The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

by Roberto Calasso

  Crown, necklace, garland: they all have the same shape, and often the one will become the other. When Amphiaraus left his palace in Corinth to fight beneath the walls of Thebes, he knew perfectly well, clairvoyant as he was, that the adventure would end in his death. It was only the treachery of his wife, Eriphyle, that had managed to winkle him out of concealment and force him to go to the field of Polynices: in return for her betrayal, Polynices gave Eriphyle the necklace that had once been Aphrodite’s gift to Harmony. In the courtyard of the palace, as the horses tugged at their reins, impatient to be off, with helmet already on his head and sword pointing heavenward, Amphiaraus turned to look back one last time. And what he looked at most of all was his young son, Alcmaeon. He had already patiently explained to the child how one day he would have to kill his mother to avenge the father who was now saying good-bye forever. The boy hadn’t seemed to be paying attention, laughing and fooling about as he listened, but his father’s words would haunt his memory like a refrain from a nursery rhyme. Amphiaraus looked at him now, naked, healthy, arms raised to wave good-bye, against a backdrop of women. Behind him other arms were waving, white arms, Demonassa and Eurydice, his daughters. Then the bony arms of the old wet nurse. And behind them all, head wrapped in a shawl, Eriphyle: Amphiaraus met her cold stare, which rivaled his own in its hatred. One of her arms was hidden: she didn’t lift it to wave, and, from the fingers of that hand, huge and brilliant, hung Harmony’s necklace, a garland of golden light dangling almost to the ground.

  In scenes like these, which mark the beginning of the end of a noble house, each respects his own role, as if everything were perfectly normal, even though all are aware of the impending disaster. But outside the group there will always be one person crouching down, a hand lifted to his head. It is he who sees but cannot act. One day he will become the tragic poet, he will tell these stories. But for the moment he is silent. To the unpracticed eye there is nothing out of the ordinary about the scene: the head of a family is riding off to war, a common enough event. Only the observer who kept his eyes on the ground would have realized that something terrible was happening. For the courtyard is swarming with animals: fearless lizards slither between people’s legs; a hedgehog is in danger of being crushed under Amphiaraus’s heel; a majestically large scorpion is climbing slowly along the groove of one of the columns of the atrium; a nervous, trembling hare rubs its flank along the chariot; an owl has alighted on a horse’s mane; and, amid the stones outside the courtyard, a snake lifts its head, motionless, and watches.

  Many generations passed, and the story of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle was turned into verse and widely discussed. Now, after all the trouble it had caused, Harmony’s necklace, like the necklace Menelaus gave to Helen, was kept in the temple of Delphi. During the second Sacred War, the Phocians sacked the temple and their leaders decided to share out the famous jewels among their wives. They drew lots to see who got what. Eriphyle’s necklace went to “a woman who looked sad and resentful, though deeply serious, while Helen’s went to a woman of outstanding beauty and loose morals. The latter fell in love with a young man from Epirus and ran off with him, while the other hatched a plot to kill her husband.” The woman who eloped later sank to prostitution, “throwing her beauty at anyone who wished to abuse her.” The woman who killed her husband was burned alive in her own home. The fire was started by her eldest son, who had gone crazy.

  The necklace, the crown, the garland. As the years passed the leaves and petals of beauty fell away, leaving only the cold fetter of the circle, unadorned necessity; and what once had given rise to whole cycles of stories, the Theban cycle, the Trojan cycle, now shrank back into the stuff of commonplace crime where the protagonists remain nameless and only the bare events are remembered: an elopement, a murder, in a Greece that had nothing to look forward to now but its capitulation to Alexander and wanted only to forget the past. But all of this, and no less than this, was of the nature of the crown, the necklace, the garland.

  In the girdle of Aphrodite, in the crown, in the body of Helen and of her phantom, beauty is superimposed over necessity, cloaking it in deceit. The necessary has a certain splendor, and behind any splendor one senses a metallic coldness, as though of a weapon poised to strike. The real split in Greek consciousness, like all the other irreversible steps it took, comes when Plato for the first time affirms, “How very different is the nature of the necessary from the nature of the good.” And he means an immense, an unbridgeable distance—the same distance that made atheists of “those who study astronomy and other sciences of the necessary, when they see that what is, is so out of necessity and not out of any plan conceived by some will to accomplish the good.” The Beautiful, in this scenario, must either be quickly reabsorbed into the Good—as its agent, instrument, and pedagogue—or left up in the air, like a malignant spell (goteuma) bewitching the mind only to subject it even more helplessly to the fiat of necessity. With Homer we are still at a stage when the Good isn’t even mentioned: happy and unhappy, the poet’s warriors know only the many-colored weave of necessity and sate themselves with its splendor, which at the end of the day will destroy them. “The mortal cannot go intrepid through these many-colored beauties,” says Agamemnon, a few seconds before falling beneath Clytemnestra’s ax.

  Agamemnon, ánax andrôn, “king of men,” is kingship itself. As such, he must preside over relations with heaven and with earth. It is on him that all exchanges converge. And at the origin of exchange there is always a death of some kind. Such is the shove that sets the wheel moving, that breaks “the silence of the winds.” For Agamemnon, this becomes clear with the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. The person who controls the mechanism of exchange, the king, is that unique person who must sacrifice the uniqueness of every other, including his daughter. But this one master of exchanges, prince of substitutions, may in turn be attacked by uniqueness. When the priest Chryses asks to ransom his daughter Chryseis and, to replace her, Agamemnon demands that Achilles hand over Briseis, uniqueness rises in rebellion against exchange.

  Achilles is kingship without a kingdom. He carries his grace within himself and does not need a hierarchical order to sustain it. It is in his grace, not his power, that Achilles is more kingly than the others. And that is precisely why Agamemnon is so determined to show him who is really king, as Nestor explains with near pedantic exactness: “Son of Peleus, don’t be so stubborn as to clash head on with a king: no prestige can equal that of a king who holds the scepter, a king to whom Zeus has granted glory. You are strong, your mother is a goddess; but he is even stronger than you, because he commands more men.” On the one hand, we have a king who is considered such because a whole society converges on his person; on the other hand, we have an individual who is kingly in his very isolation, in the uniqueness of his gift. With Achilles we witness, in Homeric radiance, the emergence of a quality that Vedic mathematics never guessed at: the unique, unsustained by the sacred, precarious, fleeting, irreplaceable, not exchangeable, entrusted to a brief appearance ending in death, and for this very reason incommensurable. That which exists only once, and for only a short time, cannot be measured against any other commodity.

  Shut away in his tent, furious with Agamemnon, Achilles sleeps with Diomeda “of the lovely cheeks,” just as Briseis had been “of the lovely cheeks.” But still Achilles refuses to accept the substitution of Briseis. The elderly Phoenix, who loves Achilles as only an old servant whose chest the baby hero once belched wine over can, simply does not understand this absurd insistence. How can Achilles, “for just one girl!” turn down the seven girls of Lesbos, plus “some even better ones,” together with a host of other gifts Agamemnon is offering to keep him sweet. Phoenix, in his tribal devotion, can’t even conceive of the claim to uniqueness. But it is precisely to Achilles that the poem gives the speech that for the first time announces this discovery, this emotion that will put its stamp on history from that moment on and has survived intact to this very day: a foothold in the vast s
hipwreck of ideas, the only thing still self-evident to everybody, blasphemous and devout alike, in this age that no longer manages to be either blasphemous or devout. This is what Achilles says: “Fat sheep and oxen you can steal; cooking pots and golden-maned horses you can buy; but once it has left the circle of his teeth, the life of a man [andròs psych] can be neither replaced, nor stolen, nor bought.” Not only have these words never been confuted with the passing centuries, but they have gathered further intensity and urgency, as beliefs and principles withered away all around to leave them standing alone. Today, whenever somebody who doesn’t belong to any creed refuses to kill, Achilles’ words live on in him.

  The aesthetic justification of existence was not an invention of the young Nietzsche. He was just the first to give it a name. Earlier, it had been the tacit premise of life in Greece under the Olympians. Perfection of the outward appearance was indissolubly linked to the acceptance of a life without redemption, without salvation, without hope of repetition, circumscribed by the precarious wonder of its brief apparition. Achilles is the son of a goddess, and this fact gives him a strength and grace unknown to others, but he chooses a brief and resplendent life, which is irrecoverable.

  Rather than the life of one individual, the life Achilles chooses is an image of all life as Homer understood it. Later, in the underworld, Achilles comes out with a speech that offers a mirror image of the one he made when refusing Agamemnon’s gifts. The hero now appears as just one among many, “unfeeling shades of exhausted mortals.” All that’s left of life is a long weariness. Odysseus tries to call him “happy,” even among the dead, and claims to admire him because even here he has preserved his “great power.” But once again Achilles is ready with words that will prove unanswerable: “Don’t try to prettify death for me, noble Odysseus. I would rather live as a cowherd in the service of a poor peasant, with barely enough to eat, than reign over all these wasted dead.” It is only because life is irretrievable and irrepeatable that the glory of appearance can reach such intensity. Here there is no hidden meaning, no reference to, nor hint of, anything else, such as the Platonic tyranny will later impose. Here appearance is everything, is the essential integrity of what exists only for the brief period when it is present and visible. It is a fleeting figure briefly capturing the perfection of those other figures who live on unhindered, on Olympus.

  On two occasions, before the beginning and after the end of the Trojan War, Agamemnon finds himself obliged to preside over the sacrifice of a virgin. The first time it is his daughter Iphigenia, whom he lures to Aulis by pretending to offer her in marriage to Achilles. The second time it is the Trojan Polyxena, whom Achilles thought he was going to meet and marry in the temple where, hiding behind a column, treacherous Apollo kills him. Iphigenia is sacrificed because the long, windless calm is preventing the Achaean ships from leaving; Polyxena is sacrificed because the long, windless calm is preventing the Achaean ships from returning. In the case of Iphigenia, the deceived bride, Achilles tries to oppose the sacrifice; in the case of Polyxena, Achilles, the deceived groom, reappears as a ghost to claim his victim.

  Right from the beginning, the lives of Agamemnon and Achilles run in perfect parallel. Agamemnon is never the cause of the sacrifice, but it is always he who carries it out, with a watchful eye on the multitude who obey him and who are kept under control by these gestures. His concern is that murder should be sufficiently well camouflaged as sacrifice, until he himself is murdered like a sacrificial beast by Clytemnestra. There is a circularity in his destiny that allows of no deviation. Achilles opposes him every step of the way: it is he who is about to marry the victim of both sacrifices. The first time, alive, he rejects the sacrifice; the second, dead, he demands it. Agamemnon carries out the law of men; Achilles wants to escape the will of the gods, or to assume their role himself. Agamemnon does not touch the victim but gives orders for her to be killed; it will be Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son, who actually plunges his knife into Polyxena’s throat. Agamemnon is death’s administrator; for Achilles, death is always either too attractive or too repugnant. At the two extremes of the stage stand the two heroes. In the center, in ceremonial silence, the two sacrifices that open and close the Trojan War are consummated.

  This is how Iphigenia is sacrificed: “After the prayer, Agamemnon made a sign to the servants officiating with him to seize his daughter Iphigenia just as she was falling to the ground wrapped in her tunics, then to lift her on top of the altar like a goat and with mute violence stop her mouth with its fine line like the prow of a ship, using a gag [or a horse bit?], so that she might not curse her family. Her saffron-dyed tunic having slithered to the ground, Iphigenia’s eyes darted arrows at each of her sacrificers, moving them to pity, as though she were a painting that wanted to speak, she who had so often sung at banquets in the beautiful halls of her father’s palace, lovingly intoning in her pure virgin voice the third good-luck paean to her beloved father.”

  This is how Polyxena is sacrificed: “The people cheered her, and King Agamemnon told the young men to let go of the virgin.… When she heard the king’s words, Polyxena grabbed her tunic and tore it from her shoulder right down to her waist, near her navel, so that everybody could see her beautiful breasts and torso. She was like a statue. And sinking to one knee, she spoke the boldest and saddest speech of all: ‘Look, young man, here is my breast; if you want to strike here, then strike; if you would prefer the neck, then here is my throat, ready.’ And he, Neoptolemus, both wishing and, out of pity for the girl, not wishing to, cut her windpipe with his knife. The blood gushed out. Yet, even as she died, she was most careful to fall in proper fashion, hiding what must be hidden from the eyes of men.” After which some of the warriors scattered leaves on the girl. A scholiast notes in the margin: “They throw leaves over Polyxena, as if she had won an event at the games: for this was the way they congratulated the winners.”

  Achilles always seeks out the woman who is hostile and distant. He fell in love with Polyxena when he saw her on the walls of Troy throwing down buckles and earrings as ransom for the return of Hector’s body. This was the woman Achilles was to die for. The nuptial crown on his head, he went into the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus, the same temple where he had killed one of Polyxena’s brothers, Troilus. Apollo was supposed to be a witness to the marriage. Instead, hidden behind a column, the god let fly the arrow that struck Achilles’ heel. It was a story of intertwining betrayals. How could Achilles have imagined that the god who had always been opposed to him would now be a benevolent witness at his marriage to one of Priam’s daughters? And what were his Achaean comrades supposed to make of his decision? Achilles is capable of betrayal but not of reflecting on it: his actions are impulsive surges, changing direction unexpectedly. Thus he rains a frenzy of blows onto the body of Penthesilea, convinced he is slaying a mighty Trojan warrior not even Ajax had been able to handle. Then he lifts the helm of the dying Amazon. He looks Penthesilea in the eye for the first time, precisely as he plunges his sword into her breast. And in that instant he is overwhelmed by passion. He had pinned the Amazon to her horse. Now he takes the virgin warrior in his arms with loving care. In the dust and blood, Achilles made love to Penthesilea, lifeless in her armor.

  The hideous Thersites was fool enough to laugh over that rape. Achilles slew him with a punch. He insisted that Penthesilea have the same funeral honors as Patroclus. He crossed the battlefield with the Amazon’s body on his back. And once again the Achaeans were against him. Furious over the death of his relative Thersites, Diomedes tried to throw Penthesilea’s body into the river Scamander, dragging her away by one foot. The others, shouting and screaming, wanted to toss her to the dogs. That woman was the closest thing to himself Achilles had ever come across. But he didn’t find out until a moment after he had killed her. She was hostile, and dead: everything Achilles loved in a woman.

  Beneath the walls of Troy, Achilles loved Briseis, Penthesilea, Polyxena. And each time his love met with a sorry end. But th
ere was another woman constantly on his mind, a woman he had never even seen: Helen. As he camped in his pine hut on the plain of Ilium, he thought of Helen as the woman who “sends shivers down the spine.” But at night he dreamed of her, “tossing and turning on his bed at the apparition of her imagined face.” There are those who claim that, like two crafty pimps, Tethys and Aphrodite arranged a meeting between Achilles and Helen during one of the truces. But most believe that the two only saw each other after Achilles’ death. Helen was a phantom as she always had been. Achilles became her fifth husband.

  On leaving the Danube for the open sea, sailors must pass by Leuke, the White Island. They see a coastline of dunes, rocks, and woods. It’s an island for castaways and people who want to offer up a sacrifice. No one has ever dared stay there after sundown. And no woman has ever trod its sandy beaches. The only building on the island is a temple with two statues: Achilles and Helen. Piled inside are heaps of precious votive gifts. The temple guards are sea gulls. Every morning they wet their wings in the sea and sprinkle water on the stones. And with their wings they sweep the floor. Achilles lives on the island as Helen’s fifth husband. Some have seen him appear in the dazzling armor that once blinded Homer with its brilliance. Around the statues, visitors have seen Ajax Telamonius and Ajax Oileus, Patroclus and Antilochus. At night they chant the poetry of Homer in high, clear voices. Sometimes, when boats drop anchor off the beach, the sailors hear a drumming of horses’ hooves, the clashing of weapons, and cries of warriors.

  Helen ends in whiteness, as in whiteness she began. The foam of the waves from which Aphrodite was born dried and hardened to become the white shell of a swan’s egg, which was then tossed “into a swampy place.” The mobile immensity of the sea had shrunk to a patch of stagnant water, surrounded by reeds. When that egg hatched in the swamp, Helen appeared. Some authors say the Dioscuri were huddled in the same egg. So right from the start, Helen, the unique one, is linked to the notion of twinship and division. The unique one appears as the Double. When people speak of Helen, we can never know whether they are referring to her body or her phantom copy.