Men and women in Trachis

A choral ode from Sophocles' Women of Trachis - the chorus recalls the battle of Achelous and Heracles. The "she" on the hill is Deianeira:

Chorus 

Great is the power of Aphrodite's triumph!
I will not mention                                               500
the gods, nor how she deceived the son of Kronos,
nor Hades the lord of night,
no, nor Poseidon, shaker of earth.
But when this woman was wedded,
what mighty-limbed men came to claim her in marriage?
Who were they who entered the hard-hitting, dust-clouded conflict of battle?

[Antistrophe]One was a violent river in a bull's form,
four-leggèd, high-horned                                     510
Achelóüs from Oeniadae; the other came from
Bacchian Thebes, and his bow
was bent and he wielded the spear and cudgel -
Zeus's son; and they came together
in battle, desiring to win her in wedlock,
while Aphrodite the blesser of marriage sat in the middle and judged them.

[Epode]Then was the clash of fists and arrows
mingled with the clatter of bull's horns;               520
intricate grapplings were joined;
there were deadly blows of the forehead,
and groaning was heard from both.
But she, in tender beauty,
on a far-seen hilltop,
sat and waited for her husband
even as the battle raged.
The bride these men had fought for
piteously remained;
and then she left her mother                                   530
like a lost and helpless calf.

We know how Deianeira felt as she watched their combat, because the play opens with her recollection:

Deianeira

There is an ancient proverb people tell
that none can judge the life of any man
for good or bad until that man is dead;
but I, for my part, though I am still living,
know well that mine is miserable and hard.
Even while I was living with my father
Oeneus in Pleuron I was plagued by fear
of marriage more than any other woman.
My suitor was the river Achelóüs,                                  10
who took three forms to ask me of my father:
a rambling bull once - then a writhing snake
of gleaming colors - then again a man
with ox-like face: and from his beard's dark shadows
stream upon stream of water tumbled down.
Such was my suitor. As I waited there
I prayed my agony might end in death
before I ever shared my bed with him.
But later on, to my great joy, the glorious
child of Alcména, son of Zeus, arrived                             20
and joined in combat with the river god,
and freed me

The helpless girl, at the mercy of who was stronger in combat, has lived years with Heracles, borne his children. She then learns that Iole, who has been sent to her home by the still absent hero, is his new lover. She is no longer helpless. To Lichas the messenger, who has been concealing the actual state of things from her, she says:

Tell me the truth! It is a foul disgrace
for a free man to be known as a liar.
And do not think you will escape detection,
for many heard you speaking, and will tell me.
If you have fears, dismiss them, for to me
the greatest pain is not to learn the truth.
What harm in knowing?

Far from emulating Hera (Juno), Deianeira, in speaking of love, sounds almost like an Enlightenment philosopher, before turning her imperious gaze back upon Lichas:

Deianeira:

Whoever stands opposed to Love, with fists

clenched like a boxer, does not understand him;

for he rules over gods as he desires,

and over me. Why not another like me?

So if I blamed my husband for the passion

which has afflicted him, I would be mad -

or this girl either, who has shared with him

what is no shame for them, no wrong to me.

. . .

Has not Heracles                                               460

taken more brides than any other man?

And yet none of them ever was reproached

by me, or slandered. She will not be either,

not even if she melts with passion, for

I pitied her most when I first beheld her

because her beauty has destroyed her life,

and she, against her will, has sacked and ravaged

her native country. But let all this be

cast to the winds: to you I say, deceive

anyone else, but do not lie to me!

Sophocles' Deianeira is a woman in full possession of reason, compassion, and dignity. The thrust of the play is not that she is a "jealous wife"; far from it. When she discovers her error, she ends her life without a word. It is Heracles whose complaints and execrations and howls of pain fill the stage after she has gone:

         Heracles: 

And pity me, for I 

am pitiful indeed as I lie sobbing
and moaning like a virgin! No one living
has ever seen me act like this before;
for I have never groaned at my misfortunes
till now, when I have proved myself a woman. 

Ovid tells the story somewhat differently in Metamorphoses 9, but the conversation with Alcmena shows that Iole is part of the family -- married to Hyllus, as per Heracles' last order to his son.

How to use a river god

Returning to Athens from the hunt in Calydon, Theseus and his companions are warned not to attempt to cross the river Achelous. By Achelous.

Theseus visits Achelous

". . . do not commit yourself to my devouring waters. They are liable to carry solid tree-trunks along, in their roaring, and roll great boulders over on their sides. I have seen whole stables, near the bank, swept away, with all their livestock: and neither the cattle’s strength nor the horses’ speed was of any use. Many a strong man has been lost in the whirling vortices, when the torrent was loosed, after mountain snows. You will be safer to stay till my river runs in its normal channel, when its bed holds only a slender stream."

As Prof. Anderson notes, there's an interesting split here between the voice of the river and the rapacious waters it speaks of. Achelous expresses genuine concern for Theseus, but the root of the concern is about the superhuman force of his own waters. He speaks of his power as though it belonged to another. When humans do this, it often has a comical quality, because of the suggestion of compulsion -- e.g., a boxer who cannot stop throwing punches continually has to warn people to beware of his fists. The god asks the Athenian hero, whom he admires, to pause and use his hospitality rather than hubristically dare to cross at this time.

With a witty zeugma, Theseus agrees to use both Achelous' home and his counsel:

Adnuit Aegides, “utar” que “Acheloe, domoque
consilioque tuo” respondit; et usus utroque est.

Hercules and Achelous

The warning of Achelous speaks to the question of scale. For the ancients, the gods were powerful and immortal, but still capable of being imaginatively represented (as opposed to the god of the Old Testament, who forbids any attempt to depict him, yet nonetheless is anthropomorphized within certain kinds of stories). A river god is a mysterious flowing presence -- rivers are far better known for their endings than their often veiled beginnings -- and they possess powers to fertilize, nourish and destroy. A river seems not to be able to go from flood to calm at will, though as Achelous will go on to say, he can change into a bull and a serpent, as he did when he wrestled Hercules. (Similarly, Achilles in the Trojan war will fight Xanthus, aka Scamander.)

Hesiod conveys something of the fertile variety of rivers in his catalog in the Theogony. The power to remember the names of all the Earth's streams is beyond any mortal:

And Tethys bore to Ocean eddying rivers, Nilus, and Alpheus, and deep-swirling Eridanus, Strymon, and Maeander, and the fair stream of Ister, and Phasis, and Rhesus, and the silver eddies of Achelous, Nessus, and Rhodius, Haliacmon, and Heptaporus, Granicus, and Aesepus, and holy Simois, and Peneus, and Hermus, and Caicus' fair stream, and great Sangarius, Ladon, Parthenius, Euenus, Ardescus, and divine Scamander. Also she brought forth a holy company of daughters1who with the lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping—to this charge Zeus appointed them—Peitho, and Admete, and Ianthe, and Electra, and Doris, and Prymno, and Urania divine in form, Hippo, Clymene, Rhodea, and Callirrhoe, Zeuxo and Clytie, and Idyia, and Pasithoe, Plexaura, and Galaxaura, and lovely Dione, Melobosis and Thoe and handsome Polydora, Cerceis lovely of form, and soft eyed Pluto, Perseis, Ianeira, Acaste, Xanthe, Petraea the fair, Menestho, and Europa, Metis, and Eurynome, and Telesto saffron-clad, Chryseis and Asia and charming Calypso, Eudora, and Tyche, Amphirho, and Ocyrrhoe, and Styx who is the chiefest of them all. These are the eldest daughters that sprang from Ocean and Tethys; but there are many besides. For there are three thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters, children who are glorious among goddesses. And as many other rivers are there, babbling as they flow, sons of Ocean, whom queenly Tethys bare, but their names it is hard for a mortal man to tell, but people know those by which they severally dwell. Theogony 337 ff

Parada also has an annotated list of River Gods.

The house of Achelous

Grottoes were all the rage in 16th Century Italy, and humanists of the time turned to Ovid for the loci classici.

The cave of Achelous in Book 8 is clearly one such scene, where the river god offers Theseus and his companions hospitality:

[Theseus] entered the dark building, made of spongy pumice, and rough tufa. The floor was moist with soft moss, and the ceiling banded with freshwater mussel and oyster shells.

Another is the grotto of Diana in Book III:

There was a valley there called Gargaphie, dense with pine trees and sharp cypresses, sacred to Diana of the high-girded tunic, where, in the depths, there is a wooded cave, not fashioned by art. But ingenious nature had imitated art. She had made a natural arch out of living pumice (pumice vivo) and porous tufa. On the right, a spring of bright clear water murmured into a widening pool, enclosed by grassy banks. Here the woodland goddess, weary from the chase, would bathe her virgin limbs in the crystal liquid. Kline.

Vallis erat piceis et acuta densa cupressu,
nomine Gargaphie, succinctae sacra Dianae.
Cuius in extremo est antrum nemorale recessu,
arte laboratum nulla: simulaverat artemingenio natura suo; nam pumice vivo                          160
et levibus tofis nativum duxerat arcum.
Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidus unda,
margine gramineo patulos succinctus hiatus.
Hic dea silvarum venatu fessa solebatvirgineos artus liquido perfundere rore. III.156 ff

This is the arched grotto and pool where Actaeon met his fate.

A grotto of Diana was included in the gardens of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli:

Villa d'Este pools, fountains gardens

Ovid hints that when one creates a cave of tufa and pumice, one imitates nature imitating art.

Grotte du Grand Roc, Dordogne

Mono Lake, CA

More Italian grottoes:

Grotto of Boboli Gardens, Firenze

Im park der Villa d'Este, Carl Blechen

More images of Italian fountains, some by Bernini, can be found here.

Some motifs in Metamorphosis 8

If Book 7 of the Metamorphoses addresses foedera -- faith, trust, and the ultimate investments individuals and nations place in bonds with others -- Book 8 seems preoccupied with a set of perspectives on vulnerability, strategies of defense, and the infamy of treachery, the betrayal of foedera.

One word for the moral repugnance of traitorous acts is the adjective foedus:

foedus m (feminine foeda, neuter foedum); first/second declension (physically) filthy, foul, disgusting, loathsome, ugly, unseemly, detestable, abominable, horrible (mentally) disgraceful, vile, obscene, base, dishonorable, shameful, infamous, foul

In the tale of Scylla and Nisus, not all the arma of Crete, but rather one young girl's amor brought down her father's city. Look for parallels as the book moves on to the tales of Minos, Daedalus, and Meleager. What do the various unexpected deaths have to tell us about vulnerability?

Aetolia and Achelous

The book is also rich in at least two other motifs: rivers and forgetting. The second half is largely taken up by a conversation with Achelous, the largest river of Greece, the one that defines Aetolia and Acarnania.

We'll be hearing about the nymphs who forgot him:

At the mouth of the Achelous River lie the Echinades Islands. [They] were once five nymphs. Unfortunately for them, they forgot to honor Achelous in their festivities, and the god was so angry about this slight that he turned them into the islands.

Achelous