BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY

THE AGE OF FABLE

OR STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES

by Thomas Bulfinch

[1855]

CHAPTER XXIII

ACHELOUS AND HERCULES – ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS -ANTIGONE –
PENELOPE

ACHELOUS AND HERCULES

THE river-god Achelous told the story of Erisichthon to Theseus
and his companions, whom he was entertaining at his hospitable
board, while they were delayed on their journey by the overflow of his
waters. Having finished his story, he added, “But why should I tell of
other persons’ transformations when I myself am an instance of the
possession of this power? Sometimes I become a serpent, and
sometimes a bull, with horns on my head. Or I should say I once
could do so; but now I have but one horn, having lost one.” And here
he groaned and was silent.

Theseus asked him the cause of his grief, and how he lost his
horn. To which question the river-god replied as follows: “Who likes
to tell of his defeats? Yet I will not hesitate to relate mine,
comforting myself with the thought of the greatness of my conqueror,
for it was Hercules. Perhaps you have heard of the fame of Dejanira,
the fairest of maidens, whom a host of suitors strove to win. Hercules
and myself were of the number, and the rest yielded to us two. He
urged in his behalf his descent from Jove and his labours by which
he had exceeded the exactions of Juno, his stepmother. I, on the other
hand, said to the father of the maiden, ‘Behold me, the king of the
waters that flow through your land. I am no stranger from a foreign
shore, but belong to the country, a part of your realm. Let it not
stand in my way that royal Juno owes me no enmity nor punishes me with
heavy tasks. As for this man, who boasts himself the son of Jove, it
is either a false pretence, or disgraceful to him if true, for it
cannot be true except by his mother’s shame.’ As I said this
Hercules scowled upon me, and with difficulty restrained his rage. ‘My
hand will answer better than my tongue,’ said he. ‘I yield to you
the victory in words, but trust my cause to the strife of deeds.’ With
that he advanced towards me, and I was ashamed, after what I had said,
to yield. I threw off my green vesture and presented myself for the
struggle. He tried to throw me, now attacking my head, now my body. My
bulk was my protection, and he assailed me in vain. For a time we
stopped, then returned to the conflict. We each kept our position,
determined not to yield, foot to foot, I bending over him, clenching
his hand in mine, with my forehead almost touching his. Thrice
Hercules tried to throw me off, and the fourth time he succeeded,
brought me to the ground, and himself upon my back. I tell you the
truth, it was as if a mountain had fallen on me. I struggled to get my
arms at liberty, panting and reeking with perspiration. He gave me
no chance to recover, but seized my throat. My knees were on the earth
and my mouth in the dust.

“Finding that I was no match for him in the warrior’s art, I
resorted to others and glided away in the form of a serpent. I
curled my body in a coil and hissed at him with my forked tongue. He
smiled scornfully at this, and said, ‘It was the labour of my
infancy to conquer snakes.’ So saying he clasped my neck with his
hands. I was almost choked, and struggled to get my neck out of his
grasp. Vanquished in this form, I tried what alone remained to me
and assumed the form of a bull. He grasped my neck with his arm, and
dragging my head down to the ground, overthrew me on the sand. Nor was
this enough. His ruthless hand rent my horn from my head. The Naiads
took it, consecrated it, and filled it with fragrant flowers. Plenty
adopted my horn and made it her own, and called it ‘Cornucopia.'”

The ancients were fond of finding a hidden meaning in their
mythological tales. They explain this fight of Achelous with
Hercules by saying Achelous was a river that in seasons of rain
overflowed its banks. When the fable says that Achelous loved
Dejanira, and sought a union with her, the meaning is that the river
in its windings flowed through part of Dejanira’s kingdom. It was said
to take the form of a snake because of its winding, and of a bull
because it made a brawling or roaring in its course. When the river
swelled, it made itself another channel. Thus its head was horned.
Hercules prevented the return of these periodical overflows by
embankments and canals; and therefore he was said to have vanquished
the river-god and cut off his horn. Finally, the lands formerly
subject to overflow, but now redeemed, became very fertile, and this
is meant by the horn of plenty.

There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia. Jupiter at
his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care of the
daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the infant deity
with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke off one of the horns
of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the
wonderful power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might
wish.

The name of Amalthea is also given by some writers to the mother
of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, “Paradise Lost,” Book IV.:

“…That Nyseian isle,
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid son,
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye.”

ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS

AEsculapius, the son of Apollo, was endowed by his father with
such skill in the healing art that he even restored the dead to
life. At this Pluto took alarm, and prevailed on Jupiter to launch a
thunderbolt at AEsculapius. Apollo was indignant at the destruction of
his son, and wreaked his vengeance on the innocent workmen who had
made the thunderbolt. These were the Cyclopses, who have their
workshop under Mount AEtna, from which the smoke and flames of their
furnaces are constantly issuing. Apollo shot his arrows at the
Cyclopses, which so incensed Jupiter that he condemned him as a
punishment to become the servant of a mortal for the space of one
year. Accordingly Apollo went into the service of Admetus, king of
Thessaly, and pastured his flocks for him on the verdant banks of
the river Amphrysos.

Admetus was a suitor, with others, for the hand of Alcestis, the
daughter of Pelias, who promised her to him who should come for her in
a chariot drawn by lions and boars. This task Admetus performed by the
assistance of his divine herdsman, and was made happy in the
possession of Alcestis. But Admetus fell ill, and being near to death,
Apollo prevailed on the Fates to spare him on condition that some
one would consent to die in his stead. Admetus, in his joy at this
reprieve, thought little of the ransom, and perhaps remembering the
declarations of attachment which he had often heard from his courtiers
and dependents fancied that it would be easy to find a substitute. But
it was not so. Brave warriors, who would willingly have perilled their
lives for their prince, shrunk from the thought of dying for him on
the bed of sickness; and old servants who had experienced his bounty
and that of his house from their childhood up, were not willing to lay
down the scanty remnant of their days to show their gratitude. Men
asked, “Why does not one of his parents do it? They cannot in the
course of nature live much longer, and who can feel like them the call
to rescue the life they gave from an untimely end?” But the parents,
distressed though they were at the thought of losing him, shrunk
from the call. Then Alcestis, with a generous self-devotion, proffered
herself as the substitute. Admetus, fond as he was of life, would
not have submitted to receive it at such a cost; Lut there was no
remedy. The condition imposed by the Fates had been met, and the
decree was irrevocable. Alcestis sickened as Admetus revived, and
she was rapidly sinking to the grave.

Just at this time Hercules arrived at the Palace of Admetus, and
found all the inmates in great distress for the impending loss of
the devoted wife and beloved mistress. Hercules, to whom no labour was
too arduous, resolved to attempt her rescue. He went and lay in wait
at the door of the chamber of the dying queen, and when Death came for
his prey, he seized him and forced him to resign his victim.
Alcestis recovered, and was restored to her husband.

Milton alludes to the story of Alcestis in his Sonnet “on his
deceased wife”:

“Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.”

J. R. Lowell has chosen the “Shepherd of King Admetus” for the
subject of a short poem. He makes that event the first introduction of
poetry to men.

“Men called him but a shiftless youth,
In whom no good they saw,
And yet unwittingly, in truth,
They made his careless words their law.

“And day by day more holy grew
Each spot where he had trod,
Till after-poets only knew
Their first-born brother was a god.”

ANTIGONE

A large proportion both of the interesting persons and of the
exalted acts of legendary Greece belongs to the female sex. Antigone
was as bright an example of filial and sisterly fidelity as was
Alcestis of connubial devotion. She was the daughter of OEdipus and
Jocasta, who with all their descendants were the victims of an
unrelenting fate, dooming them to destruction. OEdipus in his
madness had torn out his eyes, and was driven forth from his kingdom
Thebes, dreaded and abandoned by all men, as an object of divine
vengeance. Antigone, his daughter, alone shared his wanderings and
remained with him till he died, and then returned to Thebes.

Her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had agreed to share the
kingdom between them, and reign alternately year by year. The first
year fell to the lot of Eteocles, who, when his time expired,
refused to surrender the kingdom to his brother. Polynices fled to
Adrastus, king of Argos, who gave him his daughter in marriage, and
aided him with an army to enforce his claim to the kingdom. This led
to the celebrated expedition of the “Seven against Thebes,” which
furnished ample materials for the epic and tragic poets of Greece.

Amphiaraus, the brother-in-law of Adrastus, opposed the
enterprise, for he was a soothsayer, and knew by his art that no one
of the leaders except Adrastus would live to return. But Amphiaraus,
on his marriage to Eriphyle, the king’s sister, had agreed that
whenever he and Adrastus should differ in opinion, the decision should
be left to Eriphyle. Polynices, knowing this, gave Eriphyle the collar
of Harmonia, and thereby gained her to his interest. This collar or
necklace was a present which Vulcan had given to Harmonia on her
marriage with Cadmus, and Polynices had taken it with him on his
flight from Thebes. Eriphyle could not resist so tempting a bribe, and
by her decision the war was resolved on, and Amphiaraus went to his
certain fate. He bore his part bravely in the contest, but could not
avert his destiny. Pursued by the enemy, he fled along the river, when
a thunderbolt launched by Jupiter opened the ground, and he, his
chariot, and his charioteer were swallowed up.

It would not be in place here to detail all the acts of heroism or
atrocity which marked the contest; but we must not omit to record
the fidelity of Evadne as an offset to the weakness of Eriphyle.
Capaneus, the husband of Evadne, in the ardour of the fight declared
that he would force his way into the city in spite of Jove himself.
Placing a ladder against the wall he mounted, but Jupiter, offended at
his impious language, struck him with a thunderbolt. When his
obsequies were celebrated, Evadne cast herself on his funeral pile and
perished.

Early in the contest Eteocles consulted the soothsayer Tiresias as
to the issue. Tiresias in his youth had by chance seen Minerva
bathing. The goddess in her wrath deprived him of his sight, but
afterwards relenting gave him in compensation the knowledge of
future events. When consulted by Eteocles, he declared that victory
should fall to Thebes if Menoeceus, the son of Creon, gave himself a
voluntary victim. The heroic youth, learning the response, threw
away his life in the first encounter.

The siege continued long, with various success. At length both hosts
agreed that the brothers should decide their quarrel by single combat.
They fought and fell by each other’s hands. The armies then renewed
the fight, and at last the invaders were forced to yield, and fled,
leaving their dead unburied. Creon, the uncle of the fallen princes,
now become king, caused Eteocles to be buried with distinguished
honour, but suffered the body of Polynices to lie where it fell,
forbidding every one on pain of death to give it burial.

Antigone, the sister of Polynices, heard with indignation the
revolting edict which consigned her brother’s body to the dogs and
vultures, depriving it of those rites which were considered
essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading counsel
of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance,
she determined to brave the hazard, and to bury the body with her
own hands. She was detected in the act, and Creon gave orders that she
should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the
solemn edict of the city. Her lover, Haemon, the son of Creon,
unable to avert her fate, would not survive her, and fall by his own
hand.

Antigone forms the subject of two fine tragedies of the Grecian poet
Sophocles. Mrs. Jameson, in her “Characteristics of Women,” has
compared her character with that of Cordelia, in Shakspeare’s “King
Lear.”

The following is the lamentation of Antigone over OEdipus, when
death has at last relieved him from his sufferings:

“Alas! I only wished I might have died
With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
For longer life?
O, I was fond of misery with him;
E’en what was most unlovely grew beloved
When he was with me. O my dearest father,
Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
Wast dear, and shalt be ever.”
Francklin’s Sophocles

PENELOPE

Penelope is another of those mythic heroines whose beauties were
rather those of character and conduct than of person. She was the
daughter of Icarius, a Spartan prince. Ulysses, king of Ithaca, sought
her in marriage, and won her, over all competitors. When the moment
came for the bride to leave her father’s house, Icarius, unable to
bear the thoughts of parting with his daughter, tried to persuade
her to remain with him, and not accompany her husband to Ithaca.
Ulysses gave Penelope her choice, to stay or go with him. Penelope
made no reply, but dropped her veil over her face. Icarius urged her
no further, but when she was gone erected a statue to Modesty on the
spot where they parted.

Ulysses and Penelope had not enjoyed their union more than a year
when it was interrupted by the events which called Ulysses to the
Trojan war. During his long absence, and when it was doubtful
whether he still lived, and highly improbable that he would ever
return, Penelope was importuned by numerous suitors, from whom there
seemed no refuge but in choosing one of them for her husband.
Penelope, however, employed every art to gain time, still hoping for
Ulysses’ return. One of her arts of delay was engaging in the
preparation of a robe for the funeral canopy of Laertes, her husband’s
father. She pledged herself to make her choice among the suitors
when the robe was finished. During the day she worked at the robe, but
in the night she undid the work of the day. This is the famous
Penelope’s web, which is used as a proverbial expression for
anything which is perpetually doing but never done. The rest of
Penelope’s history will be told when we give an account of her
husband’s adventures.