413: European folklore: Justice

This week, on Myths and Legends, there are three and a half stories of love and justice from European folklore.

We'll see why you should let that snake vomit in your drink and why you shouldn't be friends with tyrants.

The creature this time is a cow that brings you free groceries, but only if you don't get greedy.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 413.

Justice.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore.

Some are incredibly popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are tales that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

Today there are three-ish stories of love and justice from ancient medieval Europe.

We'll jump in with the story of the bell of justice, a bell that will get you justice, If only you're brave enough to ring it.

Okay, everyone, here is a bell, the Lord said, holding up the end of a rope for all in the city who could make it out on that particular Thursday morning to see.

I'm all about justice and the rights of you, you people, he said, pacing.

here's the deal you ring this bell you get justice you get a hearing no matter the reason big or small i want this to be a town with rights for all he whispered for his advisor to write that down that's a good slogan promise you you won't be mad one voice yelled out yeah why would i be mad the lord squinted who said that well what if it's one of your friends who's mistreating us one of the common people in the city another voice cried out.

The Lord laughed.

Well, okay.

Assume the rich and powerful with their superior bloodlines and all that, if they would do that, and the rich and powerful abusing their position for the sake of cruelty or personal gain, that's a pretty big if,

yes, he would hear the case with impartiality.

The commoners said,

hmm,

and asked if they could go back to working themselves to death.

And it should be no surprise, over the next few weeks, no one rang the bell.

Why is no one ringing the bell?

The Lord demanded weeks later.

All he wanted to do was help the people.

Was he wait, was he too good a ruler?

Was there no one in need?

We could go with that, sure, one of his advisors said, advocating the clearly wrong answer.

But then, how will people know of my magnanimity if my city is too perfect?

No, we must.

What if we start doing crimes?

Committing crimes?

And then how will we bring people to justice if it's us?

The advisor asked, wary that this was how a supervillain might get their start.

He didn't realize he was holding his breath until he finally exhaled when they heard it.

The bell

was ringing.

Someone is using my bell.

Someone Someone is using my bell.

I'm so excited.

The Lord was giddy.

Putting on his finest ermine cloak, he assembled his greatest knights and judges.

They were going down to the bell tower.

They weren't doing crimes today.

They were doing justice.

Where's the bell ringer?

The Lord paced.

The square where he built the the bell tower was

always pretty deserted.

The Lord might say one thing, but everyone, from the lesser nobility to the merchant class to the free peasants and the serfs, all got the impression from the rung above them, or their peers when it came to the class just below the Lord, that snitches get stitches, and in a time with an incomplete grasp on germ theory and before antibiotics, stitches could very well be a death sentence.

So no one wanted to be seen in the square lest desperation move one of their peers to actually ring the bell and they get spotted by someone with power over their life.

But the bell rang again.

The men marveled.

What was happening?

How was the bell of justice ringing on its own?

Oh, it's just a horse, one of the ministers pointed out.

And it was.

A horse was chewing on the cord.

Like,

really chewing it.

Is he Is he trying to eat the cord?

The lord shook his head.

Actually, now that he was noticing it, that horse didn't look like he was doing too great.

He looked downright famished.

Hey, I know that horse, one of the nobles said.

This your horse?

The servant held up the reins as the knight stood in the doorway of his manor.

Who wants to know?

The knight glowered.

Your lord!

The lord stepped out from behind a barrel with a perfectly timed reveal.

Bowing, the knight said yes, it was.

How could he serve his sneaky, sneaky lord?

By answering the question why this horse was chewing on my bell cord.

The knight said he was so sorry.

He would get him a new bell cord and beat the horse accordingly.

It's not the bell cord I'm concerned about.

It's the horse.

The horse rang the bell for justice, and he is getting justice.

The lord seemed a foot taller standing over the knight.

But

it's a horse, the knight said.

What I think has happened is that this horse served you well for years.

It never shirked from battle or from a joust.

But in its old age, it was of no further use to you, so you didn't even let it graze in the field.

You just let it go in town.

Yeah, it's a horse, the knight chuckled.

It served you faithfully for years, its entire life, the lord said.

A crowd was growing behind him of merchants and the others coming out of their houses.

But the moment it was seen as useless, you cast it aside to the point that it had to chew on a rope to ease the pain of its stomach.

The Lord grimaced.

Respectfully, it's my horse.

I can do with it what I like, the knight replied.

The lord leveled a glance at the man.

True enough, but the horse did something about it.

The horse rang the bell.

The horse sought justice, and the horse would have it.

From now on, the knight would feed and care for the old horse until his dying day.

The lord thought about it.

The horse's dying day of natural causes, they would have to draw up a contract because there was a lot of ways the knight could wiggle out of this one.

Still, the Lord would see it done because the horse rang the bell.

After that, seeing what the Lord would do for even a horse, not only an animal that couldn't do him any benefit, but who was literally the property of someone else, the people relaxed.

They saw that the Lord was earnest and serious in his desire to change things, to be different, to be just.

The people started using the bell too, and the city flourished.

So

the local magistrate grinned.

King Charlemagne snapped too.

So sorry, what was the point of that?

To tell about the bell of justice, the man smiled expectantly.

Great.

Good story.

The man, the holy Roman Emperor, definitely meant and wasn't just trying to move the line along.

So, what do you want?

I want a bell of justice here in Zurich, the man said.

It was the perfect spot.

The rest of the supplicants were getting annoyed, but the man kept on.

And why is it the perfect spot?

Charlemagne asked, not realizing that he had just teed up another story.

The Theban Legion was a Roman legion of Christian soldiers in the 3rd century.

A bad time to be a Roman, a legionnaire, and a Christian.

It wasn't called the crisis of the third century because things were going great.

But really, it was a time of civil war, invasions from Rome's various enemies, assassinations, and unrest.

Which was why, if you have a legion who is happy to serve, but maybe just doesn't want to violate their religious beliefs and sacrifice to the cult of the emperor, maybe let it go until your cities aren't on fire and then revisit that.

Or just be cool about people believing different things.

I'm joking, of course, though I do think that people should be cool about other people believing different things.

But to the Romans, refusing to sacrifice to the emperor was a problem.

This was at the tail end of the crisis, and they just had so many problems with disloyal troops and commanders who would use those troops in declaring themselves emperors and marching on Rome.

People generally use the term decimation to mean the complete destruction.

But the Roman use of the term and practice was actually kind of the opposite of that.

Decimation was a form of military discipline used to regain control, kill enough of the people to make an example for the rest.

And how many they killed is right there in the name.

Deci means 10, so it's killing a tenth of the group, like every tenth person.

It was the most extreme punishment in the Roman army.

I don't know the timeframe, but it feels both charitable and misleading to say that they discipline them with decimation when they kill a tenth of the group, then a tenth of the group, and then a tenth of the group, and then just kill the rest.

The rest being 72% of the original group, but numbers didn't really matter to the Romans executing an entire legion.

Like, you can't just do three decimations back to back and call it three decimations.

That's, you're killing 28%.

That's a completely different thing.

I think it probably became clear to the people ordering the executions that, while it likely wasn't rebellion against the empire, it was a devotion the magistrate didn't fully understand.

The willingness to die yourself after just watching nearly a third of your friends killed.

So, like I said, the rest of them were put to death.

And sadly for them, the Roman Empire would declare legal tolerance for Christians fewer than 30 years later.

Among the group of martyrs were two people, Felix and Regula.

Now, legions were big.

I'm not sure exactly how big this one was and if the whole legion was Christian or just a subset, but with that many people awaiting execution, a few were bound to slip through the cracks.

Like brother and sister, Felix and Regula, and their servant, Exuperiantius.

Real quickly, I don't know how Regula was there with the Legion, as she specifically mentioned to be the sister of Felix.

Maybe she was visiting her brother, maybe they were from the area, maybe she was traveling along in some non-combat capacity.

Regardless, they fled to nearby Zurich.

But, well, people dead set on zealously executing others for their beliefs, sadly, are not the lazy type, and the Romans caught up to them.

Seeing no escape at this point, they too became martyrs.

Then things got

interesting.

I will say that I don't know how much of the medieval stories of the saints and their supernatural exploits are part of modern Catholicism.

But I imagine the Roman executioners in various states of disbelief and complete panic when the three people whose heads they just cut off stood up, picked up their heads, and walked away.

They didn't walk far, only about 40 paces uphill, where they prayed, or I guess their heads prayed, buried themselves comfortably, according to one story that's specifically folklore, and died.

Felix and Regula are, to this day, the patron saints of Zurich.

You can see the spot where they were supposedly executed, at a church called the Wasserkirk, the Water Church, and walk to the spot where they buried themselves, the location of the Grossmunster today.

Neither of those things were around in Charlemagne's time, though.

Roughly 550 years after Felix and Regula, and 1,200 years before the 1989 release of Belgian musical act Technotronics Pump Up the Jam.

And unlike Kunk on Earth, I can't afford the rights to pay that, and wouldn't actually know the first thing about getting them.

So, okay, you want a bell of justice?

Charlemagne asked, on the site where the future saints buried themselves.

The man nodded.

The growing line behind him was beyond impatient.

So Charlemagne shrugged.

Sure, whatever.

It would not only keep a man from digressing into yet another story, but it did seem like good optics.

That he should care about justice, and if he was going to be holy Roman Emperor, he needed to set himself apart from all those simply regular Roman emperors who were so into killing Christians.

So he would build a bell tower so that the town that would come to be known as Zurich, Switzerland, would have a bell of justice.

He called for one of his advisors to contact the stonemasons and a bell maker.

And then Charlemagne left.

He had a big-ish kingdom to rule and couldn't just hang out in one place.

Quick history lesson.

Charlemagne was king of the Franks, who went on to found the Carolingian Empire.

Crowned emperor in 800 AD by Pope Leo III, he formed the Holy Roman Empire, which persisted in one form or another for over a thousand years until Napoleon in 1806.

He had a lot going on.

And while Zurich was pretty central, it did take him a while to get back there, well after the Bell of Justice was established.

As he was reclining in a manor, after a long day of riding, he heard the bell.

Someone was ringing the bell of justice.

Did that just work?

He called the local lord in and asked if the bell rang regularly, to which the man laughed.

What?

No, he was a thoughtful and competent ruler, and the bell was largely unnecessary.

Obviously not, Charlemagne said.

Someone waited until the king was in town to ring ring the bell because they needed justice the Lord couldn't provide.

He ordered both for his men to go up to the bell tower to see who rang the bell of justice and for them to keep the lord here just in case he was the unjust party.

A tense few minutes passed, for the lord at least, until the men came back empty-handed.

There was no one around the bell.

The hill was empty.

The bell, though, rang again.

Charlemagne laughed and rocked backwards.

Okay, actually, go look for horses.

Something chewing on the rope that rings the bell.

He didn't think the tropes were this prominent, but here they were.

The men, once again, returned with nothing.

No horses, even.

Charlemagne was pretty cranky at this point.

Did they have any idea how hard it was to travel in this time period?

I mean, sure, he rolled around in a nice box, but that box wasn't air-conditioned and they didn't have shock absorbers.

He really just wanted to get get some rest.

Go see who's messing with the bell so they can be publicly flogged and he could take a nap.

They came back for the third time, stunned and confused.

There was a snake, a big one, wrapped around the bell tower.

It had the coordinate's teeth, and it was, apparently, ringing with purpose.

This wasn't an accident.

The bell wasn't dipping into the snake's nest or anything.

The snake was seeking justice.

Alright,

yeah, I'm tired, but I have to see this.

Charlemagne rose and found his boots.

Let's do it.

We will see the justice request the snake makes, but that will be right after this.

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The snake bowed before the monarch.

That was a first.

Snakes are evil, right?

One of the soldiers asked the Lord, like that's a whole thing with the Bible and stuff, the serpent.

They decided to put a pin in this conversation when the snake shot them a glance.

Flattery isn't always the way to get what you want, but when you're dealing with royalty, it appears to be a good opening move because Charlemagne asked the snake what it wanted.

How could he give the snake justice?

The snake began slithering away.

The soon-to-be emperor and others were left nearly as confused as they were when they first saw a snake ringing the bell.

But then the snake stopped, slithered back to them, turned around, and began slithering away again.

To their somewhat credit, it only took two more rounds of that for the emperor and his lackeys to catch on that they should follow the snake.

It wasn't a long trek down to the river.

According to a map I'm looking at, I've never actually been to Zurich.

The snake slothered up to some reeds and stopped.

What is it, girl?

Is it is it is there trouble?

Trouble at the old river?

One of the soldiers said.

Charlemagne grumbled that it wasn't a collie just part the reeds so they could see what the snake was trying to tell them.

They did, and they saw the nest of the snake.

Four eggs sitting in the mud.

But it was the toad, sitting next to a smooth, concave spot in the dirt that drew their attention.

We've talked about frogs and toads and why they're actually low-key terrifying.

They don't just catch flies with their tongues, they eat mice, birds, and they do it calmly with that dead-eye stare, which is probably the worst thing about it.

For a snake wanting to protect her nest, a giant squat toad slowly eating her children one by one was a waking nightmare.

For the three armed soldiers, the toad was a toad.

The emperor said that the bell of justice had been rung and justice would be done.

Execute the toad.

And they did, because it was a toad.

After they flung the toad corpse in the river, the snake slithered right up to the front of the emperor, bobbed her head in a bow, and wrapped herself around her nest to rest with her children.

Well,

that was weird, Charlemagne said.

Bell of justice, huh?

Who would have thought?

He went back to his interrupted meal and nap.

It got weirder, though.

Wouldn't be myths and legends if it didn't.

The next day, while the king sat down to dinner, with some local lord or noble or something or other, who knows, it was a lot to keep track of, anyway, while he sat eating, shouts went up from the guards for whoever approached to stop right there.

At the third and purportedly final warning, the king stood to see who dared attack the cloister where the king was staying at the center of his empire, but soon saw that it wasn't an attack.

It was a snake.

The snake.

Word, apparently, hadn't gotten around of Charlemagne's actions, where, like the lord of the old story, he too was such a fiend for justice that he would give it to an animal who rang the bell.

Telling the men to step aside, the king invited the snake inside the cloister.

Possibly growing concerned that this was a when you give a mouse a cookie situation, the snake crawled into dinner with the lord and slithered atop the table.

Charlemagne tried to explain to the lord about what happened the previous day with the bell and the toad, but then remembered that being high king means you don't have to explain anything to anyone.

Commanding the lord to calm down, Charlemagne turned to his most recent guest, who was now, it seemed, lifting the cover to the emperor's drinking cup.

This was a step too far, even for a reasonably intelligent and/or magic snake, and the king tried to tell her such, but she couldn't hear him.

Over the vomiting, the emperor nodded.

They could just throw that cup out.

Also, probably the snake, because no matter how smart a creature appears to be, once they start purposefully vomiting your drinks, it's time to go.

That was before the emperor saw the jewel.

Plopping in the wine, the snake vomited up a large, magnificent diamond to say thanks for slaying the toad and saving her children.

With that, the snake bowed a final time, slithered from the manor, and was never seen again

by anyone not rooting around in the reeds by the river, looking for smart snakes.

I'm not judging, though.

I don't know what people did in their free time in the Middle Ages.

Charlemagne also didn't know what to do with the diamond.

Then he remembered his wife.

He handed off the diamond to a jeweler to have a ring made.

You know, times were different,

one hopes.

This was likely set in the early 790s.

So in my head, when it mentioned Charlemagne and his wife, Festrada, I pictured two people about the same age, maybe in their early 40s or 50s, a sweet, middle-aged couple who had weathered the turbulence of court and royalty together and were closer for the experience.

That was not the case.

Charlemagne married Festrada when he was 35 and she was 18.

That being a high number for the ages of Charlemagne's wives at marriage, but we'll get to that.

She was his third wife, if you're not counting his first consort, who I guess was technically a concubine, and Festrada didn't count it, apparently, because Charlemagne had had a son by that union, Pepin the Hunchback, and she had the man publicly shamed and tonsured.

Charlemagne, in total, had four wives, five concubines with whom he had children, and several lovers, two of which were abbots.

So yeah, when I thought about Charlemagne a few years ago, in my head I pictured something like the wise and elderly Marcus Aurelius portrayed by Richard Harris in 2000's Gladiator, and not how he actually was,

like Henry VIII with better PR because his wives died of natural causes.

All that in mind, it was noteworthy, then, that Charlemagne could not get enough of his wife, Festrada, now in her late twenties, him in his mid-forties.

Expectations were probably different back then, and she probably didn't care about his proclivities.

But, after gifting her the ring, he became every bit the doting, loving husband.

So much so that his people began to worry that something was wrong.

The emperor is too nice, too attentive to his wife.

It was, according to one German source, almost sinful, the passion with which he adored his wife, apparently ignoring the actual sinful passion with which he adulterously adored pretty much everyone else.

One aspect of the Middle Ages that the advisors could rest on was that everyone dies, and by virtue of it being the Middle Ages, people might die a lot sooner and more unexpectedly than you think.

Festrada, the wife of the king, became ill, and in under a week, she was dead.

The court, collectively, breathed the sigh of relief that the king was no longer constantly attached to a woman with a allegedly cruel disposition.

But they had no way of knowing that, unlike the deaths of his previous two wives, the Emperor would not move on so quickly with another teenager.

The folklore emperor, the real one, was married again before the year was out to, yes, another 18-year-old.

The folklore one, though, was beside himself with grief that his wife would be buried.

He refused to accept it and ordered her dug up.

He's still doing this.

How long is this going to be going on?

Turpin, a courtier, asked.

He thought that this was just a phase of the Emperor.

The overnight oats or the birding, the courtier who arrived with the Emperor asked.

Both phases have been going on for a few months, so they looked like they had some staying power.

The corpse.

The corpse at the breakfast table, Turpin hissed, his finger pointing to the

yeah, the corpse.

The corpse at the breakfast table.

Nodding, the other courtier said, Oh that, sorry, that had been going on for well, for so long he honestly didn't notice the decayed husk of Fistrada that the Emperor had been bringing with him to breakfast.

And dinner.

Lunch, too.

Really, it was kind of everywhere always.

Turpin paced the anteroom.

He had heard rumors that the Emperor had been acting strangely since the snake incident at Zurich.

But it was so much worse than he thought.

That was 18 years ago?

Why had he been carting around his wife's corpse for nearly two decades?

And yeah, according to the story, Charlemagne had been doing just that.

He, quote, carried Festrada's body with him wherever he went.

I'm unsure if he talked to the body.

It's troubling, definitely.

It makes me think of Alfred Hitchcock's psycho, but instead of a very ill man preserving his mother's body and acting out violently, this is a fundamental breakdown of every rule of decency and propriety in the society to appease the whims of a deranged ruler.

Okay, this is not normal, Turpin declared.

Also, this was his house.

And the emperor was getting corpse bits all over the upholstery.

Did he have any idea how expensive elaborate fabric was in this time?

Turpin was going to say something.

The clinging fingers of his colleague, trying to stop him from entering the room and accosting the emperor while he breakfasted, were useless.

Turpin couldn't be swayed.

Here comes the giant bird carrying Sinbad because airplanes won't exist for another 1,150 years, the emperor said to his very late wife's corpse.

Ah, she was never hungry.

He would finish her breakfast too.

Again.

Oh, hi, Turpin, the Emperor smiled, throwing his arms around the corpse.

My lord emperor, the courtier bowed, and rose.

There was a bit of an awkward silence, as the emperor looked at him expectedly.

Turpin, you have yet to address your empress, Charlemagne broke the long silence and grumbled the words with a scowl.

I'm not doing that, Turpin swallowed hard.

Excuse me, she is your queen, the emperor rose with a shout, Festrada's corpse lurching and hitting the table, her jaw coming off completely.

Our

near his shoe.

A ring.

He and Charlemagne, and everyone else for that matter, had no way of knowing, but Festrada, well,

she knew of the ring's power, and had enjoyed those last few months actually beloved by her own husband.

She knew he would remarry, but perhaps hoped that his times with whomever he married next would not overshadow her memory.

So she held the ring under her tongue.

She had no way of knowing that the emperor would carry that same affection for her to her corpse, and that her preserved remains would travel with him for the next two decades.

Of course, Turpin had no way of knowing any of this when he picked the diamond ring up off the floor of his great hall.

Charlemagne recoiled.

It was like for the first time in 18 years, he was seeing her with clear eyes.

This was macabre and profane.

He loved her, but he needed to let her rest.

But still, there was something that needed to be addressed.

A courtier, a servant of the crown, refused a direct order.

No matter that that order was weird and gross.

Charlemagne called the guards.

Turpin would answer for his crime

of being a heartbreaker.

Turpin blinked.

Um

what?

The guards also looked around.

Was that was that a thing?

Should they arrest someone for that?

Yeah,

it's a crime how blue your eyes are.

An emperor could get lost in there, Charlemagne winked.

Uh, I I guess you're you're under arrest for having great eyes.

The guards stepped forward with the irons.

But Charlemagne turned to face them.

Gentlemen, please, he was joking.

The emperor laughed, though he supposed he could sentence Turpin to dinner to-night with

He stopped.

Hey, where'd where'd Turpin go?

Charlemagne searched the room and then the fort.

He finally spotted Turpin when sounds came up from the front gate of the keep.

Outside, a horse clattered through the crowd of peasants and merchants.

Turpin looked behind him, and he and Charlemagne locked eyes.

Turpin spurred his horse on to a canter and took off on the road through the woods, as Charlemagne ordered his own tacked up and readied.

The Emperor and his guard caught up with Turpin about a mile outside his keep by the mineral springs.

As Charlemagne approached the courtier, Turpin, he realized his affections toward the man had...

somewhat dimmed over the past hour or so.

Well, dimmed implies a gradual gradual fade.

His affections had all but dropped off a cliff not five minutes ago when he questioned why he was riding here in the forest in the middle of March for

Turpin.

Uh

hello, Turpin.

Charlemagne studied the man who now appeared to be nothing special at all.

I guess the light is bettering your keep or something because

you know what never mind.

You were the only one brave enough to speak out and break me from my haze of anguish.

But you also defied a direct order.

Let's say those cancel out.

Fair enough.

Turpin glanced down into the murky mineral springs.

Guess it was the ring, then, huh?

he muttered.

He turned to the Emperor.

Sure, all was forgiven.

And that was definitely not because the Emperor was the Emperor and he had no recourse, legal or otherwise, to hold the man to account, so yeah, forgiven.

Great, Charlemagne said.

He told his own men to tarry here a bit.

He was just going to water his horse at the mineral springs.

Turpin stopped a little ways down the road to see how this would play out.

He had plopped the ring into the mineral springs, in a last-ditch effort to ditch both the ring and the emperor's unwanted affections, and was curious about the rules.

If it could make the emperor love a corpse and him,

could it make him love

water?

Whatever the ring's power over the emperor, the horse did not feel the same way.

It recoiled from the spring, and Charlemagne, seeing the naturally wary animal step back from a threat it obviously saw, but he did not, did the medieval emperor equivalent of that thing from an 80s horror movie where a team goes to investigate a weird noise they just heard outside, alone in the dark, with all those murders happening.

He knelt down and investigated the water.

It had less destructive but more far-reaching consequences because Charlemagne loved that spot.

Like, not loved, loved, probably,

but here, at the mineral springs at Aix-la-Chapelle, he said he would found his capital.

And he did.

According to the story, he loved the spot so much that he never left.

And according to the story and the history, he was buried there in his Palatine Chapel in 814.

The story of Charlemagne's belle is interesting because love is good.

Justice is good.

Justice for a snake that leads to an emperor carting around his wife's corpse harassing a courtier and then never leaving a spot because he falls in love with the ground?

Not so great.

We're going to wrap up today's stories of love and justice with one more from ancient Greece.

But that will, once again, be read after this.

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You have committed a crime against the crown, and for that, you will be killed, the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius, said.

Pythias bowed his head.

He knew the dangers of living under a tyrant, but this was where his life was.

His mother had left years ago, but she was struggling in a nearby kingdom.

To stay was challenging, but to leave was worse.

Better to remain home and fight against tyranny by example, to stay and show how to live with courage, honor, and justice.

In a time when a tyrant could declare anyone to be a lawbreaker for any reason, arrest them, and, in the case of Pythias, have them killed.

That Pythias didn't even know the crimes he had been charged with, and that he would be executed for, was not surprising.

Dionysius hated him and his friend Daemon, personally, and Pythias knew that he didn't need to look farther than that for a reason.

Still, the gods had placed the tyrant here, and he could trust that there was a reason for that, and he would continue to live within his values for as long as he was able to remain living.

My only request, my king, is that I be able to travel to my mother.

Pythias spoke up.

Dionysius took notice, and before he shut Pythias down, the man explained that his mother was very old, and he had a younger sister.

She was, as far as he knew, unmarried, and he wanted to ensure that she had a protector before he died.

Uh, one,

no, and two, no talking.

You already had a trial.

The tyrant stopped when an advisor whispered, Oh, he didn't?

We're not going to put that in the histories, just say that he did.

We're the writers, editors, and publisher of the history, so you know, it'll be it'll be good.

He turned back to Pythias and told the man, no.

It's not that he didn't care about the man's mother and sister.

Well, it's not just that he didn't care about the man's mother and sister, but it's not like there were ankle monitors and GPS.

Pythias gets one kilometer outside of Syracuse and he's in the wind.

I'll take his place.

A man stepped from behind Pythias.

Oh,

you, Dionysius said.

Damon, Pythias' best friend.

What did he mean he would take Pythias' place?

It means exactly what it sounds like.

I'll take his place in prison, and if he does not return in time, his place on the cross, as one story says.

And even though the ancient Greeks didn't really use crucifixion as a method of execution, this is set in Sicily.

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, okay, yes, the tyrant bit his lip.

This was

amazing.

No man would willingly come back to be killed.

He would have to value his friendship over his very life, and people just, they didn't work that way.

Yes, this was amazing.

He'd still get to execute one of the pair for being a goody-goody justice nut who wouldn't bend the knee to him.

But he would get to make one forsake everything he stands for and get to watch the other's spirit slowly break when he realizes his friend isn't coming back for him.

Yes, please, take his place, Dionysius motioned to the guards, who took the cuffs off Pythias and put them on Damon.

Yes, say thank you and make all your promises, Pythias, because we all know this is the last time you're going to see your friend.

It's shameful what you're doing, by the way, but that's people for you.

That's what they do.

The tyrant laughed.

Pythias thanked his friend again and sprinted out the door of the palace.

Look at how fast he runs.

Last time we'll be seeing him, the tyrant chuckled.

He ordered a stool to be taken down to the jail so he could watch the very moment Damon's faith in his friend breaks.

Ooh, snacks too.

The tyrant was right, Pythias feared.

In a day, he made it home, across the hills and through the villages of central Sicily.

He told his mother he wouldn't be back for some time and secured a husband for his sister.

It wasn't difficult.

Everyone in his mother's town knew him to be an honorable, honest man and would gladly marry into his family.

Coming home though, alone and on foot, he ran into thieves.

Trying to reason with them that he was already a dead man and that he had nothing for them to steal, they decided to delay the former when they realized the honesty of the latter.

They beat him bloody and tied him to a tree in a desolate spot, where the sun or the beasts could work more slowly and more painfully on the man than they could.

He came to as the sun began to dip lower and lower, and he knew if he wasn't back in Syracuse by sunset, Damon would die.

His arms and back tore faster than the cord that bound him.

Pythias drooped, still bound, on the tree, blood streaming from his hands.

It's an hour until sunset, one of the soldiers bowed before the tyrant.

An hour, and Pithias still isn't back.

Dionysius grinned.

You know he left.

He's halfway to Spain or Rome by now, Dionysius said.

What a fool Damon was.

Friendship.

Ugh.

If he can return, he will, Damon asserted.

But I hope he doesn't.

He's my friend, and I want what's best for him.

I will gladly die in his place.

False, the tyrant shouted.

Lies.

No one feels like that.

Ever.

This is death.

Your death.

Dionysius shook his head.

Damon overplayed his hand.

He could maybe,

maybe

believe that Damon had faith in Pythias' return.

But no one would willingly die for another, especially one who betrayed him.

The tyrant waved to his men.

Get him out there Damon walked to the spot outside the city, to the trees with the reddened dirt beneath them.

The nails were ready.

Now they would wait.

The sun dipped lower and lower, as the road into town remained empty.

The tyrant watched the face of Damon as night closed in, and a tremor grew.

Soon everyone would see the folly of these two men.

But in a moment, Damon's face changed.

It lit up, and murmurs grew from the crowd.

The tyrant turned and saw Pythias.

Bruised, torn, burned, and half drowned, he sprinted until he collapsed at Damon's feet.

At the last possible moment, both he and Damon burst into tears.

Pythias from relief, Damon from fear mixed with anguish that, though Pythias had been faithful, Daemon would lose a dear friend on that day.

Pythias presented his wrists and begged to be bound.

He made it in time.

It was him who was supposed to die, not Damon.

The tyrant stepped forward.

He ordered the chains removed from Damon's wrists and that they be cast aside.

He would pardon Pythias.

He didn't think it was possible that people could care so much for one another, even to the point of death.

And he wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't just seen it with his own eyes.

He never had a friend like Pythias or Daemon.

He didn't have any friends.

He thought loneliness was endemic to the human condition, that people were a certain way and couldn't change.

But maybe,

maybe it was just him.

Maybe he was broken.

Then he looked up at the two men.

Maybe he could heal.

He took the hands of Daemon and Pythias into his own.

Could they help him?

Heal, that is?

Could he be the third friend in number?

Pythias looked at the man who, up until the last few moments, had been threatening his life.

Absolutely not.

No, right?

He and Damon pulled their hands away at the same moment.

Damon agreed.

No, yeah, definitely not.

You're a terrible person.

Just because you're powerful and rich doesn't mean we need to like you or be your friend, Damon said.

I would literally rather die, Pythias said.

Is that a choice?

Between being friends with you and crucifixion?

Is that still on the table?

The tyrant, though, was speechless.

He turned and began walking away as the soldier shrugged and let the two men go.

And the two men's friendship became proverbial because when two men are devoted friends, they're compared to the legendary friendship of Damon and Pythias.

This is a famous one, and there have been many takes on the work.

I even posted an ad from like the 50s where it said your eye drops will be the Damon to your eyes Pythias.

Either a classics major copywriter was really getting away with something on that one, or people were much more familiar with these stories back then.

Them refusing to be friends friends with the tyrant at the end is only in some versions, but it was too perfect for me not to include.

And I think it actually really fits with our modern world because social media has really highlighted the tyrant's problem at the end because no matter how much money or power someone has, they still seem desperate for approval and universal acclaim.

But this story is cool because it illustrates how, just because someone has money and power, that doesn't entitle them to your friendship, love, or adoration.

And, with all the other things they have, love might just be what they want most.

Next time, we're back in the story of the Monkey King, where Pigsy gets a promotion.

The creature this time is the Dun Cow, from England.

A giant cow that can give you all the milk you could ever want.

That's the Dun Cow.

So, why did it have to die?

die?

Well, greed for one.

So the deal is this.

You bring a container to the dung cow, a giant cow, and she will fill it up.

It's a good deal.

A part of this is that containers contain a finite amount of space.

What happens when a sneaky witch brings a sieve to the field with the dung cow and constantly switches out containers to get more milk?

Aka white gold as only I call it and only in this context.

Well, death and destruction happens.

A giant, angry, magical cow bent on revenge?

Yeah, you can see where this is going.

Absolutely wrecking the wood and thatch structures of the Middle Ages, the cow rampaged the countryside and the villages.

Enter some guy, but well, really, the guy.

A legendary hero, Sir Guy of Warwick.

He chased the cow to Dunsmore Heath and killed it.

For a time after that, the, in some cases, female cow's horn, and in other places her rib, could be seen at Warwick Castle.

Warwick Castle is actually open to the public nowadays.

It's a bit of a tourist destination.

We actually went on our trip around England and Wales not too long ago, and I didn't see the horn or rib of the magical cow, but to be fair, I wasn't looking for it at the time.

Still, feels like something you'd want to show off.

Apparently it does exist, the bone thing that is.

And there's some debate on what it is, with some sources saying it's an elephant tusk brought back by a crusader, and the the other that it's a narwhal horn.

No matter what it is, I think we can all agree.

Take your free groceries and don't try to trick the magical cows.

Or, even better, get back in line.

That feels like it's allowed.

You think cows can tell people apart?

I don't.

That's it for this time.

Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Weiser.

Our theme song is by Broke for Free, and the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Colmes.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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