i. Palamedes offered a hecatomb to Apollo Smintheus in gratitude for the Tenedan victory but, as he did so, a water-snake approached the altar and bit Philoctetes, the famous archer, in the foot. Neither unguents nor fomentations availed, and the wound grew so noisome, and Philoctetes’s groans so loud, that the army could no longer tolerate his company. Agamemnon therefore ordered Odysseus to put him ashore in a deserted district of Lemnos, where he sustained life for several years by shooting birds; and Medon assumed the command of his troops.11
j. According to another account, the accident happened on Chryse, an islet off Lemnos, which has since vanished beneath the sea. There either the nymph Chryse fell in love with Philoctetes and, when he rejected her advances, provoked a viper to bite him while he was clearing away the earth from a buried altar of Athene Chryse; or else a serpent that guarded Athene’s temple bit him when he came too close.12
k. According to a third account, Philoctetes was bitten in Lemnos itself by a serpent which Hera sent as a punishment for his having dared to kindle Heracles’s funeral pyre. He was, at the time, raptly gazing at the altar raised to Athene by Jason, and planning to raise another to Heracles.13
l. A fourth account is that Philoctetes was bitten while admiring Troilus’s tomb in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo.14 A fifth, that he was wounded by one of Heracles’s envenomed arrows. Heracles, it is said, had made him swear never to divulge the whereabouts of his buried ashes; but when the Greeks learned that Troy could not be sacked without the use of Heracles’s arrows, they went in search of Philoctetes. Though at first denying all knowledge of Heracles, he ended by telling them exactly what had happened on Mount Oeta; so they eagerly asked him where they might find the grave. This question he refused to answer, but they became so insistent that he went to the place, and there wordlessly stamped on the ground. Later, as he passed the grave on his way to the Trojan War, one of Heracles’s arrows leaped from the quiver and pierced his foot: a warning that one must not reveal divine secrets even by a sign or hint.15
1. Hyginus: Fabula 190.
2. Benoit: Le Roman de Troie.
3. Ptolemy Hephaestionos: vi, quoted by Photius p. 483; Euripides: Iphigeneia Among the Taurians; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 21.
4. Ptolemy Hephaestionos: loc. cit.; Euripides: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 22; Dictys Cretensis: i. 20.
5. Euripides: Iphigeneia in Aulis; Sophocles: Electra 574; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Dictys Cretensis: i. 19; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 183.
6. Homer: Odyssey iv. 342–4; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 23–4; Pausanias: x. 14. 2; Hyginus: Fabula 157; Scholiast on Pindar’s Olympian Odes ii. 147; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 232–3.
7. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 24; Pausanias: loc, cit.; Tzetzes: loc. cit.
8. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 25; Pausanias: x. 14. 2; Tzetzes: loc. cit.
9. Tzetzes: loc. cit.; Plutarch: Greek Questions 28.
10. Tzetzes: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 31; Cypria, quoted by Proclus: Chrestomathy 1.
11. Dictys Cretensis: ii. 14; Cypria, quoted by Proclus: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 27; Homer: Iliad ii. 727.
12. Pausanias: viii. 33. 2; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 911; Sophocles: Philoctetes 1327; Philostratus: Imagines 17; Eustathius on Homer p. 330.
13. Hyginus: Fabula 102; Scholiast on Sophocles’s Philoctetes, verses 2, 193 and 266.
14. Philostratus: loc. cit.
15. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid iii. 402.
1. The lost play from which Hyginus has taken the story of Thestor and his daughters shows the Greek dramatists at their most theatrical; it has no mythological value.
2. Aversion of the ‘Jephthah’s daughter’ myth (see 169.5) seems to have been confused with Agamemnon’s sacrifice of a priestess at Aulis, on a charge of raising contrary winds by witchcraft; Sir Francis Drake once hanged one of his sailors, a spy in Cecil’s pay, on the same charge. Agamemnon’s high-handed action, it seems, offended conservative opinion at home, women being traditionally exempt from sacrifice. The Taurians, to whom Iphigeneia was said to have been sent by Artemis, lived in the Crimea and worshipped Artemis as a man-slayer; Agamemnon’s son Orestes fell into their clutches (see 116. e).
3. Odysseus’s wrestling match with King Philomeleides, whose name means ‘dear to the apple-nymphs’, is probably taken from a familiar icon, showing the ritual contest in which the old king is defeated by the new and given an apple-bough (see 53. b).
4. Achilles killed a second Cycnus (see 162. f); Heracles killed a third (see 143. g), and was prevented by Zeus from killing a fourth (see 133. d). The name implied that swans conveyed these royal souls to the Northern Paradise. When Apollo appears in ancient works of art riding on swan-back, or in a chariot drawn by swans (Overbeck: Griechische Kunstmythologie) on a visit to the Hyperboreans, this is a polite way of depicting his representative’s annual death at midsummer. Singing swans then fly north to their breeding grounds in the Arctic circle, and utter two trumpet-like notes as they go; which is why Pausanias (i. 30. 3) says that swans are versed in the Muses’ craft. ‘Swans sing before they die’: the sacred king’s soul departs to the sound of music.
5. Philoctetes’s wound has been associated with many different localities because the icon from which his story derives was widely current. He is the sacred king of Tenedos, Lemnos, Euboea, or any other Halladic state, receiving the prick of an envenomed arrow in his foot (see 126. 3; 154. h; 164. j and 166. e) beside the goddess’s altar.
6. Heracles was not the only sacred king whose grave remained a secret; this seems to have been common practice on the Isthmus of Corinth (see 67. j), and among the primitive Hebrews (Deuteronomy xxxiv. 6).
7. Tenes hurling rocks may be a misinterpretation of the familiar icon which shows a sun-hero pushing the sun-boulder up to the zenith (see 67. 2), since Talos, a Cretan sun-hero, also hurled rocks at approaching ships (see 154. h). The ships in this icon would merely indicate that Crete, or Tenedos, was a naval power.
162
NINE YEARS OF WAR
AT what point the Greeks sent Priam envoys to demand the return of Helen and of Menelaus’s property is disputed. Some say, soon after the expedition had landed in the Troad; others, before the ships assembled at Aulis; but it is commonly held that the embassy, consisting of Menelaus, Odysseus, and Palamedes, went ahead from Tenedos.1 The Trojans, however, being determined to keep Helen, would have murdered them all had not Antenor, in whose house they were lodging, forbidden the shameful deed.2
b. Vexed by this obduracy, the Greeks sailed from Tenedos and beached their ships within sight of Troy. The Trojans at once flocked down to the sea and tried to repel the invaders with showers of stones. Then, while all the others hesitated – even Achilles, whom Thetis had warned that the first to land would be the first to die – Protesilaus leaped ashore, killed a number of Trojans, and was struck dead by Hector; or it may have been Euphorbus; or Aeneas’s friend Achates.3
c. This Protesilaus, an uncle of Philoctetes, and son of that Iphiclus whom Melampus cured of impotence, had been called Iolaus, but was renamed from the circumstance of his death.4 He lies buried in the Thracian Chersonese, near the city of Elaeus, where he is now given divine honours. Tall elm-trees, planted by nymphs, stand within his precinct and overshadow the tomb. The boughs which face Troy across the sea burst early into leaf, but presently go bare; while those on the other side are still green in winter-time. When the elms grow so high that the walls of Troy can be clearly discerned by a man posted in their upper branches, they wither; saplings, however, spring again from the roots.5
d. Protesilaus’s wife Laodameia, daughter of Acastus (whom some call Polydora daughter of Meleager) missed him so sadly that as soon as he sailed for Troy she made a brazen, or wax, statue of him and laid it in her bed. But this was poor comfort, and when news came of his death, she begged the gods to take pity and let him revisit her, if only for three hours. Almighty Zeus granted Laodameia’s request, and Hermes brought up Protesilaus’s gh
ost from Tartarus to animate the statue. Speaking with its mouth, Protesilaus then adjured her not to delay in following him, and the three hours had no sooner ended than she stabbed herself to death in his embrace.6 Others say that Laodameia’s father Acastus forced her to remarry, but that she spent her nights with Protesilaus’s statue until one day a servant, bringing apples for a dawn sacrifice, looked through a crack in the bedroom-door and saw her embracing what he took to be a lover. He ran and told Acastus who, bursting into the room, discovered the truth. Rather than that she should torture herself by fruitless longing, Acastus ordered the statue to be burned; but Laodameia threw herself into the flames and perished with it.7
e. According to another tradition, Protesilaus survived the Trojan War and set sail for home. He took back, as his prisoner, Priam’s sister Aethylla. On the way he landed at the Macedonian peninsula of Pellene but, while he went ashore in search of water, Aethylla persuaded the other captive women to burn the ships; and Protesilaus, thus obliged to remain on Pellene, founded the city of Scione. This, however, is an error: Aethylla, with Astyoche and her fellow-captives, set fire to the vessels beside the Italian river Navaethus, which means ‘burning of ships’; and Protesilaus did not figure among their captors.8
f. Achilles was the second Greek to land on the Trojan shore, closely followed by his Myrmidons, and killed Cycnus son of Poseidon with a well-flung stone. Thereupon the Trojans broke and fled back to their city, while the remainder of the Greeks disembarked and pressed murderously on the rout. According to another account, Achilles, mindful of Protesilaus’s fate, was the very last to land, and then took such a prodigious leap from his ship that a spring gushed out where his feet struck the shore. In the ensuing battle, it is said, Cycnus, who was invulnerable, killed Greeks by the hundred; but Achilles, after trying sword and spear against him in vain, battered furiously at his face with the hilt of his sword, forced him backwards until he tripped over a stone, then knelt on his breast and strangled him with the straps of his helmet; however, Poseidon turned his spirit into a swan, which flew away. The Greeks then laid siege to Troy and drew up their ships behind a stockade.9
g. Now, the city was fated not to fall if Troilus could attain the age of twenty. Some say that Achilles fell in love with him as they fought together, and ‘I will kill you,’ he said, ‘unless you yield to my caresses!’ Troilus fled and took sanctuary in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo; but Achilles cared nothing for the god’s wrath and since Troilus remained coy, beheaded him at the altar, the very place where he himself later perished.10 Others say that Achilles speared Troilus while he was exercising his horses in the temple precinct; or that he lured him out by offering a gift of doves, and that Troilus died with crushed ribs and livid face, in such bear-like fashion did Achilles make love. Others, again, say that Troilus sallied vengefully from Troy after the death of Memnon and encountered Achilles, who killed him – or else he was taken prisoner and then publicly slaughtered in cold blood at Achilles’s orders – and that, being then middle-aged, with a swarthy complexion and a flowing beard, he can hardly have excited Achilles’s passion. But whatever the manner of his death, Achilles caused it, and the Trojans mourned for him as grievously as for Hector.11
h. Troilus is said to have loved Briseis, Calchas’s beautiful daughter, who had been left behind in Troy by her father and, since she had played no part in his defection, continued to be treated there with courtesy. Calchas, knowing that Troy must fall, persuaded Agamemnon to ask Priam for her on his behalf, lest she should be made a prisoner of war. Priam generously gave his assent and several of his sons escorted Briseis to the Greek camp. Although she had sworn undying fidelity to Troilus, Briseis soon transferred her affections to Diomedes the Argive, who fell passionately in love with her and did his best to kill Troilus whenever he appeared on the battlefield.12
i. On a night expedition, Achilles captured Lycaon, surprising him in his father Priam’s orchard, where he was cutting fig-tree shoots for use as chariot-rails. Patroclus took Lycaon to Lemnos, and sold him to Jason’s son, King Euneus, who supplied the Greek forces with wine; the price being a silver Phoenician mixing-bowl. But Eëtion of Imbros ransomed him, and he returned to Troy, only to perish at the hand of Achilles twelve days later.13
j. Achilles now set out with a band of volunteers to ravage the Trojan countryside. On Mount Ida he cut off Aeneas the Dardanian from his cattle, chased him down the wooded slopes and, after killing the cattlemen and Priam’s son Mestor, captured the herd and sacked the city of Lyrnessus, where Aeneas had taken refuge. Mynes and Epistrophus, sons of King Evenus, died in the fighting; but Zeus helped Aeneas to escape. Mynes’s wife, another Briseis, daughter of Briseus, was made captive, and her father hanged himself.14
k. Though Aeneas had connived at Paris’s abduction of Helen, he remained neutral for the first few years of the war; being born of the goddess Aphrodite by Anchises, the grandson of Tros, he resented the disdain shown him by his cousin Priam.15 Yet Achilles’s provocative raid obliged the Dardanians to join forces with the Trojans at last. Aeneas proved a skilled fighter and even Achilles did not disparage him: for if Hector was the hand of the Trojans, Aeneas was their soul. His divine mother frequently helped him in battle; and once, when Diomedes had broken his hip with the cast of a stone, rescued him from death; and when Diomedes had wounded her too, with a spear-thrust in the wrist, Apollo carried Aeneas off the field for Leto and Artemis to cure. On another occasion his life was saved by Poseidon who, though hostile to the Trojans, respected the decrees of fate and knew that the royal line of Aeneas must eventually rule Troy.16
l. Many cities allied to Troy were now taken by Achilles: Lesbos, Phocaea, Colophon, Smyrna, Clazomenae, Cyme, Aegialus, Tenos, Adramyttium, Dide, Endium, Linnaeum, Colone, Lyrnessus, Antandrus, and several others, including Hypoplacian Thebes, where another Eëtion, father of Hector’s wife Andromache, and his comrade Podes, ruled over the Cilicians. Achilles killed Eëtion, and seven of his sons besides, but did not despoil his corpse: he burned it fully armoured and around the barrow which he heaped, mountain-nymphs planted a grove of elm-trees.17 The captives included Astynome, or Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo in the island of Sminthos. Some call Astynome Eëtion’s wife; others say that Chryses had sent her to Lyrnessus for protection, or to attend a festival of Artemis. When the spoils were distributed, she fell to Agamemnon, as did Briseis to Achilles. From Hypoplacian Thebes, Achilles also brought away the swift horse Pedasus, whom he yoked to his immortal team.18
m. Great Ajax sailed to the Thracian Chersonese, where he captured Lycaon’s blood-brother Polydorus – their mother was Laothoë – and in Teuthrania killed King Teuthras, and carried off great spoils, among them the princess Tecmessa, whom he made his concubine.19
n. As the tenth year of the war approached, the Greeks refrained from raiding the coast of Asia Minor, and concentrated their forces before Troy. The Trojans marshalled their allies against them – Dardanians, led by Aeneas and the two sons of Antenor; Thracian Ciconians; Paeonians; Paphlagonians; Mysians; Phrygians; Maeonians; Carians; Lycians; and so forth. Sarpedon, whom Bellerophon’s daughter Laodemeia had borne to Zeus, led the Lycians. This is his story. When Laodameia’s brother Isander and Hippolochus were contending for the kingdom, it was proposed that whichever of them might shoot an arrow through a gold ring hung upon a child’s breast should be king. Each hotly demanded the other’s child as the victim, but Laodameia prevented them from murdering each other by offering to tie the ring around the neck of her own son, Sarpedon. Astounded at such noble unselfishness, they both agreed to resign their claims to the kingdom in favour of Sarpedon; with whom Glaucus, the son of Hippolochus, was now reigning as co-king.20
o. Agamemnon had sent Odysseus on a foraging expedition to Thrace, and when he came back empty-handed, Palamedes son of Nauplius upbraided him for his sloth and cowardice. ‘It was not my fault,’ cried Odysseus, ‘that no corn could be found. If Agamemnon had sent you in my stead, you wo
uld have had no greater success.’ Thus challenged Palamedes set sail at once and presently reappeared with a ship-load of grain.21
p. After days of tortuous thought, Odysseus at last hit upon a plan by which he might be revenged on Palamedes; for his honour was wounded. He sent word to Agamemnon: ‘The gods have warned me in a dream that treachery is afoot: the camp must be moved for a day and a night.’ When Agamemnon gave immediate orders to have this done, Odysseus secretly buried a sackful of gold at the place where Palamedes’s tent had been pitched. He then forced a Phrygian prisoner to write a letter, as if from Priam to Palamedes, which read: ‘The gold that I have sent is the price you asked for betraying the Greek camp.’ Having then ordered the prisoner to hand Palamedes this letter, Odysseus had him killed just outside the camp, before he could deliver it. Next day, when the army returned to the old site, someone found the prisoner’s corpse and took the letter to Agamemnon. Palamedes was court-martialled and, when he hotly denied having received gold from Priam or anyone else, Odysseus suggested that his tent should be searched. The gold was discovered, and the whole army stoned Palamedes to death as a traitor.22
q. Some say that Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomedes were all implicated in this plot, and that they jointly dictated the false letter to the Phrygian and afterwards bribed a servant to hide it with the gold under Palamedes’s bed. When Palamedes was led off to the place of stoning he cried aloud: ‘Truth, I mourn for you, who have predeceased me!’23
r. Others, again, say that Odysseus and Diomedes, pretending to have discovered a treasure in a deep well, let Palamedes down into it by a rope, and then tumbled large stones on his head; or that they drowned him on a fishing excursion. Still others say that Paris killed him with an arrow. It is not even agreed whether his death took place at Trojan Colonae, at Geraestus, or on Tenedos; but he has a hero-shrine near Lesbian Methymna.24