Epitome 13. Charioteer
THIS, so they say, is the man whom Zeus first saw to harness horses to a chariot, namely Erichthonios, son of Hephaistos and Earth. Impressed by the way in which Erichthonios had yoked white horses, and had driven the chariot in imitation of Helios,* and by the fact that he was the first to have conducted a procession on the Acropolis in honour of Athena, and had moreover brought splendour to the sacrifice with which she is honoured, Zeus [placed him among the constellations].
Euripides reports* as follows about the manner of his birth. Hephaistos conceived a passion for Athena and wanted to make love with her, but she rejected him because she preferred to remain a virgin, and hid herself away in a place in Attica which, so they say, is named the Hephaisteion* after that god. He thought that he could take her by force, but when he tried to do so, he received a blow from her spear, so that his desire was cut short and his semen fell on to the ground; and from it, so they say, a child was born, who was named Erichthonios as a result of this course of events. When he grew up, he made the aforementioned invention, and won renown as a competitor in the games. He organized the Panathenaia* with great care, and drove his chariot with a companion at his side who carried a small shield and wore a three-crested helmet on his head; it was after the example of that passenger that the so-called dismounter* was introduced.
Within this constellation are depicted the Goat and the Kids.* Musaeus* recounts that after Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted him to Themis,* who passed the infant on in turn to Amaltheia;* and the latter placed him with a she-goat that she owned, so that it became the nurse of Zeus. This goat was a child of Helios, and it was so terrifying to behold that the gods of the age of Cronos, struck with horror at its appearance, had asked Earth to hide it away in one of the caves in Crete; so she hid it there, placing it under the care of Amaltheia, who fed Zeus with its milk. When the boy came of age and was preparing to make war against the Titans, an oracle advised him, since he had no weapons, to make use of the goat’s hide as a weapon,* because it was impenetrable and terrifying, and because it had a Gorgon’s head set on the middle of its back. Zeus acted accordingly, and appeared twice as strong as a result of this stratagem. He covered the bones of the goat with another hide, and brought it back to life again and rendered it immortal. It is said that he [raised it to the sky to become] a heavenly star.
Others say that this is Myrtilos, the charioteer of Oinomaos, who was a son of Hermes.
Hyginus
The Constellation
The Charioteer is crossed by the summer tropic at the level of his knees,* while also being crossed from his left shoulder to his waist by the milky circle that we mentioned above. His right foot is joined to the left horn of the Bull by a single star.* He is portrayed as though holding reins in his hands. On his left shoulder the Goat is supposed to be represented, and on his arm two Kids in the form of two stars. He is located wholly at the feet of Perseus, and has his head facing toward the large Bear. He can be seen to set at the rising of the Archer and of Capricorn, and to rise at the setting of the Serpent-holder and Kneeler.
He has one star on his head, and one on each shoulder, that on the left, which is known as the Goat, being the brighter, and he has a star on each elbow, and two on his arm, known as the Kids, formed from stars which are almost fading out.
The Mythology
In Latin we call him Auriga, and his name is Erichthonios, as Eratosthenes shows. When Zeus saw him yoking horses to a four-horse chariot, as the first man to do so, he marvelled that a human mind could match the invention of Helios, who had been the first of the gods to make use of a four-horse chariot. Erichthonios first introduced such chariots, as we have just said, and the cult of Athena, and he raised the first temple on the Acropolis at Athens. As regards his birth, this is what Euripides reports. Hephaistos was so captivated by the beauty of Athena that he begged her to marry him, but without success; and she hid herself away at the place that would be known as the Hephaisteion because of his love for her. Hephaistos followed her there, so the story goes, and tried to take her by force. In a high state of arousal, he went up to her and tried to embrace her, but he was pushed away and shed his semen on to the ground. Overcome by shame, Athena spread some dust over it with her foot; and from it there was born the serpent Erichthonios, who owed his name to the earth (chthon) and to their struggle (eris). Athena is said to have hidden him in a small casket like those used at the Mysteries,* and she took it to the daughters of Erechtheus and entrusted it to their care, ordering them not to open it. But since human beings are inquisitive by nature, and the more eager to find out about something the more often they are told not to, the girls opened the casket and caught sight of the snake. As a result, they were driven mad by Athena, and hurled themselves down from the Acropolis. The serpent for its part fled to Athena’s shield, and was brought up by her.
Others have said, however, that Erichthonios merely had legs in snake-form, and that during his earlier years he founded the Panathenaic Games in honour of Athena, competing in person in the four-horse chariot-race; and it was by way of reward for that, so it is said, that he was placed among the constellations. Or according to some authors who have written about astronomical matters, it was a man of Argos called Orsilochos* who first introduced the four-horse chariot, and won a place among the constellations because of his invention. Others have said that it is the son of Hermes and Clytia, Myrtilos by name, who was the charioteer of Oinomaos; after he met his death in circumstances that are well-known to everyone, his father is said to have placed his body in the sky.
On his left shoulder there stands the Goat, and on his left arm the Kids seem to be set. Some report as follows about them. There was a son of Hephaistos called Olenos, and he had two daughters, the nymphs Aix and Helike, who were nurses of Zeus. Others say too that some cities are named after them, Olenos in Elis, Helike in the Peloponnese, and Aiga in Haimonia; Homer talks about this in the second book of the Iliad. According to Parmeniscos, however, there was a certain Melisseus,* king of Crete, and it was to his daughters that Zeus was entrusted to be nursed. But because they had no milk, they brought him to a she-goat called Amaltheia, and this goat is said to have reared him. It always used to give birth to a pair of kids, and had just given birth when Zeus was brought to it to be suckled; and so, in reward for the services rendered by their mother, Zeus is said to have placed the kids too among the stars. Cleostratos of Tenedos* is said to have been the first to have pointed them out in the sky.
But according to Musaeus, Zeus was nursed by Themis and the nymph Amaltheia, having been entrusted to them by his mother Rhea; and Amaltheia had a goat as a pet, which is said to have suckled Zeus. Some say, however, that Aix was a daughter of Helios who was almost unmatched for the brilliant whiteness of her body, but had a face that was terrible to behold and was out of keeping with her beauty. The Titans were so terrified that they asked Earth to hide her body away, and Earth is said to have hidden her in a cave on the island of Crete. Aix subsequently became the nurse of Zeus, as we have already indicated. And when Zeus, placing confidence in his youth, was preparing to make war against the Titans, he received an oracle saying that, if he wanted to win, he should wage war wearing the skin of a goat (aigos) and the Gorgon’s head; the Greeks have named this the aegis. So after he had acted as we have explained above, Zeus defeated the Titans and attained supreme power. He then covered the remaining bones of the goat with a goat’s skin, brought it back to life again, and made an image of it in the stars to preserve its memory; and later he made a gift to Athena of the aegis that he had worn when achieving his victory.
According to Euhemerus,* there was a certain Aix who was the wife of Pan; after being raped by Zeus, she gave birth to a son whom she passed off as being the child of her husband Pan. So the child was called Aigipan, while Zeus was called the title of Aigiochos (Aegis-bearing). Because he loved her very greatly, he placed an image of a goat among the stars to recall her memory.
Commentary
The Charioteer
(i) This Charioteer could be identified either as the inventor of the chariot or as a famous charioteer. Erichthonios, a primordial king of Athens (Ap. 3.14.4), was an appropriate candidate on both accounts, because he was said not only to have invented the four-horse chariot, but also to have competed in it after founding the Panathenaic Games. Chariots of such a kind were used for that purpose alone in historical times. The founding of the games was an aspect of his activity as the founder of the principal cult at Athens, that of Athena, since athletic contests were attached to religious festivals rather than being purely secular events as in modern times.
(ii) Or this is an alternative candidate for the honour of having invented the four-horse chariot. For it was claimed at Argos that its inventor had not been an Athenian, but an Argive, whose name, which appears in garbled form in the present text of Hyginus, was Trochilos (trochos meaning a wheel in Greek). He is described as a grandson of Peiras, the founder of the cult of Argive Hera, the principal cult which was comparable to that of Athena at Athens, and the son of Callithuia, the first priestess of Hera at Argos (schol. Arat. 161); his ‘talking name’ suggests that he was invented specifically to be the inventor of the chariot, which he is said to have dedicated to Hera.
(iii) The most famous chariot-race in myth was that in which Pelops was said to have defeated Oinomaos, king of Pisa, to establish himself in the Peloponnese (Ap. Epit. 2.3–8). Oinomaos forced his daughter’s suitors to set out ahead of him in a chariot, and killed them when he caught up with them, until Pelops managed to escape that fate; it was often said that Pelops bribed Myrtilos, the charioteer of Oinomaos, to ensure that the king would be thrown from his chariot, which he achieved by sabotaging the wheel-pins. In connection with this myth, it was suggested that the Charioteer in the heavens is (a) Myrtilos, who was soon killed in his turn by Pelops; since he was a son of Hermes, it could easily be explained why he came to be placed in the sky. Or (b), he is Cillos (schol. Arat. 161), this being the name of the charioteer of Pelops according to the Olympian tradition (Pausanias 5.9.7). Or (c), he is Oinomaos himself (schol. Arat. 161); Germanicus (159 ff.) argues that this interpretation accords better with the appearance of the constellation than that in which it is said to portray Erichthonios, because the figure has no chariot, and can be pictured as grieving, with broken reins, for the daughter who had been robbed from him through the treachery of Pelops.
(iv) Pausanias (2.32) reports a local tradition from Troezen, a coastal town in the north-eastern Peloponnese, which claimed that the Charioteer is Hippolytos, son of Theseus. After Phaidra, the wife of Theseus, falsely accused her stepson of raping her, Theseus prayed to Poseidon to cause his death, and the god responded by sending a bull up from the sea as he was driving his chariot by the shore at Troezen, causing him to be thrown off (Ap. Epit. 1.18–19). The Troezenians claimed, however, that he had not been killed as the usual story suggested, and thus had no grave there, but had been transferred to the heavens to become this constellation.
(v) In late poetic sources alone (Claudian, 28.168 ff., Nonnus, Dionysiaca 38.242 ff.), this is sometimes said to be Phaethon, who met his death when trying to ride the chariot of his father Helios.
The Goat and Kids
(i) There were traditions that claimed that the infant Zeus had been suckled by a goat when he was hidden away from his father Cronos, and these provided the starting-point for the myths that were developed to explain the origin of this star-group of the Goat and Kids. Aratus (162–4) merely states that the Goat is the one that suckled Zeus without any further detail. He calls it the Olenian goat, apparently in reference to a tradition in which Zeus was said to have been suckled by a goat at Aigion, near Olenos in Achaea (Strabo 8.7.5); there may also be a punning allusion to the fact that the Goat lies on the elbow (olene) of the Charioteer, as a scholiast noted. In any case, ‘Olenian’ came to be a purely conventional title for the Goat in the heavens. In standard myth, the goat was often said to have been owned by a Cretan nymph called Amaltheia, or else, secondarily, the goat itself was said to bear that name, and authors who recounted the astral myth sometimes filled out the story accordingly. Ovid thus writes (Fasti 5.115 ff.) that the Goat was that of Amaltheia, who lived on Mount Ida in Crete, and that it had had two kids of its own when it was put to work to suckle Zeus, hence the origin of the two Kids in the sky; and Hyginus refers to a version in which the infant Zeus was entrusted to the daughters of Melisseus, king of Crete, who had a goat called Amaltheia, again with two kids.
(ii) Eratosthenes offered a remarkable account in which the goat was a wondrous beast which was the offspring of Helios, and became the source of Zeus’s strange weapon and attribute, the aegis (‘goat-skin’), a fringed hide or the like, which caused terror when he shook it (Il. 15.307–10 etc.). This became the goat of Amaltheia after it was hidden away in Crete because the Titans were terrified by its appearance, and Zeus subsequently used its hide as a weapon when waging war against the Titans to seize supreme power, providing additional reason for him to represent the goat among the stars.
(iii) The goat was also brought into connection with Aigipan (Goat-Pan) to develop a joint myth in which the goat suckled him along with Zeus, and both he and the goat were later transferred to the heavens (see p. 79). Hyginus records a rationalized version of this myth, no less facile than most of its kind, at the end of his summary of the myths of the Charioteer.