'If we're going to cross the gulf, I take it, then, that our next stop will be Delphi?' she remarked.
He shot her an uneasy glance. Nothing would have delighted him more than to spend a few days at Delphi, but unfortunately it was many miles from any of the sites at which the Czechs were scheduled to operate; so he replied rather lamely: 'No, I hadn't planned to go to Delphi. You see, there are, er . . . lots more interesting places.'
Raising her dark eyebrows, she shot him a surprised glance. 'Really! I thought Delphi was the piece de resistance of all the ancient sanctuaries. That's where the priestesses used to get dopey in a cellar on the fumes of herbs, and prophesy to people who put their ears to the ground. Surely you are going to write about that, and how people came from all over the place to consult the famous Oracle?'
'Yes; oh yes, of course,' he hastened to assure her. 'But as a matter of fact, I don't think the Oracle was quite all that it was cracked up to be. Most of the answers it gave were terribly ambiguous. You were left to interpret them for yourself, so that left the Pythoness who made them sitting pretty on the basis of "heads I win, tails you lose". For example, look what happened to Croesus. Being a greedy type, he thought it might be a good idea to make war on his neighbour, Cyrus the Persian, and sack some of his cities; but, wanting to make certain before he started anything that he would get the best of it, he sent an Ambassador with costly presents to Delphi to consult the Oracle. The reply came back that his war against Persia would overthrow a mighty Empire. And it did—his own great Kingdom of Lydia.'
'I should have asked for my money back,' commented the practical Stephanie. 'Anyhow, it's better to be born lucky than rich.'
'How right you are! Even before Croesus lost his kingdom, he found that out. He had a favourite son named Atys, and one night he dreamed that the beautiful youth would die of a wound from an iron weapon. He got into such a tizzy about this that he wouldn't allow Atys to remain in the Army, found him a lovely wife to keep him busy at home, and even had all the spears and axes in the Palace hidden away, so that Atys shouldn't cut himself on one by accident. But it wasn't any good. A savage boar began to give trouble to the people in the Mysian hills; so they sent to the King for help to kill it. He collected his bravest hunters and Atys begged to be allowed to go along. Croesus said "No", but Atys argued that a boar's tusks were not made of iron, and persuaded his old man to let him go on the hunt. They found the boar, and made a circle round it. Naturally, all these young bloods wanted the kudos of being the first to wound it. They ail rushed in, and Atys was just a fraction quicker than the rest. The boar didn't get him, but the spear of one of his pals did; and that was that. Look at Midas, too.'
'He was even richer than Croesus, wasn't he?'
'Yes, he was the King of Phrygia and the richest man in the World, but even that didn't satisfy his avarice. One morning, he was walking in his garden, and he came across old Silenus. He was a kind of cask on legs, and one of the god Dionysus's boon companions. The previous night, they had had quite a party, and Silenus had got so drunk that he had lost the others; and there he was sleeping it off under a bush.
'Midas gave him an outsize "hair of the dog", crowned him with a wreath of fresh roses, then took the old soak back to his patron. Dionysus was so pleased with the kindness shown his henchman that he offered to grant Midas anything he liked to ask.
'Without a second thought, Midas asked that everything he touched should turn to gold, And, of course, it did—fruit, flowers, stones; anything he picked up on his way home. His clothes had become gold, too; so before he had gone far, he was getting pretty puffed. Seeing a mule in a field he thought he would ride, but the moment he mounted it, the animal became solid gold and couldn't budge. When he did reach home, things went from bad to worse. The water in which he tried to wash turned to golden ice. He kissed one of his children, and the poor mite became a golden bambino; he struck a slave and found he had made a golden statue. By this time, really worried, he was getting hungry; but when he sat down to lunch, every bit of food he put in his mouth turned to gold, so he had to spit it out again. Hoping against hope that the whole thing was a bad dream, he lay down on his luxurious couch, but the great pile of soft cushions turned instantly to golden rocks.
'At crack of dawn, with not a stitch on, he hurried back to Dionysus. The god laughed at him at first, but later took compassion on his pleading and told him that, if he bathed in the spring from which the river Pactolus rose, he could get rid of his golden touch. For days on end, willing to barter all his wealth for even a penny bun and a cup of ersatz coffee, he staggered round, hunting for the source of the river. At last he found it, plunged in, and came out able to eat and drink again.'
'What an awful story. How about his child and the slave? Was he able to turn them back again?' Stephanie suppressed a smile, and went on wickedly: 'You didn't mention his wife, but if they were fond of one another, that must have been very awkward, mustn't it?'
'You mean if . . . Well, there's no record about that.' Hurriedly, Robbie changed the subject. 'That golden touch business wasn't Midas's only bit of bad luck or, if you prefer, stupidity. One day, he was taking a stroll through the woods and he came upon Apollo and Pan. Apollo had always prided himself on being the absolute tops where music was concerned, but Pan said he could get better music out of his reed flute than Apollo could out of his lyre. To settle the matter, they held a contest there and then, and asked Midas to act as judge. Midas said he liked Pan's pipes better and ApoHo was furious. He said Midas had no more sense of harmony than an ass, so for the rest of his life he should go about with asses' ears. Poor Midas went home, hiding his head in a cloak; and after that, he was so ashamed of his great, pointed, hairy ears that he kept them covered up. But he couldn't keep the secret from his barber; so everyone got to know about it, and he became the laughing-stock of his Court.'
'I think that was very unsporting of Apollo, since he had asked Midas to act as judge. I've always been under the impression, too, that Apollo was one of the kindest of the gods.'
'So he was, generally speaking. He bestowed all sorts of benefits on mankind, but he could turn awfully nasty if anyone upset him. Look at what happened to Marsyas. Athene is said to have been the first of the Olympian family to take up music, but the others laughed so much at the way she blew out her cheeks when playing the flute that she flung the instrument aside, with a curse on anyone who picked it up. Marsyas was unlucky enough to find it. He was a very ugly, ignorant Satyr. However, the flute, having touched Athene's lips, made the most lovely music, so he was chump enough to challenge Apollo. Of course he hadn't an earthly, and as a punishment for his impertinence, the god had him flayed alive.'
'All the same,' remarked Stephanie thoughtfully, 'from what I remember about the gods and goddesses, Apollo must have been much the most attractive to women. He represented the warmth of the Sun and is always portrayed as strong-limbed and handsome, and he was both clever and brave. He would certainly have been my choice.'
'Oh, he was brave enough,' Robbie conceded. 'There was the occasion when two monster giants piled Mount Pelion on Mount Ossa, because they had designs on two of the goddesses and hoped to get up into Olympus and abduct them. Apollo caught the raiders at it, and drove them off single-handed. And, of course, he did have a lot of successful love affairs, but the girls weren't so universally smitten with him as one might suppose.
'Coronis, the daughter of the King of Lepiths, was a case in point. She two-timed him with a chap named Ischys, and a crow let on to Apollo about it. He was so angry at her having preferred a mortal to himself that he not only struck her and her boy friend dead, but cursed the crow so that all crows have had black feathers ever since. Then there was a girl at Delphi named Castalia who disliked him so much that, rather than sleep with bim, she drowned herself in a fountain. With the beautiful Oaphne, too, he had no luck. He did his utmost to seduce her with presents and all that, but she flatly refused to play; so he tried to take her by force. He had actually got his arms round ber, but she prayed for help to the Earth-Mother Gaea, who did a quick magic, and before Apollo knew what was happening he found himself clutching a laurel bush. He must have felt awfully sick.'