Greek Mythology, page 27
The quickly rebuilt Troy VIIb shows signs of cultural continuum, but subsequent building techniques and ceramics suggest a new, immigrant population. Unlike mainland Mycenae or Tiryns, Troy was inhabited throughout antiquity. With the receding shoreline, ships waiting to enter the Dardanelles abandoned Troy to shelter in the lee of Tenedos, but as the city’s commercial star waned its cultural importance grew.
In 480 BC, Persia’s Great King Xerxes sacrificed a thousand cattle at Troy’s Temple of Athene before launching his unsuccessful invasion of Greece (partly to avenge the sack of Troy). In 334 BC Alexander the Great, who kept a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, landed at Troy, where he too sacrificed before invading Persia, and ran naked to Achilles’ grave mound. When Athene’s priests presented him with ancient armour claimed to date back to the Trojan Wars, and offered to show him the lyre belonging to his namesake (Paris-Alexander), he replied that he preferred to see the lyre to which Achilles sang the famous deeds of men.
Alexander planned to build the largest temple in the world to Athene at Troy, but it was never begun. Nonetheless, his successors enhanced and enlarged the city, restoring the existing Temple of Athene with sculptures mirroring those of the Parthenon in Athens. A theatre was constructed and festivals inaugurated. Troy prospered, assuming renewed significance under Julius Caesar, his adopted son Augustus and subsequent Roman emperors. As Caesar’s family, the Iulii, traced their descent through Iulus (Ascanius) to Aeneas and Anchises, so the ruling Romans lavished money on the city they perceived as their ancestral home.
Constantine considered making Troy his capital before settling instead for Constantinople. Under the Byzantines, Troy’s importance diminished, and in AD 1452 their nemesis, Mehmet the Conqueror, paid one last visit to the site to mark his victory over the crusading infidels, now couched as the successors to Homer’s Greeks.
For 400 years the site lay almost forgotten, but in 1865 a British expatriate, Frank Calvert, believing reports that Hisarlık (‘The Place of the Fortress’) was Homer’s Troy, bought the land and began digging. Six years later a chance conversation in nearby Çannakale so enthused the romantic German Heinrich Schliemann that he took over, ploughing much of his wealth into unwittingly destroying valuable archaeology. Excavations have continued ever since.
Troy
SOME IMPORTANT DATES & REMAINS
3000 BC
Troy I: first settlements.
2550–2300 BC
Troy II’s Citadel and Lower Town (destroyed by fire) show signs of wealth.
1750–1300 BC
Troy VI: fine houses on the Citadel and a Lower Town covering 30 ha (75 acres). Partially destroyed by fire.
1300–1180 BC
Troy VIIa: further houses on the Citadel and an expanded Lower Town.
c. 1300 BC
King Alaksandu of Wilusa signs treaty with Hittites.
c. 1250 BC
?War between the Greeks and Hittites over Troy.
c. 1200 BC
King Walmu of Wilusa temporarily overthrown.
1180–950 BC
Troy VIIb: signs of immigrant occupation.
480 BC
Xerxes sacrifices at Temple of Athene.
334 BC
Alexander the Great sacrifices at Troy.
85 BC
Roman general Fimbria sacks, and Sulla restores, city.
48 BC
Julius Caesar visits Troy and inaugurates building works.
20 BC
Augustus visits Troy and rebuilds Temple of Athene and theatre.
c. AD 318
Constantine considers making Troy his eastern capital.
AD 1452
Mehmet the Conqueror visits Troy.
AD 1865
Frank Calvert buys site and begins excavations.
AD 1871
Heinrich Schliemann takes over excavations.
Troy is situated off the E87 southwest of Çannakale in a gated compound amid flat wheat fields. From the car park (dominated by the replica wooden horse) the path leads past the old dig house (now a museum containing models and photographs) before forking (right) to a vantage point. Steps (left) lead down to the fine city walls and eastern gate (from Troy VI). From here the designated walkway climbs to the Temple of Athene with its Roman altar and good views towards the Dardanelles. After traces of early walls (Troy I) and houses (Troy II), the path skirts Schliemann’s trench before reaching the magnificent ramp into the citadel of Troy II and a stretch of city walls from Troy VI. Beyond is a sanctuary. The track now curves back past the Roman Odeon and Bouleuterion (Council Chamber), between which is a narrow towered gateway fronted by altars, identified as Homer’s Scaean Gates. The Lower City lies beneath wooded terrain, from which can be seen the tumulus known as the Grave Mound of Achilles. At the time of writing, plans are afoot for an Eco Park, which will integrate the site more sympathetically with the surrounding countryside.
Some finds from Troy are housed in Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum. Others, including the ‘Jewels of Helen’, enjoyed a peculiar and very modern adventure. Taken by Schliemann to Germany, they were kept in the Royal Museums in Berlin until the Second World War, when they were hidden for safe keeping in vaults beneath Berlin’s zoo. At the end of the war they disappeared, but in 1993 it was revealed that the Red Army had spirited them to Russia, where they can now be seen in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum.
21
Ithaca & the Wanderings of Odysseus
I am Odysseus, the son of Laertes, known to all men for my cunning, and my fame has reached the skies. I come from clear-seen Ithaca. There, on the island, is a mountain, Neriton, with rustling trees, quite visible even from far-off. Nearby are many other islands, all close to each other: Dulichium and Same and forested Zacynthus. Ithaca itself is generally low-lying, the furthest out towards the sunset, while the others lie apart to the east, towards the rising sun. It is a rugged island, but a good nurse for young men.
Homer, Odyssey, 9.21f.
Lapping water; rigging slapping rhythmically against the tall masts of sleek yachts moored by the harbour wall; cafés; salt-blistered wooden tables draped with ochre cloths and crowned with crisp white linen; the clink of plates and cutlery; fine, solid houses freshly painted; pale blue walls and deep blue shutters; orange roof tiles gleaming in the noon-day sun; the town hall with its clock tower and its Greek flag dragging lazily in the warm breeze; the music drifting from the open doors of tourist shops: the seafront of Vathy, the capital of Ithaki, nestles in the arms of an idyllic bay embraced by gentle wooded hills.
A statue stands beside the sea, a ragged figure, hollow-cheeked, gazing out across the gulf towards Mount Niritos. He is Odysseus, exhausted from long voyages, exuding defiant confidence that at last he has found his home. But Ithaki and the Ithaca of Greek mythology may well be different places. The island’s location and topography bear arguably scant resemblance to the description in the Odyssey. The harbour restaurants of Vathy may offer fine havens for contemplation but, like Odysseus as he struggled with the foam-lashed sea, we too may have some way to go before we can be certain that we have truly reached his Ithaca.
The Kings of Ithaca
Odysseus belonged to a dynasty of island kings, all only sons. Most were of doubtful parentage. His (supposed) grandfather, Arcesius, was said to be the son of either Zeus or the hero Cephalus. The Athenian Cephalus had been the reluctant and temporary paramour of Eos, goddess of the dawn. Then, in a hunting accident, he tragically killed his true love, Procris (who had returned to him after an affair with King Minos of Knossos). As Cephalus mourned her fate, an oracle advised him to mate with the first thing he came across. This turned out to be a she-bear, but no sooner was the deed done than it changed into a beautiful young woman, Arcesius’ mother. Later, in gratitude for helping Amphitryon defeat Taphians raiding Mycenae, Cephalus received the island which now bears his name – Cephalonia, just west of modern Ithaca.
Arcesius married Chalcomedusa (‘Cunning with Copper’), fathering Laertes, a king who, as he reminisces in the Odyssey, expanded Ithacan rule to include Nericus, ‘the well-built citadel on the mainland shore’. In turn Laertes married Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus, a notorious trickster (a human Hermes), but when she bore a son gossips suggested that Laertes was not his father. They remembered how, when Anticlea still lived with her father near Delphi, Autolycus stole cattle belonging to Sisyphus the king of Corinth, himself an inveterate deceiver. Sisyphus traced his beasts to Autolycus’ byres, where, while finessing their release, some claimed he slept with Anticlea, either with or without her consent.
Now Autolycus sailed to Ithaca to see his grandson. Homer tells how:
After supper, Eurycleia [the boy’s nurse] placed the baby on his knees and said to him: ‘Autolycus, you must find a name for the grandson you have longed for for so many years.’ Autolycus replied: ‘My daughter and my son-in-law, give him the name that I shall tell you. I hold such anger against so many people, men and women, across the bounteous earth. So let him be called Odysseus [‘The Angry One’]. And when he reaches manhood, send him to his maternal home on Mount Parnassus, where I store my possessions, so that I may give him some and send him home rejoicing.’
In due course, Odysseus travelled to Mount Parnassus, where he took part in a boar hunt with his uncles. But when Odysseus ran in close and speared it, the dying boar sliced Odysseus’ leg with its tusk, inflicting a dangerous, deep wound. His uncles ran to help him, binding his wound and singing spells, before carrying him back home. The wound healed, but its scar (in Greek, oulē) remained, a physical reminder, lending him another name: Ulysses.
The Reluctant Hero
Odysseus was renowned for his intellect – his Homeric epithet is ‘very cunning’ (polymētis). Thanks to his advice, King Tyndareus of Sparta made his daughter Helen’s suitors swear an oath to aid her future husband, should she ever stray – which led to the Trojan War and Odysseus’ own prolonged absence from home.
As a reward, Tyndareus helped Odysseus marry his niece, Penelope, whose childhood was not without adventure. Some say that her father Icarius tried to drown her at birth by throwing her out to sea. But when she was rescued by a flock of ducks, Icarius relented and named her from the birds that saved her (pēnelopes in Greek). Others suggest that the ducks saved Penelope when she tried to drown herself, having been wrongly told by Nauplius (embittered by his son Palamedes’ death at Troy) that Odysseus was dead.
Odysseus envisaged a life of marital bliss, even building his own bed – a wondrous creation inlaid with gold and silver, strung with ropes and covered in crimson oxhide – around a vigorous young olive tree. Lopping off its upper branches he used the trunk as the bedpost. In time, the couple had a son, Telemachus (‘He Who Fights from Afar’). But soon the drums of war beat throughout Greece. Helen had run off to Troy with Paris; Agamemnon had assembled an army to retrieve her; and now he, Menelaus and Palamedes, the clever king of Nauplion near Argos, had arrived in Ithaca to recruit Odysseus. But Odysseus knew that the war would be protracted. So he pretended to be mad. Yoking an ox and ass to a plough, he carved furrows in the beach and sowed them with salt. Suspicious, Palamedes stole Telemachus from his cradle and laid him in the ploughshare’s path. Odysseus reined in his team, accepted the inevitable and – as his puppy, Argos, whined to watch him leave – set off for Troy.
Ithaca in Odysseus’ Absence
The Trojan War finally over, the Greeks’ homecoming – particularly that of Odysseus – was plagued by storms and sabotage. After many years, when he did not return, most thought that Odysseus was dead. Only Penelope still hoped, but her resolve was tested when a plague of bachelors descended upon Ithaca demanding her hand in marriage. These suitors behaved abominably, eating voraciously, drinking copiously and cavorting with the maidservants.
Penelope refused them all, until, pestered to distraction, she agreed to reach a decision, but only after she had woven a winding-sheet for Odysseus’ father Laertes, who now lived on his country farm – another possible meaning of Penelope’s name is ‘Weft-Face’ (from pēnē, ‘weft’ and ops, ‘face’). Progress was slow, and after three years a maidservant revealed why. Weaving at her loom by day, by night Penelope was unpicking all the stitches. Torn between her desire to save the house from ruin by remarrying and a wish to stay faithful to Odysseus’ memory, Penelope despaired.
Or so Homer tells us. Pindar was less convinced, asserting that she slept with Apollo, and so bore Pan, god of the countryside. A different myth has Hermes fathering Pan by her. Another went further, claiming that she slept with all 112 suitors – hence name Pan’s name (‘All’) – and that, returning to Ithaca, Odysseus consequently banished her to the mainland. For most, though, Penelope remains a beacon of fidelity.
With Telemachus nearing manhood, the suitors, seeing him as a threat, plotted his murder. But Athene intervened in the guise of his guardian, Mentor, suggesting that he make one last attempt to learn Odysseus’ fate. So Telemachus hoisted a white sail and put to sea, ‘and the dark waves sang loud around the keel’. His journey took him first to Pylos and then to Sparta. Back in Ithaca he rushed to tell his news to the swineherd Eumaeus, who, fostered in the palace, was treated with considerable respect. Eumaeus embraced him:
Kissing his head and his lovely eyes, and both his hands, and letting fall a great tear. As a loving father greets his beloved son, returning from a distant land in the tenth year, his only son, his darling son, the cause of so much sorrow – so did the noble swineherd embrace godlike Telemachus, and kiss him as if he had escaped death.
Sitting by Eumaeus’ fire was a ragged, weather-beaten man, who revealed his true identity only when he could be sure that he could trust Telemachus. It was Odysseus, returned at last. The story of his homecoming is legendary.
The First Wanderings of Odysseus
Following the sack of Troy, Odysseus sailed with twelve ships to the land of the Cicones. Here he sacked the city and enslaved its women, but, not for the last time, his crew disobeyed him, raucously partying instead of making a swift escape. Cicones from the country’s heartland launched a dawn raid, inflicting heavy losses before the Greeks could flee.
Sailing south, a storm which wrecked so many other Greek ships forced them ashore; and later, trying to round Cape Malea, the wind and currents drove them off course. When they next made landfall, they had put the real world behind them and entered the realm of mythology. A brief visit to the laid-back land of the Lotus-Eaters saw many of Odysseus’ crew so stupefied by the narcotic effects of the ‘honey-sweet lotus fruit’ that they had to be forcibly dragged back to the ships.
Their next port of call was much less welcoming: a land of Cyclopes. Polar opposites of civilized urban Greeks, these Cyclopes lived in isolated families without laws or decision-making assemblies. Nor did they honour the Greek concept of xenia (‘guest-friendship’), whereby strangers received hospitality when far from home. With twelve men, Odysseus entered one of their caves, where, overruling the suggestion of a quick raid and hasty departure, he stayed and feasted on the cheeses he discovered there. It was a rash decision. When the Cyclops Polyphemus (‘Garrulous’) returned with his flocks, he closed the cave’s mouth with a huge boulder. Then, spying the Greeks, he brusquely interrogated them, seized two, dashed out their brains and ate them. Odysseus was helpless. Because of the boulder, escape was impossible, but next morning, after Polyphemus (breakfasting on human flesh) departed, leaving them still trapped, Odysseus hatched a plan.
That evening after Polyphemus consumed two more of his companions, Odysseus offered him a skinful of potent red wine, which he had fortuitously brought with him. The normally abstemious Cyclops accepted, asked Odysseus his name, and happily accepted his strange reply, ‘My name is No one.’ Then he collapsed in a stupor. Hurriedly the Greeks retrieved the sharpened stake they had hidden earlier, and heated its point in the fire. Then they rammed it into the sleeping Cyclops’ single eye ‘and the boiling blood surged out around it. As the eyeball burst it singed his eyebrow and both eyelids, and the roots crackled in the fire.’
With Polyphemus bellowing in pain, his fellow Cyclopes outside the cave demanded to know what was happening. ‘No one is attacking me’, he shouted, to which they replied: ‘If no one is confronting you and you are alone, Zeus must have caused your sufferings, and you must endure them. So, pray for help to our father Poseidon!’ Odysseus’ ruse defies translation. ‘No one’ in Greek is outis, but sometimes (as here) the form changes to me–tis, which in turn sounds like (though is not cognate to) the word for ‘cunning’ – part of Odysseus’ epithet polymētis. So the Cyclopes’ reply could mean: ‘If cunning is confronting you…’ It is the first pun in Western literature.
Next morning, when Polyphemus let his flocks out to graze, the Greeks made their escape by clinging underneath the bellies of his sheep to avoid his fumbling grasp. Once out to sea, Odysseus taunted Polyphemus, announcing himself as: ‘Odysseus, sacker of cities, the son of Laertes, whose home is Ithaca.’ Unwittingly he thus provided all the details necessary to formulate a curse, which Polyphemus duly did, calling on Poseidon either to prevent Odysseus’ homecoming or to cause him to reach Ithaca after many years, in a stranger’s ship, having lost all his men.
