The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  When Alcestis fetched water in a painted goblet, Medea brought it to the image of the Goddess and prayed in the Colchian tongue, which Pelias took for that of the Hyperboreans, being equally ignorant of both; and flames seemed to leap up from the goblet as Medea gulped down some of the hissing water. She shrieked aloud and darted into a little wine-closet near by, the door of which stood ajar; then closed the door behind her and shrieked again terribly, so that tears burst from the eyes of every woman in the hall. Soon the noise of shrieking was moderated, and the sound of low, sweet laughter rose instead. Medea emerged young, beautiful, golden-haired, and without a single wrinkle upon her face or hands. For with what remained of the water and a Libyan sponge she had thoroughly cleansed herself, and had torn off her yellowish-white perruque.

  A great sigh of wonder went up from the spectators.

  Pelias said, his voice quavering for eagerness: ‘I do not doubt. Do with me as you wish, Holy One! I consent in the name of the Goddess. Make me young again!’

  Medea, no longer hobbling, went up to Pelias and gazed at him steadfastly. She narrowed the pupils of her eyes until they were as small as sesame-grains, and waved her hands about his face like white weeds that sway gently in the current of a stream. ‘Sleep!’ she commanded in her most tuneful voice.

  The white head of Pelias sank upon his breast, and he was fast asleep in an instant.

  ‘Lay him upon his royal couch!’ Medea ordered. The princesses obeyed her and she followed them to the bedchamber. When the doors were closed, she said to them quietly: ‘Children, do not be frightened by the commands that I must now deliver to you. Before your father can be reborn as a young man, he must first be cut into pieces and boiled in a cauldron of magical herbs and spices. This act of violence must be performed by his own loving children, because no other persons have the power to work the miracle. Take knives now and hatchets and sharpen them well upon whetstones, so that no deformity will appear upon his new body from any jagged or ill-managed stroke upon his old.’

  The daughters, whose names were Alcestis, Evadne, Asteropaea, and Amphinome, quailed. Each looking for encouragement to the other, they refused in a body the task assigned to them.

  Alcestis said: ‘I am Alcestis. I object. I will never shed my father’s blood – no, not though father Poseidon himself should order it.’

  Evadne said: ‘I am Evadne. I also object. It is the common fate of men to grow old. I should loathe to call a man ‘father’ who looked younger than I; my friends would deride me. And it is easier for a woman to bear patiently with the spleen of a petulant old man than with the rage of a head-strong youth.’

  Asteropaea said: ‘I am Asteropaea. I also object. A young father would find a young stepmother to tyrannize over us. As things are now, we supervise the royal household ourselves, leaving to our old father only the management of the wine, the armoury, and the sacrificial instruments; we lead a happy enough life. Why should we wish for so strange an alteration of our affairs?’

  Lastly Amphinome said: ‘I am Amphinome. I also object. Why must our father be cut to pieces like an old ram and boiled in a cauldron? It was enough for you merely to gulp at a goblet of hissing fiery water and retire into a wine-closet; you became young without shedding a drop of your blood.’

  Medea dismissed Alcestis, saying: ‘You are Alcestis, and a married woman. Go far away from this holy spot. Only maidens are permitted to take part in the holy rites of Artemis.’ She saw that Alcestis alone shrank in piety and love from the atrocious deed, whereas the other three hated the old man.

  When Alcestis had been bound to silence and had gone, Medea said to the remaining princesses: ‘I will answer all your objections in turn. Evadne, do not fear to call a young man “father”. The Gods are eternally young, and Pelias has never complained, I think, that his father Poseidon is more vigorous than himself and still able to beget sons and daughters. Your friends will not deride but honour you. Besides, if Pelias is often petulant, this is because he suffers the cruel aches and pains of old age; I undertake that when he is restored to youth he will become as sweet-tempered as yourself. Asteropaea, do not fear a young stepmother. So long as Pelias has need of you to manage his affairs he will never consent to let you marry; but as soon as he is young again, I undertake that he will find a splendid match for you, worthy of your birth, beauty, and talents. You shall be a Queen and rule over a rich and populous land. As for you, Amphinome, you must understand that the magical formula used for rejuvenating old men necessarily differs from that used for rejuvenating old women; nor was my transformation by any means a painless one.’

  Amphinome was silent, not wishing to offend the Priestess.

  Medea then said: ‘Amphinome, you spoke of cutting an old ram into pieces. Tell me now, is there not an aged ram in your palace, the sacred ram of Zeus? Bring him out of his stable to me. I will kill him and cut him into pieces, and boil him in a cauldron with magic herbs. You will then see him reborn as a lamb again, from the worm of life that inhabits the hollow of his spine. Soon he will crop again the rich meadow grass and the juicy shoots of the terebinth; from which he turns now with a sigh of weariness.’

  Amphinome replied: ‘If you can perform this miracle upon the old ram of Zeus, I will believe that you can do the same with my father. Nevertheless, I am a pious Achaean girl. I will not lay violent hands upon the ram myself, for fear of Father Zeus.’

  Evadne fetched the ram, a beast of sixteen years of age, with bleary eyes, no front teeth, a mangy fleece, and a tremendous head of horns. It was Amphinome’s daily task to feed him with milk-gruel, and curry him and sweep out his stable.

  Medea led the stinking old ram into the hall where a cauldron of pure water was bubbling on the fire, suspended from a hook in the chimney; ready to boil up the customary broth of mutton and barley for the royal household to breakfast upon. It was the very cauldron that Hercules had dinted with his fist and, when filled to the brim, held fifty gallons. Medea dismissed everyone from the hall except the three unmarried princesses. She ordered them to close every door and bolt it fast. Then, uttering long prayers in the Colchian language, she hacked the ram into pieces with an axe of black obsidian and tossed them into the cauldron, together with packets of aromatic herbs and barks which she drew, one by one, from the embroidered wallet by her side. She began to utter incantations and stirred the cauldron with a wooden spoon until at last, uttering a glad shout, she cried in Greek: ‘Look, look! The maggot rears his head! The transformation has begun!’

  She sprinkled a powder upon the burning brands, so that they crackled furiously and gave out excessive heat. A blood-red light glowed throughout the hall, the cauldron seethed over and thick steam hid the whole chimney-corner from sight.

  As the smoke cleared, a sudden bleating was heard and a lamb, six months old, with little horns budding from its forehead, skipped and bucked about the hall in fright, and fled to Amphinome as to its mother. Amphinome gazed at the lamb in wonder and then ran over to the cauldron. Nothing was left in it but a sort of broth and a few sodden wisps of old wool.

  Medea spoke again to the three princesses: ‘Evadne, Asteropaea, and Amphinome, you have witnessed a miracle. Hesitate no longer but obey the wishes of your father, and carry out the orders of Artemis. Be sure that when you have done so, your names will never be forgotten by poets. Yet strike all together, that none may hereafter claim the glory of having dealt the first blow; and leave the backbone entire between haunches and ribs, for there the worm of life resides.’

  Resolutely returning to the bed-chamber, each with a sharp axe in her hand (taken from the armoury which adjoined the hall), they whetted the blades with a whetstone, passed from hand to hand; and soon Medea heard the chopping sound that she longed to hear and the shrill scream of Pelias as he awoke from sleep.

  The Argonauts, drowsing at noon in the oak-thickets of Methone, were aroused by Lynceus: ‘Look, comrades!’ he cried. ‘Red smoke is rising from the smoke-hole of the palace of Pelias.’ They sta
rted from their hiding-place, ran down to the Argo, launched her, and were soon rowing at a furious rate towards the beach of Iolcos. They leaped ashore under arms, and found the principal gate of the city unguarded; for Medea had given orders that nobody should bar the way of the Goddess, who would shortly return by the gate through which she had entered and would resume her seat in the waiting serpent-drawn car. They ran in, and coursed down the main street, silently, like well-trained hunting dogs.

  The townspeople wondered at them but nobody opposed them, for their appearance was sudden, and it was only when they had passed out of sight that one neighbour turned to another and asked gaspingly: ‘Did you see the same as I saw? Did you see the pale armed ghosts of the Argonauts pass by in a body, with Jason, son of Aeson, and Acastus, son of Pelias, at their head? How is this? Did the night of ghosts not end with the dawn, as we had supposed?’

  When they entered the palace, Medea herself opened the door of the hall to them and cried out: ‘Alas, Argonauts, you come too late to save Pelias from destruction. His three daughters have turned parricides. They have barbarously chopped him into little pieces and are now boiling them in a cauldron, with as little concern as though they were preparing mutton broth for their royal breakfast.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The Fleece is Restored to Zeus

  That evening the Argonauts feasted in the hall of Pelias, after first fumigating it well with brimstone and Arabian incense, and sprinkling the walls with lustral water inside and out. The three axes and the great cauldron they dedicated to the Goddess Persephone, in whose shrine outside the city the three guilty princesses had already taken sanctuary. Against Medea they dared to do nothing, but every man and woman except Jason avoided her glance and company: they would pale even if her shadow fell across their path. However, she pleased them well, while they sat at dessert, by rising up and publicly urging Jason to resign the throne of Phthiotis to his cousin Acastus as a free gift, without delay. How could he do otherwise? Had he not once declared before witnesses at a popular sacrifice that he laid no claim to the wealth of his uncle? A king without wealth, she said, is a spear-head without a shaft, and since Acastus would not willingly forfeit his inheritance, would it be prudent or seemly for King Jason to go ragged and beg crusts and scraps of meat from his rich cousin’s table? Besides, though she had not been present in the royal bed-chamber when the axes began to fall, she could not risk the displeasure of a certain ghost by taking up her residence in Iolcos.

  Jason brooded and would not at first reply. But when his companions playfully pelted him with crusts and scraps of meat he answered that he would follow her advice, though it grieved him to resign what was his own and so appear to be slighting his father Aeson and his grandfather Cretheus; and as a reward for his magnanimity he called upon his comrades to assist him, if necessary, in securing the throne of Ephyra for Medea and himself. This with one voice they all promised to do; for they feared Medea’s anger if they refused.

  The next day, seated upon the Phthiotid throne, gloriously crowned, robed, and armed with the ram-topped sceptre of Athamas, which Jason himself had put into his hand, King Acastus called for holy silence while he pronounced sentence of perpetual banishment from Iolcos against Medea, Atalanta, Jason, Idas, Castor, Pollux, and Periclymenus, as either instigators of his father’s murder or accessories to it, and against the murderesses themselves, his three sisters. This sentence caused no surprise since it would have been unfilial in him to pronounce any other, and he showed remarkable mildness in permitting all of the guilty ones to remain at Iolcos until the funeral Games of Pelias should have been held.

  These Games Acastus solemnly inaugurated that same day, and who should arrive, just as they were about to begin, but Hercules, lately returned from the island of Hesperides with the basketful of sacred oranges that he had been ordered to fetch back for King Eurystheus. The Argonauts at once crowded about him, kissing his great dirty knees and hailing him as their saviour from death in the wilderness of Libya.

  He displayed the oranges with satisfaction, saying: ‘Smell them, if you please, comrades. They confer long life. But do not touch or handle the sacred fruit.’ Hercules was not drunk and had not yet dined, but was affable beyond the ordinary: for an oracle of Artemis had informed him that he would soon beget a daughter at last. He seemed to have forgotten the very name of Hylas, for he never spoke of the boy; they were careful not to do so either. When he had feasted at the palace for an hour or two he consented to become President of the Games.

  Telamon of Aegina made the longest cast with the quoit; Meleager, the longest cast with the javelin; Euphemus of Taenaron won the two-horse chariot race. And Peleus won the wrestling contest, for Castor, who would otherwise have been the winner, was competing instead in the four-horse chariot race: Peleus twice hurled Jason to the ground with the savage throw called the flying mare – for now that the Argo was safely home he needed to show his captain no tenderness or mercy.

  Castor’s four-horse team outdistanced those of all his Thessalian rivals; yet the team consisted wholly of Thessalian horses, than which there is no better breed in the world, not even the Laconian. Corinthian Glaucus also entered for this race. He was Medea’s cousin-german, being the son of Sisyphus. It is still unknown why his team took fright at the first post and not only dragged him out of the chariot but turned on him and began eating great mouthfuls of his flesh. Some say that the ghost of Pelias had baulked them; others that Glaucus had offended Poseidon, Protector of Horses, in some way; but the common rumour is that Medea had poisoned the team with the herb hippomanes, fearing that Glaucus might be an obstacle to her at Corinth if ever he claimed the throne of Asopia. In any case, Glaucus was killed and his ghost has ever since haunted the isthmus of Corinth, delighting to baulk the teams in the four-horse contest at the Isthmian Games.

  Pollux won the boxing contest, but too easily to please the better-bred spectators, though the commonalty roared for joy to see the blood spurt from the mouths and noses of his inexpert opponents. Hercules entered merrily for the all-in wrestling contest, and Alcestis, for whom he had the greatest respect, persuaded him to spare the life of his opponent, the Centaur Nessus, when he had broken his leg and three ribs and had him at his mercy. Phalerus of Athens won the archery contest, shooting at a straw doll dangling in the wind from a tree and piercing it through the throat at the very first shot.

  The competitors for the foot-race were Argeus and Melanion, the younger sons of Phrixus, and two strangers, Iphiclus the Phocian and one Neotheus. Iphiclus came in first, with a long lead. He was a Minyan, and his winning of this race has therefore misled some poets into describing him as an Argonaut, which he was not; and neither, for that matter, were Iphiclus half-brother to Hercules, or Iphiclus the uncle of Castor and Pollux, as has also been alleged. It would have needed a fleet of ships to accommodate all the heroes for whom the vanity of their descendants has claimed the illustrious title of Argonauts.

  Atalanta entered for the hop, skip, and jump; but when Acastus measured out the jumping-pit and had the earth loosened and raked and levelled, Atalanta raised a protest. She declared that Hercules, as President, should have undertaken the task, and that Acastus, though King of Phthiotis, had no right to meddle with the preparations for any of the contests. Hercules obligingly measured out a new jumping-pit, the further edge of which lay at the customary distance of fifty feet from the starting-line, and the nearer edge half that distance. But the fifty feet measured by Hercules were longer by a half than those measured out by Acastus, who was a short-footed man. The propriety of Atalanta’s objection was soon proved, when she jumped to the very end of the pit marked out by Hercules: if she had made as long a jump from the edge of the pit marked out by Acastus, she would have flown clean across and broken her ankles on stony ground not loosened by the mattocks. This wonderful jump was no novelty to Atalanta, who was accustomed to keep her legs supple by the buttock dance, leaping up and down on a greased cow-skin and kicking he
r buttocks with alternate feet: she could do a thousand kicks and more, where any common athlete would have slipped from the cow-skin at the first or second kick.

  The sword fight at the barrow of Pelias was performed between an Iolcan named Pilus and Ascalaphus, son of Ares, the Argonaut. It often happens in contests of this sort that one of the swordsmen tries to excite the admiration of the crowd by laying about the other with unnecessary vigour; then play turns to earnest. On this occasion, Pilus foolishly ran Ascalaphus through the fleshy part of the thigh with his sword, narrowly missing his genitals; and the pain vexed Ascalaphus so much that he retaliated with a back-handed sweep that cut off the Iolcan’s sword-hand at the wrist. Pilus died from rage and loss of blood, having fought on with his left hand and refused to let his friends bind up the pitiful stump. The death caused general satisfaction, since Pilus was a man without kinsmen to avenge him and the ghost of Pelias drank well of the spouting blood – as keen-sighted Lynceus testified.

  Orpheus arrived suddenly, at the close of the Games. He was in settled ill-health and his voice was no longer what it had been. Nevertheless, he sang a long and exceedingly sweet song about the voyage of the Argo, not glozing over any unhappy or discreditable event, as many poets have since done; and was by general consent crowned with a chaplet of sweet-smelling bay. He had preserved, as in honey, the memory of several glorious particulars that might otherwise have been forgotten even by the Argonauts themselves. However, the priests of Dodona later complained against him that the song was in part disrespectful to Zeus, and forbade him to sing it again under pain of the God’s displeasure; so that only snatches of it now survive.