The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  Jason said: ‘The God Apollo, when he understands the urgency of the case, will doubtless release us from the oath of mutual assistance that we swore in his name. For if we send back a party to rescue Butes, who is perhaps already dead of the poison, not one of them can hope to return safely; and with many oars unmanned, the escape of those who remain will be impossible. Shall the presumptuous folly of Butes condemn his comrades to death as well as himself? I say no! Cast off, Argonauts! Let Butes, since he is so knowledgeable about bees, escape from the angry hive of Aea from which we have already dared to rob both the golden honey, which is the Fleece, and the young Queen Bee, Medea.’

  Some of the Argonauts, though not many, praised this prudent speech. Others indignantly rejected it – not only the Athenians but also Iphitus and Mopsus and Admetus, out of respect for Apollo; for they did not dare forswear themselves of the oath that had been taken in his name.

  Augeas of Elis said: ‘The law of Apollo is this: “Nothing in excess.” Let us please the Far-Darter by not carrying to excess the loyalty that we owe to a fool.’

  This speech angered Atalanta, who sprang out of the ship and asked: ‘What man of honour dares come back to Aea with me? Because Jason and Augeas are cowards, shall we others leave Butes to a Colchian funeral and to the same cruel fate from which we were sent to deliver Phrixus?’

  Meleager followed at her challenge, and Iphitus and Phalerus and Mopsus and Admetus, but not Argus (because of his lameness); and when Little Ancaeus saw that all the rest hung back he offered himself as a seventh. But Atalanta asked: ‘Will no one come of those who speak the Colchian language?’

  Melanion, son of Phrixus, answered: ‘I will come. My hair and features are darker than those of my brothers, and I can pass unnoticed among Colchians. Besides, I am by far the most courageous of them all.’

  Atalanta praised Melanion, and they were starting out together, a party of eight, when Jason called them back. He told Atalanta that she was robbing the ship of too many oarsmen: she must leave five of the seven men behind. She therefore chose Iphitus and Melanion as her companions. But Meleager and Phalerus went off with her into the darkness, notwithstanding.

  The remainder of the Argonauts waited on their benches in prolonged anxiety. Each man prayed aloud to the god or goddess whom he most favoured, imploring assistance, and making great promises of sacrifices and votive gifts. At last Jason said: ‘Comrades, be ready with weapons to assist the return of Atalanta and her party. Mopsus, have bandages and salves at hand for the wounded. Lynceus, go and stand on the mound yonder, called the Ram’s Back, and keep watch.’ But he himself remained in the ship, to comfort Medea, who was racked with sobs and could not utter a word.

  Meanwhile, since the palace guards, who hated the Taurians and the Albanians equally, could not be persuaded to intervene and prevent them from exterminating each other, but stood by laughing, Aeëtes sent a messenger to Jason demanding the immediate assistance of his Argonauts. The messenger came back after a while with the report that Jason was not to be found in the wing where the Argonauts were lodged, and that no Greek at all remained with the exception of the Bee King (for so he called Butes), whom he had found lying insensible in the corridor. Aeëtes at once divined what had happened: the mutilation of the bulls had been a Greek stratagem to set the Albanians and Taurians at each other’s throats, and his own grandsons, who had now disappeared too, were Jason’s accomplices.

  Aeëtes was swift to act. He despatched the captain of his guard with a hundred men to the Royal Quay to seize the Argo if she were still there, and himself ran to his brother-in-law, Prince Perses the Taurian, imploring him to call off the bull-headed priests. With great difficulty he persuaded Perses that the Albanians were innocent of the sacrilege and that the Greeks were the culprits. Then, with still greater difficulty, he and Perses together persuaded King Styrus to call off his Albanians, who were now gaining the upper hand of the Taurians. Gradually fighting ceased and order was restored throughout the palace. The wounded were taken up and laid upon couches, where their comrades began dressing their wounds as best they might. Aeëtes tried to soothe Styrus, saying: ‘Cousin, wait and you shall see how wonderful a physician my daughter Medea is. She will heal the most gaping, desperate wound within the hour, so that only a thin scar remains to record it.’

  No sooner had he spoken than he was overcome by a hideous thought. What of Medea? Where was she, all this while? Could she too have been drawn into the plot? Could she have contrived the mutilation in the hope that the Taurians would avenge their god on the Albanian King, and thus cancel her hated marriage?

  He ran to her apartment and looking hastily about found it in disorder, with garments lying on the floor and coffers open and ransacked as if she had gathered together a few choice possessions in haste. ‘So she is gone!’ he cried aloud. ‘My daughter Medea is gone! Not with the impious Greeks surely? Yet with whom else?’ He was stupefied.

  The captain of the guard returned breathlessly to report the Argo missing from her moorings. Aeëtes told him: ‘The three war-galleys at the Public Quay, that are always provisioned and manned in case of an emergency: send them down the river at once in pursuit. Jason the Greek must be killed or captured at all costs, together with his crew and as many traitors of my own blood as may be found in the ship. If any of the galley-masters dares to return before this mission is fully accomplished I will first cut off his hands and feet and then enclose him in the scorching hot belly of a Taurian bull, to make it bellow for delight. Go, inform Prince Apsyrtus that he is to command the flotilla. You will find him with his mother, the Queen Idyia, at the North Gate.’

  It was just about this time that Atalanta and Melanion re-entered the city, without being challenged, and slipped into the palace by a side-door: he, spear in hand, clothed as an officer of the Royal Guard; she disguised in the same shawl and smock that Jason had used, with bow and javelin hidden under the smock. They hurried unnoticed through the corridors and up the staircase of the wing where the Argonauts had lodged. There they found Butes lying in a faint upon the floor of the corridor, wound about with a long cord as if he were a chrysalis or an Egyptian mummy.

  Melanion quickly unwound the cord and reeved one end of it into a running noose. Then he hauled Butes to the window, pierced in the city wall, under which Iphitus, Meleager, and Phalerus waited far below, he tightened the noose under his shoulders and lowered him to the around. But as Iphitus released Butes from the noose, he unluckily jerked the other end of the cord from Melanion’s hand so that he could not descend by it.

  Meleager was trying to throw the cord up again to the window, high above his head, and Melanion was leaning out to catch it. Aeëtes himself appeared at the stair-head, roaring with rage, a drawn sword in his hand.

  Atalanta cried: ‘Hasten, Melanion, I will fend them off while you escape. Send Phalerus and Iphitus ahead with Butes. Do you keep with Meleager. I will go by another way if I must.’

  Then Melanion, catching the cord at last by the end where the noose was, thrust his spear through the noose, which he drew tight about the middle of the shaft. Then, gripping the cord, he clambered out of the window and slid safely down to the ground; for the spear, being longer than the window was broad, pressed against the wall on either side and supported his weight.

  Atalanta did not follow him. Instead, she cast off her disguise, seized her bow and javelin, and uttering her famous laughing scream ran for the stair-head. Aeëtes opposed her with his sword; she thrust him sideways through the bowels as she ran, so that he fell groaning, and his guards raised a wail of alarm and grief.

  On she ran as though she had wings, her eyes glaring with the rage of Artemis. Leaping high over the wreckage of battle in the hall below she burst through the mixed company of Colchians, Taurians, and Albanians, like the leather-covered bladder that young men or women hurl about for sport at the baths. One man only, an Albanian Sun priest, dared to lift his hand against her; she struck him dead with the javelin and ran
on, leaving him transfixed, then darted through the guards at the main gate like a diving swallow, and rejoined her party with a yell of triumph.

  When Perses came rushing out in pursuit at the head of his Taurians, Meleager and Atalanta covered the retreat of Iphitus and Phalerus, who were carrying Butes by turns, and drew off the pursuit in another direction.

  Meanwhile Jason and the other Argonauts heard shouts from the Public Quay and the rattle and splash of the three ships that were being launched. This was followed by the beat of oars and the shrill voice of helmsmen shouting the stroke, and presently the war-galleys came rushing abreast past the dark backwater where the Argo lay, and threshed onward downstream towards the sea. As the sounds died away in the distance, the dismayed Argonauts heard another noise, that of a running battle coming towards them from the North Gate. Lynceus called out: ‘To the rescue, Argonauts! I can see Iphitus and Phalerus not far off, carrying Butes between them. Atalanta and Meleager are lagging behind. Atalanta is wounded in the heel with an arrow and Meleager is supporting her as she hobbles; but every now and then she turns to use her death-dealing bow. Meleager is also wounded, in the left arm, but not badly.’

  At this, not wishing to disgrace himself in Medea’s eyes, Jason proved himself more courageous than his comrades had hitherto credited him with being: he leaped ashore and called on all brave men to follow him. In the battle that ensued many Colchians and Taurians and Albanians fell, among them a brother of King Styrus, and Jason was run through the shoulder with a javelin, and the skull of kindly Iphitus the Phocian was broken with a flint axe of the sort that the Taurians use for sacrifice. Yet the Argonauts gained the victory and drove off their enemies and held the field of battle. They despoiled the dead and carried their own wounded into the ship, and Butes, too, who was groaning feebly with his hands pressed against his belly. Then at leisure they unhitched the hawsers from the mooring-stakes and pushed the Argo along the backwater into the river, each one of them boasting loudly of his feats.

  Mopsus, fumbling for his salves and bandages in the darkness, began to dress the wounds of Jason, Atalanta, and Meleager; but Iphitus was already dead. He was the very first Argonaut who had been killed in battle, and his comrades at least had the satisfaction of carrying off his corpse for burial. Jason, groaning loudly for the pain in his shoulder, entrusted the command of the ship to Argus; and Argus gave the order: ‘Out oars and row!’ But he added: ‘In the name of grey-eyed, cuckoo-sceptred Athena, by whose inspiration I built this glorious vessel, I beg you all to keep perfect silence, once we are well on our way.’

  Thus the Argonauts came away from Aea with the Fleece, and despite the number of their wounded every oar was manned; for the four sons of Phrixus were practised oarsmen, and Orpheus had taken the helm from Great Ancaeus, who now set the stroke from the seat once occupied by Hercules.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Away from Colchis

  Atalanta, not knowing for certain whether she had killed King Aeëtes, said nothing of her encounter either to Medea or to anyone else. Medea ceased to sob after a while. She seemed to be dazed by what had happened and spoke in simple inconsequent language to Jason, giggling softly, making childish grimaces and often asking: ‘You are Jason, are you not? You love me, do you not?’ When at last she fell asleep she tossed and groaned and muttered in a frightening manner. And once she cried aloud in a heart-rending voice: ‘Alas, cruel Love Spite! Why have you clung to my breast, you muddy leech, and drained my veins of every drop of healthy blood?’ The Argonauts heartily wished her at the bottom of the river; but they feared the double-eye and dared say nothing against her in Jason’s hearing.

  Argus asked Phrontis, son of Phrixus, how far downstream in his judgement the Colchian war-galleys would go in pursuit. Phrontis replied that they would continue to the mouth of the river, and then pertinaciously scour the coasts of the Black Sea; and that Aeëtes would doubtless send other galleys on the same mission, so soon as ever they could be manned, oared, and provisioned. So the Argonauts rowed on at a good pace, neither fast enough to overtake the three galleys ahead, nor slow enough to be overtaken by possible pursuers. About dawn Phrontis hailed the watchman posted on the quay of a river-side settlement. ‘Hey, watchman,’ he cried, ‘have the impious Greeks been overtaken yet?’

  The watchman, taking the Argo for a Colchian, answered: ‘No, my lord, not so far as I know. The three galleys that hailed me in the grey dawn had not yet sighted the wretches, who must have passed my quay in the darkness without using their oars, letting the current carry their vessel silently by.’

  Argus decided that the most prudent course for him to take was to sail by night and hide by day. Phrontis knew the river well, and between this settlement and the next he showed Argus a narrow backwater, where the Argo could lie concealed, stern on to the river. There they put in, shipping their oars and wreathing the stern ornament with long green creepers.

  Two hours later three more galleys ran past their place of concealment, each with an embroidered white pennant at the mast-head, and disappeared beyond the next bend of the river. But the master of a fourth galley gave the order as he drew abreast of the Argo: ‘Avast rowing! Make her fast to the right bank.’ The galley was thereupon moored to a tree not a bowshot downstream. Her proximity was disagreeable to the Argonauts, since it imposed absolute silence on them. But Euphemus the swimmer presently whispered to Argus: ‘Bull man, shipwright, dear Attic friend – pray pass me an auger from your tool-locker.’

  Argus passed him a sharp auger without a word. Euphemus stripped, dived soundlessly overboard, and swam under water to the Colchian galley. Catching hold of the stern ornament with one hand, with the other he plied the auger and bored five large holes below the water-line; not pushing the auger home in any one hole until all five had been bored to an equal depth. Then he cut the mooring-rope of the galley with his knife and swam back as secretly as he had come.

  The Colchians were all asleep while he worked, even the look-out man, and the first thing that the oarsmen knew was that the river-water had welled up through the floor-boards as far as their ankles and that the ship was slowly sinking. They tore up the planking to find and stop the leak, but with their frightened movements they tipped the galley now this way and now that, so that the muddy water seemed to be swirling in from all points at once. They began to bail, but when the water gained on them some leaped overboard, hoping to make the land, and were engulfed in the black ooze of the foreshore; others climbed up on the gunwales. Only one man tried to swim downstream to the nearest landing-stage; but Euphemus swam after him, stunned him with his fist and towed him back by the hair to the Argo. He proved, by his badge of a winged horse, to be the galley-master. The rest of the crew went down with the galley, shrieking for terror. Only the white embroidered pennant remained fluttering above the water, and this Euphemus secured as an adornment and disguise for the Argo.

  Melanion asked: ‘Dear comrades, what prevents the Argo, now that the enemy has been sunk without a trace, from taking her place in the squadron? If we keep well astern our identity will not be suspected, and when this captive revives we can threaten him with death unless he communicates to the galley-master next ahead of us whatever messages we may care to put into his mouth. This stratagem will allow us to sail boldly past the remaining settlements, even by day if we keep our distance prudently, and as soon as we are clear at last of the river we can use discretion as to our further course.’

  The Argonauts applauded Melanion’s reasoning, and Argus agreed to carry out the plan that he had suggested.

  To the Colchian master, when he revived, Melanion promised his life on condition that he did whatever he was commanded to do. He proved to be a man of good sense and obeyed Melanion faithfully, for he had a large family of children dependent upon him. His name was Peucon. When the Argo came in sight of the galley next ahead of them, Peucon hailed her, as Melanion ordered him to do, and reported that four men of his crew had the fever heavy on them. The
other master, suspecting nothing, shouted back: ‘Alas, friend Peucon, is it indeed the fever? Then keep a wide berth of us when you anchor tonight, for we are as yet uninfected, blessed be the name of the Mother.’

  That night Euphemus proposed to swim out and sink in turn each of the three remaining ships; but Argus restrained him. He argued that so soon as one ship began to sink, the others would be rowed hurriedly up to take off the yelling survivors. ‘So much the better,’ replied Euphemus. ‘In the confusion I will work undisturbed, and you shall see good sport.’

  His boldness was applauded, but Orpheus said: ‘Comrades, let us not take Colchian lives merely for sport. Let us kill only if dire necessity compels us; if not, let us refrain. The men will drown, but perhaps their ghosts will clamber aboard our ship, conveyed on floating sticks or leaves, and plague us beyond endurance.’

  Euphemus listened to Orpheus, being as prudent as he was courageous.

  Jason resumed command of the Argo. He had recovered from his wound in the most wonderful manner, as also had Atalanta and Meleager; for Medea that morning had unbound the bandages tied by Mopsus and dressed the throbbing wounds with a salve of her own preparation which burned like fire but healed the festered flesh within the hour.

  Butes came to his senses at about the same time. He sat up suddenly and asked what had happened, what was the time of day, and where was he?

  Idas replied bitterly: ‘Your taste of mountain honey has cost us dearly enough, Bee Fool. Because of you, a gentle Phocian has been killed, and the corpse lies under a bear-skin cloak yonder, awaiting honourable burial.’

  Mopsus reproached Idas, saying: ‘Idas, how nonsensically you talk! Our dear Phocian comrade was struck by a Taurian with a sacrificial axe. Butes was lying senseless on the ground when the blow fell.’