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The locale
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Thus, the two most reliable sources are in apparent
disagreement about even the sire of Hecabe, although both
agree to omit any mention of her mother. However, the
quotations do give us some uncontradicted information with
which to begin. Both mention Phrygia. Homer says that Hecabe
was from the area of the Phrygian Sangarios, a major river
that drains the interior of Anatolia, beginning in ancient
Phrygia, passing through Galatia, and looping back through
Bithynia before emptying into the Black Sea. It passed
through the religiously and economically important city of
Gordieum, formerly capital of Phrygia, where was the famous
Gordian Knot, from the untying of which depended the
kingship of Phrygia and the mastery of Asia. Euripides calls
Troy the capital of Phrygia.(Map of
Phrygia. 85K)
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The Gordian Knot
|
The Knot, tied in an intricate manner said to have been
invented by Gordios, was used by him to tie the yoke to the
shaft of his ox-cart. After he became king of Phrygia,
fulfilling an oracle that declared the new king would arrive
in an ox-cart, the priests of the temple of Zeus placed the
Knot (or the whole ox-cart) in the temple, declaring that
thereafter he who could untie the Knot was rightful king of
Asia. Gordium, founded by Gordios as his capital city,
remained important even after the establishment of Ancyra as
the principal city of the area. The secret of the Knot and
its power to make kings continued, of course, until
Alexander solved its difficulty by hacking through it with
his sword, thereby resolving the mystery and, incidentally,
giving the world a new proverbial method by which to remove
old and thorny problems.
Arrian1
reports that the knot was made of cornel bark
(Camp. II.3). The Cornel Cherry tree likely would
have been meant. Arrian also says that the Knot had no
visible ends, which was a notable feature of the so- called
Knot of Hercules, mentioned by
Pliny2
(Nat. Hist. XXVIII.65) as producing salutary
effects when used, the number four, according an authority
named Demetrios, being sacred to Hercules. (Apparently the
Hercules knot had four loops.) Technically, the Gordian Knot
would have belonged to that class of knots termed lashings,
because it was used to join two pieces of wood. It is
unlikely that it actually was a knot of Hercules, or,
presumably, it would have been recognized as such and
readily yielded up its authority to any pretenders. Arrian
does throw some doubt on the story that Alexander severed
the Knot and thereby voided its power, saying that there was
another story told wherein Alexander, after studying the
yoke and pole, simply removed the linch pin from the pole
and slide Knot and yoke from the pole intact, so that the
Knot could be unfolded. Arrian reports both stories as
equally probable, noting that, whatever the truth of the
matter, it was put about generally that the Knot had been
loosed and subsequent events (including thunder and
lightning later that night, not to mention the successful
conquest of the Persians) showed that heaven's favor had
been won.
Of course, the secret of untying the Knot would have been
a test by which a new king could have ritually proven his
divine right to the kingship. The secret was transmitted
through the priests to the heir of the throne, thereby
ensuring that only the divinely intended and legitimate
successor would be able to assume the kingship. Impostors
and usurpers would be debarred and exposed by their
ignorance. Naturally, this would have placed the priests of
the temple in a position of great power, something that
Alexander would have understood when he decided to cut the
Knot and end the possibility of threat to the stability of
his conquest. Without the Knot, the priests could no longer
raise the issue of legitimacy. Previous conquerors had used
the Knot as a means by which they had assured their
legitimacy, either compelling or bribing the priests to
reveal the secret. Midas, it will be remembered, who was
confident enough to both establish the new cult of Dionysus
and to found Ancyra as his new capital, respected the
king-making power of the Knot and its sacerdotal protectors.
Midas was supposedly adopted by Gordios, a fiction that
covered the fact of conquest and preserved the Knot. Thus,
even the transfer of power to a new dynasty and new locale
did not mean the end of the Knot and the essential power of
the priesthood. What, then, does this tell us about Priam
and Hecabe?
Because Euripides called Troy the capital of Phrygia, we
may assume that another transfer of capital cities and
dynasts had occurred, and that Priam had become the new king
of Phrygia. Because there is no mention of a conquest, and
because the Knot survived down to the time of Alexander,
about nine hundred years later, we can also assume that
Priam had learned the secret of the Knot peacefully. The
most common manner by which this type of peaceable transfer
of kingship from one line to another was accomplished was
through marriage. Ergo, we are led to conclude that Priam
obtained the kingship of Phrygia lawfully and without overt
coercion by marrying into the previous dynasty. In fact, we
are told that Hecabe was Priam's second wife, he having put
away his first wife, Arisbe, who had already given him an
heir, Aesacus, in order to marry Hecabe. (Ovid,
Metam. XI.763, calls Aesacus the son of the
nymph Alexrioè, but he does not call her Priam's
wife.) Providing an heir was a matter of primary importance
to all ancient monarchs, and that Priam was willing to
divorce Arisbe compels us to think that his reason must have
outweighed even the assurance of succession. The only
logical reason would have been the expansion of his kingdom,
and the winning of the throne of all of Phrygia would have
been such a reason. It is recorded (Apollodorus) that he
gave Arisbe an honorable divorce and arranged for her to
marry Hyrtacus, presumably returning or ceding over to her
new husband her dower.
If we assume all of the above, then we are safe in saying
that Hecabe was the daughter of the previous king of Phrygia
and that she brought to Priam the secret of the Knot, by
which he became the legitimate claimant for the throne.
Dymas or Chisseos, then, would have to have been the last
king out of the line of Midas, the successor of Gordios. It
is further noted that all of the kings of Phrygia styled
themselves alternately either Gordios or Midas, which raises
an obvious objection to this statement. However, the
adoption of a royal name upon accession is a commonplace
part of the ritual by which a new monarch is confirmed,
being significant of his re birth into the family of the
tutelary deity of the kingdom. Therefore, we can assume that
Dymas or Chisseos might have been the original name of the
last king in Ancyra, or that either one of the names (or
both) was a title of the king in addition to his dynastic
name of Gordios or Midas. In confirmation of this guess,
Priam, we are told, had previously been called Podarces.
Priam's new royal name probably indicated that he was the
first (and last, as it turned out) of a new royal
dynasty in Phrygia. Still, there remains the conflicting
testimony of our primary sources as to the name of that last
Gordian-Midan king, Hecabe's father, either Dymas or
Chisseos.
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Clues to her
father
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The modern authorities generally agree in making Dymas
her father, as he is named by the elder source, Homer.
However, Euripides would not have called Hecabe's father
Cisseus (or Chisseos) without some good reason. He would
have been very much aware of Homer's lines, as would have
been his audience, so it is unlikely that he would have
chosen to flout the very cogent evidence of Homeric
tradition with or without good reason. That is to suggest
that he did not, that there is no contradiction. In order
for that assumption to be correct, we must accept that
Chisseos and Dymas are one and the same, and that the
auditors of the play would have recognized this identity,
just as a modern audience would recognize that Bill Clinton
and the Chief Executive are one and the same. In other
words, we have some justification in believing that either
Dymas or Chisseos is an alias or title and that both refer
to one and the same person. As Phoebus Apollo could be
called Far-Darter, or Zeus called Aegis-Bearer, without use
of either god's name, and still be generally recognized, so,
too, might Dymas be called simply Chisseos and still be
known as the father of Hecabe. Which name, then, is the name
and which the title? Or, as hinted above, might both be
titles of the king of Phrygia?
As it happens, Chisseos, or Cisseos, is a title, an
epithet of a very important god in Greek (and Phrygian)
myth: Kisseos means "Ivy", and the Ivy God is Dionysus,
whose worship was instituted by Midas. The fount or source
in which Dionysus was bathed by the Nymphs after his birth
was called Cissousa (Callimachus). Dionysus Ivy was a common
denomination of the god. He was almost always pictured or
written of with Ivy twined about the Thrysus or with Ivy
chaplets. And all of the stories of Midas are centered about
his relationship with the Ivy-Crowned God. The Euripidean
audience would have been as aware of the connection between
the cult of Dionysus in Phrygia and the Phrygian dynasty of
Midas as the modern American audience of the connection
between the Church of England and the Windsors. We are safe
in stating, therefore, that Chisseos was a royal prerogative
of the house of Midas, and that the reference to Chisseos
would have passed unremarked, everyone understanding that
Hecabe was descended through her father from Midas.
If we accept that Euripides in speaking of Chisseos was
referring to Dionysus or, by metonymy, to the previous king
of Phrygia, then we have successfully removed one obstacle
in identifying Hecabe's parents. It is quite likely that
Dymas was Chisseos, Ivy-Crowned, by association to his
tutelary deity. However, it would be more compelling if we
could also find some explicit relationship between Dymas and
Dionysus. Is it possible. for instance, that Dymas was a
local Phrygian name for Dionysus?
Phrygia was an important locale in the mythology of
Dionysus. The vine grew wild on the south coasts of the
Black Sea, and may have spread from there to other places
around the Mediterranean, taking with it the cult of
Dionysus. Phrygia is where Dionysus was purged by his
grandmother
Rhea3 of
guilt for the murders that he committed during his mad
progress throughout Asia (Asios). The Bacchantes of
Euripides are described as Phrygian. Is it possible that the
Sangarios was the river in which he was cleansed? Sangarios
could be read as "bloody", a term frequently applied to
wine, and the river, if the god had washed off the blood of
his crimes in its water, might have run
red or at least have acquired the name through
association with the baptismal
ritual4. (Sangarios might also
derive from the root for "sacred".)
There is a late antique story told by
Nonnos5
(Dion. XLVIII.242) that Aura, daughter of the
Titan Lelantos, was raped by Dionysus. In her rage at this
crime, Aura threw into River Sangarios the statue of
Aphrodite, who had been the tangential accomplice of her
ruin; later, having given birth to twins on Mt. Dindymon,
one of whom she slew and ate, Aura cast herself into the
Sangarios, where she was transformed into the spring whence
the river issued. Artemis, who attended all births, but who
had provoked the rape and had taunted the pregnant Aura,
rescued the second infant, Iacchos, out of guilt. While
there does not seem to be any truly ancient authority for
this story, some of its elements are suggestive. At the
least, it does define a specific instance of relationship
between Dionysus and Sangarios.
Further, the name Dymas could be a shortened form of
Dindymon, which Nonnos derives from the word for twins,
 6, making Dymas the
surviving twin, Iacchos. Also, the desecration of the statue
of Aphrodite in Sangarios and the suicide of Aura in its
waters could have some relation to the river's name.
Diodorus7
records another legend that King Meïon (Midas?) of
Phrygia married a maiden named Dindymê. This suggests
that the personification of this particular mountain was
customary, and that the reference to Dymas could have been
to the mountain in its masculine form. Diodorus also records
that Dionysus was frequently called  , Dimeter, "twice-born", on
account of his premature delivery from Semele and his
re-birth from the thigh of Zeus, lending more evidence to
the notion that Dymas refers to Dionysus. Still further,
Pausanias8
relates the Achaian town of Dyme to Phrygia, saying
that it is unknown whether the town were named after a woman
named Dyme or a man named Dymas (The town had originally
been called Paleia.) In Dyme, he says, there was a shrine to
Athene and a very ancient statue. There was also in Dyme a
shrine to the mother of Dindyme and Attis. It was said by
the poet Hermesianax that this Attis, who was impotent from
birth, was the son of a Phrygian named Kalaos. Attis later
went to Phrygia in the service of the Great Goddess of the
Lydians, where he was killed by a boar. This story is
important, not only in that the names of Dymas and Dindyme
occur in juxtaposition to that of Phrygia, but that it links
Dymas and Dindyme to the other great religious cult of Asia
Minor, that of Cybele and Attis, about which we shall
enlarge later.
To conclude the connection to Dionysus, if we examine the
murder of Polymestor's children and the blinding of the King
himself in Hecabe, we find yet another link between Hecabe
and the Phrygian monarchs of Ancyra and Gordium. The murders
and blinding were carried out by a group of frenzied women,
much in the manner of the murders committed by the frenzied
Maenads who attended Dionysus in his revels. The
descriptions of the attack upon Pentheus by the Bacchantes
and of that of the Trojan women upon Polymestor are
strikingly similar. If Hecabe was Phrygian and of royal
descent, she probably had been an initiate of the Dionysiac
mysteries, and her confidence that she and the Trojan women
could overcome Polymestor and his sons was drawn from her
knowledge of ritualistic murders in which the cultists of
Dionysus participated. It is even possible to derive her
name from  , "to drive to a frenzy". Although acceptance of
this interpretation is not necessary to the argument that
her mode was ecstatic and Bacchic, it is undoubtedly an
association that a writer such as Euripides or Homer would
have expected his audience to apprehend. The simple fact
that the resemblance existed would have been sufficient,
whatever the actual origination of the name, therewith
enriching the context. Could it be that the terrible
suffering and eventual madness and death of Hecabe were but
the result of a Nemesis which had pursued her because she
had not been cleansed of her previous crimes? Whether or not
the destruction of Troy was fated as the result of Hecabe's
unexpiated Dionysian murders, we can, however, feel some
confidence in drawing the conclusion that both Dymas and
Cisseus are really names or titles of the Phrygian king, the
father of Hecabe.
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Candidates for motherhood
|
Having revealed the underlying unity of the Homeric and
the Euripidean accounts of the sire of Hecabe, we can turn
our attention to her mother, who must have been the Queen or
a concubine of the last Gordian-Midan king. Unfortunately
the names of the Queens of Phrygia are not recorded. Not
even the maiden seer who directed Gordios to sacrifice at
Telmissus, where he was proclaimed King, and whom he
married, is named. Frazer, in a footnote to his translation
of Apollodorus, states that Pherecydes had found references
to Evagora, Eunoe, Glaucippe, and Telechia as possible
candidates for motherhood of Hecabe. Apollodorus himself
suggests Metope. However, neither Frazer nor Apollodorus
gave any argument to support those candidates. We might,
therefore, have recourse to the stories of the loves of
Dionysus to find a name for the Queen. It is not unusual
that the paramours of a god are the queens of one or another
royal house. If we were to find among them one of the above
mentioned names, then we could assert the likelihood that
she were Hecabe's mother. Dionysus, by the standards of his
father, at least, was relatively chaste, which makes the
search shorter than might otherwise have been expected.
Some accounts relate that Dionysus (or
Ares9) had an
irregular connection with Althaia, wife of Oineus, to whom
the god had given the vine, and that she was delivered of
Meleagros as a result. This divine fathering would explain
the invulnerability of the hero. Meleager was said to have
had a son, Parthenopaeus, by Atalanta before she married
Hippomenes (or Melanion). Parthenopaeus later became one of
the Seven Against Thebes, but his son does not seem to have
formed any Asiatic liaisons. Likewise, Dionysus is said to
have loved Beroè to he point of distraction, but she
was given to another, older god, Poseidon.
The first real wife of Dionysus, it is generally agreed,
was Ariadne, whom the god encountered on Naxos after she had
been abandoned by Theseus. According
Apollodorus10,
Dionysus took her to Lemnos where they were married. She is
said to have had four sons, Staphylus, Thoas, Oenopion, and
Peparethus by the god. Another story makes Phanus the
brother of Staphylus by Ariadne. Both Staphylus and Phanus
were sometimes numbered among the heroes of the Argo,
assembled by Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece, although
neither
Apollonius11
nor Valerius
Flaccus12 gives them a place
in the epic. Apollonius does put another putative son of
Dionysus on board, however, Phlias of Araethyrea, from the
vicinity of Asopus. Nonnos records that Ariadne was turned
to stone by the shield of Perseus when Dionysus was opposed
in his passage through Attica. Again, however, none of these
sons seems to have had any female children who married Asian
monarchs, nor is it recorded that they married daughters of
Midas. Nonnos also says that Dionysus afterwards married
Pallene, daughter of Sithon of Thrace, after besting her in
a wrestling match. She is said to have been impregnated by
Dionysus, but her children are not mentioned, and none were
reported to have gone to Phrygia, although Thrace is but a
short swim from Anatolia.
In fact, it is difficult to find any evidence to link any
of these lines to the Phrygian legends of the god in general
or to Hecabe's family in particular. About the only
reasonably solid lead between the progeny of Dionysus and
the Queen of Troy at the time of its fall is provided by
Priam himself. Laomedon's herd of mares had been promised as
the payment for the deliverance of Laomedon's daughter
Hesione from the monster sent by Poseidon to devour her,
but, when Herakles performed the rescue, the miserly king
had refused to make good on his promise. Priam (at that time
called Podarces) alone of Laomedon's sons argued that the
debt must be fairly discharged, and he warned Herakles and
his companions of Laomedon's intention to murder the heroes
rather than pay them. Herakles then took the city and slew
Laomedon and his sons, saving only Priam, to whom he
returned the kingship in gratitude for his uprightness.
However, whether this event was accomplished during the
return voyage of the Argo or later is not certain. At any
rate, even if the son or sons of Dionysus participated in
the deed, there is nothing to connect directly them with the
family of Hecabe. In fact, there is no evidence whatever
that any of the descendants of Dionysus married into the
royal lineage of Midas.
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Other leads
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If none of the above women can lend her name to Hecabe's
family, perhaps it is possible to divine from Hecabe's own
name the name of her mother. The name of Hecabe and that of
her first born, Hector, share a common
verbal element13, and some
have noted the close resemblance between Hecabe and
Hecaté.
As described by
Hesiod14
(Theog.410 ff.), Hecaté is well
nigh the most powerful of all the gods, for she has
prerogatives in heaven, on the earth, and in the ocean.
Although she is described as the daughter of Asteria (Stars,
i.e. Heaven) and
Perses15
(Destroyer), Hesiod speaks of her with great praise. She
gives great honor and wealth to those whom she favors, and
in battle she gives victory to whom she will. In the ocean
she raises great waves or makes them smooth. She attends all
births. Of course, there is also the other side of favor,
which is disfavor, that Hesiod wisely leaves unmentioned.
When she gives victory, there are those who must receive
defeat. If she smoothes the waves for some, she heaps the
waters of the deeps upon others. If to some she gives an
easy delivery, to others she brings harsh travail. If some
are born with her good will, others are born with her ill
will. This appears to be a case of ironic
euphemism16,
whereby Hesiod seeks to avert the wrath of Hecaté,
speaking of her with laudatory phrases, in this case so
excessive that they must be taken as flattery. Obviously,
there is more to her than one would at first suspect. The
daughter of Destruction ought to be more baleful. There is
no explanation offered for the exceptional preferment that
she receives from Zeus. In later times, to be sure, her
darker side is evinced. Hecaté was the goddess of
death, of necromancy, of the hounds of
Hell17. Could
this be the mother of Hecabe?
On the first glance, this etymological similarity seems
to be a rather slender reed upon which to support the theory
that Hecaté was the mother of Hecabe. One is inclined
to treat such derivations with skepticism, and to look
anywhere else for other, more promising subjects. If,
however, we recall the earlier story cited by Pausanias
concerning the town of Dyme in Achaia and its surprising
Phrygian connection, then there is the possibility that we
have come upon a real clue to the name of Hecabe's mother.
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The Great Goddess and
Hecaté
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To recur to Pausanias: There was in Dyme a shrine to
Athene and a very old statue. There was also a shrine to the
mother of Dindyme and Attis, whose father was Phrygian. The
story of Hermesianax took this Achaian Attis to Phrygia,
where he died of a goring by a boar. Pausanias then enlarges
on the episode by repeating a story that the Phrygians
themselves told of the god Attis.
While sleeping, Zeus dropped his seed on the earth, which
caused a dæmonic creature to spawn having both male
and female organs. The creature was called Agdistis. The
other gods castrated this creature, and an almond tree
sprouted from the severed gonads (apparently from the place
where they bled into the earth or whence they were buried).
The almond tree already bore ripe nuts, and a daughter of
the River Sangarios took some of them and placed them in her
bodice, causing her to be impregnated. The child Attis was
born and abandoned or exposed, but he was cared for by an
he-goat. (At this point in the story something has obviously
been omitted, probably the adoption of the child by the
goatherd and his wife.) Attis grew up to be inhumanly
beautiful, and Agdistis fell madly in love with him.
(Agdistis was at this time only female.) However, the boy's
family (hence the conjectural adoption) sent him away to be
married at Pessinous. Agdistis followed and interrupted the
marriage ceremony, driving the wedding party mad and causing
the unlucky boy and his prospective father-in-law to
emasculate themselves and die. Agdistis repented of the
crime, and Zeus granted that the body of Attis would never
corrupt.
This is a fairly confused version of the basic Cybele and
Attis story. In other versions the character Agdistis is
called Atargatis (an Astarte) or Magdistis or something
similar. Most of the stories contain the impregnation by
almond. The site, always near Pessinous, where Cybele had
her principal temple, is sometimes Dindymon and sometimes
Ida. The name of the androgyne is formed on the basis of the
Greek for "almond". The almond is chosen because it
possesses both the male and female flowers on the same
plant. The emasculation and death of the god and his
eventual resurrection or transfiguration is the essence of
the myth and is as old in literary form as the Sumerian tale
of Inanna and Dumuzi, and is repeated in virtually every
Mediterranean culture. The Great Goddess or Mother of the
Gods is variously named Ishtar, Astarte, Cybele, Rhea,
Mênê, Isis, and Hecaté, while Attis is
known as Tammuz, Adonis, Adoon, and Osiris. It is in the
form of Hecaté, of course, that we are now
interested.
The goddess, who transformed
Lucius18
into an ass for his impious invasion of her secrets and who
then reformed him, was considered the mistress of witches.
In addition to being equated with the orgiastic Phrygian
Great Goddess, Cybele and with her Semitic counterpart
Astarte, she later was regarded as Selene, an aspect of
Artemis, the triple goddess. (Selene is also called
Mênê, as is attested in Athenaeus.) One
re-telling of the legend of Iphigenia, who had been
sacrificed by Agamemnon to ensure the safe passage of the
Greek fleet to Troy, said that she had actually been saved
by Artemis (another aspect of the Triple Goddess, to whom
she had been offered), who transported her to the Tauric
Chersonese and translated her into Hecaté (Hesiod).
Another legend made Hecaté wife of Aeètes the
cruel King of Colchis and mother of Medea, Circe, and
Aegialeus. She was reputed to have discovered many powerful
poisons and medicinal concoctions, including aconite
(wolfbane), which she extracted from the plants that grew,
according Pliny, near the entrance to Tartarus in the
vicinity of Heraclea on the Euxine. Her secrets she passed
to her daughters, with the known deadly results. The cutting
into pieces of Aeètes' son by Medea is proof enough
that Cybele was present in some form. (Of course, both
stories cannot be true. If she were really Iphigenia, then
she could bot have been the mother of Medea: the timing is
wrong. Medea was fully grown when Jason and the Argo reached
Colchis, which was long before the beginning of the Trojan
War.) Only the identification of Hecaté with the
Great Mother can explain why the younger goddess had such
broad and pervasive powers. The cults of Dionysus and of
Cybele are drawn together with that demonstration of the
identity of Hecaté and Cybele.
There are many corresponding traits in the cults of
Cybele and Attis and Dionysus. Both were distinguished by
orgiastic and enthusiastic rites in which the devotees
(Corybantes of Cybele and the Bacchantes of Dionysus)
offered their own blood and the blood of ritualistically
dismembered victims to their deity. Dionysus was said to
have been rent into pieces in much the same manner as Attis
and Osiris, and as was Orpheus, who was credited with
establishing the Dionysisac mysteries. Osiris, Attis and
Dionysus were vegetation gods. All were resurrected by the
Great Mother.
All things taken together, it is clear that the Gordian
dynasty must have been devoted to the older chthonic
religion of Cybele and Attis, and that Midas, when he became
king, took over the inspired rites of the older cult and
associated them with his own tutelary god, Dionysus, thereby
uniting the worship of two powerful deities in his behalf.
It was from this unified cultic background that the titles
Dymas and Chisseos grew inextricably together, the titles of
the older dynasty being subsumed by the titles of the new .
Evidently, in the time of Homer, the older form of address
(Dymas) was still used to designate the Phrygian monarch,
but, by the time of Euripides, the newer form (Cisseos) had
been established, but both were applicable to the same
person and may have been used interchangeably or
concatenated.
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A plausible answer
|
There is, therefore, abundant evidence that both the Cult
of the Great Mother and the Cult of Dionysus were involved
in the Phrygian monarchy of the successors of Midas. Having
come this far, can we now be certain that we can give a name
to Hecabe's mother? It seems quite probable that
Hecaté, either the mortal or the immortal, was the
benefactress of Hecabe's family, especially if we accept one
report that Midas was said to be the son of Gordios and
Cybele. While this last may be only a poetic or political
fabrication, it is conceivable that, just as the Kings of
Phrygia were called Cisseos, the Queens of Phrygia were
styled Hecaté, and that the political marriage of
Midas ( or Dymas) to Hecaté (or Dindyme) was a
metaphoric cultic marriage of the Great Goddess Cybele with
the Greek god Dionysus. The mother of Hecuba, therefore,
could be called Hecaté or Cybele or even Rhea,
depending upon the nation telling her story. The answer for
Tiberius, according this theory, would have been Rhea. (This
is convenient, because Rhea Silvia, priestess of Vesta, was
the mother of Romulus and Remus, and the death of Remus was
undoubtedly the Latin version of the death of Attis.)
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Objections
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Why do we hesitate to affirm this theory? There are a
number of reasons to suspect that it is in error. First, it
is too readily developed. If the question could have been
answered by merely noting the similarity between Hecabe and
Hecaté, then Tiberius would not have asked it. He
delighted in recondite matters, and the evidence that we
have examined, though not common knowledge today, would have
been known to every casual student of the myths, and would
have been dismissed as elementary by the Emperor and his
table guests. They would have been aware of stories now lost
and of connections now broken by time that are to us
invisible. Second, there is the matter of Hecabe's ultimate
fate. In Euripides's play and in accepted tradition, it is
said that final insults to Hecabe are the foreknowledge that
her daughter Cassandra will be murdered by Clytemnestra and
that she herself will be turned into a bitch and buried in a
tomb that shall forever after be called the Bitch's Tomb.
The bitch was a familiar creature of Hecaté, so that
it may seem but further confirmation that Hecabe was the
daughter of the goddess, who transformed her in the
extremity of her torment to render her insensible of the
anguish of her situation. However, it is stated that this is
not a rescue but a final and crushing insult. It is possible
that the mythographers had misconstrued the intent, but that
seems unlikely, since the precedents for such metamorphoses
were so clear. In every other instance, transformation is a
method of escape. In the more pristinely preserved myths,
the device is obvious, as in the story of Peleus and Thetis
or of Proteus. In later tellings, the device is used as a
release, as in the stories of Daphne or Tithonus, but
nowhere is it an affront or punishment. For Adonis, even for
Narcissus, the change is effected to immortalize or preserve
the life of the protagonist. It is difficult to see how the
formula could have been misread in this one instance. We
must, therefore, accept that the transformation of Hecabe
was meant to punish not to preserve. Certainly, she herself
regarded it thus, which is sufficient. This is an
insuperable obstacle to the acceptance of the conclusion
that Hecaté was Hecabe's mother. The resemblance
between the names Hecabe and Hecaté must be a red
herring. Undoubtedly, many, who when asked the question by
Tiberius, fell into the trap that had been prepared for
them. One can easily imagine that he listened with patient
attention to their long elaborations over much the same
material as we have educed and then handily and summarily
refuted them.
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Reassessing the
evidence
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What, then, are we to make of all the other evidence?What
then would have been Tiberius' reply? Who was Hecabe's
mother?
To answer the question, lets us first ask another: what
crime had she or her family committed that should earn her
such fearsome retribution? Or what woman in classical myth
committed crimes so horrendous that they would stain her
descendants through three generations with the guilt?
It must be remembered that all such classical stories of
suffering had at their roots some horrible crime for which
the atonement and punishment of the immediate criminal was
deemed insufficient by the Fates and Nemesis. It was not
enough to punish the murderer of
Pelops19:
the gods pursued his descendants down through Agamemnon and
Menelaus even to their children. Guilt was a thing attached
to a family until the gods were sated with their vengeance.
To warrant such a terrible punishment as was meted out to
Hecabe, who was the source of the destruction of her family,
her country, and of so many innocent allies, the crime must
have been as unprecedented as was the degree of severity of
her sentence.
Supposing for the time that our previous speculations
concerning the association of the Gordian-Midan dynasts to
the cults of Cybele and of Dionysus were in the main
correct, excepting only that Hecaté was not the
mother of Hecuba, we are left with a solid foundation upon
which to build our present speculative structure. The mother
of Hecuba would have been, as we concluded, the Queen of
Phrygia or a concubine of the King. She might even have
possessed as a royal title the name Hecaté. But, just
as Midas was a dynastic name and not a personal name of the
King, so too would Hecaté have been a dynastic title
and not a personal name for the Queen. At some point, this
Queen must have committed a crime so heinous in the eyes of
the gods that a curse was laid upon her and her kingdom that
passed down through the generations even to her great
grandchildren20,
resulting not only in the end of her husband's line but in
the destruction of his successor through marriage to Hecabe.
There were two crimes that required such far-reaching
penalties, homicide and impiety.
Another indication that the guilt of some horrible crime
followed the footsteps of Hecabe is the change of names of
Alexander and Podarces. In ancient myth as in modern day
real life, persons hoping to escape the consequences of
their crimes changed their names. All great criminals, which
is to say homicides or the impious, were pursued by a
Nemesis, a kind of personal bounty hunter or heavenly
process-server, whose duty it was to apprehend the criminal
and to serve the warrant by which punishment was to be
administered by the accompanying Fury. It was thought that
by fleeing to another land and changing one's name, the
Nemesis could be thrown off the trail, as a bloodhound might
be diverted from the scent of the fugitive by passage over
or through water. While this might have a temporary effect,
it was never a permanent solution. Divine justice always
prevailed, however long it might be delayed. In this
instance, the members of her family have taken the
prophylactic measure of changing their names to escape any
Nemesis that might be stalking Hecabe. At any rate, we have
to look for some woman who committed a terrible crime and
who fled to Phrygia and was able to marry the King.
Evidently, only a well-born woman would be suitable for
the King of Phrygia. She must have been a woman of great
personal qualities as well, qualities that would overshadow
the crimes that she had committed, that would argue to a
great monarch to receive her when she brought with her no
dowry and no honor. Perhaps she was even a pitiable figure,
having been wronged greatly. And, as a matter of
practicality, she must have been a woman whose history fit
into the timeline defined by the length of Priam's lifetime,
beginning roughly from the period of the Argonauts. The
answer ought to be obvious. Who was the great female figure
from the period of the Argonauts who had committed great
crimes, who had suffered greatly, and who had great personal
qualities?
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An unexpected mother
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Medea was the mother of Hecabe.
Medea, we are told, abetted Jason and his companions in
their numerous murders , was the genius of the patricide of
Pelias by his daughters, and later committed murders of her
own, including those of Creon King of Corinth, of
Glaucé his daughter, and of her own children by
Jason, Alcimenes and Tisandrus. Her desertion by
Jason was universally regarded as
unjust and impious, for he had taken the names of the gods
in vain when he put her aside21.
She had, thereafter, sought refuge with Herakles in Thebes,
who had promised, as the arbiter of the oath, to protect her
if ever she were in need. When Herakles had the Labors laid
upon him by Eurystheus, she went from city to city, staying
briefly with Aegeus in Athens where, before being expelled
on the accusation of attempting to poison Theseus, she bore
Aegeus a
son22.
After this, she went, according Diodorus (Hist.
54-56), to Phoenicia and thence into the interior of Asia
where she married a "certain king".
Medea was wise in council, learned, of an indomitable
spirit, quick, faithful, and beautiful. She was of a noble
house, being descended from Helios. She had suffered greatly
and been greatly wronged. She had committed great crimes.
She was, in addition, the daughter of Hecaté. And her
life fitted very well with the timeline of Priam's lifetime.
In every particular she answers to the criteria. There is no
doubt that she could have persuaded the King of Phrygia to
give her sanctuary. He was powerful enough that he need not
fear the Corinthians or the Athenians, the wrath of whom had
prevented other states from granting her safe harbor.
Besides, the King of Phrygia was under a special obligation
to the Great Goddess and would have been compelled to take
her daughter under his protection. If, for example, she had
gone to Pessinous, the center of the cult of the Goddess,
and begged for sanctuary in the goddess' temple, naming
herself as the daughter of Hecaté, the King would
have had no option but to accept her. And, being in her
company, he could not fail to be impressed by her. It is
easy to imagine that she became his concubine or Queen and
bore him Hecabe. It is also easy to see that Hecabe would
have carried with her the stain of the guilt of the various
murders committed by her mother and for which she later
suffered to expiate. The murders and deaths in battle of
Hecabe's children are especially convincing evidence of the
Nemesis of Medea at work, for there could be no more apt
punishment for Medea's infanticides. The transformation of
Hecabe into the bitch is also a fitting punishment, for she
would then join her grandmother Hecaté's black hounds
and be forced to attend the births and deaths of children
into eternity, ever reminding her of the crimes of her
mother. Lastly, it is exactly the sort of answer that
Tiberius would have approved. It side-steps the deadfall
which would have been activated by the equation of Hecabe to
Hecaté, while following up on the clew that that
similarity suggests. There is every reason to think that it
is the correct answer.
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Notes
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1 Flavius Arrianus
Xenophon, born ca. A.D. 90 in Nicomedia, died
ca.180 in Athens. Roman civil servant (Consul
A.D.130, afterwards Governor of Cappadocia.) and author of
numerous works, including The Campaigns of
Alexander. Knots were considered to have magical
properties that could stop the flow of force from a person
or impede the influx of luck. They could also delay delivery
of a woman in labor. Back to Text.
2 Gaius Plinius Secundus
(Pliny the Elder), A.D. 23 - 79, from Como, Gaul. Educated
in Rome, served in Germania as a cavalry officer, after
which he studied law, was appointed Procurator of Spain, and
lastly Prefect of the Fleet at Misenum near Naples, to which
post he was elevated by Vespasian, a friend from his
military days on the frontier. He was also the author of
numerous works of history and rhetoric, none of which
survive, and of the Natural History, an
encyclopaedic composition in 37 books, in which he collected
the scientific knowledge of his time. Science being then in
its infancy, the work places fact and observation upon
the same footing of credibility as report and rumor, with
the result being a rather uneven mixture of fancy and
perspicuity. In general, he was a critical, even
skeptical author, but he was ready to admit the fabulous if
he had received it from a "good" authority. It did not seem
to occur to him that even persons of good sense and
responsible position might be credulous. It was while
attempting to rescue survivors, who had fled to the beaches,
and to gather first-hand knowledge during the eruption of
Vesuvius in A.D. 79, that he landed a ship at Stabiae and
was killed by the toxic vapors. He was the uncle and
adoptive father of Gaius Plinius Luci Caecilius Secundus,
Pliny the Younger. Back to Text.
3 The Greek name for the
Mother Goddess or Great Goddess, known
by various names in Asia. Back to Text.
4 Lucian (Greek satirist
ca. A.D.120-190 of Samosata, Syria) records in The
Goddess of Syria that the Adoon in Lebanon yearly ran
red in memory of Adonis who was slain by the boar in that
land. Sangarios had generally a bloody repute, for it was
also the locale of the slaying of a giant serpent by
Herakles. Zeus commemorated the event by placing the
constellation Ophiochus in the heavens. Back to
Text.
5 Nonnos, Egyptian-Greek,
ca. A.D. Fifth Century, author in Greek of a long poem,
Dionysiaca, epitomizing in epic form almost all
of ancient mythology, quite apart from the story of
Dionysus. Back to Text.
6 It is reported by Strabo that, according to
Hesiod, Coronis, who lived "hard by Amyrus, rich in grapes",
on the Dotian Plain (Magnesia) by Didymous (Twin Hills),
bore the Graces (or Muses) to Dionysus. There was an ancient
town called Amyron near the headwaters of the Sangarios in
Phrygia, and Mt. Dindymon was not
far. It is also told that a maid named Coronis coupled with
Apollo, who helped Poseidon build the walls of Troy. A
temple to Apollo existed in Didymi near Miletus on the
southwest coast of Phrygia, south of Ephesus. Apollo, like
Ares, often shared mythological attributes with Dionysus.
Back to Text.
7 Diodorus Siculus (the
Sicilian) ca. 80-20 B.C., Greek author of The Library
of History, a compendious narrative of Antique
History in 40 books, less than half of which survive. He
integrated myth with history, rationalizing mythology as a
record of human deeds. Back to Text.
8 Pausanias, Ionian
Greek of the early-middle A.D. Second Century, (thus a
contemporary of Arrian, Pliny the Younger, and Hadrian),
author of a Guide to Greece, a travel book
noting the principal sites in mainland Greece and the
legends attached to them. Back to
Text.
9 Ares and Dionysus are
easily interchanged. Ares was originally a vegetation god
such as Dionysus before becoming Greek god of war.
Back to Text.
10 Apollodorus or
Pseudo-Apollodorus, possibly Second Century B.C. Athenian.
Greek author of the The Library, a prose
compilation of Greek Myths drawn from many sources.
Back to Text.
11 Apollonius Rhodius
(the Rhodian), Alexandrian, late Third and Early Second
Century B.C. Pupil of the poet Callimachus, Librarian of the
Alexandrian Library, whom he later succeeded. Author in
Greek of the epic Argonautica, relating the
story of Jason's quest with the greatest heroes of Greece,
including Herakles, for the Golden Fleece and the tragic
romance between Jason and Medea of Colchis. Apollonius
quarrelled publicly with Callimachus over the epic and
removed himself to Rhodes, where the poem gained great
success. He was given the honor of honorary Rhodian
citizenship for his literary achievement. He afterward
returned to Alexandria. Back to
Text.
12 Gaius
Valerius Flaccus, late A.D.
First Century, Latin poet, author of the incomplete epic
Argonautica upon the same subject as the epic
of Apollonius Rhodius (q.v.above). The poem exists in eight
books, with tradition stating that the remaining, unwritten
books perished with the poet, who died sometime prior to
A.D. 93. He was contemporary to both Pliny the Elder and
Suetonius. Back to Text.
13 The usual derivation is from
"HEKAS" the word for "Far" or "Distant".
Back to Text.
14 Hesiod, Greek poet
from Cyme in Ionian Greece, of unknown dates, but assumed
anciently to be a contemporary of Homer (Eighth Century
B.C.). Moved early in life to Boeotia in Central Greece,
where he was a farmer, until called to Poetry by the
Muses on Mt. Helicon. Author of Theogeny, the
story of the creation of the Greek gods, and Works and
Days, a poetical book of agricultural lore and
advice. Also thought to have written certain Homeric Hymns
to the gods. Primary source for Greek
myth. Back to Text.
15 There was a Cappadocian and Cilician
goddess named Perasia or Artemis
Perasia, whose rites were basically the same as those of the
Great Goddess. Perhaps the title harks back to Perses. It is
an interesting coincidence, to say the least, that Hesiod's
prodigal brother, who allegedly had stolen from Hesiod his
rightful portion of their patrimony, was named
Perses. Back to Text.
16 It was common
practice to avoid using the name of a possibly dangerous
spiritual being, lest that being be summoned to one's own
destruction. The sense is continued in the later phrase
"Speak of the Devil, and there he is." Similarly, it was
customary to "speak well of the dead", lest they take
offense and work some mischief upon their denigrator. See
also the relevant passages in the discussions of the
maidenly name of
Achilles, the song of the
Sirens, and the secret name
of Rome. Back to
Text.
17 It is interesting that Hecaté was,
in northern myth, sometimes thought to be the mother of
Hel, the Goddess or Angel of Death. The
interior of Anatolia was conquered by Gauls who had been
driven from mainland Greece. It is possible, therefore, that
the Gauls found a resemblance between the local god Attis
and their own Balder, and they very naturally took Cybele to
be none other than Hecaté. Most accounts make the
Giantess Angabroda the mother of
Hel, and Fenris Wolf. Hel was represented pictorially as
being longitudinally half white and half black, a curious
dichotomy that reflects a double nature.
Hecaté is sometimes represented as having the
heads of the cultic animals the horse, the lion, and the
dog. The horse is the Nightmare, the steed upon which Death
rides and which prefigures death in night terrors. The Lion
is the beast that draws the Car of Cybele or upholds her
throne. The Dog is the Hound of Artemis, that leads the Hunt
and rends the body of the vegetation god. The story of Diana
and Actaeon is illustrative, wherein the dogs betray their
true allegiance. Back to Text.
18 Lucius, the
protagonist of the picaresque tale Lucius or The
Ass, extant in two forms, in Latin, The
Metamorphosis of Lucius Apuleius, commonly known as
The Golden Ass, and in Greek by Lucian, which
is generally regarded as a redaction of the original work of
Lucian or of another original story which was also the model
for the work by Apuleius. Apuleius (b. A.D. 125) was a
sophist from Madaura in Africa, from which he is sometimes
given the cognomen Africanus. Besides the adventure
story, the book contains what is probably the earliest
romantic, allegorical fairy tale, Cupid and
Psyche. There is also a genuinely moving religious
epiphany of Isis, the Great Goddess. The Magna
Mater was worshipped in Rome, the first
Asian goddess admitted to the Roman pantheon (not counting
Aphrodite who had become thorughly Hellenized). She was
brought to Rome to help the descendants of Æneas win
the Punic Wars. Her icon, apparently an aerolite of the kind
typically worshipped among ancient peoples (The Kaaba, the
holiest site in Islam, is built around one such black
meteroite.), was placed in a barge and ferried to Ostia.
When her barge became stiuck on a mud flat or sand bar at
the mouth of the Tiber, Claudia Quinta, an ancestor of
Tiberius, who, because she liked cosmetics and fashionable
dress had been slandered by the Romans as a wanton, prayed
to the goddess to allow her to draw the barge off the shoal
only if she were chaste. She then single-handedly succeeded,
where teams of men had failed, thereby proving her
rectitude. This was April 204 B.C. Her temple was dedicated
in 191, rebuilt in 111, and restored in A.D. 3. The
sanctioned worship of Isis did not come to Rome until much
later under Caligula. Back to Text.
19 Tantalus, his
father, who cut Pelops into pieces and served him to the
gods in a stew. The victim was later restored in the
expected manner, by cooking him in the same pot. This is a
recipe used in many stories, including that of Medea.
Tantalus was punished in Tartarus by being suspended for
eternity from a fruit tree, the fruit of which he could not
reach, above a pool of water that retreated from him
whenever he stooped to drink. Back to
Text.
20 Astyanax, the infant
son of Hector by Andromache, was hurled from the battlements
of Troy in order to eradicate the entire male line of Priam
so that no warrior might arise who could seek retribution
for the sack of the city. Back to Text.
21 Jason had sworn by the
names of all the gods to keep Medea as his wife for as long
as he lived, if she would agree to help him obtain the
Golden Fleece. When he broke that oath, he committed an
affront to the gods whom he had called to witness the oath,
the greatest of all crimes. Back to Text.
22 Medus, (or Medeus) whom
she took in her flight from Athens and who, supposedly,
became the founder of the Medians. His father could also
have been that "certain" Asian king whom Medea was said to
have married, but one supposes that the King of Phrygia had
adopted him, as Midas had been adopted by Gordios. It is not
necessary to suppose that Medus would have been eligible to
succeed him, however. One supposes that Medus was sent as
general of a military expedition to conquer or quell the
people who were later to bear his name and that he decided
to remain among them, first as military governor and later
as king in his own right. Back to Text.
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