The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  Now that the Argo was surrounded, Apsyrtus behaved cautiously. He ordered every Colchian to hold his weapon in readiness but not to use it until the trumpet should blow for a general attack. He hoped that Jason would surrender unconditionally, after a short parley.

  Outwardly the Argonauts preserved their calm, but the chill of doom stole upon their spirits as they reached for their weapons and put on their helmets or body-armour. All eyes were turned to Jason, but he mumbled ignobly: ‘What can I say? What can I do, good comrades? I cannot in honour hand the Princess Medea back to her brother after the sacred oaths that I swore to her; yet if I refuse to do so, he will kill us all.’

  ‘That is very true,’ said Augeas, speaking in low, rapid tones, so that Medea should not overhear him. ‘However, as I see the case, we went to Colchis for two reasons only: to bury the bones of Phrixus and to fetch back the Fleece. The bones are duly buried and we have won the Fleece; but we cannot hope to bring it safely home unless we restore this lady to the father from whose guardianship Jason stole her. Fortunately, she is still a maiden, or so I suppose, and what oaths of love Jason may have sworn to her need not greatly concern us. We can, if need be, depose him from his captaincy and act according to our own interests. We can inform Apsyrtus that if he allows us to keep the Fleece we will give him Medea in exchange, but that if he refuses us the Fleece we will kill her without pity. He will think twice before he refuses us the Fleece, because if he fails to bring Medea back, Styrus the Albanian will doubtless suspect Aeëtes of double-dealing and will make war on Colchis in vindication of his honour.’

  Echion the herald fixed Augeas with a stern eye, saying: ‘Pray be silent, King Augeas, and leave this matter to be settled by men of greater experience than yourself. Have you no shame? Your laziness and your ignorance are the cause of our present predicament.’ Then he asked Jason: ‘Most noble Jason, have I permission to speak on your behalf and on behalf of us all?’

  Jason said: ‘Do your best. But I think that the case is hopeless.’

  Echion then bent down to whisper in Medea’s ear: ‘Gracious lady, do not take to heart any crooked words about you that my divine father, the God Hermes, may put into my mouth today. We Greeks love and honour you, and will never give you up to your brother, whatever we may tell him to the contrary during this parley.’

  Then he put on his royal robes and took his twisted rod in his hand, and the parley began. Apsyrtus was obliged to be his own herald, because none of his captains or counsellors spoke Greek, he spoke it haltingly and confusedly, but whenever he stumbled for a word and lapsed into Colchian, Phrontis, the son of Phrixus, faithfully interpreted his meaning to the Argonauts.

  Apsyrtus spoke first: ‘You have committed four great and premeditated crimes, Greeks, and before I pronounce summary sentence upon you I sincerely recommend you to acknowledge yourselves guilty on all four counts, throwing yourselves upon my mercy.’

  ‘We are unaware that we have wronged you in any way, Prince Apsyrtus,’ replied Echion, ‘and are much distressed to think that our former friends should have suddenly turned against us, poisoned by baseless suspicions. While freely apologizing for any accidental wrong that we may have done you, we do not find it consistent with our honour to plead guilty to four premeditated crimes, without knowing what crimes you mean, merely because you outnumber us in ships and men. Come now, pray tell us, for example, what is the first charge?’

  ‘The first crime with which I charge you,’ replied Apsyrtus, ‘is sacrilege. You came to Colchis under the guise of friendship and piety, yet you obscenely mutilated the sacred brazen images of the Taurian bulls in the inner hall of the palace. Do you deny this charge?’

  Echion answered: ‘Whether this deed was done by a Greek, a Colchian, or an Albanian, who knows? We do not know; though, like you, we have our suspicions. But in any case, was it not well done? The Taurian bulls are obnoxious to Mithras, the glorious Sun God whom you worship and whom the Bird-headed Mother of Colchis loves and fosters. Doubtless it was at the Goddess’s own prompting that the Albanians, or whoever it may have been, turned bull into ox.’

  Apsyrtus dared not press this charge, knowing upon what insecure ground he stood. The Taurian alliance was hated in Colchis, and on his return there he might be wise to let it lapse. The Albanians, a powerful race, worshipped almost the same deities as the Colchians; and alliance with them, confirmed by the marriage of Medea to Styrus, would immeasurably strengthen his throne. He therefore said nothing in reply.

  ‘What is the second charge?’ asked Echion, after a pause.

  ‘The second crime with which I charge you,’ said Apsyrtus, ‘is the abduction of my well-beloved and only sister, the Princess Medea. You can hardly dare to deny that charge, I believe, for I can see her with my own eyes seated on a purple cushion in the stern of your ship.’

  Echion answered: ‘We deny the abduction. The Princess Medea came with us of her own free will. Having, with the gracious help of your father, accomplished in Colchis a certain secret and divinely dictated mission, we were just about to sail home with his blessing under the friendly cloak of night, when the Princess came to us and asked for a passage to Greece. Naturally, the request astonished our noble leader Prince Jason, who questioned her closely. He asked, was her marriage to King Styrus already abandoned? She answered: “My father loves me and has never intended me to marry that filthy beast King Styrus, nor have I pledged my word in the matter. Within the hour you will hear a great commotion in the palace, which will be the sound of the Taurians and Albanians provoked to savage battle by my father. Pay no attention to the hubbub, dear friend; but I myself will take advantage of it to slip out unnoticed and come along with you. This is my father’s desire.” Prince Jason answered: “I can hardly believe your words, Princess; yet if the battle of which you speak does indeed take place within the next hour, I shall take it for a sign that you are deep in your father’s confidence.” The Princess Medea answered: “A thousand thanks, gracious Greek. I will come to you again with irrefutable evidence of my sincerity.” And so indeed she did.’

  When Echion lied he not only made his hearers believe him, against their inclination, but he believed himself.

  Apsyrtus said: ‘This is a strange and fantastic story that you are telling me, though I suppose that, for want of any evidence to the contrary, I must believe that Medea told you what you report her to have told. Yet let me assure you that she wove a tissue of plain lies, and that I blame your captain heartily for believing her.’

  Echion answered: ‘Prince Jason is young and inexperienced and was naturally inclined to believe whatever Medea told him. He could not imagine that Aeëtes was cruel enough to persuade his entrancingly lovely daughter into marriage with such a stinking old dung-hill as King Styrus. Now, what is your third charge?’

  Apsyrtus answered: ‘That you impiously stole the Golden Fleece from the shrine of Prometheus. You cannot wriggle out of that charge by any slippery trick of eloquence.’

  ‘I wriggle!’ cried Echion in indignation. ‘Pray, my good lord, remember the cloak of sanctity with which we heralds are invested in our noble calling! I wriggle indeed! I stand upright and announce finally and fearlessly whatever I am commanded by my divine father to say. In the matter of the Fleece, we have nothing to hide from you. This Golden Fleece is the undisputed property of Laphystian Zeus and was long ago stolen from his sacred image by Phrixus, your brother-in-law. We have been commissioned – and this commission has been solemnly confirmed with oracles, dreams, signs, and prodigies – by the united wills of all the leading Olympian deities, Zeus himself at their head. On our outward voyage we rescued from drowning the four sons of this same Phrixus, your nephews, who understood at once that what had brought them into such peril had been their presumption in sailing, without the Fleece, to claim their paternal inheritance at Orchomenos. They humbled their hearts and offered to intercede with their grandfather on our behalf. Though at first he demurred, his obdurate mood was not long-lasting;
and when Medea displayed the golden trophy to the stupefied gaze of Jason, as she climbed up the ladder into the ship, and when she said: “Here, noble Greek, is the Fleece of Zeus, irrefutable evidence not only of my sincerity but of my father’s love towards you” – O, then You can guess how gratefully he accepted the glittering gift from her sacred hands! And who else in the world had a right to confer this gift upon him but your sister Medea, the Priestess of Prometheus, who tends his hero-shrine? No, no, my honoured lord, I beg you in good earnest not to regard us as pirates or petty thieves. We are all Minyans, and as Minyans we came boldly to Colchis to demand our own. The Golden Fleece lay under the guardianship of Athamas the Minyan at the time that his son Phrixus absconded with it; and ever since that day a curse has lain upon our clan which only the glorious adventure that we have undertaken can ever wipe away. I warrant that you will find it hard enough, Prince Apsyrtus, to part us from the sacred Fleece, the Luck of the Minyans, now that it is once again in our possession. It will be easier to part our souls from our bodies.’

  ‘Yet I shall not hesitate to do both, unless you yield the Fleece to me freely,’ said Apsyrtus sourly. ‘And now, as I acquaint you with your fourth and most heinous crime, let me instruct you to address me not as “Prince Apsyrtus” or “my lord”, but as “King Apsyrtus” or “Majesty”. For Aeëtes, my admirable father, has succumbed to the terrible belly-wound that one of your Greeks inflicted upon him, and with his last breath he named you collectively as his murderers.’

  Echion did not conceal his surprise. ‘Pray, Majesty,’ he said, ‘let me condole with you most sincerely upon your loss, of which, as I will swear by any sacred name you please, I have hitherto been wholly unaware – until this instant I did not know that your dear father had been even wounded. Yet at the same time, let me congratulate your kingdom of Colchis upon its good fortune. Bitter as is the grief that the demise of good old Aeëtes will everywhere occasion among his loyal subjects, it will be swallowed up and drowned by the joy of your accession. And is it not possible that the dying King was mistaken in charging a Greek with this extraordinary crime? Was his mind not perhaps clouded by the pain of a wound inflicted by some Taurian or Albanian? And, if not, will you be good enough to name the murderer, who must answer to us, as well as to yourself, for having abused the laws of hospitality in this unheard-of manner?’

  Apsyrtus answered: ‘The guilt must fall equally upon all of you, as my father ordained with his dying breath, though the instrument of the crime was a single person, the red-haired Atalanta of Calydon. She it was who mercilessly pierced my father’s bowels with her javelin as he stood at the head of his palace stairs. I am informed by my High Admiral that he expired four hours later in unspeakable anguish.’

  Echion turned to Atalanta and asked: ‘Surely, best of women, King Apsyrtus has been misinformed?’

  Atalanta rose up and answered calmly: ‘It is unlikely that he has been misinformed about the old man’s death, but I cannot speak with certainty not having waited for the death-rattle. However, being a Greek by birth, Aeëtes should have been wiser than to oppose a maiden huntress of Artemis with a naked weapon in his hand. I had done him no harm and intended none either. If he is dead, in punishment for his act of sacrilege, let the Goddess answer for his death, not I.’

  ‘Come what may, I must avenge my father upon all of you together,’ cried Apsyrtus. ‘Do you ask me also to take vengeance on the Goddess?’

  Atalanta answered: ‘Be careful what you say, Majesty. The Goddess who is reverenced even in these outlandish parts, is the most implacable of all deities, the Bird-headed Mother not excepted.’

  Apsyrtus addressed Echion again: ‘You deny all the charges, herald of the Greeks; and I reaffirm them. Does this not mean battle?’

  Echion answered imperturbably: ‘That is not for me to decide, Majesty. I must seek further instructions from my captain; and will return you a plain answer as soon as I have obtained one from him.’

  Apsyrtus said: ‘I will give you as long a time to answer me as it takes that crane, in the distance yonder, to fly past us and out of sight.’

  Echion again spoke privately to Medea, who sat with a face like clay, stunned by the news of her father’s death. ‘Princess,’ he said, ‘let me repeat my assurance: we will never give you up, whatever may happen. But we must practise a deep deception and must even threaten to take your life. I beg you to pay no attention to our empty words.’

  Medea raised troubled eyes to his face, nodding to show that she understood.

  Echion next addressed Jason: ‘Prince Jason, take the Fleece from its hiding-place quickly and give it into my hand, and lend me your sharp Magnesian hunting-knife. Whatever I may say, however strangely it may sound to you, assent. The spirit of my divine father is upon me.’

  Jason made no answer, but with gloomy countenance he fetched the Fleece from its hiding-place below the helmsman’s seat, unrolled it and displayed it glittering in the sunlight. Then he drew his curved hunting-knife from its sheath and handed it to Echion.

  As he did so, the crane flapped overhead and repeated the same cry that it had uttered on the previous evening.

  Echion laughed aloud, stretching out his right hand to the bird in gratitude for its message. He stood up again in the prow and, lifting up the Fleece for all to see, again addressed Apsyrtus. ‘Majesty, even before the crane has flapped out of sight, heading (you may be sure) for the island of Artemis – of Implacable Artemis, to whom the crane is sacred – I have ready the answers not only of my captain, Prince Jason but of your sister, the Princess Medea. And all my comrades, the Argonauts, assent to them without dispute.’

  ‘Say on,’ Apsyrtus answered.

  ‘We have concluded,’ began Echion, ‘in the matter of the mutilated bulls to make you a handsome offer – handsome because it has not yet been established who it was that performed the act of mutilation. Let me remind you that this is a quarrel subsisting not between Colchians and Greeks but between the war god of the Taurians and the Colchian Sun God Mithras, whom in Greece we honour as Helios. We have aboard our ship five devotees of the Sun, namely the four sons of Phrixus and Augeas, King of Elis, who are prepared, here and now, to disembark on the nearest stretch of firm ground and fight to the death with as many champions of the Taurian god as you may care to call out against them.’

  Apsyrtus answered: ‘Is this not unreasonable? Your challenge could be accepted only by myself, the son of a Taurian princess, and by two old Taurian greybeards who are here in this ship with me. All the rest of my men are worshippers of Mithras. We three should be no match for your five.’

  ‘Evidently,’ said Echion, ‘you have lost confidence in the might of your god, now that he is unmanned by the gelding of his two sacred images. I cannot reckon you a less bold man than myself, who, were I challenged to uphold the honour of my father, the God Hermes, would gladly come out armed against the whole embattled might of the East and be assured of victory. I presume, then, that our challenge is refused and shall pass on to the matter of the Fleece. For the reasons that I have already advanced, we have concluded to retain the Fleece. We warn you that if you attempt to seize it by force I myself with this knife will cut it into little pieces – cut it into little pieces and fling them into the water. The weight of the gold will sink them in the thick black ooze, beyond recovery. They will never be put together again and the Fleece will be lost to Prometheus, as it was lost to Zeus.’

  ‘That would not disturb me,’ said Apsyrtus. ‘I care not whatever may happen to the Fleece, so long as you do not fetch it back to Iolcos and flaunt it there as a proof alike of your enterprise and courage, and of our negligence and cowardice.’

  Echion took him up at once, saying: ‘I am rejoiced, Majesty, to hear an admission from your lips that you do not prize the Fleece as much as we do, and are indifferent to its fate so long as its removal by us does not reflect injuriously on the honour of the Colchian nation. Doubtless, when the two other outstanding questions are set
tled to our common satisfaction, we shall reach an understanding upon this also. For I assure you that we value the honour of your kingdom as highly as any men living, having received marks of hospitality from your King and principal noblemen which it would be ungrateful in us ever to forget. Let us therefore pass on to the third question: what is to become of the Princess Medea? Here is our offer to you. We do not insist upon her remaining with us, but neither shall we permit her to be taken back to Colchis against her will. Since, by your own admission, her father Aeëtes is dead, the secret treaty that you made with her, in which you resigned to her your claims to the throne of Corinthian Ephyra, has now come into force. By that act of resignation you set her free to become Queen of Ephyra as soon as ever your father should die, and in return she freely resigned to you all claims to her Colchian patrimony. Therefore, though we admit the right of the King of Colchis, namely yourself, to persuade his sister, a Colchian princess, into marriage with whomsoever he pleases this right can now no longer be exercised. By the terms of your compact Medea has ceased to be a Colchian princess and has become Queen-Designate of Ephyra; and as Greeks we cannot admit your right to persuade her into marriage with a vermin-eating barbarian. For the Queen-Designate of Ephyra, if she is unmarried, is entitled to contract a royal union with the prince of her choice and to disregard the persuasions of the King of Colchis. However, we do not wish to press our view too strongly; the Fleece is our prime concern, not the marriage of your sister Medea. We therefore make the following suggestions. Let us all sail together in consort down the Danube, and set Queen Medea ashore with a suitable attendant upon the island of Thracian Artemis, which the crane in its flight has divinely indicated to us. Let us leave her there until some powerful king – without prejudice, we nominate the milk-drinking King of the Scythians, your ally, as a man of the highest rectitude – shall have consented to act as arbiter between yourself and ourselves. If, after weighing the case scrupulously in the scales of justice, the king decides that your sister must return with you, why then we shall let her go without hindrance; if, on the contrary, he decides that she may remain with us, then you, for your part, must let her go without hindrance.’