Jason and the Argonauts

by Apollonius Of Rhodes

  4.37 heartfelt lamentation: The final version of Callimachus’ Aetia closes with the young queen, Berenice II, dedicating a lock of her hair for her husband’s safe return from the Third Syrian War, a lock that itself laments its being severed from its sister-locks, and that ends up in a heavenly apotheosis in the lap of Arsinoe-Aphrodite, figured in cult terms as Berenice’s mother. This is one of many striking parallels between the poetry of Callimachus and Apollonius’ Argonautica.

  4.41–42 “I wish . . . / before you ever reached the land of Colchis”: This is a very close echo of the opening two lines of Euripides’ Medea. In Euripides’ play these lines are spoken by the children’s nurse. The difference of speaker underlines some of the conventional differences of tragedy and epic.

  4.149–50 sacrificed / the gilded miracle: This image recalls the final one on Jason’s cloak in Book 1, where the golden ram appeared to be speaking to Phrixus.

  4.172 a pile of smoldering wood: This simile recalls the one in Argonautica 3 that compared Medea’s initial passion to the fire a workwoman lights at night. The lyric-heroic division again comes forward; here Medea, in heroic mode, is subduing a dragon.

  4.182 Jason, terrified: Jason’s heroism is once again complicated by Medea’s own superhuman action.

  4.203 Just as a maiden: This brilliant simile is very revealing about Jason in multiple ways. The goal of the Argo’s voyage is the “heroic” obtaining of a magical object, yet this is actually done by a woman, a local princess, through magic. The simile highlights Jason as object of desire, yet as a young girl; it both casts light on a new aspect of male sexuality (object of desire) and problematizes Jason as hero.

  4.244 “infamy of Greece”: Hellas, “Greece,” here is worth noting. The term, rare in Homer, does not appear in Homer’s poetry for the conceptual space “Greece.” As Thucydides famously observes (1.3), Homer does not make the distinction Greek vs. Barbarian. This marks Apollonius’ poem, albeit before the Trojan War in mythological time, as a latter-day epic.

  4.257 as thickly as the dead leaves: The simile is in part prophetic, as the Colchians who subsequently embark will not return to Colchis.

  4.267 His son Absyrtus: With the reference to Helius a few lines earlier, we again recall the image of Phaëthon, who proves unequal to driving the chariot of his father Helius, as Absyrtus will not survive the attempt to replace Aeëtes at the head of the Colchian force that pursues Jason and Medea.

  4.298 Holy dread prevents me: This is a reference to aporreta, elements of ritual that must be kept secret. Aporreta are a typical feature of initiation rituals, and also of magic and witchcraft.

  4.307 but what that route would be: This is the key moment that allows for Apollonius’ new return route for the Argonauts.

  4.321 the Apidanian Arcadians: The Apidanians appear in the opening section of Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus. Callimachus’ narrative of Zeus’ birth in Arcadia is reflected at several moments in this passage of Apollonius.

  4.396–97 ever had observed / seagoing vessels: There may be an implied reference here to one tradition about the Argo, that it was the first boat.

  4.442 “Jason, what is this plot”: Medea’s speech here appears to recall, at several points, Medea’s denunciation of Jason in Euripides’ Medea at lines 465–519 of that drama.

  4.469 wretch: The Greek term sketlios, “wretch,” is an erotic leitmotif of this book, culminating in the address to Eros at line 565.

  4.486 Themis: Themis is the divinity who oversees what is morally right, such as the validity of oaths.

  4.533 the sacred raiment of Hypsipyle: Once again a piece of clothing is the instrument that instigates action, and this is again a gift.

  4.565 Wretched Eros: The apostrophe of Eros is the culmination of the theme, one that pervades the second half of the Argonautica, of love leading mortals to commit wrongful acts.

  4.586 as a little boy: This simile highlights Absyrtus’ vulnerability, particularly at the hands of his sorceress sister.

  4.605 smeared his sister’s mantle: Murder of the innocent results in miasma, or pollution, and the potential for revenge by the Fury that arises from the blood wrongly spilled. Here Medea’s being bespattered by her brother’s blood (to take part in the killing of a sibling is a particularly grievous sin) is emblematic of the process of guilt and punishment imagined in Greek religion.

  4.611 and spat the taint out: A widespread belief in many cultures that licking the blood of the murdered will quiet a potentially vengeful spirit.

  4.640 people orphaned of a leader: These lines are in part reminiscent of the situation in the Iliad upon Achilles’ withdrawal from fighting. Not by chance are these lines spoken by Peleus—Achilles is his son.

  4.691 Heracles, you see: Once again Heracles appears on the Argonautica’s periphery. The passage brings together two episodes in Heracles’ life, which are perhaps best known now from two different fifth-century Athenian tragedies. One is Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, in which Hyllus figures as an adult and wherein Deianeira, Heracles’ last wife, in an attempt to recover her husband’s love, is the accidental cause of his death. The other is Euripides’ Madness of Heracles, which tells of Heracles’ killing his wife, Megara, and their three children.

  4.707 a grazing herd of cattle: There is a distant recollection here of one of the scenes on Jason’s cloak in Book 1. All of the scenes on the cloak are recalled, in one way or another, in the course of the poem.

  4.708 Come, tell me, goddesses: This new appeal at this point in the poem is a marked new beginning. Here Apollonius takes the Argonauts beyond the traditional narrative of their return (“so far abroad,” line 714, is emblematic of this new narrative).

  4.736 queen Calypso: Calypso in the Odyssey harbors Odysseus at the end of his first attempted return to Ithaca from Troy; we find him there at the opening of the poem. As the point from which he comes to the Phaeacians and begins his reintegration into mortal society, Calypso comes at the end of a series of marvelous figures, several of whom we will now encounter in Argonautica 4.

  4.745 one of the Argo’s beams: Although Apollonius declared at the beginning of the Argonautica that he would not narrate the building of the Argo, in fact the theme repeatedly resurfaces in the course of the poem, thus allowing for a different, more episodic than linear narration of what the poet himself claims to have been a theme already much treated by earlier poets.

  4.765 Phaëthon: Phaëthon is a son of Helius, and so brother to both Aeëtes and Circe. On the one hand, the Argonauts are once again traveling by the visible remains of earlier mythology. At the same time, by evoking Phaëthon in Italy, Apollonius gives a kind of legitimacy to this part of the poem, where in fact he is traversing new terrain.

  4.774 the Heliades: It is worth noting that Ovid, in the second book of his Metamorphoses, has Phaëthon, the Heliades, and Coronis in this sequence, although there are other figures as well.

  4.850 because a dream had troubled her: Once again Apollonius makes use of the Nausicaa episode in the sixth book of the Odyssey, here bringing it together with the Circe episode in Odyssey 10. A dream is the cause of Nausicaa going to the river to wash the household clothing, and by the river she meets with Odysseus. Circe in Odyssey 10 lives apart in a forest, surrounded by animals into which she has transformed various mortal men. She fears Odysseus’ resistance to her magic and enables his return. Here Circe is Medea’s aunt, Jason has a foreign princess with him, and they are in need of ritual purification for a murder they have committed.

  4.862–63 some mélange / of limbs: These are Empedoclean forms, a sort of primordial collage of parts, not entirely formed. Empedocles’ influence is felt elsewhere in the poem, particularly in the ball that Aphrodite gives to Eros at the opening of Argonautica 3.

  4.882 and he alone escorted: There is a reminiscence here of Odysseus’ lone approach to Circe’s house in the
tenth book of the Odyssey.

  4.902 to expunge the deed’s contamination: In Greek religion, one guilty of murder must be first purified of pollution. This need for purification is separate from any subsequent judgment the guilty may encounter (compare the case of Orestes in Aeschylus’ Eumenides).

  4.934 in the Colchian tongue: Homeric epic poems do not acknowledge a plurality of languages per se (the Trojans in the Iliad, for example, speak the same Greek as their Greek opponents). This reference to the “Colchian tongue” is a moment of later realism in an epic narrative, e.g., the Ptolemies ruled over many peoples, and these spoke many languages.

  4.967 Iris: Iris is an anthropomorphic realization of the rainbow, and is frequently Hera’s handmaid, often (though not here) to do Hera’s will in a malevolent context.

  4.974 and summon Thetis: Achilles summons his mother in the first book of the Iliad. Subsequently Thetis in Iliad 18 will go to Hephaestus to ask for new armor for her son. These are both recalled in this passage.

  4.980 Aeolus, who regulates the gales: Aeolus, the keeper of the winds, is a figure from the tenth book of the Odyssey: he gives Odysseus a bag in which the winds are sealed, and on the approach to Ithaca Odysseus falls asleep, his men open the bag, and the winds are released, thus preventing them from reaching their homeland. In this passage Apollonius juxtaposes two figures from the two Homeric poems.

  4.1011 Scylla and Charybdis’: Two monstrous dangers from the twelfth book of the Odyssey, where Odysseus must choose between facing one or the other. Scylla and Charybdis represent the fearful dangers of the sea, in contrast with the Naiads, who are benevolent.

  4.1013 I myself have nursed: Hera in the Argonautica has a rather different characterization from that of the Iliad, not to mention the wrathful figure of Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Apollonius sketches a side of the goddess from the beginning of the poem that is protective and nurturing. Even in the various references to Heracles her malevolent role is much played down.

  4.1032 a heartfelt wedding: This wedding is in fact the origin of the Trojan War. The goddess Eris (“Strife”), not invited to the wedding, casts a golden apple among the gods with the epigraph “to the fairest,” which results in the judgment of Paris, which in turn leads to the abduction of Helen, and so on. But in the time frame of the Argonautica, where Achilles is still an infant, the Trojan War is yet to come, and the poet can decorously omit direct reference to the strife over the golden apple, though the opening of Book 3 is an elaborate allusion to this contest.

  4.1042 that he wed Medea: This reference to the future, after-death marriage of Achilles and Medea, cannot but surprise the poem’s audience, given that the second half of the Argonautica follows the love and early adventures of Jason and Medea. There is certainly an ominous note on the future of the relationship of the latter couple.

  4.1121 and raised a frightening cry: The narrative of Thetis’ attempt to make Achilles immortal closely follows the parallel scene in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where Demeter, disguised as an old woman, is surprised by Metaneira as she attempts to make the latter’s baby immortal through fire. Apollonius’ reconfiguration of this scene emphasizes the different natures of Thetis and Peleus.

  4.1141 the clear-voiced Sirens: The Sirens figure in the twelfth book of the Odyssey. Apollonius’ use of many of the figures from Odysseus’ wanderings draws the attention of his audience to the Odyssean quality of this part of the Argonautica, which features a journey into the unknown.

  4.1148–49 while she was still / unmarried: A second reference, this time to the opening of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, to Persephone as a virgin.

  4.1157 if Orpheus of Thrace: In contrast to the Odyssey’s narrative of the Sirens, where Odysseus, bound by his men, listens to the Sirens’ song, Apollonius has Orpheus compete with the Sirens, and Orpheus’ song overpowers theirs.

  4.1190 had retired from the forge: There is almost a partial ring composition here. We first hear of Hephaestus at his forge in the opening scene of the third book of the Argonautica, when Hera and Athena come upon Aphrodite alone. Indeed, one section of the fourth book, the voyage among the figures of Odysseus’ voyage, is about to end, as did Odysseus’, with the arrival among the Phaeacians.

  4.1196 As dolphins during tranquil weather rise: The collection of Homeric hymns that Apollonius’ contemporaries would have known began with the Hymn to Dionysus (now fragmentary), which features a famous metamorphosis of pirates into dolphins. It is unclear whether, and to what extent, that poem may be in play here as a model, but this passage, coming so soon after allusions to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, is of particular interest in that regard, among others.

  4.1216 pick up a ball: Another allusion to the Nausicaa episode in Odyssey 6, an episode that Apollonius plays upon again and again in the course of the second half of the Argonautica. As the Argonauts are shortly to arrive at the home of Alcinoös and Arete, the parents of Nausicaa (who has not been born at this time), the allusion is particularly appropriate.

  4.1223 Mighty Hephaestus stood: Unlike the Iliad, which is replete with scenes of the Olympians watching the battlefield below, scenes like this in the Argonautica are rare. Here their presence marks this superhuman effort as truly extraordinary.

  4.1234 where Helius’ cattle graze: In a masterful stroke, Apollonius has the Argonauts pass by the cattle of Helius, the final, disastrous episode in Odysseus’ wanderings before the shipwreck that brings him to the island of Calypso. His men’s assault on Helius’ cattle is the last episode that Odysseus narrates to the Phaeacian court, where Jason and Medea are now to find themselves.

  4.1257 Muses, forgive me: The gesture is a particularly Pindaric one, when a poet alludes to, or briefly narrates, a myth involving unsuitable behavior among the gods. The passage is especially striking as a brief self-referential reference to the poet in the “act” of composition, and of the modern scholar-poet laying out two ancient explanations.

  4.1265 nursemaid of the Phaeacians: Apollonius’ own take on the history of the Phaeacians that Athena (in disguise) provides to Odysseus at the opening of Odyssey 7. Throughout the following episode, the audience is repeatedly reminded of the earlier version of reception among the Phaeacians and so of Apollonius’ own recasting of this in his Argonautica.

  4.1270 Alcinoös and all his people: In Odyssey 7, Odysseus, with Athena’s aid, approaches the palace of Alcinoös in concealment, in part to avoid any maltreatment by the Phaeacians along the way. The arrival of the Argonauts is rather an occasion for initial public rejoicing, until this is interrupted by the arrival of the armed Colchians.

  4.1290 Alcinoös’ wife Arete: Odysseus, on arrival at Alcinoös’ palace, first must supplicate the queen, Arete (her name means “virtue” or “excellence” in Greek). Her role in Odysseus’ salvation remains fascinating and in part enigmatic and is the subject of a large scholarship. Here Medea, a young woman, supplicates an older female figure. While this is appropriate, there remains a certain paradox, as Medea is repeatedly likened, by allusion, in the second part of the Argonautica to Nausicaa.

  4.1308–9 a perfect / life: Medea’s prayer for Alcinoös and Arete thematically, though not verbally, echoes Odysseus’ prayer for Nausicaa at the conclusion of his supplication of her in Odyssey 6, which includes, at line 154, a reference to the blessed state of Alcinoös and Arete, Nausicaa’s parents, whom Odysseus does not yet know.

  4.1351–52 a poor, / hardworking woman: This simile recalls two similes in Book 3, that of Medea’s initial erotic arousal compared to the fire a workwoman keeps at night, and the description of sleep coming to all, even to a mother who has lost her children. The reworking of the earlier similes into this one keeps alive the image of Medea’s erotic suffering, now turned into true epic fear.

  4.1389 Antiope: Antiope was the daughter (in one of several ancient mythical versions of her story) of the Theban king Nycteus
. Beloved by Zeus, she bore him two sons, Amphion and Zethus, who were brought up by herdsmen. Persecuted by her father’s wife, she flees to the house of two herdsmen, who turn out to be Amphion and Zethus. The story is the subject of Euripides’ fragmentary drama Antiope.

  4.1390 Danaë: Daughter of Acrisius. Zeus came to her as a shower of golden rain in the prison where her father confined her. Her father then placed Danaë, and her son Perseus, in a chest that he had cast into the sea. The story was narrated in lyric poetry by Simonides (fr. 543 PMG) and by Aeschylus in his fragmentary Dictoulkoi (“Net Drawers”).

  4.1393 Echetus: Echetus is a savage king of Epirus, father of Merope. The extant sources for this tale are fairly late. Arete here combines the catalog (an epic tradition) with a Hellenistic scholar’s eye for contested narrative versions and/or unusual detail.

  4.1406 war down on Hellas: As noted earlier, Hellas is not a term used of the Greek world in Homeric epic; rather, it is a coinage that comes to define Greek vs. Barbarian. A “war” on “Hellas” evokes the Persian Wars, and indeed Aeëtes, coming from the far east of the known world and associated with the Sun, can easily be aligned with the one-time Persian kings.

  4.1450 Zeus’ Nysaean son: This is Dionysus, a god with whom the Ptolemies claimed close association. For a recent, somewhat novel and very accessible study of the spread of the Dionysus cult in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, see Hunter 2006 ch. 2.

  4.1458 glinting golden fleece: The fleece has been a leitmotif throughout the poem, and we have seen it in several settings: as a living thing on Jason’s cloak and as the guarded object that Medea and Jason take from its dreadful guardian. At its beginning the golden ram bears Phrixus and Helle away from their stepmother Ino, at its end here it serves as the bedding for Jason and Medea, the latter also fleeing a cruel parental figure.

  4.1469 The nymphs had come: The setting of this wedding serves in turn as the model for that of Aeneas and Dido in Aeneid 4, where at lines 165–68 the woodland nymphs sing the wedding song, and Juno serves as the pronuba (matron attending upon the bride).