That damn family, part two
by Seamus Sweeney
[ fiction - may 08 ]
No one knows anything. Not even Oedipus. He may have answered the sphinx's question, but that was because it was so damnably stupid, once you realised. I had guessed it myself. Do you know the story? Ach, like all stories, my story opens up every other story. I actually want to talk about the damned plague, and how Oedipus, arrogant as ever, announced he could handle it. "Delphi, Creon", he had announced, "To Delphi. There it will be revealed to me just how I am to best the plague that ails my city." That's how he talked. I, me, my. My city, my city.
Thebes was my city, not his. So I thought, though of course time would prove him to be very much the native son. My city. A senseless regicide, a crazed cryptic puzzle-setting monster, and now after the years of peace which - give the man his due - Oedipus had delivered, the plague. Plague! You country folk - not really proper country farming folk, not even mountain people, you folk have the look of the mean hardscrabble hills of this territory - anyway, you have no conception of what plague does to a city. Do you even know what a city really is? A city isn't just a few buildings, like this mean hut - mean in every way, speaking frankly - thrown together. A city is alive, a city has a life. O Thebes! My city. My city.
Plague rips open a city by tearing apart what makes a city - trust. Everyday trust. Where once neighbours chatted in the marketplace, during plague they stay at home, fearful of each other. Where once children played and cried in front of their house, during plague the streets are silent. Silence is the death of cities.
Oedipus had won Thebes with words. And with words he would save it. I felt the anguish of the city under my skin, in my flesh, in my bones. When Laius vanished and was killed, and my sister widowed, and Thebes made kingless - I had felt the grief and shame in belly, as a constant constraint and tightening. When the riddling Sphinx had reigned, I had felt the oppression in my chest, as a difficulty in breathing. And now, with the plague, I had felt the citizens agony, felt it as an endless tension in my head. Yet through all this misery and pain and had been the same Creon - decisive, "Delphi, Creon," he had barked at me, and off to Delphi I went. The oracle. Truth, in this world of lies and deceit. Purity. Knowledge, for those who can understand it. Of course, just as with the words of the Sphinx, the words of the Oracle are clear only with hindsight. But I was going to speak of the Sphinx! I am old and tired, and had forgotten that you near-barbarians seem baffled by my references to the creature. And everything implies everything else, and there is no end to stories.
We'll begin further back, with Laius. Laius, King of Thebes, husband of my sister Jocasta, a lordly man, a royal man. Command emanated from him. Decisive. Always ready for action. Unfortunately, his actions tended to be completely random and destructive. Consider Chrysippus, son of Pelops, King of Pisa in the Peloponnese. Laius had been on a royal visit to Pelops. A dull affair at the best of times, full of speechifying and decisions about agricultural produce. Nevertheless, a royal duty. The gods make us work through duty to earn our royal status. Now, unfortunately, Laius didn't know much about duty. While still a child, his own royal father had died, and a regent, Lycus, had stepped in. There had been an usurpation. Two twins, two offspring of Zeus no less! Amphion and Zetheus, unfortunately for them, were the product of one of the god's unofficial couplings. Or so their mother, lovely haired Antiope, had said. Of course, the land is filled with these "offspring of Zeus", children whose parentage, or rather fatherhood, is, how shall we put it, inconvenient. How happy the land that has such a randy Chief Divinity who can take credit for these children!
Fleeing to become consort of yet another foreign king, Antiope was brought back by force by Lycus, her own uncle. route back to Thebes, she left her children to be brought up by a herdsman - who, as we shall see, seem always ready to raise any infants left abandoned around the place. Back in Thebes, Antiope was installed as a prisoner in Lycus' household. Now, Antiope was reputedly the daughter of a river god, and whatever the truth of that, she had the look. Slender and elegant, with a body that meandered like a lazy river, with long, billowing hair and with one of those faces that seem permanently delicately poised between delight and tears, or possibly just on the verge of delighted tears, Antiope had the beauty to bewitch the father of the gods alright. And the kindle the jealousy of Lycus' wife, Dirce.
Dirce had Antiope whipped when she got up in the morning. She had Antiope put to work in the kitchens, and whipped if she dropped a pot or if she was late fetching a pail of water, whipped if she stood up too straight or bent too crooked, and sometimes whipped just for the sake of it. Dirce would pull Antiope's long, long hair out, twisting her tresses and pulling hard. Antiope slept upon stony ground, which Dirce refreshed with sharp flints every so often. This went on for years Antiope fled from this house of terror, and fled to the region where she had abandoned her children. There, as you might expect, she found her sons who were now sturdy young men, disbelieving that their mother had appeared. Eventually the old herdsman who had raised them came back, and confirmed this was indeed her. The boys reacted by gathering local yeomen, heading off to Thebes, killing Lycus, seizing power, obliging Laius to go into exile, and attaching Dirce to a bull which was then driven over rough ground. Dirce died many times in many places.
The boys had quite a productive reign, as Theban monarchs go. They built the wall around the city's citadel, and Amphion was quite the musician. Indeed, the story went that while Zethus struggled to carry stones into place - I meant that they literally built the wall - Amphion just played his lyre a little and the rocks flew into position. Be that as it way, they died younger than they should, out of grief at the death of their children. That I can understand. Laius returned to take the throne after they died.
Anyway - you see what I mean about stories begetting stories - let's get on with Laius and his death, and then we can get on with the story of the Sphinx. Oh, as I was saying, to give you an insight into the character of Laius, while on his visit to Pelops, discussing the import of grain and the export of goats, Laius caught sight of Pelops' son, Chrysippus. A handsome youth, as they all are. Purportedly the son of a coupling between Pelops and a nymph, and to be sure he had something of the divine lightness, the slender step, of a woodland spirit. It would not have been thought much of - and I speak as the brother of Laius' wife - if the Theban king had tried to seduce the boy. Such things commonly cement, so to speak, alliances. But seduction was not enough for Laius. He wanted possession. That need to go all the way, beyond decent limits - see how it was a family trait even then! See how the enormities of Oedipus and of Antigone were already forecast, already foretold. If only I had managed to dissuade my own father from allowing the marriage of Laius and Jocasta to take place at all. But we were all star stuck, our family status as Theban aristocracy confirmed in the most definitive way.
Laius wanted to possess the boy, to seize him. He offered to show him some new technique in chariot riding, something the boy was especially proud of. This proved an excuse to drive the boy to the very edge of the kingdom of Pelops. There it was no problem for to just keep driving, with the surprised Chrysippus whimpering all the way back to Thebes. Oh the trouble I had after that! Laius' lust was seen, politically, as the seizure of a hostage, and a near-declaration of war. And who sorted it out? Creon, that's who. Creon who wanders the lands, outcast, alone, shamed among men, nothing, no one, et cetera et cetera. Three years older than Jocasta, who was already married to Laius, I was already doing the House of Laius' dirty work for it, protecting them from themselves.
Can I ever stay on track? The curse of that damn family - not just the incest, the distraction. The business of ruling, always disrupted by the histrionics, the selfishness, the sheer lust of that damn family. It was typical of Laius to wander off like he did, and how awkward of him to get killed. How he got killed - ah, perhaps I'll let you find out, gentle listener, the same way Oedipus found out. Let's twist the narrative knife. Let's do as the gods do, and let time and destiny do their work. As I said earlier, stories beget stories, and to tell you about Creon I have to tell you about Oedipus and tell you about Laius and tell you about Antiope and tell you about Chrysippus and so on. Stories run out of control, unless like the gods you ration out the drama, let it fester, let the listener find out the way it was at the time.
So the death of Laius will wait, but I will tell you about what followed the death of Laius. Though I have spoken enough for tonight, and the smell of your broth is surprisingly enticing. The pleasures of the simple life, free from the vexing world of the lusty, selfish royals and mysteriously incontinent gods. Enough for tonight. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow I will tell you of the Sphinx, and how the Sphinx was vanquished, and what followed on.
