The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  Everywhere there was murmuring against this wholesale reformation of religion, but the Achaeans overawed the complainants by force of arms and the Oracles unanimously confirmed the innovations. The weightiest utterances came from Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi, the possession of which had ceased to be a humiliation to him and become a source of glory and power; and from Zeus’s own Oracle at Dodona in Epirus, where the response to enquiries was given by the rustling leaves of a sacred oak-grove, and by augury of black doves. No sudden outbreaks of armed revolt occurred in Greece: as when, a generation or two before, a band of Pelasgian women, since mistakenly known as the Amazons, had made a sudden armed assault on Athens because they were displeased with the religious innovations of King Theseus the Ionian; or when, in the time of King Pelops the Henetian, the Danaid river-nymphs, forced into wedlock by his Egyptian masons, had murdered all but one of them on their common wedding night. Four kings only refused to recognize the new Olympian order: Salmoneus of Elis, brother of King Athamas; Tantalus, son of the Ionian hero Tmolus, who had lately settled overseas in Lydia; Aeëtes, King of Colchis, but formerly of Corinthian Ephyra, who was of Cretan stock; and Sisyphus of Corinthian Asopia, nephew of Aeëtes.

  All four were laid under a curse by the Oracles. To Tantalus, who had ridiculed the feast of the Gods, fire and water were universally denied, so that he starved to death; Salmoneus, who in contempt of Zeus the Rain-Giver had raised a rain-storm of his own by making artificial thunder with the loud clanging of brazen pots, was stoned to death. Sisyphus was forced to work as a labourer in the marble-quarries of Ephyra, where he remained for years until one day a falling stone crushed him. His offence was that he had broken the oath of secrecy which was exacted of all members of the conference: he had sent a timely warning to the College of Asopian Fish nymphs that they were to be carried off by the Achaeans and ceremonially prostituted in the island of Aegina. He had also put in chains a priest of Hades who came to take over an Underworld shrine from a priestess of Hecate; and when Sthenelus, his overlord, sent a herald to release the priest and to remind Sisyphus that Hades was now the sole ruler of the Underworld, Sisyphus boldly forbade any of his relatives to bury him when he died, preferring, as he said, the liberty of wandering along the banks of the Asopus as a ghost. As for Aeëtes of Colchis, he lived far enough away to be able to laugh at the Oracles.

  Some poets have asserted that several conferences were held at Olympia and elsewhere, not one only, before the reformation could be completed; and that many of the incidents represented in the final pantomime had already been engrafted on the national religion in the time of the Aeolians and Ionians. Others deny that any conference at all was held, declaring that all the decisions on matters affecting the Divine Family of Olympus were taken by Zeus in person without any human advice. Who can tell where the truth of all this may lie? At all events, the power of Zeus was now firmly established throughout Greece, and no public oaths were highly valued that were not sworn in his name.

  The government of the province of Phthiotis, from Iolcos in the north to Halos in the south, fell to an Achaean named Pelias, who had represented the God Poseidon at the divine feast of Olympia and adjudicated the horse race at the Games. He behaved contemptuously towards the local Minyans after he had killed the most dangerous of them; yet he did not put to death Aeson, son of Cretheus, their King, contenting himself merely with marrying a daughter of Athamas and Nephele and acting as Aeson’s regent. Since Aeson had no surviving children (or so it was supposed), Pelias became his heir and expected that his own children would one day succeed him as the unquestioned rulers of the country.

  It happened that Pelias could claim to be a Minyan himself, and was indeed a half-brother of Aeson’s. Tyro, their mother, wife to King Cretheus, had been visiting a College of Thessalian Heron nymphs on the banks of the Enipeus some years before, when a raiding party of Achaeans carried her off. They prostituted her in a temple of Poseidon, and when she was found to be with child they sent her home on foot to her husband. She was delivered of twin boys by the wayside but, feeling ashamed to bring them back to Cretheus, exposed them; they were found by a horseherd riding by on his mare, who took them home to his wife and called them Pelias and Neleus – Pelias, which means ‘dirty’, because the mare had kicked a clod of dirt in this child’s face; Neleus, which means ‘ruthless’, because of his staring eyes. Sidero, the horseherd’s wife, happened to have just lost a child of her own, and agreed to foster the twins; but had not enough milk for two. That they therefore took turns at the dugs of the shepherd’s wolf-hound bitch was afterwards held to account for the fierceness of their natures.

  Two days later Tyro returned, intending to bury her sons and so protect herself from their resentful ghosts. When she found them alive at the horseherd’s house she was overjoyed, having bitterly repented her deed, and asked for them to be restored to her. But Sidero refused the great rewards that Tyro offered, and sent her off with a beating. When Pelias and Neleus grew to an age of understanding and were told the story in full, they killed their foster-mother Sidero in punishment for her cruelty to Tyro. Then they ran off to the Achaeans, to whom they presented themselves as sons of Poseidon, having been born to a temple prostitute, and were given high rank. When the Achaeans invaded Hellas, Pelias in virtue of his Minyan blood successfully claimed the kingdom of Phthiotis; and Neleus, the other Minyan kingdom of Pylos. But the Mother Goddess hated Pelias, because he had violated one of her sanctuaries: he had killed Sidero as she was clinging to the very horns of the moon altar.

  Chapter Four

  Jason Claims His Kingdom

  The Centaurs of Mount Pelion were now again forbidden to company with the wives of the Minyans, a practice which Pelias considered indecent and would not condone. But, since ‘even such pitiful savages cannot live without the occasional company of women’, as he said, he encouraged them to steal brides from their old enemies, the Lapiths of Thessaly, who were now ruled by a Minyan aristocracy. Pelias had found the Lapiths restless and insolent neighbours, and was pleased to assist the Centaurs in their raids.

  One day he paid the Centaurs a ceremonial visit, meeting Cheiron, their leader, in the enclosure of the Mare-headed White Goddess on Pelion. Cheiron persuaded Pelias to enter the shrine and consult the Oracle. It amused Pelias to ask the Goddess how he should die; his reason for posing this question, he told his companions, was not that he needed enlightenment but that he wished to test the Goddess’s veracity. He had already been informed of the exact manner of his death by the Oracle of Father Zeus at Dodona; and who could presume to contradict All-mighty, All-knowing Zeus?

  The answer that the Goddess returned was: ‘How shall I tell you, Pelias, what you pretend to have heard already from my Son? Yet let me warn you to beware of the one-sandalled man: he will hate you, and before he has done his hatred will make mince-meat of you.’

  Pelias paid little attention to the maunderings of this ‘old three-souled woman’, for so he blasphemously called her, whose religion, as he said, was now everywhere in decay; especially since he could not reconcile her prophecy with the solemn assurance of Zeus that no man’s hand should ever be raised against him in violence and that, in old age, he should be given the choice of the hour and manner of his death. Nevertheless, he prudently gave orders that no Aetolians should be allowed to enter Phthiotis on any pretext whatsoever; because the Aetolians, for good luck when they march or dance, go shod on their left foot only.

  A few days later, Pelias had a curious reminder of the power of Zeus. The Chief Priest of Apollo came on foot through Iolcos, once more in the dress of a hired servant, and refused the richer portions of roast meat and the better drink, due to his distinguished rank, that Pelias offered him; he sat beside the hearth with the menials and ate umbles. He was on his way to the fortress of Pherae, in Thessaly, where Admetus the Minyan lived, son-in-law to Pelias; carrying out in his own person a second punishment of his divine master decreed by the Oracle of Zeus. This was the story:
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  The priests of Hades complained at Dodona that a new school of medicine had been founded at Delphi by one of Apollo’s sons, born of a temple prostitute, named Aesculapius. They charged Apollo with encouraging the study of medicine and surgery in order to decrease the number of dead, especially children, and thus to deprive the Infernal priesthood of their fees and perquisites. It seems that Aesculapius, at the request of a poor widow, had attended the funeral of her only son who had been drowned. The howling lament was already being raised by the priests of Hades; yet Aesculapius refused to regard the boy as dead, and by emptying him of water and moving his arms about, as if he were still alive, brought back the breath into his body. He sat up and sneezed, and Aesculapius thereupon dedicated him to the service of Apollo.

  The Dodonan Oracle gave a response favourable to the complainants by ordering the school to be closed, but Aesculapius refused to accept the decision as genuinely oracular. He protested that Hades caught every soul in the end, and that the more lives of children Apollo saved, the more children would be born in the course of nature: all of whom would eventually become the prey of Hades. This argument vexed Zeus, because it was unanswerable except by violence. A party of temple guards were at once sent from Dodona to Delphi, where they killed both Aesculapius and the boy whose life he had saved. A retaliatory raid was made on Dodona by Apollo’s archers, who shot to death all the Sons of Cyclops, the smiths of Dodona who made the sacred furniture for the shrines of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, and who were called the One-Eyed men because they worked with one eye shaded against the sparks flying from their anvils.

  The Oracle of Zeus then threatened Apollo with extinction if he would not abase himself and once more serve as a menial for a full year: this time his servitude was to be in the wildest province of Greece – which the Chief Priest took to be the Minyan kingdom of Pherae; during that year the Oracle was to be silent and all sacrifices, vows, and prayers to Apollo were to be discontinued. The Chief Priest had no choice but to submit. It is possible that he chose Pherae as his place of servitude because Admetus, King of Pherae, was under an obligation to him; Admetus had once unwittingly offended Apollo’s sister, the Maiden Goddess Artemis, by omitting the propitiatory sacrifice to her when he married Alcestis, the eldest daughter of King Pelias. The Goddess had punished Admetus by arranging that when he entered the bridal chamber he should find nothing in the bed but a basketful of snakes; and at first refused ever to give Alcestis back to him. Admetus then went to Delphi with offerings and begged Apollo to intercede with his divine sister; which he did. So now, in return, Admetus gave the Chief Priest as pleasant a servitude as possible; and earned his abiding gratitude.

  It was a long time before any other deity (except the Triple Goddess, who remained implacably hostile) dared dispute the authority of Zeus; but Apollo has never forgotten the insult that he was then forced to swallow, and it has been prophesied among the barbarians that one day he will make common cause with the Triple Goddess, and will castrate his father Zeus as ruthlessly as Zeus once castrated his father Cronus. Apollo, it is prophesied, will use against him the golden sickle laid up in the temple of Zeus at Hyllos in Corfu, which is said to be the authentic instrument used against Cronus. But Apollo has learned to be cautious and bides his time. At the entrance to the Navel Shrine these words are written: ‘Nothing in excess.’ And he studies the sciences.

  At the next winter solstice, when Mount Pelion was capped with snow, and so too was Mount Othrys far across the gulf to the southwestward, Pelias celebrated the customary festival in honour of the deities of the land. He paid especial reverence to his Father Poseidon, and gave precedence over the others to the Maiden Goddess Artemis. Because the Fish was now sacred to Artemis, he had rededicated the College of Fish Nymphs at Iolcos to her, putting it under the charge of old Iphias, his maternal aunt, daughter of a King of Argos. Pelias was obliged to make three strange omissions from the list of immortal guests whom he invited to share in the rich public feast of roast beef, mutton, and venison, The first omission was the name of Zeus himself. This was because, some years before, in the time of King Athamas, the God had unfortunately (as Pelias put it) been discovered on Pelion by the Mare-headed Mother, sleeping off the effects of a pleasant debauch; embarrassed to find himself naked – for he had flung off his Golden Fleece to cool his heated body – he had yielded his shrine to her and retired, in a new sober suit of black wool, to Mount Laphystios. ‘Until Father Zeus publicly returns to Pelion and sends the Mare-headed One packing,’ said Pelias, ‘I consider it wise to offer only private sacrifices to him.’ Since, however, he did not wish to seem an ally of the Mother in her quarrel with Zeus, the second and third omissions from his list were the names of the Goddess in her characters of Hera and Demeter. He made this omission – which was even stranger than the omission of Zeus, because the mid-winter festival had originally been sacred to the Goddess alone – without offering her any propitiation. He wished to show her that he neither feared her oracles nor intended to curry favour with her. But he propitiated Zeus with a private sacrifice in his dining-hall, in which he burned the whole carcase of a fine ox and ate not a morsel of it himself.

  In the confidence that he had averted the Father’s displeasure, Pelias then went down into the market-place, where the bonfires of dried pinelogs were already crackling, ready to roast the carcases of the beautiful beasts that he had chosen for sacrifice to the other Olympians. Among the crowd of holiday-makers he noticed a remarkable stranger – young, tall and handsome, with features that he seemed to recall as from a dream, armed with two bronze-bladed spears. To judge from his close-fitting deer-skin tunic and breeches and his leopard-skin cape, he was a Magnesian of the Leopard fraternity, come down from the mountains above Lake Boebe; yet the long mane of yellow hair that he wore proved him to have been initiated into the Centaur Horse fraternity. ‘Strange,’ thought Pelias. ‘I might have taken him for a Greek with that yellow hair, that fine straight nose and those large limbs.’ The stranger was gazing at Pelias intently and disconcertingly, but Pelias did not deign to greet him.

  Pelias ordered the garlanded victims to be led to the great altar, on which he had set several equal heaps of roasted barley-grains and one twice as big as the rest. He sprinkled the polls of the beasts with salt calling out the name of each God or Goddess in turn; then his assistant slaughtered them with a pole-axe; then he himself cut their throats with a curved flint knife. He turned their heads upwards as he did so since this was a sacrifice to the Olympians, not to any hero or Underworld deity. Lastly, he made a burnt offering of the thigh-bones, rolled in fat, and part of the entrails; but every morsel of the flesh was for the worshippers’ own eating. Salt sprinkled upon sacrificial victims as a seasoning was an innovation of the Achaeans; before their time no deity had called for it, and the Triple Goddess still refuses any salted offering that is made her.

  As soon as these sacrifices were completed, the stranger accosted Pelias boldly and asked: ‘King Pelias, why do you offer sacrifices to all the other deities, but not to the Great Goddess as she is worshipped by the Pelasgians?

  He answered: ‘Man without eyes, have you not observed that no sacrifice has been offered to Father Zeus, either? Would it be mannerly to invite the wife to the feast (for you surely know that the Great Goddess is now the consort of Zeus) and not the husband? This sacrifice is for my father Poseidon and the lesser Olympian Gods whose names you have heard me invoke.’

  The stranger said: ‘Perhaps you are right in making no sacrifice to Zeus, if what I hear is true: that he loathes to appear in these parts since once he uncovered his nakedness to his Mother in a fit of drunkenness.’

  Pelias looked the stranger up and down, for this was a speech so bold as almost to be impious, until his eye was suddenly checked at the feet: he saw only one sandal.

  He immediately enquired the stranger’s name, and he replied: ‘Ask me any other question, Greybeard, and I shall do my best to answer it.’

  Pelias paus
ed in astonishment and then asked, gasping: ‘Stranger, what would you do if you were in my place?’ He had never in his life been so affronted.

  The stranger laughed insolently, tossed up his rowan-hefted spears, both together, caught them again, and answered: ‘I should send out a wool-gathering expedition with orders to the commander not to return until he had found golden wool, even though he had to sail for it to the other end of the world – perhaps to Colchis where the chariot-horses of the Sun are stabled – or to descend into the lowest depths of the Earth where, according to our new theology, the Thirteenth Deity has his dark and horrible empire.’