Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

T HE O RACLE S PEAKS The Greeks believed that the first city state, or polis, to appear in the world was Thebes in Boeotia, the first polis or city state.fn1 The family of its founder hero Cadmus could claim amongst its members the only Olympian god with mortal blood in his veins. It was notorious for internecine dynastic wars, curses and homicides that for catastrophic generational ruin matched even those of Tantalus and the doomed house of Atreus. If they weren’t casseroling their children they were sacrificing them; while those who made it to adulthood, if they weren’t committing incest with their parents were murdering them.fn2 To be biblical, Cadmus and HARMONIA begat Semele, who exploded and begat Dionysus, her son by Zeus. Cadmus and Harmonia also begat Agave, Autonoë and Ino. Agave begat PENTHEUS, who was torn to pieces by all three of the sisters, his mother included – a fate arranged by the god Dionysus as punishment for the women’s failure to honour his mother, their sister Semele.fn3 Ino, as we saw in the preamble to the story of Jason, begat Learchus and Melicertes, tried to get Phrixus and Helle sacrificed and was finally transformed into Leucothea, the white goddess of the sea. As well as their four daughters, Cadmus and Harmonia also begat a son, POLYDORUS, who begat LABDACUS, who begat LAIUS,fn4 who – as if the enmity of Ares and Dionysus was not enough to blight the fortunes of the house of Cadmus – attracted a new curse.fn5 Without going into too much detail, when Laius was still a baby, his father Labdacus had been overthrown by the twins AMPHION and ZETHUS.fn6 His life in peril, the infant Laius had been smuggled out of Thebes by Cadmean loyalists keen to ensure that the royal line could one day be restored. Laius grew up as the guest of King Pelops of Pisafn7. It seems he fell in love with Pelops’s illegitimate son CHRYSIPPUS, taught him chariot driving and took him to the Nemean Games, where the youth competed in the races. Instead of returning him safely home to Pelops, Laius brought Chrysippus with him when he went on from the games to Thebes to reclaim his throne. Chrysippus, who did not consent to this abduction and was ashamed of his public position as a kept lover, committed suicide.fn8 When news of this reached Pelops he cursed Laius and his line for ever. Whether as a result of the curse or slack sperm motility, or both, Laius – who had reclaimed the throne that was his birthright and married a Theban noblewoman called JOCASTA – found that he was unable to father a child. Not for the first time we follow a king without an heir as he visits the Delphic oracle for advice. The son of Laius and Jocasta shall kill his father. Well, that would never do. The prophecy that had told Acrisius of Argos he would be killed by his grandson was bad enough, but this … Acrisius had indeed died at the hand of his grandson, the hero Perseus, even if it was an accident; but Acrisius, Laius thought to himself, had been a fool. He would have found a surer way to beat the oracle than throwing the infant in a wooden chest and casting him into the sea. He would have had the brat’s head chopped off and there would have been an end to it. Nonetheless, perhaps it might be safer to stay away from the marriage bed. But Laius was a man, wine was wine and Jocasta was beautiful. The morning following a great feast, he barely remembered having spent a night of passion with her; but when, nine months later, she presented him with a baby son, he began to understand Acrisius’s dilemma. To kill his own son would be to invite the certain fury of … the Furies. He sat on his throne and pulled on his beard. At last he sent for his most trusted servant, Antimedes. ‘Take this baby and expose it on the highest point of Mount Cithaeron.’ ‘Yes, my lord.’ ‘And, Antimedes, just to be sure, stake him to the hillside. I don’t want him crawling away, you understand?’ Antimedes bowed and did as he was told, piercing the infant’s ankles with iron staples and shackling them to a peg that he drove deep into the ground. It was not long before a shepherd called PHORBAS came on the scene, attracted by the loud wails. ‘Oh my good gods,’ he cried, smashing the fetters with a rock and cradling the bawling infant in his arms. ‘Who can have done such a terrible thing?’ The baby screamed and screamed. ‘Shush, now, little one. It’s no good me keeping you. Plain country people don’t treat babies this way. Only a great and powerful ruler can have done a thing so cruel. No, I daren’t be found with you.’ It happened that Phorbas had a friend from Corinth staying with him, another herdsman. This friend, Straton by name, was happy enough to take the abandoned foundling home with him. Back in Corinth, Straton presented the baby to his king and queen, POLYBUS and MEROPE. Long childless themselves, they adopted the infant and brought him up as their own son. On account of the scars from the shackles that had staked him to the ground, they called him Oedipus, which means ‘swollen foot’. So Oedipus grew up far away from Thebes, wholly ignorant of his true origins. His life might have turned out like that of any attractive, intelligent, proud princeling – especially one so much indulged by loving parents – were it not for the spite of a drinking companion who had always been jealous of his popularity and casual air of superiority. One evening the sight of beautiful young women queuing up for Oedipus’s attentions maddened the young man past enduring. ‘They only go for you because they think you’re a prince,’ he blurted out, deep in wine. ‘Well,’ said Oedipus with a smile, ‘I know it’s unfair, but as it happens I am a prince, and there isn’t much I can do about it.’ ‘You may think you are,’ jeered the friend. ‘But you’re not.’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘You’re a peasant orphan bastard, nothing more.’ The others in the group tried to silence him, but the drink and malice had taken hold. ‘Queen Merope was always infertile, everyone knows that. Barren as the Libyan desert. You were adopted, mate. You’re no more a royal prince than I am. Less probably. Ask your so-called parents how you got those scars on your feet.’ Other friends rushed to undo the damage. ‘Don’t listen, Oedipus. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. You can see how drunk he is.’ But Oedipus read the fear in their eyes plain enough. After a sleepless night he went to the king and queen for reassurance. ‘Of course you’re our son! What makes you think otherwise?’ ‘The scars on my ankles?’ ‘You were a breech birth. They had to pull you out of my womb with pincers.’ So outraged and indignant were Polybus and Merope that Oedipus believed them. Almost believed them. There was a certain way to settle the question once and for all. He made his way to the oracle at Delphi. He did not know what he expected in reply to the simple, bald question, ‘Who are my true parents?’ but it was not the simple, bald answer he received. Oedipus will kill his father and mate with his mother That was all he could get out of the Pythia. As ever with oracles, all supplementary questions were met with silence. Oedipus left Delphi in a daze, striking out on a road that took him in the exact opposite direction from Corinth. He must never see Polybus and Merope again. The risk of harming Polybus through some accident was too great. And as for the second part of the prophecy … the idea made him feel physically sick. He was very fond of his mother, but in that way? One thing was certain, the greater the distance he put between himself and Corinth, the better.