Hippolytus at the Isthmus

Nec vires tamen has rabies superasset equorum.

ni rota, perpetuum qua circumvertitur axem,

stipitis occursu fracta ac disiecta fuisset.

Even then, the horses’ madness would not have exhausted my strength, if a wheel had not broken, and been wrenched off, as the axle hub, round which it revolves, struck a tree. Meta. 15.

The story Hippolytus tells of his own death has to be one of the more semantically charged moments in the Metamorphoses. It would go far beyond the bounds of a blog post to develop a full reading of his character and acts in book 15 and in the poem as a whole. Suffice it to say Hippolytus speaks, as we've noted, without preparation or introduction, and immediately strikes an odd note.

He's not very sympathetic to mourning Egeria, and goes on to recount his chariot crash scene, as if it somehow trumps the nymph's tale of loss. Coming as it does after the long song of Pythagoras, the physicality of the description of his crash, the uncanny appearance of the mountainous wave and the bull, all this narrative energy inserts a strange shock between the reflections and prescriptions of the philosopher and the serene journey of serpentine Aesculapius that follows.

The disfiguring death of Hippolytus is enigmatic at all points: he's one of the greatest horsemen in the world, yet he dies neither in a war nor in an Olympic race, but in an accident involving no other "drivers." He is the son of Theseus, one of the most just, beloved, and balanced heroes of Greece, but he dies cursed by his father for an alleged crime of Venus, though he's a follower of Artemis. He is of the line of Pelops, who was the lover of Poseidon. The god is also his grandfather, yet it's Poseidon's gift that visits Theseus's curse upon Hippolytus.

To unravel this knot, we need to follow threads leading back to violent kings, acts of treachery, and an abandoned princess.

An anthropological conundrum

Ovid's account of the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs in Metamorphoses 12 is engaged in exploring what it means to be human. Theseus and his Lapith friends are not expecting the chaos that explodes at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia.

In looking at the centaurs through the eyes of the Greek heroes, we're seeing creatures that are biform, clearly not like us, yet just as clearly containing, somehow, fully the upper half of an entity that's uncannily, undeniably, us. They provoke urgent anthropological inquiry.

"Pindar recounts how the Centaurs from their very origins were associated with the negation of marriage," says Page duBois in Centaurs and Amazons.

Pindar, Pythian 2:

 Unnatural lust throws men into dense trouble; it befell even him [Ixion], since the man in his ignorance chased a sweet fake and lay with a cloud, for its form was like the supreme celestial goddess, the daughter of Cronus. The hands of Zeus set it as a trap for him, a beautiful misery. Ixion brought upon himself the four-spoked fetter, his own ruin. He fell into inescapable bonds, and received the message that warns the whole world. She bore to him, without the blessing of the Graces, a monstrous offspring—there was never a mother or a son like this—honored neither by men nor by the laws of the gods. She raised him and named him Centaurus, [45] and he mated with the Magnesian mares in the foothills of Pelion, and from them was born a marvelous horde, which resembled both its parents: like the mother below, the father above. 

duBois:

"As liminal creatures, the Centaurs may be understood most fully if their sexual nature is taken into account. They are not simply nature spirits, or river creatures, but also hybrid monsters whose existence in myth permitted speculation about boundaries and kinds."  

"As liminal beings . . . they tested the the boundaries between man and beast, between nature and culture." Centaurs and Amazons.

We might do well to remember that the Parthenon's metopes depicted four battles: the battle of the giants against the Olympians; the battle of the Amazons and Athenians; the battle of Lapiths (with Theseus) vs. Centaurs, and the war of Troy. The war rages around borderlines between what the Greeks understood to be their own kind, and the other, in various guises.

More from the duBois book:


 

Bettany Hughes on the roots of democracy

Exit Medea, Enter Theseus

Medea

The mini-recognition scene in which Theseus and Aegeus discover they are father and son is also the moment when the ever-industrious Medea disappears from the Metamorphoses. She invokes a dark cloud via an incantation (carmen) and vanishes.

Immediately we are present at a communal celebration, marked by a public song, a festive carmen that recalls several of the heroic feats of Theseus, the elimination of hideous thugs and monsters from the roadways of central Greece.

That song begins:

‘Great Theseus, admired in Marathon,
for the blood of the Cretan bull,
your act and gift made Cromyon’s fields
safe for the farmers plough.
Epidaurus’s land saw you defeat
Vulcan’s club-wielding son,
and the banks of the River Cephisus
saw evil Procrustes brought down.


Theseus has made the fields safe for farmers, and the roads secure for travelers -- exactly what the Muses told Athena they need for art and culture to flourish.

The song of the Athenians contrasts sharply with Medea's incantation that invoked the moon:

‘Night, most faithful keeper of our secret rites;
Stars, that, with the golden moon, succeed the fires of light;
Triple Hecate, you who know all our undertakings,
and come, to aid the witches’ art, and all our incantations:
You, Earth, who yield the sorceress herbs of magic force:
You, airs and breezes, pools and hills, and every watercourse;
Be here; all you Gods of Night, and Gods of Groves endorse. (7.192 ff)

Where Medea's song speaks of silence, night, secrecy and Hekatean arts -- all perfectly consistent with what we have seen of this witch's dramatized introspective consciousness -- the song to Theseus is sung by the polis in broad day:

It is said no day ever dawned for the Athenians more glad than that.

and it's helped along with the natural magic of wine: carmina vino ingenium faciente canunt.

Interestingly, the paean to Theseus begins in the middle of line 433, the dead center of Book 7.

        te, maxime Theseu, 


It might just be coincidence, and certainly there are vagaries of textual integrity -- a line lost here, or interpolated there -- that would offset the structural precision. But let's note that the figure of the greatest Athenian hero enters here, and returns in books 8 and 9 as well. So he's present in the three central books of the poem. While he's given less space than Medea or Cephalus, we have to remember that sometimes, in Ovid, the most important figures can be fleetingly, allusively present.

So consider the possibility that Ovid chose to insert Theseus at this point in Book 7 to mark a golden moment of Athenian balance, harmony, and centrality. In this bright day of his arrival, we are poised between the disappearing eastern witchery of Medea and Hecate, and the ships of Minos that soon appear over the horizon from the south, seeking vengeance upon Athens.

If Medea, the solitary secretive spellbinder, dominated the tale of feckless Jason and the first half of book 7, Minos dominates the latter. He is the king of 100 cities, son of Zeus and Europa, husband to the daughter of the sun who has cursed his sexuality, and caretaker of the land that gave baby Zeus a place hidden from his devouring father, Cronos. As we'll see, the realm of Minos is woven through the latter half of Book 7 and the first half of Book 8.

Dore: Minos in the Inferno 

Setting and background in Metamorphoses 7

In the latter half of Metamorphoses 7, Ovid pointedly stage manages meetings between Aeacus and Minos, and then Aeacus and Cephalus. These latter happen to be ancestors, respectively, of Achilles and Odysseus -- the chief heroes of the Homeric epics.

Aeacus, son of Zeus and father of Peleus, was the king of Aegina - an island to the west of Athens - and grandfather of Achilles. Cephalus, grandson of Aeolus, was the great-grandfather of Odysseus through Clymene, the woman he married after the death of Procris. The line (known as "the line of only sons") is Cephalus -> Arcesius -> Laertes -> Odysseus -> Telemachus.

Aeacus while he reigned in Aegina was renowned in all Greece for his justice and piety, and was frequently called upon to settle disputes not only among men, but even among the gods themselves.[12][13] He was such a favourite with the latter, that, when Greece was visited by a drought in consequence of a murder which had been committed, the oracle of Delphi declared that the calamity would not cease unless Aeacus prayed to the gods that it might.[2][14] Aeacus prayed, and it ceased in consequence. (Aeacus)

The Arrhephoria

The Athenian feast of the Arrhephoria, or "dew carriers" relates to the three daughters of Cecrops:

Arrhephoria was a feast among the Athenians, instituted in honor of Athena.

The word is derived from the Greek term Ἀρρηφόρια, which is composed of ἀρρητον, "mystery," and φέρω, "I carry". (Perhaps not, see this.) This feast was also called Hersiphoria, from Herse, the daughter of Cecrops, on whose account it was established.

Herse pursued by Hermes.

On the Athenian Acropolis two girls aged between seven and eleven were elected to live for a year at a time as arrhephoroi, tending the sacred olive tree and weaving, with the help of other women, the new robe for Athena. Proud parents commemorated their daughters' service by making dedications on the Acropolis. At the annual festival of the Arrhephoria the girls (according to Pausanias), placed on their heads what the priestess of Athena gives them to carry and neither the priestess knows what it is she is giving them, nor do the girls who carry it. In the city there is a sacred precinct not far from that of Aphrodite in the Garden and through it runs a natural underground passage. Here the virgins descend. Down below they leave behind what they have brought and take something else and carry it, veiled as it is. These two virgins are discharged forthwith and others are taken up to the Acropolis in their place.

Interpretation of the festival is difficult because of the lack of sources, but it is clear that the virginal arrhephoroi are chosen from the noblest families of the city and are deployed in a context of impregnation (dew), sexual power (Aphrodite and Eros), and birth (Erichthonios). The word "arrhephoros" etymologically probably means "dew carrier", which at first sight does not help. The arrhephoroi were charged with weaving the peplos (garments) for Athena.. . .

Archaeological evidence reveals that from near the Erechtheion a secret stairway led off the Acropolis past a small rock-cut shrine of Eros and Aphrodite, near which was the precinct to which they were going. They mythical associations of the arrhephoroi are with their starting-point the Erechtheion. Kekrops, the first king of Athens, whose tomb was in the complex, had three daughters, Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosos. The mystery revolves around innocence, obedience, and fecundity. They were given a closed basket by Athena who forbade them to open it. One night Aglauros and Herse gave in to curiosity, opened the basket, and saw Ericthonios, the mysterious child of Hephaestus. Snakes also appeared out of the basket, and in terror the two girls jumped off the Acropolis to their deaths. The sanctuary of Aglauros lies at the foot of the cliff; it may have been the precinct to which the arrhephoroi descended. Pandrosos, who did not succumb to this fatal curiosity, has a shrine next to the sacred olive tree on the Acropolis itself. More: Wikipedia

Update (11.23.11: I recently came across this book, which goes into the subject in depth: