Jason and the Argonauts

At Lemnos

This is their first port of call and inhabited by women. This was a place inhabited by women who had murdered their husbands after being cursed by Aphrodite. The crew stay there awhile and help balance the population. Jason meets with Hypsipyle and where his cloak for amatory purposes much like Akhilleus would be a shield for combat. He succeeds even though in a non-Homeric way he submits to love

At Imbros, Samothrace, Propontis and Doliones

King Kyzikos provides them hospitality and they leave but the winds push them back on shore and thinking they are under attack Kyzikos defends the island but is killed. His new wife Kleite is devastated

she clasped a noose around her neck [and] all her tears made a fountain they call Kleite, the illustrious name of the hapless maid

The Argo sailed to Samothrace, where the Argonauts were initiated into the Kabeiroi, a cult of 'great gods' who were not Greek and who offered protection to seafarers.The Jason tale is a founding myth for many towns along this shore. It is, however, most likely that local accounts of events have arisen out of the story itself, rather than being based on historic facts that themselves became the basis of the myth.

At Mysia

Herakles is becoming prefunctory to the narrative as his braun and no brains have little worth in this Hellenistic narrative. At Mysia he heads off to repair his oar. Meanwhile his companion Hylas is pulled in to the water by a nymph and his cries are heard by Polyphemos and Herakles went to help. Meanwhile Tiphys sets sail and it is only later they realize they left left the three companions.

At Bebrykes

King Amykos force the strangers in to a boxing match which was taken up by Polydeukes Pollux. He shatters the King's skull and then subject to an assault the crew but the Argonauts repel them.

At Salmydessos

Here they meet the blind seer Phineus who is tormented by Harpies who steal is food and leave him only the stinking scraps. He says he will help them if they rid him of the Harpies. They lay bait and Zetes and Kalais pursue the Harpies and Iris intrevenes and agrees not to torment Phineus further. Phineus tells them that if a dove can fly between the clashing rocks (Symplegades) it would be safe to navigate. The dove just manages to get through. Tiphys' helmmanship is extraordinary but they need help from Athena who holds back the rocks. Now that the rocks have been navigated through by man for the first time they become rooted to the spot.

At Thynias

Here Apollo appears to them and on Orpheus' instruction they built an altar next to see King Lykos. Here Idmon the seer, dies from a wound from a boar. Peleus slays the boar. Tiphys dies from sickness here.

At Aretias

They meet up with the shipwrecked Argos and his brothers who agree to sail with Jason. They pass by Caucasian Mountains where the eagle is still devouring Prometheus' liver and finally the River Phasis the land of Kolkhis. The first part of their quest is soon to be achieved. The heroes land and hold council, deciding to walk up to the city of Aia. Along the way they see bodies wrapped in hides and hung in trees, a sight that travellers in Georgia recount right up to the 17th century Here Hera asks Aphrodite to get her son Eros to help Jason. Her plan is to use Aietes' Medeia to destroy Pelias. Jason asks Aietes to give up the fleece for frienship sake. Aietes is not impressed. He gives them a test. Jason must do something that Aietes cannot do.

Two bulls with feet of bronze I have a pasture on the plain or Ares...I yoke and drive over the stubborn field of Ares...If thou wilt accomplish such deeds as these on that very day shalt carry off the fleece

Medeia gets help from Argos' mother Khalkiope who is also her sister. She gives Jason charms to cast a spell on the bulls knowing she is being treacherous to her own family but she is hopelessly in love with Jason. Jason promises to marry her if she returns to Iolkos with him.

He succeeds the next morning, throwing the bulls to their knees, and sowing the dragon's teeth. At this point skeletons spring up from the ground and attack. Jason seizes a boulder and hurls it at the skeletons. But Aietes does not keep his word and vows to destroy the Argonauts. Medeia offers to lull the fleece's serpent to sleep so that Jason can retreive it, which he does.

They escape but are pursued by Kolklians who say they can keep the fleece if they hand back Medeia. Instead they entrap her brother Apsyrtos and kill him. Zeus was outraged and told them to sail to Kirke Medeia's aunt to be purified.

Jason and the Fleece

An excavation of the 1920s and 30s, at Boghaz Koy, in central Turkey, uncovered Indo-European tablets from a Hittite civilisation dating to the 14th century BC. One of these has an account on it of a story similar to that of Jason and Medea, and may reveal the prehistory of the myth.

It is not known at what date the Greeks borrowed it, but it very possibly happened in the ninth or eighth century BC. This was the time when many themes were taken from the east and incorporated into Greek poetry. It is a classic triangle of hero, dark power and female helper, familiar to Greek stories at the time, right down to the present day.

Incidents drawn from The Odyssey

They also sail to the island of the Sirens who were daughters of Akheloos. They say they were friends of Persephone when she was abducted and Demeter punished them. The argonauts next encountered the sheer cliffs of Skylla and then to Phaiakians where they see Alkinoos. At the same time the Kolkhians turn up. They say they can have Medeia back if she is a virgin. Queen Arete forces the issue and has Jason sleep with her.

There is another prophesy that takes them to the Garden of the Hesperides at Hesperides where Herakles had got the golden apples the day before.

Finally they went to Crete where they met a great bronze statue called Talos who threw massive rocks to deter mariners. Madeia's magic causes him to graze his ankle and moten lead flows out of his leg and he dies.

Apollonios Rhodios describes the aetiological tales like this - referring to ancient customs, derivations or rationalizations much like a scholarly nineteenth century authors who tried to pinpoint sources of myth, work out dates and origins and connect them to religious, economic and social life.

After the Epic

Jason and Medeia return to Greece where Jason claims his father's throne, but their success is short-lived. Jason discovered that Pelias had made Aison commit suicide, which had made his mother die of a broken heart. Medeia then punished Pelios in a horrible way by making his daughters believe they could make him young again by boiling him, wich they did, unwillingly becoming their father's murderesses. Uncomfortable with Medea's magic, the locals drive Medeia and Jason out of Iolkos. They go into exile in Korinth where the Kreon offers Jason his daughter Glauce in marriage. He agrees and so violates his vow to the gods to be true only to Medeia. Furious, Medeia kills the woman, kills Kreon and Jason's children and then ascends to Mount Olympus where she eventually marries Akhilleus. Jason goes back to Iolkos where his boat the Argo is on display. One day, while he sits next to the boat weeping, the decaying beam of his ship the Argo falls off and hits him on the head, killing him outright.

Analysis - An epic or a series of interconnected episodes?

Apollonios Rhodios seems to have written the “Argonautica” out of bravado, to show that he could write an epic poem. But the influence of the age was too strong. Instead of the unity of an Epic we have merely a series of episodes, and it is the great beauty and power of one of these episodes that gives the poem its permanent value—the episode of the love of Jason and Medea.

As we have it, the motive of the voyage is the command of Pelias to bring back the golden fleece, and this command is based on Pelias’ desire to destroy Jason, while the divine aid given to Jason results from the intention of Hera to punish Pelias for his neglect of the honour due to her

He interweaves with his narrative local legends and the founding of cities, accounts of strange customs, descriptions of works of art. Ultimately Jason succeeds in retrieving the fleece not just by force but more importantly through seduction, diplomacy of Medeia. His adventures at Lemnos for instance give a hint of his future yet unconventional successes. The brute force of Herakles becomes impotent. The disappearance of Herakles also forces more attention on Jason. The reader is not thinking at the back of his/her mind that Herakles is going to come up with a violent response.

Medeia is also a more complex character that many Greek women in epic poetry. She is a maiden and a witch. She can cry for help but also lure her brother to her death. In traditional Homeric poetry monologues do not betray the reader but give them a real insight to the character's motives and thoughts. we do not get that sense with Medeia. She is either lying to herself or deluded at times

Not Yet a Hero

At the beginning of this tale Jason is portrayed as a nervous, unsure young man. He does not yet know how to lead and broods over the enormous task ahead of him. He is not yet a hero, he shows his doubts in front of the men. He does not take charge but is overawed by the men on his team and asks them who should lead. He is not yet a leader. He is like an adolescent who is told to go out into the world and do his thing but there is still a homesick boy tearful at leaving home.

When he has to take charge and meet with Hypsipyle he walks to her with eyes down to the ground, a shy teenager. He does the only thing he can think to impress by wearing his best clothes and show off his beauty. He is still not the hero of Greek Myth. It is Herakles not Jason who gets the men to remember why they are on this journey.

He does not seem to react about his first Androktasia , but curls up snugly in a warm blanket and has to be told to rouse himself and get going. All in all we have a fairly quiet insecure young man, rather than a hero, who has not yet made a mark in the world.

Jason we are told has been well educated and trained to be a King by the Centaur. He has even been taught medicine. He could already be described as a hero. His good looks, his bearing, his desire to put his father back on the throne that he feels belongs rightly to his family, his ability to confront Pelias, and to put himself in Pelias's shoes regarding the oracle's warning. (In other words Jason would have reacted the same way that Pelias does.) He thinks logically and shows a maturity beyond his years. He is already a 'speaker of words'.

When departure time arrives we see a man anxious to be on his way,but with words, soothing the crying women yet suggesting they return to their homes/work and stop crying. He promises his mother that he will return. When he meets his fellow shipmates at Pagasai 'they gathered to meet him'.He calls a democratic meeting and suggests they vote for their leader.

The poet uses 'delaying tactics' to add impetus to his poem by having the other men suggest Herakles. Herakles refuses and rightly answers that Jason is the man who has called them together. Jason's authority has been established by the one man who could have done enormous damage.

So Jason is already a hero. What he now has to do to claim 'kleos' is to become a 'doer of deeds'.

Herakles or Jason as Leader?

It is not surprising that Herakles passed up the opportunity to lead the Argonauts. Apollonios makes it very clear he was in the middle of his ‘Labours’ and he is not a ‘team player’ especially when you have fifty of the best men of the era on the crew. For that purpose you need a skillful organizer who sometimes can take the lead as Jason does at Lemnos and, tragically, at Samothrace, but also knows when to promote his own men in the heart of the action; Polydeukes boxing the King at Bebrykes and Tiphy’s navigation through the crashing rocks. Herakles’ answer to any problem is normally brawn rather than brain but increasingly Jason shows that you need to use charm, negotiation and cold hearted calculation. He co-opts Medeia to retrieve the Fleece as it is her magic that is the key to the success of the quest. He is also willing to surrender Medeia if it means he can keep the fleece. He is a more ‘political’ leader, perhaps reflecting the Hellenistic age that Apollonios was writing in.

There is definitely within Apollonius' poem the tracing of one man from boyhood to maturity. We learn that his parents, fearing for his safety - he was an only son, sent him to be educated to a wise centaur, who obviously gave him a fantastic educational grounding, as well as training in fighting. By the time Jason returned to face Pelias he was 20 years of age, but as Apollonius tells us in a round about way the down was just growing on his cheeks. Book 1 961-988) when Apollonius describes Jason meeting Cyzicus 'Cyzicus like Jason 'soft down just blooming on his chin'.

He had good looks, he had his education. He had been taught to think logically, to respect elders and not to act rashly. His first 'test' was to face up to Pelias which he did with a maturity beyond his years. His second 'test' was the handling of the weeping women and his mother upon farewell.

His third test was showing his ability to build and prepare a ship for sea.
His fourth test was that he was able to gather a crew around him from the best heroes in the land.
His fifth test was for leadership. No emotional heroic speeches, just an understated suggestion that they vote on it.
His sixth test was the handling of Hypsipyle, this foreshadowed his romance with Medeia. She fell hopelessly in love with him. He accepted her adoration but was far more reserved and didn't promise that he would be back.

The whole of the journey of the search for the Golden Fleece could be seen as a poem dedicated to one man as we watch him move from boyhood, youth to the full maturity of manhood, learning from his mistakes along the way. It could also be suggested that the myth of Jason was in fact created to explain how a boy could achieve fame with manhood.

Jason - Great Hero?

He hides behind his beauty
He dithers and avoids making decisions until he has to.
He waits for someone else to take the first step.
He uses his beauty to tantalise women and then leaves them dangling.
He approaches his tasks by sending an envoy first and then following. The same applies to his fighting.
He cannot obtain the Golden Fleece on his own. In fact Medea is the brains behind this particular moment. Without her Jason would have failed.

We need to remember that she has been smitten by the arrow of Eros and is head over heels in love with Jason. He takes full advantage of this. He promises marriage but we are not at all sure he would have married her if Arete and Alkinoos had not intervened. In fact, when they arrive at the palace of Alkinoos and are told by Arete that Alkinoos plan to hand Medea back if she is still a virgin; Jason and Medea make love in a cave. They do not get married and he does not seem very passionate about Medea. If truly he acts as described above then he could only be described as a very clever man who uses his looks and mind to let things happen the way he wants.

It is worth comparing Dido and Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid Book IV - they also make love in a cave while all of the natural world performs a kind of parody of a wedding, but a wedding it definitely is not. Virgil had read his Apollonios, of course. Although Virgil has used the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius and the Ariadne of Catullus as models, along with various heroines of Greek tragedy, the version of the Dido mythology that he presents in Book 4 is very much his own. So far we have seen that she is beautiful, happy, brave, dynamic and kind. But after Aeneas’ story [of the fall of Troy she is overwhelmed with passion and cannot sleep and, as dawn breaks, she talks about it to her sister Anna. However, she does not want to be unfaithful to the memory of her dead husband, Sychaeus, no matter how tempting a prospect Aeneas might be. Anna, though, comes up with a number of persuasive arguments for starting a relationship with him. Her words are persuasive;Dido stops dithering; she is ablaze with passion, compared in a simile to a deer which has been accidentally and unknowingly shot and wounded by a shepherd hunting in the woods; she cannot bear to be without Aeneas; she becomes clingy when she is with him; and yearns frantically when she is not. [There are lots of Dido/Medeia parallels going on here]

All the building work in Carthage grinds to a halt, and during the lull Juno offers Venus a truce and a deal: she will let Aeneas marry Dido, and Carthage will be the dowry. This is a fairly transparent trick to make Carthage all-powerful, but, although Venus sees through it, she still accepts. The next day a hunting party assembles, and Dido finally appears in her full exotic royal splendour, decked out in purple and gold; Aeneas joins her, as radiant and graceful as Apollo. On the mountains they find deer in abundance, and little Ascanius has the time of his life.

Then a storm breaks; the torrential downpour makes Aeneas and Dido take shelter in a cave; and amid thunder and lightning and wailing nymphs, with all the forces of nature and the supernatural imitating the events of a real wedding ceremony, Dido and Aeneas consummate their passion. But what Aeneas regards as enjoyable casual sex, Dido interprets as serious commitment. It is the beginning of a tragedy.

Thoughts on Jason's Heroism

The most surprising and interesting aspect was Jason’s character, is the difference between Jason and the other Greek heroes. While he is somewhat opportunistic at times, he is definitely not smart or cunning, the way Odysseus for example is. I also thought he might have risen to the occasion as a leader in response to the doubt that the crew expressed at the outset of selecting him as leader, but he remained a weak leader throughout the task. In understanding his arete he uses his sexuality to proactively or actively achieve the task, but he got very lucky (or through the doing of Aphrodite) in Medeia falling in love with him – and Medeia more or less called the shots from thereon, he just merely capitalized and ‘went with the flow’.

However, regardless of Jason’s qualities as a hero or his lack of traditionally heroic qualities, we cannot deny his effectiveness as a hero - based on his arete. From the stance of a Homeric or traditional hero he is pathetic, but as a love hero he is spectacularly successful. At the end of the day, the ‘job got done’. Another of the more traditional heroes might not have been successful in the journey, but through his special nature he was. One also has to say for him that he was not war-mongering or trouble-seeking, and so most of his crew also got home safely. This is more than one can say for Odysseus for example. Conversely, one might argue that this is not in any way due to Jason, but that he had an exceptional, talented crew. The interesting thing about the Argonauts (even excluding Herakles) is that while they are also supposedly Hellenistic, they have a lot more of the ‘traditional’ heroic tendencies than he does.

To judge whether there are quintessential qualities of a mythical hero proved somewhat fruitless. Whilst all the other heroes had varying level of skill, intelligence and strength, they had one thing in common: Bravery. Jason does not have that; in fact even Medeia (who is ‘a woman’) is braver than Jason when having to face the sleepless dragon. This would lead us to conclude that myth adapts its heroes to circumstance, or one might even argue the dominant poetic style or school of thought of the time. This would certainly be an interesting observation to ideologists.Not to mention nothing of Jason's treatment of Medeia after their return and settlement - which was not heroic in the least

Does he EVER truly becomes a hero. We try to judge heroism from the the perspective of his arete, and to judge how successful he was as a love hero, and while we do know that when push came to shove Jason did realize that he could capitalize on Medeia's lovesickness and duly did so, he still came a bit short.

Further, Jason was enormously helped by the effectiveness of the Argonauts, and would not have got anywhere without them. Then he is helped by Medeia, so we are left wondering when he ever really took action. Although we are, obviously, more inclined towards a Homeric hero, even from a Hellenistic point of view - he was not particularly heroic - as some of his fellow Argonauts (excluding Herakles even) were more effective than he was. And yes he fetched the Golden Fleece, but Medeia all but took it down for him herself. <comments voting="Plus" />

Author	Eumelos +, Pindar +, Diodoros +, Ovid +, Apollonios Rhodios +, Homer + and Virgil +
Character	Aison +, Kretheus +, Polymede +, Autolykos +, Pelias +, Poseidon +, Argos +, Phrixos +, Athena +, Herakles +, Aphrodite +, Hypsipyle +, Akhilleus +, Kyzikos +, Kleite +, Hylas +, Polyphemos (Argonaut) +, Tiphys +, Amykos +, Polydeukes +, Phineus +, Zetes +, Kalais +, Iris +, Apollo +, Orpheus +, Idmon +, Peleus +, Prometheus +, Hera +, Eros +, Aietes +, Medeia +, Khalkiope +, Apsyrtos +, Kirke +, Akheloos +, Persephone +, Demeter +, Alkinoos +, Talos +, Kreon +, Glauce +, Arete +, Dido +, Aeneas +, Ariadne +, Anna + and Odysseus +
Place	Thessaly +, Aia +, Lemnos +, Samothrace +, Propontis +, Doliones +, Mysia +, Bebrykes +, Salmydessos +, Symplegades +, Thynias +, Aretias +, River Phasis +, Kolkhis +, Iolkos +, Skylla +, Phaiakians +, Arete +, Hesperides +, Crete +, Troy + and Carthage +
Term	Aetiological +, Androktasia + and Kleos +

Jason and the Argonauts

Contents

At Lemnos

At Imbros, Samothrace, Propontis and Doliones

At Mysia

At Bebrykes

At Salmydessos

At Thynias

At Aretias

Incidents drawn from The Odyssey

After the Epic

Analysis - An epic or a series of interconnected episodes?

Not Yet a Hero

Herakles or Jason as Leader?

Jason - Great Hero?

Thoughts on Jason's Heroism

Personal tools

Namespaces

Variants

Views

Actions

Search

Navigation

Toolbox