Mycenae stood before us on its high rock. Those of Creon’s army who had come from the far north gazed in wonder at the tall thick walls, and, in the centre of the fortress, the steep-gabled hall, the Megaron, with its many columns of grey granite, tapering at the base like those ancient columns at Cnossus.
‘Look, look!’ a grey-bearded captain said, pointing as he sat hunched on his sheepskin saddle. ‘There is the city of the Cyclops! Only the creatures of the Other Place could have put such a town together, stone on stone.’
His men were simple folk from beyond Illyris, straw-haired fellows who painted their faces with blue woad and wore little but stiff leather jerkins to protect them. They had only one war-cart among the hundred of them, and daily squabbled about their right to ride in it and be great ones. They had never seen a city, or a pitched battle, before. Many of them had not even seen the sea or a ship with sails.
Creon heard this and smiled. He looked splendid in his bronze corselet, with the head of Zeus beaten out upon the breast-plate, and with his long thin bronze leg greaves, all chiselled with the leaves of acanthus. Men have said that Creon of Thebes was a villain, a man without honour; that may be so, but he was certainly a man with pride and beauty, and never a coward. His thin greyish hair blew beside his face, from under the great cheek-guards of his iron helmet; his hooked nose was made straight for the moment by the long nose-guard; and the narrowness of his head was disguised by the wide and spreading red plume which bobbed in the wind, and which made him appear a foot taller than he was.
He stood with his short iron sword in his right hand, his chopped beard jutting forth, a broad copper collar about his throat, and looked almost like a god.
The chariot was a thing to be admired, too. The body of the cart was of woven plaitwork to lessen the jolting; a silver pole stood out in front, at the end of which was a golden yoke. Two black horses stood under that yoke, their breast-stupas decorated with bronze nails, their frontlets of gold, beaten thin and punched with the shapes of sea-monsters such as the octopus and the squid. The wheels of the chariot were of heavy bronze, set on iron axle-trees, having eight spokes, and silver hubs.
I mention this because at that time most of us, even the kings, had war-carts of pinewood, plated with iron if we could get it, and often having solid wooden wheels.
Creon heard the captain from Illyris and called out to him, ‘You are wrong, my friend! Men made Mycenae and men can take it, even if they have nothing more than bows in their hands! These great stones will fall to the bow as easily as to the thunderstone!’
He was speaking thus to keep their courage up; the men of Illyris used the short bow, made of layer upon layer of horn, which had to be warmed and rubbed with lard before it could be bent, so strong was it and so great its curve. Yet once strung, in the hands of a master-archer, it was capable of sending a short arrow for three hundred paces, and of killing an armoured man at that distance, or even further.
After Creon spoke those words to the captain from Illyris his men let fly a volley over the walls of Mycenae. I do not think it did much good—save perhaps killing a few women and children who were gathered in the passage-ways beyond the walls—but it had the effect of bringing a herald up on to the high platform above the great gate.
At first I did not recognize him, he was so enclosed in bronze and iron; but when I heard his voice I knew well enough who it was. No one else in Hellas had a roar like my brother Heracles.
‘Creon of Thebes, Jason of Corinth, Acastus of Iolcos,’ he called along the wind, ‘go back to your homes, I command you. This Place of the Tombs is not to be taken by a bunch of ragged goatherds, I tell you. You may have done very well against the poor devils of shepherds who have their huts outside our walls, but you will meet your deaths if you come up the ramps at us. So go now, before Eurystheus and I come down and take your tongues and hands from you and send you packing back to your dung-hills!’
Creon’s face did not move a muscle as Heracles shouted out these insults. But when he had finished, he put a speaking-horn to his thin lips and shouted, ‘Nicely spoken, Great Ox! For this, we will broil you on the tallest pyre you could wish for, when we come in. We will do you the honour of binding your wrists and ankles with bronze chains—no common hide-thongs for such a fine shouter!’
The Spartans behind the first line of our chariots laughed at this, the laughter that comes close to madness. Some of them were already stripping off their breast-plates and standing near-naked on the plain; others were chewing on the edge of their hide shields in their war-fury. They knew well enough that Eurystheus of Mycenae had sworn to put an end to every Spartan he could lay hands on; they knew also that Castor had been betrothed as a young lad to the little princess, Electra, the ward of Eurystheus, and so had a lawful claim to Mycenae by marriage. And they were anxious both to gain revenge on the Mycenaean king and to set their man on his throne.
One of them, a leather-lunged fellow named Amphomis, began the Spartan battle-chant:
‘Who shouts the loudest
Sleeps the deepest;
Wrapped in rags,
A stick in his hand,
A sword-hole in his heart,
When Spartans have passed!’
But Theseus, who stood in the war-cart next to me, and was a very cautious fellow, turned back and waved to the Spartan to keep his mouth shut. I did not greatly trust Theseus, I must confess; he was the sort who might change sides if he saw the battle running against us. I winked at the Spartan, Amphomis, and decided to keep a close watch on this Theseus once things had started. Polydeuces was in the chariot with me, holding the reins, and I whispered to him, ‘An Athenian should not open his mouth when a Spartan speaks. It may be that either you or I will have to put a javelin into the bull-dancer before the day is out.’
Polydeuces nodded, glowering, and said, ‘You take the words from my mouth, Jason.’
Heracles stayed up there a while, calling down taunts. In the Theban army was a company specially recruited and called ‘The Sacred Band.’ They were all woman-haters, men who had taken boys as their lovers, and who now were assembled in the first ranks, with their lovers beside them decked in white flowers. No one among my Corinthians cared greatly for them, but all had to give them their due as fighters. They were, apart from the Spartans, as bloody a company as I have known—even including the Scythians. But Heracles, of all men, turned his spite on them and called out, ‘I see the pretty boys have come to take Mycenae! Well, they shall have their fill this day, one way or the other! And then we will hang them from our orchard trees like dolls, to bring on the next year’s crop!’
I was angry that he, who had so loved Hylas, should speak in this way, and called out, ‘Go and search in the pool of Lemnos, Fat One. There you will find another pretty boy to hang beside them.’
Heracles knew well enough where I was positioned but he scanned the horizon, as though he could not place me, and then said, ‘That is a voice I think I know! Yes, it is a man whose wife dreams she is always giving birth to snakes. Lift up his kilt, some of you, and see if he has a little adder there, tucked away warm!’
I think that everyone except my own men and the Spartans laughed aloud at this rough jest. My face went hot under my bronze cheek-flaps, and if I could have toppled Heracles from that high wall then, with a thunderbolt, I would have done it. But Polydeuces gripped my sword-arm tightly and said between his big teeth, ‘Do not show your anger, friend. He is digging his own grave with every word he utters. We shall have him before long. My Spartans have sworn an oath and they do not forget easily.’
Theseus drew his chariot alongside mine, a twisted smile on his thin white face, and said, ‘This Heracles is a man of some humour, Corinthian. Shall I carry on the jest and have a look at the little adder?’
I did not take this well. I had never forgiven Theseus his cowardice in not sailing with me in Argo. At the time when the crew was being assembled, he was out on a number of cattle-raids, he said, to replenish the stalls at Athens, and could not come. This deceived no one in later years, when we heard that during our voyage he had been sitting at home with his little Minoan queen, daily waiting for news that we had foundered, so that he could set himself up in our places.
I knocked his outstretched hand away and said to him quietly, ‘You may be a friend of Creon, and a pretty player of the lyre, but to me you are nothing. You are no more than those painted Phoenicians who sing and dance in the market-places to collect a crowd before their stalls. Take care, Theseus! What the poets say of you is one doing; what I know is another.’
He had a young girl in the war-cart beside him, who was munching honey-cakes all the time and getting her black locks sticky with the stuff. She heard my words, and though, being a Cretan, could hardly understand my dialect, she got the drift of what I was saying and began to giggle at him and point as though in mockery. Theseus struck the little Cretan across the face, knocking the honey-cake from her hand on to the ground, he was so nettled at my words.
I smiled and whispered, ‘It is well enough when your opponent is a girl, but what of a man for an enemy?’
He did not answer, but moved his war-cart round so as to be on the other side of Creon, away from me. Polydeuces laughed to see him go and called out that the bull of Minos must have been a castrated calf. I joined in the laughter, which rang through the Spartan ranks, though I must confess that Theseus, despite his character, looked a fine fellow in his Cretan gear—his broad gold belt which drew his waist in like that of a wasp, his black helmet from which two great serpents writhed to form a crest, and with the double-headed stone axe set before him on the chariot, as proud-looking as the prow of a ship.
Creon heard our exchange and frowned. ‘Let us stay as brothers until Mycenae is humbled, Jason,’ he said. ‘Battles are not won when brothers quarrel with each other.’
I accepted his rebuke since he was, for the time being, our High King; but I determined to remind Theseus of this occasion once we were inside the walls and sword play was over. Theseus was lighter than I, and a foot shorter in height. He could choose any form of combat, except wrestling, at which he was a great master.
Then an amazing thing happened. While Heracles still stood on the high walls, his hands on his broad hips, the Lion Gate opened for a brief space, and a group of small girl dancers ran out. Their heads were wreathed with the myrtle, as though they mourned the death of a sacred king; their lithe bodies were clothed with fine white robes, which, in the morning sunlight, allowed every motion of their long legs to be seen as they danced and sang.
The place of their dancing was a Troy-town maze, cut in the turf before the Lion Gates and, as they swayed about each other, they flung small eggs made of stone high into the blue air and caught them as they plummeted down.
The captain of the Illyrian mercenaries called out to Creon, ‘Master, from this range my men could clap an arrow into each of the dancers the moment you said the word.’
King Creon held up his bronze-braceleted hand and, shaking his grey head, said sharply, ‘There will be time for that later, perhaps, man. Listen to what they are singing, you may learn something.’
Theseus winked at the captain behind Creon’s back. I did not like that, either. When a High King speaks, lesser kings should bow the head and mind their manners, whatever they think. Order and obedience come above all things, in statecraft as in sailing a ship.
I turned from this Theseus and listened to the shrill voices of the young girls of Mycenae. The song they sang was not easy to follow, being in the old dialect that the Cretans had left behind them, and being full of riddles; but it was worth listening to while one was waiting for a battle to begin.
They sang:
‘Out of the egg, the bird;
From the bird a seed.
The seed lodges among rocks,
And apples grow.
Hang the corn-boys in the branches,
Let them laugh in the breezes;
So the new year will turn again
Like wheel upon the axle.
So twigs will grow to branches,
Giving home to nests.
In nests the eggs are laid
And we throw them in the air,
Blessing the Mother’s fruitfulness;
Blessing the Father’s seed.’
One of the Illyrians said, ‘Those eggs they throw up—are they of the Mother or the Father?’
Their captain laughed and grunted, ‘What does it matter? When old Creon gives the word we can go up there and see for ourselves.’
But no arrows were shot from the horn-bows that time. Creon allowed the girls to finish their dance, and even stood still, smiling, as the Lion Gates were flung open again to let the virgins pass into the city once more. Theseus glowered and made a gesture as though Creon did not know his business. But my men—the Corinthians and the Spartans—agreed with me that he had done right. It would have brought small credit to us, the men of half Hellas, to have slaughtered these young girls as they sang and danced. Our trade was with men, with warriors, and not with women.
I am not whitening Creon. In his time he did many wrong things, perhaps more than most of the tyrants of those days. For example, never in all his battles did he allow the bodies of his dead enemies to have decent burial, but had them piled in heaps on the field and left for the kite-hawks and the straying dogs to crunch at. This was an offence to all those clans who either buried their dead in grave-shafts or put their burned ashes in urns. And I can understand their fury against Creon—though, to me, a rough and ready fellow brought up among the stallions on the hill-side, such things did not matter. In my view, once a man is dead that is the end of the story. When the light has faded from his eyes and the hands have unclenched about the sword-hilt, what does it matter whether fire, or worms, or dogs eat the poor flesh that once housed his pride and cunning?
All the same, Creon of Thebes was at one time abused in most towns of Hellas for his brutishness, but this morning, as we drew up in our array outside Mycenae, he acted like a quiet god, and not like a brute beast. The girls passed inside the wall and there was silence for a while.
The Spartans sat down in the dust and began to comb each other’s hair, making themselves neat and comely for the battle. Those Thebans who belonged to The Sacred Band caressed one another and spoke of the celebrations they would have when that day was done. Above us the eagles wheeled, gold against the blue sky, as though they had been told that there was red feasting to be had before long.
Creon commanded his artificers to set up a small pavilion, and then called us under its striped awning—Acastus, Theseus and me. We each hated the other, we lesser kings, but we hated King Eurystheus even more, and this kept us smiling together that day.
Creon sat himself in the one gold chair in the tent and took off his high helmet. He set it on the turf beside his chair, but I noticed that he slung his heavy sword up across his thighs, its ivory handle under his hand. He was sure of me, I knew, because of my sworn oath to take his daughter, Glauce, in marriage as soon as the fighting was done; but I do not think that he trusted Theseus, any more than I did. Theseus had a nickname in Hellas, ‘He who lays down,’ and this was given various interpretations by various people. In Thessaly they said that it meant the sort of thing that Hylas did, and, for that matter, what Heracles sometimes did. But I will give Theseus greater credit than that; I think it came from an incident in his youth, when he was foraging along the Isthmus to make his name as a hero.
You understand, one of the places he passed through was Epidaurus, which was ruled by a man with a club-foot called Periphetes. As a baby this Periphetes had been nailed up by the feet to a barn-door by a clan of travelling Dorians. They were rude players of the goatskin bagpipes, who held nothing sacred, not even the blood of kings. Somehow, the baby had survived when the Dorians had passed through the village, driving all the cows before them, and had grown up in a shepherd’s hut, to become a man ridden by vengeance. Frankly, Periphetes was never anything more than a village headman; he was never a king, in the sense that I was a king, or Acastus or Pelias were kings. At a guess, I would say that Epidaurus covered two hundred acres, no more. But he styled himself king, and we will leave it at that. The point was, that any stranger who came through his miserable stretch of scrub and dried olives was always considered as an outlander and in some way connected with those Dorians who had crippled him. Not even the true subjects of the great Minos, and carrying his seal as a passport, were allowed to go unchallenged through Epidaurus. I think that Minos must have chuckled at this hobbling fool. He could have sent a man with a little knife at any time to be rid of this Periphetes; but he did not put himself out to do so.
At all events, along comes young Theseus, full of some nonsense about being the son of Poseidon—whereas we all knew that he was a bastard, the by-blow of a Spartan drunkard on the body of Aethra, who claimed to be the bride of Aegeus of Athens—and meets Periphetes in a bean-field.
‘Halt!’ calls the cripple, holding out a spear made of flint set in an ash-shaft. ‘He who passes through Epidaurus must first satisfy the king of that place that he is no Dorian.’
Theseus—and I swear to this—said, ‘Great One, I have heard of your fame and fear to stand before so great a warrior-king. I lay down my sword and beg your mercy.’
Then he flung down an old sword he used to carry, which he had found under a stone somewhere, and bowed his head before Periphetes. When the old man came forward to lay the shaft of his javelin on Theseus’ neck, harmlessly, only as a sign that he had put Theseus under the yoke, this brisk young fellow from Troezen flicked out a sharp dirk that he kept hidden in his woollen vest and ripped out the cripple’s bowels.
This was all done in a field, outside the village, at the year’s start, when the rams were first sniffing at the ewes, and the buds first showing on the dry boughs. I could find you a score of women, peasants’ widows, who saw it happen. Theseus killed that old madman as he stood defenceless over him, with nothing more than a stick in his hands.
Of course, the poets made a song about it later when Theseus got himself a gold chair to sit on and a red-tiled roof over his head. But that is the truth; ‘He who lays down his sword’ should be the true nickname—but that is too long for men to say. In fact, I would go a step further, and call him, ‘He who lays down his sword, but keeps his dagger!’ But there is no man in Hellas who has enough breath to say all that for a nickname! Men have got so lazy in these later years.
What was I saying? I am old and easily forget. Yes, I remember telling the story of my life at a feast-board in Clitor. Long before I had finished what I wished to say, a young man sitting beside me—a lad I had wanted to interest because of his yellow hair and blue eyes—said loudly to his father, ‘This old scarecrow is a tedious fellow. Why do we listen to him? He has done nothing with his life.’
And this set me thinking, for often the young speak truth, sometimes without knowing it. Perhaps I am a tedious fellow; and perhaps I have done nothing. Perhaps everything was done to me. . ., When I have acted, it has perhaps been because Pelias, or Heracles, or Medea, or Creon, have willed it, not I. Now this is a strange thing, that a man should learn from the young who know nothing. And that a man should be made aware of his pattern, his themis, by a fool.
My pattern has been stitched by women, I fancy even more than by men. There were the girls at the village beyond the pine wood, then Perimede who called herself my mother then Hera of the Ford, then dear sweet Hypsipyle, and then Medea. . . . Do I forget the two daughters of Pelias? One with the slashed face, the other with the hanging breast . . . No, those two did not mean much to me, not even as much as that little washed-out fool Glauce, Creon’s brat, for whom I gave my dear sons and my life before all was over.
Yes that is it; all my life, although I have half-feared them even while loving them, women have ruled me, have twitched my arms and legs as though I were a puppet. Only once have I acted alone and that was when I was a boy, throwing javelins on the sandy hill-side. And I killed a Spartan with one, thrown at a venture.
Come to think of it, that Spartan fellow who grinned even when he was dying, could have killed me as a lad can kill a sparrow, if I had not taken him unawares. I am ashamed to remember it. All my courage has been invented later by poets—those liars—but I do not recall that Medea ever employed a poet to set down her feats. She was self-sufficient; yes, a goddess, in that. Those who sang of her later did so because she had impressed them and not for payment. Poseidon help me, but I paid a score of them, before I was thrown over the cliff-top above Pagasae, so as to leave a good name behind me.
There was only one woman ever in my life—that is, a woman I could feel comfortable with, not fearing, not despising—and that was the long-legged Queen of Lemnos. My sweet Hypsipyle. She was of my kind; her skin and hair and eyes were so like mine that she might have come from the same litter as myself, the same womb.
She was my other-self. And our little son, Euneus, was myself born again. I never knew that boy after we left Lemnos; but I heard great things of him. He turned out to be a good trader when the Trojan War broke, as it had to, by force of circumstances out there in the Aegean Sea, with everybody jostling for a trading-place, after Argo had set a fashion among the merchants.
Things get too much for me to describe at my age. The world is a bigger place than we used to think it. . . . There are, for example, the Hyperboreans, in a little island among the far mists. They rear stones to mark their pathways over their land, high above the oak forests. And in the south of their land, they have a big circle of such stones, to which they travel each year at the coming of the growth-time; and there they lay a red-haired youth upon the altar, in homage to Apollo. I have heard that they can sail the broad blue seas in little shells of boats—nothing more than skin stretched tight upon wicker. That is a miracle in itself, and proves to me at least, that they are the children of Poseidon. Or else he would have given them to the basking shark or the squid, wouldn’t he?
But I tread on the train of my tale like a young bride whose dress is too long for her! Our business is the battle for Mycenae, and Poseidon knows how poorly I can describe it! I, who speak to you as an old man of more than thirty years, and whose scars have long since grown back into the flesh—all except for my eye. That will never grow again. That is lost for ever. Always I shall see but half the world—never the fullness of it, the roundness, the whole breast of the world. The woman of it all.