Map of the Whorl

Aristeas of the Long Sun

The Long Sun is basically a re-telling of the story of Aristeas as related by Robert Graves in The Greek Myths.The following is the basically Robert Graves’ telling (The Greek Myths Ch. 82):

Apollo fell in love with the virgin-hunteress Cyrene. He whisked her away and promised for her passion long-life to indulge in hunting. Then he left her in the care of the Myrtle-nymphs. She soon bore Apollo's son, Aristeas.1

She soon bore Apollo's son, Aristeas. The Myrtle-nymphs, nicknamed him. "Nomius" (guardian of the flocks) and "Agreus" (wild) they taught him how to make cheese, build hives, and produce goods from olives. 2 He taught these arts to others for this he was paid divine honors. 3

When he grew up, he married the Muse Autonoe whose name means "a mind of her own".4

One day he consulted the Delphic Oracle and was told to visit an isle Ceos where he would be honored. There he found that the scorching Dog Star had caused a plague among the islanders, in revenge for the murder of Icarus whose secret murderers were sheltering among them. Aristeas summoned the people, offered sacrifice to Zeus, and appeased the Dog Star by putting the murderers to death. Zeus was gratified and cooled Greece and stopped the plague. 5

Later, all his bees died, and greatly distressed he went to a deep sacred pool. There aunt Arethusa heard his imploring voice through the water and invited him down to the wonderful palace of the Naiads. They washed him with water drawn from a perpetual spring and after a sacrificial feast, he was advised by Cyrene to "bind Proteus and force him to explain why your bees sickened." 6

Proteus, the ancient sea-god, was taking his noon-day nap in a cave on the island of Pharos, sheltering from the heat of the Dog Star. Aristeas overcame him "in spite of his changes" and learned that the bees sickness was punishment for the death of Eurydice by a serpent. Aristeas must "propitiate the ghost of Orpheus." 7

Aristeas was then instructed "to raise four altars in the woods to the Dryads, Eurydice's companions, and sacrifice four young bulls and  four heifers; then to pour a libation of blood, leaving the carcasses where they lay." Then he was to return "nine-days later, bringing poppies of forgetfulness, a fatted calf, and a black ewe." "Aristeas obeyed and, on the ninth morning, a swarm of bees rose from the rotting carcasses, and settled on a tree." 8

Now the Arcadians honor him as Zeus for having taught them this method" of bee-keeping. "Aristeas visited other distant lands," and is paid "divine honors, especially from the olive-growers". Finally he "supplemented his education by taking part in the Mysteries of Dionysus", and then "disappeared without a trace". He is now "now worshipped as a god both by the barbarians and by the civilized Greeks." 9


Aristeas of Proconnesus was a mystic poet whose life was eulogized by the Theban poet Pindar (a character in Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist). Regarding Aristeas' death and disappearance, Plutarch compares Aristeas' death and disappearance to Romulus':
This is like some of the Greek fables of Aristeas the Proconnesian...for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's workshop, and his friends, coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton.
 


The following is what Herodotus says of Aristeas:
What follows I know to have happened to the Metapontines of Italy, three hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of Aristeas, as I collect by comparing the accounts given me at Proconnesus and Metapontum. Aristeas then, as the Metapontines affirm, appeared to them in their own country, and ordered them to set up an altar in honour of Apollo, and to place near it a statue to be called that of Aristeas the Proconnesian.

"Apollo," he told them, "had come to their country once, though he had visited no other Italiots; and he had been with Apollo at the time, not however in his present form, but in the shape of a crow." Having said so much, he vanished. Then the Metapontines, as they relate, sent to Delphi, and inquired of the god in what light they were to regard the appearance of this ghost of a man. The Pythoness, in reply, bade them attend to what the spectre said, "for so it would go best with them." Thus advised, they did as they had been directed: and there is now a statue bearing the name of Aristeas, close by the image of Apollo in the market-place of Metapontum, with bay-trees standing around it. But enough has been said concerning Aristeas.
 

 

  1. It's not hard to see this as a disjointed account of The Book of the Long Sun. Apollo is the Caldé; in this case, the Caldé Tussah. He leaves his heir, grown from a bio-engineered embryo in the care of Silk's "mother". She doesn’t cut as good a deal as Cyrene: for her services she received six cards per year (or maybe she does--possibly more on that later).
    Nightside of the Long Sun     pg 27

  2. The Myrtle-nymphs are Mint, Rose, and Marble as I explain in my essay The Sacred King of the Long Sun. As his only true representatives of the Charter, it is they whom daily honor him as augur. As augur is a "guardian of the flock”. His designation as "wild" is one of the confabulations between Silk's and Tussah's identities because tussah is "wild silk." Silk credits the sybils as teaching him the duties of an augur. In the Long Sun, the "bees" are the people of his manteon at first and later the whole whorl; olives represent peace; cheese could be considered the everyday duties of an augur. According to Graves, the myrtle was the symbol of colonization.
     

  1. At the palaestra and during Scylsday services, Silk teaches what he has learned to others and is properly respected as a holy man.

  2. Silk marries Hyacinth a sexually licentious woman who has been possessed by Kypris ~ an old name for Aphrodite when she was a seminal creative fertility goddess who arose from the sea. Hyacinth is definitively a nymph.

  3. After the theophany of Kypris at the Sun St manteaon (the Delphic Oracle was that of the Sun god Apollo), the campaign for Silk's election as Caldé is begun in earnest. The Long Sun is certainly scorching. Viron in particular, and the rest of the whorl as well, is suffering under a terrible drought. At one point, the Long Sun goes dark shortly and then flares, burning the fig tree at the Sun St. manteaon. It is tempting to assign the murder of Icarus to the death of Iolar the Flier and his "murderers" to Blood and Musk at the instigation of the Ayuntamiento. In deed there is some confabulation with this. But Iolar is not exactly murdered ~ his death is an unintended accident like Mamelta's althought the murderers are the same. "Icarus" is Tussah as explained my up-coming essay Daedalus of the Long Sun.

    First Musk (Blood's protegé) is put to death before "all the people" by Marble/Echdina, when he attempts to assassinate Silk, the new Caldé who is somehow also Tussah himself. However, this cannot be the event we are looking for. Aristeas must put the murder to death. Later, at Blood's house, Silk/Aristeas executes Blood, the murderer of Tussah/Icarus. The death of Musk and Iolar are clever additions to the story by which Wolfe accomplishes several ends:
     
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    He fulfills the criteria of murderers (plural) of Icarus
     

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    He sets Musk as type of Blood; a picture of Blood some twenty years prior who assassinated Tussah and received his house in payment.
     

  4. "The dying of the bees" is the endangerment of Silk's mantaeon and the imminent end of the whorl. Silk goes to sacred Lake Limna and is "invited", rather forcefully, by the talus (Arethusa) into Scylla’s shrine, into the palace at the lake's bottom. While the talus is not Silk's aunt is nevertheless his cousin and is treated as such thematically as described in Daedalus of the Long Sun. The “perpetual spring could either be the pool of water by which Silk slept in the tunnels or the opening in the submarine’s bottom.

  5. Proteus' name means "the first man", and in a cave under Lake Limna, Silk meets Councillor Lemur. A lemur is a primitive primate--evolutionarily speaking, the first man. He's changed quite a bit, from his lemur days however: a "living statue" of a modern man. Wolfe twists the story a bit in that Lemur binds Silk instead of the other way around. Yet, it is Lemur who does all the talking and reveals that Pas is dead; killed by the Serpentine Echidna.

  6. Pas' "companions" are the Fliers and the altars are the four gondolas of the Trivigaunte airship.

Patera Jerboa is the "poppies of forgetfulness" -- unaware that he carries in his mind a hidden piece of Pas.

To "appease" the "ghost" of Pas, Auk and Hammerstone offer a "fatted calf" (Hyacinth, stuffed with nectarines) and a black ewe (Incus). 

Note 1: Here is a great puzzle. Auk shares with Silk the persona of not just Aristeas, in that he offers one of the Aristeas' sacrifices, but also Hephaestus and Orion. What does it mean that Silk and Auk share the identities of at least three mythological characters? Normally, I would say this means that they are in some way the same personalities, just as Silk, Pas, and Typhon are in some sense the same persons and thus share archetypal identities. But unlike Pas, Auk looks nothing like Silk. Silk is blonde while Auk is dark. Silk is tall and stately while Auk is dark and bearish. Furthermore, Auk is not equivalent to Silk in every mythological theme. His also Aristeas' brother, Idmon the seer and he is Daedalus to Silk's Talus. This suggests that Silk and Auk are to be considered related yet the same in a way that Silk and Pas are not.

Note 2: The Auk and Hammerstone are treated thematically as one during this sacrifice as Incus said afterward,

"Accompanying me are two laymen who themselves have the greatest of claims to your revered attention, for they are Auk and Hammerstone, the biochemical person and the chemical one, conjoined, selected by Lord Pas himself to execute his will..."

Note 3: This event is one of the signals that Incus is a woman (a ewe) in disguise, not a closet homosexual as her behavior suggests initially -- it is also another hint of the chem (probably Molybdenum) that has become Hyacinth: Tartaros told Auk to present him with a woman. Tartaros accepts Incus and rejects Hyacinth telling Auk to let her go. So in once sence Hyacinth is the rejected fatted calf.

Incus is "black" is due to the following:

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Her vestments as an augur--just as Mints vestments are black

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She is a black mechanic

Later Remora repeats the process with Sand as the accepted fatted calf ("five hundredweight metal") and Mint as the rejected black ewe (due to her vestments) in Exodus of the Long Sun, Chapter 11.

Also, note that in Grave’s telling, the calf and ewe don’t have to be sacrificed, just presented. In Sand’s case, the libation of blood is his own.

Of the four heifers and four young bullocks that are carried to the altar:

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The four heifers are Hyacinth, Nettle, Marble, and Incus

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The four bullocks are Silk, Horn, Remora, and Spider.

For the sacrifice "that is left where they lay," that is, left behind, from which the bees (that is, the colonists) rise and settle (on Green) Sciathon replaces Spider. But in each case, they are exactly eight; four male and four female; no more, no less.

  1. Silk is “scanned” at Mainframe and his personality becomes one of the heads of Pas. Afterward, Silk is honored as the one who founded the colonies of Green and Blue. He is also honored by peace-lovers (olive-growers) in Viron and Trivigaunte. Just before disappearing without a trace, he is seen riding in the company of Quetzal, the demon-Dionysus. But he does disappear and is accepted as the last Caldé by both the Ayuntamient and the Trivigauntes. Since he becomes one of the heads of Pas, he worshipped as divine wherever Pas is honored.

The Meaning of Aristeas

What is Wolfe's attraction to Aristeas that he would nurture this obscure archetype over three novel series? Twofold. The first is his connection to Romulus noted by Plutarch. Hamlet's Mill, an important source for Wolfe at least since The Fifth Head of Cerberus, connects Romulus with the constellation Orion for whom all Wolfe's protagonists in his main novels are a type. So the poet Aristeas is with his stylus is like the Mighty Sky hero with his sword or club.

Secondly, Dechend, co-author of Hamlet's Mill, associates Orion with the Deus Faber, the Maker God who created all the world. This associates Aristeas with Jesus, the Divine Word, by whom "all things were made" and "without Him nothing was made that was made."  Aristeas' death, resurrection, and disappearance are himself reminiscent of Jesus Christ (whom is also vaguely associated with Orion in Hamlet's Mill).
 

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