The fourteen Minyans (there were no more) stood aside. Conspicuous among them was Mopsus the Lapith, who, having lately been assured by an old hen-stork that he would die in the deserts of Libya, was perfectly confident that he would survive the voyage, which would take him in the other direction. For Mopsus claimed to understand the language of birds, though admitting that they sometimes talked as nonsensically as humans. He wore a starling crest, and the tip of his tongue was slit with a knife. Near him stood honest Coronus the Lapith, of the Crow fraternity; gloomy Melampus of Argos, a cousin of Jason, who wore the Magpie crest; and hot-tempered Erginus of Miletos, whose cloak was striped like a tunny-fish in honour of his father Poseidon, and who wore a belt of plaited horse-hair. Next to Erginus stood another son of Poseidon, the wizard Periclymenus, from Sandy Pylos; he wore the same sort of belt as did Erginus, but had been born during an eclipse of the sun and was therefore free to wear whatever badges he pleased – he was even permitted to eat the food of the dead. His mother, Chloris, was now wife to Neleus, the cruel brother of Pelias. Next to Periclymenus stood taciturn Ascalaphus, a son of the God Ares by Astyoche, whose arms were tattooed with lizards. These three men had come to have divine parentage because their mothers’ distinguished birth had marked them out for election as temple prostitutes. The other Minyans were Jason, son of Aeson; Acastus, son of Pelias; Eurydamas the Dolopian from Lake Xynias in Thessaly, a stalwart horse-breeder; Tiphys the helmsman, from Thisbe in Boeotia; two men from Halos whose names are now forgotten; and a pair of brothers, grandsons of Perieres the former King of Messenia, named Idas and Lynceus. Idas and Lynceus wore caps of lynx-skin which they never removed from their heads; they were tall men in the prime of life, and cared nothing for any man.
Hylas went up and down the ranks of the volunteers who were not of Minyan blood. Two magnificently tall champions, twins by the look of them, with bulging muscles, swan’s-feather head-dresses and cloaks of swan’s-down, caught his eye first. He tapped them on the shoulders.
‘Your names, if you please,’ said Hercules.
‘Castor and Pollux,’ they answered in one breath. ‘We are the sons of Leda by Father Zeus, and princes of Sparta.’
‘I fancied that I recognized you,’ said Hercules, ‘though upon my soul I could never tell you apart. Which of you is the horse-tamer and wrestler – the one whom I threw far over the ropes into the crowd at Olympia, and who afterwards tried to teach me the art of fencing?’
Castor smiled and answered: ‘I am Castor. I was a fool to enter the ring with you. Yet I had never been thrown before and have never been thrown since. I well remember those fencing lessons… In the end I advised you to stick to your club.’
‘I am Pollux,’ said Pollux. ‘I won the boxing contest at the Games. It was lucky for me that you did not enter.’
‘I was too beastly drunk,’ said Hercules, ‘which was lucky for both of us: once I am in the ring I can never remember that I am fighting a friendly match – can I, Hylas my child?’
Castor and Pollux, though not Minyans, were cousins to Idas and Lynceus, and brought up with them since childhood; there was deadly rivalry between the two pairs of brothers.
Hylas then tapped two wild-looking Northerners, another pair of twins, who wore feathered head-dresses of kite-plumes stained with sea-purple. The face of each was tattooed with thin blue interlocking rings.
‘Your names, if you please,’ said Hercules.
‘Calaïs and Zetes,’ Calaïs answered. ‘Our mother, Oreithyia of Athens, when a girl, was carried off by Thracian pirates as she was dancing in honour of Artemis, on the banks of the Ilissos. They made her a prostitute at the Oracle of the North Wind, on the bank of the Erginos river, and we were born to her there. Afterwards, blind King Phineus of Thynia took Oreithyia as his wife and begot two more sons on her; we are thus known as the sons of Phineus. But we are, properly, the sons of the North Wind.’
Hylas next chose Euphemus, the son of Europa, from Taenaron, which lies on the southernmost promontory of the Peloponnese. He was the best swimmer in all Greece. Compared with others, he seemed to skim along the surface of the water like the swallow, which happened to be his badge. Poets have therefore celebrated him as a son of Poseidon; but his father was Ctimenus the Phocian.
The truth was that Hylas had a fancy for feather head-dresses and was choosing all the men who belonged to bird fraternities. His next choice was Idmon of Argos, who wore the golden crest of the hoopoe. Idmon was heir to the King of Argos, but his mother, Calliope, had become pregnant of him after a pleasurable visit to the Oracle at Delphi, and he thus ranked as a son of Apollo. He wore scarlet boots and tunic and a white cloak embroidered with laurel leaves in his divine father’s honour. Like Mopsus, he was a student of augury.
The next man chosen was Echion, a son of the God Hermes by Antianeira of Alope; he wore a snake’s badge in his father’s honour and a gorgeous heraldic robe embroidered with myrtle-leaves. He had been one of the heralds employed by Jason and had persuaded himself to volunteer for the voyage by the force of his own eloquence.
Just as Hylas was choosing Echion, in came a splendid-looking Thessalian, dressed in a cloak and tunic made from the skins of lambs cast untimely. He was one of the boldest of the adventurers, but had been away on a short visit to his home, which was not far off. No sooner had he seen Hercules than he uttered a cry of joy and came running to embrace him. He was Admetus of Pherae, the Thessalian King with whom Apollo had been condemned by Zeus to serve as a menial. One day, some twelve years before this, he had accidentally trespassed in an enclosure newly consecrated to the God Hades, where a stag which he had been pursuing was harboured. The priest of Hades then warned Admetus that either he or one of his relatives must, within seven days, offer himself as a victim to the offended God; otherwise a curse would fall on the whole country. His wife Alcestis, one of the daughters of Pelias, went at once to the shrine and offered herself in place of Admetus; for she was the best of wives. However, Hercules, passing through Thessaly with the infant Hylas on his shoulders, happened to hear the story. Protesting that Hades had no shadow of right to the shrine which had recently been stolen from the Goddess Persephone, he ran in with his club, terrified the Infernal priests and rescued Alcestis in the nick of time. Hercules had a high regard for Alcestis, and used to say regretfully that no woman had ever loved him well enough to have offered her life for his. He now gave Admetus a friendly slap that sent him spinning across the hall, and told Hylas: ‘Count Admetus in!’ For Admetus was a Minyan, son of Aeson’s brother Pheres.
Hylas continued to choose from the remaining volunteers, and when he had chosen a full ship’s company, all but three, Hercules waved his hand and said: ‘Enough. Now let the remainder strip themselves to the buff and fight it out among themselves for our diversion, wrestling or boxing with nothing barred. The last three men to remain upon their feet shall come with us.’
Then ensued a battle that was at once very fierce and very mild, for not all the twenty contestants were whole-heartedly set upon making the voyage; the rest had volunteered from shame and wished for nothing so much as to be rejected. Some fell down and lay like logs at the first feeble tap that was dealt them; others fought with terrible vigour, punching, kicking, gouging, and biting. The spectators yelled encouragement to their kinsmen, and one or two could not be restrained from running into the fight and taking part. Hylas squealed and Hercules roared with laughter to see two enormous fighters, who had blacked each other’s eyes, break off their fight by mutual consent and go in search of easier game; and to watch the antics of leather-helmeted Little Ancaeus of Flowery Samos – not Great Ancaeus of Tegea, the helmsman, who wore a broad-brimmed Arcadian hat. Little Ancaeus pretended to be fighting with the utmost fury, but was merely darting in and out of the scrimmage, dodging blows and dealing none, in order to reserve his strength for the final tussle.
Gradually the hall cleared. Now only seven contestants remained on their feet: four in a struggling mass; tw
o together, whose names were Phalerus and Butes, sparring cautiously apart; and Little Ancaeus. Little Ancaeus ran up to Phalerus and Butes. ‘Break away, Athenians,’ he cried. ‘You, like myself, are still fresh and strong. Let us fall, all three together, on the other bloody-nosed fools, and sweep them away like a mountain torrent.’
Phalerus the archer and Butes the bee-master were as shrewd as one expects Athenians to be: they knew that their best chance of being chosen was to stage a sham fight, exchanging noisy but ineffective blows, and trusting that their reputation as boxers would keep other fighters away. One young Arcadian from Psophis, who had a grudge against Athens, did indeed try to make a three-cornered fight of it, but Phalerus jerked his knee into the Arcadian’s groin, so that he fell groaning.
At the invitation of Ancaeus the Athenians dropped their fists, and all ran together to the other end of the hall, where three of the combatants were trying to fell the fourth. Ancaeus crouched down behind the knees of one of them, a Mycenaean, whom Butes caught by the hair and dragged backwards. As the Mycenaean toppled and fell, Phalerus drove a great fist into his midriff. This trick they repeated with one of the remaining pair, both Cadmeans from Thebes; and the survivor they picked up bodily and swung out through the open door of the hall into the muddy road. So Butes, Phalerus, and Little Ancaeus were the victors.
However, the names of the thirty oarsmen, the helmsman, and the supernumeraries, who eventually sailed in the Argo do not correspond with those of the ship’s company chosen by Hylas and Hercules. For a couple of Minyans, those from Halos, slipped away on the last night and two Aetolian new-comers, a man and a woman, unexpectedly took their places. Since, therefore, there has been so much vain boasting by pretended Argonauts who never so much as saw the Argo riding at anchor in a sheltered harbour, the authentic roll will be given in full; but not yet.
Chapter Ten
The Argo is Launched
The day appointed by the Oracle for the launching of the ship was now close at hand, and the chosen crew practised rowing together in the same galley – all but Hercules, who went off with Hylas on a visit to his Centaur friends and spent the next three days and the intervening nights in a tremendous carousal with Cheiron. Those of the crew who were not Minyans by birth performed a perfunctory ceremony of becoming so by adoption. Each in turn crept out from between the knees of Jason’s mother, Alcimede, and then wailed like a new-born infant until comforted by her with a rag-teat dipped in ewes’ milk. After this they were solemnly given their own names again and grew to manhood within the hour.
Jason saw to the provisioning of the ship, but many of the Argonauts were men of wealth and willing to pay their share, or more than their share, of the expense. With the silver and golden ornaments, the jewels and the embroidered robes that they contributed to the common stock Jason was able to purchase from Pelias sacks of grain, sides of cured beef, conical lumps of fig-bread, sun-dried grapes, roast salted filberts, jars of honey, honey-cakes flavoured with thyme and patterned with pine kernels, and all manner of other confections, in large quantities. He found it unnecessary to ballast the ship with stones and sand: instead, enormous earthenware jars, of the length of a man or longer, filled with sweet wine and well stoppered, were laid in cradles on either side of the kelson. Each Argonaut provided his own arms and bedding, but spare cordage and sails had been found by the Archons of Athens.
At last the fateful morning dawned. The sky was unclouded and the North Wind blew cold from Thessaly, but dropped as the sun rose. In Iolcos a great wailing was heard. Some of it was caused by genuine grief at the departure of so many magnificent young men on an unusually hazardous voyage; but most of it was raised by hired mourners whom the Argonauts had paid to avert the jealousy of any God or Spite who happened to feel maliciously inclined towards the ship – just as beans are planted with curses to keep away the ghosts that gnaw at the young shoots. Pelias, for politeness, wept the loudest of all and kept repeating: ‘If only the dark wave which carried Helle away to her death had overwhelmed Phrixus too! For then the Fleece would never have been conveyed to Colchis, and my very dear nephew Jason would never have had occasion to make this voyage. I fear that it will prove fatal to many, if not all, of the brave men who sail with him.’
Aeson, when Jason came very early to say goodbye, bore himself with dignity, and gave him his blessing. He also undertook to send to Dodona the promised cauldron and ivory-handled sacrificial sickle, though he could ill afford to purchase them. Alcimede wound her arms about Jason’s neck, weeping ceaselessly. He managed at last to disengage himself, saying: ‘For shame, Mother! Anyone would think that you were an orphan girl, cruelly ill-treated by a stepmother, who sobs around the neck of an old nurse, the only person in the house who still cares for her. These cries are unbecoming in a Queen.’
Crouched on the floor, she sobbed: ‘When you are gone, what will become of your dear father and me? You may be sure that you will never find us alive on your return – if ever you do return. Pelias will have been our murderer. Then who will dare to bury us? Our bodies will be thrown into the open fields for the kites to peck at and for the dogs to gnaw. I do not fear death, which is the common fate of mankind, but I do shrink in loathing from the miserable existence of an earth bound ghost, condemned to wander homeless for ever, twittering like a bat, in the cold and rain.’
Jason told her curtly to be of good cheer and went striding out into the market-place. There the people greeted him with cheers of admiration mingled with howls of grief. They strewed his path with the scarlet wind-flower, which is the emblem of youth that is doomed to die. His grand-aunt Iphias, the Chief Priestess, stood in his path. She had fallen in love with him, as aged virgins sometimes do with handsome young men. She seized his right hand and kissed it, but, for all her eagerness to say something, she could not force the words out, because her heart beat so loud against her ribs. Jason passed on, with the crowd yelling beside him, and she was left there by the wayside mumbling spitefully: ‘The heartless young man, with no respect for age or virtue! May he one day remember me when his hair is grey and thin and his bones ache; when the fine ship towards which he now hurries so proudly is a rotting skeleton on the beach; when there are no crowds to cheer him and slap his back!’ She scratched a secret figure in the dust at her feet.
Jason continued on his way along the curving coast road and at Pagasae found most of his comrades already assembled. They were sitting on the coiled cordage, folded sails, and other gear collected on the beach. Argus, dressed in a long cape of bull’s hide, with the black hair worn outside, stood waiting impatiently for permission to launch the ship. Hercules had not yet arrived, but Jason suggested that they should begin to launch the ship without him. Jason had vowed a sacrifice to Apollo, God of Embarkations, and his father Aeson who had supplied a yoke of oxen on each of the three preceding days – for sacrifices to Zeus, Poseidon, and Athena respectively – had promised him yet another yoke, of the small herd still remaining to him; so the company would feast well as soon as the ship had taken to the water. When Jason told them of this they all rose to their feet and began collecting large flat stones which they piled one on top of the other to make an altar, and heaped logs of dry driftwood about it.
When this was done, Jason took off all his clothes except his leather breeches and laid them on a large rock above high-water mark, the others followed his example. Then at the request of Argus they frapped the ship lengthwise from prow to stern with four heavy ropes, which they wetted first and afterwards drew tight with a windlass. As each rope was securely reeved and knotted, Jason called in turn on each of the four Olympian deities who had sponsored the voyage, to guard that rope well.
Argus had mattocks ready, and set his comrades to dig a trench, a little broader than the ship’s beam, down the beach into the sea, beginning from her prow. There was a greater depth of water at this point than anywhere else on the coast for half a mile around. Behind them, as they dug, their servants, armed with heavy logs, rammed
down the stony sand of the trench to make a level surface. The Argo was already resting on a set of rollers which had been in position since her keel was laid. Now it remained to lay others ahead of her in the trench, of stout pine logs with the bark stripped off, and heave her forward upon them. There was no room at the pointed poop for more than two or three men to heave; but Argus reversed the oars in the oar-holes so that the butts protruded a couple of feet beyond the gunwale and the blades pressed against the ribs on the opposite side. Then he posted a man at each of the oars and climbed up into the bows and cried: ‘One, two, three – heave!’
The Argonauts heaved with their arms and shoulders and thrust backwards with their feet, while the crowd kept holy silence. The Argo shuddered, creaked, and began to slide slowly forward. The men at the oars and those at the stem heaved the harder, and Tiphys kept her straight on her course by shouting: ‘Handsomely, you of the starboard side! More muscle, you of the port!’ The rollers groaned and a light smoke rose from the friction as she rattled down. Tiphys shouted ‘Ho up, ho up! Avast shoving! Hold her now! Handsomely, handsomely all!’ Then with a swish her prow took to the water, and her whole length followed. Tiphys, who had a jar of olive oil in readiness, emptied it into the sea, splashing it first upon the prow, as a libation to the God Poseidon and a request for a calm sea.
The Argo rode trimly on the water, and the crowd cheered three times for good luck. The crew tied her up in shallow water and, after reversing the oars again and securing them in the oar-holes with the leather loops began lifting stores aboard. Argus saw to the stepping of the mast, to the adjusting of the loops and pulleys for hoisting the yard, and then to the reeving of the rigging; but he did not hoist the sail, for there was no wind.
These tasks were nearly complete when a sudden shout of dismay rose from the shore. Hylas appeared from the direction of Iolcos, beside a rough ox-wagon on which was stretched Hercules, at full length, with a train of mourners following behind. ‘He is dead, Hercules our leader is dead,’ the Argonauts cried in dismay, and one or two of them added: ‘Nothing without Hercules! Hercules is dead; we cannot sail.’ But it proved that he was only lying in a drunken stupor and that the hired mourners, after taking refreshment by the way, had come down to Pagasae to give the Argo a lucky send-off.
The Golden Fleece Page 12