The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  Apsyrtus slowly came nearer. He stood in the doorway and uttered in a whisper what seemed to be a prayer to the ghost of his father Aeëtes, dedicating the sacrifice to him.

  The prayer ended, and Jason heard the chink of weapon against armour as Apsyrtus groped his way across the room.

  Jason started up, with the sword gripped in his right hand and his cloak doubled about the left as a shield. Apsyrtus stepped back a pace, but Jason, seeing him dimly outlined against the doorway, lunged forward and pierced him in the groin, so that he howled for pain and dropped his sword. Jason wrestled with him, threw him to the ground, and with one deep stab of the Magnesian hunting-knife cut the principal artery of his throat, so that blood spouted out like a warm fountain.

  ‘Bring a light quickly,’ Jason called to Medea, when Apsyrtus had ceased to struggle.

  She fetched the lamp but hid her eyes from the sight of blood. Jason straddled the corpse and shouted boldly down to it: ‘I am innocent, King Apsyrtus. You were the first to break the oath that we swore together. You undertook to offer no violence to any Argonaut, yet you came with steel in your hand against me. I did no more than defend myself against your violence.’

  Nevertheless, knowing well in his heart that he had committed a treacherous murder, he lopped off the ears, nose, fingers, and toes of Apsyrtus, and three times licked up some of the blood that came gushing out, and three times spat it back, crying: ‘Not I, ghost! Not I!’ He had lopped off the ears and nose so that the ghost should be unable to trace him by smell or sound, and now he also nicked out the eyes, to blind it; and he slit the soles of the feet so that it should not pursue him without pain. The fingers and toes he cast through the window among the reeds of a swamp, so that the Colchians should have difficulty in recovering them.

  Then he went out, his hands and face sticky with blood. Medea shrank away from him with irresistible loathing, and he said to her reproachfully: ‘Princess, there is blood upon your gown also.’

  She answered nothing, but called Atalanta from the shrine. ‘Bring the Fleece,’ she said, ‘and follow me!’

  The old Priestess came stalking out and asked: ‘Did I not hear a cry?’

  Medea answered: ‘Gracious lady, the Goddess Artemis is avenged on the blasphemer.’

  The Colchian sentinels, watching for the return of Apsyrtus, heard the plash of paddles and called out: ‘Boat ahoy!’

  Medea answered: ‘It is I. It is Queen Medea. Colchians all, listen to me, listen with awe and obedience to your new Queen! My brother King Apsyrtus is dead, and I alone remain of the Royal House. Careless of the oath that he swore to Jason the Greek in the name of the Thracian Artemis, Goddess of this place, he came secretly by night to take vengeance on my attendant the maiden Atalanta, whom he unjustly charged with the murder of our father. As he stole into the hut where Atalanta and I were both lying, and as he crept, sword in hand, towards the bed, I witnessed a prodigy. A kirtled woman of extraordinary tallness and marvellous beauty, plainly the Thracian Goddess herself, appeared from nowhere and darted her javelin into my brother’s throat, crying: “Pitiful man, would you dare murder a maiden huntress of Artemis upon the very island of Artemis?” Then her firm hand lopped off his extremities, using his own sword, so that he fell in a pool of his own blood. The blood spouted out on all sides, and bespattered my gown.

  ‘Listen again, Colchians! I am your Queen, and whatever orders I give you, they must be obeyed. In the first place, I require you to remain here for nine days, beginning from dawn tomorrow, to mourn and perform funeral rites for my brother Apsyrtus. Assemble his scattered bones with care – not some, but all – and convey them in a white horse hide to Colchis, to my capital city of Aea, where I shall sail ahead of you. As for these Greeks, I intend to let them go free, restoring to them the Fleece that was stolen from them by Phrixus, my sister’s husband; and I make this gift not from weakness or cowardice but lest its noxious properties should cause the death of a third member of our Royal House, namely myself. Yet I shall tie a condition to this gift: they must carry me to Colchis with them before they sail homeward to their own land. Sailors, I am aware of your religious scruples and respect them. You consider it unlucky to take a woman aboard any of your ships, and doubly unlucky to take a priestess of the Goddess of Death, and trebly unlucky if her robe happens to be stained, as mine is, with her brother’s blood.’

  The Colchians listened to Medea’s speech with stupefaction, and no one dared say a word. Then she cried out: ‘My nephew Melanion, you who stand sentinel on the Greek ship! Wake your leader Prince Jason and ask him whether he will agree to the bargain that I offer him.’

  Melanion made a show of consulting Jason and then replied in the Colchian language that Jason assented, but on condition that he might first fetch off Atalanta from the island and then sail up the Danube to overtake Peleus and bring him back: for he could not desert either of these two comrades.

  Medea pretended impatience, but acquiesced. She came aboard the Argo, crying that the sooner they sailed the better, if they hoped to overtake Peleus. So the Argonauts trundled their anchor-stones aboard and rowed away into the darkness without another word, while behind them rose a slow wail of grief from the leaderless Colchian sailors, like hungry wolves howling to the moon.

  Ancaeus steered to the island of the Oracle, and when the keel grounded upon sand he let down the ladder. First Atalanta, holding the Fleece, and then Jason climbed aboard. From the shore came the cackling laughter and repeated farewells of the Priestess, who called out merrily in her Thracian accent: ‘Cut into little pieces – cut into little pieces – they will never be put together again!’

  The Argonauts shivered when they heard this. They guessed that she had been the crane in disguise, and indeed with her long nose and skinny legs she looked crane enough. They were glad to leave the island of blood astern and to spread their sail to a stiff northerly breeze.

  Chapter Forty

  The Argo Dismisses Jason

  At dawn the Argonauts found Peleus waiting for them at the Brygian village. Admetus asked him as he climbed up the ladder: ‘Are you still here? And what of the Colchian Vice-Admiral?’

  Peleus answered briefly: ‘We borrowed the canoe and sailed off in her. But the Vice-Admiral admitted to me that he could not swim.’ He paused.

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ said Admetus. ‘This was another of your unlucky accidents, I suppose.’

  ‘My life has been strewn with them,’ Peleus confessed, blushing, ‘ever since, long ago in Aegina, my quoit was diverted from its true course by a winged Spite and killed my wretched foster-brother. Yesterday it was the unsteadiness of the canoe and the rapidity of the current which bloodlessly robbed the Colchian of his life.’ Then he addressed Jason and Medea: ‘Tell me, blessed pair, how have you managed to be rid of our oppressors? Did our Euphemus borrow the auger again from the tool-locker of Argus? And have you brought the Fleece with you?’

  As Jason rose up to display the prize, the searching rays of the sun shone on his bloody tunic and smeared legs and on the clots of blood in his yellow hair.

  Peleus made a Gorgon face and said: ‘It seems, Jason, that you too have had an unlucky accident, and not a bloodless one either. Or have you perhaps been making a midnight sacrifice to an Underworld deity?’

  None of the Argonauts, except Atalanta and the two sons of Phrixus, knew that Jason had murdered Apsyrtus, though all knew that he had secretly visited the island to secure the Fleece. The sight of the blood astounded and shocked them, and they waited in silence for Jason’s answer.

  Jason gave no answer.

  Medea smiled down the row of well-filled benches and said: ‘Come sail on, dear men, while the breeze is fresh. Let none of you think that I was in earnest when I demanded that you should convey me back to Aea before returning to Greece. The whole kingdom of Colchis may be engulfed by an earthquake or overwhelmed by a deluge for all I care. The Argo sails directly to Iolcos. Come, let us push her off!’

  No
man stirred. All eyes were fixed on her robe, sprayed with blood on the left side.

  Atalanta asked: ‘Comrades, what hinders you? Why does none of you stir?

  The creaking voice of Ascalaphus of Orchomenos broke the long silence. ‘I hear a strange singing sound from the prow,’ he said. ‘Does it perhaps proceed from the oracular oak branch of Zeus that addressed us on a former occasion and dispelled our uncertainties?’

  ‘It is only the buzzing of flies, or the wind in the cordage,’ said Echion, who was jealous of all oracles not delivered by his father Hermes.

  Mopsus the soothsayer climbed up into the bows, carefully drawing his garments away from Medea as he passed by, so that they should not be defiled. He listened intently and at last nodded and spoke. ‘The branch says: “Those who in battle destroy my declared enemies are welcome to sit in due order upon the well-made benches of this ship; but those who are concerned in a treacherous murder, committed in however just a cause, lie under my curse and displeasure. Unless they quit the ship at once, I will blast her and them with a thunderstroke and hurl all the Argonauts together down to bottomless perdition. They must go, they must go, they must go, and they must not return until they are fully purified of their guilt. Ha! I smell blood even on the golden horns of my Fleece. I will accept no bloody Fleece, not though the blood may have flowed from the throats of my enemies. Remove the purple-and-gold from the ship, let it not be brought back to me until it has been washed in seven rivers that flow into seven different seas.”’

  From the distant peaks of Mount Haemos thunder rolled with a growling noise, though the day was cloudless, and confirmed the authenticity of the oracle.

  Without another word Jason and Medea gathered up a few of their possessions, together with the Fleece, and descended the ladder.

  Mopsus asked Atalanta: ‘Had you no part in the murder?’

  She answered: ‘I was an accessory, not a principal. There is no blood on my body or hair or kirtle.’

  Eurydamas the Dolopian said: ‘Yet a spot or two may have evaded your scrutiny. I shall not permit you to remain aboard.’

  Meleager said: ‘If Atalanta goes, I go too.’

  ‘Go in peace,’ answered Eurydamas. ‘And take Melanion with you, who, though he did not disembark on the island of the Oracle, is more guilty even than Atalanta, I believe.’

  The other Argonauts echoed: ‘Go in peace, Meleager!’

  Atalanta, Meleager, and Melanion quitted the Argo, and Meleager said: ‘I go from free choice, not necessity; yet I call you to witness before Apollo that I am no deserter, for I am desired by you all to go in peace. Where do we all meet again?’

  Argus answered: ‘Where but at Aeaea, the city of Circe? Circe, being the sister of murdered Aeëtes and aunt of murdered Apsyrtus, is the only person alive who can perform the purifying office for the guilty ones. Do you conduct them to her palace, taking the Fleece with you by the route that we agreed upon in our recent council, and persuade her to cleanse them.’

  Another distant peal of thunder lent weight to the words of Argus.

  Meleager said: ‘Very well, comrades. I wish you a happy voyage and a lucky escape from Aras the High Admiral, who is lying in wait for you at Troy, and from his relentless Trojan allies. I consider that you have been unwise to expel Medea from among you, since she alone, as Queen of Colchis, can command the obedience of Aras.’

  ‘I fear nothing for the Argo, said Argus, ‘so long as no evil thing remains aboard her. We are under the protection of five deities – of Athena, under whose guidance I built this glorious ship; of Zeus, whose speaking branch has just admonished us and whose confirmatory thunder has twice rolled across from Haemos; of Poseidon, on whose trickish element we have sailed and must yet sail; of Artemis, whose crane lately gave us a comforting augury in our distress; and of Apollo, whom Artemis calls Brother, and to whom we sacrificed at Leuce when we went ashore on that delightful island.’

  From his blanket in the bows Orpheus reproved Argus, saying in a weak voice: ‘Argus, son of Hestor, do not forget the Great Goddess, in whom we subsist.’

  Argus answered in haste: ‘There is no need to speak her name with our lips; ever since our stay on Samothrace it has thudded beneath our ribs like the maul of a shipwright.’

  Then they pushed the vessel off, with farewells only to Meleager, not wishing to earn the enmity of the ghost of Apsyrtus. Argus was elected their captain, without dissension.

  They sailed on down the western coast of the Black Sea, meeting with no further adventures. The shores continued low until, on the third day, they came abreast of Haemos; after which they were moderate in height, backed with wild hills. The winds were light but favourable, and on the fifth day the Argo rounded a tree-covered cape with sloping yellow shores and came to Salmydessos, the summer capital of King Phineus. All the Argonauts went ashore, and Phineus, ruddy and active again from his change of diet, came tapping with his stick across the courtyard to meet them and wept upon the necks of his stepsons Calaïs and Zetes. When they had told him in brief the whole story of their voyage, ‘Hasten home, dear sons,’ he said, ‘as soon as ever the Fleece is safely laid again upon the oaken image of the Laphystian Ram.’

  They undertook to do so, but they said: ‘There is danger still ahead. How are we to escape alive from our Colchian enemies and from the Trojans, their allies?’

  Phineus answered: ‘Atalanta is not with you, nor is Medea, nor is Jason, nor are you carrying off the Fleece. What have you to fear from the Colchians? As for the Trojans, you have no merchandise aboard to rouse their jealousy; and when you inform them that both Aeëtes and Apsyrtus are dead, and that the throne of Colchis is untenanted, they will bless and feast you as bearers of good news. The misfortunes of Colchis will sound merrily in their ears, I warrant, for Aeëtes drove many hard bargains with them and restricted their trade with several peoples of the Black Sea coast.’

  Thus reassured and refreshed, the Argonauts continued contentedly on their way. But they sailed without Orpheus, who had been ailing ever since they had quitted Colchis and had not once made music for them during all that time. When Phineus undertook to restore him to health with baths and purges, and to send him safely back into his own country under sufficient escort, his comrades absolved him of his oath to remain with them. On the evening of the next day they came to a desolate place covered with arbutus thickets, rough brushwood, and stunted oak-trees – the outfall of Lake Delcos. There, on a beach of glaring white sand, they sacrificed to the Goddess Athena two sheep that they had brought with them from Salmydessos, beseeching her as the blood flowed out to guide them again safely through the Clashing Rocks.

  The current in the Bosphorus ran even more strongly than before, and though they grieved that Tiphys was no longer alive to steer them, Great Ancaeus, relying upon the instructions of King Phineus, took the helm confidently. They swept down the straits without misadventure in three hours or less, and were soon sailing merrily along the northern coast of the Sea of Marmora. Their first stage was the wide, sheltered bay into which the river Athyras falls, in the territory of King Phineus; their next was a sand-bank under the shadow of the Holy Mountain; their next was the bay of Sestos. This was the first landing-place of their homeward voyage to coincide with a landing-place of their outward voyage, and was destined to be their last.

  They ran swiftly down the Hellespont one early morning with the sun hot in the sky and the waters as blue as lapis lazuli; but the fresh green grass of the shores was withered and burnt, summer being now well advanced. A column of smoke went up from Trojan Dardanos as they sailed by, and another from a look-out tower a few miles downstream. They looked askance on one another, put on their armour and held their weapons in readiness, fearing the worst.

  Soon they saw four or five ships putting out from the mouth of the Scamander river. Lynceus reported: ‘They are Colchian ships, the squadron of Aras. But I can see no Trojan ships anywhere about, either beached or afloat.’

  Phrontis, son o
f Phrixus, said to Argus: ‘Aras the High Admiral was for many years a prisoner of war at Percote, and therefore understands Greek. Let Echion the herald speak for us. Doubtless Hermes, his divine father, will put another pack of lies in his mouth.’

  Idas guffawed at this, and Echion was offended. He said: ‘My father Hermes is not to be lightly derided. His eloquence is such that he can deceive with the truth as easily as with lies. Listen, and you will find that I say nothing at all to the Colchian but what is strictly true; and yet I will darken his vision with an impenetrable cloud of falsehood.’ So saying he put on his heraldic robes and, taking his twisted rod of office in his hand, stood up magnificently at the prow. He hailed Aras across the water in a clear voice.

  ‘Excellent Aras,’ he called. ‘We have good news for you. Your squadron has already accomplished its destined mission without any hazard or bloodshed, and may now return home in honour. Our ship was pursued across the walloping waves of the Black Sea by your dogged and sagacious King Apsyrtus, and trapped at last in a lake – the Crane’s Lake – which lies a few miles up the Fennel Stream, the more northerly of the two broad arms that carve out the Danubian delta. When he had us at his mercy, Apsyrtus demanded three things from us: that we should restore his sister Medea to him; and restore the Golden Fleece to the shrine of Prometheus; and grant him bloody vengeance upon our she-comrade, Atalanta of Calydon, whose ungrateful javelin pierced the bowels of your former King, glorious Aeëtes. We were but one ship against twelve. How could we not yield? Yet so vexed with us was your King that blood, royal blood, spouted and flowed before the quarrel could be composed. Therefore, alas, not only are Atalanta and the Princess Medea gone from the Argo, but you no longer see Jason among us, heir to King Aeson of Phthiotis, nor Meleager, heir to King Oeneus of Arcadian Calydon, nor yet Melanion, the grandson of doomed Aeëtes. May this mast fall and crush my head if I am lying to you! Come aboard, lord of the salty beard, and welcome, to see for yourself that we are not hiding the Fleece from you or any of the persons whom I have named. Our lives have been spared. We are returning empty-handed to Greece, under another leader, and when the story of our adventure runs through Greece it will excite laughter, do you not think? Be assured, after what we have seen and suffered, none of us will ever wish to brave again the terrors of your inhospitable sea.’