The Song of Orpheus (10 page)

Oinone had foreseen Paris’s arrival and was waiting for him in the front room of their house. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead as the pain of the arrow’s venom gripped him. He was unable to speak. He extended a hand to her, his eyes pleading.

Oinone looked at him, and her heart was torn. Paris was her husband. Once she had loved him so much, she had left everything dear to her—the fields and streams, the river that her father protected, her beloved mountain—and moved into this house to be with him. She still loved him.

But he had left her without a word to take up with another woman. She had heard that they’d had children together. When Helen’s husband came to reclaim her, Paris fought for years to keep her. He had made a fool out of Oinone. Worse, he had left her alone to comfort their son, who didn’t understand why his father had suddenly disappeared.

Oinone addressed the men carrying the litter. “There’s nothing I can do,” she said brusquely. “Take him away.” And she turned her back on them, weeping silently. Feebly, Paris called her name, but she pretended not to hear him, although the pain in his voice broke her heart.

“Who was that man?” Korythos had come in and was looking at her, the practice sword dangling from his hand.

She didn’t know how to answer him. My husband? Your father? The man who betrayed me and abandoned us?

The man I love?

Suddenly, she snatched up the pouch of healing herbs that Apollo had given her and ran out the door and down the mountain path. “Wait!” she called. “Wait! I forgive you! I’ll heal your wound!”

But she was too late. As she reached the shore of the river, she saw a plume of smoke rising, and she realized that it was Paris’s funeral pyre. With an agonized cry, she threw herself onto the fire and burned to death.

After the flames died down, the mourners gathered the ashes that had been Paris and the ashes that had been Oinone and buried them in separate urns. They placed a column over each. But they set them up in such a way that it looked as though they faced away from each other.

Even in death, Paris and Oinone were united, yet apart.

Oh, that story makes me sad. If only Paris had kept pleading with Oinone to forgive him, maybe she would have changed her mind. I know that if I’m ever permitted to see Eurydice again, I’ll beg and beg her to forgive me for my—but never mind. Time is running out, so here’s a short myth that isn’t at all sad—not unless you’re the dog or the fox in the story, I guess. And even then, it could be worse.

There once was a hound whose name, Lailaps, means “hurricane.” Lailaps always caught what he hunted. This isn’t just because he was a great hunter, although he was. He was also magical; some say he was even immortal. He first appeared to guard the infant god Zeus, who was hiding from his father in a cave on the island of Crete. (Zeus’s father wanted to eat him, but that’s another story.) This great dog was passed down from owner to owner until he wound up with a man named Kephalos, though some claim the dog was a gift from Artemis, goddess of the hunt, to Kephalos.

Anyway, one day Kephalos heard about a huge fox that the gods had sent to the city of Teumessos to punish its citizens for something; it’s not clear exactly what the crime was. Just as Lailaps was no ordinary dog, this was no ordinary fox. She was the daughter of a monster called the Echidna, which was half human and half snake.

Just as Lailaps always caught his quarry, the Teumessian fox could never
be
caught. She escaped from every trap and eluded every dog that chased her. Once, some men surrounded her with nets, sure they’d finally gotten her, but the great fox leaped over the nets and escaped into the woods. She was so bold that she even ventured into town to eat people. The only way the people of Teumessos could cut down on her attacks was to feed her a child every month. Naturally, this made them very unhappy, but what else could they do?

Kephalos went to Teumessos with his dog and his spear to try to help. As soon as Lailaps caught the fox’s scent, he lunged against his leash, eager to go after her. When Kephalos released him, Lailaps took off like an arrow shot from a bow. He chased the fox across plains, through forests, up hills, and down valleys. Kephalos climbed a hill to watch the pursuit.

The dog nearly caught the fox several times, but each time, she managed to escape. She sped away and then doubled back, circling as Lailaps’s teeth snapped. The hound was never more than one pace behind her, but with each bite, he just missed her. Kephalos was afraid his magic hound would run himself to death.

Kephalos wasn’t the only one watching this strange hunt; in their home on tall Mount Olympos, the gods were observing it, too. Zeus recognized his old friend Lailaps, the hound that had kept him safe when he was a baby. “How will this ever end?” the gods asked one another. “If the dog always catches his prey but the fox can never be caught, will the dog chase the fox forever?”

They turned to Zeus, sitting on his throne, his mighty brow furrowed. The situation irritated him: How could mere humans set up a situation that would last forever? Eternity was the privilege of the gods, not mortals! And besides, he hated to see his faithful guard-dog trapped in an endless chase.

Zeus made up his mind. He drew back his arm and hurled a spell toward earth.

Meanwhile, Kephalos had decided to use his magic spear that never missed its mark. Surely the dog and the spear together would be enough to stop the giant fox. He tossed it in his hand a few times to get its balance; then he too drew back his arm.

But unlike Zeus, Kephalos lowered his arm without throwing his weapon. Down in the field, he now saw not one fierce animal in hot pursuit of another, but two marble statues caught in mid-stride. In front was the huge fox, and right behind it, jaws open but destined never to snap shut, was Lailaps. Zeus had turned them both into stone.

Some, however, say that instead of turning them into statues, Zeus set Lailaps and the fox in the heavens as the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor, where for eternity the Hurricane Hound chases the Teumessian Fox across the night sky.

I keep thinking of stories that I’ll bet you already know, which won’t do me any good. I’m so close, yet so far. I need to calm down so I can think.

I know—how about something from Crete? Many Greeks even in my day didn’t know many Cretan myths. That’s because in ancient times, the island of Crete wasn’t part of Greece, the way it is today. It had a different culture, language, religion, and customs. I’m from Thrace, which is now a province of Greece, and Crete was almost as foreign to me as it probably is to you.

The little I know about Crete I learned from Greek travelers who went there and reported what they had seen, a lot of which they misunderstood. Sometimes they even outright lied about the Cretans, because the Cretans were the enemies of most of the people in Greece, and they thought it was funny to tell stories that made the Cretans look stupid or savage.

Here’s an example. The Cretan sun god was a bull. (I know that sounds strange, but in a lot of ancient religions, the gods took the shape of animals. In fact, the Greeks’ humanlike gods were unusual in those days.) There were probably some religious ceremonies on Crete where a priest of the sun god would wear a bull’s-head mask. Maybe one of those ceremonies was a kind of pretend marriage between the sun god and a priestess of the moon goddess. It’s possible that a person or two was sacrificed at this ceremony.

So say you were an ancient Greek tourist watching this ritual. The lighting was probably dim in the temple, and the air was smoky from all the torches. You might get confused and think that what you saw was a real wedding between a for-real half-man, half-bull monster and the moon goddess herself. And if the Cretans really did perform a human sacrifice, you’d find that pretty shocking.

When you got home to Greece, you’d have forgotten some of what you saw and mixed up most of the rest. You might even exaggerate what you saw when you told people about it, because it was so strange and frightening.

Something like this could be where the myth of the Minotaur came from. You know the Minotaur? The Greeks described him as half man, half bull. They said his father was King Minos of Crete and his mother was the priestess of the moon, and that he ate people. That’s probably not really what the Cretans had in mind with their sun-worship ceremony, but you can see how Greek visitors might get confused.

Another story that the Greeks brought home from Crete is the tale of Talos. Like the story of the Minotaur, it’s gotten all mixed up, and it’s hard to know exactly what the Cretans believed about him—or
it
. Talos was a kind of robot made of bronze. He (or it) was shaped like a man (or maybe a bull. See? The myth is all mixed up), and he was alive. Well, maybe not alive, but he could move; in fact, he ran around the entire island of Crete three times a day. This wasn’t easy, since Crete is pretty big; by your modern measurements, it’s 649 miles around.

Some say that Talos was the son of the island of Crete and the sun god, and that he was the father of both the god of the forge, Hephaistos, and the queen of Crete. Others say that far from being the father of Hephaistos, he was actually
created
by Hephaistos. Others say that Talos was the sun god himself. Still others say that he was the last of the men of the Age of Bronze, a time when all humans were made of bronze and were huge and heroic. He’s sometimes pictured with wings, sometimes not. Mixed-up enough for you?

One odd thing about Talos, which most of the versions agree on, was that he had only one vein in his body, but it didn’t carry blood. Instead, it held a liquid called ichor—the same fluid that ran through the veins of the gods. A bronze nail in his heel kept the ichor from leaking out.

But enough about the contradictions and the weirdness. Let’s get to the story.

The reason Talos ran around Crete three times a day was to guard the island from an attack by sea. If enemies approached, he threw huge boulders at them. If they managed to land anyway, he would build a fire and heat himself red-hot—remember, he was made of metal—and then he would embrace the invaders, and they would die in excruciating pain.

The story goes that one day, a foreign ship came sailing up to Crete. The ship was named the
Argo
, and its sailors were called Argonauts. (I was an Argonaut; did I tell you? I was there that day, and I remember it well.) The captain of the
Argo
was a Greek hero named Jason. He was sailing home with the hide of a magical flying ram, the Golden Fleece, which he had stolen from the land of Kolkhis.

After rowing for days in the hot sun, the Argonauts were desperately thirsty. As the ship approached the island, Jason saw a huge shining figure standing on the shore, brandishing a boulder in his enormous hand. “We just want to get some water!” Jason called to the giant. “Let us refill our barrels, and we’ll be on our way.” Talos didn’t believe him—or maybe he didn’t understand Greek (the Cretan language was totally different), or maybe he didn’t care if the Argonauts died—and he tossed the boulder. It nearly landed on the
Argo
’s deck. The oarsmen hastily reverse-rowed until they were out of range, and then they tried to figure out what to do. They had to think fast. If they didn’t get water soon, they would die.

Unfortunately for Talos, one of the passengers on the
Argo
was a woman named Medea, who had helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece. Later Greeks called her a witch, but she was probably a powerful priestess of the religion of her homeland, Kolkhis.

“Are you giving up so easily?” Medea asked the Argonauts. “What cowards you are! I can deal with him. Row toward the island until we’re just far enough away to keep from getting sunk by a rock.” Jason said that this was too dangerous, but Medea insisted, and he finally ordered the oarsmen to do as she said, while she went below to prepare for the confrontation.

When Medea received the signal that they were in position, she climbed out onto the deck of the
Argo
. The Argonauts fell silent at the sight of her in her beautiful purple robe (purple dye was so expensive that it was reserved for ceremonial clothing). She drew the folds of her robe over the lower half of her face and said a spell through the purple cloth, summoning the ancient spirits of death.