b. This caused high indignation among the Greeks, and Diomedes, who was a cousin of Thersites and wished to show his disdain for Achilles, dragged Penthesileia’s body along by the foot and threw it into the Scamander; whence, however, it was rescued and buried on the bank with great honour-some say by Achilles; others, by the Trojans. Achilles then set sail for Lesbos, where he sacrificed to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto; and Odysseus, a sworn enemy to Thersites, purified him of the murder. The dying Penthesileia, supported by Achilles, is carved on the throne of Zeus at Olympia. Her nurse, the Amazon Clete, hearing that she had fled to Troy after the death of Hippolyte, set out to search for her, but was driven by contrary winds to Italy, where she settled and founded the city of Clete.
c. Priam had by now persuaded his half-brother, Tithonus of Assyria, to send his son Memnon the Ethiopian to Troy; the bribe he offered was a golden vine. A so-called palace of Memnon is shown in Ethiopia, although when Tithonus emigrated to Assyria and founded Susa, Memnon, then only a child, had gone with him. Susa is now commonly known as the City of Memnon; and its inhabitants as Cissians, after Memnon’s mother Cissia. His palace on the Acropolis was standing until the time of the Persians.
d. Tithonus governed the province of Persia for the Assyrian king Teutamus, Priam’s overlord, who put Memnon in command of a thousand Ethiopians, a thousand Susians, and two hundred chariots. The Phrygians still show the rough, straight road, with camp-sites every fifteen miles or so, by which Memnon, after he had subjugated all the intervening nations, marched to Troy. He was black as ebony, but the handsomest man alive, and like Achilles wore armour forged by Hephaestus. Some say that he led a large army of Ethiopians and Indians to Troy by way of Armenia, and that another expedition sailed from Phoenicia at his orders under a Sidonian named Phalas. Landing on Rhodes, the inhabitants of which favoured the Greek cause, Phalas was asked in public: ‘Are you not ashamed, sir, to assist Paris the Trojan and other declared enemies of your native city?’ The Phoenician sailors, who now heard for the first time where they were bound, stoned Phalas to death as a traitor and settled in Ialysus and Cameirus, after dividing among themselves the treasure and munitions of war which Phalas had brought with him.
e. Meanwhile, at Troy, Memnon killed several leading Greeks, including Antilochus, son of Nestor, when he came to his father’s rescue: for Paris had shot one of Nestor’s chariot horses and terror made its team-mate unmanageable. This Antilochus had been exposed as a child on Mount Ida by his mother Anaxibia, or Eurydice, and there suckled by a bitch. Though too young to sail from Aulis at the beginning of the war, he followed some years later and begged Achilles to soothe Nestor’s anger at his unexpected arrival. Achilles, delighted with Antilochus’s warlike spirit, undertook to mediate between them and, at his desire, Nestor introduced him to Agamemnon. Antilochus was one of the youngest, handsomest, swiftest and most courageous Greeks who fought at Troy and Nestor, having been warned by an oracle to protect him against an Ethiopian, appointed Calion as his guardian; but in vain. The bones of Antilochus were laid beside those of his friends, Achilles and Patroclus, whose ghosts he accompanied to the Asphodel Fields.
f. That day, with the help of Memnon’s Ethiopians, the Trojans nearly succeeded in burning the Greek ships, but darkness fell and they retired. After burying their dead, the Greeks chose Great Ajax to replace Memnon; and next morning the single combat had already begun, when Thetis sought out Achilles, who was absent from the camp, and broke the news of Antilochus’s death. Achilles hastened back to take vengeance, and while Zeus, calling for a pair of scales, weighed his fate against that of Memnon, he brushed Ajax aside and made the combat his own. The pan containing Memnon’s fate sank in Zeus’s hand, Achilles dealt the death-blow, and presently black head and bright armour crowned the flaming pyre of Antilochus.
g. Some, however, report that Memnon was ambushed by Thessalians; and that his Ethiopians, having burned his body, carried the ashes to Tithonus; and that they now lie buried on a hill overlooking the mouth of the river Aesepus, where a village bears his name. Eos, who is described as Memnon’s mother, implored Zeus to confer immortality upon him and some further honour as well. A number of phantom hen-birds, called Memnonides, were consequently formed from the embers and smoke of his pyre, and rising into the air, flew three times around it. At the fourth circuit they divided into two flocks, fought with claws and beaks, and fell down upon his ashes as a funeral sacrifice. Memnonides still fight and fall at his tomb when the Sun has all the signs of the Zodiac.
h. According to another tradition, these birds are Memnon’s girl companions, who lamented for him so excessively that the gods, in pity, metamorphosed them into birds. They make an annual visit to his tomb, where they weep and lacerate themselves until some of them fall dead. The Hellespontines say that when the Memnonides visit Memnon’s grave beside the Hellespont, they use their wings to sprinkle it with water from the river Aesepus; and that Eos still weeps tears of dew for him every morning. Polygnotus has pictured Memnon facing his rival Sarpedon and dressed in a cloak embroidered with these birds. The gods are said to observe the anniversaries of both their deaths as days of mourning.
i. Others believe that Memnon’s bones were taken to Cyprian Paphus, and thence to Rhodes, where his sister Himera, or Hemera, came to fetch them away. The Phoenicians who had rebelled against Phalas allowed her to do so on condition that she did not press for the return of their stolen treasure. To this she agreed, and brought the urn to Phoenicia; she buried it there at Palliochis and then disappeared. Others, again, say that Memnon’s tomb is to be seen near Palton in Syria, beside the river Badas. His bronze sword hangs on the wall of Asclepius’s temple at Nicomedeia; and Egyptian Thebes is famous a colossal black statue-a seated stone figure-which utters a sound the breaking of a lyre-string every day at sunrise. All Greek-speaking people call it Memnon; not so the Egyptians.
j. Achilles now routed the Trojans and pursued them towards city, but his course, too, was run. Poseidon and Apollo, pledged to avenge the deaths of Cycnus and Troilus, and to punish certain insolent boasts that Achilles had uttered over Hector’s corpse, took counsel together. Veiled with cloud and standing by the Scaean Gate, Apollo sought out Paris in the thick of battle, turned his bow and guided fatal shaft. It struck the one vulnerable part of Achilles’s body, the heel, and he died in agony. But some say that Apollo, assuming likeness of Paris, himself shot Achilles; and that this was the acer which Neoptolemus, Achilles’s son, accepted. A fierce battle raged that day over the corpse. Great Ajax struck down Glaucus, despoiled of his armour, sent it back to the camp and, despite a shower of arrows carried dead Achilles through the midst of the enemy, Odysseus bring up the rear. A tempest sent by Zeus then put an end to the struggle.
k. According to another tradition, Achilles was the victim of a plot. Priam had offered him Polyxena in marriage on condition that siege of Troy was raised. But Polyxena, who could not forgive Achilles for murdering her brother Troilus, made him disclose vulnerability of his heel, since there is no secret that women cannot extract from men in proof of love. At her request he came, bare and unarmed, to ratify the agreement by sacrificing to Thymbraean Apollo; then, while Deiphobus clasped him to his breast in pretended friendship, Paris, hiding behind the god’s image, pierced his heel with a poisoned arrow or, some say, a sword. Before dying, hovering Achilles seized firebrands from the altar and laid about him vigorously, felling many Trojans and temple servants. Meanwhile, Odysseus, Ajax, and Diomedes, suspecting Achilles of treachery, had followed him to the temple. Paris and Deiphobus rushed past them through the doorway, they entered, and Achilles, expiring in their arms, begged them, after Troy fell, to sacrifice Polyxena at his tomb. Ajax carried body out of the shrine on his shoulders; the Trojans tried to capture them but the Greeks drove them off and conveyed it to the ships. Some on the other hand, claim that the Trojans won the tussle and did not surrender Achilles’s body until the ransom which Priam paid for Hector been returned.
l. The Greeks were dismayed by their loss. Poseidon, however, promised Thetis to bestow on Achilles an island in the Black Sea, where the coastal tribes would offer him divine sacrifices for all eternity. A company of Nereids came to Troy to mourn with her and stood desolately around his corpse, while the nine Muses chanted the dirge. Their mourning lasted seventeen days and nights, but though Agamemnon and his fellow-leaders shed many tears, none of the common soldiers greatly regretted the death of so notorious a traitor. On the eighteenth day, Achilles’s body was burned upon a pyre and his ashes, mixed with those of Patroclus, were laid in a golden urn made by Hephaestus, Thetis’s wedding gift from Dionysus; this was buried on the headland of Sigaeum, which dominates the Hellespont, and over it the Greeks raised a lofty cairn as a landmark. In a neighbouring village called Achilleum stands a temple sacred to Achilles, and his statue wearing a woman’s ear-ring.
m. While the Achaeans were holding funeral games in his honour-Eumelus winning the chariot race, Diomedes the foot-race, Ajax the discus-throw, and Teucer the archery contest-Thetis snatched Achilles’s soul from the pyre and conveyed it to Leuce, an island about twenty furlongs in circumference, wooded and full of beasts, both wild and tame, which lies opposite the mouths of the Danube, and is now sacred to him. Once, when a certain Crotonian named Leonymus, who had been severely wounded in the breast while fighting his neighbours, the Epizephyrian Locrians, visited Delphi to enquire how he might be cured, the Pythoness told him: ‘Sail to Leuce. There Little Ajax, whose ghost your enemies invoked to fight for them, will appear and heal your wound.’ He returned some months later, safe and well, reporting that he had seen Achilles, Patroclus, Antilochus, Great Ajax, and finally Little Ajax, who had healed him. Helen, now married to Achilles, had said: ‘Pray, Leonymus, sail to Himera, and tell the libeller of Helen that the loss of his sight is due to her displeasure.’ Sailors on the northward run from the Bosphorus to Olbia frequently hear Achilles chanting Homer’s verses across the water, the sound being accompanied by the clatter of horses’ hooves, shouts of warriors, and clash of arms.
n. Achilles first lay with Helen, not long before his death, in a dream arranged by his mother Thetis. This experience afforded him such pleasure that he asked Helen to display herself to him in waking life on the wall of Troy. She did so, and he fell desperately in love. Since he was her fifth husband, they call him Pemptus, meaning ‘fifth’ on Crete; Theseus, Menelaus, Paris, and finally Deiphobus, having been his predecessors.
o. But others hold that Achilles remains under the power of Hades, and complains bitterly of his lot as he strides about the Asphodel Meadows; others, again, that he married Medea and lives royally in the Elysian Fields, or the Islands of the Blessed.
p. By order of an oracle, a cenotaph was set up for Achilles in the ancient gymnasium at Olympia; there, at the opening of the festival, the sun is sinking, the Elean women honour him with funeral rites. The Thessalians, at the command of the Dodonian Oracle, also sacrifice annually to Achilles; and on the road which leads northward from Sparta stands a sanctuary built for him by Prax, his great-grandson which is closed to the general public; but the boys who are required to fight in a near-by plane-tree grove enter and sacrifice to him before.
1. Penthesileia was on of the Amazons defeated by Theseus and Heracles: that is to say, one of Athene's fighting priestesses, defeated by the Aeolian invaders of Greece. The incident has been staged at Troy because Priam's confederacy is said to have comprised of all the tribes of Asia Minor. Pentheseleia does not appear in the Iliad, but Achilles's outrage of her corpse is characteristically Homeric, and since she is mentioned in so many Classical texts, a passage about her may well have been suppressed by Peisistratus's editors. Dictys Cretensis modernizes the story: he says that she rode up at the head of a large army and, finding Hector dead, would have gone away again, had not Paris bribed her to stay with gold and silver. Achilles speared Pentheseleia in their first encounter, and dragged her from the saddle by the hair. As she lay dying on the ground, the Greek soldiers cried: 'Throw this virago to the dogs as a punishment for exceeding the nature of womankind!' Though Achilles demanded an honourable funeral, Diomedes took the corpse by its feet and dragged it into the Scamander. Old Nurses in Greek legend usually stand for the Goddess as a Crone; and Penthesileia’s nurse Clete (‘invoked’) is no exception.
2. Cissia (‘ivy’) seems to be an early title of the variously named Goddess who presided over the ivy and vine revels in Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, and Syria; Memnon’s ‘Cissians’, however, are variant of ‘Susians’ (‘lily-men’), so called in honour of the Goddess Lirio, Susannah, or Astarte. Priam probably applied for help not to Syrians but to the Hittites, who may well have sent reinforcements by land, and also by sea, from Syria. ‘Memnon’ (‘resolute’), a common title of Greek kings-intensified in ‘Agamemnon’ (‘very resolute’)- has been confused with Mnemon, a title of Artaxerxes the Assyrian, and Amenophis, the name of the Pharaoh in whose honour singing statue was constructed at Thebes. The first rays of sun fall at the hollow stone, making the air inside expand and rush through narrow throat.
3. Achilles in his birth, youth, and death is as the ancient Pelasgian sacred king, destined to become the ‘lipless’ oracular hero. His mythic opponent bore various names, as ‘Hector’ and ‘Paris’ and ‘Apollo’. Here it is Memnon son of Cissia. The duel with Memnon, each supported by his mother, was carved on the Chest of Cypselus (Pausanias), and on the throne of Apollo in Amyclae (Pausanias); besides figuring in a large group by the Lycius, which the inhabitants of Apollonia dedicated to him in Olympia. These two represent sacred king and tanist-Achilles of the Sea-goddess, bright Spirit of the Waxing Year: Memnon, son of the Ivy-goddess, dark Spirit of the Waning Year, to whom the vine is sacred. They kill each other alternately, at the solstices; the king always succumbs to a heel-wound, his successor decapitates him with a sword. Achilles, in this ancient sense, untainted by behaviour of the Achaean and Dorian chieftains who usurped the name, was widely worshipped as a hero; and the non-Homeric story of his betrayal by Polyxena, who wormed from him the secret of his vulnerable heel, places him beside Llew Llaw, Cuchulain, Samson, and other Bronze Age heroes of honest repute. His struggle with Penthesileia likely to have been of the same sort as his father Peleus’s Thetis. The recipient of Helen’s message from Leuce-which is now a treeless Romanian prison island-was the poet Stesichorus.
4. Because Memnon came from the East to help Priam, he was styled ‘the son of Eos’ (‘dawn’); and because he needed a father, Eos’s lover Tithonus seemed the natural choice. A fight at the winter solstice between girls in bird-disguise, which Ovid records, is a more likely explanation of the Memnonides than that they are fanciful embodiments of sparks flying up from a corpse on the pyre; the fight will originally have been for the high-priestess-ship, in Libyan style.
5. Achilles as the sacred king of Olympia was mourned after the summer solstice, when the Olympic funeral games were held in his honour; his tanist, locally called ‘Cronus’, was mourned after the winter solstice. In the British Isles these feasts fell on Lammas and St. Stephen’s Day respectively; but though the corpse of the golden-crested wren, the bird of Cronus, is still carried in procession through country districts on St. Stephen’s Day, the British Memnonides ‘fell a-sighing and a-sobbing’ only for the robin, not for his victim, the wren: the tanist, not the sacred king.
6. Achilles’s hero-shrine in Crete must have been built by Pelasgian immigrants; but the plane is a Cretan tree. Since the plane-leaf represented Rhea’s green hand, Achilles may have been called Pemptus (‘fifth’) to identify him with Acesidas, the fifth of her Dactyls, namely the oracular little finger, as Heracles was identified with the first, the virile thumb.
7. Priam’s golden vine, his bribe to Tithonus for sending Memnon, seems to have been the one given Tros by Zeus in compensation for the rape of Ganymedes.
Comments
Post a Comment