Before I start with this first chapter to the Herakles novel I’m working on, shout out to
for her excellent advice, support and friendship.No this isn’t actually a Trump post. I’ve no interest in that stuff, this was a test to see what might get views. Now on with the story about the greatest mythical figure in all Western Mythologies…
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Descent Into Madness
“The day is downcast, but it shall not be a wicked one,” One farmer pronounced, his name was Alekos, thin and grey-haired he bore himself stiffly, with his clothes hanging off of his shoulders as might rags.
“I am not so certain father,” Replied his son Evangelos, hardly encouraged by the darkened skies and the cold, whispering wind that blew against their cheeks. “I smell autumn on the horizon, and mislike its stench.”
“Bah what would you know?” Though he insulted his son, Alekos nonetheless threw several more surreptitious glances upwards.
More might well have been said as they worked the fields, were it not for a sudden cry that erupted and tore through the land. Bewildered, and shocked at the rage and pain of it, all of the four sons of Alekos and their father halted in their work to stare. They were not alone in this regard, for a great many other farmers from all the nearby fields did much the same.
“What in the name of the King of Olympos?” Evangos the youngest of Alekos’s sons exclaimed alarmed at the force of the cry.
“That sounded rather like the voice of Alcides…” Evangelos remarked ever the keenest of ears, glancing to his father for permission.
This he received if curtly so, ere the two of them ventured thither down the road, to the vastest of the fields outside the city. At one time wealthy, Amphitryon had bequeathed his fortune to his two sons, with the younger of the twins Iphicles taking up the city residence and the young, the farm. It happened that Amphitryon had passed but a mere two years hence, much to the sorrow of those such as his widow, at one time the most beauteous of all the maids of Thíva, Alcmene. The daughter of the King of Mykreneon, Electryon the predecessor of Sthenelos (Alcmene’s uncle), she had chosen to wed the humble warrior after he had avenged her father, so that he had in this way won her love. A lady that even Alekos had at one time fancied, as had all men in the locality. She had but eyes for the finest of the city’s warriors, Amphitryon.
The farmers multiplied in numbers, by some two dozen by the time Alekos had arrived before the large stone-house that Alcides had built by his own hands. Brushing aside the door made of mahogany that separated the outside world from the interior one, of the kinsmen of Alcides.
The gasp that was torn from the throats of the women, was one that the men joined in with Alekos near the front of the crowd who looked into the house. “Away!” He hissed as he turned to speak to Evangelos, as his eldest son arrived and complained that he could not see, anything at all. “To the city!”
“Why?”
“For there has been a multitude of murders!” He informed his son gravely, who turned away to depart for the city.
*****
Many were those who gawked at the interior of the home. Their own innate human goodness forgotten, and sense of communal loyalty a thing of the past. Such was the shock that pierced each of their hearts, as they stared at the kneeling figure that their reaction was the most humane and to be expected. None of them, in a thousand years could have foreseen such a possible event. Not a one of them, had expected this event not even the Oracle of Apollo who lived to the east of their city could have predicted this possibility. So unexpected was this terrible event that, none had expected it or could properly bring their minds to bear upon the terrible scene that lay before them.
Quite how it had come about, was a mystery with the sole individual to have been there for some time, as far as they knew being Antikyreus. A local warrior, son of one of the King’s scribes he it was who had arrived within the house, but a day prior wherefore he had departed in a hurry ere night-fall. Returning in a hurry some time ago, Antikyreus had hardly drawn any attention, with few if any present taking notice of him as he gathered together several choice items into a pack, made of leather to one side of within the house.
“How terrible!” One woman gasped.
“Oh, what a wicked event!”
“Do you see the blood on him?” This last query was asked by Nicolaos, who lived just east of Alekos’s home.
The blood to which he referred that decorated Alcides, was that not of some enemy killed in the heat of battle but that of the man’s own family. Their innards and blood had come to decorate the whole of the house interior’s main hall; with the greatest proportion of those slain being what remained of Megara.
*****
Such news, such a wicked crime could no more remain hidden than it could be taken back. The news that the mightiest of those who had fought in King Creon’s army several years prior, when he had first warred with his neighbours to the north in Aechea had slain his own family soon spread. Even at this time, Alcides was already a legend in the locality, as much for his part in the ‘Thíva-North War’ as he was for his immense strength, for it was said that he possessed the might of a hundred strong men. Such had been the glory he had won that none were surprised, when five years prior, King Creon had consented to wed his seventeen year old daughter Megara to the fourteen year old youth. Alcides had for his part little in the way of his father or brother’s military ambitions, and had quietly sunk into married life. It was soon evident that he preferred to exchange the sword for the plough. Turning away from the making of orphans and widows, to the fathering of children so that men soon forgot all about him much to the frustration of the likes of his father Zeus, or so many who knew how vain he could be about his children suspected.
When the news reached at long last his ears after several hours of circulating the darkened countryside, the storm that had been brewing in the east, at last began to sweep across the land. This storm though was as nothing compared to that which swept over the royal palace, where Creon had loved Megara, he had never borne much love for his good-son. A peasant in his eyes in spite of the youth’s mother being of royal stock and father having been revealed in recent years as having been Zeus, thanks in part to the Oracle of Apollo to the east. It happened that he had however seen just how enflamed his daughter had become at a single glance at the warrior. Full of dread and against his own wishes and inclination, he consented to the union, giving over Megara who to his horror had taken to her rough, country life with a zest and joy that had bewildered him.
Always his advisors and his wife would say to him, “In time she will grow bored. The humiliation of her situation, the lowliness of being a wife to such a man will occur to her.”
Yet it never did.
And now it never would, he mused utterly overcome and overwhelmed by his own grief. Certainly, he had not met with her or seen her in years, refused to see or visit with his grandchildren he had thought that they may as well have never existed and might at times have wished them gone. Yet now that they were, he felt haunted and consumed by his grief, his sorrow and the regret that he had not done his grandfatherly duty.
The news had taken him unawares, and at first he had not believed it. He had thought it one of his wife or concubines’ many disrespectful and highly inappropriate jests. Yet when the messengers twelve in all, sent out one after the other each of them returning to confirm to him that yes, indeed Megara had passed away.
At which time, the Queen who had long since retreated to her own bedchambers to weep, and wail with much of the household going there to comfort her, or withdrawing into their own grief. It happened that in this way, the King was abandoned to his grief. Abandoned and alone with nary any to speak to, so that he delved very much inwardly, as all men must at such times.
What he found deep within himself was a blackness, a storm that was in the midst of ravaging all that he was. His daughter, who had raced along the palace halls, singing as she went and who had dreamt of marriage and love, even as she had insisted on carrying away every puppy she could find in the kennels to her bedchambers. This girl that had played with dolls, and devoted herself to games that had included noble-girls, merchant daughters and even servant-girls was now gone. That same girl that had loved to report to his wife at even the most unseemly of hours, the sort of gossip that enormously annoyed her husband on more than one night, was now gone.
How could it be that he would never speak to her again? Seized by grief, and horror, Creon could hardly keep from trembling, keep from giving way to the sense of grief that had come to overwhelm him. All reason was shut away, so that all that was left was his sense of despair and hollowness.
Megara was lost to him. Her children gone, along with all hopes to make right what mistakes he had made.
“Sire, your orders?” Demetrius his court-fool asked of him, seeking to coax him from the great sorrow and melancholy that had overtaken him.
“Orders?”
“I understand there is now a dread that has taken over thee, a dread at the thought of acting.”
“Why would I dread action?”
“Because to act, would mean to affirm that Megara and her children are now deceased, and with this affirmation must come acceptance.” Demetrius told him, looking on him with the sort of tenderness that a father might have his child.
It was this great act of kindness. These words that inspired in Creon a kind of call of action, one that might well have inspired in later days much regret, but not him. Such was the wrath that overwhelmed him thence and forevermore for the rest of his days that he would never forgive, nor cease in his relentless drive to avenge his lost daughter. Never would he compromise, or seek to accept the grief, the black despair that would forever haunt Alcides. Such was the nature of Creon’ love and grief that he could not do other than he was to do in later days.
*****
Well might you ask what Zeus, father of Olympos might have thought of such shoddy treatment of his best beloved son? He it must be said was wholly unawares until Alcmene left to consult with the Oracle of Pythia, who it was that first advised Zeus to the danger that had befallen his son. Alerted to the truth of this great travesty of justice, thanks in part to Apollo the King of Olympos was to send Hermes down to the ruler of Thíva to inform him in no uncertain terms that his son had his protection.
Alarmed to have awoken, the wroth of the King of Olympos, and consumed with grief the King was to depart at once with Pericles, and Iphicles still present to defend the honour of his half-brother for the Oracle.
Such was the misery enjoyed by those involved in the journey, as none of the men took much solace in the company of one another. The eldest of whom bewailed time and again, the wickedness inherent in Alcides, “How could he do such a thing? I gave unto him, the best beloved of all the jewels I had in my life, and he has thanked me with madness and murder! I should think it only right that Alcides pay for his crimes with his life!”
“And I say to thee, o King that there would be little in the way of justice, were you to lay hands upon him! My brother under no circumstances, and in no way would ever bring harm down upon Megara or his sons, or daughter!” Iphicles defended at once, exasperated and irritable his words hardly impressing the King.
A man of a brooding nature, of an often impulsive instinct that drove him from intrepid act to intrepid act, Iphicles was known for his ill-temper and dark moods. In this he had much in common with his twin, and also his mother. The difficulty was now was the time for diplomacy, for patience and reason all virtues that so very often escape the best of men, during such trying times.
The men of the city scorned his words. They had the view that Iphicles, simply harboured special favour for his unworthy brother. Neither the King nor his guards were of a mind to consider the man and his mother correct in their assumption of the sorry fate that had befallen poor Alcides. Well might you think of them, and their perspective for all that they had endured also, but it must be borne in mind that Alcides was by no means guilty as they soon learnt when at last they arrived thereupon the summit of the hill upon which the Oracle lived.
Mounting it, they were to meet at the base of the great pilgrimage site the once beauteous, now aged Alcmene present with Iolaus. She had departed for the Oracle, with the only remaining grandchild she had left, with the two of them greeting the monarch with far more courtesy than Iphicles had. Their courtesy was responded to with a curt nod, one that showed neither forgiveness, nor interest in doing so.
“Your Grace,” She said with considerable more respect than her son had uttered, curtseying as was proper.
“Let us conclude this matter,” King Creon, aged ere his time as he pressed forward importantly ordering aside the other pilgrims that he might present his suit before the Oracle. It was his view that there were no suits more important than his own. Once presented alongside them, before the crone atop the hill, he was to lay before her, the crimes committed against his house by the barbarous Alcides. “He has besmirched the honour of my house, slain my daughter, her four sons and daughter and fled from my justice for a time. Once I had him in my grasp though, Hermes messenger of the lords of Olympos presented himself before me, and forbade the execution of that most treacherous of men Alcides.”
“And what be thy query, o Creon King of Thíva?”
“I should know that my suit is lawful, and just and that no ill-fate shall befall me should I exact justice.”
In answer to his request the Oracle was silent for some time. The vapours near the back of the shrine rose, and surrounded the wise mouth-piece of Apollo. All waited with bated breath.
At last the Oracle bade them present the man in question before her. Reluctant though he was to abide by this request, Creon did as was right and just.
Pericles sent away to retrieve the mightiest of men, soon returned days after with the man still in chains. Once presented before the wisest of all those who bespoke in the name of Apollo, Alcides eyes lowered and head bent presented so pitiful a figure that his mother and nephew were driven once more to tears. Valorous Iphicles equally moved and upset, could not bring himself to look upon his brother such was the pain and grief he felt also.
Presented before she who was to decide his fate, Alcides was bidden to kneel before the Oracle. Quite why was a mystery to him, and yet full of grief and shame he did as bidden, fully expectant judgement such as that which was desired by Creon was to be exacted of him. So that he, the son of Zeus knelt before a mortal woman with less divinity in her, than the barest of his fingernails.
“Kneel Alcides, and know that thy mortal life of ease such as it was, is now lain aside.” She proclaimed, were any to have thought about those words at all they might have been moved to chortle at them. Ease could hardly be the word used to describe the life he had had before then, “Great is the pall of shame that has been lain before thee… lo! All present shall bear witness to my pronunciation of what is to be thy fate; you will go forth to Argyles where King Eurystheus rules.”
“King Eurystheus despises my son, what possible good could come from him presenting himself before him?” Alcmene intervened horrified by the Oracle’s decree.
Continuing to speak, as though she had not interrupted her, the Oracle declared, “You shalt present thyself before him and place thyself into his service. To serve him in all matters, unquestionably so with the King to lay ten tasks before thy feet; it shall only be once these duties are fulfilled that you shall be cleansed of thy crimes.”
“But what of the reason for which he slew the princess Megara, and her children?” Iolaus demanded of the Oracle speaking up for the first time, since he had been presented before her. This in spite of how he knew it to be improper of him, yet none of them sought to shush him such was the shock that had rocked all those around him, at the decree of the Oracle.
“The cause for the murder, was the Queen of Olympos.” The Oracle said, still in the same trance that had entrapped her since some time ago, “Madness she sent down to Alcides that he might commit such a heinous crime, as to draw the ire of Creon upon himself, and thus be executed.”
“And well he should be!” Pericles growled hotly.
It happened that none paid him any further mind, nor did any take interest in either him or the views of Creon on this matter. Not that the monarch was to demonstrate what he thought in that moment, of the sentence that had been cast down from the Oracle from on high down upon Alcides.
“Is my son to be made a slave, for the crimes of Hera?” Alcmene shrieked swept away by fury and humiliation.
“Mother,” Alcides attempted to calm her from where he knelt.
“Careful with thy words milady,” The Oracle declared, adding a heartbeat later, “Neither thy son nor the love of Zeus may shield thee from blasphemy, should you commit it.” She paused if briefly so communing in that moment with those gods which Alcmene felt to be most unjust. “Once his duties shall be completed then, and only then shall he be cleansed of the filth of his sins.”
There was more that was decreed, with Alcides having little in the way of time between then and when he must present himself before the King in question. Eurystheus, who had been so humiliated in the past and poorly treated, was to have a messenger sent to him to inform him of the great honour given over to him.
This Alcides accepted with penitent silence. His grief such that he neither questioned, nor did he think to defy the Oracle, oh to have seen him in that moment, thought his nephew Iolaus. How could any despise him, or consider him aught less than the most tragic of men?
There was to be more, and it was this that most stoked the flames of humiliation and rage. It was this that best pleased Creon and appeased the flames of vengeance that licked still at the core of his being.
“Alcides shall cast aside his name that he might take up that of Hera.” The Oracle added, possessed still by the vapours of those serpents blessed by Apollo.
“Never!” Alcides refused at once, unable to bear the shame.
“Then you shall never be absolved. All of thy works from this day on, shall be done for the betterment of Eurystheus and for the better glory of Hera.”
“Is my brother to have no dignity, no manly pride left to his name?” Iphicles demanded bitterly, speaking out for his sibling.
“His is to be the eternal glory of his name,” The Oracle pronounced, “But he shall do so for Hera, for she whom he insulted and humiliated previously to this most horrid of events. Go now Herakles, for this is to be thy name; ‘Hera’s Glory’ and it is for this that you are to strive forevermore… Now kneel no more Alcides son of Alcmene, and arise Herakles son of Zeus!”
Though, it filled his heart with endless bitterness to do so, Herakles as he was now to be dubbed did as bidden if against his will.
The pronouncement of the new name brought untold bitterness to his mother, and twin. Both had loved him, more than their own lives. It was thus with a great deal of reluctance at first that, even they were to take to calling him so, yet to them and those nearest to them in blood and in heart, Alcides he would forever remain.
We've been tricked, we've been backstabbed and we've been quite possibly, bamboozled.
In a good way.
For the record, I didn't read this because I thought it was political. I clicked on it praying that it wouldn't be. So be sure to factor that into your statistics...
This is a very interesting take on the Herakles story. I'm looking forward to more!
One minor thing--unless you're changing the genealogy, Creon is Oedipus's uncle, not his brother.
That also raises some potentially irritating questions about chronology. (I encountered them in my own work with the Herakles and Oedipus stories but never really developed a good answer for them.)
Creon is king in his own right for only about fifteen minutes (the time between the deaths of Eteocles and Polynices in the battle of the seven against Thebes, and the point at which Creon is overthrown by the elders after causing the deaths of Antigone, etc. (as documented in the play, "Antigone" by Sophocles). Clearly, Herakles slaughters his Theban family long before that.
But Creon was acting king on two other occasions: during the very short period between the death of Laius and the crowning of Oedipus after his defeat of the Sphinx; after Oedipus blinds himself when he discovers he has inadvertently killed his father and married his mother, up to the point at which Eteocles and Polynices come of age. Thus, the only interval long enough for the Herakles incident to fit is the latter.
The problem with that is that the myths seem to descend from two different storytellers ignorant of each other's work. None of Creon's other children or nieces and nephews are mentioned in any version of the Megara story, which has even led some writers to suggest that the Creon in the Herakles story is a different man. There isn't any room for another Creon in the traditional king's list, however. In the same way, neither Megara nor the Herakles connection is ever mentioned in any version of the story of Oedipus and his kin.
Greek mythology is beautiful--but it's also messy. It takes a lot of work to draw a storyline coherent enough for modern readers out of its incredibly varied and inconsistent stories. You do a great service by tackling such a task.