Gorgophone stood before the
flames with her eldest boy Tyndareus, daughter Arene and the rest of the little
children. She faced the end of life as
she knew it. It ended with the cackling
of the fire racing through the wood, with the whoosh as bowls of olive oil were
flung into the hungry flames, with the boiling and billowing of thick black
smoke rising from the pyre, with the screams of animals wild and domesticate
tossed into the holocaust, with tokens of her husband’s life and gifts to the
departed King Perieres. And over all;
the pale, the aura, the hair-twitching stench that universally our primordial
senses can identify and which my father told me still hangs over Dachau.
It ends with Marpessa
befouled, hysterical and wailing beside her husband’s funeral pyre. Finally, facing the fears of her youth which
forced her to flee the embrace of the god Apollo to avoid this very hoary old
age and this abandonment.
It ends with Cleopatra
standing in doomed Calydon. Within and
without the ruined gate lay all her kinsmen, killed in a fratricidal war. The fields lay trampled and the land
polluted. She stands beside the searing
flames, fist upraised in anger, cursing the Fates and a traitorous
mother-in-law who slew her own son.
Another army approaches.
In ends with weeping Polydora
the wife of Protesilaus, the first Achaean slain at Troy. With her husband’s death begins the first war
to enflame the entire known world, then come the betrayals and the revolts in
Greece, the Dorian Invasion and the attacks of the Sea People. Civilization will fall and her culture will
be destroyed. Not since the sinking of
Atlantis will so many mortals die. That
leap from the bow of his boat to the sands of Troy, was one small step for
Protesilaus and one giant leap for the ancient world into the Dark Ages.
And it could have been the
end of Gorgophone. But, Perseus’
daughter chose neither the flame nor rope nor knife. She chose life. And from that decision arose two powerful new
family of gods; the gods of Sparta and Aescupalides.
“Gorgophone (Gorgon-slayer), the daughter of
Perseus. As soon as you hear the name
you can understand the reason why it was given her. On the death of her husband, Perieres, the
son of Aeolus, whom she married when a virgin, she married Oebalus, being the
first woman, they say, to marry a second time; “ Pausanias 2.21.7
But, the widow Gorgophone
brought more to the marriage with her brother-in-law than her children and the
legacy of Perseus. She also brought the
crown of Sparta, beside the River Eurotas. The Eurotas springs from Mt
Taygetos, a range of limestone horst heavily forested in Greek Fir. The river runs through wide, lovely Sparta; a
shining hollow broken by ravines. In
this land of lovely women Gorgophone bore to her second husband; Leucippus,
Aphareus (who wed his half-sister Arene), and others.
Aphareus became King of
Messene. Foreshadowing the traditions of historic Sparta, he shared the throne
with his brother Leucippus. Among
Aphareus and Arene’s sons stood the inseparable brothers Idas and
Lyncheus. Lyncheus’ eyesight was superhuman
sharp. Idas was the strongest man alive,
so strong indeed that when battling with Apollo for the affections of his
future wife; Idas would have bettered the archer god if Zeus had not
intervened.
Tyndareus eventually replaced
his step-father/uncle as King of Sparta.
Legend states that Tyndareus forgot to make due sacrifice to Aphrodite
once, in revenge she cursed his daughters and made them unfaithful wives. How odd that, though cursed two of them
became goddesses. He was the father of “the
admitted first cause of all time and all history”1; Helen of Troy.
It was Tyndareus who demanded the oath of Helen’s suitors before he allowed
her to choose a husband. It was the oath
that obligated most of Greece to sail to Troy.
From the walls of Troy Helen
wondered where her brothers, the Discouri, were in the sea of warriors crashing
up against the walls of Ilium. They were
called Discouri as sons of Zeus and Tyndaridae as sons of Tyndareus. They were Castor the tamer of swift horses
and glorious Polydeuces, both of whom surpassed all men in valor. Whether over women or cattle, Castor and
Polydeuces died fighting with their cousins Idas and Lyncheus. Or had they?
What most the world does not
know even now and did not then, was that glorious Polydeuces and lovely Helen
were actually the children of Zeus, King of the Gods.
Helen never went to Troy,
Zeus sent a phantom in her place. Helen
whiled away the decade upon the sun-drenched shores of the Nile. Eventually she and Menelaus (promised the
Isles of the Blest as a son-in-law of Zeus) rejoined one another and sailed
home. With the passing of more years
Helen died; her mortal parts sailed off to the Island of the Blessed, where she
wed Achilles and bore him the winged demigod Euphorion; named for the fertility
of the land. Her divine part returned to
Sparta as goddess of trees and the savior of sailors at sea. And she brought her brothers with her.
The divine grandson of Gorgophone;
the god Polydeuces could not bear to be separated from his mortal brother
Castor. Zeus granted Castor immortality so
that he also would ride the meadows of Olympus . They became gods of boxing and horsemanship .
They aided their sister the goddess Helen in rescues at sea . When they returned as gods to wide-lovely Sparta,
they brought their wives too, the goddesses Phoebe and Hilara; granddaughters of Gorgophone through her son
Leucippus.
Helen and the Discouri had a
younger sister Philinoe, who was made immortal by Artemis, when she snatched
the lass up to be one of her companions.
Phoebe and Hilara had a
sister Arsinoe who bore Apollo a son; Aesculapius,
the smoother of cruel pain. Aesculapius
was such a skilled physician that with a vial of the Gorgon’s blood he brought his great-uncle Tyndareus back to
life; making him immortal “as he did the first time, as he will forever”.2 For this blasphemy Zeus struck Gorgophone’s great-grandson with a
thunderbolt. In revenge for his son’s
death, Apollo slew the Cyclopes who’d made the weapon.
That’s when Aesculapius returned from the
dead. He carried a snake sheaved club and became a god of almost Olympian stature. Aesculapius
continued Gorgophone’s bloodline by siring a host of gods and goddesses dealing
with health and medicine;
"By
him [Aesculapius] were fathered Makhaon and Podaleirios and Iaso (Healer)--ie
Paian!--and fair-eyed Aigle (Radiance) and Panakea (Panacea, Cure-all),
children of Epione, along with Hygieia (Health), all-glorious, undefiled." Greek Lyric V Anonymous, Fragments 939
Image of Aesculapis provided by NY Public Library.
1
Helen
in Egypt Hilda Doolittle
2
The
Politics of Olympus, Jenny Strauss Clay, 2nd edition, page 28
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