Ancient Greek Aeschylus’ death was a complete farce … it almost happened to me too

Aeschylus met his maker when he was hit on the head with a tortoise. You might well laugh, but I survived a similar incident, writes Phillip Adams.

Today, what the tortoise has taught us. Were I to say Aeschylus, you might say “Bless you!” thinking I’d sneezed rather than drawn your attention to the Ancient Greek who had top billing in local theatre as “the father of tragedy”. He wrote about 90 of them, of which, tragically, few survive. We know his name better because of the way he died, which was not so much a tragedy as a farce. He was hit on the head by a tortoise. Crowned, if you will, by a combination of its carapace and the force of gravity. Little gravitas for Aeschylus – the only human in history to die in such an improbable manner.

According to the famous story, an eagle had lifted the tortoise high aloft and was looking for a hard rock to drop it on, so as to gain access to the contents of the carapace; the eagle mistook the playwright’s bald head for a small boulder, and the rest is history.

As I write these woeful words at the farm I can see a pair of wedge-tails circling in a thermal, so will remember to take care. You may well laugh but an eagle once swooped down and grabbed our Jack Russell, dropping it only when it realised it was too heavy to lift. No damage done, except to the dog’s dignity. As I was chasing the raptor at the time Willy might well have landed on my balding noggin and I’d have gone down – and down in history, too. What Spike Milligan described as “the dreaded deadings”, by a flying terrier.

Tortoises are rarely into aviation. They leave that to Mr Joyce’s kangaroo. So notoriously earthbound are they (when not paddling in water, at least) that Aesop used the creature in a fable about a tortoise racing a hare. Spoiler alert: the tortoise won, though stewards are demanding a swab.

Up around the farm, tortoises can often be found trying to cross the Gundy Road in search of sex in the local river or adjacent dams. Some vile humans try to run over them. My daughter Rory and I were forever saving them – popping them in the boot in order to re-house them in one of Elmswood’s dams or fishponds.

Their big siblings, the giant tortoises, have legendarily long lifespans, and can be enormous – such heavyweights that I remember riding on one as a child. Back in the days when you were also encouraged to ride elephants at zoos.

Their cousins, the turtles, also loom large in mythology. There was an ancient belief that our world was held on the back of a giant turtle. When a sceptic asked WTF, someone held up the turtle and told him, “There’s another turtle… and another beneath that. It’s turtles all the way down.” From myths to movies. Remember the Ninja Turtles? I don’t but someone mentioned them. Perhaps they’re related to the Mock Turtles of soup fame.

In boom times, between droughts, our dams brim with tortoises. You see them traffic-jammed. Then off they go. Just as the grass is always greener, the waters are always wetter. In search of love you see them bravely trudging along dusty tracks – not in a race against any hares but against dehydration. A race against time. Often they lose, and you see the sad sight of a dried-out shell.

Yep, in the farm’s vast menagerie of wild things the “tortie” is our favourite.