and slaughtered it, proclaiming:
“Helpful god,
2060whichever power it was that has appeared
upon this shorefront, whether holy Triton
Soothsayer of the Sea or Nereus
or Phorcys (as your ocean-dwelling daughters
address you), please be favorable and grant us
2065a heartwarming conclusion to our journey.”
While he prayed, he slit the throat and dropped
the victim from the stern into the lake.
Triton in answer surfaced, undisguised
and in his sacred person, from the depths.
2070 (1604)As when a trainer who has led a stallion
onto the broad arena of the games
takes bushy mane in hand and jogs beside him,
and the horse obeys his master, head
upreared with mettle, and the foam-flecked bit
2075clinks as he champs it side to side, so Triton
took hold of hollow Argo’s sturdy stern post
and pushed her toward the sea.
His upper parts—
head, back, and torso—perfectly resembled
the gorgeous bodies of the blessed gods,
2080but from the abdomen on down extended
the forking tail of an aquatic creature.
He slapped the surface of the lake with fins
that, farther out, divided into spines
curved like the tapers of a crescent moon.
2085 (1617)He pushed the ship a good long ways, launched her
across the surface, then abruptly plunged
into the depths. As they beheld, up close,
this awesome miracle, the heroes broke
into a cheer.
There is a stretch of coast
2090known as the Argo’s Harbor to this day.
Signs of the ship are there, as well as shrines
set up to honor Triton and Poseidon
because the heroes rested there that day.
At dawn, a healthy Zephyr in their sails,
2095they cruised along, keeping the desert coastline
off to their right. Next morning they discerned
a jutting headland and the gulf that stretches
beyond it. All at once the Zephyr died.
A stiff south wind had risen, and their hearts
2100 (1628)rallied before it. Once the sun had set
and Hesperus the herdsman’s star had risen
(the one that brings tired plowmen home from work),
then, when the evening breezes died away,
they furled the sails, stepped the tall mast down,
2105and heaved upon the sanded oars all night
and through the day and still were rowing, rowing
when daylight came around again.
From there
the distant, rugged island of Carpathus
received them and from there they had intended
2110to cross to Crete, which is of greater size
than all the other islands in the sea.
Talus, however, stood there on the shore—
a giant wholly made of bronze. He broke
sharp rocks from jagged cliffs and held them up
2115 (1640)as threats to keep the Minyans from mooring
once they had sailed into the bay of Dicte.
Long, long ago ash trees had given birth
to men of bronze, and Talus was the last
still living in the age of demigods.
2120The son of Cronus gave him to Europa
to guard the island. Three times every day
he strode the coastline on his brazen feet.
All of his limbs and body were of bronze
impenetrable, all except the vein
2125that carried blood down through the ankle tendon.
The tender film across it meant the limit
of life and death for him. The heroes, though,
subdued already by their own exhaustion,
quickly rowed the ship away from land
2130 (1651)in terror. And they would have fled from Crete
in a distress of thirst and agony
had not Medea said as they were leaving:
“Listen. I think that I can kill that man
all by myself, whoever he might be,
2135yes, even if his body is entirely
made out of bronze, so long as he is not
invulnerable. Come, then, friends, and hold
the Argo steady here outside his range
until he yields and tumbles down before me.”
2140So said Medea, and they worked the oars
to hold the ship steady outside his range,
and everyone was eager to discover
what sort of spell she would employ. She draped
a doubled purple veil before her face
2145 (1664)and mounted to the deck with Jason holding
her hand and guiding her between the benches.
Once there, she sang hypnotic lullabies,
praising the heart-devouring Fates of Death,
Hades’ intrepid monster hounds, who range
2150abroad in air to hunt the living down.
In her entreaty she pronounced their titles
thrice in incantation, thrice in prayer.
Then, putting on a wicked cast of mind,
she hypnotized the eyes of brazen Talus
2155and held him helpless in her hostile glare.
Grinding her teeth in earnest anger, then,
she hurled homicidal ghosts his way.
Father Zeus, profound astonishment
has stormed my mind—to think that death can come
2160 (1674)not only through disease and injury,
but people can undo us from afar,
just as that man, though made of bronze, surrendered
and fell down underneath the far-flung onslaught
of that ingenious conjurer, Medea.
2165Just as he heaved a stone to block the heroes
from reaching anchorage, he scraped his ankle
across a jagged rock, and all the ichor
drained from him in a rush like molten lead.
No, he did not long stand astride the outcrop
2170but like a massive tree atop a mountain,
a Cretan pine that woodcutters had only
cut half through with their axes and abandoned
when they started back down through the forest,
and then the breezes shake it in the night
2175 (1686)and then it snaps off at the trunk and comes
rumbling earthward, so did Talus totter
this way and that way on his stubborn legs
and then at last lost balance, toppled sideways,
and landed with a crash as loud as thunder.
2180So in the end they spent the night on Crete.
When daylight came again, they built a shrine
in honor of Athena the Minoan,
drew water, and embarked, eager to row
quickly beyond the Salmonian cape.
2185But as they crossed the spacious Cretan Sea,
a deep and nightlike darkness called the “Shroud”
swept down and frightened them. No constellations,
no moonbeams penetrate its deathlike blackness.
No, it was like the depths fell from the sky
2190 (1698)or an abyss had risen from the depths,
and they themselves no longer knew if they
were on the waves or down in Hades’ hall.
Left without options, they could only trust
the sea, wherever it might steer their course.
2195So Jason raised his palms and cried Apollo!
Apollo! summoning the god to aid them,
and tears were falling from him in his grief.
He vowed to offer many gifts at Pytho,
more at Ortygia, and at Amyclae
2200countless gift
s. And you, O son of Leto,
ready of ear, came swiftly down from heaven
and settled on the Melanteian rocks
that crop out of the ocean. Perched upon
one of the pair of summits there, you brandished
2205 (1709)in your right hand a golden bow from which
a dazzling light shot out in all directions.
A tiny island then appeared to them,
one of the Sporades beside the small
Isle of Hippuris. There they dropped anchor
2210and waited for the light of dawn. At daybreak
they cordoned off a plot of land as sacred
in honor of the god and built a shrine
under the shade of trees. They also coined
a title there, Apollo God of Radiance,
2215because his beams were radiant, and they named
that barren isle Epiphany because
the god revealed it to them, like a vision,
when they were sunk in fear.
The men could only
offer the god the paltry sorts of things
2220 (1720)sailors marooned on desert shores could offer,
so, when Medea’s Phaeacian handmaids
saw them decanting liquid offerings
of water on the blazing altar fire,
they couldn’t keep the laughter in their chests
2225since they had only ever seen expensive
ox offerings at Alcinoös’ palace.
Delighted by their taunts, the men responded
with crude suggestions, and delightful insults
and sweet harassment sparkled back and forth
2230among them. So, because of all this humor,
the women on that island to this day
fling naughty innuendos at their men
whenever in their holy sacrifices
they toast Apollo God of Radiance
2235 (1730)and Guardian of the Isle Epiphany.
When they had loosed the cables, and the weather
was fair, Euphemus happened to recall
a dream that he had dreamed one night, a dream
sent down to him by Maia’s famous son:
2240it seemed that he was clutching to his breast
a clod of earth, a sacred gift, and white
droplets of milk were somehow nursing it,
and from the clod, small as it was, emerged
what seemed a maiden. Ravenous desire
2245took hold of him, and he made love to it
but afterward cried out in lamentation—
he felt as if he had deflowered the daughter
he had been nourishing with his own milk.
Soon, though, the figure said to reassure him:
2250 (1741)“Dear friend, I am the child of Triton, nurse
of all your heirs-to-be, and not your daughter,
no, Libya and Triton are my parents.
Please hand me over to the Nereids
beside the island of Epiphany.
2255I later shall emerge into the sunlight
and be the grounds for all of your descendants.”
Euphemus had retained this night encounter
within his memory and now divulged it
to Jason. Jason thought the dream resembled
2260an utterance of the Archer-King Apollo,
and he himself proclaimed the prophecy:
“Dear friend, a glorious destiny awaits you.
Once you have thrown this clod into the sea,
the gods will make an island out of it,
2265 (1752)and there your children’s children shall reside.
The sea god Triton graced you with the earth,
a piece of Libya, as a parting gift—
it was none other of the deathless gods
than he who gave it to you when he met us.”
2270So Jason read the omen, and Euphemus
did not invalidate his friend’s prediction.
No, giddy with the prophecy, he flung
the clod of earth into the sea and from it
emerged the sacred island of Callista,
2275the nursemaid of Euphemus’ descendants.
In former days they lived on Sintian Lemnos
but, driven thence, they settled down in Sparta
as hearth friends. Then, once they had moved from
Sparta,
Theras, Autesion’s distinguished son,
2280 (1763)guided them to this island of Callista
and named it Thera after his own name.
But all this happened generations after
Euphemus.
After this they swiftly left
the great expanse of sea astern and landed
2285on Aegina. At once they set about
a friendly contest over fetching water
to find out who could draw it and return it
first to the Argo, since the stiff tailwind
and hope for home were urgent. To this day
2290the Myrmidons compete with big jugs full
of water on their shoulders, sprinting round
a track, light-footed, seeking victory.
O heroes, offspring of the blessed gods,
look warmly on this work, and may my song
2295 (1774)grow sweeter year by year for men to sing.
No further trials befell you once you sailed
from Aegina, no other gales opposed you,
so I have now arrived at your adventure’s
glorious conclusion. After gladly passing
2300the land of Cecrops, Aulis in Euboea,
and the Opuntian cities of the Locrians,
you landed on the beach of Pagasae.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
fr. fragment
frr. fragments
Gr. Greek
Pf. R. Pfeiffer, ed. Callimachus. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949–53.
PMG D. L. Page, ed. Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
V. E.-M. Voigt, ed. Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta. Amsterdam: Plak and Van Gennep, 1971.
W. M. L. West, ed. Iambi et Elegi Graeci. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
BOOK 1
1.1 from you, Phoebus Apollo: The Argonautica begins and ends (Argonautica 4.2293–2302) with poetic gestures that mark it as a traditional Greek hymn, one of the many indications of generic complexity of the poem.
1.7–8 Pelias had received / a prophecy: The background to the poem is given as a very short summary, set between parts of the proem: a feature of Hellenistic poetry is variation of emphasis.
1.28 Past poets: Interestingly, we do not have any evidence about whom the poet refers to here, whether individual poets, poems, or a larger poetic tradition.
1.34 surrogates of my song: One of the most enigmatic and debated phrases in the poem. It is clear, however, that the poet is in some way repositioning himself in relation to the Muses, traditionally figured as the direct source of the poet’s artistic inspiration, as the opening lines of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey both demonstrate.
1.35 Orpheus is the first: Catalog is a traditional feature of the epic genre. Whereas the Catalog of Ships in Homer’s Iliad assembles multiple leaders and peoples, Apollonius’ catalog of heroes figures individuals who man one ship, the Argo.
1.36 Calliope: The Muse frequently figured as the patron of poetic song, Calliope appears here in the context of the epic narrative as the mother of Orpheus, often thought to be the first poet.
1.43 still today: A standard feature of Hellenistic poetry is the aetion, or “origin” of, among other things, contemporary natural phenomena, animal behavior, and cult practices. Apollonius’ contemporary Callimachus composed a four-book poem, his Aetia, that interweaves a series of individual etiological narratives. There are many aetia in Apollonius’ poem.
1.90 he sank into the earth: One of many fantastical moments in the poem. The Argonautica is something of a combination of the h
eroic and the fantastical (rather like the narrative of Odysseus in the Odyssey).
1.95 the sacred signs exhibited by birds: Augury through reading the flight or sounds of birds was a standard practice in Greco-Roman antiquity. A recently discovered papyrus roll of short poems attributed to Apollonius’ near-contemporary poet Posidippus includes a section of poems on bird omens.
1.121–22 Libya, a land / as far from Colchis: A possible learned double entendre, as the Colchians were sometimes thought to be originally Egyptian (Herodotus 2). The image may be a subtle allusion to the extent of the Ptolemaic Empire at the time of Ptolemy II.
1.135 Peleus: The father of Achilles, hero of the Iliad. An ongoing leitmotif of the poem is that the legend of the Argonautica occurs chronologically before the Trojan War, while Apollonius’ poem is composed many generations later than the Iliad.
1.165 the Argo was the most remarkable: The construction of the Argo, the story not told in the opening of the poem, is invoked repeatedly in the course of the hexameter narrative.
1.190 Hylas: The hero’s attendant is to be the cause of Heracles’ separation from the expedition. The reference here, juxtaposed to that of Heracles’ taskmaster Eurystheus, creates an ironic foreboding of what is to happen later in Argonautica 1.
1.288 offspring of Hephaestus: Hephaestus’ hobbled feet are the source of laughter among the gods at the conclusion of the first book of the Iliad. Hephaestus’ hobbled feet are a sign of his parents’ wrath, those of Palaemonius rather one of the distinction of a divine father.
1.312 a wonder to behold: The Argonauts include among their number both the heroic and the fantastical, as befits a ship that has the power of speech.
1.319 Argus: With the shipwright of Athena, we return to the launching point of the catalog, the note that the poet would not sing of the ship’s building, but of its heroes.
1.323 “Minyans”: Apollonius attempts here to clarify a problem in ancient genealogy regarding early southern Thessaly and northern Boeotia, to which he returns twice later in the poem, giving two other explanations. We do not know that all three of these explanations carried equal weight for the poem’s audience. This one, that most of the heroes are descended from the shadowy figure Minyas, seems exaggerated (some certainly are: that Alcimide was descended from Minyas is found in Stesichorus).
1.378 As a lonely maiden: Apollonian similes are a fascinating enhanced development of Homeric ones, often with unusual implications within the surrounding narrative. Alcimede, through the possible loss of her son, risks being left a helpless and mistreated dependent.
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