Jason and the Argonauts (22 page)

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

1535
of 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

1540
had 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

1550
his 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.

1555
He 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

1565
through 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

1570
beneath 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.

1580
The 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.

1585
Next 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

1595
to 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

1600
greenery 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

1610
the 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

1615
that 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

1625
in 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

1630
from 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,

1640
they 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,

1645
on 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

1655
helm 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,

1660
muzzle 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

1670
shooting 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

1675
and 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,

1685
his 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.

1690
Soon 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

1700
eddies 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

1705
boulders 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

1715
the 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

1720
and 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

1730
and 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,

1735
and 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,

1745
valiant, 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

1750
mangled 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,

1760
the 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

1765
and 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.

1775
Such ruin,

one can imagine, pelting Zeus would wreak

upon a vineyard—nurslings sprawling, stalks

snapped at the root, and so much labor wasted,