Nestor's Silence: Why Heracles attacked Pylos

[Added: related tale of Pholos]

There are myriad tales of individual Greek heroes and their mighty deeds, But if we wanted to list the greatest adventures of groups of Greek heroes, it would be a fairly short list. Those that come quickly to mind:

• The Argonautica
• The Calydonian Boar Hunt
• The Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs
• The War of Troy

Only one human being was actually present at all four moments of glory: Nestor. 

Nestor and Hecamede

Great counselor and historian Nestor is a living link between the greatest names of ancient legend. Which makes it all the more interesting that in Metamorphoses 12 we learn of Nestor's determination to suppress the glory of one of those heroes. As a sort of coda to Nestor's tale of Lapiths and Centaurs, Ovid tells of how Tlepolemus, Heracles' son, was angered by the absence of his father's name:

As the hero from Pylos told of this battle between the Lapiths and the half-human Centaurs, Tlepolemus, son of Hercules, leader of the Rhodians, could not keep his mouth silent in his indignation at Hercules, the descendant of Alceus, being overlooked. He said ‘Old man, it is amazing that your recital forgot to praise Hercules: certainly my father often used to tell me of the cloud-born centaurs he defeated.’ Nestor answered him, sternly. ‘Why do you force me to remember wrongs, to re-open wounds healed by the years, and to reveal hatred for your father and the injuries he did me?

The question came up as to what lay behind Heracles war upon Pylos. A few hints from Parada:

On one occasion, Heracles 1 came to Neleus in Pylos in order to receive purification for having killed Iphitus 1, the man who gave Odysseus his famous bow. However, Neleus refused on account of his friendship with Iphitus 1's father Eurytus 4, the prince of Oechalia who had received the mentioned bow from Apollo. Others say, however, that Heracles 1 wished purification for having murdered his own wife Megara. In any case, later, during his military campaigns in the Peloponnesus, Heracles 1 invaded Messenia (after the conquest of Elis, but before he attacked Lacedaemon) on the ground of Neleus' refusal to purify him. He took Pylos, and killed all the sons of Neleus, except Nestor, who had taken refuge in Gerenia, or just happened to be there receiving education. [Neleus]

The back story of Iphitus 1:

after Heracles 1 finished his LABOURS, he came to Oechalia to compete in archery for the hand of Iole; he won and yet he was refused the bride by Eurytus 4 and his sons (except Iphitus 1 who said that Iole should be given to Heracles 1), on the ground that he could once more kill his offspring as he had done to his children by Megara. Shortly after some cattle were stolen by the notorious thief Autolycus 1, and Heracles 1 was held responsible; but Iphitus 1 did not believe it and, having gone to meet him, he invited him to seek the cattle with him. Heracles 1 promised to do so but suddenly he went mad again and he threw Iphitus 1 from the walls of Tiryns killing him. He later offered compensation for this death but Eurytus 4 rejected it. [Eurytus 4.]

While we might think Nestor need not have mentioned Heracles, who as far as we know wasn't at the Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, Heracles did in fact have his own encounter with the Centaurs who survived this battle:

PHOLOS (or Pholus) was one of the Peloponnesian kentauroi (centaurs) who dwelt in a cave on Mount Pholoe. He once had cause to entertain the hero Herakles who was passing by in search of the Erymanthian boar. But when Pholos opened his wine-skin to serve the hero, the other kentauroi were thrown into a frenzy by the aroma and attacked. Herakles managed to kill most of them with his arrows, with the few survivors fleeing to far off parts.

With the tale of Pholos (who also accidentally meets his end), Heracles earns the right to be considered the exterminator of the Centaurs -- the very thing Tlopolemus was asserting to Nestor.

Nestor makes clear that as far as he's concerned, Heracles' name (which means "fame of Hera") will not have fame. After describing how Heracles killed his 11 brothers, including Periclymenos in the form of Zeus' eagle, he says:

I look for no other revenge for my brothers
than to be silent about his mighty deeds:

Nec tamen ulterius, quam fortia facta silendo ulciscor fratres

Nestor's determined silence with regard to the name of the most famous Greek hero seems a historian's revenge. He'll strive to erase Heracles just as Heracles tried to erase his world.

The silence might also seems an interesting counterweight to the resonance of Fama's echoing palace, where every name is murmured incessantly.

This might be a good place to explain why Nestor was granted such a long life:

Neleus married Chloris 1, daughter of King Amphion 1 of Thebes, and one of the few NIOBIDS who escaped the wrath of the sweet children of Leto, Apollo and Artemis. It is told that Apollo and Artemis paid back for this slaughter, because they granted Nestor, son of Neleus and Chloris 1, life for three generations, thus compensating for the lives they had shortened when they killed Chloris 1's sisters and brothers.

Nestor is then the sole survivor of his siblings, and his mother seems to have been one "one of the few" who escaped the massacre of her mother Niobe's children which Ovid depicts so powerfully in Book 6. Book 12 begins with a possible survivor, Iphigeneia, and is marked by solitary survivors including Caeneus, Cycnus, Nestor and his mother. It's also preceded by an unwilling survivor bird, Aesacus, and ends with Nestor's memory of his brother Periclymenos who, though emulating the eagle of Zeus, in fact did not survive. Book 13 will also be about lone remnants, one of which is Aeneas.

Aeneas, Anchises, Ascanius

The dangerous imaginings of infelix Niobe

Two words that are repeatedly used in the tale of Niobe are felix - happy, fortunate, blissful - and orba - destitute, lacking, spoiled, robbed.

Niobe says:

Sum felix: quis enim neget hoc? felixque manebo:

I am happy (fortunate): who could deny this? And I will remain fortunate.

She scorns Latona:

Fingite demi
huic aliquid populo natorum posse meorum,
non tamen ad numerum redigar spoliata duorum,
200 Latonae turbam: qua quantum distat ab orba?

Imagine that some of this host of children could be taken from me, I would still not, be stripped -- reduced to the two of Latona’s "crowd." 

In that state, how far is she from childlessness?

Kline's translation of orba as "childlessness" is reasonable here, but when one looks at the etymological roots of the words "felix" and "orba," an interesting relationship emerges:

felicity

late 14c., from O.Fr. felicite (14c.) "happiness," from L. felicitatem (nom. felicitas) "happiness, fertility," from felix (gen. felicis) "happy, fortunate, fruitful, fertile," from L. base *fe-, equivalent of PIE *dhe(i)- "to suck, suckle, produce, yield" (see fecund)

fecund

early 15c., from M.Fr. fecond, from L. fecundus "fruitful, fertile, productive," from *fe-kwondo-, suffixed form of L. base *fe-, corresponding to PIE *dhe(i)- "to suck, suckle," also "produce, yield" (cf. Skt. dhayati "sucks," dhayah "nourishing;" Gk. thele"mother's breast, nipple," thelys "female, fruitful;" O.C.S. dojiti "to suckle," dojilica "nurse," deti "child;" Lith. dele "leech;" O.Prus.dadan "milk;" Goth. daddjan "to suckle;" O.Swed. dia "suckle;" O.H.G. tila "female breast;" O.Ir. denaim "I suck," dinu "lamb"). Also from the same Latin base come felare "to suck;" femina "woman" (*fe-mna-, lit. "she who suckles"); felix "happy, auspicious, fruitful;" fetus "offspring, pregnancy;" fenum "hay" (probably lit. "produce"); and probably filia/filius "daughter/son," assimilated from *felios, originally "a suckling."

If the root of felicity is to give/receive nourishment of the maternal breast (and the words for "woman" and "child" derive from the same root), the root of "orba" is precisely the privation of that breast:

orphan

c.1300, from L.L. orphanus "parentless child" (cf. O.Fr. orfeno, It. orfano), from Gk. orphanos "orphaned," lit. "deprived," fromorphos "bereft," from PIE *orbho- "bereft of father," also "deprived of free status," from base *orbh- "to change allegiance, to pass from one status to another" (cf. Hittite harb- "change allegiance," L. orbus "bereft," Skt. arbhah "weak, child," Arm. orb "orphan," O.Ir. orbe "heir," O.C.S. rabu "slave," rabota "servitude" (cf. robot), Goth. arbja, Ger. erbe, O.E. ierfa "heir," O.H.G. arabeit, Ger.Arbeit "work," O.Fris. arbed, O.E. earfoð "hardship, suffering, trouble"). The verb is attested from 1814. Related: Orphaned;orphaning.

The roots divide around the terms of breast, nourishment, freedom, fertility, plenitude (and, interestingly, "change,") vs. privation, orphanhood, enslavement and work. One might note that in Latin, liberi, the plural of liber, i.e., free, meant "children."

One could say the tale of Niobe as Ovid tells it is the story of Niobe changing from mater felix to enslaved orphan:

Orba resedit
exanimes inter natos natasque virumque (301-2)

Childless, she sat among the [lifeless] bodies of her sons, her daughters, and her husband:

Early in the tale (152: multa dabant animos), we learn that it was Niobe's children that made her most animosa - which yields both "pride" and "liveliness, spiritedness." (We recall that Arachne also had a guttura animosa).

Here Ovid subtly underscores what is happening to the mother by his use of exanimes for the children ("lifeless" -- curiously omitted in Kline's version): a kind of self-orphaning, leading, unless this is too fanciful, to a robotic condition. One must take care before saying something is too fanciful for a poet.

Variations upon Fate in Book 6

In Book 6, Ovid takes up not simply art per se, but art in relation to wisdom -- as we have seen in the tale of Arachne and Athena. And while the enigmatic end of that tale is still being mulled, we should note that Ovid now seems to break with the theme of "art" in the narrow sense, as he turns to Niobe.

After reading that tale, we might be in a better position to say whether Ovid has dropped his exploration of art and wisdom, or has in fact broadened it. The vast system of Greek myth gave Ovid great latitude -- by moving from the poor country girl (who could equal Athena in spinning) to the daughter of Tantalos, the most powerful queen of her day and sister of Pelops, Ovid seems to be asking us to expand our sense of what the theme, the substance of Book 6, really is.

We move, on one level, from a humble artificer to a noblewoman at the peak of her fortune, from the girl who, like a human parody of Clotho, spun her own fate, to the queen who, presuming to be absolutely in possession of her great good fortune, lived to watch the sudden severance of those lives she thought she had the measure of -- clipped by the shears of Atropos.

Tantalos, Niobe's progenitor, foreshadows her tragic end: As his daughter, she's heir to the strange fortune of her father, who was the most favored of mortals before becoming the most accursed of them.

It would take us farther afield than is reasonable, but the grouping of Tantalos, Sisyphus, Ixion and Tityos is worth exploring when we can, and not only because of their egregious eternal punishments. Tantalos, Sisyphus and Ixion were all unusually favored and gifted. They just went too far (not unlike Prometheus) -- Sisyphus got the better of Hades, Ixion tried to outwit Zeus, and Tantalos has a most peculiar story vis a vis the entire dynasty of the Olympians.

As Pindar says:

If indeed the watchers of Olympus ever honored a mortal man,

that man was Tantalus.

I hope to explore some of the features of the Tantalos figure in another post (I'll link to it here when it's up). It's enough now to note that Ovid, in moving from Arachne to Niobe to Marsyas, is touching on the making of images, of self image, and of voiced music -- before he turns to the tale of Procne and Philomela. The first three tales concern mortals vying with immortals -- as Tantalos and Co. had done. The next tale -- that of Tereus, Procne and Philomela -- concerns mortals alone. Yet as we'll see, the making of image, of self-image, and of voice return in that tale, horrifically.

My point is simply to remember that the tales of Book 6, mostly set in Asia Minor, take place in the land of one of the most enigmatic ancient characters, the son of Zeus and Pluto. Pindar's 1st Olympian continues:

If indeed the watchers of Olympus ever honored a mortal man,

that man was Tantalus.

But he was not able to digest his bliss,

and for his greed he gained overpowering ruin,

which the Father hung over him: a mighty stone.

Always longing to cast it away from his head,

he wanders far from the joy of festivity.

He has this helpless life of never-ending labor,

a fourth toil after three others,

because he stole from the gods nectar and ambrosia,

with which they had made him immortal,

and gave them to his drinking companions.

If any man expects that what he does escapes the notice of a god,

he is wrong.

Niobe and the poets

This pensive tomb within no dead contains,

This pensive corpse without untomb'd remains;

For, by a strange result of fate's decree,

At once th'unburied dead and tomb you see.

~~~

The gods to stone transform'd me; but, again,

I from Praxiteles new life obtain.

Greek epigrams found in The first twenty-eight Odes of Anacreon: in Greek and in English, John B. Roche, 1827, p. 155

O Niobe, con che occhi dolenti

vedea io te segnata in su la strada,

tra sette e sette tuoi figiuoli spenti!

O Niobe, what tears afflicted me

when, on that path, I saw your effigy

among your slaughtered children, seven and seven!

Mandelbaum translation of Dante, Purgatorio XII.17-19

Dying Niobid, Horti Sallustiani

Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle,
My father’s brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules:

Hamlet I.2

By children's births, and death, I am become

So dry, that I am now mine own sad tomb.

John Donne

Thanks to Jutta for this addition:

Oh Rome! my Country! City of the Soul!

The Orphans of the Heart must turn to thee, 695

Lone Mother of dead Empires! and controul

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see

The Cypress, Hear the Owl, and plod your way

O’er steps of broken thrones and temples – Ye! 700

Whose agonies are evils of a day –

A World is at our feet as fragile as our Clay.

The Niobe of Nations! there She stands,

Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

An empty Urn within her withered hands, 705

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;

The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now;

The very Sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,

Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? 710

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

Lord Byron Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto IV.78-79

A few notes for Niobe

felicissima matrum

dicta foret Niobe, si non sibi visa fuisset.

Niobe would have been spoken of as the most fortunate of mothers,

if she had not seemed so to herself.

I know we're not quite "done" with Athena vs. Arachne - the startling conclusion of their certamen remains to be read. But looking ahead:

- William S. Anderson is quite helpful in drawing some of the parallels between Niobe and Pentheus (of book 3) - both are warned by prophets (Pentheus by Tiresias, Niobe by Manto), both confront citizens of their state who are worshipping a deity other than their leaders, i.e., Pentheus as King of Thebes and Niobe now as wife of the king of Thebes, and both cry out: "Quis furor?"

What madness, to prefer the gods you are told about to the ones you see? Why is Latona worshipped at the altars, while as yet my godhead is without its incense? Tantalus is my father, who is the only man to eat the food of the gods. My mother is one of the seven sisters, the Pleiades. Great Atlas, who carries the axis of the heavens on his shoulders, is one of my grandfathers. Jupiter is the other, and I glory in having him as my father-in-law as well. The peoples of Phrygia fear me. Cadmus’s royal house is under my rule: and the walls, built to my husband’s lyre, and Thebes’s people, will be ruled by his power and mine. (Kline)

“quis furor, auditos” inquit “praeponere visis

caelestes? aut cur colitur Latona per aras, numen adhuc sine ture meum est? mihi Tantalus auctor, cui licuit soli superorum tangere mensas, Pleiadum soror est genetrix mea, maximus Atlas 175est avus, aetherium qui fert cervicibus axem; Iuppiter alter avus socero quoque glorior illo. Me gentes metuunt Phrygiae, me regia Cadmi sub domina est, fidibusque mei commissa mariti moenia cum populis a meque viroque reguntur.

- Anderson is also helpful in noting the meaningful resonances of Niobe's family tree: daughter of Tantalos, sister of Pelops (whom Tantalos chopped up and served to the gods, only to be miraculously re-constituted, minus a shoulder) and Broteas (another strange fate), mother of 14 healthy children, wife of Amphion, daughter-in-law of Antiope. (Left: Jupiter and Antiope by Franz Anton Maulbertsch.)

- If you have a chance, have a look at where Niobe appears in Homer, Iliad 24 - the moment within the scene between Achilles and Priam - what role does the tale of Niobe (around line 602 ff.) and the description of her eating, play there? Achilles says to Priam:

"Thy son, old sire, is given back according to thy wish, and lieth upon a bier; and at break of day thou shalt thyself behold him, as thou bearest him hence; but for this present let us bethink us of supper. For even the fair-haired Niobe bethought her of meat, albeit twelve children perished in her halls, six daughters and six lusty sons. The sons Apollo slew with shafts from his silver bow, being wroth against Niobe, and the daughters the archer Artemis, for that Niobe had matched her with fair-cheeked Leto, saying that the goddess had borne but twain, while herself was mother to many; wherefore they, for all they were but twain, destroyed them all. For nine days' space they lay in their blood, nor was there any to bury them, for the son of Cronos turned the folk to stones; howbeit on the tenth day the gods of heaven buried them; and Niobe bethought her of meat, for she was wearied with the shedding of tears. And now somewhere amid the rocks, on the lonely mountains, on Sipylus, where, men say, are the couching-places of goddesses, even of the nymphs that range swiftly in the dance about Achelous, there, albeit a stone, she broodeth over her woes sent by the gods. But come, let us twain likewise, noble old sire, bethink us of meat; and thereafter shalt thou make lament over thy dear son, when thou hast borne him into Ilios; mourned shall he be of thee many tears."

- As Niobe proudly notes, she's also the granddaughter, via her mother Dione, of Atlas.

Weeping Rock, Mt. Sipylus, Manisa, Turkey

Tantalos

Among the memorable characters in Metamorphoses 6 is Niobe, the daughter of Tantalos, the fabled king punished in the Underworld.

Tantalos is remembered in the 1st Olympian Ode of Pindar, which begins,

ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ

ἅτε διαπρέπει νυκτὶ μεγάνορος ἔξοχα πλούτου:

Water is best, and gold, like a blazing fire in the night,

stands out supreme of all lordly wealth.

Pindar, Olympian 1

εἰ δὲ δή τιν᾽ ἄνδρα θνατὸν Ὀλύμπου σκοποὶ

ἐτίμασαν, ἦν Τάνταλος οὗτος: ἀλλὰ γὰρ καταπέψαι

μέγαν ὄλβον οὐκ ἐδυνάσθη,κόρῳ δ᾽ ἕλεν

ἄταν ὑπέροπλον,

If indeed the watchers of Olympus ever honored a mortal man, that man was Tantalus. But he was not able to digest his great prosperity, and for his greed he gained overpowering ruin . . .

Tantalos, Ixion, Sisyphos

. . . he stole from the gods nectar and ambrosia, with which they had made him immortal, and gave them to his drinking companions. If any man expects that what he does escapes the notice of a god, he is wrong.

ἀθανάτων ὅτι κλέψαις

ἁλίκεσσι συμπόταις

νέκταρ ἀμβροσίαν τε

δῶκεν, οἷσιν ἄφθιτον

θῆκαν. εἰ δὲ θεὸν ἀνήρ τις ἔλπεταί τι λαθέμεν ἔρδων,

ἁμαρτάνει.

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