The Song of Orpheus (7 page)

Ah! Almost halfway through!

Wait—where are you going? Can’t you stay a little longer? I’ll try to be quick—I can’t stand to be this close and not finish. If you have to be somewhere, can’t you use that little thing you people always carry and tell them you’ll be late?

Thanks. I appreciate it, I really do. That little thing you talk on is awfully handy, isn’t it? So many misunderstandings that made problems in the myths could have been avoided if someone had been able to get in touch with people who were far away. If Kydippe had been able to call the plowman and tell him to bring the oxen back—but you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Here’s what happened.

Like I said before, some things never change, despite all your modern technology. For three thousand years, I’ve heard complaints that young people are spoiled, that they don’t respect their elders, and that nowadays—whenever “nowadays” might be—everyone treats them as if they were more important than their parents. Maybe this is true and maybe it isn’t, but people said it back in my time and probably before then, all the way back to the Golden Age. What do you think? You’re young, but I’ll bet you don’t feel like everyone worships you, right?

Anyway, that’s what this myth is about. Youth is supposed to be such a great time of life that—well, you’ll see. I’ll warn you that this tale has a sad ending, or at least that’s how it would probably seem to you modern folk. A lot of the ancient Greeks would have thought it was a really happy ending. You can decide for yourself.

More than two thousand years ago, two teenage brothers named Kleobis and Biton lived in the proud and independent Greek city-state of Argos. The brothers were as proud and independent as their homeland. Like most people of the time, they were farmers. Their father was dead, and they lived with their mother. They weren’t rich, but they were comfortable enough. Their mother, Kydippe (not the same Kydippe who was tricked into marriage by Akontios), was a priestess in the service of Hera, queen of the gods.

When it came time for Hera’s festival, Kydippe was eager to go to her great temple, the Heraion, to help with the celebration. She got dressed and made up with great care, since a priestess’s beauty honors the goddess. The white makeup that covered Kydippe’s face made her look like a lady of leisure who never had to work in the fields, and bright rouge made from crushed berries reddened her cheeks and lips. A servant darkened her eyelashes and eyebrows with charcoal, joining the line of her brows over the bridge of her nose, and carefully painted sacred designs on her cheeks with a slim brush. Another servant bound her hair into an intricate knot at the back of her head. Dressed in a tunic of the finest linen, Kydippe wore ornaments of gold and jewels in her hair, around her neck and wrists and ankles, and on her fingers.

“You’re as beautiful as the goddess herself,” Biton told her.

“I’ll go harness the oxen to the wagon,” Kleobis offered. He went to the barn but came back almost immediately. “The oxen haven’t returned from the field yet,” he said. “But don’t worry, Mother. Surely they’ll be here soon.”

At first, Kydippe wasn’t concerned. True, the temple was five miles away and the oxen had been plowing all morning, but they were powerful. They had enough strength to get Kydippe to the Heraion in plenty of time to participate in the sacrifice and the other rituals planned for that day.

But time passed, and the oxen didn’t appear. Both boys went out to look for them, but the fields were large and the oxen were nowhere to be seen. The priestess paced up and down, worry spreading across her face.

Her sons drew aside to confer. “Do you think she can walk all the way to the temple?” Kleobis asked.

Biton shook his head. “Not dressed in her finery.” They imagined their mother’s face streaked with sweat, making her eyeliner run and her reddened cheeks smudge. The other priestesses would be appalled, and Kydippe would be mortified. Besides, it would be dishonorable for a priestess to arrive on foot like a common person.

Kleobis looked at the wagon. He knew the disappointment his mother must feel at the prospect of missing the festival. Even worse would be her fear that failing to show up would anger Hera, the powerful goddess-queen. No, he couldn’t allow that. He glanced at Biton and saw from his brother’s eyes that he too was determined to get Kydippe to the festival on time.

There was only one thing to do. The boys hitched themselves to the wagon and leaned hard into the yoke. At first the wheels refused to turn, but then slowly, slowly, the brothers were able to move down the drive, until they came to a stop in front of their mother.

“Boys, you can’t pull me all the way there!” Kydippe exclaimed.

“Of course we can,” Biton said.

“Climb in, Mother,” Kleobis added. “You don’t want them to start without you!”

A servant helped Kydippe, still protesting, into the wagon, and she settled onto the seat. She had no need to use the reins or whip, of course. Kleobis and Biton pulled her over the dusty road in the hot sun, over pebbles and rocks that scraped their sandaled feet, until they reached the Heraion.

The priestesses were just about to go ahead with the ceremony, even with one of their number missing. Only once their mother had been safely escorted to the sacred area did Kleobis and Biton allow themselves to be unhitched from the wagon and take a drink of water. As the sacrifices and prayers began, everyone exclaimed at their strength, and even more, at their love for their mother and their piety.

When all the rituals had been performed and the feast had ended, the worshippers settled down in the temple for the night. Kydippe looked at her two boys, deep in exhausted sleep. They were so handsome, so young, so full of strength, and so dutiful. Everyone admired what they had done, and other women were already telling their own sons to be as good and as pious as Kleobis and Biton.

Quietly, Kydippe stood before the altar of the goddess and said a prayer from her full heart: “Dearest Hera, goddess-queen, ruler of the heavens, you too are a mother. You know how I love these boys, and how they have honored both you and me by what they did today.

“Please, Hera, give my sons the greatest gift a mortal can receive. I don’t know what that gift might be. I leave it to you to reward them suitably.”

The next morning, the plowman who worked for them led the oxen to the temple. He apologized for losing track of the time the day before and hitched the oxen to the wagon. After Kydippe had been helped aboard, she sent the plowman to wake her sons. They must be tired and sore, their feet cut and bruised. They would ride, too; the strong beasts wouldn’t notice their weight.

But when the plowman ran back from the temple, his face was as white as Kydippe’s had been during the ceremony. “Your s-s-sons,” he stammered. “Your sons, my lady—they won’t wake up!”

And they never did. The goddess had granted their mother’s wish as only an immortal being who doesn’t understand death could grant it: Kleobis and Biton had died when they were young and beautiful and admired by all. They never had to know shame or illness or old age.

Did Kydippe thank the goddess? Or did she curse her and refuse to worship her again? Herodotus, who was the first to write down this story, doesn’t say.

Why are you getting up? Was that one too sad or something? Sorry about that, but life in ancient Greece was pretty tough. You’re lucky that not many people die young these days, the way Kleobis and Biton did. I know, I know—some still do, and it’s terribly sad, but your doctors can fix a lot of things that killed people in my time. They can’t fix everything, though. Many mysteries remain, and who knows—maybe someday, a scientist will find a medicine like the magic herb in the story I’m about to tell you, something that will save as many lives as your antibiotics and vaccines do. Interested? Great.

You know, I’ve seen some scary-looking snakes in these woods. Sometimes they even go slithering over me, which would make me shiver if I could still shiver, and on hot days, they like to warm themselves in the sun on me. I’m not bothered by snakes, especially now that they can’t bite me, but I don’t like to feel them sliding around on my face.

Greece has only one kind of venomous snake: the adder, like the one that bit my poor Eurydice. So I think this story originally came from someplace other than Greece, maybe from Maionia, which is in the western part of what you people call Turkey. There are lots of snakes in Turkey, including one that has a hood like a cobra’s and that sounds kind of like the monster in this story, about Tylos and the dragon.

Tylos was a young man who lived in Maionia with his sister, a tree nymph, or dryad, named Moria. In Maionia, there also lived a
drakon
—a hideous snake, or perhaps a dragon (the word δράκων can mean either one). This reptile, whatever it was, lived in a wild area, where it lay in wait for prey. Passersby, cows, even whole flocks of sheep would disappear down its huge throat. When it finished eating, it would blow out a great blast of air, and sometimes the blast would terrify someone nearby long enough for the snake to grab this victim, too.

One day, as Tylos strolled near a river with his sister, he accidentally brushed against the drakon, which instantly spread its hood and attacked him. Moria shrieked at the sight of this reptile with rows of teeth in its gaping jaw and a long, muscular body. The drakon didn’t just bite the young man; it wrapped its tail around his neck and torso, and with its fangs, it ripped at his face, spitting poison all the while. Not surprisingly, Tylos fell dead from this lethal combination of poison, face ripping, and strangulation.

The drakon stayed on the youth’s body, mauling Tylos even as he lay lifeless. The dryad must have been immune to the creature’s attack, for she managed to pull the terrifying beast off her brother without being injured. The drakon hissed and spit at Moria as she saved her brother from being devoured.

Tylos’s mutilated face and body were a horrible sight, and Moria wailed so loudly that a giant named Damasen heard her cries. Damasen was no ordinary giant, if you can call any giant ordinary. His mother was none other than Gaia, the earth, and he was born fully bearded and armed like a soldier, even holding a spear.

He approached Moria and asked, “Why are you crying?” but she was so distraught, she couldn’t speak. She pointed wordlessly at the writhing reptile and at the corpse of her brother, lying in the dust.

Damasen didn’t hesitate for a moment. He tore a tree from the ground and, wielding it like a club, ran toward the drakon.

The creature hissed a challenge and flung itself at the giant. The drakon was so huge, this caused the ground to tremble as though in an earthquake. It wrapped its long body around the giant’s feet and spiraled up his body. Rolling its eyes and breathing its foul breath into his face, it opened its mouth and spat yellow, foamy poison into Damasen’s eyes. Then it reared up over his head, looking for a spot unprotected by his armor, where it could sink its fangs.

But the monster was used to dealing with mere humans and sheep and cows, not with someone as large and strong and battle-proven as the son of the Earth, and it had met its match. Damasen shook the serpent off his arms and legs and whirled the tree in the air—once, twice, three times—and then smashed it down on the drakon, right where its head joined its long neck.

All was still. Moria was stunned into silence, and Damasen stood panting near the two dead bodies, Tylos’s and the drakon’s, wiping the stinking drakon spit off his face and recovering from the fight.

Then a slithery sound reached the ears of the girl and the giant, and out of the shrubs poked a narrow head. It looked around as if wondering what all the commotion was about. Then it spied the reptile’s broken body, and the rest of the creature emerged.

It was another drakon—technically a
drakaina
, for it was a female. She coiled herself out of the dust, her long tail dragging behind her like the train of a gown, and headed straight for the drakon’s body.

“What do you think she wants?” Moria whispered to Damasen. He could only shake his head.

Moria was terrified. Would the creature realize that Damasen had killed her mate and attack the giant, too? Would she tear at Moria the way the drakon had torn at Tylos?

But neither the girl nor the giant could have imagined the strange thing the drakaina did next. After nosing the drakon’s corpse and realizing her mate was dead, she turned and wound with great haste through the rocks that lay around them, toward a hill covered with flowers and herbs. Moria and Damasen watched in amazement as the creature yanked a plant known as the flower of Zeus from the ground and, clutching it in her teeth, came slithering back. She coiled herself next to the drakon and carefully dropped the plant against one of its nostrils.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the drakon’s body gave a great shudder, and bit by bit, as life returned first to one part of the monster and then to another, the creature moved. His tail was the last to revive. Finally, cold breath hissed out of his many-toothed mouth.

Moria clutched at Damasen, afraid that the two creatures would come at them. But the drakon had learned his lesson, and with his mate, he went slithering back into his den rather than daring to approach the giant again.