Jocasta: Wife and Mother

They had some twenty miles to travel to the temple of Apollo at Paralia Avidos, on the shore of the warm sea, where they hoped a better future awaited them.

The ruined village of Eleo stood on their route, inhabited now by nothing living but goats and a few scrawny hens. The hens had long since relearnt the art of flight. They rose clucking out of the path of the procession. Beyond the ruins, the entourage entered on a more dreary landscape. Here began bleak heathland, denuded of trees, where three ancient roads met: the roads from Delphi, Ambrossos and Thebes. The procession took the right-hand fork, which led to the coast. A white commemorative stone stood by the track. This was the region called Phocis.

Jocasta gave a small shriek, belatedly attempting to smother it in the hem of her red robe. Her daughters asked her why she shrieked.

‘I thought I saw a wolf lurking by the bush,’ she said.

‘Where? Where?’

‘Over there!’ She stretched out one of her shapely arms, to point vaguely into the distance.

‘You saw nothing but what was in your mind, Mother,’ said Antigone, patting Jocasta’s arm.

While her sons argued the possibilities, and the lack of desirability, of being attacked by wolves, a different dialogue was playing in Jocasta’s mind.

She was of a noble family, its history darkened by feuds and vendettas. Fathers had strangled their sons, mothers had slept with their daughters, brothers had raped their infant sisters. The juices of their line had become mixed. Yet they had been learned; they understood astronomy and kept doves and enjoyed music, sport and drama. Jocasta herself had been an independent-minded child. She was the jewel of her mother Hakuba’s eye. Her grandmother Semele then lived away in the forest.

Semele had come to look after her grandchild only when Hakuba had died unexpectedly. Those were the years of Jocasta’s greatest grief.

In her adolescence, she had become a keen runner. Only the generous size of her breasts had robbed her of a championship in the Theban games.

She had thought nothing of marrying Prince Laius. She considered it her birthright to wed into the royal line. She knew – her father had told her as much – that Laius had at an earlier age cohabited with two wild youths whom, in a drunken quarrel, he had stabbed to death. What were these sins but the follies of youth, the jeux d’esprit of a bold disposition? Besides, now that he was King of Thebes, Laius was as beyond reproach as he was above the law.

So Jocasta wed Laius. Laius wed Jocasta.

Oaths were sworn. Flowers were thrown.

The throats of many nanny goats were cut.

Offerings were made, dances danced, wine consumed.

Jocasta’s tastes were lascivious. This pleased Laius.

The marriage went well enough. At least she lived in a palace.

There was that trouble with Athens.

Laius became more brutal. He lost interest in Jocasta sexually. He preferred beating her to making love to her. All these recollections flowed through her mind like blood from an altar.

There came the night, filled with the greyness of a watching moon, when she dined with her brother Creon, spilling out her troubles in confidence to him, exhibiting her bruises. Creon was good to her. Creon and she had enjoyed carefree sexual relations when children.

They had spurned conventional entrances. It was long ago.

Creon grew up to be a stubborn law-abiding man, wedded to the fair Eurydice. He had never forgotten his early affection for his sister. Nor had Jocasta ceased to love her elder brother. She knew his weaknesses. She knew, too, that he coveted the throne on which her husband Laius reigned.

She recollected now, as her carriage bumped over the barren heathland, a night when she returned to Laius’ palace, after dining with Creon and Eurydice. Creon had accompanied her, since it was deemed incorrect for women – even queens – to walk in the streets alone.

Entering the palace, they heard cries, sounds expressing something between pain and ecstasy, or a blend of both.

Hastening through to the courtyard, they came on a scene which remained, though many a year had passed, vivid in Jocasta’s mind. Laius was bent naked over a naked boy. About these figures, as in a diseased dream, stood four naked slaves, holding lamps aloft, and all with erections gleaming as if oiled.

The sweat of Laius ran from his back and down his buttocks to the floor.

Laius had penetrated the rear exit of the boy. His left hand clutched the boy by the throat, while with his right hand he agitated the puerile organ of the child. It was from this boy that the cries of agony and joy issued. Laius himself was mute, his face in the lamplight a mask of lust.

Creon leapt forward, drawing his short sword.

‘You beast! How dare you perform this foul act before mere slaves?’

As he waved his sword, the four slaves dropped their lamps and fled, clutching those organs they no doubt thought imperilled by Creon’s avenging blade. The darkness would have been complete, had the moon overhead not been at full, throwing its drab light on the scene.

Although considerably aghast at being discovered, Laius was defiant.

‘You dare speak thus to your king? Go! I must satisfy myself somehow. My wife will not do it.’

To all this Jocasta had been witness, concealed behind a curtain. Only now did she step forth to confound her husband’s words.

‘You liar!’ she cried. ‘On how many occasions have I not bent to your drunken whim, yielded my body to your thrust – yielded to your wretched preferences, while you poured your disgusting seed into my hinder parts?’

‘Who is this wretched urchin you were defiling?’ Creon demanded of the king. ‘Some common street boy, doubtless!’

Creon seemed to grow in authority and darkness, while Laius shrank back, snatching up his disordered robe and clutching it about him with one hand.

The boy seized on the opportunity, slipping from Laius’ grasp, to run away. They heard him as he rushed into the street, yelling at the top of his voice that the king had molested him.

‘Do shut that brat up!’ cried Laius. His voice was faltering. ‘He’ll awaken the neighbourhood. He liked what we were doing, Creon, begged for it, believe me. He’s no slave. He’s a freeman’s son, by name Chrysippus. Do pray silence him.’

Creon drew himself up, while still wielding his sword in a threatening manner.

‘Put your clothes together, you pederast. I will see that this vile act is known, and your four menial witnesses executed in due time. Your reign as King of Thebes is at an end.’

Jocasta’s mind drifted to the present. It was many a year since that gross incident, buried within the sinews of a June night. Laius, forgetting his crown, had fled the city. Yet, as Creon said, a curse lay over Thebes to this day. There was a pollutant in its bloodstream: so Creon declared. It kept him from the throne.

The memory of those days returned roughshod to Jocasta when the procession passed another place where three roads met, on the edge of the heathland. There, it was said, brigands had attacked Laius in his chariot and killed him. That act of regicide haunted the situation still in Thebes.

Such reflections caused a melancholy disturbance in Jocasta. She felt herself tremble inwardly. Why was it that human life should be so troubled? The life of a wolf was better. Wolves enjoyed the wilderness and the hunt. They relished their strength, their speed, and their family relations. Why was a human being’s life more troublesome than a wolf’s?

Perhaps wolves had no memory. Perhaps animals were not born to carry the burden of the past with them every day.

Why did she suffer from black spells, during which she felt her life to be hardly worth a candle? She had experienced similar moods when her first child was growing inside her body. Her grandmother had rebuked her for them.

She had become bound to religion, undertaking incantation and self-chastisement. Then, when her child had been born, she – little more than a child herself! – had gone to the shrine of Apollo to seek a blessing for the infant, and had experienced the great black moment of her life.

For what had the servant of Apollo said?

She felt the trembling overcome her again as she recalled the prodromic utterance: that her innocent babe, her boy-child, would grow up to kill his father and, even worse, would take his father’s place and cohabit with his mother. This grievous prediction would surely be fulfilled.

She had told Laius of this terrifying prophecy. He had struck her, alarmed and made furious by the blackness of the prediction. Laius was full of pride. He had gone, humbling himself, to Apollo. Apollo had spoken in precisely the same terms Jocasta had been forced to hear: that their infant boy would grow up to be a regicide and, having killed his father, would take his place in his father’s bed, to mate with his own mother.