Memorial Days

      Remember Hypsipyle? I’ve written about her in the past; she’s a favorite character of mine. There are plenty of reasons to like her story: for one thing, Aphrodite’s decision to repay her neglect from the women of Lemnos with a foul odor seems much more humane than the gods’ usual responses to neglect, such as demanding human sacrifice or cursing someone with a hunger so insatiable he is eventually driven to eat himself. After suffering from incurable body odor, the decision of the Lemnian women to repay their neglect from the Lemnian men with mass murder seems hilariously overblown, in a dark comedy way, the sort of thing that would only happen to create a backstory for an all-female Greek city-state that wouldn’t exist for any other reason. Despite her dubious means to power, Hypsipyle seems to exercise the sort of prudence and gravitas expected of a ruler (although she does take on Jason as a romantic interest, which shows some questionable judgment). In Statius’ Thebaid, she stands as a rather improbably innocent study of morality in the midst of evil, observing the slaughter but refusing to participate--and at the same time refusing to bring to justice any of the murderers she ostensibly rules over. Later in life, for reasons that vary from version to version, Hypsipyle was sent into exile, or possibly kidnapped by pirates.

      But where did she go? It’s a long fall for the former queen of Lemnos. She ends up enslaved in Nemea (famous as the home of the Nemean Lion that Herakles fought) working as a babysitter, and not doing a very good job of it. In fact, she’s such a poor babysitter that the child she’s watching dies. This is how it happens: a sudden drought occurs, just as an aggressive army comes marching through Nemea. Meeting Hypsipyle (alone with the baby she’s watching) on the road, the army demands to be led to a water source; in her haste to comply, she sets down the baby. The baby, named Opheltes, isn’t in danger of wandering off; he’s swaddled up tightly and too small to crawl anyway. But the moment Hypsipyle walks away, a snake lunges out of the grass and kills the baby--but this is no ordinary snake. It’s the most fearsome snake in the world, apparently, with three rows of teeth and flaming eyes, a snake powerful enough to tear down oak trees and venomous enough to wither grass just by breathing on it. And this baby isn’t Herakles, ready to strangle divine snakes even before he leaves the cradle; this is an ordinary baby, who never stood a chance against the world’s most dangerous snake. It’s complete overkill. While the army is milling around and refilling their canteens, Hypsipyle is agonizing over the question of how to tell her masters that their son is dead.

      The parents are so upset to hear about their son’s death that they decide to institute a recurring athletic competition (similar to the Olympics) in his honor. These were called the Nemean Games and they’re the other thing (besides the Lion) that Nemea is famous for--if you go there today, you can still visit the ancient racetrack, and find ancient Greek graffiti carved into the walls. For context, you should know that ancient Greece was home to many recurring athletic competitions, most of which commemorated some extraordinary triumph. The Panathenaic Games, for example, were held in honor of Athena’s mythic defeat of Poseidon in the contest for patronage of Athens, in which Athena created the olive tree and Poseidon made a horse spring out of the ground. The Pythian Games at Delphi commemorated Apollo’s defeat of the Python, a giant dragon (hard to imagine it was more fearsome than the one that killed Opheltes) that was terrorizing Delphi. Compared to these heroic stories, the origins of the Nemean Games seem unbelievably banal: a baby was left unattended and died by accident. Even so, Opheltes is revered as a hero, no doubt the most heroic infant that ever lay immobile on the ground. It’s a commonplace statement that the heroes of Greek myth are often not as heroic as one might wish--Herakles, Theseus, Orpheus, and all the other heroes generally have some unsavory exploits lurking in their pasts that are hard to condone under modern mores--but Opheltes is probably the least heroic Greek hero I’ve ever heard of. I’d say that, in the spirit of the Nemean Games, we should all endeavor to be more like him, but I’m afraid he left us very few accomplishments to emulate.