1510to fetch the seed—Telamon, dear to Ares,
and Hermes’ famous son Aethalides.
Nor did this embassy set out in vain:
when they arrived haughty Aeëtes gave them
the dire fangs of the Aonian serpent
they needed for the contest.
1515 (1178)While in Hellas
searching for Europa, Cadmus found
this serpent watching over Ares’ spring
in ancient Thebes. He slew it there and founded
a town at the direction of the heifer
1520that gave him guidance, as the Lord Apollo
had prophesied. Tritonian Athena
knocked the fangs out of the serpent’s jaws
and gave half to Aeëtes, half to Cadmus
the son of Agenor, the monster’s slayer,
1525who planted them in the Aonian plain
and took as citizens those earthborn men
left over after Ares harvested
the others with his spear.
Aeëtes gave them
the serpent’s fangs to carry to the ship
1530 (1189)and did so gladly since he never thought
Jason would actually complete the labor,
even if he somehow yoked the oxen.
The sun god Helius was gliding under
the twilit earth beyond the farthest summits
1535of Aethiopia, and Night was yoking
her mares, and all the men had made their beds
beside the Argo’s cables—all but Jason.
Once the Greater Bear, the constellation
Helica, had descended, and the air
1540had gone completely still beneath the heavens,
he slipped off like some calculating thief
to a deserted spot with the supplies
he needed. He had spent the whole day fretting
over the details. Argus had already
1545 (1199)brought in an ewe and fresh milk from the sheepfold,
and Jason fetched the rest out of the Argo.
When he had found a spot out of the way
and free of traffic, a deserted heath
beneath an open sky, he duly bathed
1550his supple body in a sacred stream,
then wrapped around his limbs a pure-black mantle,
the one that Lemnian Hypsipyle
had given him as a memento of
innumerable vehement caresses.
1555He dug a pit, a cubit wide and deep,
placed logs and sticks therein, and lit a bonfire,
then slit a sheep’s throat over it and duly
laid on the victim. Once the fire was burning
solidly upward from the woodpile’s base,
1560 (1210)he poured a mix of liquid offerings
upon it, begging Brimo Hecate
please to assist him in the coming trial.
After the prayer, he backed up without turning.
The awesome goddess heard him and ascended
1565through deep moist caverns to accept his gifts,
and horrid serpents crowned her head, with oak leaves
mixed in among them, and the glow of torches
gleamed far and wide, and hellhounds howled keenly
around her, and the swampy meadow trembled
1570beneath her footsteps. All the moorland nymphs,
the ones who traipse in rings around the flats
of Amaranthian Phasis, trilled and shrieked.
Though awe instantly gripped the son of Aeson,
he never once turned round and looked behind him,
1575 (1222)and so his feet returned him to his comrades.
The Early-Rising Dawn, by then, had climbed
over the snowcapped peaks of the Caucasus.
Aeëtes, meanwhile, round his torso bound
a hard breastplate, a special gift from Ares.
1580The god, in fact, had worn this very armor
when he had cut Phlegraean Mimas down.
Then King Aeëtes put his helmet on,
a four-plumed marvel, golden and as bright as
sunlight emerging from the River Ocean.
1585Next he took up a buckler thick with bull hide
and formidable spear. None of the heroes
could have withstood it, no, not since the hero
Heracles left the roster. He alone
could have opposed that mighty shaft in battle.
1590 (1235)Phaëthon was waiting near at hand
holding a tight-knit chariot and team
of fleet-foot stallions for the king to mount.
Aeëtes soon got in, received the reins,
and took the broad cart road out of the city
1595to reach the field of contest. Countless rushing
citizens thronged around him. Think of how
the god Poseidon travels in his war car
to Isthmia to watch the sacred games,
or Lerna’s spring, Taenarus or the holy
1600greenery of Hyantian Onchestus
before proceeding to Calaurea,
Haemonian Petra, forested Geraestus—
that’s how Aeëtes looked, the Colchian chieftain,
riding behind a team of chargers.
Jason,
1605 (1246)meanwhile, obeyed the precepts of Medea,
steeped the magic herbs and laved his shield,
sword, and sturdy spear with the concoction.
When his companions pounded on the spear
to test its fortitude, they failed to blemish
1610the metal even a little—it emerged
fresh and undented from their mighty blows.
When Idas son of Aphareus wildly
hacked at the spear butt with his giant broadsword,
the blade rebounded, and the clang resembled
1615that of a hammer that has struck an anvil,
and all the heroes whooped with ecstasy
before the trial.
As soon as Jason rubbed
his body with the salve, he felt divine
and boundless vigor welling up within him.
1620 (1258)His hands were tingling, quivering with vim.
Think of a warhorse eager for a fight,
the way it neighs and stamps the ground, the way
it rears its neck and pricks its ears, exulting—
that’s how the son of Aeson looked, exulting
1625in the excitement of his newfound strength.
The way he ran around, kicked up his heels,
and waved his ash-wood spear and big bronze shield,
you would have thought of winter lightning flashing
against a pitch-black sky, the bright forks shooting
1630from clouds that bring a thunderstorm in tow.
No longer wary of the trial, the heroes
took their places at the rowing benches
and fought the stream. The plain of Ares lay
upriver on the far side of the city
1635 (1272)as distant from them as a chariot
must travel from the starting line to reach
the turning post, when a deceased king’s kinsmen
put on games for charioteers and sprinters
to do him honor. When the heroes landed,
1640they found the Colchians sitting at the foot
of the Caucasus while Aeëtes wheeled
his chariot along the riverbank.
Soon as his shipmates bound the hawsers, Jason
vaulted ashore and swaggered to the lists,
1645on one arm shield and spear and in the other
the burnished bowl of a bronze helmet, brimful
of jagged fangs. Save for these armaments,
he was all nude, like Ares, some would say,
or Lord Apollo of the golden sword.
1650 (1284)His sweeping survey of the fallows found
a bronze yoke and a plow compact as iron,
its haft and
harrow hewn out of one trunk.
Nimbly he jogged out to the plow and yoke,
planted the spear butt in the soil, propped the
1655helm up against the shaft. Then, stripping down
to shield alone, he backtracked through a haze
of exhalation countless cloven hoofprints
until he struck on something like a burrow
or buried stall. Thence the bulls burst abruptly,
1660muzzle and nostril of a sudden scorching
the air around him. Soldiers on the sidelines
recoiled in terror, but not Jason, no—
he spread his feet for leverage and fought them,
taking the shock as a rock headland greets
1665 (1295)the big waves rising from a sudden squall.
Roaring, they stabbed and slashed with brutish horns,
ramming his buckler with their brows, but Jason
never retreated, never gave an inch.
Think of a blacksmith’s bull-hide bellows, now
1670shooting a spire of cinders through a vent
while stirring up the deadly blaze, now wheezing,
now still, and all the while infernal hiss
and flicker issue from the furnace grate—
panting and heaving thus, the bulls snuffed thrice
1675and bellowed, and a brimstone blast consumed him,
calamitous but for the maiden’s salve.
He gripped the tip of a right horn and yanked
masterfully, muscles taut, until the neck
had met the yoke. A quick kick followed after,
1680 (1308)foot against brazen fetlock, and the beast
was hunkered on its knees. A second kick
crumpled the other. Casting shield aside,
he bore, head-on, a swirling ball of flame
by gripping earth more widely with his feet,
1685his left hand and his right holding the bulls
bent over both on buckled knees.
Meanwhile
Aeëtes gaped at Jason’s fortitude
and Castor and his brother Polydeuces
played their part and dragged the yoke afield.
1690Soon as the bulls’ hump necks were harnessed, Jason
fed the bronze brace beam between the team
and drove its beveled end into the yoke loop.
The brothers shrank back from the flames, but Jason
took up his buckler, slung it over his shoulder,
1695 (1321)and cradled in his arm the helm brimful
of jagged fangs. Like a Pelasgic farmer,
he pricked the oxen’s haunches with his spear
and steered the stubborn plow unbreakable.
The bulls still mettlesome, still spitting out
1700eddies of frustrate flame, a roaring sounded
loud as the lightning-frazzled gusts that warn
old tars to reef the mainsail. Soon enough
they lumbered forward at the spear’s insistence;
soon enough the hoof-drawn harrow cleft
1705boulders and left them crumbled in its wake.
Clods with the girth of soldiers loudly ruptured
and turned to tilth. Feet planted on the draw bar,
he sledded after, and each backward toss
sent fangs some distance from him, lest the rows
1710 (1338)of earthborn soldiers rush him unprepared.
And still the bulls leaned on their brazen hooves
and lumbered forward.
At the hour when elsewhere
the third part of a workday still remained
and plodding plowmen prayed aloud that soon
1715the sweet hour of unyoking would arrive,
here was a field already tilled and sown,
and Jason shooed a tame team back to pasture.
Since he could see no earthborn soldiers sprouting
out of the soil, he paused to catch his breath
1720and walked back to the Argo where his mates
gathered around him, whistling and whooping.
He scooped the river with his helm, drank deeply,
and slaked his thirst. Stretching from side to side
to keep his muscles’ suppleness, he puffed
1725 (1350)his chest with lust for battle—rippling, ready,
keen as a boar that whets its tusks on oak
while slaver dribbles earthward from its snout.
Now in the god of slaughter’s garden sprang
an army nursed in earth—all rounded shields
1730and tufted spears and crested helmets bristling;
and from the soil through middle air the glint
shot to the gods. As, when a heavy snowfall
has covered all the fields, fresh gusts will scatter
the clouds in patches from a moonless night,
1735and crowds of congregated constellations
light up the darkness from both sky and snow—
so rose the soldiers from the furrows, sparkling.
Jason obeyed the mandates of the maiden,
the clever one. He lifted from the field
1740 (1365)a great round rock, the war god’s shot to toss,
a mass four strapping laborers would struggle
to budge in vain. Raising it without strain,
he spun round and around and cast it far
into their midst, then under his buckler crouched,
1745valiant, in hiding. The Colchians went wild,
roaring as hoarsely as the sea swell roars
on jagged cliffs. Aeëtes stood there dumbstruck,
dreading what would come. The earthborn soldiers
like famished mongrels snapping for a morsel
1750mangled each other round the boulder, falling
to Mother Earth beneath each other’s spears
like oaks or pines a leveling wind lays low.
Then, as a fiery meteor shoots from heaven
trailing a wake of light (a signal always
1755 (1379)ominous to the men who see its brilliance
separate the night), the son of Aeson
dashed on the earthborn ones with naked sword,
slashed here and there and harvested them all—
the seedlings grown as far as chest and back,
1760the waist-high, the knee-deep, those freshly afoot
and rushing to the fray—all fell beneath him.
As, when a border war has broken out,
a man who fears that foes will torch his yield
seizes upon a freshly whetted scythe
1765and runs to reap the too-green grain before
the proper time has parched it to perfection,
Jason mowed the growth of soldiers. Blood
flowed in the furrows like torrential flooding,
and still they fell—some, stumbling forward, bit
1770 (1393)the fine-ground, fang-fomenting dirt, some backward
tumbled or wallowed on an arm or flank
like beached sea beasts; a hundred more, hamstrung
before they first took steps upon the earth,
slumped over just as far with drooping head
as they had sprouted into air.
1775Such ruin,
one can imagine, pelting Zeus would wreak
upon a vineyard—nurslings sprawling, stalks
snapped at the root, and so much labor wasted,
a crushing heartbreak and dejection pressing
1780the vintner who had set the slips himself.
In such wise, heavy grief of mind came over
Aeëtes, and he turned homeward to Colchis
together with his Colchians contriving
how he might best contest the strangers’ claim.
1785The sun went down, and Jason’s work was done.
BOOK 4
Now Zeus’ daughter, deathless Muse, describe
for me the Colchian maiden’s wiles and worries.
The mind within me spins in speechlessness,
wondering whether I should call the impulse
5that drove her to forsake the Colchian people
a wild obsession’s lovesick injury
or headlong panic running from disgrace.
Up in the palace all night long Aeëtes
worked with his council on a foolproof plan
10to catch the heroes. He was vengeance-hearted,
wildly incensed about the painful contest,
but never for a moment thought his daughters
had worked to bring about the stranger’s triumph.
Hera, meanwhile, had pierced Medea’s heart
15 (12)with poignant dread. The girl was shaking like
a nimble fawn that baying hounds have trapped,
trembling, in a densely wooded thicket.
All in a flash she sensed the aid she gave
the foreigners had not escaped her father;
20her cup of woe would soon be overflowing;
surely her handmaids would divulge the crime.
Her eyes were full of fire, her ears abuzz
with trepidation. Time and time again
she gripped her throat, time and again pulled out
25her hair, and moaned in sorry misery.
She would have drained a vial of poison, died
right then and there before her proper time,
and ruined all of Hera’s plans, had not
the goddess driven her to run away,
30 (22)in utter terror, with the sons of Phrixus.
Once her fluttering heart had calmed, she poured
the potions from her lap into the casket.
She kissed her bed good-bye and kissed the frame
around the double doors and stroked the walls.
35She clipped a lock and left it for her mother
as a memento of her maidenhood,
then, sobbing, brought out heartfelt lamentation:
“I’m going, Mother, but have left this tress
to take my place when I am gone—farewell.
40Farewell, Chalciope. Farewell, old home.
Stranger, I wish the sea had torn you up
before you ever reached the land of Colchis.”
So she spoke, and from her eyelids tears
came pouring down. Picture a girl that fate
45 (35)has torn out of a wealthy home and homeland,
how, since she is unused to heavy labor
and ignorant of what slaves do and suffer,
she goes abroad to serve a mistress’
relentless whims in terror—that’s the way
50lovely Medea crept out of the palace.
The latches on the doors undid themselves
Jason and the Argonauts (Penguin Classics) Page 18
