Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

The Greeks, like all great civilizations, set a great price on music – placing it so high in the arts that it took its name from all nine of the daughters of Memory. Music festivals and music prizes, so ubiquitous a feature of our cultural life today, were quite as important in the Greek world.

Few earned a finer reputation in their lifetime as singer, minstrel, bard, poet and musician than ARION, from Methymna on the island of Lesbos.fn1 He was the son of Poseidon and the nymph ONCAEA, but despite this parentage he chose to devote his musical talent to the celebration and praise of the god Dionysus. His instrument of choice was the kithara, a variation of the lyre.fn2 He is accepted everywhere as the inventor of the poetic form known as the dithyramb, a wild choral hymn dedicated to wine, carnival, ecstasy and delight.

With his dreamy brown eyes, sweet voice and bewitching ability to cause the toes to tap and hips to rotate, Arion soon became something of an idol around the Mediterranean world. His patron and most enthusiastic supporter was the tyrant of Corinth, PERIANDERfn3 and it was he who found out about a big music festival being held in Tarentum, a prosperous port city set in the instep of Italy’s heel. Periander gave Arion the money to get himself across the sea and take part in the competitive elements of the festival on the condition that he agreed to split the prize money on his return.

The outward journey was uneventful. Arion arrived in Tarentum, entered the competitions and easily won first prize in every category. The judges and members of the public had never heard such thrilling and original music. A treasure chest of silver, gold, ivory, precious stones and exquisitely wrought musical instruments was his reward. In gratitude for so generous a prize Arion gave a free concert for the townspeople the following day.

The Tarentum region was famous for the great wolf-spiders commonly found in the countryside all around. The locals called them, after their town, ‘tarantulas’. Arion had heard that tarantula venom could provoke hysterical frenzy and so he improvised for the crowd a variation on his wild dithyrambs that he called a tarantella. The delirious rhythms of this folk dancefn4 maddened the excitable Tarentines, but towards the end he tamed them with a medley of his softest, most romantic airs. By the early hours he could have had his pick of any girl, boy, man or woman in southern Italy and it is reported that, like the successful musician he was, he did.

A large crowd was there to see Arion off the next morning, many of the people blowing kisses and a good few sobbing their hearts out. He and his luggage, including the box of treasure, were rowed out to sea in a tender, where a small but serviceable brig crewed by a sea-captain and nine civilian sailors was standing off. Arion was soon comfortably settled aboard. The crew hoisted sail and the captain set a course for Corinth.

Overboard

As soon as land was out of sight and they were in the open sea, Arion sensed that something was wrong. He was used to being stared at – he was after all as outrageously beautiful as he was talented – but the looks that were being directed at him by the crew were of a different order. Days passed in this sullen and threatening atmosphere and he grew more and more uncomfortable. There was something in the sailors’ eyes that resembled lust, but suggested a darker purpose. What could be wrong? Then one hot afternoon, the ugliest and meanest looking of the sailors approached him.

‘What you got in that chest you’re sitting on, boy?’

Of course. Arion’s heart sank. That would account for it. The sailors had heard tell of his treasure. He supposed they wanted some of it, but he was damned if he was going to share his hard-won prize with anyone but Periander. He had earlier planned in his mind to tip the crew generously at the end of the voyage, but now his heart hardened.

‘My musical instruments,’ he replied. ‘I am a kitharode.’

‘You’re a what?’

Arion shook his head sorrowfully and repeated slowly, as if to a child. ‘I – play – the – kith – ara.’

Such a mistake.

‘Oh – do – you? Well – play – us – a – tune – then.’

‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’

‘What’s going on here?’ The captain of the brig approached.

‘Snotty kid says he’s a musician but won’t play. Says he’s got a kithara in that box of his.’

‘Well now, I’m sure you won’t mind showing it to us, will you, young man?’

The full ship’s complement had circled round him now.

‘I – I’m not feeling well enough to play. Perhaps tonight I’ll be in better shape.’

‘Why don’t you go below and rest in the shade?’

‘N-no, I prefer the fresh air.’

‘Seize him, lads!’

Rough hands lifted Arion up as easily as if he were a newborn puppy. ‘Let me go! Leave it alone. That’s not your property!’

‘Where’s the key?’

‘I’ve … I’ve lost it.’

‘Find it, boys.’

‘No, no! Please I beg you …’