Jason and the Argonauts (37 page)

4.1190
had retired from the forge
:
There is almost a partial ring composition here. We first hear of Hephaestus at his forge in the opening scene of the third book of the
Argonautica,
when Hera and Athena come upon Aphrodite alone. Indeed, one section of the fourth book, the voyage among the figures of Odysseus' voyage, is about to end, as did Odysseus', with the arrival among the Phaeacians.

4.1196
As dolphins during tranquil weather rise
:
The collection of Homeric hymns that Apollonius' contemporaries would have known began with the
Hymn to Dionysus
(now fragmentary), which features a famous metamorphosis of pirates into dolphins. It is unclear whether, and to what extent, that poem may be in play here as a model, but this passage, coming so soon after allusions to the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter,
is of particular interest in that regard, among others.

4.1216
pick up a ball
:
Another allusion to the Nausicaa episode in
Odyssey
6, an episode that Apollonius plays upon again and again in the course of the second half of the
Argonautica
. As the Argonauts are shortly to arrive at the home of Alcinoös and Arete, the parents of Nausicaa (who has not been born at this time), the allusion is particularly appropriate.

4.1223
Mighty Hephaestus stood
:
Unlike the
Iliad,
which is replete with scenes of the Olympians watching the battlefield below, scenes like this in the
Argonautica
are rare. Here their presence marks this superhuman effort as truly extraordinary.

4.1234
where Helius' cattle graze
:
In a masterful stroke, Apollonius has the Argonauts pass by the cattle of Helius, the final, disastrous episode in Odysseus' wanderings before the shipwreck that brings him to the island of Calypso. His men's assault on Helius' cattle is the last episode that Odysseus narrates to the Phaeacian court, where Jason and Medea are now to find themselves.

4.1257
Muses, forgive me
:
The gesture is a particularly Pindaric one, when a poet alludes to, or briefly narrates, a myth involving unsuitable behavior among the gods. The passage is especially striking as a brief self-referential reference to the poet in the “act” of composition, and of the modern scholar-poet laying out two ancient explanations.

4.1265
nursemaid of the Phaeacians
:
Apollonius' own take on the history of the Phaeacians that Athena (in disguise) provides to Odysseus at the opening of
Odyssey
7. Throughout the following episode, the audience is repeatedly reminded of the earlier version of reception among the Phaeacians and so of Apollonius' own recasting of this in his
Argonautica
.

4.1270
Alcinoös and all his people
:
In
Odyssey
7, Odysseus, with Athena's aid, approaches the palace of Alcinoös in concealment, in part to avoid any maltreatment by the Phaeacians along the way. The arrival of the Argonauts is rather an occasion for initial public rejoicing, until this is interrupted by the arrival of the armed Colchians.

4.1290
Alcinoös' wife Arete
:
Odysseus, on arrival at Alcinoös' palace, first must supplicate the queen, Arete (her name means “virtue” or “excellence” in Greek). Her role in Odysseus' salvation remains fascinating and in part enigmatic and is the subject of a large scholarship. Here Medea, a young woman, supplicates an older female figure. While this is appropriate, there remains a certain paradox, as Medea is repeatedly likened, by allusion, in the second part of the
Argonautica
to Nausicaa.

4.1308–9
a perfect / life
:
Medea's prayer for Alcinoös and Arete thematically, though not verbally, echoes Odysseus' prayer for Nausicaa at the conclusion of his supplication of her in
Odyssey
6, which includes, at line 154, a reference to the blessed state of Alcinoös and Arete, Nausicaa's parents, whom Odysseus does not yet know.

4.1351–52
a poor, / hardworking woman
:
This simile recalls two similes in Book 3, that of Medea's initial erotic arousal compared to the fire a workwoman keeps at night, and the description of sleep coming to all, even to a mother who has lost her children. The reworking of the earlier similes into this one keeps alive the image of Medea's erotic suffering, now turned into true epic fear.

4.1389
Antiope
:
Antiope was the daughter (in one of several ancient mythical versions of her story) of the Theban king Nycteus. Beloved by Zeus, she bore him two sons, Amphion and Zethus, who were brought up by herdsmen. Persecuted by her father's wife, she flees to the house of two herdsmen, who turn out to be Amphion and Zethus. The story is the subject of Euripides' fragmentary drama
Antiope
.

4.1390
Danaë
:
Daughter of Acrisius. Zeus came to her as a shower of golden rain in the prison where her father confined her. Her father then placed Danaë, and her son Perseus, in a chest that he had cast into the sea. The story was narrated in lyric poetry by Simonides (fr. 543
PMG
) and by Aeschylus in his fragmentary
Dictoulkoi
(“Net Drawers”).

4.1393
Echetus
:
Echetus is a savage king of Epirus, father of Merope. The extant sources for this tale are fairly late. Arete here combines the catalog (an epic tradition) with a Hellenistic scholar's eye for contested narrative versions and/or unusual detail.

4.1406
war down on Hellas
:
As noted earlier,
Hellas
is not a term used of the Greek world in Homeric epic; rather, it is a coinage that comes to define Greek vs. Barbarian. A “war” on “Hellas” evokes the Persian Wars, and indeed Aeëtes, coming from the far east of the known world and associated with the Sun, can easily be aligned with the one-time Persian kings.

4.1450
Zeus' Nysaean son
:
This is Dionysus, a god with whom the Ptolemies claimed close association. For a recent, somewhat novel and very accessible study of the spread of the Dionysus cult in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, see Hunter 2006 ch. 2.

4.1458
glinting golden fleece
:
The fleece has been a leitmotif throughout the poem, and we have seen it in several settings: as a living thing on Jason's cloak and as the guarded object that Medea and Jason take from its dreadful guardian. At its beginning the golden ram bears Phrixus and Helle away from their stepmother Ino, at its end here it serves as the bedding for Jason and Medea, the latter also fleeing a cruel parental figure.

4.1469
The nymphs had come
:
The setting of this wedding serves in turn as the model for that of Aeneas and Dido in
Aeneid
4, where at lines 165–68 the woodland nymphs sing the wedding song, and Juno serves as the
pronuba
(matron attending upon the bride).

4.1483
sang the wedding hymn
:
A wedding hymn was a genre of lyric song, known as an
epithalamium
(the song sung “before the chamber”). There are several references in Apollonius' poem to other types of song, which may reflect the interest of his period in categorization of earlier poetry.

4.1485
was not the place
:
The passage leaves open a certain ambiguity about the wedding, and about whether it in fact constitutes a true wedding, leaving open, and unresolved, a very important issue for the future of both principals.

4.1491–92
we / the members
:
An unusual philosophical comment on the ephemeral nature of human happiness that, coming so closely upon the wedding, casts a pall on the whole scene.

4.1500
Dawn had returned
:
This is Apollonius' version of, and elaboration on, an image fairly common in Homer, but not in the
Argonautica.
The lines here may be meant especially to recall the opening of
Odyssey
8 and Alcinoös summoning the Phaeacian leading men to take counsel on the future of Odysseus.

4.1533–34
dancing / a cyclic dance
:
Another evocation of actual cult practice, and the type of song that accompanies it.

4.1555
and settled on the island opposite
:
Apollonius' poem includes a number of references to settlements and their future histories, a way of weaving history into an epic narrative. Callimachus does something very similar in his narrative of Acontius and Cydippe, in the third book of his
Aetia
.

4.1579–80
the land / of Pelops had arisen into view
:
This passage reworks Odysseus' first approach to Ithaca (
Odyssey
10.29), when his ship is then blown off course by his followers' illicitly opening the bag of winds given to Odysseus by King Aeolus. The “dismal gust of wind” that blows the Argonauts off course is a recollection of the Homeric passage.

4.1645
odd omens have been witnessed
:
Ancient historical narrative often includes both natural and supernatural phenomena as testimony of difficult times. Here Apollonius is evoking that tradition.

4.1655
fall in the sand, and die
:
This is the second time that the heroes of the
Argo
have given up hope, and prepare to die. The scene, particularly with the shrouding of their heads, may recall the end of
Odyssey
5, where Odysseus, exhausted and shipwrecked, buries himself, more like an animal than a human, to await a very uncertain future.

4.1665
swans release their dying proclamations
:
The idea that swans sing most beautifully before dying is a belief that recurs in a number of Greek authors, particularly Plato's
Phaedo,
which the poet may be in part recalling here.

4.1676
the guardians of Libya
:
These divinities are the daughters of Poseidon and Libya, thus their fitting role in bringing the Argonauts from Libya to the sea. The same group of female maidens (called “ladies, heroines of Libya”) feature in an elegiac fragment of the poet Callimachus (fr. 602 Pf.) with their mother, here probably Cyrene. As is the case with Odysseus, the Argonauts are often helped in their return by female figures.

4.1770
I sing at the Pierides' command
:
The poet's recourse to the Muses' authority here marks both a debt to the epic tradition (an appeal to the Muses to give veracity to a more than human account (the Catalog of Ships
in the second book of the
Iliad,
for example) and the extraordinary nature of the story. Bearing a ship to the sea has strong parallels in Egyptian religious belief and practice.

4.1796
Heracles had already shot
:
Once again the Argonauts are preceded by Heracles, whose peregrination just precedes their own. The description of Heracles from one of his victims at lines 1837ff. is an especially vivid one.

4.1833
they emerged out of the trees
:
There are several types of nymphs associated with trees in Greek belief. Apollonius is evoking something of that image here.

4.1912
Then, O Canthus
:
The deaths of Canthus and Mopsus continue a trend in the poem of significant deaths of heroes in pairs. As with the frequent paired arrivals at the poem's opening, this is particularly appropriate to a heroic narrative involving a ship and oarmates.

4.1941
the lethal sort of asp
:
Snakebite was a constant danger in North Africa, particularly from the asp. In some accounts of her death, Cleopatra VII commits suicide by holding an asp against her breast—this is the version popularized by Shakespeare. The poet Nicander (probably second century BCE) wrote a poem in hexameters, the
Theriaca,
on various creeping animals. The poem survives in its entirety; it includes a long section on snakes.

4.1956
the Gorgon's freshly severed head
:
The narrative of Perseus and the Medusa is known to us from several ancient sources—the most familiar one is in the fourth book of Ovid's
Metamorphoses
—but the myth is much older. Here Apollonius uses a traditional Greek myth to emphasize the earlier presence of North Africa in Greek mythology, a gesture very common in Hellenistic poetry.

4.1967
Slumber the Loosener of Limbs
:
Sleep and Death have a long tradition as partners, both in poetry and in art. Apollonius' description of the death of Mopsus is influenced both by earlier artistic tradition and also by medical descriptions of the effects of poison (the death of Socrates in Plato's
Phaedo
is a famous example of the latter).

4.1981
and mourned the man
:
The description refers in part to a
threnos,
or song of lament. An interesting feature of the
Argonautica
is the variety of song forms that this heroic epic evokes. A famous
threno
s in epic hexameter is the conclusion of
Iliad
24.