Heroes

by Stephen Fry

  At the sound of the song, Cerberus – who had bunched himself up ready to bound forward and savage this presumptuous mortal – gave a whining gulp and froze in his tracks. His huge eyes rounded and he began to pant with pleasure and an inner joy that was entirely new to him. He dropped down on his haunches and curled himself on the cold stone of the gateway, like a huntsman’s favourite hound dreaming by the fire after a long day in the field. Orpheus’s song slowed into a gentle lullaby. Cerberus’s six ears flopped down, his six eyes closed, his three tongues passed across his chops with a great slap and his three massive heads dropped into a deep and happy sleep. Even the snake of his tail drooped in peaceful slumber.

  Orpheus climbed over the snoring form and, still humming his lullaby, he headed along the cold dark passageway until his progress was blocked by the black waters of the River Styx. Charon the ferryman poled his way towards him from the further bank where he had just deposited a new soul. He stretched out his hand for payment but quickly withdrew it when he saw that the young man standing before him was alive.

  ‘Hence! Avaunt!’ cried Charon in a hoarse whisper.fn5

  In reply Orpheus strummed his lyre and began a new song, a song praising the overlooked profession of ferryman, glorifying the unrecognised diligence and industry of one ferryman in particular – Charon, the great Charon, whose central role in the vast mystery of life and death should be celebrated the world over.

  Never had Charon’s ferry skimmed the cold waters of the Styx with such alacrity. Never before had Charon, his skiff now beached, put an arm round a fare and helped them gently to disembark. And for sure, never, not in all eternity, had such a stupid, fatuous smile played over the ferryman’s habitually gaunt and unrelenting features. He stood supporting himself on his pole, his adoring gaze fixed on the person of Orpheus who, with a final wave and strum of the lyre, was soon swallowed up by the darkness of the passageways that led to the palace of Hades and Persephone.

  On entering the palace’s great hall, Orpheus found himself facing the three Judges of the Underworld, MINOS, RHADAMANTHUS and AEACUS, enthroned in a grim semicircle.fn6 The light of Orpheus’s living spirit dazzled their eyes.

  ‘Sacrilege! Sacrilege!’

  ‘How dare the living invade the realm of the dead?’

  ‘Summon Thanatos, lord of death, to suck the insolent soul from his body!’

  Orpheus took up his lyre and before the last command could be obeyed, the three judges were smiling, nodding their heads and tapping their sandaled toes in time to the intoxicating strains.

  Their retinue of ghoulish servants, sentries and attendants had not heard music for so long that they could not remember how to respond to it. Some clutched at the air as if the sounds they heard were butterflies that could be caught in their hands. Some clapped, clumsily at first, but soon in time to the beat of the lyre’s chords. An awkward shuffle turned into a rhythmic stamp that became a frenzied dance. Within minutes the whole chamber was alive and echoing with singing, dancing and cries of joy and laughter.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  At the sight of Hades, King of the Underworld himself, and his pale consort Persephone, the hall fell into an instant and guilty silence. As in a game of musical chairs, they froze to a halt with thuds and skids. Only Orpheus appeared unmoved.

  Hades curled a beckoning finger. ‘If you wish to avoid an eternal punishment more excruciating than those of IXION, SISYPHUS and TANTALUS combined, you had better explain yourself, mortal. What possible excuse could you have for this indecent display?’

  ‘Not an excuse, sir, but a reason. The best and only reason.’

  ‘A pert reply. And what is this reason?’

  ‘Love.’

  Hades replied with the barrage of bleak barks that was the closest he came to laughing.

  ‘My wife Eurydice is here. I must have her back.’

  ‘Must?’ Persephone stared at him in disbelief. ‘You dare use such a word?’

  ‘My father Apollo –’

  ‘We do no favours for Olympians,’ said Hades. ‘You are mortal and you have trespassed into the realm of the dead. That is all we need to know.’

  ‘Perhaps my music may change your mind.’

  ‘Music! We are immune to its charms here.’

  ‘I tamed Cerberus. I charmed Charon. I bewitched the Judges of the Underworld and their retinue. Are you perhaps afraid that my songs might enchant you also?’

  Queen Persephone whispered briefly in her husband’s ear.

  Hades nodded. ‘Fetch Eurydice!’ he commanded. ‘One song,’ he said to Orpheus. ‘You may sing one song. If it fails to delight, the relentless agony of your torture will be the talk and terror of the cosmos till the end of time. If your music moves us, well – we will allow you and your woman to return to the world above.’

  When Eurydice’s spirit floated into the hall and saw Orpheus standing so boldly before the King and Queen of the Dead, she let out a great cry of joy and wonder. Orpheus saw the shimmering form of her shade and called out to her.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ said Hades, testily. ‘Most affecting. Now. Your song.’

  Orpheus took up his lyre and gave a deep breath. Never had an artist asked more of their art.

  The moment his hands touched the strings everyone present knew that they were going to hear something entirely new. Nimbly, Orpheus’s fingertips flew up and down the strings, causing a cascade of trilling notes so quick and pure that everyone caught their breath. And now, out of the golden ripple emerged the voice. It asked everyone to think of love. Surely, even here, in the dark caverns of death, love still sat in their souls? Could they remember the first time they felt the sweeping rush of love? Love came to peasants, kings and even gods. Love made all equal. Love deified, yet love levelled.

  Persephone’s hand tightened around Hades’ wrist as she recalled the day his chariot erupted into the meadow where she had been gathering flowers. Hades found himself thinking of the bargain he had struck with Demeter, Persephone’s mother, allowing him access to his beloved for six whole months in every year.

  Persephone turned to look at her husband, the man who had taken her by force but kept her by his steadfast love. Only she understood his dark moods and the honest passions that boiled within. He returned her gaze. Could that be a tear she saw welling up in his eye?

  Orpheus reached the climax of his song to Eros. It wound its way along the passageways and through the chambers, galleries and hallways of hell, binding all who heard it – the servants of Hades, the emissaries of death and the souls of the departed – in a spell that took them, for as long as the music played in their ears, far away from the remorseless miseries of their endless captivity and into a kingdom of light and love.

  ‘Your wish is granted,’ boomed Hades huskily as the last notes faded away. ‘Your wife may depart.’

  At his words Eurydice’s shade took on the substance and form of quick and breathing life. She ran into her husband’s arms and they held each other tight. But a frown was forming on Hades’ brow. The loss of just one dead soul tormented him. When it came to the spirits doomed to spend eternity in his kingdom, he was a hoarder, a miser of the meanest kind.

  ‘Wait!’

  The moment Eurydice had returned to flesh and blood, Orpheus had stopped playing and singing and the powerful spell of the music began to weaken its hold. It was a memory, a keen and a beautiful one, but the transcendent mood it engendered, like all the keenest pleasures, vanished like steam the moment the closing notes died away. Hades now regretted bitterly that while imprisoned in the bewitching coils of Orpheus’s song he could have been so weak as to agree to Eurydice’s release. How foolish he had been to give his word in front of so many witnesses. He leaned across for a whispered consultation with Persephone. Nodding, with a small smile of triumph, he kissed her cheek and pointed a finger at Orpheus.

  ‘Let go of the woman. Turn and leave us.’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘She w
ill follow. As you make your way to the upper world, she will remain ten paces behind. But if you turn round to look at her, if you cast so much as the briefest backward glance in her direction, you will lose her. Trust, Orpheus the musician. You must show that you honour us and have faith in our word. Now go.’

  Orpheus took Eurydice’s face in his hands, kissed her cheek and turned to leave.

  ‘Remember!’ Persephone called after him. ‘Look back for just one instant and she will be ours. No matter how many times you return, and how many songs you sing, you will have lost her for ever.’

  ‘I won’t be far behind. Have faith!’ said Eurydice.

  Orpheus reached the door that led to life and freedom.

  ‘Faith!’ replied Orpheus, his eyes fixed resolutely ahead of him.

  And so he began to make his way along the slowly rising stone corridors and passageways. Hundreds of flitting souls acknowledged him and breathed messages of good luck as he passed. Some alarmed him by begging to be taken to the upper world with him, but Orpheus waved them away and kept resolutely to his course, upwards and ever upwards. Gates and doors opened mysteriously before him as he went.

  To encourage Eurydice, but mostly to reassure himself, he called out continually.

  ‘Still there, my darling?’

  ‘Still there.’

  ‘Not tiring?’

  ‘Always ten paces behind. Trust me.’

  ‘So close now.’

  Indeed, over the last two hundred or so paces Orpheus had become aware of a cool breeze fanning his face and fresh air filling his nostrils. Now he saw light ahead. Not the underworld’s light of rush torches, pitch lamps and burning oil, but the pure light of living day. He quickened his step and pressed forward. So close, so fantastically close! In just fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve steps they would be free, free to live their lives again as husband and wife. Free to have children, to travel the world together. Oh, the places they would visit. The wonders they would see. The songs and poetry and music he would compose.

  The mouth of the cave opened wide as Orpheus strode on with joy and triumph in his heart. One more step – out of the shadows and into the light.

  He had done it! He was out in the world, the sun was warming his face and its light was dazzling his eyes. Ten more steps forward to be sure, and now he could turn and take his beloved in his arms.

  But no! No, no, no and no!

  Orpheus had not known it, but his last twenty or so steps had accelerated into a run. Eurydice had quickened her own pace to try to match his, but when he turned round she was still too far behind, still in shadow, still in the realm of the dead.

  Her eyes, filled with horror and fear, caught his for a second before the light inside her seemed to die and she was pulled back into the darkness.

  With a cry of anguish Orpheus ran into the cave but she was flying away from him at tremendous speed, no longer flesh and blood but an immaterial spirit once more. Her unhappy cries echoed as Orpheus ran blindly into the blackness after her. The doors and gateways that had opened to let them leave now slammed shut in his face. He beat his fists against them until they bled, but to no avail. He could no longer hear her cries of despair, only his own.

  If he had waited just two blinks of an eye before turning, they would have been united and free. Just two heartbeats.

  THE DEATH OF ORPHEUS

  Orpheus’s later life was a sad one. After a long second mourning period, he picked up his lyre again and continued to compose, play and sing for the rest of his life, but he never found a woman to match his Eurydice. Indeed, it is reported in several sources that he turned away from women altogether and lavished what affection he had left on the male youths of Thrace.

  The Thracian women, the Ciconians, followers of Dionysus, were so enraged at being overlooked that they threw sticks and stones at Orpheus. However, the sticks and stones were so charmed by his music they just hung in mid-air, refusing to hurt him.

  At last the Ciconian women could bear the degradation and insult of being ignored no longer and, in a Bacchic frenzy, they tore Orpheus to pieces, pulling off his limbs and wrenching the head from his shoulders.fn7 The golden harmonies of Apollo were always an affront to the dark Dionysian dances and dithyrambs.

  Orpheus’s head, still singing, was cast into the River Hebrus where it floated out into the Aegean. Eventually it found its way onto the beach at Lesbos; it was taken up by the inhabitants of the island and placed in a cave. For many years people came from all over to the cave to ask the head of Orpheus questions, and it always sang the most melodious prophecies in reply.

  At last Orpheus’s father Apollo, perhaps jealous that the shrine was threatening the supremacy of his own oracle at Delphi, silenced him. His mother Calliope found his golden lyre and carried it heavenwards, where it was placed amongst the stars as the constellation Lyra, which contains Vega, the fifth brightest star in the firmament. His aunts, the eight other Muses, gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Libethra, below Mount Olympus, where nightingales still sing over his grave.

  Finally at peace, Orpheus’s spirit descended once more into the underworld where he was at last reunited with his beloved Eurydice. Thanks to Offenbach, they still perform a joyful cancan together in the realm of the dead every single day.

  JASON

  * * *

  THE RAM

  The voyage of Jason’s ship Argo in the quest for the Golden Fleece involves backstory, backstory and more backstory. But it’s good, juicy backstory, so I hope you will dive in. A lot of names will come at you now like quills shot from a porcupine; but don’t worry, the important ones will stick.fn1

  We can start with BISALTES, a founder hero of the Bisaltae peoples of Thrace. His mother was the primordial earth goddess Gaia and his father the sun Titan Heliosfn2. Bisaltes’ beautiful daughter THEOPHANE caught the eye of the sea god Poseidon, who snatched her up and took her to the island of Crinissa, where he turned himself into a ram and Theophane into a ewe. In the course of time she gave birth to a beautiful golden ram.

  Point One – there now existed in the world a beautiful golden ram, of immortal lineage.

  Ixion, a king of the Lapiths, had once dared to attempt to seduce Hera, the Queen of Heaven, at a banquet on Mount Olympusfn3. To expose his depravity Zeus entrapped Ixion by sending to him a living cloud in the exact likeness and form of Hera. The brutish Ixion had leapt all over this cloud, thinking it was the goddess herself. As a punishment for such blasphemous intent, Ixion was bound to a revolving wheel of fire and sent spinning across the heavens, and latterly down into the underworld to remain there for ever. The cloud took on the name NEPHELE and went on to marry King ATHAMAS of Boeotiafn4 by whom she had twins, a boy, PHRIXUS, and a girl, HELLE.

  Point Two – the twins Phrixus and Helle are born to Athamas of Boeotia.

  In time Nephele took her place back in the sky as a cloud and as a minor goddess of xenia, the highly prized principle of hospitality. Athamas looked to take a new wife and chose INO, one of the daughters of CADMUS, the founding King of Thebes.fn5 Ino installed herself in Athamas’s palace and, as second wives will, instituted a new regime to banish all memories of her predecessor. Ino came with a reputation as the most caring and nurturing of women – it was she who had suckled her sister Semele’s child by Zeus, the infant Dionysus. Her other sisters, AGAVE and AUTONOË, had rejected Semele and paid a terrible price when a grown Dionysus visited Thebes and sent them mad to tragic effect.fn6 But Ino had survived with her life and good name intact, and the world loved her for it.

  Inside, however, Ino was ambitious, relentless and cruel. She had taken an instant dislike to her stepchildren Phrixus and Helle and decided to get them out of the way. By Athamas she had her own sons, LEARCHUS and MELICERTES, and was determined they should rule Boeotia when Athamas died, not Phrixus and Helle. An archetype of the wicked stepmother that was to dominate myth, legend and fairy tale for ages to come, Ino hatched a formidably malicious and elaborat
e plan to destroy the twins.

  First she persuaded the women of Boeotia to ruin the seedcorn in the barns and silos by charring it, so that when their husbands went out to sow in the fields it would be unable to sprout. As she had hoped, the next year’s harvest failed and famine threatened the kingdom.

  ‘Let us send messengers to Delphi, dear husband,’ said Ino to Athamas, ‘and find out why this disaster has been visited on us and what we can do to set it right.’

  ‘How wise you are, dear wife,’ said the besotted Athamas.

  But the messengers sent to Delphi were paid agents of Ino and the words they claimed now to bring back from the oracle were hers and hers alone.

  ‘My lord king,’ said the chief messenger, unfurling a roll of parchment, ‘hearken unto the words of Delphic Apollo. “To placate the gods for the sins of the city and the vanities of its citizens, your son Phrixus must be sacrificed.” ’

  On hearing this Athamas let out a howl of anguish. He was too distressed to consider how uncharacteristically direct and unambiguous this pronouncement was from an oracle notorious for its equivocations and double meanings.

  Young Prince Phrixus stepped up. ‘If my life will save the lives of others, Father,’ he said in a clear, steady voice, ‘then I go happily to the sacrificial altar.’

  His mother Nephele, high in her palace of clouds, heard this and made ready to intervene.

  Phrixus, head held aloft, was led to the great sacrificial stone that had stood in the town square for generations. Human sacrifice, especially involving the young, was now looked on as barbaric, an unwanted legacy from the days when gods and men were crueller. But gods and men never lose their cruelty and the stone remained, just in case.