But that was not punishment enough. Creon, Jocasta’s brother, drove Oedipus out of Thebes for only with him gone would the epidemic that plagued Thebes end.
The story of Oedipus led Sigmund Freud to construct the Oedipus complex: the unconscious repressed male desire to compete with the father for the mother’s affections. Indian psychoanalysts have argued that in India, the story reveals a Yayati complex: the repression of sons by their fathers. The Yayati complex is the opposite of the Oedipus complex.
In Euripides’ play The Phoenician Women, Jocasta does not kill herself.
The story of Oedipus is one of fate, free will and tragic flaw.
It is ironic that Tiresias who is blind can see more than Oedipus who has eyes. That is why Oedipus blinds himself, for he cares not for human eyes that do not reveal the truth and instead present delusions.
Oedipus
Abandoned by his people and his sons, despised for committing patricide and incest, the blind Oedipus—once a king and husband and father—wandered all over the land, shunning the company of people, fearful of their reaction if they discovered his identity. Only his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, stood by him, serving him without judgement.
After many years of wandering, he came to Colonus, a grove near Athens, that was sacred to the Furies, ancient spirits who punish those who disrespect their parents.
‘This is a good place to die,’ Oedipus told his daughters.
The guardians of the grove tried to drive Oedipus away but he insisted on meeting their king, Theseus. When the king arrived, Oedipus revealed his identity and begged Theseus to let him die there. The king, feeling sorry for Oedipus, agreed. Only then did Oedipus reveal a secret: ‘It has been foretold that the land where I am buried will always stand safe, never succumbing to any assault by its enemies.’
The idea of fate is found in both Greek and Hindu mythologies. But while the gods determine man’s fate in Greek stories, in Hindu tales it is the outcome of our own past actions which attract boons and curses.
If in the play Oedipus Rex Oedipus is shown as wanting to challenge and escape fate, in Oedipus at Colonus there is resignation, or rather acceptance of the idea that fate is a necessity and inescapable.
While Oedipus’s sons fight over Thebes, his daughters take care of him; thus ancient playwrights and mythmakers presented the tendencies of the two genders.
Eteocles and Polynices
After throwing Oedipus out of the city, his two sons began fighting over the throne. Finally, it was decided that each brother would rule the kingdom alternately for a year, beginning with Eteocles in the first year.
Unfortunately, after he ruled as king for a year, Eteocles— with the support of Creon—refused to hand over the crown to his brother. A furious Polynices declared war on Thebes, raising an army of seven commanders—each ordered to attack one of the seven gates of the city.
It was around this time that news of the powers Oedipus’s grave would grant the land reached Thebes. Creon, now regent, rushed with Eteocles to meet Oedipus. They begged him to return and protect the city threatened by the armies of Polynices, but Oedipus refused to indulge the opportunists.
Then Polynices came to his father, purportedly seeking his blessings. While Creon wanted Oedipus to be buried within the walls of Thebes, Polynices wanted to bury Oedipus outside. For Polynices hoped that the power of Oedipus’s grave would help him defeat his brother, Eteocles, who had been declared king of Thebes by Creon.
Oedipus was disgusted as to how those who rejected him while he was alive wanted control over his grave. And he was not even dead yet! He refused to forgive his sons and reiterated his curse that his two sons, who had humiliated him and driven him out of Thebes, would die at each other’s hands.
Both Creon and Polynices tried to force Oedipus to change his mind by dragging Antigone and Ismene back to Thebes with them. But Theseus thwarted their attempts. In gratitude, Oedipus told Theseus to follow him deep into the woods to the spot where he would die. ‘Bury me and keep the location of my grave secret so that no one can desecrate it. May it protect Athens forever.’
And so Oedipus, rejected by his sons and his subjects, finally died alone and in secret, genuinely mourned only by his daughters. Theseus, who buried him, never told the world where the grave stood, for the sake of Oedipus and Athens.
If the Ramayana is about following rules, then the Mahabharata is about breaking rules. This epic contrast is mirrored in Greek mythology through the cities of Athens and Thebes. Athens is seen as a place where boundaries and roles are strictly adhered to while Thebes is where there is transgression, allowing for themes of incest, rape, murder and hubris.
At Colonus, Oedipus is no longer a tragic figure but a hero sought after by two forces, those inside Thebes and those exiled from the city. When he dies, it is in secret and only Theseus knows his gravesite. Those who first mocked him, then sought him, do not ever find him.
Antigone
Polynices raised an army of seven commanders, each of whom was to storm and take control of one of the seven gates of Thebes. The attack, however, was unsuccessful; all seven commanders were killed.
Then Polynices fought his brother Eteocles and ultimately these two sons of Oedipus ended up killing each other.
Creon was declared king of Thebes. He ordered that Eteocles’s body be brought into the city and buried with full honours. Creon also decreed that Polynices, who had raised an army against his own city, did not deserve a burial and that his body would rot in the battleground outside the city walls, to be claimed by wolves and vultures. Thus while one son of Oedipus was given due respect, the other was stripped of all dignity.
Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus’s daughters, who had returned to Thebes after the death of their father, mourned both their brothers. Unlike Creon, they believed that both sons of Oedipus deserved to be given decent burials, not just the one. But Creon refused to change his mind: the traitor Polynices who had disrespected Thebes deserved neither honour nor a proper burial.
Ismene submitted to the will of the new king but not Antigone. She defied Creon, walked out of the city at night, and cremated her brother with full honours on her own on the battlefield. When this was discovered, she was arrested and Creon ordered that she be buried alive.
Rather than submit to Creon, the defiant Antigone hanged herself. Creon’s son, Haemon, who was engaged to marry Antigone, could not bear the loss of his beloved betrothed and took his own life. In despair, Haemon’s mother also killed herself. Thus, Creon found himself all alone as a result of attempting to impose the will of the city over the wishes of family members.
Conflicts between the rules of the city and the rules of nature dominate Hindu thought too. The Sama Veda classifies all its melodies into forest songs and settlement songs. In the forest, there are no rules, no ruler, no regulating authority. In the city, there are rules, rulers and regulating authorities. Which is better? The freedom of the forest, where no one helps anyone, or the rules of the city, where the strong are expected to help the weak?
Antigone embodies the heart while Creon embodies the head. She is all about compassion where he is all about rules; she symbolizes feminine ‘divine law’ and he, masculine ‘human law’.
Epigoni
Each of the seven commanders who had attacked one of Thebes’s gates and failed had a son. These sons grew up and called themselves the Epigoni. They attacked the city and razed it to the ground, and with that Thebes, established by Cadmus, ceased to exist.
Greek mythology informs us how Thebes came into being and how it collapsed; Hindu mythology describes the rise and eventual demise of Dwarka. Both cities were established by refugees: Cadmus, who is searching for Europa and cannot go back home; and Krishna, who is escaping the wrath of a Jarasandha determined to destroy Mathura. Both cities are annihilated by war: the Epigoni devastate Thebes; and the civil war of the Yadus, together with the curse Gandhari—mother of the fallen Kauravas—hurls on the Yadus, destroys Dwarka.
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nbsp; The second Theban war led by the Epigoni takes place ten years after the first Theban war, between the sons of Oedipus. It is the great war of the Greeks before the Trojan War. Both Apollodorus and Pausanias tell the story of the war.
The Epigoni is an epic that formed a part of the Theban cycle. Only the first line of the epic survives today: ‘Now, Muses, let us begin to sing of younger men.’ The story was also the subject of a tragedy written by Sophocles.
House of Cadmus
Book Four
Heracles
‘Are you a child of the Fates or a victim of hubris, Alexander?’ asked the gymnosophist.
‘Sometimes I think I am a child of destiny. At other times I think I am just ambitious. So I don’t know. Does anyone really know? All I seek is a place in Elysium, the heaven of heroes, in the land of the dead, beyond the Styx. Or maybe even a place in Olympus, amongst the gods. For that is what was given to Heracles. He too was torn between hubris and the Fates. And he too, like me, was a son of Zeus.’
Danae
Heracles was a son of Zeus. His mother, Alcmene, was the granddaughter of Perseus, who was also a son of Zeus. Perseus’s mother, Danae, had descended from Io, who had been seduced by Zeus long ago.
It was foretold that Danae’s son would kill her father, Acrisius, king of Argos. And so Danae was locked in a tower, away from all men. But her father couldn’t hide her beauty from the gods. Danae caught the eye of Zeus who made love to her in the form of a shower of gold that streamed into the room along with a shaft of sunlight. Soon after, she gave birth to a son whom she named Perseus.
When Acrisius discovered Danae had given birth, he was so upset that he put her and Perseus in a box and threw it into the sea. After drifting for days, the box was found by a fisherman called Dictys who gave refuge to the abandoned mother and son.
In the Mahabharata, Kunti invokes the sun god Surya who approaches her as sunlight. The child born from their union is abandoned—placed in a basket and set afloat on the river. But Vedic gods need to be invoked by women who want to bear their children. It is only in rare instances that one hears of a god making love to a woman without her permission, as in the tale of Agni who is enchanted by the wives of the Sapta Rishis, but is warned against acting on his desires by his wife Svaha.
The theme of a son or grandson destined to kill his father or grandfather is a recurring one in Greek mythology. It starts from the rivalry between Uranus and his son Cronus, and then Cronus and his son Zeus. This actually symbolizes the fear of the previous generation that it will lose its relevance to the next generation. Although it is inevitable, but the old still resist.
Danae is the name given to an asteroid.
Perseus
Dictys had a brother, Polydectes, who wanted to marry Danae. She, however, kept him at bay saying that she would do so when Perseus grew up. When Perseus came of age, she had another excuse: not until he made his own fortune. So to get rid of Perseus and secure Danae, Polydectes challenged Perseus to bring him the head of Medusa.
The reckless Perseus accepted without thinking too much about it. He then learned the dreadful truth about Medusa: she was a Gorgon, with snakes for hair, and anyone who laid eyes on her turned into stone.
Luckily for Perseus, the Olympians were more than willing to help this son of Zeus.
Athena told Perseus to consult the three grey witches, the Graeae, to determine the whereabouts of Medusa. These three grey sisters shared a single eye between them and could see everything. As the sisters passed the eye between them, Perseus grabbed it, rendering the sisters sightless, and refused to return it until they told him where Medusa was.
Hermes gave Perseus a pair of winged sandals, a helmet that belonged to Hades and made the wearer invisible, a polished bronze shield, a sharp and firm sword and a pouch from Hephaestus.
Guided by Athena, Perseus approached Medusa while she slept. He came flying using his winged sandals so that his footsteps would not wake her up, and instead of looking at her directly, he observed her reflection in the shiny bronze shield. Medusa, however, did wake up; but she could not see Perseus as he was wearing Hades’ helmet. All the Gorgon saw was a sharp and strong sword come at her with tremendous speed and before she could react, her head had been severed from her neck. Perseus then put the head in his pouch and proceeded homeward.
Perseus owes his success to the Olympians. Such tales of heroes who are helped by gods and goddesses are seldom found in Hindu mythology, where the heroes are gods themselves, or they contain a divine spark. They may even be avatars, finite manifestations of the infinite divine.
The Gorgons were three sisters of whom only one, Medusa, was mortal. Their name means ‘dread’. Their parents were ancient marine deities: Phorcys and Keto. Gorgons were probably linked to ancient Mother Goddess mystery cults and later became monsters with the rise of the Olympian gods. These were primal deities who descended from the ancient god of the oceans, Pontus, a child of Gaia.
According to the Roman poet Ovid, who lived over 2000 years ago, Medusa was a beautiful woman who was seduced or raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. Athena therefore cursed her to grow snakes instead of hair and made her so hideous that everyone turned to stone when they saw her face.
From the blood of Medusa, spilt when she is beheaded, rises Pegasus, the flying horse, who plays an important role in the story of Bellerophon.
In ancient times, amulets with the face of Medusa were used to ward off evil spirits. This was known as the Gorgoneion. Alexander the Great’s shield also bore this image.
Medusa has come to represent many things, from fear of maternal sexuality to feminine rage to nihilism.
Andromeda
On the way home, in Aethiopia, Perseus saw a girl chained to a rock. It was Andromeda, whose mother Cassiopeia had foolishly claimed that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, sea nymphs. Furious, the Nereids had sent a monster to destroy the kingdom, and would spare it only if Andromeda was offered to the monster as a sacrifice.
As the monster rose from the sea to claim Andromeda, Perseus rushed to her rescue, coming between her and the creature. He waved the severed head of Medusa at the monster, turning it to stone. Andromeda could not believe her good fortune. As reward for his valour, Perseus asked Andromeda’s father, King Cepheus, for her hand in marriage. Cepheus could not refuse, but there was a problem. Andromeda was betrothed to marry another, and the suitor did not like Perseus trying to claim his bride-to-be. He attacked Perseus along with his friends. Outnumbered, Perseus waved Medusa’s head before them, and they too turned to stone.
Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and Perseus are all constellations identified by Graeco-Roman astronomers such as Ptolemy. Hindu mythology is also full of stories that can be connected to constellations, such as the story of the seven sages, the Sapta Rishis, who are linked to the Great Bear, and their estranged wives, the Krittikas, who form the Pleiades or Seven Sisters.
Cassiopeia displays hubris, or extreme pride, when she boasts that her daughter is more beautiful than a goddess, whether the Nereids or Aphrodite herself.
The image of Perseus fighting a monster to save a damsel morphs into the idea of the knight in shining armour fighting the dragon to save the damsel in distress, which becomes a metaphor for Chaoskampf, German for the human struggle against chaos for order.
Acrisius
Perseus returned home with his bride and the head of Medusa, which he used to turn his mother’s suitor Polydectes to stone, leaving Danae free to marry the simple fisherman Dictys, who had helped raise her son. Perseus gave the Gorgon’s head to Athena who placed it on her shield.
When Danae told Perseus who he really was, he decided to go to Argos and meet his grandfather. But fearing death at the hands of his grandson, Acrisius abandoned Argos before Perseus arrived, leaving the crown for him.
Years later, Perseus was invited to participate in the funeral games of a local king. During the games, Perseus threw his discus further than any
of the other athletes, much to the delight of the audience. In fact, he threw it so far that it hit someone in the audience—an old man who died on the spot. Everyone recognized him as Acrisius, who had come to the games to secretly watch his grandson compete. Thus fate had its way.
However, for the crime of killing his grandfather, Perseus had to abandon the city of Argos. Luckily for him, the king of Tiryns was in a similar situation. And so the two kings exchanged their positions.
As king of Tiryns, Perseus built a new city nearby, on the spot where his cap fell near a mushroom. Since the word for both cap and mushroom in Greek is ‘myces’, the new city came to be known as Mycenae.
Acrisius cannot escape what is prophesied. He must submit to fate. The three Fates, who may or may not be influenced by the Olympians, especially Zeus, determine his destiny. On what basis is fate decided? On the basis of keeping order or cosmos, and avoiding chaos. This is very distinct from the idea of karma found in Indic mythologies, where fate is a reaction to previous known and unknown actions.
In the Greek world, the act of killing demands a ritual cleansing which involves exile, participating in ritual funeral games, or performing tasks ordained by oracles, who speak the will of the gods. Similar ideas of cleansing are found in Vedic as well as Puranic literature too. Indra has to cleanse himself by doing austerities for the crime of killing Vritra; Ram has to cleanse himself for the crime of killing Ravana; and the Pandavas have to cleanse themselves for the crime of killing the Kauravas. Taking a dip in the Ganga to wash away sins is a kind of ritual cleansing.
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