Idas laughed, but gaspingly, for Pollux the boxer was seated on his chest. ‘Come, Argive Frog,’ he said, ‘prophesy against me if you dare, as you did against the Aloeids, and watch for what will happen. You will be proved a false prophet, you buskined rogue, for I assure you that your dead body will lie and rot here, here on the beach of Pagasae, not on some remote flowery meadow (as you pretend), while the ship sails on without you.’
The quarrel would have ended in bloodshed, for Lynceus was on his way, sword in hand, to the help of his brother Idas, had it not been for a sudden twanging and banging and tinkling behind the altar – a four-stringed lyre played incomparably well. At this sound those who were struggling with Idas relaxed their grip on him. They rose up and began to dance in time with the music. Idas rose too and joined in the dance, without showing any resentment, for drunken men have a short memory; and Lynceus was glad to sheathe his sword and follow. Next Jason started out of his brooding trance and pranced about nimbly, with his arms raised and fingers cracking, for Cheiron had been a stern and accomplished dancing-master. Finally the thud of feet aroused Hercules. He heaved himself up and leaped upon the ox-cart, where he stamped about, keeping time to the music, until it seemed certain that the axle would break. Beside him the train of dancers wound in and out, weaving a holy figure of eight.
With a whack on the belly of the lyre, the music ended as suddenly as it had begun. Mopsus, Idmon, and several more ran to embrace the gaunt wild-eyed Thracian, with the tattooed face and the white linen robe, whose intervention had so narrowly averted bloodshed. ‘Orpheus,’ they cried, ‘Orpheus, you are come again to us from your Egyptian wanderings and your self-imposed exile among the cruel Ciconians?
Orpheus replied: ‘I have been instructed in a dream to sail with you. Let us go aboard.’
The arrival of Orpheus prolonged the banquet until evening, when it was too late to sail. Then Jason called for grass to be cut and spread upon the beach for couches, and he and his companions ate and drank until the moon shone high in the sky, and Orpheus entertained them with his music. Ballad after ballad he sang of the good old days of Theseus and Peirithoüs, and still they called for more. At about midnight they fell asleep, one by one; but their retainers kept guard lest Pelias might be meditating treachery. The night was calm, and presently dawn shone clear and bright.
When they had breakfasted on cold meats and a little wine, Jason gladly led the way down to the Argo, and the crew clambered aboard and took their allotted seats. Retainers came crowding up with the gear that had been piled on the beach, and their masters hurriedly stowed all in the lockers under the benches. They were anxious to be gone, now that Orpheus was playing the solemn, slow rowing chant, Slide out to sea, devoted barque – since famous, then heard for the first time. When Hercules magnanimously volunteered to take the starboard oar on the bench nearest the helmsman, Jason gave orders that the heavier man of each pair of oarsmen abaft the mast should seat himself on the port side to counterpoise the weight of that tremendous pull; this he did on the advice of Argus. The wind blew fitfully from the south.
Tiphys took his high seat in the stern, and Jason shouted to the crowd on the beach to unreeve the hawsers from the pierced anchor-stones. They did so, and flung the rope-ends aboard for Jason to catch. But Argus reproached Jason for wishing to leave behind the stones which the masons had so long laboured to drill and shape. Despite murmurs of impatience from the benches, the stones were taken up from the beach and trundled up a long plank into the ship.
At last Jason gave the signal for departure. Hercules dipped his oar into the water, and heaved. The other oarsmen did likewise, and after a ragged start the beautiful ship began to glide down the gulf, the oars dipping and rising in perfect time. Here was seen the fulfilment of Apollo’s prophecy that the true Jason would appear. For, once aboard the Argo, Jason was no healer of discord, despite his name; it was Orpheus who was called upon to compose the incessant quarrels of her jealous and unruly crew.
Jason observing a triple wink of sunlight on polished brass from the direction of Methone, a signal that he had been expecting, told Tiphys: ‘Steer for Methone, if you please. There I hope to make up our complement.’ Tiphys did so, and soon the sound of wailing from the beach of Pagasae came more faintly down the wind.
When they had left Iolcos well astern, Lynceus, casting his eye over his left shoulder, interrupted the music. ‘I see something, comrades,’ he cried. ‘Two men and a woman are running down the spur of Pelion towards Methone, half hidden by the oak thickets. The men you all know: they are Acastus, son of Pelias, and Peleus the Myrmidon, his friend. Many of you also know the woman: she runs and leaps across the bushes with the gliding motion of a deer; and by her braided hair, short tunic, and bow anyone would tell her for a maiden huntress of the Goddess Artemis.’
‘Oh, Lynceus, Lynceus, tell me, what is the colour of her tunic?’ eagerly asked young Meleager of Calydon, his bench partner. ‘It is not saffron-coloured, is it?’
‘Saffron-coloured,’ replied Lynceus, ‘and she wears a necklace of bears’ claws. I will not leave you any longer in suspense, Meleager. It is the woman whom you love better than your life; it is Atalanta of Calydon.’
Great Ancaeus cried out angrily: ‘She had better not set foot in this ship. No ship is lucky with a woman aboard.’
Be careful,’ said Meleager. ‘You spoke in the same strain in Calydon before the hunt, and where would you have been without Atalanta? Did she not save your life?’
Great Ancaeus growled some unintelligible reply.
As the Argo drew alongside the great rock at Methone which served as a jetty, Atalanta sprang aboard before anyone could prevent her, with a fir branch in her hand. ‘In the name of the Maiden Goddess,’ she cried. Jason had no choice but to accept her as a member of the ship’s company. The silver fir is sacred to Artemis, who, though she has renounced her connexion with the Triple Goddess and acknowledged herself a daughter of Zeus, still keeps most of her former characteristics. It is more dangerous to offend her than almost any other deity, and Jason was relieved that she too favoured the expedition; he had feared that he might have offended her priestess Iphias by his curtness that morning.
But Meleager, who was in love with Atalanta, was bitterly disappointed that she had come in the Goddess’s name and was therefore untouchable. Recently he had offered to put away his young wife Cleopatra, the daughter of Idas and Marpessa, and marry Atalanta instead as soon as she had withdrawn from the service of Artemis. This she was free to do if she performed certain unnameable sacrifices at a shrine of the Goddess; but an oracle had warned her that marriage would bring her ill luck, and, besides, she did not wish either to provoke Idas, Cleopatra’s father, or to wrong Cleopatra herself, who had been her fellow-huntress. Atalanta had therefore refused to marry curly-haired Meleager, who then swore that at least she could not compel him to remain with Cleopatra: he would go to Iolcos and there volunteer for the voyage to Colchis, and forget them both.
It seemed now that Atalanta did not by any means wish Meleager to forget her. She came to sit on the same bench with him, and Lynceus resigned his oar to her. It was noticed that she had three bloody scalps dangling at her girdle, which caused her neighbours discomfort and anxiety.
Presently Acastus and Peleus came running down to the jetty and sprang aboard, laughing. They sat down together on the bow bench and fixed their oars in the oar-holes, while Jason and Lynceus pushed the ship away from the jetty with poles. As they rowed off, Acastus told his comrades what had happened. It seems that when he reached Iolcos Pelias had told him at once that he had no charge to answer but that guards were posted to prevent his return to Pagasae. Acastus had answered resentfully and made no pretence of submission to his father’s will until Peleus arrived. For Peleus came into the hall declaring that he had quarrelled with Jason about the leadership of the expedition, and swore that he, for one, would never think of embarking except under the captaincy of Hercules. ‘You were wise,�
� Pelias told him, ‘very wise, for (to be frank with you) I do not expect ever to see the ship again, now that the adventurers have put themselves under the captaincy of my presumptuous nephew.’ Then Acastus, feigning a change of heart, said: Since you too have returned, dear Peleus, I do not much care whether I sail or whether I stay. Come, now, let us sit down and feast, and tomorrow morning early we will go up to Pelion to greet Cheiron and persuade him to hunt with us.’ To this Pelias made no objection. So the next morning they arose early and went a little way up the mountain and then turned off towards Methone; for Peleus had told Jason of his intention and hoped to find the Argo there. Presently they fell in with Atalanta, who had just killed two Centaurs and was engaged in removing their scalps…
‘The Centaurs do not recognize the Olympian Artemis,’ explained Atalanta. ‘They have hated her ever since she took over the College of Fish Nymphs at Iolcos, and so deprived them of their customary pleasures. Three of them lay in wait for me as I came over the mountains from Ossa, and would doubtless have tried to outrage me had I not sprung the ambush with an arrow. I started away at once and laid an ambush myself when I saw that they were following me; from which I shot the remaining two, as Peleus and Acastus have said. To avoid being haunted by their erotic ghosts I scalped them – these horse manes that the Centaurs wear are handy for the purpose – and thus made them powerless against me. All their power lies in their hair. No, no the drops of blood that drip from the scalps will bring the ship good luck, not bad.
Atalanta’s story horrified Jason. Whatever she might say, the ghosts of the Centaurs, his kinsmen, would almost certainly call on him for vengeance. Yet he could not risk an offence to Artemis. He said at last: ‘So long as you have not killed my stepfather Cheiron, I can forgive you. It would have gone hard with you if you had killed my stepfather Cheiron.’
‘Ah! Did I forget to tell you,’ Hercules interrupted, ‘that my old centaur friend is dead? He died yesterday. He, Hylas, and I were having the happiest of times together, feasting and telling stories, and then… I cannot remember exactly how the trouble began, but I know that some of the other Centaurs began to grow excited and make faces at me. I slapped one of them and must have hit him a trifle too hard, because he did not speak another word. The others grew still more excited and decided to avenge the dead one.’
‘Hercules killed about six Centaurs,’ said Hylas. ‘It was those children’s voices in his head again. That man tried to restrain him from exterminating the tribe, but ran into the way of one of his arrows. Hercules was overcome with remorse, as you can imagine, and I had to soothe him with another jar of wine. That was why we were late at the beach.’ He called Cheiron ‘that man’ to avoid invoking his ghost.
‘The Centaurs are a pest,’ said Coronus the Lapith. ‘They set upon my father Caeneus, without provocation, beating him to death with pine logs. My heart always leaps within me when I hear that a Centaur is killed.’
At this Orpheus hastily struck up a soothing melody, and began singing:
Let us forget, comrades, let us forget
What dark deeds lie behind us.
Let grief not blind us,
Confuse, or bind us.
There is hope yet.
‘Sing that verse again, Thracian,’ said Hercules. ‘You are right. Let us forget those miserable Centaurs. You bear me no ill will, Jason?’
Jason did not reply until Hercules had repeated his question threateningly, and then he said in a broken voice, the tears starting to his eyes: ‘That man was the noblest man of all my acquaintance, and I would think very ill of myself if I did not shed tears at this news; for I see that even the eyes of bold Peleus are streaming, and that his shoulders are heaving with sobs. Nevertheless, I had rather that my dear foster-father and my Centaur comrades had fallen by your hand, most noble Hercules, than by any other. For I know that on your return to Greece you will appease that man’s ghost with more magnificent offerings than he could hope from any other man, and that you will not forget the other ghosts either. And that man was not blameless himself: he should have refrained from publicly broaching a cask of wine; wine is the Centaurs’ curse, as he himself often said.’
Thus Jason soothed the rising anger of Hercules.
‘Comrades,’ said Argus, ‘I propose that we make good use of the afternoon and row clear out of the Pagasaean Gulf before Pelias sends a galley in pursuit.’
‘Sing that song again, Orpheus,’ Hercules repeated. ‘By the way, Linus the music-master whom in self-defence, long ago, I brained with his own lyre – a tiresome pedant – was he not your brother?’
‘Forget those dark deeds, Hercules,’ said Orpheus sorrowfully, and presently struck up again.
Yet Methone was not the last place in the Pagasaean Gulf where the Argo was made fast: Jason was constrained to touch at a beach in the innermost recess of the gulf, since called Aphetae (or the ‘beach of departure’), and there sacrifice to Bright Artemis a kid which he bought from a goatherd for a few lumps of fig-bread. Yet this sacrifice did not delay them long, and Atalanta was persuaded by Meleager to dedicate the Centaurs’ scalps at the same altar, which lifted a load from every heart.
This is the story of Atalanta. Jasius the Arcadian, a chieftain of that King Oeneus of Calydon who planted the first vineyard in Aetolia, wished for a son; and when his beloved wife died in childbirth of a girl whom she named Atalanta, he ordered his bailiff to expose the girl on the mountains, there to expiate her mother’s murder. However, nobody cares to expose a child, for a child’s ghost is far more difficult to shake off than that of a grown person. The bailiff entrusted the task to his under-bailiff, and the under-bailiff entrusted it to a swineherd, and the swineherd entrusted it to his wife, and his wife laid Atalanta upon the threshold of a mountain shrine of Artemis the She-Bear and informed the swineherd that the orders of Jasius had been obeyed. It is said that a real she-bear used to come down daily from the mountains to be fed on honey at the shrine, where its visits were welcomed, and would allow Atalanta to drink at her dugs. Atalanta was dedicated to the Goddess and became a famous huntress; when she was fully grown she could run through forest or over broken country faster than anyone in Greece, woman or man, so sure-footed she was.
Presently a great boar began to ravage the fields and orchards of Calydon, in punishment as it was thought for the King’s insult to Artemis, Lady of the Wild Things. Oeneus had purposely omitted the Goddess’s portion from a sacrifice offered to all the Olympians together, because her foxes had made free with his vineyard. Nobody dared face the boar at first; but at last Meleager, who was the King’s son, gathered a band of courageous young men from every part of Greece and went after it. Yet Meleager scrupled to attack the boar unless Artemis should first give her consent, and went to the Bear shrine with a propitiatory gift. The High Priestess approved of Meleager’s courage and piety, and not only sanctioned the hunt but sent Atalanta to take part in it. This displeased his companions, who included Idas, Lynceus, Castor, Pollux, Admetus, Great Ancaeus, and Peleus. All of them refused at first to hunt in the company of a woman, declaring that it would bring them bad luck. Meleager replied that if they now abandoned the hunt Artemis would no doubt punish them as severely as she had punished his father Oeneus. So they went hunting, with very bad grace, agreeing that whoever killed the boar should have the pelt.
Atalanta shamed them by being the first to track the boar to the thicket where it was harboured. To show their contempt for her they disobeyed her orders, which were to surround the thicket silently and lie in wait with bows and javelins while she dislodged the boar. Instead, they rushed headlong into the copse, shouting loudly to frighten it. The boar found them bunched together in a crowd, killed two of them and lamed two more, including Great Ancaeus. Atalanta caught Ancaeus up on her shoulders and dragged him to safety while the boar was ravening at the bodies of his companions. She left Peleus the honour of killing the beast with his javelin; but, though the boar was still preoccupied with its filthy task,
Peleus succeeded in killing nothing but his father-in-law. The boar ran off unhurt.
When Atalanta had bound up the wound of Great Ancaeus she continued her pursuit of the boar and once more discovered its harbourage. This time the huntsmen obeyed her signals and remained under cover. She crept up close behind the boar and drove an arrow deep into its ham. Out it limped with horrid squeals into a clearing and was met there by a flight of arrows from the bowmen whom Atalanta had posted all around. One arrow struck it full in the left eye and it began to run around in slow circles, foaming at the mouth. Meleager dared to come in on the blind side and drove his javelin through its heart.
The boar fell, and then several other men, who had kept out of the way while it was still dangerous, rushed up to stab at it. As might have been expected, a noisy dispute arose as to who had killed the boar and thereby won the pelt. Meleager settled it by declaring that though he had himself struck the death-blow with his javelin, yet he resigned his claim to the pelt and awarded it to Atalanta. For she had first so lamed the boar that it would have died within a few days in any case, and next had driven it into an ambush which she had herself posted.
Meleager’s servants then skinned the boar and presented the pelt to Atalanta. She accepted it with gratitude and was slowly returning to the shrine of Artemis when Meleager’s uncles, one of whom claimed to have shot the arrow which blinded the boar, tried in their fury not only to seize the pelt but to violate her. Meleager heard her cry out and ran to the rescue, calling upon Artemis to shield him from guilt. He killed both his uncles with the same javelin that had put an end to the boar. Thus the prejudice against hunting with a woman was confirmed, for five men had died that day; and yet one might say with equal truth that it was the prejudice itself that had killed them.
The Golden Fleece Page 14