One of the stories in Hindu mythology that demonstrates the idea of how some people value wealth more than relationships is of Sunahshepa whose poor father, Ajigarta, sells him to King Harischandra. The king wants an adopted son whom he can sacrifice to the gods in the place of his real son, Rohit. The priests refuse to do human sacrifice and so Ajigarta offers to behead his own son if given more cattle. This story comes from the Aitreya Brahmana composed around the time of Homer’s Iliad.
Euripides’s Greek tragedy Hecuba, written around 460 BCE, tells us the tragic story of Polydorus. Here, Hecuba (Hecabe) avenges her son’s death by attacking and blinding Polymestor.
In Hyginus’s Fabulae, Polydorus is sent to his older sister, Iliona. Not trusting her husband, Polymestor, she raises her own son as her brother and her brother as her son. After the Trojan War, Agamemnon offers Polymestor the hand of his daughter Electra if he kills Priam’s son and daughter. Polymestor does so, thus accidentally killing his own son.
Polymestor denies Polydorus burial rites by throwing his corpse into the sea. Aeneas conducts the proper funeral rites so that the ghost of Polydorus can be at peace and travel to the land of the dead across the Styx.
Andromache
His journey in search of a homeland took Aeneas to Epirus in Greece, where he found a city that looked very much like Troy, a diminutive double with much diluted grandeur. On enquiry, he learned that Helenus, son of Priam, known for his prophetic ability, and his queen, Andromache, widow of Hector, were its king and queen.
Helenus explained, ‘After my father gave Helen to my brother Deiphobus instead of me, I left Troy and went over to the Greeks and revealed all the secrets that would enable them to bring down Troy. For my favours, I was spared. I joined Achilles’ son, Pyrrhus, and travelled with him to Epirus, for I divined that one day I would be master of all that was his.’
Andromache added, ‘I was concubine to Pyrrhus. He was not interested in home or kingdom.
He loved conquest and felt he should claim the hand of Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, in marriage; but she was betrothed to wed her cousin, Orestes, son of Agamemnon. A duel took place between them in which Orestes prevailed. With Pyrrhus gone, the people chose Helenus as king, for he was of royal blood and an able ruler, and he chose me as his wife. So you see, the gods have ensured that at least some Trojans rule over some Greeks.’
Andromache provided Aeneas with supplies he would need for his voyage. And Helenus made a prediction: Aeneas would establish a new city in the land that was once home to those who built the city of Troy. At the destined spot, he would find a giant sow suckling thirty white piglets.
These stories reveal how the consequences of war are blurred in the long run, for in some instances, the conquerors end up being ruled by the vanquished.
In 280 BCE, Pyrrhus of Epirus won a war against the Romans in which his own ‘victorious’ army suffered so many losses that he feared another such victory would see him returning to Epirus alone. The phrase ‘pyrrhic victory’, a victory where the losses sustained makes it as good as defeat, comes from here.
Dardanus
Where did the people who built the city of Troy come from, Aeneas wondered. His father, the oldest Trojan on the ship, remembered the stories he had heard as a child and said, ‘It must be Crete, for Teucer came from Crete.’
Teucer left Crete after it was struck by famine. He came to Asia and the oracles told him to settle down in a land where he would be attacked by creatures born of the earth. On his first night, mice, who are ‘creatures born of the earth’, attacked his tent. Thus, Teucer made his home there and established the worship of Apollo who helped him rid the region of the rats.
Aeneas sailed east to Crete, but his crew suffered great sickness on landing on its shores.
‘Then it must be Italy, for Teucer’s son-in-law Dardanus came from Italy,’ said Anchises, regretting his earlier decision.
This westward journey meant travelling through unknown waters where he encountered the Cyclopes, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Harpies who told Aeneas, ‘When you and your sailors eat your plates along with the food on it, know that you have found your home.’
These adventures proved too much for Anchises, and he died before the ship reached Italy.
The theme of heroes and kings establishing cities is a common theme in Greek mythology, but not so much in Hindu mythology. The great cities of mythology such as Ayodhya and Hastinapur seem to have always existed. Kubera does establish Lanka and after being cast out by Ravana, moves north and founds Alaka. Krishna too establishes the city of Dwarka after Jarasandha burns down Mathura. But these are exceptions rather than the rule.
Virgil clearly wants the journey of his hero to include encounters of other heroes, from Jason who travels east, to Odysseus who gets lost in the west. And so Aeneas encounters both the Cyclopes as well as the Harpies. Like these past heroes, Aeneas also travels to the land of the dead across the Styx.
Pygmalion
The journey to what would eventually be his home was not an easy one for Aeneas, since the goddess Hera was still angry with the Trojans, smarting from the fact that Paris had judged Aphrodite more beautiful than her. And the fact that Aeneas was Aphrodite’s son and a Trojan only served to compound her hatred. So she asked the wind god Aeolus to cause the Trojan ship to crash against the rocks.
The sea god Poseidon did not appreciate Hera’s interference in his realm. So he countered Aeolus’s move and ensured Aeneas’s ship did not crash. Instead it reached Carthage, a city on the northern shore of Africa, ruled by the lovely Dido.
Dido, princess of Phoenicia, and her brother, Pygmalion, were supposed to jointly rule the kingdom as per their father’s wishes. But an ambitious Pygmalion had claimed the throne for himself and then killed Dido’s husband, hoping to lay his hands on his hidden treasure. Guided by her husband’s ghost, Dido found the treasure and sailed with it, and her many followers, to Africa.
The rulers of Africa told Dido that for her wealth they could give her as much land as could be enclosed by the hide of a bull. So Dido sacrificed a bull, got its hide cut into thin strips and joined the strips end-to-end to enclose a vast tract of land.
The Africans were impressed by Dido’s intelligence and let her stay. Her kingdom, Carthage, became a major trading port, rivalling, and even overshadowing, the ancient trading ports of Phoenicia.
The more famous Pygmalion is a sculptor who carves a statue of what he considers to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and falls in love with it. Amused, the Olympians give the statue life and a name, Galatea, and she marries her creator.
The story of Dido claiming land using strips of hide has given rise to a perimetrical problem in mathematics popularly known as ‘the Dido problem’: What is the closed curve which has the maximum area for a given perimeter?
Carthage and Rome were rival cities that were competing for control over the Mediterranean.
Hannibal, a great general of Carthage, took a roundabout route to cross the Alps and enter Italy with elephants; he conquered and occupied Italy for fifteen years. He was eventually defeated by Scipio, a Roman general who incorporated Hannibal’s war strategies and acknowledged him as one of the greatest generals in the world after Alexander and Pyrrhus.
In the ancient world, there was no such entity as Europe. Civilization thrived around the Mediterranean, with ancient cultures such as the Greek and Roman in the north, Carthage and Egypt in the south, and Phoenicia in the west. The creation of Europe, Asia and Africa happened much later in history, probably with the rise of Islam which led to the Arabs occupying much of Africa by the eighth century. Their northward march was resisted by a united Europe, led by kings of what is now France and Germany, whose ancestors were considered barbarians by the Romans and the Greeks.
Dido
On his arrival, Aeneas told Dido his story, and Dido told Aeneas hers. They spent hours telling each other about the tragedy of losing old homes and seeking new ones; o
f their families and losing loved ones. Before long, they were talking about each other, gazing into each other’s eyes, and falling in love.
Aphrodite orchestrated this love between her son and Dido to ensure her son’s safety. But Zeus was clear that Aeneas would have to leave Dido eventually and make his own home elsewhere. And so, he sent Hermes to remind Aeneas of his destiny: Carthage was his lover’s home, not his. He had to fulfil his destiny, and make a new home for the Trojans. For that his love would have to be sacrificed.
Not having the courage to break Dido’s heart, Aeneas planned to slip out of Carthage secretly with his sailors and his ship, laden with provisions. But Dido was no fool. She had sensed Aeneas’s hesitation. She came to the harbour just as Aeneas’s ship was about to set sail, but she did not stop the Trojan prince. Instead, she ordered her servants to set up a huge bonfire: she threw in all the gifts Aeneas had given her, and cursed him that his descendants would forever suffer the enmity of her descendants. Finally she stabbed herself in the heart and hurled herself into the flames.
The idea of women killing and burning themselves on the pyre of their dead husbands, to protect their honour or prevent their abuse, is found in many Hindu stories. Many male heroes also threaten to burn themselves to death if they fail to keep a promise. Voluntary death by fire was seen as heroic.
The story of Dido and Aeneas is clearly inspired by the tension between Rome and Carthage that peaked during the Punic Wars which took place about 150 years before Virgil.
The people of Carthage were called Punic by the Romans.
While the Egyptians lived in the Nile valley, the Berbers lived on the north African coast, in what was known as Lybia. The Punics descended from the Phoenicians as well as the Berbers.
In medieval times, the story of Dido and Aeneas inspired many ballads and plays. The idea of a powerful woman aware of her own desires made people uncomfortable and so she was portrayed as barbaric, even demonic, not in control of her passions. In Dante’s Divine Comedy written in the fourteenth century in Italian, the ‘lustful’ Dido is imagined as being in Hell, eternally blasted by fierce whirlwinds.
In the twentieth century, under Mussolini, when streets in Rome were being named after characters from Virgil’s epic, Dido was conspicuous by her absence as she represented feminine desire, Semitic origins (Phoenicia) and Africa; hence she was demonized by the fascist powers.
Sibyl
Guided by Hermes, Aeneas crossed the ocean from Africa to Europe and reached the coast of Italy, where lived the famous Sibyl.
‘Unless you go where the Sibyl tells you to go, you will not find your home,’ Hermes told Aeneas.
The Sibyl wanted to see if Aeneas was indeed the man prophesied to establish the city of Rome. She pointed to a golden oak tree in her sacred grove and asked Aeneas to break off a branch. Only if he was worthy, if he was the chosen one, would he be able to do it.
Two doves led Aeneas to the golden oak tree.
When Aeneas broke off a branch, a new branch grew in its place; a good sign, said the Sibyl.
With that golden branch, Aeneas entered the Sibyl’s cave. She directed him to go deep down where he found himself on the banks of the River Styx. He realized, like heroes before him, that he had to journey to the land of the dead before he could find a new home in the land of the living.
Aeneas paid a silver coin to Charon and was ferried across. He fed honey cakes to the three-headed Cerberus and with the permission of Hades and Persephone met the ghosts of his wife and those who died in Troy, and those who had perished at sea on the way to Italy. He saw Dido there too, but she turned away from him. The ghost of his father told him that he would establish a great city of leaders who would rule the world.
Since Hindus believe in rebirth, there are not many tales of heroes travelling to visit their ancestors in the land of the dead. However, hermits do dream of ancestors suffering in the land of the dead: hanging upside down over a bottomless crevice (a hell called Put for childless people) into which they risk falling because they are unable to be reborn, as their descendants have become hermits and practise celibacy, refusing to father children.
Underworld journeys are a recurring theme in Greek mythology. Heroes such as Heracles, Odysseus and Theseus all go to the underworld where they see visions of the past and the future, and then return to the land of the living.
Sibyls or oracles were popular in the ancient Mediterranean world. The most popular lived in Delphi, Greece. They were known for mouthing the words of the gods in a state of frenzy. These words were in the form of puzzles mostly, cryptic and often prophetic. They were known not by personal names but by the places where they lived.
While prophets in Abrahamic mythology are mostly male, Greek mythology continuously refers to female prophets, like the Sibyls.
In 1890, the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer published a book called The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. It is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology. The title is based on the story of Aeneas being asked by the Sibyl to take a branch of the tree to prove his worthiness as king. It refers to an ancient practice, pre-Roman, of priest-kings who were married to a goddess and eventually killed by their successors. Their life and death mirrored the sowing and harvest cycles of agriculture.
Lavinia
On returning from the underworld, Aeneas continued his journey along the coast of Italy. After many days of sailing, he came to a river’s mouth that was lined with trees full of fruit and berries.
Aeneas weighed anchor so his sailors could rest and eat in peace. It was here that the people ‘ate their plates’ as the Harpies had predicted: they were so hungry that they ate the dry stiff bread on which the women served the fruits they had collected and the meat they had cooked. It was also here that Aeneas and his son, who were exploring the countryside, came upon a gigantic white sow suckling thirty piglets, as Helenus had foretold. This was Italy. This would be their home. Here, Aeneas would build the city that would eventually become Rome.
But before that there would be marriage, a war and an unlikely alliance.
When Aeneas met King Latinus, who ruled the land, the King immediately knew that this stranger of regal bearing was the man the oracle had told him about, the stranger from a distant land who would marry his young daughter, Lavinia. He requested Aeneas to accept the hand of his daughter in marriage and Aeneas agreed, knowing that marriage to a local princess would grant him legitimacy and enable him and his people to make a home in Italy. Unlike the union with Dido, this union was blessed by Zeus.
Unfortunately, the queen Amata wanted Turnus, king of the Rutuli, to be her sonin-law. She was angry and this anger served Hera well. The goddess got the queen to fill Turnus with hate for the Trojan, and he went around rallying a vast army of all the people who lived in Italy including the Etruscans and Sabines. Soon a confederacy of Italian tribes declared war on the Trojans.
It was a terrible war that saw the death of the warrior-maiden Camilla, priestess of Artemis, raised by her father, suckled on a mare, who, like Atlanta before her, could run over water without getting her feet wet, and could run over a field without breaking a single ear of corn.
There was bloodshed all around and everything was spinning out of control. Finally, the angry Olympians, led by Zeus, told Hera to forget her anger against the Trojan race. ‘Only if,’ said Hera, ‘Aeneas forgets the Trojan way of life and embraces all things Italian, and makes friends with a Greek.’
This was communicated to Aeneas. Henceforth, he declared, he would refer to Zeus as Jupiter and Hera as Juno. Hermes would be called Mercury, Artemis would be Diana, Apollo would be Phoebus, Eros would be Cupid, Poseidon would be Neptune, Hades would be Pluto, Aphrodite would be Venus, and Athena would be Minerva.
Aeneas then scoured the island looking for a Greek ally. He came upon Diomedes, the Greek warrior, who had fought in the Trojan War.
When Diomedes had returned home to Greece, he had found that his wife
had taken another husband and started a new life. So he had turned away from his city and sought a new home. But wherever his ship had stopped, he was pursued by birds—the ghosts of the men who were once his companions. They wailed all day and all night, forcing him to set sail again, shunning land, until he reached the shores of Italy. Here the birds told him to wait for a Trojan and to give him the image of Athena, the Palladium, that he and Odysseus had stolen from Troy. Only then would he find peace, and a home.
Said Diomedes to Aeneas, ‘I will neither fight for you nor stand against you. I have had enough of war. But here, take this image I stole from your father’s city and place it at the centre of your new city.’
Diomedes then directed Aeneas to Evander, who was also Greek, but who had left Greece long before the Trojan War. Evander decided to support Aeneas and put an end to this hostility against immigrants. In the battle that followed, Evander lost his son Pallas, but Turnus was also killed and Aeneas declared victor.
‘Let there be peace,’ begged Aeneas. He was tired of war. Did not all residents of a land descend from refugees from other lands? Everyone agreed. So the Trojans, Greeks and Italians embraced one another. Everyone drank to the marriage of Aeneas and Lavinia, and the friendship of Aeneas and Evander.
Together they built a temple to enshrine the ancient Trojan Palladium, and around it eventually rose a great new city: Rome.
In the Mahabharata, after being cast out of the house by his father, Yadu finds shelter with the Naga people whose king, Dhumravarna, invites him to marry his five daughters. From this union is born the race of Yadus, who rule Mathura. In another story, a childless king finds the blind sage, Dirghatamas, floating on a river clinging to a log of wood, and sends him to his wife so that she can have children by him. Thus are born the kings of Anga, Vanga, Kalinga, Pundra and Suhma. Thus, homeless warriors and sages end up founding royal dynasties in Hindu mythology too.