Roberto Calasso: The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(photo credit 2.1)

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

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

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