Jason and the Argonauts (31 page)

as it is trending to the north. As soon as

the coast retreats and slopes the other way,

cut seaward, and your journey will be safe.

Proceed in joy. As for the work involved,

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there should be no complaints when limbs endowed

with youthfulness are toiling at a task.”

So, in a friendly way, he gave directions,

and they embarked at once, giddy to row

out of the lake at last. As they were speeding

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eagerly onward, Triton seized the tripod

and seemed to disappear into the lake,

so swiftly did he vanish with the gift.

Their hearts exulted at the hopeful omen—

a blessed god had stopped to aid their journey.

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So all the men urged Jason to select

the finest of the flock and sacrifice it

and thus propitiate the god. He picked out

a sheep at once, held it above the stern,

and slaughtered it, proclaiming:

“Helpful god,

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whichever 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

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a 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.

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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

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clinks 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,

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but 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.

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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

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known 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,

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they 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

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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,

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and 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

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to 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

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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.

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The 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

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that 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

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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,

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yes, 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.”

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So 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

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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

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abroad 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

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and 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

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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.

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Just 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

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but 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

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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.

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So 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.

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But 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

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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.

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So 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

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countless gifts. 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

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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

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and 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,

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because 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

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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

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since 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

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among 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

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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:

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it 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

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took 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:

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“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.

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I 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

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an 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,

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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.”

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So 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,

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the 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

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on 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

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the 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.