‘Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis)’. – James George Frazer, 1911
Mythology, in the words of one uncompromising scholar, is nothing but religion in which no one believes any more. Here, we are not far from Hulme’s qualifying of Romanticism as “spilt religion”, since the ultimate concerns of both poetry and mythology are nature and the infinite, weighed against the finitude of human existence.
Hume goes farther, comparing Classicism to a well and Romanticism to a bucket – wells do not spill; buckets, with their hectic and hurried porters, often do. It is as if, along the path from the far wellspring of man’s first consciousness of self, his path is damp from beliefs spilled along the way, as he heads back again and yet again to let down his frayed rope and battered bucket to fill with water of truth…
A bough for the Underworld: The Golden Bough by John Mallord William Turner, exhibited 1834. The Sibyl, holding her golden sickle, displays the freshly cut bough in front of Lake Avernus, gateway to the Underworld. The Fates dance in the background.
Left: Aeneas and the Sybil by an anonymous artist, circa 1800. The painting was formerly attributed to John Martin.
Centre: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn: The Palace of Sleep, dwelling place of the Oneiroi, the offspring of Hypnos. The Gate of Ivory is on the left and the Gate of Horn on the right. The plate is part of “The Temple of the Muses”, an illustrated book of Ovid’s more popular tales, published in Amsterdam by the French engraver Bernard Picart in 1733. The plate is accompanied by a caption in French, English, German and Dutch.
Right: Questions in Delphi: Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia by Eugène Delacroix, painted between 1835 and 1845. John Collier painted his Priestess of Delphi in 1891. He dutifully included all the elements believed to play a role in the depiction of the Pythia: the laurel branch, the tripod on which she sits, the bowl of water from the Spring of Enthusiasm and above all the sacred vapours drifting up from the fissures. Carter the Great presents the Modern Priestess of Delphi, circa 1926. The Secrets of the Delphi Oracle, Fate Magazine, July 1955.
There are two gates to the land of Sleep and Dreams: one of ivory, one of horn. They first appear in the Odyssey. Of them, Penelope says: “Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came.”
Socrates adds, in his dialogue Charmides: “Listen then,” I said, “to my dream, to see whether it comes through horn or through ivory.”
Why Virgil sends Aeneas back through the gate of deception is a mystery:
“There are two gates of sleep: one is called the Gate of Horn and it is an easy exit for true shades; the other is made all in gleaming white ivory, but through it the powers of the underworld send false dreams up to the heavens. Here on the night did Anchises walk with his son and with the Sibyl and spoke such words to them as he sent them on their journey through the Gate of Ivory.”
In the waking world, gold and ivory define Chryselephantine sculpture, originating in Archaic Greece from the 2ndmillennium B.C., combined gold and ivory (representing mortal or immortal flesh and armour & divine accoutrements). Of the most famous, the Athena Parthenos of Phidias, remains only the hole in the temple floor that affixed the wooden structure of the statue, and Pausanias’ description: “…The statue is created with ivory and gold. On the middle of her helmet is likeness of the Sphinx…and on either side of the helmet are griffins inrelief. … The statue of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa isworked in ivory. She holds a statue of Victorythat is approx. four cubitshigh, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Ericthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora inrelief.”
Chryselephantine sculpture is one of the more neglected of art forms of Ancient Greece. While much is made of Phidias’ masterpieces, they were far from alone, the desire to commission sculptures in gold and ivory swept through the ancient world. Ivory, this time, was not seen as deceptive, but as being the closest incarnation of human flesh, and the golden hair, garments and accoutrements brought the spirit of the observer into the very company of the gods. Philostratos states in his Vita Apollonii: “As for myself, I would far rather enter a temple, no matter how small, and behold in it a statue of ivory and gold, than behold one of pottery and bad workmanship in a vastly larger one.”Chryselephantine considered to approach achieropoieta (“not fashioned by human hands”), in sum, gifts from the divine, enhanced by the fact that neither ivory nor gold are native to the Greek world.
The most complete accounts are to be found in Pausanias, notably his thousand-word description of Phidias’ Zeus at Olympia. Begun around 448 B.C., a decade before the Athena Parthenos. In Pausanias’ words:
“The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive-tree. In his right hand he holds a Victory in ivory and gold, with a tiara and crown on his head; and in his left hand a sceptre adorned with all manner of precious stones, and the bird seated on the sceptre is an eagle. The robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. And the throne is richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it. There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne, and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the Sphinxes, Apollo and Artemis shooting down the children of Niobe. And between the feet of the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from each of the four feet. In the division nearest the entrance there are seven models,—the eighth has vanished no one knows where or how. And they are imitations of ancient contests, for in the days of Phidias the contests for boys were not yet established. And the figure with its head muffled up in a scarf is, they say, Pantarces, who was a native of Elis and the darling of Phidias. This Pantarces won the wrestling-prize for boys in the 86th Olympiad. And in the remaining divisions is the band of Hercules fighting against the Amazons. The number on each side is 29, and Theseus is on the side of Hercules. And the throne is supported not only by the four feet, but also by four pillars between the feet. But one cannot get under the throne, as one can at Amyclæ, and pass inside; for at Olympia there are panels like walls that keep one off. Of these panels the one opposite the doors of the temple is painted sky-blue only, but the others contain paintings by Panænus. Among them is Atlas bearing up Earth and Heaven, and Hercules standing by willing to relieve him of his load; and Theseus and Pirithous, and Greece, and Salamis with the figure-head of a ship in her hand, and the contest of Hercules with the Nemean lion, and Ajax’s unknightly violation of Cassandra, and Hippodamia, the daughter of Œnomaus, with her mother; and Prometheus still chained to the rock, and Hercules gazing at him. For the tradition is that Hercules slew the eagle that was ever tormenting Prometheus on Mount Caucasus, and released Prometheus from his chains. The last paintings are Penthesilea dying and Achilles supporting her, and two Hesperides carrying the apples of which they are fabled to have been the keepers. This Panænus was the brother of Phidias; and at Athens in the Painted Stoa he has painted the action at Marathon. At the top of the throne, Phidias has represented above the head of Zeus the three Graces and three Seasons. For these too, as we learn from the poets, were daughters of Zeus. Homer in the Iliad has represented the Seasons as having the care of Heaven, as a kind of guards of a royal palace. And the base under the feet of Zeus (what is called in Attic [Greek]) has golden lions engraved on it, and the battle between Theseus and the Amazons,—the first famous exploit of the Athenians beyond their own borders. And on the platform that supports the throne there are various ornaments round Zeus, and gilt carving,—the Sun seated in his chariot, and Zeus and Hera; and near is Grace. Hermes is close to her, and Vesta close to Hermes. And next to Vesta is Eros receiving Aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by Persuasion. And Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Hercules, are standing by, and at the end of the platform Amphitrite and Poseidon, and Selene apparently urging on her horse. And some say it is a mule and not a horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about this mule.
I know that the size of the Olympian Zeus both in height and breadth has been stated; but I cannot bestow praise on the measurers, for their recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from looking at the statue. They make the god also to have testified to the art of Phidias. For they say that when the statue was finished, Phidias prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately Zeus struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day there is a brazen urn with a lid.
And all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black stone. And a border of Parian marble runs round this black stone, as a preservative against spilled oil. For oil is good for the statue at Olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the grove. But in the Acropolis at Athens, in regard to the statue of Athene called the Maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water freely. And when I was at Epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither water nor oil to the statue of Æsculapius, the sacristans of the temple informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well.”
Unfortunately, given the nature of construction of chryselephantine sculpture, plaques of ivory and gold panels affixed to a wooden framework, no monumental sculptures have survived. We do not know what became of the Zeus, it may have been dismantled when pagan temples were closed by Theodosius in 391 AD, it may have been transported piecemeal to Constantinople and perished in the fire of the Palace of Lausus in 475. It is unlikely we will ever know. (As for the Athena Parthenos, Lachares, tyrant of Athens, stripped the gold to pay his troops in 296 B.C., a fire further damaged the statue in about 165 B.C., and afterword, it disappears from history.) Few serious studies of chryselephantine statuary have ever been made.
Nonetheless, the notion of that statuary made to reproduce, or at least echo, godliness for the contemplation of human eyes, underlines the notion of the divine in the work of the artist, of the surpassing of nature in order to attain the ideal. In the artist, ecstasy and intellect combine to create art, an act that has magical properties and is intimately linked to the upper spheres.
Left – Discord in the Garden: The Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibited in 1806. The three daughters of Hesperus tended a tree of golden apples on the slopes of Mount Atlas. Eris, goddess of Discord, plucks an apple, setting off the events leading to the Trojan war.
Centre – Trouble for the Hesperides, left to right: John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) Atlas and the Hesperides 1922-25. The Garden of the Hesperides by Frederick, Lord Leighton, 1892. The Garden of Hesperides by Albert Herter. Hercules in the garden of Hesperides by Rupert Bunny, c. 1922
Right – First to the finish: Atalanta’s Race, by John Dickson Batten, 1922.
That particular garden is the source of the Apple of Discord, which led to the Trojan War. The apple that Eris tossed into the midst of Thetis and Peleus’ wedding feast immediately sewed dissention. Here is the episode in the words of Josephine Preston Peabody (1874-1922), from Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew, 1897.
Stories of the Trojan War: I. The Apple of Discord
“There was once a war so great that the sound of it has come ringing down the centuries from singer to singer, and will never die.
The rivalries of men and gods brought about many calamities, but none so heavy as this; and it would never have come to pass, they say, if it had not been for jealousy among the immortals, all because of a golden apple! But Destiny has nurtured ominous plants from little seeds; and this is how one evil grew great enough to overshadow heaven and earth.
The sea-nymph Thetis (whom Zeus himself had once desired for his wife) was given in marriage to a mortal, Peleus, and there was a great wedding-feast in heaven. Thither all the immortals were bidden, save one, Eris, the goddess of Discord, ever an unwelcome guest. But she came unbidden. While the wedding-guests sat at feast, she broke in upon their mirth, flung among them a golden apple, and departed with looks that boded ill. Some one picked up the strange missile and read its inscription: For the Fairest; and at once discussion arose among the goddesses. They were all eager to claim the prize, but only three persisted.
Venus, the very goddess of beauty, said that it was hers by right; but Juno could not endure to own herself less fair than another, and even Athena coveted the palm of beauty as well as of wisdom, and would not give it up! Discord had indeed come to the wedding-feast. Not one of the gods dared to decide so dangerous a question, not Zeus himself, and the three rivals were forced to choose a judge among mortals.
Now there lived on Mount Ida, near the city of Troy, a certain young shepherd by the name of Paris. He was as comely asGanymede himself, that Trojan youth whom Zeus, in the shape of an eagle, seized and bore away to Olympus, to be a cup-bearer to the gods. Paris, too, was a Trojan of royal birth, but like Oedipus he had been left on the mountain in his infancy, because the Oracle had foretold that he would be the death of his kindred and the ruin of his country. Destiny saved and nurtured him to fulfil that prophecy. He grew up as a shepherd and tended his flocks on the mountain, but his beauty held the favor of all the wood-folk there and won the heart of the nymph Œnone.
To him, at last, the three goddesses entrusted the judgment and the golden apple. Juno first stood before him in all her glory as Queen of gods and men, and attended by her favorite peacocks as gorgeous to see as royal fan-bearers.
“Use but the judgment of a prince, Paris,” she said, “and I will give thee wealth and kingly power.”
Such majesty and such promises would have moved the heart of any man; but the eager Paris had at least to hear the claims of the other rivals. Athena rose before him, a vision welcome as daylight, with her sea-gray eyes and golden hair beneath a golden helmet.
“Be wise in honoring me, Paris,” she said, “and I will give thee wisdom that shall last forever, great glory among men, and renown in war.”
Last of all, Venus shone upon him, beautiful as none can ever hope to be. If she had come, unnamed, as any country maid, her loveliness would have dazzled him like sea-foam in the sun; but she was girt with her magical Cestus, a spell of beauty that no one can resist.
Without a bribe she might have conquered, and she smiled upon his dumb amazement, saying, “Paris, thou shalt yet have for wife the fairest woman in the world.”
At these words, the happy shepherd fell on his knees and offered her the golden apple. He took no heed of the slighted goddesses, who vanished in a cloud that boded storm.
From that hour he sought only the counsel of Venus, and only cared to find the highway to his new fortunes. From her he learned that he was the son of King Priam of Troy, and with her assistance he deserted the nymph Oenone, whom he had married, and went in search of his royal kindred.
For it chanced at that time that Priam proclaimed a contest of strength between his sons and certain other princes, and promised as prize the most splendid bull that could be found among the herds of Mount Ida. Thither came the herdsmen to choose, and when they led away the pride of Paris’s heart, he followed to Troy, thinking that he would try his fortune and perhaps win back his own.
The games took place before Priam and Hecuba and all their children, including those noble princes Hector and Helenus, and the young Cassandra, their sister. This poor maiden had a sad story, in spite of her royalty; for, because she had once disdained Apollo, she was fated to foresee all things, and ever to have her prophecies disbelieved. On this fateful day, she alone was oppressed with strange forebodings.
But if he who was to be the ruin of his country had returned, he had come victoriously. Paris won the contest. At the very moment of his honor, poor Cassandra saw him with her prophetic eyes; and seeing as well all the guilt and misery that he was to bring upon them, she broke into bitter lamentations, and would have warned her kindred against the evil to come. But the Trojans gave little heed; they were wont to look upon her visions as spells of madness. Paris had come back to them a glorious youth and a victor; and when he made known the secret of his birth, they cast the words of the Oracle to the winds, and received the shepherd as a long-lost prince.
Thus far all went happily. But Venus, whose promise had not yet been fulfilled, bade Paris procure a ship and go in search of his destined bride. The prince said nothing of this quest, but urged his kindred to let him go; and giving out a rumor that he was to find his father’s lost sister Hesione, he set sail for Greece, and finally landed at Sparta.
There he was kindly received by Menelaus, the king, and his wife, Fair Helen.
This queen had been reared as the daughter of Tyndarus and Queen Leda, but some say that she was the child of an enchanted swan, and there was indeed a strange spell about her. All the greatest heroes of Greece had wooed her before she left her father’s palace to be the wife of King Menelaus; and Tyndarus, fearing for her peace, had bound her many suitors by an oath. According to this pledge, they were to respect her choice, and to go to the aid of her husband if ever she should be stolen away from him. For in all Greece there was nothing so beautiful as the beauty of Helen. She was the fairest woman in the world.
Now thus did Venus fulfil her promise and the shepherd win his reward with dishonor. Paris dwelt at the court of Menelaus for a long time, treated with a royal courtesy which he ill repaid. For at length while the king was absent on a journey to Crete, his guest won the heart of Fair Helen, and persuaded her to forsake her husband and sail away to Troy.
King Menelaus returned to find the nest empty of the swan. Paris and the fairest woman in the world were well across the sea.”
Byzantine Circular Pyxis. This circular Pyxis or box depicts two scenes. This scene presents the Olympian gods feasting around a tripod table holding the golden Apple of the Hesperides.
A bough for the Underworld: The Golden Bough by John Mallord William Turner, exhibited 1834. The Sibyl, holding her golden sickle, displays the freshly cut bough in front of Lake Avernus, gateway to the Underworld. The Fates dance in the background.
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Gold and silver are prominently placed on mythology’s periodic table, their most obvious role being symbols of the sun and moon. Mythology speaks of boughs of gold or silver and apples of gold as well, precious branches and fruits that are nonetheless somehow accepted as natural (in other words: fashioned by gods) and not made by the clever hands of men. And there are associations: gold and ivory, or ivory and horn, as if the symbolic nuptials of two dissimilar substances can somehow evoke the dualist nature of life, the two sides of the coin, the contradictions, aspirations, illusions and contrasts of myth.[1] Once religion becomes myth, once the fervor and the requirement to believe, the obligation to adhere, and above all the inherent exclusion clause of orthodoxy have all fallen by the wayside, what is left is the stuff of dreams and poetical truth. This multiplicity of belief, drawn from that bottomless well that reflects the sky, was above all initially considered as an entertaining facet of ethnology, lauded if Egyptian or Greek, or noted with a wry superior smile if typecast as primitive. (Mythography, like geology, tends to lay epochs out in tidy sedimentary layers.) George Frazer, who sat like a spider at the center of a word-spanning web of hunter-gatherers of folk tale and ritual, was convinced that these two unwritten legacies could inform us of the nature of the myths that lie at their wellheads. Of course, he was wrong; but on the way, his encyclopedic ramblings, entitled The Golden Bough, grew to thirteen volumes, a treasure spun of golden thread, perhaps the richest study of its kind.[2] When Aeneas wishes to speak with the shade of his dead father, he is told by the Cumaean Sybil Delphobe that he must take as a gift to Proserpina a golden bough from a tree growing nearby. Aided by two doves sent by Venus, he finds the tree and breaks off a branch – branch immediately replaced by the growth of a new one, a good omen for his quest. Aeneas, guided by Delphobe, descends to the Underworld. She presents the branch to Charon, who allows them aboard his craft; she throws a drugged cake to Cerberus, who devours it and falls asleep. After what amounts to a brief guided tour of hell, Aeneas places the golden bough above the arched door of Pluto’s palace, and goes through to the Elysian Fields, where he converses with his father Anchises. Aeneas returns to the world through a gate of ivory.
Left: Aeneas and the Sybil by an anonymous artist, circa 1800. The painting was formerly attributed to John Martin.
Centre: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn: The Palace of Sleep, dwelling place of the Oneiroi, the offspring of Hypnos. The Gate of Ivory is on the left and the Gate of Horn on the right. The plate is part of “The Temple of the Muses”, an illustrated book of Ovid’s more popular tales, published in Amsterdam by the French engraver Bernard Picart in 1733. The plate is accompanied by a caption in French, English, German and Dutch.
Right: Questions in Delphi: Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia by Eugène Delacroix, painted between 1835 and 1845. John Collier painted his Priestess of Delphi in 1891. He dutifully included all the elements believed to play a role in the depiction of the Pythia: the laurel branch, the tripod on which she sits, the bowl of water from the Spring of Enthusiasm and above all the sacred vapours drifting up from the fissures. Carter the Great presents the Modern Priestess of Delphi, circa 1926. The Secrets of the Delphi Oracle, Fate Magazine, July 1955.
There are two gates to the land of Sleep and Dreams: one of ivory, one of horn. They first appear in the Odyssey. Of them, Penelope says: “Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came.”
Socrates adds, in his dialogue Charmides: “Listen then,” I said, “to my dream, to see whether it comes through horn or through ivory.”
Why Virgil sends Aeneas back through the gate of deception is a mystery:
“There are two gates of sleep: one is called the Gate of Horn and it is an easy exit for true shades; the other is made all in gleaming white ivory, but through it the powers of the underworld send false dreams up to the heavens. Here on the night did Anchises walk with his son and with the Sibyl and spoke such words to them as he sent them on their journey through the Gate of Ivory.”
In the waking world, gold and ivory define Chryselephantine sculpture, originating in Archaic Greece from the 2ndmillennium B.C., combined gold and ivory (representing mortal or immortal flesh and armour & divine accoutrements). Of the most famous, the Athena Parthenos of Phidias, remains only the hole in the temple floor that affixed the wooden structure of the statue, and Pausanias’ description: “…The statue is created with ivory and gold. On the middle of her helmet is likeness of the Sphinx…and on either side of the helmet are griffins inrelief. … The statue of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa isworked in ivory. She holds a statue of Victorythat is approx. four cubitshigh, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Ericthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora inrelief.”
Chryselephantine sculpture is one of the more neglected of art forms of Ancient Greece. While much is made of Phidias’ masterpieces, they were far from alone, the desire to commission sculptures in gold and ivory swept through the ancient world. Ivory, this time, was not seen as deceptive, but as being the closest incarnation of human flesh, and the golden hair, garments and accoutrements brought the spirit of the observer into the very company of the gods. Philostratos states in his Vita Apollonii: “As for myself, I would far rather enter a temple, no matter how small, and behold in it a statue of ivory and gold, than behold one of pottery and bad workmanship in a vastly larger one.”Chryselephantine considered to approach achieropoieta (“not fashioned by human hands”), in sum, gifts from the divine, enhanced by the fact that neither ivory nor gold are native to the Greek world.
The most complete accounts are to be found in Pausanias, notably his thousand-word description of Phidias’ Zeus at Olympia. Begun around 448 B.C., a decade before the Athena Parthenos. In Pausanias’ words:
“The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive-tree. In his right hand he holds a Victory in ivory and gold, with a tiara and crown on his head; and in his left hand a sceptre adorned with all manner of precious stones, and the bird seated on the sceptre is an eagle. The robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. And the throne is richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it. There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne, and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the Sphinxes, Apollo and Artemis shooting down the children of Niobe. And between the feet of the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from each of the four feet. In the division nearest the entrance there are seven models,—the eighth has vanished no one knows where or how. And they are imitations of ancient contests, for in the days of Phidias the contests for boys were not yet established. And the figure with its head muffled up in a scarf is, they say, Pantarces, who was a native of Elis and the darling of Phidias. This Pantarces won the wrestling-prize for boys in the 86th Olympiad. And in the remaining divisions is the band of Hercules fighting against the Amazons. The number on each side is 29, and Theseus is on the side of Hercules. And the throne is supported not only by the four feet, but also by four pillars between the feet. But one cannot get under the throne, as one can at Amyclæ, and pass inside; for at Olympia there are panels like walls that keep one off. Of these panels the one opposite the doors of the temple is painted sky-blue only, but the others contain paintings by Panænus. Among them is Atlas bearing up Earth and Heaven, and Hercules standing by willing to relieve him of his load; and Theseus and Pirithous, and Greece, and Salamis with the figure-head of a ship in her hand, and the contest of Hercules with the Nemean lion, and Ajax’s unknightly violation of Cassandra, and Hippodamia, the daughter of Œnomaus, with her mother; and Prometheus still chained to the rock, and Hercules gazing at him. For the tradition is that Hercules slew the eagle that was ever tormenting Prometheus on Mount Caucasus, and released Prometheus from his chains. The last paintings are Penthesilea dying and Achilles supporting her, and two Hesperides carrying the apples of which they are fabled to have been the keepers. This Panænus was the brother of Phidias; and at Athens in the Painted Stoa he has painted the action at Marathon. At the top of the throne, Phidias has represented above the head of Zeus the three Graces and three Seasons. For these too, as we learn from the poets, were daughters of Zeus. Homer in the Iliad has represented the Seasons as having the care of Heaven, as a kind of guards of a royal palace. And the base under the feet of Zeus (what is called in Attic [Greek]) has golden lions engraved on it, and the battle between Theseus and the Amazons,—the first famous exploit of the Athenians beyond their own borders. And on the platform that supports the throne there are various ornaments round Zeus, and gilt carving,—the Sun seated in his chariot, and Zeus and Hera; and near is Grace. Hermes is close to her, and Vesta close to Hermes. And next to Vesta is Eros receiving Aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by Persuasion. And Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Hercules, are standing by, and at the end of the platform Amphitrite and Poseidon, and Selene apparently urging on her horse. And some say it is a mule and not a horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about this mule.
I know that the size of the Olympian Zeus both in height and breadth has been stated; but I cannot bestow praise on the measurers, for their recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from looking at the statue. They make the god also to have testified to the art of Phidias. For they say that when the statue was finished, Phidias prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately Zeus struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day there is a brazen urn with a lid.
And all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black stone. And a border of Parian marble runs round this black stone, as a preservative against spilled oil. For oil is good for the statue at Olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the grove. But in the Acropolis at Athens, in regard to the statue of Athene called the Maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water freely. And when I was at Epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither water nor oil to the statue of Æsculapius, the sacristans of the temple informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well.”
Unfortunately, given the nature of construction of chryselephantine sculpture, plaques of ivory and gold panels affixed to a wooden framework, no monumental sculptures have survived. We do not know what became of the Zeus, it may have been dismantled when pagan temples were closed by Theodosius in 391 AD, it may have been transported piecemeal to Constantinople and perished in the fire of the Palace of Lausus in 475. It is unlikely we will ever know. (As for the Athena Parthenos, Lachares, tyrant of Athens, stripped the gold to pay his troops in 296 B.C., a fire further damaged the statue in about 165 B.C., and afterword, it disappears from history.) Few serious studies of chryselephantine statuary have ever been made.
Nonetheless, the notion of that statuary made to reproduce, or at least echo, godliness for the contemplation of human eyes, underlines the notion of the divine in the work of the artist, of the surpassing of nature in order to attain the ideal. In the artist, ecstasy and intellect combine to create art, an act that has magical properties and is intimately linked to the upper spheres.
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But back to apples. When Melanion feared he would lose the footrace against Atalanta, Aphrodite gave him three golden apples. One by one, he dropped them to distract her, and won the race. A golden apple was at the origin of the tale of the Judgement of Paris. Idunn, one of the eight goddesses at the banquet in Asgard, possesses a tree of golden apples, which guarantee the immortality of the Aesir. Kidnapped by the giant Pjazi, she is rescued by Loki. A similar tree is found in the Gardens of the Hesperides, under the guard of the drakon Ladon.
Left – Discord in the Garden: The Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibited in 1806. The three daughters of Hesperus tended a tree of golden apples on the slopes of Mount Atlas. Eris, goddess of Discord, plucks an apple, setting off the events leading to the Trojan war.
Centre – Trouble for the Hesperides, left to right: John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) Atlas and the Hesperides 1922-25. The Garden of the Hesperides by Frederick, Lord Leighton, 1892. The Garden of Hesperides by Albert Herter. Hercules in the garden of Hesperides by Rupert Bunny, c. 1922
Right – First to the finish: Atalanta’s Race, by John Dickson Batten, 1922.
That particular garden is the source of the Apple of Discord, which led to the Trojan War. The apple that Eris tossed into the midst of Thetis and Peleus’ wedding feast immediately sewed dissention. Here is the episode in the words of Josephine Preston Peabody (1874-1922), from Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew, 1897.
Stories of the Trojan War: I. The Apple of Discord
“There was once a war so great that the sound of it has come ringing down the centuries from singer to singer, and will never die.
The rivalries of men and gods brought about many calamities, but none so heavy as this; and it would never have come to pass, they say, if it had not been for jealousy among the immortals, all because of a golden apple! But Destiny has nurtured ominous plants from little seeds; and this is how one evil grew great enough to overshadow heaven and earth.
The sea-nymph Thetis (whom Zeus himself had once desired for his wife) was given in marriage to a mortal, Peleus, and there was a great wedding-feast in heaven. Thither all the immortals were bidden, save one, Eris, the goddess of Discord, ever an unwelcome guest. But she came unbidden. While the wedding-guests sat at feast, she broke in upon their mirth, flung among them a golden apple, and departed with looks that boded ill. Some one picked up the strange missile and read its inscription: For the Fairest; and at once discussion arose among the goddesses. They were all eager to claim the prize, but only three persisted.
Venus, the very goddess of beauty, said that it was hers by right; but Juno could not endure to own herself less fair than another, and even Athena coveted the palm of beauty as well as of wisdom, and would not give it up! Discord had indeed come to the wedding-feast. Not one of the gods dared to decide so dangerous a question, not Zeus himself, and the three rivals were forced to choose a judge among mortals.
Now there lived on Mount Ida, near the city of Troy, a certain young shepherd by the name of Paris. He was as comely asGanymede himself, that Trojan youth whom Zeus, in the shape of an eagle, seized and bore away to Olympus, to be a cup-bearer to the gods. Paris, too, was a Trojan of royal birth, but like Oedipus he had been left on the mountain in his infancy, because the Oracle had foretold that he would be the death of his kindred and the ruin of his country. Destiny saved and nurtured him to fulfil that prophecy. He grew up as a shepherd and tended his flocks on the mountain, but his beauty held the favor of all the wood-folk there and won the heart of the nymph Œnone.
To him, at last, the three goddesses entrusted the judgment and the golden apple. Juno first stood before him in all her glory as Queen of gods and men, and attended by her favorite peacocks as gorgeous to see as royal fan-bearers.
“Use but the judgment of a prince, Paris,” she said, “and I will give thee wealth and kingly power.”
Such majesty and such promises would have moved the heart of any man; but the eager Paris had at least to hear the claims of the other rivals. Athena rose before him, a vision welcome as daylight, with her sea-gray eyes and golden hair beneath a golden helmet.
“Be wise in honoring me, Paris,” she said, “and I will give thee wisdom that shall last forever, great glory among men, and renown in war.”
Last of all, Venus shone upon him, beautiful as none can ever hope to be. If she had come, unnamed, as any country maid, her loveliness would have dazzled him like sea-foam in the sun; but she was girt with her magical Cestus, a spell of beauty that no one can resist.
Without a bribe she might have conquered, and she smiled upon his dumb amazement, saying, “Paris, thou shalt yet have for wife the fairest woman in the world.”
At these words, the happy shepherd fell on his knees and offered her the golden apple. He took no heed of the slighted goddesses, who vanished in a cloud that boded storm.
From that hour he sought only the counsel of Venus, and only cared to find the highway to his new fortunes. From her he learned that he was the son of King Priam of Troy, and with her assistance he deserted the nymph Oenone, whom he had married, and went in search of his royal kindred.
For it chanced at that time that Priam proclaimed a contest of strength between his sons and certain other princes, and promised as prize the most splendid bull that could be found among the herds of Mount Ida. Thither came the herdsmen to choose, and when they led away the pride of Paris’s heart, he followed to Troy, thinking that he would try his fortune and perhaps win back his own.
The games took place before Priam and Hecuba and all their children, including those noble princes Hector and Helenus, and the young Cassandra, their sister. This poor maiden had a sad story, in spite of her royalty; for, because she had once disdained Apollo, she was fated to foresee all things, and ever to have her prophecies disbelieved. On this fateful day, she alone was oppressed with strange forebodings.
But if he who was to be the ruin of his country had returned, he had come victoriously. Paris won the contest. At the very moment of his honor, poor Cassandra saw him with her prophetic eyes; and seeing as well all the guilt and misery that he was to bring upon them, she broke into bitter lamentations, and would have warned her kindred against the evil to come. But the Trojans gave little heed; they were wont to look upon her visions as spells of madness. Paris had come back to them a glorious youth and a victor; and when he made known the secret of his birth, they cast the words of the Oracle to the winds, and received the shepherd as a long-lost prince.
Thus far all went happily. But Venus, whose promise had not yet been fulfilled, bade Paris procure a ship and go in search of his destined bride. The prince said nothing of this quest, but urged his kindred to let him go; and giving out a rumor that he was to find his father’s lost sister Hesione, he set sail for Greece, and finally landed at Sparta.
There he was kindly received by Menelaus, the king, and his wife, Fair Helen.
This queen had been reared as the daughter of Tyndarus and Queen Leda, but some say that she was the child of an enchanted swan, and there was indeed a strange spell about her. All the greatest heroes of Greece had wooed her before she left her father’s palace to be the wife of King Menelaus; and Tyndarus, fearing for her peace, had bound her many suitors by an oath. According to this pledge, they were to respect her choice, and to go to the aid of her husband if ever she should be stolen away from him. For in all Greece there was nothing so beautiful as the beauty of Helen. She was the fairest woman in the world.
Now thus did Venus fulfil her promise and the shepherd win his reward with dishonor. Paris dwelt at the court of Menelaus for a long time, treated with a royal courtesy which he ill repaid. For at length while the king was absent on a journey to Crete, his guest won the heart of Fair Helen, and persuaded her to forsake her husband and sail away to Troy.
King Menelaus returned to find the nest empty of the swan. Paris and the fairest woman in the world were well across the sea.”
Byzantine Circular Pyxis. This circular Pyxis or box depicts two scenes. This scene presents the Olympian gods feasting around a tripod table holding the golden Apple of the Hesperides.
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A bough of silver is needed “to enter the Otherworld before the appointed hour marked by death,”in The Voyage of Bran. Three Calls to Cormacstates that Manannán mac Lir offers “a branch of silver with three golden apples”to King Cormac mac Airt. When the branch is shaken, is makes a music that induces sleep; the branch is the talisman to enter the world of dreams. Lady Gregory describes it as a “shining branch having nine apples of red gold.” While gold and silver are considered “precious” metals, a myth of worth to which much of mankind has long subscribed to such a degree that it has become indissociable from notions of value: golden ages, golden means, golden and silver anniversaries, both are so much a part of everyday language that it is difficult to consider them afresh. William Butler Yeats comes perhaps the closest to the true nature of the myth, combining precious metals, deeply symbolic fruit and the two celestial bodies closest to us, if not in distance, at least in significance. He is speaking of poetic truth, the kind that provides solace only through acceptance of our mortality and our spiritual ambiguity. He reminds us that although we are the children of Enlightenment and Science, we are nevertheless the siblings of the Romantics. No other movement has explained with such welcome and ambiguous lucence the ambiguities of our relationships with the “real” and the “other than real.” To understand the latter, we must at least attempt to understand the former. “Real” is defined as “actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed” or “having objective independent existence” And “not artificial, fraudulent, or illusory.” This of course defines everything that Romanticism is not. Yeats is not asking us to accept palpable existence of the sublime, but like all those tellers of tales before him, he is offering us a branch laden with metaphor. In our minds, we may imagine what we can grasp and what we cannot, what we can hold in our hands and what we can only hold in our minds: the tangible and the sublime. Romanticism is about infusing the personal with the universal, finding the points where those two dissimilar things come into contact. Romanticism is acceptable in modest dosage, too much would either dull the senses or drive one to utter distraction. To have none at all is a grand shame; we have so ably domesticated our existences as to erase most of the moments when we can find ourselves in a place to appreciate it, we have to a large degree turned our regard, that once was outward-facing, inwards, confusing the richness of the Freudian trinity of ego, super-ego and id with the riches of the world. As well, Yeats cautions us against wilfully ignoring the darker side of Romanticism, the silver apples of the moon. Art historians have often dismissed Romanticism as a certain endeavour in languid futility, the desire to push back against the inevitable of urbanisation by extolling the virtues of nature, rather than engaging in pre-modernism, taking the industrial bull by the horns, so to speak. This is a profound error; the clearest intuitions are rarely statements of fact, but restrained reminders of what will soon be gone, admissions of the inevitable loss as part of life, whether it be the life of the world, or the brief span of human life. We should consider the spirit of Romanticism as something precious, a gift or a guarded treasure: like Yeats’ golden and silver apples, gifts infused with a sense of loss, eternity mixed with the brevity of human existence. That encounter of opposites sparks all things that are not “real”: spirituality, poetry, myth and of course Romanticism. The twin gates of ivory and horn temporize. All is not romantic impulse: visions can be inexact or misinterpreted. The Greek world saw a constantly evolving attitude towards death and the otherworld, and towards the neighbouring land: that of dreams and visions. The pythoness of Delphi is defined by her ambiguity, although the sceptics, citing Plutarch, attributed the visions of the oracles to hallucinogenic fumes issuing forth from crevices under the temple. Others suggested that oleander leaves, either chewed or burned, explain Pythia’s enigmatic connection with the divine. Chances are, though, that the long-flourishing tradition, which clearly survived Apollo’s slaying of Python,[3]is simply witness to the ever-increasing complexity of dealing with the future and the past. Both sets of symbols combined are there to remind us that the poetic impulse is not far from madness. They dance closely together, separated only by the desire, in the case of the former, to celebrate the brevity of human existence as part of the eternal (“until time and times are done”), and in the latter, to acquire immortality and prescience, talents reserved for the gods and the mad. Cautionary tales about dealing with what is not “real” do not apply to poetry, which seeks no practical application in the world beyond the riches of the spirit. Poets who voyage in the otherworld inevitably return through the gate of ivory, only those whose urges are unclear are faced with a choice, and the anguish that follows. In this sense the poetic impulse is inherently a generous one, based in part on personal interrogation of infinite spaces, whether they be interior or exterior, translated into golden or silver things that we can grasp. One might call it the permanent hiraeth of the soul, the longing to return to where we have never been, the desire to become once again what we never were.˜ ˜ ˜
The title is taken from the final two lines of William Butler Yeats’ poem The Song of Wandering Aengus, first published in his 1899 collection The Wind Among the Reeds. I WENT out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, nd pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.˜ ˜ ˜
The theme of artistic creation (or sub-creation, as Tolkien has put it, implying a divine influence, once removed, the artist as a sort of second cousin to God) is a theme I have often touched upon. Here are a few recent newsletters. HERMENAUTICA: TRAVELLING WITH THE TRICKSTER http://www.metadelic.com/john-howe/2018/05/03/hermenautica-travelling-with-the-trickster/ HIRAETH, OR HEKATE AS THE MUSE http://www.metadelic.com/john-howe/2017/09/14/hiraeth-or-hekate-as-the-muse/ STORIES TOLD http://www.metadelic.com/john-howe/2017/07/01/stories-told/ WE ARE THE RAVEN-FED http://www.metadelic.com/john-howe/2016/11/15/we-are-the-raven-fed/ THE SPELL OF DISENCHANTMENT http://www.metadelic.com/john-howe/2016/03/15/the-spell-of-disenchantment/˜ ˜ ˜
Further reading: Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World, FOOTNOTESby Kenneth D. S. Lapatin,Oxford University Press, 2002 Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment, by Enst Kris and Otto Kurz, Yale University Press, 1979˜ ˜ ˜
FOOTNOTES
[1]The Euhemerist explanation would be that these “golden” fruit are in reality simply exotic fruit accorded divine status by populations unfamiliar with them. As is often the case, this sells our ancestors short and focuses on their supposed gullibility as the primary motivating force to create powerful mythological symbols. [2]The Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890, in three volumes in 1900 and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published between 1906 and 1915. Volume XIII, entitled Aftermath, was added in 1936. (I have a copy from the 1930’s, purchased from a used-book shop in Wellington, New Zealand; Frazer occupied a full suitcase on the trip home.) [3]Apollo’s killing of Python is symbolic of the solar deity replacing some older god or more likely goddess in the 8thcentury BC. The laurel replaced the oak at Delphi at a similar time.
