As the tourist season was now getting under way the hotel was already half full, and among the guests there was a number of Americans. After dinner that evening, Robbie secured a table in the lounge while Stephanie went to her room to get a book. An elderly American with horn-rimmed spectacles paused beside his table and, giving him a friendly but rather worried smile, said in a rich, Southern voice:
‘Bad business this about our submarine, isn’t it?’
Robbie smiled back, but shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen a paper for some days, so I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Don’t you now!’ The American raised a pair of bushy eyebrows in surprise. ‘Well, one of our latest atomic subs has got herself cornered under the ice in a bay up on the Arctic coast of Russia, somewhere near Murmansk.’
‘Really; what bad luck,’ Robbie commented.
‘It certainly is. The Russians are accusing us of sending her up there on a spying mission. They’ve named their price for letting her out—that we should surrender her and her crew.’
‘What, with all your latest nuclear stuff in her?’
‘That’s it,’ the American nodded glumly. ‘And I don’t see the President agreeing to that. This looks pretty bad to me. Maybe it’s just one more threat to peace that will come to nothing; but if things do blow up I don’t want to be caught here. If the news isn’t better tomorrow morning, I think I’ll telephone Athens to fix me a seat on the next plane home.’
18
The Amateur Photographer
John Foster Dulles’s ostrich-like mentality had forced the West into playing the dangerous game of Brinkmanship instead of attempting to bring about world disarmament in the days when the United States’s superiority in nuclear weapons might well have induced the Russians to listen to reason. This had resulted, ever since Robbie’s early teens, in periodic crises that had threatened to usher in a Third World War. Therefore, Robbie took no serious notice of the elderly American’s fears that this new cause for friction between the Soviet Union and the United States might develop into the blotting-out of all the major cities of Europe. In fact, on the following morning, while he was dressing to set off with Stephanie for an early visit to Mycenae, he never gave it a thought.
By arrangement, they picked up a private guide outside the Tourist Office at the end of the town and soon covered the twenty-odd kilometres up the slope to the prehistoric capital of Greece. It had once covered a considerable area, but the visible remains were concentrated in three places not very far apart: the Acropolis on the crown of the hill, which contained the palace; the royal burial ground with its adjacent courts some way down the slope and, still lower down, the famous beehive tombs.
As they arrived there by a quarter to nine, they had the place to themselves with little likelihood of coachloads of people on conducted tours arriving for over an hour and a half; so they took their time going round the Acropolis. There was no Temple there with standing pillars so Stephanie found it disappointing, and Robbie was soon irritated by their little guide reeling off facts and figures in parrot fashion. Although he had never before been to Mycenae, he knew so much about the place that he felt he could have done the job better himself.
On the lower level, the famous Lion Gate and the cyclopean walls, similar to those at Tiryns, forming courts and narrow passages, were impressive. It was intriguing to think of the vast fortune that had remained undiscovered for so many centuries in the oblong graves which pitted the stoneflanked circular enclosure that had formed the burial ground. But it was several hundred yards away down the slope that the most remarkable survival of Mycenaean building was to be seen.
This consisted of a great underground chamber, known as the Treasury of Atreus. It is a perfectly symmetrical hollow cone, over forty-five feet in diameter at its base and gradually narrowing in a graceful curve up to a small circular slab over forty feet above floor level. The inner surface of every stone in its walls is curved, and their courses are graduated from big blocks at the bottom to small ones at the top. Between there is no cement, yet there is not enough space to put the blade of a knife. The chamber is reached by a broad, deep corridor, having cyclopean walls, and the lintel stone above the seventeen-foot-high doorway is said to weigh one hundred and twenty tons.
Their guide said that no one knew how, with only human labour, it could ever have been got into position. Robbie could have told him. It had been dragged up a ramp, then rocked into place, in the same way as the Egyptians had built the Pyramids; but that did not detract from his admiration for the wonderful craftsmanship of those ancient people.
Just below the steep entrance to the Acropolis, there was a similar, though smaller, underground chamber called the Tomb of Clytemnestra and, as they walked back to their car, Stephanie asked why it was that Agamemnon should have been buried in the Royal Cemetery but his Queen outside it.
‘She was a bad woman,’ the guide replied. ‘She murdered her husband; so, when she died, the people would not agree to her being buried in the Acropolis.’
As they had breakfasted early, they had brought biscuits, fruit and drinks with them. Leaving the guide by the car, they found a comfortable bank nearby and sat down to their ‘elevenses’. When Stephanie had unpacked the basket, she said:
‘What rotten luck for Agamemnon that, having survived ten years of fighting outside Troy, he should have been murdered.’
Robbie nodded. ‘Yes; and when he got back, he didn’t enjoy even one night in his old home. His cousin, Aegisthus, was the fly in the ointment although Clytemnestra played the part of a Lady Macbeth. She never forgave Agamemnon for being the cause of her losing her eldest daughter, Iphigenia, and no sooner had he sailed for Troy than she took Aegisthus for what old-fashioned authors call her “paramour”.
‘After a while, they gave out that they’d had news from Troy and that Agamemnon had copped it; so they could live together openly as man and wife, and they ruled the kingdom between them. The ten years went by, then they had secret intelligence that Troy had fallen and that Agamemnon was on his way home.
‘Some of the Heroes never got home, and others had very rough trips. Odysseus took years and years, because Poseidon had a grudge against him and kept on wrecking his ship in places where he had all sorts of terrifying adventures; but that’s another story. Agamemnon was not delayed for very long, and as his wife had arranged for a chain of beacons to be lit as soon as his ship was sighted she had ample warning of his coming.
‘His people were delighted when they learned that he wasn’t dead after all, and the two younger children he had had by Clytemnestra, a girl named Electra and a boy named Orestes, gave him a terrific welcome. Clytemnestra, too, pretended to be overjoyed to see him; but Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, whom Agamemnon had brought with him, threw a fit. You may remember that she had the gift of foreseeing the future, and she implored him not to go into the palace. But Apollo had decreed that no one should ever believe her prophecies, so Agamemnon ignored her warning.
‘Everyone was bustling about preparing a huge banquet, and Agamemnon said that he would first like a bath. As soon as he was in it, Clytemnestra came into the bathroom with a big openwork woollen blanket made like a net. She chucked it over his head, and when he tried to push it off his hands got entangled in it. Then out popped her boy friend Aegisthus from behind a curtain. He was armed with a battle-axe and he sliced poor old Agamemnon to pieces with it, so that the water in the big silver bath turned scarlet with his blood.’
‘What a horrible business. Did the people rise up and kill them?’
‘No, they got away with it; at least, for some years. But Agamemnon’s children avenged his death later on. Apparently Clytemnestra hated her younger daughter, Electra, and made her into a sort of Cinderella; but she was a good girl and very attached to her brother Orestes, who was only about twelve at the time. She found out that Aegisthus was planning to do a “Princes in the Tower” act on Orestes—’
‘Who were the P
rinces in the Tower?’ Stephanie interrupted to ask.
Robbie smiled. ‘I forgot you might not know. They were two young English Princes who were believed to have been murdered by their wicked uncle. Anyhow, when Electra learned that Aegisthus intended to do Orestes in, so that he could not grow up and claim the throne, she managed to have him smuggled out and away to Phocis, where King Strophius gave him a home.
‘Orestes and King Strophius’s son, Pylades, became terrific buddies and when they reached “man’s estate”, as the saying is, they decided to take a trip to Mycenae. Of course, they went in disguise and with them they took an urn containing wood ash. On their arrival they went to pay their respects at Agamemnon’s grave, and there they found Electra putting flowers on it.
‘She didn’t recognise Orestes; so he told her that they had come from Phocis, that Orestes was dead and that they had brought his ashes to be buried in the family vault. She was frightfully upset; so Orestes then told her the truth, and when she had dried her tears she took the two chaps into the palace.
‘Producing the urn, Orestes told the same yarn to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. They were so pleased to hear that they no longer need fear Orestes turning up one fine morning with an army at his back, that they got up from the cellar a special bottle for their guests. No sooner was the butler out of the way than Pylades pulled a knife out of his stocking and stuck it into Aegisthus’s middle and Orestes, only pausing to tell his mama who he was, did the same to her.’
Stephanie frowned, ‘Whatever she had done, it was a terrible thing to kill his own mother.’
‘Yes; that’s just what his people thought. They were glad to be rid of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, but scared stiff that the gods would show what they, too, thought of Orestes’ deed, by putting a curse on the country. None of them would even sit down to a cut off the joint with him. In fact, some of them actually suggested stoning him to death; but their priests said the gods would not take it out of them provided they drove him out of the country.
‘By then the thought of what he had done was giving him awful nightmares and daily fits of the staggers; so, seeing that he was in such poor shape, his sister and his faithful friend went into exile with him. Apollo then appeared to him in a dream and told him that he must dree his weird for a year in the forests of Arcadia.’
‘What is one’s “weird” and how does one dree it?’ Stephanie asked.
‘I gather it means traipsing around with everyone hating you on sight, and being haunted by every sort of bugaboo. Anyhow that’s what happened to Orestes, and Electra and Pylades didn’t fare much better. They got married; but they couldn’t have had much of a honeymoon, living like gipsies in the woods and watching Orestes gradually going crackers. The Furies made the poor chap’s life such hell that he seriously considered doing himself in, but before taking the plunge he thought he would try begging Apollo to let up and call off his tormentors.
‘Apollo told him that if he could get back a statue of Artemis that had been carried off by a barbarous people called the Taurians, who lived up in the Crimea, the gods would call a Council to consider his case and perhaps give him a new deal. So he and Pylades got hold of a galley manned by fifty oarsmen from somewhere and set out for the Black Sea.
‘Barbarous people are always scared that strange gods may do them a mischief if they are not polite to them, and to keep Artemis in a good humour the Taurians had built a little temple to house her statue. This temple was not far from the shore, so when Orestes and Pylades reached Tauris and landed to have a snoop round they soon came upon it. But their luck was out that night. They were caught by the guards and lugged before the priestess, whose job it was to sacrifice any foreigner turning up in those parts.
‘Now you may remember that when Iphigenia was about to be sacrificed, Artemis had relented at the last moment and whipped her up to the heavens. But instead of keeping her there, as everyone had believed to be the case, she had promptly dumped her down in Tauris to act as priestess to the stolen statue.
‘Of course, Iphigenia didn’t much care for her job of slitting castaways’ throats, and was longing to get back to her family in Greece. When the two young prisoners told her they were Greeks she was particularly put out at the thought of having to kill them, so she said:
“Look, chaps, the horrid hairy man who is King here is not altogether a bad sort. When there are several shipwrecked mariners for me to do my stuff on, he sometimes lets me beg a few of them off. But it’s sure as that Zeus made little apples that he won’t agree to let both of you beat the rap. Of course Artemis loathes these human sacrifices, but the King can’t get it out of his head that unless I spill some blood on her altar now and again she may come after him one night with a carving knife. So I can save one of you, but not both. Now, which is it to be?”
‘Being frightfully loyal types the friends naturally said to one another: “My dear old boy, what a splendid break. I’m so glad for you. As for me, not to worry. I’ve always wanted to die by having my throat slit. In fact, I’ve been hoping that would happen to me for years.”
‘Hearing all this, Iphigenia got the idea that neither of them was telling the truth but just putting on the sort of act that two Englishmen would have done when dressed in boiled shirts and threatened by cannibals in the jungles of darkest Africa.’
‘Wouldn’t that have been a bit after Iphigenia’s time?’ Stephanie remarked.
Robbie grinned. ‘Yes, I suppose it would. But you know the sort of thing I mean. And being the “whitest girl that anyone ever knew”, Iphigenia felt that these chaps were just up her street; so she became more than ever reluctant to do either of them in.
‘To put off the evil hour she asked them about themselves, and it then emerged that Orestes was the kid brother that she hadn’t seen since he was two years old. She didn’t let on for the moment who she was but pretended to be very tough and had them thrown into a dungeon to await slaughter.
‘That evening she went to see the hairy King, and said to him: “Sire, I find myself in a bit of a fix. A couple of young Greeks have been cast ashore and I couldn’t be more anxious to give them the works, but my goddess has tipped me off that they are criminals of the deepest dye. Unless they are purified first they will pollute her altar and she would be so annoyed that she might even cause your beard to drop out.”
‘The King clutched his face fungus and asked: “What’s the drill then? You’ll be for the high jump yourself unless you can get me out of this.”
‘“I can sort it for you,” Iphigenia reassured him. “Both these thugs and the statue of the goddess must be dipped in the sea. That will wash their sins away; then I’ll be able to stick a knife in their gullets without fear of any unpleasant after-effects.”
‘“Go to it, then,” said the King, “and good luck to you.”
‘But he must have been a very trusting type, as later that night Iphigenia was allowed to lead both the prisoners from their cell with only a dog leash attached to their wrists and no escort. What is more, they took the wooden statue of Artemis with them.
‘Orestes had left his galley with its fifty oarsmen hidden behind a headland, so all they had to do was to go aboard her and get the crew to row like hell for Greece. The King’s coastguards told him what was doing, so he sent his fleet after them; but Artemis was very pleased with her own people, so she got her brother Apollo to put up the sun an hour or so early that day and it blinded the pursuers.
‘When they got the statue back to Greece it was set up in Athens so that it could be duly honoured by Artemis’s worshippers. Then, the year being up, a Council of the Gods was called to assemble on the Areopagus there and judge Orestes. It is rather interesting that they should have used white stones and black stones in their ballot, just as a committee do when voting whether to receive or reject a candidate who has been put up for membership of a modern club; although in their case it had to be a majority of black balls to exclude. At the count the whites and the blacks came out even
, but suddenly Athene winged her way down to the meeting and threw a white ball into the urn.
‘That saved Orestes and gave him a new lease of life. He returned to Mycenae and, suddenly, everybody there became frightfully pleased to see him. Then he married Hermione, the beautiful daughter of Helen and Menelaus, that Helen had borne before skipping off with Paris to Troy. So Orestes and Hermione and Pylades and Electra lived happily ever after.’
Stephanie sighed. ‘How pleasant it is to think that at least a few of the ancients escaped from some frightful fate decreed for them by the gods.’
They were back at Navplion in time for a bathe before lunch and slept in the afternoon. In the early evening Stephanie gave Robbie another driving lesson. At dinner that night he noticed at a table on the other side of the room the elderly American who had spoken to him the previous evening of getting an air-passage home. As he had not, after all, left for Athens that morning, Robbie assumed that the situation with regard to the trapped submarine had not deteriorated. Then he again forgot all about it.
The next four days went all too quickly. On two occasions, Stephanie half-heartedly suggested that she ought to make a start on typing Robbie’s manuscript; but he knew that if she did, he would have to leave her to it, and he took such delight in her company that he assured her that there would be plenty of time later for typing it.
Besides, there seemed so many things to do. One day, they drove the twenty miles across the isthmus to Epidauros. It had been the Greek equivalent of Bath, and the Greeks of classical times had gone there in their thousands for treatment by the priests of the healer-god, Asclepius. There were no cyclópean walls, but the ruins of the great temple to the god, of the rotunda and of other buildings still standing were sufficient to give a good idea of what this famous spa of a later age must have looked like. Above all, there was its theatre. It was the best-preserved of any in the ancient world and so cleverly constructed that no modern auditorium could equal the perfection of its acoustics.
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