T HE D EATH OF O RPHEUS Orpheus’s later life was a sad one. After a long second mourning period, he picked up his lyre again and continued to compose, play and sing for the rest of his life, but he never found a woman to match his Eurydice. Indeed, it is reported in several sources that he turned away from women altogether and lavished what affection he had left on the male youths of Thrace. The Thracian women, the Ciconians, followers of Dionysus, were so enraged at being overlooked that they threw sticks and stones at Orpheus. However, the sticks and stones were so charmed by his music they just hung in mid-air, refusing to hurt him. At last the Ciconian women could bear the degradation and insult of being ignored no longer and, in a Bacchic frenzy, they tore Orpheus to pieces, pulling off his limbs and wrenching the head from his shoulders.fn7 The golden harmonies of Apollo were always an affront to the dark Dionysian dances and dithyrambs. Orpheus’s head, still singing, was cast into the River Hebrus where it floated out into the Aegean. Eventually it found its way onto the beach at Lesbos; it was taken up by the inhabitants of the island and placed in a cave. For many years people came from all over to the cave to ask the head of Orpheus questions, and it always sang the most melodious prophecies in reply. At last Orpheus’s father Apollo, perhaps jealous that the shrine was threatening the supremacy of his own oracle at Delphi, silenced him. His mother Calliope found his golden lyre and carried it heavenwards, where it was placed amongst the stars as the constellation Lyra, which contains Vega, the fifth brightest star in the firmament. His aunts, the eight other Muses, gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Libethra, below Mount Olympus, where nightingales still sing over his grave. Finally at peace, Orpheus’s spirit descended once more into the underworld where he was at last reunited with his beloved Eurydice. Thanks to Offenbach, they still perform a joyful cancan together in the realm of the dead every single day.
JASON
T HE R AM The voyage of Jason’s ship Argo in the quest for the Golden Fleece involves backstory, backstory and more backstory. But it’s good, juicy backstory, so I hope you will dive in. A lot of names will come at you now like quills shot from a porcupine; but don’t worry, the important ones will stick.fn1 We can start with BISALTES, a founder hero of the Bisaltae peoples of Thrace. His mother was the primordial earth goddess Gaia and his father the sun Titan Heliosfn2. Bisaltes’ beautiful daughter THEOPHANE caught the eye of the sea god Poseidon, who snatched her up and took her to the island of Crinissa, where he turned himself into a ram and Theophane into a ewe. In the course of time she gave birth to a beautiful golden ram.
Point One – there now existed in the world a beautiful golden ram, of immortal lineage. Ixion, a king of the Lapiths, had once dared to attempt to seduce Hera, the Queen of Heaven, at a banquet on Mount Olympusfn3. To expose his depravity Zeus entrapped Ixion by sending to him a living cloud in the exact likeness and form of Hera. The brutish Ixion had leapt all over this cloud, thinking it was the goddess herself. As a punishment for such blasphemous intent, Ixion was bound to a revolving wheel of fire and sent spinning across the heavens, and latterly down into the underworld to remain there for ever. The cloud took on the name NEPHELE and went on to marry King ATHAMAS of Boeotiafn4 by whom she had twins, a boy, PHRIXUS, and a girl, HELLE. Point Two – the twins Phrixus and Helle are born to Athamas of Boeotia. In time Nephele took her place back in the sky as a cloud and as a minor goddess of xenia, the highly prized principle of hospitality. Athamas looked to take a new wife and chose INO, one of the daughters of CADMUS, the founding King of Thebes.fn5 Ino installed herself in Athamas’s palace and, as second wives will, instituted a new regime to banish all memories of her predecessor. Ino came with a reputation as the most caring and nurturing of women – it was she who had suckled her sister Semele’s child by Zeus, the infant Dionysus. Her other sisters, AGAVE and AUTONOË, had rejected Semele and paid a terrible price when a grown Dionysus visited Thebes and sent them mad to tragic effect.fn6 But Ino had survived with her life and good name intact, and the world loved her for it. Inside, however, Ino was ambitious, relentless and cruel. She had taken an instant dislike to her stepchildren Phrixus and Helle and decided to get them out of the way. By Athamas she had her own sons, LEARCHUS and MELICERTES, and was determined they should rule Boeotia when Athamas died, not Phrixus and Helle. An archetype of the wicked stepmother that was to dominate myth, legend and fairy tale for ages to come, Ino hatched a formidably malicious and elaborate plan to destroy the twins. First she persuaded the women of Boeotia to ruin the seedcorn in the barns and silos by charring it, so that when their husbands went out to sow in the fields it would be unable to sprout. As she had hoped, the next year’s harvest failed and famine threatened the kingdom. ‘Let us send messengers to Delphi, dear husband,’ said Ino to Athamas, ‘and find out why this disaster has been visited on us and what we can do to set it right.’ ‘How wise you are, dear wife,’ said the besotted Athamas. But the messengers sent to Delphi were paid agents of Ino and the words they claimed now to bring back from the oracle were hers and hers alone. ‘My lord king,’ said the chief messenger, unfurling a roll of parchment, ‘hearken unto the words of Delphic Apollo. “To placate the gods for the sins of the city and the vanities of its citizens, your son Phrixus must be sacrificed.” ’ On hearing this Athamas let out a howl of anguish. He was too distressed to consider how uncharacteristically direct and unambiguous this pronouncement was from an oracle notorious for its equivocations and double meanings. Young Prince Phrixus stepped up. ‘If my life will save the lives of others, Father,’ he said in a clear, steady voice, ‘then I go happily to the sacrificial altar.’ His mother Nephele, high in her palace of clouds, heard this and made ready to intervene. Phrixus, head held aloft, was led to the great sacrificial stone that had stood in the town square for generations. Human sacrifice, especially involving the young, was now looked on as barbaric, an unwanted legacy from the days when gods and men were crueller. But gods and men never lose their cruelty and the stone remained, just in case. A royal guard stood high on a roof and began to pound his drum. If the youth was to die, better to make a good show of it. The women of Boeotia put scraps of linen to their eyes and made a great display of weeping. Children who had never known the privilege of witnessing a ritualistic killing of this kind pressed forward to get a better view. Athamas howled and beat his breast, but the townspeople had all had a surfeit of famine. The words of the oracle were clear and the sacrifice was required. The high priest, dressed all in white, stepped forward, a ceremonial knife of shining silver in his hand. ‘Who gives this child to the Lord Zeus?’ ‘No one, no one!’ wailed Athamas. ‘I give myself!’ said Phrixus stoutly. Young Helle, who had not let go of her brother’s hand from the moment he had volunteered himself for the sacrifice, now added her voice. ‘I die with my brother!’ Ino almost hugged herself. ‘Really, this is better than I dared hope!’ she thought. ‘No!’ cried Athamas. Strong hands took both children and laid them on the sacrificial slab. As the priest raised his knife and held it poised for the strike, a voice called down from the sky.