the Myrmidons

story in short …

The Myrmidions originated on the island of Aegina.

The island took its name from Aegina who was one of the daughters of the river Asopus in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Jupiter had abducted her in the shape of an eagle and then left her stranded on the island with no way of getting home.

She bore a son called Aeacus but Juno who was, as usual, vindictive to the victims and the produce of her husbands rampages and also anyone else who happened to be around – poisoned the water in the well and all the people died on the island of a plague except King Aeacus himself.

Bereft at having nobody and fetch and carry for him, Aeacus prayed to his father Jupiter to give him some new people to rule over and Jupiter sorted this out by taking a handful of ants and turning them into soldiers
These soldiers became called the Myrmidons (from “myrmidos”. The Greek word for Ant)

Time went by and Aeacus had two sons, Telamus and Peleus, then got annoyed when they accidently killed their half-brother and he threw them off the island of Aegina.

Peleus went North to Thessaly, taking some of the Myrmidons with him and later he married the sea-goddess, Thetis, and became the father of Achilles
Achilles led an army to the Trojan war and this is where the Myrmidons entered history as the ant-warrior bodyguard of Achilles in the Iliad

He also took his father’s talking horses … But that is another story …

BACK – Medea NEXT- Cephalus and Procris

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Bk VII:501-613 Aeacus tells of the plague at Aegina

After meeting and exchanging a few words, Cephalus described his mandate from Athens, asking for help and quoting the treaty sworn to by their ancestors, adding that Minos was out to control all Achaia. When he had invoked the treaty, in this way, to aid his cause, Aeacus, resting his left hand on the handle of his sceptre, replied ‘Don’t ask for our help, assume it. Don’t hesitate to reckon the forces of this island your own, and (let this state of my fortunes last!) energy is not lacking. I have men enough, and thank the gods, the moment is auspicious and there will be no excuses.’ ‘I wish it may always be so’ Cephalus said ‘and may your city swell its numbers. Indeed, as I came I felt happy: so many equally youthful, handsome people, meeting me on the way. Yet there were many I missed, that I saw before, when I visited the city.’ Aeacus sighed, and spoke sadly. ‘From a bad beginning, better fortune follows. I wish I could recall the one for you without the other! I’ll take them in order, now, and not stall you with irrelevances. Those your mind, remembering, misses are only bones and ashes, and how great a part of my wealth perished with them!

A terrible plague afflicted the people through the unjust anger of Juno, detesting us because our island had been named after my mother, her rival. While it looked like a human disease, and the cause of the disastrous epidemic was hidden, we fought it with medical skill. But the destruction cancelled out our efforts, which waned as we were conquered. At the outset the sky shrouded the earth in a thick fog, and held the sultry heat under clouds. While Luna filled her horns four times to make her disc complete, and four times thinned her full disc away, hot southerly winds breathed their deadly air on us. We know the pestilence reached our lakes and streams. Thousands of snakes slithered through the empty fields, and fouled the waters with their slime. The unexpected power of the disease surprised us, at the first, with its destruction of dogs, sheep and cattle, wild animals and birds. The wretched ploughman watches in dismay as sturdy oxen stumble in their task, and sink down onto the furrows. The flocks of sheep give out a sickly bleating, while the wool falls away of itself, and their bodies waste. The spirited horse, once famous on the track, loses his glory, and forgetting past honour, whinnies in his stall, dying a slow death. The wild boar no longer remembers his fury; the deer cannot trust to speed; the bears cannot match the strength of the herds. Lethargy grips them all. Decaying carcasses lie in the roadways, fields and woods, and the air is fouled with the stench. Strangely, dogs, carrion birds, and grey wolves, will not touch them. They rot on the ground, pollute the air with their dying breath, and spread contagion far and wide.

Increasing in virulence the pestilence spreads to the luckless farmers themselves, and takes lordship inside the city walls. Firstly the inner organs grow hot, and a flushed skin and feverish breath are symptoms of hidden warmth. The tongue is rough and swollen with heat: the lips are parted, parched with dry breath, and gasping suck in the heavy air. The sick cannot tolerate a bed or any kind of covering, but lie face down on the bare ground, though the earth does not cool their bodies, their bodies heat the earth.

No one can control it, and it breaks out fiercely among the doctors themselves, and the practice of their skill condemns the practitioners. The nearer people are to the sick, and the more selflessly they attend them, the more swiftly they meet their fate, and as the hope of recovery deserts them, and they see the end of their illness only in death, they give way to their desires, and ignore what is good for them, since nothing is any good. Everywhere they cling to the fountains and runnels and deep wells, and drinking, thirst is not quenched sooner than life. Many of them are too weak to stand, and even die in the water, yet others still draw it. Others loathe their hateful beds so much they leave them, and if they lack the strength to stand, they roll out onto the ground. They quit their household gods since their house seems fatal to them, and, because the cause is unknown, the building itself is blamed. You see them, half-dead, wandering the streets, while they can still stay on their feet, others lying on the ground weeping, turning their exhausted gaze upwards in their dying efforts, and stretching their arms out to the stars in the overhanging sky, breathing their last, here or there, wherever death has overtaken them.

What were my feelings then? What could they be, but to hate life, and to wish to be with my people? Wherever I looked as I turned my gaze, there were layers of dead, like rotten apples fallen from shaken branches, or acorns from a windblown ilex. See that temple opposite on the hill with a flight of steps up to it? It is Jupiter’s. Who among us did not bring useless offerings to those shrines? How often a husband while still praying for his wife, or a father still praying for his son, ended his life in front of those implacable altars, part of the unused incense found in their hands! How often the sacrificial bulls fell down, without waiting for the blow, while the priest was praying and pouring unmixed wine between the horns. Even when I was sacrificing to Jove, for myself my country and my three sons, the victim let out a dreadful moan, and suddenly collapsed without a stroke from my blade, barely staining the knives below with its blood. The diseased entrails showed no marks, from which to read the prophetic truths, and warnings, of the gods. That offensive morbidity penetrated to their vital organs. I have seen corpses thrown down in front of the temple doors, in front of the altars, to make their deaths even more of a reproach. Some cut off their breath with a noose, and banished, by death, their fear of death, summoning their approaching fate from the beyond.

The bodies of the dead were not given the usual rites (the exit gates from the city could not cope with so many funerals). They either lay on the ground unburied, or were given to the heaped pyres without ceremony. And now there was no reverence left: the people struggled to the pyres, and were consumed by others’ flames. There was no one left to mourn, and the spirits of parents and children, of young and old were left to wander, unwept. There was no space in the burial mounds, and not enough wood for the fires.’

Bk VII:614-660 The creation of the Myrmidons

Stunned by such a storm of dark events, I said ‘O Jupiter, if they do not lie when they say that you were held in Aegina’s embrace, she, the daughter of Asopus, and if you are not ashamed, mighty father, to have fathered me, give me back my people or bury me too in their tomb.’ He gave me a flash of lightning as a sign, and thunder followed. I said ‘I interpret this to be an omen, and that you give me it as a pledge, and may these accordingly be auspicious tokens of your purpose.’

There happened to be an oak-tree nearby, with open spreading branches, seeded from Dodona, and sacred to Jove. I noticed a long train of food-gathering ants, carrying vast loads in their tiny mouths, and forging their own way over its corrugated bark. Admiring their numbers, I said ‘Best of fathers, give me as many citizens as this and fill the city’s empty walls.’ The tall oak-tree quivered, and its branches filled with sound, without a wind. I shivered, my limbs quaking with fear, and my hair stood on end. Though I kissed the oak-tree and the earth, not acknowledging my hopes, yet I did hope, and cherished my longings in my heart. Night fell, and sleep claimed my care-worn body.

The same oak-tree was there before my eyes, with the same branches, and the same insects on its branches, and it shook with a similar motion, and seemed to scatter its column of grain-bearers onto the ground below. Suddenly they seemed to grow larger and larger, and raise themselves from the soil, and stand erect, they lost their leanness, many feet, and their black colouration, and their limbs took on human form. Sleep vanished. Awake again, I dismissed my dream, bemoaning the lack of help from the gods. But there was a great murmuring in the palace, and I thought I heard human voices, those I was now unaccustomed to. While I suspected that it was an effect of sleep, Telamon came running and throwing open the door, shouted ‘Father, come out and see, something greater than you could hope or believe. Come now!’

I went, and saw such men as I had seen in sleep’s imagining, in ranks such as I recognised and knew. They approached and saluted me as king. I fulfilled my prayer to Jove, and divided the city amongst this new people, along with the lost farmers’ empty fields. I called them Myrmidons, a name that did not belie each one’s origin as an ant, μύρμηξ. You have seen their bodies: they still retain the habits they had before, a thrifty, hard-working people, tenacious of achievement, and keeping what they achieve. These men fresh in years and spirit, will follow you to war, as soon as that favourable east wind that brought you here’ (it was indeed an easterly that had brought him) ‘has swung round to the south.’

https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph7.php#Bkseven1

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