VftSW: Euripides’ Hippolytus and 20.CB22.1x

I am still participating in “The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours” starring Gregory Nagy and a chorus of enthusiastic teaching assistants.  It in a free on-line class from Harvardx.  This “Hour” we studied Hippolytus by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. 

If you don’t know the story; Hippolytus is out about in the suburbs of Ancient Athens.  Either he is participating in a major public event or else exercising naked on a remote beach, in either case his stepmother gets an eyeful and falls madly in love.  Hippolytus has two problems with her obsessive affection; 

1) Well, it is his step-mother! 

2) Hippolytus is madly in love with the virginal invisible goddess Artemis.   

Hippolytus picks flowers for Artemis and weaves them into a headband for the goddess.  Explaining that the blossoms are from “a place where it is not fit for the shepherd to pasture his flocks, nor has iron yet come there, but it is unspoiled” (Euripides Hippolytus 75) The above is an euphemism for an “untrod meadow”.  In other words Hippolytus is a virgin.  This is a problem among the Ancient Greeks, particularly when Hippolytus forsakes his dutiful worship at the altars of mighty Aphrodite, the goddess of love and sex.   

Professor Nagy writes in Chapter 20.41 of the textbook “  So, what is the trouble with Hippolytus? The answer is, Hippolytus himself simply cannot make the transition from the phase of virginity into the phase of heterosexuality.” Then at “20§42. “facilitated in the ritual of initiation, leading to social equilibrium, this same transition is blocked in myth (that is the myth of Hippolytus that we studied), leading to personal disequilibrium for the hero and, ultimately, to catastrophe. ”  In other words, like Peter Pan, Hippolytus doesn’t want to grow up. 

At line  87 the young hero says “That is the same way I should go round the turning post, heading toward the end of life just as I began it.“ He came into this world a virgin and he wants to rather unnaturally to go out that way.  The problem is the “turning post”.   

As I discussed elsewhere, in the next to last book of the Iliad Nestor gives a very long speak his son Antilokhos on  how to win a chariot race.  If involves how to turnabout the the turning point.  Two thousand and five hundred  years of scholarship termed that Nestor’s speech had nothing to do with chariot racing.  Neither do Hippolytus’ words.  

Hippolytus loves to drive his chariot along the beach practicing his skills as a chariot driver.  The turning post is what chariots turnabout during a race or contest.  And let’s be honest any time you go anywhere in life, once you go “there” and come back you aren’t the same person.  For Hippolytus, his figurative “turning post” would be the move into adulthood and marriage.   

Nagy says of Hippolytus’ virginity and relationship with the huntress goddess Artemis at 20.58 “Only Aphrodite allows female and male experiences to merge, but that merger can happen only in the adult world of heterosexuality, not in the pre-adult world represented by Hippolytus.” 

One of our lecturers for the hour is Douglas Frame.  He says of this Euripides comments on this turning post.  “he’s just not explicit about it. There's something called an absent signifier here, which means that the audience isn't being told everything.   But the absent signifier is something that you can supply if you just think it through”.  As to Hippolytus chariot racing metaphor, Douglas Frames says, “this metaphor at this point, about reaching the end of his life, turning. It's going to be a crash. He doesn't know that yet.”  

So his step-mother commits suicide and leaves an accusatory note.  Hippolytus whips the horses in hopes of getting away.  But his father believing the suicide note curses his son, the horses are freaked by a bull running up out of a wave, Hippolytus is tangled in the reins and dragged to death.  Bummer, eh?  But after all this is a tragedy. 

Now for the good news.  Artemis asks her nephew Asclepius to resurrect Hippolytus from the dead.  Artemis transplants the now immortal Hippolytus to Italy and gives him the name Virbius to disguise this little trick they played on the fates.  As to Artemis’ nephew: Nagy at 20.30 explains “As the story goes, Zeus incinerated Asclepius with his divine thunderbolt.”

TFBT; Oedipus at Colonus; A Tale of Old men

With great joy, I continue my on-line class from Harvard; The Ancient Greek Hero in Twenty-Four Hours”.  Even on the second reading I still enjoy the textbook by the same name. This session we studied Oedipus.  Professor Nagy describes the hero in “Oedipus at Colonus” by Sophocles as;

“seeking to be purified of the unholy pollution he has already experienced in his most wretched life.” ( HSH 18.9)

You know Oedipus.  He killed the Sphinx with the answer to a riddle.  He killed his dad and married his mother.  Things went downhill from there.  Considering the unthinkable crimes and tragedy that hounded Oedipus,  Professor Nagy’s description above kindly sidesteps the issue of how much Oedipus knew or not of what he did.  For at this point in the cycle of myths surrounding Oedipus, he is “blind old man”, “care worn”, exiled by his sons, cast out by his city of Thebes, doomed  to “wander, an outcast and a beggar evermore” in “filthy clothing.”  He arrives at Colonus a suburb of Athens hoping to make peace with the goddesses of vengeance who have hounded him these many years and to find a resting place.  The place he came to is described   as;

this land of fine horses you have come to earth’s fairest home, the shining Colonus. Here the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note under the trees of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy and the god’s inviolate foliage, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun, unvexed by the wind of any storm. Here the reveler Dionysus ever walks the ground,  companion of  the nymphs that nursed him. And, fed on heavenly dew, the narcissus blooms day by day with its fair clusters; it is the ancient garland of the Great Goddesses.  And the crocus blooms with a golden gleam. Nor do the ever- flowing springs diminish, from which the waters of Cephisus wander, and each day with pure  current it moves over the plains of the land’s swelling bosom, making things fertile. Nor have the choruses of the Muses shunned this place, nor Aphrodite of the golden rein. 

In addition to the shrine to the Hero Colonus, this is the home of the same goddess of vengeance Oedipus is trying to escape; the Eumenides. 

The lame old man explains to the local ruler,  King Theseus; “ I come to donate this wretched body of mine   as a gift to you   - a gift that seems not to be important when you look at it. But it has   benefits coming out from it that have more power than any form of beauty.”  Professor Nagy continual leads us in discussions about how a peaceful fallen Hero is connected to the fertility of the land in which he lays.

All the ancient tragedies were performed at a festival in Athens.  Now Sophocles is no fool.  He and his fellow playwrights wrote for the mob.  In their plays, Athens is the ideal city state, often set during the reign of the most ideal of King, Theseus.  Theseus in the plays is portrayed as heroic, righteous and almost saintly. 

The King quickly assures Oedipus of proper burial ceremonies.  So the purification ceremonies begin.  Then Oedipus’ maternal uncle (and brother-in-law) arrives;

Gentlemen, noble dwellers in this land, I see from your eyes that a sudden fear has troubled you at my coming;   but do not shrink back from me, and let no bad utterance   escape you. I am here with no thought of force; I am old, and I know that the  to which I have come is mighty, if any in Hellas has might.   No, I have been sent, aged as I am, to plead with this man to return with me to the land of Kadmos ( He means Thebes.  Cadmus is the founder of Thebes). 

To which Oedipus knowingly replies “You have come to get me, not to bring me to my home but to plant me near your borders, so that your city might escape uninjured by evils from this land”. 

At which point, the “old”, “aged” perpetual regent of Thebes makes it clear, that he is taking Oedipus home dead or alive.   How old is Creon at this point?  He is clearly a generation older than “blind old”, “care worn” Oedipus.  Creon  saw all his sister’s grandchildren grow to maturity and will shortly be the regent for his sister’s great-grandson!

Theseus saves the day, the ceremony continues, most of the celebrants (and the audience)  are sent away, “ He of the Earth Below made a thunderclap.” and theoretically Mother Earth opens and  with loving arms welcomes the weary hero home.  A messenger appears on stage shortly thereafter to tell the citizens of Athens what happen.  In describing the death scene the messenger says of Oedipus,

 “he stopped still at one place where paths were leading in many directions, ₁₅₉₃ near the Hollow Crater, which was where Theseus and Peirithoos had made their faithful covenant lasting forever.”   

The line strikes me strange because in the storyline, King Theseus and his best friend Peirithoos haven’t made this pact yet.  This is something King Theseus will do later, when he is an old man.  Many sources say around age fifty, both men found themselves bachelors again and determined that the only suitable wives would be Helen for Theseus and Persephone for Peirithoos.  Helen, not even a teenager was easily snatched up and left with Theseus’ mother for safe keeping.  Then off to Hades for Persephone.  Peirithoos never returned. By the time Theseus got home (thanks to Heracles)  the Spartans had rescued princess Helen, overthrown Theseus and sent the old man into exile.   (Fabulae 79 by Hyginus)

This is a lot of aged male characters in exile.  Oedipus at Colonus hit the stage, the year father Sophocles died.  Here is what Leonard Meullner and Gregory Nagy had to say about the playwright in lecture for 19.CD22.1x 

“ Sophocles dies in his nineties, he lives to a ripe old age -- he is so respected by his city, he did just about everything that you would ever want to be able to do in Athens. He realized all his ambitions. He was a general. He was a statesman, besides being a performer in tragedies, -the greatest master of tragedy and a performer in tragedy. He did everything. And then after he died, his people did transform him, so to speak, into a cult hero.  And he was worshipped as a cult hero.

Just as Oedipus was at Colonus.

 

 

 

 

 

TFBT: Random Notes from 6.CB22.1x

“They swarmed like bees that come forth from some hollow cave and flit in countless throng among the spring flowers, bunched in knots and clusters; even so did the mighty multitude pour from ships and tents to the assembly” (Iliad 2.88) Pretty image, I thought.

 Priam said  at Iliad 3:185 “When I was in Phrygia I saw much horsemen, the people of Otreus and of godlike Mygdon, who were camping upon the banks of the river Sangarios; I was their ally, and with them when the Amazons, peers of men, came up against them,”  Now they would have been an epic to hear!

 “There are two whom I can nowhere find, Castor breaker of horses, and Pollux  the mighty boxer; they are children of my mother, and own brothers to myself. Either they have not left Lacedaemon or else, though they have brought their ships, they will not show themselves in battle for the shame and disgrace that I have brought upon them.” She knew not that both these heroes were already lying under the earth in their own land of Lacedaemon.  (Iliad 3.236 )  I think this is one of the saddest moments in the Iliad.

 “Still, taunt me not with the gifts that golden Aphrodite has given me; they are precious; let not a man disdain them, for the gods give them where they are minded, and none can have them for the asking”  (Iliad 3:64)   Maybe that is good advice for us all.

 

  “My own three favorite cities,” answered the ox-vision goddess Hera, “are Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae. Destroy them whenever you may be displeased with them. I shall not defend them and I shall not care."(  Iliad 4:50) Was Mycenae already in ruins by the time  Homer sang of its doom?

 

 

 

TFBT: Excerpts from Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture

Honestly, I only read a sample chapter, but Marilyn B. Skinner produces some great insights.  Here are a few excerpts that caught my attention from Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture

“Pandora stands for something more than just “Woman.” In creating her, Zeus causes two sexes to exist where there was only one. This means that sexual intercourse has now become an inescapable part of human existence. Pandora is therefore a doublet of Aphrodite, whose emergence from the sea, after the forced separation of the primal parents Sky and Earth, introduces duality of the sexes into the cosmic order.” 

“Helen is to some degree a personification of epic values: she self-consciously voices the heroic perspective of the poet. When Iris, messenger of the gods, summons her to attend the single combat between Paris and Menelaus, Helen is weaving a great double-folded cloth on which are figured “the many contests the horse-taming Trojans and bronze-corseleted Achaeans had endured for her sake” (Il. 3.125–8). In this weaving project Homer has mirrored himself composing the plot of his song

“Aphrodite is portrayed as older than the other Olympian gods, for she emerges as a stimulus to union in the previous generation, immediately after the sky and the earth are forcibly separated. Her placement outside the genea- logical scheme of the Theogony indicates that she is not altogether subject to the same rules as the Olympians.”  

 “Anchises was foolish enough to let the truth slip (he’d been drinking). Zeus’ retaliatory thunderbolt disabled him for life. Long before Freud, ancient mythmakers represented castration as lameness.” 

“… in a “fallen world,” where an original harmony has been disrupted and the techniques of Aphrodite must come into play because men and women are naturally estranged from one another. We will understand why the sexes are forever alienated after we have studied Hesiod’s myth.”

TFBT: Just a Question. Did They Remember His Words?

Easter Service was gorgeous.  The kids in the brass band played great.  Pastor was on a roll.  The pews and railing were covered with quilts for charity.  Everyone wore bright colors and the sun shone through the stained-glass windows.  Here was some of the scripture:

(Luke 23:55-56) “And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulcher, and how his body was laid.  And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” (Mark 16:1-2) “And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.  And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulcher at the rising of the sun.”

I am taking an on-line course from Harvard via edX; “The Ancient Greek Hero”.   So immediately Iliad 23:184 comes to mind; “…the daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite, kept dogs from him (Hector’s body) by day alike and by night, and with oil anointed she him, rose-sweet, ambrosial”

Aphrodite’s intent was to preserve the body from further decay and damage until a proper funeral.  John 19:40 explains that when the Lord’s body was entombed they, “wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.”  Martha worries about the smell in her brother’s tomb after he’d been dead four days (John 11:39) 

So what were Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome planning to do?  How were they going to roll the rock away?  Why preserve a “buried” body that already had been decomposing for a day and a half?  Unless, unless they remembered His words, remembered how He spoke to them when He was yet in Galilee, saying, “The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”  Their reaction in scripture does not support it, but is it possible that they believed in the resurrection?  That they believed enough, hoped enough, that they wanted to preserve the body for its momentary reanimation? 

 Just a question.

TFBT: Send Me to Some Man in Phrygia or Fair Maeonia

From the ramparts of doomed Ilion Helen’s heart yearned [Iliad 3:140] after her former husband, her city, and her parents…”   Sitting with her father-in-law King Priam  she says (Iliad 3:235) “…many other glancing-eyed Achaeans whose names I could tell you, but there are two whom I can nowhere find, Castor, breaker of horses, and Polydeukes the mighty boxer; they are children of my mother, and own brothers to myself. Either they have not left Lacedaemon, or else, though they have brought their ships, they will not show themselves in battle for the shame and disgrace that I have brought upon them." She knew not that both these heroes were already lying under the earth in their own land of Lacedaemon.” 

From the city wall Priam and Helen watched the winner-take-all duel between Menelaus, Helens’ former husband and Paris (Alexander) her current husband.  It rapidly becomes clear that Paris will lose the fight. 

Just before Menelaus drags the Trojan prince into the ranks of the Achaeans, the goddess Aphrodite snatches her favorite (Paris) from the victor’s grasp.  Then she takes the form of Aethra, mother of Theseus an elderly handmaiden “of whom she (Helen) was very fond. Thus disguised she plucked her by perfumed robe and said, (Iliad 3:390] "Come here; Alexander says you are to go to the house; he is on his bed in his own room, radiant with beauty and dressed in gorgeous apparel. No one would think he had just come from fighting, but rather that he was going to a dance or had done dancing and was sitting down." 395 With these words she moved the heart of Helen to anger “   When she marked the beautiful neck of the goddess, her lovely bosom, and sparkling eyes, she marveled at her and said, "Goddess, why do you thus beguile me?  (Iliad 3:400) Are you going to send me afield still further to some man whom you have taken up in Phrygia or fair Maeonia? “

Why would Helen think;

1.     she was going to be given away again?

2.     And why to some man in Phrygia or fair Maeonia?

Why Helen assumed she would be going to Phrygia or Maeonia (Lydia) might most easily be explained by  a conversation at Iliad 18:285 “In the old-days the city of Priam was famous the whole world over for its wealth of gold and bronze, [290] but our treasures are wasted out of our houses, and much goods have been sold away to Phrygia and fair Maeonia.”  In other words everything else the Trojans had of value ended up in these two nations to support the war effort  Why not golden Helen?.   Walter Leaf (Troy: a study in Homeric geography) suggests Helen infers that Aphrodite intends to  send her to the slave markets there, but that’s not really event in the text and we know that is not the goddess’ intention.  However, Helen might have a different perspective on this issue.  We will get to her unique perspective on slave auctions shortly.  It could also be that she was referring  to Aphrodite’s claim to  being a princess from Phrygia (The Homeric hymn to Aphrodite 106)

As to why Helen assumed she was going to be given to some man again; that’s probably because that’s what happen last time someone kidnapped her.     The previous time some man kidnapped Helen it was Theseus King of Athens.  Theseus handed the underage Helen off to his mother Aethra for safe keeping and went off on other adventures.  The Sparta army led by her brothers Castor and Polydeukes defeated Athens and took  their sister home.  (Apollodorus Epitome 1.23) A few months later she was of marriageable age and all the princes of Greece gathered at Sparta plying her father with gifts in hopes of obtaining her hand.  Even if Helen got to choose her husband which seems doubtful , the whole affair could look like nothing but a fancy slave auction.

So, here stood Helen upon the windy ramparts of her current kidnapper’s capital, a white shawl across her head and shoulders.  Surely during the extensive ceremony preceding the duel, she realized her brothers were dead.  They had rescued her before.  Every Achaean prince   stood  before the city.  She would have jumped to that sad conclusion.  Next she was publicly humiliated when her cowardly kidnapper/husband fled the field of battle.  By the terms of the truce Menelaus had won.  Based on passed previous experience  she would go home with him and a few months later be given to someone else.  This hurricane of emotions might explain the anger and vehemence of her response to the goddess of beauty and why Helen assumed Aphrodite was going to “send (her) afield still further to some man whom you have taken up in Phrygia or fair Maeonia”

TFBT: Helen's Handmaiden

Aethra was there when Paris met Helen.  She was there when the sword fell from Menelaus' hand and Helen welcomed back into her bossom.  Aethra raised Helen, raised Theseus and raised her own great-grandson.  She was a princess in Greece and a slave in Asia Minor.  Like Nestor she witnessed three generations of men come and go upon the face of the other.

The story of Aethra starts as such stories often do with a woman being carried away in a chariot pulled by winged horses.  On the far left out of view are her grandfather Oenomaus and his charioteer Myrtilus in pursuit of her grandparents Pelops and Hippomada.  These sorts of contests usually don’t end well for someone.  If you wonder where Pelops charioteer is; Sphairos falls into the sea at Lesbos and drowns in route to the contest.[i]  Poseidon’s favorite; Pelops finally won with a little help advice.  Oddly the winning scheme didn't come from Aphrodite, the goddess of Love.  The ,  as it ends up, bad advice came  from Sphairos’ ghost.  Aethra’s grandparents go on to raise myriad sons.  Of particular note in Aethra’s life were her uncles Hippachlas and Trozeon along with her father Pittheous.  For a family with such a remarkable large number of boys, those sons were remarkable in their inability to raise legitimate, un-cursed male heirs.  Pittheus married his niece Alcmene (a common practice in Greek mythology). On her father’s side Alcmene was a niece of the legendary Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, tamer of the winged horse Pegasus.  

An image on a vase showing Aethra’s rescue by her grandsons show a small woman, but maybe the weight of 90 years and decades of slavery weighed upon her shoulder.  Her father was the king of Hyperea and Anthea, which he merged into a new city, called Trozeon in honor of his brother.  In later years there would be a temple to Artemis the Savior.  In this temple are altars to the gods said to rule under the earth. It is here that they say Semele was brought out of Hell by Dionysus, and that Heracles dragged up the Hound of Hell.  (Pausanias) So surely she was once a beautiful princess made more beautiful by the fact that she was her father’s sole heir.  (Her sister Henioche doesn’t seem to get mentioned much.)  As a matter of fact, Bellerphon, the hero made famous by also riding about on the winged horse Pegasus, courted and became engaged to Aethra.  But prior to the marriage he “accidently” killed a kinsman and went into exile. 

At which point along comes King Aegeus of Athens. On his way home from Delphi, he stopped at Troezen, a city southwest of Athens.  Pittheus got Aegeus drunk on unmixed wine and put him to bed with Aethra. The goddess Athena; the patroness of Athens sent Aethra a dream.  Following the instructions of Athena, Aethra left the sleeping Aegeus and waded across to the island of Sphairia that lay close to Troezen’ s shore. There she poured a libation to Cillus the charioteer of Pelops, whose real name, according to a Troezenian tradition, was Sphaerus. His tomb was shown near the town of Cilla in the neighborhood of the temple of Apollo. (Paus. v. 10. § 2; Strab. xiii. p. 613.) As though she was the eponymous nymph of the place.  Aethra bedded the sea-god Poseidon.  Still in the eponymous mode Aethra named the island Sphaera Hiera (sacred) and had a temple built there to the goddess Athena Apaturia.  She established the custom in Troezen that girls dedicated their girdles to Athena when they got married.   Now Aethra’s son was heir to the thrones of Troezen, Athens and the islands of Sphairia and Kalavria.[ii]

When the product of those unions, Theseus, reached maturity, Aethra showed him a huge rock.  It served as a primitive altar to Strong Zeus.  There the tokens his mortal father left behind were hidden; the proof of Theseus’s birthright.   At some point Aethra marries her Uncle Hippalcus.  He was one of the Argonauts.    The product of that marriage was "ox-eyed" Clymene, thus half-sister to Theseus and a distant relative to Menelaus. ^[iii] In Euripides’ Suppliants it is Aethra that intercedes on behalf of the unburied and convinces Theseus to enter the wars at Thebes on the side of righteousness. 

Aethra reappears in the mythic storyline thirty years later Theseus and his best friend Peirithous decided they needed new wives.  They decided they deserved daughters of Zeus.  On the left sans winged chariot, are the two heroes carrying off Helen daughter of Tyndareus, the most beautiful woman every born on earth.  Also in the picture is Corone, the eponymous nymph of Messenia.  For Perithous’ bride they chose Persephone, Queen of the Dead.  Clearly there was some unmixed wine involved in this decision making.  While they were gone on this expedition, Theseus handed the under-age Helen off to his mother Aethra’s care. And set them up in Ancient Aphidna, which was one of the twelve ancient towns of Attica, then ruled by earth-born Aphidnus.  Then off to Hades they went.  The involvement of Persephone once again invokes the image of a woman being carried off in a chariot drown by winged horses, these particular horses being black ones flying up out of the chasm that formed beneath the girl’s feet.  As, I said, such races don’t end up well of someone.  Theseus and Peirithous spent a lot longer time in Hades that expected.  

As Persephone spent some time in the realm of Hades, called Hades, so Helen spent time in the realm of King Aphidnus named Aphidna.  Here Aethra began her Hecate-like existence as foster-mother, companion and slave to Helen.  Just as Dionysus had Polymnus to point out the entrance to Hades in Troezen, so Helen’s brothers had Decelme to show where their sister was hidden.  When Aphidna fell her brothers brought Helen back to Sparta, with Theseus’s mother Aethra and a sister of Peirithous as slaves. Along with Aethra’s daughter Clymene.[iv]  According to Pausanias’ description of the chest of Cypselus [Pausanias 5.19.3] “Aethra, the daughter of Pittheus, lies thrown to the ground under the feet at Helen. She is clothed in black, and the inscription upon the group is an hexameter line with the addition of a single word: The sons of Tyndareus are carrying of Helen, and are dragging Aethra from Athens”

She reappears to our view when Alexander arrives at Sparta. Ovid quotes Helen says” Æthra and Clymene, my faithful companions and counselors. “ and suggests they aided in her elopement.  (P. Ovidius Naso, The Epistles of Ovid).  Aethra’s grandson Acamas and his brother  Demophoon were sent,  prior to the launch of  the “thousand ships”  to demand the surrender of Helen.  During his stay at Troy Acamas won the affection of Laodice, daughter of Priam and begot by her a son, Munitus.  Munitus was raised by his great-grandmother Aethra .[v]  Homer mentioned Aethra and Clymene accompanying Helen to the Scaean Gate [Iliad 3.139) Visit here for more on Helen. 

Pausanias’ mentioned that when Troy fell, Aethra with a shaven head, snuck to the Greek camp, and was recognized by her grandsons Demophoon and Acamas.  With his sister-in-law’s approval Agamemnon released Aethra and her daughter from bondage (Paus. x. 25.7-8)   Munitus, was killed by the bite of a snake while hunting at Olynthus in Thrace.( Parthenius of  Nicaea) while his family visited the Bisaltae on the lower reaches of the Strymon River.  Surely he too was buried with heroic honors. [vi]

Aethra and her daughter Clymene returned to Athens in triumph accompanied by Menestheus leader of the Athenians at Troy . Her grandson Acamas accepted the crown of Athens shortly thereafter.

( Corone tries to free Helen carried by Theseus. On the left side Pirithous, pot by Euthymides, 2308 Munich,  Pelops and Hippodamia from Charles Mills Gayley, The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1893) 171)

An updated version of this article can be found at Hour 25.  http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?p=12882

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i] Cillas, the charioteer of Pelops, though Troezenius gives his name as Sphaerus, died on the way to Pisa, and appeared to Pelops by night, begging that he might be duly buried. Pelops took pity on him and burnt* his body with all ceremony, raised a huge mound in his honor, and built a chapel to the Cillean Apollo near it. He also named a town after him. This dutiful attention did not go unrewarded. Cillas appeared to Pelops again, and thanked him for all he had done, and to Cillas also he is said to have owed the information by which he was able to overthrow Oenomaus in the famous chariot race which won him the hand of Hippodamia. 

 Greek and Roman Ghost Stories by Lacy Collison-Morley, St. John’s College, Oxford. 

[ii] Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 33. 1 :
"The Troezenians possess islands, one of which is near the mainland, and it is possible to wade across the channel. This was formerly called Sphairia . . . In it is the tomb of Sphairos, who, they say, was charioteer to Pelops." Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 33. 1

[iii] Homer, Iliad, 3. 144

[iv] http://anuandong.blogspot.com/2011/09/acropolis-at-athens-complete-edition-11.html

[v] Dictionary of Greek and roman biography.

[vi] Surely he was buried with heroic honors like the Argonaut Mopsus bitten by a serpent born of Medusa blood in Libya (Argonautica I, 65-68 and 1502-1536);   the Arcadian King Aepytis. He is said to have been killed during the chase on Mount Sepia by the bite of a venomous snake and mentioned by Homer ( Pausanias, viii. 4. § 4, 16. § 2), or Canopus, the helmsman of Menelaus, who on his return from Troy died in Egypt, in consequence of the bite of a snake, and was buried by Menelaus on the site of the town of Canobus, which derived its name from him. (Strab. xvii. p. 801;.)  or the child Opheltes  crushed by a serpent when his nurse looked for water and afterwards honored as Archemoros with the Nemean games.

TFBT: Proper Pray and Personal Conversations in the Iliad

Here I present examples of the proper  prayers and personal conversations styles in the epic.  The “typical structure of prayer” in epic is; the invocation of the divine, a reminder of the reciprocal obligations between the god and man and the specific request. ¹  I am under the impression there is a similar structure for personal conversation; touch, say a word, call by name and then speak.  And naturally there are examples of combining the two. 

PRAYER can most famously be illustrated by Iliad 1:33.  Apollo’s priest Chryses just failed to ransom his daughter and was summarily expelled from the Achaean camps;

·        “when he had gone apart,

·        the old man invoked Apollo by praying; "Hear me, god of the silver bow,”

·        reminded Loxias of their relationship with a “if ever I roofed over a temple to your pleasing, or if ever I burned to you fat thigh-pieces of bulls and goats,”

·        then requested specifically “fulfill this prayer for me: let the Danaans pay for my tears by your arrows." 

Many of the twenty prayers in the Iliad listed by Ian Johnston²  are performed similarly.  For example, Tenth book starting at line 227 when Odysseus and Diomedes depart on their night mission.

·        they went their way and left there all the chieftains.

·        Odysseus invokes” Child of aegis-bearing Zeus, untiring goddess, hear me.

·        Reminds her of their relationship, “You’ve always stood  beside me in all sorts of troubles. I don’t move without you watching me.

·        Then requests, “Grant that we two come back to the ships
covered in glory, “

Likewise Diomedes,  

·        Invoked  “Child of Zeus, invincible goddess, hear me.”

·        Requests “Stand by me…”

·        And then reminds  her of her affection and relationship his family ”as you did my father, lord Tydeus, at Thebes, …       and I’ll sacrifice to you an unbroken yearling ox with a broad head.”  (Often the prayer of prayers mentioned mutual obligations of the past and promises of favors to come on the part the prayer.) 

PERSONAL CONVERSATION style  involving touch;  say a word, call by name and then speak,   might best be demonstrated with Iliad 1:347 where a distraught Achilles is comforted by his mother Thetis.  Achilles:

·        “withdrew apart from his comrades, and sat down on the shore of the grey sea,”

·        His mother Thetis “stroked him with her hand,”

·        “and spoke to him,”

·        and “called him by name:”

·        Then spoke, "My child, why do you weep?" 

Another conversation that surprising follows the convention for personal conversation rather than prayer can be found in Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo around line 300³ 

·        Hera “went apart from the gods, being very angry.”

·        She said some words, that is “Hera prayed,

·        She touched the goddess Gaia by “striking the ground flatwise with her hand”,

·        Called “ Gaia and wide Uranus above, and you Titans who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus,

·        She requested; “grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength--nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus as all-seeing Zeus than Cronus.”

Notice the lack of claim to relationship or promise of favors as in a prayer.

PERSONAL CONVERSATIONS AS PRAYERS is a style of conversation in the Iliad that continues to follow the formula above; usually, when the approaching party needs something from the other.  For example in Iliad 14.222 after lying to Aphrodite something awful and using neither formula;

·        “Hera darted down and left the peak of Olympus;”

·        “she clasped him by the hand,”

·        “and spake”

·        “and addressed him: "Sleep, lord of all gods and of all men” 

At which point a standard use of another’s name became an invocations and the conversations continued in the tradition of prayer,

·        Hera created a relationship between herself and the son of Night by stating, “ if ever thou didst hearken to word of mine, so do thou even now obey,  and I will owe thee thanks all my days.” (“And gifts will I give thee,”)

·        Then asks specifically  “Lull me to sleep the bright eyes of Zeus” 

Thetis uses a similar formula when asking of Zeus the favor that her son Achilles never quite finished formally;  Iliad 1.493

·        she found the far-seeing son of Cronus sitting apart from the rest upon the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus.

·        So she sat down before him, and clasped his knees with her left hand, while with her right she touched him beneath the chin,

·        and she spoke in prayer to king Zeus, son of Cronus:

·        called his name or invoked him, "Father Zeus,

·        reminded him of their relationship, “if ever amid the immortals I gave you aid by word or deed”  An understatement if ever there was one considering she rescued him when bound by the other gods.. 

·        “grant me this prayer: do honor to my son, who is doomed to a speedy death beyond all other men; yet now Agamemnon, king of men, has dishonored him, for he has taken and keeps his prize by his own arrogant act. But honor him, Olympian Zeus, lord of counsel; and give might to the Trojans, until the Achaeans do honor to my son, and magnify him with recompense." 

King Priam uses the same personal conversation turned prayer strategy at Iliad 24.468;

·        “he found Achilles, but his comrades sat apart”

      ·        “clasped in his hands his knees, and kissed his hands, the terrible, man-slaying hands that had slain his many sons. “
At this point formula for conversation or prayer would require the calling or invoking of the name of Peleus’ son.  Doomed and heartbroken, Priam might be forgiven his inability to say that terrible name.   He moves onto to the prayer formula.
     ·        He says "Remember thy father, O Achilles like to the gods, whose years are even as mine, on the grievous threshold of old age”.  Which we might understand as in “If ever you remember your father…”  Priam tries and affectively creates a relationship between Achilles a man who will never again embrace his father and the Priam who will never know his son’s embrace again. “and I bear with me ransom past counting”
     ·        He states his specific need  “I now come to the ships of the Achaeans to win him back from thee”  

I should mention that in my experience since working on this paper that all three styles of speaking in the Iliad are also affective in modern life. 

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¹        Laura Slatkin The Power of Thetis page 62, speaking on Meullner Meaning of the Homeric EYXOMAI 

²       Speakers and Speeches in Homer’s Iliad   by Ian Johnston http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/speeches.htm

³           trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.