The shifty ruler knew very well that no one could do this. He did not think he was in the remotest danger of losing the Golden Fleece. However, he had reckoned without the “divine conspiracy.” After the evening feast Jason and his friends returned rather glumly to the Argo. They too thought the task was beyond them. Jason complained bitterly to his companions about the dreadful king’s conditions:
He says he has two untameable bulls on the field of Mars. Their feet are iron, they breathe flames. With these I must plough four acres of land. Then he wants to give me seed from the mouth of a dragon. From them, he says, armoured men will grow, whom I must kill before the day is done.41
But Jason’s new lover, the king’s daughter Medeia, knew how to help. She possessed a strange ointment with unusual effects. This miracle cure came from a medicinal herb that had grown from the blood of Prometheus the Titan. She told Jason to rub it all over his body and on his weapons. The ointment would protect him from heat and fire so that the fire-spitting bulls could not harm him. His weapons would also become invincibly strong, and give him superhuman powers.
Jason passed a quiet night, then washed himself thoroughly, made a sacrifice to the gods, smeared himself and his weapons all over with the miracle ointment, and pulled on his clothes. Soon after began the strangest battle described anywhere in ancient literature:
Suddenly, from the secret cavern, the locked stall, the whole air was full of acrid smoke. The two bulls shot forth, breathing fire from their nostrils. The heroes were seized with fright when they saw them. But Jason stood firm, his feet steady, and waited for their attack. He held his shield before him as they bellowed and at the same time struck him with their strong horns, but they were unable to move him even an inch from his position. As when the bellows in the blacksmith’s stove sets the fire fiercely roaring with a fearful rush and noise of heat, so the bulls blew flames from their mouths and bellowed at the same time. The heat engulfed the hero like a bolt of lightning, but the lady’s ointment protected him. And now he seizes the nearest bull by the point of its horns, and draws it by sheer force to the iron yoke. Then he trips up the iron foot with his own foot and floors the beast.42
As King Aietes had demanded, Jason ploughed the field with these unruly, fire-spitting animals, then threw the dragon’s teeth upon the furrows. Soon dreadful figures sprouted up everywhere on the battlefield, armed with metal spikes and shining helmets, and the soil beneath them shone white hot and lit up the night.
Jason took a mighty lump of stone, so large that even four men couldn’t have raised it, and threw it in the midst of the swelling ranks of monsters. They were confused and did not know where the attack was coming from. This gave Jason the chance to wreak havoc:
From the scabbard he drew the sword and with it stabbed whatever came his way. Many who were up to their navels in the ground still, and others who were still up to their shoulders. There were others, too, who had just got up on their feet, and then a whole crowd who had run into the battle too soon. They fought and fell…. Thus Jason mows them down…the blood ran in the furrows like streams of spring water…some fell on their faces and got mouthfuls of soil, others on their backs, others on their sides and arms. Of great girth they were, monstrous as whales.43
Jason made a clean sweep of them. But the worst was still to come: the dragon who never slept, who guarded the Golden Fleece. Together with his lover, Jason went to the grove where the Golden Fleece was fastened to a beech tree:
So they looked around for the shady beech and the Fleece upon it…it shone like a cloud that is illumined by the setting rays of the sun. But the Lindworm on the tree, who never sleeps, stretched out its long neck. It whistled in a horrible way. The hills and the deep grove rang with the sound…clouds of smoke filled the flaming wood, wave after wave of bright smoke snaked up out of the earth into the upper air, like the monster’s lengths of knotty tail, which were covered in hard scales.44
Jason could not see how to get around this monster, but once more his lover helped him. She smeared an elder branch with her special ointment and waved it around in front of the dragon’s glowing eyes. At the same time she spoke magic words, and the monster grew visibly slower and more soporific, until it finally laid its head upon the ground. Jason climbed the tree and released the Golden Fleece. The strange object glowed red, and was too large for Jason to carry on his shoulders. The ground below the Golden Fleece also shone the whole time that Jason was fleeing with it back to the Argo.
Once back on board, everyone wanted to touch the Golden Fleece, but Jason forbade this and covered it with a great blanket. There was no time for feasting or celebrations. Jason and the king’s daughter were afraid that King Aietes would do all in his power to get this unique treasure back. The Argonauts sailed as fast as they could down the river, and out to the open sea.
King Aietes, who had never meant to keep his word, ordered up a great fleet, which he divided so as to come at Jason and the Argonauts from both sides. Aietes’ ship reached a country whose inhabitants had never seen such travellers, and who therefore believed them to be sea monsters. (There is a similar story in the Ethiopian “Book of Kings,” the Kebra Negest, which tells how Baina-lehkem steals the greatest treasure of the time from his father Solomon: the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon sends his warriors to get it back. The chase is pursued—partly by flying machines—from Jerusalem to the [modem-day] town of Axum in Ethiopia.)
After a few minor adventures, which are described differently in various versions of the Argonautica, the Argo reached the “amber islands.” The talking beam in the prow of the ship warned the crew of the wrath of Zeus. (In the meantime the ship’s keel began to talk with audible voice.) The father of the gods was furious, for Jason had managed to kill the brother of his beloved. This did not occur through jealousy, but because Medeia had spun an intrigue. Later on in the story Jason was absolved of this murder, and Zeus was satisfied. On various islands and in many different lands the Argonauts raised altars and memorials. At some point the Argo ran far up into the rivers of Eridian. Astonished, one learns that “This is where Phaethon fell from the sun chariot down into the deepest sea when Jove’s flaming thunderbolt half burned him. This sea still stinks of sulphur…no bird spreads its wings and flies over it.”45
This is a strange reference. The story of Phaethon and his sun chariot is very ancient, and has not been precisely dated. The Roman poet Ovid gives it in full in his Metamorphoses, though Ovid lived about 40 years before Christ, at a time when the Argonautica has already existed for centuries. According to this tale, Phaethon was a son of the sun god Helios. One day Phaethon visited his father in the sky and asked him to fulfill one wish, because the earth-dwellers did not believe that he was really related to the sun god. He asked to be allowed to drive the sun chariot. His father was horrified and continually warned his offspring to give up the idea, telling him that to drive the sun chariot required quite particular knowledge. Typically, Phaethon didn’t want to heed these warnings. His father had unwittingly promised to fulfill his every wish, and so couldn’t get out of it now. The fiery horses were therefore refueled with four-star ambrosia, and harnessed up to the wagon.46
The sun chariot raced out into the sky, but the horses soon noticed that their driver couldn’t control them. They broke out of their usual course, rose high up into the sky then sped at dizzying speed down toward the earth again. This went on for a while—up, down, and all over the place—until the sun chariot started to get closer and closer to the earth. The clouds started steaming and whole forests and stretches of land caught fire. But the air in the heavenly vehicle also got hotter and hotter so that Phaethon could hardly breathe. As the fire engulfed his hair and skin, there was nothing left for him to do but leap out of the chariot, and his body was said to have fallen into the Eridanos River. His sisters, the Heliades, went there and wept so long that their tears turned to amber, which one still finds on the river’s banks. The heavenly chariot crashed with a shower of sparks into a
lake.
Nowadays the tale of Phaethon is seen as a double parable. On the one hand is the sun which has the power to burn up whole stretches of land, on the other the young man who thinks that he can do anything his father can. I doubt whether this story was originally regarded by those who told it simply as a parable. Too many of its elements are too logical and show parallels with modern space travel technology. But this is equally true of other parts of the Argonautica.
After all, it is not just a matter of course if amphibious vehicles turn up in a tale that is millennia old. Apollonius tells us, “Out of the sea leapt a horse of unusual size, and came ashore. Its mane was golden, its head was high, and it shook off the salty foam from its sides. Then it ran off on feet as swift as the wind.”47
This amphibious horse is meant to have been one of Poseidon’s horses. Poseidon was the god of the sea, but also the god of Atlantis. We’ll come to that story later on. So what was going on here? Is Poseidon’s horse an isolated episode, something that only the Argonauts saw? Far from it.
In the Bible, in the book of the Prophet Jonah (Chapter 2), we can read the episode in which Jonah survived for three days and nights in the belly of a whale. Theologians say that this is meant prophetically, in reference to the three days from Jesus’ death to His resurrection. An absurd ideal. One learns more in Volume III of the book Die Sagen der Juden (“Tales of the Jews From Ancient Times”). Here we read that Jonah entered the jaws of the fish just as “a man enters a room.” It must have been a strange fish because its eyes were like “windows, and also shone inwards.” Of course, Jonah was able to speak with the fish, and through its eyes—portholes!—he could see, “bathed in light, as in the midday sun,” all that was happening in the sea and on the ocean floor.48
There is a parallel to this prehistoric submarine in the Babylonian Oannes Tale. Around 350 BC, a Babylonian priest wrote three works. He was called Berossus and served his god Marduk (also called Bel or Baal). The first volume of his book, the Babylonic, deals with the creation of the world and the starry firmament, the second volume with the Babylonian kingdom, and the third was a proper history. Berossus’ books are only preserved in fragments, but other ancient historians quote from them, such as the Roman Seneca, or Flavius Jospehus, a contemporary of Jesus. And in the 1st century after Christ, Alexander Polyhistor of Milet wrote about the Babylonians. Thus bits and pieces of Berossus’ work have survived the millennia.
This Babylonian priest also described a curious being, Oannes, that came out of the Eryteian Sea beside Babylon. This creature, he said, had the shape of a fish, but with a human head, human feet, and a tail, and had spoken like a human being. During the day Oannes had conversed with people, without eating anything. He had taught them not only knowledge of written signs and sciences, but also how to build towns and erect temples, how to introduce laws and measure the land, and everything else they might need to know. Since this time, no one had invented anything which exceeded his teaching. Before departing, Oannes had given the people a book containing his instructions.
Not bad for a teacher from the water. Of course, one can dismiss the Oannes tale as fantasy, as with every incredible story, but Oannes also forms part of the traditional tales of other ancient peoples. The Parsees call the teacher from the water “Yma,”49 the Phoenicians call it “Taut,” and there is even a monster with the body of a horse and the head of a dragon who rises up out of the depths of the ocean at the time of the Chinese emperor Fuk-Hi. This must have been a strange creature indeed, for its body was adorned with written signs.50
The amphibious horse in the Argonautica also turned out to be a speaking creature. The heroes and their vessel had come to a lake which had no opening to the sea. The team kept going by towing the Argo over land—probably with the help of wooden rollers. Finally they made an offering to the gods of a tripod which Jason was supposed to have received in Delphi, and straight away the amphibious creature reappeared. It was apparently called Eurypylus, another son of Poseidon. Eurypylus first appeared in the form of a beautiful and friendly youth, with whom one could have excellent conversations. He wished the Argonauts good luck on their further travels, showed them which way the sea was, and walked off with the tripod into the cold water. Then he grasped hold of the Argo’s keel and pushed the ship off into the current:
The god took pleasure in the worship afforded him, rose out of the depths and appeared in the shape of body natural to him. As a man will lead a horse into the swiftest course…he took hold of the Argo’s keel and led it gently into the sea…. But his lower body was divided into two separate fish tails. He beat the water with the pointed ends, which appeared crescent-shaped like the horns of the moon, and led the Argo until they came to the open sea. Then he suddenly vanished down into the depths. The heroes raised a loud shout when they saw this wonder.51
The “shout” of the Argonauts was quite understandable. When earthly forces don’t help, super-earthly ones have to. Jason’s friends carried on sailing and rowing for home, passing many countries on their way. On the heights of Crete they wanted to replenish their stocks of water, but this was prevented by Talos, who was endowed with an invulnerable, metal body. He is described as a “bronze giant,”52 or as a being whose “whole body was covered in bronze.”53 According to Apollonius, Talos encircled the island three times in a year, but all other ancient authors speak of “three times a day.”54 With his magic eyes he caught sight of every vessel which approached Crete, then pelted it from a great distance, apparently with rocks, with great accuracy. He also had the ability to radiate heat, drawing boats toward him and letting them go up in flames. Talos was said to have been made by the god Hephaestus, who was a son of Zeus. The Romans worshipped him as the god of fire, and named him Vulcanus. For the Greeks Hephaestus was both god of fire and protector of blacksmiths.
Zeus was said to have given Talos to his former beloved Europa, who once lived with this father of the gods on Crete. The reason they had gone there is shrouded in mythology. The Greeks assumed that Europa was the daughter of King Tyrros. When she was a girl, and playing with her animals, Zeus had come by and fallen for her. Zeus changed himself into a young and handsome bull, and Europa had gently got up on his back. This bull must have been another kind of amphibious machine, for hardly had Europa taken her seat than it plunged into the sea and swam with its lovely cargo to Crete. There, I assume, it turned back into a man, who made love to Europa. But gods are not constant in love; divine business required Zeus to leave Crete, and he gave Talos to his beloved, to guard the island from undesired visitors.
Although Talos was invulnerable, he did have a weak spot. On his ankle was a sinew covered in tanned skin, and under it lay a bronze nail or a golden screw. If this bolt was opened, then colorless—other writers say white or festering—blood poured out, and Talos would be incapacitated.
Jason and his Argonauts tried to approach Crete, but Talos spied the Argo and began to fire upon it. Once more it was Medeia, by now Jason’s wife, who suggested rowing out of range. She said that she knew a magic way of putting Talos out of action. Apollonius tells us:
They would gladly have sailed to Crete, but Talos, the steel man, prevented the noble ones tying up on shore with the dew still on their mast. For he hurled stones at them. Talos was one of the iron race of the earthly ones… a half god, a half man. Jupiter gave him to Europa to defend the island. Three times in each year he circled Crete with feet of iron. Ironclad and invincible was his body, but he had a vein of blood on the ball of his foot under the ankle, lightly covered by skin. This is where death lurked close to his life.55
The Argonauts quickly rowed away from the bombardment and out to the open sea. Medeia began to recite magic spells and to call upon the spirits of the abyss, which, once they have been called up, split the air. Then she cast a spell on Talos’ eyes so that imaginary pictures filled his gaze. Irritated, Talos knocked the sensitive place on his ankle against a cliff, and blood flowed out of the wound like molten lead:
Although he was made of iron, he succumbed to the magic…so he knocked his ankle against a sharp stone, and a sap like molten lead flowed out of him. He could no longer stand upright and fell over, just as a pine tree falls from the summit of a mountain…. Then he picked himself up again and stood upon his huge feet—but not for long for he fell to the ground again with a mighty crash.56
Talos tumbled helplessly back and forth, trying to right himself, but then lost his balance altogether and plunged with a horrific noise into the sea.
Now the Argo came to Crete’s shores and could anchor safely. But the Argonauts were longing for home by now, and after all they had a trophy to show—the Golden Fleece. After a short sojourn on Crete they headed off again to sea, and suddenly everything around them became dark. No star was visible any longer, and they seemed to be in some sort of underworld. The air was black as pitch—no spark of light, and no glint of moon. Jason begged Apollo not to leave them now, so near to their destination; he promised to offer many gifts in the temples of their homeland. Apollo shot down from the sky and lit up the whole surroundings with bright arrows. In their light the Argonauts caught sight of a small island, close to which they anchored. They set up a holy place in honor of Apollo, and called the islet Anaphe.
The rest of the story is quickly told.
The Argo sailed past several Greek islands and reached the harbor of Pagasai, where their journey had begun, without further problem. Jason and his crew were given a heroes’ welcome. Then follow a few family intrigues. Jason is said to have turned his attentions to another young lady, behavior which his wife Medeia frowned upon. She poisoned her children, put a curse on Jason’s girlfriend, and the poor fellow threw himself on his sword in desperation. So our divine hero ends the story rather unfittingly with suicide.
And what happened with the Golden Fleece? Below what castle or fortress does the skin of the flying ram lie buried? Who used it? Did it reappear again? In which museum can one admire it? The greatest voyage of ancient times took place because of the Golden Fleece. The thing must have been of enormous value to its new owner. But there is nothing more to be found in ancient literature; the trail of the Golden Fleece disappears in the mists of time.
Odyssey of the Gods Page 3
