Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (23 page)

Philippides ran the seventy-five miles to
Sparta
in one day. The Spartans refused aid to
Athens
, the next day he ran back; a feat which would task our own
Marathon
runners. The Athenians attacked the Persians on the plain of Marathon winning one of the most decisive battles in world history. Plutarch in '
Theseus
' records that the Greeks claimed that superhuman warriors, Theseus, Athene and Heracles descended to fight with them, victory was won by aid from the Gods.

Herodotus was born only six years after the Battle of Marathon and probably met people who confirmed the tale of Philippides; he would see with his own eyes the
Temple
of
Pan
and learn why it was built. Silenus, brother of Pan, a jovial, tipsy old man, was a satyr, possibly a humanoid. Plutarch in '
Sulla
' reports that in 83 BC at Apollonia near Dyrrachium in Illyria Sulla's soldiers caught a satyr asleep, 'such a one as sculptors and painters represent'; despite many interpreters this humanoid could not understand, he emitted a hoarse cry like a goat. To us this sylvan creature appears an alien from another world like those green children manifesting from
St. Martin
's Land in the Middle Ages and the strange humanoids said to be manifesting today.

Surely Philippides must have told a most convincing tale to persuade the Athenians to build a
Temple
to Pan. Could he have met a Spaceman?

Plutarch relates that in the time of Tiberius, 14 AD, one, Thramm, pilot of a ship making for Italy, was thrice called by name and bidden to give the news that the Great Pan was dead. A tale with UFO overtones?

Since 1942 natives in
South Sea islands
have worshipped an American airman as the God, John Thrumm, and followed the Cargo Cult. Could not the Greeks have worshipped a humanoid as their God, Pan?

The Persians planned revenge for their defeat at
Marathon
. Ten years later in 480 BC, Xerxes invaded
Greece
with tremendous land and naval forces numbering according to Herodotus 2,641,610 fighting-men swollen by reserves to 5,282,220 with countless women and concubines. The vast army bridged the Dardanelles, conquered Thessaly and Macedonia then advanced on the disunited South-Leonidas with his three hundred Spartans met heroic deaths defending the Pass of Thermopylae, the Persians swept on to burn Athens; the Athenians had evacuated their wives and children to the island of Salamis. Themistocles cleverly lured the great Persian fleet, partly crippled by heavy storms, to venture into the narrow waters, watched by Xerxes seated on a marble throne on the hill above. The heavier Greek ships smashed the trapped enemy in a glorious victory. The following year the Spartans routed the invaders at
Plataea
. The Persians were shattered and
Greece
saved.

Plutarch in 'Themistocles XV' wrote:

'At this stage of the struggle they say that a great light flamed out from Eleusis and an echoing cry filled the Thricassian plain down to the sea, as if multitudes of men together conducting the mystic Iachus in procession. Then out of the shouting throng a cloud seemed to lift itself closely from the earth, pass out seawards and settle down upon the triremes. Others fancied they saw apparitions and shapes of armed men coming from
Aegina
with hands stretched and to protect the Hellenic triremes. These they conjectured were the Aecidae, who had been prayerfully invoiced before the battle to come to their aid.’

In 1287 BC Rameses II facing defeat by the Hittites at Kadesh swore the God Amen came to his aid; the Japanese claim that in 660 BC the Heavenly Deities assisted their Emperor Jimmu against the Ainu;
Cicero
recorded that in 498 BC Castor and Pollux saved the Romans at
Lake
Regillus
. A comet, possibly a UFO, hovered over the Battle of Hastings in AD 1066. Strange aerial lights attended battles during the Hitler and Korean Wars. Did Gods visit.
Marathon
and
Salamis
? The great dramatist, Aeschylus, probably thought so; he fought there.

The fifty-three years from 484 BC, the year Aeschylus gained his first prize, including the great plays of Sophocles, to 431 BC, when Euripides wrote '
Medea'
, was a Golden Age of Drama, unequalled until those glorious decades of Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and their brilliant rivals. Aeschylus was said to have been ordered by the God, Dionysius, to write tragedies; Sophocles said Aeschylus wrote without knowing it; others swore he was drunk or inspired by the Gods, his originality and genius were superhuman. Only seven of his seventy tragedies are extant. Aeschylus modestly described his works as scraps from Homer's banquet; like Homer he was inspired with religious awe of the supreme authority of Zeus, his plays sternly upheld moral law, the triumph of good, the punishment of evil; he wrote with concentrated power, dictating human destinies directed by the Gods.

The trilogy of 'Agamemnon', 'Cboephori' and 'Eumenides' describing the murder of Agamemnon by his adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, the matricide and suffering of their son, Orestes, are mighty tragedies, impressive today. In the 'Eumenides' Apollo advises the guilt-stricken Orestes to go to Athens for the judgment of Athene who acquits him, as though Aeschylus knew that Celestials judged the fate of men. 'Prometheus Bound' concerns the struggle between Zeus and Prometheus, a titanic drama of the Gods; this tragedy could be irreverently regarded as science fiction though it soars in cosmic grandeur transcending the squalid morals titillating our modern stage.

Aeschylus died at
Gela
in
Sicily
in 456 BC at the age of 69. An eagle mistaking the poet's bald head for a stone dropped a tortoise upon it to break its shell, and so fulfilled an oracle by which he was fated to die by a blow from heaven.  Do UFOs drop tortoises on playwrights' bald heads?

Sophocles, thirty years younger than Aeschylus, was a sunny-natured Athenian, trained in music and gymnastics, famed for his handsome physique, the ideal healthy mind in a healthy body. The pleasure-loving pursuits of this gallant endeared him to the Athenians, who soon preferred his lyrical plays to the austere moralisings of his crusty rival, Aeschylus. His astonishing output of 130 plays did not detract from their excellence, only seven are extant. Tragedies like
'Antigone'
, 'Elcctra', express deep and poignant emotions with soulful beauty yet Sophocles is profoundly aware of Gods brooding over the destinies of Men. Aristotle considered 'Oedipus Rex' to be the masterpiece of Greek tragedy, a judgment still held today;  dominating the plot was the oracle of Apollo; the Goddess Athene introduces 'Ajax', Heracles as 'Deux ex machina’ suddenly appears to conclude 'Philoctctes' directing the hero with divine decree. Lucian wrote entertainingly:

'Sophocles, the tragedian, swallowed a grape and choked to death at ninety-five. Brought to trial by his son, Iophen, towards the close of his life on a charge of feeble-mindedness he read the jurors his "Oedipus at Coloneus" proving by the play that he was sound of mind, so that the jury applauded him to the echo and convicted the son himself of insanity.'

The idealism of Sophocles charmed easy-going
Athens
, he expressed popular opinion in stressing that all men and women, whatever the trials and temptations of human life, are finally subject to the Gods above, the Spacemen.

While Aeschylus was fighting to defeat the Persians at
Salamis
in 480 BC on that very island was born his distinguished successor, Euripides, whose parents had evacuated from their home in
Athens
. Close friendship with Socrates and study of the teachings of Anaxagoras, made him break with tradition, he represented men and women as they really are not as they should be, stressing human emotions in theatrical scenes without which drama could never have developed. Such modernity made him enemies. Even Aristophanes, himself a free-thinker, jeered that Euripides was no gentleman since his mother sold cabbages. Euripides was sour-tempered and loathed ridicule, his two wives proved unfaithful. In his old age he left
Athens
in disgust for exile at the Court of Archclaus of Macedon, a fateful venture for in 406 BC at 75 jealous courtiers contrived for Euripides to be attacked and killed by savage dogs. Of his seventy-live plays only eighteen survive. Despite his unhappy marriages Euripides had surprising understanding of women, creating the brilliant characters of Hecuba, Helen, Electra, Iphigenia and above all the fascinating, revengeful Medea, classic roles long foreshadowing those emancipated women of Ibsen.

Euripides, considered it 'good theatre' to bring the Immortals down to Earth. Castor and Pollux appeared in 'Electra' and 'Helen'; Apollo in 'Alcestis' and 'Orestes'; Minerva in 'Ion'; 'Suppliants', 'Trojan Dames' and Artemis in 'Hippolytus'.

Aristophanes born 448 BC wrote fifty-four comedies, the eleven which survive satirise the Gods in burlesque scenes amusing the Athenians. In the 'Birds' Peisthetairus goes to seek his fortune in Nephefcoccuga, a City of
Cuckoos
in the clouds, there he meets Prometheus, Hercules and Iris. Trygeas in 'The Peace' flies to heaven on a giant dung- beetle and meets Mercury. Hundreds of Greek plays must have been lost the few that remain suggest that the characterization of the Gods on the stage was a welcome convention.

The intervention of a God to foretell the future or to give judgment was evidently accepted as vaguely possible, if somewhat improbable. Race-memory had implanted in the mind of all Greeks the reality of the Gods in ancient times; the cynical younger generation probably looked upon them as exiled Royalty living in luxury somewhere in the skies, perhaps even returning occasionally incognito to see their friends. Elderly people no doubt welcomed representations of the Gods confirming their religious beliefs. Today were Christ, Buddha and Mahomet to appear on the stage our theatre-goers would be shocked, could even our greatest playwright give such Illumined credibility were they just figments of imagination and had never existed? The Greek dramatists knew the Gods were not symbols but Supermen larger than life with grandiose moods dominating mortal men. Surely the Gods were Spacemen!

The Greek Classics tell of generals and politicians, philosophers and playwrights, whose genius inspired
Hellas
. Alexander, Pericles, Socrates, Sophocles, bejewel a galaxy of Immortals shining across the centuries to inspire civilization of the West. Behind these Colossi bestriding
Greece
we glimpse in the shadows a few solitary eccentrics who seem more suited to our Space Age. Those Spacemen watching Babylon and Israel must also have landed amid the mountains of the Peloponnese and met some disciples; our knowledge is so tantalisingly vague yet we may imagine the men they would likely contact.

Lycurgus, son of Eunoxus, King of Sparta, visited
Spain
,
Crete
,
Libya
,
Egypt
and even
India
in the ninth or tenth century before Christ meeting the wise men of those countries, although Plutarch deplores that concerning Lycurgus nothing can be said which is not disputed since indeed there are different accounts of his birth, his travels, his death. On return to
Sparta
, a city torn by anarchy and licentiousness, Lycurgus was hailed by all factions as a Saviour, the only man to cure the sorry ills of State. He paid frequent visits to
Delphi
and said the Laws were given him there by Apollo just as Minos, Hammurabbi and Moses had received Laws from their own Gods. Apollo slew Python, the celebrated serpent after the deluge of Deucalion, similar legends of dragon-slaying in Ancient Britain and
China
seem to symbolise conflict with Spacemen. Serpent worship all over the ancient world was associated with sky-dragons, a primitive memory of Spaceships. The high- priestess at
Delphi
, called Pythia, inhaled an intoxicating vapour emanated from a chasm in the
Temple
floor; her oracle purported to give the revelations of Apollo usually couched in double-talk which left the ancient questioners more confused than before.