failed to
rejecting
all
the
fulfil
other
condition and,
women, he wandered
band of Thracians preaching his

own mysteries and those of Dionysus,
until he was torn to pieces by Thracian
Maenads, who were jealous for the honour of their sex. They cast his head into
the river Hebrus, and it sang 'Eurydice,
with
Eurydice' as
it
earth
in
way, bringing back the
this
spring, and Eurydice
must be
a deity
of the same type. Dionysus descended
through the bottomless Alcyonian lake

Argos by the spring of Lerna where
in
annual
were
mysteries
performed
at
nature of which Pausanias
the
night,
refuses to divulge.
The
lie
arrival of
Dionysus by sea may
behind the myth told in the hexameter
Hymn
circles.
Orpheus
Semele and conduct her to Olympus

under her Greek name Thyone, the
'possessed'. Persephone or Core, and in
one version also Pandora, rise from the
him and danced,
another explanation
like
10
and illustrated on a famous vase.

Dionysus was kidnapped by Etruscan
pirates (in a later version he took passage
with them for Naxos, where he had a
cult involving Ariadne),
unable to
persisted
tie
advice of the pious steersman.
Out
at
was wreathed in a
fruiting vine and the mast and oars were
twined in ivy. Ivy was much used in
sea suddenly the sail
Bacchic
rites,
probably
because
evergreen and preserves the
it
is
of the
life
vegetation spirit during the dead season.
The god became a

and made a
lion
deck,
amidships,
driving
on the
she-bear
the
sailors
fore-
appear
to
the
where they huddled round the
stern
pious steersman.
floated to the sea.
who
even when they were

him up and despite the
in their intention
The
lion seized their
asked, that everything he touched might
Georgics with the story
first
and they all jumped into the

sea and were turned into dolphins. But
Dionysus stopped the steersman from
turn to gold.
surviving author to bring in the romantic
following their example, revealed him-
who
nysus,
But
granted
like a
him
man who
the
boon he
swears an oath,
The
story of
Orpheus has
attracted
who
ends his
writers ever since Virgil,
motif of Aristaeus.
and
is
the
He probably
got
leader,
self to
him and made him rich. Presumbecame a Dionysiac mis-
from the Alexandrian scholars but

it might have a basis in a ritual sacrifice
of a virgin. Eurydice's sisters took their
ably he too
to ask that the gift be rescinded, a well
revenge by making
the well-known friendliness of dolphins,
known
die: he learnt
he was held to the
words, and
literal
when even
meaning of
the food he put
to his lips turned to gold he
wash
all
fairy tale motif.
his
was forced
He was
told to
in the sands of the river Pactolus,
the sands of
which turned
thus fulfilling a prophecy

infancy,
into his
to gold,
made
in his
when ants carried grains of corn

mouth while he was sleeping,
showing that he would be the

man on earth.
richest
Orpheus
The mysteries of Orpheus were another
which spread in Greece in
this
how
all
Aristaeus' bees
to get a
new swarm
from the decaying carcass of
a bullock,
a superstition (for the bees are really a
form of fly) shared by the ancient

Hebrews. The prohibition on looking
back is a folk-tale motif. Cronus in the
succession myth and Deucalion after the
both threw things over their
shoulders without looking back. The
flood
singing head
is
a similar motif.
The apotheosis of Dionysus
ecstatic cult
the hard times of the seventh century
onwards. They resembled the cult of
Dionysus too was said to have descended

into Hades to bring up his mother
sionary.
The
story
is
partly intended to explain
who
rescued the poet Arion in similar

circumstances (an example of a myth
being transferred to a historical personage). But chiefly it exhibits the manifest
power of
the god,
who
painter Exekias as a
in
sailing
is
shown by
huge bearded
the
figure
ship like a dolphin, with
two dolphins painted on its side fore

and aft, and a bird-beaked stern. This
is the early form in which the god is
depicted, full of that quality which the
Greeks never failed to attribute to their
gods, whatever the stories they told of
them, a quality that aroused in men
feelings of reverent worship.
63
The Erechthcum, as it was called by

Greek traveller Pausanias in the
the
second century ad, is the most recent

building on the Acropolis in Athens,
constructed during the Peloponnesian
war from about 420 bc. But its site
was the most sacred and oldest on the
Acropolis, where a number of very
ancient cults were sited, and this
accounts for
To
the
left,
its
odd
shape.
facing north, a normal
temple facade led into the ancient

shrine of Poseidon and Erechthcus,
also entered
from the door
to be seen
by the sacred olive of Athena, and

stairs leading from the porch
of the maidens. Here were the
marks of Poseidon's trident, and the
'sea' or brackish pool which he created
there. Here the cleft of the oracular
hero Erechtheus, struck by lightning.
from
64
was
left
open
to the
heaven and
protected from flooding by the porch

of the maidens. Outside, next to the
olive, was the tomb of the serpent
man Cecrops. Two other heroes also
had shrines in the temple further
east.
Then came
a wall, completely
cutting off a temple of Athena,

where the ancient wooden image of the
goddess was kept, perhaps removed
there from the older temple which
the Parthenon had succeeded in
all
but sanctity. This temple was entered

at a different level
from
normal
which was balanced on

which
can be seen above the door by
facade,
the west by the false fa(;ade

the olive.
The
a shrine of
Cecrops,
in the
olive itself stood in
one of the daughters of
who may
also be symbolised
Caryatids of the porch.
THE CHILDREN OF AEOLU
Cadmus, Aeolus had sons as

The stories about them
Unlike
over his wife and the kingdom.
Then
well as daughters.
sons avenge their father's death by
seem to contain saga, that is, genuinely

historical material however garbled and
ing their mother.
misplaced, as well as ritual elements.
tery,
the raw material for
number of primitive motifs
large
and suggest a modified patriarchal
recur,
This bald catalogue of incest, adul-
and matricide provides

most Greek tragwhich took their plots from
parricide
edies,
system. Genealogies are normally reck-
heroic mythology.
oned
centration
in the male line, but sons rarely
succeed fathers: they often marry their
them
more often sac-
brother's daughter, as if that gave

a better
title.
They
sometimes
rificed,
cauldron,
they
or
are
by
boiling
leave
in
country
the
and marry another king's daughter,

with whom, of course, they get the
kingdom.
kings often fear death
Conversely,
at the
hand of
their daughter's
son and
edness. In
many
of two completely incompatible social

structures.
The important children of Aeolus

are four sons
seem
and three daughters: the

be genealogical
The four sons
their daughter's hand,
but their daugh-
the right man.

Sometimes they prevent their daughter's
marriage, but she is impregnated by a
betrays
ter
god.
is
them
to
Then they expose
the child, but
the promised supplanter. Their actions
incestuous love of their
and
own
by an
daughter,
one hero actually fathered a

son in this way, at least keeping the
succession in the male line. Their wives
too join in the conspiracy against them,
at least
inviting
young men who
husbands to
kill
their
visit
to
fictions.
Athamas, Sisyphus,
Salmoneus and Cretheus, and the three
daughters Alcyone, Canace, and Calyce.
are
Athamas
it
miraculously preserved to return as
are often said to be motivated
cases they are simply
the consequence of the strong interaction
Sometimes they
ritual contests for
tragedians' con-
be explained only in terms of individual

psychology or of essential human wick-
rest
up
The
on such themes reflects the

tensions of Athenian social and family
Ufe. But the original stories are not to
take fruitless steps to avoid this fate.

set
kill-
their
host and take
Athamas, king of Orchomenus,

cenaean
site
on the Thessalian
My-
side of
Boeotia, seems to have practised rain
magic
like his ancestor
Deucalion. Atha-
mas married Nephele, whose name

means 'cloud' she may have been a fairy
like the Swan-maiden, whom Athamas
captured by stealing her clothes, though
such stories are told in Greek only of
sea nymphs like Thetis. At any rate she
:
Phrixus and the Golden Ram. The

type of the god or goddess
riding upon an animal is one that
may go back to a period when god
and animal were even more closely
artistic
identified. It recurs in a
number
of myths of heroes, such as Europa and

the bull and, as here, Phrixus on the
Golden Ram, and even perhaps
Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops'
cave. This late version in terracotta,
perhaps towards 435 BC, shows Phrixus
not riding but holding on to a ram
that appears to be swimming the
Hellespont. It may have been balanced
on the large wooden chest for which

it was designed (it is ten inches long)
by a figure of Helle on the ram, for
an earlier figure of her, shown seated
on
the
faces
ram
left.
like
Europa on her
Metropolitan
bull,
Museum
of Art, Rogers Fund, 191 2.
^ ^
'-^r
IT-
'^'î

is
evidence for her husband's concern
drought he proposed to sacrifice his son Phrixus on

Mount Laphystius but Zeus sent a golden
ram on which Phrixus made his escape
with rain-making. In
with
his sister Helle.
He
Delphi. The reconstructed columns
of the fourth century temple are seen

from above, looking south-east up
the valley to the pass.
reached Col-
end of the Black Sea,

where Aeetes was king. Helle fell off
on the way and the Hellespont is named
after her. But Phrixus sacrificed the
chis at the far
ram
whom
to Zeus of Escapes, to
Deucalion had sacrificed
and hung up
its fleece
same
in a sacred grove.
Athamas was about
Later in Thessaly,
to suffer the
also
after the flood,
fate
of
sacrifice
to
Zeus Laphystius when his grandson,

who had returned from Colchis, rescued
him. In consequence, the
eldest
male
of the line of Athamas and Phrixus had
some time been
for
if
liable
to
sacrifice
he entered the council chamber there,
an act by which he was presumably

deemed to have become king. It is
doubtful, however,
if
the sacrifice was
ever more than simulated in the time
of Herodotus,
This
who
reports the custom.
does not seem to be
sacrifice
Athamas was
part of the rain magic.

liable to
be sacrificed at the end of his
term, or
when he
emergency,
Golden
like
Bough.
lost his virility, or in
any sacred king in the
He was
sacrificing
his
son as his surrogate or substitute. The
golden ram
emblem of
seems to have been an

with which
sovereignty,
Phrixus was temporarily invested, and
not
'a
ram caught
in a thicket'
and sub-
stituted for him.
Later the sacrifice of Phrixus was

accounted for by the wiles of a wicked
step-mother.
ond wife Ino
/^7^.
Athamas took
as his
sec-
Cadmus.
By her he had two children, in whose
interests their mother wanted to be rid
of Phrixus and Helle. So she parched
the seedcorn and persuaded the oracle
the daughter of
(always the sign of a later version) to

require their sacrifice to cure the famine.
For
their part in rearing
Dionysus,
Athamas and Ino were driven mad and

killed their children: Melicertes was
boiled in a cauldron and then Ino
jumped into the sea with him. They
were worshipped, especially
as
^^'i,
at Corinth,
Leucothea, the White Goddess, and
the infant Palaemon, and are in fact a

mother-goddess and consort, the former
67

the winter, and during these 'halcyon
days' the sea remained calm.
The
lake
by which Dionysus entered Hades was

Alcyonian, and
called
have
therefore
the
story
reminiscences
may
of
the
chest that brought the child to land.
Pelias
Sisyphus
is
said,
in an obscure story,
and to have
to have hated Salmoneus,
been told that if he had children by

Salmoneus' daughter Tyro they would
avenge him. In
Tyro appears
fact.
as
married to the other brother, Cretheus.
She bore twins to
who assumed
god, Poseidon,
form of the river

Enipeus, for which she conceived a
passion. One of the sons, Pelias, avenged
the
on Cretheus' second
her
wife,
who
mistreated her (perhaps the second wife
was married under the

and probably on Cre-
in such cases
patriarchal rules)
theus as well, since Pelias inherited the
kingdom. He
is,
of course, represented
as a villainous usurper,
on the
of Hera.
altars
who killed Sidero

He was in turn
supplanted,
and indeed
boiling
in
cauldron,
sacrificed by
by Cretheus'
grandson, Jason.
Pelias
and
his brother
were exposed
herdsman
brood mares
in a chest, but saved by the

in charge of a troop of
when one
of them drew his attention
by kicking Pelias in the

Poseidon often appears in the form
of a stallion, just as Demeter, his original
consort, appears in that of a mare so it is
possible that Pelias was the divine twin
to the children
face.
Labour of Sisyphus. The same painter
who
depicted the capture of Silenus

on page 60 also drew this picture
of Sisyphus punished in the underworld.
Persephone holds four huge ears of
corn in one hand and two in the other.
Hades himself (the Greeks spoke

always of the house of Hades, never of
Hades as a place) is portrayed as a
white-haired old man with a staff.
and marked as such by his father. When

they were fully grown they returned
to lolcus, the city of Cretheus, where
they were recognised by the tokens of
identity
which they had worn when

It was then that
avenged his mother. But he
they were exposed.

Pelias
quarrelled with his mortal brother Neleus

identified with the nurse of
Dionysus,
perhaps because the child came from

the sea. Athamas killed the other child
and went into

Salmoneus
tised
exile in Thessaly.
also
rain-magic,
seems to have pracimitating Zeus by
dragging cauldrons behind his chariot

for thunder and throwing out torches
for lightning. So too his sister Alcyone
and her husband Ceyx called each other

Hera and Zeus. This identification - rather than impersonation - was required
of early kings. But the later Greeks
considered it blasphemous. Salmoneus
was blasted by real lightning, and Alcyone and Ceyx were turned into the sea
birds whose names they bear. The
halcyon was said to nest on the sea in
who went
off to Pylos.
There has obviously been some substitution and suppression in this part
of the story of the sons of Aeolus and
their families, but
many
it
none the less
exhibits
features of the pattern of inter-
acting forms of succession. Apart from

the
one
obscure
story,
the
Sisyphus has been completely
role
lost,
of
and

all
rolled
the Corin-
Such helmets are known

from the shaft graves excavated by
SchLiemann at Mycenae: so perhaps
Autolycus was a tomb-robber. But
Sisyphus outwitted him. When Autolycus stole his cattle and changed their
colour, Sisyphus marked their hooves,
and so recognised his own and got them
time there were few
back. This looks like a rationalised ver-
four sons to Poseidon, one of
The sons of
sion of the exploit of Hermes, Autolycus'
Aloeus, married his brother's daughter
and of the invention of branding
Iphimedia. But her children were sons
the other myths about
fairy-tale
him contain
motifs.
Sisyphus
Sisyphus, with the keenest eye for profit
of any man, lived
at
Corinth where his
tomb was, 'though even of

thians of his
own
who knew where
it
was'.
Aeolus were widely dispersed in Greece:

Salmoneus went to Elis, and it is likely
that the quarrel he or Cretheus
had with
was about the inheritance.

Such quarrels, especially between twin
tor Ormenides.
father,
Corinthians used Q, the original

form of the first letter of their town).
(the
Finally Sisyphus cheated
Sisyphus
brothers, are another recurrent motif in
and they too are probably

consequence of the social structure.
Death and
took him prisoner, so that nobody died

until Ares released him. Then Sisyphus
body unburied,
the stories,
told his wife to leave his
and persuaded Hades to let him return

to repair this impious omission, probably swearing some crafty oath which
is
Because of his reputation, Sisyphus

brought into association with two
other heroes of similar character, Auto-
'who surpassed other men in

thieving and the oath', and Odysseus,
whose mother was Autolycus' daughter
and whose real father was sometimes
lycus,
said to be Sisyphus.
One
of Autolycus'
was that of a boars' tusk helmet,

which he took from Eleon sonof Amynthefts
made Hades think he would

some future
once, instead of on
No
tale,
details are
return at
occasion.
preserved of this folk-
a kind of story generally alien to
the temper of
Greek mythology. But
is one of the great sinners whom

Odysseus saw punished in Hades, pushing up a hill a stone which continually
he
back to the bottom. This punish-
ment suggests the Titans under
Endymion
The other two daughters of Aeolus
belong rather to religion. Canace bore
whom,
of Poseidon, Otus and Ephialtes
from Corinth, 325-508
bc.
The winged horse Pegasus, on
the
obverse, though born from the

Gorgon's blood in the African desert,
was always at home in Corinth,
where Bellerophon, himself originally
Corinthian, caught it and bridled it

with the help of Athena. The
Corinthians put Pegasus and Athena
on their coinage, only bringing the
type up to date from time to time.
Athena's helmet, on the reverse, worn
a
who
on Ossa. Calyce was the

mother of Endymion, another of the
Handsome Hunters carried off by a
goddess. The Moon took him to Asia
and bore him fifty daughters. He sleeps
for ever eternally young in a cave on
Mount Latmus in Caria. Presumably,
like all such sleepers, he will awake one
day. But his tomb was also shown in the
stadium at Olympia in Elis, and he is
said to have made his sons hold chariot
piled Pelion
There is also
was admitted to Olympus,
but expelled and cast asleep for an
attempt on Hera: this is appropriate
behaviour for a mighty hunter.
races for the inheritance.
a story that he
.'V
Stater
their
mountains.
back to show the face and not
down
as in war, has the leather neckpiece
showing under it. The boar and the

letter P (the Greek R) are mint marks
dating the issue. The Q under Pegasus
stands for Corinth.
69
DNSTER=KILLE
no lack of monsters in very

whether in Minoan and
Mycenaean art or in mythology, in
which Typhon, the opponent of Zeus
There
is
early Greece,
in the
succession myth,
grandfather of
all
is
the
great-
monsters. This and
other conflicts with monsters have
all
stories;
there
then
for Acrisius
who went
Proetus,
Mycenaean
are
drove
settlements)
father-in-law lobates
pattern, but in an earlier version he
restored
Greek art is the seventh century,

when Gorgons (with or without Perseus),
and, but
Sphinxes, Sirens
commonly, Chimaeras abound

'orientalising' art of the time.
myths are
earlier
than this:
in
less
the
But the
the
two
great mortal monster-killers, Bellerophon
and Perseus, are already known in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. They involve
both Aeolids and Danaids, though the
this
pattern,
the mention of Lycia. There were a
Perseus was a descendant of Danaus
things', orders for his
of the
part in the fighting
much
Iliad,
of
it
against
the
Myrmidons under Patroclus. This might

reflect Mycenaean settlement there rather
than the
Greek migrations
later
to Asia
Minor.
twins,
phus.
He
Corinth, exiled for the
left
Proetus at Tiryns.
was
have been the work of
god: perhaps
the story was suppressed in the interests
of a genealogy in the male
when
line. Later,
grown, they fought for the

kingdom. The result was a draw, and
the two brothers were reconciled. This
was probably a trick, as in other similar
fully
and came to
was later recog-
brother,
his
god', Poseidon,
no story of their
begetting, which might be expected to
He
who
form
winged horse
Pegasus by Medusa, the mortal Gorgon.
Bellerophon was remarkable for his
beauty. The wife of Proetus, Antia in
Homer, later Sthenoboea, asked him
to
in his horse
also the father of the
lie
with her and,
accused
'May you
him
die,
ophon'. This
many
before
O
is
when he
Proetus,
Proetus, or
refused,
saying
kill Beller-
the motif of the virtu-
on a
spirit-destroying
own
death which
'baleful signs' are certainly a refer-
ence to writing, the power of which
impressed an
illiterate
encountered
it,
people
when
they
but they are hardly,
been suggested, the sole surviving
lobates
womb. But
is
tablet
recollection of the
Acrisius and Proetus, strove even in the

there
The
as has
Bellerophon
and gave
baleful signs, having graved
he was to show to the king of Lycia.
first
nised as 'being the noble offspring of a
The
to Lycia,
phically unlikely,
who
her husband.
Bellerophon himself.
him
folded
murder of
kill
rules of hospitaUty prevented

killing
Instead 'he sent
him
may
was, Proetus was convinced,
it
though the
him from
number of epic traditions about Lycia.

The Lycians play a large, but geogra-
by Acrisius, one of the twin grandsons

of Hypermnestra, the virtuous Danaid
did not
a deliberate rejection of that
is
killed his host.
As
in
Bellerophon was the grandson of Sisy-
genealogies will not synchronise.
have
rule at Argos.
is
in
Proetus
to Tiryns, while Acrisius continued to
type of hero and monster
Certainly the great period for monsters
regular succession pattern. Bellerophon's

refusal
The only unusual element

story, which falls into a regular
very early.
and
ous Joseph: but the wife is not originally

wanton, merely playing her part in a
married the king's daughter. But his
sometimes been derived from religious

ritual of the Near East, where the artistic
is
out
Lycia (where
to
made
Mycenaean Linear B.
number of fruitless
attempts to arrange Bellerophon's death.

First he sent
him
against the Chimaera,
monstrous goat with the head of a

lion and the tail of a snake. Bellerophon
killed her from the back of Pegasus,
the gift of his father Poseidon, on which
a
may have come from Greece.

For Pegasus is firmly located at Corinth,
where BeUorophon caught him and
Athena bridled him: the winged horse
is the badge of the coins of Corinth.
Then Bellerophon was sent on two
expeditions, one against the Solymians
and one against the Amazons. On the
way back from the latter he was ambushed
indeed he
THE MONSTER-KILLERS
'Melian relief of Bellerophon
and the Chimaera. It was made in the

middle of the fifth century bc either
as decoration for a chest or for
suspension on the wall as a decoration.

It has been restored from other
examples of the same type.
Bellerophon's body and the horse's
front legs were missing, but the

restorations can be regarded as certain.
Bellerophon's posture, which suggests

Mithras killing the bull, is made
necessary by the goat's head which
has turned an ordinary lioness into the
monster, with the addition of a snake's
head at the end of her tail. The
type of horse and rider was adapted

for other mythological subjects, such
as Perseus and the Gorgon and Helle
on
the ram. British
Museum.
LEFT
Danae and the Shower of Gold.

In the fifth century some Attic vase
painters illustrated the more human
aspects of the legend of Perseus,
perhaps reflecting Attic drama. Danae
is preparing for bed, untying one
of the scarves that hold her hair,
when she is surprised by the descent

of the gold. The pose suggests the earth
by the rain.
Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.
fertilised
ABOVE
Obverse of four drachma piece from
Athens, 530-520 Bc. When the
Athenians began their commercial
expansion about 5 20 bc, they introduced
the famous coinage with the head of
Athena and the owl that was known

over the Greek world as 'Attic
The earlier and purely local
all
owls'.
coinage used other symbols, such as

this gorgon's head, which
existed as a charm long before it was
attached to the Gorgon. In this case
it probably suggests the aegis of
Athena
A very fierce and convincing Chimacra

appears on an amphora by the Swing
painter in the second half of the
sixth century. It is nearly as tall as
a
man, and
a wild goat rears out
of
its back, so that it can attack two men

There is, however, no trace
of the snake on its tail. The type of
Bellerophon and the Chimaera was well
established by this time, and though
Chimaeras appear alone, there is no
other picture of a Chimaera hunt
like this. The figure on the right with
a club has been identified as Heracles,
and the other on the left, with some
kind of bent weapon, hardly a sword,
at once.
as his
companion
lolaus.
There
is
indeed a nude Heracles without

attributes on the other side of the vase
but no surviving legend associates
Heracles with the Chimaera.
British
7i
Museum.
by a picked band of Lycians: none of

them returned home, for Bellerophon
slew the lot. After this genuine saga of
Lycian war, which has been assimilated
to the pattern of exploits
king's
supplanter
is
by which the
selected,
Bellero-
phon married the king's daughter and

became king of Lycia. But he came to
bad end:
he returned to Greece
and carried off Sthenoboea, whom he
a
first
Bellerophon's daughter lay with Zeus
and bore Sarpedon, for whose death

at Troy Zeus 'poured bloody drops of
rain to the earth honouring his dear
son, whom Patroclus was going to
The twin brothers, Sleep and
kill'.
Death, carried his body back to Lycia
for
embalming and
mother died
burial.
don's
at
the
But Sarpehands of
Artemis, probably a piece of
ritual sur-
from the back of Pegasus; then he tried to ride up to heaven,

an impiety for which he was thrown off
Pegasus and lamed when he fell to earth.
After that he wandered about as an
outcast, although to go to heaven and
dine with the gods was originally the
This was the
prerogative of a divine king.
hands of Perseus, the 'Destroyer', per-
cast into the sea
vival, just as
rophon
it
seems
likely that Belle-
originally died at the hands of
his supplanter
Sarpedon.
Perseus
fate also
of Acrisius at the
.41
in
jj-
,T
V^'Mw
(.'.^'---t;-
THE MONSTER-KILLERS
the
Perseus
Gorgon Medusa was
monster to be slain. She had a horrible

head with two tusks and a protruding
tongue, and snakes for hair. Yet Poseidon had loved her, and she bore him
two children, the winged horse Pegasus
and the giant Chrysaor. This and her
name, which means 'ruler', suggest that
she was once the earth-mother in the
form of a horse from a version of the
succession myth in which Poseidon was
the chief god.
Gorgon
Perseus killed the
in fairy-
manner with the help of marvellous
tale
who
Marsyas,
musical
against lyre, and

was winning until Apollo reversed the
lyre and continued playing, a trick
which Marsyas could not do with the
pipes. Whereupon Apollo flayed Marsyas alive, cutting off
a knife, a fate
and for deciding against Apollo was

punished with ass's ears, which he tried
to conceal under his Phrygian cap. He
digging
called
cibisis into which he put the head but

which may originally have been a neverfailing magic source of supplies for the
journey; a polished shield, in which to
Gorgon without being turned
see the
to
and a special weapon, the

half sword, half sickle, which
stone;
harpe,
revealed their existence only to his barber,
who
the
Gorgon and her
sisters
who were
usually located in the African
desert.
the
of the
by
secret
a hole in the earth in a
secluded
Returning from killing the Gorgon,

was involved in yet another
supplanter story to get himself a bride.
now
Jaffa,
king of
boasted that she was
than the daughters
of Nereus,
which probably means that she impersonated or was identified with a sea
goddess. Poseidon punished this blas-
There they were guarded by the three

aged sisters, who shared a single eye.
phemy by sending
Perseus stole the eye, and thus either
daughter, Andromeda, by turning
them
into letting him pass and showing him
the way. Thus he was enabled to come
upon the Gorgon asleep.
stone with the Gorgon's head (a story
evaded the
sisters
or blackmailed
Various legends are attached to the
Many of them
who wore the Gorgon's
death of the Gorgon.
concern Athena,
head on her goatskin aegis (an early
form of
Gorgon's head
shield: the
favourite device
on
is
hoplite shields) as
war goddess. Medusa's children

have sprung from her dying
body, probably, like the Furies and
Uranus, from her spilt blood. Chrysaor,
who was named after the golden sword
befits a
were
his
said to
father
left
as
token
of paternity,
himself fathered the three-bodied giant
Geryon whom Heracles killed.

Athena invented the pipes to
which
Perseus
a sea
monster, from
delivered
the
king's
it
to
probably told to explain an off-shore

rock).
He
her father's
marry
had to save her from

brother, who wanted to
also
Then Perseus returned
to
Seriphus
and turned Polydectes and his court into

a stone circle. His action is variously
justified: either he saved his mother
whom the king was trying to starve to
death at the altar where she had taken
refuge (it was no sacrilege to deny a
suppliant food) or he was asked to
bring his contribution to a banquet and
teased into taking out the Gorgon's
head.
When
Perseus returned with his
mother and bride to Argos, Acrisius

fled to Larissa in Thessaly, where Perseus visited him, only to cause his death
dying hiss of the snakes in the

Gorgon's hair. But when she saw how
death suggests a form of contest, to
by an unlucky
cast of the discus. This
her cheeks were distended in playing
decide the supplanter, which was
them, she cast them away. The aban-
in order that the blood guilt
doned pipes were picked up by
upon an inanimate
a satyr.
On
Perseus and the Gorgon.
wine
Amasis,
who has signed the jug on the left,
produced one of the most fearful
gorgons ever depicted,
entirely justifying
Perseus' averted gaze, as he stabs her
mouth. For her mask is almost

lionlike, with a huge white gash of a
mouth and four tusks as well as the
tongue protruding. Her matted locks
suggest a mane or a beard and four
in the
snakes curve decoratively but

threateningly from her head, while
two larger ones are entwined in her belt.
To the right a bearded Hermes assists,

perhaps subduing the monster with
his
wand
to assist the
young and
Museum.
beardless Perseus. British
her.
imitate
the
ABOVE
jug, the great painter
wife of Cepheus,
Cassiopeia,
Joppa,
to
of
Perseus
fairer
way
burden
hole broadcast the secret.
myth.
his
tried to relieve himself
spot, into which he whispered the secret.

But the reeds which grew up from the
possibly suggests the original succession
Thus equipped, he made
some
musical contest between Pan and Apollo,
made him
wallet
reflect
Midas was the judge of a similar
ritual.
intolerable
with
his skin
all
which might
primitive and barbaric Asian sacrificial
magic gifts from the gods or from some

nymphs. They comprised winged sandals
from Hermes; the cap of Hades, which
invisible;
challenged Apollo to a
pipes
duel,
object.
'fixed'
might
fall
LEFT
Perseus slaying the Gorgon.
second sixth century temple
(temple C)
still
The
at Selinus
survives and the
metopes have been excavated in

fragments from it. They are in a far
heavier style than those of the earlier
temple, one of which showed Europa
and the Bull (page 5;), and ail the
characters are
It is
shown
full face.
for this reason
and not to avoid being turned

that Perseus
is
not looking
to stone,
at the
Gorgon, whose head is in the form

of the old gorgon mask. He kills her
with a simple sword, but is shown
with the winged boots of Hermes.
The goddess behind him, who may
have worn the aegis, is Athena.
Medusa holds an unwinged Pegasus,
her child by Poseidon who presumably
visited her in the form of a stallion.
Museo Nazionale, Palermo.
THE MONSTER-KILLERS
The Calydonian Boar
hunt. This
Frangois vase which in
many
band cup signed

by two potters or potter and painter,
Archicles and Glaucytes, which is
shown in black and white on page '107.
Two of the most popular exploits
ways may have been its model.

To the right are Meleager with his
bitch Thcro, Peleus (who killed his
host Eurytion by mistake), Melanion
and Cimon with a dog Podargos
in archaic art, about 540 bc, are
(swift-foot).
is
the other side of the
shown on
and the
Minotaur on the other side and the
Calydonian Boar hunt on the side
shown. All the characters and their
dogs are labelled, but there is no sign
the vase: Theseus
of Atalanta as there
is
on
the earlier
On the other side are

Castor and Pollux, Mopsus the seer, and
Jason and Idasus (perhaps = Idas)
with the dogs Gorgus and Charon.
The names show
that the literary
tradition of the hunt as a
exploit
communal
was well known. The white
dog on top of
tall
as a
man,
the boar, which

appropriately
is
as
is
called Leucius, 'Whitey'. The mangled

remains of Podes lie below.
REAT exploit:
Bellerophon and Perseus performed individual exploits and became the found-
games of Oedipus, which belong to a

Theban cycle which culminated in the
and in
Mycenae. For Perseus did not take up
the inheritance of Acrisius in Argos,
but exchanged kingdoms with Megapenthes, the heir of Proetus at Tiryns.
failure of the Seven against Thebes

and the success of their sons, the Epigoni, 'those born after'.
The Odyssey was conceived as a later
sequel to the I/iad, and succeeds in
From
dealing incidentally with the fates of
ers of ruling dynasties, in Lycia
there he
is
Mycenae. Various
have founded
said to
stories
were told to
account for the name, the ending of
which
pre-Greek. Either the cap
is
off his scabbard, or
fell
he picked a mush-
room, thus discovering a spring. The

Greek for both objects is myces. The
exchange of kingdoms suggests the dual
kingship and picks up the rivalry of
Acrisius and Proetus.
all
heroes
the
who
fought
at
exploits
of the generations after
Trojan war
is
the culminating episode
of Greek mythology. But the exploits

of the Calydonian Boar hunt and the
Voyage of
the Argonauts are fitted
on
to the heroic genealogies especially of
the children of Aeolus.
Odysseus. But the story of his wanderthough very largely made up of
ings,
and folk tales, seems

motifs from
also to have drawn on the last of these
lost epics, which told the tale of the
Argo and Jason's quest for the Golden
fairy
Fleece.
These communal enterprises may be

a literary device to group the
stories of a number of heroes around a
exploits
of the sack of Thebes was that Thebans

play little part in the siege of Troy. The
in the course of narrating that of
Troy
partly
Communal
The
almost
on Thebes. One consequence
the attacks
But they may
central theme.
also reflect
The
Calydon
in
Aetolia
claimed descent from Aeolus by
Endym-
dynasty
ion.
It
has
at
its
share
of the sons of
Evenus was son of Ares, and

therefore the owner of (probably maneating) mares with which he ran chariot
gods:
races against the suitors of his daughter
When
Marpessa.
their skulls to his
they
lost
house
he
walls.
nailed
He was
something of the political organisation

of Greece under the Mycenaeans, who
defeated by the divine one of a pair of
the
heroes of one generation, in addition
built their cities at points of strategic
Idas
importance, linked them with
him
Bellerophon and Perseus are more

quently co-operative.
to their personal mythology, are
together
brought
some great communal

which seems, in most cases,
for
enterprise
to have
fre-
number of
formed the material of an epic
poem. The I/iad, describing essentially,

though in its own highly sophisticated
literary
war,
is
way, the history of the Trojan

the only one of these epics
which
has survived.
It
also
refers
to
Meleager,
chief
hero of the Calydonian Boar hunt, and
makes
one reference to
the
funeral
the
of
rudiments
system,
and
fortified
against
perhaps,
at least
subject
winged chariot with which he
beat Evenus, and carried off his daughter.
them not
The
only,
each other but also

population.
these sagas are connected with
race, or the pursuit, ended at a river,

which Idas could presumably cross in
his winged chariot. In disgust Evenus
killed his horses and threw himself
and them into the river which was
given his name.
This variant of the myth of the supplanter
related).
The Theban
communications
For all
Mycenaean cities, Thebes, Orchomenus and
the port lolcus, Argos and Mycenae
(together with Troy which is culturally
against
Spartan twins, Idas, brother of Lynceus.

was son of Poseidon, who gave
stories stand apart
from
the rest, though Argives took part in
is
clearly based
of chariot
race
and
on
a local ritual
sacrifice,
which
recurs in the story of Pelops and
lies
behind some of the Olympic games. But
primitive
wine-god. But the daughter
further complicated,
Deianeira
drove
the story of Idas
is
chariot
as
may
in
war-
ing this monster, though at some cost

to themselves, but a quarrel arose over
some
versions have been Ares, who was also
the spoils. Artemis saw to
Zeus separated them and allowed Marpessa to choose the one she wanted.
She chose Idas, for she feared that Apollo
would desert her in her old age. In one
have been the father of Oeneus'

son Meleager. Meleager led the heroes
in the Calydonian Boar hunt, as a result
these great
of which he himself met his
lanta, a virgin huntress
version Apollo begot a son on Marpessa
Artemis was angry with Oeneus because he had failed to sacrifice to her the
first-fruits of his vine-yard. This is the
motif of the neglected fairy for he had
sacrificed to the other gods. But some
because he then
fell in
with Apollo, and
fought him for the hand of Marpessa.
to supplant Evenus.
The cousin of Evenus

line
in the male
was Oeneus, 'wine man',
have been the
first
said to
to receive the vine
from Dionysus. He got it, and his

nickname, by abandoning his wife for
Dionysus to beget a daughter, a version
which suggests that he started as a
maiden, and so her father

said to
fate.
vine-yard ritual
may
lie
behind the story.
huge boar which ravaged the

land, especially, no doubt, the vines.
The combined heroes succeeded in killShe sent
whole enterprise
no good
The
to
(like
communal
all
it
the
exploits)
that the
rest
of
brought
any of those engaged in
it.
quarrel in fact arose over Ata-
who
is
obviously
form of Artemis and as such needed

for the Boar hunt. In her story, elements
from the myths of Artemis and her
nymphs are mixed with others taken
from those of the sons of gods. Thus
she was exposed by her father, who
wanted a son, but was suckled by a bear,
Artemis' animal. She made her suitors
run a foot race for her hand, and put
a
THE GREAT EXPLOITS

Jason and the snake. This cup by
the great painter Douris is perhaps a
little earlier than the vase depicting
the Golden Fleece, but it attests
Athenian interest in the myth in the
early fifth century.
Both vases show
Jason under the protection of Athena,

but this one, in which Jason is
identified by name, brings out some
of the ritual implications of the myth.
For if Jason was swallowed and
regorged by the snake it suggests
that his quest was, as befits a
whose name
is
man
'Healer', for
immortality, and that he, like

Pelias, died and was rejuvenated.
Vases, even if they are derived from
drama, often depict earlier versions
of a myth than are preserved in the
literary tradition.
Etrusco, Vatican.
Museo Gregoriano
them to death if they lost, but was

punished for the eventual loss of her
virginity by being turned into a lion.
Like Callisto, she is said to have violated
a
which seem to derive from the
who
Lycaeus. Those
entered
it
shadows and were hunted to
lost their
death or exile as 'stags' like Actaeon.
One
of the two alternative genealogies
emer-
father, to save the city in a grave
gency.
Many
sanctuary of Zeus, perhaps that on
Mount
sacrifice
of a son, probably as a surrogate for his
of the heroes
who were present
Calydonian Boar hunt also appear

as Argonauts. Jason, their leader, is the
at the
grandson of Cretheus in the male line,

and the Quest for the Golden Fleece is
of Atalanta made her Arcadian, the other
the
a Boeotian descendant of Aeolus.
selected. Like Perseus,
The famous golden apples with

which Melanion prevented Atalanta
from overtaking him are a fairy tale
motif, like the magic objects thrown out
in the 'flight from the enchanter' to
become impenetrable thickets and mountains. They have become apples, and the
gift of Aphrodite, because an apple was
into going for
the traditional love gift of the Greeks.
language of birds and animals for
They have
an oak was
really
nothing to do with the
by which the supplanter
test
it:
he would destroy an enemy, and Jason

answered, 'by sending him for the
Fleece'.
Melampus
Melampus, Jason's cousin,
felled,
son was called Parthenopaeus,

'unmarried woman's child', and the
they cleaned
was sometimes
Ares
said to be
The quarrel over the spoils of the

Calydonian Boar was caused by Meleathe
love for Atalanta.
first
Atalanta was
to hit the boar, but Meleager
killed it. So he was awarded the skin,

which he gave to Atalanta. His mother's
brothers (who are always important in
societies organised on matrilinear principles) objected, and claimed it by family
right. In the ensuing war Meleager
killed them, and his mother cursed him,
so that he withdrew from the fighting
and locked himself into his chamber
He
with his wife.
refused to
despite the pleas of his father
was about
until the city
when he
come
out,
and mother,
the cost of his
own
city,
presumably
mother did more than merely

She prayed for the death
of her son, a prayer which the Fury
heard. She actually caused his death by
putting back on to the fire the brand
in which the 'external soul' of Meleager
was lodged, and which she had taken
from the fire when he was seven days
old. Meleager was in fact put to death
his
refusing
to
accept the
matrilinear descent,
as told in the Iliad,
used
this
knowledge to get
The
daughter
was the cattle

of Phylacus, which were guarded by a
wonderful hound which nothing could
escape.
bride-price
Melampus
let
himself be caught
and put into prison. There he heard

the worms saying that they would
gnaw through the beam the next night,
and established his reputation by asking
for
new cell. Impressed, Phylacus

how to cure the impotence of his
asked
son,
which had been magically caused
when he put
a gelding knife in a sacred
oak, as a bird told Melampus.
caused.
As
his reward,
The
wound
of that knife cured the
it
rust
had
Melampus got
the oxen, and his brother his bride.
though
claims
his
Admetus
at
life.
curse him.
for
and in gratitude
to be sacked,
yielded to the pleas of his wife
and delivered the

For
He
it,
out his ears with their
his brother Bias a bride, the
of Neleus.
or Meleager.
ger's
tongues.
the
when
he saved the young
snakes that lived in
father
learnt
:
Hesperides. Despite her marriage, Atalanta's
is
Jason is tricked
Pelias asked him how
of
story,
contains elements
Admetus was another cousin of Jason.

Apollo served him as cowherd, and made
cows drop twins. This special
was explained as Apollo's
penance for killing the Cyclops who
made the thunderbolt with which Zeus
all
his
relationship
killed
Asclepius for raising the dead.
This deed had offended Hades and made

men immortal like gods. Asclepius was
woman, Corhim false with
Apollo's son by a mortal

onis,
who
later
played
another mortal. This story, like that of

Marpessa, may reflect the theory that
^.ki.c:u.>i:w5
^'ii'^'dÂ'
THE GREAT EXPLOITS
LEFT
Caeneus
slain
by the Centaurs.
number of vase
the name of the
painters
great Thasian painter

Polygnotus, the friend of Sophocles
famous for his painting of the sack
of Troy. All of them may have applied
his innovations to vase painting,
as in this vase
of about 440 bc. The
invincible Caeneus disappears into
two
ground
the lower frame of the painting as
Centaurs
hammer him
into the
way to destroy him.

has a pole, the other uses a skin
as the only
One
in the old
way
as a shield, while
he
prepares to use a rock. Caeneus is a

hoplite with a very deep shield and
using his secondary armament,
the sword. Musees Royaux d'Art
et d'Histoire, Brussels.
ABOVE
The earliest mosaic
pavements are found in Greece
from 400 BC made from natural pebbles.
But the developed art is Hellenistic
and it became extremely popular among
the Romans. In the fourth century ad
hunting scenes were especially liked,
and Atalanta was portrayed as the type
Atalanta.
borrowed
of the huntress. Her quarry in this

mosaic was not the Calydonian Boar
but a lion, now lost, and she was
balanced by Meleager hunting
a leopard. At the other end of a
large
is
room
in a villa at Halicarnassus
was a mosaic of the hunt of Dido

and Aeneas. This combination of
Greek and Roman mythological motifs,
and of eroticism and hunting is
notable. British
Museum.
THE GREAT EXPLOITS
one twin had
a divine
and the
father
other a mortal one. But Apollo killed
and
Coronis,
Hermes
from her womb on
he
either
snatched the child
or
But he already bore the mark of which

Pehas had been warned to beware. He
was the 'single-sandalled man'. This was
appear as Argonauts,
in fact particularly an Aetolian custom,
despite their extremely primitive origins,
when
the Centaurs are in the heroic tradition.
designed to give a better foothold
the pyre.
This legend assimilates the birth of

Asclepius to that of Dionysus. But the
Epidaurians,
who had a
cult of Asclepius
mud. But Jason
fighting in
have
woman
old
when
lost the sandal
across
is
ferrying an
re-
Pirithous, however,
just as Jason is
educated by the immortal Chiron. For
On
said to
stream. She
Both Caeneus and
voyage the Argonauts met
their
with a number of adventures, which, like

all
Greek mythology, contain elements
Some may be genuine
involving 'incubation', sleeping in the
vealed herself as Hera and promised her
of different kinds.
temple to learn the cure by a dream,
help, a fairy-tale motif. Jason's absence
traditions
accounted for by the story that he

had been entrusted to Chiron the Centaur for his education and safe custody,
others are there to enable the Helpers
told a typical story of exposure,
mountain
on
and feeding by
goats. Various men were listed as having
been raised from the dead by Asclepius.
Some of them may have been originally
'dying
called Nipple,
whose
gods'
stories
included
is
a tale told of
many
hills,
lustful
and
easily
the
in-
resurrection, like Lycurgus the surrogate
flamed with wine, relations of the La-
of Dionysus.
piths,
Apollo
won
for
Admetus
Alcestis, daughter of Pelias,
ing
for
him
the
his bride,
by perform-
required
exploit
of
yoking a lion and a boar to a chariot.

But Admetus was doomed to an early
death, and found the marriage chamber
full of snakes sent by Artemis. Apollo
made the Fates drunk, and extracted

from them the concession that Admetus
might live if any could be found to die
for him. Only his wife would do so but
Persephone sent her up to earth again.
:
Euripides introduces Heracles to wrestle
with Death for the
of Alcestis, but
life
in the original story can be seen the
sacred king, with
whom
the fertility of the realm,
bound up
and whose wife
is
impersonates the Girl and returns from

the underworld in the spring.
Pirithous was king of the Lapiths, but
seems himself to be a very primitive
one of those invited to Zeus' table, despite having

murdered his wife's father by making
him fall into a pit of burning coals when
he came for the promised bride-price.
Zeus purified him from this murder,
which was probably originally a sacrifice.
Ixion repaid the kindness by an
attempt on Hera, which was foiled when
Zeus made a duplicate of her in cloud,
upon which Ixion begot the first Centaur. Ixion's action was regarded as
impiety and he was punished in Hades
by being bound to a wheel, flaming
divine king. For he
Admetus appears as one of Jason's

Argonauts: Bias and Melampus do not,
though the latter possesses a special
skill. For though the saga of the Argonauts may contain some recollections of
real voyages of exploration, it also has
many folk-tale motifs, one of which is a
crew of Helpers, the special talents of
each of whom must originally have been
required. The Quest itself is such a
is
the
emblem of
and not the
fleece
in
the Colchians collected gold-dust
Jason arrived
at the
sov-
which
from
court of Pelias
as a stranger, as the supplanter often
is.
minating in an orgy such as doubtless

took place when the Argonauts landed.
The myth provided
a historical expla-
nation for the ceremony.
A
story
ceremony
similar
lies
behind the
of Hylas, the boy favourite of
He was
Heracles.
carried off by water
nymphs and
vainly sought by Heracles,
who
"Hylas" o'er the

followed in
'cried
hills',
dition in order that this episode might
form of a horse, out of a daughter
Mysia.
annually
Heracles was only attached to the expeexplain the ritual.
No
other use
made
is
of Oceanus. Behind both these myths
of his special qualities. Whereas Pollux,
lie a ritual in which a

god could assume the form of a horse.
The war of the Lapiths and Centaurs
originated at the wedding of Pirithous,
when the Centaurs got at the wine and
the boxer, defeated a savage king
there seems to
tried
to
carry off the
women.
In the
his
is
ceremony of mourning on Lemnos, durall fires were put out for nine
days and no ship might land. It was
presumably part of a fertility cult, culing which
given a different parentage, by Cronus,
in antiquity.
ereignty,
object
this insult their
custom
a river, a rationalisation already current
its
mainland Thrace. For
wives killed them. There was an annual
which his wife's father died.

But Chiron, the one good Centaur, was
and impious Caeneus was battered into the ground by

the Centaurs. Caeneus had been a woman. Poseidon
raped her, and then
turned her into an invulnerable man to
prevent anybody from following his
example. Caeneus' impiety was shown
by his refusal to worship anything but
motif:
first
Lemnos, always important

because it is on the island-hopping route
to the Dardanelles. Here they found
only women who, 'because they did
not honour Aphrodite', had been afflicted with a bad smell, which drove
their husbands to fetch women from
like the pit in
in the
Jason and the Argonauts
whose enemies they were. They

off^spring of Ixion, whose son
were the
who
The
to display their special skills.
stop was at
heroes.
The Centaurs were wild men of

Thessalian
from voyages of exploration;

others are based on ritual, and yet
fight the invulnerable
own
spear stuck into the ground.
Here, as in the myth of Ixion, there seems

to be
some primitive
ritual.
challenged
all
comers to
who
a fight, a ritual
contest perhaps originally held in Greece.
Zetes and Calais, winged
Similarly
sons of the North wind, chased away the
who were
Harpies
persecuting the blind
Phineus. In gratitude, he showed the
Argonauts the way to Colchis. Phineus

plays the role taken in the story of Per-
seus by the aged sisters. There are

sides to the Harpies,
like the
heads.
ghosts
are
who
Sirens as birds with
They
who
also
are
many
are represented
women's
snatching winds,
or
carry off the living, but they
like
the
Gorgons, and
like
Medusa they bear wind-swift horses

Poseidon.
to
Delphi perhaps owed
On
divide and Oedipus killed his father,
large archaic temple.
as a sacred shrine to the landscape.
and south-west down
The
The
to the same plan a fourth century

temple was built in 320 bc after the
its
reputation
stream and a spring descend in a

cleft between the Phaedriades Rocks,
with Parnassus rising behind them.
The cleft joins a narrow but
remarkably
east
up
which leads
where the roads
fertile valley
to the pass
to the sea.
looks south.
precinct was walled in the middle
of the sixth century bc, when a large
polygonal wall was built, partly
destroying the earlier sanctuary of
Gaia, the earth, in order to support a
sacred
site
this site
one had collapsed in 373.

reconstructed columns of
last temple are shown, looking
earlier
The
this
and
six
south to the
valley
hills
across the
which hides the
sea.
THE GREAT EXPLOITS
The
blindness of Phineus
is
variously
explained. In the original version
it
was
caused by the sun, either because Phineus

preferred long
to sight, or because
life
had already revealed the way to
he
Colchis
Phrixus.
to
This
suggests
version in which Phrixus was not the
who
man
took the Golden Fleece to Colchis,
man who brought it back from

and Phineus was the guardian of
brought
contact
into
with
many
as
other myths as possible.
On
his return, Jason dealt with

by boiling him in a cauldron, as
Ino had done to Melicertes, who became a god. Pelias was persuaded that
Pelias
Medea would
rejuvenate him, as
she
did an old ram, and his daughters ac-
performed
removing
but the
tually
there,
blood-guilt from Jason. This form of
the secret
home of
The way
there
this task, thus
sacrifice
of the divine king, which
was further guarded by

the Clashing Rocks, which even destroyed one of the doves which brought
what
clearly
ambrosia to Zeus.
a ram, the
The motif of
how
the child of the sun.
the doves
is
also used
Argo passed through

dove which
brought them together and following
to explain
the
these rocks, by sending out a
it
through
as the rocks
rebounded. The
it
is,
is
seems to have been
by those whose god (Zeus
that preferred
or Hermes) could appear in the form of
emblem of
sovereignty.
It
recurs in the history of the house of
Atreus.
The rejuvenation motif shows
ABOVE
that,
Only two Greek vases
was followed by
the story of Jason and the Golden

Fleece. The vase painted by the Orchard
'resurrection',
who were
as
of
from the
doves suggest an original Quest for the
those heroes
Water of
Life,
which kept the gods
dead by Asclepius. The magic herbs
immortal.
The rocks have sometimes
used by Medea suggest the Herb of
been identified
as icebergs.
After arriving at Colchis, Jason had
perform traditional exploits to win

king's daughter and the Golden
Fleece. The wizard's daughter, Medea,
herself a witch, fell in love with him
and helped him to yoke the fire-breathing
bulls, sow the Dragon's teeth, and destroy the armed men who sprang up.
Then she charmed the snake which
guarded the Fleece, helping Jason to
escape by a gruesome variant of the
Flight from the Enchanter. For what
she threw in the path of her father were
chopped up pieces of her brother Apsyrto
the
tus,
in
who may
have started
some fertility
The required
as the victim
The
returned
this
the surface.
Pelias was succeeded by his son,
whereupon Jason and Medea went to
Corinth, where Jason acquired another
bride in the
king's
was varied to accommodate
One
the river Phasis east from
on which they turned
her children, and fled to Athens in a

chariot
fell
city,
and the Corinthians perhaps
Jason with the hero of a local

An annual ceremony mourned
identified
ritual.
the slain children, and seven boys and
seven
(the
girls
in
black with shorn hair
Greek mark of mourning,
a sanctuary, a ritual
way
they were
form of
which suggests the
story of the Athenian victims sent to
such fairy brides,
the
self-punitive activity) spent the year in
them north and west,

by the rivers Danube and Po, the old
On
the stern
Corinth was an early and important
Crete
routes.
when
upon him while he was
asleep.
naval
illustrate
may have
been inspired by a play, possibly
by Aeschylus, since it is parodied
in another vase which shows a satyr
playing the role of Jason under the
protection of Dionysus. This vase too
has a slightly comic appearance as
a tiny Jason reaches up to seize the
Fleece from under the head of the
snake which surrounds the tree.
The cloaked figure with his hand on
the stern of the Argo must, from
his size, be another deity, perhaps the
river Phasis which is going to give
the ship a good shove off to help
Jason escape. The female head might
be the speaking bough from Dodona
built into the Argo where it could
address the rowers. Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane
Dick Fund, 1934.
painter, about 470-460 BC,
drawn by winged snakes. Jason
south to the Nile, and back by Libya,

colonised in the seventh century. Another route took
But he
her to death in a magic garment, killed
of the Argo
Colchis to Ocean,
amber
daughter.
never enjoyed her, for Medea burned
exploits are paralleled
increasing geographical knowledge.
way was up
The myth of Jason suggests that

Quest may not have been as beneficent and disinterested as it appears on
father.
died at Corinth, killed
route by which the Argonauts
raised
Life found in the epic of Gilgamesh

and in other Greek myths. Like the
Water of Life this is often the object of
a Quest to save the life of the Princess'
cult.
and perhaps derived from other stories.

Apollo yoked a lion and a boar to win
Pelias' daughter for Admetus, and heroes
are always dealing with monstrous bulls,
lions and boars. The sown men come
from the Theban legend.
Jason seizing the Golden Fleece.
as in the case of Melicertes, the sacrifice
for
the
Minotaur.
Medea may
have been originally the goddess there:

like
Thetis,
eventually desert their husbands in
mythology.
always
Greek
Man and Centaur. The bronze statuette,

only four-and-half inches high,
is one of the earliest Greek metal
statuettes surviving. It was probably
dedicated at a shrine perhaps as
early as the beginning of the eighth
century BC, but there is no record
of where it was found. The Centaur
is
shown
in the early style, a
man
from whose back a horse's body

emerges. The encounter is probably
hostile rather than friendly, as there
on the Centaur's body of the

end of what seems to have been a
sword in the man's right hand.
An anonymous Lapith and Centaur
seem the most likely identifications.
But the encounter could be given
are traces
a friendly interpretation, as in vases
of Chiron receiving the infant Jason.

Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ABOVE
The Parthenon was
BELOW
Athens
the 440s BC on the
built at
under Pericles in
site of an earlier temple destroyed
by the Persians. The Athenians used
some of the money paid as tribute
by the Greek islands for defence
against the Persians, and deliberately
constructed on the Acropolis
monumental display of the power
of Athens that had kept the Persians
out of the Aegean. The western
fa9ade of the Parthenon, shown here,
was that seen from the entrance porch.
a
The sculptures on the pediment

showed the conflict of Athena and
Poseidon for the land of Attica,
but only the figures of Cecrops
and one of his daughters are left on
the temple. The metopes below,
which
are
still
battle of the
in place,
showed
the
Athenians and Amazons.
The processional way from
the entrance
round to the eastern end of

the Parthenon, from which the shrine
was entered which housed the
huge gold and ivory statue of Athena.
led
Agrigento, the ancient Acragas, was
founded early in the sixth

century from Gela to extend Greek
control westwards on the south coast
of Sicily. After the defeat of the
Carthaginians in 480 BC an aggressive
democracy turned the acropolis into
a monumental display of power,
with a huge temple of Zeus
flanked by five temples along the city
wall. Of these. Temple F, seen here
from the north-east, is contemporary

with the Parthenon but older in style.
One
After the death of Cadmus, a second
foundation story
is
told of Thebes, in-
volving the divine twins
have
to
the
are
who seems
children of Antiope,
inally
Amphion and
They
sons of Zeus.
Zethus,
orig-
been the daughter of
Her sons
the local river Asopus.
are
and may have been some kind
was one of the daughters of Niobe,

whom Amphion had married. Niobe
line
dating from the beginning
century, of a series of
illustrations of Oedipus and the
Sphinx. Oedipus
bearded traveller
shown
mature
and the Sphinx is
is
as a
monumental. The scene suggests a

cemetery in which a traveller meditates
upon human life. Later, Oedipus
appears as a young man armed with
sword or spear, and the Sphinx becomes
more
lifelike.
Vatican.
to
the years lost to his mother's kin.
Antiope
daughter
to
said
is
of Nycteus,
have been the
who came
to
forcibly recovered
they are outside the heroic gen-
The only surviving descendant of the
fifth
said
is
to
Thebes.
is,
ealogies
earliest,
spared
of ancient cult figures in the city of
that
The
all
been
Thebes from Orchomenus. When she

became pregnant, she was expelled, and
in some versions she married Epopeus,
king of Sicyon, from whom she was
almost completely without descendants,
of the
daughter, however,
marry Neleus,
Pelias' brother. She became the mother
of the long-lived Nestor, who was given
have
likened herself
to,
or identified with,
two chiland six
Leto, who, she said, had but
dren, while she had six sons
daughters. Apollo and Artemis punished

this
presumption
by
killing
all
the
children of Niobe, 'and they lay nine
days in their gore, nor was there any
one to bury them; for Zeus had made

the
Eventually Niobe
people stones'.
too was turned into a stone, which
wept for
its
children:
it
was
still
later identi-
brother.
stance
He
by Lycus, Nycteus'
imprisoned her
had been reared by
Dirce
shepherds.
had intended for

Antiope, and her dead body was thrown
into a spring that took her name.
suffered the fate she
These complicated
ventions of
gedians,
fifth
who
tra-
habitually cast their plots
to a Theban cult similar to that in Corinth

which mourned the children of Medea.
three strains in
The
myth which
planter,
stories are the in-
century Athenian
into the pattern of the
stones suggest a stone circle, or a
hated
and eventually proposed to kill her

by tying her to the horns of a wild bull
in a Dionysiac orgy on Cithaeron. From
this fate she was rescued by the twins
she had earlier exposed there, who
her,
with one on Mount Sipylus in Lydia,

and Niobe was made daughter of Tantalus. But the story originally belonged
fied
at the in-
who
of his wife Dirce,
myth of
the sup-
may
The
Greek mythology come
elements of which they
have already attached to the
stories.
out very clearly in this story the simple

:
explains a ritual,
its
literary
misapplication of the story of Deucalion,
elaboration with the addition of other
who made
ritual elements, and the genealogies

which connected the subjects of different
flood.
people from stones after the
The dripping
of water magic.
stone
may
be a piece
myths.
87
The best known features of the story

Amphion and Zethus come from the
literary tradition. Amphion the musician
of
contrasted with Zethus the farmer

and warrior, the former of course being
preferred by the poets, who added the
Orphic detail that Amphion fortified
Thebes by charming the stones with his
lyre. More primitive legends were attached to places: Dionysus punished
Antiope for the death of his devotee,
Dirce, and sent her mad to Phocis where
she was buried. The tomb of her sons
was at Thebes, and in the spring the
Phocians tried to steal earth from it and
sprinkle it on Antiope's tomb, to make
their crops good and harm those of
Thebes. A fertility cult lies behind this
survival; but it may not have been originally attached to Amphion and Zethus
and their mother.
is
great
Theban dynasty was that of

which Oedipus be-
longed. Labdacus, founder of the
only
artificially
Punishment of Niobe. This masterpiece

of the severe classic style of painting
about 460 BC has given its name
Niobid painter. The terrifying
and unpitying figures of Artemis
and Apollo dominate the scene as they
to the
complete the slaughter of the sons

and daughters of Niobe, who dared
to compare herself with Leto. Louvre.
of one of the
line,
linked to the house
of Cadmus, but his mother

ter
and parricide
which may have been absent in its original form. For the Oedipus story is
created by combining the two forms of
create a motif of incest
story
of the supplanter.
In one,
who
performs
is
the stranger
the exploit of defeating the Sphinx and

is
thus chosen to marry the queen (or
the
king's
kingdom
daughter)
and
in the other, he
is
inherit
the
the divinely
begotten grandson, the grand-daughter's
husband who becomes king. It is the

combination of the two which gives
the situation of Oedipus its particular
is
The
horror.
incest
motif
is
normally
where he carried
and that of parricide is disguised

by making the child the son of a god,
the murdered father a grandfather or
uncle, and the murder itself no more
than an accident.
When Oedipus discovered he had
killed his father and married his mother,
Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus
son while teaching him to
blinded himself. His wife's brother, that
'L'.
Laius, Oedipus' father,
is
drive a chariot. Pelops' curses were the
The
cause of the fate of the Labdacids.
homosexuality
theme
must
be
late:
Laius behaves as a typical supplanter,
BOTTOM
possible to see how at some time

myth of Oedipus was modified to
It is
the
the daugh-
sent into exile to Elis,

off Pelops'
bore him two sons and two
Sown men. In all Theban
myths the inheritance in the female line

is much clearer than it is in any other
stories, perhaps because the myths are
older. Nycteus and Lycus, and Amphion
and Zethus, are fitted in as regents or
usurpers, Nycteus sometimes as one of
the Sown men himself. Labdacus has
no mythology and may be only a cipher:
his name suggests the Greek letter
lambda,
who
daughters.
Oedipus
the Labdacids, to
is
casta,
the
Oedipus
The
manhood, Oedipus was taunted by a

drunk with not being the true son of his
father, and himself went to the oracle at
Delphi for information, only to be told
that he would marry his mother and kill
his father. Resolved never to return to
Corinth, he set out for Thebes. He was
forced from the road by an old man in
a waggon, whom he killed. He found
Thebes beset by the Sphinx (the Strangler) whose riddle he was able to solve,
becoming king in place of Laius, who
had been killed by robbers on a journey.
Oedipus then married the queen, Joto
Pelops,
and
again
while
absent,
important figure in matrilinear
societies,
Thebes until Oedipus' sons,

Eteocles and Polynices, came of age,
ruled in
when
they
kingship, as
quarrelled
over the joint
they were twins. Oedipus
Oedipus slaying the Sphinx.
like
In this late fifth century

treatment of the myth by one of the
circle of the painter Midias, Oedipus
is shown in the act of killing the
Sphinx. She crouches before him
exposing her neck for the coup de grace,
as he leaps upon her with a hoplite
spear. Beside the column
driving a chariot, the same fate himself.
cursed them and went to Athens, where
The oracle warned Laius

would die at the hands of his
against the
Apollo holding his bay.

presiding over the fate of Oedipus,
whom he sent to Thebes by his
sits
British
Museum.
suffers,
that
he
'Swell-
blem on
But the child was found by
shepherds of the childless king of Corinth, Polybus,

his
own and
foot',
who
called
reared the child as
him Oedipus,
because of his mutilation.
defended the frontier
Grown
Cithaeron with his feet pinned together

a spike.
his buried corpse
Thebans who had rejected

him. Polynices went into exile to Argos,
where he married the daughter of Adrasstus the king. Adrastus had been told
to yoke his daughters to the lion and the
boar, and he recognized in Polynices
the lion. For he bore that Theban em-
son: in
consequence, his child was exposed on
by
if
his shield.
|
"
The Seven against Thebes
Atalanta's
son Parthenopaeus
joined the attack
on Thebes,
as
also
an Ar-
oracular
hero
when Zeus opened
cleft in the earth
with
thunderbolt be-
join the attack because he
him as he fled from Thebes defeatand he vanished down it. In the

fifth century the Thebans transferred
the cult to the border town of Oropus,
of which they disputed possession with
Mycenae and Thebes. Hesiod says that

some of the heroes died at Thebes
like so
the Athenians, in order that the oracular
fighting for the sheep of Oedipus. In
Oedipus, and be the cause of his death
was bribed with the

necklace of Harmonia and she sent her
husband to his death. In fact, Amphiaraus was probably bound by the rule of
brought upon him by
a matrilinear society to follow Adrastus
This
is
the occasion of the next great
communal
two
the
and
enterprise of the Heroic Age,
on Thebes by
attacks
their sons. It
the Seven
seems to be genuine
saga, reflecting political rivalry
the epic tradition the
been
have
and the
last evil
Furies
the
made
in
invoked
between
may
first
attack
the
lifetime
by
his
of
mother's
was led from Argos in the

interests of a Theban pretender. But
there was a Calydonian contingent which
attack
links this
communal
exploit with that
of the Calydonian Boar hunt. Tydeus,
son of Oeneus, was also in

killing
some
close
male
exile for
relative.
He
married the other daughter of Adrastus

for
on
his shield
was emblazoned the
all late
Roman
carving
is
equally
and many later

sarcophagi can be dreary and fussy.
But this alabaster urn from Chiusi,
which is plausibly identified as the
dying Eteocles and Polynices, combines
successful as art,
two
but
reversed postures, in a scene of
the
ed,
seer
Oecles, father of the reluctant
Amphiaraus, was also shown in

Amphiaraus was reluctant to
Arcadia.
knew that,
many of these communal enterit was bound to fail.
But his
prises,
wife,
figures, in identical
hero might protect the frontier.

All the Seven died except Adrastus,
Eriphyle,
who was
his wife's brother.
way to Thebes the Seven

founded the Isthmian games, in honour
of Opheltes Archemorus, the Corinthian
king's infant son, devoured by a serpent
when his nurse showed the Seven a
spring. His name suggests that he was
himself a snake, Ruler of Death, and
their
the object of a local cult.
course,
commemorate
Games, of
dead
man
as
well as selecting his supplanter.
Amphiaraus
Calydonian Boar.
Not
fore
tomb of
On
curse.
The
cadian rather than a Boeotian, and the
also received cult as an
who
escaped on his magic horse Arion.

Tydeus was invited alone into Thebes,
beat them all at athletic contests, and
then slew all but one of a fifty-man
ambush on the way back. This suggests
an exploit, like that of Bellerophon. In
the attack of the Seven, which the Thebans repulsed by sacrificing the son of
king Creon, Tydeus was fatally wounded
by Melanippus, who was also killed.
Athena would have made Tydeus immortal, but he disgusted her by eating
the brains of his dead adversary before
he died, an act of ritual cannibahsm
which may originally have been the very
means of immortality.
tremendous emotional power, which

is enhanced by the presence of the
winged figure (possibly the curse of
Oedipus) staring directly out
the pathos of brother killing brother
their frequent civil wars,
fought
with almost Byzantine intensity.
largely by a professional
army which
In earlier ancient accounts, it is the

impiety of the brothers, especially
often contained relatives,
of Polynices, that
is
stressed
here
much stronger. It was a theme

known to the Roman experience from
is
who found
themselves on opposite sides.

Museo Archaeologico, Florence.
"'^'^^^^!RS|H
fought his brother
Polynices
Ete-
vowed
the fairest of the spoils. This
common
one of the seven gates of Thebes.

Both were killed, but Polynices was left
to rot unburied on the orders of Creon.
Antigone disobeyed his orders, for her
brother Polynices was more important
to her than husband or child would
have been. Antigone was walled up in
a cave to die without polluting her
killers: Creon's son died with her, for
looks like a variant of the
love.
not existed
the deed, the
islands
at the
ocles at
The Theban
victory had been
the Greeks called a
which
like
Cadmean
was too
a Pyrrhic victor\'
costly to the winners.
Ten
what
victory,
years later
Seven succeeded in
restoring Thersander, son of Polynices.
This time victory was promised them
under the leadership of Alcmaeon, son
of Amphiaraus, who defeated the Thebans in a pitched battle at GUsas where
of the
sons
the
their
tombs were shown. Then
Tiresias
motif of the home-comer's vow. Alcmae-
home and avenged
on returned
his
by kiUing his mother,

for which the Furies drove him mad.
Exile to Psophis, with marriage to the
death
father's
daughter,
king's
not
did
him:
cure
instead, the earth refused to bear fruit.
Finally he settled
on
of the river Achelous. This
proach
had
a land that
when he did
freshly laid down
mouth
ap-
literal
found also in the story of the

birth of Apollo and Artemis on Delos.
Alcmaeon married the river's daughter, CaUirhoe, who wanted the necklace
of Harmonia which Alcmaeon had given
is
He
to Arsinoe.
asked for
it
back, pre-
tending he was going to dedicate
it
at
Delphi, but his wife's brothers discovered the deception and murdered him.
advised them to abandon Thebes, and
Callirhoe
waggons and joined

the tribe of the Illyrians to which Cadmus
and Harmonia had gone before.
Tiresias, the Theban prophet, appears
in every Greek tragedy set in Thebes,
father may have been Zeus,

might at once become full grown to
avenge Alcmaeon's death. This they did,
and took the necklace at last to Delphi.
There are early and late elements in
this story, which was dramatised by both
Sophocles and Euripides. The Delphic
oracle is late. But the swift-growing
children are giants like Otus and Ephialtes, and the role of the wife's brother
belongs to matriUnear society. But ma-
they went out in
from the Bacchae to the Antigone. He

was already famous enough for Odysseus
to
make
but
special,
unnecessary',
journey to Hades to get from him in-
formation which Circe also gave him:

for he
was the only man
to retain his
He was
nymph's son, given the gift of prophecy
when he was bhnded for seeing Athena
naked, a legend that may have been
deliberately modelled on that of Actamong
intelligence
the dead.
aeon.
In what
probably the earUer legend
is
sons,
tricide
is
in
iety',
then prayed that her infant
whose
the crime of a patriarchal soc-
which
a wife's infidelity
The stories of the two great matriAlcmaeon and Orestes, although

they may have influenced one another,
may,
like
the
This enabled him to
rilinear
quarrel
settle
man enjoys
in
stories
strive for possession
between Zeus and Hera by testifying

from personal experience that in love
which gods
of a land,
reflect
the conflict between patriarchal and mat-
rituals
societies and
and customs.
their
respective
only a tenth of the woman's
pleasure. This assertion, part of a patriarchal societ}''s resentment
and envy of
women,
so angered Hera by
lation of
women's
its
secrets that in
reve-
revenge
The
sixth century temple
Selinus stood
Only the north

been rebuilt:
finally
when Thebes
was evacuated. His daughter was sent

which the Argives had
to Delphi, to
it
side of the temple has

collapsed early in
when Selinus was

village. The photograph
from the inside. The
entrance was to the right, and the
surviving metopes were on its fagade.
the Christian era,
died
at
the edge of the sea, to the west

of the ancient port in the estuary.
or else he saw and disturbed the same
Tiresias
on the Acropolis on
she turned Tiresias back into a man,
snakes again.
to
cides,
saw and disturbed two snakes

coupling, and was turned into a woman.
Tiresias
is
be punished with death.
decayed
shows
it
^yiiaS
'^'
1
The third metope from the temple

of Hera at Selinus shows Heracles
about to kill the Amazon Queen
Hippolyta. She had promised to yield
him her girdle willingly, but Hera
provoked the other Amazons into
92
an attack. The ambiguities of love

and death contained in this legend
fascinated the artists of the Periclean
period. Heracles uses his lion skin
as a shield to ward off the axe blows
of the Amazon, and seizes her oriental
ii
jiiM.
,-
i rf -rt^nBigai
''^' ?::.îV^^:helmet as he prepares the coup de grace

with his club (now lost). Museo
Nazionale, Palermo.
HERACL]
The
story of Heracles
another that
is
connects Thebes and Argos. But this

is
because a Tirynthian hero, a descend-
ant of Perseus in the junior line and
Mycenae, has been
vassal of the lord of

identified
with
Theban hero
Alcaeus, 'Mighty'.
To
his
Amphitryon killed him in an 'accident':

his club bounced off the horns of a
charging cow. So Amphitryon went to
Thebes and the fourth son of Perseus,
Eurystheus, took over Mycenae.
In Thebes, too, Amphitryon behaved
called
story have
man
he deliv-
like a typical supplanter. First
of
ered the land from a monstrous vixen
insatiable appetites, capable of fathering
which could never be caught. It had

been sent by Dionysus and children had
to be exposed to it. Amphitryon sent
been added
fifty
folk-tales of a strong
sons in a night.
against
Amphitryon
Amphitryon, Heracles'
from Argos to Thebes in
of
father,
went
a typical story
Perseus' grand-daughter Hip-
exile.
it
wonderful hound
like that
with which Phylacus guarded his

It
never failed of
gods resolved
cattle.
quarry, and the
its
this folk-tale
dilemma by
turning them both to stone, probably
pothoe, 'Swift Mare', was carried off
a pair of standing stones.
by Poseidon and bore him Pterelaus,

king of the Teleboans, whom his father
against the Teleboans, because Alcmena,
made immortal by putting his external

soul into a golden hair on his head.
he was blond
was indistinguishable
from the rest, and it is clear that only
his daughter knew which one it was.
If
In the
it
genealogies, Poseidon's son
called Taphius, but he
is
inserted only
is
Then Amphitryon resumed

with proper matrilinear
death
of her
the previous war.
Comaetho
fell in
war
piety, refused to
yield her virginity until he
the
the
had avenged
brothers,
killed
Pterelaus'
daughter
love with
in
Amphitryon
and killed her father by pulhng out the

golden hair to which her name refers
By
Amphi-
to identify the Teleboans with an exist-
(come
ing tribe: the golden hair shows that
tryon should have married her: instead,
Pterelaus
was
originally the god's son.
Pterelaus' sons claimed

their
mother's
went off to
kingdom, his
uncle,
fight
good
all
the rules
patriarchal hero, he killed
Reverse of Syracusan gold loo
litra
piece, 590-380 BC. Heracles
wrestles with the
Nemean
lion
Mycenae from
her for her treachery and returned to
who
Alcmena. But he found that he had been

anticipated by Zeus, who had taken his
form and prolonged the night to the
length of three to beget the mighty
Heracles. Amphitryon then begot the
350 BC. In the fourth

century the youthful Heracles,
resting after a labour, was replaced on
coins by the child strangling the snakes
mortal twin, Iphicles.
sent against
Electryon,
them.
He
left
his
and his daughter

to his wife's brother Amphitryon, making him swear to respect Alcmena's
virginity. But when Electryon got back
cattle
like a
hair).
whose skin he
BOTTOM
later
wore.
Reverse of stater from Croton about
him by Hera.
Heracles was eventually admitted to
Birth of Heracles
Olympus and became
When
Heracles was to be born, Zeus
vowed
that the next Perseid
born should
Mycenae, intending it to be Heracles. But Hera sent Ilithyia, who presided

over childbirth, to stop the birth by
rule
sitting cross-legged, a
common
piece of
though only
the object of cult,
rarely as a god, mostly as
a kind of very superior hero.
told to
the developed legend she
month child. Ilithyia

did not go away until somebody gave
a cry of joy as if Alcmena had been de-
able enemy. Zeus lulled
which she then was. This story

was told to explain how it was that the
mighty Heracles had to serve Eurystheus,
just as the compUcated series of perhaps
traditional tales about Amphitryon were
used to get Heracles born in Thebes in
thrust
the period after the death of Oedipus.
cles strangled
livered,
But Heracles' position may

flect
really
is
his implac-
him in relays, though he thought

was always the same one. He also
in to
it
won
Creon's daughter, as a reward for
Thebans from
delivering the
a tribute
has the appearance of a late Alexandrian
went mad and killed his children and

so was sent to perform Labours for
Eurystheus in penance. Thus again a
variation on a traditional theme was
myth. Hera also sent snakes to the cradle
used to get Heracles back to Argos.
him
spilling her milk
off",
the firmament as the Milky
of the twins: Iphicles
is
over
Way. This
shown on
vase painting as cowering, while Hera-
The
exploits of Heracles
Heracles' earliest exploits are located at
in details
on the
figures,
was
discovered about 530 bc. Around

510 both painter Euphronius and
potter Cachrylion signed a cup on the
outside of which Heracles' exploit
against
Geryon
having used his
is
shown. Heracles,
bow
But Alcmena,
originally a
name
who was
or
title
probably
of a mother-
goddess, remained located at Thebes,
them.
BELOW RIGHT
amphora by
sons in one night
daughters of Thespius.
piece of historical information. But he
Heracles and the cattle of Geryon.

The technique of red-figured painting,
which allowed the artist to put
of the great master

Exekias, about 560 bc, Heracles is
attacking the Stymphalian birds
with a sling. British Museum.
fifty
and Hermes put Heracles to her breast:

but he bit it and awoke her, and she
BELOW LEFT
a predecessor
fifty
He
won one of them. Thespius fed the others
on the
paid to Orchomenus, perhaps a genuine
Heracles and the Stymphalian birds.

Heracles was always one of the most
popular subjects of Attic vase painting,
and especially so in the sixth century,
when Athens was still strongly
aristocratic. In this
whose skin he always
wore, and begot
sleep,
Hera to
re-
the political fact that Tiryns was
subordinate to Mvcenae.
legend
show how he was prepared

for this fate in infancy. At the same time
it brings him into a fihal relation with
Hera, whose name he bears, though in
was
magic, until Sthenelus' wife bore Eurystheus as a seven
Thebes. At eighteen he killed the lion
of Cithaeron,
to kill the
where two curious legends were told

about her. One tells how Amphitryon
condemned her
to be burnt to death for
three-headed hound and one of the

bodies of Geryon, advances with his
club on the other two. Geryon looks
two shield
winged pig
like three hoplites in line
emblems can be
seen, a
and an octopus. Athena, with the
gorgon on her
shield, hastens to his
aid, leaving lolaus
and the wounded
Eurytion in reserve. Antikensammlungen,

Munich.
her supposed infidelity
when he was
the hydra,
fighting the Teleboans.
But Zeus ex-
of which was replaced by two
which had nine heads, each
when
it
tinguished the pyre with a miraculous
was cut
shower of
of lolaus, but only because Hera sent
rain,
perhaps originally a
piece of rain magic.
how Hermes
when she was
tells
bier
ed
The other legend
stole
her from the
dead, and substitut-
stone which the
Thebans rever-
enced, while Zeus took her to the Isles
of the Blessed. This

logical
myth,
is
the
partly
feeling that the
partly an aetioresult
of a
mother of Heracles de-
served special treatment.
Almost
iants
of the single exploit
by which
The
the hero vanquishes a monster.

five are all localised in the
the
Nemean
first
Peloponnese
Lernaean hydra,
lion, the
the Ceryneian hind with
its
golden horns,
the Erymanthian boar, and the Stym-
phalian birds.
To
all
of these various
other legends are attached.
To
deal with
Heracles and the Centaurs. The city

of Assos occupies an impregnable
site on the mainland of Asia Minor
opposite the island of Lesbos, and
was the first site ever to be excavated
by the American Institute of
Archaeology.
late sixth century
temple was found there. Following
Ionian practice, the architrave
immediately above the columns was
sculptured as well as the metopes,
while the pediment was left
bare. The hard volcanic stone partly
accounts for the primitive appearance
of this relief, which shows Heracles
with his bow driving off the Centaurs.
While seeking the Erymanthian
boar he lodged in Arcadia with
Pholus, seen on the left with a cup
of the wine which he specially
opened for Heracles. The wine

maddened the Centaurs, and they
attacked Heracles. Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of the Archeological
Institute of
America.
RIGHT
Heracles bringing Cerberus from the
underworld. The type of the youthful
Heracles was
known
as early as the
end of the sixth century, and appears

in this plate by Paseas, who has simply
appplied to the circular area at his
disposal part of a frieze of figures,
bottom with a palmette.
Aided by Hermes, who conducts men
filling the
to the underworld and is identified

by the caduceus and hat, Heracles,
waving his bow and dressed in an

apparently headless lion skin, leads up
Cerberus. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
Pierce Fund.
Heracles enlisted the help
a crab to bite his heel
cannot fight two'
as
and 'even Heracles

the Greek proverb
lolaus seared the roots with
said.
head was cut
as each
fire
off.
With the hydra's poison Heracles

anointed the arrows of the
which, exceptionally for
bow
a hero,
drove
tra-
With these arrows he

the drunken Centaurs with
club.
off
whom
with
he was
normally armed and not with the

ditional
Heracles' Labours are var-
all
off,
he lodged
when fetching the

wounded Chiron,
boar.
He
who
traded his immortality with
accidentally
tal).
The
castanets
birds
seem to be immor-
he scared with brazen
made by Hephaestus.
Some of
single exploits.
He overcame
the
Cretan Bull, a sacred animal, which was

either that
which
carried
Europa or one
sent out of the sea by Poseidon.
He
also
tamed the man-eating Mares of Diomede

of Thrace, captured the Cattle of Geryon,
and even brought up the three-headed
dog Cerberus from Hades. Diomede was
a son of Ares, and so might be expected
to have used his mares to race the suitors
of his daughters, and then to tear them
apart, possibly in honour of Dionysus.
This motif has been suppressed in the
interests of Heracles. But a son of Hermes was dragged to death by the mares
when Heracles left them with him.
the
Titan Prometheus (another late legend,

for Titans normally
also
Heracles' other Labours are
The quests of Heracles

The
other Labours are quests, which
took
Heracles
afield
and even outside the world of
progressively
further
men. One of the Peloponnesian Labours

may have started as a quest, the cleansing of the cowsheds of Augeas, which
Heracles accomplished by diverting a
river. For Augeas in some versions was
the child of the
Sun and the
task
is
of
the type of impossible ones which have
win the Magician's

it would be
done for him by animals which he had
befriended. More prosaically, the Labour
to be performed to
daughter. In a fairy tale
has elements of a simple cattle
So has that of the

three-bodied giant.
raid.
Geryon, the
But he lived beyond
Cattle of
Ocean, on which Heracles sailed in the

Sun's Golden Bowl. He got the Bowl
by threatening to shoot the Sun with
his arrows,
swamp
it,
and when Ocean
tried to
he threatened him too. These
are the acts of the
myth, and the
god
cattle,
in a succession
even
if originally
those of the Sun, are not entirely in
though ApoUodorus solemnly has
place,
Bowl
them back.
slightly more traditional quest is
Heracles embark them too in the

to bring
that for the Girdle of Hippolyta, the
Amazon Queen, who

willingly. It
yielded
was given
it
to
him
to Hippolyta
by
Ares because of the warlike prowess of

the Ama2ons, who lived without men
and met
their neighbours only
year for procreation.
once a
They reared only
the girls, cutting off the right breast so

that
it
should not get in the way
when
they drew the bow-string or threw the

spear,
detail usually
ignored in
RIGHT
Heracles and the Golden Apples
of the Hesperides. The sculptured
metopes of the early fifth century
temple of Zeus at Olympia were not
under the pediment, but over the
porches in front of and behind the
number, they seem

Twelve Labours
of Heracles, founder of the Olympian
games and the great hero of the
Dorians, who developed the games
shrine.
Twelve
to have
shown
in
the
during the eighth century. Heracles did

not get the Golden Apples of the
Hesperides himself. The giant Atlas
got them for him wliile Heracles
supported the vault of heaven on a
cushion. Athena, shown here as a
severe maiden, helped him, taking
the weight with her left hand. At this
period, the hero is clearly inferior
to the gods. Archaeological Museum,
Olympia.
96
art.
Another metope
irrom the late sixth
upside down on a pole over his

shoulders. In that position they had
good view of his hairy rump
and they recognised
the black bottom of which their
mother had warned them to beware.
century temple C at SeUnus shows

Heracles with the two Cercopes.
These mischievous monkey men stole

bow as he slept on a rock
at Thermopylae. But when he woke,
he caught them and hung them
Museo
Heracles'
Nazionale, Palermo.
aMp-**.
m^:!^'
tm^l
\^^l'
.S*a>3!irt,îji>i
silver relief found at Perugia, which

formed part of the decoration of a
chariot ornamented with plaques of
bronze and silver. It was made in Ionia,
possibly at Clazomenae, in the sixth

century, and
extent of
its
journey illustrates the
Greek contacts with
Etruria,
and
manufacture for a
perhaps unlikely that
the chariot was exported as well. The
Amazons (if they are indeed female
since the hair is little longer and the
bust no more developed than that of
many undoubtedly male statues) on
their ability to
market, since
it is
their rearing horses are an appropriate
decoration for a war chariot. The righthand warrior appears to be spearing

the fallen figure
is
on
the ground,
which
also being trodden by the horses.
British
Museum.
Heracles and the tripod of Delphi. One

of the earliest surviving vases in the
red-figure technique, by the Andocides
shows the fight between

Apollo and Heracles for the tripod
of Delphi. When Heracles killed
the son of Eurytus, who refused him
his daughter, he went to Delphi to be
painter,
purified.
When
the Pythia, the
priestess, refused, Heracles stole the
tripod and carried
it off with the

approval of Athena. Staatliche
Museen, Antikenabteilung, Berlin.
CENTRE
Heracles and the Erymanthian boar.
Heracles is
presenting the boar head down to
a completely terrified Eurystheus who
cowers in a huge pithos buried almost
neck
to the
in the earth.
Athena on one
side stretches
out her left hand, beautifully

extending the aegis fringed with
snakes. On the other side a bearded
lolaus holds the club (the bow and
arrows are on Heracles' back).
British
Museum.
RIGHT
Heracles with his family. The
decorations on oil-flasks are often
either sepulchral or domestic, reflecting
their two chief uses. The genre scene
of the son reaching out for his father
from his mother's lap is given piquancy
by its application to Heracles, not
the most domestic of heroes. He is resting
on his club with his bow probably
unstrung and strapped to the quiver.
His wife Deianeira holds their son
Hyllus, who survived Heracles to
become the ancestor of the Dorians.
Ashmolean Museum.
Whatever
tal
their origin in beardless orien-
warriors, the
Amazons
male
are a
fantasy of role reversal, and are extremely
popular in
art.
In another legend, Heracles served
Omphale,
There
were
originally
ten,
all
of
which, including the contests with mon-
much
of the quest about
sters,
have
them
that Heracles brings
back
to
this
Eurystheus,
all
who
fetch a
in
Apples
which time he wore women's
dress,
perhaps to deceive the ghost. The epi-
Amazons looks like a

variant of this. It may have been borrowed from the myth of Theseus, who
sode with the
plays an important part in the
Hera
is
war
that
said to
Little is
made of the Labour,
except to provide an opportunity for

Heracles' visits to Troy, and to
make
up the canonical number of Labours.
terror in a brazen pot
of the Hesperides, perhaps
He made
This myth
is
the origin of
from which,
wreathed with the snake that guarded
the
pillars
of Heracles,
the apples, the dollar sign
is
derived.
They were transferred to the story of

Geryon, which was located in Spain,
where the symbol was often used on
coins.
After this Heracles went to Hades

to bring back the
dog Cerberus, whose

Geryon also,
three heads suggest that
Life with the
with his three bodies,
For a moment
too.
who
it
he would
pad and return, the motif of the
Trickster.
Water of
Heracles plays the part of the giant
Atlas take
a trick, saying that
sinister implications.
variant of the
same
the apples.
cowers
way round.
years in expiation for a murder, during
him
back by
have stirred up, though

such borrowings are usually the other
Lydian Queen, for three
heaven and earth, taking over

burden from Atlas, who fetched
the objects
which he buries in
the earth. Later the canon was made up
to twelve by the addition of two more
which are much more other-wordly.
Eurystheus is said to have rejected two
of the Labours, the Cowsheds of Augeas
and the Lernean hydra, the one because
it was done for pay and the other because Heracles had help.
First Heracles was sent for the Golden
that
bears
the
really lived there
number of Greek
god Dionysus, 'harrow
heroes, and
hell' in this
The story seems to contain a

number of themes: the Quest for the
way.
Death and Resurrection of the Hero, and the Return of the

Water of
Life, the
Tripod. This suggests that Apollo
may
have been originally involved in some

way in the contest for the daughter of
Eurytus,
who
was, like him, an archer.
the context of Heracles' service
like
Otus and Ephialtes, they have been
transferred to
in order to
the
time of the heroes
make use of
early motif survives.
Heracles.
One
There was a herb
which would make the Giants completely

immortal (obviously the Herb of Life):
but Zeus forbade Sun and Moon to
Girl in the Spring, the last appearing
This
in the story of Alcestis.
the traditional pattern of the sup-
with Omphale, which provides also the

occasion for his second visit to Troy,
where his role, to be discussed with the
been
other Trojan stories, was originally that
stop Earth getting
of a supplanter.
The succession myth and the myth

of the supplanter are in fact the same
story appearing in a divine and in a
Heracles' other adventures are closer

to
planter,
suggesting that he
identified with a
First
has
number of local
heroes.
is
he gave his wife Megara to lolaus,
his assistant,
and wooed
lole,
daughter
The
battle of the
gods and giants
of Eurytus, beating her father at archery.
Eurytus refused to pay up, on the

reasonable grounds that Heracles might
On
go mad again and
fight
When
kill his
children, Hera-
son and went to

Delphi to be purified. There he was
involved in a fight with Apollo over the
cles killed
Eurytus'
his return from Troy, Heracles was
co-opted as the gods' Helper in their
with the Giants,
who
defeated only by a mortal.
could be
The
Giants,
born of Earth by the blood of Uranus,

belong to the succession myth. But,
shine,
human
and picked the herb himself,
context.
to
it.
The human may have
impersonated the god, as many heroes

are exphcitly punished for doing. If so,
the
myth originated
in ritual,
though
continued to be told because of the

psychological satisfaction it provided.
it
Elements of
it
were therefore added to
other
mythical
stories,
show
a tendency to
typal
pattern.
of which
all
into that arche-
fall
seems very possible

was at
It
that such a ritual of succession
some time
carried out at least at
some
places in Greece.
Two
of the Giants perform deeds
Alcyoneus
that recur in other myths:
of the Sun, and Por-
stole the cattle
They were
on the Phlegraean plains in
Thessaly, near Mount Olympus. But
phyrion
tried to rape Hera.
defeated
Heracles'
position
ambiguous,
is
cause at Pylos, where he slew
be-
all
the
descendants of Neleus except Nestor,
he fought with the
Hades with
wounding
gods,
his arrows, hitting
Hera in
her right breast, and gashing Ares in
ABOVE
BELOW
Heracles in the garden of the

Hesperides. The Athenian vase painter
Midias, at the end of the fifth century,
decorated a water pot
This late (about 410 Bc) and vigorous

painting of Heracles rescuing Deianeira
from the Centaur Nessus is an exact
copy of a vase signed by both potter
with two bands,

one on the shoulder and one below
the handle. In the centre of the
and
Heracles is sitting on his lion

a rock in the garden of the
Hesperides. He is looking at one
of them named Lipara, 'shining', who
already holds an apple. Behind Heracles
latter
skin
is
on
his squire lolaus,
is full
and the garden
of Argonauts (not shown
in this detail). British
Museum.
the thigh. Pylos seems to have been an
painter, Erginus
and
Aristophanes. In earlier
versions Heracles has the lion skin,
but he is always armed with the club,
though
in the literary tradition
he used his arrows, the poison from

which turned Nessus' blood into the
charm that caused Heracles'
Museum
of Fine Arts,
death.
entrance to the Underworld, but other-
wise Heracles
is
himself behaving like
a Giant.
But most of his opponents are Giants,

keep on turning up in his stories.
of the most famous is Antaeus,
regained his strength when he
touched his mother, the Earth, and was
who
One
who
dealt with by being held in the air until
he died.
A pair
Poseidon,
of divine twins, sons of
were
turned
into
two-
He also
who prac-
bodied giant called 'the MoUone'.
overthrew an Egyptian king

tised
human
and
sacrifice
tried
it
on
Heracles.
The death of Heracles

Finally Heracles himself
the hands of a
met
woman and
his fate, at
dead man.
He wrestled with the river Achelous,

who took the form of a bull-headed
snake, for the
hand of Deianeira. But
he took her into exile because he com-
murder at
was said to be that of a
cup-bearer, but must have been origmitted another 'accidental'
the
wedding
it
inally the father
the
of the bride.
centaur Nessus
On the way
carried
Deianeira
across a river and then tried to rape her.
Heracles killed
him with
his
poisoned
arrows, but, before he died, he gave
Deianeira a charm to keep her husband's

love.
She used
it
when
Heracles sacked
the city of Eurytus and sent back lole
But Nessus' charm, his blood

with which she was to anoint a garment
as his prize.
(the Shirt of Nessus),
was
in fact a poi-
The decoration of
the pediment
Greelc temple presented a number

of problems to the sculptor who
wished to create a unified scheme.
of
the greatest was how to

the two sides where they slope to a
narrow point. In the old Athena temple,
One of
fill
associated with the tyrant Pisistratus
and dating probably from about

560 BC, these spaces were filled by
monstrous figures, which could
easily be adapted to any area.
At one end Heracles wrestled with
a Triton. At the other appeared this
three-bodied serpent man with wings.
Benevolent though he looks, such
three-bodied figures are in
mythology almost always hostile,
and he could possibly be another
opponent of Heracles, even Geryon

himself. Acropolis
BELOW
Medea and
Museum, Athens.
son which burned him up, similar to

that
which Medea gave
to Jason's in-
tended bride. Like
that,
of the
pyre
equivalent
it
is
magic
upon which
and consenting
to his fate, immolated himself on
Mount Oeta. He handed on to the man
who Ht the pyre his magic bow and
arrows which were the symbols of his
Heracles,
recognising
sovereignty.
There
a folk-tale motif in this story
is
partly exphcit
and partly
implicit. It
was
no
Heracles' fate to die at the hands of
man
living, a hteral ambiguity. It
may
have originally meant at the hands of

the supplanter who brought the Water
Herb of
from the land of the

it means at the
hand of a dead man. Deianeira's willingness to employ the charm may have
been similarly explained if Nessus told
her that, when it was used, Heracles
would never love another woman.
The death of all heroes may once
have meant their immortality. In Heracles the theme is made explicit, and he
ascends to Olympus from the pyre in the
form of an eagle, the bird of Zeus whose
son he was. There he was reconciled
or
Life
dead. But in the story
to Hera, possibly his original mother,
and given eternal youth, Hebe, the cupbearer of the gods, to wife. But on earth
he never received divine honours, only
those paid to heroes. In Greek theology
the race of gods and the race of men,
though born of
always
mortal
separate,
who
tried
of his mortality.
were
and woe betide any
to overstep the bounds
a single mother,
boiling cauldron, beneath which

Pelias.
The
Jason adds a brand to the
later
Athenian black-figure vase painters,

like the Leagros group of 530-510 bc,
had to compete with red figure, not
entirely successfully. This crowded
scene shows Medea at the start of
her proof to Pelias that she can
rejuvenate him.
The ram
is
in the
Medea
fire.
aged
one of whose daughters watches
The ram became a lamb.
But when his daughters performed
to the left looks at the
Pelias,
in concern.
on Pelias, he only
became immortal perhaps, but
the operation
certainly dead. British
Museum.
ATHEN
Geographically,
eastward-
the
Attica,
facing peninsula in mainland
Greece,
gave
to the three daughters of Ce-
it
crops forbidding them to open

so,
communications between Boeotia and

the Peloponnese, which passes through
Corinth. Though Athens was a Myce-
The
that
naean settlement, the isolation of Attica,
Greeks.
which also preserved it from disturbance,
the
does not even
is
of Greece.
important regions
less
lie
on the main
It
of
reflected in the comparative paucity
of Attic mythology. The

tance of Athens was based
Its
line
harbour, the Piraeus,
later
on
is
impor-
sea power.
ideally situ-
it.
Two
were driven mad by the

sight of a serpent in the chest, and hurled
themselves down from the Acropolis.
of them did
has always been one of the poorer and
idea
the
Athena should bear
virgin
goddess
was repug-
a child
nant to the developed theology of the
The
story
is
essentially that of
of Dionysus,
nurses
though the
Athenian myth comes close to the orig-
which the divine

was born of the goddess without
inal state of affairs in
child
a father.
ated for a sea port trading not only with

Birth of Erichthonius. Gaia, 'Earth',
the Black Sea, but also with the south
baby to Athena while Nike,

'Victory', holds out the swaddling
band. Zeus holding a stylised
thunderbolt looks on, supported by
a girl over whose head is written
'Oinanthe is beautiful'. She is probably
one of the daughters of Cecrops,
who took over the infant Erichthonius.
The scene shows that Erichthonius
was originally the son of the mothergoddess, a role Athena lost at Athens,
where she remained 'nurse of
and east. It is no accident, then, that

Athenian mythology is closely linked
with that of Crete. As Schhemann
followed Homer to Troy and to Mycenae, so Sir Arthur Evans was led by
the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur
to discover the centre of the great Mi-
hands
youths'. British
Museum.
noan
civilisation at Cnossus.
The
first
inhabitant of Attica was an
earthborn serpent-man called
He was
the judge in
the
Cecrops.
contest be-
tween Athena and Poseidon for possession of the land, and awarded it to
Athena for her creation of the olive.

The daughters of Cecrops were the
nurses of Erichthonius, another serpent-
man who was
in a
sense the son of
Athena. For he was born from the earth
when Hephaestus
tried to rape
Athena put the baby into
Athena.
a chest,
and
Tereus and Procne
The Athenian king Usts contained a

number of names which were brought
into
genealogical relation to
arbitrary
each other.
whom
is
One
of them
attached
is
Pandion, to
fable
about the
hoopoe, the nightingale and the swallow,

which explains their songs in terms of
a fate
which
is
made up of some of
the
elements of a supplanter myth. Procne
and Philomela were
who
sisters,
daughters
Procne to
Tereus, Idng of Thrace. Tereus begot
on her a son Itys, but then raped her
sister Philomela and cut out her tongue to
prevent her telling what had happened.
of Pandion,
married
But she wove the story into a tapestry, and in this way told Procne, who
took her revenge by serving up Itys as
a meal for his father. Tereus pursued
them with an axe, and the gods turned

them into birds. Philomela is the nightingale, who calls alternately upon Tereus
and Itys, Procne is the swallow, who
twitters unintelligibly, trying to tell her
fate,
and Tereus
pursues them
the hoopoe,
is
crying
who
'Pou pou pou',
'Where, where, where?'
Another king
of
human
is
Erechtheus, a kind
coianterpart of Erichthonius.
The daughters of Erechtheus met

which seem
fates
to be versions of those of
the daughters of Cecrops. Orithyia was
carried off by
the
North Wind, who
helped the Athenians by destroying the

ships of their enemies
Zetes and Calais,
and begot on her
who were
Argonauts.
She was said to have been carried off

from the banks of the Ilissus while
gathering flowers, like Persephone:
it
would be appropriate if she had cast

herself down from the Acropolis into
the arms of her lover. The other daughters sacrificed
tory
for
Eleusis.
themselves to ensure vic-
their
father
in
war with
The Acropolis
at
Athens. Greece
consists of a series of small plains,
many of them on
the sea, surrounded

by mountains. For protection from
Greek cities were founded
around easily defensible outcrops
pirates,
of limestone. Later,
such a hill was called an acropolis.
That of Athens is the most famous,
and in the fifth century Pericles turned
it into the sacred centre of Athens.
On
is
the
left,
to the west,
the formal entrance, the Propylaea,
Parthenon and
between them the Erechtheum.
in the centre the
Aegeus was the putative father of Theseus, the great Athenian hero. Perhaps
because of his name, which could mean
'Founder', Theseus was honoured as
the
man
the
cit}'-state
responsible for the creation of
of Athens by persuading
come and live

together in Athens and accept him as
their overlord. As Heracles was taken
all
the local rulers to
over, especially by the Spartans, as the

Dorian hero, so Theseus was built up
as his Ionian counterpart. Heracles was
made to found the Olympic games to

commemorate one of his exploits, since
were the chief cultural
Dorian aristocracy. The
Athenians were never distinguished in
these; but in everything else Theseus
athletic contests
In some of the stories about Theseus

father
his
sources
is
is
Poseidon,
who
explicitly stated to
in
have
late
lain
with Aethra the same night. Theseus'

father left his
sword under
a token of his paternity,
did
when he
lay
as
a rock as
Poseidon
with Medusa the Gor-
gon and begot Chrysaor. But there is

no trace of a mortal twin. That a man's
wife should bear a son to the god is, of
course, one way in which succession in
the female line can be reconciled with
a patriarchal system.
CreU
activity of the
The
is
Old Age
known only from art
story of Heracles and
a folk tale
and not from
literature. Several vases
show Heracles
in all his accoutrements
attacking a dwarf figure labelled
'Old Age'. This Etruscan bronze mirror,

the other side of which was originally
highly polished, may show an
idealised version, perhaps derived from
a comedy, in which 'Old Age' was
a giant. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
TOP RIGHT
Wall painting of Theseus leaving
Ariadne on Naxos. Roman wall painting
follows Hellenistic models no less
than Roman mosaic, and mythological
erotic panels such as this example
from Herculaneum, overwhelmed
in the eruption of ad 79, are common
in both media. Ariadne awakes
on the island of Naxos to find that
Theseus has deserted her. British Museum.
104
Aegeus then returned to Athens, and

here that the Cretan connection
is
it
first
appears as either the companion or the
appears in the person of Androgeus,
imitator of Heracles.
son of Minos. Minos may have really

been the title of the divine king of
Crete and not a name. But all the stories
are told of one man, the son of Zeus
But the Cretan connection shows that

Theseus is more than a fictional hero
representing Athenian aspirations, and
it must constitute the oldest part of the
myth. It starts before his birth in the
reign of Aegeus, who had no son. The
Delphic oracle told Aegeus not to loose
the wineskin before he got home. Not
understanding
this,
he visited Pittheus
Troezen on his way back,

him drunk and loosed on him
at
ter
as well as
judge in Hades, married to Alcmena.
the
is
said to
have
drunk.
Like
and the wine-skin may
whose name is definitely pre-Greek. He

went into exile, ending with Minos as
daugh-
him, Aegeus was begetting his supplanter
brother, perhaps a twin, Rhadamanthys,
At
his
first
they
dead,
merely judged between
continuing the activity for
which they were famous in life, perhaps

an aspect of Minoan culture that had
impressed the Greeks.
BuUs
reflect a ritual
symbolising sexual intercourse.
who survived to the generaHe had a
tion before the Trojan war.
who made
when
Aethra. Laius too
begotten Oedipus
and Europa,
He
got
feature in the story of Minos.

title
to the
kingdom when Po-
In return, Procris got the wonderful
seidon sent a bull from the sea in answer

to his prayer.
it
For
his failure to sacrifice
he suffered many
evils. First
unpleasant affliction that
made
was an
it
im-
him to beget children: for

he emitted not semen but snakes, scorpions and milhpedes, which killed any
woman. He was cured by Procris, the
wife of Cephalus, who made an artificial
woman which drew off all the animals,
after which he was able to beget children
normally. The legends of Crete are full
possible for
Another
of them was Talos, the burning brazen
of mechanical marvels like
this.
man who patrolled Crete. Medea killed

him when the Argonauts passed, by
opening the vein in
his leg
out his magic blood.
and
letting
took to Thebes,
where it caught the monstrous vixen,
together with a spear that never missed
dog
its
that
Cephalus
mark. But
when Dawn
it
of the Sun and
sister
of Aeetes king of
in love with the
fell
he
bull that should
have been
Cephalus
Dawn
off,
sent
him
was
and
but when she came
back disguised to see
if
Procris
able to seduce her,
she went to Crete,
back played a similar trick, disguising

herself as a boy and giving both hound
and spear to Cephalus for a promise of his
favours. Though they were reconciled,
Procris secretly followed her husband
as
fact his wife Procris.
Colchis. But she
carried
He was
was in
The cured Minos begat sons and

daughters on his wife Pasiphae, daughter
caused her death. For
pined for his wife, and

faithful.
a deer but
who had
sacrificed.
Athens for killing an apprentice who had surpassed

him, made her an artificial cow inside
which she gratified her passion and
conceived the Minotaur. Daedalus also
Daedalus,
left
designed the Labyrinth,
named
after the
Cretan double-axe, but perhaps rather

a ritual
maze than
folk-memory of the
Palace of Cnossus.
Minoan
power
reflected in the
he went hunting each morning, and

took her revenge by causing him
story of Minos' son Catreus. His sonAl-
what he took to be
thaemenes went to Rhodes to avoid be-
Dawn
to cast the spear at
sea
is
THESEUS
Reverse of stater from Cnossus, 350-325
RIGHT
Bc. Cnossus, site of the palace of
Theseus killing the Minotaur. The

decoration of an Attic wine cup
Minos, adopted as its

symbol the labyrinth, a ritual maze
with one path to the centre which
became more difficult as the stem

got longer and the cup shallower.
From 550 BC the band between the
handles was decorated with a frieze
round the whole pattern.

Such mazes are known from all over
Europe and have been found engraved
on megalithic monuments. They
leads right
may be diagrams of a
On
of miniature figures, as in the vase

signed by the potter Glaucytes. Both
sides of the vase show great exploits:
on one the Calydonian Boar hunt
(page 76); on the other Theseus
killing the Minotaur. Theseus wears
an animal skin like Heracles, the great
ritual dance.
arrowhead and
both probably
either side are an
a thunderbolt,
emblems of Zeus.
British
Museum.
monster slayer, and the exploit is

watched by Ariadne on the right and
Athena on the left. Behind each of them
is a procession of alternate women
and men. Antikensammlungen, Munich.
coming his
he
failed,
when
father's
murderer of course
:
killing Catreus 'by accident'
he visited Rhodes.
his sister to death
by Hermes,
who
when
He
also kicked
she was raped
only caught her by
Like a goddess, she turned into a sea

bird.
Not even
the sacrifice of three
ters,
were not the king's daughthough probably victims of the
same
ritual as the
sisters (they
daughters of Cecrops)
probably by tearing them apart between

trees. The Athenians claimed
Theseus had founded the Isthmian
two of the
that
Games
in
honour or expiation of
Sciron kicked
men
Sinis.
over the chff to a
could save the Athenians from Minos'
man-eating
same sacrificial
was turned to
Polypemon
Polyidus, found the body after correctly
and they were forced to agree to

supply seven youths and maidens a year
to be thrown to the Minotaur there was
a somewhat similar ritual at Corinth.
This was the tribute that Theseus joined.
He slew the Minotaur, and by this
describing the colour of a marvellous
exploit
cow
betrayed her father and helped him.
lifted into the air,
The
Antaeus he gained strength from the

earth. The Crommyonian sow, called
Phaea, 'grey', looks like a duphcate of
Heracles' Erymanthian boar, and some-
spreading fresh bull hides in her path

to
make her
slip.
This must
reflect a
Rhodian ritual. Another of Minos' sons,

Glaucus,was drowned in a jar of honey
(the Minoans seem to have embalmed
dead in great
their
jars).
prophet,
and was asked to revive it,

which he did when he saw a snake
bring the Herb of Life to the body of
its dead mate. A Cretan ritual from the
story of the supplanter seems to lie
as a test,
behind
this
tale.
Minos' third son Androgeus died at

the horns of a bull. After triumphing
at the
Panathenaic
festival,
he was sent
fleet,
won
who
the king's daughter,
Theseus
exploits of
For when he was full grown Theseus

recovered the sword from under the
stone where his father had left it, and
set out for Athens by the coast road
along the Isthmus.
On
the
way he
dealt
against the bull of Marathon, identified
with
with the Bull from the Sea, which Hera-
plagued the road, thus conveniently performing half the number of labours
had taken from Crete and turned

loose in Attica after showing it to Eurystheus. The news of his death was used
to account for a ritual on the island of
Faros, where they sacrificed to the Graces
without garlands or flutes. It was said
that Minos had started to sacrifice there,
and in his grief at the news tore off' his
garland and stopped the flutes.
cles
Minos
First
later
made war on Athens.
six
robbers and monsters which
required to equal those of Heracles.
The
other six seem to be the Bull of Marathon, which Theseus finally disposed of
when he got
exploit, the
to
Athens
as
Centaurs, the rape of Helen
descent into Hades. In these
he
is
his
first
Minotaur, the Amazons, the
and the
last three
associated with Pirithous, king of
the Lapiths.
he captured Megara through the
There are elements of folk
tale in the
some of
whom
treachery of the king's daughter Scylla.
stories of the robbers,
For love of Minos she pulled out the

hair that was her father's external soul.
But Minos drowned her, tying her feet
may be decayed
an iron club which Theseus took over
to a ship's stern, perhaps a ritual death.
his
in
imitation of
victims
by
giants.
Periphetes had
men
turtle
below: he suffered the
fate
himself and the turtle
a rock.
Procrustes
into shape to
was the man who
fit
hammered
his bed:
Theseus
fitted it exactly
and
thus turned the tables on Procrustes.
Cercyon was a wrestler
whom
Theseus
perhaps because like
times appears mascuhne in vase paint-
But
ings.
the rest reflect Athenian
all
claims to the area, and the restoration of
law and order
is
an appropriate activity
for Theseus the political hero.
Theseus then successfully performed

one exploit. He killed the Bull of Marathon which Heracles had set free. But
his chief exploit was the killing of the
Minotaur, in which he was helped by
Minos' daughter Ariadne. She gave him
the ball of thread that
to return successfully
of the
ritual
would enable him

from the centre
Labyrinth
after
kiUing the
Minotaur with his bare hands. Afterwards he left Ariadne, asleep on Naxos.
She was soon consoled by Dionysus. In
the local ritual of Dionysus she was his
consort.
variant of the exploit, appropriate
may appear
Sinis
killed
for a son of Poseidon,
means of pine
trees,
the story of the contest between Theseus
Heracles.
in
'accidental'
and it seems just possible that the Amazon legend was originally Athenian
and not part of the story of Heracles.
Then Theseus joined Pirithous in the
war of the Lapiths and the Centaurs,
which, like the war of the gods and the
Giants, was used in the fifth century to
symbolise the triumph of Athenian civ-
'forgot' to
ilisation
and Minos on the voyage to
Crete.
thundered in a clear sky to
Zeus
attest
his
fatherhood of Minos. Theseus by his

father's aid recovered a
golden ring that
Minos threw into the sea, and a golden

crown as well. But whatever form the
exploit took, it ended predictably in the
death of Aegeus. Theseus
change the sails to the colour
that would announce success, and Aegeus threw himself down from the point
on the Acropolis from which the sea
can be seen. His death
is
clearly related
to the similar fates of kings' daughters

at
Athens.
Minos shut up Daedalus in the Labywhich he had given the secret

to Ariadne. But he and his son Icarus
escaped on wings (another Cretan invention). Icarus emulated Phaethon and
went too near the sun. The glue of his
wings melted and he was precipitated
into the sea. Minos pursued Daedalus
to Sicily, where he discovered him by
rinth of
a typical piece
shell
ant.
of Daedalic technology,
threaded with the help of an
But the
local king's daughters saved
Daedalus by boiling Minos immortal

after his bath, like the daughters of
Pelias.
Theseus and Hippolytus
The
rest
He went
of Theseus'
life is
anti-climax.
with Heracles against the
Ama-
zons, and carried off the queen as his
Amazon
invasion of
had thus
provoked.
bride, defeating the
Athens that he
Theseus' son, Hippolytus, was
named
Amazon
queen,
after
his
mother, the
over the barbarian.

Also with Pirithous he carried out
his last two exploits, both of which
BELOW
Lapith and Centaur. The metopes on
the south side of the Parthenon all
had a single theme, the battle of the
Lapiths and Centaurs. The figures have
the sad repose of developed classical
art. The Centaur has nothing bestial
about him, but is the ideal type of
an older man, as the Lapith is of a
young man. Elgin Marbles,
British
Museum.
mm
J--*^
.\
v,->
f^
LEFT
The
sacred
site at
Olympia.
TOP RIGHT
Castor and Pollux. The artist Psiax
used both the red and the black figure
technique about 530 BC. On this vase
the figures are not named, but the
two young cavalrymen in leather

helmets, which leave the ear open
hear orders, and in some kind of
to
riding breeches, could well be twins
and therefore Castor and Pollux, who

appear named on a famous vase
by Exekias. If so, the old man on the
stool is Tyndareus and the woman
their mother Leda. The twin sons
of Zeus, the Dioscuri were the patrons
of the horseriding aristocracy.
Romano,
Museo Civico
Brescia.
ABOVE
Theseus and the Minotaur.
This vase of about 550 BC
shows a robust Theseus
killing a subdued Minotaur with
sword in the vulnerable part

of the neck where the helmet joined
the breastplate in an armoured
hoplite. The six Attic youths, one with
a fillet in his hand, three of the others
with wreaths, stand on either side of
him, and he has put his cloak down
his
on
a rock.
Ashmolean Museum.
BOTTOM RIGHT
Theseus carrying off Helen. Pirithous
draws his sword to ward off opposition
as Helen's servant vainly tries to save
her.
sister
of Ariadne,
fell
in love with Hip-
polytus, and her nurse tried to procure
him
for her.
But Hippolytus,
later Peleus,
like
Bellerophon and
played the virtuous Joseph.
with an oath, and he was unable to rebut

the accusations. Whereupon Theseus
invoked one of the curses given by his

father Poseidon, and another Bull from
came to cause Hippolytus' death

manner appropriate to his name
the Sea
dragged to death over the rocks. Finally

the virgin goddess Artemis appeared to
reconcile father and son, and to institute
the
cult
of her favourite Hippolytus.
But behind the chaste figures of goddess

and devote it is possible to discern the
Ashamed, Phaedra hanged herself, preserving her good name with a letter
in a
accusing Hippolytus. Theseus at once
bolted with
accused his son of trying to supplant
along the coast road which Theseus
supplant him, slaying
him. The nurse had bound Hippolytus
had himself taken to Athens, and he was
ing the course of a ritual chariot race.
'Horse
loosed'.
him
His
as he
frightened
drove into
who remen who shall
team
consort of a crueller goddess,
exile
gularly
chooses
the
him
after or dur-
TROJAN W^
Achilles and Penthesilea. Terracotta

was the preferred material for sculptural
Greece because of its

cheapness and the ease with which
it could be modelled. It is
details in early
though
virtually indestructible,
fragile,
and
is
not
liable, like stone,
of about 600 BC, decorated

the tomb of a warrior, since it shows
relief,
Achilles, the ideal warrior, victorious

that the
may be
He
is
shown
facing
gorgon head of
seen. Part of a
at his feet
is
left
so
his shield
Metropolitan
Museum
Samuel D. Lee Fund, 1942.
of Art.
communal
enterprise of
who
passed
it
on to Hermes. From there
it
Though
then to Atreus, shepherd of hosts, and
succeeded in its aim, the

were great, and an air of
and defeat hangs over it all. Few
it
difficulties
of the
heroes
kingdoms
returned to
find
their
and few of the dynasties survived for more than a few

generations. For this there is a historical
reason. Many of the leaders came from
new families with much shorter geneasecure,
went
first
to Pelops, striker of horses,
on his death to Thyestes, of many lambs,

and finally to Agamemnon. This is not
the same as the genealogy, which begins
with Pelops* father Tantalus in Lydia.
Tantalus
unsettled by further migrations, and the
one of those divine kings

and eventually punished for some act of presumption, like Ixion and perhaps Bellerophon.
He is the son of Zeus, though there were
new
some attempts
dead warrior
labelled Aenea, so that his
opponent must have been an Amazon,

presumably Penthesilea, the queen
who led the Amazons to Troy to help
the Trojans. Greek artists preferred
to illustrate episodes from the legends
of the Trojan war and not from the
Iliad.
last great
the Greek heroes was the Sack of Troy.
failure
to reworking. Part of an early Attic
in a duel.
The
logies
than
those of the children
of
Cadmus, of Aeolus and of Danaus.

Greece had presumably already been
situation
may be
reflected in the
rise
of Mycenae rather than Thebes as
the
dominant power
in
Greece.
My-
cenaean settlements have been found

all
over the eastern Mediterranean, on
the coast of Asia Minor, in Cyprus and

in
Syria.
It
is
likely
Mycenaean
that
Greeks controlled Crete during the
last
Tantalus
shepherd kings, deriving their authority
from Hermes, the god of

given very early in the
made
Iliad.
the sceptre, and gave
flocks,
is
Hephaestus
it
to Zeus
to link
him with Thebes,
where his daughter Niobe seems to

have belonged. There are various accounts of his
sin, that
he revealed the
counsels of the gods or stole ambrosia

to give to
men: but they all add up to

made the king's son im-
the ritual that
mortal as the king's surrogate.

In a variant Tantalus, like a Titan,
great period of the Palace at Cnossus.
Something of this may lie behind the

myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, just
as the sack of Troy may reflect an episode in the period of the expansion. But
myth and epic are not history.
The great leader of the Greek expedition is Agamemnon, king of Mycenae.
His place in a list of what seem to be
is
adinitted to the table of Zeus
buried under
Mount
is
Sipylus, for perjury,
or perhaps abuse of his oath, like Sisy-
phus.
The
story
concerns
the
theft
of a golden dog from the shrine of Zeus
by Pandareus, who entrusted

But when he asked for
it back, Tantalus swore some oath to
Zeus which denied all knowledge of it.
Pandareus, to whom Demeter had granted the ability to eat anything without
in Crete
it
to Tantalus.
suffering for
in
it,
may have been involved
the punishment, for his daughters
\:
-i*^
'l!,.
THE TROJAN WAR
i/'^:
THE TROJAN WAR
twin Lynceus. But Zeus loved Leda,

and came to her in the form of a swan.
Quite exceptionally, she is said to have
borne two sets of twins, one of each
pair being mortal and one immortal:
one pair was female, Helen and Clytemnestra, the only set of female twins in
Greek mythology. Even more exceptionally, Leda is said to have laid either
one or two eggs.
The quarrel of Castor and Pollux
with Idas and Lynceus arose when they
carried off the daughters of Leucippus,
'White Horse',
who had
to the other pair.
been promised
Another version maizes
them quarrel over the division of the

spoils of a cattle raid, and contains folktale elements making use of the special
talents of Idas,
at
who
could eat anything
high speed, and Lynceus,
who was
keen-sighted. Idas cut one of the

into four parts,
and proposed
cows
that half
go to the man who finished

first, and half to the second.
Then he gobbled up his and his brother's
before the Dioscuri even started. So
the booty
his
portion
they laid an
ambush
for Idas
and Lyn-
ceus, but the latter's keen sight discovit. Both mortal twins were killed.
But Zeus struck Idas with lightning,
which should mean he received cult
as a hero in Hades, and carried Pollux
up to heaven. But for love of his brother
he spent one day with him in Hades, and
the next took him up into heaven with
ered
him. This accounts for the two kinds
came
woo
Helen, but the contest,
if
to
there ever
was one, has been suppressed. Instead

another folk
there
is
oath,
which
is
tale,
of the suitors'
used to account for the
Greeks against
Troy. Tyndareus feared to favour one
suitor over another, until Odysseus advised him to make them all swear loyalty to the chosen one. This was Menelaus, whose brother, Agamemnon, was
expedition
of
all
the
already married to Clytemnestra, Helen's
mortal twin. Both the sons of Atreus,

therefore,
wives.
owed
their
kingdoms
the period of Locri's greatest prosperity,
and have been influenced in style

by the sculptures of the Parthenon.
Modern taste makes them face one
another: in antiquity they probably
faced outwards, as here. They show
the two Dioscuri, the divine twin
of cult received by the Dioscuri.

All the heroes of Greece
Two marble groups of the Dioscuri

formed the projecting decorations
at either end of the pediment of the
Ionic temple at Locri, a Greek colony
on the toe of Italy and the last port of
call before Syracuse. The groups
belong to the end of the fifth century,
to their
horsemen who were extremely popular

objects of cult in Italy as gods of
sailors and horsemen. They are
shown dismounting, with the aid
of two Tritons, in order to reside in
both
Locri and bless its inhabitants.

Nazionale, Naples.
Museo
THE TROJAN WAR

have been suppressed and have con-
Achilles
tained a contest. Acastus stole Peleus'
Though
share of the spoils of the hunt, but Peleus
off
proved
the Trojan war was triggered

by the rape of Helen, its origins lavfurther back in the house of Achilles,
the greatest of the
Greek heroes
In the ///W he
often called Aeacides,
is
at
Troy.
not son but grandson of Aeacus, who

was the most just of all the Greeks and
ended up in Hades as the third judge
with Minos and Rhadamanthys. His reputation for justice seems to rest on his
fame as a rain-maker. Greece was afflicted by a drought attributed to the impious
deed of Pelops, who murdered an Arcadian king and scattered his limbs over
the land. Aeacus then ascended the
mount of all the Greeks on Aegina, and
prayed successfully to his father Zeus
common
As
sometimes drawn on a white ground

which covered the red clay, as in a
wine jug of the late sixth century
by the painter of London. It shows
Peleus taking refuge in a tree from
the attack of a lion and a boar after
his host Acastus had robbed him
of his magic spear. Acastus' wife
had tried to seduce Peleus and, failing,
accused him to her husband. But lion
and boar recur as sacred animals in
many exploits, and the vase, as often
happens, suggests an earlier ritual
in which Peleus was the supplanter
hand of Thetis, for
gave Peleus the
Zeus and Poseidon had contended, but both abandoned her when they
learnt that her son was to be mightier
As always where Thetis
than his father.

is
concerned, this
is
a watered
nymph
Aegina,
Myrmidons, were
Zeus turned into men, in a
variant of the myth of Deucalion and
Pyrrha, when Aeacus was alone on the
island. Aeacus had two sons, Peleus
and Phocus: a third, Telamon, is really
a local hero of Salamis, if he is not
versions Thetis
who
is
is
water nymph,
a t3'pical
captured by the hero and held
through
her
various
transformations.
After this he might keep her as his wife
provided she never spoke to him.
The gods came
Strife,
his people, the
other folk-tale motif), cast
whom
belt
which supports the

The mother of Phocus,
presum-
ably because she was not invited (an-
ants
the
wedding of
to the
and
simply
down
version of the succession myth. In other
Peleus and Thetis, but
the story of his children.
Peleus treed by a lion and a boar.

Greek black-figure vases were
folk-tale motif.
reward for his chastity the gods
whom
for rain. Traces of the ritual survive in
His mother was the
them by producing
which he had cut out, a
his title to
the tongues
golden apple inscribed
the
among them
'for the fairest',
which occasioned the
contest for
Trojan war. The surviving child of the

marriage was Achilles. Thetis had destroyed six previous children by putting
them on
the
fire
or boiling them in a
cauldron to make them immortal.
When
relled (one should be the son of a
was doing the same to AchiUes

Peleus interrupted her, and she spoke
to him and had to return to the sea.
She had made him immortal and invulnerable except for the heel, which Peleus
number of
supphed like Pelops' shoulder blade, but

from the bone of a swift-footed giant.
The version that AchiUes was dipped
shield-hero Ajax.
and originally perhaps of Peleus as well,

was a seal-maiden; sea nymphs recur in
the family history.
The two sons quar-
god)
and Peleus killed Phocus 'accidentally'
by a cast of the discus: there are a
familiar ritual motifs here.
Peleus went into exile and appeared

as a potential supplanter in
First in
two
Phthia, where he married the
king's daughter, he 'accidentally' killed
Joseph Pulitzer Bequest.
Boar hunt. Then
with his spear
at the
Calydonian
forti-
Trojan stories
him hunting on
ing that the genealogical Ust of Trojan
games of
where he
Pelias
(which looks
like
an
he played the virtuous Joseph

with his host's wife. His host could not
Peleus, but took
which was probably magic, and

which none but him could wield. Peleus
escaped from the beasts up a tree, from
which he was rather tamely rescued by
Chiron the good centaur, who had originally given him the spear.
spear,
The
Troy, the modern Hissarlik, was a
Pelion and stole away his ash
lolcus,
exploit),
Mount
later.
is
from the beginning of

the Bronze Age. It had cultural links
with Greece from the time of the first
Greek speakers about 1900 B.C., who
may have entered Greece from Asia
Minor through Troy. So it is not surpris-
at
wrestled with Atalanta at the funeral
kill
much
in the water of the Styx
places.
who killed Acastus. Metropolitan

Museum of Art. Purchase; 1946,
his host
she
original ending of the tale
may
fied palace site
kings
is
as
long
as that
of the Thebans,
or that the mythical history of
Troy
is
interwoven with that of Greece. Indeed,

the first king, Dardanus, is said to have
been a brother of the culture hero lasion,
a consort
of Demeter. In one version
lasion was struck by lightning for his
THE TROJAN WAR

in
horse-breeding,
this
which
reflects
the historical fact that the plain of
was one of the places where
it
possible to pasture horses in large
Troy
was
num-
Zeus gave mares, the best in the

the price of Ganymede, son
of Tros and brother of Ilus, when he
carried him off to heaven to be his
cupbearer. But the story was probably
bers.
as
east,
first
that of the sacrifice of a son.
Laomedon, the son of Ilus, promised

those mares to Heracles,
who
touched
Troy when returning with the girdle

of the Ama2on Hippolyte, and saved
Hesione, Laomedon's daughter, from
a sea monster to which she was exposed.
But he was cheated of his reward. The
story, modelled on that of Perseus and
Andromeda, may in fact have been
borrowed to motivate Heracles' second
visit to Troy when he sacked the city.
But Laomedon had a reputation as a
cheat. He also cheated Apollo and Poseidon of their wages when they had
to serve him for a year as punishment
for the conspiracy from which Thetis
saved Zeus. Apollo herded Laomedon's
cows, as he had done those of Admetus,
at
while
Poseidon built an impregnable

Laomedon not only
wall round Troy.
refused to pay
them
but threatened to
Peleus wrestling with Thetis was
a favourite subject of Greek vase
painters, and from imported vases it
was copied by the engravers of Etruscan
mirror-backs, for which it formed a'
suitably erotic subject.
these engravings
Etruscan in
As time went by
became increasingly
style, as is that
shown
which dates from perhaps the fourth

rather than the fifth century. Thetis
beginning to be assimilated to the

of a winged Etruscan female
demon. Peleus is a boy and not a man.
is
style
British
Museum.
and Dardanus,
presumption,
like
his
status. It
Asia on a
ment
were no ships
them
of inflated hides. There

until
Danaus invented
from
to escape with his daughters
Egypt.
Much
of the early genealogy
is
arti-
though already known to the

Iliad. Dardanus and his grandson, Tros,
are derived from the names Dardanians
and Trojans used in the Iliad. His greatgrandson Ilus is derived from the city
ficial,
that
was in revenge for this treatPoseidon sent the sea-monster
to Troy.
Heracles returned to sack Troy in
what may be
a piece
evidence for
continuous
of genuine saga,
hostility
be-
tween Greece and Troy. He took with

him Telamon, who was the first to
breach the wall because he knew the
one piece of it that had been built not
more appropri-
an earthborn king. Erichthonius
Heracles the Glorious Victor. In grati-
site
was indicated by
of which,
a
was very
like
Thebes,
cow. The name of
his son, Erichthonius,
is
rich, as befits a
son of earth,
but in horses.
He was
not in
cattle
said to
have had three thousand mares
marshes of the river

Scamander. The best of the colts were
sired by the North wind, and were so
at pasture in the
fast that
corn
into slavery
by Poseidon but by his father Aeacus.

Heracles would have slain him for this
presumption, but he averted his fate by
the timely dedication of an altar to
of Ilium, the
ate to
them
with their ears cut off to mark their
brother a son of Zeus, floated across to

raft
their agreed wages,
sell
they did not bend the ears of
when
they ran over them.
possible that Poseidon also had a
It
is
hand
tude, Heracles assigned
daughter
Hesione,
him Laomedon's
who
been Heracles' reward on

visit,
if
should
have
his previous
the pattern of the supplanter
were followed. When she was allowed

to ransom one of the captives, she chose
her brother. Telamon's bastard son by
Hesione is more Trojan than Greek.
Though he fought for the Greeks at
THE TROJAN WAR
Troy he used the eastern bow, and

ended up in Cyprus. His name Teucer
is that of a Trojan king, and may be
that of an eastern god.
one
Orion
and Cephalus indeed he was sometimes
said to be the son of Cephalus. She
Priam's brother Tithonus was
Dawn,
of the consorts of
like
and the child

was therefore exposed, only to be suckled by a bear and brought up by a shepherd. No god is associated with a
bear, only Artemis, which suggests that
Paris was once, like Aeneas, a goddess's
that destroyed the city,
son.
therefore not surprising that
It is
of immortality,
judge
when
but the jealous gods granted only the
apple
inscribed
begged for him the
gift
of her prayer, withholding eternal
letter
made him
the other three goddesses
Strife cast
the
they strove for the golden

'for
the
among them
fairest'
at the
that
wedding
youth, as they did from the Sibyl. So
of Peleus and Thetis. Aphrodite offered
Tithonus withered away and Dawn shut

him up in his chamber, where he may
and he praised her, rejecting

Hera and Athena,
who offered him kingship and victory
in war respectively.
Behind the story, which is alluded
to in the Iliad in the slightly contemptuous form given above (though only
the gift of Aphrodite is mentioned), can
be seen the son and consort of a mother-goddess, who has made him every
woman's darling. His wife Helen seems
once to have been a Spartan treegoddess, and he went to Sparta to carry
her off as if he were a supplanter.
Menelaus with Agamemnon gathered
most of the heroes of Greece with the
exception of the Thebans and the Athen-
have turned into
similar
Anchises,
a grasshopper.
may be
consort
seen in
descendant of Assaracus,
and Ganymede. The

goddess Aphrodite actually bore him
a son, Aeneas, the only son of an
Olympian goddess by a mortal known
to Greek mythology. Aeneas was imof Ilus
brother
portant to later genealogies.
The
story
of his rescue of his father from Troy

appears early. But in the
rodite,
Hymn
to
Aph-
Anchises knows that the consorts
of goddesses do not have a flourishing

hfe,
and Aphrodite warns him
that if
he discloses the maternity of his son
he will be struck by lightning.
It
is
reasonable inference that Anchises too
ended up
desire
as the object
among
those
who
of
and the
cult,
claimed descent
from Aeneas to continue
this cult
may
be the explanation of the stories of the

rescue
of Anchises.
The family
also
claimed the divine Trojan mares, saying

that
Anchises had stolen them from
Laomedon.
The Trojan royal house has much
closer and more frequent dealings with
the gods than any Greek family. This
relationship
continues in the time
Priam, whose daughter Cassandra
of
is
an inspired prophetess.
But because she refused the god her
favours he spat in her mouth, that
nobody might believe her, and she
could safely prophesy the doom of Troy
without in any way altering the course
'bride of Apollo',
of history.
The judgement of Paris

There
is
a story
Paris lust,
the other goddesses,
ians.
that
There was a persistent tradition

Troy was not taken until the twen-
tieth year after the rape
delay
is
First, it
of Helen.
The
accounted for in two ways.

took some time to persuade all
come on the expedition.

Odysseus at least was reluctant. He had
advised Tyndareus to exact the oath
because he wanted to marry Penelope,
daughter of Tyndareus' brother Icarius,
the suitors to
who
tried to persuade
him
to settle in
But Odysseus carried Penelope

off in his chariot, followed by Icarius,
who kept on begging her to stay but
gave up when she veiled her face.
Agamemnon went to Ithaca, off the
west coast of Greece, to persuade OdysSparta.
seus to join him.
Odysseus was reluctant to join the

expedition and at one time was said to
have feigned madness, yoking an ox

and an ass to the plough and sowing
his fields with salt. The stratagem was
discovered when the Greeks put Te-
about Priam's son Paris
lemachus in the path of the plough.

This is a decayed version of the exploit
mother
of yoking beasts, and of the sacrifice of
that suggests a supplanter. His
Hecuba dreamed she bore
firebrand
son.
Odysseus
himself
discovered
Ganymede and
the eagle. Seals were

in the ancient world
most circumstances where nowadays
used
in
genuineness
or a money transaction.
engraver's work was therefore
a signature attests the
of a
letter
The gem
highly confidential, and his art

was partly for this reason highly
regarded in antiquity. Lilte all other
Greek art forms, a high proportion
of the subjects are taken from
mythology. This garnet of the first
Ganymede and
century BC shows
the
eagle which, according to one version,

carried
him
He is giving
cup, a clear
off to heaven.
the eagle a drink
from
reference to his task in heaven. But
on a rock under a tree, dressed

shepherd in a Trojan cap, a type
used also for Paris, and the scene
he
sits
as a
is
therefore on earth.
It
was only
Zeus
for the actual abduction that
assumed the form of an
eagle,
lonides Collection.
LEFT
The body of a terracotta statue of Zeus

and Ganymede found in excavations
since the Second World War fitted
a head found at the end of the
nineteenth century.
It
retains traces
of the original colours. The blackbearded Zeus has a red cloak with
black border.
Ganymede
carries
which Zeus has given him as

a love gift. The whole stands o\er
three feet high, and adorned the top
of the pediment of a small temple or
shrine. It was made by a Peloponnesian
the cock
in Corinthian clay
Archaeological
about 470 bc.
Museum, Olympia.
THE TROJAN WAR
The sacred island of Delos, where

the lonians gathered together to hold
a festival of Apollo on the island
where he was born, lies to the
south-west of Mykonos. The sacred
site lay on the north-west coast
of Delos, under the sacred mountain
of Cythnus on which Zeus and Athena
were worshipped. The ancient path
up the mountain lay to the left of that
prominent in the picture. To the
north of the sanctuary was a sacred
of the picture,
overlooked by a terrace of sacred lions,
set up at the end of the 7th century
by the Naxians, who dominated the
lake, just off the left
island at that time.
Naxos
is
the
largest of the Cyclades, the islands
that continue the line of Attica
between
Crete and Turkey, and the first to

revolt when the Athenians made Delos
the sacred and administrative
centre of their empire.
in this
whom
mother had hidden

Scyros, hoping
way to save him from an early
Achilles,
among
the
his
women on
death.
The second reason
for the delay in
taking Troy was that the Greeks got
and went to Mysia to the south of

There Telephus the king repulsed
them, until Dionysus tripped him with
a vine branch and Achilles wounded
him in the thigh. Telephus was Heracles'
son and a typical supplanter, who was
lost
it.
exposed and suckled by a doe,

his mother's uncles
and came
killed
to Mysia,
where he seems to be a figure in a fertility cult. For the wound would not
heal until, like the magic impotence
inflicted on his son by Phylacus when
gelding rams, it was touched with the
rust of the spear that made the wound.
Telephus came to the Greek camp, and
promised to navigate the Greeks to
Troy
so the
omen
er,
them
told
that
representing the nine
full
years they
would consume at the siege, and then

was turned to stone. The fleet was held
by contrary winds until Agamemnon's
daughter Iphigenia was sacrificed to
Artemis. She was brought under the
pretence that she was going to be married
to Achilles.
Various not very convincing reasons

are given
One
why
a sacrifice
version linked
Brauron (page
35),
it
was required.
with the
ritual at
another with that
of the Sacred Spring,
when
everything
born in a year was vowed to the god.

In fact, in Greek mythology and especially
at
Athens, daughters are often
sacrificed for the victory of
or sacrifice themselves. This
an army,
is
just an-
other case, softened by the story that a
in return.
Even
though an
Troy would fall
in the tenth year. A snake devoured
eight sparrows together with their mothto leave Aulis in Boeotia,
Greek
fleet
was unable
deer was substituted at the
last
moment
THE TROJAN WAR

by the goddess, who carried off Iphigenia to be her priestess among the
Tauri of the Crimea, where human
could safely be attributed to
sacrifices
The Greeks went

where Achilles
Apollo,
first
to Tenedos,
killed the king, a
thus ensuring
On
son of
own
his
early
was
bitten by a snake and marooned on
Lemnos because the Greeks could not
bear the smell of the suppurating wound.
The bow of Heracles, which Philoctetes had been given as a reward for
igniting his pyre, was necessary to the
capture of Troy, and this story conveniently gets it and him out of the way.
When
The
Iliad
a straightforward story
is
Tenedos,
Philoctetes
they finally reached Troy,
the
Trojans refused to return Helen and
broke the truce when Menelaus
won
of
the fighting at Troy, told in personal
terms. Achilles quarrels with
barbarians.
death.
BELOW
The sack of Troy
non because
his
honour
Briseis,
prize,
Chryseis,
his
is
Agamem-
slighted
is
when
taken to replace
whom Agamemnon
to return to her father.
forced
is
He withdraws
to his tent, but allows his friend Pat-
when Zeus
roclus to help the Greeks
permits the Trojans to reach the ships.
He
rejoins the fight for personal reasons
when Patroclus is
as
treats Hector's
Troy, but
it
killed,
and
kills
an act of personal revenge.
is
to Priam,
body, dragging
Hector
He
finally moved to
who reminds him
mis-
round
it
perhaps the chase of Hector round the

walls of Troy, since Achilles is con-
BOTTOM RIGHT
Achilles slaying a Trojan.
Towards
end of the fourth century bc the

native Etruscan style of vase painting
the
introduced a
new
scenes, a native
represent a
character into
many
demon. This does not
new development
in
Etruscan religion; rather, as long as the

followed their Greek models
artists
there
strictly,
was no room for a demon

Here Charon, the Greek
the boatman who
in the pictures.
name adopted from
ferried souls across the Styx to the
underworld, stands by with his
hammer
AIFAS,
as Achilles, mislabelled
that is Ajax, kills one of the

Trojan captives at the tomb of
Patroclus with a downward stab into
the jugular. Achilles appears as a

brutal Italian, but the scene has the
direct power sometimes lacking in more
refined
Greek
Nationale.
vases. Bibliotheque
of the father. This vase is quite calm,

and fully aware of the divine
intentions for Iphigenia. The presence
of Apollo, top left, balancing
his sister Artemis with her bow and
with the typical crossed bands of vases
of this kind, may point to his
instructions to Orestes to rescue
his sister from the Crimea. As it is,
Iphigenia seems almost to be turning
which
supposed to settle the issue. Then the

Greeks settled down to the long siege
of Troy.
But both literature and art stressed

the pathos of the scene and the grief
which stands behind

her rearing up on to the altar, and
can sometimes be explained

of myth and ritual - even
'swift-footed'
a vase - by the
fourth century artist Timanthes.
into the deer
in
ventionally
famous painting - not
of the
the single combat with Paris that was
terms
the fifth century. It also inspired a
restore
father he will never see again. Various
episodes
Sacrifice of Iphigenia.
This was a subject that
appealed to dramatists throughout
but
such
is
of the
wielded by a man
clearly the target
sacrificial knife
whose lack of
distress identifies
as Calchas rather than
On
him
Agamemnon.
the left an attendant holds the

garlands for the victim and perhaps
the flour that was sprinkled on it.
British
Museum.
THE TROJAN WAR
poem.
war are
explanatiotis are irrelevant to the
The myths of
Suicide of Ajax. This bronze
from Etruria was attached
outside the
statuette
to the rim of
and are often con-
cerned with the conditions that had to be

fulfilled before Troy could be taken.
some bronze
object, perhaps acting as one

of the handles. Ajax's attitude
Thus
suggests that he was appealing to

somebody on the other side of the
object, perhaps Athena,
Iliad,
the Trojan
the
to be
man
first
tomb
opposite Troy; elms grew
him from the

consequence of his madness.
Museo Archeologico, Florence.
tried to save
and
could
see
ambushed
Thus,
Troy.
Thrace
in
in the pre-
their leaves faded
cinct,
who
Protesilaus,
received cult at his
who had
was fated
to land
was
It
killed.
when
too,
young Troilus and
the
they
Achilles
killed
him. If Troilus reached twenty Troy
was
safe, so
the
very
no doubt he was
eve
of
the
fatal
killed
on
birthday.
Odysseus and Diomede stole the horses

of the Thracian Rhesus on the night
he arrived at Troy: if they but drank
the waters of Scamander Troy was safe.
Rhesus sounds as though he may have
been a 'son of Ares' once: he was probably the object of cult in an oracular
cave.
As
Sar-
Patroclus died for killing
pedon, the son of Zeus, so Hector's

death was avenged by that of Achilles.
But before that, Achilles killed two of
the exotic
allies
of the Trojans.
The
first
was Memnon, son of the Dawn and

Tithonus. He was buried on the Hellespont, and once a year birds went to
sweep the grave and sprinkle it with
water. There was evidently a tendency
to assume that all the local cult-heroes
had met their death at Troy. The 'birds'
may have been women performing a

bird dance. The other victim was Penthesilea,
came
to
dental'
queen of the Amazons, who

Troy to be purified for the 'accimurder of her sister Hippolyte,
mother
TOP RIGHT
Achilles sparing Priam.
Some metal vessels have survived
from ancient times by being buried

for security in unsettled times
A silver cup of the

period signed both in Greek
and Latin by Cheirisophus
(the name means 'Hand-wise')
and countries.
Roman
was found at Hoby in Denmark.

One side shows the classic scene
which ends the Iliad, and exploits
its poignancy rhetorically.
Priam kisses the hands that slew his
son, and Achilles spares him,
when he thinks of the aged father
who would in his turn mourn
the dead Achilles. National Museum,
Copenhagen.
suggests
of
The pattern
may have been re-
Hippolytus.
that
she
BOTTOM RIGHT
The other side of the silver cup
from Hoby. Odysseus,
cruited as an ally by marrying one of

Priam's sons. Thersites accused Achilles
recognisable by his hat, is trying

to persuade the injured Philoctetes,
of violating the body, and himself put

out its eyes with his spear. For this, or
shown as a beggar with staff

and bandaged foot but no bow,
to return to Troy which could not
be taken without him. Odysseus
concealed his identity, and used
the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus,
to work on Philoctetes. When persuasion
failed, Heracles resolved the
resulting impasse by reminding
Philoctetes that it was the will of the
gods
that
Troy should
fall
and that
possibly
Achilles
for
killed
stealing
some
him, knocking
treasure,
off his
head with one blow. Though Thersites

in the Iliad is a deformed demagogue
properly chastised by Odysseus, he
was in fact a kinsman of Diomede, and
his death caused dissension in the
Greek
camp.
Achilles was shot in his vulnerable
by Paris in a battle at the gates of
he should contribute.
National Museum,
heel
Copenhagen.
Troy. Apollo guided the
shaft, for in a
THE TROJAN WAR
shame
is
culture success as well as failure
projected on to the gods to avoid
personal responsibility disruptive of society, just as ritual killings are always
'accidental'.
romantic version
later
told of Achilles' love for Priam's daughter,
Polyxena, and of secret and treach-
erous meetings and betrayals. This
at-
mosphere of dissension and failure can

even be detected in the Iliad, where the
Greeks on occasions contemplate withdrawal. Clearly the expedition was not
an unqualified success.
arms were awarded to
Achilles'
Odysseus, and not to Ajax who, at the
loss of
more
face than he could reason-
turned on
which social
pressures prevented him from directing
against the Greek leaders, and committed
suicide. He found some difficulty as
ably be expected
Heracles
is
to
bear,
aggression
the
himself
have made him inbut one part of his
said to
vulnerable in
all
body by wrapping him in the lion's

skin. The body of Ajax was buried, not
burnt, and he was the object of cult both
in the Troad, where his grave was by
the sea side and contained huge bones,
and at Salamis his home, where it was
associated with that of his son Euryshield'. There was a story
armour of Achilles was washed
ashore from the shipwreck of Odysseus,
and came to rest on Ajax's grave in the
saces,
'Broad
that the
Troad.
The Greeks then brought

the helper necessary to
Troy
to
the successful
conclusion of the enterprise, Philoctetes

with the bow of Heracles. The Trojan
Helenus,
who had
quarrelled with his
brother for the hand
of Helen after
con-
Paris' death, revealed three further
ditions
that the bones of Pelops should
be returned to Asia
Minor whence he
came, that the son of Achilles should
and that the Palladium, a magic

image of Athena, should be stolen.
Neoptolemus was fetched from Scyros,
where he had been begotten, and, clad
in his father's armour, was prominent
fight,
in the sack of
Troy
the motif suggests
the success of the sons of the
Seven
against Thebes.
The Palladium was said to have been

made by Athena to represent her female
companion Pallas, whom she accidentally
killed and whose name she took. Zeus
Suicide of Ajax. The Etruscan gem

engravers seem to have taken their
from Greek vases, which

were imported into Etruria in large
quantities and later imitated there,
rather than from Greek gems. But a
fifth century example, of which
the impression is shown, is very well
adapted to its medium. The suicide
of Ajax, when he was not awarded
the arms of Achilles, was a subject
subjects
whose
cruelty particularly appealed
to the Etruscans.
Museum
of Fine Arts,
Boston, Bartlett Fund.
Diomede with
the Palladium. Because
they were intended as seals, most

Greek ringstones, like this fourth
century chalcedony one, are engraved
in intaglio to
produce an
relief impression.
effective
Diomede, who has
succeeded in stealing the

Palladium or sacred image from the
Temple of Athena in Troy, is stealthily
tiptoeing with drawn sword to avoid
discovery. The Palladium is shown
as a tiny but perfect image. Such
totems were really either meteoric
stones fallen from heaven or a primitive
and roughly shaped tree trunk
containing the god whose presence
just
made
the city inviolable.
Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Bartlett Fund.
RIGHT
The Judgement of Paris. The Penthesilea
painter, working from 475 BC, unlike
some of his followers, could
decorate a toilet box with an
appropriate subject without descending
into sentimentality. The Judgement
of Paris, with the inscription twice
repeated 'The boy is beautiful', runs

right round the jar. Paris is seen
on a rock, wearing a travelling

hat and carrying a club. Behind him is
an older man with a thin stick. He
may be only a spectator to fill the space,
sitting
possibly Zeus or Priam. Hermes,

bearded and similarly dressed as a
but identified by his attributes,

him to the goddesses,
who face one another on the other
side of the vase. Metropolitan Museum
traveller,
comes
to fetch
of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907.
Diomede and Odysseus. Opposite

Diomede Odysseus, shown as always
bearded and
and cloak
sword
hand and indicates
in a cap, holds his
in the left
with his right the feet of a guard

he has killed. Between them is a
similar statue of Poseidon on a column,
next to a stylised representation of the
walls of Troy, outside which, in this
version of the myth, Odysseus
awaited Diomede.
Ashmolean Museum.
THE TROJAN WAR
N^,
,-%
L^^
LEFT
Laocoon and
the sea serpents
is
perhaps the most famous statue of

antiquity. It was discovered in Rome
during the Renaissance. It was the
work of three sculptors of Rhodes in
the first century BC, when a developed
technique of sculpture was put to
the service of sensational realism.
The Rhodians, prosperous merchants
and sailors, were allies of the Romans,
who claimed descent from the
Trojans via Aeneas, and this may
have led to the choice of the subject.
The
priest
Laocoon warned
the
Trojans against the wooden horse

and was destroyed together with his
sons by sea serpents for attempting
to interfere with the fated course
of events. Vatican Museum.
RIGHT
Marble statue of Athena. The
pediments of the temple of Aphaea
on Aegina both show Athena presiding
over scenes of
battle,
perhaps
between Greeks and Trojans (for

there is an archer in one scene),
symbolising the victory over the
Persians in which the Aeginetans
joined with the Athenians. Aphaea
was identified with Britomartis, one
of the forms of the Artemis worshipped

in Crete. But the temple suggests she
may also have had qualities that could
lead to her identification with Athena.
The statue of about 480 BC from
the pediment was originally painted
and decorated with bronze or gold
for which the holes can be seen. The
breast of the goddess probably bore
the gorgon head and her right hand
held a spear. Antikensammlungen, Munich.
THE TROJAN WAR

cast
it
Troy where Ilus built

had to be stolen because
can be taken as long as its gods
down
to
a temple. It
it
no city
remain in it. The Romans, who claimed
that Aeneas had brought the real Palladium to Rome, had a special ceremony
of evocation to entice enemy gods to
Rome. So Odysseus and Diomede
stole
as they had joined in killing the horses

of Rhesus. Odysseus used the trick of
disguising himself as a beggar and en-
it
listing the help
He
the
grave
of
Achilles.
sacked the sleeping

pieties.
city,
The
Greeks
not without im-
Neoptolemus slew Priam
at the
of Zeus where he had taken refuge.

Locrian Ajax raped Cassandra before
altar
the image of Athena. Astyanax, infant
son of Hector, was cast from the battlements like a sacrifice. And Polyxena was
on the tomb of Achilles, the

germ of the romantic story of their love.
sacrificed
of Helen.
also devised the
wooden horse
in
which the heroes entered Troy by a

trick. It may be a recollection of some
kind of siege engine, which breached
the walls at, no doubt, the one place
where they had not been built by gods
and were therefore vulnerable - another

device for throwing the responsibility
of defeat off the defenders. Or it may
represent treachery in Troy, the normal
way in which the Greeks took walled
certainly Antenor and Aeneas
were spared by the Greeks, though they
were needed for genealogical reasons.
All the Greeks but those in the horse
retired to Tenedos, pretending that they
were finally withdrawing and that the
horse was a thank-offering to Athena
(though it ought to have been to Pocities:
seidon,
who
built the walls
and often
appears in the form of a horse). The

Trojans dragged it into the city, of
course disbelieving the prophecies of
Cassandra and also neglecting the am-
biguous warning of Apollo, who sent

two snakes to devour the sons of Laocoon,
who had
begotten them on his
wife in the sanctuar\.
The Greeks in the horse, whose

number varies from twenty-three to
three thousand, were
all
frightened ex-
cept for Neoptolemus. Their presence
was suspected by Helen, who went

round addressing each in the tones of
his wife. Odysseus bade them all keep
and strangled Anticlus, the only
one who was going to cry out. Helen
was accompanied by her second husband, Deiphobus, and her role is ambiguous, for 'some god wanted to give
silence
glory to the Trojans'.
The
first
out of the horse was killed

The rest admitted the
leaping down.
Greek army, which had been guided

from Tenedos by a beacon lighted on
last of the temples at Agrigento,

the ancient Acragas, is almost
contemporary with the Parthenon and,
The
like
it,
survived as a Christian church.
was dedicated to Saints Peter and

Paul, who perhaps took over from the
twin Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.
National pride and the desire to impress
visitors with the power and wealth of
the city, was a powerful motive for
It
temple building in the ancient world,

and Acragas under its tyrants was one
of the strongest cities in Sicily during
the fifth century. Several temples lie
along the southern city wall, looking
towards the
to the west.
sea,
and
this is the furthest
THE TROJAN WAR
THE TROJAN WAR
Murder of Aegisthus. This painting

of the murder is earlier (500-475 BC)
than any of the surviving dramatic
treatments of the story. It suggests
that Orestes came openly and armed,
though Aegisthus, who is dragged off
his throne, was evidently not
expecting the attack. The horrified
girl is Chrysothemis, the younger
sister who stayed with her mother, and
not Electra, who is associated with
the murder only in drama.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
RIGHT
Orestes and Electra. At the beginning
of the fourth century the local potters
of the Greek colonies in Italy began
to imitate the Attic red figured vases
they had been importing. An amphora
by a painter working in Paestum

from 550-310 BC illustrates a
performance of
a play,
probably the
Electra of Sophocles. Orestes,
shown
conventionally nude, stands on one

side of the memorial pillar on the tomb
of Agamemnon, supported by his
friend Pylades. On the other side
Electra brings a fillet to the tomb
which she is visiting on her way from
the fountain, at which she will fill
the water pot she carries. The
recognition is imminent. Above two
Furies watch the scene. Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Pierce Fund.
THE END OF THE HERO
Perhaps because of their various acts
the capture of Thebes by the sons of
of impiety, few of the heroes had a
the Seven.
or
safe
profitable
kill
but because of
of the local oracle of Apollo at Clarus
with
Diomede and Nestor.
the exception of
Menelaus was
Helen for her
The contest was to guess

number of figs on a tree, and the
number of pigs in a sow's unborn farrow.
The story is Ionian propaganda in favour
return home,
at first
determined to
infidelity,
her beauty (and her divine status) was
unable to do
and set out with the

other two. But he was delayed by the
death of his helmsman off Sunium, and
off the south-west promontory of the
Peloponnese a north-westerly drove him
to Crete and Egypt. He spent the next
the
near Colophon.
The impious
so,
suffered
Ajax,
Menelaus,
like
Ancient
shipwreck.
scholars
and date of the

may have taken place
in the summer, at the
tried to fix the exact time

fall
of Troy.
dangerously
It
late
setting of the Pleiads,
when
the sailing
eight years accumulating wealth in the
season ends in Greece and the autumn
was
winds begin to blow. Thus there may
eastern Mediterranean. Finally he
becalmed
off
Pharos,
an uninhabited
which the Odyssey envisages as a long sail from Egypt, to

which Menelaus had to return, on the
advice of Proteus, an Old Man of the
off-shore island
Sea, before he could
make
Sparta. All
be a perfectly
natural
explanation
of
these calamities. Ajax succeeded in getting to shore
and boasted
that he
had
escaped against the will of the immortal

gods,
who promptly proved him wrong.
Poseidon broke
off the
rock upon which
An
early navigation
he was sitting and drowned him.
from
annual Locrian ceremony, in which a
depended on starting
known landmark. At home he
continued to live in immense prosperity
with his divine wife, looking forward

to
the Islands
this is
of the Blest. Most of
a realistic account of freeboot-
ship was launched with black sails,

was explained as mourning for the dead
fire
Ajax.
number of the Greeks returned
ing true enough of any period from the
to find that they
Mycenaean
in the affections of their wives during
Some
at
all.
to the eighth century.
of the Greeks did not return
Calchas the prophet went overland
to Colophon, to die in a kind of magical

conflict (a folk-tale motif)
with Mopsus,
the son of a 'bride of Apollo',
Manto
the daughter of Tiresias. She had emi-
grated there with
some Argives
after
had been supplanted
their absence. This
eneus of Crete,
happened
to
Idom-
but another or addi-
was told to account for his

from a storm he
vowed to sacrifice the first thing he met
on his return, which was of course his
tional story
exile,
that to escape
son or daughter.
plague resulting
ABOVE
This fragment from 560-550 BC
by Nearchos has often
recalled the
passage in the Iliad when Achilles'

horses are suddenly able to answer
his reproaches for deserting
Patroclus by reminding him of his
own
rapidly approaching fate, which
Achilles has long
makes
known and which
his quest for glory the
urgent. But the horses'
names
more
are
not the same, and in fact the vase

showed Thetis and Hephaestus bringing
Achilles his armour. National Museum,
Athens.
RIGHT
Blinding of Polyphemus. A huge early
Attic amphora four and a half feet
high was found in excavations at
Eleusis in 1954. The neck shows the
blinding of Polyphemus, in a
flamboyant
style.
The
painting's chief interest
Homeric
is its
The stick has two

some illustrations which
subject.
points, as in
assume a two-eyed Cyclops, but both

seem to terminate in the one eye,
which is not central and may
Cyclops' origin in the smith
has lost an eye by a spark.
reflect the
who
Eleusis
130
Museum.
from
this
impious
to banish him.
sacrifice led the
people
In this folk-tale motif
Vow,
of the Home-comer's
the order
of events has been deliberately altered

to conceal the normality of the practice,
and to absolve Idomeneus of the

sponsibility for having willed it.
re-
The death of Agamemnon

The
is
of the betrayed husband
classic case
Agamemnon
who was supwho had already
himself,
planted by Aegisthus,
Atreus, his father's brother. In
killed
seducing his cousin's, wife, Aegisthus
was only doing what Thyestes had done

to Atreus. He may have had some real
claim to the kingdom. The murder of
Agamemnon
is
simply an episode in the
gory history of the Pelopids. It contains

elements derived ultimately from ritual:
murdered him
for Clytemnestra
in the
bath-house after a bath, striking him

three blows, possibly with a double axe,
after catching
him
in a hunting net
more
appropriate to a sacred animal than

a
tc
man.
Zeus, through the oracle of his son
Apollo
at
Delphi, ordered Orestes to
avenge the murder of
his father
by
kill-
ing his mother Clytemnestra and her

lover Aegisthus.
He
did so and returned
from
the'
help of his almost
exile
with
incestuously devoted sister Electra and
under the protection of Hermes. Orestes

was purified of the murder of his mother
by Apollo at Delphi. But the Furies
Purification of Orestes. This fourth

century south Italian vase shows the two
chief figures, Orestes and Apollo.
Orestes, with his conical hat off his
head, clasps the navel stone with the
left arm, in which he holds his scabbard,
and with the sword
Odysseus
er.
in his right wards

an invisible Fury. Apollo
performs the purification with two
laurel leaves which he has dipped in the
bowl full of presumably pig's blood.
off
Museum.
British
some of them Penelope seems

husband by some
In
to have recognised her
The
fate
of
Agamemnon, and
the
filial
token and to
have connived in the
duty of Orestes, are in the Odyssey con-
destruction of his rivals. But the poet
and held
up as a model to his son Telemachus.
Odysseus returned from Troy after ten
who
years of wanderings, to find his substance
Argus,
being devoured by the nobility of Ithaca,
ter.
has transferred this to the aged nurse,
were unaffected and continued to pursue

him. Orestes fled to Athens and took
refuge at the image of Athena, who
instituted the Athenian homicide court
of the Areopagus to decide the issue.
Her own presiding vote went to Orestes.
trasted with that of Odysseus,
who were
pressing his wife Penelope

marry one of them. She kept them at
bay until his return by insisting that she
must finish the shroud she was weaving
slain,
This made the votes equal, and, accord-
to
her husband returned until she has tested
Odysseus' father Laertes. This

shroud she unpicked each night. Odys-
Odysseus in making it had incorporated

an olive tree which grew on the site of
seus returned in time to defeat
his palace.
ing to the practice of the court, Orestes
was aquitted. The Furies were persuaded

to accept cult at Athens, becoming the
Kindly Ones, Eumenides, earth-goddesses
rather
like
daughters
the
of
Cecrops.
went there to bring

back his sister to Athens with the image
of Artemis. He was taken prisoner and
Orestes
Iphigenia recognised her brother only

in
the nick
sacrifice.
all
the
suitors in the exploit to determine Pe-
Iphigenia had been carried off to the
Crimea.
for
of time
to
prevent
his
nelope's
husband.
He
used
great
bow, which he alone was able to string,

to shoot them down at a feast.
The story of the Return of Odysseus
is made up of a number of different
traditional versions of what may have
been originally the myth of the supplant-
his
on
hound
recognises Odysseus by a scar
and to the
thigh,
who
Even
faithful
dies after greeting his
the
after
Penelope refuses to believe
him by claiming
mas-
have been
suitors
that his marriage
it
is
bed
has been moved, an impossibihty since
The myths
in the Odjssey appear in
the account of his wanderings
Odysseus gives
at the
acians, a race of ideahsed sailors
swift
and
which
court of the Phae-
whose
own way
men to the
silent ships find their
and may once have
ferried
land of the dead. Angered at their habit
of giving free passage to
all,
including
enemy Odysseus, Poseidon turned
his
ship into a
their
a
myth
rock on
its
return^
that explains natural features of
an island traditionally identified as Corfu.

Odysseus was cast up there by a ship-
wreck and befriended by the king's

daughter Nausicaa.
He
defeated
all
the
Phaeacian nobles in an athletic contest.

The episode is clearly modelled on the
myth of
the supplanter.
Only the exihim from
gencies of the plot prevent
marrying Nausicaa.
He does appear however as the temporary consort of two nymphs or goddesses in the course of his wanderings.
Many of the motifs that occur during
his journey seem to have been taken
from the Argonautic saga, and may
contain some information about northern waters. But they all seem to be
located in the western Mediterranean,
an area in which the Greeks showed

increasing interest from the eighth century. It
was also the scene of some of
the exploits of Heracles.
After leaving Troy, Odysseus touched
ABOVE
BELOW
Orestes and the Furies. This early
Odysseus
bell crater from the beginning

of the fourth century bc is one of the
most dramatic illustrations of the story
of Orestes, a favourite subject. The
painting seems to be closely related to
Aeschylus' play the Eumenides. The
ghost of Clytemnestra is seen awaking
vigorous free style
Apulian
showing that
performed by Apollo
the sleeping Furies,

the purification
is
powerless against the ancient curse

of blood. Apollo, half girt in a richly
embroidered tragic garment, holds his

bay in one hand and in the other
a pig over the head of Orestes, not to
illustrate
but to symbolise the
performed with
its blood
for the purification was not
shown on stage. Louvre.
purification he has
;
The
employed on
even when very
in Circe's house.
vases from 450 bc,
at
Thrace, where he sacked the city of
the Cicones, sparing only the priest of
Apollo,
who
gave him in return some
sketchy in style, as here, could

produce an effective illustration
of action. Odysseus rises from his
exceptional wine that could be diluted
and draws his sword when Circe

tries to turn him into a beast,
like his companions behind him,
one with a pig's head, one with an
was blown to North Africa, to the land

of the Lotus-eaters, whose food caused
all that tasted it to forget home and
chair
ass's.
The herb moly, given him
by Hermes, had rendered Odysseus

immune to her spells, and
she flees before him, dropping
the mixing bowl in which
she had mixed the wine, and the
rod with which she had stirred it.
Gift of Amelia E. White, 1941.
with twenty parts of water. Thence he
Then in Sicily the Cyclops Polyphemus imprisoned him in his cave

and ate his companions. Odysseus made
him drunk with his Thracian wine and
family.
put out his one eye, escaping in the
morning under the
belly of the Cyclops'
ram.
The
Cyclopes were originally
smiths of Zeus,
bolt.
who made
the
the thunder-
For the purposes of the Odyssey
they have been turned into uncivilised

shepherds, sons of Poseidon, whose
anger Odysseus provokes by blinding
Polyphemus. But they have retained the

single eye typical of smiths which is
necessary to the plot.
The
traditional
motif of the magic ring, which betrays

the position of the escaped hero to the
blinded giant and can be removed only
with the finger on which

put,
is
himself and his

ing.
it
has been
absent. Instead Odysseus betrays
He had
name by
his
own
previously concealed
boastit
and
by saying that he
was 'No man'. But he succeeded in escaping the rocks which the Cyclops hurled
tricked the Cyclops
at
him and proceeded
to the next ad-
venture.
him
Aeolus, king of the winds, got
within sight of Ithaca by tying up
Odysseus went to
sleep,
and
all
Then
com-
the contrary winds in a goatskin.

his
rades, thinking the sack contained treasure, untied
blown
so that they were
it
back west again. They reached the land
Some
cannibal Laestrygonians.
giant
of the
of Odysseus' comrades encounter
the king's daughter, but
little
made
is
of the episode because Odysseus must
be preserved for further adventures, in

the extreme west.
There
daugh-
lay the island of Circe,
of the Sun. Circe turned Odysseus'
ter
Odysseus was
pigs, but
comrades into
protected against her spells by the magic
moly which Hermes found for

must originally have been the
Herb of Life, and Circe the enchanter's
herb
him.
It
who
daughter
But
quest.
all
behind these
lie
the hero in his
assists
the ritual elements which
have been con-
stories
verted into fiction. Odysseus did,

ever,
become
with his
her
threatening
how-
the consort of Circe, after
sword and
making her swear not to harm him.

She sent him to consult the soul of
Odysseus
Tiresias so that
as a typical
hero descended into Hades, where he
encountered
his
who had
penor
Hades by
own crew-man
El-
taken a swift route to
falling to
his
death off the
roof of Circe's palace.
On
way back from Aeaea,
his
Odysseus
island,
passed by the
safely
Sirens, stopping the ears of the
wax and having
with
the mast.
He
rowers
himself tied to
also survived the monsters
and Charybdis,
Scylla
Circe's
whom
he pre-
Rocks which
only the Argo could survive. Scylla was
ferred
to
the
Clashing
kind of monstrous bitch rather
a giant squid, with twelve feet
and
like
six
long necks, each with a horrible head
on
with three rows of teeth. Even
it
was
so she
better than Charybdis, the
whirlpool which sucked in water and

belched
Scylla
it
out again three times a day.
and Charybdis
are
traditionally
located in the straits of Messina between

Italy
and
Sicily,
but they
may
equally
ABOVE
Odysseus and the
rough vase in the
Sirens. This rather

late archaic style
of
first quarter of the fifth

century shows the Sirens still as
essentially birds whose faces alone
the
are
human. Odysseus
has passed the Sirens safely, while

himself enjoying their song,
and
in chagrin at this, like the
Sphinx
when
her riddle was guessed,

one is hurling herself into the sea,
her eyes closed already in death.
Sirens, Sphinx and Harpies all
perhaps originate in an exploit by
which the hero overcomes death.
British
Museum.
Odysseus escaping from Polyphemus.

This small archaic bronze relief
from the end of the sixth century was
perhaps made to be fixed to a piece
of furniture dedicated in the sanctuary
of Apollo at Delphi.
It shows Odysseus escaping from
the giant Cyclops Polyphemus under
ram that was the bell

wether of the flock and the only
one large enough to bear a man alone.
The others were tied together
in threes with one man between them.
the
The
relief attests the popularity
of the Odyssey, though the
artist
has
making Odysseus
tie himself to the ram instead of
simply holding on to it. Delphi.
altered a detail,

Reverse of four drachma piece
of Acragas, 420-415 bc. The symbols
of the city of Acragas were the eagle
of Zeus, in whose honour the
people built a colossal temple, and the
crab, which, perhaps because
it was proverbial for crooked
dealing, they later supplemented
with a fish or other symbol of the sea.
On this coin they added the sea
monster Scylla, who lived in
the straits of Messina. Her
name means 'whelp', and
is no trace here of the six
heads on long necks which
devoured six of Odysseus' men.
As always, the monsters of Greek
there
more human
art are
than those of literature.
well be tales deliberately told by Phoeni-
from
Odysseus
cians sailors to keep the Greeks
passing the Strait of Gibraltar.

steered
close
to
loss of six of his
Scylla,
men
accepting the
to save the ship
and the rest.

But Odysseus' companions finally
met their fate through their own folly
when they killed and ate the magic
cattle
of the Sun, a type of impiety more
usually
committed
by
Giants.
Zeus
out on his travels again, to keep his

vows. Following Tiresias' instructions,
he found the people who took an oar
for
who
is
necessary to
the plot, to survive clinging to the mast.
was sucked into Charybdis and belched

out again, while Odysseus clung to a
wild fig tree which grew above the
whirlpool. From there he was cast up
It
on
the
who
island
of Calypso, the Hider,
kept him as her unwilling consort
for seven years until the

to send
him home on
gods told her

Poseidon
a raft.
wrecked the raft, but Odysseus was

saved by the White Goddess Leucothea.
She gave him her veil which carried
him safely to the land of the Phaeacians.
Landing there with the help of a kindly
river god, he
threw the
veil
back into
in
north-west
Greece. There he married the queen of

Thesprotians,
the
when
Ithaca
his
only
returning
to
son by her was old
ritual survivals. It
significant that
sor
in
after
Almost
Ithaca.
dynasties
the
is,
however,
Odysseus had no succesthe
all
out in the
died
Trojan
heroic
generation
Neoptolemus
War.
joined up with Helenus, the renegade
Trojan soothsayer
who had
told
the
kingdom. The
later Thesprotians claimed descent from
Odysseus, and told this story to account
to
for
tolemus. Either on his advice or that of
enough
to inherit the
it.
In Ithaca finally he met his death at
struck the ship with a thunderbolt, but
allowed Odysseus,
winnowing fan
genuine
hand of his son by Circe, Telegonus.

He came to Ithaca to seek his father and
'accidentally' slew him with a spear
Greeks the conditions that they had

fulfil
before Troy could be taken,
and had caused them to send for NeopThetis, he avoided shipwreck
by return-
the
ing to Greece by land through Epirus.
tipped with the spine of a sting-ray, the
There he became king over the Molossians, having been advised to settle where
he found a house with foundations of
iron, walls of wood and a roof of wool.
Neoptolemus found the Molossians
from the sea which Tiresias

had prophesied for him. When Telegonus discovered what he had done he
took the corpse to Circe, who made it
gentle death
He married Penelope and

Telemachus married Circe. Circe's other
son by Odysseus was said to be Latinus,
by whose daughter Aeneas became ancestor of the Romans.
immortal.
camping under blankets or
fleeces sup-
ported on spears of which the iron tips
were stuck into the ground. There he

begot them an ancestor Molossus on
Andromache, w-ho had been his share
of the Trojan
spoils.
He
Phthia and reclaimed his
returned to
kingdom from
who had expelled

though in one version
he married Hermione, daughter of Helen
and Menelaus, Neoptolemus got no son
to succeed him there, and died in sordid
the sons of Acastus,
Peleus. But even
Neoptolemus
the sea, doubtless without looking back,
Most of
and the goddess took it up again.

Thus Odysseus survived all his wanderings and came back safely to Ithaca
to reclaim his kingdom. Then he set
later
Many
these stories are typical of the
continuations of the great epics.
of them are fictions to provide a
respectable
heroic
ancestry
peoples, though they
may
for
later
contain some
circumstances
the
attendants
offerings.
The
at
Delphi, brawling with
over the
story
may
flesh
of the
conceal the

Odysseus and the shade of Elpenor.
In the age of Pericles, from
460-430 BC, Greek vase
painting shows the serene classical
of the sculptures of the
Parthenon, especially of the frieze.
Perspective and landscape are
indicated and not shown.
In this masterpiece of the
Lycaon painter, Odysseus has been
escorted to Hades by a bearded
style
and booted Hermes and sacrificed

the two rams which lie dead
behind the rock on which he sits.
Then he is confronted by
the unburied shade of Elpenor,
who had fallen from the roof of Circe's
palace and reached Hades
more swiftly on foot than Odysseus
in his black ship.
Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston,
William
Amory Gardner Fund.
death of a hero in Greek
ritual
last
mythology: for Neoptolemus was killed

with a sacrificial knife and buried near
the temple of Apollo, who was responsible
for
death.
his
There he received
annual offerings as a hero.
The return of the Heraclids

Orestes
the only one of these heroes
is
who was
succeeded by a son. This was
Tisamenus, and
Sparta
the
when he was king of
Heraclids
(descendants
of
Heracles) returned to the Peloponnese

to claim their inheritance.
At
Heracles'
death they had fled from Eurystheus
and found only the Athenians to protect them. Eurystheus was slain in a
battle in Attica and his head and his
body were buried separately, like those
of the husbands of the Danaids, to
protect the strategic routes to Athens.
Then
the Heraclids returned, but were
Gulf and take the Three Eyed

guide.
After
mean
in
as
their guide,
they defeated Ti-
samenus and killed him.

They took possession of the whole
of the Peloponnese, for which they drew
lots, setting up three altars to the Zeus
of their fathers, first for Argos, then for
Sparta and lastly for Messene. Cresphontes wanted Messene, and so he
cast into the pitcher of
water not
but a piece of mud. The
bound
to
come out
first,
On
the altars
found signs which foretold the
at
combat at the Isthmus.

hundred years later the Heraclids
received the same oracle, now interpreted
to mean the third generation, and they
were advised to cross the Corinthian
two were
and he got
subsequent history of the three regions,

a toad for Argos, to
dissolved,
what he wanted. Temenus got Argos,

and the twin sons Sparta, where the
when
feated in single
mud
a stone
so that the lots of the other
the third year, and were again repulsed
Hyllus, son of Heracles, was de-
at
him
they
to
over the eastern Mediter-
may have weakened them
ranean
home, and their strength seems to have

been further dissipated by freebooting
and viking ventures. Such ventures are
represented in myth by the siege of
Troy and in history by the concerted
attack on Egypt by the 'Peoples of the
Sea', which was repulsed by Rameses 11
oracle to await the third crop before

this
settlements
murder of a soothsayer, they crossed

from Naupactus, which took its name
from the ships they built there, in three
tribes led by four descendants of HeraTemenus, Cresphontes and the
cles,
twin sons of Aristomachus. They found
a man sitting on a one-eyed horse. With
dual kingship survived.
They took
as
the
driven out by a plague and told by an

trying again.
Man
some trouble caused by
home,
a wily
warn them
to stay
fox for Messene, but
serpent for the Spartans
who were
terrible in attack.
The Mycenaeans had over-extended

themselves in the unsettled period
at
the end of the second millennium. Their
192 B.C.
The weakness of the Mycenaean dynasties may have given the opportunity
to new bands of Greeks to make their
way by land and sea into the rich pasture
lands of Boeotia and the Peloponnese,
driving out the existing inhabitants to

settle in
Asia Minor, or confining them
to the poorer lands of Attica
They
palaces with
and Arcadia.
Mycenaean
more primitive settlements
replaced
the
great
where small closely knit patriarchal famwhich preilies combined. The sack
served in
its
flames the current accounts
of the Mycenaean kingdom of Nestor

at Pylos,
written on clay,
may
represent
an episode in the invasion of the Dorians,

as the
dialect.
earlier
newcomers are called from their

But traces and traditions of the
period survived in
the
stories
which the Greeks continued to tell, and

which they brought to an end with
their own version of the Dorian Invasion, the
Return of the Heraclids.
lADIM
FURTHE]
1
Dictionaries and
works of
reference
Smith,
W.
(ed.)
A Dictionary of Greek
2nd edition 1927; Merlin Press, 1963.

Murray, Gilbert. 'Early Greek Epic',
in Anthropology and the Classics,
Oxford University
Rohde, E.
Kegan
Routledge and
Psyche.
Paul, 8th edition, 1925;
reprinted 1950
an
from a
and Roman Biography and Mythology.
ed. Marett, R. R.
3 vol.,
London 1876: still the most

exhaustive work in English.
Press, 1908.
school of mythological scholarship.
These three authors founded the
Gary, M., etc. (ed.) The Oxford
anthropological comparative study of
4 Psychological studies:
Kerenyi, C. The Gods of
Classical Dictionary.
Oxford, 1949:
selected articles with further
bibliography.
Rose, H.
J.
Handbook of Greek
Greek mythology. Two volumes

in the American series 'Our Debt
to Greece and Rome' provide short
introductions to the larger works
is
earlier classic
&
Thames
the
Greeks.
&
Hudson, 1959
re-tellings of the Greek myths
Mythology. Methuen, 1958 and also
cited above:
'for adults'. Professor
Methuens University Paperbacks.

2 Greek myths have been retold at
various levels and for different
Harrison, Jane. Mythology. Harrap.
worked with Jung on
in
classes
of readers many times since
Two
the Renaissance.
recent
examples are:
Graves, R. Greek Myths. Cassell and
Penguin,
first
many
reprints since the
and 1955
editions of 1958
respectively.
Robert Graves adds a stimulating

personal commentary on the myths.
Grant, M. Myths of
Romans. Weidenfeld
W.
Roman
the
Folklore. Harrap, 1927.
The following
Thames
R. Greek and
are also introductory
Rose, H. ]. Primitive Culture

Methuen, 1925.
Halliday,
&
Hudson, 1955.
Stokes, Adrian. Greek Culture and Ego,
studies:
W.
in Greece.
Tavistock Publications Ltd, 1958

is
the
work of
a Freudian.
5 Studies of particular myths

Harrison, Jane. Myths of the
R. Indo-European
Folk-Tales and Greek Legend.
Art and
Cambridge University Press, 1933.

A modern classic, and one of the
most important works of classical
Odyssey in
and Monuments of ancient Athens,

Macmillan, 1890.
Greeks and
scholarship to have appeared
&
Nicholson,
since 1945,
New EngHsh
Kerenyi has
psychology of myths.
Otto, W. F. The Homeric Gods.
Halliday,
the
1962; Mentor Books,
is
Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and
the
University of California
Literature.
London, 1882;
with M. de G. Verrall Mythology
Hartland, E.
S.
The Legend of Perseus.
London, 1894-1896.
Library, 1965.
Irrational.
3 General books on mythology
Press, 1951;
and Greek culture:

Frazer, Sir J. G. The Golden Bough,
in paperback.
Argonauts. Methuen, 1925.
The shamanistic elements which

Dodds found in some myths have
Nilsson,
been very speculatively developed

two books:
University Press, 1932;
abridged edition, Macmillan, 1922
and subsequent
reprints.
Harrison, Jane. Prolegomena
to the
2nd edition 1959
also
in the following
Study of Greek Religion. Cambridge

University Press, 1903; 3rd edition
Lindsay, Jack. The clashing rocks.
1932; Merlin Press, 1961.
Butterworth, E. A.
Harrison, Jane. Themis: a Study of
of the pre-Olympian World in Greek
the Social Origins
of Greek Religion.
Cambridge University
1,6
Press, 1912;
Greeks.
the
Hudson, 1951 and
The Heroes of
Thames
are
different
Chapman
&
Hall, 1965.
S.
Some Traces
Bacon,
J.
R. The Voyage of
M.
the
P. Mjcenean Origin of
Greek Mythology. Cambridge
Oldbourne, 1964.
Brown, N. O. Hermes
{the Evolution
the
Thief,
of a Myth). University
of Wisconsin Press, 1947.
Literature and Myth, de Gruyter,
Woodward, J. M. Perseus:
in Greek Art and Legend.
Berlin, 1966.
Cambridge University
a Study
Press, 1937.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
publishers gratefully acknowledge the
The
122 bottom. Bibliotheque Nationale:
following sources for permission to repro-
bottom.
duce
Trustees of the British
the illustrations indicated:
Boissonnas-Borel
bottom
top, 60 centre, 72
Colour
The Trustees of
71,
81,
the British
76.
62,
bottom. Hirmer Fotoarchiv:
loi
38 right, 42 top, 42
right,
Museum:
loi
80,
bottom
42 bottom
left,
126-127, 130 top,
top,
130 bottom, front jacket.
M. Holford:
38
50.
10,
Museum:
left,
119
The
12,
37
75, 88 bot-
tom, 94 bottom left, 99 left, 100 top, 102,

107 bottom, 112, 115, 119 top, 131, 133
top. F.
Bruckmann, Munich:
30-31. J. Al-
lan Cash: 90-91, 103. Deutsches Archaeo-
Athens:
97,
105.
D. Hughes-Gilbey
rousse: 46. Metropolitan
New
York:
17, 66-67.
84, 123.
W.
20-21. Pic-
ZFA: back
108.
La-
of Art,
K. Miiller-Bavaria
^- Pedone-Bavaria
ture Point: 24,
13.
Museum
left.
left,
6 right, 18, 19 left, 19 right,
28, 32, 33 top, 36 top left, 36 top right, 56
69 left, 69 right, 72
74, 78, 83, 86 bottom, 92, 93 top,
bottom,
bottom,
106, 109 top, 113
96
93
52,
56,
59,
right,
Black and White
left,
Antikensammlungen, Munich: 25, 68, 94

bottom right, 107 top, 109 bottom. Archives Photographiques 40. Ashmolean Museum: 16, 35 top, 48, 99 right, 109 left,
:
113 right, 116, 124,
historisches
Anderson:
39, 88 top.
57,
22,
Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe,

53. Museum of Fine Arts, Bos-
ton: 35 bottom, 35 bottom, 41, 58, 60 top,

61, 94 top, 95, 100 bottom, 104, 122 top,
122 centre,
Denmark:
129,
121
135.
top,
National
121
Museum,
bottom. Picture
Point: 15, 26, 44, 86 top, 118. Soprintenalle Antichiti della Calabria: 30 bot-
tom.
Soprintendenza
Orientale:
34.
Antichita dell'Etruria:
alle
Antichita della
Soprintendenza
89,
120.
alle
Staatliche
Museen Antikenabteilung, Berlin: 98. Nick

Stournaras, Athens: 97 bottom right, 133
bottom. T.A.P., Athens, 37 bottom
Dietrich
Hans Teuffen-Bavaria
left.
64.
125, 134. Kunst-
Museum, Vienna:
II. Mansell-Alinari
York:
Hamburg:
Sicilia
bottom,
jacket.
bottom.
Hirmer Fotoarchiv: end-
grad: 72 top
papers, 6
New
of Art,
60 bottom, 65, 85, III, 114, 132
54,
denza
Institut,
left,
23,
29, 75. Ehemals Staatliche Museen, Berlin: 14. Konrad Helbig-Bavaria 51. Hermitage, Lenin-
logisches
Museum
ropolitan
128. Mansell:
132 top. Mansell-
87, 96 top. Mansell-Giraudon

Enrico Mariani-Bavaria 49. Met:
from EnJohn
Boardman published by Thames and Hudson, photograph by Robert L. Wilkins.
The
illustration
on page 117
is
graved Gems: The lonides Collection by
INDEX
Figures in
Androgeus
italics refer to captions
Atalanta
Antaeus 100, 106

Antenor 126
Achelous, river 90, 100
Acheron,
Asopus, river 87
Assaracus 117
Astyanax 126
104, 106
Andromache 134
Andromeda 75, 115
Acastus 114, 134

Achelous, painter 61
river 27
Achilles 18, 53, 54, no, 112, 114,
Callisto 35, )6, 79
Calyce 65, 69
Calydonian Boar
78-79, Si, 89,
/(f,
89, 106,
j^,
Calypso 134
Canace 65, 69
Athamas 51, 58, 65, 67, 68

Athena ip, 25, jo, 31, 32,
Antia 70
35,
Anticlus 126
37,
Acrisius 70, 72, 73, 75, 77
Antigone 90
69, 70, 7-2. 7i. 75. 79, S6, 89, 94,
Actaeon
Antigone 53, 90
Antiope 87, 88
96, 9S, 102, 106, 112,
118, 119, 120,
122, 126, IJO
21, 58, 61, 79, 90
Admetus
79, 82, 85,
Adrastus
88,
115
Anu
89
Athena Nike 102
22, 23
19,
Aeetes 67, 105
Aegaeon 32
Aegean Sea 32
Aegeus 104, 107
Apis 55
Apollo II,
Aeacus 114, 115
4h
ii.
Aegina
30,
25, 114
Aegisthus 112, 12S, 131
J9-40. 57.
Aeneas
119,
no,
35, }6,
31, )},
58,
75.
"7
78.
79.
37,
122,
126,
128,
131,
82.
132,
58, 65, 68, 69, 77,
51,
79,
133
Aeschylus 15, S), i}2
Aethra 104
Agamemnon no,
112,
113,
117,
Apollo Lyceius 56
cult of 35, 40
festival of iiS
sanctuary of i}}
temple of 16, 45
ApoUodorus
Apsu 19, 22
118, 119, 128, 131
Centaurs
Agave 58
Aged Sisters 82
Agenor 35, 56
102, 103, 106, 131
64, 86,
81,
82,
<f/,
95, 106, /07
Cephalus 105, 117
Atreus no, 112, 113, 131

house of 85
Cepheus 75
Augeas 96
cowsheds of 98
Cercopes 96
Ceryneian hind 95
Autolycus 69
Ceyx 68
Chaos 16
Charon (dog) y6
Charon of Lampsacus 43
Autonoe
Cerberus
58
Ba'al 55
Bacchae (Euripides) 58, 90
Beasts, mistress of
Bellerophon
96
Cassiopeia 75
Castor /6, 108, 109, 113, 126
Cecrops
Bacchantes 40, 62
Bacchic Rites 65
15, 27, 54,
Carthaginians /^
Cassandra 43, n2, 117, 126
Atlas 25, 32, 35, 47, 96, 98
3?
Aeolids 70
Aeolus
82.
85, 87, 8S, 90, ^S, 99, 115, 117,
117, 12), 126, 134
53, Si,
Mount
Athos,
22, 29, }o, 31,
77, 78, 79,
Catreus 105, 106
temple of 4S
57. 79.
55.
117, iiS,
126, 131
120, I2J,
Aphaea, goddess 25
temple 25, 12;
Aphrodite 16, 18, 19,
Aeacides 114
43. 45. 47, 48, 60, 62, 64,
Hunt
114
114
109,
Belus
j6
69, 70-72, //, 77,
89,
no
27, 47, 95, 98
Charybdis 133, 134

Cheirisophus 120
Childbirth, goddess of 35
Chimaera 27, 70, //, 72
Chiron 82, 95, 114
Chrysaor 75, 104

Chryseis 119
Ba'al
Apsyrtus 85
Arcadians 50
Bias 79, 82
Agriculture, goddess of 33
Areas )6
Blest, Isles
Aidos 45
Ajax 114,
Archicles 76
Boreas 4)
Cimon j6
Ares
Boston Throne 18
Circe 48, 90, i}2, 133, 134, 1}!

Cithaeron, IVlount 62
122, 129
120,
Locrian 112, 126
79, 95, 96,
Alalu 19
Alcaeus 93
Alcestis 82, 99
Alcmaeon 90
Alcmena 93,
94-95,
^0, 31, 37, 57, 61, 69, 77, 78,
Briseis
Argo
Bull Cult, Crete 56
Argus
/;;,
55,
85,
Aristaeus 58, 63
21,
70, ^2, ^y,
98,
106,
Egyptian
131
Amalthea 22
no, 120
Amphiaraus 89, 90
Aristomachus 135
Aristophanes 27, 48
Arsinoe 90
Artemis 21, 25, }o, )2,
18, 19, 22, 47, 49,
114
Cocytus 27
Coeus 16
Comaetho
55
Greek 55
Bull from the Sea
Ariadne 63, 104, 106, 107, 109

Arion 63
Arion, magic horse 89
107,
Bronze Age
105
Alpheus, river 4)
Althaemenes 105-106
Amazons
119
Britomartis 12;
85
Argonauts 79, 82,

Saga of 132
104
Alcyone 65, 68
Alcyoneus 100
Alcyonian, Lake 65
Clashing Rocks 85, 135

Clytemnestra 113, 131, 1)2
Arethusa 43
Argeiphontes see Hermes
Argive Heraeum 55
77,
Chrysippus 112
Chrysothemis 128
of 47, 95, 129
Briareus 32, 36, 61
112, 120
100,
see
106, 109
Bull-leaping 12, 56
93
'Conductor of Souls' 39
Core 12, 33, 35, 63
Coronis 79, 82
Cosmogony
Greek
Cachrylion 94
Cadmean victory 90
Cadmus 54, 56, 57, 58,
87,
88,
Caeneus
no
81,
82
Cow
63, 65, 67,
16
19,
23
goddess 55
Creation myth
Creon, king 89, 90, 94

Cresphontes 135
Calliope 63
Cretan Bull 95
Cretheus 65, 68, 69, 79
Crius 16
Amyntor Ormenides 69
Asclepius 79, 82, 85
Callirhoe 90
Crommyonian sow
Anchises 117
Ash nymphs
Callistc 35
Cronides 53
Amphion
87, 88
Amphitryon
Amymone
158
93, 95
56
37. J9, 45.

Si, 90,
58, 61,
jj, 35, 36,
Calais 82, 103
72, 78,
Calcash 119, 129
87,
109, 117, 118, 11^, 131
18
see
Phaca
Cronus
i6,
19, 22, 25, 27,
i8,
29,
Cuictes 22
25, 37,
tf;,
Cyllene,
Mount
39
Da
79, 152, 153
Danaus 54, 55, 56,

Danube, river 85
Dardanus 53
105,
70,
117,
no
Gorgus, dog 76
Eratosthenes 54
Graces, the 31, 57, 106
Hours
'Guilt Culture' 12, 45, 58
Hundred-handers
Hades
Eteocles 88,
120
22,
25,
29, }0,
35, 36, 47.
56,
63, 68, 69, 73,
16,
82,
79,
Eros 19, 4}
Erymanthian boar 47,
Escorter of souls 4}
106
90
.??,
90,
0/
Haemon
100,
104,
113,
114,
133,
Euboea
Hebe
Delphic Oracle 40,
Eumenides 131
Euphronius 94
Demophoon
)o, jz, 33, 34, 35,
33
53, 61, 120, 122, 126,
(Aeschylus)
Euripides
Europa
Deucalion 49, 51, 63, 67, 87

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 1
Dido 81
Diomede
35
F.iimenides
129
57, 61, 82,
12, 53, /;, 56, 57.
Eurypylus 61
Eurysaces 122
Eurystheus 47, 93, 94, 98, 106, 155
Eurytion 76
Eurytus
9S, 99
Evenus
77, 78,
Exekias )), 65, 109
Dioscuri //, 109, 115, 126

Dirce 87, 88
19,
Earth
113
goddess of 4)
Phrygian gods of 58
shrine of 54
Italian
Sicilian goddess of }2
Thracian gods of 58
100,
god oi )6, no
Flood myths, Greek 49-51
Fresh water, god of 19
Gaia
18,
22,
32,
Bow
33,
102
1)4,
Glaucytes 76, 106

Glisas, battle of 90
Electra 12S
Gold, age of 45
Golden Apples 79
152, 135
quest of 79
67
Herodotus 43,
Heroic Age 89
Hesiod 14, 16,
31, )2, }}, )6,
37,
105
102,
29, 68,
Jocasta,
Queen
77,
79,
88
Joseph 70
Paris 122
Judgement of
Juno 29
Jupiter 29
22, 45, 47, 48, 63,
22, 23
Labdacus 88
Labyrinth 105, 106, 107
Laertes 131
Laestrygonians 133
?6
25, 79,
Laius 88, 104

96,
98
Laocoon
i2j,
Hestia 22
Laomedon
Hippodameia 112
Laphystius,
Queen
92
Girdle of 96
Hippolyte 115, 120
Hippolytus
76,
lOI
Kouros )7
Kumarbi 19,
67
53,
garden of 100
golden Apples of
Hippolyta,
no
/;;/
Hesione 115, 117
77, 85
of the Blest 47, 95, 129

Isthmian games 89
Ixion 36, 82,
89
15,
55
Isles
Jason
27, )0,
Hesperides
Isis
(Euripides) 61
Hermione 134
108
59
Iron, age of 45
Itys
of 119
Mad
112, 122, 151, i}2, 133,
98
67
Golden Bowl 96
Golden Fleece 68,
6j,
112,
39-40, 41, 43, 48, !), 55, ;/, 6',

69, 75, 82, 85, 94, 95, 106, no,
of Hesperides ^6, 98
Golden Bough (Sir James Frazer)
Golden ram
Heracles
Hermes
117
Glaucus 106
69, 77
Enipeus, river 68
122,
107,
Heras 108
Herb of life 85, 99, loi, 106, 133
Herds, god of the 41
Georgics (Virgil) 63
27, 75,
106,
104,
Heraeum 54
33
Geryon
lOI,
Twelve Labours of 96
sanctuary of 8)
115,
Iris
25, 29, 47, ji, 72,
115, 118, 120,
131, Ij2
Eilithyia 35
Endymion
lolaus 72, ^4, 95, 98, 99, 100
Iphigenia n8, n9, 131
117
82, ^2, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99,
Flocks,
Elara 35
Electra 128, 131
Enchanter 133
58, 60, 61, 67, 85
Iphimedia 69, 73
temple of 92
Heracles n, 21,
58
Girl, deity 34, 82,
/;;/
Ino
Iphicles 92, 94
Egyptus
shade of
Inachus, river 55, 56
lo 54-55, 56
lobates 70
100, loi,
98,
cattle of 95, 96
Gilgamesh, epic of 85
Elpenor 133
no,
21, 22, 23, 28, 29, }0, 51, 32,
cult 37, 82, 88, 118
Ecstatic cult 63
Eleusis 103
57,
108,
lole 99, 100
Ge
Electryon 93
Eleon 69
95,
I02,
82, 90, 9/, 94, 95,
mother
56
32, )}, 36, 57,
68, 69, 7),
Ganymede
55,
48,
115, 117
Ilus
31,
.'/,
Fertility
goddess 48
Echidna 27
Hephaestus
103
lUuyankas, dragon 27
Hellen 51
Hellespont 120
59. 43. 55. 5^. 60,
100
mother-goddess 33
mother, Phrygian 58
Ilithya 94
67. //
(!/,
temple of //
22
55
Irissus, river 2),
Helle
1)0
Furies 18, 22, 75, 79, 89, 90, 112,
16, 18, 22, 23, 27, 32, 35, j6,
122,
119,
117,
37.
rites
50, 99,
"o.
120,
115,
114,
35. 36.
128,
Ea
39. 54. 61. 63. 70. 77. 79.
Helenus 122, 134
Hera
riod
Dryads 43
Dryas 62
Dryops 40
129, 131
Fates 82
Dorian invasion 11
Dorian period see pre-Dorian peDorians 12
Douris y^
Dragon's teeth 85
108, 109, 113, 119, 122,
j6,
117
107,
Iliad 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 29, 33, 37,
126, 129, 134
39,
112,
88,
93. 95. 98. i2. '6, 118
Idomeneus
117
54, 112,
33
rape of io6, 114, 117
Dionysus
62, 63, 67, 68, 78, 82, Sj,
Helen
90
7/. 95.
104
Eurydice 63
Mares of 95
Dione 29
27, j8, 39, 40, 58, 60, 61,
<?/.
70
56,
Idas 77, 78
Idasus 76
Hebrus, river 63
Hector 119, 120, 126
/_;_'
Hyperion 16
Hypermnestra
Icarius 62, 63,
loi
57,
Hecuba
15, )S,
Harmonia
Hylas 82
Hyllus 98, 135
lapetus 16, 47
lasion 54
Euaenetus 4}
57, 88, 104, 131
23, 25
Hydra 27
lambe
Deianeira 78, ^S, 100, loi

Deiphobus 126
Delphyna 27
Demeter 22, 251,
68, no, U2
55
57
Haemus, Bloody Mountain 27

Handbook of Greek Mythology
57, 89, 90
Harpies 82, 112, i)}
27,
22,
37, 47,
55
Etna,
Mount
34,
33,
98,
95,
112,
108,
io6,
95, ^S,
Ether 16
16
16,
Hurrians 19
105
64,
27
22, 23,
Epopeus 87
Dead, goddess of the 35

Death 69, 72, 82
Day
19
myth
Homer 14,
Hope 49
Eriphyle 89
135
Hittite
75, 12;
62,
27
sister
Erigone 63
72, 73
56, 70,
36,
Epic of Gilgamesh 85
Epimetheus 47, 48, 49
Hippothoe 93
70, 71, 72, 75, 82
blood 69
head 25,
Erichthonius 102, 103, 115
Danaans 34
Danae 51, 60,
Dawn
Gorgons
55
Erebus 16
Erechtheus
33
Daedalus 105, 107
Danaids
Epaphus
Ephialtes 37, 69, 90, 99
32. 45. 47. 49. 63, 82
Cyclops
.'.',
107, 108, 109, 120
126
115
Mount
67
Lapith loi
Latinus 134
Latmus, Mount 69
Leda 55, ^6, 109, 112,
82,
85,
Lerna, springs of 56, 63

Lernaean hydra 95, 98
Lethe, river 27
Naiads 45
Nausicaa 132
Neleus 68, 79, 87, 100
Nemean Lion )), 95
Parnassus,
Mount
Parthenon
31, 64, 86, lO}, 113, 126,
14, 51, 8)
')!
Porphyrion 100
Pomegranate 36
Poseidon 16, if,
29, )0, 51, 32, 53,
Parthenopaeus 79, 89
Parthenos 35
35.
Pascas y/
Pasiphae 12, 105
102,
104,
105,
109,
112,
114,
115,
122,
126,
129,
131,
132,
Nephele 65
Patroclus 70, 72, 119, 120, i)0
Libya 55
Nereids 43
Paul, Saint 126
Linear B, Mycenaean 70
Pausanias- 15, 50, 60, 63, 64
Lipara 100
Nereus 43, 75
Nessus 100, loi
134
temple of 27
shrine of 64
Peace 48
Praxiteles if
Locrian Ajax 112, 126
Nestor, 87, 100, 129
Pegasus, the winged horse 6), 70,
Ludovisi Throne iS
New
Pre-Dorian period 53
Priam 117, 119, 120,
126
87, SS
Leto 32, 35, )9,

Leucippus 1 1
Leucius 76
Leucothea 67, 134
Library (Apollodorus)
Mount
Lycaeus,
50,
Nemesis 45
Neoptolemus
79
Lycaon 49-51, 112
134,
Nile, river 55, 85
Mount
Nipple,
Lyssa 61
Nyctimus 50
North wind
Nycteus
Nysa,
115
103,
27, 60, 61
40, 58, 61, 63
Marathon,
of 40
battle
bull of 106
Marduk
Odysseus 49,
22
Mares of Diomede 95
Maia 39, 40
Manto 129
Marpessa
Ocean 16, 32
Oceanus 16, 19,
77, 78, 82
Marsyas 75
Medea 85, 87,

Medusa 70, 73,
100, loi, 105

75, 82, 104
106
99,
69, 77, 90, iiz,

120,
113,
117,
118,
129,
132,
133, 134,
122,
126,
in
Greek
my-
thology 22
77, 8}, 8j, 88, 89, 94,
Megarus 5
Melampus 79, 82
Melanion 76, 79
Melanippus 89
Meleager 76,
77, 78, 79, Si
Meliae 43
1
78, 89
Oenomaus
112
Oeta,
20
113, 117, 119, 129,
154
Proteus 129
58,
34,
35,
Periphetes 106
27, 2p, }0,
35,
34,
35, 36, 48, 63, 68, 82, 103, 108
Psyche 4)
Pyriphlegethon, river
Pyrrha 49,
75. 77. 79. 82, 93, 115
Pyrrhus
Pythia 43
Peter, Saint 126
Python
Phaea 106
Phaedra 108
Phaethon 49, 107
Rameses
35, //
II
135
Return of the Maiden 18
Rhadamanthys 104
Rhea 16, 22, 23
Rhesus 120, 126
Rhoecus of Cnidos 43
Sack of Troy 54, no, 112
Sacred Spring 118
Salmoneus 65, 68, 69
Phocus 114
Phoebe 16
Pholus 9!
((/,
27
114
51,
Pyrrhic victory 90
cult of io
Phrixus
98, 99
Psiax 10)
Pterelaus 93
Pylades 128
Pericles 2j, 48, 62, 86, lO), ij!
18,
47, 51, 95
Psychopompus 59
62
Philomela 102, 103

Phineus 82, 85
Oinanthe 102
Old Man of the Sea 129
Omphale
Pelops 77, 88, no, 112, 114, 122

Penelope 117, 131, 154
Penthesilea no, 120
Philoctetes 119, 120, 122
loi
37, 40, 63, 69, 100, loi
Menelaus 112,
Protesilaus 120
Philippides 40
Mount
Proetus 70, 77
Pelium 37
Phasis, river 85
Oenopion 36
Olympia 21, 4), )6, lof

Olympus, Mount //, 23,
Melicertes 67, 85
Memnon
Oeneus
67, 85
Sarpedon
72,
120
Onatas }2
Ophertes Archemorus 89
Phrygian cap 75
Phylacus 79, 118
Saturn 47
Menestheus 108
Metaneira 33
Metis 32
Orchomenus 94
Pindar 15
Sciron 106
Oreads 43
Pirithous 82, 106, 107, 108, /oy
Scylla 106,
Midas
Orestes
Pisistratus loi
Sea 16
Pittheus 104
Sea goddess, Asia Minor 19
Plato 56
Pleiads 129
Selinus 21, 28
61,
63; 75
Midias
SS,
Milky
Way
Minos
104, 105, 106, 107, 114
Minotaur
100
12, y6, 85, 102, 105, 106,
Mistress of Beasts }2, )6
Mithras 7/
Mnemosyne
69, 99
Mopsus
76, 129
Mother-goddess
29, 31, 35, ^/, 56,
102, 117
Muses 43
Mycenae //
Mycenaean Linear B 70
Myrmidons 70
56,
Orpheus 63
Orthus 27
Ossa 37, 69
Otus 37, 69,
117
58,
151,
1)2,
Scamander, river 115, 120
Semele 58, 60, 61, 63

Seven against Thebes
Pluto 34
Plutus 34
90, 99
133, ij4
culture 14, 45, 122
Po, river 49, 85
Shame
Podargos, dog 76
Shepherd god
35
n7
Podes 76
Pactolus, river 65
Pollux 76, 82, 108, 10^, n3, 126
Sidero 68
Palaemon 67
Polybus 88
Silenus 61, 63, 68
Palladium 122, 125
Polydectes 75
Pallas 125
Polydegmon 54
Pan
Polygnotus
40, 43, //, 61, 75
cult
Pan painter
Pandareus
j8,
Polynices 88,
61
no
Paris 117,
Mount
119,
120
Polyxena
112,
Pontus 16
Sipylus,
Mount
87,
no
Sirens 70, 82, 133

8p,
90
blinding of ijo
61
of 47
Sinis 106
112
Polypemon Procrustes 106

Polyphemus 132, ijj
Pandion 102
Pandora 48-49, 63
Mysteries, ritual of 34
Silver, age
81,
Polyidus 106
of 40
77, 89, 90,
122, 129
Sibyl
Pangaeus,
140
37,
Orithyia 103
uz
Myrtilus
128,
16
Molione, the 100

Molossus 154
Moon
119,
135
Orion
94
no
10),
90,
122,
Procne 102, 103, 112
Promachos 62
Prometheus 45,
69, 114
Perseus 25, 51, 54, 61, 70, 7/, 72-
Oecles 89
Oedipal element
104
Megarians
Mount
Persephone
/;;/
Odyssey 14, 15, 25, 29, 35, 39, 43,

4>, 63, 77, 131, 132, I})
Oedipus 47,
///,
122,
Procris 105
Pentheus
23, 33, 82
6),
114,
134
Pelion,
87, 88
Mount
109,
Pelias 68, 79, 82, 85, 87, loi, 107,
82
82,
72. 75
Pelasgus 50
Peleus i8, 57, 76,
"7
no, 112
87, 88,
Lynceus 56, 77, 11}

Lycurgus 61, 82
Lycus 87, 88
Megara
126,
Year Festival, Babylonian 19

Night 16
Niobe
painter 61
Maenads
122,
120,
i?5
37. 53. 55. 56, 68, 69,
56.
7. 75. 77. 82, 86, 93, 95, too,
122, 126
Sisyphus 65, 68, 69, 70,

Sithnid 51
Sky god, Asia Minor 19

Greek 29
Sleep 72
Snake god, lUyrian 57
no
Temcnus
Solymians 70
Sophocles 15,
Sown men
Si,
90,
129
88
myth of 57
Sparti,
Sphinxes 80,
Sthenelus 94
S7,
88, ij)
Sthenoboea
see
p4, 95
Asia Minor
Virgil 47, 63
battle of 25
Tithonus 117, 120
War
Themis 16, 55
Theodorus 4J
Theseus
22, 27
Greelv 32, 35, 56, 37, 39, 63,

70, 96, 99, 114
original 75
106,
//, /6,
134
Ludovisi iS
Thucydides 43,
Tantalus 47, 87, no, 112

115, 117
Telegonus 1 54
Telemachus 118, 131, 134
Telephus 118
104,
no
Thetis 32, 39, 57, 61, 65, 85, 114,
Talos 105
19
102,
Thcspius 94
Thief god 27
Three eyed man 135
Throne, Boston iS
105, 133
98,
Thunder god
Thyestes no,
Thyone 65
Triptolemus 34
Troilus 120
48
107, 108, 109,
of the 100, 134

Supplanter, myth of the 87, 88
51, 34, 85, 96, 99,
Taphus 93
Telamon 114,
25,
12,
115, 117, !jo,
cattle
Tamisu
22,
Tros 1 1
Trygaeus 48
Twelve Labours of Heracles pi
Twelve Olympians jo
Twins, in Greek mythology 55
Tydeus 89
Tyndareus !op, 112, 113, 117
Typhoeus
Typhon
53
112, 131
Typhon
27,
35,
37
giant 70
Tyro
48
Water of life 85, 98, 99, loi

White goddess see Leucothea
Wooden horse of Troy 126
W'orks and Days (Hesiod) 14, 48
World, creation of the 16
Zemelo
58
Zetes 82, 103
Zethus 87, 88
Zeus 14, 19, 2/,
29, JO,
31,
22, 23, 2;, 27,
32,
33,
5 5.
56. 60, 6i, 67, 68,
2<f,
jiS,
70,
90, 93, 94, 95, pi, 99, lol, 102,
27
Underworld 18, 25, 39, 6S, 100

Uranus 18, 22, 23, 27, 32, 33, 75,
99
104,
loj,
107,
112,
113,
114,
119,
120,
122,
134,
135
108,
115,
125,
temple of S6
Vegetation
Zeus-bull 12
Timanthes
Phrygian gods of 58
Thracian gods of 58
Vegetation cult, Thracian 62
Zeus helper 32
Zeus Laphystius 67
Zeus of escapes 67
up
35,
72. 73. 78. 79. 82. 85, 87, 89,
Tiamat
19, 22
Tiberius, Emperor 54
Tigris, river 19, 22
34,
57. 39. 40. 47. 48, 49. 5. 51.

/i.
68, 73
UUikummi
14
see
2;,
Vine, Phrygian god of the 58
13;
Tityus 35-36, jp
16,
14,
Thersites 120
Theseum
19,
Odes (Pindar)
ic/orj
Titans 16, 18, 23, 27, 47, 69
Thersander 90
114, 117
Tisamenus
32
19,
27. 29. 32. 43. 47.
Styx 25
Succession myth
Sun
Tiresias 43, 90, 129, 133, 134
135
Tereus loz, 105
There 7^
Stymphalian birds
Tethvs 16,
Theia 16
Theogony (Hesiod)
70, 72
also Antia
Storm god 29
Strife
109,
no,
ir/,
iiS,
126,
132,
^v.X
'Â
H^
(Wilfred Ltt)
John Pinsent was born

Gloucestershire,
in
at
1922.
at Oriel College, Oxford.
after World War

do research instead
Winchcomb,
He read 'Greats'
He completed his
and accepted an
offer
degree
II
to
of rejoining the Royal
He
Air Force.
did.
however, remain an active
Reserve and is now a

Squadron Leader. He has been teaching Greek
at Liverpool University since 1950. But he still
considers himself a Roman historian, and is
writing a commentary on Livy which has
member
of the Volunteer
developed from his doctoral thesis. He finds

Greek literature perpetually interesting
and stimulating. This book has arisen
from extra-mural lectures in which he tried
to relate literature to the social structure
of
Greek
life.
For the interpretation of his subject

an Important part
to the general public Is
of the duties of a university lecturer.

Dr. Pinsent
and
lives
in
has three children

Liverpool.
;^

Greek Mythology

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Greek Mythology

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JOHN PINSENT

and sculpture of the Qreeks is based on stories

the creation of the glory

The author, in addition to narrating familiar

Greek mythology have been

for the general reader.

The author, John Pinsant, who has

a special study of this subject.

Front jacket: Heracles wrestling with

the sea-monster Triton

Heracles bringing Cerberus

Bellerophon and the Chimaera

Wind shown as a running figure

The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited

Copyright (C) 1969 John Pinsent

All rights reserved

Three-bodied serpent man

The judgement of Paris

The daughters of Danaus

Tereus and Procne

The apotheosis of Dionysus

THE ORIGINS OF THE

The creation myth

THE FAMILY OF THE GODS

Zeus and Hera

Ares and Aphrodite

gods and giants

THE CHILDREN OF AEOLUS

THE TROJAN WAR

Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes

Leto, Apollo and Artemis

Otus and Ephialtes

THE GREAT EXPLOITS

THE END OF THE HEROES

The death of Agamemnon

Jason and the Argonauts

The Five Ages

return of the Heraclids

of the children of Heracles to the Pelo-

ponnese, the mythological equivalent of

enchanter. Success brings

the Dorian invasion,

generally rejected magic. In other re-

myths do resemble fairy tales.

the tale of the

young man who

order to win the hand of a maiden

the daughter either of a king or of an

of the enchanter, and he lives happily

traced their descent

This pattern recurs in Greek mythol-

back to these children of Heracles.

logy with some significant differences.

because of a family quarrel or homicide,

sometimes provoked by a step-mother.

The Spartan kings

genealogies which related

The young man

personages of the myths, and prepared

schematic mythological handbooks to

of death at the hands of his daughter's

explain references in the older authors.

husband, and himself engages in a con-

In the earlier periods, writers