Robbie finished his mandarine, licked his fingers, gave her a rather doubtful glance, and said: 'Very well, then; and it won't really matter if you do drop off. This is another chapter that 1 haven't written yet, so telling it will help to get my ideas in order.' After another drink of the red wine that had been put in the hamper, he started off:
'Cadmus, who was the founder of Thebes, definitely ranks as one of the Heroes, although he differs from the others because so many of his descendants also played big parts in Greek history. Unfortunately, though, they nearly all came to sticky ends.
'He was not a Greek, but the son of Agenor, King of Tyre, and he had a very lovely sister. You'll have heard of her because her name was Europa. One day, she was making sandcastles on the beach with a bevy of attendant maidens. From up aloft, old Zeus happened to spot her and, not wanting to scare her, he came mincing along the sands in the form of a beautiful, white bull.'
'You can skip what happened next.'
'Yes; you're right. The little idiot made him a chaplet of flowers and let him lick her neck; then, when he knelt down she climbed on his back and the next thing she knew was that she was clinging to his horns for dear life, while he ploughed through the sea like a speed boat, carrying her off to Crete. When he had got her safe ashore, he told her who he was, and said that if she were willing to give him a good time without making any trouble, he would see to it that a whole continent was called after her. Much flattered by that, she said: "All right; go ahead," and, in due course, she bore him two sons, Minos and Rhadaman-thus; both of whom were later made judges in Hades.
'Meanwhile, her father had got himself terribly worked up about her disappearance, and sent his three sons, Cadmus, Phoenix and Cilix, off to search for her. Her mama, Telephassa, couldn't sleep at nights for thinking of what might be happening to her ewe lamb, so she decided to go along with the boys.
'Phoenix was the first to get bored, so he pegged out a claim for himself and founded Phoenicia. Cilix threw his hand in next, and started a kingdom called after him, Cilicia. But Cadmus and his mother kept plodding on, until the old girl gave out and died by the wayside, still urging him not to give up.
'He took a ship for Greece, but could hear nothing of Europa, who by then had become quite used to providing bed and breakfast for Zeus in Crete. As a last hope, Cadmus decided to consult the Oracle at Delphi. Apollo, being a decent sort, must have realized that, if he told Cadmus where Europa was, things could only end in Zeus turning him into a praying mantis, or something; so the Oracle gave him no news of his sister. Instead, it told him to follow a cow that was browsing in a nearby field and that, wherever the cow lay down, he should build a city.
'That cow would have won a prize at any cattle show. She crossed a range of mountains, and walked over a hundred kilometres before she decided to have a lie-down. And when you think of the pace of a cow, following her must have driven Cadmus nearly potty.
'They landed up in Boeotia but, unfortunately, the cow had chosen to go to sleep near a grove that was the property of a three-headed dragon. Cadmus sent his servants into the grove to fetch some water from a stream. As they didn't come back he went in after them, and found that they were all as dead as doornails from having been overcome by the dragon's bad breath.
'Being a Hero, Cadmus naturally had to slay the dragon, and, after some pretty lively give and take, he managed to nail one of the dragon's necks to an oak with his sword. As is usual with dragons, this one was belching flames and smoke, but it bled so much that it acted as its own fire extinguisher and put itself out.
'Athene, as the patroness of brave men, then put in an appearance and said to him: "Jolly good show." As all his henchmen had been killed off by the dragon, and it was a bit much to expect him to build a city on his own, she showed him how to get a fully grown labour force in no time at all by sowing some of the dragon's teeth. With their help he built Thebes, which henceforth was the capital of the Kingdom of Boeotia.
'As both Apollo and Athene took a good view of Cadmus, they decided to provide him with a very special wife: in fact a young goddess. She was the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, and her name was Harmonia. I suppose that is why the marriage was such a success, for they lived in harmony for the rest of their lives.'
'Surely it is more likely that the word "harmony" is derived from her marriage having been so free from quarrels,' Stephanie suggested.
'Perhaps. Anyhow, all the gods came to the wedding, and Aphrodite gave Harmonia a beautiful necklace and a wonderful veil. These were known as "the heirlooms", and later caused a whole packet of trouble; but there was already trouble brewing, because the dragon Cadmus had slain was a pet of Ares. The God of War took its death very badly, and put one of those frightfully unfair Biblical curses on Cadmus. You know, "unto the third and fourth generation".'
'But if Ares had a "down" on Cadmus, why should he have given his consent to his marrying his daughter?'
'He wasn't asked. You see, he wasn't Harmonia's legal father. She was the result of his having had a tumble behind the bushes with Aphrodite while her husband Hephaestus was hard at it in his smithy.'
'Even then, to have cursed the progeny of his own daughter doesn't make sense.'
'He was a big, brutish chap, with very little grey matter. Anyhow, his curse took effect. Cadmus was dethroned by his own grandson, Pentheus, and finally the family ended up in an absolute welter of blood and death.'
'Like the last Act in Hamlet'
'Oh, that is nothing to the goings-on in Thebes. One of Cadmus's sisters, Ino, drowned herself, because her husband had, in a fit of madness, killed her sons. Another, Semele, had an affair with Zeus, and-'
'Did that old rip never stop?'
'Not often, I imagine. Poor Semele came to a very sticky end. Hera was always terribly jealous of her lord's mistresses, so she told Semele what a lucky girl she was, and how she ought to persuade Zeus one night to show himself to her in all his glory. He didn't like to refuse her, and, as Hera had known would be the case, the electricity that radiated from him and the lightning flashing from his head was so powerful that Semele was roasted like a chicken before she could even get out of bed.'
'How absolutely frightful.'
'He managed to save the son she was having by him, though. He plucked it out of her body, and put it in his own thigh till it was ready to be born; then it became the God of Revelry, Dionysus. The parties he thought up for his worshippers must have been quite something. One gathers they always ended with everyone very lit up, and the girls doing a sort of bees' and birds' Paul Jones with Dionysus's Satyrs in the moonlight. Anyway, the ladies of Thebes felt that they had never had it so good, and it was that which put paid to Cadmus's grandson, Pentheus. For those times he must have been a bit strait-laced, because he forbade the women of his household to attend these midnight hops. When they read the notice he had posted up, they held an indignation meeting and became so enraged that, led by his own mother, they ran into his room and tore him to pieces.
The heir to the throne was a young Princess, named Antiope. She must have been a good-looker, too, as Zeus had already spotted her and given her twins. They were called Amphion and Zethus. But the throne was usurped by a chap called Lycus; so Antiope hurried her boys off* up into the hills, to be brought up as herdsmen. Later, she fell into the hands of Dirce, a nasty, spiteful woman, whom Lycus had made his Queen. She gave orders for Antiope to be tied to the horns of a wild bull, so that she would be gored and dragged to death. But it wasn't Dirce's lucky day. The two chaps to whom she had given the orders happened to be Antiope's sons, and they recognized their old Mum. So they tied Dirce instead to the horns of the bull. Then Amphion led a revolution, killed off Lycus and became King in his place.