The Song of Orpheus (3 page)

Did you like the tale about Herakles and the brothers who turned into monkeys? It always cracks me up to think of those little guys peeking up Herakles’s robe.

Sorry, didn’t mean to lose it like that. It’s not a very realistic story, and I don’t think anyone ever thought it really happened. It was just a story to explain why monkeys sometimes act like naughty children. And maybe to show that the big strong guy doesn’t always win.

I don’t know if the ancient Greeks believed the one I’m about to tell you, either. Most of them probably thought this story was hilarious, but things have changed, and some people might find it upsetting now. You make up your mind which you think it is. Maybe both?

So this myth is about Salmakis. She was a nymph, a kind of humanlike girl that lives in the wild. There were many different kinds of nymphs: The ones called dryads protected trees, oreads protected mountains (I’m thinking about telling a story later about an oread), and naiads lived in and protected streams and rivers and ponds.

Either nymphs don’t live where we are right now or else they’ve gone extinct. I wish there were still some around. It would be nice to have some company. Oh, well, can’t be helped. And with any luck, I’ll be with Eurydice soon, and then I won’t be lonely anymore.

Salmakis was a naiad—a water nymph. The way she acted would have been unthinkable for a well-brought-up girl in ancient Greece, and probably would be today, for all I know. But by behaving badly, she got what she wanted—or did she? You decide.

The land of Anatolia is in what is now Turkey, a country very close to Greece. A lot of Greeks lived there in my day. In Anatolia, there once existed a marvelous pond. Its waters were so clear that a visitor standing at the edge could see its bottom as clearly as if only air lay above it. No spiky grasses or slimy moss grew on the earth and rocks around it, only soft grass as inviting as the finest couch.

Most nymphs liked hunting and other outdoor sports. Salmakis lived in this pond and was its guardian spirit, and she was the only nymph who never picked up a bow and arrow, never joined in a hunt led by the goddess Artemis, never practiced throwing a spear. As they were leaving on a hunt, the other nymphs would call out to her: “Salmakis, it’s a beautiful day! Please come with us; you’ll have a good time, we promise!”

And she would always answer, “No, thanks. I feel like a swim today” or “It looks like rain; you go on without me.” After a while, the nymphs stopped asking, which was just fine with Salmakis. She would watch them come back in the evening, dirty and disheveled, sometimes limping from a wound made by a stray arrow or the tusk of a boar, and wonder what they could possibly find fun about hunting. She preferred to sit at the water’s edge and gaze at her own reflection as she combed out her long hair, pondering whether it looked better up or down, whether a center part or one on the side suited her face more, whether she should encourage her hair to curl around her temples or clip it back.

One day, Salmakis decided to pick some flowers to twine in her long locks. She waded out of the water and poked among the bushes to see what was in bloom. She happened to glance up just as a boy emerged from the forest and threw himself down, as if exhausted, at the edge of her pond. She was about to scold him for trespassing when she paused and looked at him. He was
so
handsome. He was almost as handsome as she was pretty, she thought. Luckily, she still held her comb, so she arranged her hair in the most becoming way possible, straightened her dress, and approached him, despite the fact that in her time and place, it would have been shocking for a girl—even a nymph—to talk to a boy her parents didn’t know.

When the youth saw her, he sprang to his feet, looking even handsomer when he blushed. Salmakis didn’t know it, but the boy’s father was the messenger god, Hermes, and his mother was Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The youth was named Hermaphroditos after both his parents. He lived in a nearby mountain range and was on a walking trip, exploring the region.

Hermaphroditos had been raised by naiads, so he was familiar with their ways. He guessed that Salmakis was the guardian spirit of the pond at whose edge he had stopped.

“Please excuse me,” he said. “I hope I’m not trespassing.”

Salmakis took a step closer. “Oh, no.” She smiled at him. “You’re welcome to drink and take a rest here.”

Something about her made Hermaphroditos uneasy, but he couldn’t very well refuse her hospitality without being rude, so he thanked her and squatted by the pond. He cupped his fingers and drank some of the clear water, and then he rose. “Well,” he said. “Thank you very much. I’ll be on my way now.”

But Salmakis was so smitten with Hermaphroditos that she ran up and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, please, don’t go!” she cried. “Why don’t you stay with me? We could get married and you could live here forever!”

Hermaphroditos jumped back, freeing himself from her embrace. “Married? Why—why—I don’t even know you! What are you talking about? I’m sorry if I said something that made you think—I don’t know what you’re—I’d better leave.”

Salmakis managed to calm herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You can’t leave so soon; everyone would say I hadn’t been hospitable, and that would shame me. Please stay a little longer. I’ll go away and leave you in peace.” He hesitated, since he really was nice and didn’t want to be discourteous, and Salmakis took a few steps away. “See? I’m going. Stay as long as you like. Clean the road dust from your clothes. I’ll just go for a walk and come back when you’ve left.”

She disappeared into the woods, but she didn’t go far. Instead, she knelt behind a shrub and parted its branches so that she could gaze at him.

Hermaphroditos, thinking he was alone and unobserved, took off his sandals. He waded into the pond to relieve the blisters that had arisen during his hike. The cool water felt so good that he walked in up to his knees and then dove under the water. He came up with his dark curls hanging down his neck and his wet lashes looking even longer than they had when dry.

Salmakis couldn’t contain herself. He was just too handsome! Forgetting her promise not to return to her pond until Hermaphroditos had left, she ran from her hiding place and jumped into the water. She grabbed the startled boy and hugged him tight. She kissed him again and again as he struggled to get away, twisting and turning, kicking out with his feet and trying to free his arms from her grasp. But he had as much chance of getting away from the nymph as a snake has of escaping an eagle’s talons.

Salmakis shouted, “I’ve won! I’ve won! He’s mine!”

“Let go of me, you crazy girl!” Hermaphroditos sputtered over a mouthful of water that went down the wrong way.

But she clung to him all the tighter and called out, “Gods, please grant that the two of us will never be parted! Keep us together forever!”

The gods granted her wish, although (as often happens) not exactly in the way she meant. Their two bodies joined together as one, and Hermaphroditos, who had entered the pond as two separate people, emerged from it as a new being: half man and half woman.

So you liked that one? Not too silly? Not upsetting? Okay if I keep going? This will be my fourth tale, and I don’t want to waste any time.

You know, not many people come through the woods here, and I was just about to give up hope when I saw you. Some of the people who pass by don’t even hear me when I try to get them to stop. A couple times they’ve built fires on top of me, when the ground is wet and they want a dry surface. Do they ever think that it might hurt to have a fire on top of your head? No. I’m just a rock to them.

So let’s get on with it. Here’s a tale that’s a little more serious. It’s all about truth-telling, which was as important in my time as it is for you modern folks.

A lot of things have changed in the past few thousand years, though. In my day, we didn’t have all the things you people can’t seem to live without. We had some kinds of metal, but it was really expensive. Only rich people could afford anything made of glass. Most cooking pots, serving ware, dishes, cups, lamps, religious objects, statues, and other things we used in our everyday lives were made from clay.

So it’s no wonder the first potter was an important character in the tales that my people told. This potter’s name was Prometheus, and he was a Titan. Titans are hard to explain. They’re immortal, so they’re a kind of god, but they came in between the really early gods—like Tethys and Ananke—and the Olympians that most people think of when they talk about Greek gods.

One thing that hasn’t changed since my time is that everyone likes it when a practical joke is played on someone really important. I think that people who listened to this next tale probably enjoyed seeing the great Prometheus being fooled, even if he eventually figured out that someone was trying to trick him.

Prometheus is best known for being the guy who created the human race. He made his people out of clay and stole fire from the heavens as a gift to them. He’s still being punished in the underworld for that. Another story tells how he once fooled Zeus into accepting a sacrifice that wasn’t very good and kept the better one for himself. So it’s odd that despite stealing from the gods and cheating their king, Prometheus valued honesty so highly that he decided to make a
daimona
(a female
daimon
, or spirit) out of clay, to be a kind of living symbol of Truth.

Even today, it’s hard to make a full-size clay statue. The potter has to form the parts of the body separately and join them together after they’re baked, or fired, as potters call it. Large pieces sometimes shatter in the high heat of the kiln—the very, very hot oven they’re hardened in—and the different parts shrink as the water is baked out of them. The potter has to calculate the shrinkage precisely, so that pieces that fit together before firing will still fit together afterward. Prometheus was really good at this, obviously, and he also had a skilled helper, named Dolos. Even so, it took a long time before he was ready to put the finishing touches on his beautiful statue of Truth.

Just as Prometheus was about to settle down to work on it again, he received a summons from Zeus. It was impossible to ignore a command from the king of the gods, but Prometheus hated to leave his work when it was so close to completion.

“Don’t worry,” said Dolos. “You’ve already done the hard part. I’ll finish it up while you’re gone.”

Prometheus wasn’t sure he should allow that. The apprentice came of good parents; his father was the air and his mother was Gaia, the earth. But the rest of Dolos’s family didn’t exactly inspire confidence: His brothers and sisters included Pain, Anger, Lamentation, and Fear. The potter had another reason to worry. His apprentice’s name means “trickery.”

As the Titan hesitated, Dolos said, “I’ll do a good job; I promise.” So, against his better judgment, Prometheus agreed.

But he had been right to be suspicious, because Dolos had no intention of completing Prometheus’s work. He had hatched a plan to make his master look foolish. Why? I don’t know. I guess if your name is Trickery, you just like playing tricks. Anyway, as soon as Dolos was sure that the Titan was gone, he set about sculpting a second statue that would be identical to the first one.

Dolos had learned a lot in his apprenticeship with Prometheus, and he was skilled. Tricksters have to be good at what they do, or they don’t fool anyone. Under his skilled fingers, the new statue took shape. Like the real statue, this figure was nude, because the ancient Greek word for truth,
aletheia
(αλήθεια), literally means “without concealment.” Her face and body were flawless, because the truth is unblemished. She looked beautiful and strong, and she wore an expression of fearlessness.

Dolos worked hard, hoping that Prometheus wouldn’t return until he was done. He fit the various pieces—arms, legs, head, torso—to one another so he could see what they’d look like when they were fired and joined together. He was almost through when something happened that ruined his whole plan: He ran out of clay.

What would he do now? Dolos had finished everything but the statue’s feet, but he didn’t have time to get more clay, because just then, he heard Prometheus approaching. Dolos quickly hid the statue Prometheus had been working on behind a screen and put his own creation in its place. Then he got busy cleaning implements, stacking firewood for the kiln, and sweeping the floor.

When Prometheus entered and surveyed his studio, at first the great potter saw nothing amiss. Suddenly, he realized that, while at first glance his statue looked the same as when he had left it, it seemed to have lost its feet.

“What happened here?” Prometheus asked, too bewildered at first to suspect his helper of doing anything to his work. He leaned in and examined the statue as Dolos held his breath.

When Prometheus straightened, Dolos saw that he was furious. “Did anyone come in while I was gone?” the potter growled. Dolos shook his head. “Did you leave at any time?”

Dolos was too terrified to answer. If Prometheus found out what he had done, he would punish him in ways too terrible to contemplate. Why he hadn’t thought about what would happen when his trick was revealed, I don’t know. Maybe he’d just been carried away with the thought of how much fun it would be to fool the guy who had created the human race.

Prometheus inspected the statue again, and when he faced his apprentice this time, Dolos could tell that he had figured out what happened. “I can see I taught you well,” the Titan said, and Dolos was so relieved at his master’s calmness that he let out the breath he had been holding.