Greek Mythology, page 10
Travellers wishing to experience more archaeology should continue east to Curium with its impressive theatre and Temple of Apollo. Two less historically sound, yet nonetheless evocative sites lie north of Paphos. In Kili the so-called Baths of Adonis, complete with waterfall and pool, boast a statue of Aphrodite and Adonis and promise fertility to women who touch Adonis’ phallus. At the Baths of Aphrodite further north near the coast at Latchi a sign proclaims: ‘Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, used to bathe in the small pool of this natural grotto … Please do not swim.’
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Pylos: Where Nestor Ruled & Hermes Hid the Cattle of Apollo
Helios the sun-god left his limpid pool and rose into the brazen sky to bring daylight to gods and mortal men across the fertile plough-lands. And so they came to Pylos, the well-built citadel of Neleus. Here on the beach the people were all making sacrifice, slaughtering black bulls to Poseidon, the dark-haired shaker of the earth. They were seated in nine companies, five hundred men in each, and each company had nine bulls. When the men of Pylos had tasted the entrails and were burning the thigh pieces for the god, the others quickly put in to shore, hauled up and furled their fine ship’s sail, let down the anchor-stone and disembarked. Telemachus, too, disembarked, and with him went Athene.
Homer, Odyssey, 3.1–12
Noontide, and the molten sun hangs in a cloudless sky. Insects murmur drowsily in dry air, aromatic with the woody scent of shrubs and arid grasses. Their high-pitched voices throb in counterpoint to the rhythm of the waves as they lap and fizzle far below. Beyond the lagoon with its scrubby sandbars, haze shimmers on the sheltered bay of Navarino, its mouth almost enclosed by the rocky spine of the waterless, long, narrow island of Sphacteria. In the distance modern Pylos is an exuberance of pretty houses, its town square bounded on one side by a sheltered harbour – café chairs and tables in the shade of leafy trees; yellow nets laid out to dry; lolling boats; and shoals of tiny fishes gliding in clear glassy water.
Despite the breadth of the horizon, with its pale blue mountains, patchwork farmland and the coastline stretching north beside the gentle swelling sea, a nearer bay demands the eye. Its narrow entrance flanked by steep-curved hills, it is a perfect horseshoe of turquoise water, soft white sand, and lilies flowering in the sand dunes. It is perhaps the most idyllic beach in all of Greece. On its western headland, Coryphasion, below the crumbling grey walls and squat square towers of a Venetian castle, is a portal to an ancient past – a cave where stalactites hang like red and rusty oxhides from the high roof. For it was here (so legend tells) above the cove (where Nestor’s men of Pylos once made sacrifice and which today the Greeks call Voidhokiliá, Ox-belly Bay), that the newborn Hermes hid the stolen cattle of Apollo.
The Birth & Babyhood of Hermes
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes tells how, like so many other gods and heroes, Hermes was the result of one of Zeus’ extramarital liaisons. Smitten by dark-eyed Maia, a nymph with magnificent hair, who lived in a cave on Mount Cyllene on the borders of Arcadia, Zeus ‘joined with her in the dark of night, while pale-armed Hera slept’. The Hymn catalogues some of Hermes’ many attributes:
shifty, wily, thieving, a cattle driver, a dream-bringer, a watcher in the night, a thief beside the doors, he would soon show his famous deeds to the undying gods. Born at the dawn, by noon he was master of the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of Apollo, who shoots from afar.
Within hours of being born Hermes had already leapt from his cradle, discovered a tortoise munching outside by the cave mouth, killed it (the description in the Hymn is gruesome) and used its shell as the basis of an instrument of his own invention – the lyre – to the accompaniment of which he sang of his own conception and birth. However, such entertainment was insufficient for the hours-old trickster god. His exertions had brought on an appetite. To assuage it Hermes turned cattle-rustler.
Pylos & the Cattle of Apollo
He headed to Pieria, where the gods pastured their cattle. Picking fifty of the finest beasts, he drove them swiftly south, making them walk backwards so that their tracks led not from but towards Pieria. But before he did so he contrived a plan to baffle any searchers even more: to mask his footprints, he made the first pair of sandals by plaiting together sprigs of tamarisk and myrtle.
‘Across dark mountains, through valleys loud with gusting winds and over flowering meadows’ Hermes drove the cattle until near dawn he reached Pylos. But the location of this Pylos was the subject of debate. The Hymn places it by the River Alpheus near Olympia – where there was once a coastal settlement called Pylos. But the same Hymn tells how, having slaughtered and cooked two of the cattle (with the help of his newly invented fire-stick), Hermes: ‘spread their hides across the adamantine rock, where they still remain so many ages later’. Many saw this as a reference to the hide-like stalactites in the cave at Voidhokiliá, and in later tradition this Pylos won out.
Replete, Hermes returned to his cradle on Cyllene, ‘slipping sideways through the closed door like late-summer mist’. But it was not long before the clear-seeing Apollo discovered his cattle hidden in the cave and tracked down Hermes. Despite the infant’s protestations, Apollo commanded Hermes and Maia to accompany him to Mount Olympus, where both parties put their case before the gods. Naturally, Zeus could not be deceived and he ordered Hermes to return the cattle to Apollo.
Together the two adversaries returned to Pylos, where Apollo first liberated his cattle then tried to tether Hermes with withies. Hermes had other ideas. He caused the withies to take root, sprout and encircle the cattle; then, strumming his lyre, he sang a long bewitching song about the birth of the gods and the creation of the earth. Apollo was enchanted and proposed a settlement: if Hermes gave him the lyre and taught him to play it, Apollo would overlook the theft and champion the newborn god, making him master over flocks, herds and pasturelands. He would also give Hermes the kerykeion (or herald’s staff, also known by its Latin name, caduceus). The Hymn describes it as a ‘three-branched’ magic golden wand, but it is usually depicted as a rod around which two snakes intertwine, and occasionally tipped with outstretched wings. Hermes could not refuse. So at Pylos the two gods were reconciled and forged a tight-bound friendship.
Hermes’ Other Attributes
As well as being associated with the countryside (where he could be heard playing another of his inventions, shepherds’ pipes), as the archetypal thief and liar Hermes was also linked with trade and commerce, where his trickery and cunning served him well. Counter-intuitively (given his contempt for the truth) but unavoidably (given his possession of the kerykeion), Hermes also became Zeus’ trusted messenger. In the course of his duties, he helped invent that great aid to communication: writing. As Zeus’ messenger he was the patron of mortal heralds, too, identified in art by his broad-brimmed sun hat and winged sandals. And because his duties involved so many journeys, Hermes was the god of travellers.
The journeys over which Hermes presided were not only physical. As Psychopompus (Conductor of Souls) Hermes accompanied the spirits of the dead to Hades, while as Oneiropompus (Conductor of Dreams) he sowed true or lying visions in the minds of those whom he lulled to sleep with his staff. Hence Hermes, god of ghosts, became associated with magic and necromancy. Especially in Hellenistic Egypt, the long-lasting cult of Hermes Trismegistus became popular with mystics.
Many Greek gods embodied opposites. Thus Hermes was god of both theft and security. Guard dogs were under his protection, and throughout antiquity statues of Hermes known as hermai (herms) stood at house doors to ward off evildoers. These were simple four-square pillars sometimes topped by the god’s bearded head but always adorned with his erect phallus. When almost all Athens’ hermai were smashed on the eve of an expedition against Sicily in 415 BC, it was interpreted (correctly) as a bad omen. Since a safe house is a happy house, Hermes presided, too, over banquets such as Nestor’s on the beach at Voidhokiliá. In fact, whenever a sudden silence fell over a roomful of banqueters, it was commonplace for someone to observe: ‘Hermes has entered the room’.
Nestor, King of Pylos
In Homeric epic Pylos is ruled by the wise (if garrulous) old Nestor. In the Iliad he is:
the sweet-voiced, clear-tongued speaker of the Pylians, whose voice, when he spoke, was sweeter than honey. Already two generations of men, born and raised with him in sacred Pylos, had withered in his lifetime and now he ruled over a third.
As a youth, Nestor had taken part in many adventures, joining both the boar hunt at Calydon and the voyage of the Argo from Iolcus, his father Neleus’ childhood home. After quarrelling with his brother Pelias, Neleus left Iolcus and settled as king in Pylos, where he fathered twelve sons. However, he took the wrong side in a war between Heracles and Elis (near Olympia). In retribution, Heracles sacked Pylos and killed Neleus’ sons – all except Nestor, who was living in nearby Gerania (hence his Homeric epithet ‘Geranian’). When the dust settled, Heracles befriended Nestor and made him king of Messene.
Weakened but unbowed, Neleus continued to rule Pylos. Responding to the theft of a chariot, which he had sent to the Olympic Games, he requested Nestor to conduct a cattle-raid across the border into Elis. In the Iliad, Nestor describes how he and his men drove off
fifty herds of cattle, the same number of sheep, the same of pigs, the same of roaming goats, and a hundred and fifty chestnut horses, each one of them a mare, and many with a foal beneath her, suckling. At night we drove them inside Neleus’ city, Pylos.
The Elians responded by crossing the River Alpheus into Neleus’ territory. Nestor led his army out to meet them. First blood was his. He leapt into his victim’s chariot:
and took my place in the front rank.… Then, like a black storm cloud, I charged. I brought down fifty chariots, and for each chariot two men bit the dust, felled by my spear.… Into the hands of Pylian men Zeus put great strength. Across the vast plain we pursued them, killing them and stripping their bodies of their armour.… And all praised Zeus among the gods; but among men they praised Nestor.
Nestor was not just a fine warrior. He was an athlete, too. On another occasion he describes how he took part in funeral games, winning contests in boxing, wrestling, racing and javelin. Only in the chariot race was he defeated. ‘Thus I was once. But now younger men must face such challenges and I must yield to harsh old age, though once I ranked among the greatest of the heroes.’
Succeeding Neleus as king of Pylos, Nestor took part in the Trojan War, where he enjoyed his role as elder statesman. Despite his old age he was still keen to fight – Pindar describes how, when one of his horses was shot down, Nestor was marooned in his chariot; as Troy’s Ethiopian ally Memnon bore down on him, Nestor’s son Antilochus stepped between them, sacrificing his life for his father. However, it was for his counsel (usually given at some length and not always the best) that Nestor was held in highest esteem. Agamemnon declared that with ten such advisors Troy would ‘soon fall to our hands, taken and destroyed’. Nestor was one of the few Greek commanders to return safely home from Troy and enjoy prosperity.
A fresco from the palace at Pylos dating from the thirteenth century BC shows a battle raging across a river between helmeted warriors and light-armed soldiers.
Telemachus at Pylos
Not so Odysseus of Ithaca. When he was still missing ten years after the war ended, his son Telemachus sought news of him from his surviving comrades. His first port of call was Pylos, where he found Nestor and his followers feasting on the beach. Once Nestor learned Telemachus’ identity, he unleashed a stream of reminiscences of the Trojan War and the murder of Agamemnon at Mycenae, and of his own homecoming (‘the wind did not fail us once, but a god caused it to blow’). Then he invited Telemachus to his palace:
The Geranian horseman Nestor led his sons and his sons-in-law back to his beautiful palace. When they reached the shining royal palace, they sat down in order on couches and thrones. As they came, the old man mixed wine in a mixing bowl, ten years old and sweet to taste, which the housekeeper had opened, and undone the fastening.… When they had drunk to their satisfaction, each man went home to sleep, but the Geranian horseman Nestor told godlike Odysseus’ dear son Telemachus to sleep on a corded bedstead beneath the echoing portico.
Next day, Nestor arranged for his youngest daughter to bathe Telemachus and anoint him with oils before providing him with a chariot and charioteer (his own son, Peisistratus) and sending him off on the next leg of his quest to Sparta and the court of Menelaus.
These descriptions are particularly evocative in the light of the discovery of a Bronze Age palace inland from Voidhokiliá near modern Chora. Excavations begun by Carl Blegen in 1939 revealed an unprecedentedly large cache of Linear B tablets, which confirmed that its Bronze Age name was Pylos. They also brought to light a well-appointed megaron (central hall), its walls adorned by fine frescoes – and a painted bath (which the romantically inclined believe to be the very bath in which Telemachus was bathed).
Pylos in History & Today
In antiquity at least two other sites (further north on the west coast of the Peloponnese) were associated with Nestor’s palace. One, close to the River Alpheus and Elis, accords well with geographical references in the Iliad and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, mentioned above. However, since Blegen’s discovery of the palace at Chora, with Linear B tablets identifying it as Pylos, this is now accepted as the site. Today it is signposted: ‘Nestor’s Palace’.
Occupied from around 1700 BC, the palace formed the nucleus of a walled city, itself the centre of a much wider community (with over 50,000 inhabitants). Linear B tablets reveal a highly regulated state administered by civil servants, who kept close watch on details such as the size of sheep flocks, the quantity of vines and fig trees on royal estates (there were a thousand of each) and the number of broken wheels awaiting repair. Industry, including perfume manufacture, was conducted close to the palace. Meanwhile, frescoes from the palace show scenes from nature, both real and imagined (including deer, dogs, lions and griffins), as well as two whose subject matter reflects myths associated with Pylos: on one a young man plays a lyre; on another a battle rages across a river.
The tablets also provide tantalizing glimpses of Pylos’ religious life. Although no religious texts survive (probably none existed), there are apparent references to offerings made to Potnia (the mother goddess), Zeus, Hera, Poseidon – and Hermes. In addition, royal tholos tombs were found both near the palace (containing a staggering amount of gold and gold leaf) and at Voidhokiliá. Pottery sherds from the cave at Voidhokiliá suggest it was a Bronze Age cult centre.
Pylos was overrun around 1200 BC. In Classical times the region of Messene, to which it belonged, was annexed by Sparta and its inhabitants enslaved. In 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian general Demosthenes occupied and fortified Coryphasion, reasoning that it would provide an excellent base from which to attack Spartan territory and rally disaffected slaves. The Spartans responded, besieging Coryphasion by land and stationing troops on the adjacent (waterless) island of Sphacteria. When the Athenian navy cut them off, the Spartans surrendered for the first time in their history, and 120 elite Spartiates became prisoners-of-war.
In AD 1827 the joint fleet of Great Britain, France and Russia, charged with ensuring the withdrawal of the Ottoman Turks from the Peloponnese, sailed into Navarino Bay. When the Ottoman general Ibrahim Pasha resisted, allied gunboats opened fire. Fifty-three Turkish ships were sunk, many of whose wrecks can still be seen today. Five years later, Greece won her independence.
Pylos
SOME IMPORTANT DATES & REMAINS
c. 5000 BC
Neolithic settlement at Voidhokiliá.
c. 1700 BC
Foundation of ‘Nestor’s Palace’.
c. 1200 BC
Destruction of ‘Nestor’s Palace’.
425 BC
Athenians capture Coryphasion and defeat Spartans on Sphacteria.
AD 1204
Crusaders capture Pylos during Fourth Crusade.
AD 1572
Turks capture Pylos and build Neokastro fortress.
AD 1827
Ottoman Turks defeated at Battle of Navarino.
AD 1939
Carl Blegen first excavates ‘Nestor’s Palace’.
‘Nestor’s Palace’ is 18 km (11 miles) northeast of modern Pylos near the village of Chora. The site is covered by an unattractive roof, and at the time of writing it was closed for renovation. From the site entrance the route passes through a propylon (antechamber). Left is the Archive Room, where most of the Linear B tablets were discovered. Through the propylon is a courtyard. This leads through a series of antechambers to the megaron, with a central circular hearth, 4 m (13 ft) in diameter, and the bases of four columns, which originally supported an upper gallery. Corridors lead from antechambers to storage rooms and (right) the bathroom, complete with terracotta bath and the jugs with which to fill it. Southwest are the remains of an earlier palace (mostly covered over), while northeast are workshops, wine cellars and a (reconstructed) tholos tomb.
Voidhokiliá lies across the Bay of Navarino from Pylos, adjacent to the lagoon of the Voidhokiliá Wetland Reserve. A rough track leads from the Pylos-Kyparissia road. The cave is at the far side of the bay on the slopes of Coryphasion. Above (the climb is strenuous) is the Venetian castle of Palaikastro on the site of Demosthenes’ fifth-century BC fortifications. On the nearer headland (hard to find) is a tholos tomb. The white-sanded beach affords good bathing.
