by Stephen Fry
Atalanta sighed in sorrow and turned away.
The women, children, priests, cowards, merchants and older men from the city and the palace were streaming out to view the body of the boar. Queen Althaea arrived in time to see her son Meleager standing in dazed triumph over the bodies of her four brothers.
Demented with sorrow and raging for revenge, Althaea ran back to the palace. Down to the cellars she went until she came at last to the deserted chamber in whose floor she had buried the log on the day her son was born. Meleager would live, Atropos and her fellow Moirai had proclaimed, for as long as that log was not consumed by fire. But Althaea was now inexorable: after killing her beloved brothers, Meleager had forfeited the right to live one moment longer.
She scrabbled at the earth and brought out the log, still wrapped in what was left of the woollen blanket she had swaddled it in all those years ago.
Meleager’s life will end in a flash
When his log of fate is turned to ash
Althaea hurried into the kitchens, where a great open fire roared all day and all night. She looked up and saw that across the opening in the floor of the feasting room above a great spit had been suspended directly over the flames. On this the skinned and gutted carcass of the boar would be transfixed and slowly roasted for the evening’s banquet.
Still engulfed by her fury, Althaea unwrapped the log and hurled it into the heart of the fire.
The instant she saw the old log spark and bloom into flames Althaea regretted what she had done. She tried to find a way to pull it out, but the heat was too intense. She could not reclaim the log without burning up herself.
But perhaps, she told herself, she had only dreamed the whispered conversation between the three Fates all those years ago. She had long convinced herself that this was probably so. The proclamations of the Moirai were not for mortal ears. They would never have talked to each other if there had been a chance of being overheard. It had all been imagination.
Surely!
She stroked her cheek with the tattered blanket.
Surely?
Althaea turned and ran outside, drawn by a sense of deep and terrible foreboding towards the shouts of horror that came from the ruined barn where lay the corpses of the Calydonian Boar and so many heroes, including her brothers.
She arrived in time to see her son Meleager running, jumping and screaming in pain, his voice sounding horribly like the squealing of the monstrous boar.
‘I’m burning! I’m burning!’ he screeched. ‘Help me, mother! Help me!’
Everyone pulled back in confusion and apprehension to see this brave young man so suddenly overtaken by madness. No flames leapt from him, yet he howled and writhed back and forth, falling to the ground and rolling over and over as if he were being consumed by living, scorching flame. Finally his screams turned to sobs, his sobs to a great shuddering sigh and he fell silent, quite dead. His body, as the soul left it, blackened, charred and disintegrated into grey ashes that were whipped away by the wind, leaving behind nothing but a memory of the proud and handsome Meleager’s mortal remains.
With a grief-stricken wail Althaea ran blindly into the woods.
They found her some hours later, suspended from the branch of a tree, remnants of an old blanket clutched in her hands. Before she hanged herself she had torn out her own cheeks in the wild throes of her anguish.
This whole sorry train of events came about, you may recall, because King Oeneus had failed properly to worship Artemis. Her punishment was first to send a boar that ravaged the countryside and nearly brought ruin to Oeneus’s kingdom, then to despatch Atalanta to sow discord amongst his family and the warriors who gathered to his aid. The hunt itself resulted in the deaths of dozens of fine heroes before the outbreak of enmities that caused the slaughter of Oeneus’s brothers-in-law, the uncanny seizure and death of his son Meleager and the frightful suicide of his wife Althaea. But Artemis didn’t stop there. She transformed the Meleagrids – Meleager’s grieving sisters Melanippe, Eurymede, Mothone and Perimede – into guinea fowl, who clucked and mourned their brother for eternity.fn12
Two other daughters of Althaea and Oeneus were spared by Artemis, however. They were Gorge and Deianira, whom Moros, fate, had marked out for important contributions to the heroic years to come.fn13
Atalanta, her task complete, left the bitter and blighted kingdom of Calydon, never to return.
THE FOOT RACE
Atalanta’s triumphant role in the Calydonian Boar Hunt caused her name to be sounded far and wide. It came to the ears of her father King Schoeneus. He had cruelly left her to die exposed on a mountainside, but now he was only too keen to welcome her back to his palace. He may have been the first cruel, abusive and unfit parent to reclaim a child once they became famous or rich, but he would certainly not be the last.
‘My darling child,’ he said, spreading his arms wide to show the breadth of his kingdom, ‘this will all be yours.’
‘Really?’ said Atalanta.
‘Well, your husband’s, naturally,’ said Schoeneus.
Atalanta shook her head. ‘I will never marry.’
‘But consider! You are my only child. If you do not marry and have children, the kingdom will go to outsiders.’
Atalanta’s devotion to Artemis and her lifelong objection to marriage had not altered. ‘I will only a marry a man,’ she said, ‘who can …’
She considered. She was a superb shot with a bow, but it was conceivable that the man might live who was better. It was the same with her skill with javelin, discus and on horseback. What was there that no man could ever best her at? Ah! She had it.
‘I will only a marry man who can run faster than me.’
‘Very well. So let it be.’
Atalanta was safe. Her speed could never be matched.fn14
‘Oh, and any suitor who takes the challenge and fails must die,’ she added.
Schoeneus grunted his assent and arranged for the word to be put out.
Great was Atalanta’s fame and beauty, great the value of Schoeneus’s kingdom and great the conviction of many fine, fit and fast young fellows that no woman could ever best them. Many made the journey to Arcadia: all were defeated and all were killed. The crowds loved it.
In amongst the spectators one day was a young man called HIPPOMENES. He watched a prince from Thessaly run against Atalanta, lose and be taken off to be beheaded. The crowd cheered as his head rolled in the dust but all Hippomenes could think of was Atalanta. Her impossible swiftness. Those long striding legs. The hair streaming behind. The stern frown on that beautiful face.
He was in love and he meant to win her. But how could he do it? He was no runner – the prince who had just lost his head was much faster, and had been nowhere in sight when Atalanta crossed the finish line.
Hippomenes made his way to a temple of Aphrodite, knelt before the statue of the goddess and prayed his heart out.
The statue seemed to move and he heard a voice whisper in his ear. ‘Look behind the altar and take the things you see. Use them to win the race.’
Hippomenes opened his eyes. Fragrant incense was burning strongly. Had wreaths of its smoke snaked into his head and made him imagine Aphrodite’s voice? He was alone in the temple; surely there was no harm in looking behind the altar.
Something gleamed in the shadows. He reached out a hand and pulled out one, two, three golden apples.
‘Thank you, Aphrodite, thank you!’ he whispered.
The following day Atalanta looked at the next young man foolish enough to challenge her to a race, the next young lamb to the slaughter.
‘What a pity,’ she thought to himself, ‘he’s rather good-looking. A young Apollo. But he’s stupid enough to have a satchel slung over his shoulder. Doesn’t he know how much that will slow him down? Ah well …’ she crouched and waited for the starting signal.
Hippomenes set off after her as fast as he could. His running style was poor at best, but hampered by the bag of apples swinging
from his shoulder it was preposterous enough to cause the crowd to hoot with laughter. They howled even louder when he started fumbling with the bag.
‘He’s decided to have his lunch, now!’
Hippomenes took out one of the apples and rolled it along the ground ahead of him. It shot along the track and overtook Atalanta, who sprinted after it and picked it up.
How beautiful, she thought, turning it round in her hand. A golden apple! Like the apples Gaia gave Zeus and Hera as a wedding gift. The apples in the Garden of the Hesperides. Or perhaps this one came from Aphrodite’s sacred apple tree in Cyprus? She glanced up to see Hippomenes flailing past her. ‘I’ll soon reel him in,’ she muttered to herself, shooting off again.
Indeed, it wasn’t long before she had passed him. She was just feeling the heft of the apple in her hand when another one rolled past her. Once again she stopped to pick it up; once again Hippomenes overtook her; once again she regained her position ahead of him with ease.
The third apple Hippomenes deliberately rolled at an angle, so that as it shot past Atalanta it veered off the track. Atalanta saw it flash by and took off in hot pursuit. The damned thing was stuck in an acacia bush. Its thorns scratched her and caught in her hair as she plucked it out. She now had three golden apples. How marvellous. But there was that damned boy racing past her again. She turned and streaked after him.
It was too late! Unbelievable, but true. The crowd roared as the exhausted Hippomenes crossed the line arms aloft and staggered, doubled up, hands on hips, sobbing and panting from the exertion.
Atalanta came through in a creditable but shocked second place.
She was too honourable to go back on her word and she and Hippomenes were soon married. You can say it was the work of Aphrodite, you can say it was love – it amounts to the same thing – but Atalanta found herself growing fonder and fonder of Hippomenes until it could safely be said that she loved him with an ardour equal to his for her. They had a son, PARTHENOPAEUS, who grew up to be one of the Seven against Thebes.fn15 Their married life, though, was to end strangely.
It seems that Hippomenes neglected to thank Aphrodite properly for her aid in winning Atalanta. As a punishment, she visited great lust upon the couple while they were visiting a temple sacred to the goddess CYBELE fn16. Unable to resist the urge, they made furious love on the floor of her temple. The outraged Cybele transformed the pair into lions. This might not seem so terrible a punishment, lions being kings of the jungle and high up the food chain; but to the Greeks it was the worst fate that could befall lovers, for they believed that lions and lionesses were unable to mate with each other. Lion cubs, they thought, came exclusively from the union of lions and leopards. And so Atalanta and Hippomenes were doomed to live out their lives drawing Cybele’s chariot, closely harnessed to each other but eternally denied the pleasure of sex.
OEDIPUS
* * *
THE ORACLE SPEAKS
The Greeks believed that the first city state, or polis, to appear in the world was Thebes in Boeotia, the first polis or city state.fn1 The family of its founder hero Cadmus could claim amongst its members the only Olympian god with mortal blood in his veins. It was notorious for internecine dynastic wars, curses and homicides that for catastrophic generational ruin matched even those of Tantalus and the doomed house of Atreus. If they weren’t casseroling their children they were sacrificing them; while those who made it to adulthood, if they weren’t committing incest with their parents were murdering them.fn2
To be biblical, Cadmus and HARMONIA begat Semele, who exploded and begat Dionysus, her son by Zeus. Cadmus and Harmonia also begat Agave, Autonoë and Ino. Agave begat PENTHEUS, who was torn to pieces by all three of the sisters, his mother included – a fate arranged by the god Dionysus as punishment for the women’s failure to honour his mother, their sister Semele.fn3 Ino, as we saw in the preamble to the story of Jason, begat Learchus and Melicertes, tried to get Phrixus and Helle sacrificed and was finally transformed into Leucothea, the white goddess of the sea.
As well as their four daughters, Cadmus and Harmonia also begat a son, POLYDORUS, who begat LABDACUS, who begat LAIUS,fn4 who – as if the enmity of Ares and Dionysus was not enough to blight the fortunes of the house of Cadmus – attracted a new curse.fn5
Without going into too much detail, when Laius was still a baby, his father Labdacus had been overthrown by the twins AMPHION and ZETHUS.fn6 His life in peril, the infant Laius had been smuggled out of Thebes by Cadmean loyalists keen to ensure that the royal line could one day be restored.
Laius grew up as the guest of King Pelops of Pisafn7. It seems he fell in love with Pelops’s illegitimate son CHRYSIPPUS, taught him chariot driving and took him to the Nemean Games, where the youth competed in the races.
Instead of returning him safely home to Pelops, Laius brought Chrysippus with him when he went on from the games to Thebes to reclaim his throne. Chrysippus, who did not consent to this abduction and was ashamed of his public position as a kept lover, committed suicide.fn8 When news of this reached Pelops he cursed Laius and his line for ever.
Whether as a result of the curse or slack sperm motility, or both, Laius – who had reclaimed the throne that was his birthright and married a Theban noblewoman called JOCASTA – found that he was unable to father a child. Not for the first time we follow a king without an heir as he visits the Delphic oracle for advice.
The son of Laius and Jocasta shall kill his father.
Well, that would never do. The prophecy that had told Acrisius of Argos he would be killed by his grandson was bad enough, but this … Acrisius had indeed died at the hand of his grandson, the hero Perseus, even if it was an accident; but Acrisius, Laius thought to himself, had been a fool. He would have found a surer way to beat the oracle than throwing the infant in a wooden chest and casting him into the sea. He would have had the brat’s head chopped off and there would have been an end to it. Nonetheless, perhaps it might be safer to stay away from the marriage bed.
But Laius was a man, wine was wine and Jocasta was beautiful. The morning following a great feast, he barely remembered having spent a night of passion with her; but when, nine months later, she presented him with a baby son, he began to understand Acrisius’s dilemma. To kill his own son would be to invite the certain fury of … the Furies. He sat on his throne and pulled on his beard. At last he sent for his most trusted servant, Antimedes.
‘Take this baby and expose it on the highest point of Mount Cithaeron.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘And, Antimedes, just to be sure, stake him to the hillside. I don’t want him crawling away, you understand?’
Antimedes bowed and did as he was told, piercing the infant’s ankles with iron staples and shackling them to a peg that he drove deep into the ground.
It was not long before a shepherd called PHORBAS came on the scene, attracted by the loud wails.
‘Oh my good gods,’ he cried, smashing the fetters with a rock and cradling the bawling infant in his arms. ‘Who can have done such a terrible thing?’
The baby screamed and screamed.
‘Shush, now, little one. It’s no good me keeping you. Plain country people don’t treat babies this way. Only a great and powerful ruler can have done a thing so cruel. No, I daren’t be found with you.’
It happened that Phorbas had a friend from Corinth staying with him, another herdsman. This friend, Straton by name, was happy enough to take the abandoned foundling home with him.
Back in Corinth, Straton presented the baby to his king and queen, POLYBUS and MEROPE. Long childless themselves, they adopted the infant and brought him up as their own son. On account of the scars from the shackles that had staked him to the ground, they called him Oedipus, which means ‘swollen foot’.
So Oedipus grew up far away from Thebes, wholly ignorant of his true origins. His life might have turned out like that of any attractive, intelligent, proud princeling – especially one so much indulged by loving parents �
�� were it not for the spite of a drinking companion who had always been jealous of his popularity and casual air of superiority. One evening the sight of beautiful young women queuing up for Oedipus’s attentions maddened the young man past enduring.
‘They only go for you because they think you’re a prince,’ he blurted out, deep in wine.
‘Well,’ said Oedipus with a smile, ‘I know it’s unfair, but as it happens I am a prince, and there isn’t much I can do about it.’
‘You may think you are,’ jeered the friend. ‘But you’re not.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re a peasant orphan bastard, nothing more.’
The others in the group tried to silence him, but the drink and malice had taken hold.
‘Queen Merope was always infertile, everyone knows that. Barren as the Libyan desert. You were adopted, mate. You’re no more a royal prince than I am. Less probably. Ask your so-called parents how you got those scars on your feet.’
Other friends rushed to undo the damage.
‘Don’t listen, Oedipus. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. You can see how drunk he is.’
But Oedipus read the fear in their eyes plain enough. After a sleepless night he went to the king and queen for reassurance.
‘Of course you’re our son! What makes you think otherwise?’
‘The scars on my ankles?’
‘You were a breech birth. They had to pull you out of my womb with pincers.’
So outraged and indignant were Polybus and Merope that Oedipus believed them. Almost believed them. There was a certain way to settle the question once and for all. He made his way to the oracle at Delphi.
He did not know what he expected in reply to the simple, bald question, ‘Who are my true parents?’ but it was not the simple, bald answer he received.
Oedipus will kill his father and mate with his mother
