The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  He went over to the Phaeacian girls. ‘Leave your mistress, dear children!’ he exclaimed in a bold but tender voice. ‘She has no need of your services at present. If any one of you wishes ever again to see the inside of a royal palace, and to sit on soft cushions at her spindle or her loom, with berries and cream in a little bowl on the gilt table at her side, why then, my pretty ones, rise up courageously, the whole dozen of you together, and help me now!’

  He made them remove all their clothes but their shifts, and carry ashore on their tender shoulders great quantities of stores and tackle, and the contents of each man’s locker, laying all in order upon the beach. The poor girls stumbled under their heavy loads and floundered in the weed and driftwood, and fell often, weeping for shame when they exposed their bare buttocks and Idas mocked at them; but they were willing workers and the ship had risen several inches in the water before they laid off. The men removed the mast, sails, and anchor-stones, and whatever else was too heavy for the women to lift, such as the sacks of gold from Sinope.

  The emptying of the lockers brought to light three secret hoards of drink, which amounted in all to twice the amount that had already been declared; these Jason confiscated. The owners, who were Peleus, Acastus, and Eurydamas the Dolopian, looked a little shamefaced, but pleaded that they had forgotten that more than a few drops of drink were left, and pretended to be pleased that so much had been discovered.

  The Argonauts slept that night by the lake-side and lighted a fire of driftwood from habit, but had no game to roast at it, nor could they fill the ship’s cauldron with fresh water to make a chowder of the small, bony fish that they caught in the lake with their hands. The next day they spent in much the same manner as the first, but the thirst and heat had begun to tell on them: they groaned and whimpered at their labours and by late afternoon the Argo had been coaxed forward no more than half a mile from the spot where she was first tossed by the wave.

  The sand-ghosts did not dance that day, but far away in the desert they saw a mirage of palm-trees and white houses, and a fleet of three ships sailing upside down. At dusk the Phaeacian girls began weeping softly to themselves; they continued all night, because a jackal was howling in the far distance and they feared that before long he would be feasting on their own shrivelled corpses.

  At noon of the third day the last of the wine and water was doled out. Some drank it down greedily, some sipped it frugally, rolling it around their mouths with their swollen tongues; but Great Ancaeus, abasing himself in marvellous humility, poured his cupful upon the sand.

  ‘Dear Deity of this remote country,’ Ancaeus cried, ‘whoever you may be, pray accept this libation from my hands, knowing well how precious a gift it is that I pour to you. I give of my poverty; do you in return give of your abundance!’

  Two or three other men felt impelled to do the same, and among them Jason, as leader of the expedition. But Jason, having swallowed down his own wine and water, poured out the plain water that had been set aside for Medea to drink when she should wake; he did this from no unkindness to her, but because an undrained cup of water would soon have excited his comrades to crime.

  That evening, distressed and speechless, they abandoned the ship and began stumbling about at random in the barren desert. Mopsus roared with laughter at them and cried gaily: ‘Oho, comrades, what long, lugubrious faces the Evening Star looks down upon! Anyone might mistake you for earth-bound ghosts, or for the population of a doomed city when the images in the fore-courts of the temples sweat with blood, and unexplained bellowings are heard from the sanctuaries, and the genial sun is eclipsed. In Apollo’s name, what ails you all? Take heart, comrades, neither Apollo nor any other of the Blessed Olympians will dare to leave us in the lurch after carrying us in safety through so many frightful dangers.’

  But Mopsus could not rouse any spirit in any of them. Eurydamas the Dolopian observed to the taciturn Melampus: ‘Mopsus will be the first to leave this upper air, I believe. Such exaltation is a certain sign of impending death – an omen more to be relied on than the irresponsible chirpings of wagtails, swallows, finches, and similar small birds.’

  ‘In that case I envy him,’ said Melampus. ‘For he who succumbs to thirst and heat before all his companions will earn the best funeral. I fear that it will be my luck to survive you all.’

  Then the Argonauts, drawn by a sudden compulsion, came together and gazed at the Fleece where it lay shining softly in the starlight. In reverence they handled the heavy golden fringe and the great golden horns. Erginus of Miletos said: ‘Nevertheless, when one day our dead bodies are found here, dried and baked black by the sun like Egyptian mummies, the Fleece will also be found, and our great deeds will be remembered because of it. We will be accorded a worthy funeral, all of us together, and our bones heaped in a common grave – unless (better still) our weapons, clothes, and badges declare our several identities and we are conveyed for burial each to his own city or island. I regret having complained against Orpheus and accused him of malingering. I rejoice that he is no longer among us, but has been spared this present misery and returned to his home among the savage Ciconians of Thrace. For when he hears the news of our fate, carried to him by some merchant or exile, or by some prophetic bird, he will weep for us; he will tune his lyre and sing to it, night after night, a great epic of the quest that we undertook and in his company performed – wonderfully composed hexametric verses which will ring around the world for a thousand years or more.’

  With this, Erginus began to embrace his comrades, one by one, asking pardon for any injuries that he had inflicted upon them and granting pardon to any who sought it of him. Then he said farewell to them all and strode out into the desert to die alone.

  His example was followed by several of his comrades. But Castor and Pollux resolutely refrained from joining hands in friendship with Idas and Lynceus. And Argus waded out to his beloved Argo to die aboard her. And Mopsus built a great fire by the lake-side and danced around it merrily in honour of Apollo. And Meleager and Atalanta with a strange look of joy upon their faces went off out of sight, hand in hand down to the seashore where the small waves hissed.

  As for Jason, he stayed where he was, with the Fleece at his right hand and the peacefully slumbering Medea at his left. Close to his feet lay a huddled mass of Phaeacian girls, twittering together like wretched fledgelings that have fallen from a lofty nest and lie on the stones below, abandoned by their parents and unable either to find food or fly away.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The Argonauts are Rescued

  Jason wrapped his head in his cloak and fell into a deep sleep, from which he was roused by a sudden remarkable apparition. Three goat-headed women with linked arms appeared, smiling benignly at him, and addressed him in a single bleating voice. ‘Jason, son of Aeson, we are the Goat headed Triple Goddess of Libya, and we greatly value the piety that you have showed in pouring an acceptable libation to us of pure water. Your comrades ignorantly poured water mixed with wine, an intoxicating drink which we cannot stomach. Nevertheless, you may inform them that all but one will escape safely from their predicament; we mean all but the slit-tongue fellow, who must die here because he has no fear of death, and because he honours Apollo not ourselves, and because a far-travelled hen-stork once warned him that he must meet his end in Libya.’

  Jason looked modestly aside as the Goddess, or Goddesses, spoke to him. He asked: ‘Ladies, what must we others do to be saved?’

  The Goddess, now united into a single form, answered: ‘Only hope. And when you are at length returned to your native country do not forget me, as you forgot me before. Whether I roar to you as a lioness, or bleat to you as a she-goat, or shriek to you as a night bird, or neigh to you as a mare, remember this: I am the same three-in-one implacable Goddess – mother, maiden, nymph – and you may fool the undependable Father of Heaven, or mousy-eyed Apollo, or crop-eared Ares, or even wriggle-wanded, deceitful Hermes, God of heralds: but nobody has ever yet deceived me, or fi
nally escaped punishment for his attempted deceit.’

  With that a mist arose between the Goddess and Jason, and when it cleared she had disappeared and he was gazing at the great yellow disk of the moon. Then he slept again, a sleep of marvellous contentment.

  When he awoke he leaped up and began to shout to his comrades: ‘Argonauts, dear Argonauts, we are saved! The Triple Goddess herself has appeared to me in a vision and promised us all life – or all but one of us!’

  The dawn was breaking over the lake with a fiery splendour that portended another day of heat. A lonely Argonaut, who proved to be Melampus, unwrapped his haggard head from the folds of a cloak and answered in a hoarse voice: ‘Do not break our last sleep, Jason, by your unseasonable bawlings. Dream your dreams, if you will, but leave us to ours.’

  Jason strode out further and came upon Lynceus, whom he wakened with a recital of his dream. Lynceus blinked and looked about him, not yet understanding what Jason had told him. Then he cried out: ‘Look, look! Stretch out your hand and tell me what you see at three fingers’ breadth to the right hand of the mound of sand yonder!’

  ‘I see nothing, ‘Jason replied.

  ‘But I see a man galloping on a fawn-coloured horse,’ cried Lynceus. ‘He is coming towards us.’

  These loud words roused ten or twelve men. They came together with distraught looks and dusty hair. None of them could see any horseman. ‘It is the mirage,’ Euphemus sadly pronounced.

  But presently the better-sighted of them descried a little cloud of dust in the far distance, and presently the horseman came in full view and hallooed to them in a tongue that nobody could understand. Nauplius said: ‘He is a Tritonian of the Ausensian tribe, to judge by his white robes and red-tasselled javelins, and by the tuft of hair that he wears above his brow. Can this, after all, be Lake Tritonis, far to the south of Hedrumetum?’

  Echion was about to advance and would have made an eloquent address to the horseman, had not Autolycus restrained him, saying: ‘Noble son of Hermes, do not think that I wish to deny you your herald’s privilege of representing us. But your wonderful eloquence is only of service when those whom you address understand some dialect either of Greek, Pelasgian, or Thracian: it is wasted upon savages. Let me be spokesman for once. At Sinope I became well versed in the universal language of the deaf and dumb.’

  Autolycus had his way. He went up to the Tritonian, seized him by the right hand and embraced him; then he made a dumb-show of drinking, pointed to his parched lips and swollen tongue, and began scanning the horizon with impatience.

  The Tritonian understood. He made the same dumb-show of drinking, waved vaguely into the desert, and held out his hand for a gift.

  Autolycus nodded assent, and the Tritonian pointed to a bronze tripod, with gilded legs and seat, which was lying on its side near by; King Alcinoüs had presented it to Jason, intending him to dedicate it at Delphi on his return.

  Autolycus made a show of refusing to part with the tripod, but finally promised that the Tritonian should have it as soon as ever he had led them to the water.

  By drawing an imaginary bow and three times thrusting out his hands with fingers outspread, the Tritonian signified that the water was thirty bowshots distant. He then drew himself up to his full height, puffed out his chest, bulged his muscles, roared like a lion, and began banging at a rock with an imaginary club. Then he rippled his fingers in a watery gesture and stooped down greedily, as if drinking, at the same time uttering a sound that was unmistakably an attempt at the Greek phrase‘Holy Serpents!’

  The Argonauts looked at one another in amazement and exclaimed with one voice: ‘Hercules!’

  The Tritonian nodded and repeated ‘Hercules’, then glowered at them, exclaimed ‘Holy Serpents!’ again with great vigour, and burst into laughter.

  They patted him on the back and followed him eagerly towards the water. When they reached it, not long after – a clear spring bubbling from a rose-coloured rock – they found great fragments of the rock lying in the desert near by, recently broken off by the blows of some powerful instrument, doubtless the brass-bound club of their comrade Hercules. Ah, how they drank and drank of that sweet, restorative spring!

  Then one said to the other: ‘Hercules has saved our lives, it was Hercules!’ And afterwards indeed they learned that Hercules, in sailing towards the island of the Hesperides in quest of the sacred oranges, had been blown ashore not far from that very spot. He was as thirsty as they, but instead of resigning himself to death strode out into the desert snuffing for water like a lion, and as soon as he caught a faint scent of it began striking at a rock with his club until a stream came gushing out. Now the tracks of animals already led to the stream from every direction, and the Tritonian explained with expressive gestures what animals they were: namely the tiny, large-eyed, leaping jerboa, the jackal who feeds on corpses, the porcupine with rattling quills, and the splendid Barbary sheep.

  Autolycus persuaded the Tritonian with gifts and promises to return with them to the camp. There he showed him the Argo, asking whether she could be extricated from the lake by any means and returned to the sea. The Tritonian assured them that this was possible, because a narrow river ran out of the lake some miles to the east, and the Argo already lay in the tortuous channel which communicated with this river. Autolycus gave him brooches and earrings, which all the Argonauts gladly contributed, and promised him a fine red cloak as well if he would assist them to escape. This contented him and he uttered a sudden loud cry between a whistle and a yell. Immediately from a small barren hill half a mile away, as if by magic, a large company of nearly naked Tritonians poked out their tufted heads and came running towards the Argonauts.

  Lynceus cried: ‘By the Lynx’s pads and tail, what a fool I am! Yesterday at noon I saw men and women squatting on that hill, but took them for figures in the mirage.’

  These Tritonians, or Ausensians, were troglodytes, living in deep caverns underground, with small holes, like those of a fox’s earth, serving for doors and windows. Nobody wandering across that hill would have guessed that he was standing above a populous city; for they are a shy people and seldom dare reveal themselves to strangers. The chieftain had taken the precaution of riding towards the Argonauts’ camp from another direction altogether, and as if from a great distance.

  Both the Ausensians and their neighbours the Machlyans (who wear their tuft of hair behind, not before) worship the Triple Goddess in the antique style. They do not practise marriage, but couple indiscriminately within certain degrees of kinship; and every three months, at a tribal assembly, any boy that has been born is assigned to the guardianship of the man, of the prescribed kinship, whom he is judged to resemble most closely. The women show great independence of spirit; they bear arms and annually decide who is to be Priestess of the Moon by a furious battle among themselves in which no man is allowed to meddle under pain of dismemberment. To the Ausensians, as to all other peoples of the Double Gulf, the Sun is not a beneficent deity but a merciless tyrant; and they curse it at its rising every day, and hurl stones at it.

  The troubles of the Argonauts melted away. Medea awoke suddenly from her trance and led the Phaeacian girls to the spring with empty jars and buckets, which they brought back full, and soon everyone was restored to life and vigour. The Ausensians staked out the further course of the channel, and with their help the Argonauts, after stowing the cargo aboard again, shoved the Argo slowly along it, for a distance of twelve miles in all;

  making two miles or so each day, until at last they found themselves in clear water and able to use their oars. Jason rewarded the Tritonians suitably with pieces of coloured cloth and other slight gifts, and on the tripod Argus incised an inscription of gratitude and friendship for their nation. The Tritonians, shrieking like bats in their delight, bore the tripod underground to some hidden shrine of the Goat-headed Mother, whose triple form Argus had depicted upon it.

  The Argonauts waded ashore and built an altar on a knoll close to where
the river, called the Gabes river, flows out of the lake. There they heaped sober offerings to the Goat-headed Goddess. Yet on other altars they also sacrificed to the Olympians: two fat Barbary sheep which Meleager and Idas had run down and taken alive, and a gazelle which Atalanta had wounded with a long cast of her javelin.

  They had already re-embarked and said a gracious farewell to the Ausensians, and rowed off, when the chieftain remembered a mark of courtesy that he had forgotten: he galloped his horse along the banks of the river, waving a clod of earth. He wished them to accept it as a token that they were welcome to visit his land whenever it pleased them. Euphemus shipped his oar, plunged overboard and swam to receive the gift, which he brought back without wetting it, swimming one-handed. Then the salty current of the Gabes river caught the Argo and carried her swiftly towards the sea, after ten days of imprisonment.

  Medea made a prophecy to Euphemus: ‘Man of the Swallow badge, your descendants in the fourth generation shall be Kings of Africa by the token of this clod of earth, if only you can bring it safely back to holy Taenaron, your home. If not, Africa must wait for the seed of Euphemus until the seventeenth generation.’

  But the fourth generation of his descendants, stemming from a son that was born to him by Lamache of Lemnos, was destined to be cheated of sovereignty; for one dark night on the homeward voyage a wave broke over the Argo and dissolved the clod into muddy water.

  Thus all the Argonauts were saved except Mopsus the Lapith, who had not escaped the fate prophesied to him. Three days before this, at noon, as he wandered by the lake-side, an enormous shadow fell across his path. Looking up, he saw circling overhead a bearded vulture of prodigious size, with pointed wings and wedge-shaped tail. It was crying to him in strange pleading tones and urging him away from the lake with the reiterated cry of ‘Gold! Gold!’; hoping (it is supposed) to have lured him to some inaccessible and waterless part of the wilderness, and there feasted at ease on his body when he was dead of thirst. Mopsus was easily deceived. He ran forward with his eyes on the bird, but had not run many paces before he trod on the tail of a black snake that was lying torpid in the sun. The snake turned and drove its fangs into his ankle, close to the shin. Mopsus cried aloud and his comrades came hurrying up to see what was amiss.