Helen of Troy

by Jack Lindsay

  To examine fully the nature of the double-axe would carry us too far on a complex inquiry; but it is relevant to note that the Lydian term labrys, glossed pelekys, double-edged axe, seems certainly connected with labyrinthos, a word belonging to the group of place-names with suffixes -nth-, -rn, -mn-, -nd-, also perhaps -ss- (Attic -tt-) and -nt-, which come from a single linguistic system — not Greek, but roughly classifiable as Anatolian.

  Among the place-names are Corinthos, Tirynthos (Tiryns), Parnassos, Hymettos, Assos, Knossos, Labraundos, Halikarnassos. It has been conjectured that -inth- means ‘place of’. The Labyrinth would be the Place of the Labrys, a sacral symbol: not a weapon, but a fetish of the thunderbolt conceived as the fertilizing force of the rainstorm. The Caves of the Mother, where the sacred marriage was consummated and the divine Child born, would be the womb-clefts both caused and fertilized by the thunderbolt. The Labyrinth would originally have signified the sacred Vulva-Cave conceived in terms of action and movement, the spirals of copulation and birth, the dance pattern expressing the successful passage in and out of the Cave. This interpretation is helped by the presence of votive double-axes in the Cretan sacred caves, for example, the miniature gold and silver axes found in a cave at Arkalochori in central Crete. That such axes look like a pair of wings on either side of the staff would perhaps help to strengthen the symbolism. Only in a secondary sense would Place-of-the-Labrys refer to the Palace of Knossos.

  Some coins of Lykia and Karia, which have been seen as illustrating the myth of Myrrha, show the double-axe in connection with the sacred tree marriage, though no bird is present. They depict a large tree with men dancing around it, wearing Phrygian caps and swinging double-axes; at times there is a female form inside the tree, and two snakes seem to guard her and her tree, on either side. The scene has generally been taken as showing an attack on the tree by the axe-men; but it is far more likely that we see a ritual dance in honour of the tree-goddess in epiphany with her snakes. The moment would be that of the spring bursting out of greenery, the Aischylean moment of mating Sky and Earth. It is perhaps worth noting that in a late magical gem we see the three Graces, the outer ones holding garlands, under Kybele enthroned with thunderbolt and bird-tipped sceptre.[380]

  Where the myth of Nemesis is unusual is that it depicts both the god, Zeus, and the woman whom he ravishes, as assuming bird-forms during the copulation.

  We may add here a ritual myth of Zeus and Hera, which helps to bring together the imagery of the goddess in the tree, the bird in the tree, and the tree itself as the goddess. At Stymphalos Pausanias heard that Temenos, son of Pelasgos, had reared Hera and in an older foundation had set up three sanctuaries for her, giving her three surnames: Girl or Pais, Teleia on her marriage with Zeus, and Widow, Chera, ‘when for some cause or other she quarrelled with Zeus and came back to Stymphalos’. (Widow must refer to a phase such as that of the sorrowing Demeter the forlorn earth of winter; the three phases may represent birth, marriage, death.) At Plataia, however, Pausanias found an image of Hera called the Bride or Nymph (Nympheuomenē), and a different story of her leaving Zeus. Angry with him for some reason, she withdrew to Euboia; Zeus tried vainly to change her mind, then visited Kithairon, ‘at that time lord over Plataia and surpassing all men in cleverness. He bade Zeus make a wooden image and carry it all wrapped up in a bullock-wagon, giving out that he was celebrating his marriage with Plataia, daughter of Asopos.’ Hera at once heard the news and promptly arrived on the scene. But when she neared the wagon and tore the dress from the image, she was amused at the trick and was reconciled with Zeus. The reconciliation was commemorated in the festival Daidala (because old images were so called) held every six years ‘according to a local guide, but actually at a shorter interval’. Pausanias wanted to work out the system but failed. Not far from Alalkomenai is a Grove of Oaks with the largest trunks in Boiotia. Here the Boiotians lay out portions of boiled flesh and watch the crows that flock along, then mark the tree where a crow settles with its meat; they cut down this tree and make the image of it. The Plataian feast is the Little Daidala, but the Great Daidala is shared by all the Boiotians and is held ‘at intervals of fifty-nine years: for once the Plataians, in exile, could not hold it for that length of time.’ Fourteen wooden images are made, and lots are cast for them by the Plataians, Koronaians, Thespians, Tanagraians, Chaironeans, Orchomeneans, Lebadeans, Thebans. Smaller towns pool resources for images. They take each image to Asopos, put it on a wagon together with a bridesmaid, and again cast lots, for positions in the procession. They drive from the river to the top of Mt Kithairon. There an altar has been prepared out of quadrangular pieces of wood (as if the edifice were of stone); brushwood is put on it; the cities with their magistrates each sacrifice a cow to Hera and a bull to Zeus, ‘burning on the altar the victims full of wine and incense along with the daidala. Rich persons sacrifice individually what they wish; the less wealthy, the smaller cattle.’ Victims and altar both burn. ‘I know of no fire so lofty or seen so far.’ Below the peak is the Cave of the Kithaironian Nymphs, named Sphragidion (from sphragis, seal); ‘the story runs that of old the nymphs gave oracles there.’

  Here we clearly have a very ancient and important sacred marriage, which drew together a wide region. An oak-bride played the main role, with a bird as mantic guide. (The Koronaians were, by the way, People of Crow-town.) Perhaps once the crow was the incarnation or form of the mating god, as the sparrow or swan of Zeus in the other stories.

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  We now turn to Nemesis in her own right. We have seen that there is no proof as to whether she or Leda was originally the mother of Helen, and that, as far as the egg-birth is concerned, there is good reason for giving the primacy to Nemesis. Scholars have too often seen Nemesis as primarily a moral personification, a goddess of retaliation, who gained her prestige in the fifth century for political reasons. ‘About sixty stades from Marathon, as you go along the sea-road to Oropos, stands Rhamnous. The dwelling-houses are on the coast, but a short way inland is a sanctuary of Nemesis, the deity most implacable to men of hybris [wanton violence or pride]. Her wrath is thought to have fallen on the foreigners [Persians] who landed at Marathon. Sure in their pride that nothing stood in their way for capturing Athens, they were taking along a piece of Parian marble to be made into a trophy, convinced that their task was already completed.’ Of this marble the Greeks, after defeating the Persians, made the statue of Nemesis.[381]

  Such an avenging Nemesis was indeed the mother of the destroying Helen depicted by Aischylos, man of Marathon. But in fact the goddess, like Helen, was an ancient vegetation deity, with cults at both Rhamnous and Smyrna. Legends made her an old queen of Rhamnous, gaining her position from her son Erechtheus, king of Athens, to whom the introduction of Athena’s cult was attributed. She was also linked with Themis, whose role in the Cypria we discussed. A statue dedicated to Themis in the third century has been found in the lesser shrine at Rhamnous; also two dedications of seats were made in the fourth century to Nemesis and Themis, at the time of Kallisto, priestess of Nemesis, and Philostratē, priestess of Themis. At Smyrna there was no Themis, but Nemesis had a dual form.

  We have already glanced at the Rhamnousian cult-statue. Of it Pausanias says: ‘On her head is a crown with deer and small images of Victory; in her left hand she holds an apple bough, in her right a cup on which are wrought Aithiopians.’ He then attacks those who think these folk are shown because they lived near Okeanos and Nemesis was an Okeanid. (Perhaps they stood for blameless persons who had nothing to fear from Nemesis; the sculptor seems doing his best to synthesize the cult without fully understanding it.) Pausanias then adds that no early statue of the goddess had wings, and describes the relief in which Leda brings Helen to Nemesis. The bough (on which we may assume apples or an apple to hang) suggests Aphrodite; but as we saw, the apple in archaic times had a wide reference. The sculptor may have taken the detail from an early wooden statue in the shrine. There was a Demeter Malophoros at Megara, but as m
elon was used both for sheep and for apple, the meaning of the epithet is not sure. Pausanias thought it referred to sheep; but he may well have been wrong. At Selinos in Sicily, colonized by Megareans, there was the cult of a goddess simply called Malophoros, who seems certainly a giver of fruits. Many clay apples and pomegranates have been found in her precinct, as well as at other sanctuaries (Samos and Lindos). At Selinos Malophoros was linked with a younger goddess, perhaps called Pasikrateia, who had underworld links; in later strata of the site (in the section belonging to Malophoros) figures have been excavated showing Persephone with polos, torch, and piglet.[382]

  An apple or pomegranate seems enough to define Helen in late art on sarcophagi, for instance at Kephissia. The image of the apple-offering goddess of love was spread all over the Near East. So we may say that while Aphrodite offers the apple of sexual joy and fulfilment, Eve is a surrogate offering the apple of temptation and sin. The apple in Greek myth, however, ends up with an ambivalent quality: for while it stands for the good fruits of the earth, and then for sensuous beauty and enjoyment, in the story of Helen it brings disaster upon mankind. The problem is posed how to use the apple rightly. Nemesis with her apple also has the ambivalent value of Helen. As nature-goddess, she offers the fruits of the earth like Demeter; as an avenging force, she warns against the misuse of the apple. Not that any such duality of meanings was intended by the sculptor; it was something that emerged willy-nilly out of the cult’s development.[383]

  The legend of Atalanta deserves a glance. Exposed and then reared by a she-bear, she became a huntress of the wilds. She was exposed by a spring and mouth of a cave, and she herself caused a spring near Kyphanta by striking a rock with her spear. She was reconciled with her father, who imposed a bridal ordeal. The suitor had to compete with her in a foot-race; if he failed, she shot him with her arrows. Many failed, but Melanion (Apple-man) won her by dropping in turn three gold apples which Aphrodite had given him, apples from the Hesperides, which were later taken back to the Garden by Athena.[384] Atalanta stops to pick up the apples and loses the race. But we also hear that they came from the garland of Dionysos. Anyhow, they exercise an irresistible love-spell on the girl as she runs naked. She and Melanion slip off into the forest and mate in a sanctuary of the Great Mother (also called the Great Artemis). We may compare the Lucus Nemoriensis by Lake Nemi, to which Artemis carried off her beloved Hippolytos; there in later days hunters used to bring her as offering a branch with apples hanging on it.

  Melanion may originally have won the girl by merely offering an apple. In one version Atalanta took to the wilds to keep her virgin independence and Melanion seems her counterpart. ‘Once upon a time lived a lad, Melanion was his name,’ sings Aristophanes. ‘He didn’t want to marry, so to the wilds he came, and he lived there on the mountain and he hunted after hares, and he kept a dog as well and he plaited crafty snares; and home again he would not go.’ He thus had affinities with Daphnis and Paris. Parthenios, following Timaios, says of Daphnis: ‘He never went down from the mountains to associate with the common run of men, but winter and summer lived out on Aitna, tending his cattle.’ Euripides in Andromache speaks of the three goddesses coming to the cottage of Paris, the young recluse, monotropos.[385] (The man living alone in the wilds with a nymph or spirit-bride has a shamanist character, though in myth no doubt he represents the initiate in his secluded withdrawal.) Melanion with his apple thrown or held out to Atalanta indeed suggests Paris. Turn the single nymph into a triad, and we have the raw material of Paris and the three goddesses.

  The apple seems in fact to have been a prize in early contests, for example at the Olympic Games. Phlegon of Tralles, a contemporary of Pausanias, says that in the Sixth Olympiad Iphitos consulted the Delphic oracle and was told to make the prize, not the fruit of the apple, but the wild olive ‘now wreathed in the light web of the spider’. (After what we have learned about the spirit-thread of guidance, which, especially in Africa, appears as a cosmic spiderweb linking earth and heaven, we can perhaps understand this oracle in a new way.) It seems then that the Apple of the Earthmother was replaced by the Olive of Athena in the Seventh Olympiad, when the first victor to be olive-crowned was the foot-race winner. It has been suggested that the change came about when the race of young men was combined with that of the maidens, at the introduction of the sun-and-moon calendar, and the men’s games were assimilated as much as possible to those of the girls.[386]

  As for the figures on the crown of Nemesis that Pausanias calls Victories, with the tale of Marathon in his mind, they may well have been really Graces, who were certainly associated with the cult at Smyrna. The cup or bowl may be connected with the vegetation-cult, since in it first fruits could be offered: as we see from the second and third statues of a group of three found in the smaller temple. The second shows a priestess of Nemesis with her name on the pedestal, Aristonoē: she holds a bowl in her left hand. The third shows a boy with uplifted arm; the hands are missing, but the right one may have held a bowl: a firstfruit offering by Lysikles. The stags may be merely decorative, but more likely express a link with Artemis. As for the cult-statue, a silver coin of Paphos is thought to give the type: a woman in a long chiton and a peplos fastened on shoulder with a griffin-headed fibula; in her left hand is branch, on her right a phiale.[387]

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  At Smyrna the cult seems dependent on that of Attika.[388] In a movement from Asia Minor to Greece, a more important town than Rhamnous would have been chosen; we may assume that early Ionian migrants took the goddess eastward. Aristeides paid tribute to the antiquity of the cult, which certainly existed when Alyattes, about 580 BC, destroyed Smyrna; this antiquity has indeed made some scholars argue unnecessarily for an eastern origin. The sculptor Boupalos, of the Chian school, made the golden Graces above the image; and Pausanias says that only later images here showed Nemesis with wings. But she was given a dual form. Pausanias tells how she, or rather they, appeared under a planetree to Alexander the Great asleep after a hard hunt; they bade him found a city nearby and transfer people to it from Smyrna. Following the Klaros oracle, which promised blessings to the inhabitants of Pagos ‘beyond the sacred Meles’, the Smyrnaians obeyed, and thereafter had two Nemeseis. It is easy to assume the duality arose from the new foundation which split the townsfolk into two; but that is unlikely. The dual form must have roots in the early attitudes we discussed; it brings out the link of Nemesis with Nymphs or Graces. A relief at Thasos has the triadic form; it occurs also at Halikarnassos, Antiocheia, Panamara; and the multiplication of form occurs in popular belief, in writings like the magical papyri. The dream-tale must have been invented to explain an old custom, the origin of which had been lost. Several other attempts have been made to explain the duality: it arose from twin peaks called the Two Brothers, it expressed the good and evil types of retribution, it represented the union of Greek Nemesis and an Asianic deity. But all such explanations are misconceived.[389]

  Especially in later phases the cult showed a strong syncretising trend; Nemesis took over the attributions of others, most of all in Smyrna and Alexandreia, and conflation with Fate and Fortune gave her the Wheel of the City-Tyche. Any goddess of the nature-cults was liable to be multiplied, even Themis, who early became a rather abstract figure. At Troizen, ‘not far from Artemis Lykaia are altars close to one another. The first is to Dionysos, surnamed after an oracle Soates [Saviour], the second is called the Altar of the Themistes, and was dedicated, they say, by Pitteus.’

  A Helen-Nemesis appears on magical gems. Thus we see the goddess holding the bridles of two horsemen, Dioskouroi, who brandish overhead hammer or sickle-sword and who trample two naked bodies stretched on the ground with feet towards the goddess. Behind each horse is a woman with hand to mouth in salutation, a serpent rearing at her back. Over Helen-Nemesis is a bird, probably a crow, with head turned back, surrounded by four stars and busts of sun and moon. Mithraic elements seem here to have merged with the Dioskouric cult. We also find Nemesis joined
with Hekate in similar scenes.[390] She was further related to Aphrodite and Artemis. At Patrai in Achaia she stood side by side with Aphrodite in colossal white marble. Isokrates says that it was Aphrodite who helped Zeus to gain Nemesis by changing herself into an eagle and pretending to chase him into Nemesis’ lap. In later times both Nemesis and Aphrodite had the epithet Ourania, Heavenly.[391] Nemesis’ association with the Graces may well have been helped by the atmosphere of Smyrna; Aristeides refers symbolically to the city’s culture as ‘Choruses of Muses and Graces’, speaks of Choruses of Nymphs and Muses, and apostrophizes the place as ‘the Woven Robe of Nymphs and Graces’.