Chronic dyspepsia in Olympian 1

Pindar's First Olympian has several interesting motifs. This is about one of them: digestion. The ode begins with a banquet honoring Hieron, and swiftly moves to the somewhat less felicitous feast of Tantalos, though Pindar's version of events swerves from the grisly tales of other poets.

Pindar begins by protesting his own innocence - he would never dishonor a god:

For me it is impossible to call one of the blessed gods a glutton. I stand back from it.

The word for "glutton" is γαστρίμαργον, (gastro: stomach.)

At Hieron's feast, the assembled guests have the "sweetest thoughts" (γλυκυτάταις ἔθηκε φροντίσιν) thanks to the grace of Pisa and of Pherenikos, Hieron's horse. χάρις, or grace, is a potent word that contains beauty, favor, and goodwill, as well as some show of kindness that gains gratitude, and thus can act as a charm, or influence.

As the charmed guests sing and toast Hieron at his feast, Pindar sings of that arch-feast to which Tantalos invited the gods, to reciprocate their grace:

If indeed the watchers of Olympus ever honored a mortal man, [55] that man was Tantalus. But he was not able to digest his great prosperity, and for his excess he seized overpowering ruin, which the Father hung over him: a mighty stone.

εἰ δὲ δή τιν᾽ ἄνδρα θνατὸν Ὀλύμπου σκοποὶ

ἐτίμασαν, ἦν Τάνταλος οὗτος: ἀλλὰ γὰρ καταπέψαι

μέγαν ὄλβον οὐκ ἐδυνάσθη, κόρῳ δ᾽ ἕλεν

ἄταν ὑπέροπλον, ἅν οἱ πατὴρ ὑπερκρέμασε καρτερὸν αὐτῷ λίθον, 

Pindar makes a punning joke. This raising up of Tantalos by the "watchers of Olympus" was a bit too rich for Tantalos, who couldn't keep it down. The word Pindar uses, καταπέσσω, is not a metaphor. It simply means "to digest." 

What Tantalos couldn't digest was the μέγαν ὄλβον, the great happiness that he was enjoying among the gods. According to one version of the tale, when they discovered he had cooked them up his son, Pelops, they were horrified - it was an indigestible thing (except for Demeter, who nibbled absentmindedly, hence the ivory shoulder).

Great happiness can be as indigestible as great horror, Pindar tells the happy peers of Hieron. Tantalos's error -- κόρῳ -- can mean satiety or surfeit --is perfectly consonant with the gastronomic figure. I have translated it as "excess" to underscore the ethical dimension.

A brief digression . . .

Why does Pindar here call the gods the "watchers of Olympus"? One possibility is that, as we know, they hold Olympus because Zeus defeated his father, Kronos, in a war after Kronos ate, or tried to eat, all his children. (This gastronomic predilection is a bit of a tradition.) The Olympians are always "watchers" because at any time some extraordinary monster, like Typhon, could rise and try to unseat them from their place in the sky. Perhaps Tantalos was trying to emulate Kronos? Or Zeus himself, who ate Metis ("cunning") because of a prophecy that her child would unseat him -- a devouring that led to the birth of Athena.

In any event, angered that Tantalos attempted to share the gods' ambrosia and nectar with mortals, Zeus hangs the stone over Tantalos. The man who found Olympian happiness indigestible now and forever lives beneath it. But the gastronomic imagery continues.

The scene shifts to the night that Pelops, alone, at the edge of the sea, called upon Poseidon:

θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον γῆρας ἐν σκότῳ καθήμενος ἕψοι μάταν, 

Since all men are compelled to die, why should anyone sit stewing an inglorious old age in the darkness, with no share of any fine deeds?

Translator Svarlien's "stewing" is precise. Pelops's word is ἕψοι - which describes the boiling and seething of meat. To Pelops, life itself is a matter of being cooked -- it's only a question of whether one stews in dark anonymity, or steps up:

As for me, on this contest

I will take my stand. 

ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ μὲν οὗτος ἄεθλος

ὑποκείσεται:

In taking his stand, Pelops speaks and establishes a position. He posits a place from which the contest is on. ὑποκείσεται literally means to put or set under, and is related to hypothesis. Pelops "takes as given" the possibility that he can defeat Oenomaus with his former lover's help.

For Pelops that "stand" leads to "horses with untiring wings" and a golden chariot -- he has become an image of the sun. The shift from dark ocean's shore to blazing flight and triumph is quick in the telling. Pelops's race launches the games forever linked with his coming of age, his courage, his slaying of the evil father, and his marriage to Hippodameia. The rest, as we say, is history. Now it's Hieron's turn. No winged horse, but the radiant χάρις of Pherenikos. 

τὸ δ᾽ἔσχατον κορυφοῦται βασιλεῦσι. μηκέτιπάπταινε πόρσιον

the peak of the farthest limit is for kings. Do not look
beyond that!

To be king is sweet, but

the good of the common day

is the best that comes to every mortal man.

τὸ δ᾽ αἰεὶ παράμερον ἐσλὸν

ὕπατον ἔρχεται παντὶ βροτῶν.

The core of coeur-age

The first Olympian sets the scene for Pelops' address to Poseidon:

ἐγγὺς ἐλθὼν πολιᾶς ἁλὸς οἶος ἐν ὄρφνᾳ 
ἄπυεν βαρύκτυπον 
Εὐτρίαιναν: ὁ δ᾽ αὐτῷ 
πὰρ ποδὶ σχεδὸν φάνη.

near to the gray sea, alone in the darkness, 

he called aloud on the deep-roaring god, 

skilled with the trident; and the god 

appeared to him, close at hand.

Pelops then says:

θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον 

γῆρας ἐν σκότῳ καθήμενος ἕψοι μάταν, 

ἁπάντων καλῶν ἄμμορος; ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ μὲν οὗτος ἄεθλος 
ὑποκείσεται

Since all must die, why should anyone nameless 
sit in the dark, foolishly stewing old age 

with no share in all that is good? As for me, on this contest 

I will take my stand.

Compare Sarpedon's speech that comes near the center of the Iliad (end of Book Twelve):

'Glaukos, why is it you and I are honored before others
with pride of place, the choice meats and the filled wine-cups
in Lykia, and all men look on us as if we were immortals,
and we are appointed a great piece of land by the banks of Xanthos,
good land, orchard and vineyard, and ploughland for the planting of wheat? 

Therefore it is our duty in the forefront of the Lykians
to take our stand and bear our part of the blazing of battle,
so that a man of the close-armoured Lykians may say of us,
“Indeed these are no ignoble men who are lords of Lykia,
these kings of ours, who feed upon the fat sheep appointed
and drink the exquisite sweet wine, since indeed there is strength
of valour in them, since they fight in the forefront of the Lykians.” 

'Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle,
would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,
so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost
nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory.
But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us
in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them,
let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.'

The birth of Erechtheus

Erechtheus is the strange figure who stands at the root of Athenian culture - born in a most peculiar manner of god(s) and Earth. Erichtheus and Erichthonius are variants of the same character in early accounts, and ought not be confounded with Erichthonius of Dardania, an ancestor of the royal line of Troy.

Erechtheus is said to have taught the people certain key things:

When he grew up, Erichthonius drove out Amphictyon, who had usurped the throne from Cranaus twelve years earlier, and became king of Athens. He married Praxithea, a naiad, and had a son, Pandion I. During this time, Athena frequently protected him. He founded the Panathenaic Festival in the honor of Athena, and set up a wooden statue of her on the Acropolis. According to the Parian Chronicle, he taught his people to yoke horses and use them to pull chariots, to smelt silver, and to till the earth with a plough. It was said that Erichthonius was lame of his feet and that he consequently invented the quadriga, or four-horse chariot to get around easier. He is said to have competed often as a chariot driver in games. Zeus was said to have been so impressed with his skill that he raised him to the heavens to become the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) after his death.

The best known version of his birth comes from the Bibliotheca,

Hephaestus attempted to rape Athena but was unsuccessful. His semen fell on the ground, impregnating Gaia. Gaia didn't want the infant Erichthonius, so she gave the baby to the goddess Athena. Athena gave the baby in a box to three women—Aglaulus and her two sisters Herse and Pandrosus—and warned them to never open it. Aglaulus and Herse opened the box. The sight of the infant caused them both to go insane and they threw themselves off the Acropolis,[2] or, according to Hyginus, into the sea.[3]

This blog's title image is from Rubens' illustration of this tale. The Erechtheion in Athens, a temple to both Athena and Poseidon, was named for Erechtheus.

Added: More about Erikthonios and Erechtheus

Very unlike a Squalodon: The Messenger's tale, Part II.

Euripides' Hippolytus presents a vivid sequence of events that persuade us that a great dynasty can be undone in a single day without war, natural disaster, or enemy action. That is, it argues that Eros pervades the world, driving all creatures to move, desire, act, and cause to fall.

Not fire nor stars have stronger bolts than those of Aphrodite sent by the hand of Eros, Zeus's child.

οὔτε γὰρ πυρὸς οὔτ᾽ ἄστρων ὑπέρτερον βέλος,οἷον τὸ τᾶς Ἀφροδίτας ἵησιν ἐκ χερῶνἜρως ὁ Διὸς παῖς. (530-33)

Among the consistent lessons the text yields is how difficult it can be to rightly interpret signs, witnesses, evidence. Reading is less simple than it appears, if Theseus's reading of Phaedra's letter is any indication.

Another way of putting it: Euripides is interested both in the unfolding of actions or events and in how we think about their unfolding. Phaedra makes a lethal decision based on incomplete information. Her overhearing of Hippolytus's exchange with the Nurse is a dramatic exercise in basing an inference upon what one hears, what one doesn't hear, which in turn is yoked to what one previously knew and didn't know. Introducing garbled, or incomplete understanding into the speeches and actions of the characters reminds us - or should remind us - that the human figures here have limitations, yet they can be depended upon to arrive at judgments and conclusions by not thinking critically enough about what they have not seen, heard, verified.

This is not as simple as to say that Phaedra should have been less precipitate. Devoured by love and threatened by plausible fear of exposure, her solution disposes of both by disposing of her life and of Hippolytus' honor. Her solution is lethal yet elegant - like a mathematical proof that solves for all variables with ingenious simplicity.

Hippolytus asks, when confronted with Theseus's judgment that he shall be alien to his own house:

Will you not examine my oath and sworn testimony or the words of seers?
Will you banish me without a trial?

οὐδ᾽ ὅρκον οὐδὲ πίστιν οὐδὲ μάντεων φήμας ἐλέγξας ἄκριτον ἐκβαλεῖς με γῆς; (1055-56)

The verb ἐλέγχω names the act of examining or testing, and is linked to the idea of putting to shame. To successfully refute a proposition or allegation is to shame it as unworthy of being true. To decide truth without testing is to be ἄ-κριτον --  to lack κρίνω, the root of our word "critical," the discerning separation of something into its proper parts in the act of judgment. Theseus is not thinking critically, according to Hippolytus, and has not exposed his supposition's shame.

Given the play's dramatization of profoundly wrong judgments made by Phaedra and Theseus, we as readers/audience might sense admonishment. We might tread more carefully before deciding too quickly "what to make of" the events leading up to the end.

Take the events reported by the Messenger that reinforce Theseus's sense that he is right, that his father, the sea god, is on his side, and that they both have administered true justice by breaking Hippolytus on the rocks by the sea.

We have looked at the account he gives of the wave that stood still. As the narrative continues, it has a number of interesting elements -- the descriptions of sound, the actions of the bull, the vivid detail of how Hippolytus was "woven" into the reins, causing him to be tangled inextricably in the crash. We'll return to these, but for the purposes of this argument, take the narrative as a whole. It's yet another witnessed event, and Theseus accepts it as the fulfillment of his father's promise, confirming everything he believes about his father, his son, and himself. We know things Theseus doesn't know, but with regard to the Messenger's tale we have only the same story that Theseus himself hears. So should we agree entirely with Theseus's "reading" of the event, or not?

First, it's clear from multiple statements from two goddesses and others in the play that Poseidon had indeed given Theseus three prayers or wishes, and all agree that Theseus exercised his option and got his wish -- the death of Hippolytus. What's less clear is why this action unfolded just the way it did -- the wave, the bull, the chariot, the reins, the rocks, the rumbling roar. Couldn't Poseidon have just sent drowned the boy with a wave? Why send a bull instead of, say, a zeuglodon (a form of squalodon), a plesiosaur, or just a prosaic giant squid such as might have threatened Andromeda and killed Laocoon?

Zeuglodon

If we step back from the performance of the wish to regard how the wish is performed, we find plenty of elements that seem unnecessary to execute the deed. What do we do with this surplus of story? We can ignore it by supposing that somehow all this would either provide ornamental delight or make sense to those involved, or we can ask whether by introducing these dreamlike ingredients into his performance of the wish fulfillment, the god might have had his reasons. Given that the play appears to dramatize difficulties in understanding, a bit of critical thinking about the Messenger's tale might be in order.

Poseidon's gift, Theseus's curse

Several characters in the Hippolytus, including two goddesses, refer to the gift of three wishes/prayers/curses [ἀρά] promised to Theseus by Poseidon. This list is relevant to the next post.


Aphrodite
the young man who wars against me shall be killed by his father with the curses the sea-lord [45] Poseidon granted as a gift to Theseus: three times may Theseus pray to the god and have his prayer fulfilled.

==


Theseus
But, father Poseidon, with one of the three curses you once promised me kill my son, and may he not live out [890] this day, if indeed you have granted me curses I may rely on.

==

Theseus
Who killed him? Did someone have a quarrel with him [1165] whose wife he ravished as he did his father's?

Messenger
His own chariot destroyed him, and the curses of your mouth which you uttered against your son to your father, lord of the sea.

Theseus
stretching out his arms, palm upwards, in prayer
Merciful gods! So you were after all truly my father, Poseidon, [1170] since you have heard my prayer. How did he perish? Tell me, how did Zeus's cudgel strike him for dishonoring me?

==

Messenger

All was confounded: the wheels' naves [1235] and the axle-pins were leaping into the air, and the poor man himself, entangled in the reins, bound in a bond not easy to untie, was dragged along, smashing his head against the rocks and rending his flesh and uttering things dreadful to hear: [1240] ‘Stay, horses my mangers have nourished, do not blot me out! O wretched curse of my father! Who wishes to stand by the best of men and save his life?’

==

Theseus

[1265] Bring him so that I may look him in the face, the man who denies he violated my bed, and with my words and with the misfortunes sent by the gods give him the lie.

==

Artemis

Do you know that you possess three reliable (or clear)

curses from your father? One of these you took, base man, to use against your son when you could have used it against an enemy. Your father, the sea-lord, kindly disposed as he was towards you, granted what he had to grant seeing that he had made this promise. [1320] 

ἆρ᾽ οἶσθα πατρὸς τρεῖς ἀρὰς ἔχων σαφεῖς;
ὧν τὴν μίαν παρεῖλες, ὦ κάκιστε σύ,
ἐς παῖδα τὸν σόν, ἐξὸν εἰς ἐχθρόν τινα.

==

Hippolytus

O pain, o pain! Wretched man that I am, how mutilated I am by the unjust words of an unjust father! [1350] 

==

Hippolytus

O wretched curse of my father! [1378]

==

Hippolytus

Poseidon your father's gifts, what woe they brought! [1411]

Theseus

Would they had never come into my mouth!

==

Artemis

But you, child of old Aegeus, take your son in your arms and embrace him. For you were not responsible for killing him, and when the gods so send, it is understandable that men make fatal errors. [1435]

Enter Theseus: Uncanny echoes, ambiguous oracles

A kind of fateful ambiguity seems to pursue Theseus throughout his life, extending even to the time before his birth. When Euripides has him enter the Hippolytus, he has just returned from a voyage to Delphi. Instead of announcing some word from the oracle, some response to his quest, his first words respond to the sound of wailing:

[790] Women, do you know what was the shout that came with leaden sound through the door? For the house has not seen fit to open its gates and greet me in friendly (εὐφρόνως) fashion as befits a sacred ambassador (θεωρὸν).

 Informed of Phaedra's suicide, Theseus cries out:

Oh! Oh! Why then is my head crowned with these plaited leaves since my sacred embassy has ended in disaster? 

Instead of Oh! Oh!, Theseus actually says αἰαῖ -- the common Greek cry which is also, according to myth, the grief-stricken cry uttered by Apollo when, while playing with his beloved Hyacinth, his discus accidentally struck the boy in the head, killing him. It's the cry found ever after inscribed on the flower's petals.

Thesesus' return to Troezen from Delphi repeats the act of his father, Aegeus, who had once made a voyage to Delphi to learn the reason why he was not able to have a son. The oracle gave him an answer so cryptic that Aegeus needed to consult his wise friend Pittheus:

"Do not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, lest you die of grief."

Pittheus's understanding of the oracle was to get Aegeus drunk and have him sleep with his daughter Aethra. Immediately after, Aethra fell asleep and had a dream in which Athena told her to wade out to the island of Sphairia, where Poseidon possessed her the same night. The child of both unions, Theseus, has questions about his father(s) that receive an answer in this play.

One interesting detail is that Aethra was told in her dream to make a libation at Sphairia to Sphairos, the charioteer of Pelops. For one thing, this reminds us that Pittheus was brother to Atreus and Thyestes, all sons of the son of Tantalos.

For another thing, Sphairos died before Pelops' great race against Oenomaus for the hand of Hippodamia took place. Pelops honored him greatly in death, and legend has it that Sphairos helped him win the race.

Yet the libation to the charioteer recalls another story of that race. Pelops was granted winged horses by his lover, Poseidon, but still doubted he could win, so he bribed Oenomaus's charioteer, Myrtilus, to rig the axel, causing Oenomaus to crash. In return for the help, Pelops was supposed to give Myrtilus the first night with Hippodamia. Instead he killed the charioteer, who cursed him and his house before dying. This was considered one of the main causes of the long-lived curse upon the Atreidae.

Pelops and Hippodamia

The peculiar origin of Theseus links to events earlier in his ancestry that foreshadow what is to come. And the arrival of Theseus now, direct from the Oracle, strikes an uncanny chord, echoing the arrival of Aegeus to Troezen and the curious, fateful events of his own ambiguous conception.