Damn. John Halverson is dead.

He was my professor for Chaucer back at UCSC. Great teacher, nice man, and now in an attempt to look up his email, I find that he died of cancer five years ago.

Backstory on this: I'm a mythology buff, and back when I was freshman taking his class, the topic of discussion was Oedipus, and I mentioned Oedipus's mother-wife Jocasta's magic necklace that kept her forever young and beautiful, one of those reasons why Oedipus had decided to marry her. John laughed, saying the tale of the magic necklace was a new one on him, and then went on to talk about marrying the queen after killing the king and other good ways to consolidate power.

I was embarrassed, and more than that, pissed at my junior high school for having had the textbook where I read the story, which until now I had assumed was some stupid Bowdlerization, like the expurgated "Romeo and Juliet" which we'd thankfully skipped over (and I'd read the original years before).

Except now, it turns out, I was right in my mythology, my junior high school was blameless (at least in this instance), and Professor Halverson had missed an important mythological detail of the Oedipus Cycle. And I can't even tell him, not even to touch base. The man was a great scholar and always up for a new interpretation or detail.

But for everyone else, here are the fragments of research, pulled from the web after I read Patrick Nielsen Hayden's blog listing for today, January 9, 2003, regarding New York bowdlerizing the literature in their tests, which made me think about my own annoyance at bowdlerization.

However, before posting on that, I decided to fact check just to make certain there wasn't a magic necklace somewhere. And there was. Here are the fragments regarding Jocasta's magic necklace I first read about in junior high:

1. Oedipus accepted, even though Jocasta was much older than him, because she wore a magic necklace that the gods had given Harmonia, one of her ancestors.
   
   
2. HARMONIA
   
   Harmonia was the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. She married Cadmus. At the wedding she was given a necklace made by Hephaestus which confered irresistible beauty upon the wearer.
   
   
3. Harmonia received from Cadmus, as a wedding present, a Robe and a Necklace. The only certain about the origin of these items is that they came from the gods. It is said sometimes that Hephaestus wrought the Necklace, and that he himself gave it to Cadmus. Others say that it came from Europa (perhaps they knew of each other after all), and that she had received it from Zeus. Still others affirm that Athena provided the renowned Necklace and Robe, and also a flute. But there are those who assert that the golden Necklace was the present that Aphrodite gave Harmonia.
   
   

   The golden Necklace has been described thoroughly, but, briefly stated, it represented an amphisbaina, which is a two headed serpent, with open mouths as if hissing. The two mouths on each side enclosed with their jaws a golden eagle upright, its wings covered with yellow jasper and moonstone. The whole clever work was set with sparkling gems in masterly refinement.
   
   

4. her marriage with king Cad mos, she received a necklace made by Vulcan for Venus. This unlucky ornament afterwards passed to Semelê, then to Jocasta, then to
   
   
5. They received many gifts from the gods. Among the wedding presents given to the couple was necklace that was cursed. The necklace of Harmonia brought disaster to owners in later generations. (See Seven Against Thebes).
   

There is also this useful illustration:

Polyneices bribes Eriphyle with the necklace of Harmonia in order to win the support of her husband Amphiaraus against Thebes. Attic Red-figure oinochoe by the Shuvalov Painter, 420 BC