Theban Saga

Good morning and welcome to LLT121 Classical Mythology. Today we’re going to be picking up with what I like to think of as the ultimate soap opera of Greek mythology, the so-called Theban Saga. For those of you who have honored me with your presence this morning, I’d like to remind you that Thebes is the capital of Boeotia. Boeotia is the city-state right next to Athens, and Attica. Where, as you have heard me say a thousand times before, most of surviving Greek literature comes from. It follows, I believe, that Thebes and Boeotia are going to get the proverbial bum rap, as they most certainly will. The Theban Saga, however, begins, not in Thebes, but in ancient Palestine. Ancient Palestine is located on the present day site of modern Palestine—wouldn’t you know?—which is right around here. Thebes is up here in a land known as Phoenicia, but now known as either Lebanon or something else. The story involved a boy, a girl, and a bull.
The boy and girl are the daughters of King Cadmus and Mrs. King Cadmus of Tyre. They have two kids, a girl named Europa and a boy named Cadmus. Europa is a very beautiful young woman. One day Europa happens to be just walking by the seashore and a very handsome bull comes up to her. The handsome bull is a very charming and friendly bull. If you care to go back and read the appropriate section from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, please hold firmly onto your stomach, because it is rather humorous. How the bull comes up to Europa and paws friendly at the ground until finally Europa starts petting him in the chest, smiling and hanging garland around his horns. Meanwhile, the bull is thinking—because who, Carrie, is the bull? Who do you think the bull is? Hazard a guess. Zeus, darn it, that bull is Zeus. He’s changed himself into a bull in order to ingratiate himself with Europa. Gentleman, don’t try this at home. It could be painful. Finally, Europa climbs up on the bull’s back and goes for a ride, a ride that ends on the island of Crete. Yes, it was. By the time Europa gets to Crete she is in the family way. Zeus and Europa mingle in love and have a kid by the name of Minos, who goes on to be the king of Crete. He gets married to a woman with a thing for bulls, has a stepson who is part bull, and has a bull problem all the rest of his days. This is neither here nor there. We need to focus on Cadmus, the adoring brother. He finds out that his sister has run off or been taken away by a bull. Since there is no missing persons bureau in ancient Palestine, he goes to consult an oracle, the Delphic Oracle, which has a 100 percent correctness ratio. Mark, I’m not going to even answer your implicit question about how a kid growing up in Palestine is going to get the bright idea to consult a Greek oracle. No, Mark. No, because the story, after all, demands it. I point out here, as a present to those of you who have honored me with your presence today, that legend… you can write this down and spew it out for valuable points on your essay exam because it’s a sentence I made up myself. It has proven to be true, Crystal. Legend, by its very nature, contains a kernel of historical fact. Legend, by its very nature, contains a kernel of historical fact. Crystal, it is a little nugget. A little piece. A chunkoid. Not a granule because a granule is too small. Very shortly, this story, well, it’s pretty weird already, but trust me folks, it gets a lot stranger. You’re going to be very hard pressing. What warped mind came up with this pack of stories? I wouldn’t blame you. I have wondered the same thing myself. Just think, remember that I said legend, by its very nature, contains a kernel of historical fact. This one does. When Cadmus goes to the oracle, he’s informed by the oracle, “That bull your sister ran off with is Zeus. There is not much you can do about it, Cadmus.” Okay. So the next thing the oracle tells him to do is to travel until you see a sacred cow. No, not Hindu sacred cow, but just your basic garden variety moo-moo, who just happens to be sacred. Follow the sacred cow until she falls down and dies and found a city there, which he does. Cadmus founds a city there and the city, he decides to call it Cadmia.
I pause for a question there. Yes. Let your imagination be your guide, Crystal. They don’t talk about that. Even Ovid never really came up with an answer for that one. It’s a valid question. If I were forced to guess, I would say that Zeus probably Zeusified himself from a bull, because Minos turned out to be completely human. I just made that up to make you happy, Regina. They can do that whenever they want. It’s just a matter of getting away with it. Getting away with it depends on how dumb the person you’re trying to mess over is. If somebody tries to convince me of a false oracle, I’ve got a PhD in this stuff. I’m not going to fall for it. If, on the other hand, you try to convince somebody who’s really mentally challenged, you might get away with it. Thank you. So here’s what happens. The cow dies. Cadmus decides to sacrifice it to the gods, but in order to have a good sacrifice, you need water. There is water, all right, but a giant serpent guards the water hole. That is the only way I know how to draw a snake. He kills the snake and, all of a sudden, this voice comes out from the sky, “You have incurred miasma,” because the snake, as it turns out, is the son of Ares. I don’t even want to make up an answer for how Ares, god of war, successfully begets a son who was in effect a serpent. My sources tell me this happens all the time in classical mythology. So I’m not even going to make one up for that. But Cadmus doesn’t have to atone for this miasma immediately. He is informed that he will spend the rest of his life—after he goes on to be the king of this town—he will end his days as a snake. Well, that’s something really worth looking forward to. I’m going to end my days as a snake. The next cute thing that he is told to do or does is that he sews the dragon’s teeth. He is told that if he wants to populate the city, he is to sew the dragon’s teeth, which he does. All of a sudden, all sorts of armed men pop out of the earth, complete with all their necessary weapons, and start fighting him. But our hero Cadmus catches a clue. He takes this humongous rock, throws it into the middle of them, and they start fighting each other until only five of the men are left. These individuals founded five families called the Spartoi or the quote/unquote sewed ones. They were considered to be the five leading families of ancient Thebes.
You will recall, when we were discussing the legends of Attica, about that interesting King Erichthonius, who was born from an unusually fertile, shall we say, patch of ground. This is another legend which is basically cooked up to explain how the greatest families of our town literally popped out of the earth. It’s none too satisfying, but this is the palette they had to work with. After founding this city of Cadmia and populating it, so to speak, Cadmus is forced to atone for his miasma in killing the snake, who is the son of the influential war god Ares. Being purified by serving as Ares’s servant for seven years or one year, depending on what version of the myth. Maybe I know they were dog years. At the end of his service to Ares, Cadmus is given as his wife the lovely Harmonia, daughter of Ares. Now you may ask how is it that a god of war—good god, what is it good for?—is going to have a daughter named Harmonia. Because that is the way the story works out. Cadmus and his wife Harmonia have a number of kids. You may know them. There is Ino. Does anybody remember Ino? Where was she last seen, Regina? She is the wicked stepmother from the Jason story. Way to go. You didn’t say it was the cow, that was Io. Put your head on the desk. You may take a nap for five minutes. Does anybody remember Agave? You might remember her kid, Pentheus, who makes his last appearance in classical mythology right at the end of Euripides’s Bacchae. He is the guy who fell to pieces when he was torn apart by the Bacchic women out on the slopes of Mount Cithaeron. Then there is Autonoe. You may not remember her, but you may remember her son, Actaeon, the fellow who was torn to bits—or sparagmosed—by his own dogs after he saw the goddess Artemis naked. Remember? She turned poor Actaeon into a stag and the hunting dogs tore him apart to bits and bits. Boy, two sparigmos in the same family. Finally, daughter number four was Semele, who had the honor of giving birth to the great god Dionysus. That was the good part. The bad part is she turned into a heap of smoking ashes. This is not what you would call the proverbial great big happy family. Cadmus and Harmonia rule the city of Thebes for a nice, long time. Among other things they are said to have taught the people of Thebes how to write. They were said to have taught the people of Thebes how to write. Huh? We’ll get there. You’re not going to like it. Real stupid aetiology. After they teach their children well how to read and write they go on to that career that Cadmus had been promised. They are both turned into snakes and they slither around the Mediterranean world converting people or trying to convert people to the religion of Dionysus, their grandson. Eventually, they slither off into the Elysian Fields where they are happy forever after.
I pause for your questions. Well, that was what Farrah Lynn was kind of asking me, too. Well, put it this way. Let’s say that you are eventually going to have a granddaughter named Jennifer who is going to marry a guy named Bob. You founded a city. Are you going to name it after your future granddaughter’s husband? No you will probably name it Crystal City or something after your own bad self. It makes sense that Cadmus is going to name the city Cadmia. It became known by another name. We’re going to make up a really stupid entirely unsatisfactory aetiology. You’re not going to like it. My guess—and this is strictly a guess—is that the people of the town of Thebes wanted to say they were founded by a really neat hero. “Theseus founded Athens. Argos is where Perseus came from. Mycenae has its own heroes and here we are with stinky old Thebes and we don’t even have a great hero to claim as our founder. I know. Let’s make up a story about how Cadmus actually founded our city.” You see how that works. The people of Thebes probably wanted that extra prestige bump and they couldn’t say that their city was founded by somebody named Thebus because there was nobody named Thebus that anybody ever heard of. So they take Cadmus instead. That is the best I can do. Oh they did, but Thebe turned out to be a girl. We’ll get there in a second.
I pause now for a kernel of historical fact. Does anybody know or recall the original writing system that the ancient Greeks had? They used a pictographic system. Originally they had Linear A and Linear B was a revised, reformed pictographic system. What do I mean by pictographic? If I want to say, “My honey, I love you.” I would draw Winnie the Pooh’s honey pot, an eye, a heart, which means love, and a little female sheep. I can’t draw these characters for squat. That is what I mean by pictographic. Where symbols stand for sounds and sometimes entire ideas as opposed to the alphabet in which letters stand for individual small sounds. Do any of you know where the alphabet is known to have been invented? Matt? It was in ancient Phoenicia. How do you think it came to ancient Greece? From Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were great traders. The Phoenicians founded cities all over the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians founded cities in Spain. Those danged Phoenicians were everywhere, bringing their cool purple clothes, their hot flashy ships, and this concept of using symbols to represent individual sounds. The award winning Phoenician word for ox, an ox is a neutered steer, bull, cow, is aleph. They used to represent the initial sound of aleph a very simple, easy to draw, nothing near as artistic as I drew here, a representation of the head of an ox. They called that the letter aleph. By the time that the traders from Phoenicia, over a period of years, we don’t know what date it happened or when. This concept of an alphabet made its way over to Greece. The alpha had turned itself over 180 degrees. Greeks couldn’t pronounce aleph so they called it alpha. The word alpha didn’t mean anything like ox to the ancient Greeks. This didn’t look like the head of an ox to the ancient Greeks but they liked that idea. It made it a whole lot easier for the ancient Greeks to write down stuff that they had only known orally, by word of mouth for centuries. The poetry of Homer, for example. “Hey, let’s take this alphabet and write down the whole Odyssey and the Iliad.” What a great idea. If the ancient Greeks... well, you folks have all taken history or are doomed to take history someday. If you were to read in a book that on September 7, 1426 BC about 2 am in the morning a Phoenician trader named … made a gift to an ancient Greek named Hypocrites of the Alphabet, complete with instructions. You would let it run in one ear and out the other. But through my telling you that this girl ran off with a bull—that’s pretty cool—and eventually the Greeks learned how to read and write. You will remember for the rest of your life what we now call the alphabet is something that the Greeks derived from the Phoenicians. Folks, it’s a known fact, hiding behind this silly legend of a man and a woman who got married and turned into snakes and went around as an evangelistic couple for years, spreading the good word of Dionysus. How many of you think that is too weird? But buried in this story is a kernel of historical fact.
I pause for a question up to this point. Mark. Yeah. No, he was thinking about getting there. One of the neat things about ancient tragedy, Mark—and this is a good question, by the way—is that you can bend the characters somewhat. You can bend the story line somewhat, so long as you don’t break it. I offer you as an example, that award winning television show, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I am sort of dating myself here, but don’t worry. That show will be on reruns forever. The show, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, I have come to realize, serves a need. It presents a side of the west that women enjoy watching on television. The sort of empowering plot or character that, if your 10-year-old daughter watches a Clint Eastwood shoot them up, she would get the impression that all women were either, shall we say, quote/unquote professional women, wives, or cooks. That is not good. Your 10-year-old daughter can watch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and say, “Wow! Here is a woman who is a doctor. Here is a woman that people listen to. Here’s other women that are off having lives and stuff like that.” It’s wonderful. It’s empowering. But the fact is, I’m very sure that it did not happen. That is okay. It serves a purpose. Sometimes we need to reinvent our pasts. God knows that there need to be more shows that are family oriented and especially your little daughters can watch and think, “Hey, girls can kick butt, too.” God bless whoever invented that show, even though it drives me nuts. It’s the same thing with Euripides’s Bacchae, Mark, and everybody else. Euripides introduces the character of Cadmus into the play, even though most mythological traditions say he wound up as a snake. Cadmus is introduced into the play to conflict with Pentheus. Pentheus, if you’ll recall from the play, the guy who succeeded Cadmus, is the hard-hitting, fire-breathing law and order, love it or leave it, “None of this fruity, Carmen Maranda religion in my city, thanks,” kind of guy. As opposed to Cadmus, the old time king who has been around. He knows he’s going to wind up as a snake. He is therefore more flexible. You will recall what Cadmus says. “Yeah, I’m going to dress up in this leopard skin. I’m going to try this new religion out. It’s good for the state.” Only Cadmus could get away with saying that in the Bacchae. Cadmus shows a side that you might associate with political expediency. Cadmus thinks, “Well, if it’s good for the state, I’m going to dance like a Dionysus’s girl and go woo, woo, woo.” That, I submit, is what Cadmus was doing in the award winning Bacchae of Euripides.
Other questions. Ray. Do you find places where you know they’ve lied? Yes. At the very beginning of one of the very first pieces of Greek literature. I speak here of Hesiod’s Works and Days. I think it is the Theogony. Hesiod describes himself as a poet, right? He’s just sitting under a tree in Boeotia. Hesiod, believe it or not, is from Boeotia, the one Boeotian who never gets dissed in all of ancient Greek literature. He said the Muses came to him and called him a fat bellied pig, just sitting there, snoring. They said, “We’re going to inspire you to write beautiful poetry. We’re going to tell you all sorts of lies, too.” Oh yeah, they lied like rugs. They all did. I mean think about Odysseus as he’s lying, cheating and fornicating his way through the second and first halves of the Odyssey. I added that as an afterthought. I mean he just lies all the time. He lies to Athena. Athena finds him sleeping. Odysseus wakes up and Odysseus is disguised as a shepherd. She says, “Now, who, sir, are you?” She knows who she is. She’s Athena, damn it, right? Odysseus wakes up and says, “I’m this mercenary. Pirates kidnapped me. They ditched me here.” She says, “You lying sack of feces. I know you’re Odysseus.” Every time Odysseus is asked who he is, he makes up this big lie about who he is. He lies through his teeth all the time. He can’t help it. I can’t help but think that this is Homer, the poet of the Odyssey, or whoever wrote the Odyssey, hinting that he or she, too, is a great big, bleeping liar all the time. Do you see what I’m getting at?
It’s like when we reinvent our histories. When you’re dating somebody and you’re telling that special someone or the person you hope will be that special someone the history of your family. Your parents met in the prison. “Oh, mom and dad were in this building together, working.” You know you reinvent it. You start out with little bitty lies like, “no, you were the first one I ever dated and really loved.” Pretty soon it comes out that you loved so and so. So and so broke your heart. Yeah, everybody tells lies, Ray. Sometimes a lie is better than the truth. This is getting too metaphysical. We need to, probably, move along. I obviously get wound up about this subject. We can take it up in the parking lot after class. Sometimes a lie is better than the truth. I say that from the bottom of my heart. I lie to you people like a rug all the time. It’s part of my success as your teacher. Especially about... now how did I lie to you about a test?
Supposedly, Pentheus succeeds Cadmus, one way or another. We know what end Pentheus came to. He was torn apart, bit by bit, by his mom and his aunts out on the back of Mount Cithaeron. This mythical king succeeded him. Well, hell, everybody is mythical at this point named Labdacus. Pentheus was succeeded by Labdacus. We’re going to leave Labdacus here for the time being so that we can get into an utterly, unbelievably, confusing story. Account, one of which not even Herodotus or Thucydides could make sense in the long run. Labdacus dies, leaving behind an infant son named Laius. Since Laius is too young to rule Thebes—he’s just a little baby—Laius goes off and lives in the city of Argos and this dude by the name of Lycus, who is the uncle of Laius—and don’t ask me how the family tree works out. I don’t know. Morford doesn’t know. Lenardon doesn’t know. Ovid doesn’t know. Zeus doesn’t know.
Lycus and his wife, Dirce, it so happens that Lycus has a brother named Nycteus who has a daughter. That is fine. You are supposed to be confused. I’ll circle the names of people you should know about, okay? Nycteus has a daughter. No, these two are married to each other. Nycteus and his wife, Mrs. Nycteus. Yeah he’s a brother. Hand me the book there for a second. God knows that I hope the earth would just open up and swallow me before I bungle this up. Yep. I was right. I generally am. Good catch. They have a daughter by the name of Antiope. Now, this is supposed to confuse you. Antiope is so beautiful and pretty that she attracts the attention of no less a swinger than the father of gods and men, loving husband of Hera and number one cause of teenage pregnancy in ancient Greek mythology, Zeus. She gives birth. She bares two kids for Zeus. I love this. Their names are Amphion and Zethus. Meanwhile, bad King Lycus—he’s not really the king. He’s ruling as regent for baby Laius. He is not happy that his niece has given birth to two children of Zeus. So he tries to exile Antiope and the two little boys to make an amazingly long story as short as possible. Amphion and Zethus make a strong comeback. They kill Lycus. They kill Dirce. They immediately set themselves up as co-kings of the city of Cadmia. It is still called Cadmia.
Amphion is married to a princess named Niobe. They have seven sons and seven daughters. You know what happens, right? The seven sons and seven daughters of Amphion and Niobe get killed. I’m telling you the gods hate Thebes. Zethus was married to a promising young sea nymph by the name of Thebe. They decided to name the city Thebes after her, a very unsatisfactory aetiology. Regina. Question? Comment? Thank you, Farrah Lynn. That’s pretty good. It just happened that way. Why did your folks name you Mark? Why were you a boy instead of a girl? Well, why were you? Artemis killed the girls and Apollo killed the boys. You will recall that Niobe was bragging about what a great mom she was because she had 14 kids and Leto only had two. “Ha, ha, ha, Niobe now you have zero.”
Supposedly, Amphion and Zethus ruled together for many years, which, in and of itself, is an odd thing in Thebes because this is the one instance of an orderly succession of power in Thebes. The two brothers got along together. They ruled until they died of old age. That is right, these two little babies, who were exposed by birth by their evil uncle, eventually became the two joint kings. They got married, had families, built up a city and died of old age. Then after Amphion and Zethus, died Laius was ready to become king. Yes. He was related. Kristen. Yes, okay. Labdacus dies. Lycus takes over as regent, because Laius is too young. Laius’s niece gives birth to two little baby boys. The two little baby boys grow up to be kings of Thebes. They die of old age. They don’t die an early death. They live their entire lifetime. When they have died, then we go back over here to Laius. Has anybody checked the math here? He must be awfully old. No, he is somewhat of a medical miracle, but that’s not it. Apparently, Laius just lived in Ellis with Pelops for years and years and years and years. He got kind of lonely after a while. In one instance, Laius ran off with the son of Pelops. He just took him across the state line for immoral purposes. Crysipus, that was his name. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is Pelops was so angered at Laius’s ingratitude. “Here I put you up for 93 years and you run off with my son. Curses on you.” He cursed Laius, because this guy ran off with his son. Yeah. That’d do it for you, too, huh?
In our next class, I’m going to draw a picture of a cute little baby on this side of the wall. Then I’m going to draw a picture of this guy with two eyes poked out of his head. There will be blood. I’ll try to bring colored chalk so I can do a really good job. That guy is Oedipus who begins his life as a little bitty baby. He never did anybody no harm. Well, his mom probably has some complaints, but a little baby who was not evil. He was just a little baby, but winds up as this reviled man who pokes his own eyes out and stuff. You’re going to ask, “What the heck did Oedipus do wrong?” One very good answer is, “Nothing.” This is the old curse on his old man coming home to roost. Well, to make an interminable story short, I have your undivided attention for about three more minutes. Laius eventually gets to become king of Thebes. Laius gets married to a lovely princess by the name of Jocasta. Laius and Jocasta rule as king and queen for a while. They’ve got a problem. They cannot beget an heir. This is important, as I’ve mentioned before. It’s important to have an heir, because it reduces greatly the chances of a civil war. This is after all Thebes, the city that the gods love to hate.
Since there is no such thing as a fertility clinic in ancient Greece Laius goes to the Delphic Oracle. “How can my wife, Jocasta, and I beget an heir? We’ve tried the usual method.” The oracle responds to him, “You will have an heir, Laius, but he’ll grow up to kill you.” Imagine what this would do for your libido. On the one hand, as a responsible king of Thebes, which has had enough trouble over the years, you want to provide Thebes with an heir. It’s your duty as the king to ensure the succession. On the other hand, this little squirt is going to grow up and kill you. Ouch. The only thing you know for sure is that you will beget a son and he will grow up and kill you. All too often, we fall into the very human trap of thinking we can elude fate. There are people in this room, I’m quite sure, who don’t really believe they are going to die. I didn’t when I was your age. I thought I was going to live forever. Boy was I dumb. Now that I’m old and follically disadvantaged, I have a far better appreciation of my own mortality. Laius being human, Jocasta, being human, think, “Well, the Delphic Oracle is always right. What are we going to do fold up our tents and quit?” We’ve got a life to lead in the meantime. So it happens that, well, one morning Jocasta wakes up, goes to the doctor and finds out that she is with child. Oh happy day. Oh blessed event. You’ve been a good class. I’ll see you next time.