Jason and the Argonauts
Page 21
This parley, though, is just an artful pretext
to draw Absyrtus out to his destruction.
Once their lord, your guardian and brother,
510 (405)is dead, the locals will be far less keen
to take his side in this dispute about you.
Then I, for one, would hardly shrink from fighting
the Colchians, if they obstruct our passage.”
So Jason said in an attempt to calm her,
515but her reply was still more devastating:
“You listen now. Our shameless actions drive us
to still more shameless actions. It was I
who took the first false step. Once I was duped
by my obsession, higher powers forced me
520to execute the evil scheme I plotted.
Tonight your comrades’ part will be to fend off
Colchian spears in battle. Mine will be
to place Absyrtus safely in your hands.
I see, yes, you must welcome him to parley
525 (417)with splendid gifts, so that I can persuade
the heralds heading back to him to make him
come all alone to listen to my plan.
Then, if the deed is pleasing to you, kill him
and start a battle with the Colchian soldiers.
I don’t care.”
530So they together wove
a mighty web of ruin for Absyrtus.
They sent him many friendship-gifts, including
the sacred raiment of Hypsipyle,
a crimson gown. The Graces had themselves
535made it by their own hands for Dionysus
on Dia. He bestowed it on his son,
Thoas, and he in turn upon his daughter,
Hypsipyle, who offered it to Jason
to take away, a finely woven guest-gift,
540 (428)along with many other treasures. Neither
by ogling nor fondling this garment
could you fulfill your sweet desire for it.
The fabric still exhaled ambrosia essence
from the night when the Nysaean king,
545tipsy with wine and nectar, lay upon it
to fondle Ariadne’s gorgeous breasts—
this is the girl whom Theseus abandoned
on seagirt Dia after she eloped
from Knossos with him.
Once the plan was set,
550Medea issued orders to the heralds—
they were to tell Absyrtus to arrive
after she reached the temple of the goddess
in keeping with the treaty and as soon as
the deepest darkness of the night had come,
555 (438)so that they could devise a scheme by which
she would retrieve the mighty golden fleece
and bring it home to King Aeëtes’ palace
(she had alleged it was the sons of Phrixus
who dragged her off and gave her to the strangers
560as spoils of war). Making such false excuses,
she scattered on the airy breezes drugs
potent enough to lure a savage creature
down a precipitous cliff, even a creature
that happened to be very far away.
565Wretched Eros, great abomination,
great bane of humankind, from you arise
murderous feuds and groans and lamentations
and countless other miseries besides.
Great god, may you arise and shoot your arrows
570 (448)against the offspring of my enemies
just as you shot Medea’s insides full
of cursed spite. How cruelly did she slaughter
Absyrtus, her own brother, when he came
to meet her? That’s the next part of my song.
575After the heroes put the girl ashore,
according to the treaty, on the Isle
of Artemis, the parties separated
and beached their vessels on opposing shores,
and Jason chose an ambush to await
580Absyrtus first and his companions later.
The fatal promises deceived Absyrtus,
and he went sailing right away across the river
and landed in the darkest hour of night
upon the sacred isle. He started forth,
585 (459)without a guard, to learn his sister’s mind
through conversation, as a little boy
dares sailing on a runoff-swollen torrent
not even adults would attempt. He hoped
that she would plot with him against the strangers.
590As they were settling the details, Jason
vaulted out of the leafy ambuscade,
a naked sword-blade hefted in his hand.
The girl was quick to turn her eyes away
and veil them, so that she would not behold
595the coming deathblow and her brother’s blood.
Think of a butcher slaughtering a bull,
a giant, big-horned bull—yes, that’s the way
that Jason struck the man. He had been lurking
beside the temple that the Brygians
600 (470)who live upon the mainland opposite
had built for Artemis. Knees buckling,
Absyrtus crumpled in the temple’s forecourt.
A hero gasping out his life, he caught,
in both his hands, the crimson geyser streaming
605out of the wound and smeared his sister’s mantle
and silver veil as she recoiled from him.
A dauntless Fury watched it all, sidelong
and without sympathy—a putrid deed.
The son of Aeson, then, the hero, hacked off
610the corpse’s limbs, three times imbibed its blood
and spat the taint out through his teeth three times,
as is the proper way for murderers
to purge perfidious assassination.
He stashed the sagging carcass in the earth,
615 (481)and to this day the bones are lying there
among a people known as the “Absyrtians.”
As soon as his companions saw before them
the glimmer of the torch the girl had raised
to signal them to come, they rowed the Argo
620up alongside the Colchian ship and started
massacring all the men aboard it
as hawks descend upon a flock of doves,
or savage lions, when they reach the fold,
pounce on a teeming flock of huddled sheep.
625They overwhelmed them like a conflagration,
slaughtered them—none of them escaped destruction.
Jason returned at last to join the battle,
but his companions needed no assistance;
rather, they had been worrying for him.
630 (492)When they were done, they all sat down to form
some prudent plan about their journey home.
Medea joined in the deliberations,
but Peleus was first to speak his mind:
“I say that right now while the night remains
635we climb aboard and row in the direction
opposite to the one that they are watching.
At dawn, when they discover what has happened,
I doubt that anyone among them urging
further pursuit of us will win support.
640Like any people orphaned of a leader,
they will be rent by nasty factions. Then,
after their forces are divided, we shall find
safe passage when we come back later on.”
So he prop
osed, and all the young men cheered
645 (503)the words of Peleus. They leapt aboard
without delay and labored at the oars
relentlessly until they reached the farthest
island in the chain, divine Electris,
right next to the Eridanus’ mouth.
650Soon as the Colchians saw their leader dead,
they swore to hunt the Argo and the Minyans
across the whole wide Cronian Sea. But Hera
checked them with horrifying lightning flashes.
Finally, then, since they had come to loathe
655their homes in the Cytaean land and dread
Aeëtes’ savage temper, they divided
and sailed to settlements by separate routes.
Some landed on the very islands where
the heroes had been beached. They live there yet
660 (515)under the name they took from Prince Absyrtus.
Others settled near the deep and brackish
Illyrian River, where Harmonia
and old King Cadmus share a common tomb.
(Thus they were neighbors to the Encheleians.)
665Still others settled in the mountain chain
known as “Ceraunian” (or “Thundering”),
because the thunderbolts of Cronian Zeus
frightened them from the island opposite.
Once their homeward journey seemed secure,
670the heroes coasted back and bound the hawsers
to the Hyllaean land. The islands here
are packed in tight and jut so from the mainland
that it is hard for helmsmen to avoid them.
The local tribesmen, though, were kind. They helped
675 (528)the heroes navigate the strait and earned
a tripod of Apollo in return.
You see, when Jason went to holy Pytho
to ask about the quest, Apollo gave him
two tripods to be kept aboard the ship
680throughout the journey he would undergo.
According to the oracle, no hostile
forces would ever occupy a land
that kept one of these sacred tripods in it.
Thus, even to this day, the tripod stands
685close to the friendly citadel of Hyllus,
but underground, so that it will remain
forever out of sight.
The heroes, though,
did not find Hyllus still among the living—
Hyllus, whom shapely Melita had borne
690 (539)to Heracles among the Phaeacians.
Heracles, you see, had come to visit
Nausithoös’ court and Macris, nurse
of Dionysus, to expunge the ghastly
murder of his own children from his hands.
695And there it was he coveted and conquered
the daughter of the river god Aegaeus,
the water spirit Melita, who bore
Hyllus the Strong.
When Hyllus came of age,
he chafed beneath Nausithoös’ rule
700and wished no longer to reside beneath it.
So, after gathering from among the natives
a crew of Phaeacian journeymen,
he sailed into the Cronian Sea. (In fact,
the hero-king Nausithoös had helped him
705 (550)outfit the voyage.) Hyllus settled here,
and the Mentores killed him as he fought
to keep a grazing herd of cattle from them.
Come, tell me, goddesses, how is it that,
beyond the Adriatic Sea, off near
710Ausonia and the Ligystian islands
known as the Stoechades, such mighty
proof of the Argo’s route can still be found?
What great necessity, what wants and needs,
drove them so far abroad? What winds conveyed them?
715After the brutal slaughter of Absyrtus,
Zeus himself, the King of the Immortals,
succumbed to wrath against the perpetrators.
He ruled that they must purge themselves of bloodguilt
under the guidance of Aeaean Circe
720 (561)and then endure ten thousand miseries
before returning home. None of the heroes
knew of this verdict, no, they simply left
Hyllaea and went speeding on their way.
Soon they had left all the Liburnian islands,
725one by one, behind them in their wake,
Issa, Dysceladus, fair Pityeia—
islands that lately had been full of Colchians.
Then they passed Corcyra where Poseidon
settled the fair-haired daughter of Asopus,
730Corcyra, far, far from the land of Phlius
from which the god had snatched her up in love.
Sailors who see it from the sea, all wooded
and somber, call it Dark Corcyra.
Next,
cheered by a balmy breeze, they passed Melita,
735 (573)sheer Cerossus, then, much farther on,
Nymphaea where the queen Calypso lived,
Atlas’ daughter. They would soon have seen
the misty mountains of Ceraunia,
but Hera turned her thoughts toward Zeus’ verdict
740and heavy penalty. To force the heroes
onto the necessary course, she roused
storm winds, which fastened on the ship and pushed it
back to the rocky island of Electris.
Next thing they knew, as they were dashing backward,
745one of the Argo’s beams, the one Athena
had chopped out of an oak tree in Dodona
and fitted as the Argo’s keel, emitted
a human voice, a warning. Holy dread
possessed them when they heard the voice proclaiming
750 (585)Zeus’ terms—to wit, that they would never
survive the long sea paths and fierce sea squalls
unless the goddess Circe washed away
their cruel assassination of Absyrtus.
What’s more, it told the brothers Polydeuces
755and Castor to beseech the gods to grant
safe passage into the Ausonian Sea
where they must stop and visit Circe, daughter
of Helius and Persa. So the Argo
cried through the night. Tyndareus’ sons
760arose and raised their hands to the immortals,
praying, Please, may all this come to pass,
though grief had gripped the other Minyan heroes.
The ship dashed onward under sail and reached
the halfway point on the Eridanus
765 (598)where Phaëthon, chest smitten by a flashing
lightning bolt, fell, half-incinerated,
out of the chariot of Helius
into the river muck, and to this day
foul vapors rising from the smoldering wound
770bubble out of the brackish slick. No bird
can pass on flapping wings above that fen,
no, they all catch fire and drop midflight.
Hidden in lofty poplars there, sad maidens,
the Heliades, raise sorrowful laments
775and from their eyelids gleaming drops of amber
fall to the sand. The sunlight dries them there.
Then, when a strong wind heaves the current over
its banks, the flood tide rolls them, hardened balls
of amber, into the Eridanus.
780 (611)The Celts, who give a variant of the story,
claim that the tears the rapids sweep a
long
are really those that Leto’s son Apollo
shed many years before, when Zeus was angry
over the boy that beautiful Coronis
785bore to Apollo, next to the Amyrus,
on gleaming Lacereia. Riled in turn,
Apollo spurned the sky and stayed awhile
among the holy Hyperborean tribes.
Such is the story told among the Celts.
790The heroes felt no thirst or hunger there,
nor did their minds think happy thoughts. No, rather,
all day burdened with the noxious stench,
they tired and sickened. The Eridanus
and all its streams were boiling off the vapors
795 (623)of Phaëthon’s still smoldering corpse—
unbearable. All night the heroes heard
the Heliades lamenting his demise,
weeping and weeping, and their tears went drifting
downstream like little drops of oil.
From there
800they crossed into the deeply flowing Rhône.
Here, where it marries the Eridanus,
enemy roars contend. The Rhône, you see,
starts at the farthest outskirts of the earth
where Night’s portcullis and embankments stand.
805Part of it flows into the River Ocean,
part empties into the Ionian Sea,
and part goes rushing out through seven mouths
into a large bay off Sardinia.
While on the Rhône, they crossed into a chain
810 (635)of stormy lakes that pock the vast, unmeasured
plains of the Celts. They almost met with shameful
destruction there because a tributary
was trending off into the Gulf of Ocean,
and they, in ignorance, resolved to take it.
815They never would have gotten out alive.
But Hera leapt from heaven just in time
and shrieked turn back! from a Hercynian peak,
and all the heroes trembled at the cry,
so ominously did the vast sky echo.
820So, with divine assistance, they reversed
their course and found a route to take them home.
A good long slog, and they had reached at last
a beach and ocean breakers, after passing,
unchallenged, through a thousand tribes of Celts
825 (647)and Ligyans, and all because of Hera—
she poured impenetrable mist around them
all the days they traveled on the river.
They coasted out the fourth mouth of the seven
and beached safely amid the Stoechades,
830thanks to the sons of Zeus—this is the reason
altars and rites were founded here to honor