Greek Mythology, page 23
Calydon
SOME IMPORTANT DATES & REMAINS
C8th–7th BC
Wooden temples of Artemis and Apollo on Laphrion.
C6th BC
Laphrion extended with new retaining walls.
460 BC
Gold-and-ivory statue of Artemis installed.
C4th BC
Temples of Artemis and Apollo rebuilt in stone; theatre constructed.
391 BC
Calydon briefly seized from Aetolians by Achaean Greeks.
367/66 BC
Epaminondas helps restore Calydon to Aetolians.
C3rd BC
City walls built.
219 BC
Calydon badly damaged in war with Philip V of Macedon.
C2nd BC
Hero shrine built.
30 BC
Calydon’s citizens relocated to Nicopolis; religious statues and festivals transferred to Patras.
Calydon, at first sight unprepossessing, is located by the busy motorway linking Antirrhio and Messolonghi. Near the car park is the theatre, with foundations of stage buildings and a rectangular orkhestra and auditorium. From here a path leads to the fenced hero-shrine – the site attendant will unlock the gate and show the subterranean tomb with beautifully carved stone beds, complete with pillows and other delicate sculptural details. Further on are the foundations of a temple, identified as the Temple of Dionysus, from where a track (right) soon leads to the Laphrion, with foundations of the temples of Artemis and Apollo. From the Temple of Dionysus another track leads to Calydon’s acropolis, surrounding which traces of city walls are visible. At the time of writing, the site had no signage and the guidebook was available only in Greek. There is no museum.
18
Sparta & the Haunts of Helen
The most beautiful of all Spartan woman had once been the most ugly. What happened was this: [as a child] her parents considered her appearance a disaster (they were wealthy; she was unsightly), so, pondering her unappealing looks, her nurse devised this plan: each day she took the child to Helen’s sanctuary at Therapne, above the temple of Apollo … placed her beside the statue and prayed to the goddess to stop the child being ugly.
One day, as she was leaving the sanctuary, they say the nurse met a woman who asked her what she was carrying in her arms. When she said it was a child, the woman asked if she could see it. The nurse refused, saying that its parents had forbidden her to show it to anyone. But when the woman kept on asking her and the nurse realized how important it was to her, she relented and showed her the child. The woman stroked its head and said it would become the most beautiful woman in Sparta. And from that day, the child’s appearance changed …
Herodotus, Histories, 6.61
Far below the grassy plateau studded with wild flowers, where once the shrine of Helen stood, a golden glow from the Eurotas River bathes the fertile plain. Olive groves and orchards, small-holdings and farms, the bustling town of Sparti, the road south to the sea – all seem mellow in the evening sun, though dwarfed by the mountains soaring high beyond: Taÿgetus, the great massif, a saw-tooth dragon-spine of ridges, even in early summer dazzling with snow. Sound travels effortlessly in the crystal air: the throaty barking of a dog; a tractor’s sputtering; the splash of water as the river ripples past thick stands of lush bamboo. It must be the most magical location in all Greece, a perfect marriage of extremes, possessed of an almost unendurable euphoria fused with the deepest melancholy. To stand here is to stand face-to-face with the divine.
Apollo & Hyacinthus
In the Eurotas valley and its surrounding mountains the divine seems palpable. Mythology tells that at Amyclae (south of modern Sparti) god did once walk with human when Apollo fell in love with the beautiful young athlete Hyacinthus. But Zephyrus, the West Wind, also loved the youth and, shunned, was consumed by jealousy. So when Apollo and Hyacinthus were competing with each other in games, Zephyrus caused Apollo’s discus to veer from its path and deliver Hyacinthus a mortal blow. Apollo could not save his lover, but in tribute caused flowers to blossom from the dead boy’s blood – the hyacinth, whose petals bore, so Greeks perceived, the letters ‘AI AI’, the sound made in lament, in everlasting memory of Apollo’s tears.
In historical times an annual three-day early summer festival was held at Amyclae. Its focus was Hyacinthus’ tomb, a chamber built into the base of a colossal throne, topped by a statue of Apollo, 14 m (45 ft) tall. The Hyacinthia promised rebirth after death – ritual mourning for the fallen hero was followed by a celebration of his resurrection as Apollo-Hyacinthus.
Leda & the Swan
The porous boundary between human and divine winds through many of Sparta’s myths, not least those associated with Leda’s children. Leda was married to Sparta’s King Tyndareus, but still Zeus desired her. Fearing (uncharacteristically) that she would rebuff him, Zeus waited until Leda was walking by the River Eurotas. Then, transforming himself into a swan and pursued by one of his own eagles, he plummeted to earth in a flurry of feathers. Leda instinctively protected the trembling bird but, as she clutched him in her arms, Zeus seized the opportunity and raped her. Nonplussed, the queen returned home, where Tyndareus consoled her by making love to her. In time Leda was delivered of two eggs, one of which hatched twin girls (Helen and Clytemnestra), the other twin boys (Castor and Polydeuces). Because of their mixed patrilineage, two of the siblings (Castor and Clytemnestra) were mortal, the other two (Helen and Polydeuces) immortal.
The myth of Leda and the Swan as depicted on a Roman mosaic in Paphos, Cyprus.
The Heavenly Twins
Known as the Dioscuri (sons of Zeus), Castor and Polydeuces grew up to be great horsemen and bold adventurers, taking part in the boar hunt at Calydon and sailing with Jason from Iolcus to find the Golden Fleece. But they were best known for the aftermath of their destructive desire for two sisters, Phoebe and Hilaeira (great-grand-daughters of Perseus), who had been promised to the Dioscuri’s cousins, the Thebans Lynceus and Idas.
When they discovered that their betrothed had been abducted to Sparta, where each had borne a son, Lynceus and Idas retaliated: to redeem their honour they would take their cousins’ livestock. Feigning friendship, they joined the Dioscuri in a cattle raid, then, after unfairly beating them in a speed-eating contest, claimed all the booty. The quarrel intensified. After stealing back their cattle and rustling their rivals’ herd, Castor and Polydeuces hid in ambush in a hollow oak tree. But lynx-eyed Lynceus spotted them from Mount Taÿgetus, and Idas aimed his spear unerringly. Castor was killed and, as Polydeuces leapt out to deal Lynceus a death-blow, Zeus blasted Idas with a thunderbolt. Grief-stricken, Polydeuces prayed that Zeus might let him die with Castor but, being immortal, this was impossible. Instead, Zeus told him:
‘If you really want to champion your brother and share all equally with him, you may draw breath for half your time beneath the earth, and half in the golden halls of heaven.’ When he heard this, Polydeuces did not hesitate: he opened bronze-clad Castor’s eyes, and then set free his voice.
So, on alternate days each brother lived as a sky-god, while on the other he was honoured as a god of the underworld in his tomb-shrine at Therapne, one of the most sacred sites in Sparta. Mounted on snow-white stallions, their heads encased in egg-shell helmets, the Dioscuri were protectors of sailors, manifesting themselves as St Elmo’s fire. Alcaeus of Lesbos celebrated them in a hymn:
Leave the Peloponnese and come to me here, Castor and Polydeuces, brave sons of Zeus and Leda! Come with benevolence! You gallop on swift horses across the wide earth and the sea, snatching men from tearful death, leaping on prows of well-benched ships, a blazing light running high up masts and rigging, bringing brightness in the dark night of despair.
At Sparta the Dioscuri were worshipped in the form of two upright wooden beams, joined by two cross-bars. They were both loved and feared. In historical times, disguised as travellers, they were believed to have tested the owner of the house where they had lived, asking him to let them spend the night in their old room. The owner refused, explaining that his young daughter was asleep there. Pausanias records: ‘In the morning effigies of the Dioscuri were discovered in the room, but the girl and all her servants had vanished.’ Today we remember them as the Heavenly Twins, the brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, set there by Zeus as their memorial.
Helen & Menelaus
Helen’s childhood had been turbulent. Already her magnetic beauty had aroused such wild emotions that her mother was rumoured to be not Leda but Nemesis, goddess of vengeance, raped by Zeus at Rhamnous when both were in the guise of swans.
Theseus, determined to possess an immortal wife, abducted Helen to Athens when she was only seven. Although the Dioscuri rescued her, when she reached marriageable age Tyndareus again realized the dangers inherent in her loveliness. Sparta was besieged by ardent, volatile admirers, the highest-born and most ambitious heroes, each offering rich gifts in exchange for Helen’s hand. So passionate were they that Tyndareus feared for the stability of Helen’s future marriage – until Odysseus of Ithaca (who was wooing not Helen but her clever cousin, Penelope) suggested a solution.
Taking Odysseus’ advice, Tyndareus assembled the suitors on the plain just north of Sparta, and commanded each to stand on the butchered carcass of a horse and swear an oath: they would unite against any who sought to undermine the marriage. Then he gave Helen to Menelaus. Some versions of the myth suggest he also passed his kingdom to him. To Agamemnon, Menelaus’ brother and king of Mycenae, he gave Helen’s sister Clytemnestra (though Agamemnon had to kill her husband first).
In return for his advice concerning Helen’s marriage, Tyndareus lent his support to Odysseus’ efforts to win his niece, Penelope, the daughter of his brother Icarius. Odysseus was fleet of foot, so Tyndareus suggested that Icarius give Penelope to whoever won a race through Sparta’s streets. The victor was Odysseus, but Icarius was loath to let the happy couple leave, and when they set out, he followed in a chariot, begging his daughter to stay. Loving her father but in love with her husband, Penelope was torn. But when Odysseus told her she must choose, she veiled her head in silence and continued on to Ithaca to be the model of fidelity.
A few years later Tyndareus forgot to sacrifice to Aphrodite, so the goddess enflamed Paris, Prince of Troy, with reports of Helen’s beauty and brought him to Sparta as a reward for judging her the fairest. Foolishly, Menelaus sailed to Crete, leaving them alone. When he returned to find his palace and bed empty, he sent messengers throughout Greece to remind Helen’s erstwhile suitors of their oath, and so the army sailed to Troy, and after ten years sacked the city. Helen, unbowed, returned to Sparta, where (as Telemachus discovered when he visited on his search for his father, Odysseus) she continued to assert control:
At once into the wine, which they were drinking, she threw a drug, which would relax and soothe and take away all memory of suffering. Whoever drank the mixture would shed no tears that day, not even if his mother or his father were to lie before him dead, or if his brother or dear son were to be slaughtered right in front of him before his very eyes. So clever was the drug that Zeus’ daughter mixed, which Polydamna the Egyptian, Thoön’s wife, had given her.
While Eros hovers overhead and Peitho (Persuasion) follows on, Paris leads Helen by the wrist from her palace at Sparta. (Red figure Attic deep wine cup, c. 490–480 BC.)
After his death, Menelaus was buried at Therapne on the plateau overlooking the Eurotas, where the Spartans honoured him as a hero and Helen as a goddess. As for the immortal Helen, a sixth-century BC Greek explorer from South Italy claimed to have met her on White Island in the Black Sea, where she was living with Achilles. She gave him a message to convey to the lyric poet Stesichorus, who had suddenly been struck blind after condemning Helen’s adulterous relationship with Paris. Now Helen promised to restore his sight if he wrote a recantation, so his Palinode begins: ‘The story is untrue! You never sailed in well-oared ships, nor reached Troy’s citadel.’ Immediately he wrote the lines, Stesichorus saw again. His explanation was that the gods, wishing to decimate mankind through war, yet preserve Helen’s honour, substituted a phantom for Paris to abduct. The real Helen was spirited to Egypt, where Menelaus found her on his voyage home.
Sparta in History & Today
Mythological Sparta is unlike the Sparta of Classical history. Early Sparta (a confederacy of villages rather than a consolidated city) enjoyed a flourishing cultural and artistic life, but in the late seventh century BC this changed. Fearing defeat by either external enemies or their own slaves, the dominant classes adopted a regime of extraordinary austerity. Loyalty to the state was paramount. Boys housed in barracks from the age of seven were trained exclusively as warriors, while girls honed their bodies to bear strong children. An eccentric constitution melded monarchy (with two kings ruling simultaneously), oligarchy and democracy (limited to the ruling warrior class), underpinned by an almost fanatical observation of religious festivals. Predictably many Spartans were sociopaths.
Despite establishing some early colonies, Spartans were reluctant to become involved in international politics. They played no role in opposing the Persian invasion of 490 BC, claiming that the Carneia (a fertility festival) took precedence. Shamed as a result, three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas died holding back the second invasion at Thermopylae (480 BC), and Sparta took the lead in every ensuing battle of the campaign until the victorious Greeks refused to follow their Spartan generals and command passed to Athens.
For the rest of the fifth century BC, Sparta and Athens enjoyed an edgy relationship, which erupted in the Peloponnesian War. In 404 BC Sparta hesitated to capitalize on victory and its power was diminished. It was even forced to build protective city walls, only to demolish them and scrap its constitution when it was conquered by a league of other Greek states under Philopoemen (188 BC).
Under the Romans, Sparta featured on the tourist trail. When Pausanias visited, almost every street corner had mythological associations. One temple even boasted a beribboned egg, said to have been laid by Leda, suspended from its ceiling. By the third century AD, Sparta’s macho past was celebrated at the shrine of Artemis Orthia, where stone seating was installed to let audiences enjoy a degenerate version of an ancient initiation rite in which boys were flogged (sometimes to death) at the altar.
In AD 396, Sparta was overrun by Alaric the Goth. It never recovered. In the Byzantine era a new city was built in the foothills of Taÿgetus at nearby Mistra. After Greek independence in 1834, with Mistra in ruins, an elegant new town built on the site of ancient Sparta obscured much that was potentially of archaeological interest. Modern travellers may marvel at the prescience of Thucydides’ observation two and a half millennia ago:
Imagine that Sparta became uninhabited, with only the foundations of its buildings still intact. As time passed, future generations would, I think, find it hard to believe that it had ever been as powerful as men said it was. For Sparta has no very striking monuments and buildings.
There would be more remains had not the French Abbé Fourmont visited in 1730, intent on discovering inscriptions. His letters, freely describing himself as ‘a barbarian in Greece’, make chilling reading:
For a month now I have been engaged with thirty workmen in the complete destruction of Sparta; not one day passes on which I do not find something – some days I have discovered up to twenty inscriptions! Imagine my joy (and fatigue) at recovering so many marbles.… Perhaps by my demolishing its walls and temples, so that no stone rests on another in even the smallest shrine, its location will be unknown in future, but at least I have some evidence by which to recognize it, and that is something. This is the only way that I could make my journey to the Peloponnese illustrious – it would have been quite pointless otherwise, and that would have suited neither France nor me.
Sparta
SOME IMPORTANT DATES & REMAINS
c. 1500 BC
Mycenaean palace (Homeric Sparta?) at Therapne.
c. 1200 BC
Mycenaean palace destroyed by fire.
c. 750 BC
Spartan expansion annexes Amyclae and much of southern Peloponnese.
late C7th BC
Spartan constitution reformed, traditionally by Lycurgus.
480 BC
Leonidas delays Persians at Thermopylae. Sparta leads Greek victory against Persia.
404 BC
Sparta and its allies defeat Athens.
371 BC
Thebes defeats Sparta at Battle of Leuctra.
331 BC
Alexander the Great forces Sparta to join ‘Corinthian League’.
c. 207 BC
First city-walls built.
188 BC
Philopoemen defeats Sparta, destroying walls and constitution.
C1st BC–4th AD
Sparta features on Roman ‘tourist trail’.
AD 396
Alaric the Goth overruns Sparta.
AD 1730
Abbé Fourmont demolishes much of ancient Sparta’s remains.
AD 1834
Modern Sparti built on site of ancient city.
Ancient Sparta began as a collection of villages, so (scanty) remains are relatively scattered. A car is recommended. Mycenaean Sparta and the Menelaion at Therapne lie on a bluff east of the Eurotas River. A track (15 minutes walk), signposted on the Yeraki road, leads past the chapel of Agios Ilias (on the site of a Temple of Apollo). The views are stunning. Another contender for Menelaus and Helen’s Sparta is Pellana, 27 km (17 miles) north of modern Sparti. A complex of rock-cut tholos tombs includes one apparently with a carving of a heraldic lion. The discovery of a further Mycenaean palace in 2015 near the village of Xirocampi south of Sparti may have a significant impact on our understanding of the period.
