Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  ‘Sorry, Skiron,’ he said, ‘your water’s taken a dive.’

  Skiron, caught completely by surprise, struggled to free his legs and reached for his axe, but Theseus was too strong for him. Rising to his feet and stepping well back on to the path, he swung the writhing Skiron as if he was a club and flung him after his pot, saying, as he heard the man’s long scream of despair, ‘Wash your own feet when you get there, and feed the turtle!’

  Robert Graves in The Greek Myths, first published in 1955, tells us that ‘there is no record of an Attic turtle cult’ and suggests that this episode is based on a series of icons illustrating the ceremony of killing a Sacred King, who was provided with a parasol to break his fall, and that the supposed turtle was the parasol ‘floating on the waves’. His earnest anthropological explanations often sound even more unlikely than the original story. These days, as the modern traveller speeds along the side of this mountain between Corinth and Athens, the motorway passes through a tunnel called ‘Skiron’.

  Theseus’ next stop on his journey was the city of Eleusis, famous for its temple of Demeter and the Mysteries associated with her cult. The current king of the city was Kerkyon, a cruel and tyrannical ruler who had killed his own daughter in a fit of rage and was famous for his strength as a wrestler. Entering the city and going immediately to the well in the city square to draw himself a drink, Theseus met a tall, handsome woman who had just filled her pitcher and gave him water from it. Thanking her, he asked where he could find a room for the night.

  ‘Don’t stay the night,’ she said, ‘unless you’re good at wrestling! Even if you are, I’d advise you to leave this unhappy city immediately. Its ruler, King Kerkyon, is a rough and ferocious man. He makes all visitors wrestle with him and they seldom live to tell the tale. You are young and I’m sure strong, but no one has matched him yet.’

  ‘Thank you for warning me,’ said Theseus, ‘but I think I’ll stay all the same. I learnt to wrestle in my home city of Troezen and would like to test my skill against such a dangerous opponent.’

  The woman looked at him appraisingly and smiled.

  ‘I will show you his house, then,’ she said, balancing her pitcher on her shoulder and striding ahead.

  But when she had pointed it out and Theseus turned to thank her, she had disappeared. He was baffled for a moment, since they were in an open street and there was nowhere she could have gone except into thin air. He wondered if she might be the goddess Demeter herself. If so, it was clear that she had no love for this man who ruled the city of her worshippers and would be glad to see him defeated. Theseus felt his confidence surge and boldly approached the king’s house.

  Kerkyon was delighted to see him. Travellers who knew his reputation generally avoided Eleusis, while those who did not were seldom worth fighting. If they refused he had them beaten to death by his guards, otherwise he soon broke their limbs or necks and sent them dead or dying out of the city. But this tall and handsome boy was clearly good for a round or two and Kerkyon sent his herald out to call an audience to the square. Meanwhile he offered Theseus a cup of wine, which he declined, drank one himself, and asked where his visitor came from and where he was going.

  ‘From Troezen, on my way to Athens.’

  ‘A long and dangerous journey. You must have had a few adventures on the way.’

  ‘Several, yes.’

  ‘How did you get past our friend Skiron on the mountain?’

  ‘I tossed him out of the way.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very likely. I’m afraid you’re a boaster. Boasting won’t help you here. Where did you get that sword and those fine sandals?’

  ‘I found them under a stone.’

  ‘Worse and worse. And that club with the bronze bands?’

  ‘I took that from a cripple called Periphetes.’

  ‘That sounds nearer the truth. Well, I’m glad to say that your career of casual theft, taking unfair advantage of the disabled, and boastful arrogance ends here.’

  A crowd had assembled in the square, Kerkyon and Theseus stripped off and oiled themselves and the contest began. Kerkyon was no taller than Theseus, but much broader, with bulging muscles, and he immediately rushed at Theseus with all the confidence of a man who had never yet been defeated. Theseus began by dodging and retreating, watching his opponent carefully. He could see that Kerkyon relied entirely on his strength and had not learnt any of the skills which Theseus had acquired from his teachers in Troezen. The crowd was now growing derisive at the way Theseus continued to dance backwards and aside and evade Kerkyon, and the king himself was becoming angry. At last he closed in and flung his arms out in what should have been a crushing bear hug, only to find he was embracing air and that Theseus had stooped and grasped him by the legs. A great shout went up from the crowd as Theseus tipped Kerkyon over his shoulder and dropped him head-first on the paving-stones. Kerkyon staggered to his feet, blood pouring down his face, and charged at Theseus with his head down like a maddened bull. Theseus stepped deftly sideways, put out his foot and again sent Kerkyon crashing to the ground. Then, as the king struggled up for the second time, Theseus grasped him from behind, lifted him off his feet and threw him at the low wall round the well. Kerkyon lay there without moving, but lived long enough to hear the crowd’s outburst of joy at the defeat of their hated ruler. They wanted to make Theseus king in his place, but he politely refused, saying that they did not want another wrestler as king, far less a foreigner, and after a thanksgiving sacrifice to Demeter and a general feast of celebration, he set off towards Athens the following day.

  He was now in a fertile plain, with Mount Parnes to his left and the sea to his right, and soon crossed a series of streams which marked the boundary between Eleusis and Attica. At a place called Korydallos he came to an isolated house beside the road, where an old man sitting outside in the evening sunshine invited him to spend the night. Theseus accepted gladly and sat with the old man, admiring the view of the island of Salamis, while an old woman brought them wine and a frugal meal of soup, bread and olives.

  ‘Have you come far?’ asked the old man, whose name was Prokrustes.

  ‘Only from Eleusis today,’ said Theseus, ‘but originally from Troezen.’

  The old man was astonished.

  ‘How did you cross the Isthmus?’ he said.

  ‘How does anyone cross it? I put one foot in front of another.’

  ‘I mean, how did you get past that villain Sinis?’

  ‘I had words with him.’

  ‘Sinis is my son, you know. An evil man. People tell me he uses pine trees to catapult or tear apart every passer-by. I don’t know how you escaped him.’

  ‘So his daughter Perigune is your grandaughter?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You met her then?’

  ‘I met them both.’

  ‘And Sinis let you pass unscathed?’

  ‘He was scathed, but I wasn’t.’

  ‘Are you telling me …?’

  ‘Sinis took a ride on his own pine tree.’

  The old man looked at him doubtfully, with his eyes screwed up and a deep frown on his heavily lined forehead.

  ‘He’s an evil man,’ he repeated. ‘My wife and I couldn’t keep him here, he was always up to his tricks, annoying and frightening the travellers, and our aim is to make people happy and comfortable.’

  ‘No pine trees here.’

  ‘No. But in those days he was all talk. He didn’t like having to wait on people. He wanted to get rich and have people wait on him. He wanted nothing to do with the hotel trade. So we told him to go and set up his own business somewhere else. He was making our guests feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘Yes, he was evidently good at that.’

  Theseus soon felt very sleepy. Prokrustes led him to a small dark room.

  ‘You’ll be comfortable here,’ he said.

  ‘The bed looks rather too short,’ said Theseus, yawning. ‘Haven’t you got another room?’

  ‘Only one,’ said the old
man, ‘but I’m afraid that’s already taken.’

  ‘Well, this will have to do,’ said Theseus and, hardly waiting for the old man to leave the room, removed his belt and tunic and dropped on to the bed. The lower part of his legs, almost up to the knees, hung over the end of what seemed to be a bed intended for a child, so he curled up in a foetal position and immediately fell asleep.

  He woke up sometime later to find that he was lying on his back and that both his arms were strapped to the sides of the wooden bed. There was another strap across his chest. His head ached terribly and he still felt drowsy. He realised that the wine he drank at supper must have been drugged. His legs were dangling half over the end of the bed and in the dim light of a lamp in the far corner of the room he saw two shadowy figures.

  ‘No, he really is too long, isn’t he?’ said Prokrustes’ voice.

  ‘You’ll have to make him comfortable,’ said the old woman’s voice.

  Theseus, in his woozy state, almost believed he was dreaming, but he suddenly felt himself grasped by the ankles and his legs stretched out.

  ‘Yes, there’s a lot to come off here,’ said the old man. ‘Hand me the saw!’

  The light gleamed for a moment on a metal blade passing between the two figures and as it did so, Theseus pulled back his legs and kicked out with both feet. The old man fell back against the wall with a cry of angry surprise, the saw clattered on the floor, and the old woman stepped backwards obscuring the light. Now Theseus got his feet on the floor and, exerting all his strength, raised himself and the whole bed to which he was strapped and flung himself forward, pinning Prokrustes against the wall. Raising one knee he jabbed the old man in the crotch and as he fell down shouting with pain, stamped hard on his chest, breaking one of his ribs. Then Theseus turned towards the old woman, who dodged out of his way. Theseus put himself and the bed across the doorway.

  ‘I am going to do the same to you,’ he said, ‘unless you untie these straps.’

  But the old woman had picked up the saw and nervously threatened him with it. Theseus spun round and struck her with the edge of the bed. The old woman dropped the saw and, clutching her side, crouched near her groaning husband. Theseus moved slowly towards her.

  ‘I will, I will,’ she said in terror, ‘but you must promise not to kill me.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Theseus.

  ‘And my poor Prokrustes?’

  ‘Your poor Prokrustes was about to saw off my legs,’ said Theseus. ‘I make no promises for him.’

  When the old woman had released him from the bed, he resumed his tunic and belt and retrieved his club, sword, sandals and pack which the old couple had taken into their front room. Driving the pair of them in front of him – Prokrustes bent double with his hand on his injured chest, his wife supporting him and carrying the lamp – Theseus demanded to be shown the other room which the old man had told him was taken. He thought it likely that some other unlucky traveller might be there and liable to be treated to the same fate as he had just escaped.

  The room was empty, but the bed, unlike his own, was an especially long one.

  ‘What does this mean?’ said Theseus angrily. ‘You tell me this room is taken and you give me the one with the ridiculously short bed.’

  The couple made no reply.

  ‘Speak up!’ said Theseus, threatening Prokrustes with his club.

  ‘You were too tall for this bed,’ mumbled Prokrustes and suddenly, with a long knife he had somehow acquired while they were in the front room, made a lunge at Theseus. Theseus batted the knife out of his hand with his club and knocked the old man backwards on to the bed.

  ‘Now explain yourselves more clearly!’ he said, seizing the old woman by one arm and forcing her to the floor beside the bed.

  As he did so he saw in the light of the lamp which she still held that this bed, like the one he had slept in, was equipped with leather straps. Beginning to suspect the truth, he took the lamp from the woman and examined the rest of the room. Attached to the wall beyond the foot of the bed was a large drum from which dangled two ropes with looped ends.

  ‘This bed is for people who are too short, I suppose?’ he said.

  ‘We try to make people more comfortable, you see,’ said the old woman.

  ‘Is that so? Then tie the straps on your husband’s arms and chest and let me see how you make him more comfortable!’

  Very reluctantly, in the face of threats from Prokrustes that he would kill her if she did so and more convincing ones from Theseus that he would cripple her if she didn’t, the old woman tied the straps.

  ‘Now these!’ said Theseus, indicating the looped ropes dangling from the drum, and when she had put the loops round the old man’s feet, ‘Now turn that handle!’

  She made a few turns until the ropes were taut and Prokrustes’ legs stretched as far as they would go, he meanwhile alternately shouting curses at her and making desperate pleas for mercy to Theseus.

  ‘You had no mercy on me or on other innocent travellers,’ said Theseus. ‘Am I to leave you here to drug their wine and make them “comfortable” according to your mad, perverted idea of hospitality. I have already cleared this road of your vile son Sinis and several other equally monstrous creatures, and now it’s your turn.’

  Brushing the old woman aside, he began to turn the handle himself, stretching Prokrustes’ limbs and racking his body until he could bear the old man’s screams of pain no longer, when he picked up his club and despatched him with a single blow to the head.

  ‘You were this torturer’s willing accomplice,’ he said to the cringing old woman, ‘but I promised to spare your life. I am going to Athens now, where my father is king, and if ever I hear that any traveller has been harmed or robbed by you, I shall punish you so severely that you will wish you were dead.’

  Then he broke up the drum, took away the saw (which he later threw into the sea) and left the house as the red glow of dawn appeared over Mount Hymettos far in front of him.

  3. THE TRIBUTE

  When he reached Athens, Theseus was welcomed and made much of by his father Aegeus, but nearly murdered by his father’s wife, Medea. She was a princess (and sorceress) from Colchis in what is now Georgia and had helped Jason and the Argonauts steal the Golden Fleece from her father, the King of Colchis. She sailed away with the Argonauts and when her angry father looked like overtaking them cut up her little brother, whom she had taken with her (perhaps for that very purpose) and dropped the pieces in the sea. Her distraught father, pausing to collect the floating fragments of his son for decent burial, was delayed long enough for the Argonauts to escape.

  It should have been obvious to Jason that Medea was not a person to cross, but the silly hero, arriving finally after many adventures in Corinth and wishing to be its next king, discarded Medea in favour of the King of Corinth’s daughter. Medea thereupon slaughtered her own and Jason’s children and poisoned his new wife, escaping to Athens where Aegeus, spellbound by her beauty and strong personality and pitying her terrible history, gave her asylum and married her. She naturally assumed that their son Medus would succeed Aegeus as king, so that the appearance of Theseus, this earlier and unknown son, possessing the sword and royal sandals left for him by his father to show that he was the true heir, was an unpleasant shock. She made an angry scene in private with her husband, who pointed out that he had saved her from the vengeance of the Corinthians but had made no promises about their son succeeding to his throne. She was in no way mollified, though she pretended to be, and at the banquet celebrating Theseus’ arrival she put wolfsbane in his wine.

  Theseus was saved by his father who, knowing his wife better by now and noticing the smile of vindictive satisfaction on her face as Theseus lifted the cup, knocked it to the floor. Again she escaped punishment, though Aegeus sent her and their son away to Asia and some say that she returned to Colchis and was reconciled to her father. The Georgians are charming and hospitable people, living in a beautiful land with a long history
of civilisation, but what with Medea, Stalin and his sidekick Beria, their best-known contributions to the outside world have been peculiarly unwelcome.

  Theseus, incidentally, is often listed as one of the Argonauts, but how is that possible if Medea was already married to his father and living in Athens when, as a youth still in his teens, Theseus first arrived there from Troezen?

  Two years before his arrival, Athens had been attacked by Minos, King of Crete. One of Minos’ sons, Androgeos, had visited Athens for the Panathenaic Games and defeated all comers at wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin. But as he was leaving Athens to visit the city of Thebes he was attacked and murdered, either by robbers or by his disappointed fellow sportsmen. No one was brought to justice and his bitterly grieving father blamed Aegeus and the Athenians. Cretan troops landed on the coast between Corinth and Athens and, capturing the small city of Megara as a base, devastated the countryside of Attica and drove the Athenians back inside their walls, where famine and disease soon forced them to sue for peace.

  The price was a large annual payment, with an extra clause intended to inflict the same pain (with interest) on Athenians as Minos had suffered by the death of his son. They had to send fourteen young people, seven boys and seven girls, to feed the Minotaur, a man with the head of a bull, who liked his meat fresh and was particularly partial to humans. His mother was Minos’ wife Pasiphaë and his father was a bull – no ordinary bull but an especially beautiful one given to Minos by Poseidon to be sacrificed to him on the occasion of Minos’ enthronement as King of Crete. Minos, however, liked the bull too much to sacrifice it and substituted another from his own herd. Poseidon was understandably annoyed and punished him by causing his wife to fall passionately in love with the bull. So after she had indulged in a few sessions of bestiality with it – the storytellers explain that she received its thrusts from inside the wooden replica of a cow – she duly gave birth to the Minotaur.