The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony Read online

  From first to last Ariadne’s story is woven into a crown. “My cousin’s arriving,” the young princess thought when they told her Dionysus had landed on the island. She had never seen this relative, born from his mother’s death pyre and rumored to be so handsome. When he appeared, Dionysus didn’t want to stay in the palace. He gripped her wrist and led her to one of Crete’s many caves. And there the darkness was rent by a dazzling crown. Fiery gold and Indian jewels. Dionysus offered Ariadne the crown as a gift on the occasion of this, their first embrace. Sign of perfection, “herald of propitious silence,” the crown was a circle of seduction. But to seduce also means “to destroy” in Greek: phtheírein. The crown is the perfection of deceit, it is the deceit that circles in on itself, it is that perfection which includes deceit within it.

  By the time Ariadne turned her gaze on the handsome Theseus, she was no longer a girl playing with her sisters in the palace of Cnossos. She was a god’s bride, even if no one knew of their union. The only witness had been that shining crown. But when Theseus came up from his father Poseidon’s underwater palace, he too had been holding a crown. It was made of small apple blossoms, dripping water and radiating light. He gave it to Ariadne, as Dionysus had given her his crown. And at the same time Ariadne gave Theseus Dionysus’s crown. For his part, Theseus was repeating the god’s gesture; for hers, Ariadne was betraying the god, so as to enable the Stranger to kill the Minotaur, who belonged to the bull god. When he set off into the dark passages of the labyrinth, Theseus was led by the light of the resplendent crown. His sword sparkled in that light before he buried it in the body of the youth with the bull’s head. So Ariadne brought deception to a higher level: she betrayed her divine partner and at the same time offered his love gift to the man who was taking his place.

  But wasn’t the deception already there from the beginning, in the god’s gift to her? Ariadne is deceived precisely as she deceives: she imagines Theseus is the god’s opposite; she sees him as the man who will take her as his bride to Athens, beyond the vicious circle of the bull. When he reappeared in Naxos, Dionysus was waving a shining crown. Ariadne looked at it and thought of the other crowns that had been behind the other deceptions in her life. She realized now that that crown was the same crown and always had been. Her story really was over now; Ariadne would be forever alone, prisoner of that radiant crown in the sky: Corona Borealis.

  In any Cretan story, there’s a bull at the beginning and a bull at the end. At the beginning Minos summons Poseidon’s white bull up out of the sea. If it appears, he promises, he will sacrifice it to the god. The bull does appear, but Minos doesn’t keep his promise. The bull is too beautiful, he doesn’t want to kill it, he wants it for his own. It is for that bull that Minos’s wife Pasiphaë will develop her fatal passion.

  At the end, Theseus captures a bull at Marathon, and once again it’s the Cretan bull risen from the sea. After its couplings with Pasiphaë the bull had turned wild, and Minos had called for Heracles to capture it. The hero caught the bull and took it away to the mainland. For a long time the bull wandered about the Peloponnese before turning up in Attica. Where nobody had been able to get the better of it, not even Androgeus, Minos’s son, who used to beat all the Athenians in their games. Theseus captured it, at Marathon. He offered it to his father, Aegeus, who sacrificed it to Apollo. Everything between that beginning and that end, which is to say Ariadne’s destiny, takes place within the displacement of a sacrifice: from Poseidon to Apollo, from Crete to Athens. That passage is strewn with corpses. The mute, the sacrificial victim is part and parcel of the religious rite. But the myth claims other victims for itself, those who fall around the place of sacrifice, iron filings in the magnetic field. Out of the sacrifice, together with the blood, stream the stories. Thus the characters in the tragedy emerge. In the Cretan stories these characters are Pasiphaë, the Minotaur, Ariadne, Phaedra, Minos, Hippolytus, and Aegeus himself. Returning from Crete, Theseus forgets to lower the black sails, and Aegeus kills himself by leaping from the Acropolis. It’s the last footnote to the displacement of the sacrifice.

  “Finally, some people in Naxos have their own version of the story. They claim that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes: one was Dionysus’s bride in Naxos and mother of Staphylus and his brother; the other, who lived some time later, was first abducted then abandoned by Theseus, arriving afterward on the island with a nurse called Corcyne, whose grave these people will take you to. The second Ariadne, who also died on the island, was not granted the same honors as the first: the festival to commemorate the earlier Ariadne takes place amid games and fun, whereas for the second there are only sacrifices mingled with mourning and sadness.”

  Ariadne’s is a dual destiny right from the start, and the rites held on Naxos celebrated that duality, without looking for relief in notions of death and resurrection. She who becomes Dionysus’s “bride,” the only one chosen from the crowd of women surrounding him, she who even receives a new name from him when he calls her Libera, is also the woman Dionysus has killed. He asks Artemis to do it. The goddess was always ready to draw her bow. Dionysus asks her to transfix Ariadne with an arrow. And he wants to watch too. Then time turns all to euphemism. All that will remain on the walls of Pompeii is an image of celestial love.

  Mythical figures live many lives, die many deaths, and in this they differ from the characters we find in novels, who can never go beyond the single gesture. But in each of these lives and deaths all the others are present, and we can hear their echo. Only when we become aware of a sudden consistency between incompatibles can we say we have crossed the threshold of myth. Abandoned in Naxos, Ariadne was shot dead by Artemis’s arrow; Dionysus ordered the killing and stood watching, motionless. Or: Ariadne hung herself in Naxos, after being left by Theseus. Or: pregnant by Theseus and shipwrecked in Cyprus, she died there in childbirth. Or: Dionysus came to Ariadne in Naxos, together with his band of followers; they celebrated a divine marriage, after which she rose into the sky, where we still see her today amid the northern constellations. Or: Dionysus came to Ariadne in Naxos, after which she followed him around on his adventures, sharing his bed and fighting with his soldiers; when Dionysus attacked Perseus in the country near Argos, Ariadne went with him, armed to fight amid the ranks of the crazed Bacchants, until Perseus shook the deadly face of Medusa in front of her and Ariadne was turned to stone. And there she stayed, a stone in a field.

  No other woman, or goddess, had so many deaths as Ariadne. That stone in Argos, that constellation in the sky, that hanging corpse, that death by childbirth, that girl with an arrow through her breast: Ariadne was all of this.

  But would the story have ever been set in motion without the gadfly, instrument of Hera’s revenge? Wherever we look, among the lives of the heroes, we are met by the unwavering, implacable gaze of the goddess, that bovine eye that never seems to close. The very name Heracles (“glory of Hera”) tells us right from the start that glory is neither more nor less than a by-product of Hera’s revenge.

  But how did it all begin? As children, Zeus and his sister Hera quickly discovered secret love. “Unbeknown to their dear parents, they embraced in bed,” says Homer. They enjoyed the most extravagantly drawn out amorous childhood of all time. “Then Zeus petted [with Hera] for three hundred years.” In their ears they could hear the endless thunder of the Imbrasus, the river of Samos. They embraced between the river and the sea. They never grew weary, they forgot the world beyond those waters—and Zeus put off the moment when he would rule over it. Thousands of years later, in the wet sand of the Imbraso, a stone relief that must once have stood on a wooden bed was found. It shows Zeus, standing, moving toward Hera. Her chest is bare, and he is taking her right breast in his hand.

  Hera is goddess of the bed—she even worries if old Oceanus and Tethys, who brought her up as a girl, are depriving themselves of it. For her, the veil, the first veil, is the pastós, the nuptial curtain that surrounds the thálamos. In Paestum, in Samos there is still
evidence that the bed was a central devotional object of the cult. And when Hera makes love to Zeus on top of Mount Gargaron, the earth sprouts a carpet of flowers for the occasion. “Thick and soft, it lifted them up off the ground.” The pseudo-bed is then surrounded by a golden cloud, to substitute for the pastós. The bed, for Hera, was the primordial place par excellence, the playpen of erotic devotion. In her most majestic shrine, the Heraion in Argos, the worshiper could see, placed on a votive table, an image of Hera’s mouth closing amorously around Zeus’s erect phallus. No other goddess, not even Aphrodite, had allowed an image like that in her shrine.

  And it was in the Heraion that the story of Zeus’s first betrayal, origin of all vendettas, began. To betray Hera, Zeus chose one of her priestesses, the human being closest to her, since it was she held the keys to the shrine. Her name was Io. In looks and dress it was Io’s duty to re-create the image of the goddess she served. She was a copy endeavoring to imitate a statue. But Zeus chose the copy; he wanted that minimal difference which is enough to overturn order and generate the new, generate meaning. And he wanted it because it was a difference, and her because she was a copy. The more negligible the difference, the more terrible and violent the revenge. All Zeus’s other adventures, all Hera’s other vendettas, would be nothing more than further heaves on that same wheel of necessity Hera set rolling to punish the woman most like herself.

  II

  (photo credit 2.1)

  THERE IS A GIVE-AND-TAKE AMONG THE gods, a strict accountancy that takes on new ramifications with every passing age. Artemis came in useful as a murderer when Dionysus wanted to kill Ariadne. But the day would come when Artemis too, proud virgin that she was, would find to her amazement that she needed the help of that impure and promiscuous god. She too would need to ask someone to kill for her, leaving him the choice of weapon. And she asked Dionysus.

  A mortal had made a fool of her. Aura, a tall mountain girl with clean limbs and feet that could run like the wind. She would take on boars and lions single-handed, disdaining weaker prey. And she likewise disdained Aphrodite and all her doings. All she wanted was virginity and strength, nothing else. One hot, sultry day, while sleeping on some laurel twigs, Aura had a disturbing dream: a barbaric, whirling Eros was offering Aphrodite and Adonis a lioness he had caught with an enchanted girdle (Aphrodite’s perhaps? Had this erotic ornament become a weapon for capturing wild beasts?). In the dream, Aura saw herself standing next to Aphrodite and Adonis, her arms around their shoulders. It was a sinuous, flourishing group they made! Eros approached with his lioness and presented the animal with these words: “Goddess of garlands, I bring you Aura, the girl whose only love is her virginity. See, the enchanted girdle has bent the stubborn will of the invincible lioness.” Aura woke up with a sense of anxiety. For the first time she had seen herself split in two: she was the prey, and she was also the huntress watching her prey. She was furious with the laurel leaves she’d slept on, and hence with Daphne: why had a virgin sent her a dream worthy of a slut? Then she forgot all about it.

  On another hot, sultry day, Aura was leading Artemis’s chariot toward the Sangarius waterfalls, where the goddess planned to bathe. Running beside the chariot, the goddess’s maids had taken their bands from their foreheads and were lifting up the hems of their tunics, showing their knees. They were the Hyperborean virgins. Opis lifted Artemis’s bow from her shoulders, and Hekaerge took her quiver. Loxo untied her boots. Artemis stepped carefully into the water. She kept her legs tight together, lifting her tunic off only as the water began to lap at it. Aura watched her with a cruel, inquisitive eye. She studied her mistress’s body. Then she swam around her, stretching right out in the water. She stopped next to the goddess, shook a few drops from her breasts, and said: “Artemis, why are your breasts soft and swollen, why have your cheeks got that rosy bloom? You’re not like Athena: her chest is tight as a boy’s. Or look at my body with its sweet smell of strength. My breasts are round as shields. My skin is taut as a bowstring. Perhaps you’d be better suited to shooting and suffering Eros’s arrows. No one looking at you would ever think of inviolable virginity.” Artemis listened in silence. “Her eyes flashed murderous glints.” She leapt out of the water, put on her tunic and girdle, and disappeared without saying another word.

  She went straight to Nemesis, high up in the Taurus Mountains, to ask her advice. She found her, as ever, sitting in front of her wheel. A griffin was squatting on her throne. Nemesis could remember Artemis coming in for all kinds of insults. But always from men, or at most from a mother with children, Niobe, for example, now transformed to a damp rock in the mountains here. Or was it the old matrimonial comedy business? Had Zeus gone and teased her again about it being time to get married? No, said Artemis, this time it was a virgin, Lelanto’s daughter. She couldn’t even bring herself to repeat the insulting things Aura had dared to say about her body and breasts. Nemesis decided she wouldn’t turn Aura to stone, as she had Niobe. Apart from anything else, they were related; the girl belonged to the ancient family of the Titans, as did Nemesis herself. But she would rob her of her virginity, a punishment no less cruel perhaps. And this time it would be Dionysus who would take care of the matter. Artemis agreed. As if to give her a foretaste of her destiny, Nemesis got on her griffin-drawn chariot and went off to see Aura. To make the stubborn girl bow her head, she cracked her whip of snakes on her neck. And Aura’s body went under the wheel of necessity.

  Now Dionysus could get moving. In his last adventure he had come across another girl warrior: Pallene. Something he’d never experienced before in all his amorous adventures had happened with her. He’d had to agree to a wrestling match with the girl. The match took place in front of a crowd of spectators, and, most important, in front of the girl’s incestuous father. Pallene appeared in the sand-covered ring with her long tresses around her neck and a red sash around her breasts. A piece of white cloth barely covered her crotch. Her skin was shiny with oil. The match was a long one. Sometimes Dionysus would find himself squeezing the palm of a deliciously white hand. And, rather than overcome that body, he wanted to touch it. He wanted to put off his voluptuous victory, but meanwhile he realized that he was breathing hard like a mere mortal. A moment’s distraction, no more, and Pallene was struggling to lift Dionysus and throw him. That was too much. Dionysus slipped out of her grasp and managed to lift her instead. But then he ended up laying her down quite softly, his furtive eyes straying over her body, her thick hair in the dust. And already Pallene was back on her feet again. So Dionysus decided to throw her properly. He gripped her by the neck and tried to make her knee give. But he judged the move badly and lost his balance. Down he went on his back in the dust, Pallene astride his stomach. A second later, Pallene slipped away, leaving Dionysus on the ground. But just another moment and Dionysus had managed to throw her. The score was even, and Pallene wanted to go on. But her father, Sithon, intervened, giving Dionysus the victory. Drenched in sweat, the god looked up at the king coming over to give him his prize and speared him with his thyrsus. The man was a murderer and destined to die in any event. As a love gift Dionysus gave Pallene the thyrsus dripping with her father’s blood. The next thing was the wedding.

  Amid the hubbub of the celebrations, Pallene wept for Sithon. He may have been cruel, but he was still her father. Gently, Dionysus pointed to the rat-gnawed heads of her twenty previous suitors on display in front of the palace doors like the first fruits of the harvest. And to soothe her he said she couldn’t possibly be the daughter of such a terrible man. Maybe her real father was a god, Hermes, for example, or Ares. But, even as he spoke, Dionysus was already beginning to feel vaguely impatient. He had beaten Pallene. She was his lover now. Soon she would become a faithful follower like so many others. Yet only that once had Dionysus experienced the excitement of finding himself wrestling in the dust with a woman he desired but couldn’t dominate. And he yearned for an unattainable body.

  He went off alone into the mountains. He couldn’t
stop fantasizing a strong, elusive woman, a woman as capable of hurting him as he was of hurting her. The time was ripe for Eros to have him longing for an even more unattainable body. He sensed in a sudden gust of wind that a woman even stronger, even more beautiful, and even more hostile than the wrestler Pallene was hiding right there in the woods: Aura. And already he knew that she would flee from him; she would never surrender. For once Dionysus decided to go it alone and in silence, free from the clamor of his Bacchants. Crouching behind a bush, he caught a glimpse of Aura’s white thigh thrusting through the dark undergrowth. Dogs bayed all around. And Dionysus found himself melting like a woman. He had never felt so powerless. The idea of talking to the girl seemed as pointless as talking to an oak tree. But a hamadryad living in the roots of a pine told him what he needed to know: he would never lie down with Aura in a bed. Only in the forest and only if he bound her hands and feet would he ever be able to possess her. And he should remember not to leave her any gifts.

  While the exhausted Dionysus was sleeping, Ariadne appeared to him again. Why did he always desert his women the same way he had deserted her? Why, having desired the girl so much when they were rolling about together in the sand, was he now completely forgetting Pallene? In the end Theseus had been the better of the two. And, before she went, Ariadne made an ironic gesture. She gave him a spindle and asked him to give it to his next victim as a gift so that one day people would say, She gave Theseus the thread and Dionysus the spindle.