Theseus in Tartarus

AFTER Hippodameia’s death Peirithous persuaded Theseus, whose wife Phaedra had recently hanged herself, to visit Sparta in Iris company and carry away Helen, a sister of Castor and Polydeuces, the Dioscuri, with whom they were both ambitious to be connected by marriage. Where the sanctuary of Serapis now stands at Athens, they swore to stand by each other in this perilous enterprise; to draw lots for Helen when they had won her; and then to carry off another of Zeus’s daughters for the loser, whatever the danger might be.

b. This decided, they led an army into Lacedaemon; then, riding ahead of the main body, seized Helen while she was offering a sacrifice in the Temple of Upright Artemis at Sparta, and galloped away with her. They soon outdistanced their pursuers, shaking them off at Tegea where, as had been agreed, lots were drawn for Helen; and Theseus proved the winner. He foresaw, however, that the Athenians would by no means approve of his having thus picked a quarrel with the redoubtable Dioscuri, and therefore sent Helen, who was not yet nubile- being a twelve-year-old child or, some say, even younger-to the Attic village of Aphidnae, where he charged his friend Aphidnus to guard her with the greatest attention and secrecy. Aethra, Theseus’s mother, accompanied Helen and cared well for her. Some try to exculpate Theseus by recording that it was Idas and Lynceus who stole Helen, and then entrusted her to the protection of Theseus, in revenge for the Dioscuri’s abduction of the Leucippides. Others record that Helen’s father Tyndareus himself entrusted her to Theseus, on learning that his nephew Enarephorus, son of Hippocoön, was planning to abduct her.

c. Some years passed and, when Helen was old enough for Theseus to marry her, Peirithous reminded him of their pact. Together they consulted an oracle of Zeus, whom they had called upon to witness their oath, and his ironical response was: ‘Why not visit Tartarus and demand Persephone, the wife of Hades, as a bride for Peirithous? She is the noblest of my daughters.’ Theseus was outraged when Peirithous, who took this suggestion seriously, held him to his oath; but he dared not refuse to go, and presently they descended, sword in hand, to Tartarus. Avoiding the ferry-passage across Lethe, they chose the back way, the entrance to which is in a cavern of Laconian Taenarus, and were soon knocking at the gates of Hades’s palace. Hades listened calmly to their impudent request and, feigning hospitality, invited them to be seated. Unsuspectingly they took the settee he offered, which proved to be the Chair of Forgetfulness and at once became part of their flesh, so that they could not rise again without self-mutilation. Coiled serpents hissed all about them, and they were well lashed by the Furies and mauled by Cerberus’s teeth, while Hades looked on, smiling grimly.

d. Thus they remained in torment for four full years, until Heracles, coming at Eurystheus’s command to fetch up Cerberus, recognized them as they mutely stretched out their hands, pleading for his help. Persephone received Heracles like a brother, graciously permitting him to release the evil-doers and take them back to the upper air, if he could. Heracles thereupon grasped Theseus by both hands and heaved with gigantic strength until, with a rending noise, he was torn free; but a great part of his flesh remained sticking to the rock, which is why Theseus’s Athenian descendants are all so absurdly small-buttocked. Next, he seized hold of Peirithous’s hands, but the earth quaked warningly, and he desisted; Peirithous had, after all, been the leading spirit in this blasphemous enterprise.

e. According to some accounts, however, Heracles released Peirithous as well as Theseus; while, according to others, he released neither, but left Theseus chained for ever to a fiery chair, and Peirithous reclining beside Ixion on a golden couch-before their famished gaze rise magnificent banquets which the Eldest of the Furies constantly snatches away. It has even been said that Theseus and Peirithous never raided Tartarus at all, but only a Thesprotian or Molossian city named Cichyrus, whose king Aidoneus, finding that Peirithous intended to carry off his wife, threw him to a pack of hounds, and confined Theseus in a dungeon, from which Heracles eventually rescued him.

2. Bel, and his successor Marduk, spent their period of demise in battle with the marine monster Tiamat, an embodiment of the Sea-goddess who sent the Deluge; like ancient Irish kings, who are said to have gone out to do battle with the Atlantic breakers, they seem to have ceremonially drowned. An Etruscan vase shows the moribund king, whose name is given as Jason, in the jaws of a sea-monster-an icon from which the moral anecdote of Jonah and the whale have apparently been deduced, Jonah being Marduk.

3. Athenian mythographers have succeeded in disguising the bitter rivalry between Theseus and his acting-twin Peirithous for the favours of the Goddess of Death-in-Life-who appears in the myth as Helen and Persephone-by presenting them as a devoted friends like Castor and Polydeuces who made an amatory raid on a city, and one of whom was excused death claim thanks to alleged divine birth. Idas and Lynceus, a similar pair of twins, have been introduced into the story to emphasize this point. But name of Peirithous, ‘he who turns about’, suggests that he was a sacred in his own right, and on vase-paintings from Lower Italy he is ascending to the upper air and saying farewell to Theseus, who meets the Goddess of Justice, as though Theseus were merely tanist.

4. Helen’s abduction during a sacrifice recalls that of Oreithyia by Boreas, and may have been deduced from the same icon, which represents erotic orgies at the Athenian Thesmophoria. It is possible though, that a shrine of the Attic goddess Helen at Aphidnae contained an image or other cult object stolen by the Athenians from her Laconian equivalent-if the visit to Tartarus is a doublet of the story, they may made a sea-raid on Taenarus-and that this was subsequently retrieved the Spartans.

6. Yet Theseus was a hero of some importance, and must be given the credit of having harrowed Hell, in the sense that he penetrated to the centre of the Cretan maze, where Death was waiting, and came safely out again. Had the Athenians been as strong on land as they were at sea, he would doubtless have become an Olympian or, at least, a national demi-god. The central source of this hostility towards Theseus was probably Delphi, where Apollo’s Oracle was notoriously subservient to the Spartans in their struggle against Athens.