‘I told you that I would bring you to a new land,’ said the king. ‘It is here that we shall stop and build a new city.’ He asked the helmsman if the wind was strong enough to allow the ship to sail upstream.
‘Yes, wanax,’ replied Myrsilus. ‘I think so.’
‘Then let us go,’ said the king.
He took a cup and filled it with strong red wine, the same that he would drink before battle in the fields of Ilium. He poured it into the river current, saying: ‘I offer you this libation, oh god of the waters of Eridanus. We have fled our homeland, after suffering all that men can suffer in a long war. We seek a new land and a new era and a new life. Show us your favour, I beseech you.’ He threw the precious silver cup into the water as well; Anassilaus had melted it and engraved it with supreme art one day long ago at Lemnos, never imagining how far away it would end up.
He went to Lamus, son of Onchestus, the Spartan that Myrsilus had freed from slavery: ‘Could you recognize the place where the old man said he had seen the Sun fall?’
‘I think so. But why do you want to know?’
‘If we want to remain here, I must know every secret of this land. You show me the place, as soon as you see it, and do not fear.’
The ship began to sail up the river; it was immense, so wide that the banks could barely be seen from the centre of the current, and the tallest oaks seemed mere shrubs.
‘A river like this receives many rivers, and descends from mountains as high as the sky, always covered with ice, in the winter and in the summer, higher than the mountains of Elam and Urartu,’ said the Hittite slave, Telephus.
‘You are right,’ said the king. ‘And perhaps one day we shall see them.’ The wind picked up from the west and north, and the ships had to counter its thrust with their helms, so as not to run aground on the river’s southern shore. They crossed a dense forest from which immense flocks of birds would suddenly rise, blocking out the pale autumn sun like a cloud, and then finally entered the open plain. Every so often they would meet with big wooded islands whose gigantic trees stretched out their branches to touch the surface of the water. Every puff of wind snatched a host of brightly coloured leaves from those branches; yellow, red and ochre, they whirled through the air before alighting on the current.
To their left and right, instead, the land was bare, with scattered groups of trees here and there. The Spartan pointed to a place in which a branch of the river broke off from the main current, crossed a large pool and then headed south towards the sea. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘this is the place the old man told us about; where the pond water is sparkling.’
Diomedes ordered them to stop the ships. One after another they furled the sails and cast anchor. The king armed himself with only a sword and set off on foot, taking a small group of warriors inland with him: Licus, Eumelus, Driop and Evenus, all from Argos, as well as Crissus and Dius of Tiryns.
The sun was already low, and transformed the still water of the marshes into mirrors of gold. They would stop every so often and listen: silence, everywhere, wringing their hearts and chilling their souls. They had never felt anything similar, not even in the midst of the fiercest fray on the field of battle. Even the birds were still and all they could hear were the small sudden thuds of the frogs jumping into the water.
They advanced as far as the shore of the pond and Diomedes signalled for his men to wait under an oak that stretched its bare branches towards the water. He went on alone, as the dusky light dimmed and the sun sank into the mist that veiled the horizon.
He stopped all at once, vaguely sensing that the place was infested by a powerful, dark presence; he glanced back at his men, who had so often faced death on the open field. They were glancing about helplessly, seized with dismay.
Just then he thought he heard something: a sound, or a moan, perhaps, was that the voice that Lamus, son of Onchestus, had spoken of? The cry of wailing women? He looked at the surface of the waves and heard the sound even more distinctly. It was a wail, yes, a chorus of weeping as if many women were grieving over the slain bodies of their sons or brothers or husbands. Diomedes the hero sought the voice of his own mother in that chorus, the voice of Aigialeia, his lost bride, but he could not hear them. He drew even closer to the pond which had swallowed up the chariot of the Sun and he saw a shiver run over the water although the wind had calmed and the air was still and stagnant. And as the sky darkened the surface of the pool stretched and curved as if pushed upward by the back of a monster. To his left the sun disappeared with a last tremor of light and the sky suddenly blackened above the pale layer of fog. A gurgling rose from the pool and beneath the surface, deprived of its golden reflection, Diomedes could see a shape, like a wheel. . the wheel of the chariot of the Sun? The water gurgled again and the wheel dissolved in the rippling waves. Diomedes turned towards his companions: ‘I don’t need you any longer,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to stay here, I want more time.’
‘Come back to camp with us, wanax,’ pleaded the men. ‘These are unknown lands.’
‘Go,’ repeated Diomedes. ‘This place is deserted, can’t you feel that? Nothing can harm me, and the goddess Athena will watch over me.’
The men departed and the rustling of their passage through the swamp reeds could be heard for a while, until silence descended once again over the pond. The hero leaned against the trunk of a colossal willow that wet its branches in the water. The ground had become as dark as the sky.
Time passed and the cold become pungent but he continued to stare at the surface of the water, black as a burnished mirror. He had nearly decided to return to the ships when he saw a pale flash of light animate the bottom of the swamp. He turned his eyes to the sky, thinking that the moon had emerged from behind a bank of clouds, but he saw nothing. The light was emanating from the bottom of the pool. The surface of the water arched again, becoming a dark globe which covered something that continued to remain invisible. The hero could not believe his eyes. The water did not fall; it adhered to the bulging beneath like a fluttering cloak. The light flashed again, stronger and brighter, and struck the clouds of the sky which quivered as if pervaded by lightning in a storm. These were the lights that had accompanied them since they had left the land of the Achaeans, sailing over the sea, these were the unexplainable flashes that had frightened the men at the oars and filled the helmsmen with wonder. He was afraid to stare at the light, which now seemed directed towards him. How could his body resist a bolt that could penetrate the clouds of the sky? The light darted now from the hub of the wheel like a sunburst, and when the ray struck him, the veils that prevent us from seeing that which has existed before us and that which will exist after us, fell suddenly from his eyelids. The hero saw, as if in a dream, the origin of his life and of his human adventure.
He saw the war of the Seven against Thebes; he could distinctly hear the neighing of the horses and the cries of the warriors. It was there, in that blind massacre, that everything began. War of brother against brother, blood of the same father and of the same mother. He saw his own father, Tydeus, scaling the walls and hurling the defenders down from the bastions, one after another. Shouting, shouting louder and louder for his comrades to join him and follow him. It was at that moment that the spear of Melanippus, flung with great force, stuck into his belly. And his father, Tydeus the hero, ripped the spear from his flesh, holding the bowels that burst from the wide wound with his left hand, while with the other he whirled the mighty two-edged axe. Melanippus took no care — how could a dying man find the strength to harm him? — and the great axe was whirled and then flew through the air. It fell on his neck, cleanly chopping his head off.