Greek Mythology, page 18
In the fifth century BC, Corinth’s economic rivalry with Athens was partly responsible for the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Even Syracuse, Corinth’s colony, became involved in the conflict when Athens launched an unsuccessful campaign against Sicily in 415 BC. In 395 BC, less than ten years after the war ended, Corinth allied with Athens against Sparta, but civil strife and quarrels among allies, together with an inconclusive outcome, weakened Corinth, and only when it came under Macedonian influence did its star wax again. Then in 146 BC, when Rome’s general Lucius Mummius defeated the Achaean League, which resisted Roman interference in Greece, he took brutal revenge on its leader, Corinth. Comprehensively plundering its artworks and destroying much of the city, he massacred many citizens and enslaved the rest.
For a century Corinth was abandoned, until in 46 BC Julius Caesar chose it as the site of a new colony for army veterans. Again Corinth flourished, quickly regaining its reputation for luxury and fine living. In the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the city had been famous for its courtesans; now Strabo marvelled at the wealth of Acrocorinth’s Temple of Aphrodite, home to a thousand sacred prostitutes, dedicated by rich men (and women). It was no coincidence that it was to the Christians of Corinth that the apostle Paul (who lived there for eighteen months around AD 51) wrote a letter exploring the meaning of true love:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Roman emperors including Nero and Hadrian patronized and embellished Corinth, but from the mid-fourth century AD earthquakes (and perhaps looting by Alaric the Goth) led to its decline. After a brief renaissance at the turn of the first millennium, it was sacked by crusaders in 1147. The site remained inhabited, but in 1858 further earthquake damage led to the decision to relocate Corinth to the coast. For this reason, the site of ancient Corinth is less frenetic than that of (say) ancient Athens. Although many Classical buildings lie inaccessible beneath modern houses, enough remains to give a real flavour of the once bustling city.
Corinth
SOME IMPORTANT DATES & REMAINS
? 6500 BC
Early habitation (Corinth’s name is pre-Greek).
C8th/7th BC
Corinth establishes colonies, including Syracuse.
658–628 BC
Cypselus turns Corinth into an economic powerhouse.
581 BC
Isthmian Games first celebrated.
480–479 BC
Corinth takes part in Persian Wars.
433 BC
Corinth fights Athens over Corinth’s colony, Corcyra.
431–404 BC
Corinth takes part in Peloponnesian War against Athens.
395–387 BC
Corinth and allies (including Athens) wage Corinthian War against Sparta.
338 BC
Philip II of Macedon creates Corinthian League against Persia.
243 BC
Corinth joins Achaean League against Sparta and (subsequently) Rome.
146 BC
Destruction of Corinth by Lucius Mummius of Rome.
46 BC
Julius Caesar re-founds Corinth as a colony for Roman veterans.
c. AD 51
Paul lives among Corinth’s Christians.
AD 68
Nero sings at Isthmian Games and declares freedom of Greece.
C2nd–3rd AD
Further expansion and enhancements.
mid-C4th AD
First in a series of major earthquakes which last into the sixth century AD.
AD 1147
Crusaders sack Corinth.
AD 1858
Corinth relocated to the coast.
From the site entrance a track leads past the foundations of the first-century AD Temple of Octavia towards the impressive agora, dominated to the north by the sixth-century BC Temple of Apollo, with seven standing Doric columns, partly surmounted by entablature. Close by is Glauce’s Fountain. At the far side of the agora is the tranquil Fountain of Peirene (no access), built in its current form by Herodes Atticus (second century AD). Close to the entrance but outside the enclosure is the well-preserved Odeon (no access). Across the road a track leads to the scant remains of the Theatre.
A road leads steeply up to Acrocorinth with its impressive Frankish Walls. Here are the remains of the Upper Fountain of Peirene and the Temple of Aphrodite. Little of its former glory survives, but the views north towards central Greece and south to the Peloponnese are spectacular.
Also in the environs of Corinth are the remains of Sicyon and Isthmia (site of the Isthmian Games) with its, theatre, Temple of Poseidon and poorly preserved stadium.
Further afield, travellers in Turkey can visit Chimaera, an inextinguishable fire fed by subterranean gases on the coast 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Antalya. Near Fethiye at Tlos (where the hero is said to have died) is a tomb bearing a sculpture of Bellerophon and Pegasus.
14
Argos: Land of Hera, Home of Heroes
The people of Argos were celebrating the Festival of Hera and it was vital that the priestess be driven to the temple by a yoked team of oxen. However, the oxen had still not returned from the fields. Time was running out, so her sons, Cleobis and Biton, shouldered the yoke and pulled the wagon with their mother inside it for five miles until they reached the temple of Hera.
Their mother was delighted with their efforts. She stood in front of the statue and prayed that, since Cleobis and Biton had shown her such honour, the goddess Hera should grant them the greatest reward which a man might have. The prayer made, the people sacrificed and feasted. As for the young men, they fell asleep in the temple, and never woke again. Their lives were over. The Argives made statues of them, which they dedicated at Delphi, to show that they had been the best of men.
Herodotus, Histories, 1.31
Sit in the top tier of the theatre’s rock-cut auditorium, and Argos – ancient and modern – stretches before you. The view is vertiginous. Clumps of pale grasses pockmark rows of grey stone seats, whose plunging lines are scarred by brutal fissures, the work of centuries of winter rain. On either side, phalanxes of tall trees file obliquely down, drawing the eye first to the theatre’s orkhestra and stage, and then on, beyond the Roman bath-house, its brickwork rosy-pink, across the modern road towards the agora, the flat green plain, across the bay to Nafplio, and finally to the blue hills far beyond. Rather than to modern Argos, a concrete catastrophe, bleakly unattractive, a bewilderment of busy one-way streets, it is on these hills that the eye rests. And so it was, too, in antiquity. For across the dusty riverbed of the Inachus, beyond the fields and vineyards, the most sacred shrine in all the land of Argos nestled on a low plateau below these distant hills. It was the sanctuary of Hera, the ‘ox-eyed goddess’, thanks to whose protection the land of Argos thrived.
Hera & the Argive Heraion
The Argolid (the region of the northeast Peloponnese named from Argos) did not hold entirely happy associations for Hera. True, it was here that she was first wooed by her brother, Zeus (though some set the scene at Knossos). After overcoming Cronus and seizing Mount Olympus, Zeus found Hera on Mount Thornax, east of Argos, and amorously pressed his suit. But Hera was unwilling and rebuffed him. Then, in a thunderstorm, she found above the bay at Hermione a cuckoo, trembling, dishevelled, its feathers dull; and gently lifting it, she cradled it inside her dress against her breasts. In an ardent flash, the cuckoo transformed into Zeus and raped her. Shamed, Hera accepted the inevitable. She married Zeus, but every year renewed her virginity by bathing in a spring at Nauplion.
Even at the Argive Heraion, her sanctuary near Argos, Zeus could cause Hera distress. As was his wont, he became infatuated with a local girl: Hera’s priestess, Io, the daughter of the river-god Inachus. Io soon succumbed, and, when Hera learned of the affair, Zeus tried to conceal his misdemenour: he turned the now-pregnant Io into a cow. But Hera was not deceived. Claiming the cow as her own, she took it to her sanctuary, tethered it beneath an olive tree and set a guard over it: Argos Panoptes (‘Who Sees All’), an earth-born giant with a hundred eyes, which took it in turn to close. Even when Panoptes slept, some stayed open, watching.
Zeus was loath to leave Io to her bovine fate, so he sent Hermes to abduct her. Disguised as a goatherd, Hermes ingratiated himself with Panoptes, serenading him on shepherd’s pipes. So soothing and hypnotic was the melody that Panoptes’ eyes began to close until, for the first time ever, not one remained open. Hermes seized the moment, lopped off Panoptes’ head and untied the halter around Io’s neck.
Hermes slays the hundred-eyed Argos Panoptes, guardian of Io whom Hera has transformed into a cow. (Fifth-century BC Attic red figure vase.)
Hera saw it all and unleashed a gadfly, which attacked poor Io and drove her, bucking, off. After many years Io reached Egypt, where Zeus restored her to her womanly form. Here at last she gave birth to Zeus’ son, married the king and (so the Greeks claimed) was later worshipped as Isis. As for Argos Panoptes, Hera named her land from him, removed his hundred eyes and set them in the tail of her favourite bird, the peacock, where they have kept watch ever since. Many Greek guard dogs (including Odysseus’ on Ithaca) were called Argos after him.
The Danaids
Io’s banishment was the first in a series of flights to and from Argos. In time, a boatload of her descendants fled back from Egypt. Aegyptus, king of Egypt (Io’s great-great-grandson), had fifty sons, whom he wished to marry to the fifty daughters of his rival, his younger twin, Danaus. But Danaus and his daughters, fearing it was a ruse to kill them, were unwilling. So they built a ship – the first ever – and escaped across the sea to Argos.
Here (in a story dramatized in Aeschylus’ Suppliants), they begged King Pelasgos Gelanor (‘Laugher’) for asylum. Pelasgos referred the matter to the Argive people, who voted to protect the girls. Pausanias writes that they also voted to make Danaus their king, a decision reached in response to an omen: while they were debating, news came of a wolf descending from the mountains and killing a bull in the pasturelands, which they interpreted as meaning that the incomer Danaus should supplant the native Pelasgos. The omen was sent by Apollo Lycaeus (the Wolf God), and they established a sanctuary in his honour, which survived to Roman times.
When Aegyptus’ fifty sons arrived in hot pursuit, the Argives were unwilling to join battle. Instead, Danaus conceived a monstrous plan. Pretending reconciliation, he let the marriages proceed, all on a single day. But that night, Danaus’ daughters murdered their new husbands, skewering them through the heart with their hairpins – all except Hypermnestra, whose husband, Lynceus, had respected her pleas not to sleep with her.
The other forty-nine were exonerated, purified themselves and sought new husbands. Despite their track record, many suitors came forward, so to prevent dispute Danaus arranged a footrace: the winner could have first choice of bride; the runner-up could choose next; and so on. The system worked, and the resultant families became the ancestors of the Danaans, a term Homer commonly uses for the Greeks.
Not everything ended happily, however. Some say that Lynceus murdered his father-in-law Danaus to become king of Argos, while in Hades Danaus’ daughters were punished for their crime, condemned to fetch water in cracked jars to fill a leaking cauldron. It was a task of domestic drudgery that could never be completed, a fitting penalty for such unwifely women.
Perseus, Prince of Argos
Lynceus and Hypermnestra’s grandson also feared death at a family member’s hands. Acrisius, king of Argos, received notice from the Delphic oracle that his daughter’s son would kill him. His only daughter Danaë was childless, so, to prevent her conceiving, Acrisius imprisoned her in a bronze-walled cell with just one window. This window was the king’s undoing. Through it Zeus glimpsed Danaë and poured into the prison as a shower of golden rain, whose heavenly moisture impregnated her. Her resultant son was Perseus.
Refusing to believe Danaë, but reluctant to kill her, Acrisius locked her and her baby in a wooden chest, which he cast into the waves. The currents bore this latest in a line of refugees to Seriphos. There they were found by a fisherman, Dictys (‘Net’), who brought up Perseus as his own. After some years, Dictys’ brother, King Polydectes, became infatuated with Danaë – and to help achieve his desired ends, he plotted to do away with Perseus. As a ruse he announced his intention to woo Hippodameia, princess of Elis, and demanded from the great and good of Seriphos that each should contribute a horse as a courtship-gift. Perseus had neither horse nor the money to buy one. So he asked Polydectes to demand from him another levy. The trap was sprung. Smirking, Polydectes demanded: ‘Bring me the head of the Gorgon, Medusa’.
Perseus & Medusa
There were three Gorgons, terrifying winged sisters, who lived far to the west beyond the bounds of Ocean. With grotesquely large heads, boar’s-tusk teeth and lolling tongues, their hair was a nest of writhing snakes. One look at them and anything living was turned to stone. Hesiod describes how: ‘Two snakes, heads bent forwards, hung suspended from their belts. Their tongues were flickering, their sharp teeth grinding in their rage, and their eyes were wildly glaring. And Terror quaked above their terrifying heads.’ Two were immortal, but not the third, Medusa, and it was her head that Polydectes demanded. In fact, his choice was irrelevant: everyone knew that Perseus would never return.
When Athene found out about the quest, however, she resolved to help Perseus. First she persuaded the gods to provide him with equipment necessary to achieve his task: Hermes gave winged sandals; Zeus an adamantine sickle; Haides a dog-skin-covered helmet that made its wearer invisible; Athene herself a polished shield. But Perseus still needed one more item – a kibisis, an insulated bag, in which to store the Gorgon’s head and prevent its venomous power from leaking out. This he must acquire in person from the Hesperides, whose home was far to the west in the realm of the setting sun.
To discover how to reach this land, Perseus first visited the Graeae. Like the Gorgons, they were Phorcys’ daughters, and they, too, were grotesque. Aeschylus calls them ‘three girls, but ancient, shaped like swans, with only one eye between them and one tooth. The sun with his rays does not shine down on them, nor the moon by night.’
Only by tricking them and seizing their one eye as they passed it between them in their gnarled hands was Perseus able to discover the information he needed. Quickly he set out, racing to the west, and in their golden orchard the Hesperides graciously gave him the kibisis. Then borne aloft by Hermes’ winged sandals, he flew on to the Gorgons’ lair.
Encouraged by Athene, Perseus lops off the head of Medusa, who clutches Pegasus, born at the moment of her death, on a metope from the c. 550 BC Temple ‘C’ at Selinunte, Sicily.
As he drew near, Perseus lowered Haides’ helmet over his head. Now invisible, he unsheathed his sickle and stealthily approached, holding Athene’s shield obliquely before him – for he knew that while he could not so much as glimpse the Gorgons with his naked eye, their reflection in the shield could do no harm. At last, with the serpents hissing round him, he came close enough to strike, and in an instant had lopped off Medusa’s head. Hurriedly stowing it in the kibisis, he leapt into the air, triumphant. Hesiod imagines the scene depicted on a shield:
He soared as swiftly as a thought. At his back was the head of the terrifying beast, the Gorgon, wrapped in its kibisis, miraculous to see.… Like a man who runs in haste or horror, Perseus, the son of Danaë, raced at full stretch; and behind him raced in hot pursuit the Gorgons, unspeakable, whom no man might approach, stretching out their hands to grab him.
The Gorgons were fast, but Perseus was faster, and soon he was alone, skimming the waves towards the sunrise and the east.
Perseus, Andromeda & Home to Argos
As he passed over Ethiopia, Perseus saw a beautiful young girl tied naked to a stake beside the seashore. Even as he approached, the waves frothed and parted and a monster reared up in front of her. Perseus acted swiftly. Calling on the girl to close her eyes, he swooped down, and, averting his face, pulled out Medusa’s severed head. Immediately the monster turned to stone. Carefully replacing the head, Perseus untied the girl and heard her story.
She was Andromeda, the daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia. Poseidon was angered when her parents boasted that she was more beautiful than the sea-nymphs, so he first flooded their land and then sent the monster to ravage it. Only by showing their willingness to sacrifice Andromeda to its appetite would they appease Poseidon’s anger. Amid general rejoicing Perseus claimed Andromeda as his bride, and together they returned to Seriphos.
Polydectes, seated in his crowded hall, sneeringly enquired whether Perseus had completed his task. Silently, his eyes locked on Polydectes, Perseus lifted out the head. Its effect was inescapable and instant. Polydectes and his attendants froze like marble statues. Danaë and Dictys were overjoyed. Approving his mother’s marriage to the fisherman, Perseus set off with Andromeda for Argos.
