by Stephen Fry
‘Now, all you have to do is roll that boulder up the slope. When you reach the top, that hole will slide open. You will be able to climb out and live for ever as the immortal King Sisyphus. Thanatos will never visit you again.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it,’ said Hermes. ‘Of course, if you don’t like the idea I can take you to Elysium, where you will spend a blissful eternity in the company of other souls of the virtuous departed. But if you choose the stone you must keep trying until you have succeeded and won your freedom and immortality. Make your choice. An idyllic afterlife down here or a shot at immortality above.’
Sisyphus examined the boulder. It was bulky, but not colossally so. The slope was steep, but not precipitously. Forty-five degrees of gradient, but no more. So. An eternity skipping though the fields of Elysium with the dull and well behaved or eternity up above in the real world of fun, filth, frolic and frenzy?
‘No tricks?’
‘No tricks, no pressure,’ said Hermes, putting his hand on Sisyphus’s shoulder and flashing his most dazzling smile. ‘Your choice.’
You know the rest. Sisyphus put his shoulder to the boulder and began to push it up the slope. Halfway there and he was confident that life eternal was assured. Three-quarters done and he was tired, but not blown. Four-fifths and … damn, this was hard work. Five-sixths, pain. Six-sevenths, agony. Seven-eighths … He was within an inch of the top now, within a fingernail’s length, just one more supreme effort and … Noooooooo! The stone slipped, bounced over Sisyphus and rolled down to the bottom. ‘Well, not bad for a first effort,’ Sisyphus thought to himself. ‘If I take my time, if I conserve my strength, I can get there. I know I can. I’ll discover a technique. Maybe I’ll go up backwards, taking the weight on my back. I can do this …’
Sisyphus is still there in the halls of Tartarus, pushing that boulder up the hill and getting almost to the top before it rolls back down and he has to start once again. He will be there until the end of time. He still believes he can do it. Just one last supreme effort and he will be free.
Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind’s courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.
Hubris
To the Greeks hubris was a special kind of pride. It often led mortals to defy the gods, bringing about inevitable punishment of one kind or another. It is a common, if not essential, flaw in the makeup of the heroes of Greek tragedy and of many other leading characters in Greek myth. Sometimes the failing is not ours but the gods’, who are too jealous, petty and vain to accept that mortals can equal or surpass them.
All Tears
You may remember that Pelops was not the only child of Tantalus and Dione. They also had a daughter, Niobe. Despite the terrible fate that befell her father and the bleak adventures of her brother, she was a proud, confident woman. She had met and married Amphion, the son of Zeus and Antiope. He was a former lover of Hermes, you may recall, one of the twins who had constructed the walls of Thebes, enchanting the stones with his singing and strumming of the lyre.fn1 Between them Niobe and Amphion had seven daughters and seven sons, the Niobids.
Swollen with dangerous levels of conceit and self-regard, Niobe liked to tell all who would listen how important she was and just how royal and divine her bloodlines were.
‘On my mother’s side I claim descent from Tethys and Oceanus – they’re first-generation Titans, you know. On my father’s side, well there’s TMOLUS, of course, the most highborn of all the Lydian mountain deities. My dear husband Amphion is a son of Zeus, and of Antiope, the daughter of King NYCTEUS, one of the original Theban Spartoi who sprang from the dragon’s teeth. So my darling sons and daughters really can boast the most distinguished lineage, one feels justified in saying, of any family in the world. Not that I ever allow them to boast, of course. The well bred are never puffed up.’
Such foolishness might have been no more than faintly sad were it not that Niobe even presumed to compare herself to the Titaness Leto, mother of gods. On the very day that the people of Thebes gathered annually to sing Leto’s praises and tell the story of Artemis and Apollo’s miraculous birth on Delos – on that very day, sacred to the Titaness and her dignity – Niobe unburdened herself of her haughtiest broadside.
‘I mean, I’d be the first to admit that Leto’s dear twins Artemis and Apollo are charming and fully divine, of course they are. But only two children? One girl and one boy? Good heavens, how she can even call herself a mother I fail to understand. And who’s to say that of my seven sons and seven daughters there won’t be some, if not all, who will ascend to divine and immortal rank?fn2 Given their birth I think it rather more likely than not, don’t you? In my view, celebrations of such a lazy, vulgar and unproductive mother as Leto are in extremely poor taste. Next year I shall make sure the festival is cancelled altogether.’
When word reached Leto that this jumped-up Theban was insulting her in such a fashion, and daring to set herself up over her, she burst into tears in front of her sympathetic twins.
‘That terrible, boastful, conceited woman,’ she choked. ‘She called me lazy for having only two children … She said I was unproductive … and she called me vulgar. She said she would prevent the people of Thebes from celebrating my f-f-festal day …’
Artemis put an arm round her while Apollo paced up and down, slamming the ball of his fist into his palm.
‘She has fourteen children,’ wailed Leto, ‘so I suppose, compared to her, I am inadequate …’
‘Enough!’ said Artemis. ‘Come, brother. She has made our mother weep. It is time this woman knew the meaning of tears.’
Artemis and Apollo went straight to Thebes, where they hunted down every one of Amphion’s and Niobe’s fourteen children. Artemis shot the seven daughters dead with her silver arrows; Apollo shot the seven sons dead with his golden ones. When Amphion was brought news of the slaughter he took his own life by falling on his sword. Niobe’s grief was also insupportable. She fled to her childhood home and found refuge on the slopes of Mount Sipylus. No matter how snobbish, reckless, proud and absurd she had been, such wretched and inconsolable unhappiness was terrible to behold. The gods themselves could not bear to hear her unceasing lamentations, and so turned her to stone. But not even solid rock had the power to hold back such tears as these. Niobe’s weeping pushed her tears through the stone and sent them cascading in waterfalls down the mountainside.
Even today, visitors to Sipylus, now called Mount Spil, can see the rock formation in which the outlines of a female face can still be discerned. In Turkish this is known as Ağlayan Kaya or ‘Weeping Rock’.fn3 It looks down on the city of Manisa, the modern name for Tantalis. The waters that gush from this rock will flow for ever in their grief.
Apollo and Marsyas: Puffed Cheeks
Mortal humans were not the only beings capable of exhibiting excessive pride. The goddess Athena’s injured self-regard led, indirectly, to the downfall of a conceited creature called MARSYAS.
It all began when Athena proudly invented a new musical instrument which she named the aulos. It was a double-reeded pipe of what we would call the woodwind family, not unlike the modern oboe or cor anglais.fn4 There was one problem with this splendid instrument: whenever Athena played it – gorgeous as the music that emerged undoubtedly was – it elicited from her fellow Olympians nothing but roars of laughter. There was no way for Athena to get a good sound from it without blowing so hard that her cheeks bulged. To see this goddess, the very personification of dignity, going all pink and swelling up like a bullfrog was more than her disrespectful family could take without howling out loud. Wise as Athena was, and free (for the most part) of affectation and conceit, she was not entirely without vanity and could not bear t
o be mocked. After three attempts to win the gods over with the mellifluous sounds of her new instrument, she cursed it and cast it down from Olympus.
The aulos fell to earth in Asia Minor, in the kingdom of Phrygia, near the source of the Maeander river (whose winding course lends its name to all mazy, wandering streams), where it was picked up by a satyr called Marsyas. As a follower of Dionysus, Marsyas was gifted with curiosity as well as many more disreputable traits. He dusted the aulos off and blew into it. A small peep was the only result. He laughed and scratched at the tickling buzz in his lips. He puffed and blew hard again until a long, loud musical note was produced. This was fun. He went on his way, blowing and blowing until he could, after a surprisingly short time, play a real tune.
Within a month or two his fame had spread around all of Asia Minor and Greece. He became celebrated as ‘Marsyas the Musical’, whose skill on the aulos could make trees dance and stones sing.
He revelled in the fame and adulation that his musicianship brought. Like all satyrs he required little more than wine, women and song to make him happy, and his mastery of the third ensured a ready supply of the other two.
One evening, the fire crackling, Maenads at his feet gazing up adoringly at him, he called drunkenly to the heavens.
‘Hey there, Apollo! You, god of the lyre! You think you’re so musical, but I bet if there was a compishon … a compention … a condition … What’s the word?’
‘Competition?’ suggested a drowsy Maenad.
‘One of them, yes. If there was … what she said … I’d win. Easy. Hands down. Anyone can strum a lyre. Boring. But my pipes. My pipes beat your strings any day. So there.’
The Maenads laughed, Marsyas laughed too, belched and fell into a contented sleep.
The Competition
The next day Marsyas set off with his many followers to Lake Aulocrene. They had arranged to meet other satyrs there for a great feast at which Marsyas would play wild, corybantic dances of his own composition. He would pluck some reeds from the shores of the lake (whose very name testified to their abundance – aulos means ‘reed’ and krene is ‘fountain’ or ‘spring’) and cut himself a new mouthpiece for his aulos. Piping and dancing he led his followers in a merry trail of music until he turned a corner to find his way blocked by a dazzling and disturbing spectacle.
In the meadow a stage had been erected on which sat the nine Muses in a broad semicircle. At the centre of the stage, lyre in hand, stood Apollo, a grim smile playing on his beautiful lips.
Marsyas skidded to a halt, the assorted satyrs, fauns and Maenads behind bumping into him and each other in a concertina of confusion.
‘Well, Marsyas,’ said Apollo. ‘Are you ready to put your brave words to the test?’
‘Words? What words?’ Marsyas had forgotten his drunken boast of the night before.
‘ “If there was a competition between me and Apollo,” you said, “I would beat him hands down.” Now is your chance to find out if that is true. The Muses themselves have travelled from Parnassus to hear us and judge. Their word is final.’
‘B-b-but … I …’ Marsyas’s mouth was suddenly very dry and his legs suddenly very wobbly.
‘Are you or are you not a finer musician than I?’
Marsyas heard behind him a murmur of doubt from his followers and the flames of his pride flared up again.
‘In a fair contest,’ he declared with a burst of bravado, ‘I can certainly outplay you.’
Apollo’s smile widened. ‘Excellent. Join me up on the stage here. I shall start. Here is a little air. See if you can reply to it.’
Marsyas took up a position next to Apollo, who bent to tune his lyre. When this was done he gently strummed and delicately plucked. The most beautiful melody emerged – subtle, sweet and seductive. It came in four phrases, and as the last one sounded, Marsyas’s followers broke into appreciative applause.
Immediately Marsyas put the aulos to his mouth and repeated the phrases. But he gave each a little tweak and modulation – a shower of grace notes here, a riffle of accidentals there. A gasp of admiration from his followers and even a nod from Calliope herself encouraged him to end with a flourish.
Apollo replied at once with a variation on the phrases in double time. The complexity of his picking and strumming was marvellous to the ear, but Marsyas responded with even greater speed, the melody bubbling and singing from his pipes with a magical splendour that provoked yet more applause from the audience.
Now Apollo did something extraordinary. He turned his lyre upside down and played the phrases backwards – they still held up as a tune, but now they were imbued with a mystery and a strangeness that enthralled all who heard. When he finished Apollo nodded to Marsyas.
Marsyas had an excellent ear and he started to play the inverted tunes just as Apollo had, but the god interrupted him with a sneer. ‘No, no, satyr! You must turn your instrument upside down as I did mine.’
‘But that’s … that’s not fair!’ Marsyas protested.
‘How about this then?’ Apollo played on his lyre and sang, ‘Marsyas can blow down the infernal thing. But while he does it, can he sing?’
Infuriated, Marsyas played for all he was worth. His face purple with the effort and his cheeks swollen so that it looked as if they must rupture, hundreds of notes exploded in a volley of quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes – filling the air with a music that the world had never heard before. But Apollo’s divine voice, the chords and arpeggios that flew from the golden strings of his lyre – how could Marsyas’s pipes compete with such a sound?
Panting with exhaustion, sobbing with frustration, Marsyas cried aloud, ‘Not fair! My voice and breath sing into my aulos just as much as your voice sings out into the air. Of course I cannot turn the instrument upside down, but any unbiased judge can tell that my skill is the greater.’
Judgement
With a final glissando of triumph Apollo turned to the jury of Muses. ‘Sweet sisters, it is not for me to say, it is of course for you to decide. To whom do you award the palm of victory?’
Marsyas was out of control now. Humiliation and a burning sense of injustice drove him to turn on the judges. ‘They can’t be impartial, they are your aunts or your step-sisters or some such incestuous thing. They are family. They will never dare to …’
‘Hush, Marsyas!’ pleaded a Maenad.
‘Don’t listen to him, great god Apollo!’ urged another.
‘He’s hysterical.’
‘He’s good and honourable.’
‘He means well.’
It did not take the Muses long to confer and to announce the results.
‘We unanimously declare,’ said Euterpe, ‘that Apollo is the winner.’
Apollo bowed and smiled sweetly. But what he did next might make you for ever think less of this golden and beautiful god, the melodious Apollo of reason, charm and harmony.
He took Marsyas and flayed the skin off him. There is no nice way of saying it. To punish Marsyas for his hubris in daring to challenge an Olympian he peeled the skin from the living body of the screaming satyr and hung it on a pine tree as a lesson and warning to all.fn5
The ‘Flaying of Marsyas’ became a favourite subject for painters, poets and sculptors. For some his tale echoes the fate of Prometheus: a symbol of the artist-creator’s struggle to match the gods, or of the gods’ refusal to accept that mortal artists can outdo the divine.fn6
Arachne
The Weaver
In a small cottage outside a little town called Hypaepae in the kingdom of Lydiafn1 there dwelt a merchant and craftsman called IDMON. He worked in the nearby Ionian city of Colophon as a trader in dyes, specializing in the highly prized colour Phocaean purple. His wife had died giving birth to a girl, ARACHNE. Idmon was as proud of Arachne as ever father was of daughter. For since her early childhood she had shown the most extraordinary skill as a weaver.
Spinning and weaving were naturally of great importance in those days. Next to the
growing of food few things were as crucial to human welfare as the reliable manufacture of textiles for clothing and furnishing. And ‘manufacture’ is quite the right word. It literally means ‘making by hand’ – and all such work was done by hand then. Fleece or flax was spun into threads and loaded onto looms to be woven into woollen or linen cloth. It was so much the province of skilled women that the very gender itself was given names in some cultures and languages that reflected the practice. In English we still talk of the ‘distaff side’ of a family, meaning the female line. The distaff was the spindle around which the wool or flax was wound preparatory to spinning. And those who spun were called ‘spinsters’, a name which once applied without negative connotation to any unmarried woman.
But as with almost all human practices, there are those who have the mysterious ability to raise the everyday and ordinary to the level of art.
From the very first Arachne’s skill at the loom was the talk and pride of all Ionia. The speed and accuracy of her work were astonishing; the assurance and dexterity with which she selected one coloured thread after another, almost without looking, stunned the admirers who often crowded into Idmon’s cottage to watch her at work. But it was the pictures, patterns and intricate designs that emerged from under the blur of her shuttle that caused onlookers to burst into spontaneous applause and declare her without equal. The forests, palaces, seascapes and mountain views she created were so real that you felt you could jump into them. It wasn’t only the mortal citizens of Colophon and Hypaepae that came to see her at her loom: local naiads from the River Pactolus and oreads from nearby Mount Tmolus crowded into the cottage and shook their heads in wonder too.
All were agreed that Arachne was the kind of phenomenon that might come only once in five centuries of history. To be so technically skilled was cause for admiration enough, but to be endowed with such taste – she never overdid the use of purples or other costly and showy dyes, for example – that was the miracle.
