(A Thyrsus was a staff entwined with ivy and surmounted by a pine cone in the cleft at its end. It was used by those engaged in Bacchic rites.)
Part 1
A cry through the heat alerted Marie to the discovery of something of importance. She looked up and wiped the sweat from her forehead and moved carefully over the gritty dirt surface of the hill. She slipped and cursed as her butt slapped onto the surface and she slid into a stunted olive tree. After that she virtually crawled over the hill to the grotto where the cry had come.
Carefully she crossed the dry creek bed and the loose stones to the pile of larger rocks in the cliff. Steven looked up his dark sunglasses trained in her direction and he then looked at the rocks again as their two male Greek students shuffled aside the rocks over a cunningly concealed cave beneath them. Henry joined the others as she came up and he mopped his bald head before putting back on his hat. Henry looked and acted the perfect eccentric professor whilst Steven was perfectly at ease in the politics of academia. Both were firm friends and both loved the thrill of the field as well as being brilliant scholars.
"Is it...?"
Henry's excitement was as reserved as both his personality and English accent could make it, yet both of them knew that he had pieced together clues that had suggested that something had been placed here. Steven brushed the dirt from the lintels and surfaces about the rock that formed the doorway to the cave below. Once satisfied he signaled to Marie to come over and look, she still thrilled to this classically handsome man with the grey hair that peppered his hair. Yet he was a reserved as Henry with her and was like him the perfect gentleman. Looking at her you would have thought she was a youth being slim and small. She kept her hair short and severely tied back which did not show her face to the best advantage. Her nose was more a beak and the dark brown eyes that were behind thick glasses assaulted you more than seduced you.
Marie bent down and traced a couple of possible shapes. She straightened and looked at the two waiting men.
"There may be what could be an A in Linear B and I think there is a staff engraved into the rock. " She drawled out her answer.
Henry beamed and slapped his knee and danced a small jig remarking how he knew it was here. Even Steven who was so grave smiled. Seeing the happiness in the two men smiled as well though with puzzlement. They were here to learn about archaeological techniques and instead of a well-developed dig they had found themselves on a treasure hunt in the middle of Boeotia some forty miles west of Thebes. Dimitrios a dark-haired muscular Herakles looked at the trio and cleared his throat.
"Excuse me Professor Symons what is here? What have we found?" He spoke English well but with the strong accent his friend Theo nodded as though he had also spoken.
Henry looked up and smiling spoke,"Why my dears we may have found Agave's tomb."
Dimitrios looked shocked and then spoke again,"Agave Professor but she was a myth."
"No, no my dears she was no myth she was as real as you or me. The daughter of Cadmus and Harmony, the sister of Semele the mother of Pentheus and a Bacchante who in her Maenad rage slew her son thinking him a beast at their orgy to Dionysus. I found an old inscription that said she fled here and in her grief took her own life to be buried here by her servants. And my dear boys we have found the old woman!!"
The man beamed with the thought of what was here and you could see the hunger in his eyes. It was in fact Marie who told the two students to bring their tents and gear here as they tried to find the best way to open the tomb. Steven led the exultant Henry into the shade though he quickly came back and began to seek other signs on the doorway to Agave's tomb. As they searched Marie joined Dimitrios and Theo in going back to the camp and preparing for the move to the newly-found tomb. The two men conversed in low voices until Dimitrios spoke.
"Do you think it true that we have found the tomb of Agave Professor?"
Marie considered her answer and then gave it.
"Yes I think it true. Not the Agave of myths but the Agave of ancient history. If it is what we think it is we have the greatest discovery in the Greek world since the discovery of Troy. You know the legend of course?" Theo shook his head.
"Well Agave was the daughter of Cadmus and Harmony, Cadmus had founded Thebes after rescuing Zeus from the Typhon and sowing the dragon's teeth. He was given Ares and Aphrodite's daughter Harmony as wife. Well they had four daughters, Semele who gave birth to Dionysus whose father was Zeus and another called Agave who married Pentheus a very ambitious nobleman of Thebes. Well Agave exposed the shame of Semele who was thrown out of the city and died of exposure, Pentheus using her shame was able to become king of Thebes in place of Cadmus." Swallowing some water to wet her dry throat she waited and continued with her story.
"Dionysus was taken to Asia and waited and learnt there until a man he came back to Thebes using his gifts he seduced Agave and her daughters in into wild orgies with him. Pentheus heard about them of course and spied on the women as they practiced their Bacchanal, Dionysus driving them mad made them see an animal that they tore apart only finding out later that they had ripped apart their father and Agave's husband. There was even a hint of cannibalism, as it was the people of Thebes drove out Agave, Cadmus and Harmony as well as Agave's daughters. There the legend ends, what Henry found was a shard of pottery that talked of a coven of Maenads led by Agave in these hills."
"No matter what you think of Henry he is a brilliant Classical Scholar and combing all references he came to the conclusion that there had been a secret Dionysian sect that had sprouted her around 1800BC and that they had been hunted to extinction by the later invading Dorians. So we came looking and I think we have found the find of the century. So to work and lets find out more."
