The Book: The Argonautica
The Author: Apollonius of Rhodes (some time in the 3rd century BCE)
This text: An etext of an 1912 prose translation by R. C. Seaton, R. C. My version is the Charles Rivers Editors version.
Price: This one cost me 81 cents from Amazon, but there are free versions available.
(Previously...)
Book III: Still There.
The Argonauts arrive in Colchis, completely unobserved - except by the goddesses Hera and Athena. Hera asks Athena what her plan is.
Athena, goddess of wisdom, says, "Dunno. I thought we'd wing it."
Hera scoffs and says that she has a plan: romance. They head back to Olympus to enlist Cypris, goddess of love and sarcasm - or, more particularly, her son.
"Hera. Athena. To what do I owe this overwhelming pleasure? I am so rarely visited by such powerful goddesses."Cypris has some difficulty with this, because Eros is a little shit-
"Cut the crap, Cypris, we need your kid."
"It would be my greatest honour to humbly serve the great Queen of the Gods."
"I said cut the crap. Go get Eros."
"That's because you're a crap mother."-and needs to be bribed with a shiny thing. Cypris finds him cheating at dice with Ganymedes, and produces the shiniest thing there is: a golden sparkly ball that Zeus played with as a child. Eros accepts this commission, and heads off to Colchis to shoot Aeetes' daughter, Medea.
"Fuck off, Hera. My real mum is way prettier than you."
Meanwhile, Jason explains his plan to the Argonauts:
"I'll go into the city and ask Aeetes if he'll give the fleece to me."So Jason heads off to the city with his cousins, the sons of Phrixus. Here he meets his cousins' mother, Chalciope, and her much younger sister, Medea. Medea doesn't normally spend a lot of time in the city, preferring to do dark magic at the Temple of Hecate. However, she's here in time to be shot by Eros, and to fall utterly in love with Jason. Aeetes hears the commotion and asks what's going on, and why his grandsons have come back so early. Other Argus explains that their ship sank, and they were rescued by their Greek cousin on their father's side, who has an awesome ship.
"That's brilliant! But what if it doesn't work?"
"We'll wing it."
Aeetes assumes that a shipful of heavily armed godlings can only be after his throne. He sets Jason a test: he's to harness the two fire-breathing bulls of bronze, use them to plough the field of Ares, sow the field with dragon's teeth, and kill all the armed men that grow from them. Aeetes does this all the time, and he won't give the fleece to someone who won't.
This all sounds a bit too hard and complicated for Jason, so he goes off for a sulk. He explains the trial to the Argonauts, and sighs and says that it's impossible. The typical Argonaut response to this is, "Pfff. No it's not. I'll do it."
Other Argus chimes in at this point and says that, no, actually, Jason has to do this himself. He goes on to explain that he has a brilliant and not at all totally wussy plan: he'll ask his Aunt Medea to use magic to cheat. This plan is met with general Argonaut approval, with one or two dissenters.
It turns out that Chalciope is way ahead of him, on the grounds that if anything happens to Jason her sons will probably be the next to face Aeetes' wrath. She heads to Medea's chambers herself.
Medea is a bit of a mess at this point: she's having terrifying/exciting dreams about being dragged away from Colchis by Jason, which he can't do if he's dead. Although, since she's a terrifying black sorceress, it's more that he can't do it as easily if he's dead. But Medea is completely lovelorn and is not thinking clearly. She comes upon Chalciope and Other Argus arguing about the best way to win her over. She asks them what's up and they tell her: we need some black magic to save Jason.
Ok, says Medea. Go away now.
"That was easier than I expected."Medea, despite being unwilling to betray her father, spends the night conjuring dark sorceries and preparing a magic ointment for Jason, and heads off to the Temple of Hecate to finish off the ritual. She sends her handmaidens to secretly send Jason there, but she needn't have bothered since her nephews are spying on her, and also Hera's crows have a message for Mopsus, Jason's seer.
Jason and Medea meet for the first time in the doom-shrouded Temple of Hecate. Medea gives him the ointment and a spell for his weapons, and they flirt shamelessly until dawn. Medea asks what Iolcus is like, and Jason says that she'll love it.
Jason heads back to his comrades and enacts the rituals Medea has given him, making his weapons irresistable and his skin invulnerable.
Aeetes releases the bulls. Jason is able to resist their onslaught thanks to Medea's magic, and binds them to the yoke. He spends much of the day ploughing the field. He sows Aeetes' dragon's teeth and stops for a drink, then releases the bulls. The Earthborn men start sprouting, and Jason spends the late afternoon and early evening chopping them up.
Aeetes is not pleased.
Book IV: ...and Back Again.
Aeetes, far from honouring his bargain, aims to take vengeance on Jason, and also on his treacherous daughters, and also on his presumably treacherous grandsons. Medea, not unwisely, flees.
In the Temple of Hecate, she prays for guidance. Hecate's guidance is not comforting.
"Honestly, kid, you did a stupid thing for stupid reasons. Some other god was messing with you. Suck it up: the only way is forward."She heads to the Argo, where she finds her nephews, and Jason. She pleas to be taken with them back to Hellas. Jason agrees, saying that he will marry her when they get home. She leads Jason to the temple where the golden fleece rests, and sings the dragon guarding it to sleep. They return to the ship with the sheep.
Aeetes learns of this and gives chase. Unfortunately, he gives chase in a chariot. That doesn't work very well, so he sends out his fleet instead. (To be fair, his horses are pretty awesome.)
Medea makes the ship stop so that she can offer a secret sacrifice to Hecate. The poet once again says that he's not allowed to say what the sacrifice was, but says that the altar still stands today. This may no longer be the case, since "today" was more than two thousand years ago.
At a loss for a direction, Original Argus suggests that they head to Orchomenus, which was where Phineus the Seer told them they'd go. This suits Other Argus, because that's where he and his brothers were originally heading.
The Colchians, led by Aeetes son Apsyrtus, manage to outmaneuvre the Argo and corner them on an island. They let Jason know that he can keep the fleece - he did both win and successfully steal it - but Medea has to come back until her father says she can go. Jason considers this for exactly as long as it takes for Medea to find out about it. Jason is swayed by her tender feelings, and also her vicious curses and her threats to burn the ship to the waterline.
Jason points out that the only other option is to trick and kill her brother.
"Why the hell was that not Plan A?"Medea sends to Apsyrtus that she is willing to surrender herself, having, she says, been taken by force by the sons of Phrixus. She takes many of Jason's treasures to distract him. Apsyrtus, trusting his sister, goes alone to the rendezvous, and Jason leaps out and thwacks him, mortally.
"Well, he's your-"
"Just get on with it. No, let me do it. You'll only screw it up."
At this point we learn that the Greeks had a ritual to atone for a treacherous murder, which is to cut off the extremities of the dead man, thrice lick up the blood and thrice spit it out.
The Argo sidles up to Apsyrtus' ship and the Greek heroes massacre the Colchians. The crew collects Jason and Medea, and they sail off. The Colchians, incensed at the murder of their commander, start to pursue, but Hera scares them off with a lightning show.
Zeus is similarly incensed, pronouncing the crew of the Argo cursed until they can be cleansed of their evil deeds. However, since no-one tells them, they blithely continue on their journey.
The curse doesn't actually last very long. After sailing around for a bit they come to the island of Circe, the sorceress sister of Aeetes. Circe recognises her niece, and notices Zeus' curse on Jason. She performs a cleansing ritual. Medea explains what's going on, leaving out the bit about getting her brother murdered. Circe twigs anyway. She tells her niece that she's being a complete idiot, but frightening black sorceresses have to stick together and she's not going to kill her with death magic. She lets them go, with a parting shot that this is not to say that she approves, young lady.
By now Hera has realised that the Argo's current course will take them past the sea monster Charybdis and the rock Scylla, and so she organises a posse of gods to still the monster and steer the ship past the rock. Before the ship gets there they are serenaded by sirens, whose song is irresistable. The quick-thinking Orpheus pulls out his harp, and twangs loudly until the ship is safe. They lose only a single Argonaut: Butes, who leaps overboard but is saved by Cypris and taken away to a heavenly mountain.
Held by the sea goddess Thetis, the Argo is guided safely past Charybdis and past several gods, to arrive at the island Drepane, ruled by Alcinous and his wife Arete. Here they are met by a party of angry Colchians, who demand that Medea be handed over to them. Medea begs Arete not to let her go. Alcinous is keen to resolve the matter without bloodshed, and comes up with a solution: if Medea is still a virgin then she shall go back to her father, but if she's married she should go with her husband.
Alcinous then goes off to bed, and Arete sneaks out to tell Jason what the verdict will be. He tells the Argonauts, who arrange an impromptu wedding ceremony.
Next morning, Alcinous passes his sentence. Good thing we just got married, says Jason. The Colchians weigh up the prospect of returning to Aeetes without Medea, and decide to stay with Alcinous.
The Argo once again sets sail, and is promptly caught in a storm that blows them off course for nine days, to the coast of Libya. They find themselves caught in a flood tide and beached on a barren shore. They leave the ship and wander off along the beach. Eventually, they collapse into an exhausted sleep.
Jason is wakened at noon the next day by a party of nymphs, who take pity on him and on Medea. By means of a cryptic prophecy, the nymphs advise the Argonauts to carry the ship across land until they find the Tritonian Lake. Here they find a mostly dead serpent and some apple trees with no fruit. The local spirits tell them that some lout has come through and killed the guardian and stolen the golden apples. The Argonauts recognise Heracles from the description, but he is no longer around.
Two more Argonauts are lost in Libya: Canthus is killed by a shepherd defending his flock (the Argonauts kill the shepherd and take the sheep) and Mopsus is bitten by a poisonous snake.
The Argo sets sail on the lake, but they soon realise that this doesn't help them. They pray to the gods, and Triton turns up. He gives them a lump of dirt and shows them how to get back to the Mediterranean through the lake's marshy entrance.
Nearly home, the Argo sails by Crete, which is guarded by Talos, the man of bronze, so that the ship can't approach. Leave this to me, says Medea, and zots him with death magic from the open sea.
"...you can do that?"In the last stretch the clod of earth that Triton presented turns out to be his daughter, who seduces Euphemus and then becomes an island.
"Yes."
And then the story ends abruptly: "No more adventures, you're home!"
I'll just assume that Jason and Medea lived happily ever after...
--
I feel like I haven't done Medea a lot of justice in this summary. She's an incredibly vivid character - a precise, mathematical split between lovelorn teenager and terrifying dark sorceress. There are long passages sumptuously describing her magic rituals, and long passages detailing her lovesick torment. As she and Jason flee Colchis, she reminisces about the place where she used to gather corpse parts for her spells. But it's only when Jason is thinking of handing her back to her brother that he realises just how terrifying she can be...
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