Acis and Galatea: a Graeco-Roman myth

The story of Acis and Galatea, although it purports to be a Greek myth, is not wholly so. The version that is generally known is that told by the Roman poet Ovid in his “Metamorphoses”, although his source is almost certainly a poem attributed to the late Greek poet Theocritus, who lived in the Greek colony of Sicily in the early 3^rd century BC. It is thus probably fair to call it a “Graeco-Roman” myth.

The story

The tale is a version of the love triangle in which two men love the same woman and the outcome is a violent one.

The woman in this case is Galatea, a sea nymph. She is in love with a young shepherd named Acis, but her beauty has not gone unnoticed by Polyphemus, a one-eyed giant and a son of the sea-god Poseidon. This is the same character who appears in Homer’s Odyssey as one of the monsters that Odysseus and his men encounter, although he is drawn in a somewhat different light in the story told by Theocritus and Ovid.

In the Galatea story Polyphemus is portrayed as a stalker who follows Galatea everywhere and does everything he can to ingratiate himself with her, including dressing smartly and trimming his beard. However, nothing he does is likely to persuade Galatea to abandon Acis, whom she sees as a far better prospect.

Polyphemus decides that music is the answer. He makes a set of “pan pipes” with a hundred reeds that can be heard for miles around when he blows it. He composes a love song which he belts out at full volume.

Acis and Galatea, lying in each other’s arms on the sea shore, cannot help but hear the song and the pipes, and they find it all highly amusing. How could the rough giant Polyphemus possibly hope to win the love of a beautiful nymph?

The pair are still laughing to each other when the song stops and they find that Polyphemus is standing over them, roaring with anger at being mocked in this way.

Galatea is able to slip into the sea but Acis is not so lucky. Polyphemus grabs hold of the side of a nearby hill and throws most of it at the shepherd, who is crushed to death.

Galatea is powerless to restore her lover to life, but she has enough magic in her to transform his blood into water that then flows as a river from underneath the rocks thrown down by the giant. Acis arises from the river as a river god who can then always be in contact with Galatea at the point where the river meets the sea.

Origins of the myth

One possible origin of the myth is that it explains the nature of a small river that flows underground on the eastern side of Mount Etna and emerges into the open shortly before reaching the sea. This river is still known as the River Akis.

There are other suggested explanations, such as the story being a political satire aimed at a ruler who had a mistress named Galatea.

There is another variant of the myth, in which Polyphemus wins the hand of Galatea in a sort of “Beauty and the Beast” scenario. She then becomes the mother of three sons who are subsequently the founders of the Gauls, the Celts and the Illyrians.

The myth inspired a large number of artistic and musical works in later centuries, with one of the best known being Handel’s celebrated opera “Acis and Galatea” which reached its final form in 1732. 

© John Welford

The first inhabitants of Scotland

The first inhabitants of Scotland were probably living there before the last Ice Age. However, no trace has been found of any Scots who were quite that early although remains of humans from that time have been discovered elsewhere in the British Isles. It is probable that, as the ice receded, humans would have moved in from the south, in pursuit of the animals that had preceded them.

The earliest trace of human habitation that has been found so far is around 11,000 years old and is a stone arrowhead. This was found on the island of Islay, showing that the final retreat of the ice was soon followed by hunter-gatherers who found island-hopping to be the best means of progress.

On Rum, which is about 85 miles north of Islay, there is evidence of early industry in the shape of tool-making based on local supplies of bloodstone that could be fashioned into small blades. This work was being done around 9,000 years ago.

Other traces have been found of hunter-gatherer communities all round the Scottish coast and on the islands. Even older than the site on Rum are the archaeological remains of settlements near Dunbar and at Cramond, both on the Scottish mainland near Edinburgh.

The very first people of Scotland were therefore nomads, moving on as the herds of reindeer moved, building structures only when they settled in a place for more than a few weeks or months. These structures would have been little more than tents made from animal skins stretched between posts hammered into the ground. At other places, natural shelters such as caves would have been used.

Agriculture arrived in Scotland some five and a half thousand years after it was first practiced in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, and it may have been as recently as 2000 BC before most inhabitants of Scotland were farmers who lived in settled communities. Scotland has never been an easy country to farm, due to the thin soils and often adverse weather, and these problems were made worse by the increasing deposits of peat that built up, making the land boggy and unsuitable for growing crops. Many early Scots may therefore have continued as hunter-gatherers long after others had become more settled.

Evidence of two remarkable communities has been discovered in the Orkney Islands, at Knap of Howar and Skara Brae. The latter site, which dates from around 3000 BC, was probably occupied for about 500 years which means that many generations of Orcadians lived and died there. A group of small stone houses were linked together by passageways such that maximum protection was offered against winter storms.

These people were the “Picts” whom the Romans encountered when they sought to extend their empire northwards in the 80s AD.  These scattered tribes, living in habitable corners across mainland Scotland and the Isles, proved not to be worth conquering, hence the decision in 122 AD by Emperor Hadrian to build his wall from the Tyne to the Solway, thus marking the northern limit of the Empire.

The Picts had developed a civilization of their own, with bronze and later iron working, religious practices that included sacrifices to their gods of some of the products of their metal foundries, and trade with their neighbours to the south. They were skilled boatbuilders and navigators and were far from being ignorant savages. Pictish culture was well developed, with social structures that included a hierarchy from kings and nobles down to farmers and workers. Items have been found that show advanced craftsmanship in stone, metals and jewels.

  

As well as the Picts, who were the direct descendants of the original hunter-gatherers, the area that now comprises Scotland was, in the years following the withdrawal of the Romans in the 5^th century AD, also occupied to the south by Britons who had become Romanized and Gaels who probably come from Ireland (although this is not absolutely certain).

These Gaels settled on the western coasts and islands and lived in an uneasy relationship with the Picts. Confusingly, the Gaels were also known in Latin as “Scoti”, from which the name Scotland clearly derives. However, the original “Scottish” people were Picts, not Scots!

The other major component of the early ethnic mix of the people of Scotland was provided by Vikings from Norway, who came first to plunder and then to settle. The Viking invasions began in the 8^th century and continued into the 9^th. Wars between Vikings, Picts and Gaels continued for many years, at the end of which the Gaels had usurped the Picts on mainland Scotland, and the Vikings had taken firm control of the northern islands of Orkney and Shetland.

In the northern isles a form of ethnic cleansing took place, with the men being killed or driven off and the women being seized as wives. The DNA of the modern population shows strong Norwegian origins in male DNA but Pictish traces in that of the women. It was only in 1472 that the islands became part of the Kingdom of Scotland, having been Norwegian (and later Danish) possessions for some 600 years.

The first people of Scotland were therefore a mixture of Picts, Gaels, Britons and Vikings. However, with the exception of the northern isles, none of the later invaders were so numerous that they were able to overwhelm the original bloodline that stretched back to the first post-Ice Age hunter-gatherers. Although the Picts lost out politically to the Gaels, which is why the country is called Scotland and not Pictland, the descendants of the people whom the Romans contained by building a wall are still very much in evidence today.

© John Welford