Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  Theseus sat down on the pebbles bordering the pool and tied the sandals on to his feet. They fitted him perfectly. He stood up and walked to and fro over the pebbles. He was deliberately holding back, not immediately putting his hand into the cavity again, so as to prolong his enjoyment of the sandals and the promise they held that he would also find the sword. When he did finally reach into the cavity his hand felt the hilt he expected, but he couldn’t draw it out. The blade was stuck fast under one cheek of the boulder’s bottom. Perhaps his father had thrust it in deep on purpose, or the boulder had shifted over time, or he himself had pinned it there when he tilted the boulder in sliding off it. He put his shoulder to the stone and tilted it again, but the sword was still immoveable. His hero Herakles would simply have lifted the boulder and flung it aside, but Theseus lacked that level of strength. He made a few more attempts to shift it by brute force, then resorted to mechanics. Selecting a flattish stone he hammered it under the boulder with a rounded stone, then did the same with another and another. At last when he put his hand into the cleft and grasped the sword’s hilt, it came free. With blood pouring from his hand where he had scraped it, he drew the sword out and saw that its ivory hilt was carved with the serpents of the House of Erechtheus, the royal line of Athens. Triumphant, he flourished the sword once in the air, thanked the gods, washed his bleeding hand in the pool, took off the sandals, put on his tunic, and carrying the sandals and the sword walked quietly and thoughtfully, without haste, down the path to Troezen.

  He was already planning his next move, and when he had shown his finds to his mother and grandfather, he surprised them both. They had expected him to want to go straight to Athens to meet his father, and Pittheus said that he would send him in his own royal ship, so that he might be received on arrival at Peiraias with proper ceremony. But Theseus thanked his grandfather and said that he did not mean to leave at once, but to spend another year at least in training.

  ‘Training for what, dear boy?’

  ‘For the journey.’

  ‘There’s nothing to the journey. It’s very short. My sailors are well accustomed to it and you will be required to do nothing but walk on to the ship and walk off it again the other end.’

  ‘That’s why I mean to go by land.’

  ‘Go by land! That’s crazy. It will take you weeks, if not months, to go round by land, and besides there are several notorious brigands along the route. You would need a very strong escort of soldiers to protect you and I don’t see my way to providing them when you can so easily go by sea.’

  ‘I don’t want an escort, not even a single servant.’

  ‘Then you will certainly be murdered.’

  ‘That’s why I need to train.’

  ‘I really don’t understand your reasoning.’

  ‘It’s simple. If I turn up in Athens in a royal ship, with a pair of my father’s sandals and his sword, which I found under a stone with no great difficulty, what have I done? Who am I? Theseus, son of Aegeus, grandson of Pittheus. Good! I’m most fortunate and much honoured to have such a noble heredity. But none of this is mine, is it? Not the birth, not the ship, not the sandals, not the sword, not even the name Theseus. All borrowed, lent to me on account. I mean to pay part of the account on my journey to Athens, so that when I arrive people will not be saying, ‘Theseus, who’s he?’ ‘Oh, the son of Aegeus, the grandson of Pittheus, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, comes from Troezen, found his father’s sandals and swords under a stone, and now he’s heir to two kingdoms, lucky bastard!’ No, when I arrive in Athens, let them just say, ‘Theseus? He’s the man that cleared the road of all those killers and by the way he’s Herakles’ cousin’.’

  So for more than a year Theseus exercised his body with weight-lifting, running and jumping, and honed his skills at wrestling, archery and swordplay, learning from all the best athletes and warriors in Troezen, until he was confident that he had enhanced his natural abilities beyond all competition. Observing his reflection in a polished shield he saw with satisfaction that the slim youth who had failed to push aside the boulder now looked a little more like the image he retained from his childhood of his cousin Herakles, who had once visited Troezen. Finally, Theseus walked up the path beside the aqueduct, crossed the bridge and returned to the boulder. Then, after washing himself, glancing with approval at his muscular reflection in the pool, and praying to Poseidon, who had loved Pelops and who he had come to believe looked with favour on himself, Pelops’ descendant, he went to the boulder, exerted all his strength and rolled it off its shelf of rock into the pool. He was ready now to make the journey to Athens.

  2. THE JOURNEY

  The first part of the journey, northwards between Mounts Ortholithi and Mavrovouni, was not especially difficult, but descending towards the sea at Epidauros Theseus encountered a huge hairy hunchback called Periphetes, who demanded a fee and brandished a formidable club bound round with hoops of bronze.

  ‘How much?’ asked Theseus.

  ‘Your pack,’ said Periphetes, circling round him greedily, ‘and that nice-looking sword in your belt and those pretty red sandals hanging beside it and the belt itself. And, of course, your gold, which I can’t see but which you’ve surely got hidden somewhere.’

  ‘Will you leave me nothing?’ said Theseus plaintively. ‘I have a long journey ahead of me.’

  ‘I’m sorry for you. You’ll meet a lot of nasty people and if I don’t take your things someone else will, so you might as well get rid of them now and avoid the trouble of carrying them. It’s a favour I’m doing you.’

  ‘You’re too kind. But if I had a club like yours …’

  ‘Oh, indeed! This is a nice little club, well balanced, and does its business very sweetly. This club could take you out of trouble anywhere if you were strong enough to swing it.’

  ‘So what price your club?’

  ‘What price! This club will cost you your life, cheeky boy, if you make any more jokes of that sort.’

  ‘Come on, then! Let’s have it!’

  Periphetes looked at him popeyed, not quite believing that this youth who had seemed so anxious to please was really asking to be pulped, then swung his club almost nonchalantly at Theseus’ head. But Theseus was too quick for him. His head was no longer where it had been a second earlier, but butting hard into Periphetes’ stomach, knocking him flat on the ground, while his club flew out of his hand. Theseus picked it up and, as Periphetes struggled to his feet, swung it.

  ‘Cheap at the price of your life,’ he said and struck him dead.

  After that, with the club balanced on one shoulder just in the way Herakles carried his, Theseus continued his journey round the coast to Corinth. In the middle of the Isthmus, between the two seas, in a grove of pine trees, he met a robber called Sinis. Sinis was a tall and very strong man with a ready smile, who pretended to be a friend to travellers. When he saw one coming he would lasso the top of a pine tree and bend it down to the ground. Then he would say to the traveller:

  ‘Welcome, my friend! You must be tired and hungry. Let me offer you something tasty! Just hold this while I get it for you! It’s well secured, you see,’ pointing to the rope wound round another tree-trunk.

  But as soon as the traveller did as he said, Sinis released the rope. The pine sprang up, the traveller was catapulted into the air and fell down dead or stunned. However, if the traveller declined his offer, Sinis would knock him senseless, bend down a second tree close to the first and tie one of the traveller’s arms to each tree. He would wait until the traveller recovered consciousness, remark smilingly, ‘Feeling a bit better, son?’ and release the trees, so that his victim was torn apart. Either way Sinis finished him off, if necessary, with his knife, robbed him of anything of value and threw his corpse into the sea.

  Theseus pretended not to understand Sinis.

  ‘You want me to hold this tree for you?’

  ‘That’s right. Just for a minute or two while I fetch you refreshment. Quite free. Noth
ing to pay. I love to send travellers merrily on their way.’

  ‘Very kind of you. But what’s your purpose with this tree?’

  ‘To hold it down.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sinis looked at him suspiciously. This traveller, he thought, might have to be treated to Plan B, but he didn’t like the look of his club.

  ‘So that I can trim it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, really? I didn’t know pine trees needed trimming. But just show me what’s the best way I can hold it for you,’ said Theseus, edging round to get close to the rope wound round the other tree.

  Sinis sat on the bent tree and smiled genially.

  ‘Like this,’ he said. ‘Simple as simple.’

  ‘People must be simple to be taken in by that,’ said Theseus, releasing the rope. ‘Or else they lose their wits at the thought of a free lunch.’

  The pine sprang, Sinis flew through the air, hit another tree and lay spreadeagled in its branches. Theseus shinned up the tree to make sure he was dead and left him there.

  ‘A free lunch for the crows,’ he said, going towards Sinis’ hut on the far side of the grove of trees to see if he really had anything to eat. But as he did so he saw somebody run out and disappear into a patch of undergrowth. Grasping his club he kept quite still, scanning the undergrowth until he saw one of the bushes move. Then he ran forward, pounced, and pulled out a young girl of about fifteen, trembling with terror, her dress ragged and dirty, her black hair tangled.

  ‘Are you that man’s slave?’ he asked, pointing to the body in the tree.

  She shook her head.

  ‘What then? His wife?’

  ‘He’s my father.’

  ‘Sorry about that, but I have to say that he’s no loss to anybody but you. And he doesn’t seem to have looked after you very well.’

  ‘I hate him,’ she said.

  ‘Then you’re well rid of him. Is there anything to eat in your hut?’

  ‘Some bread. A few olives.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘We live mostly on whatever travellers have in their packs and the last few haven’t had much.’

  ‘Well, bring out what there is! All his talk of food has made me hungry.’

  ‘I thought you would kill me.’

  ‘I’m only interested in killing monsters.’

  Sitting on the ground, they shared the food. The girl, who was called Perigune, had seen many travellers murdered by her father, but she had never seen one as handsome as Theseus with his long fair hair, blue eyes, long legs and perfectly tuned athlete’s body. He was equally attracted to her, not because she was beautiful – she was thin and malnourished – but because up to now he had had nothing to do with women, apart from his mother, and was suddenly overcome with lust. He did not jump on her and rape her, however, but asked her what she would do now that her father was dead. She shrugged her shoulders, she had no idea, so Theseus invited her to go with him. Perigune smiled for the first time and showed Theseus where her father had hidden the coins and jewellery he had stolen from travellers. He told her to gather them up and bring them.

  ‘They’re not strictly yours,’ he said, ‘but their rightful owners have no need of them any more and they will help you get yourself a husband.’

  ‘I don’t want a husband,’ said the girl.

  ‘You won’t survive without one,’ said Theseus. ‘This world, as far as I can judge, is made for men.’

  They left the ill-omened hut and the body of its owner in the pine tree and walked on together across the Isthmus until they came to a pleasant place near the sea. There they bathed in a stream, looked longingly at each other’s bodies and, inexperienced as they were, began to touch and caress each other, before lying down together and making love in the light of a full moon. It was a painful and difficult process for both of them, especially Perigune, but in the days ahead, as they went eastwards along the coast, stopping at villages to buy food but sleeping always in the open, they got better at their lovemaking and were soon stopping more and more often to attend to it.

  ‘Now I have a husband,’ said Perigune happily, ‘and I shan’t need all those valuables. Won’t you take them?’

  ‘Better you keep them,’ said Theseus. ‘It’s a cruel world.’

  One day they came to a village called Krommyon where all the people were indoors or in their courtyards and the fields were untended. They were being terrorised, it seemed, by a sow, which had killed several farmers when they were out working in their fields.

  ‘A sow?’ said Theseus. ‘I’ve heard of a wild boar killing people – the Erymanthian Boar captured by Herakles – but does a sow even have tusks? How can it kill people?’

  They told him that this was no ordinary sow, but a sister of the Erymanthian boar and child of the giant Typhon and the monster Echidna, mother of many other monsters, including Cerberos, the Lernaian Hydra and the Nemean Lion. This sow was as big and fierce as a wild bull. It would charge and knock a man down, then trample his face with its hooves and tear away the flesh with its teeth. Theseus did not quite believe them, but he promised to delay his journey for a week or two and rid them of the sow if he could meet it. He and Perigune, whom he introduced as his wife, were given the best room in one of the villagers’ houses, while Theseus spent the days roaming the empty fields with his club and sword at the ready.

  He had almost given up and was standing idly picking his teeth at the edge of a field, when just behind him he heard a crashing of bushes and was only just in time to fling himself sideways as the huge creature emerged and charged. It turned in a moment and would have been on top of him if Perigune, who had come out to call him in to supper, had not shouted in dismay and momentarily distracted its attention. Theseus leapt to his feet, stepped deftly sideways and brought his club down on the sow’s snout. Roaring with pain and fury, a mass of livid flesh thinly covered with black bristles, with glaring red eyes and great teeth that looked more like those of a lion than a pig, it charged him again. Theseus stood his ground and at the last moment, grasping his club with both hands, brought it down with all his strength on the monster’s skull. It stopped within an inch of him, shivered the length of its body and collapsed.

  ‘Thank you, Periphetes,’ he said to the club, which he had named after its previous owner, and kissed it. Then, drawing his sword, he thrust it through the sow’s throat.

  The villagers held a great celebration, including a monster pig roast. The flesh, however, was not very sweet – the sow, after all, had been mainly carnivorous and was almost as old as the hills, though it had only been preying on this village for the last two or three years – and several people fell ill the next day, including Perigune. Theseus was eager to continue his journey and asked if the village would take care of her until he could send for her, which, of course, they were most willing to do considering what he had done for them. Perigune was desperate not to be left behind, but she could hardly stand up and was clearly unfit to travel. Theseus refused to delay his departure, and although he never did send for her and probably never saw her again, he did make arrangements, as soon as he reached Athens, for her to marry one of the villagers. It was said that Theseus was the father of her first child.

  Beyond Krommyon the mountain of Geraneia blocked the way to Athens and the rest of Greece. The road, such as it was, ascended steeply and became little more than a path on a ledge high above sheer cliffs. Here Theseus met, as he had been warned he would by the villagers of Krommyon, a brigand called Skiron, heavily bearded and heavily built, who did not even pass the time of day.

  ‘Your money!’ he said, ‘And wash my feet!’ And he flourished an axe and pointed to a large pot of water beside him.

  Theseus stopped and looked at him and at the steep drop beneath them.

  ‘If you’re thinking of having a go with that little club of yours,’ said Skiron, ‘don’t! You’ll never know what hit you until you reach the sea and down there is a giant turtle which looks to me for its dinner.’
>
  ‘I’m very short of money,’ said Theseus, pretending to be frightened of him.

  ‘Put all your things on the ground!’ said Skiron. ‘If you wash my feet to my satisfaction, I’ll pay you for it.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Theseus, knowing from the villagers exactly what payment was intended. He put his club and all his other things on the path.

  Skiron sat down against a rock and stretched his legs out.

  ‘Now wash my feet!’ he said.

  Theseus picked up the pot of water and knelt down beside Skiron’s feet at the very edge of the precipice. But as he saw Skiron raise his knees and draw back his feet so as to kick his victim off the cliff, Theseus seized him by the ankles and jerked him sideways, knocking the pot of water into the abyss as he did so.