From Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend, by Professor H. Steuding, Translated from the German and Edited by Lionel D. Barnett. The Temple Primers, London: J. M. Dent; 1901; pp. 74-78.
[74]Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend
GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Heroic Poetry
II. The Legends of Argos, Mykenai, and Tiryns. §126. Excavations have shown that in the palmy days of the city of Mykenai, a period which must have extended approximately from 1400 to 2000 B.C., the district of Argolis entered into close relations with Egypt and Asia. The myths of this land tell the same story; Io and Danaos point to a connection with Egypt, Perseus and the Pelopids to one with Asia.
Io, the daughter of the river-god Inachos, is loved by Zeus; the jealous Hera therefore transforms her into a heifer, the animal sacred to her, and sets the many-eyed all-seeing (πανόπτης) Argos to keep watch on her near Mykenai, until at the command of Zeus he is cast into slumber and slain by Hermes, who on this account bears the by-name of ‘Argos-slayer’ (Ἀργεφόντης). Hereupon Io is hunted over land and sea by a gadfly sent by Hera; in Euboia or Egypt however she at last recovers from Zeus her human form, and now gives birth to Epaphos, the father of Danaos and Aigyptos.
§ 127. Danaos — the representative of the Danaoi, who in Homer’s time dwelt in Argolis — emigrated, according to the story, with his fifty daughters, the Danaides, to Greece, and became King of Argos, where later his gravestone was shown in the market-place of the city. The fifty sons of Aigyptos pursued them and sued for the maidens; but at the command of Danaos all were slaughtered on their wedding night by their wives excepting Lynkeus, whom his bride Hypermestra spared. In punishment of this misdeed the Danaides were doomed in the nether world to fill with water a leaking jar.
§ 128. Akrisios, King of Argos, was a descendant of Lynkeus. From an oracle he learned that he was to be slain by a grandson; he therefore hid his daughter Danae in a brazen chamber and set a close watch over her. But Zeus nevertheless made his way to her as a golden rain, and she 75 became mother of Perseus. Akrisios now confined both in a chest, and cast them into the sea. Simonides of Keos depicts their sore distress with deep pathos. “When in the cunningly-wrought chest the raging blast and the stirred billow and terror fell upon her, with tearful cheeks she cast her arm around Perseus and spake ‘Alas, my child, what sorrow is mine! But thou slumberest, in baby wise sleeping in this woeful ark; midst the darkness of brazen rivet thou shinest and in swart gloom sent forth; thou heedest not the deep foam of the passing wave above thy locks nor the voice of the blast as thou liest in thy purple covering, a sweet face. If terror had terrors for thee, and thou wert giving ear to my gentle words — I bid thee sleep, my babe, and may the sea sleep and our measureless woe; and may change of fortune come forth, Father Zeus, form thee. For that I make my prayer in boldness and beyond right, forgive me.’ ”
At length they reached the island of Seriphos, in which Perseus grew up. The king of it later despatched him to fetch the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Having the support of Hermes and Athena, he succeeded in cutting off the head of the sleeping monster, the sight of which turned to stone all who beheld it; he escaped the pursuit of Medusa’s sisters only by the help of a helmet lent to him by Hades, which made him invisible. In Aithiopia (perhaps Rhodes) he liberated Andromeda, the daughter of Kepheus, who had been bound to a rock on the shore as a sacrifice to a sea-monster sent by Poseidon. After having then turned into stone all his enemies by the sight of the Gorgon’s head and slain his grandfather, as the oracle foretold, by an oversight in throwing the quoit, he ruled with his wife Andromeda in Tiryns, and thence built Mykenai. In Argos he had a heroon, and he was worshipped also in Athens and Seriphos.
§ 129. The race of Tantalos is later, though even before the Dorian migration it was powerful in Argos and a great part of the remaining Peloponnesos. Tantalos at the same time has his seat on Mount Sipylos in Asia Minor. He is a figure like Atlas, the supporter of heaven and mountain-god. 76 As the son of Zeus, the gods honoured him with their intimate society, but by his sensual lusts and his audacity (hybris) he forfeited their favour. He was therefore hurled down into the nether world and there stood, in an eternal agony of hunger and thirst, in the midst of water under a tree abundant with fruit; for water and tree retreated whenever he stretched forth his hand towards them. According to another story, a rock ever threatening to fall swung over his head. This appears to be the older conception, for the name Tantalos is certainly to be derived from τανταλοῦμαι, τανταλέυω), ‘to rock,’ and to be translated by something like ‘Rocking-Stone’; perhaps rocking-stones, as in Germany, were looked upon as the seat of the deity on mountain-tops. There was a mountain of the same name in Lesbos, where Tantalos also received worship as a hero.
§ 130. His children are Niobe and Pelops, from whom the Peloponnesos (‘island of Pelops’) is said to have got its name. The latter wooed Hippodameia (‘horse-tamer’), the daughter of King Oinomaos of Elis, and won her by a race with her father, who perished in it by the treachery of his charioteer. The preparations for this race are represented on the eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Pelops was devoutly worshipped as a hero with sacrifices and games in Elis and other parts of the Peloponnesos.
His son Atreus on the death of Eurystheus became ruler of Mykenai; and, according to the older legend furnished by the Iliad, his brother Thyestes legally inherited the kingdom from him. But later epos, and above all the tragedians, represent the descendants of Tantalos as involved in a series of most awful crimes. According to them, Thyestes robbed his brother of empire, wife, and son. Atreus again, after recovering the royal power, avenged himself by slaughtering the sons of Thyestes and setting their flesh as food before their unwitting father. For this Atreus was in his turn murdered afterwards by Aigisthos, a son of Thyestes, whom he had however regarded as his own son and brought up as such.
77§ 131. Aigisthos was ousted from the kingship by Agamemnon and Menelaos, the true sons of Atreus; the former became king of Mykenai, the latter of Lakedaimon, where in later times he and his wife Helena were worshipped as local gods, especially in Therapne. Paris, the comely son of Priamos of Troy, abducted Helena with the aid of Aphrodite. To avenge their shame the two Atreidai mustered a mighty host of Greeks, over which Agamemnon assumed chief command. When this had gathered at Aulis, contrary winds delayed their sailing, because Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis. A seer announced that the goddess could be appeased only by the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia. Upon this the king sent a messenger to his wife Klytaimestra1 at Mykenai to tell her that she should send her daughter to the camp to be wedded to Achilleus. But when Iphigeneia was dragged to the sacrifice Artemis carried her away to Tauris (the Crimean peninsula), and in stead of the maid a doe stood by the altar. Agamemnon now set forth with Menelaos and many other heroes against Troy. In the meantime Aigisthos seduced Klytaimestra, who was wroth with her husband for the immolation of her daughter; and the pair then murdered the king when ten years later he returned home after capturing Troy. In Lakonia, Chaironeia, and Klazomenai however Agamemnon was worshipped in after times as Zeus Agamemnon (compare Ζ. βασιλεὺς), a sort of ‘infernal Zeus’ (§ 24), under the form of a sceptre, the symbol of kingship; his grave was shown in Amyklai and Mykenai. On the murder of her father Elektra, his elder daughter, saved her young brother Orestes and conveyed him to King Strophios of Phokis, with whose son Pylades he formed a friendship. When grown into a youth he hastened back to Mykenai in order to take vengeance for his father on the two slayers. In the Elektra of Sophocles, and still more in that of Euripides, Elektra, herself ill-treated by Klytaimestra, 78 spurs on her brother by words breathing deep hatred to execute the hideous deed of blood, when the sight of his mother makes him hesitate. First Klytaimestra fell transfixed by her son’s sword, then Aigisthos also. But scarcely had Orestes shed the blood of his mother when the Erinyes arose to pursue him. He wandered about in restless misery, until at the bidding of the Delphic oracle he went to Tauris in order to bring to Greece the statue of Artemis to be found there. Captured in the attempt to steal it away, he was doomed to be slain as a sacrifice to the goddess. In her temple he found his sister Iphigeneia serving as priestess. With her aid he escaped, carrying her and the statue with him. Pylades, who had accompanied him everywhere, now wedded Elektra, Orestes the lovely Hermione, the daughter of Menelaos and Helena.
Iphigeneia is originally a by-name of Artemis, hence the priestess may have been akin in character to her goddess. Orestes, on the other hand, received honour as a hero in Sparta, Tegea, Trozen, and elsewhere.
FOOTNOTES
1 The spelling Klytaimnestra, or Clytaemnestra, is wholly without authority; the name usually spelt Hypermnestra seems to be in need of a like correction to Hypermestra.
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Heroic Poetry :
III. Corinthian Legends.