When the Games were over, the Argonauts made their last voyage in company, sailing down the Euboean Gulf until they came to the town of Opus. There they disembarked, entrusted their ship to the care of the Opians, and marched across the hills until they came to the Copaic Lake and to the famous city of Boeotian Orchomenos; where they made their devotions at the shining white tomb of their ancestor Minyas.
From Orchomenos they proceeded to Mount Laphystios, and there at last Medea, on behalf of Prometheus, restored the Fleece to the oaken image of the Ram in his shrine near the summit, while the others burned rich sacrifices and sang hymns. However, Zeus vouchsafed no sign of pleasure or gratitude, not so much as a distant roll of thunder, which abashed them all. They had counted upon some extraordinary dispensation, in the foolish belief that, because Zeus invariably punishes his devotees for any injury that has been done him, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, he will also show gratitude for benefits conferred.
Hercules had come with them, on his way to Mycenae with the sacred oranges, and, though he did not ascend Mount Laphystios, yet it was he rather than Orchomenan Ascalaphus, or anyone else, who compelled the Orchomenan Council to restore to the sons of Phrixus the inheritance of their grandfather Athamas, and thus make good a promise of Jason’s. The sons of Phrixus feasted Hercules well for his kindness.
Then followed the first dispersal of the Argonauts, those of Thessaly and Phthiotis travelling northward on foot, after embracing with tears their comrades in so many hazards. But Hercules, Jason, Argus, and the rest hired Boeotian oarsmen and fetched the Argo down the Euboean Strait. They circumnavigated Attica, and set Phalerus ashore at Athens, where they reverently greeted the King and Queen Archons and all went up together to the shrine of Athena, giving humble thanks for her continued care. Then they re-embarked and, passing by the island of Salamis, came to the isthmus of Corinth.
Jason beached the ship at Cenchreae, and sent Echion forward as his herald to the people of Ephyra, to announce the arrival of their rightful Queen, Medea. This was a charge that pleased Echion well, since he wished to convert into truth the fiction which his father Hermes had put into his mouth when he disembarked at the Royal Quay of Aea. He found his task the easier, because there had been a drought and a pestilence in Corinth that summer, much as he had said, and the Ephyrans were weary of the harsh and capricious rule of the Achaean usurper, who had styled himself Corinthus.
Echion stood in the market-place and informed the Ephyrans that Jason, glorious son of Aeson, had fulfilled his quest of the Fleece and, in response to an oracle, had brought home Medea the fair-haired sorceress, daughter of Aeëtes, to be their Queen; and that, freely resigning to others his claims to the thrones of Lemnos and Phthiotis, Jason had consented to marry Medea and become their loving King. Echion told them further that Castor and Pollux, Atalanta and Meleager, Melampus and Periclymenus, Idas and Lynceus, and the great Hercules himself, were on their way from Cenchreae with arms in their hands, to ensure that justice was done, however tardily, to the name of Aeëtes. The Ephyrans listened with joy and made an immediate uprising. The usurper Corinthus fled, and the populace streamed down to the coast to welcome the royal pair.
Echion’s one regret was that the people of Corinthian Asopia, the former kingdom of Sisyphus, could not by any means be persuaded to revolt against Creon, their unyielding Achaean King, and thus join the double kingdom into a single one, as he had prophesied; for Creon had married Glauce, the daughter of Sisyphus, and was ruling in her name.
Jason decided to dedicate the Argo, with all her oars and tackle, to the God Poseidon, in gratitude for the great wave that had saved her from the rocks of the Libyan shore. He therefore sailed her eastward from Cenchreae to the narrowest part of the isthmus, where she was duly beached, and put on rollers, and rolled inland to the enclosure of Poseidon. There Argus said a proud farewell to his lovely ship, being the last to quit her at the final dispersal of the Argonauts.
Chapter Fifty
What Became of the Argonauts
Acastus reigned in Iolcos for some years, but fell out at last with his dear friend Peleus. They quarrelled about a flock of one hundred sheep which Peleus paid as indemnity for the accidental murder of a young son of Acastus; however, it was not Peleus himself who had struck the blow but one of his drunken Myrmidon retainers. The flock was set upon by a pack of wolves on the way from Phthia to Iolcos, so that only a few sheep survived. When Acastus demanded more sheep, to replace those that had perished, Peleus refused, on the ground that the wolves had made their attack nearer to Iolcos than to Phthia. In the ensuing war Acastus was defeated, captured, and put to death, and Peleus made himself master of all Phthiotis; but he owed his victory to the powerful help of Castor and Pollux, who brought chariots from Sparta. Peleus lived to a good age and survived his famous son Achilles, an initiate of the Centaur Horse fraternity, who was killed at the siege of Troy.
As for Atalanta, she returned to Calydon in company with Meleager, going by way of Arcadia for the sake of the hunting. Coming to the sanctuary of Artemis on Mount Artemisios, where Hercules had caught the white doe of Artemis and so fulfilled his Third Labour, she resigned from the Goddess’s service, hanging up her bow, javelin, and girdle and offering nameless sacrifices. She companied at last with Meleager in a thicket on Mount Taphiassos, not far from Calydon; for desire compelled her against her will. Now, Melanion was journeying on foot from Orchomenos to Calydon, intending to ask Jasius for Atalanta’s hand in marriage. By chance he came upon Meleager and Atalanta asleep together in the thicket; but feared to do them any injury. He passed on into Calydon to the palace of King Oeneus, where he spitefully told Cleopatra, Meleager’s wife, what he had seen. Cleopatra went in a rage to the apartment of her mother-inlaw Queen Althaea, who was not there and searched in the Queen’s chests until at last she found what she needed: a charred brand of nut wood. For when Meleager was born Althaea had been warned by an augur that her child would live only so long as a certain brand remained unburned on her hearth; she had seized it, extinguished it, and secreted it in a chest. Cleopatra, vexed beyond endurance, now took up the brand and thrust it back into the fire on the hearth; whereupon Meleager, asleep in Atalanta’s arms under a bean-rick not many miles off, uttered a loud cry and began to burn with fever. He was dead before morning. Thus the prophecy of Aphrodite was justified, which declared that the man for whose sake Atalanta first hung up her girdle would die on the same night.
When Atalanta became aware that she was with child she consented to marry Melanion, not knowing that he had been the prime cause of Meleager’s death; and the child that was born to her, by name Parthenopaeus, she fathered on Melanion. But upon learning from Althaea what had occurred, she refused to cohabit with him and he won little from his marriage but her hate and scorn. Some say that Melanion defeated Atalanta in a foot-race by dropping golden apples for her to pick up, and so gained her as his bride, but this is a misreading of an ancient fresco of the funeral Games of Pelias shown in the palace of Iolcos. Atalanta is there depicted, crouched on the ground, in the act of winning the jumping contest, and close by her, in a chair, sits Hercules, as president of the Games, with the golden oranges tumbled at his feet, one of which she seems to be picking up; and just ahead of her is shown the foot-race in which Iphiclus the Phocian came in first and Melanion last; all the runners but Melanion have disappeared from the fresco, because a new door has been pierced in the wall at that point, so that Melanion appears to be winning the race from Atalanta. So much for these jealous lovers.
The quarrel between Idas and Lynceus, on the one hand, and Castor and Pollux on the other was patched up for a time, until one day they joined forces in a marauding expedition against Ancaeus of Tegea. They drove off a hundred and one head of prime cattle, pretending that Ancaeus had cheated them long before, at Bebrycos, when the palace spoils were distributed, by withholding from the common stock four valuable necklaces of amber, emerald, and gold. Ancaeus, whose conscience troubled him
in the matter of the necklaces, did not go in pursuit of the brothers; but left the vengeance to his father Poseidon, to whom he had already promised ten of the best bulls in the herd as a gift.
The four marauders sat down together close to the spot where the frontiers of Laconia, Arcadia, and Messenia meet, and disputed not very amicably how the herd was to be divided among them. At last Idas said: ‘Let us have sport, comrades. I will carve this bull-calf into four equal parts, and roast them on spits, one part for each of us four. Let the man who first finishes his share and leaves nothing but bare bones be awarded half the cattle, choosing the fifty that please him best; and let the one who finishes next take the remaining fifty.’
Castor and Pollux agreed: Lynceus was a slow eater, because he had broken his front teeth in a boxing match, and both twins fancied themselves better trenchermen than Idas. But no sooner had the hissing joints of beef been taken from the spit and allocated by lot, than Idas began tearing at his joint with teeth and dagger, bolting the succulent beef almost without chewing. He had finished every morsel and sucked the marrow-bones too before the others had well started. Like the loyal brother that he was, Idas then went to the assistance of Lynceus, carving the beef into handy strips for him and swallowing a marvellous deal more himself, so that Lynceus finished second, a little ahead of Pollux, before whom several rib-bones and part of the inwards lay still untasted.
Idas and Lynceus rose up, replete but not incapacitated, and drove off all the cattle with a mocking farewell. Pollux, with his mouth full, called to them to stay, objecting that Lynceus had not finished his portion by himself; but he did not pursue them until, by finishing his own portion, he should have established his claim to half the cattle – for he did not dispute that Idas had justly earned the first choice of fifty. Castor however, who was vexed at being slowest eater of them all, left his joint unfinished and ran off. He took a short-cut over the mountains and laid an ambush for Idas and Lynceus, concealing himself in a hollow oak sacred to Zeus. He guessed that they would pass close by the oak: it grew near the tomb of their father Aphareus, where they doubtless would pour a generous libation of bulls’ blood.
Lynceus with his keen sight discovered the hiding-place from half a mile away, for the tip of a swan’s feather from Castor’s head-dress showed through a chink in the tree. He signed to Idas to creep around behind the herd and spring the ambush. Idas did so; he charged suddenly at the tree with his spear and pierced Castor through the ribs, killing him instantly.
At this moment Pollux came hurrying down the path and heard Castor’s death-cry. He drove at Idas with his spear, and Idas, unable to free his own spear from the oak, darted sideways and dodged behind his father’s tomb. He broke off the headstone from the tomb and hurled it with both hands at Pollux, crushing his left collar-bone.
Pollux heard Lynceus charging down upon him from behind and turned, wounded as he was, to receive him on the point of his spear. Lynceus fell, transfixed through the belly. But Idas sprang forward and catching up his brother’s spear from where it lay in the grass, drove it into Pollux with an upward thrust through the fundament so that he died miserably.
Idas began to dance in triumph beneath the sacred oak, and loudly to blaspheme Zeus the father of the dead champions, laughing until the rocks re-echoed, so that the shepherds who lived in a hut not far off stopped their ears for shame. He continued with his dancing and laughing and blaspheming, heedless of a sudden thunderstorm that came growling down from the north, until suddenly there was a blinding flash of lightning and, simultaneously, a disastrous crash of thunder. The lightning caught the point of the spear that Idas was brandishing, scorched away his right arm, and tore off all his clothes.
His dead body was found by the shepherds, tattooed all over with the leaves of the sacred oak. They wondered greatly, and fenced off the place where he had fallen, making it forbidden ground; and instead of burning the body they buried it, as is customary when a man has been blasted by lightning.
The Thessalians, Admetus, Coronus, and Eurydamas, returned to their flocks and herds, and for the rest of their lives took part voluntarily in no further adventures, having won fame enough to content them. Nevertheless, they all met with violent deaths, Thessaly being a country where war and tumult are unavoidable even by the most peaceable men; Coronus was killed by Hercules when the Dorians called him in to assist them in a war with the Lapiths; Eurydamas and Admetus killed each other in single combat.
Autolycus and his brothers Deileion and Phlogius had seen enough of Thessalian Tricca by the second summer after their home-coming. Accompanied by Argeus, the son of Phrixus, they paid a visit to Samothrace at the time of the Great Mysteries and there became initiates; after which they returned to Sinope, where the simple Paphlagonians welcomed them with tears of joy. Now that the power of Troy had been broken by Hercules, and the power of Colchis weakened by the death of Aeëtes and the loss of the greater part of the Colchian fleet – for not a single ship had returned from the expedition sent out against Jason – Autolycus and his brothers secured a monopoly of Eastern goods and grew fabulously rich. At their deaths they became oracular heroes.
Phrontis and Cytissorus, the elder sons of Phrixus, went to Iolcos to ask the assistance of Peleus in some dispute that they had with the Orchomenans; but no sooner had they entered the city than he arrested them and sentenced them to death. He declared that Father Zeus had never been paid the debt of two lives that had been owed him by the house of Athamas ever since Helle and Phrixus absconded with the Fleece, and that this unpaid debt was the reason why the God had given so cold a welcome to the Argonauts when they restored the Fleece to his image, and why rain was so scarce in Phthiotis. So Peleus garlanded the two men and called upon the whole city to chase them out with stones and weapons. This the citizens did and Cytissorus soon fell, pelted to death, but Phrontis escaped by running and leaping; and when he returned to Orchomenos he sacrificed a ram to Zeus the God of Escapes. Peleus then issued a warning to all the surviving descendants of Athamas that the same fate awaited them too, if ever they ventured into Iolcos; for the debt to Zeus had been increased by the usurious lapse of time. But Melanion lived on, childless and unhappy, under the same roof with Atalanta, who scorned him and took to fine needlework and grew very buxom.
Phalerus, the Athenian archer, quarrelled about the ownership of a brass pestle and mortar with his father, Alcon the archer, who had once saved his life as a child by shooting to death a serpent that was entwined about him; the arrow, though discharged from a distance, had not done him the least harm. Phalerus did not revile or injure Alcon but went silently away from Athens and died in exile at Euboean Chalcis. The Athenians named their port of Phaleron after him and paid him heroic rites; they reverenced him especially for his wonderful feat of archery that had saved the Argo in her passage through the Clashing Rocks, and they considered (though the case never came up for decision upon the Areopagos) that he was right in claiming the pestle and mortar as his own property.
Melampus of Pylos became a soothsayer, by accident. A pair of snakes nested in a tree outside his house, and his servants killed them; but he piously preserved the whole brood of young snakes and kept them as pets in his bedchamber. One day, as he slept after dinner, they graciously cleaned out his ears with their forked tongues. When Melampus awoke, he was surprised to be able to understand the conversation of some wood-worms in the beams over his head, one saying to the other: ‘Dear friends, we have now riddled this beam through and through. Let us dance up and down in celebration of our feat, by midnight it will fall and crush Melampus.’ He shored up the beam and saved his own life. Melampus presently found that he could understand the language of all insects and worms and of birds as well. This knowledge stood him in such good stead that he ended as ruler of a large part of the kingdom of Argolis, and was awarded an oracular shrine at Aegosthena in Megaris.
Ascalaphus, the son of Ares, died at Orchomenos not long afterwards, drowned in a shallow carp-pool: a stra
nge fate for one who had survived the dangers of so many inhospitable seas and dangerous straits. His grandson of the same name led a contingent of thirty Minyan ships to the siege of Troy and was killed by Priam’s son Deiphobus.
Great Ancaeus, returning to his home in Tegea, planted fig-orchards and vineyards there. He kindly gave asylum to Evadne, Asteropaea, and Amphinome, the sisters whom Acastus had banished from Iolcos for the murder of their father Pelias, and he found a husband for each of them. One day as he was setting to his lips the first cup of wine brewed from the grapes of his vineyard, and observing with satisfaction to his wife, ‘At last my labours are rewarded,’ a messenger came running in to him. ‘My lord,’ he cried, ‘a great boar is ravaging your vines!’ Ancaeus set down the cup, seized up his javelin and ran to the rescue; but the boar burst out unexpectedly from a thicket and disembowelled him. Thus the proverb originated that ‘There is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.’ It is thought that the boar was sent by Artemis, to whom Ancaeus had forgotten to offer the first-fruits of the vineyard. But he earned a hero’s tomb, none the less.
Echion the herald was accidentally killed while trying to settle a dispute between the Arcadians, Laconians, and Messenians about the possession of the cattle stolen from Ancaeus by Idas, Lynceus, Castor, and Pollux. The blow was struck by Euphemus of Taenaron who, when he saw that he had killed a sacred herald, returned home in shame to Taenaron, refused food, and was dead within three days. Echion’s tomb was much frequented by heralds, and if ever the sacred person of a herald was affronted, his headstone used to sweat with blood and a myriad of winged Spites flew out from below, at his orders, to vex the criminal.
Before Erginus the Minyan returned from Greece to Miletos he made a second attempt against Boeotian Thebes, from the walls of which he had been driven many years before by Hercules. He ran in one early morning with a few Minyan comrades disguised as country-men with goods for sale in the market. But Hercules happened to be in Thebes on a visit, and with his arrows killed all the raiders but Erginus himself. He spared Erginus, who had a well-founded grievance against Thebes for the murder of his father and the mutilation of his tax-gatherers. Then Erginus and Hercules made peace and Erginus returned in safety to Miletos. Hercules went with him as far as the island of Tenos, where he raised a monument for Calaïs and Zetes, as their ghosts had demanded of him in a dream. This is a memorial rather to the strength and precision of Hercules than to any quality of the two heroes: one huge rock is balanced upon another so exactly that it oscillates with the least breath of the North Wind, yet twenty men with crow-bars could not heave it to the ground.
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