The Greek Islands (8 page)

One can scent in all this some of the origins of our own children’s infant games, whose history goes very far back. Not to wake the monster … One remembers the suspense when Odysseus hears the question: ‘Who goes there?’ It is a breathless and fearful moment, but like a typical Greek hero he is never at a loss; he replies, ‘Nobody,’ and with this strange, double-take answer strikes the first chord in modern literature – so says a critic. The later history of Minos, the subduing of Athens and the tribute of maidens and boys for the Minotaur, has a more dramatic and historic background offering little satisfaction as to the origins of these fantasies, which at one time must have
been capable of a rational explanation. A Mithraic type of
bull-culture
is strongly present in all the echoes, not only of Minos’s own origin but also of that of Zeus – who was originally a Cretan, though of course worshipped later on all over Greece.

It was in Crete that Zeus was born, in a cave you can visit today if you will face a tremendous slog; and here, in secret, he was honeyed into babyhood by two nymphs, daughters of the then king.

He, of course, was a refugee like his brother Poseidon, but he won the distinction of finally mastering his neurotic father Chronos (Time), who had the regrettable habit of putting everything in his mouth and often swallowing it. Phagomania! Chronos swallowed a whole shopping-list of young and unfledged gods, before, at last, he had to give way and allow the Olympian gods to form themselves into a general committee appointed to oversee earthly affairs. But if Minos (a mere man) knew he was supported by both Zeus and Poseidon he must have felt great confidence in himself and his luck; it was like having a couple of friends in Parliament.

I am limiting myself to the affairs of Crete only in these superficial considerations of mythology; I am not suggesting that there is any link between the behaviour of such a polymorph-perverse profligate as the old head-prefect of Olympus and that of the modern Cretan who, like us all, has been bowed down by nearly two thousand years of
monotheism
and monosexuality. Zeus was not alone in his profligacy. Most of the Olympian heroes were very lightly screwed to their thrones; the mere sight of a nymph or a goddess, and they were in hot pursuit, eager to rid her of every complex, in the most good-natured way. (Inescapable vision of Harpo Marx with butterfly net and bicycle racing about the Paramount lot.) The list of Zeus’s own conquests in the Larousse
Encyclopedia of Mythology
is a long one. He left no nymph unturned. Minos
had an early tendency to imitate him, and once chased a young huntress called Bryomartys into the sea; but he came to his senses soon enough and sobered up. At any rate, he never
managed
the vast repertoire of impersonations and disguises of the old god – which must have made Zeus a much sought-after guest at house-parties. The most poetic of these was perhaps Leda’s swan; but it is much more important, as far as Crete is concerned, that he turned himself into a bull to court Europa.

As Robert Graves points out: ‘In primitive agricultural
communities
recourse to war is rare and goddess-worship the rule. Herdsmen on the contrary tend to make fighting a profession and, perhaps because bulls dominate their herds as rams do flocks … tend to worship a male sky god, typified by a bull or ram.’ Perhaps Zeus came into this category. In any case, the bull motif is dense with echoes; and I am sure that a comparative ethnologic and religious study of the Mithraic echoes in the bull-mania of, say, Provence will one day link together not only the sacrificial side of bull-mythology in different countries but also link it with the ritual side of bull-baiting, as shown on the Cretan vases. Certainly, in Provence today a celebrated Spanish bull, after he has been killed, is eaten by the people; I have seen this often in Protestant Nîmes. The head is exposed in the butcher’s window with the name of the animal above it, and there forms a long queue of housewives who buy small
quantities
of the meat – as a token rather than as a meal. If asked, they will agree that the meat is not of the best quality, since it is flushed with blood from the exertions of the battle, and belongs to a creature that has been raised on oats to quicken its temper. The custom is a clear illustration of Freud’s
Totem and Tabu
which should always be within reach in the Greek islands! To make my point still clearer: in another part of Nîmes there is an after-the-corrida dinner party of officials, dignitaries and fighters with their trainers. They are solemnly offered a thick
soup, made from the testicles of the slain bull. There are similar customs in countries where the bull remains a symbol of force, fertility and the father-complex which might provide more solid material for the student of bull mythology.

Wandering about the quiet and somehow reticent ruins of Knossos, whose proportions and orientation show that their architects had nothing to learn from ours, one wonders whether the matter will not one day simplify itself and bring the Minoans into much clearer focus for us. When the king gave judgment, for example, did he place the great bull’s head on his head and shoulders just as an English judge dons the black cap? And was the labyrinth both an execution ground for malefactors and a training-device for young gladiators – or even a place where initiates had to learn to find a way through the muddled penetralia of their own fears and desires? In these quiet precincts, which in fact may be simply administrative buildings, but which exhale the kind of equanimity and poise of an architecture at once beautifully proportioned and not too sweet, one feels the presence of a race that took life gaily and thoughtfully. What a pity we have not yet found something of interest in the scripts so far deciphered; it is tantalizing – wanting to work out their philosophic or religious views from something like an income tax declaration.

A few thoughts on the Olympians might help to identify the Cretan mind or soul during the periods about which we know, if not everything, at least a bit. Hesiod has set out the history of the gods in fairly neat trim and there is no reason to distrust his pedigrees, for the little group finally, after mastering more tribulations than ever Odysseus faced, formed itself into the Parliament of Olympus and took an eager interest in what was happening on the earth. First of all, says the historian, there was no difference between the two lots, gods and men; they sat down to the same table to eat. Gradually they became
differentiated – gentlemen versus players; though even when Olympus became a workable headquarters and the gods a going concern, there seemed to be little qualitative difference between the two groups. The gods had more power, that is all; they were not morally superior or in the possession of any special nuclear secrets – apart from the thunderbolt of Zeus. They behaved, however, like rather irascible and unstable uncles – one never knew when they might go off at half-cock and cause trouble. So it was best to keep them soothed with frequent sacrifices. Of course, this was long before anyone worried about cruelty to animals, and anyway, it is now generally agreed that the
tremendous
bloodshed of all these sacrifices was simply a way of feasting the whole community at the expense of the taxpayer. In every village festival where sheep or pigs turn whistling on the spit, the indigent can claim first place for a serving; and lots of beggars virtually live like this. There is little doubt about the ancient origin of today’s
panagyri
– and anyway, Xenophon has described the whole matter in detail.

The trials the Olympians had to undergo before
consolidating
themselves on the mountain whose secret magic is still with us today – as anyone who has got lost on it (almost everyone does) can testify – would make films look trivial. First the Titans had to be smashed, then the blubbering giants, and finally, just when all seemed plain sailing, the super-monster known as the Typhaeos came upon the scene and had to be dealt with; this composite horror was finally put to death and buried under Etna in Sicily, where one can still hear it writhe and roar when an earthquake arrives. After this, one might say that the reign of the Olympians really began, at the point where Zeus at long last managed to master his own father Chronos, whose pronounced phagomania had done for so many of his offspring. Poseidon also escaped the fatal gobbler-sire and settled down with his brother Zeus for a long and successful
reign. They took their place naturally among the twelve major deities.

Hesiod, the old herdsman-poet, has roughed out the historic pedigree of mankind as his age knew it – and this roughcast view must correspond to ancient traditional belief. There is no need for it to be wrong. The various ages succeed one another – ever degenerating, ever declining I fear – until they reach our own degenerate and senescent epoch. First of all, in the Golden Age, men lived like gods, free from worry and fatigues, unafflicted by old age; they rejoiced in a continual felicity and festivity and, though not then immortal, they died happily, as if falling asleep. Then came the Silver Age, which was less happy, for the inhabitants of the earth were feeble, inept people who obeyed their mothers (a matriarchy) and lived by agriculture. The Bronze Age brought in new races, with men as ‘robust as ash trees’ who delighted only in oaths and warlike exploits. Alas, they came to a smart end by cutting each others’ throats; but this age of stress was marked by the discovery of metals and the first attempts at what we call civilization. Then came the Iron Age – but no, it is too depressing to continue.

Gradually the separation between gods and men became more critical, though they still resembled each other in many ways – not always the nicest; indeed it took the gods some little time to pull themselves together and play their roles of
mediators
between man and the universal forces which menaced him from every side. Meanwhile, of course, there was a good deal of pretty hot skirmishing for maidenheads up on Olympus, and sometimes the inhabitants of the earth got caught up in the centrifugal force of a god’s actions. This interpretation makes the
Olympians
more human than other gods, but vastly increases the confusion in terms of earth-history.

The days of the gods passed in permanent merry-making; they had an eternal dinner party round golden tables, on which
they were served limitless supplies of untaxed nectar and ambrosia. In their veins flowed, not blood, but
ichor
, so they never wore out physically. As they feasted, they had pleasant whiffs of roasting pigs and cattle from the smoking altars on earth below. Yes, they were a queer lot in early times –
parent-size
copies of their children, the earthlings. If they had no ‘character’ in the psychological sense, they had clearly marked attributes and reasonably precise functions.

Perhaps that is claiming too much, for they certainly lived, just like modern Greeks, from impulse to impulse; a way of life that kept, and still keeps, reality fresh and totally unpredictable. Nor were the impulses always praiseworthy – pique, jealousy, lust, cunning; the gods ran the gamut, and were pleasantly free from self-reproach or the gnawings of guilt. Yet (and it rounds off the notion of a parent–child relationship) one must emphasize that they were vastly bigger in size than their
earthlings
. Ares’s body when stretched out on the ground was seven
plethra
in length – over two hundred yards.

The story of these ancient divinities is touching in its way; a story that little conceals the longings and desires of the
earthbound
peasant spirit of that epoch – and indeed of ours also. One can see Olympus for the glorified
taverna
that the popular belief must have made of it, full of good smells of wood-smoke and lamb. And then those golden tables! They make one think of a Hollywood ‘vehicle’ bearing, as they did, all that Disneyfied ambrosia and nectar – unremitting fare indeed; it was like being forced to live exclusively on caviar. What better heaven could a
taverna habitué
think up to solace himself against the poor harvest below, which was so often his lot?

These thoughts about the gods will not seem entirely out of place if you find yourself sitting in the main square of a Cretan hill-village today, watching the quiet drinkers and players of tric-trac; past and present are joined by so many fine threads.
You will see, for example, an elderly peasant fill his glass and, before raising it to his lips, let fall a few drops on the earth floor of the shop. The libation is a contemporary thing, as is also a muttered exclamation in the order of ‘Good Luck’. The old man may not be conscious of the age of the gesture or of its origins. In Crete – indeed in Greece – the scale of things is so small and human that the old monuments and the
contemporary
scene seem to have been hatched from the same strange egg.

The green glades, so dusty in summer, echo to the drilling of the
cicada
. But if you happen by chance on a mulberry village you will hear another kind of drilling, which sounds like
musketry
or a forest fire, so intense is it, despite the small scale. This is the death-feast of the silkworms as they quash their way through the mulberry leaves which cover them. When a
mulberry
peasant goes to the town to shop, she makes for the shoe shop and cadges all the empty shoe boxes she can find – they are perfect for her purpose. In these she places her leaves and her worms. Later, in some other village, you may see the
butter-yellow
, butter-soft loops of the raw silk being drawn from the hissing cauldrons hanging from their tripods and wound slowly and piously on to a hexagonal frame of wood ready for the looms. How ancient can this art be?

The persistence of things is a striking factor in the life of modern Greece; very old beliefs are sometimes left undisturbed, just like a vase in the ground, waiting to be unearthed by some historian, but still believed. Take saffron. My wife, when she went in search of some in the town of Alsea, was told that it would need a doctor’s prescription to obtain, and that it was only on sale at the chemist. Alarmed but intrigued, she went through the drill and an unsmiling doctor gave her a prescription, and in due course also her modest condiment. When she asked the chemist why such precautions were necessary, he replied that it was a powerful aphrodisiac;
this ancient belief had somehow managed to climb into the prescription book of the modern chemist. I seem to have read about the aphrodisiac qualities of saffron in the pages of Athenaios. It is only one example of a belief that has survived.