Jason and the Argonauts (36 page)

4.149–50
sacrificed / the gilded miracle
:
This image recalls the final one on Jason's cloak in Book 1, where the golden ram appeared to be speaking to Phrixus.

4.172
a pile of smoldering wood
:
This simile recalls the one in
Argonautica
3 that compared Medea's initial passion to the fire a workwoman lights at night. The lyric-heroic division again comes forward; here Medea, in heroic mode, is subduing a dragon.

4.182
Jason, terrified
:
Jason's heroism is once again complicated by Medea's own superhuman action.

4.203
Just as a maiden
:
This brilliant simile is very revealing about Jason in multiple ways. The goal of the
Argo
's voyage is the “heroic” obtaining of a magical object, yet this is actually done by a woman, a local princess, through magic. The simile highlights Jason as object of desire, yet as a young girl; it both casts light on a new aspect of male sexuality (object of desire) and problematizes Jason as hero.

4.244
“infamy of Greece”
:
Hellas,
“Greece,” here is worth noting. The term, rare in Homer, does not appear in Homer's poetry for the conceptual space “Greece.” As Thucydides famously observes (1.3), Homer does not make the distinction Greek vs. Barbarian. This marks Apollonius' poem, albeit before the Trojan War in mythological time, as a latter-day epic.

4.257
as thickly as the dead leaves
:
The simile is in part prophetic, as the Colchians who subsequently embark will not return to Colchis.

4.267
His son Absyrtus
:
With the reference to Helius a few lines earlier, we again recall the image of Phaëthon, who proves unequal to driving the chariot of his father Helius, as Absyrtus will not survive the attempt to replace Aeëtes at the head of the Colchian force that pursues Jason and Medea.

4.298
Holy dread prevents me
:
This is a reference to
aporreta,
elements of ritual that must be kept secret.
Aporreta
are a typical feature of initiation rituals, and also of magic and witchcraft.

4.307
but what that route would be
:
This is the key moment that allows for Apollonius' new return route for the Argonauts.

4.321
the Apidanian Arcadians
:
The Apidanians appear in the opening section of Callimachus'
Hymn to Zeus.
Callimachus' narrative of Zeus' birth in Arcadia is reflected at several moments in this passage of Apollonius.

4.396–97
ever had observed / seagoing vessels
:
There may be an implied reference here to one tradition about the
Argo,
that it was the first boat.

4.442
“Jason, what is this plot”
:
Medea's speech here appears to recall, at several points, Medea's denunciation of Jason in Euripides'
Medea
at lines 465–519 of that drama.

4.469
wretch
:
The Greek term s
ketlios
, “wretch,” is an erotic leitmotif of this book, culminating in the address to Eros at line 565.

4.486
Themis
:
Themis is the divinity who oversees what is morally right, such as the validity of oaths.

4.533
the sacred raiment of Hypsipyle
:
Once again a piece of clothing is the instrument that instigates action, and this is again a gift.

4.565
Wretched Eros
:
The apostrophe of Eros is the culmination of the theme, one that pervades the second half of the
Argonautica,
of love leading mortals to commit wrongful acts.

4.586
as a little boy
:
This simile highlights Absyrtus' vulnerability, particularly at the hands of his sorceress sister.

4.605
smeared his sister's mantle
:
Murder of the innocent results in
miasma,
or pollution, and the potential for revenge by the Fury that arises from the blood wrongly spilled. Here Medea's being bespattered by her brother's blood (to take part in the killing of a sibling is a particularly grievous sin) is emblematic of the process of guilt and punishment imagined in Greek religion.

4.611
and spat the taint out
:
A widespread belief in many cultures that licking the blood of the murdered will quiet a potentially vengeful spirit.

4.640
people orphaned of a leader
:
These lines are in part reminiscent of the situation in the
Iliad
upon Achilles' withdrawal from fighting. Not by chance are these lines spoken by Peleus—Achilles is his son.

4.691
Heracles, you see
:
Once again Heracles appears on the
Argonautica
's periphery. The passage brings together two episodes in Heracles' life, which are perhaps best known now from two different fifth-century Athenian tragedies. One is Sophocles'
Women of Trachis,
in which Hyllus figures as an adult and wherein Deianeira, Heracles' last wife, in an attempt to recover her husband's love, is the accidental cause of his death. The other is Euripides'
Madness of Heracles,
which tells of Heracles' killing his wife, Megara, and their three children.

4.707
a grazing herd of cattle
:
There is a distant recollection here of one of the scenes on Jason's cloak in Book 1. All of the scenes on the cloak are recalled, in one way or another, in the course of the poem.

4.708
Come, tell me, goddesses
:
This new appeal at this point in the poem is a marked new beginning. Here Apollonius takes the Argonauts beyond the traditional narrative of their return (“so far abroad,” line 714, is emblematic of this new narrative).

4.736
queen Calypso
:
Calypso in the
Odyssey
harbors Odysseus at the end of his first attempted return to Ithaca from Troy; we find him there at the opening of the poem. As the point from which he comes to the Phaeacians and begins his reintegration into mortal society, Calypso comes at the end of a series of marvelous figures, several of whom we will now encounter in
Argonautica
4.

4.745
one of the
Argo
's beams
:
Although Apollonius declared at the beginning of the
Argonautica
that he would not narrate the building of the
Argo,
in fact the theme repeatedly resurfaces in the course of the poem, thus allowing for a different, more episodic than linear narration of what the poet himself claims to have been a theme already much treated by earlier poets.

4.765
Phaëthon
:
Phaëthon is a son of Helius, and so brother to both Aeëtes and Circe. On the one hand, the Argonauts are once again traveling by the visible remains of earlier mythology. At the same time, by evoking Phaëthon in Italy, Apollonius gives a kind of legitimacy to this part of the poem, where in fact he is traversing new terrain.

4.774
the Heliades
:
It is worth noting that Ovid, in the second book of his
Metamorphoses,
has Phaëthon, the Heliades, and Coronis in this sequence, although there are other figures as well.

4.850
because a dream had troubled her
:
Once again Apollonius makes use of the Nausicaa episode in the sixth book of the
Odyssey,
here bringing it together with the Circe episode in
Odyssey
10. A dream is the cause of Nausicaa going to the river to wash the household clothing, and by the river she meets with Odysseus. Circe in
Odyssey
10 lives apart in a forest, surrounded by animals into which she has transformed various mortal men. She fears Odysseus' resistance to her magic and enables his return. Here Circe is Medea's aunt, Jason has a foreign princess with him, and they are in need of ritual purification for a murder they have committed.

4.862–63
some mélange / of limbs
:
These are Empedoclean forms, a sort of primordial collage of parts, not entirely formed. Empedocles' influence is felt elsewhere in the poem, particularly in the ball that Aphrodite gives to Eros at the opening of
Argonautica
3.

4.882
and he alone escorted
:
There is a reminiscence here of Odysseus' lone approach to Circe's house in the tenth book of the
Odyssey
.

4.902
to expunge the deed's contamination
:
In Greek religion, one guilty of murder must be first purified of pollution. This need for purification is separate from any subsequent judgment the guilty may encounter (compare the case of Orestes in Aeschylus'
Eumenides
).

4.934
in the Colchian tongue
:
Homeric epic poems do not acknowledge a plurality of languages per se (the Trojans in the
Iliad,
for example, speak the same Greek as their Greek opponents). This reference to the “Colchian tongue” is a moment of later realism in an epic narrative, e.g., the Ptolemies ruled over many peoples, and these spoke many languages.

4.967
Iris
:
Iris is an anthropomorphic realization of the rainbow, and is frequently Hera's handmaid, often (though not here) to do Hera's will in a malevolent context.

4.974
and summon Thetis
:
Achilles summons his mother in the first book of the
Iliad.
Subsequently Thetis in
Iliad
18 will go to Hephaestus to ask for new armor for her son. These are both recalled in this passage.

4.980
Aeolus, who regulates the gales
:
Aeolus, the keeper of the winds, is a figure from the tenth book of the
Odyssey:
he gives Odysseus a bag in which the winds are sealed, and on the approach to Ithaca Odysseus falls asleep, his men open the bag, and the winds are released, thus preventing them from reaching their homeland. In this passage Apollonius juxtaposes two figures from the two Homeric poems.

4.1011
Scylla and Charybdis'
:
Two monstrous dangers from the twelfth book of the
Odyssey,
where Odysseus must choose between facing one or the other. Scylla and Charybdis represent the fearful dangers of the sea, in contrast with the Naiads, who are benevolent.

4.1013
I myself have nursed
:
Hera in the
Argonautica
has a rather different characterization from that of the
Iliad,
not to mention the wrathful figure of Virgil's
Aeneid
and Ovid's
Metamorphoses
. Apollonius sketches a side of the goddess from the beginning of the poem that is protective and nurturing. Even in the various references to Heracles her malevolent role is much played down.

4.1032
a heartfelt wedding
:
This wedding is in fact the origin of the Trojan War. The goddess Eris (“Strife”), not invited to the wedding, casts a golden apple among the gods with the epigraph “to the fairest,” which results in the judgment of Paris, which in turn leads to the abduction of Helen, and so on. But in the time frame of the
Argonautica,
where Achilles is still an infant, the Trojan War is yet to come, and the poet can decorously omit direct reference to the strife over the golden apple, though the opening of Book 3 is an elaborate allusion to this contest.

4.1042
that he wed Medea
:
This reference to the future, after-death marriage of Achilles and Medea, cannot but surprise the poem's audience, given that the second half of the
Argonautica
follows the love and early adventures of Jason and Medea. There is certainly an ominous note on the future of the relationship of the latter couple.

4.1121
and raised a frightening cry
:
The narrative of Thetis' attempt to make Achilles immortal closely follows the parallel scene in the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter,
where Demeter, disguised as an old woman, is surprised by Metaneira as she attempts to make the latter's baby immortal through fire. Apollonius' reconfiguration of this scene emphasizes the different natures of Thetis and Peleus.

4.1141
the clear-voiced Sirens
:
The Sirens figure in the twelfth book of the
Odyssey
. Apollonius' use of many of the figures from Odysseus' wanderings draws the attention of his audience to the Odyssean quality of this part of the
Argonautica,
which features a journey into the unknown.

4.1148–49
while she was still / unmarried
:
A second reference, this time to the opening of the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter,
to Persephone as a virgin.

4.1157
if Orpheus of Thrace
:
In contrast to the
Odyssey
's narrative of the Sirens, where Odysseus, bound by his men, listens to the Sirens' song, Apollonius has Orpheus compete with the Sirens, and Orpheus' song overpowers theirs.