3. The Strophades (‘turning’) islands were so called because ships could expect the wind to turn as they approached.
4. Logan-stones, enormous boulders so carefully balanced that they will rock from side to side at the least impulse, are funerary monuments, apparently set up by avenue-building emigrants from Libya, towards the end of the third millennium. A few are still working in Cornwall and Devon, others have been displaced by the concerted efforts of idle soldiers or tourists. The dedication of a Tenian logan-stone to Calais and Zetes, the winged sons of Boreas, suggests that spirits of heroes were invoked to rock the boulder in the form of winds, and thus crush a live victim laid underneath.
151
FROM THE SYMPLEGADES TO COLCHIS
PHINEUS had warned the Argonauts of the terrifying rocks, called Symplegades, or Planctae, or Cyaneae which, perpetually shrouded in sea mist, guarded the entrance to the Bosphorus. When a ship attempted to pass between them, they drove together and crushed her; but, at Phineus’s advice, Euphemus let loose a dove or, some say, a heron, to fly ahead of the Argo. As soon as the rocks had nipped off her tail feathers, and recoiled again, the Argonauts rowed through with all speed, aided by Athene and by Orpheus’s lyre, and lost only their stern ornament. Thereafter, in accordance with a prophecy, the rocks remained rooted, one on either side of the straits, and though the force of the current made the ship all but unmanageable, the Argonauts pulled at their oars until they bent like bows, and gained the Black Sea without disaster.1
b. Coasting along the southern shore, they presently touched at the islet of Thynias, where Apollo deigned to appear before them in a blaze of divine glory. Orpheus at once raised an altar and sacrificed a wild goat to him as Apollo of the Dawn. At his instance, the Argonauts now swore never to desert one another in time of danger, an oath commemorated in the Temple of Harmonia since built on this island.
c. Thence they sailed to the city of Mariandyne – famous for the near-by chasm up which Heracles dragged the dog Cerberus from the Underworld – and were warmly welcomed by King Lycus. News that his enemy, King Amycus, was dead had already reached Lycus by runner, and he gratefully offered the Argonauts his son Dascylus to guide them on their journey along the coast. The following day, as they were about to embark, Idmon the seer was attacked by a ferocious boar lurking in the reed-beds of the river Lycus, which gashed his thigh deeply with its great tusks. Idas sprang to Idmon’s assistance and, when the boar charged again, impaled it on his spear; however, Idmon bled to death despite their care, and the Argonauts mourned him for three days. Then Tiphys sickened and died, and his comrades were plunged in grief as they raised a barrow over his ashes, beside the one that they had raised for Idmon. Great Ancaeus first, and after him Erginus, Nauplius and Euphemus, all offered to take Tiphys’s place as navigator; but Ancaeus was chosen, and served them well.2
d. From Mariandyne they continued eastward under sail for many days, until they reached Sinope in Paphlagonia, a city named after the river Asopus’s daughter, to whom Zeus, falling in love with her, had promised whatever gift she wished. Sinope craftily chose virginity, made her home here, and spent the remainder of her life in happy solitude. At Sinope, Jason found recruits to fill three of the vacant seats on his benches: namely the brothers Deileon, Autolycus, and Phlogius, of Tricca, who had accompanied Heracles on his expedition to the Amazons but, being parted from him by accident, were now stranded in this outlandish region.
e. The Argo then sailed past the country of the Amazons; and that of the iron-working Chalybians, who neither till the soil, nor tend flocks, but live wholly on the gains of their forges; and the country of the Tibarenians, where it is the custom for husbands to groan, as if in childbed, while their wives are in labour; and the country of the Moesynoechians, who live in wooden castles, couple promiscuously, and carry immensely long spears and white shields in the shape of ivy-leaves.3
f. Near the islet of Ares, great flocks of birds flew over the Argo, dropping brazen plumes, one of which wounded Oileus in the shoulder. At this, the Argonauts, recalling Phineus’s injunctions, donned their helmets and shouted at the top of their voices; half of them rowing, while the remainder protected them with shields, against which they clashed their swords. Phineus had also counselled them to land on the islet, and this they now did, driving away myriads of birds, until not one was left. That night they praised his wisdom, when a huge storm arose and four Aeolians clinging to a baulk of timber were cast ashore, close to their camp; these castaways proved to be Cytisorus, Argeus, Phrontis, and Melanion, sons of Phrixus by Chalciope, daughter to King Aeëtes of Colchis, and thus closely related to many of those present. They had been shipwrecked on a journey to Greece, where they were intending to claim the Orchomenan kingdom of their grandfather Athamas. Jason greeted them warmly, and all together offered sober sacrifices on a black stone in the temple of Ares, where its foundress, the Amazon Antiope, had once sacrificed horses. When Jason explained that his mission was to bring back the soul of Phrixus to Greece, and also recover the fleece of the golden ram on which he had ridden, Cytisorus and his brothers found themselves in a quandary: though owing devotion to their father’s memory, they feared to offend their grandfather by demanding the fleece. However, what choice had they but to make common cause with these cousins who had saved their lives?4
g. The Argo then coasted past the island of Philyra, where Cronus once lay with Philyra, daughter of Oceanus, and was surprised by Rhea in the act; whereupon he had turned himself into a stallion, and galloped off, leaving Philyra to bear her child, half man, half horse – which proved to be Cheiron the learned Centaur. Loathing the monster she now had to suckle, Philyra prayed to become other than she was; and was metamorphosed into a linden-tree. But some say that this took place in Thessaly, or Thrace; not on the island of Philyra.5
h. Soon the Caucasus Range towered above the Argonauts, and they entered the mouth of the broad Phasis river, which waters Colchis. First pouring a libation of wine mixed with honey to the gods of the land, Jason concealed the Argo in a sheltered backwater, where he called a council of war.6
1. Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 329; Argonautica Orphica 688; Homer: Odyssey xii. 61; Herodotus: iv. 85; Pliny: Natural History vi. 32; Valerius Flaccus: iv. 561 ff.; Apollodorus: i. 9. 22.
2. Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 851–98; Argonautica Orphica 729 ff.; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 890; Valerius Flaccus: v. 13 ff.; Hyginus: Fabulae 14 and 18; Apollodorus: i. 9.23.
3. Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 946–1028; Valerius Flaccus: v. 108; Argonautica Orphica 738–46; Xenophon: Anabasis v. 4. 1–32 and 5.1–3.
4. Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 1030–1230.
5. Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 1231–41; Hyginus: Fabula 138; Philargurius on Virgil’s Georgics iii. 93; Valerius Flaccus: v. 153; Argonautica Orphica 747.
6. Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 1030–1285; Argonautica Orphica 747–55; Valerius Flaccus: v. 153–83.
1. The Clashing, Wandering, or Blue Rocks, shrouded in sea mist, seem to have been ice-floes from the Russian rivers adrift in the Black Sea; reports of these were combined with discouraging accounts of the Bosphorus, down which the current, swollen by the thawing of the great Russian rivers, often runs at five knots. Other Wandering Islands in the Baltic Sea seem to have been known to the amber-merchants (see 170.4).
2. Cenotaphs later raised by Greek colonists to honour the heroes Idmon and Tiphys may account for the story of their deaths during the voyage. Idmon is said to have been killed by a boar, like Cretan Zeus, Ancaeus, and Adonis – all early sacred kings (see 18. 7). The name Idmon (‘knowing’) suggests that his was an oracular shrine and, indeed, Apollonius Rhodius describes him as a seer.
3. Mariandyne is named after Ma-ri-enna (Sumerian for ‘high fruitful mother of heaven’), alias Myrine, Ay-mari, of Mariamne, a well-known goddess of the Eastern Mediterranean. Chalybs was the Greek for ‘iron’, and ‘Chalybians’ seems to have been another name for the Tibarenians, the first iron workers of antiquity. In Genesis x. 2, their l
and is called Tubal (Tubal = Tibar), and Tubal Cain stands for the Tibarenians who had come down from Armenia into Canaan with the Hyksos hordes. Modified forms of the couvade practised by the Tibarenians survive in many parts of Europe. The customs of the Moesynoechians, described by Xenophon – whose Anabasis Apollonius Rhodius had studied – are remarkably similar to those of the Scottish Picts and the Irish Sidhe, tribes which came to Britain in the early Bronze Age from the Black Sea region.
4. Jason’s encounter with the birds on the islet of Ares, now Puga Islet, near the Kessab river, suggests that the Argo arrived there at the beginning of May; she will have navigated the Bosphorus before the current grew too powerful to stem, and reached Puga at the time of the great spring migration of birds from the Sinai peninsula. It appears that a number of exhausted birds, having flown across the mountains of Asia Minor, on their way to the Volga, found their usual sanctuary of Puga islet over-crowded and alighted on the Argo, frightening the superstitious crew nearly out of their wits. According to Nicoll’s Birds of Egypt, these migrants include ‘kestrels, larks, harriers, ducks and waders’, but since the islet was dedicated to Ares, they are credited by the mythographers with brazen feathers and hostile intentions. Heracles’s expulsion of the Stymphalian birds to an island in the Eastern Black Sea is likely to have been deduced from the Argonauts’ adventure, rather than contrariwise as is usually supposed.
5. Cheiron’s fame as a doctor, scholar, and prophet won him the title Son of Philyra (‘linden’); he is also called a descendant of Ixion (see 63. d). Linden flowers were much used in Classical times as a restorative, and still are; moreover, the bast, or inner bark, of the linden provided handy writing tablets, and when torn into strips was used in divination (Herodotus: iv. 67; Aelian: Varia Historia xiv. 12). But Philyra island will have derived its name from a clump of linden-trees which grew there, rather than from any historical ties with Thessaly or Thrace. None of these coastal islands is more than a hundred yards long.
6. Colchis is now known as Georgia, and the Phasis river as the Rion.
152
THE SEIZURE OF THE FLEECE
IN Olympus, Hera and Athene were anxiously debating how their favourite, Jason, might win the golden fleece. At last they decided to approach Aphrodite, who undertook that her naughty little son Eros would make Medea, King Aeëtes’s daughter, conceive a sudden passion for him. Aphrodite found Eros rolling dice with Ganymedes, but cheating at every throw, and begged him to let fly one of his arrows at Medea’s heart. The payment she offered was a golden ball enamelled with blue rings, formerly the infant Zeus’s plaything; when tossed into the air, it left a track like a falling star. Eros eagerly accepted this bribe, and Aphrodite promised her fellow-goddesses to keep Medea’s passion glowing by means of a novel charm: a live wryneck, spread-eagled to a firewheel.
b. Meanwhile, at the council of war held in the backwater, Jason proposed going with Phrixus’s sons to the near-by city of Colchian Aea, where Aeëtes ruled, and demanding the fleece as a favour; only if this were denied would they resort to guile or force. All welcomed his suggestion, and Augeias, Aeëtes’s half-brother, joined the party. They approached Aea by way of Circe’s riverside cemetery, where male corpses wrapped in untanned ox-hides were exposed on the tops of willow-trees for birds to eat – the Colchians bury only female corpses. Aea shone splendidly down on them from a hill, sacred to Helius, Aeëtes’s father, who stabled his white horses there. Hephaestus had built the royal palace in gratitude for Helius’s rescue of him when overwhelmed by the Giants during their assault on Olympus.
c. King Aeëtes’s first wife, the Caucasian nymph Asterodeia, mother of Chalciope, Phrixus’s widow, and of Medea, Hecate’s witch-priestess, was dead some years before this; and his second wife, Eidyia, had now borne him a son, Apsyrtus.
d. As Jason and his companions approached the palace, they were met first by Chalciope, who was surprised to see Cytisorus and her other three sons returning so soon and, when she heard their story, showered thanks on Jason for his rescue of them. Next came Aeëtes’s, accompanied by Eidyia and showing great displeasure – for Laomedon had undertaken to prevent all Greeks from entering the Black Sea – and asked Aegeus, his favourite grandson, to explain the intrusion. Aegeus replied that Jason, to whom he and his brothers owed their lives, had come to fetch away the golden fleece in accordance with an oracle. Seeing that Aeëtes’s face wore a look of fury, he added at once: ‘In return for which favour, these noble Greeks will gladly subject the Sauromatians to your Majesty’s rule.’ Aeëtes gave a contemptuous laugh, then ordered Jason – and Augeias, whom he would not deign to acknowledge as his brother – to return whence they came, before he had their tongues cut out and their hands lopped off.
e. At this point, the princess Medea emerged from the palace, and when Jason answered gently and courteously, Aeëtes, somewhat ashamed of himself, undertook to yield the fleece, though on what seemed impossible terms. Jason must yoke two fire-breathing brazen-footed bulls, creations of Hephaestus; plough the Field of Ares to the extent of four ploughgates; and then sow it with the serpent’s teeth given him by Athene, a few left over from Cadmus’s sowing at Thebes. Jason stood stupefied, wondering how to perform these unheard-of feats, but Eros aimed one of his arrows at Medea, and drove it into her heart, up to the feathers.
f. Chalciope, visiting Medea’s bedroom that evening, to enlist her help on behalf of Cytisorus and his brothers, found that she had fallen head over heels in love with Jason. When Chalcipoe offered herself as a go-between, Medea eagerly undertook to help him yoke the fire-breathing bulls and win the fleece; making it her sole condition that she should sail back in the Argo as his wife.
g. Jason was summoned, and swore by all the gods of Olympus to keep faith with Medea for ever. She offered him a flask of lotion, blood-red juice of the two-stalked, saffron-coloured Caucasian crocus, which would protect him against the bulls’ fiery breath; this potent flower first sprang from the blood of the tortured Prometheus. Jason gratefully accepted the flask and, after a libation of honey, unstoppered it and bathed his body, spear and shield in the contents. He was thus able to subdue the bulls and harness them to a plough with an adamantine yoke. All day he ploughed, and at nightfall sowed the teeth, from which armed men immediately sprouted. He provoked these to fight one against another, as Cadmus had done on a similar occasion, by throwing a stone quoit into their midst; then dispatched the wounded survivors.
h. King Aeëtes, however, had no intention of parting with the fleece, and shamelessly repudiated his bargain. He threatened to burn the Argo, which was now moored off Aea, and massacre her crew; but Medea, in whom he had unwisely confided, led Jason and a party of Argonauts to the precinct of Ares, some six miles away. There the fleece hung, guarded by a loathsome and immortal dragon of a thousand coils, larger than the Argo herself, and born from the blood of the monster Typhon, destroyed by Zeus. She soothed the hissing dragon with incantations and then, using freshly-cut sprigs of juniper, sprinkled soporific drops on his eyelids. Jason stealthily unfastened the fleece from the oak-tree, and together they hurried down to the beach where the Argo lay.
i. An alarm had already been raised by the priests of Ares, and in a running fight, the Colchians wounded Iphitus, Meleager, Argus, Atalanta, and Jason. Yet all of them contrived to scramble aboard the waiting Argo, which was rowed off in great haste, pursued by Aeëtes’s galleys. Iphitus alone succumbed to his wounds; Medea soon healed the others with vulneraries of her own invention.1
j. Now, the Sauromatians whom Jason had undertaken to conquer were descendants of three shiploads of Amazons captured by Heracles during his Ninth Labour; they broke their fetters and killed the sailors set as guards over them, but knowing nothing of seamanship, drifted across to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, where they landed at Cremni in the country of the free Scythians. There they captured a herd of wild horses, mounted them and began to ravage the land. Presently the Scythians, discovering from some corpses which fell into their ha
nds that the invaders were women, sent out a band of young men to offer the Amazons love rather than battle. This did not prove difficult, but the Amazons consented to marry them only if they would move to the eastern bank of the river Tanais; where their descendants, the Sauromatians, still live and preserve certain Amazon customs, such as that every girl must have killed a man in battle before she can find a husband.2
1. Apollodorus: i. 9. 23; Apollonius Rhodius: ii. 1260-iv. 246; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 48. 1–5; Valerius Flaccus: v. 177-viii. 139; Hyginus: Fabula 22; Pindar: Pythian Odes iv. 221 ff.; Ovid: Metamorphoses vii. 1. 13 8–9; Plutarch: On Rivers v. 4; Argonautica Orphica 755–1012.
2. Herodotus: iv. 110–17.
1. This part of the legend embodies the primitive myth of the tasks imposed on Diomedes by the king whose daughter he wished to marry.
2. Aphrodite’s love charm, carefully described by Theocritus (Idylls ii. 17), was used throughout Greece, including Socrates’s circle (Xenophon: Memorabilia iii. 11. 17). Because the wryneck builds in willows, hisses like a snake and lays white eggs, it has always been sacred to the moon; Io (‘moon’) sent it as her messenger to amorous Zeus (see 56. a). One of its popular names in Europe is ‘cuckoo’s mate’, and the cuckoo appears in the story of how Zeus courted the Moon-goddess Hera (see 12. a). Fire-kindling by friction was sympathetic magic to cause love – as the English word punk means both tinder and a harlot. Eros with torch and arrows is post-Homeric but, by the time of Apollonius Rhodius, his naughty behaviour and Aphrodite’s despair had become a literary joke (see 18. a) which Apuleius took one stage further in Cupid and Psyche.