Jason and the Argonauts

by Apollonius Of Rhodes

  2.1323 Their ruler sits inside the highest tower: Xenophon’s Anabasis 5.4.26 on the king of the Mossynoeci is one text that clearly influences Apollonius here.

  2.1355–56 Not even / Heracles: Not only does Heracles continue to figure around the margins of the poem, but so do past narratives about him, as here.

  2.1365 let’s all set on our heads: The stratagem to overcome the dangerous birds in part recalls Odysseus’ plot to prevail over the Sirens in Odyssey 12, even though the Sirens and the contest with them will appear again in Argonautica 4. Each incident, differently and in part, recalls the Homeric original.

  2.1383 so half the heroes locked their shields together: This reflects an actual military practice to avoid onslaught of missiles, in the Roman army known as the testudo, or “tortoise.”

  2.1405 The sons of Phrixus: The encounter with the sons of Phrixus brings two parts of the narrative together, with outward journeys from Thessaly and from Colchis. The description of the shipwrecked Colchians recalls the shipwrecked Odysseus at the end of Odyssey 5, on the eve of the Phaeacian episode there, and its recasting in Apollonius’ poem.

  2.1449 and give us clothes: The act of supplication, and request for clothing, recalls Odysseus’ entreaty to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6, and here suggests that a reworking of that episode is about to occur.

  2.1471 The ram, you see, could talk: These lines evoke the last scene on Jason’s cloak in Argonautica 1, where the ram appears to speak to Phrixus (1.1025–27).

  2.1548 The man could rival Ares: The comparison is especially effective, as Ares, the god of war to whom Argus compares Aeëtes, is the god at whose altar the new friends have just offered sacrifice. At the same time the comparison heightens the fearful prospect of interaction with the Colchian king.

  97 2.1585 and infant Zeus: Zeus as infant returns in the description of the ball at the opening of Argonautica 3, another example of Apollonius’ frequent doubling motifs.

  2.1606 Prometheus: As the Argonauts earlier saw the god Apollo himself walking across the landscape, so here they pass by earlier Greek mythology, the punishment of the Titan who gave fire to man. As in Argonautica 4 they will pass by the still smoldering Phaëthon, the Argonauts effectively enact their own place in Greek mythology.

  2.1645 or whether other means: Epic choices are usually presented (as the one opening Argonautica 4) as two options, of which the latter is the one taken. While that is also true here, the option is not yet spelled out, as the “means,” Medea’s infatuation for Jason, has not yet happened.

  2.1650 and so they spent the night: Apollonius recalls Odysseus at the end of Odyssey 5, when the shipwrecked hero is finally able to sleep on land, thus creating a pause to one line of narrative as another is about to open.

  BOOK 3

  3.1 Erato: Erato is one of the nine Muses (Hesiod, Theogony 75–79), who comes to be associated with love poetry (this passage is an important moment in that development). Apollonius opens his third book with an etymology of the Muse’s name. This third book has markedly lyric overtones, and there is a distinct change of narrative direction, which will change yet again at the opening of Argonautica 4. Virgil imitates the division of the poem into two halves with the invocation to Erato at Aeneid 7.37.

  3.2 Medea, Jason: Whereas the Argonauts appear as a group in the proem of the first book, here the focus moves to Medea’s love for Jason, and his success because of that love. The final two books center much more on these two figures, with Medea in many ways in the role of an epic hero. Among the highlights of the third book are the careful details of her thought processes.

  3.9–10 Athena / and Hera: The action of the two goddesses recalls their combined plotting and martial enterprise at Iliad 8.350–96. Another important Homeric passage recalled here is Hera’s approach to Aphrodite in Iliad 14 to borrow her erotic “zone,” or “girdle.”

  3.50 Hephaestus: The absence of Hephaestus, and the description of Aphrodite alone in her bedchamber, lead the reader to suspect the possible presence of Ares, who is, however, not here (in spite of the image of Aphrodite and Ares’ shield on Jason’s cloak). The fatherhood of Eros was a notorious problem in ancient mythology, and one Hellenistic poets enjoyed playing upon.

  3.69 Before today: Aphrodite’s address recalls that of Charis to Thetis at Iliad 18.385–86, when Thetis comes to Hephaestus (here husband to Charis) to ask for new armor for Achilles.

  3.87 Jason proved his worth: Hera’s short narrative here fills in a gap in the brief parenthetical background passage at Argonautica 1.5–17, and underlines the opening of Book 3 as a new beginning.

  3.121 little Eros: In pre-Hellenistic Greek literature, Eros is often depicted as young, but not as a little boy. The Hellenistic period, however, shows a marked interest in children and their portrayal.

  3.159–60 Little Eros / stood clutching: This image recalls a passage of the poet Anacreon (PMG 398), a poet whose images of Eros as competitor had much appeal for the Alexandrians.

  3.174 A nice bright ball!: This is one of the remarkable ecphrases in Apollonius’ poem, and it has a variety of scientific, poetic, and philosophical implications (particularly of the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles). Apollonius’ contemporary Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276–194 BCE) is credited with inventing the armillary sphere or globe. Aratus’ Phaenomena 525–36 is a close parallel to this passage.

  3.208–9 Thence / opens the downward path: Eros’ descent in some ways parallels that of Hermes to Calypso in Odyssey 6, where Hermes is also on a divine mission. In a moment of Apollonian variation, the expected simile (e.g., to a gull in descent) is absent.

  3.262 Circe’s Plain: Burial customs are a common feature of ancient ethnography, the one here a sign of the otherworldly realm the Argonauts are entering.

  3.275 Hera helped: The model here is the mist Athena casts around Odysseus at the opening of Odyssey 7, so that he may enter the palace of Alcinoös undisturbed. Virgil uses the same feature at Aeneid 1.411–14.

  3.286 They softly crossed the threshold: The description of the palace of Aeëtes is based in part on that of the palace of Alcinoös at Odyssey 7.81–132, with some striking enhancements. Whereas Hephaestus fashioned gold and silver dogs for Alcinoös, for Aeëtes these are fire-breathing bulls, which prefigure the plowing scene later in Argonautica 3.

  3.318 “Phaëthon”: Phaëthon is the name of the son of Helios, and his smoldering corpse figures in the Italian part of the Argonauts’ return in Book 4. That Absyrtus is called “Phaëthon” allows for the poet’s etymology of the name here, but also introduces a somewhat sinister undertone suggestive of the boy’s tragic fate later in the poem.

  3.331 she shrieked: Medea’s first utterance in the poem is one of alarm. The passage evokes Andromache hearing the tumult over the dead Hector. Here the immediate recognition, Chalciope seeing her sons safely returned, is one of joy, but the passage’s tone bodes ill for the future.

  3.359 And Eros was descending: This remarkable opening is a variation on the Homeric poetic feature known as ring composition. We return to the descent of Eros at 217. At the same time there is a transition from epic (a multitude of figures busy at court) to lyric mode, that of a single figure’s perception and reaction.

  3.361 stinging fly: This same image occurs toward the end of Book 1, describing the rage that overcomes Heracles on hearing about the loss of Hylas.

  3.373 Sudden muteness: This careful description of the effect of erotic attraction on the psyche is one of several passages in Hellenistic poetry (another is the second part of Theocritus’ Idyll 2) that imitate a famous poem of Sappho, fr. 31 V. (“that one appears to me like the gods”). Sappho’s poem implicated several contemporary medical images. Hellenistic poetry, with its awareness of new interests in medicine, further enhanced Sappho’s medical language and imagery.

  3.382 As when a workwoman: This striking simile compares the f
ire of a lone woman doing handiwork at night to Medea’s isolated reaction on seeing Jason. While Homer had used comparisons of the heroic and everyday working culture, this simile takes the conceit a step further.

  3.407 my sister Circe: Aeëtes’ reference to his sister Circe conveniently locates her in the Greek west, thus pinpointing one geographical reference of the Argonauts’ complex journey back home.

  3.415 Argus answered first: Argus’ surprisingly long speech serves as a summation of much of the past two books for the Colchian audience. Argus, though not the same Argus who designed the Argo, does

  include the building of the ship briefly in this summary, a building that Apollonius himself had consciously omitted in his opening to the whole poem.

  3.528 “Stranger, why should you tell”: Aeëtes, a figure within the poem itself, is in the unusual role of requesting narrative brevity, a hallmark of good poetry of this period.

  3.587 Jason shone: Jason’s physical beauty, and its effect on those who behold him, is an ongoing motif of the poem, as is its destructive potential.

  3.718 a timid dove: This is another example of bird augury in the Argonautica. The dove is also associated with Aphrodite, so its landing in Jason’s lap can be read as another instance of the erotic motif of this book.

  3.741–42 as fellow crewmen / to women: Idas here takes the role Heracles had in Book 1 in reaction to the Argonauts’ dalliance with the Lemnian women—an older heroic ethos disapproving of a newer one and its methods.

  3.820 She dreamed the stranger: Medea’s dream is in part an elaboration on that of Nausicaa which opens Odyssey 6, but here has a more complex nature, part exposition of Medea’s desires, part prefiguring the future. Dreams and dream interpretation were a subject of great interest in antiquity.

  3.848 shameless as a bitch’s: The Greek term for “bitch” (kyon) marks this as an allusion to Helen’s self-deprecating language in Iliad 6, where she laments her own actions in abandoning her homeland for a foreign love.

  3.858 She turned around, returned: Apollonius’ description of Medea’s hesitation here finds a striking parallel in one of the most remarkable passages of Euripides’ Medea, Medea’s agonized soliloquy (lines 1019–80) on whether or not to kill her children.

  3.867 Think of a girl: The simile varies a traditional epigram motif of the bride dead on the eve of her wedding, and so now the bride of Hades (Death). At the same time, it hauntingly recalls the hopeful young girls inspired by the Evening Star (the planet Venus) in Book 1.

  3.908 but no sound came: The motif of speechlessness, first apparent on Medea’s gazing upon Jason, continues here and will recur again as a leitmotif of the girl’s internal turmoil.

  3.925 you must swear by Heaven and Earth: Oaths, their preservation and their breaking, are a recurrent theme of the Medea narrative. Apollonius’ audience may well recall that Jason’s not keeping his sworn oaths is one of Medea’s primary charges against him in Euripides’ play.

  3.1054 So she resolved: Medea’s contemplation of suicide is another of the detailed portrayals of her inner psychology that make the third book so different in tone from much of the rest of the poem. There are some lyric antecedents (Sappho fr. 94 V. is one), but the continued description of internal psychology is something quite new.

  3.1104 Prometheon: Prometheus, whose torment the Argonauts sailed past toward the end of Book 2, recurs here as the source of Medea’s magic drug. Prometheus will return again at lines 1402–4 as the origin of Jason’s family.

  3.1123 Brimo: Brimo is an aspect of Hecate as Underworld deity. The Greek word means “the one who roars.”

  3.1139 Leto’s daughter Artemis: Apollonius here reworks Homer’s comparison of Nausicaa to Artemis at Odyssey 6.102–9, yet there is a significant change in tone with the fear that Artemis/Medea inspires here. Virgil recasts the same simile at Aeneid 1.498–504, again with contextual difference (Dido, unlike Nausicaa and Medea, has been previously married, so the comparison to Diana is intentionally problematic).

  3.1192 Never among the men: Hera’s rendering Jason an object of striking beauty recalls Athena’s doing the same to Odysseus at Odyssey 6.229–37. The encounter of Jason and Medea here is a close intertextual recall of that of Odysseus and Nausicaa.

  3.1205 Crows regularly sit: This passage is a somewhat humorous play on bird augury (reading divine will through bird motion or birdcall). Talking crows feature in another poem of this period, Callimachus’ Hecale.

  3.1229 Medea’s heart: This passage again recalls Homer’s scene with Nausicaa at play with her maids in Odyssey 6, although here there is no ball (the ball, as it were, already figured earlier in the narrative of Argonautica 3, and will appear again in a simile in Book 4). Medea’s anguished anticipation of Jason’s arrival also recalls, a second time, Sappho fr. 31 V.

  3.1240–41 as the Dog Star, / Sirius: The comparison of Jason to the notoriously destructive hottest time of the year is one of brilliance and foreboding. There is a close parallel description of Sirius in Apollonius’ contemporary poet Aratus at Phaenomena 326–35.

  3.1276–77 I have come, / a suppliant: This is another close recall, with important variations, of Odyssey 6.149–85, where the desperate Odysseus supplicates Nausicaa. One intriguing variation is that in the Homeric passage Odysseus concludes by noting that a well-married couple achieves the greatest reputation (line 185); here Jason picks up the theme of reputation, but of two figures (line 1283) living apart.

  3.1290 Minos’ maiden daughter Ariadne: Jason’s mythological choice of exemplum is full of foreboding: Theseus abandoned Ariadne, who had aided him in his quest to slay the Minotaur and then left her family and homeland with him, on the island of Naxos. Jason’s version of the Ariadne story is geared to persuade and is also only partly true.

  3.1317–18 a miraculous / and winning fire: This is often an image of a divinity, and appears in the iconography of some Hellenistic monarchs. Fire in this case, following on the Jason-Sirius comparison, has a dangerously ambiguous value.

  3.1344 to turn and look behind you: In ancient magical practice, it is standard for the practitioner calling forth an Underworld spirit to beware of looking upon that which should not be seen.

  3.1516–17 Cadmus found / this serpent: The narrative of Cadmus and the serpent’s teeth links two of the great mythological cycles, that of the Theban royal house and the Argonautica. Like other Hellenistic poets, Apollonius has great interest in mythography.

  3.1533 The sun god Helius: Helius here is both metaphor (for the sun) and a pertinent mythological presence as Aeëtes’ father.

  3.1552 Lemnian Hypsipyle: There are several mantles in the poem: Jason’s cloak in Argonautica 1, which plays a role in the seduction of Hypsipyle; this gift from Hypsipyle, which figures here at the moment Jason carries out Medea’s magical instructions; this same mantle then makes a reappearance in the luring of Absyrtus to his death in the first part of Argonautica 4; and then there is finally the mantle in which Dionysus embraced Ariadne, in which Jason and Medea make love in Argonautica 4. Each covering implicates earlier narrative or narratives into the present.

  3.1579 a special gift from Ares: Aeëtes and Ares, the Greek god of war, are again equated. This parallelism begins already at the altar of Ares toward the end of the previous book.

  3.1590 Phaëthon was waiting: The image of this Phaëthon holding his father’s chariot cannot but evoke the image of Phaëthon the son of Helius. Like the son of Helius, this Phaëthon will prove, in his tragic end, unequal to his father.

  3.1597 the god Poseidon: The simile may serve to evoke particularly Poseidon the implacable foe of Odysseus, and to heighten the sense of Jason’s heroic isolation here in the face of a foe truly larger than life.

  3.1669 Think of a blacksmith’s bull-hide bellows: The simile recalls in part the Cyclopes on Jason’s cloak in Book 1 as they fashion the thunderbolt of
Zeus.

  3.1759 the seedlings grown: Many editors assume a missing line between this line and the next.

  3.1785 The sun went down: Again a book concludes with nightfall. Whereas the other books of the Argonautica cover longer periods of time, the entire action of Book 3 encompasses only a few days.

  BOOK 4

  4.1 deathless Muse: The poet does not name this figure. Some scholars assume this to be Erato, the Muse of the proem to Argonautica 3, and that this is one of several factors that bind the two books as a unit, one that centers on Medea and Jason. Other scholars point to the different, more heroic-epic direction of Argonautica 4, especially as outlined in the proem, and suggest that this is rather a changed Muse, the typically unnamed one of epic poetry (cf. the opening lines to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey).

  4.4 wondering whether: Questions in epic, as the late Thomas Rosenmeyer observed, are generally phrased as “x or y, then y.” The second option usually prevails. See “Apollonius Lyricus,” SIFC 10 (1992): 177–78.

  4.14 Hera, meanwhile: Hera will continue to play an active role in this book of the poem. The simile that follows is a typically heroic-epic one, thus confirming the direction that the poem now follows.

  4.26 She would have drained: The lines capture two features of Medea in particular: her emotions as a young girl (this is the second time she contemplates suicide), a strong feature of Book 3, and her role as a sorceress, which will repeatedly come to the fore in Book 4. The choice of action here reflects, on a different level, the change of direction the poem takes now from that of the previous book.