enough? As usual, the advisor buffered
his pride against the king’s rude stubbornness
with ironic acquiescence. Nonetheless,
the king was right to imply Hupakoë
had trouble listening. He heard surf play
upon the shingle, but the sound appeared
to come from inland, or he heard a weird
rustling of wind in trees the king had felled
years ago for his fleet. The sound knelled
while Minos spoke and made it hard to obey.
To appease his curious ears, Hupakoë
climbed every slope on Ida till he found
the rebels’ camp that lured him with the sound
(the Kuretes had lent them instruments).
The peasant rebels slept in makeshift tents,
shared equally what they possessed, and trained
to fight the king and take back what remained
of the rich island he’d abused so long.
Hupakoë delighted in their song
condemning private property and soon
heard his own voice singing it. The moon
gives light to everyone and may suffice
to start a war. Hupakoë’s advice
directed nightly raids, which terrorized
the king’s malnourished troops, demoralized
their rarely paid commanders, and amassed
weapons to arm the young recruits who last
week were just watching furrows or a flock
and now were ready to help the rebels knock
the tyrant off his gem-encrusted throne.
Knossos was vulnerable. Defensive stone
might have deterred offensive bronze had walls
risen instead of statues. Scylla’s calls
to fortify the city went unheeded,
but her devotion to the king exceeded
that of his bodyguards when she proved right.
The ones who hadn’t fled were so polite
to the rebels nothing but her uncuirassed chest
shielded her cowering husband. Dispossessed
of everything he thought he owned, the king
heard his enemies dismantling
the bronze colossus, but he couldn’t see
them from the cell where one word, misery,
warped all his waking thoughts. His flunkies lost
their wealth and petty power; many crossed
the sea, but some, like Daedalus, remained
in Crete, denounced the monarchy, and feigned
sympathy for the new regime, which gave
their privileges away. A former slave
might exercise administrative talent,
while a palace parasite, a gallant
who courted Phaedra once, might work the fields.
In truth, the commune couldn’t raise crop yields,
only distribute destitution fairly.
Production was too crude. The commune barely
lasted a decade. Then Hupakoë’s
supposed son, who siphoned off the praise
earned by that dead hero, built a throne
in the people’s hall, and said it was his own.
Nonetheless, the commune pried Crete loose
from the family of a self-styled son of Zeus
and showed that a social order can undergo
a change as bold as blue skies to hard snow.