Idomeneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth,
The merciless brazen spear point raking through,
Up under the brain to split his glistening skull…
Teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids
With a gush of blood and both nostrils spurting,
Mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood,
And death’s dark cloud closed down around his corpse.
—Homer, Iliad 16. 407–413
The days had turned into weeks and then into months since Jason last recalled seeing Chryseis. Her sublime beauty continued to haunt him as it sharply reminded him of Amymone. In his mind’s eye she had become the essence of his long past love…a reminder of Amymone’s physical being. But Amymone was dead, and Chryseis, the only other woman he desired, was not his to behold. Thoughts of love and beautiful women now rendered his need for battle both superfluous and pointless.
In the meantime there was no end to the senseless war. The sting of battle, it seemed, paled before the pain in his heart.
Over the course of time, one by one the great heroes had met their fate. Protesilaus, Patroclus, Sarpedon…In spite of them all, Jason had before the Trojans, made a good account of himself. On one occasion, Argives and Spartans commanded a bluff before the great south gate of Troy on the throsmos, when they were set upon by twice their number. Valiantly, laboriously, methodically they repelled the defenders with their sharp bronze tipped spears.
Jason wielded his lance and slashed one opponent on the shoulder thereupon quickly regaining his balance against the second. Swords clashed about his shield but the deep wound he inflicted forced one enemy to retire. A lone spearman set upon Jason with a will but the young Argive shielded himself behind cow hide and bronze. Eventually he was able to strike at the spearman and de-weaponed him. The Trojan speedily retreated towards the city gate and Jason, fatigued from battle, obliged to let him escape.
“Go tell Apollo that Jason of Amyklai bettered you. Go tell your god Apaliunas that my lord, Poseidon is greater still!”
A cheer rose up from those of the Achaeans who had seen the contest and Jason imprudently revelled in his own glory. Far from Troy’s southern gate, King Diomedes had also witnessed the duel.
“All cheer for the Amyklaian. He has defended Argive honour and that of Agamemnon.”
A great din arose from the high ground of the hummock and for a fleeting moment in time Jason’s splendour exceeded that of the gods. Only a few weeks before this, through Diomedes’ insistence, Mene-laus had pardoned Jason’s crimes. He was no longer the fugitive from Poseidon’s temple, but rather an Achaean warrior of renown.
If only Amymone could have shared in his glory…if only…
It was then, as Jason turned blindly into another Achaean, that he felt the cold, sharp sting of bronze as a spear pierced through the plated armour, into his lower chest. His eyes met the calculating sneer of Aigisthus the Spartan, Amymone’s father.
“Remember what you had done to my daughter, dog? May you rot in the infernal regions, your shade forever seeking that which it cannot have?”
“Aigisthus, Amymone was…”
“Where is she? What have you done with my property?”
Incapacitated, Jason fell to the ground as two soldiers restrained Aigisthus from any further advance upon the stricken champion. The men watched the crimson river flowing from the mortal wound beneath his shattered bronze armour.
“My lucky countrymen, why could I not fall in honour serving the sons of Atreus on Troy’s broad plains against the Wilusans? Why could I not die the day the Trojans let fly their sharp bronze spears over Proesilaus’ corpse? Jason appealed to his Mycenaean allies.
“What have you done with my daughter?” Aigisthus growled at the dying man.
“What have I done with your daughter?”
Jason gasped for air. Every breath sent shivers of acute pain through his chest.
“Un-strap my breast plate,” Jason appealed as he fumbled in the dust to try and untie the heavy body length bronze armour. One of the soldiers obliged him. It was then they saw what Aigisthus had done. The lance had penetrated below the left nipple and his lung had probably collapsed. Jason placed his hand atop the injury in the hope to stop his life’s blood from gushing away. All the while his chest heaved, straining painfully in its failing battle to enliven the body.
“What have you done with my daughter?”
“I wish for a proper burial…I should have at least that dignity! I am a hero!”
“You will receive nothing until I know of Amymone.”
“This is not for you to demand, Aigisthus,” a soldier scolded the Spartan.
“It is my right…now tell me, Argive swine, before I run you through again and dismember you for the jackals.”
Jason’s laborious gasps were excruciating. Stripped of his brilliant armour, his muscled, near naked body was covered in sweat and dust. His life force was ebbing away like the tide of the sea. Half delirious, he spied Poseidon behind the Spartan, lashing his long-maned horses, preparing to drive to Aegae, beneath the sea, where his watery palace stood.
“Why are you so enraged with me, Poseidon? Yo u are a god and have everything. I am a poor man and yet you have sown nothing but disaster for Amymone and me. Where is your mercy?”
Poseidon’s divine shadow touched Jason’s body which convulsed in shock, and the god pointed to something that Jason was wearing. In Poseidon’s chariot stood another figure. There was the aura of the divine about this apparition, robed in white. In her steel-blue eyes he saw at once her distress and also her great repose.
“Where is the Klawiphoros?” Aigisthus screamed as he threateningly lifted his bronze spear.
Jason raised his arm and pointed to the phantom deity and his consort, intangible to all but him.
“There she is,” he smiled. “She has all the splendour of the gods.”
“You fool! I have no time for games with the likes of you.”
The wraithlike Amymone left Poseidon’s car and crouched beside the dying man. She could not speak because the god would not permit it so, but rather, longingly caressed his muscled chest. Miraculously, his pain abated and his spirit calmed. All around the battle’s dim ceased as every man instantly felt pity for Jason. The mortally wounded warrior looked into Amymone’s eyes and remembered straight away their homeland of golden meadows and wild horta. Music, serene and ethereal played in his head as he touched her hand and she returned a smile but the dream’s illusion of peace was broken when he again heard Aigisthus’ barking insults.
“Speak to me, pig! I demand it!” The Spartan spat out hatred like venom.
“I am not a pig…you are the pig!” Jason’s thoughts returned from the divine to the realities of impending death. “Aigisthus the Spartan, (Jason coughed blood) your daughter was my wife.”
Shocked, Aigisthus reeled back. He had not anticipated an answer such as this. The dying man had struck an incurable Scythian blow.
“What do you mean, she was your wife? What lies do you speak before me now?”
“Amymone was my gyne.”
“She was your gyne; you say she was!”
“Aigisthus, Amymone is dead.”
“How can she be dead?”
“Amymone died carrying my child…She died in…”
The Spartan could not immediately understand the importance of Jason’s words. His lack of perception struggled against the dying man’s truth.
“Your child…I have a grandchild you say? Listen to me! Where is my grandchild?”
“She rests in Elysium, with her mother. They are in Hades’ care now.”
“How did they die? Was it by your hand?”
“Amymone died trying to give me a child…The child was not born into this world.”
“I want to know where the bodies are. Tell me. I wish to purify them!”
“They are pure…It is too late for anything else…”
“How can the Klawiphoros be pure and holy? That which was Poseidon’s you had taken for yourself. Their bones must be gathered and purified in fire or they will never reach the after world.”
Jason found it difficult to speak. His muscled chest was heavy with blood.
“They rest in Argos. The temple-mother for Eileithyia consecrated and buried them. I do not know where exactly.”
“Then rot in all the infernal regions!”
“It is by your own words, Aigisthus, that I curse you.”
The Spartan watched as the young warrior scratched a small hole near his failing hand. A talisman hung round Jason’s neck which he snapped off and placed into the shallow grave, soaked in his own blood. It was the golden temple-bracelet that he kept at Amymone’s death.
“Here is your treasure, Poseidon…I curse it as you have cursed me…I curse Aigisthus as he has cursed me. I vow this throughout eternity. Amymone is mine. I will find a way to get her back. Yo u cannot have her forever.”
Poseidon stood by the dying man and watched on, unmoved by Jason’s pronouncement. The great god then mounted his car, Amymone behind him, and proceeded towards his watery palace. She held out her silent hand, reaching out if needs be, until the end of time. Jason’s and Amymone’s eyes transfixed, only breaking contact as the chariot disappeared into the blue firmament of heaven.
The Bronze Age lover’s eyes, together, a portal to the soul, to another place, to another time, began searching through the Flux. Elsewhere, Lyndon and Helen’s eyes, those same eyes, looked back in wonder, into Poseidon’s Pool, from another place…from another time.
Aigisthus reached down and clutched the golden bracelet from Jason’s feeble hand. He spied his daughter’s name on a locket in the shape of a horse’s head, a creature sacred to Poseidon.
“It is you who will be cursed, young dog. Desecrator of temples and defiler of a Klawiphoros! May Poseidon torment you for an eternity for what you have perpetrated! May your shade never know peace! Amymone is destined for Poseidon. It is you who will never know her again…”
“…Amymone!”
“Talk no more of my daughter.”
“…Amymone…I…”
“Silence!” The Spartan viciously kicked Jason’s rib cage, breaking one rib and forcing him to roll onto his side.
“Ahhhhh…Dog!” Jason coughed up dark blood.
Satisfied by his shallow victory, the ignoble Spartan lifted his heavy slashing sword and hacked into the hero’s collarbone, cleaving the whole shoulder to the backbone. A torrent of dark red noble blood spurted like a fountain onto the dusty Trojan plain. It was as if the eternal chthonic gods of the earth were offered a sacred libation.
Under the dying red sun Jason’s life thus ended, his death cry echoed across the blood-soaked field within ear-shod of the Trojan hosts. In this his first death, he closed his eyes at last, and all became as Stygian blackness.
High above from their beetling towers the Wilusans watched as Aigisthus desecrated the corpse. Amidst the ferocity of war, even they were taken aback by the senseless aggression of one Achaean to another.
“Enough! Enough! No more sacrilege, vile Greek! Yo u will pay a price for this disgrace.” A young Trojan high above from the ramparts of the city rebuked Aigisthus as he spat a filthy wad onto Jason’s face. “Why do you hate him so? A warrior of his valour deserves better than this. This hero deserves immortality, not desecration!”
“Pray to whatever pig-gods you have, Trojans, for only they and you could favour an animal such as this.” Aigisthus then committed one last indecency against the champion’s corpse as he severed the fallen man’s testicles with his knife. He retrieved the bleeding ball sacks, mocking the fallen victim, and held them high to the heavens in the manner of a priest offering a blood sacrifice.
Maddened with hatred he roared above the host.
“I will roast these gory bags upon Poseidon’s altar. The bringer of earthquake will be appeased that justice has been served for the rape of his Klawiphoros. His sheathed penis will shoot seed no more. My daughter’s murder will be avenged. Yo u will no longer be recognized as a man by Greeks and gods alike.”
Aigisthus finally departed, enraged and determined that he had paid a blood debt for his daughter’s death.
Jason’s emasculated body lay motionless in the blood-soaked dust. The pallor of death replaced the ruddiness of a living hero. His manhood now only carrion, fit for the vultures and crows. So much flesh to be ignobly devoured like the cooling dead meat that his body had become. Aigisthus denied Jason ‘the beautiful and glorious death’ so ardently desired by a Mycenaean warrior. Defiled, Jason was no longer perfect and in the minds of his people, he could never achieve a perfect immortality.
“You honourless filth…You violate the fallen!” Prince Hector, the bravest and noblest amongst the Wilusans, cried out from the battlements of Troy, unaware that in the not too distant future a similar fate awaited him before Achilles’ wrath.
Thoroughly appalled by the spectacle, the Trojans on their towers let fly a volley of spears against the violator but their missiles fell short of their Spartan target. He was destined to fall within the wane of the moon, but for now the laughing Aigisthus withdrew, leaving two young soldiers to retrieve their fallen and mutilated comrade. They trudged along the hummock, carrying Jason’s desecrated corpse back to the Achaean camp. At least the hero would avoid the disgrace of his body being ripped apart by the dogs and crows.
Like so many other fallen warriors, Jason was washed and oiled. The wounds were soothed over with ointments and his long hair sprinkled with perfume. Jason’s testicles were replaced as best they could be by balls of clay, camouflaged where possible by his overlying manhood.
Together with his comrades, he was ready to be received by the glorious dead, and was cremated that night as the moon eclipsed a bloody red.
The heroes’ bodies crackled like roasted pork, spitting, red with fire, lustrous in their journey towards immortality.
Wisps of black oily smoke rose through the mists straight up to the heavens, its rancid stench a violation in vindication to a senseless war for a useless cause.
It was a war fought by heroes on behalf of a faithless woman.
The black smoke rose…as dark as Stygian blackness…into the velvet night.
It Was in the Underworld Where Aeneas Met Prince Deiphobus
Here too Aeneas saw Deihobus, son of Priam, his whole body mutilated and his face cruelly torn. The face and both hands were in shreds. The ears had been ripped from the head. He was noseless and hideous. Aeneas, barely recognising him…went up to him and spoke…
“Deiphobus, mighty warrior, descended from the noble blood of Teucer, who could have wished to inflict such a punishment upon you?”
To this the son of Priam answered…
“It is my destiny and the crimes of the murdered from Sparta that brought me to this. These are reminders of Helen.”
—Virgil, Aeneid 6.494–512.