by Stephen Fry
‘He is just the right age. I like him. Leda likes him and Helen has always liked him. I think he will make her happy. Surely Apollo or Athena guided his hand when he drew his ticket.’
‘We must hope not,’ said Odysseus. ‘When the gods play so deep a part in our affairs, we should count ourselves cursed.’
‘You are a cynic, Odysseus,’ said Tyndareus.
Just then Agamemnon approached, favouring Odysseus with a dark glare. ‘Your bright idea, I suppose?’
Odysseus inclined his head. Agamemnon was no more than a prince in exile, a king without a country, yet he had that about him which commanded respect. He brought with him wherever he went an atmosphere of strength and weight. A powerful aura of authority.
Agamemnon was younger than Tyndareus by almost twenty years, yet the Spartan king always felt flustered in his presence. ‘I hope you’re pleased for your brother?’
All three men looked across the hall to where Menelaus and Helen now sat enthroned, accepting the congratulations and loyalty of the losing suitors.
‘They look like the kind of young lovers that artists depict on their plates and jars, do they not?’ said Odysseus.
‘It isn’t right,’ said Agamemnon darkly. ‘She should be marrying me. I am the older and – with all respect – the better man. There are plans afoot. Before long I will have recaptured Mycenae. If Helen were mine, she would find herself queen of the greatest kingdom in the world.’
A preposterous claim, Odysseus thought. And yet barked out with a gruff certainty that somehow convinced.
‘Oh yes,’ said Agamemnon, as if sensing Odysseus’s doubt. ‘My prophet CALCHAS has assured me that great victories lie ahead of me. And Calchas is never wrong. I’ve nothing against my brother. Menelaus is a fine fellow, but he is no Agamemnon.’
The embarrassed Tyndareus shot Odysseus a look of mute appeal.
‘Has it not occurred to you,’ said Odysseus, ‘that Helen has a sister? She may not have quite the same degree of beauty – no mortal does – but Clytemnestra can surely be counted amongst the loveliest women in the world. Had Helen never been born, Clytemnestra would be the stuff of poetry and song.’
‘Clytemnestra, eh?’ said Agamemnon, rubbing his beard ruminatively. He glanced in the direction of Helen’s sister. Clytemnestra was standing with her mother Leda and surveying the crowd clustering around Helen and Menelaus with a look of coolly ironic self-possession. She had never expressed the least hint of rancour or envy for the hysteria that her sister’s beauty generated.
Agamemnon turned back to Tyndareus. ‘Is she promised?’
‘No, indeed,’ said Tyndareus eagerly. ‘We have been waiting first to get Helen off our … That is to say, we had thought first to find a match for Helen …’
‘Go on!’ said Odysseus, daring to nudge Agamemnon in the ribs. ‘Marry Clytemnestra! What could possibly go wrong?’
The lottery for the hand of Helen of Sparta represented a momentous turning point in the history of the Greek world. It seemed to betoken the passing of power from one generation to the next and to promise the arrival of a new age of stability, growth and peace. Tyndareus abdicated the throne of Sparta in favour of his new son-in-law Menelaus.fn57 Agamemnon raised an army to invade Mycenae and, as he had assured Tyndareus and Odysseus he would, drove his cousin Aegisthus and uncle Thyestes from the kingdom, installing himself on the throne with Clytemnestra as his queen. Thyestes died in exile on Cythera, the small island off the southern tip of the Peloponnese.
Agamemnon – as all who had watched him grow up guessed he might, and as his seer Calchas had prophesied – proved himself a most brilliant and effective warrior king. He absorbed, annexed and overwhelmed neighbouring realms and city states with astonishing speed and skill. His ruthless generalship and natural gifts of leadership earned him the soubriquet Anax andron, ‘King of Men’. Under his rule Mycenae rose to become the richest and most powerful of all the Greek kingdoms, such that it might almost be called an empire.
But what, meanwhile, of Peleus and Thetis, whose wedding had been so strangely interrupted by Eris and her Apple of Discord?
THE SEVENTH SON
Six sons had Thetis given Peleus, but the famous prophecy that a son by her would grow up to be greater than his father had no chance to be proven, for every one of her six babies died very early in their infancy. No, that is not quite true. To say that they died is misleading. It would be more accurate to say that – from Peleus’s point of view at least – they disappeared. He could not understand it, but he was too sensitive to push a clearly distressed Thetis for details. Babies died more often than they lived, after all. He knew that. Six in a row seemed extreme, but it wasn’t for him, a mere man, to enquire too deeply.
The reasons were not beyond his understanding because he was a mere man, however; they were beyond his understanding because he was a mere mortal man.
In desperation Thetis, now pregnant with their seventh child, visited her father, the sea god Nereus.
‘It is so very upsetting,’ she said. ‘I have done everything correctly, I am sure I have, yet still the babies burn.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Nereus.
‘Peleus is a fine man and a good husband,’ said Thetis, ‘but he is mortal.’
‘Certainly he is mortal. But what’s this about burning?’
‘I shall live for ever. For ever is such a long time. If I am to have a son by mortal Peleus, the son who is said to be destined to rise to such greatness, then I could not bear for him too to be mortal. He would be gone in a flicker of time. I will hardly get to know him before he grows old, then decrepit, then dead. I have accepted that this will happen to Peleus, but I want my great son to live for ever.’
‘But any child of yours by a mortal father must, of course, be mortal too,’ said Nereus. ‘It is the way of things.’
‘Ah, but not if I make him immortal! The Oceanids told me that there is a way. They assured me it would work. But I fear they may have misled me.’
A shining sphere rolled down Thetis’s cheek. They were in Nereus’s great undersea grotto, in scale and grandeur a structure second only to the palace of Poseidon himself. When Thetis wept above the waves she shed salt tears like all creatures of land and air, but when she wept below the surface her tears were bubbles of air.
‘You consulted Oceanids?’ said her father. ‘Oceanids know nothing. What rubbish did they tell you?’fn58
‘They said that to immortalize a human child I should smear it with ambrosia and then hold it over a fire. I did exactly as they said six times, but each time … each time … the baby just screamed and burned up and died.’
‘Oh you silly, silly, silly child!’
‘What they said was wrong?’
‘Not wrong, no, but incomplete – which is as bad as wrong, worse perhaps. Yes, slathering a baby in ambrosia and then roasting it over flames will certainly confer immortality, but first you have to make the child invulnerable, don’t you see?’
‘Invulnerable?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh,’ said Thetis, the truth dawning. ‘Oh! Yes, I should have thought of that. First invulnerable and only then the ambrosia and the flames.’
‘Oceanids!’ said Nereus with contempt.
‘Just one thing,’ said Thetis after a pause.
‘Yes?’
‘What exactly is the procedure for making a child invulnerable?’
Nereus sighed. ‘The Styx, of course. Full immersion in her waters.’
You will remember – which is to say you will be entirely forgiven for not remembering – that Peleus had inherited the throne of Phthia, the kingdom of the Myrmidons in eastern mainland Greece. It was there that Thetis and Peleus lived, and it was thither that she now rushed after her conference with Nereus, in time to give birth to her seventh child, yet another son. Peleus was pleased, naturally he was pleased, but his warm paternal pleasure was greatly diminished by the anxiety he felt when he saw the excitement, j
oy and optimism with which Thetis celebrated this new birth. After six early deaths it seemed folly to invest so much love and hope.
‘This time all will be well, I’m sure of it,’ she said, hugging the baby to her. ‘Beautiful LIGYRON. Have you seen how bright his hair is? Like spun gold.’
‘I shall go and sacrifice a bull,’ said Peleus. ‘Perhaps this time the gods will be merciful.’
That night, while Peleus slept, Thetis took the young Ligyron from his cot and made her way with him down to the nearest entrance to the underworld. Styx, the river of hate, which ran through Hades’ realm of the dead, was herself an Oceanid, one of the three thousand children of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. Her waters were cold and black – literally Stygian black. Thetis knelt down and dipped the naked Ligyron into the river. To ensure that the swift current did not bear him away she held him by one ankle, clutching the heel of his left foot between finger and thumb. She counted to ten and then brought him up and wrapped him in a blanket. The shock of the icy water had woken Ligyron, but he did not cry.
Back in her chamber in the Phthian palace she laid him on a table and looked down into his eyes.
‘You are invulnerable now, little Ligyron,’ she told him. ‘No one can hurt you. No spear can pierce your side, no club can break your bones. Not poison nor plague can do you harm. Now I shall make you immortal.’
She warmed a handful of fragrant ambrosia in the palms of her hands before rubbing it all over Ligyron.fn59 The child gurgled happily as the unguent was smeared over his skin. When she was sure that his whole body was covered she took him to the hearth, where a good fire was blazing.
This time. This time it would work. Her boy would never die.
Thetis leaned down and kissed Ligyron on the brow, tasting the familiar sweetness of the ambrosia on her lips. ‘Come, my darling,’ she breathed, holding him over the flames.
‘No!’
With a yell of fury, Peleus reached into the hearth and snatched the child from the fire.
‘You unnatural witch! You mad, cruel, diseased –’
‘You don’t understand!’
‘Oh, I understand. I understand what happened to our six other sons now. Leave. Leave the palace. Go! Go …’
Thetis stood up to face her husband, her eyes ablaze with anger. Peleus stealing up behind her had been a shock, but she was a Nereid and not minded to reveal any hint of weakness.
‘No mortal dares tell me to go. You leave. You go.’
Ligyron, in Peleus’s arms, began to cry.
Peleus stood quite still. ‘I know you can kill me too if you choose. Well, choose then. The gods will see what kind of a creature you are.’
Thetis stamped her foot. ‘Give him back to me! I’m telling you, you don’t understand what I was doing.’
‘Go!’
Thetis screamed in frustration. Mortals. They weren’t worth the effort. Very well. She had failed to complete the process of immortalizing her son. Ligyron would die, like all humans. She had better things to do than descend to a vulgar brawl. She should never have involved herself with weak mortal flesh in the first place.
In a swirl and swim of light she disappeared.
HOLDING THE BABY
Peleus stood for some time, the infant Ligyron flushed and gulping in his arms. It seemed incredible to him that any mother, divine or human, could undergo the burden and pain of pregnancy and childbirth and then … and then do what Thetis had done. Consign her children to the flames. She must be demented. Sick to the very soul. Perhaps, over the years, the warning of the prophecy had become garbled. It was not that a son of hers would live to be greater than his father, it was that a son of hers would never live at all.
He looked down into the eyes of his seventh son. ‘Will you live now and grow up to outshine me, Ligyron? I’m sure you will.’
It was to the cave of his grandfather and saviour, Chiron, that Peleus now took the child. The very cave in which he and Thetis had been married in front of all the gods on the day when Eris rolled the golden apple.
‘You were my tutor,’ said Peleus to the centaur, ‘and you raised Asclepius and Jason. Will you now do the same for my son? Be his instructor, guide and friend?’
Chiron bowed his head and took the baby in his arms.fn60
‘I will return for him when he is ten years old,’ said Peleus.
Chiron did not like the name Ligyron. It meant ‘wailing and whining’ – and Chiron made the assumption that it had been given to the baby as a kind of mocking nickname. All babies wail and whine, after all. It was likely that, had things gone forward in the usual way, Peleus and Thetis would have found a different, more dignified name for their son. After some thought, Chiron settled on ACHILLES.fn61
And so it was that Achilles spent the first part of his upbringing in Chiron’s cave, learning music, rhetoric, poetry, history and science, and later, when he was deemed old enough, in his father’s palace in Phthia, where he perfected his skill at the javelin and discus, charioteering, sword-fighting and wrestling. At these last, the arts of war, he showed quite astonishing aptitude. By the time he was eleven no one in the kingdom could catch him on the running track. It was believed that he ran faster than Atalanta herself,fn62 that he was swifter indeed than any mortal who had ever lived. His speed, eye, balance and matchless athletic grace endowed him with a glamour, an aura, that thrilled and captivated all who came into contact with him, even at so very young an age. He was Golden Achilles, whose glorious and heroic future was assured.
When this paragon was about ten years old and newly transferred from Chiron’s cave to the Phthian royal court, King Menoetius and Queen Polymele of the nearby kingdom of Opus sent a message to Peleus. Polymele was Peleus’ sister and Menoetius had been a fellow Argonaut back in the days of the quest for the Golden Fleece. They asked Peleus if he might take in their son Patroclus, who had accidentally killed a child in a fit of rage, and must now grow up exiled from Opus to atone for his crime. Young Patroclus, that one temper tantrum aside, was a balanced, kindly disposed and thoughtful youth, and Peleus was all too happy for Achilles to have his cousin as a companion. So it was that the two boys grew up together, inseparable friends.
THE CAST
Let us remind ourselves of who is who and where they are.
In TROY, Hecuba and Priam have added to their family with – amongst many other childrenfn63 – the sons DEIPHOBUS, HELENUS and TROILUS, and the daughters Iliona, CASSANDRA, Laodice and POLYXENA. Their eldest boy, Prince Hector, has married the Cilician princess ANDROMACHE; while Paris, the ‘stillborn son’ (as word was put out), whom no one in Troy suspects to be alive, moons around with his flocks and herds on Mount Ida, quite unable to forget the strange dream he had that sunny afternoon: Hermes, an apple, a scallop shell, goddesses and that face – a face so beautiful that Paris knows he will see it in his dreams for ever.
That face belongs to Helen, now Queen of SPARTA, married to Menelaus. The couple have been blessed with a daughter, HERMIONE, and a son, NICOSTRATUS. Helen is attended by her bondswoman, Theseus’s mother Aethra.
Agamemnon rules in MYCENAE with his young wife Clytemnestra. She has borne him three daughters, IPHIGENIA, Electra and Chrysothemis, and a son, Orestes.
On the island of SALAMIS, Telamon reigns with his wife Hesione (the Trojan princess he brought back with him when he and Heracles sacked her father Laomedon’s Troy). They have had a son, Teucer – a prodigiously gifted archer – who gets on perfectly well with his huge half-brother Ajax – Telamon’s son from his first marriage.
Telamon’s brother Peleus rules in PHTHIA without his estranged wife Thetis. Their son Achilles, always accompanied by his friend Patroclus, is growing up to be remarkable.
Odysseus, having satisfactorily settled matters for Tyndareus, has sailed with his bride Penelope back to ITHACA.
If all that is clear in our minds, we can travel back east across the Aegean Sea and revisit Troy.
PARIS COMES HOME
By th
e time the eighteenth anniversary of the death of Priam’s and Hecuba’s secondborn came around, the guilt, shame and sadness that they felt for his killing was in no way diminished or assuaged.
It had been the custom to hold funeral games in honour of the lost child every year on the day of his supposed birth and death. No one in Troy but Agelaus the herdsman had any knowledge of the king and queen sending their own baby to die on a mountainside. As far as the world was aware, a young prince had been stillborn. Such things happened. It was a rare couple whose children all survived to adulthood.
Paris himself, living with the mountain nymph Oenone on the high pasture slopes of Ida, knew that these special funeral games had been going on for as long as he could remember, but he had no inkling of his unique personal connection to them, that they were memorializing his death. As for the visitation of Hermes and the three goddesses … Well, it was known that if you fall asleep in the meadows of Ida, MORPHEUS could sometimes come and blow the scent of poppies, lavender and thyme into your nostrils, causing strange and vivid phantasms to rise in the mind like mirages.fn64 Paris had decided that Oenone need not know about this particular dream. Some summers since, she had borne him a son, CORYTHUS, and while Paris had never given her any reason to doubt his love for her, he had a feeling that she might look with disfavour on his story of three goddesses, a golden apple and a lovely mortal woman called Helen. So he had kept the peculiar vision to himself. That face, though … oh, how it haunted him.
One afternoon, a few days before the annual funerary games were due to begin, an officer and six soldiers arrived on Ida to take possession of the prize bull whose beauty Paris had, months earlier, boasted to be matchless. The boast that had caused the apparition of Hermes and the whole bewildering episode.
Paris could not understand why a company of soldiers would want to take the animal.
‘He belongs to me and my father Agelaus!’ he protested.
