Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  Ariadne, always at Theseus’ side, did not discover that Phaedra was on board until much later, when the ship put in for food and water at the island of Naxos. Theseus was now out of danger and wanted to accompany Ariadne ashore to make the sacrifice she had promised to Aphrodite, but when she found that Aphrodite’s temple was on a promontory many miles from the port, she refused to let him in case his wound reopened or his fever returned. Exhausted, but determined nevertheless to keep her promise to the goddess, she went to the group of Athenian girls, who remained on-board while the sailors brought on the supplies, to ask them to care for Theseus while she was gone, and was astonished and dismayed to discover her sister among them. From the time when she was called to Minos’ study to meet Theseus and make plans for his escape Ariadne had scarcely slept. She had watched his encounter with the Minotaur, waited half the day in a state of tense anxiety beside the door to the labyrinth, conducted the Athenian girls to the rendezvous, tended Theseus night and day on the ship and could perhaps be forgiven for the bitter fury of her reaction.

  ‘You! What are you doing here? I know you fancy Theseus. But is it you or me that our father chose to marry Theseus? How dare you smuggle yourself on to our ship? How dare you leave our mother in her distress?’

  ‘What hysteria!’ said Phaedra. ‘You sound just like Mother. Why should I be left to look after her when you are flying off with the hero? I’m not trying to take him away from you …’

  ‘Are you not?’

  ‘Only trying to take myself away from that mad woman at home.’

  ‘Lies! You love him.’

  ‘What if I do? Can I help that? And what can you do about it?’

  ‘I shall make him leave you here.’

  ‘How will you make him? He’s not so cruel.’

  ‘It will be you or me. He will have no alternative. You’ll see. Your nasty little adventure ends here on Naxos.’

  Telling the girls that her sister was on no account to be allowed near Theseus, she left Phaedra in tears and went ashore. There she hired a donkey and a guide and rode out to Aphrodite’s temple to make her sacrifice with the help of the priestesses who looked after it.

  But she had not told the master of the ship what she was doing and when the supplies had all been brought on board he was anxious to leave, afraid that the Cretans might still be in pursuit. Theseus was asleep. As the ship began to leave the quay, both the girls and the young men told the master that Ariadne had not returned and that he must wait for her. Grumbling and uncertain, he told his men to tie up again, but scanning the horizon for Cretan warships and ever more nervous as time went by, he insisted on waking Theseus, who leapt up and said he would go and look for Ariadne himself. But as he was about to go ashore, pushing his way through the knot of girls who tried to dissuade him, he suddenly saw Phaedra standing alone at the ship’s rail. Unlike Ariadne, he was pleased to see her and immediately accepted her tearful explanation.

  ‘Of course you had to leave Knossos,’ he said, ‘and I will make sure that when we reach Athens you are treated with great honour as one of our saviours and, if it is your wish, I will find you a suitably noble husband.’

  Phaedra told him of Ariadne’s anger and that she had threatened to make him leave her behind on Naxos, and Theseus promised that he would do no such thing. Then, hiring a horse and getting directions to the temple of Aphrodite, he set off at once to bring back Ariadne. But the girls on the ship, afraid that he was still not well enough for such a journey, persuaded their male companions to follow him.

  Ariadne, however, was not at the temple. Her guide had deceived her. Instead of leading her to the temple of Aphrodite, he had taken her in another direction to a temple of Dionysos, which was in the care of his own relations, intending that they, rather than the priestesses of Aphrodite, should benefit from the sacrifices to be paid for by this foreign princess. When Ariadne discovered that she had been guided to the wrong temple, she angrily demanded that the guide take her immediately to the right one and he, concealing his own anger, pretended to do so, but led her instead into a dense wood where they had to dismount from their mules. As they reached the far edge of the wood and the guide was holding her donkey for Ariadne to mount, he suddenly jerked the animal’s bridle and, mounting his own, rode away with both donkeys, leaving Ariadne still struggling to her feet.

  She wasted no time or effort in trying to pursue him, but only shouted after him that if this was the way he treated strangers who were only trying to pay tribute to the gods, the gods would surely punish him. Then, looking around her – she was on the slope of a hill above a fertile valley of vines and fruit trees – and glimpsing the sea in the distance, she began to walk towards it, sure that if she kept it always on her left she must eventually come back to the port.

  Theseus, meanwhile, after reaching the temple of Aphrodite – his guide was a more honest man than Ariadne’s – and learning from the priestesses that they had never seen Ariadne, began to fear that she had been kidnapped. He hurried back to the port so as to confront the king or whoever was in authority in the island and organise a search, but by the time he reached it his fever had returned and he was delirious. The Athenians carried him on to the ship, where Phaedra at once took charge of him, and it was she now who seemed to the master of the ship to be the only person he could ask for instructions. In fact he simply wanted permission to leave as soon as possible. The sun was sinking, there would be no hope of finding Ariadne until the next day and meanwhile they would give the Cretan warships another eight hours at least to catch up with them. Phaedra hardly hesitated. She remembered vividly her sister’s last words to her and the venom she had put into them; and besides, the love she had felt for Theseus ever since she first saw him and had suppressed, partly in case he was killed by the Minotaur and partly because her elder sister had the prior claim, now flamed up and burnt away any affection she had left for Ariadne.

  ‘We must go,’ she said to the master. ‘My sister could not want us all to be recaptured just because she has got herself lost. Theseus himself is seriously ill and must be seen by doctors as soon as possible. Athens can surely send another ship back to Naxos to fetch my sister in a few days’ time.’

  The master gave his orders, the ship left the quay and headed out of the harbour into the sunset. From a headland above the sea, Ariadne, who had at last come in sight of the port and stopped briefly to rest, saw it far out on the dark water, silhouetted against the red horizon, and recognised it by its black sails.

  7. THE SAILS

  The rest of Ariadne’s story is obscure. Some say that she killed herself in despair, others that she was already pregnant and died in childbirth, but most people prefer the dramatic change of fortune depicted by Titian’s painting Bacchus and Ariadne in London’s National Gallery. Ariadne, still gazing desperately out to sea after the departing ship, is surprised by Dionysos (also called Bacchus) and his ravers – maenads, satyrs, old Silenos drunk on a donkey, Dionysos himself leaping out of a chariot drawn by cheetahs – and becomes the bride of the god instead of Theseus. This outcome must have been foreseen both by Dionysos himself and by Aphrodite, if it was not actually arranged between them, and if Aphrodite was offended by Ariadne’s broken promise of a sacrifice in return for the safe delivery of Theseus, she clearly did not blame Ariadne. It was Phaedra, far in the future, whom she punished.

  In Athens the return of the ship was awaited by the whole population with feelings between hope and despair. King Aegeus kept watchmen on duty along the south-east coast of Attica as far as the rocky headland of Sounion which, restless and apprehensive, he often visited himself in the hope of being the first to see the white sails signalling his son’s success. He saw, of course, many vessels with white sails, since most of the traffic into Peiraias or Corinth from Euboia, the Black Sea, Asia Minor or the Cyclades and Sporades islands passed that point. But one day he happened to be at Sounion when the watchman, with sharper eyes than old Aegeus, tugged his sleeve and pointed. T
he ship just coming into sight had black sails. Aegeus stared with growing dismay as it came nearer. Must it be that Theseus and all his companions were dead, that the dreadful yearly sacrifice of seven youths and seven virgins to the Minotaur would continue? Now the ship, its fatal black sails filled with a stiff south-easterly breeze, was near enough for Aegeus to see that it was the very same ship – he recognised the serpent’s head on the prow, the royal device of the House of Erechtheus – that had left Athens for Crete. He could see small figures on board, but they were too far away to be identified. Surely if Theseus and his companions were still among them, they would be waving in triumph to the people on the shore? But of course they would not, could not, since they had not changed the sails. The message was clear enough, he had devised it himself: all were dead, all was lost. Aegeus, his eyes blind with tears, stumbled to the edge of the headland, glanced once more at the ship – perhaps he had been mistaken, perhaps they were changing the sails even now – no, they were black still – and jumped to his death. His shattered body was recovered by his grieving servants from the rocky surf below and carried back to Athens.

  The news spread quickly and there were few people on the quayside at Peiraias to greet the ship with black sails, which no one on board had remembered to change, which no one on shore wished to be reminded of. Theseus, limping on to the quayside, almost himself again, followed by the six youths and seven virgins, brought the place to life. Messengers ran to Athens, and by the time the hero and his companions, with Phaedra at his side, were half way between Peiraias and the walls of Athens, the population was pouring out to greet them. Theseus made thanksgiving sacrifices for their safe return, but forbade any great celebration in the shadow of the king his father’s death, for which, bitterly blaming his own carelessness, he accepted full responsibility. As for Ariadne, having already exchanged one Cretan bride for another, Theseus had not yet worked out what he would do if the first were found and brought to Athens, but did not entirely blame himself for abandoning her, since it was not he but Phaedra who had ordered the ship to sail away. He held a magnificent funeral for his father, and after a suitable interval married Phaedra. Did he wait to do so until he had sent a ship from Athens to Naxos to search for Ariadne? Phaedra, never forgetting her sister’s last words to her and considering that Ariadne had been justly done by as she would have done, might well have discouraged him, but whether he did send a ship or not, one way or another she was not to be found.

  Ariadne was thus the second woman whom Theseus managed to leave behind, the first being Sinis’ daughter Perigune. His treatment of women in general – there were many others more peripheral to his story whom he loved and left – gave him a bad reputation. But was his womanising any worse than Herakles’? The difference was really one of character, or at least of how their respective characters were perceived. Theseus appeared to be more calculating, more self-interested, emotionally colder. Herakles’ warm, humorous, generous personality seemed to make his abandonment of women less deliberate and more forgivable.

  But Theseus was now King of Athens and, whatever his personal failings, he soon began to achieve politically what Minos had foreseen. Athens at that time was only one of a dozen small towns and districts in Attica, linked by common interests but each wary of the rest and unable to present a single front to the outside world. Theseus, inspired by what Minos had done for Crete and riding on his fame as the conqueror of the Minotaur, built up the military strength of Athens on the basis of a form of conscription. Recalling his own period of training in Troezen before setting out on his journey to Athens and the brief experience of it he had given his companions on the voyage to Crete, he ordered that every male child reaching the age of sixteen should do a year’s military service and every citizen under 40 years old should attend a military training camp for a month during the winter, when they were not required on the land. He then persuaded or forced the rest of Attica into a union ruled by himself and imposed the same rules for military service on all his new subjects. He made many local enemies, less among the common people than among landowners and noble families with private interests to protect, but, as his encounters with the brigands along his road to Athens had shown, he was ruthless towards anyone who stood in his way. Opponents either knuckled down or fled or died. As long as Minos lived there were no further Cretan attacks and even the beginnings of trade between the two kingdoms, and Athens soon had a navy strong enough to beat off any invaders from the sea.

  Minos himself, meanwhile, had trouble not only with his wife but also his subjects, when it became known that Theseus had killed the Minotaur and escaped with all his fellow prisoners and both the princesses. Minos concealed his own part in the escape by executing the guards who, on his orders, had released the prisoners and taken them to the harbour, and he put the blame for the whole affair on his lovesick and wayward daughters. He was said to have punished Daidalos for suggesting or even providing the thread by shutting him and his son Ikaros in the labyrinth, from which they escaped with artificial wings. That seems unlikely. How did Daidalos in the labyrinth come by the materials with which to construct such wings and how, even from the open space at the centre, could they have achieved lift-off? Certainly Minos’ relations with Daidalos were strained, but if he ordered Daidalos and his son Ikaros to enter the labyrinth it was no doubt because Queen Pasiphaë was insisting that her son’s body be brought out for burial and Minos judged that to be a fitting punishment for Daidalos. He could find his way along the thread left behind by Theseus, and Ikaros would have gone with him to help him carry or drag the monstrous and by now fly-blown corpse.

  To be compelled to do such dirty work as if he was a common slave was quite enough to convince Daidalos that it was time to leave Crete and, returning angrily to his workshop, he immediately put his mind to the logistics. They were not simple. He would have to leave the island in secret and go to some place beyond the reach of Minos’ power. He could hardly commandeer a ship, nor could he build a large enough one by himself. Flying was the obvious answer, except that no human without the help of the gods had ever done it. Daidalos determined to be the first and he devised two pairs of wings, one pair for himself and one pair for his son.

  It must have taken him a long time to collect enough feathers and then to assemble them into viable wings, using wax to hold the feathers together. But when they were finally completed the father and son took them by night to the top of the nearest mountain and as soon as it grew light, launched themselves into the air, finding, as with all Daidalos’ inventions, that they really did work. But although Daidalos reminded Ikaros that the wings were made with wax and he must not fly too near the sun, the boy was too excited, too exhilarated, too young to heed the warning, and somewhere over the sea near the island of Samos he soared up high above his father and suddenly saw feathers floating away all round him. The next moment he was dropping and by the time he plunged past Daidalos in a cloud of loose feathers it was too late. Far below, Daidalos saw a little plume of water and Ikaros was gone.

  They must have been heading towards Mysia or Thrace or even the Black Sea, but now for some reason, perhaps that he no longer cared where he went, Daidalos turned westwards. He landed at last in Sikania (modern Sicily) and was welcomed by Kokalos, king of the Sikani.

  Minos was surely a little unhinged by now, for old as he was, hearing that Daidalos had taken refuge in Italy, he went after him in person and, having tracked him down to Sikania, demanded his extradition. Kokalos refused and Minos was murdered by another of Daidalos’ inventions: a hot shower of boiling water.

  8. THE MISTRESS

  While he was still working to unite his people, Theseus heard that an invasion force of Lapiths from Thessaly, led by their king, Peirithoös, had appeared on the northern border of Attica. He was pleased. If anything could persuade the people of Attica that they needed to be united, it was just such an outside threat. Furthermore, he could test the quality of his new army of citizen soldiers in a serious b
attle. Up to now they had only been required to put down a few local insurrections. The two armies met near the plain of Marathon, where many centuries later the Athenians were to win their great victory over the invaders from Persia. Peirithoös, whose intelligence service must have been poor, had not expected to meet anything but sporadic resistance, and was disconcerted to see a well-armed and well-disciplined force lined up against him. His own troops were mostly cavalry, brave and dashing individuals who were accustomed to skirmishing but had no experience of a set-piece battle. They rode furiously at the Athenian ranks and, failing to break them, retired in disorder with many losses. Peirithoös, seeing the enemy preparing to advance and with nothing to stop them but his own royal guard, sent a herald to Theseus asking for a truce. Theseus accepted, the two kings met, immediately liked one another and became such friends that soon afterwards, when Peirithoös was getting married, he invited Theseus to the ceremony. Their friendship became even closer after that, since it was the infamous occasion when the centaurs, also guests at the wedding banquet, became drunk and tried to rape the bride and any other Lapith women they could get their hands on. Theseus was prominent among those who beat them off.

  Peirithoös seems to have been a restless, rash and audacious person with a great influence over his new friend, and before long he was suggesting that they should mount a joint expedition against the Amazons, whose territory lay on the south coast of the Black Sea. These militant women, he pointed out, were taking revenge for Herakles’ theft of the belt of Ares and the killing of their queen, Hippolyte, by interrupting the lucrative trade between Greece and other Black Sea kingdoms. Theseus, confident now that his own kingdom was in good working order and perhaps keen to make his mark on a wider world, agreed.