Legendary Passages #0114,
Philostratus the Elder,
Imagines Book 1,
Image 14,
Pasiphae & Semele.
Previously, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on Naxos, where she was rescued by the god Dionysus. In this passage there are descriptions of three paintings: Semele, mother of Dionysus; Ariadne, wife of Dionysus; and Pasiphae, mother of Ariadne and the Minotaur.
The first image is of the fire that consumed Semele and gave birth to Dionysus. Semele was the youngest daughter of Cadmus, and after she became pregnant by Zeus, Hera tricked her into asking Zeus to show his true self. She was burned to death by his godly form, but the fetus of Dionysus survived, and his father placed him inside Zeus' own body to carry him to term.
The second image is that of Dionysus watching a sleeping Ariadne as Theseus sails away. Dionysus is usually depicted with ivy, horns, leopards, thyrsi, faun-skins, cymbals, flutes, and satyrs; but here the god is recognized by his love alone. Theseus looks entranced, having apparently forgotten the Minotaur and his love for Ariadne.
The last image is primarily of the workshop of Daedalus, who constructed the hollow wooden cow that, uh, facilitated the union of Pasiphae and the Cretan Bull. About the workshop are unfinished statues, and little cupids aid Daedalus in constructing the wooden cow.
Pasiphae & Semele,
a Legendary Passage from,
Arthur Fairbanks translating,
Philostratus the Elder,
Imagines Book 1,
Images 14-16.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PhilostratusElder1A.html#14
1.14 SEMELE
Brontè, stern of face, and Astrapè flashing light from her eyes, and raging fire from heaven that has laid hold of a king’s house, suggest the following tale, if it is one you know.
A cloud of fire encompassing Thebes breaks into the dwelling of Cadmus as Zeus comes wooing Semele; and Semele apparently is destroyed, but Dionysus is born, by Zeus, so I believe, in the presence of the fire. And the form of Semele is dimly seen as she goes to the heavens, where the Muses will hymn her praises: but Dionysus leaps forth as his mother’s womb is rent apart and he makes the flame look dim, so brilliantly does he shine like a radiant star.
The flame, dividing, dimly outlines a cave for Dionysus more charming than any in Assyria and Lydia; for sprays of ivy grow luxuriantly about it and clusters of ivy berries and now grape-vines and stalks of thyrsus which spring up from the willing earth, so that some grow in the very fire. We must not be surprised if in honour of Dionysus the Fire is crowned by the Earth, for the Earth will take part with the Fire in the Bacchic revel and will make it possible for the revelers to take wine from springs and to draw milk from clods of earth or from a rock as from living breasts.
Listen to Pan, how he seems to be hymning Dionysus on the crests of Cithaeron, as he dances an Evian fling. And Cithaeron in the form of a man laments the woes soon to occur on his slopes, and he wears an ivy crown aslant on his head – for he accepts the crown most unwillingly – and Megaera causes a fir to shoot up beside him and brings to light a spring of water, in token, I fancy, of the blood of Actaeon and of Pentheus.
1.15 ARIADNE
That Theseus treated Ariadne unjustly – though some say not with unjust intent, but under the compulsion of Dionysus – when he abandoned her while asleep on the island of Dia, you must have heard from your nurse; for those women are skilled in telling such tales and they weep over them whenever they will.
I do not need to say that it is Theseus you see there on the ship and Dionysus yonder on the land, nor will I assume you to be ignorant and call your attention to the woman on the rocks, lying there in gentle slumber. Nor yet is it enough to praise the painter for things for which someone else too might be praised; for it is easy for anyone to paint Ariadne as beautiful and Theseus as beautiful; and there are countless characteristics of Dionysus for those who wish to represent him in painting or sculpture, by depicting which even approximately the artist has captured the god.
For instance, the ivy clusters forming a crown are the clear mark of Dionysus, even if the workmanship is poor; and a horn just springing from the temples reveals Dionysus, and a leopard, though but just visible, is a symbol of the god; but this Dionysus the painter has characterized by love alone. Flowered garments and thyrsi and fawn-skins have been cast aside as out of place for the moment, and the Bacchantes are not clashing their cymbals now, nor are the Satyrs playing the flute, nay, even Pan checks his wild dance that he may not disturb the maiden’s sleep. Having arrayed himself in fine purple and wreathed his head with roses, Dionysus comes to the side of Ariadne, “drunk with love” as the Teian poet says of those who are overmastered by love.
As for Theseus, he is indeed in love, but with the smoke rising from Athens, and he no longer knows Ariadne, and never knew her, and I am sure that he has even forgotten the labyrinth and could not tell on what possible errand he sailed to Crete, so singly is his gaze fixed on what lies ahead of his prow.
And look at Ariadne, or rather at her sleep; for her bosom is bare to the waist, and her neck is bent back and her delicate throat, and all her right armpit is visible, but the left hand rests on her mantle that a gust of wind may not expose her. How fair a sight, Dionysus, and how sweet her breath! Whether its fragrance is of apples or of grapes, you can tell after you have kissed her!
1.16. PASIPHAË
Pasiphaë is in love with the bull and begs Daedalus to devise some lure for the creature; and he is fashioning a hollow cow like a cow of the herd to which the bull is accustomed. What their union brought forth is shown by the form of the Minotaur, strangely composite in its nature.
Their union is not depicted here, but this is the workshop of Daedalus; and about it are statues, some with forms blocked out, others in a quite complete state in that they are already stepping forward and give promise of walking about. Before the time of Daedalus, you know, the art of making statues had not yet conceived such a thing.
Daedalus himself is of the Attic type in that his face suggests great wisdom and that the look of the eye is so intelligent; and his very dress also follows the Attic style; for he wears this dull coarse mantle and also he is painted without sandals, in a manner peculiarly affected by the Athenians.
He sits before the framework of the cow and he uses Cupids [Erotes] as his assistants in the device so as to connect with it something of Aphrodite. Of the Cupids, my boy, those are visible who turn the drill, and those by Zeus that smooth with the adze portions of the cow which are not yet accurately finished, and those that measure off the symmetrical proportions on which craftsmanship depends. But the Cupids that work with the saw surpass all conception and all skill in drawing and colour. For look! The saw has attacked the wood and is already passing through it, and these Cupids keep it going, one on the ground, another on the staging, both straightening up and bending forward in turn. Let us consider this movement to be alternate; one has bent low as if about to rise up, his companion has risen erect as if about to bend over; the one on the ground draws his breath into his chest, and the one who is aloft fills his lungs down to his belly as he presses both hands down on the saw.
Pasiphaë outside the workshop in the cattlefold gazes on the bull, thinking to draw him to her by her beauty and by her robe, which is divinely resplendent and more beautiful than any rainbow. She has a helpless look – for she knows what the creature is that she loves – and she is eager to embrace it, but takes no notice of her and gazes at its own cow.
The bull is depicting with proud mien, the leader of the herd, with splendid horns, white, already experienced in love, its dewlap low and its neck massive, and it gazes fondly at the cow; but the cow in the herd, ranging free and all white but for a black head, disdains the bull. For its purpose suggests a leap, as of a girl who avoids the importunity of a lover.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PhilostratusElder1B.html#16
This passage continues with Hippodameia, but in our next passage we return to Athens on The Ship of Theseus.
Greek and Roman mythology from the original sources, from Atlantis to Hercules to the Trojan War. Email: LegendaryPassages@gmail.com
Monday, December 16, 2019
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
LP0113 cat64b Ariadne's Curse
Legendary Passages #0113,
The Poems of Catullus,
Part II of Poem [64],
Ariadne's Curse.
Previously, Catullus described a couch covered with images of Theseus and Ariadne. Here the passage continues with her lamentations, her curse, and her rescue, of sorts.
Ariadne had hoped for marriage, would have endured slavery, but being left to die alone was the ultimate betrayal by Theseus. She insulted his parentage, complained to the uncaring wind about the evilness of men, and despaired that even if she escaped off the island, she had no where else to go. Her love spurned, her fate sealed, as her final act she cursed Theseus to die alone.
Meanwhile, his mind in a haze, Theseus dimly recalled his father Aegeus' parting words to him. Aegeus believed that Theseus would die as had all the youths before him, thus the tribute ship was given a black sail, the color of grief and death. Should a miracle occur, the Minotaur slain and he survive, Theseus was told to hoist a white sail, to let his father know that he yet lived.
The final section has Ariadne rescued by the god Dionysus, here called Bacchus, and his strange entourage of followers and satyrs. It is hinted that Bacchus himself compelled Theseus to leave, and the god of liberation declared his own love for Ariadne. Bacchus throws a massive party for their wedding, she became a goddess, and received her happily ever after.
Ariadne's Curse,
a Legendary Passage from,
A. S. Kline translating,
Gaius Valerius Catullus,
Part II of Poem [64].
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
But what should I relate, digressing further
from my poem’s theme: the girl, abandoning
her father’s sight, her sisters’ embraces, and lastly
her mother’s, she wretched at her lost daughter’s joy
in preferring the sweet love of Theseus to all this:
or her being carried by ship to Naxos’s foaming shore,
or her consort with uncaring heart vanishing,
she conquered, her eyes softening in sleep?
Often loud shrieks cried the frenzy in her ardent heart
poured out from the depths of her breast,
and then she would climb the steep cliffs in her grief,
where the vast sea-surge stretches out to the view,
then run against the waves into the salt tremor
holding her soft clothes above her naked calves,
and call out mournfully this last complaint,
a frozen sob issuing from her wet face:
‘False Theseus, is this why you take me from my father’s land,
faithless man, to abandon me on a desert shore?
Is this how you vanish, heedless of the god’s power,
ah, uncaring, bearing home your accursed perjuries?
Nothing could alter the measure of your cruel mind?
No mercy was near to you, inexorable man,
that you might take pity on my heart?
Yet once you made promises to me in that flattering voice,
you told me to hope, not for this misery
but for joyful marriage, the longed-for wedding songs,
all in vain, dispersed on the airy breezes.
Now, no woman should believe a man’s pledges,
or believe there’s any truth in a man’s words:
when their minds are intent on their desire,
they have no fear of oaths, don’t spare their promises:
but as soon as the lust of their eager mind is slaked
they fear no words, they care nothing for perjury.
Surely I rescued you from the midst of the tempest
of fate, and more, I gave up my half-brother,
whom I abandoned to you with treachery at the end.
For that I’m left to be torn apart by beasts, and a prey
to sea-birds, unburied, when dead, in the scattered earth.
What lioness whelped you under a desert rock,
what sea conceived and spat you from foaming waves,
what Syrtis, what fierce Scylla, what vast Charybdis,
you who return me this, for the gift of your sweet life?
If marriage with me was not in your heart,
because you feared your old father’s cruel precepts,
you could still have led me back to your house,
where I would have served you, a slave happy in her task,
washing your beautiful feet in clear water,
covering your bed with the purple fabric.
But why complain to the uncaring wind in vain?
It is beyond evil, and without senses, unable
to hear what is said, without voice to reply.
It is already turning now towards mid-ocean,
and nothing human appears in this waste of weed.
So cruel chance taunts me in my last moments,
even depriving my ears of my own lament.
All-powerful Jupiter, if only the Athenian ships
had not touched the shores of Cnossos, from the start,
carrying their fatal cargo for the ungovernable bull,
a faithless captain mooring his ropes to Crete,
an evil guest, hiding a cruel purpose under a handsome
appearance, finding rest in our halls!
Now where can I return? What desperate hope
depend on? Shall I seek out the slopes of Ida?
But the cruel sea with its divisive depths
of water separates me from them.
Or shall I hope for my father’s help? Did I not leave him,
to follow a man stained with my brother’s blood?
Or should I trust in a husband’s love to console me?
Who hardly bends slow oars in running from me?
More, I’m alive on a lonely island without shelter,
and no escape seen from the encircling ocean waves.
No way to fly, no hope: all is mute,
all is deserted, all speaks of ruin.
Yet still my eyes do not droop in death,
not till my senses have left my weary body,
till true justice is handed down by the gods,
and the divine help I pray for in my last hour.
So you Eumenides who punish by avenging
the crimes of men, your foreheads crowned
with snaky hair, bearing anger in your breath,
here, here, come to me, listen to my complaints,
that I, wretched alas, force, weakened, burning,
out of the marrow of my bones, blind with mad rage.
Since these truths are born in the depths of my breast,
you won’t allow my lament to pass you by,
but as Theseus left me alone, through his intent,
goddesses, by that will, pursue him and his with murder.’
When these words had poured from her sad breast,
the troubled girl praying for cruel actions,
the chief of the gods nodded with unconquerable will:
at which the earth and the cruel sea trembled
and the glittering stars shook in the heavens.
Now Theseus’s mind was filled with a dark mist
and all the instructions he had held fixed in memory
before this, were erased from his thoughts,
failing to raise the sweet signal to his mourning father,
when the harbour of Athens safely came in sight.
For they say that when Aegeus parted from his son,
as the goddess’s ship left the city, he yielded him
to the wind’s embrace with these words:
‘Son, more dear to me than my long life,
son, whom I abandoned through chance uncertainty,
lately returned to me in the last days of my old age,
since my fate and your fierce virtue tear you away
from me, against my will, whose failing eyes
are not yet sated with my dear son’s face,
I don’t send you off happily with joyful heart,
or allow you to carry flags of good fortune,
but start with the many sorrows in my mind,
marring my white hairs with earth and sprinkled ashes,
then hang unfinished canvas from the wandering mast,
so the darkened sail of gloomy Spanish flax
might speak the grief and passion in my mind.
But if the one who dwells in sacred Iton, who promised
to defend the people and city of Erectheus, allows you
to wet your hand with the blood of the bull,
then make sure this command is done, buried in your
remembering heart, not to be erased by time:
that as soon as you set eyes on our hills,
strip the dark fabric fully from the yards,
and hoist white sails with your twisted ropes,
so that seeing them from the first, I’ll know joy
in my glad heart, when a happy time reveals your return.’
These words to Theseus, once held constantly in mind,
vanished like clouds of snow struck by a blast of wind
on the summits of high mountains.
But when his father, searching the view from the citadel’s height,
endless tears flooding his anxious eyes,
first saw the sails of dark fabric,
he threw himself head first from the height of the cliff,
believing Theseus lost to inexorable fate.
So fierce Theseus entered the palace in mourning
for his father’s death, and knew the same grief of mind
that he had caused neglected Ariadne,
she who was gazing then where his ship had vanished
pondering the many cares in her wounded heart.
But bright Bacchus hurries from elsewhere
with his chorus of Satyrs and Silenes from Nysa,
seeking you, Ariadne, burning with love for you.
In rapture his Bacchantes raved madly, crazed in mind,
with cries of ‘euhoe’ and tossing heads,
some brandished the thyrsus with hidden tip,
some flourished the torn limbs of bullocks,
some wreathed themselves with twining snakes,
some celebrated the secret rites of the hollow box,
rights they wished the profane to hear in vain:
others beat the drums with the flat of their hands,
or raised a clear ringing from rounded cymbals:
they blew endless strident calls on the horns
and the barbarous flute shrilled with fearful tunes.
Such the splendid workings of figured tapestry
covering the sacred couch its cloth embraced.
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
This passage continues with the wedding of Peleus & Thetis, but in our next episode we hear the stories of Pasiphae & Semele.
The Poems of Catullus,
Part II of Poem [64],
Ariadne's Curse.
Previously, Catullus described a couch covered with images of Theseus and Ariadne. Here the passage continues with her lamentations, her curse, and her rescue, of sorts.
Ariadne had hoped for marriage, would have endured slavery, but being left to die alone was the ultimate betrayal by Theseus. She insulted his parentage, complained to the uncaring wind about the evilness of men, and despaired that even if she escaped off the island, she had no where else to go. Her love spurned, her fate sealed, as her final act she cursed Theseus to die alone.
Meanwhile, his mind in a haze, Theseus dimly recalled his father Aegeus' parting words to him. Aegeus believed that Theseus would die as had all the youths before him, thus the tribute ship was given a black sail, the color of grief and death. Should a miracle occur, the Minotaur slain and he survive, Theseus was told to hoist a white sail, to let his father know that he yet lived.
The final section has Ariadne rescued by the god Dionysus, here called Bacchus, and his strange entourage of followers and satyrs. It is hinted that Bacchus himself compelled Theseus to leave, and the god of liberation declared his own love for Ariadne. Bacchus throws a massive party for their wedding, she became a goddess, and received her happily ever after.
Ariadne's Curse,
a Legendary Passage from,
A. S. Kline translating,
Gaius Valerius Catullus,
Part II of Poem [64].
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
But what should I relate, digressing further
from my poem’s theme: the girl, abandoning
her father’s sight, her sisters’ embraces, and lastly
her mother’s, she wretched at her lost daughter’s joy
in preferring the sweet love of Theseus to all this:
or her being carried by ship to Naxos’s foaming shore,
or her consort with uncaring heart vanishing,
she conquered, her eyes softening in sleep?
Often loud shrieks cried the frenzy in her ardent heart
poured out from the depths of her breast,
and then she would climb the steep cliffs in her grief,
where the vast sea-surge stretches out to the view,
then run against the waves into the salt tremor
holding her soft clothes above her naked calves,
and call out mournfully this last complaint,
a frozen sob issuing from her wet face:
‘False Theseus, is this why you take me from my father’s land,
faithless man, to abandon me on a desert shore?
Is this how you vanish, heedless of the god’s power,
ah, uncaring, bearing home your accursed perjuries?
Nothing could alter the measure of your cruel mind?
No mercy was near to you, inexorable man,
that you might take pity on my heart?
Yet once you made promises to me in that flattering voice,
you told me to hope, not for this misery
but for joyful marriage, the longed-for wedding songs,
all in vain, dispersed on the airy breezes.
Now, no woman should believe a man’s pledges,
or believe there’s any truth in a man’s words:
when their minds are intent on their desire,
they have no fear of oaths, don’t spare their promises:
but as soon as the lust of their eager mind is slaked
they fear no words, they care nothing for perjury.
Surely I rescued you from the midst of the tempest
of fate, and more, I gave up my half-brother,
whom I abandoned to you with treachery at the end.
For that I’m left to be torn apart by beasts, and a prey
to sea-birds, unburied, when dead, in the scattered earth.
What lioness whelped you under a desert rock,
what sea conceived and spat you from foaming waves,
what Syrtis, what fierce Scylla, what vast Charybdis,
you who return me this, for the gift of your sweet life?
If marriage with me was not in your heart,
because you feared your old father’s cruel precepts,
you could still have led me back to your house,
where I would have served you, a slave happy in her task,
washing your beautiful feet in clear water,
covering your bed with the purple fabric.
But why complain to the uncaring wind in vain?
It is beyond evil, and without senses, unable
to hear what is said, without voice to reply.
It is already turning now towards mid-ocean,
and nothing human appears in this waste of weed.
So cruel chance taunts me in my last moments,
even depriving my ears of my own lament.
All-powerful Jupiter, if only the Athenian ships
had not touched the shores of Cnossos, from the start,
carrying their fatal cargo for the ungovernable bull,
a faithless captain mooring his ropes to Crete,
an evil guest, hiding a cruel purpose under a handsome
appearance, finding rest in our halls!
Now where can I return? What desperate hope
depend on? Shall I seek out the slopes of Ida?
But the cruel sea with its divisive depths
of water separates me from them.
Or shall I hope for my father’s help? Did I not leave him,
to follow a man stained with my brother’s blood?
Or should I trust in a husband’s love to console me?
Who hardly bends slow oars in running from me?
More, I’m alive on a lonely island without shelter,
and no escape seen from the encircling ocean waves.
No way to fly, no hope: all is mute,
all is deserted, all speaks of ruin.
Yet still my eyes do not droop in death,
not till my senses have left my weary body,
till true justice is handed down by the gods,
and the divine help I pray for in my last hour.
So you Eumenides who punish by avenging
the crimes of men, your foreheads crowned
with snaky hair, bearing anger in your breath,
here, here, come to me, listen to my complaints,
that I, wretched alas, force, weakened, burning,
out of the marrow of my bones, blind with mad rage.
Since these truths are born in the depths of my breast,
you won’t allow my lament to pass you by,
but as Theseus left me alone, through his intent,
goddesses, by that will, pursue him and his with murder.’
When these words had poured from her sad breast,
the troubled girl praying for cruel actions,
the chief of the gods nodded with unconquerable will:
at which the earth and the cruel sea trembled
and the glittering stars shook in the heavens.
Now Theseus’s mind was filled with a dark mist
and all the instructions he had held fixed in memory
before this, were erased from his thoughts,
failing to raise the sweet signal to his mourning father,
when the harbour of Athens safely came in sight.
For they say that when Aegeus parted from his son,
as the goddess’s ship left the city, he yielded him
to the wind’s embrace with these words:
‘Son, more dear to me than my long life,
son, whom I abandoned through chance uncertainty,
lately returned to me in the last days of my old age,
since my fate and your fierce virtue tear you away
from me, against my will, whose failing eyes
are not yet sated with my dear son’s face,
I don’t send you off happily with joyful heart,
or allow you to carry flags of good fortune,
but start with the many sorrows in my mind,
marring my white hairs with earth and sprinkled ashes,
then hang unfinished canvas from the wandering mast,
so the darkened sail of gloomy Spanish flax
might speak the grief and passion in my mind.
But if the one who dwells in sacred Iton, who promised
to defend the people and city of Erectheus, allows you
to wet your hand with the blood of the bull,
then make sure this command is done, buried in your
remembering heart, not to be erased by time:
that as soon as you set eyes on our hills,
strip the dark fabric fully from the yards,
and hoist white sails with your twisted ropes,
so that seeing them from the first, I’ll know joy
in my glad heart, when a happy time reveals your return.’
These words to Theseus, once held constantly in mind,
vanished like clouds of snow struck by a blast of wind
on the summits of high mountains.
But when his father, searching the view from the citadel’s height,
endless tears flooding his anxious eyes,
first saw the sails of dark fabric,
he threw himself head first from the height of the cliff,
believing Theseus lost to inexorable fate.
So fierce Theseus entered the palace in mourning
for his father’s death, and knew the same grief of mind
that he had caused neglected Ariadne,
she who was gazing then where his ship had vanished
pondering the many cares in her wounded heart.
But bright Bacchus hurries from elsewhere
with his chorus of Satyrs and Silenes from Nysa,
seeking you, Ariadne, burning with love for you.
In rapture his Bacchantes raved madly, crazed in mind,
with cries of ‘euhoe’ and tossing heads,
some brandished the thyrsus with hidden tip,
some flourished the torn limbs of bullocks,
some wreathed themselves with twining snakes,
some celebrated the secret rites of the hollow box,
rights they wished the profane to hear in vain:
others beat the drums with the flat of their hands,
or raised a clear ringing from rounded cymbals:
they blew endless strident calls on the horns
and the barbarous flute shrilled with fearful tunes.
Such the splendid workings of figured tapestry
covering the sacred couch its cloth embraced.
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
This passage continues with the wedding of Peleus & Thetis, but in our next episode we hear the stories of Pasiphae & Semele.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
LP0112 cat64a Of the Argonauts & Ariadne
Legendary Passages #0112,
The Poems of Catullus,
Part I of Poem [64],
Of the Argonauts & Ariadne.
Previously, Princess Ariadne was abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. In this passage we revisit how she came to be stranded there.
Now the structure of this poem is quite odd. It begins with the voyage of the Argonauts, where Prince Peleus fell in love the mermaid goddess Thetis, and Jupiter, King of the Gods, approved of the marriage. The people of Pelion Thessaly abandoned farm and field and gathered at the palace for the wedding of the hero and goddess.
It is here that Catullus describes a magnificent purple and ivory couch, decorated with images of an unkempt Ariadne, standing half-dressed on shores edge, watching Theseus row off without her.
Then as an aside, a summary of how they came to meet. Her brother Androgeus slain, Athens plagued by the gods, and the young boys and girls due to Minos as tribute, for which Theseus volunteered. It was love at first sight for Ariadne; she gave him the thread to escape from the Labyrinth, so that they could live together, happily ever after. But fate had other plans for them....
Of the Argonauts & Ariadne.
a Legendary Passage from,
A. S. Kline translating,
Gaius Valerius Catullus,
Part I of Poem [64].
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
64. Of the Argonauts and an Epithalamium for Peleus and Thetis
Once they say pine-trees born on the heights of Pelion
floated through Neptune’s clear waves,
to the River Phasis and Aeetes’s borders,
with chosen men, oaks of the Argive people,
hoping to steal the Golden Fleece of Colchis
daring to course the salt deeps in their swift ship,
sweeping the blue waters with fir-wood oars.
The goddess herself who guards the heights of the city,
who joined the curving fabric to pinewood keel,
made their ship speed onwards with light winds.
That vessel was first to explore the unknown sea:
so, as she ploughed the windblown waters with her prow,
and whitened the churning waves with foam from the oars,
the Nereids lifted themselves from the dazzling white
depths of the sea, amazed at this wonder of ocean.
In those, and other days, mortal eyes saw the sea-nymphs
raise themselves, bodies all naked, as far as their nipples,
from the white depths.
Then Peleus, they say, was inflamed with love of Thetis,
then Thetis did not despise marriage with a mortal,
then Jupiter himself agreed to Thetis’s marriage.
O heroes, born in a chosen age, hail, godlike race!
O offspring of a blessed mother, hail once more.
Often I’ll address you, in my song.
And I address you, so blessed in your fortunate marriage,
chief of Pelian Thessaly, to whom Jupiter himself
creator of gods, yielded his beloved:
did not Thetis possess you, loveliest of Nereids?
Did not Tethys allow you to lead off her grand-daughter,
and Oceanus, who embraces the whole world with sea?
When at the time appointed the longed-for flames arise,
all of Thessaly crowds together to the palace,
the halls are filled with a joyful assembly:
they bring gifts with them, declaring their joy in their looks.
Cieros is deserted: they leave Pthiotic Tempe,
Crannon’s houses, and Larissa’s walls,
they gather in Pharsalia, crowd under Pharsalia’s roofs.
No one farms the fields, the necks of bullocks soften,
nor does the curved hoe clear beneath the vines,
nor does the ox drag earth outward with the blade,
nor does the sickle thin the shade of leafy trees,
coarse rust attacks the neglected plough.
But the palace gleams bright with gold and silver
through all the rich receding halls.
The ivory chairs shine, cups glisten on tables,
the whole palace gladdened with splendour of royal wealth.
In the midst of the palace a sacred couch, truly joyful
for the marriage of the goddess, gleaming with Indian ivory,
stained with the red dyes won from purple murex.
The cloth depicts in ancient forms, with marvellous art,
in all their variety, the excellence of gods and men.
Here are seen the wave-echoing shores of Naxos,
Theseus, aboard his ship, vanishing swiftly, watched
by Ariadne, ungovernable passion in her heart,
not yet believing that she sees what she does see,
still only just awoken from deceptive sleep,
finding herself abandoned wretchedly to empty sands.
But uncaring the hero fleeing strikes the deep with his oars,
casting his vain promises to the stormy winds.
The Minoan girl goes on gazing at the distance,
with mournful eyes, like the statue of a Bacchante,
gazes, alas, and swells with great waves of sorrow,
no longer does the fine turban remain on her golden hair,
no longer is she hidden by her lightly-concealing dress,
no longer does the shapely band hold her milk-white breasts
all of it scattered, slipping entirely from her body,
plays about her feet in the salt flood.
But, not caring now for turban or flowing dress, the lost girl
gazed towards you, Theseus, with all her heart, spirit, mind.
Wretched thing, for whom bright Venus reserved the thorny
cares of constant mourning in your heart,
from that time when it suited warlike Theseus,
leaving the curving shores of Piraeus,
to reach the Cretan regions of the unbending king.
For then forced by cruel plague, they say,
as punishment, to absolve the murder of Androgeos
ten chosen young men of Athens and ten unmarried girls
used to be given together as sacrifice to the Minotaur.
With which evil the narrow walls were troubled until
Theseus chose to offer himself for his dear Athens
rather than such Athenian dead be carried un-dead to Crete.
And so in a swift ship and with gentle breezes
he came to great Minos and his proud halls.
As soon as the royal girl cast her eye on him with desire,
she whom the chaste bed nourished, breathing
sweet perfumes in her mother’s gentle embrace,
even as Eurotas’s streams surround a myrtle
that sheds its varied colours on the spring breeze,
she did not turn her blazing eyes away from him,
till she conceived a flame through her whole body
that burned utterly to the depths of her bones.
Ah sadly the Boy incites inexorable passion
in chaste hearts, he who mixes joy and pains for mortals,
and she who rules Golgos and leafy Idalia,
even she, who shakes the mind of a smitten girl,
often sighing for a blonde-haired stranger!
How many fears the girl suffers in her weak heart!
How often she grows pallid: more so than pale gold.
As Theseus went off eager to fight the savage monster
either death approached or fame’s reward!
Promising small gifts, not unwelcome or in vain,
she made her prayers to the gods with closed lips.
Now as a storm uproots a quivering branch of oak,
or a cone-bearing pine with resinous bark, on the heights
of Mount Taurus, twisting its unconquered strength
in the wind (it falls headlong, far off, plucked out
by the roots, shattering anything and everything in its way)
so Theseus upended the conquered body of the beast
its useless horns overthrown, emptied of breath.
Then he turned back, unharmed, to great glory,
guided by the wandering track of fine thread,
so that his exit from the fickle labyrinth of the palace
would not be prevented by some unnoticed error.
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
This passage continues next episode with the homecoming of Theseus, and Ariadne's Curse.
The Poems of Catullus,
Part I of Poem [64],
Of the Argonauts & Ariadne.
Previously, Princess Ariadne was abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. In this passage we revisit how she came to be stranded there.
Now the structure of this poem is quite odd. It begins with the voyage of the Argonauts, where Prince Peleus fell in love the mermaid goddess Thetis, and Jupiter, King of the Gods, approved of the marriage. The people of Pelion Thessaly abandoned farm and field and gathered at the palace for the wedding of the hero and goddess.
It is here that Catullus describes a magnificent purple and ivory couch, decorated with images of an unkempt Ariadne, standing half-dressed on shores edge, watching Theseus row off without her.
Then as an aside, a summary of how they came to meet. Her brother Androgeus slain, Athens plagued by the gods, and the young boys and girls due to Minos as tribute, for which Theseus volunteered. It was love at first sight for Ariadne; she gave him the thread to escape from the Labyrinth, so that they could live together, happily ever after. But fate had other plans for them....
Of the Argonauts & Ariadne.
a Legendary Passage from,
A. S. Kline translating,
Gaius Valerius Catullus,
Part I of Poem [64].
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
64. Of the Argonauts and an Epithalamium for Peleus and Thetis
Once they say pine-trees born on the heights of Pelion
floated through Neptune’s clear waves,
to the River Phasis and Aeetes’s borders,
with chosen men, oaks of the Argive people,
hoping to steal the Golden Fleece of Colchis
daring to course the salt deeps in their swift ship,
sweeping the blue waters with fir-wood oars.
The goddess herself who guards the heights of the city,
who joined the curving fabric to pinewood keel,
made their ship speed onwards with light winds.
That vessel was first to explore the unknown sea:
so, as she ploughed the windblown waters with her prow,
and whitened the churning waves with foam from the oars,
the Nereids lifted themselves from the dazzling white
depths of the sea, amazed at this wonder of ocean.
In those, and other days, mortal eyes saw the sea-nymphs
raise themselves, bodies all naked, as far as their nipples,
from the white depths.
Then Peleus, they say, was inflamed with love of Thetis,
then Thetis did not despise marriage with a mortal,
then Jupiter himself agreed to Thetis’s marriage.
O heroes, born in a chosen age, hail, godlike race!
O offspring of a blessed mother, hail once more.
Often I’ll address you, in my song.
And I address you, so blessed in your fortunate marriage,
chief of Pelian Thessaly, to whom Jupiter himself
creator of gods, yielded his beloved:
did not Thetis possess you, loveliest of Nereids?
Did not Tethys allow you to lead off her grand-daughter,
and Oceanus, who embraces the whole world with sea?
When at the time appointed the longed-for flames arise,
all of Thessaly crowds together to the palace,
the halls are filled with a joyful assembly:
they bring gifts with them, declaring their joy in their looks.
Cieros is deserted: they leave Pthiotic Tempe,
Crannon’s houses, and Larissa’s walls,
they gather in Pharsalia, crowd under Pharsalia’s roofs.
No one farms the fields, the necks of bullocks soften,
nor does the curved hoe clear beneath the vines,
nor does the ox drag earth outward with the blade,
nor does the sickle thin the shade of leafy trees,
coarse rust attacks the neglected plough.
But the palace gleams bright with gold and silver
through all the rich receding halls.
The ivory chairs shine, cups glisten on tables,
the whole palace gladdened with splendour of royal wealth.
In the midst of the palace a sacred couch, truly joyful
for the marriage of the goddess, gleaming with Indian ivory,
stained with the red dyes won from purple murex.
The cloth depicts in ancient forms, with marvellous art,
in all their variety, the excellence of gods and men.
Here are seen the wave-echoing shores of Naxos,
Theseus, aboard his ship, vanishing swiftly, watched
by Ariadne, ungovernable passion in her heart,
not yet believing that she sees what she does see,
still only just awoken from deceptive sleep,
finding herself abandoned wretchedly to empty sands.
But uncaring the hero fleeing strikes the deep with his oars,
casting his vain promises to the stormy winds.
The Minoan girl goes on gazing at the distance,
with mournful eyes, like the statue of a Bacchante,
gazes, alas, and swells with great waves of sorrow,
no longer does the fine turban remain on her golden hair,
no longer is she hidden by her lightly-concealing dress,
no longer does the shapely band hold her milk-white breasts
all of it scattered, slipping entirely from her body,
plays about her feet in the salt flood.
But, not caring now for turban or flowing dress, the lost girl
gazed towards you, Theseus, with all her heart, spirit, mind.
Wretched thing, for whom bright Venus reserved the thorny
cares of constant mourning in your heart,
from that time when it suited warlike Theseus,
leaving the curving shores of Piraeus,
to reach the Cretan regions of the unbending king.
For then forced by cruel plague, they say,
as punishment, to absolve the murder of Androgeos
ten chosen young men of Athens and ten unmarried girls
used to be given together as sacrifice to the Minotaur.
With which evil the narrow walls were troubled until
Theseus chose to offer himself for his dear Athens
rather than such Athenian dead be carried un-dead to Crete.
And so in a swift ship and with gentle breezes
he came to great Minos and his proud halls.
As soon as the royal girl cast her eye on him with desire,
she whom the chaste bed nourished, breathing
sweet perfumes in her mother’s gentle embrace,
even as Eurotas’s streams surround a myrtle
that sheds its varied colours on the spring breeze,
she did not turn her blazing eyes away from him,
till she conceived a flame through her whole body
that burned utterly to the depths of her bones.
Ah sadly the Boy incites inexorable passion
in chaste hearts, he who mixes joy and pains for mortals,
and she who rules Golgos and leafy Idalia,
even she, who shakes the mind of a smitten girl,
often sighing for a blonde-haired stranger!
How many fears the girl suffers in her weak heart!
How often she grows pallid: more so than pale gold.
As Theseus went off eager to fight the savage monster
either death approached or fame’s reward!
Promising small gifts, not unwelcome or in vain,
she made her prayers to the gods with closed lips.
Now as a storm uproots a quivering branch of oak,
or a cone-bearing pine with resinous bark, on the heights
of Mount Taurus, twisting its unconquered strength
in the wind (it falls headlong, far off, plucked out
by the roots, shattering anything and everything in its way)
so Theseus upended the conquered body of the beast
its useless horns overthrown, emptied of breath.
Then he turned back, unharmed, to great glory,
guided by the wandering track of fine thread,
so that his exit from the fickle labyrinth of the palace
would not be prevented by some unnoticed error.
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846789
This passage continues next episode with the homecoming of Theseus, and Ariadne's Curse.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
LP0111 ovHero10 Ariadne's Letter
Legendary Passages #0111,
Ovid's Heroides,
Epistle [X.],
Ariadne's Letter.
Previously, with Ariadne's help Prince Theseus defeated the Minotaur and escaped the Labyrinth. In this passage Ariadne awakens alone on the Island of Naxos, Theseus having abandoned her and sailed away in the night.
Ariadne's Letter,
a Legendary Passage from,
Grant Showerman translating,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
Heroides Epistle [X.],
Ariadne to Theseus.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides2.html#10
X. ARIADNE TO THESEUS
Gentler than you I have found every race of wild beasts; to none of them could I so ill have trusted as to you. The words you now are reading, Thesues, I send you from that shore from which the sails bore off your ship without me, the shore on which my slumber, and you, so wretchedly betrayed me – you, who wickedly plotted against me as I slept.
‘Twas the time when the earth is first besprinkled with crystal rime, and songsters hid in the branch begin their plaint. Half waking only, languid from sleep, I turned upon my side and put forth hands to clasp my Theseus – he was not there! I drew back my hands, a second time I made essay, and o’er the whole couch moved my arms – he was not there! Fear struck away my sleep; in terror I arose, and threw myself headlong from my abandoned bed. Straight then my palms resounded upon my breasts, and I tore my hair, all disarrayed as it was from sleep.
The moon was shining; I bend my gaze to see if aught but shore lies there. So far as my eyes can see, naught to they find but shore. Now this way, and now that, and ever without plan, I course; the deep sand stays my girlish feet. And all the while I cried out “Theseus!” alone the entire shore, and the hollow rocks sent back your name to me; as often as I called out for you, so often did the place itself call out your name. The very place felt the will to aid me in my woe.
There was a mountain, with bushes rising here and there upon its top; a cliff hangs over from it, gnawed into by deep-sounding waves. I climb its slope – my spirit gave me strength – and thus with prospect broad I scan the billowy deep. From there – for I found the winds cruel, too – I beheld your sails stretched full by the headlong southern gale. As I looked on a sight methought I had not deserved to see, I grew colder than ice, and life half left my body. Nor does anguish allow me long to lie thus quiet; it rouses me, it stirs me up to call on Theseus with all my voice’s might. “Whither doest fly?” I cry aloud. “Come back, O wicked Theseus! Turn about thy ship! She hath not all her crew!”
Thus did I cry, and what my voice could not avail, I filled with beating of my breast; the blows I gave myself were mingled with my words. That you at least might see, if you could not hear, with might and main I sent you signals with my hands; and upon a long tree-branch I fixed my shining veil – yes, to put in mind of me those who had forgotten! And now you had been swept beyond my vision. Then at last I let flow my tears; till then my tender eyeballs had been dulled with pain. What better could my eyes do than weep for me, when I had ceased to see your sails? Alone, with hair loose flying, I have either roamed about, like to a Bacchant roused by the Ogygian god, or, looking out upon the sea, I have sat all chilled upon the rock, as much a stone myself as was the stone I sat upon. Oft do I come again to the couch that once received us both, but was fated never to show us together again, and touch the imprint left by you – ‘tis all I can in place of you! – and the stuffs that once grew warm beneath your limbs. I lay me down upon my face, bedew the bed with pouring tears, and cry aloud: “We were two who pressed thee – give back two! We came to thee both together; why do we not depart the same? Ah, faithless bed – the greater part of my being, oh, where is he?
What am I to do? Whither shall I take myself – I am alone, and the isle untilled. Of human traces I see none; of cattle, none. On every side the land is girt by sea; nowhere a sailor, no craft to make its way over the dubious paths. And suppose I did find those to go with me, and winds, and ship – yet where am I to go? My father’s realm forbids me to approach. Grant I do glide with fortunate keel over peaceful seas, that Aeolus tempers the winds – I still shall be an exile! ‘Tis not for me, O Crete composed of the hundred cities, to look upon thee, land known to the infant Jove! No, for my father and the land ruled by my righteous father – dear names! – were betrayed by my deed when, to keep you, after your victory, from death in the winding halls, I gave into your hand the thread to direct your steps in place of guide – when you said to me: “By these very perils of mine, I swear that, so long as both of us shall live, thou shalt be mine!”
We both live, Theseus, and I am not yours! – if indeed a woman lives who is buried by the treason of a perjured mate. Me, too, you should have slain, O false one, with the same bludgeon that slew my brother; then would the oath you gave me have been absolved by my death. Now, I ponder over not only what I am doomed to suffer, but all that any woman left behind can suffer. There rush into my thought a thousand forms of perishing, and death holds less of dole for me than the delay of death. Each moment, now here, now there, I look to see wolves rush on me, to rend my vitals with their greedy fangs. Who knows but that this shore breeds, too, the tawny lion? Perchance the island harbours the savage tiger as well. They say, too, that the waters of the deep cast up the mighty seal! And who is to keep the swords of men from piercing my side?
But I care not, if I am but not left captive in hard bonds, and not compelled to spin the long task with servile hand – I, whose father is Minos, whose mother the child of Phoebus, and who – what memory holds more close – was promised bride to you! When I have looked on the sea, and on the land, and on the wide-stretching shore, I know many dangers threaten me on land, and many on the waters. The sky remains – yet there I fear visions of the gods! I am left helpless, a prey to the maws of ravening beasts; and if men dwell in the place and keep it, I put no trust in them – my hurts have taught me fear of stranger-men.
O, that Androgeos were still alive, and that thou, O Cecropian land, hadst not been made to atone for thy impious deeds with the doom of thy children! and would that thy upraised right hand, O Theseus, had not slain with knotty club him that was man in part, and in part bull; and I had not given thee the thread to show the way of thy return – thread oft caught up again and passed through the hands led on by it. I marvel not – ah, no! – if victory was thine, and the monster smote with his length the Cretan earth. His horn could not have pierced that iron heart of thine; thy breast was safe, even didst thou naught to shield thyself. There barest thou flint, there barest thou adamant; there hast thou a Theseus harder than any flint!
Ah, cruel slumbers, why did you hold me thus inert? Or, better had I been weighed down once for all by everlasting night. You, too, were cruel, O winds, and all too well prepared, and you breezes, eager to start my tears. Cruel the right hand that has brought me and my brother to our death, and cruel the pledge – an empty word – that you gave at my demand! Against me conspiring were slumber, wind, and treacherous pledge – treason three-fold against one maid!
Am I, then, to die, and, dying, not behold my mother’s tears; and shall there be no one’s finger to close my eyes? Is my unhappy soul to go forth into stranger-air, and no friendly hand compose my limbs and drop them on the unguent due? Are my bones to lie unburied, the prey of hovering birds of the shore? Is this the entombment due to me for my kindnesses? You will go to the haven of Cecrops; but when you have been received back home, and have stood in pride before your thronging followers, gloriously telling the death of the man-and-bull, and of the halls of rock cut out in winding ways, tell, too, of me, abandoned on a solitary shore – for I must not be stolen from the record of your honours! Neither is Aegeus your father, nor are you the son of Pittheus’ daughter Aethra; they who begot you were the rocks and the deep!
Ah, I could pray the gods that you had seen me from the high stern; my sad figure had moved your heart! Yet look upon me now – not with eyes, for with them you cannot, but with your mind – clinging to a rock all beaten by the wandering wave. Look upon my locks, let loose like those of one in grief for the dead, and on my robes, heavy with tears as if with rain. My body is a-quiver like standing corn struck by the northern blast, and the letters I am tracing falter beneath my trembling hand. ‘Tis not for my desert – for that has come to naught – that I entreat you now; let no favour be due for my service. Yet neither let me suffer for it! If I am not the cause of your deliverance, yet neither is it right that you should cause my death.
These hands, wearied with beating of my sorrowful breast, unhappy I stretch toward you over the long seas; these locks – such as remain – in grief I bid you look upon! By these tears I pray you – tears moved by what you have done – turn about your ship, reverse your sail, glide swiftly back to me! If I have died before you come, ‘twill yet be you who bear away my bones!
https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides2.html#10
This passage continues with a letter from Canace to Macareus, but in our next episode we hear more of the Argonauts and Ariadne.
Ovid's Heroides,
Epistle [X.],
Ariadne's Letter.
Previously, with Ariadne's help Prince Theseus defeated the Minotaur and escaped the Labyrinth. In this passage Ariadne awakens alone on the Island of Naxos, Theseus having abandoned her and sailed away in the night.
Ariadne's Letter,
a Legendary Passage from,
Grant Showerman translating,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
Heroides Epistle [X.],
Ariadne to Theseus.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides2.html#10
X. ARIADNE TO THESEUS
Gentler than you I have found every race of wild beasts; to none of them could I so ill have trusted as to you. The words you now are reading, Thesues, I send you from that shore from which the sails bore off your ship without me, the shore on which my slumber, and you, so wretchedly betrayed me – you, who wickedly plotted against me as I slept.
‘Twas the time when the earth is first besprinkled with crystal rime, and songsters hid in the branch begin their plaint. Half waking only, languid from sleep, I turned upon my side and put forth hands to clasp my Theseus – he was not there! I drew back my hands, a second time I made essay, and o’er the whole couch moved my arms – he was not there! Fear struck away my sleep; in terror I arose, and threw myself headlong from my abandoned bed. Straight then my palms resounded upon my breasts, and I tore my hair, all disarrayed as it was from sleep.
The moon was shining; I bend my gaze to see if aught but shore lies there. So far as my eyes can see, naught to they find but shore. Now this way, and now that, and ever without plan, I course; the deep sand stays my girlish feet. And all the while I cried out “Theseus!” alone the entire shore, and the hollow rocks sent back your name to me; as often as I called out for you, so often did the place itself call out your name. The very place felt the will to aid me in my woe.
There was a mountain, with bushes rising here and there upon its top; a cliff hangs over from it, gnawed into by deep-sounding waves. I climb its slope – my spirit gave me strength – and thus with prospect broad I scan the billowy deep. From there – for I found the winds cruel, too – I beheld your sails stretched full by the headlong southern gale. As I looked on a sight methought I had not deserved to see, I grew colder than ice, and life half left my body. Nor does anguish allow me long to lie thus quiet; it rouses me, it stirs me up to call on Theseus with all my voice’s might. “Whither doest fly?” I cry aloud. “Come back, O wicked Theseus! Turn about thy ship! She hath not all her crew!”
Thus did I cry, and what my voice could not avail, I filled with beating of my breast; the blows I gave myself were mingled with my words. That you at least might see, if you could not hear, with might and main I sent you signals with my hands; and upon a long tree-branch I fixed my shining veil – yes, to put in mind of me those who had forgotten! And now you had been swept beyond my vision. Then at last I let flow my tears; till then my tender eyeballs had been dulled with pain. What better could my eyes do than weep for me, when I had ceased to see your sails? Alone, with hair loose flying, I have either roamed about, like to a Bacchant roused by the Ogygian god, or, looking out upon the sea, I have sat all chilled upon the rock, as much a stone myself as was the stone I sat upon. Oft do I come again to the couch that once received us both, but was fated never to show us together again, and touch the imprint left by you – ‘tis all I can in place of you! – and the stuffs that once grew warm beneath your limbs. I lay me down upon my face, bedew the bed with pouring tears, and cry aloud: “We were two who pressed thee – give back two! We came to thee both together; why do we not depart the same? Ah, faithless bed – the greater part of my being, oh, where is he?
What am I to do? Whither shall I take myself – I am alone, and the isle untilled. Of human traces I see none; of cattle, none. On every side the land is girt by sea; nowhere a sailor, no craft to make its way over the dubious paths. And suppose I did find those to go with me, and winds, and ship – yet where am I to go? My father’s realm forbids me to approach. Grant I do glide with fortunate keel over peaceful seas, that Aeolus tempers the winds – I still shall be an exile! ‘Tis not for me, O Crete composed of the hundred cities, to look upon thee, land known to the infant Jove! No, for my father and the land ruled by my righteous father – dear names! – were betrayed by my deed when, to keep you, after your victory, from death in the winding halls, I gave into your hand the thread to direct your steps in place of guide – when you said to me: “By these very perils of mine, I swear that, so long as both of us shall live, thou shalt be mine!”
We both live, Theseus, and I am not yours! – if indeed a woman lives who is buried by the treason of a perjured mate. Me, too, you should have slain, O false one, with the same bludgeon that slew my brother; then would the oath you gave me have been absolved by my death. Now, I ponder over not only what I am doomed to suffer, but all that any woman left behind can suffer. There rush into my thought a thousand forms of perishing, and death holds less of dole for me than the delay of death. Each moment, now here, now there, I look to see wolves rush on me, to rend my vitals with their greedy fangs. Who knows but that this shore breeds, too, the tawny lion? Perchance the island harbours the savage tiger as well. They say, too, that the waters of the deep cast up the mighty seal! And who is to keep the swords of men from piercing my side?
But I care not, if I am but not left captive in hard bonds, and not compelled to spin the long task with servile hand – I, whose father is Minos, whose mother the child of Phoebus, and who – what memory holds more close – was promised bride to you! When I have looked on the sea, and on the land, and on the wide-stretching shore, I know many dangers threaten me on land, and many on the waters. The sky remains – yet there I fear visions of the gods! I am left helpless, a prey to the maws of ravening beasts; and if men dwell in the place and keep it, I put no trust in them – my hurts have taught me fear of stranger-men.
O, that Androgeos were still alive, and that thou, O Cecropian land, hadst not been made to atone for thy impious deeds with the doom of thy children! and would that thy upraised right hand, O Theseus, had not slain with knotty club him that was man in part, and in part bull; and I had not given thee the thread to show the way of thy return – thread oft caught up again and passed through the hands led on by it. I marvel not – ah, no! – if victory was thine, and the monster smote with his length the Cretan earth. His horn could not have pierced that iron heart of thine; thy breast was safe, even didst thou naught to shield thyself. There barest thou flint, there barest thou adamant; there hast thou a Theseus harder than any flint!
Ah, cruel slumbers, why did you hold me thus inert? Or, better had I been weighed down once for all by everlasting night. You, too, were cruel, O winds, and all too well prepared, and you breezes, eager to start my tears. Cruel the right hand that has brought me and my brother to our death, and cruel the pledge – an empty word – that you gave at my demand! Against me conspiring were slumber, wind, and treacherous pledge – treason three-fold against one maid!
Am I, then, to die, and, dying, not behold my mother’s tears; and shall there be no one’s finger to close my eyes? Is my unhappy soul to go forth into stranger-air, and no friendly hand compose my limbs and drop them on the unguent due? Are my bones to lie unburied, the prey of hovering birds of the shore? Is this the entombment due to me for my kindnesses? You will go to the haven of Cecrops; but when you have been received back home, and have stood in pride before your thronging followers, gloriously telling the death of the man-and-bull, and of the halls of rock cut out in winding ways, tell, too, of me, abandoned on a solitary shore – for I must not be stolen from the record of your honours! Neither is Aegeus your father, nor are you the son of Pittheus’ daughter Aethra; they who begot you were the rocks and the deep!
Ah, I could pray the gods that you had seen me from the high stern; my sad figure had moved your heart! Yet look upon me now – not with eyes, for with them you cannot, but with your mind – clinging to a rock all beaten by the wandering wave. Look upon my locks, let loose like those of one in grief for the dead, and on my robes, heavy with tears as if with rain. My body is a-quiver like standing corn struck by the northern blast, and the letters I am tracing falter beneath my trembling hand. ‘Tis not for my desert – for that has come to naught – that I entreat you now; let no favour be due for my service. Yet neither let me suffer for it! If I am not the cause of your deliverance, yet neither is it right that you should cause my death.
These hands, wearied with beating of my sorrowful breast, unhappy I stretch toward you over the long seas; these locks – such as remain – in grief I bid you look upon! By these tears I pray you – tears moved by what you have done – turn about your ship, reverse your sail, glide swiftly back to me! If I have died before you come, ‘twill yet be you who bear away my bones!
https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides2.html#10
This passage continues with a letter from Canace to Macareus, but in our next episode we hear more of the Argonauts and Ariadne.
Monday, September 30, 2019
LP0110 plLoT17 The Black Sail
Legendary Passages #0110,
Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
Section [XVII.],
The Black Sail.
Previously, the time had come for the third tribute of Athenian youths to be sent to Crete, with no hope of return. In this passage are many different versions of their adventures, not one ending happily ever after.
First of all, Theseus promised his father that if they returned safe and sound, he would replace the ship's black sail with a white one. After prayers and sacrifices to Aphrodite by the sea shore, they set sail for Crete.
Theseus competed in games against Minos' general named Taurus, and then it was love at first sight for Princess Ariadne. She gave Theseus the thread to find his way out of the Labyrinth, and after crippling the Cretan fleet they escaped on the tribute ship.
After the ship made landfall on the island of Naxos, it departed again without Princess Ariadne. Some say she she married the god Dionysus; others that Theseus left her for another woman and she died of grief. The worst story was that she went ashore while sick and the tides pushed the ship out to sea, but by the time Theseus returned to her side, she had died in childbirth.
Nevertheless, when they sailed back home to Athens, Theseus had forgotten to take down the black sail. So then King Aegeus, thinking his son and heir dead at the hands of the Minotaur, leapt off the cliff into the sea that bears his name.
The Black Sail
a Legendary Passage from,
Bernadotte Perrin translating,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus,
Sections [XVII.] - [XXII.]
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
On the two former occasions, then, no hope of safety was entertained, and therefore they sent the ship with a black sail, convinced that their youth were going to certain destruction; but now Theseus encouraged his father and loudly boasted that he would master the Minotaur, so that he gave the pilot another sail, a white one, ordering him, if he returned with Theseus safe, to hoist the white sail, but otherwise to sail with the black one, and so indicate the affliction.
Simonides, however, says that the sail given by Aegeus was not white, but “a scarlet sail dyed with the tender flower of luxuriant holm-oak,” and that he made this a token of their safety. Moreover, the pilot of the ship was Phereclus, son of Amarsyas, as Simonides says; but Philochorus says that Theseus got from Scirus of Salamis Nausithous for his pilot, and Phaeax for his look-out man, the Athenians at that time not yet being addicted to the sea, and that Scirus did him this favour because one of the chosen youths, Menesthes, was his daughter's son. And there is evidence for this in the memorial chapels for Nausithous and Phaeax which Theseus built at Phalerum near the temple of Scirus, and they say that the festival of the Cybernesia, or Pilot's Festival, is celebrated in their honor.
XVIII. When the lot was cast, Theseus took those upon whom it fell from the prytaneium and went to the Delphinium, where he dedicated to Apollo in their behalf his suppliant's badge. This was a bough from the sacred olive-tree, wreathed with white wool. Having made his vows and prayers, he went down to the sea on the sixth day of the month Munychion, on which day even now the Athenians still send their maidens to the Delphinium to propitiate the god. And it is reported that the god at Delphi commanded him in an oracle to make Aphrodite his guide, and invite her to attend him on his journey, and that as he sacrificed the usual she-goat to her by the sea-shore, it became a he-goat (tragos) all at once, for which reason the goddess has the surname Epitragia.
XIX. When he reached Crete on his voyage, most historians and poets tell us that he got from Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, the famous thread, and that having been instructed by her how to make his way through the intricacies of the Labyrinth, he slew the Minotaur and sailed off with Ariadne and the youths. And Pherecydes says that Theseus also staved in the bottoms of the Cretan ships, thus depriving them of the power to pursue. And Demon says also that Taurus, the general of Minos, was killed in a naval battle in the harbor as Theseus was sailing out. But as Philochorus tells the story, Minos was holding the funeral games, and Taurus was expected to conquer all his competitors in them, as he had done before, and was grudged his success. For his disposition made his power hateful, and he was accused of too great intimacy with Pasiphae. Therefore when Theseus asked the privilege of entering the lists, it was granted him by Minos. And since it was the custom in Crete for women to view the games, Ariadne was present, and was smitten with the appearance of Theseus, as well as filled with admiration for his athletic prowess, when he conquered all his opponents. Minos also was delighted with him, especially because he conquered Taurus in wrestling and disgraced him, and therefore gave back the youths to Theseus, besides remitting its tribute to the city.
Cleidemus, however, gives a rather peculiar and ambitious account of these matters, beginning a great way back. There was, he says, a general Hellenic decree that no trireme should sail from any port with a larger crew than five men, and the only exception was Jason, the commander of the Argo, who sailed about scouring the sea of pirates. Now when Daedalus fled from Crete in a merchant-vessel to Athens, Minos, contrary to the decrees, pursued him with his ships of war, and was driven from his course by a tempest to Sicily, where he ended his life. And when Deucalion, his son, who was on hostile terms with the Athenians, sent to them a demand that they deliver up Daedalus to him, and threatened, if they refused, to put to death the youth whom Minos had received from them as hostages, Theseus made him a gentle reply, declining to surrender Daedalus, who was his kinsman and cousin, being the son of Merope, the daughter of Erechtheus. But privately he set himself to building a fleet, part of it at home in the township of Thymoetadae, far from the public road, and part of it under the direction of Pittheus in Troezen, wishing his purpose to remain concealed. When his ships were ready, he set sail, taking Daedalus and exiles from Crete as his guides, and since none of the Cretans knew of his design, but thought the approaching ships to be friendly, Theseus made himself master of the harbor, disembarked his men, and got to Gnossus before his enemies were aware of his approach. Then joining battle with them at the gate of the Labyrinth, he slew Deucalion and his body-guard. And since Ariadne was now at the head of affairs, he made a truce with her, received back the youthful hostages, and established friendship between the Athenians and the Cretans, who took oath never to begin hostilities.
XX. There are many other stories about these matters, and also about Ariadne, but they do not agree at all. Some say that she hung herself because she was abandoned by Theseus; others that she was conveyed to Naxos by sailors and there lived with Oenarus the priest of Dionysus, and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another woman: --
Dreadful indeed was his passion for Aigle child of Panopeus.”
This verse Peisistratus expunged from the poems of Hesiod, according to Hereas the Megarian, just as, on the other hand, he inserted into the Inferno of Homer the verse: --
Theseus, Peirithous, illustrious children of Heaven,
and all to gratify the Athenians. Moreover, some say that Ariadne actually had sons by Theseus, Oenopion and Staphylus, and among these is Ion of Chios, who says of his own native city: --
This, once, Theseus's son founded, Oenopion.
Now the most auspicious of these legendary tales are in the mouths of all men, as I may say; but a very peculiar account of these matters is published by Paeon the Amathusian. He says that Theseus, driven out of his course by a storm to Cyprus, and having with him Ariadne, who was big with child and in sore sickness and distress from the tossing of the sea, set her on shore alone, but that he himself, while trying to succour the ship, was borne out to sea again. The women of the island, accordingly, took Ariadne into their care, and tried to comfort her in the discouragement caused by her loneliness, brought her forged letters purporting to have been written to her by Theseus, ministered to her aid during the pangs of travail, and gave her burial when she died before her child was born. Paeon says further that Theseus came back, and was greatly afflicted, and left a sum of money with the people of the island, enjoining them to sacrifice to Ariadne, and caused two little statuettes to be set up in her honor, one of silver, and one of bronze. He says also that at the sacrifice in her honor on the second day of the month Gorpiaeus, one of their young men lies down and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail; and that they call the grove in which they show her tomb, the grove of Ariadne Aphrodite.
Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysus in Naxos and bore him Staphylus and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Corcyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honors paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honor of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning.
XXI. On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the Labyrinth, and consisting of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions. This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians The Crane, and Theseus danced it round the altar called Keraton, which is constructed of horns (kerata) taken entirely from the left side of the head. They say that he also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him of giving a palm to the victors.
XXII. It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore, in despair, threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces. But Theseus, putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to announce his safe return.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
This passage continues with Theseus becoming High King of Athens, but in our next episode we read Ariadne's Letter to her forsaken love.
Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
Section [XVII.],
The Black Sail.
Previously, the time had come for the third tribute of Athenian youths to be sent to Crete, with no hope of return. In this passage are many different versions of their adventures, not one ending happily ever after.
First of all, Theseus promised his father that if they returned safe and sound, he would replace the ship's black sail with a white one. After prayers and sacrifices to Aphrodite by the sea shore, they set sail for Crete.
Theseus competed in games against Minos' general named Taurus, and then it was love at first sight for Princess Ariadne. She gave Theseus the thread to find his way out of the Labyrinth, and after crippling the Cretan fleet they escaped on the tribute ship.
After the ship made landfall on the island of Naxos, it departed again without Princess Ariadne. Some say she she married the god Dionysus; others that Theseus left her for another woman and she died of grief. The worst story was that she went ashore while sick and the tides pushed the ship out to sea, but by the time Theseus returned to her side, she had died in childbirth.
Nevertheless, when they sailed back home to Athens, Theseus had forgotten to take down the black sail. So then King Aegeus, thinking his son and heir dead at the hands of the Minotaur, leapt off the cliff into the sea that bears his name.
The Black Sail
a Legendary Passage from,
Bernadotte Perrin translating,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus,
Sections [XVII.] - [XXII.]
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
On the two former occasions, then, no hope of safety was entertained, and therefore they sent the ship with a black sail, convinced that their youth were going to certain destruction; but now Theseus encouraged his father and loudly boasted that he would master the Minotaur, so that he gave the pilot another sail, a white one, ordering him, if he returned with Theseus safe, to hoist the white sail, but otherwise to sail with the black one, and so indicate the affliction.
Simonides, however, says that the sail given by Aegeus was not white, but “a scarlet sail dyed with the tender flower of luxuriant holm-oak,” and that he made this a token of their safety. Moreover, the pilot of the ship was Phereclus, son of Amarsyas, as Simonides says; but Philochorus says that Theseus got from Scirus of Salamis Nausithous for his pilot, and Phaeax for his look-out man, the Athenians at that time not yet being addicted to the sea, and that Scirus did him this favour because one of the chosen youths, Menesthes, was his daughter's son. And there is evidence for this in the memorial chapels for Nausithous and Phaeax which Theseus built at Phalerum near the temple of Scirus, and they say that the festival of the Cybernesia, or Pilot's Festival, is celebrated in their honor.
XVIII. When the lot was cast, Theseus took those upon whom it fell from the prytaneium and went to the Delphinium, where he dedicated to Apollo in their behalf his suppliant's badge. This was a bough from the sacred olive-tree, wreathed with white wool. Having made his vows and prayers, he went down to the sea on the sixth day of the month Munychion, on which day even now the Athenians still send their maidens to the Delphinium to propitiate the god. And it is reported that the god at Delphi commanded him in an oracle to make Aphrodite his guide, and invite her to attend him on his journey, and that as he sacrificed the usual she-goat to her by the sea-shore, it became a he-goat (tragos) all at once, for which reason the goddess has the surname Epitragia.
XIX. When he reached Crete on his voyage, most historians and poets tell us that he got from Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, the famous thread, and that having been instructed by her how to make his way through the intricacies of the Labyrinth, he slew the Minotaur and sailed off with Ariadne and the youths. And Pherecydes says that Theseus also staved in the bottoms of the Cretan ships, thus depriving them of the power to pursue. And Demon says also that Taurus, the general of Minos, was killed in a naval battle in the harbor as Theseus was sailing out. But as Philochorus tells the story, Minos was holding the funeral games, and Taurus was expected to conquer all his competitors in them, as he had done before, and was grudged his success. For his disposition made his power hateful, and he was accused of too great intimacy with Pasiphae. Therefore when Theseus asked the privilege of entering the lists, it was granted him by Minos. And since it was the custom in Crete for women to view the games, Ariadne was present, and was smitten with the appearance of Theseus, as well as filled with admiration for his athletic prowess, when he conquered all his opponents. Minos also was delighted with him, especially because he conquered Taurus in wrestling and disgraced him, and therefore gave back the youths to Theseus, besides remitting its tribute to the city.
Cleidemus, however, gives a rather peculiar and ambitious account of these matters, beginning a great way back. There was, he says, a general Hellenic decree that no trireme should sail from any port with a larger crew than five men, and the only exception was Jason, the commander of the Argo, who sailed about scouring the sea of pirates. Now when Daedalus fled from Crete in a merchant-vessel to Athens, Minos, contrary to the decrees, pursued him with his ships of war, and was driven from his course by a tempest to Sicily, where he ended his life. And when Deucalion, his son, who was on hostile terms with the Athenians, sent to them a demand that they deliver up Daedalus to him, and threatened, if they refused, to put to death the youth whom Minos had received from them as hostages, Theseus made him a gentle reply, declining to surrender Daedalus, who was his kinsman and cousin, being the son of Merope, the daughter of Erechtheus. But privately he set himself to building a fleet, part of it at home in the township of Thymoetadae, far from the public road, and part of it under the direction of Pittheus in Troezen, wishing his purpose to remain concealed. When his ships were ready, he set sail, taking Daedalus and exiles from Crete as his guides, and since none of the Cretans knew of his design, but thought the approaching ships to be friendly, Theseus made himself master of the harbor, disembarked his men, and got to Gnossus before his enemies were aware of his approach. Then joining battle with them at the gate of the Labyrinth, he slew Deucalion and his body-guard. And since Ariadne was now at the head of affairs, he made a truce with her, received back the youthful hostages, and established friendship between the Athenians and the Cretans, who took oath never to begin hostilities.
XX. There are many other stories about these matters, and also about Ariadne, but they do not agree at all. Some say that she hung herself because she was abandoned by Theseus; others that she was conveyed to Naxos by sailors and there lived with Oenarus the priest of Dionysus, and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another woman: --
Dreadful indeed was his passion for Aigle child of Panopeus.”
This verse Peisistratus expunged from the poems of Hesiod, according to Hereas the Megarian, just as, on the other hand, he inserted into the Inferno of Homer the verse: --
Theseus, Peirithous, illustrious children of Heaven,
and all to gratify the Athenians. Moreover, some say that Ariadne actually had sons by Theseus, Oenopion and Staphylus, and among these is Ion of Chios, who says of his own native city: --
This, once, Theseus's son founded, Oenopion.
Now the most auspicious of these legendary tales are in the mouths of all men, as I may say; but a very peculiar account of these matters is published by Paeon the Amathusian. He says that Theseus, driven out of his course by a storm to Cyprus, and having with him Ariadne, who was big with child and in sore sickness and distress from the tossing of the sea, set her on shore alone, but that he himself, while trying to succour the ship, was borne out to sea again. The women of the island, accordingly, took Ariadne into their care, and tried to comfort her in the discouragement caused by her loneliness, brought her forged letters purporting to have been written to her by Theseus, ministered to her aid during the pangs of travail, and gave her burial when she died before her child was born. Paeon says further that Theseus came back, and was greatly afflicted, and left a sum of money with the people of the island, enjoining them to sacrifice to Ariadne, and caused two little statuettes to be set up in her honor, one of silver, and one of bronze. He says also that at the sacrifice in her honor on the second day of the month Gorpiaeus, one of their young men lies down and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail; and that they call the grove in which they show her tomb, the grove of Ariadne Aphrodite.
Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysus in Naxos and bore him Staphylus and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Corcyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honors paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honor of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning.
XXI. On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the Labyrinth, and consisting of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions. This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians The Crane, and Theseus danced it round the altar called Keraton, which is constructed of horns (kerata) taken entirely from the left side of the head. They say that he also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him of giving a palm to the victors.
XXII. It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore, in despair, threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces. But Theseus, putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to announce his safe return.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
This passage continues with Theseus becoming High King of Athens, but in our next episode we read Ariadne's Letter to her forsaken love.
Friday, August 2, 2019
LP0109 Bacchy17 The Athenian Youths
Legendary Passages #0109,
Bacchylides' Odes,
[XVII.],
The Athenian Youths.
Previously, Theseus had many adventures on his way to Athens before volunteering to be sent to the Minotaur's Labyrinth. This passage recounts some of those adventures as well as a few others.
Ode 17 begins with the voyage of the seven boys and seven girls to Crete. King Minos throws a ring overboard and challenges the young prince to retrieve it from the sea-god's domain.
Ode 18 is all dialogue between the Greek chorus and Theseus' father Aegeus. Word has come of Theseus and his adventures, and Aegeus fears what will happen when he comes to Athens.
Ode 19 is about Io, a lover of Zeus transformed into a cow. The messenger god Hermes rescues her from a thousand-eyed monster named Argus.
Lastly, Ode 20 is a fragment about Idas and Marpessa, but most of that story has been lost.
https://www.scribd.com/document/49175815/Bacchylides-Ode-17-Dithyramb-3
The Athenian Youths,
a Legendary Passage from,
Sir Richard C. Jebb translating,
Bacchylides' Odes,
[XVII.] - [XX.]
Ode [XVII.]
Theseus, Or the Athenian Youths and Maidens.
A dark-prowed ship was cleaving the Cretan sea, bearing Theseus, steadfast in the battle din, with seven goodly youths and seven maidens of Athens; for northern breezes fell on the far-gleaming sail, by grace of glorious Athena with warlike Aegis.
And the heart of Minos was stung by the baneful gifts of the Cyprian goddess with lovely diadem; he could no longer restrain his hand from a maiden, but touched her fair cheeks. Then Eriboca cried aloud to Pandion's grandson with breastplate of bronze; Theseus saw, and wildly rolled his dark eyes beneath his brows, and cruel pain pricked his heart as he spake:
'O son of peerless Zeus, the spirit in they breast no longer obeys righteous control; withhold, hero, thy presumptuous force.
'Whatever the restless doom given by the gods has decreed for us, and the scale of Justice inclines to ordain, that appointed fate we will fulfill when it comes. But do thou forgear thy grievous purpose. If the noble daughter of Phoenix, the maiden of gracious fame, taken to the bed of Zeus beneath the brow of Ida, bare thee, peerless among men; yet I, too, was borne by the daughter of wealthy Pittheus, in wedlock with the sea-god Poseidon, and the violet-crowned Nereids gave her a golden veil.
'Therefore, O war-lord of Cnosus, I bid thee restrain thy wantonness, fraught with woe; for I should not care to look on the fair light of divine Eos, after thou hadst done violence to one of this youthful company: before that, we will come to a trial of strength, and Destiny shall decide the sequel.'
Thus far the hero valiant with the spear: but the seafarers were amazed at the youth's lofty boldness; and he whose bride was daughter of the Sun-god felt anger at his heart; he wove a new device in his mind, and said:
'O Zeus, my sire of great might, hear me! If the white-armed daughter of Phoenix indeed bare me to thee, now send forth from heaven a swift flash of streaming fire, a sign for all to know. And thou, if Troezenian Aethra was thy mother by earth-shaking Poseidon, cast thyself boldly down to the abode of thy sire, and bring from the deep this ring of gold that glitters on my hand. But thou shalt see whether my prayer is heard by the son of Cronus, the all-ruling lord of thunder.'
Mighty Zeus heard the unmeasured prayer, and ordained a surpassing honour for Minos, willing to make it seen of all men, for the sake of his well-loved son. He sent the lightning. But the steadfast warrior, when he saw that welcome portent, stretched his hands towards the glorious ether, and said:
'Theseus, there thou beholdest the clear sign given by Zeus. And now do thou spring into the deep-sounding sea; and the son of Cronus, king Poseidon, thy sire, will assure thee supreme renown throughout the well-wooded earth.'
So spake he: and the spirit of Theseus recoiled not; he took his place on the well-built stern, and sprang thence, and the domain of the deep received him in kindness.
The son of Zeus felt a secret awe in his heart, and gave command to keep the cunningly-wrought ship before the wind; but Fate was preparing a different issue.
So the bark sped fast on its journey, and the northern breeze, blowing astern, urged it forward. But all the Athenian youths and maidens shuddered when the hero sprang into the deep; and tears fell from their bright young eyes, in prospect of their grievous doom.
Meanwhile dolphins, dwellers in the sea, were swiftly bearing mighty Theseus to the abode of his sire, lord of steeds; and he came unto the hall of the gods. There beheld he the glorious daughters of blest Nereus, and was awe-struck; for a splendour as of fire shone from their radiant forms; fillets inwoven with gold encircled their hair; and they were delighting their hearts by dancing with lissom feet.
And in that beautiful abode he saw his father's well-loved wife, the stately, ox-eyed Amphitrite; who clad him in gleaming purple, and set on his thick hair a choice wreath, dark with roses, given to her of yore at her marriage by wily Aphrodite.
Nothing that the gods may ordain is past belief to men of a sound mind. Theseus appeared by the ship with slender stern. Ah, in what thoughts did he check the war-lord of Cnosus, when he came unwetted from the sea, a wonder to all, his form resplendent with the gifts of the gods! The bright-throned Nereids cried aloud with new-born gladness; the deep resounded; while the youths and maidens hard by raised a paean with their lovely voices.
God of Delos, may the choruses of the Ceans be pleasing to thy soul; and mayest thou give us blessings for our portion, wafted by thy power divine!
Ode [XVIII.]
Theseus.
Chorus. King of sacred Athens, lord of the delicately living lonians, why has the trumpet lately sounded a war-note from its bell of bronze?
Is the leader of a hostile army besetting the borders of our land? Or are robbers, devisers of evil, driving off our flocks of sheep perforce, in despite of the shepherds? Or what is the care that gnaws thy heart? Speak; for thou, methinks, if any mortal, hast the aid of valiant youth at hand, O son of Pandion and Creusa.
Aegeus. A herald has lately come, whose feet have traversed the long road from the Isthmus; and he tells of prodigious deeds by a man of might.
That man has slain the tremendous Sinis, who was foremost of mortals in strength, offspring of the Earth-shaker, the Lytaean son of Cronus. He has laid low the man-killing sow in Cremmyon's woods, and the wicked Sciron.
He has closed the wrestling-school of Cercyon. The mighty hammer of Polypemon has dropped from the hand of the Maimer, who has met with a stronger than himself. I fear how these things are to end.
Ch. And who and whence is this man said to be, and how equipped? Is he leading a great host in warlike array? Or travelling with his servants only, like a wayfarer who wanders forth to a strange folk, — this man so vigorous, so valiant, and so bold, who has quelled the stubborn strength of such foes? Verily a god is speeding him, so that he shall bring a rightful doom on the unrighteous; for it is not easy to achieve deed after deed without chancing upon evil. In the long course of time all things find their end.
Aeg. Only two men attend him, says the herald. He has a sword, with ivory hilt, slung from his bright shoulders: he carries in his hands a couple of polished javelins; a well-wrought Laconian bonnet covers his ruddy locks; around his breast he wears a purple tunic and a thick Thessalian mantle. A fiery light, as of the Lemnian flame, flashes from his eyes: a youth he is in earliest manhood, intent on the pastimes of Ares, - on warfare and the clangour of battle; and he seeks brilliant Athens.
Ode [XIX.]
Io. (For the Athenians.)
A thousand paths of poesy divine are open to him who has received gifts from the Muses of Pieria, and whose songs have been clothed with worship by the dark-eyed Graces who bring the wreath.
Weave, then, some glorious lay in Athens, the lovely and the blest, thou Cean fantasy of fair renown. A choice strain should be thine, since Calliope has given thee a meed of signal honour.
There was a time when, by the counsels of wide-ruling Zeus most high, the heifer precious in his sight, — the rosy-fingered maid born to Inachus, — was flying from Argos nurse of steeds: when Argus, looking every way with tireless eyes, had been charged by the great queen, Hera of golden robe, to keep unresting, sleepless ward o'er that creature with the goodly horns. Nor could Maia's son elude him in the sun-lit days or in the holy nights.
Did it befall then that the swift messenger of Zeus slew huge Argus, Earth's fierce offspring, [in combat]? Or did the watcher's unending cares [close his dread eyes;] or was he lulled to rest from weary troubles by the sweet melody of the Pierian sisters?
For me, at least, the surest path of song [is that which leads me to the end]; when lo, driven by the gadfly, reached the flowery banks of Nile, bearing in her womb Epaphus, child of Zeus.
There she brought him forth, to be glorious lord of the linen-robed folk, a prince flourishing in transcendent honour; and there she founded the mightiest race among men. From that race sprang Cadmus, son of Agenor, who in Thebes of the seven gates became father of Semele. And her son was Dionysus, inspirer of Bacchants, [king of joyous revels] and of choruses that wear the wreath...
Ode [XX.]
Idas. (For the Lacedaemonians.)
In spacious Sparta of yore the golden-haired maidens of Lacedaemon chanted such a song as this, when bold-hearted Idas was bringing home the fair maiden, Marpessa of the violet locks, after escaping the swift doom of death; when Poseidon, lord of the sea, had given him a chariot, with steeds swift as the wind, and had sped him on his way to well-built Pleuron, to the son of Ares with golden shield...
https://archive.org/stream/bacchylidespoems00bacciala/bacchylidespoems00bacciala_djvu.txt
This passage concludes here. But in our next episode, Theseus journeys to Crete under The Black Sail.
Bacchylides' Odes,
[XVII.],
The Athenian Youths.
Previously, Theseus had many adventures on his way to Athens before volunteering to be sent to the Minotaur's Labyrinth. This passage recounts some of those adventures as well as a few others.
Ode 17 begins with the voyage of the seven boys and seven girls to Crete. King Minos throws a ring overboard and challenges the young prince to retrieve it from the sea-god's domain.
Ode 18 is all dialogue between the Greek chorus and Theseus' father Aegeus. Word has come of Theseus and his adventures, and Aegeus fears what will happen when he comes to Athens.
Ode 19 is about Io, a lover of Zeus transformed into a cow. The messenger god Hermes rescues her from a thousand-eyed monster named Argus.
Lastly, Ode 20 is a fragment about Idas and Marpessa, but most of that story has been lost.
https://www.scribd.com/document/49175815/Bacchylides-Ode-17-Dithyramb-3
The Athenian Youths,
a Legendary Passage from,
Sir Richard C. Jebb translating,
Bacchylides' Odes,
[XVII.] - [XX.]
Ode [XVII.]
Theseus, Or the Athenian Youths and Maidens.
A dark-prowed ship was cleaving the Cretan sea, bearing Theseus, steadfast in the battle din, with seven goodly youths and seven maidens of Athens; for northern breezes fell on the far-gleaming sail, by grace of glorious Athena with warlike Aegis.
And the heart of Minos was stung by the baneful gifts of the Cyprian goddess with lovely diadem; he could no longer restrain his hand from a maiden, but touched her fair cheeks. Then Eriboca cried aloud to Pandion's grandson with breastplate of bronze; Theseus saw, and wildly rolled his dark eyes beneath his brows, and cruel pain pricked his heart as he spake:
'O son of peerless Zeus, the spirit in they breast no longer obeys righteous control; withhold, hero, thy presumptuous force.
'Whatever the restless doom given by the gods has decreed for us, and the scale of Justice inclines to ordain, that appointed fate we will fulfill when it comes. But do thou forgear thy grievous purpose. If the noble daughter of Phoenix, the maiden of gracious fame, taken to the bed of Zeus beneath the brow of Ida, bare thee, peerless among men; yet I, too, was borne by the daughter of wealthy Pittheus, in wedlock with the sea-god Poseidon, and the violet-crowned Nereids gave her a golden veil.
'Therefore, O war-lord of Cnosus, I bid thee restrain thy wantonness, fraught with woe; for I should not care to look on the fair light of divine Eos, after thou hadst done violence to one of this youthful company: before that, we will come to a trial of strength, and Destiny shall decide the sequel.'
Thus far the hero valiant with the spear: but the seafarers were amazed at the youth's lofty boldness; and he whose bride was daughter of the Sun-god felt anger at his heart; he wove a new device in his mind, and said:
'O Zeus, my sire of great might, hear me! If the white-armed daughter of Phoenix indeed bare me to thee, now send forth from heaven a swift flash of streaming fire, a sign for all to know. And thou, if Troezenian Aethra was thy mother by earth-shaking Poseidon, cast thyself boldly down to the abode of thy sire, and bring from the deep this ring of gold that glitters on my hand. But thou shalt see whether my prayer is heard by the son of Cronus, the all-ruling lord of thunder.'
Mighty Zeus heard the unmeasured prayer, and ordained a surpassing honour for Minos, willing to make it seen of all men, for the sake of his well-loved son. He sent the lightning. But the steadfast warrior, when he saw that welcome portent, stretched his hands towards the glorious ether, and said:
'Theseus, there thou beholdest the clear sign given by Zeus. And now do thou spring into the deep-sounding sea; and the son of Cronus, king Poseidon, thy sire, will assure thee supreme renown throughout the well-wooded earth.'
So spake he: and the spirit of Theseus recoiled not; he took his place on the well-built stern, and sprang thence, and the domain of the deep received him in kindness.
The son of Zeus felt a secret awe in his heart, and gave command to keep the cunningly-wrought ship before the wind; but Fate was preparing a different issue.
So the bark sped fast on its journey, and the northern breeze, blowing astern, urged it forward. But all the Athenian youths and maidens shuddered when the hero sprang into the deep; and tears fell from their bright young eyes, in prospect of their grievous doom.
Meanwhile dolphins, dwellers in the sea, were swiftly bearing mighty Theseus to the abode of his sire, lord of steeds; and he came unto the hall of the gods. There beheld he the glorious daughters of blest Nereus, and was awe-struck; for a splendour as of fire shone from their radiant forms; fillets inwoven with gold encircled their hair; and they were delighting their hearts by dancing with lissom feet.
And in that beautiful abode he saw his father's well-loved wife, the stately, ox-eyed Amphitrite; who clad him in gleaming purple, and set on his thick hair a choice wreath, dark with roses, given to her of yore at her marriage by wily Aphrodite.
Nothing that the gods may ordain is past belief to men of a sound mind. Theseus appeared by the ship with slender stern. Ah, in what thoughts did he check the war-lord of Cnosus, when he came unwetted from the sea, a wonder to all, his form resplendent with the gifts of the gods! The bright-throned Nereids cried aloud with new-born gladness; the deep resounded; while the youths and maidens hard by raised a paean with their lovely voices.
God of Delos, may the choruses of the Ceans be pleasing to thy soul; and mayest thou give us blessings for our portion, wafted by thy power divine!
Ode [XVIII.]
Theseus.
Chorus. King of sacred Athens, lord of the delicately living lonians, why has the trumpet lately sounded a war-note from its bell of bronze?
Is the leader of a hostile army besetting the borders of our land? Or are robbers, devisers of evil, driving off our flocks of sheep perforce, in despite of the shepherds? Or what is the care that gnaws thy heart? Speak; for thou, methinks, if any mortal, hast the aid of valiant youth at hand, O son of Pandion and Creusa.
Aegeus. A herald has lately come, whose feet have traversed the long road from the Isthmus; and he tells of prodigious deeds by a man of might.
That man has slain the tremendous Sinis, who was foremost of mortals in strength, offspring of the Earth-shaker, the Lytaean son of Cronus. He has laid low the man-killing sow in Cremmyon's woods, and the wicked Sciron.
He has closed the wrestling-school of Cercyon. The mighty hammer of Polypemon has dropped from the hand of the Maimer, who has met with a stronger than himself. I fear how these things are to end.
Ch. And who and whence is this man said to be, and how equipped? Is he leading a great host in warlike array? Or travelling with his servants only, like a wayfarer who wanders forth to a strange folk, — this man so vigorous, so valiant, and so bold, who has quelled the stubborn strength of such foes? Verily a god is speeding him, so that he shall bring a rightful doom on the unrighteous; for it is not easy to achieve deed after deed without chancing upon evil. In the long course of time all things find their end.
Aeg. Only two men attend him, says the herald. He has a sword, with ivory hilt, slung from his bright shoulders: he carries in his hands a couple of polished javelins; a well-wrought Laconian bonnet covers his ruddy locks; around his breast he wears a purple tunic and a thick Thessalian mantle. A fiery light, as of the Lemnian flame, flashes from his eyes: a youth he is in earliest manhood, intent on the pastimes of Ares, - on warfare and the clangour of battle; and he seeks brilliant Athens.
Ode [XIX.]
Io. (For the Athenians.)
A thousand paths of poesy divine are open to him who has received gifts from the Muses of Pieria, and whose songs have been clothed with worship by the dark-eyed Graces who bring the wreath.
Weave, then, some glorious lay in Athens, the lovely and the blest, thou Cean fantasy of fair renown. A choice strain should be thine, since Calliope has given thee a meed of signal honour.
There was a time when, by the counsels of wide-ruling Zeus most high, the heifer precious in his sight, — the rosy-fingered maid born to Inachus, — was flying from Argos nurse of steeds: when Argus, looking every way with tireless eyes, had been charged by the great queen, Hera of golden robe, to keep unresting, sleepless ward o'er that creature with the goodly horns. Nor could Maia's son elude him in the sun-lit days or in the holy nights.
Did it befall then that the swift messenger of Zeus slew huge Argus, Earth's fierce offspring, [in combat]? Or did the watcher's unending cares [close his dread eyes;] or was he lulled to rest from weary troubles by the sweet melody of the Pierian sisters?
For me, at least, the surest path of song [is that which leads me to the end]; when lo, driven by the gadfly, reached the flowery banks of Nile, bearing in her womb Epaphus, child of Zeus.
There she brought him forth, to be glorious lord of the linen-robed folk, a prince flourishing in transcendent honour; and there she founded the mightiest race among men. From that race sprang Cadmus, son of Agenor, who in Thebes of the seven gates became father of Semele. And her son was Dionysus, inspirer of Bacchants, [king of joyous revels] and of choruses that wear the wreath...
Ode [XX.]
Idas. (For the Lacedaemonians.)
In spacious Sparta of yore the golden-haired maidens of Lacedaemon chanted such a song as this, when bold-hearted Idas was bringing home the fair maiden, Marpessa of the violet locks, after escaping the swift doom of death; when Poseidon, lord of the sea, had given him a chariot, with steeds swift as the wind, and had sped him on his way to well-built Pleuron, to the son of Ares with golden shield...
https://archive.org/stream/bacchylidespoems00bacciala/bacchylidespoems00bacciala_djvu.txt
This passage concludes here. But in our next episode, Theseus journeys to Crete under The Black Sail.
Monday, July 1, 2019
LP0108 pDoG1-26-4 Marathonian Bull
Legendary Passages #0108,
Pausanias' Description of Greece,
Book [1.26.4],
Marathonian Bull.
Previously, Theseus found his father's sword and sandals, killed the Marathonian Bull, and volunteered for the Tribute of Minos. In this passage we hear more of those stories, as well as exploring the Acropolis of Athens.
After the Erectheum and the image of Athena is a golden lamp that burns for an entire year without being refilled. After the Temple of Athena, Pausanias describes the strange ritual of the Bearers of the Sacred Offerings. Next are statues of Tolmides, a burned Athena, and Cycnus fighting Heracles.
Many legends of Theseus are chronicled here. When Heracles was visiting Troezen and set aside his lion skin, a seven-year-old Theseus attacked it with an axe. When he was sixteen, he rolled away the rock and found his father's tokens. After Heracles had conquered the Cretan Bull, it was set loose on the mainland, killing the son of Minos before being sacrificed by Theseus. Minos went to war with Athens, and ultimately demanded seven girls and seven boys to be taken to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth at Knossos.
Marathonian Bull,
a Legendary Passage from,
W. H. S. Jones translating,
Pausanias,
Description of Greece,
Book [1.26.4] - [1.27.10].
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1B.html#3
Endoeus was an Athenian by birth and a pupil of Daedalus, who also, when Daedalus was in exile because of the death of Talos, followed him to Crete. Made by him is a statue of Athena seated, with an inscription that Callias dedicated the image, but Endoeus made it.
There is also a building called the Erechtheum. Before the entrance is an altar of Zeus the Most High, on which they never sacrifice a living creature but offer cakes, not being wont to use any wine either. Inside the entrance are altars, one to Poseidon, on which in obedience to an oracle they sacrifice also to Erechtheus, the second to the hero Butes, and the third to Hephaestus. On the walls are paintings representing members of the clan Butadae; there is also inside – the building is double – sea-water in a cistern. This is no great marvel, for other inland regions have similar wells, in particular Aphrodisias in Caria. But this cistern is remarkable for the noise of waves it sends forth when a south wind blows. On the rock is the outline of a trident. Legend says that these appeared as evidence in support of Poseidon's claim to the land.
Both the city and the whole of the land are alike sacred to Athena; for even those who in their parishes have an established worship of other gods nevertheless hold Athena in honor. But the most holy symbol, that was so considered by all many years before the unification of the parishes, is the image of Athena which is on what is now called the Acropolis, but in early days the Polis (City). A legend concerning it says that it fell from heaven; whether this is true or not I shall not discuss.
A golden lamp for the goddess was made by Callimachus.
Having filled the lamp with oil, they wait until the same day next year, and the oil is sufficient for the lamp during the interval, although it is alight both day and night. The wick in it is of Carpasian flax, the only kind of flax which is fire-proof, and a bronze palm above the lamp reaches to the roof and draws off the smoke. The Callimachus who made the lamp, although not of the first rank of artists, was yet of unparalleled cleverness, so that he was the first to drill holes through stones, and gave himself the title of Refiner of Art, or perhaps others gave the title and he adopted it as his.
XXVII. In the temple of Athena Polias (Of the City) is a wooden Hermes, said to have been dedicated by Cecrops, but not visible because of myrtle boughs. The votive offerings worth noting are, of the old ones, a folding chair made by Daedalus, Persian spoils, namely the breastplate of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Now Masistius I know was killed by the Athenian cavalry. But Mardonius was opposed by the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan; so the Athenians could not have taken the scimitar to begin with, and furthermore the Lacedaemonians would scarcely have suffered them to carry it off.
About the olive they have nothing to say except that it was testimony the goddess produced when she contended for their land. Legend also says that when the Persians fired Athens the olive was burnt down, but on the very day it was burnt it grew again to the height of two cubits.
Adjoining the temple of Athena is the temple of Pandrosus, the only one of the sisters to be faithful to the trust.
I was much amazed at something which is not generally known, and so I will describe the circumstances. Two maidens dwell not far from the temple of Athena Polias, called by the Athenians Bearers of the Sacred Offerings. For a time they live with the goddess, but when the festival comes round they perform at night the following rites. Having placed on their heads what the priestess of Athena gives them to carry – neither she who gives nor they who carry have any knowledge what it is – the maidens descend by the natural underground passage that goes across the adjacent precincts, within the city, of Aphrodite in the Gardens. They leave down below what they carry and receive something else which they bring back covered up. These maidens they henceforth let go free, and take up to the Acropolis others in their place.
By the temple of Athena is . . . an old woman about a cubit high, the inscription calling her a handmaid of Lysimache, and large bronze figures of men facing each other for a fight, one of whom they call Erechtheus, the other Eumolpus; and yet those Athenians who are acquainted with antiquity must surely know that this victim of Erechtheus was Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus.
On the pedestal are also statues of Theaenetus, who was seer to Tolmides, and of Tolmides himself, who when in command of the Athenian fleet inflicted severe damage upon the enemy, especially upon the Peloponnesians who dwell along the coast, burnt the dock-yards at Gythium and captured Boeae, belonging to the “provincials,” and the island of Cythera. He made a descent on Sicyonia, and, attacked by the citizens as he was laying waste the country, he put them to flight and chased them to the city. Returning afterwards to Athens, he conducted Athenian colonists to Euboea and Naxos and invaded Boeotia with an army. Having ravaged the greater part of the land and reduced Chaeronea by a siege, he advanced into the territory of Haliartus, where he was killed in battle and all his army worsted. Such was the history of Tolmides that I learnt.
There are also old figures of Athena, no limbs of which indeed are missing, but they are rather black and too fragile to bear a blow. For they too were caught by the flames when the Athenians had gone on board their ships and the King captured the city emptied of its able-bodied inhabitants. There is also a boar-hunt (I do not know for certain whether it is the Calydonian boar) and Cycnus fighting with Heracles. This Cycnus is said to have killed, among others, Lycus a Thracian, a prize having been proposed for the winner of the duel, but near the river Peneius he was himself killed by Heracles.
One of the Troezenian legends about Theseus is the following. When Heracles visited Pittheus at Troezen, he laid aside his lion's skin to eat his dinner, and there came in to see him some Troezenian children with Theseus, then about seven years of age. The story goes that when they saw the skin the other children ran away, but Theseus slipped out not much afraid, seized an axe from the servants and straightway attacked the skin in earnest, thinking it to be a lion.
This is the first Troezenian legend about Theseus. The next is that Aegeus placed boots and a sword under a rock as tokens for the child, and then sailed away to Athens; Theseus, when sixteen years old, pushed the rock away and departed, taking what Aegeus had deposited. There is a representation of this legend on the Acropolis, everything in bronze except the rock.
Another deed of Theseus they have represented in an offering, and the story about it is as follows– The land of the Cretans and especially that by the river Tethris was ravaged by a bull. It would seem that in the days of old the beasts were much more formidable to men, for example the Nemean lion, the lion of Parnassus, the serpents in many parts of Greece, and the boars of Calydon, Eryrmanthus and Crommyon in the land of Corinth, so that it was said that some were sent up by the earth, that others were sacred to the gods, while others had been let loose to punish mankind. And so the Cretans say that this bull was sent by Poseidon to their land because, although Minos was lord of the Greek Sea, he did not worship Poseidon more than any other god.
They say that this bull crossed from Crete to the Peloponnesus, and came to be one of what are called the Twelve Labours of Heracles. When he was let loose on the Argive plain he fled through the isthmus of Corinth, into the land of Attica as far as the Attic parish of Marathon, killing all he met, including Androgeos, son of Minos. Minos sailed against Athens with a fleet, not believing that the Athenians were innocent of the death of Androgeos, and sorely harassed them until it was agreed that he should take seven maidens and seven boys for the Minotaur that was said to dwell in the Labyrinth at Cnossus. But the bull at Marathon Theseus is said to have driven afterwards to the Acropolis and to have sacrificed to the goddess; the offering commemorating this deed was dedicated by the parish of Marathon.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1B.html#3
This passage continues exploring Athens, but in our next episode Theseus sails for Crete with the Athenian Youths.
Pausanias' Description of Greece,
Book [1.26.4],
Marathonian Bull.
Previously, Theseus found his father's sword and sandals, killed the Marathonian Bull, and volunteered for the Tribute of Minos. In this passage we hear more of those stories, as well as exploring the Acropolis of Athens.
After the Erectheum and the image of Athena is a golden lamp that burns for an entire year without being refilled. After the Temple of Athena, Pausanias describes the strange ritual of the Bearers of the Sacred Offerings. Next are statues of Tolmides, a burned Athena, and Cycnus fighting Heracles.
Many legends of Theseus are chronicled here. When Heracles was visiting Troezen and set aside his lion skin, a seven-year-old Theseus attacked it with an axe. When he was sixteen, he rolled away the rock and found his father's tokens. After Heracles had conquered the Cretan Bull, it was set loose on the mainland, killing the son of Minos before being sacrificed by Theseus. Minos went to war with Athens, and ultimately demanded seven girls and seven boys to be taken to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth at Knossos.
Marathonian Bull,
a Legendary Passage from,
W. H. S. Jones translating,
Pausanias,
Description of Greece,
Book [1.26.4] - [1.27.10].
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1B.html#3
Endoeus was an Athenian by birth and a pupil of Daedalus, who also, when Daedalus was in exile because of the death of Talos, followed him to Crete. Made by him is a statue of Athena seated, with an inscription that Callias dedicated the image, but Endoeus made it.
There is also a building called the Erechtheum. Before the entrance is an altar of Zeus the Most High, on which they never sacrifice a living creature but offer cakes, not being wont to use any wine either. Inside the entrance are altars, one to Poseidon, on which in obedience to an oracle they sacrifice also to Erechtheus, the second to the hero Butes, and the third to Hephaestus. On the walls are paintings representing members of the clan Butadae; there is also inside – the building is double – sea-water in a cistern. This is no great marvel, for other inland regions have similar wells, in particular Aphrodisias in Caria. But this cistern is remarkable for the noise of waves it sends forth when a south wind blows. On the rock is the outline of a trident. Legend says that these appeared as evidence in support of Poseidon's claim to the land.
Both the city and the whole of the land are alike sacred to Athena; for even those who in their parishes have an established worship of other gods nevertheless hold Athena in honor. But the most holy symbol, that was so considered by all many years before the unification of the parishes, is the image of Athena which is on what is now called the Acropolis, but in early days the Polis (City). A legend concerning it says that it fell from heaven; whether this is true or not I shall not discuss.
A golden lamp for the goddess was made by Callimachus.
Having filled the lamp with oil, they wait until the same day next year, and the oil is sufficient for the lamp during the interval, although it is alight both day and night. The wick in it is of Carpasian flax, the only kind of flax which is fire-proof, and a bronze palm above the lamp reaches to the roof and draws off the smoke. The Callimachus who made the lamp, although not of the first rank of artists, was yet of unparalleled cleverness, so that he was the first to drill holes through stones, and gave himself the title of Refiner of Art, or perhaps others gave the title and he adopted it as his.
XXVII. In the temple of Athena Polias (Of the City) is a wooden Hermes, said to have been dedicated by Cecrops, but not visible because of myrtle boughs. The votive offerings worth noting are, of the old ones, a folding chair made by Daedalus, Persian spoils, namely the breastplate of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Now Masistius I know was killed by the Athenian cavalry. But Mardonius was opposed by the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan; so the Athenians could not have taken the scimitar to begin with, and furthermore the Lacedaemonians would scarcely have suffered them to carry it off.
About the olive they have nothing to say except that it was testimony the goddess produced when she contended for their land. Legend also says that when the Persians fired Athens the olive was burnt down, but on the very day it was burnt it grew again to the height of two cubits.
Adjoining the temple of Athena is the temple of Pandrosus, the only one of the sisters to be faithful to the trust.
I was much amazed at something which is not generally known, and so I will describe the circumstances. Two maidens dwell not far from the temple of Athena Polias, called by the Athenians Bearers of the Sacred Offerings. For a time they live with the goddess, but when the festival comes round they perform at night the following rites. Having placed on their heads what the priestess of Athena gives them to carry – neither she who gives nor they who carry have any knowledge what it is – the maidens descend by the natural underground passage that goes across the adjacent precincts, within the city, of Aphrodite in the Gardens. They leave down below what they carry and receive something else which they bring back covered up. These maidens they henceforth let go free, and take up to the Acropolis others in their place.
By the temple of Athena is . . . an old woman about a cubit high, the inscription calling her a handmaid of Lysimache, and large bronze figures of men facing each other for a fight, one of whom they call Erechtheus, the other Eumolpus; and yet those Athenians who are acquainted with antiquity must surely know that this victim of Erechtheus was Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus.
On the pedestal are also statues of Theaenetus, who was seer to Tolmides, and of Tolmides himself, who when in command of the Athenian fleet inflicted severe damage upon the enemy, especially upon the Peloponnesians who dwell along the coast, burnt the dock-yards at Gythium and captured Boeae, belonging to the “provincials,” and the island of Cythera. He made a descent on Sicyonia, and, attacked by the citizens as he was laying waste the country, he put them to flight and chased them to the city. Returning afterwards to Athens, he conducted Athenian colonists to Euboea and Naxos and invaded Boeotia with an army. Having ravaged the greater part of the land and reduced Chaeronea by a siege, he advanced into the territory of Haliartus, where he was killed in battle and all his army worsted. Such was the history of Tolmides that I learnt.
There are also old figures of Athena, no limbs of which indeed are missing, but they are rather black and too fragile to bear a blow. For they too were caught by the flames when the Athenians had gone on board their ships and the King captured the city emptied of its able-bodied inhabitants. There is also a boar-hunt (I do not know for certain whether it is the Calydonian boar) and Cycnus fighting with Heracles. This Cycnus is said to have killed, among others, Lycus a Thracian, a prize having been proposed for the winner of the duel, but near the river Peneius he was himself killed by Heracles.
One of the Troezenian legends about Theseus is the following. When Heracles visited Pittheus at Troezen, he laid aside his lion's skin to eat his dinner, and there came in to see him some Troezenian children with Theseus, then about seven years of age. The story goes that when they saw the skin the other children ran away, but Theseus slipped out not much afraid, seized an axe from the servants and straightway attacked the skin in earnest, thinking it to be a lion.
This is the first Troezenian legend about Theseus. The next is that Aegeus placed boots and a sword under a rock as tokens for the child, and then sailed away to Athens; Theseus, when sixteen years old, pushed the rock away and departed, taking what Aegeus had deposited. There is a representation of this legend on the Acropolis, everything in bronze except the rock.
Another deed of Theseus they have represented in an offering, and the story about it is as follows– The land of the Cretans and especially that by the river Tethris was ravaged by a bull. It would seem that in the days of old the beasts were much more formidable to men, for example the Nemean lion, the lion of Parnassus, the serpents in many parts of Greece, and the boars of Calydon, Eryrmanthus and Crommyon in the land of Corinth, so that it was said that some were sent up by the earth, that others were sacred to the gods, while others had been let loose to punish mankind. And so the Cretans say that this bull was sent by Poseidon to their land because, although Minos was lord of the Greek Sea, he did not worship Poseidon more than any other god.
They say that this bull crossed from Crete to the Peloponnesus, and came to be one of what are called the Twelve Labours of Heracles. When he was let loose on the Argive plain he fled through the isthmus of Corinth, into the land of Attica as far as the Attic parish of Marathon, killing all he met, including Androgeos, son of Minos. Minos sailed against Athens with a fleet, not believing that the Athenians were innocent of the death of Androgeos, and sorely harassed them until it was agreed that he should take seven maidens and seven boys for the Minotaur that was said to dwell in the Labyrinth at Cnossus. But the bull at Marathon Theseus is said to have driven afterwards to the Acropolis and to have sacrificed to the goddess; the offering commemorating this deed was dedicated by the parish of Marathon.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1B.html#3
This passage continues exploring Athens, but in our next episode Theseus sails for Crete with the Athenian Youths.
Friday, May 31, 2019
LP0107 plLoT13 Tribute
Legendary Passages #0107,
Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
Section [XIII.],
Tribute.
Previously, after many labors Theseus arrived at Athens, drove off the witch Medea, and was recognized by his father as the crown prince. In this passage, Theseus contends with the sons of Pallas, the Marathonian Bull, and King Minos come again to collect his tribute.
Long ago, King Pandion had four son: Pallas, Nisus, Lycus, and Aegeus, who might have been adopted. Aegeus became King of Athens, and when Minos' son Androgeus was killed while under his protection, Minos invaded. The forces of Crete laid siege to Athens; to break the stalemate, Aegeus agreed to give seven boys and seven girls as tribute to Crete every nine years thereafter.
Though his people sacrificed their own flesh and blood, King Aegeus never had any children of his own. Naturally, Aegeus' brother Pallas and his fifty sons assumed eventually they would inherit the throne. But when a foreign prince named Theseus was named as heir, the sons of Pallas declared war. Leos of Agnes reported to Theseus where the bands of rebels were hiding, and Theseus and his forces defeated them all.
Meanwhile, for his seventh labor, Heracles drove the Cretan bull to the Greek mainland, where it eventually terrorized the people of Marathon. On his way to subdue the beast, Theseus was given hospitality by an elderly woman named Hecale, who promised to make sacrifices if he returned safely. Theseus captured the bull and sacrificed it, but Hecale had already passed away.
Lastly, Minos had returned to Athens for the third tribute, and the seven youths and seven maidens were either to be selected at random, or chosen by himself. No one knew if the Minotaur devoured them, or they starved to death in the depths of the Labyrinth, but none had ever returned. The people were upset that their new prince could not have been chosen the last time, so Theseus volunteered for the tribute freely, because according to the treaty, the tributes would come to an end if someone killed the Minotaur.
Tribute,
a Legendary Passage from,
Bernadotte Perrin translating,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus,
Sections [XIII.] - [XVII.]
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
XIII. Now the sons of Pallas had before this themselves hoped to gain possession of the kingdom when Aegeus died childless. But when Theseus was declared successor to the throne, exasperated that Aegeus should be king although he was only an adopted son of Pandion and in no way related to the family of Erechtheus, and again that Theseus should be prospective king although he was an immigrant and a stranger, they went to war. And dividing themselves into two bands, one of these marched openly against the city from Sphettus with their father; the other hid themselves at Gargettus and lay in ambush there, intending to attack their enemies from two sides. But there was a herald with them, a man of Agnus, by name Leos. This man reported to Theseus the designs of the Pallantidae. Theseus then fell suddenly upon the party lying in ambush, and slew them all. Thereupon the party with Pallas dispersed. This is the reason, they say, why the township of Pallene has no intermarriage with the township of Agnus, and why it will not even allow heralds to make their customary proclamation there of “Akouete leo!” (Hear, ye people!) For they hate the word on account of the treachery of the man Leos.
XIV. But Theseus, desiring to be at work, and at the same time courting the favour of the people, went out against the Marathonian bull, which was doing no small mischief to the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis. After he had mastered it, he made a display of driving it alive through the city, and then sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. Now the story of Hecale and her receiving and entertaining Theseus on this expedition seems not to be devoid of all truth. For the people of the townships round about used to assemble and sacrifice the Hecalesia to Zeus Hecalus, and they paid honors to Hecale, calling her by the diminutive name of Hecaline, because she too, when entertaining Theseus, in spite of the fact that he was quite a youth, caressed him as elderly people do, and called him affectionately by such diminutive names. And since she vowed, when the hero was going to his battle with the bull, that she would sacrifice to Zeus if he came back safe, but died before his return, she obtained the above mentioned honors as a return for her hospitality at the command of Theseus, as Philochorus has written.
XV. Not long afterwards there came from Crete for the third time the collectors of the tribute. Now as to this tribute, most writers agree that because Androgeos was thought to have been treacherously killed within the confines of Attica, not only did Minos harass the inhabitants of that country greatly in war, but Heaven also laid it waste, for barrenness and pestilence smote it sorely, and its rivers dried up; also that when their god assured them in his commands that if they appeased Minos and became reconciled to him, the wrath of Heaven would abate and there would be an end of their miseries, they sent heralds and made their supplication and entered into an agreement to send him every nine years a tribute of seven youths and as many maidens. And the most dramatic version of the story declares that these young men and women, on being brought to Crete, were destroyed by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, or else wandered about at their own will and, being unable to find an exit, perished there; and that the Minotaur, as Euripides says, was
A mingled form and hybrid birth of monstrous shape,
and that
Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him.
XVI. Philochorus, however, says that the Cretans do not admit this, but declare that the Labyrinth was a dungeon, with no other inconvenience than that its prisoners could not escape; and that Minos instituted funeral games in honor of Androgeos, and as prizes for the victors, gave these Athenian youth, who were in the meantime imprisoned in the Labyrinth and that the victor in the first games was the man who had the greatest power at that time under Minos, and was his general, Taurus by name, who was not reasonable and gentle in his disposition, but treated the Athenian youth with arrogance and cruelty. And Aristotle himself also, in his Constitution of Bottiaea, clearly does not think that these youths were put to death by Minos, but that they spent the rest of their lives as slaves in Crete. And he says that the Cretans once, in fulfillment of an ancient vow, sent an offering of their first-born to Delphi, and that some descendants of those Athenians were among the victims, and went forth with them; and that when they were unable to support themselves there, they first crossed over into Italy and dwelt in that country round about Iapygia, and from there journeyed again into Thrace and were called Bottiaeans; and that this was the reason why the maidens of Bottiaea, in performing a certain sacrifice, sing as an accompaniment “To Athens let us go!”
And verily it seems to be a grievous thing for a man to be at enmity with a city which has a language and a literature. For Minos was always abused and reviled in the Attic theaters, and it did not avail him either that Hesiod called him “most royal,” or that Homer styled him “a confidant of Zeus,” but the tragic poets prevailed, and from platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence. And yet they say that Minos was a king and lawgiver, and that Rhadamanthus was a judge under him, and a guardian of the principles of justice defined by him.
XVII. Accordingly, when the time came for the third tribute, and it was necessary for the fathers who had youthful sons to present them for the lot, fresh accusations against Aegeus arose among the people, who were full of sorrow and vexation that he who was the cause of all their trouble alone had no share in the punishment, but devolved the kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, and suffered them to be left destitute and bereft of legitimate children. These things troubled Theseus, who, thinking it right not to disregard but to share in the fortune of his fellow-citizens, came forward and offered himself independently of the lot. The citizens admired his noble courage and were delighted with his public spirit, and Aegeus, when he saw that his son was not to be won over or turned from his purpose by prayers and entreaties, cast the lots for the rest of the youths.
Hellanicus, however, says that the city did not send its young men and maidens by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and pick them out, and that he now pitched upon Theseus first of all, following the terms agreed upon. And he says the agreement was that the Athenians should furnish the ship, and that the youths should embark and sail with him carrying no warlike weapon, and that if the Minotaur was killed the penalty should cease.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
This passage continues with the ship leaving under A Black Sail, but our next episode features The Marathonian Bull.
Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
Section [XIII.],
Tribute.
Previously, after many labors Theseus arrived at Athens, drove off the witch Medea, and was recognized by his father as the crown prince. In this passage, Theseus contends with the sons of Pallas, the Marathonian Bull, and King Minos come again to collect his tribute.
Long ago, King Pandion had four son: Pallas, Nisus, Lycus, and Aegeus, who might have been adopted. Aegeus became King of Athens, and when Minos' son Androgeus was killed while under his protection, Minos invaded. The forces of Crete laid siege to Athens; to break the stalemate, Aegeus agreed to give seven boys and seven girls as tribute to Crete every nine years thereafter.
Though his people sacrificed their own flesh and blood, King Aegeus never had any children of his own. Naturally, Aegeus' brother Pallas and his fifty sons assumed eventually they would inherit the throne. But when a foreign prince named Theseus was named as heir, the sons of Pallas declared war. Leos of Agnes reported to Theseus where the bands of rebels were hiding, and Theseus and his forces defeated them all.
Meanwhile, for his seventh labor, Heracles drove the Cretan bull to the Greek mainland, where it eventually terrorized the people of Marathon. On his way to subdue the beast, Theseus was given hospitality by an elderly woman named Hecale, who promised to make sacrifices if he returned safely. Theseus captured the bull and sacrificed it, but Hecale had already passed away.
Lastly, Minos had returned to Athens for the third tribute, and the seven youths and seven maidens were either to be selected at random, or chosen by himself. No one knew if the Minotaur devoured them, or they starved to death in the depths of the Labyrinth, but none had ever returned. The people were upset that their new prince could not have been chosen the last time, so Theseus volunteered for the tribute freely, because according to the treaty, the tributes would come to an end if someone killed the Minotaur.
Tribute,
a Legendary Passage from,
Bernadotte Perrin translating,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus,
Sections [XIII.] - [XVII.]
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
XIII. Now the sons of Pallas had before this themselves hoped to gain possession of the kingdom when Aegeus died childless. But when Theseus was declared successor to the throne, exasperated that Aegeus should be king although he was only an adopted son of Pandion and in no way related to the family of Erechtheus, and again that Theseus should be prospective king although he was an immigrant and a stranger, they went to war. And dividing themselves into two bands, one of these marched openly against the city from Sphettus with their father; the other hid themselves at Gargettus and lay in ambush there, intending to attack their enemies from two sides. But there was a herald with them, a man of Agnus, by name Leos. This man reported to Theseus the designs of the Pallantidae. Theseus then fell suddenly upon the party lying in ambush, and slew them all. Thereupon the party with Pallas dispersed. This is the reason, they say, why the township of Pallene has no intermarriage with the township of Agnus, and why it will not even allow heralds to make their customary proclamation there of “Akouete leo!” (Hear, ye people!) For they hate the word on account of the treachery of the man Leos.
XIV. But Theseus, desiring to be at work, and at the same time courting the favour of the people, went out against the Marathonian bull, which was doing no small mischief to the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis. After he had mastered it, he made a display of driving it alive through the city, and then sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. Now the story of Hecale and her receiving and entertaining Theseus on this expedition seems not to be devoid of all truth. For the people of the townships round about used to assemble and sacrifice the Hecalesia to Zeus Hecalus, and they paid honors to Hecale, calling her by the diminutive name of Hecaline, because she too, when entertaining Theseus, in spite of the fact that he was quite a youth, caressed him as elderly people do, and called him affectionately by such diminutive names. And since she vowed, when the hero was going to his battle with the bull, that she would sacrifice to Zeus if he came back safe, but died before his return, she obtained the above mentioned honors as a return for her hospitality at the command of Theseus, as Philochorus has written.
XV. Not long afterwards there came from Crete for the third time the collectors of the tribute. Now as to this tribute, most writers agree that because Androgeos was thought to have been treacherously killed within the confines of Attica, not only did Minos harass the inhabitants of that country greatly in war, but Heaven also laid it waste, for barrenness and pestilence smote it sorely, and its rivers dried up; also that when their god assured them in his commands that if they appeased Minos and became reconciled to him, the wrath of Heaven would abate and there would be an end of their miseries, they sent heralds and made their supplication and entered into an agreement to send him every nine years a tribute of seven youths and as many maidens. And the most dramatic version of the story declares that these young men and women, on being brought to Crete, were destroyed by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, or else wandered about at their own will and, being unable to find an exit, perished there; and that the Minotaur, as Euripides says, was
A mingled form and hybrid birth of monstrous shape,
and that
Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him.
XVI. Philochorus, however, says that the Cretans do not admit this, but declare that the Labyrinth was a dungeon, with no other inconvenience than that its prisoners could not escape; and that Minos instituted funeral games in honor of Androgeos, and as prizes for the victors, gave these Athenian youth, who were in the meantime imprisoned in the Labyrinth and that the victor in the first games was the man who had the greatest power at that time under Minos, and was his general, Taurus by name, who was not reasonable and gentle in his disposition, but treated the Athenian youth with arrogance and cruelty. And Aristotle himself also, in his Constitution of Bottiaea, clearly does not think that these youths were put to death by Minos, but that they spent the rest of their lives as slaves in Crete. And he says that the Cretans once, in fulfillment of an ancient vow, sent an offering of their first-born to Delphi, and that some descendants of those Athenians were among the victims, and went forth with them; and that when they were unable to support themselves there, they first crossed over into Italy and dwelt in that country round about Iapygia, and from there journeyed again into Thrace and were called Bottiaeans; and that this was the reason why the maidens of Bottiaea, in performing a certain sacrifice, sing as an accompaniment “To Athens let us go!”
And verily it seems to be a grievous thing for a man to be at enmity with a city which has a language and a literature. For Minos was always abused and reviled in the Attic theaters, and it did not avail him either that Hesiod called him “most royal,” or that Homer styled him “a confidant of Zeus,” but the tragic poets prevailed, and from platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence. And yet they say that Minos was a king and lawgiver, and that Rhadamanthus was a judge under him, and a guardian of the principles of justice defined by him.
XVII. Accordingly, when the time came for the third tribute, and it was necessary for the fathers who had youthful sons to present them for the lot, fresh accusations against Aegeus arose among the people, who were full of sorrow and vexation that he who was the cause of all their trouble alone had no share in the punishment, but devolved the kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, and suffered them to be left destitute and bereft of legitimate children. These things troubled Theseus, who, thinking it right not to disregard but to share in the fortune of his fellow-citizens, came forward and offered himself independently of the lot. The citizens admired his noble courage and were delighted with his public spirit, and Aegeus, when he saw that his son was not to be won over or turned from his purpose by prayers and entreaties, cast the lots for the rest of the youths.
Hellanicus, however, says that the city did not send its young men and maidens by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and pick them out, and that he now pitched upon Theseus first of all, following the terms agreed upon. And he says the agreement was that the Athenians should furnish the ship, and that the youths should embark and sail with him carrying no warlike weapon, and that if the Minotaur was killed the penalty should cease.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
This passage continues with the ship leaving under A Black Sail, but our next episode features The Marathonian Bull.
Thursday, May 2, 2019
LP0106 pDoG2-2-3 Children of Corinth
Legendary Passages #0106,
Pausanias' Description of Greece,
Book [2.2.3],
The Children of Corinth.
Previously, Medea's children were killed after they brought poisoned gifts for their father's bride Glauce. In this passage we hear many myths about them and their mother before she flees to Athens.
But first, a tour of Corinth. Lechaeum and Cenchreae are the harbors north of the city, followed by the grave of Lais, a courtesan known for her beauty. Next are carvings made from the tree Pentheus climbed to spy upon the female revelers of Dionysus. After the market-place is the spring of Peirene, and then the images of Hermes and the ram.
After the baths, we come to the Well of Glauce, where the doomed bride of Jason tried to quell the burning chemicals of her poisoned crown and robe. Medea's children Mermerus and Pheres were buried nearby, after being stoned for bringing the gifts. After being expelled from Athens by Theseus, Medea had another son, either named Medus or Polyxenus.
Eumelus said that the throne of Corinth once belonged to Medea's father Aeetes, and was subsequently ruled by Bunus, Epopeus, and Corinthus. Then the Corinthians sent for Medea to rule as Queen, making her husband Jason the King. After their children died, Jason sailed home and Medea gave the throne to King Sisyphus.
The Children of Corinth,
a Legendary Passage from,
W. H. S. Jones translating,
Pausanias,
Description of Greece,
Book [2.2.3] - [2.3.11].
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html#4
CORINTH
The names of the Corinthian harbors were given them by Leches and Cenchrias, said to be the children of Poseidon and Peirene the daughter of Achelous, though in the poem called The Great Eoeae Peirene is said to be a daughter of Oebalus. In Lechaeum are a sanctuary and a bronze image of Poseidon, and on the road leading from the Isthmus to Cenchreae a temple and ancient wooden image of Artemis. In Cenchreae are a temple and a stone statue of Aphrodite, after it on the mole running into the sea a bronze image of Poseidon, and at the other end of the harbor sanctuaries of Asclepius and of Isis. Right opposite Cenchreae is Helen's Bath. It is a large stream of salt, tepid water, flowing from a rock into the sea.
As one goes up to Corinth are tombs, and by the gate is buried Diogenes of Sinope, whom the Greeks surname the Dog. Before the city is a grove of cypresses called Craneum. Here are a precinct of Bellerophontes, a temple of Aphrodite Melaenis and the grave of Lais, upon which is set a lioness holding a ram in her fore-paws.
There is in Thessaly another tomb which claims to be that of Lais, for she went to that country also when she fell in love with Hippostratus. The story is that originally she was of Hycara in Sicily. Taken captive while yet a girl by Nicias and the Athenians, she was sold and brought to Corinth, where she surpassed in beauty the courtesans of her time, and so won the admiration of the Corinthians that even now they claim Lais as their own.
The things worthy of mention in the city include the extant remains of antiquity, but the greater number of them belong to the period of its second ascendancy. On the market-place, where most of the sanctuaries are, stand Artemis surnamed Ephesian and wooden images of Dionysus, which are covered with gold with the exception of their faces; these are ornamented with red paint. They are called Lysius and Baccheus, and I too give the story told about them. They say that Pentheus treated Dionysus despitefully, his crowning outrage being that he went to Cithaeron, to spy upon the women, and climbing up a tree beheld what was done. When the women detected Pentheus, they immediately dragged him down, and joined in tearing him, living as he was, limb from limb. Afterwards, as the Corinthians say, the Pythian priestess commanded them by an oracle to discover that tree and to worship it equally with the god. For this reason they have made these images from the tree.
There is also a temple of Fortune, with a standing image of Parian marble. Beside it is a sanctuary for all the gods. Hard by is built a fountain, on which is a bronze Poseidon; under the feet of Poseidon is a dolphin spouting water. There is also a bronze Apollo surnamed Clarius and a statue of Aphrodite made by Hermogenes of Cythera. There are two bronze, standing images of Hermes, for one of which a temple has been made. The images of Zeus also are in the open; one had not a surname, another they call Chthonius (of the Lower World) and the third Most High.
III. In the middle of the market-place is a bronze Athena, on the pedestal of which are wrought in relief figures of the Muses. Above the market-place is a temple of Octavia the sister of Augustus, who was emperor of the Romans after Caesar, the founder of the modern Corinth.
On leaving the market-place along the road to Lechaeum you come to a gateway, on which are two gilded chariots, one carrying Phaethon the son of Helius (Sun), the other Helius himself. A little farther away from the gateway, on the right as you go in, is a bronze Heracles. After this is the entrance to the water of Peirene. The legend about Peirene is that she was a woman who became a spring because of her tears shed in lamentation for her son Cenchrias, who was unintentionally killed by Artemis.
The spring is ornamented with white marble, and there have been made chambers like caves, out of which the water flows into an open-air well. It Is pleasant to drink, and they say that the Corinthian bronze, when red-hot, is tempered by this water, since bronze . . . the Corinthians have not. Moreover near Peirene are an image and a sacred enclosure of Apollo; in the latter is a painting of the exploit of Odysseus against the suitors.
Proceeding on the direct road to Lechaeum we see a bronze image of a seated Hermes. By him stands a ram, for Hermes is the god who is thought most to care for and to increase flocks, as Homer puts it in the Iliad:–
Son was he of Phorbas,
the dearest of Trojans to Hermes,
Rich in flocks,
for the god vouchsafed him
wealth in abundance.
Hom. Il. .
The story told at the mysteries of the Mother about Hermes and the ram I know but do not relate. After the image of Hermes come Poseidon, Leucothea, and Palaemon on a dolphin.
The Corinthians have baths in many parts of the city, some put up at the public charge and one by the emperor Hadrian. The most famous of them is near the Poseidon. It was made by the Spartan Eurycles, who beautified it with various kinds of stone, especially the one quarried at Croceae in Laconia. On the left of the entrance stands a Poseidon, and after him Artemis hunting. Throughout the city are many wells, for the Corinthians have a copious supply of flowing water, besides the water which the emperor Hadrian brought from Lake Stymphalus, but the most noteworthy is the one by the side of the image of Artemis. Over it is a Bellerophontes, and the water flows through the hoof of the horse Pegasus.
As you go along another road from the market-place, which leads to Sicyon, you can see on the right of the road a temple and bronze image of Apollo, and a little farther on a well called the Well of Glauce. Into this they say she threw herself in the belief that the water would be a cure for the drugs of Medea. Above this well has been built what is called the Odeum (Music Hall), beside which is the tomb of Medea's children. Their names were Mermerus and Pheres, and they are said to have been stoned to death by the Corinthians owing to the gifts which legend says they brought to Glauce.
But as their death was violent and illegal, the young babies of the Corinthians were destroyed by them until, at the command of the oracle, yearly sacrifices were established in their honor and a figure of Terror was set up. This figure still exists, being the likeness of a woman frightful to look upon but after Corinth was laid waste by the Romans and the old Corinthians were wiped out, the new settlers broke the custom of offering those sacrifices to the sons of Medea, nor do their children cut their hair for them or wear black clothes.
On the occasion referred to Medea went to Athens and married Aegeus, but subsequently she was detected plotting against Theseus and fled from Athens also; coming to the land then called Aria she caused its inhabitants to be named after her Medes. The son, whom she brought with her in her flight to the Arii, they say she had by Aegeus, and that his name was Medus. Hellanicus, however, calls him Polyxenus and says that his father was Jason.
The Greeks have an epic poem called Naupactia. In this Jason is represented as having removed his home after the death of Pelias from Iolcus to Corcyra, and Mermerus, the elder of his children, to have been killed by a lioness while hunting on the mainland opposite. Of Pheres is recorded nothing. But Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, another writer of pedigrees in verse, said that Jason's children by Medea were a son Medeus and a daughter Eriopis; he too, however, gives no further information about these children.
Eumelus said that Helius (Sun) gave the Asopian land to Aloeus and Epliyraea to Aeetes. When Aeetes was departing for Colchis he entrusted his land to Bunus, the son of Hermes and Alcidamea, and when Bunus died Epopeus the son of Aloeus extended his kingdom to include the Ephyraeans. Afterwards, when Corinthus, the son of Marathon, died childless, the Corinthians sent for Medea from Iolcus and bestowed upon her the kingdom.
Through her Jason was king in Corinth, and Medea, as her children were born, carried each to the sanctuary of Hera and concealed them, doing so in the belief that so they would be immortal. At last she learned that her hopes were vain, and at the same time she was detected by Jason. When she begged for pardon he refused it, and sailed away to Iolcus. For these reasons Medea too departed, and handed over the kingdom to Sisyphus.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html#4
This passage continues with descriptions of Corinth & Sicyon, but in our next episode King Minos comes to Athens for his Tribute.
Pausanias' Description of Greece,
Book [2.2.3],
The Children of Corinth.
Previously, Medea's children were killed after they brought poisoned gifts for their father's bride Glauce. In this passage we hear many myths about them and their mother before she flees to Athens.
But first, a tour of Corinth. Lechaeum and Cenchreae are the harbors north of the city, followed by the grave of Lais, a courtesan known for her beauty. Next are carvings made from the tree Pentheus climbed to spy upon the female revelers of Dionysus. After the market-place is the spring of Peirene, and then the images of Hermes and the ram.
After the baths, we come to the Well of Glauce, where the doomed bride of Jason tried to quell the burning chemicals of her poisoned crown and robe. Medea's children Mermerus and Pheres were buried nearby, after being stoned for bringing the gifts. After being expelled from Athens by Theseus, Medea had another son, either named Medus or Polyxenus.
Eumelus said that the throne of Corinth once belonged to Medea's father Aeetes, and was subsequently ruled by Bunus, Epopeus, and Corinthus. Then the Corinthians sent for Medea to rule as Queen, making her husband Jason the King. After their children died, Jason sailed home and Medea gave the throne to King Sisyphus.
The Children of Corinth,
a Legendary Passage from,
W. H. S. Jones translating,
Pausanias,
Description of Greece,
Book [2.2.3] - [2.3.11].
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html#4
CORINTH
The names of the Corinthian harbors were given them by Leches and Cenchrias, said to be the children of Poseidon and Peirene the daughter of Achelous, though in the poem called The Great Eoeae Peirene is said to be a daughter of Oebalus. In Lechaeum are a sanctuary and a bronze image of Poseidon, and on the road leading from the Isthmus to Cenchreae a temple and ancient wooden image of Artemis. In Cenchreae are a temple and a stone statue of Aphrodite, after it on the mole running into the sea a bronze image of Poseidon, and at the other end of the harbor sanctuaries of Asclepius and of Isis. Right opposite Cenchreae is Helen's Bath. It is a large stream of salt, tepid water, flowing from a rock into the sea.
As one goes up to Corinth are tombs, and by the gate is buried Diogenes of Sinope, whom the Greeks surname the Dog. Before the city is a grove of cypresses called Craneum. Here are a precinct of Bellerophontes, a temple of Aphrodite Melaenis and the grave of Lais, upon which is set a lioness holding a ram in her fore-paws.
There is in Thessaly another tomb which claims to be that of Lais, for she went to that country also when she fell in love with Hippostratus. The story is that originally she was of Hycara in Sicily. Taken captive while yet a girl by Nicias and the Athenians, she was sold and brought to Corinth, where she surpassed in beauty the courtesans of her time, and so won the admiration of the Corinthians that even now they claim Lais as their own.
The things worthy of mention in the city include the extant remains of antiquity, but the greater number of them belong to the period of its second ascendancy. On the market-place, where most of the sanctuaries are, stand Artemis surnamed Ephesian and wooden images of Dionysus, which are covered with gold with the exception of their faces; these are ornamented with red paint. They are called Lysius and Baccheus, and I too give the story told about them. They say that Pentheus treated Dionysus despitefully, his crowning outrage being that he went to Cithaeron, to spy upon the women, and climbing up a tree beheld what was done. When the women detected Pentheus, they immediately dragged him down, and joined in tearing him, living as he was, limb from limb. Afterwards, as the Corinthians say, the Pythian priestess commanded them by an oracle to discover that tree and to worship it equally with the god. For this reason they have made these images from the tree.
There is also a temple of Fortune, with a standing image of Parian marble. Beside it is a sanctuary for all the gods. Hard by is built a fountain, on which is a bronze Poseidon; under the feet of Poseidon is a dolphin spouting water. There is also a bronze Apollo surnamed Clarius and a statue of Aphrodite made by Hermogenes of Cythera. There are two bronze, standing images of Hermes, for one of which a temple has been made. The images of Zeus also are in the open; one had not a surname, another they call Chthonius (of the Lower World) and the third Most High.
III. In the middle of the market-place is a bronze Athena, on the pedestal of which are wrought in relief figures of the Muses. Above the market-place is a temple of Octavia the sister of Augustus, who was emperor of the Romans after Caesar, the founder of the modern Corinth.
On leaving the market-place along the road to Lechaeum you come to a gateway, on which are two gilded chariots, one carrying Phaethon the son of Helius (Sun), the other Helius himself. A little farther away from the gateway, on the right as you go in, is a bronze Heracles. After this is the entrance to the water of Peirene. The legend about Peirene is that she was a woman who became a spring because of her tears shed in lamentation for her son Cenchrias, who was unintentionally killed by Artemis.
The spring is ornamented with white marble, and there have been made chambers like caves, out of which the water flows into an open-air well. It Is pleasant to drink, and they say that the Corinthian bronze, when red-hot, is tempered by this water, since bronze . . . the Corinthians have not. Moreover near Peirene are an image and a sacred enclosure of Apollo; in the latter is a painting of the exploit of Odysseus against the suitors.
Proceeding on the direct road to Lechaeum we see a bronze image of a seated Hermes. By him stands a ram, for Hermes is the god who is thought most to care for and to increase flocks, as Homer puts it in the Iliad:–
Son was he of Phorbas,
the dearest of Trojans to Hermes,
Rich in flocks,
for the god vouchsafed him
wealth in abundance.
Hom. Il. .
The story told at the mysteries of the Mother about Hermes and the ram I know but do not relate. After the image of Hermes come Poseidon, Leucothea, and Palaemon on a dolphin.
The Corinthians have baths in many parts of the city, some put up at the public charge and one by the emperor Hadrian. The most famous of them is near the Poseidon. It was made by the Spartan Eurycles, who beautified it with various kinds of stone, especially the one quarried at Croceae in Laconia. On the left of the entrance stands a Poseidon, and after him Artemis hunting. Throughout the city are many wells, for the Corinthians have a copious supply of flowing water, besides the water which the emperor Hadrian brought from Lake Stymphalus, but the most noteworthy is the one by the side of the image of Artemis. Over it is a Bellerophontes, and the water flows through the hoof of the horse Pegasus.
As you go along another road from the market-place, which leads to Sicyon, you can see on the right of the road a temple and bronze image of Apollo, and a little farther on a well called the Well of Glauce. Into this they say she threw herself in the belief that the water would be a cure for the drugs of Medea. Above this well has been built what is called the Odeum (Music Hall), beside which is the tomb of Medea's children. Their names were Mermerus and Pheres, and they are said to have been stoned to death by the Corinthians owing to the gifts which legend says they brought to Glauce.
But as their death was violent and illegal, the young babies of the Corinthians were destroyed by them until, at the command of the oracle, yearly sacrifices were established in their honor and a figure of Terror was set up. This figure still exists, being the likeness of a woman frightful to look upon but after Corinth was laid waste by the Romans and the old Corinthians were wiped out, the new settlers broke the custom of offering those sacrifices to the sons of Medea, nor do their children cut their hair for them or wear black clothes.
On the occasion referred to Medea went to Athens and married Aegeus, but subsequently she was detected plotting against Theseus and fled from Athens also; coming to the land then called Aria she caused its inhabitants to be named after her Medes. The son, whom she brought with her in her flight to the Arii, they say she had by Aegeus, and that his name was Medus. Hellanicus, however, calls him Polyxenus and says that his father was Jason.
The Greeks have an epic poem called Naupactia. In this Jason is represented as having removed his home after the death of Pelias from Iolcus to Corcyra, and Mermerus, the elder of his children, to have been killed by a lioness while hunting on the mainland opposite. Of Pheres is recorded nothing. But Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, another writer of pedigrees in verse, said that Jason's children by Medea were a son Medeus and a daughter Eriopis; he too, however, gives no further information about these children.
Eumelus said that Helius (Sun) gave the Asopian land to Aloeus and Epliyraea to Aeetes. When Aeetes was departing for Colchis he entrusted his land to Bunus, the son of Hermes and Alcidamea, and when Bunus died Epopeus the son of Aloeus extended his kingdom to include the Ephyraeans. Afterwards, when Corinthus, the son of Marathon, died childless, the Corinthians sent for Medea from Iolcus and bestowed upon her the kingdom.
Through her Jason was king in Corinth, and Medea, as her children were born, carried each to the sanctuary of Hera and concealed them, doing so in the belief that so they would be immortal. At last she learned that her hopes were vain, and at the same time she was detected by Jason. When she begged for pardon he refused it, and sailed away to Iolcus. For these reasons Medea too departed, and handed over the kingdom to Sisyphus.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html#4
This passage continues with descriptions of Corinth & Sicyon, but in our next episode King Minos comes to Athens for his Tribute.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
LP0105 pDoG1-44-6 The Corinthian Isthmus
Legendary Passages #0105,
Pausanias' Description of Greece,
Book [1.44.6],
The Corinthian Isthmus.
Previously, Theseus traveled the road from Troezen to Athens around the Saronic Gulf. In this passage, we explore in the opposite direction, from the Scironian Road, Cromyon, and then to the Isthmus.
First is the white Megarean mussel stones along the road to the Molurian Rock, where Ino & Melicertes jumped into the sea, and became known as Leucothea & Palaemon. Later, Sciron fed strangers to the giant sea tortoises below the cliff. Cromyon, where Theseus slaughtered Phaea the sow, is where King Sisyphus found the body of Palaemon.
The Isthmus proper is where Theseus killed Sinis the Pine-Bender, after slaying Pheriphetes the Club-Bearer. Alexander the Great tried to dig a channel connecting the gulfs, but it was only completed in recent times. The sanctuary of Poseidon is full of offerings, and nearby is a temple of Palaemon, and the alter of the Cyclopes. The tombs of Sisyphus and Neleus have been lost to history.
The Corinthian Isthmus,
a Legendary Passage from,
W. H. S. Jones translating,
Pausanias,
Description of Greece,
Books [1.44.6] - [2.2.2].
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1C.html#20
SCIRONIAN ROAD
On the road from Megara to Corinth are graves, including that of the Samian flute-player Telephanes, said to have been made by Cleopatra, daughter of Philip, son of Amyntas. There is also the tomb of Car, son of Phoroneus, which was originally a mound of earth, but afterwards, at the command of the oracle, it was adorned with mussel stone. The Megarians are the only Greeks to possess this stone, and in the city also they have made many things out of it. It is very white, and softer than other stone; in it throughout are sea mussels. Such is the nature of the stone. The road called Scironian to this day and named after Sciron, was made by him when he was war minister of the Megarians, and originally they say was constructed for the use of active men. But the emperor Hadrian broadened it, and made it suitable even for chariots to pass each other in opposite directions.
There are legends about the rocks, which rise especially at the narrow part of the road. As to the Molurian, it is said that from it Ino flung her self into the sea with Melicertes, the younger of her children. Learchus, the elder of them, had been killed by his father. One account is that Athamas did this in a fit of madness; another is that he vented on Ino and her children unbridled rage when he learned that the famine which befell the Orchomenians and the supposed death of Phrixus were not accidents from heaven, but that Ino, the step-mother, had intrigued for all these things.
Then it was that she fled to the sea and cast herself and her son from the Molurian Rock. The son, they say, was landed on the Corinthian Isthmus by a dolphin, and honors were offered to Melicertes, then renamed Palaemon, including the celebration of the Isthmian games. The Molurian dock they thought sacred to Leucothea and Palaemon; but those after it they consider accursed, in that Sciron, who dwelt by them, used to cast into the sea all the strangers he met. A tortoise used to swim under the rocks to seize those that fell in. Sea tortoises are like land tortoises except in size and for their feet, which are like those of seals. Retribution for these deeds overtook Sciron, for he was cast into the same sea by Theseus.
On the top of the mountain is a temple of Zeus surnamed Aphesius (Releaser). It is said that on the occasion of the drought that once afflicted the Greeks Aeacus in obedience to an oracular utterance sacrificed in Aegina to Zeus God of all the Greeks, and Zeus rained and ended the drought, gaining thus the name Aphesius. Here there are also images of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Pan.
Farther on is the tomb of Eurystheus. The story is that he fled from Attica after the battle with the Heracleidae and was killed here by Iolaus. When you have gone down from this road you see a sanctuary of Apollo Latous, after which is the boundary between Megara and Corinth, where legend says that Hyllus, son of Heracles, fought a duel with the Arcadian Echemus.
CORINTH (MYTHICAL HISTORY)
The Corinthian land is a portion of the Argive, and is named after Corinthus. That Corinthus was a son of Zeus I have never known anybody say seriously except the majority of the Corinthians. Eumelus, the son of Amphilytus, of the family called Bacchidae, who is said to have composed the epic poem, says in his Corinthian History (if indeed the history be his) that Ephyra, the daughter of Oceanus, dwelt first in this land; that afterwards Marathon, the son of Epopeus, the son of Aloeus, the son of Helius (Sun), fleeing from the lawless violence of his father migrated to the sea coast of Attica; that on the death of Epopeus he came to Peloponnesus, divided his kingdom among his sons, and returned to Attica; and that Asopia was renamed after Sicyon, and Ephyraea after Corinthus.
CORINTH
Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans. This change is due to the Achaean League. The Corinthians, being members of it, joined in the war against the Romans, which Critolaus, when appointed general of the Achaeans, brought about by persuading to revolt both the Achaeans and the majority of the Greeks outside the Peloponnesus. When the Romans won the war, they carried out a general disarmament of the Greeks and dismantled the walls of such cities as were fortified. Corinth was laid waste by Mummius, who at that time commanded the Romans in the field, and it is said that it was afterwards refounded by Caesar, who was the author of the present constitution of Rome. Carthage, too, they say, was refounded in his reign.
CROMYON
In the Corinthian territory is also the place called Cromyon from Cromus the son of Poseidon. Here they say that Phaea was bred; overcoming this sow was one of the traditional achievements of Theseus. Farther on the pine still grew by the shore at the time of my visit, and there was an altar of Melicertes. At this place, they say, the boy was brought ashore by a dolphin; Sisyphus found him lying and gave him burial on the Isthmus, establishing the Isthmian games in his honor.
THE ISTHMUS
At the beginning of the Isthmus is the place where the brigand Sinis used to take hold of pine trees and draw them down. All those whom he overcame in fight he used to tie to the trees, and then allow them to swing up again. Thereupon each of the pines used to drag to itself the bound man, and as the bond gave way in neither direction but was stretched equally in both, he was torn in two. This was the way in which Sinis himself was slain by Theseus. For Theseus rid of evildoers the road from Troezen to Athens, killing those whom I have enumerated and, in sacred Epidaurus, Periphetes, thought to be the son of Hephaestus, who used to fight with a bronze club.
The Corinthian Isthmus stretches on the one hand to the sea at Cenchreae, and on the other to the sea at Lechaeum. For this is what makes the region to the south mainland. He who tried to make the Peloponnesus an island gave up before digging through the Isthmus. Where they began to dig is still to be seen, but into the rock they did not advance at all. So it still is mainland as its nature is to be. Alexander the son of Philip wished to dig through Mimas, and his attempt to do this was his only unsuccessful project. The Cnidians began to dig through their isthmus, but the Pythian priestess stopped them. So difficult it is for man to alter by violence what Heaven has made.
A legend of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, for I believe that the Athenians were the first to relate a similar story to glorify Attica. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helius (Sun) about the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, assigning to Poseidon the Isthmus and the parts adjoining, and giving to Helius the height above the city. Ever since, they say, the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon.
Worth seeing here are a theater and a white-marble race-course. Within the sanctuary of the god stand on the one side portrait statues of athletes who have won victories at the Isthmian games, on the other side pine trees growing in a row, the greater number of them rising up straight. On the temple, which is not very large, stand bronze Tritons. In the fore-temple are images, two of Poseidon, a third of Amphitrite, and a Sea, which also is of bronze. The offerings inside were dedicated in our time by Herodes the Athenian, four horses, gilded except for the hoofs, which are of ivory, and two gold Tritons beside the horses, with the parts below the waist of ivory. On the car stand Amphitrite and Poseidon, and there is the boy Palaemon upright upon a dolphin. These too are made of ivory and gold. On the middle of the base on which the car is has been wrought a Sea holding up the young Aphrodite, and on either side are the nymphs called Nereids. I know that there are altars to these in other parts of Greece, and that some Greeks have even dedicated to them precincts by shores, where honors are also paid to Achilles. In Gabala is a holy sanctuary of Doto, where there was still remaining the robe by which the Greeks say that Eriphyle was bribed to wrong her son Alcmaeon.
Among the reliefs on the base of the statue of Poseidon are the sons of Tyndareus, because these too are saviours of ships and of sea-faring men. The other offerings are images of Calm and of Sea, a horse like a whale from the breast onward, Ino and Bellerophontes, and the horse Pegasus.
Within the enclosure is on the left a temple of Palaemon, with images in it of Poseidon, Leucothea and Palaemon himself. There is also what is called his Holy of Holies, and an underground descent to it, where they say that Palaemon is concealed. Whosoever, whether Corinthian or stranger, swears falsely here, can by no means escape from his oath. There is also an ancient sanctuary called the altar of the Cyclopes, and they sacrifice to the Cyclopes upon it.
The graves of Sisyphus and of Neleus – for they say that Neleus came to Corinth, died of disease, and was buried near the Isthmus – I do not think that anyone would look for after reading Eumelus. For he says that not even to Nestor did Sisyphus show the tomb of Neleus, because it must be kept unknown to everybody alike, and that Sisyphus is indeed buried on the Isthmus, but that few Corinthians, even those of his own day, knew where the grave was. The Isthmian games were not interrupted even when Corinth had been laid waste by Mummius, but so long as it lay deserted the celebration of the games was entrusted to the Sicyonians, and when it was rebuilt the honor was restored to the present inhabitants.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html#3
This passage continues next episode with the Children of Corinth.
Pausanias' Description of Greece,
Book [1.44.6],
The Corinthian Isthmus.
Previously, Theseus traveled the road from Troezen to Athens around the Saronic Gulf. In this passage, we explore in the opposite direction, from the Scironian Road, Cromyon, and then to the Isthmus.
First is the white Megarean mussel stones along the road to the Molurian Rock, where Ino & Melicertes jumped into the sea, and became known as Leucothea & Palaemon. Later, Sciron fed strangers to the giant sea tortoises below the cliff. Cromyon, where Theseus slaughtered Phaea the sow, is where King Sisyphus found the body of Palaemon.
The Isthmus proper is where Theseus killed Sinis the Pine-Bender, after slaying Pheriphetes the Club-Bearer. Alexander the Great tried to dig a channel connecting the gulfs, but it was only completed in recent times. The sanctuary of Poseidon is full of offerings, and nearby is a temple of Palaemon, and the alter of the Cyclopes. The tombs of Sisyphus and Neleus have been lost to history.
The Corinthian Isthmus,
a Legendary Passage from,
W. H. S. Jones translating,
Pausanias,
Description of Greece,
Books [1.44.6] - [2.2.2].
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1C.html#20
SCIRONIAN ROAD
On the road from Megara to Corinth are graves, including that of the Samian flute-player Telephanes, said to have been made by Cleopatra, daughter of Philip, son of Amyntas. There is also the tomb of Car, son of Phoroneus, which was originally a mound of earth, but afterwards, at the command of the oracle, it was adorned with mussel stone. The Megarians are the only Greeks to possess this stone, and in the city also they have made many things out of it. It is very white, and softer than other stone; in it throughout are sea mussels. Such is the nature of the stone. The road called Scironian to this day and named after Sciron, was made by him when he was war minister of the Megarians, and originally they say was constructed for the use of active men. But the emperor Hadrian broadened it, and made it suitable even for chariots to pass each other in opposite directions.
There are legends about the rocks, which rise especially at the narrow part of the road. As to the Molurian, it is said that from it Ino flung her self into the sea with Melicertes, the younger of her children. Learchus, the elder of them, had been killed by his father. One account is that Athamas did this in a fit of madness; another is that he vented on Ino and her children unbridled rage when he learned that the famine which befell the Orchomenians and the supposed death of Phrixus were not accidents from heaven, but that Ino, the step-mother, had intrigued for all these things.
Then it was that she fled to the sea and cast herself and her son from the Molurian Rock. The son, they say, was landed on the Corinthian Isthmus by a dolphin, and honors were offered to Melicertes, then renamed Palaemon, including the celebration of the Isthmian games. The Molurian dock they thought sacred to Leucothea and Palaemon; but those after it they consider accursed, in that Sciron, who dwelt by them, used to cast into the sea all the strangers he met. A tortoise used to swim under the rocks to seize those that fell in. Sea tortoises are like land tortoises except in size and for their feet, which are like those of seals. Retribution for these deeds overtook Sciron, for he was cast into the same sea by Theseus.
On the top of the mountain is a temple of Zeus surnamed Aphesius (Releaser). It is said that on the occasion of the drought that once afflicted the Greeks Aeacus in obedience to an oracular utterance sacrificed in Aegina to Zeus God of all the Greeks, and Zeus rained and ended the drought, gaining thus the name Aphesius. Here there are also images of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Pan.
Farther on is the tomb of Eurystheus. The story is that he fled from Attica after the battle with the Heracleidae and was killed here by Iolaus. When you have gone down from this road you see a sanctuary of Apollo Latous, after which is the boundary between Megara and Corinth, where legend says that Hyllus, son of Heracles, fought a duel with the Arcadian Echemus.
CORINTH (MYTHICAL HISTORY)
The Corinthian land is a portion of the Argive, and is named after Corinthus. That Corinthus was a son of Zeus I have never known anybody say seriously except the majority of the Corinthians. Eumelus, the son of Amphilytus, of the family called Bacchidae, who is said to have composed the epic poem, says in his Corinthian History (if indeed the history be his) that Ephyra, the daughter of Oceanus, dwelt first in this land; that afterwards Marathon, the son of Epopeus, the son of Aloeus, the son of Helius (Sun), fleeing from the lawless violence of his father migrated to the sea coast of Attica; that on the death of Epopeus he came to Peloponnesus, divided his kingdom among his sons, and returned to Attica; and that Asopia was renamed after Sicyon, and Ephyraea after Corinthus.
CORINTH
Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans. This change is due to the Achaean League. The Corinthians, being members of it, joined in the war against the Romans, which Critolaus, when appointed general of the Achaeans, brought about by persuading to revolt both the Achaeans and the majority of the Greeks outside the Peloponnesus. When the Romans won the war, they carried out a general disarmament of the Greeks and dismantled the walls of such cities as were fortified. Corinth was laid waste by Mummius, who at that time commanded the Romans in the field, and it is said that it was afterwards refounded by Caesar, who was the author of the present constitution of Rome. Carthage, too, they say, was refounded in his reign.
CROMYON
In the Corinthian territory is also the place called Cromyon from Cromus the son of Poseidon. Here they say that Phaea was bred; overcoming this sow was one of the traditional achievements of Theseus. Farther on the pine still grew by the shore at the time of my visit, and there was an altar of Melicertes. At this place, they say, the boy was brought ashore by a dolphin; Sisyphus found him lying and gave him burial on the Isthmus, establishing the Isthmian games in his honor.
THE ISTHMUS
At the beginning of the Isthmus is the place where the brigand Sinis used to take hold of pine trees and draw them down. All those whom he overcame in fight he used to tie to the trees, and then allow them to swing up again. Thereupon each of the pines used to drag to itself the bound man, and as the bond gave way in neither direction but was stretched equally in both, he was torn in two. This was the way in which Sinis himself was slain by Theseus. For Theseus rid of evildoers the road from Troezen to Athens, killing those whom I have enumerated and, in sacred Epidaurus, Periphetes, thought to be the son of Hephaestus, who used to fight with a bronze club.
The Corinthian Isthmus stretches on the one hand to the sea at Cenchreae, and on the other to the sea at Lechaeum. For this is what makes the region to the south mainland. He who tried to make the Peloponnesus an island gave up before digging through the Isthmus. Where they began to dig is still to be seen, but into the rock they did not advance at all. So it still is mainland as its nature is to be. Alexander the son of Philip wished to dig through Mimas, and his attempt to do this was his only unsuccessful project. The Cnidians began to dig through their isthmus, but the Pythian priestess stopped them. So difficult it is for man to alter by violence what Heaven has made.
A legend of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, for I believe that the Athenians were the first to relate a similar story to glorify Attica. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helius (Sun) about the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, assigning to Poseidon the Isthmus and the parts adjoining, and giving to Helius the height above the city. Ever since, they say, the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon.
Worth seeing here are a theater and a white-marble race-course. Within the sanctuary of the god stand on the one side portrait statues of athletes who have won victories at the Isthmian games, on the other side pine trees growing in a row, the greater number of them rising up straight. On the temple, which is not very large, stand bronze Tritons. In the fore-temple are images, two of Poseidon, a third of Amphitrite, and a Sea, which also is of bronze. The offerings inside were dedicated in our time by Herodes the Athenian, four horses, gilded except for the hoofs, which are of ivory, and two gold Tritons beside the horses, with the parts below the waist of ivory. On the car stand Amphitrite and Poseidon, and there is the boy Palaemon upright upon a dolphin. These too are made of ivory and gold. On the middle of the base on which the car is has been wrought a Sea holding up the young Aphrodite, and on either side are the nymphs called Nereids. I know that there are altars to these in other parts of Greece, and that some Greeks have even dedicated to them precincts by shores, where honors are also paid to Achilles. In Gabala is a holy sanctuary of Doto, where there was still remaining the robe by which the Greeks say that Eriphyle was bribed to wrong her son Alcmaeon.
Among the reliefs on the base of the statue of Poseidon are the sons of Tyndareus, because these too are saviours of ships and of sea-faring men. The other offerings are images of Calm and of Sea, a horse like a whale from the breast onward, Ino and Bellerophontes, and the horse Pegasus.
Within the enclosure is on the left a temple of Palaemon, with images in it of Poseidon, Leucothea and Palaemon himself. There is also what is called his Holy of Holies, and an underground descent to it, where they say that Palaemon is concealed. Whosoever, whether Corinthian or stranger, swears falsely here, can by no means escape from his oath. There is also an ancient sanctuary called the altar of the Cyclopes, and they sacrifice to the Cyclopes upon it.
The graves of Sisyphus and of Neleus – for they say that Neleus came to Corinth, died of disease, and was buried near the Isthmus – I do not think that anyone would look for after reading Eumelus. For he says that not even to Nestor did Sisyphus show the tomb of Neleus, because it must be kept unknown to everybody alike, and that Sisyphus is indeed buried on the Isthmus, but that few Corinthians, even those of his own day, knew where the grave was. The Isthmian games were not interrupted even when Corinth had been laid waste by Mummius, but so long as it lay deserted the celebration of the games was entrusted to the Sicyonians, and when it was rebuilt the honor was restored to the present inhabitants.
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html#3
This passage continues next episode with the Children of Corinth.
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