For the Winner

by Emily Hauser

  Two prizes, one ahead of me and one beside.

  The race, which would set me free but see Jason become king, or the apple, which would make me wed, but which would proclaim me the kingdom’s rightful queen.

  Two ambitions fighting each other.

  Two desperate desires.

  And I had only moments to decide which I would choose.

  In a heartbeat I veered to the right and ran, faster than I had ever run, chasing the golden apple as it glinted in the sun, bounced and rolled, like a pebble flung from heaven by the gods, towards the sea. I could smell the salt on the air – I was only a few paces away from plunging over the sheer cliffs into the sea. The apple bounced over a stone and spiralled up, up into the air in a graceful arc …

  I threw myself forwards, face down on the ground, my hand stretched out over the cliff edge to catch it, tight, in my palm.

  Another moment, and it would have been lost to the waves for ever.

  I pushed myself to my feet, the apple clenched in my hand, and spun around in time to see Hippomenes launching himself towards the end of the track, every muscle in his body tensed, driving him onwards, Jason following in the dust kicked up by Hippomenes’ heels … ten paces … five paces …

  And then he crossed the line, and he was on his knees in the dirt, and the herald was shouting to the skies that Hippomenes, son of Megareus, had won the race and Atalanta’s hand.

  ‘How did you know I would choose it?’

  We were lying together many weeks later upon our marriage bed in our quarters in the palace of Pagasae, Hippomenes propped up on the pillows with his arms behind his head, I on my belly upon the soft woollen covers, my chin resting on my hands. I thought back over the last few hours and closed my eyes, my skin tingling at the memory of how Hippomenes had lifted me in his arms and taken me into the bridal chamber; how he had laid me down upon the bed and then, with strength but such tenderness, had run his hands along my body, wondering at my nakedness, planting kisses on my ears, my neck, my breasts … and then how, when I was moaning for his touch, he had taken me, and we had moved together, both of us as one, gasping for breath in the pleasure of our closeness …

  The breeze played across my back and set the curtains billowing at the window, wafting the warm, tangy scent of the box hedges from the courtyard beyond. We had been married that morning: a small ceremony in the palace’s private shrine, I in a red tunic with a posy of myrtle and white rose blossoms in my hands, Hippomenes wearing a dark-green cloak thrown over one shoulder, his sword hanging in a bronze sheath from his waist. The race upon the sandy cliffs of Pagasae’s shore seemed as remote as the islands of the Hesperides, a distant memory – yet I had to know.

  ‘Choose what?’ he asked me, as if he did not know.

  ‘The apple,’ I said. The mottled light of the sun through the windows, scattered by the leaves of the trees in the garden, shone on his dark hair and turned it a burnished red-gold. ‘How did you know I would choose it? That I would not run on and win the race?’

  He turned towards me, shifting onto his side. ‘Before I answer that, tell me first: why did you choose it?’

  I gleamed a smile at him and pushed myself off the piles of fleeces and rugs to stand, then wandered over to the open window and reached through to pluck an apple from the tree beyond. It was a blushing pink-red, firm to the touch. I tossed it towards him. ‘I’d hate to destroy any illusions you might have had.’

  He grinned back at me as he caught it, entirely undismayed. ‘After several weeks spent together upon the roads from Colchis, I doubt I have any left.’

  I arched an eyebrow at him, then let out a laugh. ‘Well, then.’ I plucked another apple from the branch and bit into it, the sweet juice filling my mouth. ‘If you must know, I recognized the apple as the golden treasure spoken of in the prophecy.’

  I felt a shiver run down my spine. The prophecy … It had sent me to the ends of the world and back, had determined the outcome of the race, my marriage – and the rule of the kingdoms of Pelion, even. Myrtessa would most likely have said that the gods had foretold everything, I thought – and I smiled as the image of my friend’s face, bright-eyed and grinning, rose before my mind’s eye.

  But, Myrtessa, what you do not see is that the gods might have thrown the apple – and I might have chosen not to follow it.

  It was I who determined my fate: by choosing to go after it.

  I wiped my mouth on the back of my arm and settled at the end of the bed. I frowned as I recalled the moment I had seen the golden apple speeding down the track before me in the dust. ‘I knew that, if I took it, I would fulfil the prophecy and win the city on my own terms, as its rightful heir,’ I continued. ‘And if it also meant taking you as my husband into the bargain,’ I said, looking up at last and giving him a smile, ‘well, I thought I would be able to endure it.’

  He chuckled. ‘I see. And what would you have said if I told you that I knew you would choose the apple and the kingdom, and that that was the only way I could ever persuade you to have me?’

  I moved forwards upon the bed to lie beside him, my body ever so slightly turned towards his, my lips brushing his ear. ‘I knew you knew it,’ I said softly. ‘And I would have said that you were the only man worthy of my hand, because you were the only one who knew me, and respected me, for who I was.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see. Then that makes us equals, Atalanta, does it not?’

  I considered him for a moment, a smile playing at the corners of my mouth.

  ‘Yes,’ I said at last, lying back upon the covers, gazing up at the canopy over the bed where a single golden apple had been embroidered – a wedding gift from Hippomenes. I turned to him and smiled, intertwining my fingers with his. ‘Yes, I suppose it does.’

  Epilogue

  A year or so later, a woman is standing upon the walls of the citadel of Pagasae, watching. It is a habit she is trying to break, watching things from above; but, as the poets say, not even the gods fight necessity, and she cannot resist it.

  Not today.

  Not now.

  The view spread beneath her is indeed spectacular. The citadel is thronged with colour as nobles, citizens and slaves mill about the forecourt of the palace, women wearing flounced dresses of red, blue and gold, children playing hoop-and-stick, vendors selling handfuls of honeyed nuts, grapes, and sweet mead flavoured with juicy cut lemons. A circle of young men watches the fire-breathers exhaling flame to the skies, and in the very centre of the forecourt, surrounded by a ring of townspeople, a dark-skinned acrobat wearing a loincloth vaults over the gilded horns of a huge, roaring bull, his muscles girded in sweat as he twists and turns and somersaults into the air.

  And then there she is, emerging from the temple of Zeus with the high priest, her forehead wreathed in dark-green laurels, resplendent in flowing skirts of white and gold, a gold-threaded cloak over her shoulders and the sceptre of the ruler of Pagasae in her hand, treading lightly, but her head held high and her mouth set with determination. It is Atalanta.

  The woman on the walls watches with a smile upon her lips as the new queen glances back to her husband, the king, and he lays a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Atalanta exchanges a last smile with her parents from Kaladrosos, Tyro and Eurymedon, who stand to her left beaming with pride, their eyes filled with tears. She draws a deep breath, clasps Hippomenes’ fingers briefly, then moves forwards to address the swarming crowds.

  They break into cheers and applause as their queen climbs the few steps to the dais that stands beside Zeus’ temple, a broad platform of polished limestone guarded on either side by twin images of the god. The watcher smiles a little to see the heavily built form of the king of the gods sculpted here, his arms encircling the crowned battlements of the city of Pagasae.

  As Atalanta begins to address the crowd, her voice high and clear, the woman on the wall turns aside and gazes over the plain to the north of Pagasae, across the sparkling waters of the bay, its white-sailed ships like
seagulls floating upon the waves, towards the forested green slopes of Mount Pelion and then beyond, to where the majestic peaks of Olympus thrust from the rocky plains of Pieria into the cornflower-blue sky to be wreathed in wispy clouds.

  With a smile, Iris turns her back upon the mountain of the gods and walks over to join in the festivities.

  Author’s Note

  The legend of Jason and the Argonauts is one of the oldest in Greek myth, predating even Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. It tells of the quest of Jason, the son of Aeson, and the band of Argonauts (or ‘sailors of the Argo’) for the legendary Golden Fleece in the land of Colchis. It is as fabulously rich as it is implausible, relating remarkable tales of centaurs, dragons and metallic birds; narrow escapes from clashing rocks and fire-breathing bulls; terrifying man-killing women, seductive Sirens, and shrieking, half-bird half-female Harpies.

  To summarize briefly the major points of the myth, as they occur in the texts in which they have been handed down (and it is important to remember that myth is famously fluid, constantly altered and adapted as it suited the various poets and historians through the ages, so not all versions will agree): when Jason arrived from the slopes of Mount Pelion, where he had been kept under the tutelage of the centaur Chiron, and demanded the kingdom of Iolcos as the rightful son of King Aeson, Pelias, Aeson’s brother and usurper to the throne, retaliated by setting Jason a task: the retrieval of the Golden Fleece, which was kept in the land of Colchis (modern Georgia) on the very edge of the known world, guarded by a serpent that never slept. Jason assembled a crew of the greatest heroes in Greece – among them Atalantafn1 – and set sail for Colchis on the Argo, encountering many adventures and obstacles along the way (including, among others and perhaps most famously, the Clashing Rocks or ‘Symplegades’, which Jason navigated with the help of the seer Phineus, sending a dove ahead to fly between the moving rocks).

  When he at last arrived in Colchis, he was required to complete yet further feats to prove his worth upon the orders of King Aeëtes, legendary king of Colchis, son of the sun-god Helios and father of Medea. With a pair of fire-breathing bulls, Jason was commanded to plough and sow a field with dragon’s teeth, which then transformed into fearsome warriors, completing the tasks with the help of the infamous Medea, who fell in love with him and who aided him with her (supposed) sorcery. The Argonauts then took the Fleece and returned to Greece, where Jason claimed the throne of Iolcos.

  The legend of the Argonauts was related and retold in many of the central texts of ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Hesiod’s Theogony, Pindar’s Pythian Ode 4 to Valerius Flaccus’ Roman (first century CE) Argonautica; but perhaps its most famous incarnation was in one of the great (and underrated) epics of the ancient world, Apollonius’ Argonautica. The Argonautica, named for the sailors of the Argo, Jason’s famous ship, was written in the third century BCE in Greek by a scholar–poet and librarian of Alexandria called Apollonius, and remains the only surviving Hellenistic (that is, post-classical) epic – an extraordinary achievement and testimony to the flourishing literary culture of Alexandria.

  Yet, to many critics, Jason in the Argonautica is depicted as a rather cold, repellent character, very different from the larger-than-life heroes of the Homeric epics – and it isn’t until the entrance of Medea, their passionate love affair and escape from Colchis, along with, of course, the myth (not related in the Argonautica, most famously given in Euripides’ tragedy) of Medea’s horrific revenge upon Jason after his abandonment of her in Corinth, that the story starts to become really interesting. But Medea – rather like Helen of Troy – is difficult to get a hold on. More and more scholars are now acknowledging that Euripides’ depiction of her, for example, tells us far more about classical Greek (fifth century BCE) male fantasies and fears towards women than the actual realities of being a woman in the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Medea, as we know her, is a figment of a deeply patriarchal imagination, a terrifying projection of a male-dominated society’s deepest fears and anxieties.

  So, when I turned to the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, I looked instead to the story of a woman who has tended, in spite of her brilliance, her courage and her determination, to be ignored. I decided to tell the story of Atalanta, to focus on the struggles of a woman and a warrior trying to make her way in the world, to prove herself the equal of a man. The only woman to participate in the quest for the Golden Fleece, Atalanta carves out a niche for herself in a mythical tradition that is singularly hostile to female characters (the Lemnian women, Sirens, Harpies, and, of course, Medea). Yet there is much more to Atalanta than simply her participation in the voyage with the Argonauts. Her story, handed down to us in the works of the Greek and Roman authors who write of the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece, is as varied and hard to piece together as the woman herself. The fundamentals of the mythical tale are represented in this book: Atalanta’s birth to King Iasus and Queen Clymene; Iasus’ wish for a son and heir, and his disappointment at the birth of a girl; Atalanta’s exposure upon the mountain and her rearing by a foster-parent (in the myth, a she-bear); her involvement in the famous Calydonian boar hunt along with the heroes Jason, Meleager and many of the other crew of the Argo, in which she was the first to wound the boar; Meleager’s subsequent infatuation with Atalanta (the subject of a lost tragedy by Euripides); her participation in the heroic quest for the Golden Fleece with Jason and the Argonauts; her eventual discovery by her father, his demand of her marriage and her imposition of the condition that she would marry only in the event that a suitor could outrun her in a footrace (which she knew was impossible as she was ‘far faster than swift-footed men’, to quote the Roman poet Ovid); and her eventual defeat by Hippomenes when he rolled a golden apple in her path. I have attempted, in retelling the story of Jason and the Argonauts, to nod to the many alternative versions of the myth (from Euripides’ vengeful Medea to Apollonius’ humorous and domestic gods),fn2 while keeping the fantastical elements – mythical beasts and clashing rocks among them – at a minimum to privilege Atalanta’s very human story. Where I have departed from the myth is in giving Atalanta a voice: allowing her to tell her own story, in her own way. And part of telling her own story meant responding to the assumptions that were made about her in myths – often created by and for men, then rewritten and reworked by male poets and playwrights until the ‘real’ Atalanta became entirely lost from view.

  This made me think about the reasons Atalanta might have had for one of her most famous so-called ‘mistakes’: her distraction by the golden apple during the race for her hand, and her subsequent defeat. What really happened in the footrace – and why did Atalanta stop instead of winning as she knew she could? I began to wonder if there wasn’t another story here to be told: one that explained Atalanta’s decision to go after the golden apple instead of continuing to win the race, one that motivated her extraordinary achievements as both a hunter and a warrior, that earned her a place on the Argo, among legendary heroes like Jason, Theseus and Perseus, and that carried her from Greece to the ends of the earth and back again. It was from this starting point that I began to reimagine Atalanta’s motives for taking part in the quest for the Golden Fleece: the prophecy of the golden treasure, and her fight with Jason to claim the throne of Pagasae.

  So what of the places and peoples mentioned here – and did they really exist? Although no remains of ancient Pagasae are left to us, it is named in the ancient Greek texts as a town around the bay from Mount Pelion – a mountainous region in the north-east of Greece, close to the modern city of Volos – and its harbour is mentioned in Apollonius as the starting point for Jason’s voyage. (Its name continues on in the modern Greek name for the Gulf of Pagasae, Pagasitikos.) The Bronze Age settlement of Iolcos (modern Volos) has, as recently as 1997, yielded some important archaeological remains – a Bronze Age palace in the suburb of Dimini, thought to be Jason’s Iolcos, as well as tombs and dwelling-places in the city proper. I have used as much as I can of the
textual and archaeological evidence – from the stone and mud-brick houses of Dimini to the description of the harbour of Pagasae in Apollonius – to assist in the reconstruction of this important coastal area of Thessaly and to bring it to life, from the slopes of Pelion to the streets of Pagasae. And, of course, Mount Pelion itself is a beautiful and remarkably unspoilt area of Greece, situated on a promontory around the Pagasetic Gulf, which you can still visit today.

  The towns and cities mentioned on the journey of the Argonauts are as close to the descriptions given in the ancient texts and to the landscapes as we have them today as I could make them. Thus, for example, the harbour town of Kytoros, visited by Atalanta and the Argonauts on their journey towards Colchis, is mentioned in both Homer’s Iliad and Apollonius’ Argonautica, as well as Strabo’s Geography and Virgil’s Georgics, and can be found today at modern Gideros in Turkey – complete with the enclosing headlands of the harbour and steep cliffs covered with boxwood, just as Apollonius and Virgil described it. You can find more details on the individual locations of the towns, cities, mountains and so on of Atalanta’s voyage, as well as the sources on which I drew for them, in the Glossary of Places (see here).

  The kingdom of Colchis deserves a special mention. On the one hand, it seems that the Greeks did at some point pin down a geographical location for the Golden Fleece on the shores of the Black Sea around the Phasis river (modern Rioni); as Richard Hunter observes, ‘At least as early as the seventh century BC the kingdom [of the Golden Fleece] was identified with Colchis in modern Georgia, where the river Phasis formed the traditional eastern boundary of the known world.’ However, even though the archaeological record shows an independent Bronze Age culture in Colchis, no Mycenean Greek (i.e. Late Bronze Age) artefacts have been discovered in the area – therefore making it likely that there was no significant contact between the Greeks and the kingdom of Colchis during this period (c. 1600–c. 1100 BCE). It has been suggested instead that, in the light of later Greek settlements of the Black Sea coast in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, the myth of Jason and the Argonauts was retrospectively attached to an area that, at the later period, was undergoing increasing exploration and trade with thriving cultural centres like that of Vani. I have attempted to infuse as much of the native Colchian Bronze Age culture into my descriptions of Colchis as I could: both in the details of the building of Dedali’s home and the implements she would have used, all of which come from the archaeological discoveries from Bronze Age Colchis as given in Otar Lordkipanidse’s Archäologie in Georgien.