Classical Images of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Part II by Alan Hanson
The River Styx
The Styx was a river, and on a couple of occasions
ERB combined the image of Stygian darkness with an episode on a river.
For instance, in “Tarzan and the Forbidden City,” Tarzan and other
captives were being transported by canoe through a dark tunnel leading
to Lake Horus by the Ashairians. Tarzan decided to use the concealing darkness
to lead his fellow captives in a break for liberty. Through the eyes of
Magra, ERB gave us one of his finest mythological images. “Crouched between
two galley slaves, she watched the savage scene with fascinated, fearless
eyes. The flaring torch in the bow of the galley painted the scene in dancing
highlights and deep shadows against a background of Stygian gloom, a moving
picture of embattled souls upon the brink of Hell; and through it moved,
with the strength, the agility, and majesty of a great lion, the god-like
figure of the Lord of the Jungle.”
The “Warlord of Mars” opens with an image of Stygian
darkness even more mythological in nature, considering that it takes place
upon the River Iss, Barsoom’s river of death. John Carter, seeking a way
to release Dejah Thoris from the Temple of the Sun, followed the treacherous
black pirate Thurid across the Lost Sea of Korus into the mouth of Iss
where it emerged from under the Golden Cliffs. “Into the Stygian darkness
beyond he urged his craft,” reported Carter. Thurid led the way up a subterranean
river that emptied into Iss. The route was new to John Carter, and the
intermittent darkness along the way described by Burroughs served to heighten
the image of danger, perhaps even doom, for the warlord. “What lay behind
the darkness I could not even guess,” admitted Carter. “The way was through
utter darkness. The stream was narrow — so narrow that in the blackness
I was constantly bumping one rock wall and then another as the river wound
hither and thither.” Happily, John Carter’s journey down this of mystery
turned out to be a mission of hope and resurrection, not death and despair,
as the ancient Greeks believed would be their fate along the River Styx.
Perhaps ERB’s best description of Stygian darkness and
a descent into an underworld filled with danger is found in “Llana of
Gathol.” John Carter and Pan Dan Chee were sent to the pits of Horz
for a night while the Horzan Jeddak contemplated their fate. Standing at
the head of the rock-hewn ramp leading down into the pits, Carter reported
that they were looking down into “Stygian darkness.” As they descended
with torches the corridor covered with the dust of the ages, John Carter
stopped to look into a dungeon. “A moldering skeleton lay upon the floor,
the rusted irons that had secured it to the wall lying among its bones.
In the next dungeon were three skeletons.” Not heeding the warning, the
two men continued downward, only to be attacked by the largest ulsio that
John Carter had ever seen. The Martian rat, the size of a small puma, fought
with vicious tenacity, bringing to mind the image of Cerberus, the three-headed
dog that guarded the gates of Tartarus.
Then an enemy they could not fight confronted Carter and
Pan Dan Chee. At irregular intervals they saw the glimmer of a light where
there should have been no light, and it was always accompanied by a maniacal
laugh. Even the nerves of the warlord began to fray under the attacks of
this unseen enemy. “That laugh! I can hear it yet,” recalled John Carter.
“I tried to think that it was human. I didn’t want to go mad.” In an effort
to catch the THING, the two men extinguished their torches and made their
way through the darkness toward the mysterious light. “I reached the doorway,
and as I stepped into the opening I had a momentary glimpse of a strange
figure and then all was plunged into darkness and a hollow laugh reverberated
through the Stygian blackness of the pits of Horz.” After John Carter killed
the evil Lum Tar O, he was confronted by dozens of warriors rising from
decades of sleep in the caskets where Lum Tar O had placed them back in
the time when Hors was washed by the waves of the ocean Throxeus. The meeting
is reminiscent of an episode in the “Odyssey,” when Odysseus poured blood
into a pit to call up from Erebus the souls of the dead, among them the
great Greek heroes Agamemnon and Achilles.
The Quest or the Golden Fleece
Perhaps the greatest of all stories of adventure in
Greek mythology is the quest for the Golden Fleece. Jason was the heir
of rightful king of Greece, but to claim his throne had to agree to go
on a quest to retrieve the golden fleece of a ram that had once saved a
young prince that the Greeks planned to sacrifice. Jason gathered the most
renowned warriors of Greece, Hercules among them, and set sail in the ship
Argo. Many dangers were encountered along the way, among them the dilemma
of Scylla and Charybdis. The Argo had to pass between two cliffs. On one
side, dwelling high in a cliff-side cave, lived Scylla, a six-headed monster
that swooped down upon unhappy mariners who sailed too close to her abode.
On the other side was Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool that three times a
day devoured ships that passed within reach of its swirling waters. Scylla
and Charybdis represent the ultimate dilemma for a ship’s commander. There
is unavoidable danger, and the commander’s only choice is to which terrible
fate he will submit his crew.
In “Carson of Venus,” ERB used the image of Scylla
and Charybdis when Carson Napier was hemmed in by dangers on the open seas
of Amtor. It happened when Carson was sailing a small boat from Amlot to
Sanara in search of Duare. Caught in a storm, Carson reported that, “The
seas were like a great, grey army rushing, battalion after battalion, in
their assault upon the shore, and we a tiny Argo between the Charybdis
of the one and the Scylla of the other.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs created Jason Gridley in “Tanar
of Pellucidar, “written in 1928, so it may have been just coincidence
that Jason was the name of the major player in “Tarzan At the Earth’s
Core,” a sequel to “Tanar.” Still, the analogy is strong. Here
another Jason feels compelled to set out upon a dangerous quest, this time
a rescue mission. He gathered around him men of great courage — Zuppner,
Von Horst, Dorf, Hines — including Tarzan, whose reputation for strength
and dauntless courage brought a feeling of confidence to the whole expedition,
just as Hercules’ presence had done to that first great quest over three
millennia ago. The crew sailed their modern Argo, the specially constructed
dirigible, the 0-220. After the organization of the expedition and the
embarkation of the 0-220, however, the similarity of Jason Gridley’s expedition
on a quest for the Golden Fleece fades to symbolism at best. The Argonauts
fought and survived as a team, while ERB dispersed his crew into the wilds
of Pellucidar to face their dangers as individuals. In addition, Jason
got his gold fleece through the help of the gods and the magic of Medea,
while it was the force of coincidence, ever-present in the fiction of ERB,
that brought the crew of the 0-220 back together and allowed them to accomplish
their goal of freeing David Innes from his Korsar dungeon.
The Great Heroes Before the Trojan War
The most revered of all Greek heroes were those whose
adventures took place in the years immediately preceding the Trojan War.
They included Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, and Theseus, slayer of the
Minotaur, the greatest of all Athenian heroes. Finally, there was Hercules,
strongest of all mortal men and defier of the gods. ERB was most fond of
the image of Hercules, but he did include references to the other two heroes
as well.
Burroughs made just one reference to the story of Perseus,
and even that is an indirect one. Perseus foolishly promised to bring back
the head of Medusa as a present for the Greek king Polydectes. Medusa was
one of three deadly monsters known as Gorgons, all with appearances so
hideous that whoever looked upon them would turn to stone. Certainly, the
image of the Gorgon is the ultimate in ugliness, and thus did ERB use the
image in “Beyond the Farthest Star.” When Tangor first arrived on
Paloda, the first sound he heard was a woman’s scream. Turning, Tangor
got only a quick look at the woman, since he quickly fled into the bushes
for the same reason that she screamed — he was in the buff. The lady turned
out to be Balzo Maro, who no doubt saw more than enough of Tangor. The
earth man, however, reported of Balzo Maro that, “just the glimpse that
I had had assured me that she was no Gorgon.” Of course, ERB was practicing
hyperbole by contrast there.
ERB made a much more direct reference to the story of
Theseus. The classical tale has the city of Athens suffering a terrible
fate. Minos, King of Crete, forced Athens to send seven maids and seven
youths every nine years to be fed to the Minotaur on Crete. The Minotaur
was a half-human, half-bull monster who dwelt in the Labyrinth, a structure
of endless winding corridors from which none could escape once they had
entered its twisting pathways. Theseus decided to end the scourge of Athenian
youth by traveling to Crete to kill the Minotaur. Even the great Athenian
hero, however, could not accomplish the feat without help, and that came
from Ariadne, the daughter of Minos himself. She fell in love with Theseus
at first sight and later gave him a ball of thread that he trailed behind
him on entering the Labyrinth. After killing the Minotaur, Theseus followed
the thread back to freedom.
Carson Napier found his own labyrinth in the garden of
Morgas, the “Wizard of Venus.” “Its walks were laid out in maze-like
confusion,” Carson reported, “and I had gone only a short distance along
them when I realized that I might have difficulty in finding my way out
again; yet I ventured on, though I had no Ariadne to give me a clew of
thread to guide me from the labyrinth. The only goddess upon whom I might
rely was Lady Luck.”
Hercules
Next to scenes painted in “Stygian” darkness, ERB
made more direct references to the Greek strongman Hercules than to any
other mythological image. Hercules was the strongest man on earth and in
everything he did he exuded supreme self-confidence. In contrast to the
wise Theseus, however, Hercules too often let his emotions rule his behavior,
and that led to his downfall.
ERB often referred to Hercules when he wanted to convey
the image of great physical strength. First of all, Burroughs at times
likened characters to Hercules in appearance with bulging muscles that
donated certain great strength. In “Tarzan and ‘The Foreign Legion’,”
Oju, a full-grown orangutan, confronted Tarzan. “His enormously long arms,
his Herculean muscles, his mighty fangs and powerful jaws dwarfed the offensive
equipment of even the mighty Tarzan,” ERB noted. Another Burroughs character
with “Herculean muscles” was Bulan, hero of “The Monster Men.” During
a battle, ERB referred to “the Herculean muscles that rolled and shifted
beneath Bulan’s sun-tanned skin.” In “The Mucker,” the ship Halfmoon
was headed for the rocks until Billy Byrne took the wheel. “With the aid
of Byrne’s Herculean muscles and great weight the bow of the Halfmoon commenced
to come slowly around so that presently she almost paralleled the cliffs
again.” In addition, Mugambi, the native Wagambi chief, who was a member
of “The Beasts of Tarzan,” is later referred to as an “ebon Hercules”
in “Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.”
While there may have been only a handful of Burroughs
characters described as having the awesome physical strength of Hercules,
there were quite a few others who, on occasion, were capable of exerting
a “Herculean effort.” In “Tarzan the Terrible,” Korak made a miraculous
trek into Pal-ul-don to rescue his parents. Along the way, Korak had to
cross the murky morass that surrounds Pal-ul-don like a moat. He “advanced
only by virtue of Herculean efforts gaining laboriously by inches.” In
“The Moon Maid,” it took “Herculean efforts” by Julian 5th to break
his bonds after he had been captured by the No-vans, and in "Tanar of
Pellucidar," it took a “Herculean movement” by Tanar to break the grasp
of the Korsar Bohar upon the Sarian’s throat as they battled over Stellara.
Finally, in “Jungle Girl,” Fou-tan fought frantically but in vain
to release herself from the “herculean grasp” of her captor, Prang the
wild-man.
Hercules’ reputation for strength was best exhibited in
the “Labors of Hercules,” 12 impossible tasks he undertook to purge
him of the shame he felt for having killed his wife and children in a fit
of madness. Among the labors were the killing of Hydra, the nine-headed
swamp monster; the diverting of two rivers to clean the Augean stables;
the bringing back of the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons; and
the bringing up of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, from Hades. Certainly,
none of ERB’s characters ever performed a task the magnitude of the “Labors
of Hercules,” but at times Burroughs did refer to a monumental effort
by one of his characters as a “Herculean task.” For instance, in “The
Cave Girl,” Waldo Smith-Jones’ transformation in six months from a
skinny, cowardly weakling to Thandar the killer is described as a “herculean
task.” In “Tarzan the Magnificent,” the ape-man performed a “herculean
task” when he used spear, knife and hands to excavate a ramp in an elephant
pit so that the captured Tantor could walk up to freedom. Burroughs also
at times used the term “herculean task” sarcastically, such as when he
used the term in “The Mucker” to refer to Barbara Harding’s efforts to
put a saddle on her horse Brazos. “Three times she essayed to lift it to
his back before she succeeded in accomplishing the Herculean task.”
ERB made reference to Tarzan in comparison to Hercules
a number of times. In terms of physique, Burroughs seemed uncertain or
whether or not Tarzan should have the bulging muscles that marked the Greek
hero. In “Tarzan the Untamed,” the ape-man is described as “a mightily
muscled Hercules out of the dawn of life.” However, later in “Tarzan
and the City of Gold,” ERB pictured Tarzan as “tall, magnificently
proportioned, muscled more like Apollo than like Hercules.” Bulging or
not, there was no doubt that the muscles of the ape-man carried the strength
of Hercules. In “Tarzan and the Forbidden City” ERB referred to
“the Herculean strength of the Lord of the Jungle,” and in Pellucidar Tarzan
battled a Horib while Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram, watched in amazement.
“Again and again Tarzan whipped the mighty body over his head and dashed
it to the gray earth, while the girl, wide-eyed with astonishment at this
exhibition of Herculean strength, looked on.” Another girl who marveled
at the great strength of the ape-man was Janette Laon, the French girl
who was put in a cage on the deck of the Saigon with the “wild-man” in
“The Quest of Tarzan.” After Tarzan finally decided to leave the
cage, Janette “watched with amazement the seeming ease with which those
Herculean muscles had separated the bars.”
In addition to his mighty muscles, Hercules was know for
his lack of emotional control, and on at least one occasion, Burroughs
portrayed Tarzan in a true Herculean tableau, one in which great strength
was turned loose in a fit of anger. In “The Return of Tarzan,” a
woman whose screams lured Tarzan to an ambush in Paris’ Rue Maule district,
watched with horror as Tarzan tore through the 10 men who had intended
to kill him. “Instead of soft muscles and a weak resistance, she was looking
upon a veritable Hercules gone mad.” For the most part, however, throughout
his life Tarzan was able to temper the use of his great strength with reason
and humanity, and, in that respect, he was most unlike the sad figure of
Hercules.
In the final analysis, Burroughs almost always assigned
“Herculean” strength to protagonists and seldom to villains. Obviously
he revered the image of strength embodied in the character of Hercules,
as had the early Greeks who created him.
Homer
The Trojan War, legend has it, took place about 1,000
B.C., and Homer’s record of it and Odysseus’s long journey homeward to
Greece mark the chronological end of Greek mythology. Homer is believed
to have been a blind wandering storyteller. His stories told in “The
Iliad” and “The Odyssey” were retold over many generations and
written down for the first time hundreds of years after his death. They
constitute the oldest written stories that have come down to modern times.
A couple of ERB’s characters actually read the works of
Homer in their earliest forms. In “Tarzan and the Lost Empire,”
Erich von Harben, who had been well educated in lost languages, found a
sort of archeologist’s heaven in the library of the lost city of Castrum
Mare. There “he discovered only unadulterated pleasure in his work, and
thoughts of escape were driven from his mind by discoveries of such gems
as original Latin translations of Homer and hitherto unknown manuscripts
of Virgil, Cicero and Caesar — manuscripts that dated from the days of
the young republic.”
Britannicus, the British slave of Caligula, also read
Homer in “I Am a Barbarian.” As a slave in a royal Roman household,
Britannicus learned Latin and read the poems of Homer, no doubt in the
same translations that Van Harben was to read in the lost African city
nearly1,900 years later. However, Britannicus’ studies continued for 10
years in the house of Caligula until he no longer had to read translations.
“I also read in the Greek,” he wrote, “the works of the philosopher Aristotle,
the poet Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey prompted me to become a poet.”
On occasion, ERB made reference to the content of Homer’s
stories. For instance, in “I Am a Barbarian,” the slave Tibur describes
to Britannicus the fabulous ship of Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse. Tibur
told of dozens of rooms on the ship. “All of these rooms had floors of
mosaic work with all sorts of tessellated stones on which the entire story
of the Iliad was depicted.” Helen of Troy had “the face that launched a
thousand ships” to rescue her, but Burroughs used her vanity, not her beauty,
in making a most unusual comparison in “Jungle Tales of Tarzan.”
Teeka, the great ape, shrilled with delight as Tarzan and Taug battled
for her favor, and although thousands died over Helen during the Trojan
War, Burroughs reported that “Helen of Troy was never one whit more proud
than was Teeka” at the moment that Tarzan and Taug fought for her.
Burroughs referred to the cause of the fall of Troy in
a light-hearted manner in “I Am a Barbarian.” Britannicus and Attica
were taking one of their walks along the Via Appia, when Britannicus spoke
disparagingly of Caesar. Attica brought a finger to her lips, warning Britannicus
that men had been crucified for making such comments. Looking around, Britannicus
responded, “There is no one else here.” Attica pointed to a cow in a nearby
pasture and whispered, “Do not forget the fall of Troy.” Britannicus reminded
her, “That was a horse, not a cow.”
Following the fall of Troy, the victorious Greeks dispersed
and headed for the homes they had left nine years earlier. However, Odysseus,
the Greek chieftain who had come up with the idea for the wooden horse,
had made an enemy of Poseidon, and was destined to wander for 10 years
before returning safely home to Ithaca. One of the dangers that Odysseus
and his men had to survive was the curse of Circe, the beautiful woman
whose lovely songs drew men to her irresistibly and made them forget their
native lands. It was another such intoxicating lady who made Jason Gridley
lose his sense of responsibility in Pellucidar. While he was supposed to
be searching for his lost comrades, Jason instead found himself chasing
after Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram. Jason finally realized the spell that
had been cast over him. “Why, she has made a regular monkey out of me,”
he soliloquized. “Odysseus never met a more potent Circe. Nor one half
so lovely.”
To Burroughs, however, his character most like Odysseus
was the Apache hero of “The War Chief.” Shoz-Dijiji left his tribe
to search for the 50 ponies required to claim Ish-kay-nay for his wife.
Many miles away he found and stole the horses, and the driving of them
back toward the tribe’s country is described by ERB as being in the heroic
tradition of Odysseus. “How he took them, alone and unaided, across those
weary, burning miles, through scorching deserts and rugged mountains equally
scorching, along a trail beset by enemies, pursued by wrathful vaqueros,
would well have been the subject of a deathless epic had Shoz-Diijiji lived
in the days of Homer.”
The classical images of Edgar rice Burroughs that have
been detailed in this essay have for the most part been mere surface projections
of a much deeper and detailed mythological vein that runs through the heart
of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Obviously, the formal education of
his adolescence, painful as he professed it to be, laid down in his psyche
a firm appreciation for the classics. Years later in his writing that appreciation
was to come out whether he willed it or not. The extent to which Burroughs
is indebted to classical literature is debatable, but surely had its influence
been missing from ERB’s fiction entirely, much of the beauty and majesty
that gave this author staying power would have been lacking.
— The End —
