Underworlds Live in Leeds

Atlas House: Deepest Tartarus

Atlas House was built in 1910 by the firm of architects Perkin & Bulmer.
They commissioned a striking sculpture of Atlas from Thewlis & Co., a
firm of architectural sculptors founded by Joseph Thewlis. The window
keystones – in the form of human heads – represent the continents.
Atlas, the son of Iapetos and Klymene, led the Titans in a revolt against the
Olympian gods. The gods prevailed and punished the leaders by throwing
them down from Mt. Olympus into deepest Tartarus. Atlas is kept there by the
weight of the heavens resting on his shoulders.
Atlas was punished alongside his
brother, Prometheus. When the gods
denied fire to humankind, Prometheus stole
it back from the gods. He was punished by
an eagle pecking out his liver every day,
only to have it re-grow overnight.
Hercules set Prometheus free but you
can still see the eagle. It is on its favourite
perch on the corbel by the entrance to G. B.
Bulmer‟s Yorkshire Penny Bank building
(1893-4) on Infirmary Street. Laconian bowl, c.560BC. Vatican Museum.
Hercules set Prometheus free when he came down to the Underworld to
ask Atlas for his help to accomplish one of the Twelve Labours he had to
perform to become an immortal. The task was to get the golden apples from a
tree guarded by a fearsome dragon. The tree was in a garden belonging to
Atlas‟ daughters, so Atlas agreed to fetch the apples in exchange for Hercules
holding up the heavens in his place. Who‟s here tonight?
Hercules holds up the
heavens. From left to
right: lekythos, c.485BC,
by the Athena Painter,
Athens Archaeological
Museum; with help from
Athena and a cushion on
a metope from the East
side of the temple of
Zeus at Olympia, 470-
456BC; an ivory carving,
c.AD1650, Lyon Museum
of Fine Arts.

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
City Square: Elysian Fields
City Square was the idea of T. Walter Harding (Lord
Mayor, 1898) to celebrate Leeds‟ 1893 elevation to
City status. Designed by William Bakewell, it
opened in 1903, but was compromised by 1960s
planning before being remodelled in 2002 by John
Thorp (Civic Architect). It gives a civic
prominence unique in England to the
„New Sculptors‟ of c.1900.
Demeter, goddess of fertility, with a sheaf of corn and a
bronze sickle, looks over City Square from the dome of
Flares – W. W. Gwyther‟s 1899 Yorkshire District Bank.

From Left: 1) The Return of Persephone from the Underworld to her mother, Demeter. By Frederick Lord
Leighton, 1891 (Leeds City Art Gallery). 2) Demeter and Persephone receive initiates. Red-figure plaque
from Eleusis, c.350-20BC (National Museum, Athens). 3) Demeter, with her hair loosed in mourning,
receives the gift of corn from Triptolemos and Persephone. Roman copy of a relief from Eleusis, c.430BC
(National Museum, Athens). 4) One of 8 nymphs – „Morn‟ and „Eve‟ – by Alfred Drury (1893-1903). The
torches symbolise Demeter‟s search for Persephone bringing light into the night or underworld.
The Elysian Fields were the part of the Underworld most like an idealised earth:
“Then the music of the pipes will waft around you, and you will see glorious light just
like we have up here, and groves of myrtle-trees, and happy companies of men and
women, and much clapping of hands.” (Aristophanes, Frogs)
They were reserved for Eleusinian initiates: “Demeter gave these two gifts, the greatest
in the world – the fruits of the earth, which have enabled us to rise above the life of
beasts, and the Mysteries which inspire in those who partake of them sweeter hopes
regarding both the end of life and all eternity…” (Isocrates Panegyricus 28)

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
Carpe Diem (“Seize the Day”): Tartarus
Horace‟s command, “carpe diem”, encourages us to live in the moment, but some
characters in Greek myths took their chance to impress their guests - or to take revenge -
by butchering, cooking and serving children. They often ended up in Tartarus (the
Underworld region where wrong-doers were punished). Some victims were restored to life.
The myths were popular with Romans and with English dramatists, like Shakespeare.

House of Atreus Taverna Est. 1300BC

Drinks Atreus, grandson of Tantalus („chef
to the gods‟), blends home-cooking
Bloody Atreus – vodka and tomato juice, with
with haute cuisine in repasts sure to
blood to taste and a celery stick tantalize the taste buds. Our special
Liber’s Bloody Heart – cherry brandy, Children‟s Menu is prepared using
Advocat, and pureed heart; as drunk by the choicest cuts of the youngest,
Semele (Caution: may cause pregnancy) most tender, flesh, direct from our
Greek butcher. Bone appétit!

Starters
Procne‟s Tongue Confit d‟Itys
Warm and thinly sliced with sweet and sour prunes. As eaten by: the King of Thrace
Atreus‟ Spicy Goulash
Our signature stew is as filling as it is nourishing. As eaten by: Thyestes

Main Dishes
Mixed Meats Ragout à les Lycaonidae
A thick, rich and mellow traditional casserole with gnocchi. As served to: Jupiter himself
Harpalyce‟s Homemade Belly
With black-pudding, broadbeans, scallops and fennel. As eaten by: the King of Arcadia
Tantalus‟ Choice Aged Argive Fillet
Speaks for itself. Served with fondant potatoes, cheeks, bone marrow, braised root
vegetables and red wine jus. As served to: the Olympian gods
Pelops‟ Bone-in Shoulder Roast
Served with roast potatoes, red cabbage, gravy and apple puree. As eaten by: Ceres
Atreus‟ Special Souvlaki
Skewered chargrilled morsels of Plisthenes with pita and tzatziki. As eaten by: Thyestes

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
Centenary Bridge: Tantalus
Centenary Bridge was opened in 1992 as the Waterfront was redeveloped.
So named because it was the first bridge to be completed in Leeds for 100
years, it connected Brewery Wharf and Dock Street on the South bank of the
Aire with the Calls area on the North bank. This helped to transform this part
of Leeds into the bar and restaurant destination it is today.

Tantalus, hosting a banquet for the gods,

served up an unusual dish: his son, Pelops.
He sacrificed him, cooked, carved and
presented him to the gods (right).
For this crime, the gods punished him. They
sentenced him to Tartarus, to be forever
tantalized by food and drink that was always
just out of reach. Odysseus, the Greek hero,
on his journey through the Underworld,
comments:
"I also saw the awful agonies that Tantalus has to bear. The old
man was standing in a pool of water which nearly reached his
chin, and the thirst drove him to unceasing efforts; but he could
never reach the water to drink it. For whenever he stooped in
his eagerness to drink, it disappeared. The pool was swallowed
up, and all there was at his feet was the dark earth, which some
mysterious power had drained dry. Trees spread their foliage
high over the pool and dangled fruit above his head – pear-trees
and pomegranates, apple-trees with their glossy burden, sweet
figs and luxuriant olives. But whenever the old man made to
grasp them in his hands, the wind would toss them up towards
the shadowy clouds." (as reported by Homer, Odyssey)
Tantalus‟ punishment continues at the centre of
Centenary Bridge, with the food and drink on offer
on either side of him still out of reach. He can still,
sometimes, be heard of a night, crying out for food
and drink. He is known to instil in others crossing
the bridge a desire for the things he cannot have.

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
War Memorial: Vale of Heroes
The Greeks and Romans set aside a special area in the Underworld for those who
died in battle, especially those who died fighting for their country. Death in battle
was recorded on tombstones. Fifth-century BC Athenians were the first to give their
war dead a state funeral and record their names on a public monument. We
continue the custom of mourning and remembering the war dead today.
A C7th BC Athenian epitaph, copied Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori
from one in Argos: It is sweet and fitting to die for your
Whether you are a citizen or a country. (Horace, Odes III.2.13)
stranger from elsewhere,
The Ode of Remembrance
Take pity on Tettichos as you
Age shall not weary them, nor the years
pass by: a brave man
condemn.
Killed in battle, who lost the
At the going down of the sun and in the
pride of his fresh youth.
morning
Mourn for him a while, and go on.
We will remember them.
May your fortune be good.
Laurence Binyon (1914)
Simonides of Ceos, a Greek lyric
The Soldier
poet, wrote this epitaph to honour
If I should die, think only this of me:
the 300 Spartans who fought to the
That there's some corner of a foreign
death at Thermopylae in 480BC.
field
They successfully bought their allies
That is forever England.
time to withdraw and regroup and
Rupert Brooke (1914)
the Greeks went on to win the
Athena (patron goddess of the
city of Athens), with spear and second Persian War. The Kohima Epitaph
Corinthian helmet, pays her Go tell the Spartans, passerby, When you go home, tell them of us
respects before a tombstone. That here obedient to our laws, and say,
c.460BC, Acropolis Museum, we lie. For their tomorrow, we gave our today
Athens
John Maxwell Edmonds (1944)
The Leeds War Memorial was unveiled on 14th October 1922 in
City Square (left), moved here to Victoria Gardens in 1937 and
rededicated on 10th November 1991. Following World War I the
people of Leeds raised £6,000 for a memorial by Sir Reginald
Blomfield (architect) with sculptures by Henry Charles Fehr (1867-
1940). The Portland stone obelisk was originally topped with a
Winged Victory (Athena Nike, left), but she was damaged in a gale
in 1965 and moved to Cottingly Cemetery before being melted
down. The original Nike‟s head is now in the City Art Gallery; the
„Angel of Peace‟ we see on top of the memorial today was added
in 1991 and is the work of Ian Judd, a local Leeds sculptor.
Every Remembrance Sunday, we gather at the memorial and
lay wreaths to remember all who have fought and died for us.
Remembrance Sunday this year is 14th November.

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
Dark Arches, River Aire: River Styx
Hesiod describes the river that separates the land of the living from that of the dead:
“And there dwells a goddess who makes the immortals shudder, awful Styx, eldest
daughter of Oceanus that flows back into itself. Apart from the gods she has her famed
home, roofed with long rocks, and on every side fastened to the sky with dark columns.”
A. Wanderer describes the Dark Arches in The Leeds Mercury, 1888:
“...The awe-inspiring daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, who dwells in a grotto at the entrance to
Hades, would undoubtedly be seized with a fit of envy if she could by any means be transported
from her Stygian abode to the Dark Arches of Neville Street. The ordinary impulse of any sane
mortal would be to wheel abruptly and get into as much light as can be found in the roadway...
But if the visitor were of an inquiring turn of mind, he would gaze into the darkest vista of
obscurity. A few shamefaced rays of daylight might be seen vainly struggling to assert their
supremacy over a wayward gas jet, which does its best in the vaulted warehouse where a few
mortals – for their sins it may be – are doomed to pass the day in semi-darkness and malodorous
atmosphere. Beyond the door of that warehouse the way leads on over a rocky path beset on
either side with damp brick walls and dripping buttresses of the blackened arches....
One day, not long ago, a curious stranger, intent on exploration, forsook the daylight and
the busy haunts of men and heroically ventured within the Dark Arches. Armed only with a box
of matches, he reached a rickety wooden bridge which crosses the polluted stream... And leaning
at that moment on the bridge, which creaked beneath his weight, the palpitating stranger saw
before him – sprung from the gloomy depths – a gigantic and shadowy form...”
Did A. Wanderer meet Charon?
“The warden of the crossing, who watches over the river-
water. He is the dreaded Charon: a ragged figure, filthy,
repulsive, with white hair copious and unkempt covering his
chin, eyes which are stark points of flame, and a dirty
garment knotted and hanging from his shoulders. Charon
punts his boat with his pole or trims the sails, and so he
ferries every soul on his dusty coracle...” (Virgil, Aeneid)
Or did he meet the Sibyl?
She was a very long lived Roman
priestess of Apollo. She lived in the
Charon, ferries the dead across caves (right) at Cumae, near Naples,
the River Styx. From a C3rd AD and was the guardian of the Entrance
Roman sarcophagus, France. to the Underworld.
Her temple had a maze carved on it and she entered her
prophetic trances in the bowels of the earth, where Virgil says:
“There is a cleft in the flank of the Euboean Rock forming a vast
cavern. A hundred mouthways and a hundred broad tunnels lead
into it, and through them the Sibyl’s answer comes forth in a
hundred rushing streams of sound.”

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
Town Hall: Hades‟ Palace
One of Leeds‟ most iconic buildings, by Cuthbert Broderick,
the architect who later designed the Corn Exchange and
the building now home to the City Museum. Wildly over
budget, the Town Hall was finished in 1858, five years after
the foundation stone was laid. The Leeds Mercury reported
the speeches at the opening by Queen Victoria, including
one by the Town Clerk on behalf of the Corporation:
“It is possible that in the days of [our] descendants
experimental science will have made great progress; that
inventions of which we have seen the promising infancy
will have been brought by successive improvements near
to perfection; and that the material wealth of our island
may be such as would now seem fabulous. Yet we trust
that even then our Hall will be seen with interest...”
The Town Hall – symbol of Victorian Leeds‟ civic pride –
has been used as council offices, a police station, law-
courts and a concert hall.
The Greek hero Heracles – known to the
Romans as Hercules – visited the
Underworld twice during his lifetime. On his
first visit, he enlisted the help of Atlas and
freed Prometheus as well as the heroes
Theseus and Pirithous, who had been
captured while trying to “rescue”
Persephone from her husband, Hades,
King of the Underworld. On his second visit
he succeeded in stealing Cerberus, the
three-headed guard dog of Hades‟ Palace.
Heracles and Cerberus. Caeretan hydria, c.530BC.
This meant he could answer the questions Dionysus – god of wine,
fertitlity and theatre – had about journeying to the Underworld:
“Could you tell me about the friends whose hospitality you enjoyed
when you went for Cerberus? And about the harbours, bakeries,
brothels, resting-places, turnings, springs, roads, towns, places to
stay, and the landladies who have the fewest bedbugs?”
(Aristophanes‟ Frogs)
Dionysus brought his mother, Semele, and the tragic playwright
Euripides back to life, so it‟s no wonder these two half-brothers
both have their heads prominently displayed in Hades‟ Palace‟s Dionysus on an Attic
“Rogues Gallery” for the attention of the border guards! crater, c.515BC.

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
Leeds College of Art: Gate of Taenarus
Leeds College of Art was founded in 1842. In 1861 the Leeds Mercury praised it highly:
“The absence of taste amongst the population of our large manufacturing towns, and
especially of the clothing districts of Yorkshire, has passed almost into a proverb, and
it is only of recent years that anything like an earnest, systematic, attempt has been
made to remove so serious an obstacle to our national progress... In connection with
this branch of Education, the Leeds School of Art has been very successfully at work
for some years, and the progress which has been made, notwithstanding the
difficulties to be contended with, is of the most gratifying character.”
These difficulties included poor premises. In 1903 the school moved here, to Vernon
Street. Since then its famous alumni have included Henry Moore and Damien Hurst.
The Leeds College of Art building (1903 by Bedford
& Kitson) features a mosaic panel by Professor
Gerald Moira. He used the “new vitreous mosaic”
tiles made in brilliant colours by Rust & Co..
Moira‟s mosaic shows female figures who inspire
artistic creativity and three laurel wreaths, with
which they will crown succesful artists. The Muse of
Design, in red with a small bronze sculpture, and
the Muse of Art, in blue with an artist‟s palette, flank
Eurydice, who inspired the poet Orpheus.
With Eurydice‟s help Orpheus‟ musical ability was
such that he could bring things into being by singing
about them and even tame wild beasts.
Shortly after he married Eurydice, she was bitten on
the ankle by a viper and died. Orpheus‟ love for her
was so strong that he travelled into the Underworld
to persuade Persephone and Hades to give her
back her life.
Hermes leads Eurydice back to Orpheus,
so he can take her from the Underworld. Persephone could not bear to refuse his
Marble frieze from Pompeii, pre. AD79, prayer, and called for Eurydice.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. Eurydice was among the recent ghosts, and
walked haltingly from her wound. Orpheus took her, and at the same time,
accepted this condition; that he must not look at her, until out of the Underworld, or the
gift would be null and void. (Ovid, Metamorphoses)
Alas, Orpheus lost his Eurydice again because, as he stepped through the Gate of
Taenarus, he looked back and saw her. If you, like Orpheus, tried to see Eurydice in the
mosaic, she will have vanished, leaving behind only the words: “Leeds College of Art”.

Next Stop
City Museum
 Underworlds Live in Leeds
Calls Fountain: Sisyphus
This water sculpture, called Regeneration, marks the re-development of the
Waterfront by the Leeds Development Corporation (1988-1995). Although the
Leeds Development Corporation no longer exists, regeneration is ongoing.
Sisyphus, King of Corinth, beat
death twice.
The first time, Death was ordered
to chain him up, but Sisyphus
tricked Death into demonstrating
the strength of the chains. Death
fastened himself to the rock and
Sisyphus escaped. Chaos ensued
because no-one could die.
The second time Sisyphus beat
death was after he had died.
Before he died he had persuaded
his wife not to bury his body, so
that Charon could not ferry him
across the River Styx. His wife
Punishments in the Underworld: Sisyphus and his boulder. obeyed him. Sisyphus then
Amphora by the Bucci painter, Antikensammlungen, Munich. persuaded Persephone, Queen of
the Underworld, to let him return to the upper world to scold his apparently undutiful wife.
Persephone agreed but Sisyphus did not return. Finally tracked down, he faced an
unusual punishment. Odysseus, the hero, saw Sisyphus while he was travelling through
the Underworld:
"I witnessed the torture of Sisyphus, as he wrestled with a huge rock with both hands.
Bracing himself and thrusting with hands and feet he pushed the boulder uphill to the
top. But every time, as he was about to send it toppling over the crest, its sheer weight
turned it back, and once again towards the plain the pitiless rock rolled down. So once
more he had to wrestle with the thing and push it up, while the sweat poured from his
limbs and the dust rose high above his head." (as reported by Homer in the Odyssey)
Sisyphus‟ boulder, now worn to a smooth sphere, rests here. Regeneration is a
seemingly never-ending task; not for the faint hearted. But can we take hope? Sisyphus
himself is not here and no-one knows where he has gone. Perhaps in Leeds Sisyphus
completed his task, and now roams freely through our streets? Or has he tricked his fate
again – and now wanders the streets of Leeds, trying to keep one step ahead of the
pursuers who would return him to his punishment?

Next Stop
City Museum