by Unknown
Sorrowing deeply, they sailed north again, and came to Mysia, not far from Troy, and here Heracles was left behind. For young Hylas went to draw water from a deep pool, and the water-nymphs who dwelt in it fell in love with him and drew him down into the depths to live there with them for ever. Heracles searched for him far and wide, and a great wind rising drove the Argo out to sea, so that he was forced to make his way to Colchis over land.
Next the Argonauts visited King Amycus who challenged his guests to a boxing match, and killed each in turn. This time he was met in the ring by Polydeuces, who smote him so hard that he fell to the ground and died.
Sailing onwards they landed in Thrace where the blind King Phineus dwelt, a seer nevertheless, who could look through distance.
‘Help us,’ they begged, ‘and tell us what things to do and what to avoid on our way to Colchis.’
‘Help you I will,’ said Phineus, ‘if you first free me from the Harpies!’ Then he set a feast before them: but scarcely had they tasted it when down came the two Harpies – terrible winged women with great claws – who carried off the best of the food, and made the rest uneatable.
Then Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of the North Wind, drew their swords and leapt into the air in pursuit of them, and neither were seen again, though the Harpies never more visited King Phineus.
Now fully instructed as to their way, the Argonauts sailed up the Hellespont and came to the Clashing Rocks which guarded the entrance to the Black Sea. These were great floating masses of blue rock which crashed together and crushed any ship which tried to pass them.
Following King Phineus’s advice, Jason let loose a heron, and followed it until they drew near to the Rocks, which were half veiled in mist and spray.
Presently the bird sped between them: the Rocks crashed together, just touching her tail, and then rebounded on either side.
Immediately Tiphys guided the Argo through the gap, while every hero strained at his oar. The ship shot between the Rocks, which clashed together only in time to nip the ornament from the end of the stern. From this time on the Clashing Rocks stood still, for it was fated that once a ship had passed them in safety, they could move no more.
The Argonauts sailed on, into the Black Sea, and along its southern coast, until they came to the River Phasis at its eastern end – the river that still runs red down from the Caucasus in memory of the blood which Prometheus shed there for mankind.
Up the river they went, and came to the city of Colchis where Aeetes was king, the fierce son of Helios, whose sister Circe and his daughter Medea were skilled in the black art of witchcraft.
‘I will give you the Golden Fleece,’ said King Aeetes when Jason told him of their quest, ‘if you can yoke my brazen-footed bulls which breathe fire from their nostrils, plough a field with them, and sow it with dragons’ teeth!’
That night Jason sat wondering sadly how he was to accomplish this task: for not even Heracles, who had rejoined the Argonauts, could have accomplished it. Then Medea the Witch-Maiden came to him, and said:
‘I will tell you how to do this thing, and how to take the Fleece, if you will promise to let me sail back to Greece with you and there become your wife.’
This Jason swore to do, though he had little liking for witches and witchcraft: and Medea instructed him, and gave him a magic ointment which would make him invulnerable and unburnable for a single day.
In the morning, Jason anointed himself with the ointment and to the amazement of King Aeetes harnessed the bulls without taking any harm. He ploughed the field, and afterwards sowed it with dragons’ teeth. But the moment they were sown, the teeth began to grow: and the crop was not corn, but armed men all eager for war and ready to slay Jason.
But Jason remembered what Medea had told him, and flung the helmet which had held the dragons’ teeth into the midst of the armed men. At once they began to fight fiercely among themselves, and before long they all lay dead.
‘Tomorrow you shall have the Golden Fleece,’ promised Aeetes: but before then he plotted to burn the Argo and murder the Argonauts.
Medea again came to Jason, and warned him, and in the night she led him and Orpheus to the magic garden where the Golden Fleece hung on the Tree at the World’s End, guarded by a dragon – just as the Apples of the Hesperides hung in their garden at the World’s opposite end.
It was a dim, mysterious place, high-walled and pillared with the dark boles of mighty trees. Through the dappling moonlight Medea the Witch-Maiden led the way, until they came to the centre where the Golden Fleece shone in the darkness as it hung from a tree round which coiled a dragon larger and more terrible than any in the world.
‘Play and sing!’ whispered Medea to Orpheus, and she began to murmur a spell while he touched gently on the strings of his lyre and sang in a sweet low voice his Hymn to Sleep:
‘Sleep, king of gods and men,
Master of all;
Come to mine eyes again,
Come as I call!
Sleep, who may loose and bind
Each as his thrall,
Come to the weary mind,
Come at my call!
Tamer of toil and woes,
Healer of all;
Sleep, whence our solace flows,
Come as I call!
Brother of all mankind,
Softly you fall
Leaving the world behind:
Come at my call!
Sleep, lord of all things made,
Sleep over all
Let your warm wings be laid,
Come as I call!’
As Orpheus sang it seemed that the very garden slept: the wind grew still; the flowers drooped their heads, and not a leaf stirred. The great gleaming dragon slid slowly from the tree, coil within coil, and, resting its terrible head on a bank of sleeping red poppies, slept for the first and last time in its life.
Only by the charms of Medea did Jason himself remain awake, and when he saw that the dragon slept, he drew near and looked up at the shining Fleece.
Then Medea sprinkled the dragon with her magic brew, and whispered to Jason:
‘Climb! Climb swiftly up the coils of its back and take down the Fleece, for my charms will not hold it long!’
So Jason, not without dread, mounted that terrible ladder into the great ilex-tree and unhooked the Golden Fleece which had hung there ever since Phrixus stripped it from the magic Ram; and by its light he found his way through the garden.
For Medea, by her charms, called for Hecate, the Immortal Queen of the Witches, and by her help the moon was darkened, and night closed over Colchis like a black cloak.
Going swiftly by secret paths, they came to the river’s edge where the Argo lay ready, and they stepped on board, Medea taking with her the young Prince Absyrtus, her brother. Then the Argonauts bent to their oars, and rowed so mightily that the stout pine, hewn on Mount Pelion, bent like withies of hazel in their hands as they sped towards the sea.
But suddenly in the darkness behind them the Dragon woke from its charmed sleep, and found that the Golden Fleece had gone. Then it uttered its terrible voice, a hissing and a groaning cry so fearful that all the people of Colchis woke at the sound and the women clutched their children to them and shivered with fear.
King Aeetes, however, guessed what had happened and, dark though it was, launched a swift ship and set off in pursuit of the Argonauts.
‘Row! Row!’ cried Medea, when she heard the Dragon’s cry. ‘My father’s ships are very swift, and there will be no mercy for any of us if we are taken!’
So they bent to their oars again, and the water was churned into foam as they sped down the Phasis and came with the dawning out into the Black Sea and away to the west.
Before noon they saw the tall ship of King Aeetes drawing up behind them, and in the dim distance others of the Colchian fleet coming in pursuit.
In vain Orpheus played on his lyre to cheer them as they laboured at the oars; and in vain did the winds fill the Argo�
�s sail. The great ships of Colchis drew nearer, ever nearer.
Then Medea the Witch did a dreadful thing, while the Argonauts looked on in horror, but dared do nothing because it was she who had saved them, and Jason had sworn to marry her and bring her unhurt to Greece.
She took her brother, the boy prince Absyrtus and killed him with a sharp sword in plain view of his father, King Aeetes. Then she cut him in pieces and cast the pieces into the sea, for she knew that Aeetes would stop to gather them up so as to give his son due and honourable burial – without which, so they believed, his ghost could find no rest in the Realm of Hades or in the Fields of Elysium.
All happened as she expected. King Aeetes, standing weeping at the prow of his ship, uttered a terrible curse upon Medea and upon all who sailed in the Argo; then he halted his fleet to gather up the remains of his son, and the Argonauts sailed on and were lost to view in the wide sea; nor did Aeetes and his fleet find them again.
But Jason bowed his head with shame and misery: for what Medea had done was terrible and not to be forgiven; but now he was bound to her, and had married a Witch who would bring him no good fortune in the end.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE RETURN OF THE ARGONAUTS
Forth from thy father’s home
Thou camest, O heart of fire,
To the Dark Blue Rocks, to the clashing foam,
To the seas of thy desire:
Till the Dark Blue Bar was crossed;
And lo, by an alien river
Standing, thy lover lost,
Void-armed for ever.
EURIPIDES
Medea (Translated by Gilbert Murray)
16
Under the dark shadow of Medea’s crime, the Argonauts sailed away into the mysterious distance to the north and west of the Black Sea, and presently a storm overtook the ship, spun it round, and carried it through the darkness, no one knew whither. But, as they were driven between islands and the high cliffs of what might be a great river’s mouth, the Magic Branch of Dodona set at the prow spoke to them:
‘You who have sinned so deeply cannot escape the wrath of Zeus, nor come to your native land again, until you have visited the Island of Aeaea: for Circe the Enchantress alone can purify you. But the way thither is long and terrible such as no man has sailed before.’
The Argonauts cried out with fear at that eerie voice; then the wind took them again, and darkness closed about them, and they sailed on and on, they knew not where nor whither.
On and ever on they went, sometimes rowing and sometimes blown by the wind; and Orpheus played upon his lyre. Up the river, up and up into the cold north they went; and at length, rowing against the stream until it grew too shallow for them, they landed and carried the Argo on their shoulders.
Of that terrible journey little has been told, nor could any of the Argonauts say for certain where they went. But when they were ready to die with weariness, they came to another river flowing north-west and floated down it to a sea where the sun was dimmed by mists, and icicles gathered and hung from the mast and the spars of the Argo, and when they landed they saw great white bears.
There were also wild men in those parts; the Laestrygonians, who wore skins and fought with battle-axes, singing wild songs of Odin and the halls of Valhalla, and they foamed at the mouth with berserk rage while they fought.
Shivering with cold, the Argonauts rowed quickly past these frozen coasts where the sun shone at midnight, but did not warm them even at midday. They came then into the Northern Sea and past the land beyond the North Wind, the Ultimate Islands, which in later days were called Britain. Still on they sailed into the Western Ocean where it was said that the Land of Atlantis had sunk beneath the waters not long before; and then south across a stormy bay until at last the sun grew warmer, and one day Heracles cried:
‘My friends, we have come back to the known world again! Over yonder stand the two pillars which I set up to mark the entrance to Our Sea, and to the southward Titan Atlas holds up the heavens upon his mountain peak while below is the Garden of the Hesperides!’
He told them of his quest for the Golden Apples, and they marvelled at all he had seen and done. They marvelled still more when he led them to the Garden itself: for there lay the Serpent Ladon, the tip of its tail moving, though it was fifteen years since Heracles had slain it with his poisoned arrow.
The Argonauts rested in that fragrant land until their strength and health came back to them; and they raised altars and sacrificed to the Immortals in gratitude for bringing them safely through such dangers.
Then they sailed on once more, over the blue Mediterranean Sea, passing between Corsica and Sardinia, and came to Aeaea, the little island where dwelt Medea’s aunt, the enchantress Circe.
Now if they had come alone, Circe would have worked some evil enchantment upon the Argonauts, but when she saw Medea she hastened to make them welcome. And when Medea told of her crime and the command of Zeus, spoken by the magic bough, she purified them all of the blood of Absyrtus, and sent them on their way with a load lifted from their hearts.
But their adventures were not yet ended. Near to Aeaea was another island, which is now called Capri, and on it lived the Sirens. These were once maidens who had played with Persephone the Divine Maiden in that fair field of Enna in Sicily from which Hades carried her away to be Queen of the Dead. They had prayed to have wings so as to go through the world in search of her, and Demeter granted their wish. But in some strange way they turned to evil, and so were doomed to live on their beautiful island and lure sailors to their death. They still had wings, but they had the claws and tails of birds also, and they sang so sweetly that no man who heard could resist their singing. For whoever heard that wonderful song forgot all else, plunged into the waves, and swam to shore: and there the Sirens would catch him with their sharp claws, and tear him to pieces. But it was fated that if anyone could resist their singing and sail away unhurt, then the Sirens would meet their end.
When the Argonauts drew near and heard the wondrous song of the Sirens, they bent eagerly to their oars, longing only to land on that island and listen to the enchantment of their singing. But Medea knew what fate lay in store for any who set foot on the Isle of the Sirens, and she cried to Orpheus:
‘Divine musician, play on your lyre and sing for our lives! Surely you, the son of Apollo, can sing even more sweetly than these creatures of beauty and evil!’
Orpheus played as never before, and sang such a strain as that which had ravished the ears of Hades and drawn his lost Eurydice from the dead. And the Argonauts listened to his singing, and forgot the Sirens, and were able to turn the ship from that fatal island and sail for the south. All, that is, except Butes, who sprang into the sea and swam towards the Sirens: but Aphrodite took pity on him, and carried him away in time, to become a priest at her shrine in the south of Sicily.
As for the Sirens, as mortal men had withstood their song, Fate came upon them and, like the Sphinx when Oedipus solved her riddle, they flung themselves down from their rock and died. All except two, who had not joined in the song that day, and so lived to sing still, to lure sailors to their doom until Odysseus passed that way on his return from Troy.
On sailed the Argonauts, seeing many other wonders. They passed the cave where lurked Scylla the many-headed monster; though on that day she slept. They passed the whirlpool of Charybdis in safety, and the Floating Islands which flung out burning rocks, and the Island where Helios, the Sun Titan, kept his milk-white kine with horns of gold, and the happy land of the Phaeacians.
Here they tarried a while, and the wedding of Jason and Medea was celebrated. For while they rested in Phaeacia the ships of King Aeetes arrived, and the Phaeacian King said that while he was ready to give up the daughter of Aeetes, he would defend the wife of Jason! So the Colchians failed of their design, and as Aeetes had sworn to slay them all if they returned without Medea, they settled down and formed a new kingdom of their own next door to Phaeacia.
The Argo sailed again soon after the wedding, and a storm took it as it rounded Cape Malea at the south of Greece, and drove it across the sea to Crete.
Now in the early days the Smith of the Immortals, Hephaestus, had fashioned for the first King Minos a man of brass called Talos, a giant who ran round the island three times in every day and sank any ship which drew near, by hurling great stones on it.
Minos knew how to control this monster, as did all the Kings of Crete until the last Minos had sailed away in pursuit of Daedalus after Theseus killed the Minotaur and escaped from the Labyrinth. But Deucalion, the new King, did not know how to deal with Talos, and he himself had escaped with difficulty from Crete to join the Argonauts and sail with Jason.
The monster Talos was now quite out of control, and Crete was cut off by him from the outer world, for he still ran round the island three times a day, pelting any ship which drew near. At other times he made himself red hot by lying in a bath of fire, and then burned up all that he touched.
Deucalion now begged the other Argonauts to help him to destroy Talos, but not even Heracles could think how to do it.
Then Medea said: ‘Only with the help of magic, and by great guile can we overcome Talos. But do just as I say, and all will be well.’