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THE GREEK SPHINX

Riddle: How is the Sphinx connected to your sphincter? Answer: they both "bind tight." In Greek, "sphinx" means "strangler."

In Egypt, the Sphinx had been a male monster, combining the body of a lion with the head of a ram or man. But in Greece the Sphinx became a she-monster, with the head and breasts of a woman, the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the tail of a snake. She was said to be the daughter of Echidna (herself half beautiful woman and half snake) and of Typhon, a giant winged he-monster whose fists were snake's heads and whose body, from the waist down, was a mass of snakes. Others said the Sphinx was born of Echidna and her dog son, Orthron. And still others said the Sphinx was conceived from Orthron and the Chimera, another of Echidna's brood who was a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a snake.

SPHINXES IN GREEK ART
In Greek art and literature, female sphinxes first appeared about the 8th century BC, becoming in the next two centuries quite popular. Carved in marble, they were placed on tombstones and on free-standing columns in temple courtyards.

Seated on gravestones, sphinxes guarded the dead from intruders and grave robbers. The sphinx sat along the top edge of the stone, with her head turned sideways to face and frighten away any strangers who dared approach the grave. As a guardian angel or watchdog, such a sphinx seems relatively tame and domesticated. But one can well imagine her in her wild state, as a wild dog or lion that once prowled and ravaged graveyards to dig up and devour the bones and bodies of the dead. Encountering her in the dark, might one not imagine her also as some dreadful specter or revenant, as some vampire feeding on the dead and the living alike?

Other sphinxes, less haunting or daunting, and facing straight ahead, were placed on top of free-standing columns set up in temple precincts by various wealthy donors. Each column’s donor had sworn an oath or vow to a god that if that god helped bring about some great deed or good fortune, the donor would erect that column outside the god’s temple. Such columns are called votive columns, and their sphinxes votive sphinxes.

Apollo’s shrine at Delphi was decorated with votive sphinxes. Were Apollo’s sphinxes, like the priestess who was his Delphic oracle, wise virgins who sang riddles? One, the Sphinx of Naxos (right), carved about 560 BC, stood atop an Ionic column 33 feet tall. She faced the adytum, the hidden and forbidden inner sanctum of Apollo's temple where the Pythoness, Apollo's priestess, chanelled his oracular replies.


The colossal statue of Athena that Phidias designed about 440 BC for her Parthenon temple at Athens wore a war helmet decorated with sphinxes. Were Athena’s sphinxes just decorative? Or, as part of her protective panoply, were they there to resemble and remind one of the Furies, those bitch-hounds of blood-vengeance, which her rule of law and reason had replaced?

Remember, the Sphinx belongs to a family of winged demons which included the Furies, the Keres, the Harpies and the Sirens. She belongs to a class of vampire-like demons, of spirits of the dead who ravage and carry off the living.

Remember, too, that many of these sphinxes are also cherubim, guardian angels who protect the living and the dead. As bodyguards they had to be big and strong and fearsome. When gods and angels became progresively human, their “bad” sides became more demonic, retaining their beastly natures since the Fall. And as the Greeks distanced themselves from nature, humanizing and civilizing themselves and their gods, they opposed themselves to beast and barbarian (and woman) as the enemy, as the awesome, fearful, often hateful Other.

Female sphinxes were popular on Greek vases, too, both as decorative motifs and as figures from mythic poems or plays. A favorite scene was the meeting of Oedipus and the Sphinx.


OEDIPUS AND THE THEBAN SPHINX
The Sphinx was sent by Hera to plague and punish the city of Thebes for the crimes of King Laius — for kidnapping and raping the boy Chrysippus. Others say the Sphinx was sent by Dionysos to punish the Thebans for neglecting his worship. In any case, the Sphinx certainly throttled Thebes. Choking off all traffic into and out of the city's gate, from a high rock or wall (acropolis) near the city gate she waylaid travellers and passersby and asked them her famous riddle: "What creature with one voice walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening — and is weakest when it has the most legs?" No man could answer her riddle. Therefore, one by one, she strangled them and gobbled them up. Or, some say, she seized the men and dashed them to their deaths from her rocky perch. (Just as criminals were executed, at Athens, by being tossed off the wall of the acropolis?) Even the king's son, Haimon, whose name means "bloody," was thus bloodied by the Sphinx.

Finally Oedipus came and found the solution. Oedipus’ answer: “Man, who walks on all fours in infancy, walks upright on two legs in the midday of his life, and hobbles about with a staff in old age.”

Dumbfounded by his brilliant reply, the monster dashed herself to pieces on the rocks below. But some say she refused to quit and that Oedipus was forced to kill her with the point of his spear.


RIDDLING ONESELF OF THE SPHINX: A SATYR PLAY BY AESCHYLUS

In 467 B.C. Aeschylus wrote a funny little play about the Sphinx, and how she plagued the people of Thebes. He called it, naturally, THE SPHINX. It was a satyr play, and, together with three tragedies he wrote on the evils besetting Thebes and its kings (Labdacus, Laius, Creon and Oedipus?) it won him a first prize. All four of Aeschylus' Theban plays are lost. But from some scenes painted on contemporary vases and cups, we get a glimpse of his satyr play.

On a kalpis vase a chorus of old satyrs (silens) sit before the Sphinx, listening intently to her riddle. The Sphinx crouches on her rock (see closeup below), as the satyrs sit before her, solemn as judges, on reclining chairs. The satyrs are seated as a council of wise men, as an upstart council of state. Holding scepters and wearing diadems and official robes, the uppity satyrs have just replaced the council of the king of Thebes, which had just met there and, failing to answer the riddle, had left to mourn the death of bloody Haimon, the king's son, leaving behind their insignia on the empty chairs, in full view of the audience, in the open air theater of Dionysus, at the start of the play. But now the satyrs sit agape and agog, in open-mouthed astonishment at hearing the Sphinx's riddle. Our would-be saviors of the city will obviously fare no better than their predecessors, the real Theban elders, in ridding the city of this monster.

Lucky for them, the city's real savior, Oedipus, is about to enter. Or will Oedipus also be upstaged by a satyr, his role stolen by Papposilenus, the silens’ old papa?

It is possible that the stumped satyrs are saved from Haimon's bloody fate by their father, old Papposilenus (who will appear later as the father of the satyrs in the satyr plays of Sophocles and Euripides). On a vase painted by one "Python" a century later, Papposilenus, garbed in fleecy tights, in Dionysus' panther skin, headband and thrysus, turns the tables on the Sphinx by asking HER a riddle: Holding up a bird in his right hand, he asks whether the bird is dead or alive? If she says "dead" he will let the bird fly away; and if "The Strangler/Throttler" says "alive," he will choke the bird to death. The Greeks loved riddles of this sort, and they had a name for it: dilemma.

On another vase by the same painter, "Python," old Papposilenus holds the bird up before seated Apollo, apparently satirizing the old story about a man who goes to Apollo at his oracle at Delphi to ask whether the bird in his hand is dead or alive. According to Margarete Bieber (History of the Greek and Roman Theater, p. l2), "If Apollo had said “dead”, he would have quickly choked him; if Apollo had said alive, he would let him fly away."


THE SPHINX IN CEBES' TABULA
The Picture (or Painting) by Cebes (Kebetos Pinax) or (as it is more commonly known, after its Latin title Cebetis Tabula) The Tabula or Tablet of Cebes, by an anonymous first century AD author, is a sort of Greek Pilgrim’s Progress, a dialogue that lays out the way to virtue as depicted in an ancient temple painting. Strolling through the temple, two travellers admire the various votive offerings it contains. One in particular strikes their eye: upon a tablet set up before the shrine is painted a scene so unusual they cannot fathom what it means. Three walled enclosures are depicted, one inside the other. Within the first enclosure a multitude of women can be seen through the outer gate, while outside, beside the gate, stands a crowd. Within the gate itself stands an old man, apparently giving orders to the people waiting to get in. As the two visitors debate its meaning, they are approached by an old man who offers to explain it. Both the temple and the painting, he says, were dedicated long ago to Cronos by a stranger, a Pythagorean and Parmenidean, from a foreign land.

The old man is going to explain to the visitors that the crowd outside the gate is waiting to enter Life, and that those in the first,outer enclosure who are lucky enough to receive the gifts of Fortune (in Greek, the goddess Tyche) will shortly be corrupted by whores, who represent various vices — vices they must be punished for before turning to the path of true virtue, whose mother is Paideia, goddess of Discipline or Education. But first, the old man warns them, explaining the painting entails certain dangers:
“What sort of danger?” I asked.
“Just this, said he. “If you pay attention and understand what is said, you will be wise and happy. If, on the other hand, you do not, you will become foolish, unhappy, sullen, and stupid, and you will fare badly in life. For the explanation is similar to the riddle that the Sphinx used to pose to men: if someone understood it he was spared, but if he did not understand, he was destroyed by the Sphinx. It is just the same in the case of this explanation. You see, for mankind, Foolishness is the Sphinx. Foolishness speaks in riddles of these things: of what is good, what is bad, and what is neither good nor bad in life. Thus, if anyone does not undertand these things he is destroyed by her, not all at once, as a person devoured by the Sphinx died. Rather he is destroyed little by little, throughout his entire life, just like those who are handed over for retribution.[i.e imprisoned and/or tortured?] But if one does understand, Foolishness is in turn destroyed, and he himself is saved and is blessed and happy in his whole life.” (from Fitzgerald and White, The Tabula of Cebes, Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1983, p.63)

Like many personifications of the heart's dilemmas, its dreadful ambivalences, sphinxes aroused excitement as well as terror. They had a lascivious air -- stemming perhaps from the archaic smile, which appeared on the statues of handsome young men and women during the archaic period -- an enigmatic smile easily confused in later periods with the come-hither smile of a woman on the make? Several texts treat sphinxes ironically as hetairai, i.e. courtesans, especially as whores of Megara (by,among other writers, Aristophanes, Acharnians 738). Plutarch compares the sphinx to the insidious smile of hetairai, particularly on objects meant for milady's toilette, exhibiting the sphinx as an attribute of Aphrodite!

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