Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

—Act III, scene i, lines 77-80

To go from the Pentapolis to Tyre and be driven by the storm toward Tharsus is within belief if it is really Tarsus that the name implies; but it is much less credible if Tharsus is Thasos.

The scene now shifts to Ephesus and the home of Cerimon, a skillful doctor. A follower says to him:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 43-45

Ephesus, the great and prosperous city of the time of The Comedy of Errors, is still great and prosperous in the time of Pericles.

At this moment, servants enter with a chest that has been cast up from the sea. It is the casket containing Thaisa, along with a note from Pericles asking that if the dead body be found, it be piously buried.

But Cerimon is a skillful physician indeed. He says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 94-96

If Tharsus were really Tarsus, this would be impossible. The Queen's body was consigned to the sea at a time when the ship was near Tharsus and to reach Ephesus would require it to drift westward the length of Asia Minor and then northward, half the length of the Aegean coast of that peninsula-an about six-hundred-mile journey. To drift at 120 miles an hour is quite a picture.

On the other hand, suppose the storm had driven the ship to Thasos. From there to Ephesus would be only 250 miles, which would require a drift of 50 miles an hour.

But at Tharsus, Pericles asks when Tyre can be reached and a sailor says:

—Act HI, scene i, line 76

From Thasos to Tyre is more than a night's journey. So it's best to ignore geography. Tharsus cannot be placed anywhere on the map in such a way as to have a plausible relationship to Ephesus, Tyre, and Pentapolis, all three of which have positions that are known and fixed.

To restore Thaisa to life is, of course, an arduous task even for Cerimon, who ends by saying:

—Act III, scene ii, line 112

Aesculapius (the Latin version of the Greek Asclepius) was, in Greek myth, a son of Apollo who was supremely skilled as a physician. So skillful was he that he could restore life to the dead. This enraged Hades, who apparently felt himself to be endangered by technological unemployment. He complained to Jupiter (Zeus), who solved matters by killing Aesculapius with a thunderbolt. After death, Aesculapius was raised to divine rank and became the god of medicine.

It is in his divine role that Cerimon appeals to him on this occasion.

At Tharsus Pericles is greeted warmly as the savior of the tune of the famine, but he cannot linger. He must go to Tyre, leaving behind:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 12-16

"Marina" is the feminine form of the Latin word meaning "of the sea." The baby is left in the care of Cleon and his wife Dionyza.

In Ephesus Thaisa is now fully recovered and, thinking that Pericles died in the shipwreck, says she will live in religious retreat. Cerimon, the doctor, says:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 11-13

Ephesus in ancient times was known for its temple to Diana (Artemis). An early version of this temple was completed about 420 b.c. and was impressive enough to be considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

In October 356 b.c. the temple was destroyed by fire and it proved to be a case of deliberate arson. When the culprit was captured, he was asked why he had done this deed. He replied that he did it in order that his name might live forever in history. He was executed and to defeat his desire it was ordered that his name be erased from all records and never be spoken. (However, the man had his wish after all, for a name purporting to be his survives somehow. It is Herostratus.)

This was a century and a half before the time of Pericles, but the temple was rebuilt, of course. Indeed, it is most famous to moderns because it plays a distant role in the New Testament, some two centuries after the time of Pericles and four centuries after Herostratus' crime.

St. Paul, in Ephesus on a missionary voyage, denounced idolatry and roused the hostility of the silversmiths of the city, who did a roaring business in the manufacture of little religious objects for tourists who came to visit the temple of Diana. Not foreseeing the time when their successors would do equally well, if not better, with small crucifixes and statues of the Virgin Mary, the silversmiths were horrified at St. Paul's denunciation of idolatry. There were riots in the city and the crowd was "full of wrath and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians" (Acts of the Apostles 19:28).

To be sure, Shakespeare knew Diana as the virgin goddess of the moon and the hunt (see page I-14), as she was in classical Greek mythology. The Diana of the Ephesians was another goddess altogether, a representation of fecundity, a fertility goddess with her chest covered by breasts, representing, perhaps, the nourishing earth. Diana's temple in Ephesus was surely not an appropriate life for a quiet existence, free from the sexual lusts of the world, but in the play it is taken as such.

The fourth act once again opens with Gower, who covers this time a passage of fourteen years, during which Marina grows to young womanhood in Tharsus. (The actual length of the time is specified later, when Pericles refers to her as fourteen years old.)

This is very similar to The Winter's Tale, where another baby girl, Perdita, separated from her parents, also grows to young womanhood (see page I-158). In both cases the father of the young girl is a ruler and the mother is thought to be dead but isn't really.

One difference in the two plays is that Perdita grows up in The Winter's Tale to know only love and admiration, while Marina in Pericles is not so lucky.

Cleon and Dionyza have a daughter of their own named Philoten, who is completely overshadowed by Marina. Gower describes the hopelessness of Philoten's case:

—Act IV, Introduction, lines 31-33

The dove of Paphos (see page I-15) is one of those doves that draw Venus' chariot.

Dionyza plots, out of jealousy, to have Marina murdered despite the great debt owed Pericles by Tharsus. Her vile plan is made the easier since Marina's nurse, who has been with her since her birth, has just died and Marina has lost a natural guardian. Indeed, Marina makes her first appearance in the play mourning her nurse's death. She is carrying a basket of flowers and speaks sadly at the grave of the dead woman:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 13-14

Tellus is one of the names of the Roman goddess of the earth, Terra being the other, and more familiar, one.