Listen up, dear readers, because today I'm going to introduce you to a fellow who'll make you feel like the luckiest people on the planet by comparison; even if today you had to drag yourself out of bed for a job you hate, got a flat tyre on the car, your cousin Pete got arrested over some drug business, and that old harpy of a mother-in-law makes your life hell day in and day out... Today we're talking about Adrastus the Phrygian, son of King Midas (yes, the very same Midas who turned everything he touched into gold, that one) and grandson of the mythical King Gordias (yes, the one with the famous Gordian knot, impossible to untie, that Alexander the Great sliced through with a single sword stroke a few centuries later). In short, a rich kid, a man of royal blood, of well-off family and very high birth… and yet, also the saddest, darkest, most pessimistic, jinxed and wretched human being ever to walk the face of the earth.
His story is told by good old Herodotus in the first book of his Histories, right in the middle of the tale of the mighty King Croesus of Lydia, the richest man of the ancient world. And I warn you, it's one of those stories that start off making you laugh and end up putting a lump in your throat. Because life, my friends, is exactly that, a tragicomedy. Let's get to it.
A guest with a nightmare CV
It all begins one fine day, around the year 550 BC, when a young foreigner shows up at the royal palace of Sardis, capital of Lydia, begging for asylum and the sacred protection of King Croesus. The young man in question is called Adrastus, and he comes with a backstory that tells you straight away which way the wind is blowing.
It turns out that a few days earlier, accidentally and entirely by chance, the lad had killed his own brother, the heir to the throne of Phrygia. A wholly involuntary homicide and a tragedy, one of those horrible things that sometimes happen in anyone's life. And yet, as the ultimate consequence of that death, his father had banished him and kicked him out of the house, leaving him without a penny, without family, without inheritance and without a homeland, condemned to wander the world like a lost soul. Any of us would think King Midas's reaction was disproportionate, because, hell, an involuntary tragedy that accidentally harms a loved one can happen to any of us, right? Well no, my dear friends, no… For reasons we'll see later, the old king's patience had already reached its absolute breaking point and he wanted, at all costs, his son to get a few million kilometres away from his kingdom… and, if possible, to vanish forever.
Croesus, who was a generous man and who moreover knew and esteemed the royal family of Phrygia, takes him in with open arms like one of his own and tells him, more or less, this: «Easy now, lad, I don't know exactly why your father has been so harsh with you, nor do I want to know, but here in my house you'll want for nothing. I purify and absolve you of your involuntary crime according to the ancient sacred rites, I forgive your guilt and you'll stay here in the palace as a guest of honour.» And so Adrastus settles in Sardis as the king's special guest, lodged in the wing for distinguished visitors, eating hot meals every day and living like a lord.
So far, it sounds like a lovely redemption story, doesn't it? The wretch whom life has punished harshly gets a second chance. Well, no, friends, because this Adrastus was no ordinary wretch, Adrastus was a jinx, but not a normal one — THE SUPREME JINX of the 5th century BC, an absolute magnet for drawing all manner of misfortune around him. And real jinxes, the Olympic-category ones like this fellow, have no possible redemption.
How he earned his well-deserved reputation as a bad-luck charm in Sardis: the incredible tale of the Arabian horse
So that you understand just how much this man attracted bad luck, let me just tell you that if Adrastus walked past a mill wheel, within minutes it would jam beyond repair; if he crossed a freshly built stone bridge, before long the bridge would collapse; and if it was wooden, well, more of the same, it would catch fire. If one day you bumped into him on the street and he told you «blimey mate, you're looking great today», you could be sure that very night you'd come down with a savage infection accompanied by a deadly fever… If he walked into your shop and remarked that you were a «lucky man» with «plenty of customers», well, from that day on your business was doomed and going under, and you were headed for bankruptcy… Not to mention that (sunny) day when, with him present at a wedding, a lightning bolt out of who-knows-where struck the head table, killing only the bride and groom… So there sat the newlyweds, the toast still in their hands, charred like roast chickens.
Let me tell you the juiciest anecdote that went round all of Sardis, told by a fellow named Aristides the Athenian, son of wealthy Greek olive-oil merchants, to anyone who'd listen. It's pure gold.
It so happens that one ordinary Friday, at the weekly horse auction held in the main square of Sardis, Aristides the Athenian had set his eye on a black stallion of pure Arabian breed: an enormous, never-before-seen animal, magnificent, with a gleaming coat, being sold by some Phoenician merchants. Aristides wasn't the only interested party, of course. The bidding shot up like foam, blow by blow of the wallet among the many in attendance, until in the home stretch only he and a Lebanese merchant from Sidon were left — one Belshazzar the Dark, who traded in cedar wood and who in truth was only Lebanese by adoption, being originally from Babylon.
After a fierce bidding war, Aristides won the horse for the princely sum of two hundred gleaming gold coins. A real fortune for that era. The Athenian was over the moon, puffed up with pride, parading his expensive new steed around the central square like a peacock.
And then Adrastus showed up…
The jinx, with his customary sad face, approached the magnificent animal and, full of envy, said to Aristides something like: «How I envy you, man! I'd love to have a horse like that… but I'm not rich like you…», and gave the horse a few strokes on the muzzle. Innocent strokes, yes, but deadly ones.
I'll let Aristides himself tell you what happened next, just as he used to tell it, still seething with rage, before young Prince Atys and a group of hunting friends:
«Believe me, lads, when the cursed jinx went on his way, I mounted my new horse and set off home. Well I swear I hadn't gone twenty metres when the horse tripped on something, some object utterly invisible to the human eye, and plunged straight into a deep ditch half-hidden by fallen branches and leaves, breaking its right foreleg. CRACK! The leg snapped clean through, and a racehorse that had cost the princely sum of 200 gold coins, ready to be put down not ten minutes after I'd bought it... If I ever see that bad-luck shadow Adrastus again, I swear I'll kill him with my own hands. That man cannot and must not live here a minute longer, or one day, at the very least, the city will burn down or a plague epidemic will break out that kills the lot of us…»
Picture the scene. An animal worth two hundred gold coins, bought literally ten minutes earlier, wrecked on the ground amid whinnies of pain. Aristides inconsolable at its side, with no choice but to put it down by driving a stake into its brain to end its suffering. Result: a magnificent horse dead, two hundred gold coins thrown in the bin, the Phoenicians counting their money to his face while they laughed their backsides off and, as if that weren't enough, when he got home his father nearly stabbed him to death, threatening to throw him out and disinherit him on learning of the great fortune lost. Were it not for his mother and sisters stepping in, Aristides the Athenian wouldn't be here to tell it.
And the conclusion good old Aristides drew was as blunt as it was logical: less than ten minutes after that son of a bitch Adrastus stroked the horse, the animal was dead. I'll leave it there. Draw your own conclusions.
This was the man's reputation. In Sardis everyone avoided him like the plague. When they saw him coming down the street with his long face, his black clothes and his little sackcloth bag (black too), people would cross to the other side, make horns with their fingers, touch wood, throw salt over their shoulders, rub their bits or spit on the ground to ward off the bad luck. Adrastus was, beyond any possible argument, the official Jinx Nr. 1 of the kingdom of Lydia.
King Croesus's prophetic dream: an iron point
And here is where the comedy begins to veer towards tragedy. Because it turns out that King Croesus had a son he adored: the young Prince Atys, heir to the throne, handsome, strong, brave, much loved by the people and with his whole life ahead of him. (Croesus had another son, but that one was deaf-mute and intellectually disabled, so, as far as the succession was concerned, it was as if he didn't have him.)
Well then, one night Croesus had a dreadful dream, one of those that leave your heart in a vice: he dreamed that his beloved Atys died run through by an iron point. A vision so vivid and so terrifying that the king took it completely seriously. In that era, dreams, visions and nightmares were taken very seriously indeed, just as we saw in the previous Blog article about the great King Cyrus II of Persia.
Driven by the panic of losing his heir, Croesus went into god-level overprotective-father mode. First he rushed the lad's wedding to the most beautiful young woman in all Lydia, and he did it to keep him well entertained with that magnificent specimen and, while he was at it, to secure the dynastic succession just in case. After that, he strictly forbade him to go to war, to go hunting, or to take part in any sport or activity involving pointed metal objects. In short, he wrapped him in a safety bubble as if the lad were made of glass.
The diabolical boar straight from hell
And since life, very often, is a bitch with a very twisted sense of humour, just in those days a big problem cropped up that required precisely the thing Croesus wanted to avoid at all costs: a great hunt.
In the Lydian region of Mysia, some 350 kilometres north of Sardis, a monstrous wild boar had appeared. And it wasn't a normal boar, it was an enormous beast, a shaggy demon that seemed to have come straight from the gates of hell. A monster that laid waste to fields and destroyed crops and —worst of all— the swinish demon had already killed several villagers, including some children. The Mysians, desperate, sent messengers to their king Croesus begging him to send Prince Atys (known for being an excellent hunter), along with the finest experts in the venatory arts and plenty of dogs to finish off the beast.
Croesus, logically, said there was no bloody way he was sending his son. He offered them all his best hunters, his best dogs, horses, weapons and anything else the Mysians wanted… but Atys, NO. The prince was staying home, nice and safe.
But Atys, who was young, brave and proud, found out about the veto and squared up to his father. And he laid out a perfectly logical argument: «Father, these past months you've been forbidding me all manner of activities that are the most typical of a man, yet I'm not aware that you've detected in me any cowardice, fear of the enemy or effeminacy. If now you forbid me to take part in this hunt, with what face am I to look at my wife tonight? And won't she think she's married to half a man with no balls?»
Croesus then, whether he liked it or not, found himself obliged to tell his son the prince the details of that horrible dream he'd been having for some time… Atys listened to his father and replied as follows: «Father, it seems to me your dream clearly speaks of my being run through by an IRON POINT. And what's made of iron about a boar? Its tusks? Its hooves? We're going to hunt a beast, not to fight armed men! There's no iron point to fear in the hunting of an animal.»
The argument, it must be admitted, was impeccable. Croesus, though still with his soul in knots and a thousand black phantoms whirling round his head, didn't know how to reply and ended up giving in. He gave him permission to go to the wretched hunt. But, just in case, he took an additional precaution… which would turn out to be, oh cruel irony of fate, exactly the worst possible decision.
«Protect my son at the cost of your own life»
And who do you think Croesus called upon to entrust with the sacred mission of protecting his most beloved and only heir during the dangerous hunt? Exactly. We don't quite know why he did it, but he summoned Adrastus THE JINX.
Yes, King Croesus, without realising the cosmic enormity he was about to commit, sent for the one man in the world who jinxed horses just by looking at them, the most feared bad-luck charm in the whole kingdom, and entrusted him with his son's life. He told him, moved: «Adrastus, my friend, you owe me the pardon of your crime and the hospitality I've given you in my house. Now I ask you, please, to watch over my son Atys on this hunt. Protect him at the cost of your own life!»
And poor Adrastus, who was a good man inside despite his black reputation, burst into tears. He replied, stammering, that he'd never have dared to ask to take part in an expedition with the noblest and most fortunate young men of the city, aware as he was of the dark cloud that pursued him. But that, given all the king had done for him, he could not refuse. And he solemnly swore he'd bring Atys home safe and sound.
And here, my friends, is where one wants to climb inside the pages of the book, grab Croesus by the lapel and yell at him: «But man alive, what the hell are you doing? You're entrusting the life of your only son TO THE SUPREME JINX OF THE KINGDOM! What were you thinking?» But of course, fate was already written. And against fate, nothing can be done, nothing at all!
The hunt: when fate trips on something invisible
The expedition set out from Sardis at first light the next day: a hundred and twenty men, the best hunting dogs, a patrol of the Royal Guard and, naturally, Prince Atys in command, flanked by his two best friends, Aristides the Athenian (the one with the horse) and Deioces the Lydian. And in some out-of-the-way corner at the back of the caravan, with his sad face and his black bag, came the jinx Adrastus.
After reaching Mysia and locating the beast, the hunters, arranged in a wide circle, began closing the ring amid the thick vegetation of very tall grass that kept the advancing groups from seeing one another. And adverse fate willed it — or, more likely, the wicked design of some god — that Atys and Adrastus should be advancing towards the centre, the one towards the other, in opposite positions and without knowing it, separated only by that treacherous grass.
Suddenly, the boar, finding itself cornered, let out a terrible roar of terror and leapt from its hiding place like a lightning bolt. All the hunters, in full euphoric tension, loosed at once a rain of arrows, spears, stones and clubs towards the centre of the target and against the beast, (there was even one who threw his helmet and a sandal at it, and another who hurled his shield.) And right in the middle of that dreadful confusion, with the sky streaked with projectiles, the ill-fated prophecy was fulfilled.
Because in the very same way that Arabian horse had tripped on something invisible, so too Adrastus, while running forward at the exact moment of hurling his javelin at the giant wild hog, tripped on an object utterly invisible to human eyes. The dart shot off, completely deflected from its original trajectory, described a great arc through the air and went to bury itself directly in the heart of Prince Atys. Dead on the spot. Run through by an iron point. Exactly as foretold in his father's dream.
The boar from hell also died that day, riddled with arrows. But it took with it to the underworld the young and beloved heir prince. Hell, what crazy turns this damned life takes, eh?
Croesus's grief and the jinx's end
The news reached Sardis at full gallop by way of a messenger, and it did so long before the hunters arrived. When they broke it to Croesus, the king collapsed: the guilt fell on him like an iron anvil as he realised that his son's killer had been precisely the man whose crime he had pardoned and purified. He tried to throw himself from a window (the guards stopped him), he tried to cut his own throat with a dagger (his sister Arienis stopped him), and he spent hours and hours pacing up and down the great hall like a caged lion, cursing and insulting Zeus himself, whom he blamed for all his misfortune.
The next day the hunters arrived with Atys's body in a cart. And behind it, head bowed and annihilated, came Adrastus too. The jinx knelt before Croesus and begged him to please kill him right there, over the boy's very body and with the same spear with which he had unwittingly murdered him. He cried, through tears, that a man as wretched as he didn't deserve and shouldn't go on living a minute longer. All the more so after having killed first his own brother and then the son of his benefactor (and, I'll add, dozens of other innocents Herodotus doesn't tell us about, but who are there all right, black horse included).
But Croesus, though shattered by grief, took pity on him once more. And he spoke words of a moving moral greatness:
«I already have, Adrastus my friend, all the vengeance I could desire in your evident repentance and in the fact that you offer to die by my hand. But, wretched Adrastus, I want you to know that the guilt is not yours, but fate's, and perhaps above all that of that deity called Zeus who announced to me in dreams, many months ago, what was going to happen.»
Croesus held a state funeral for his son, with all the authorities of Lydia and the neighbouring kings, including the parents of Adrastus himself, in attendance. And the jinx, now threatened with death by Atys's friends (Aristides the Athenian first among them), watched the whole funeral ceremony hidden behind a gravestone in the cemetery, at a prudent distance. But when night fell and Atys's tomb was at last silent and solitary, Adrastus, considering himself the most jinxed, most unlucky and most wretched man on the whole earth, cut his own throat with his own hands upon the gravestone of Atys.
The moral of the jinx
And what does the story of Adrastus teach us, beyond the smile drawn out by the horse or the flowerpot that lands on a grandmother from a third-floor window? Well, one of the great lessons of ancient Greek thought: that however hard a man strives, however many precautions he takes (Croesus did EVERYTHING possible to protect his son), a man's fate, when it's written, is fulfilled. And sometimes it's fulfilled precisely THROUGH the measures we take to avoid it. Croesus wanted to protect Atys by entrusting him to Adrastus… and Adrastus killed him.
It's the same idea that runs through all of Greek tragedy, from Oedipus to Croesus: Hubris, fate, the impotence and nullity of man before the gods. Only Herodotus, master of the tale, and this humble Italian author who has written this article, wrap it for us in a story so human, so full of everyday detail —the horse at the auction, the envy, the deadly strokes, the little black sackcloth bag— that you laugh and you're moved almost in the same paragraph.
In modernising it for you and telling it in my own style, I haven't had to invent a thing: the jinx, the boar from hell, the deflected spear, Adrastus's suicide on Atys's tomb… all of this is in Herodotus's original book. The only thing I've added of my own is a new way of telling it to you, the affection with which I tell it, and the odd well-placed swearword. That's what we're here for, to liven up Great Ancient History.
If you enjoyed this story, in my book «The Book of the Muse Clio», first volume of the saga «Herodotus: Histories Reloaded 2.0», you'll find this story and a great many more: King Croesus and his fabulous wealth, the wisdom of the Greek Solon, the cheating oracles of Delphi, the rise to power of the Great King Cyrus II of Persia, Queen Tomyris who beheaded him, the miracle of Arion and the dolphin… An almost infinite festival of ancient history told as you were never told it at school, nor at college, nor at university.
Sources: Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Histories, Book I, chapters 34 to 45 (the complete account of Adrastus, Croesus's dream, the hunt of the Mysian boar and the death of Atys); Bartolomé Pou (18th c.), canonical translation from the Greek. All the facts narrated are documented by Herodotus. The names of secondary characters (Aristides the Athenian, Deioces, Belshazzar the Dark) and the vivid dialogue come from the author's literary recreation in «The Book of the Muse Clio»; the core is strictly Herodotean. The humorous remarks are the author's personal literary voice.
✠ David S. Matrecano