Greek Mythology, page 22
Surrounded by a city of an estimated 8,000 inhabitants, Knossos boasted an efficient civil service. Linear A and B tablets reveal that administrators were interested in everything from the allocation of labour to the revenue from wool. Although weapons have been discovered, mostly associated with burials, there is little evidence for a strong Cretan military. Knossos lacks any apparent fortifications – in stark contrast to mainland Mycenae, which probably overran Crete in the fourteenth century BC, destroying other palace sites but preserving Knossos, which survived until the early thirteenth century BC. It was once believed that the eruption of Santorini (Thera), 150 km (93 miles) to the north, brought down Minoan civilization, causing a tsunami and polluting the soil with ash. But the eruption is now confidently dated to the late seventeenth century BC, and some modern scholars suggest that climate change was a factor in Crete’s demise.
Epic and lyric poetry tells of Minoan Crete, but the first historical references (albeit based on legend rather than hard evidence) come from the late fifth century BC. According to Herodotus, Minos was the first king to build a navy. Thucydides agreed, writing of how Minos established a sea-empire, ruling the Cyclades and sending his sons to found colonies. However, apart from a few fragments, we have no full record of the story of Minos, the Minotaur or Daedalus until the Roman period.
The Minotaur’s popularity in Greek art owed much to the rise of Theseus as a major Athenian hero in the early fifth century BC. Scenes from his myth adorned his temple’s walls in Athens, while tradition told that the sacred ship that made an annual pilgrimage to Delos was the very vessel in which Theseus sailed to Crete. Its need for constant overhaul prompted philosophical debate: since every timber had been replaced over time, when did it cease to be the original?
Questions of originality plague Knossos, too. In the early twentieth century the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans recreated many of its buildings (in concrete) and reconstructed the frescoes and reliefs which once adorned their walls. For some this represents an act of vandalism. For others it provides a useful template for how Knossos and other Cretan palaces would have looked, with their labyrinthine complexes of buildings – administrative, commercial and residential, including some three storeys high – arranged around wide central courtyards.
Palace life remains largely a mystery. Frescoes, showing segregated men and women watching from steps and balconies, suggest open-air festivals held in both courtyards and ‘theatral’ areas – perhaps similar to the dancing floor Daedalus built for Ariadne. Others (as well as fragmentary sculptures) depict bull-leaping, perhaps the inspiration for the myth of the Minotaur. The location and purpose of bull-leaping are unknown. It may have formed part of a religious ceremony. Miniature clay model bulls were dedicated at cult centres, and many buildings were adorned with ‘horns of consecration’, stylized bulls’ horns, perhaps representing crescent moons, and possibly linked to the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘horizon’. The horns may also have been associated with the double-axe, or labrys (the origin of the early-Greek word labyrinth, ‘place of the double-axe’). Small models of this axe were frequent ritual offerings; larger versions apparently adorned sanctuaries as totemic objects.
Caves (such as those on Mount Dicte and Mount Ida) and mountain peaks (such as Mount Juktas, clearly visible from Knossos) were important to Minoan religion – all Cretan palaces are in sight of such a cave or peak. Crete may have been a matriarchal society, whose supreme deity Linear B tablets call Potnia (‘Mistress’). One even lists an offering of honey to ‘Daburinthoio Potniai’, perhaps ‘The Mistress of the Labyrinth’. If so, it is the earliest reference to the labyrinth – though we can only conjecture what the word means in this context. Mazes appear in Cretan (and Egyptian) art, but there is no formal labyrinth at Knossos.
Knossos
SOME IMPORTANT DATES & REMAINS
c. 7000 BC
Earliest occupation.
c. 1900 BC
First palace constructed.
c. 1700 BC
Major fire destruction followed by a second palace covering over 20,000 square metres (almost 5 acres).
?1628 BC
Eruption of Santorini.
c. 1450 BC
Widespread destruction of Cretan palaces – but not Knossos – suggests invasion, probably by mainland Mycenaean Greeks.
c. 1370 BC
Knossos destroyed by fire.
AD 1900
Sir Arthur Evans begins excavating (and building) at Knossos.
A mile south of Herakleion, Knossos is easily accessible by car or public transport. A shaded path leads from the kiosk past three kouloures (possibly storage pits) to the West Court. A walkway runs round the south side of the palace to the South Propylaion. The Central Court is flanked on the east by a building complex housing a tripartite shrine and Throne Room. A monumental staircase leads to an upper level (with a view of adjacent storage rooms and Mount Juktas) giving access to the reconstructed light well above the Throne Room. The ceremonial Grand Staircase is across the Central Court to the east.
The North Entrance Passage leads to the North Pillar Hall. A path runs left past the North Lustral Basin to the Theatral Area, a small stepped courtyard, the terminus of the Royal Road. A path right from the North Pillar Hall leads to the industrial quarter, housing kilns and workshops, and the Queen’s Megaron with the House of the Chancel Screen beyond. A track, affording a dramatic view up to the Horns of Consecration, leads to the right past pine trees in which peacocks roost to the South House, before returning to the West Court and site entrance.
Finds from Knossos and other sites are displayed in Herakleion’s Archaeological Museum. These include original (but heavily restored) frescoes and painted reliefs as well as a cornucopia of artifacts: larnakes (burial caskets), labrys-axes (double-axes), clay models of human devotees and clay and metal bulls. Other highlights include a stone bull’s head rhyton (drinking vessel) with horns of gold, a gaming board decorated with silver and gold leaf and inlaid with rock crystal and lapis lazuli, the Phaistos Disk (a small circular clay tablet stamped with symbols in a spiral) and two small figurines of snake goddesses. (Both disk and snake goddesses are suspected by some of being forgeries from the early twentieth century AD.) There is also a useful model of Knossos in its heyday and an impressive collection of later sculpture, including a seventh-century BC frieze from Temple A at Prinias.
Knossos’ ‘sister’ sites at Phaistos and Aghia Triadha in the south of Crete repay a visit, as does Roman Gortyn, where a descendant of Zeus’ evergreen plane-tree can be admired. Closer to Knossos, Mount Juktas affords superb views (including of Knossos itself).
17
Calydon: A Boar Hunt & Golden Apples
It is hard for men who live on earth to influence the minds of gods. If not, with prayers and sacrifices of so many goats and red-backed cattle, my father Oineus, who whipped his horses hard, would have soothed the wrath of pale-armed Artemis, whose head is garlanded with flower buds. But the anger of the maiden goddess knew no bounds. She sent a savage fearless boar to Calydon, where the dancing is so beautiful. Its strength roiled like a stream in flood as with its tusks it decimated vineyards and slaughtered flocks and cut down any man it met. And we, the best of all the Greeks, stood steadfast for six days as we fought against the beast. At last one of the gods granted us victory. We buried those the screaming boar had slaughtered in its merciless attacks .… Destructive fate had killed them. But still the anger of warlike Artemis, wild daughter of the goddess Leto, was unabated …
Bacchylides, Ode 5.95f.
Atalanta (far left) and Meleager (left) attack the Calydonian Boar on the sixth-century BC François Vase.
A brooding sky hangs heavy over Calydon. Above the terraced hilltop dark clouds press low, blanketing the mountains to the north and east, bruising what remains of the two temples as they await the deluge. It has been a short climb from the modern road, but in the lull between two storms it has already brought us far: down from the modern highway rumbling with trucks; down to the theatre, a damp, eccentric rectangle, its stone seats muddy-orange like the earth around them; past the hero-shrine and past the sanctuary of Dionysus, its tall trees dripping from the recent rain, a ruined church crumbling amid the brambles; on up the track through lustrous olive groves; and out on to the levelled bluff, once called the Laphrion, with wide views west to Messolonghi and south across the Gulf of Patras to the Peloponnese beyond. Only the foundations of the temples on the Laphrion survive. The Temple of Apollo was impressive, a colonnaded masterpiece proud above the plain, while slightly in its shadow, at the furthest edge of the escarpment, crouched the temple of his sister, Artemis. Her role was central. For it was she, the virgin huntress, who inspired the myth for which Calydon is best remembered.
Meleager, Atalanta & the Boar Hunt
When Meleager, son of Calydon’s king Oineus (and brother of Tydeus), was born, the three Fates appeared miraculously in his mother Altheia’s bedroom. One promised that Meleager would be strong, another that he would be noble, but the third foretold that he would die when a log already smouldering on the hearth turned into ashes. Hastily Altheia doused the log and hid it in a chest; and Meleager grew to heroic manhood.
Years later, as the elderly Oineus was making offerings to all the gods in turn, he forgot to sacrifice to Artemis – so she sent a boar of supernatural size, strength and savagery to devastate his land. Homer describes it ‘tearing towering trees out of the ground and flinging them about, a mess of roots and apple blossom’. Meleager swore he would slaughter it. So he invited all the greatest heroes of his age to join him in the hunt, promising the creature’s pelt to whoever killed it. They included Theseus from Athens, Jason from Iolcus, Achilles’ father Peleus – and one young woman, Atalanta.
Exposed at birth by her father, who wanted a son, Atalanta was reared by a she-bear, sacred to Artemis, which taught her hunting and endurance. Now a young woman, attractive, athletic and determined to preserve her virginity, she saw no reason why she should not join the hunt. Many of the men, however, were uneasy. Meleager’s maternal uncles especially resented her inclusion on such a daring enterprise, while others found Atalanta dangerously irresistible. Among these latter was Meleager.
At last the hunters found the boar lazing by a stream. Suddenly alert, it charged them, killing two, hamstringing a third, and causing Peleus to scramble up a tree in terror. Atalanta’s arrows drew first blood, but, despite being hacked and stabbed by Greece’s finest heroes, the beast did not weaken until Meleager skewered it with his spear. Rather than keep the prize for himself (as was his right), he presented the warm, dripping hide to Atalanta. Meleager’s uncles were outraged. Blows were exchanged, and in the ruckus two were killed. Two others vowed vengeance, and hurried home to rally troops.
As battle raged outside Calydon, Meleager killed his mother’s two remaining brothers. In rage Altheia took the log out of the chest and threw it on the fire; as the blackened wood crumbled to red-hot ash, the young hero died. His sisters’ grief caused even Artemis to pity them, so she turned them into guinea-fowl, which the Greeks called meleagrides.
Meleager in the Iliad
In the Iliad, to try to turn aside Achilles’ wrath over the loss of his slave girl and persuade him to return to the fighting, a Greek delegation reminds him of the battle at Calydon. In this version, Meleager, angry with Altheia, withdraws from the conflict outside the city, and stays at home with his wife Cleopatra, ‘nursing his heart-aching wrath, in fury at his mother’s curses which, mourning her brothers’ death, she called upon him from the gods. Repeatedly she beat her fists on the rich earth, as she stretched out on the ground, her bosom wet with tears, calling on Haides and revered Persephone to bring death to her son; and the Fury who walks in darkness, whose heart is merciless, heard her.’
Meleager’s absence allows the enemy to gain the upper hand. As the situation worsens, Calydon’s elders offer Meleager magnificent incentives to return to battle; next his father, sisters and even his mother Altheia beg him to fight. But only when Cleopatra adds her voice does Meleager buckle on his armour, stride on to the plain and (despite receiving none of the promised gifts) drive off the enemy.
The parallel with Achilles’ situation at Troy is clear. Even the name of Meleager’s wife Cleopatra (‘ancestral fame’) is a variant of that of Achilles’ companion Patroclus. But at Troy the power of myth fails to sway Achilles, whose refusal to fight becomes a legend in itself.
Postscript: Atalanta & the Golden Apples
As for Atalanta, some claimed that she sailed on the voyage of the Argo, others that she bore Meleager a son, but most agreed that, a virgin, she returned in triumph to her homeland of Arcadia. Although her father welcomed her, he was determined that she should marry without delay; Atalanta was equally determined she should not. They agreed on a compromise. All suitors must compete with Atalanta in a footrace. She would marry whoever managed to defeat her; any who lost, she would kill.
As Atalanta was the fastest runner alive, fresh burial mounds soon sprang up throughout Greece, until Aphrodite took pity on a local prince, Hippomenes. She gave him three golden apples and helped him trick his way to victory. The race began. Atalanta effortlessly eased ahead. But as she did, a golden apple, dazzling in the sunlight, landed with a thud before her feet. She stopped; she picked it up; she marvelled at its beauty; and when she resumed running Hippomenes was ahead. Then a second apple, and a third – and Atalanta watched bewitched as Hippomenes claimed victory. The two lived in chaste wedlock until one day desire overtook them at a sanctuary of Zeus, where they sacrilegiously consummated their love. So Zeus changed both into lions – mistakenly believing that lions couple only with leopards, and not each other.
Dionysus & the Spring of Callirhoe
A local Calydonian myth concerns the perils of love. Pausanias records how Coresus, a priest of Dionysus, fell in love with the beautiful Callirhoe. The more he wooed her, the more haughtily she rebuffed him. So he prayed for help to Dionysus. Immediately, the Calydonians displayed symptoms of gross drunkenness, and many died deranged. At last the oracle at Dodona revealed that the sickness came from Dionysus and would end only if Coresus sacrificed to Dionysus either Callirhoe or a willing substitute. ‘When no one would save her, Callirhoe ran to her parents, but even they refused to help her. Her only future lay in death. Preparations proceeded as the oracle instructed. With Coresus presiding, Callirhoe was led to the altar – but Coresus yielded not to anger but to love. He killed himself in her place – the loftiest example of true love in all history. Callirhoe, overcome by compassion for Coresus and shame for her treatment of him, cut her throat by the spring near Calydon’s harbour, which has been named in her memory ever since.’ Appropriately, ‘Callirhoe’ means ‘Fair Flowing’.
Calydon in History & Today
Despite being the setting of a well-known myth, little is known of Calydon until the time of its abandonment. Signs of occupation from the eleventh century BC suggest that it grew up round the archaic sanctuary of Artemis Laphria, an important religious centre. Briefly fought over in the early fourth century BC, in the Classical and Hellenistic periods its two temples – one of Artemis (housing a gold-and-ivory statue), the other of Apollo – were augmented by treasuries and stoas. In the third century BC, Calydon and its newly fortified acropolis were enclosed by walls, 4 km (2½ miles) in circumference. The following century a lavish shrine to a local hero, Leon, was erected, with a colonnaded courtyard and a chapel, whose vaulted crypt contained two finely carved stone beds.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Actium (31 BC), which took place not far to the north, Octavian (soon to be called Augustus) forced the Calydonians to move to nearby Nicopolis, built to celebrate his victory over Antony and Cleopatra. Calydon, which Strabo called ‘an ornament of Greece’, became a ghost town. Even its gods were relocated, their statues shipped south across the gulf to Patras, where their priests continued to observe ancient rituals. Here Pausanias witnessed the two-day festival of Artemis Laphria. On the first day, a young priestess rode in a chariot drawn by four deer to an altar, piled high with dried logs. Next day events were less sedate:
Community and individuals alike take great pride in the ceremony. They hurl on to the altar living game birds and other animals (boars, deer, gazelles – some young, some fully grown). They stack fruits from their orchards on to the altar, too. Then they set fire to the wood. When they did this, I saw creatures including a bear trying to escape as the flames caught, but the people who first cast them into the fire forced them back again. There is no record of anyone being harmed by these animals.
Meanwhile, the Calydonian boar hunt was a popular subject for artists, inspiring a wealth of sculptures, vase paintings and mosaics. The sixth-century BC François Vase (now in Florence’s National Archaeological Museum) shows Atalanta wielding a spear in the thick of the hunt, while on a second-century AD Roman mosaic in Patras Museum a stocky Atalanta draws her bow as dogs attack the boar.
In the second century AD, relics of the boar could still be seen. One intact tusk, three feet long, was housed in the Sanctuary of Dionysus in the Emperor’s Gardens in Rome, the other at the Temple of Athene Alea in Tegea. When Pausanias visited, the priests told him that, although in their possession, this tusk was sadly broken. But they did show him the boar’s hide, which he records was ‘desiccated and without one bristle left’.
