The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (22 page)

The king was forced by his savage people to take the maiden Andromeda and chain her to a rock on the seashore, leaving her there for the monster to devour her, satisfying himself with that prey.

Perseus, flying near, heard the maiden’s laments. He saw her lovely body bound with chains to the rock. He came near her, taking the cap of darkness off his head. She saw him, and she bent her head in shame, for she thought that he would think that it was for some dreadful fault of her own that she had been left chained in that place.

Her father had stayed near. Perseus saw him, and called to him, and bade him tell why the maiden was chained to the rock. The king told Perseus of the sacrifice that he had been forced to make. Then Perseus came near the maiden, and he saw how she looked at him with pleading eyes.

Then Perseus made her father promise that he would give Andromeda to him for his wife if he should slay the sea monster. Gladly Cepheus promised this. Then Perseus once again drew his sickle-sword; by the rock to which Andromeda was still chained he waited for sight of the sea monster.

It came rolling in from the open sea, a shapeless and unsightly thing. With the shoes of flight upon his feet Perseus rose above it. The monster saw his shadow upon the water, and savagely it went to attack the shadow. Perseus swooped down as an eagle swoops down; with his sickle-sword he attacked it, and he struck the hook through the monster’s shoulder. Terribly it reared up from the sea. Perseus rose over it, escaping its wide-opened mouth with its treble rows of fangs. Again he swooped and struck at it. Its hide was covered all over with hard scales and with the shells of sea things, but Perseus’s sword struck through it. It reared up again, spouting water mixed with blood. On a rock near the rock that Andromeda was chained to Perseus alighted. The monster, seeing him, bellowed and rushed swiftly through the water to overwhelm
him. As it reared up he plunged the sword again and again into its body. Down into the water the monster sank, and water mixed with blood was spouted up from the depths into which it sank.

Then was Andromeda loosed from her chains. Perseus, the conqueror, lifted up the fainting maiden and carried her back to the king’s palace. And Cepheus there renewed his promise to give her in marriage to her deliverer.

Perseus went on his way. He came to the hidden valley where the nymphs had their dwelling place, and he restored to them the three magic treasures that they had given him—the cap of darkness, the shoes of flight, and the magic pouch. And these treasures are still there, and the hero who can win his way to the nymphs may have them as Perseus had them.

Again he returned to the place where he had found Andromeda chained. With face averted he drew forth the Gorgon’s head from where he had hidden it between the rocks. He made a bag for it out of the horny skin of the monster he had slain. Then, carrying his tremendous trophy, he went to the palace of King Cepheus to claim his bride.

    Now before her father had thought of sacrificing her to the sea monster he had offered Andromeda in marriage to a prince of Ethopia—to a prince whose name was Phineus. Phineus did
not strive to save Andromeda. But, hearing that she had been delivered from the monster, he came to take her for his wife; he came to Cepheus’s palace, and he brought with him a thousand armed men.

The palace of Cepheus was filled with armed men when Perseus entered it. He saw Andromeda on a raised place in the hall. She was pale as when she was chained to the rock, and when she saw him in the palace she uttered a cry of gladness.

Cepheus, the craven king, would have let him who had come with the armed bands take the maiden. Perseus came beside Andromeda and he made his claim. Phineus spoke insolently to him, and then he urged one of his captains to strike Perseus down. Many sprang forward to attack him. Out of the bag Perseus drew Medusa’s head. He held it before those who were bringing strife into the hall. They were turned to stone. One of Cepheus’s men wished to defend Perseus: he struck at the captain who had come near; his sword made a clanging sound as it struck this one who had looked upon Medusa’s head.

Perseus went from the land of Ethopia taking fair Andromeda with him. They went into Greece, for he had thought of going to Argos, to the country that his grandfather ruled over. At this very time Acrisius got tidings of Danaë, and her son, and he knew that they had not perished on the waves of the sea. Fearful of the prophecy that told he would be slain by
his grandson and fearing that he would come to Argos to seek him, Acrisius fled out of his country.

He came into Thessaly. Perseus and Andromeda were there. Now, one day the old king was brought to games that were being celebrated in honor of a dead hero. He was leaning on his staff, watching a youth throw a metal disk, when something in that youth’s appearance made him want to watch him more closely. About him there was something of a being of the upper air; it made Acrisius think of a brazen tower and of a daughter whom he had shut up there.

He moved so that he might come nearer to the disk-thrower. But as he left where he had been standing he came into the line of the thrown disk. It struck the old man on the temple. He fell down dead, and as he fell the people cried out his name—“Acrisius, King Acrisius!” Then Perseus knew whom the disk, thrown by his hand, had slain.

And because he had slain the king by chance Perseus would not go to Argos, nor take over the kingdom that his grandfather had reigned over. With Andromeda he went to Seriphus where his mother was. And in Seriphus there still reigned Polydectes, who had put upon him the terrible task of winning the Gorgon’s head.

He came to Seriphus and he left Andromeda in the hut of Dictys the shepherd. No one knew him; he heard his name
spoken of as that of a youth who had gone on a foolish quest and who would never again be heard of. To the temple where his mother was a priestess he came. Guards were placed all around it. He heard his mother’s voice and it was raised in lament: “Walled up here and given over to hunger I shall be made go to Polydectes’s house and become his wife. O ye gods, have ye no pity for Danaë, the mother of Perseus?”

Perseus cried aloud, and his mother heard his voice and her moans ceased. He turned around and he went to the palace of Polydectes, the king.

The king received him with mockeries. “I will let you stay in Seriphus for a day,” he said, “because I would have you at a marriage feast. I have vowed that Danaë, taken from the temple where she sulks, will be my wife by tomorrow’s sunset.”

So Polydectes said, and the lords and princes who were around him mocked at Perseus and flattered the king. Perseus went from them then. The next day he came back to the palace. But in his hands now there was a dread thing—the bag made from the hide of the sea monster that had in it the Gorgon’s head.

He saw his mother. She was brought in white and fainting, thinking that she would now have to wed the harsh and overbearing king. Then she saw her son, and hope came into her face.

The king seeing Perseus, said: “Step forward, O youngling, and see your mother wed to a mighty man. Step forward to witness a marriage, and then depart, for it is not right that a youth that makes promises and does not keep them should stay in a land that I rule over. Step forward now, you with the empty hands.”

But not with empty hands did Perseus step forward. He shouted out: “I have brought something to you at last, O king—a present to you and your mocking friends. But you, O my mother, and you, O my friends, avert your faces from what I have brought.” Saying this Perseus drew out the Gorgon’s head. Holding it by the snaky locks he stood before the company. His mother and his friends averted their faces. But Polydectes and his insolent friends looked full upon what Perseus showed. “This youth would strive to frighten us with some conjuror’s trick,” they said. They said no more, for they became as stones, and as stone images they still stand in that hall in Seriphus.

He went to the shepherd’s hut, and he brought Dictys from it with Andromeda. Dictys he made king in Polydectes’s stead. Then with Danaë and Andromeda, his mother and his wife, he went from Seriphus.

He did not go to Argos, the country that his grandfather had ruled over, although the people there wanted Perseus to come to them, and be king over them. He took the kingdom of Tiryns in exchange for that of Argos, and there he lived with Andromeda, his lovely wife out of Ethopia. They had a son named Perses who became the parent of the Persian people.

The sickle-sword that had slain the Gorgon went back to Hermes, and Hermes took Medusa’s head also. That head Hermes’s divine sister set upon her shield—Medusa’s head upon the shield of Pallas Athene. O may Pallas Athene guard us all, and bring us out of this land of sands and stone where are the deadly serpents that have come from the drops of blood that fell from the Gorgon’s head!

They turned away from the Garden of the Daughters of the Evening Land. The Argonauts turned from where the giant shape of Atlas stood against the sky and they went toward the Tritonian Lake. But not all of them reached the
Argo
. On his way back to the ship, Nauplius, the helmsman, met his death.

A sluggish serpent was in his way—it was not a serpent that would strike at one who turned from it. Nauplius trod upon it, and the serpent lifted its head up and bit his foot. They raised him on their shoulders and they hurried back with him. But his limbs became numb, and when they laid him down on the shore of the lake he stayed moveless. Soon he grew cold.
They dug a grave for Nauplius beside the lake, and in that desert land they set up his helmsman’s oar in the middle of his tomb of heaped stones.

    And now like a snake that goes writhing this way and that way and that cannot find the cleft in the rock that leads to its lair, the
Argo
went hither and thither striving to find an outlet from that lake. No outlet could they find and the way of their homegoing seemed lost to them again. Then Orpheus prayed to the son of Nereus, to Triton, whose name was on that lake, to aid them.

Then Triton appeared. He stretched out his hand and showed them the outlet to the sea. And Triton spoke in friendly wise to the heroes, bidding them go upon their way in joy. “And as for labor,” he said, “let there be no grieving because of that, for limbs that have youthful vigor should still toil.”

They took up the oars and they pulled toward the sea, and Triton, the friendly immortal, helped them on. He laid hold upon
Argo
’s keel and he guided her through the water. The Argonauts saw him beneath the water; his body, from his head down to his waist, was fair and great and like to the body of one of the other immortals. But below his body was like a great fish’s, forking this way and that. He moved with fins that were
like the horns of the new moon. Triton helped
Argo
along until they came into the open sea. Then he plunged down into the abyss. The heroes shouted their thanks to him. Then they looked at each other and embraced each other with joy, for the sea that touched upon the land of Greece was open before them.

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