Argonautae
（
Ἀργοναῦται). A name given to those who sailed in the
ship Argo under the lead of
Iason (q.v.), son of
Aeson, a generation before the Trojan War, to Aea, afterwards identified with Colchis at the
eastern end of the Euxine Sea. The expedition was undertaken for the recovery of the golden
fleece of the ram on which Phrixus, son of
Athamas
(q.v.), had fled from his father and Ino, his step-mother, to the court of Aeëtes,
king of Aea, a mighty magician. Having been hospitably received by him, and married to his
daughter Chalciopé, he had sacrificed the ram, and hung its fleece up in the grove
of Ares, where it was guarded by a sleepless dragon. The task of bringing it back was laid
upon Iason by his uncle Pelias, son of Poseidon and Tyro, who had deprived his half-brother
Aeson of the sovereignty of Iolcus in Thessaly. Aeson, to protect his son from the plots of
Pelias, had conveyed him secretly to the centaur Chiron on Mount Pelion, who brought him up
until he was twenty years of age. Then Iason came home, and without a shoe on his left foot,
having lost it in wading through a mountain torrent, presented himself before Pelias,
demanding his father's restoration to his sovereignty. The crafty Pelias, whom an oracle had
warned against a one-shoed man, promised on his oath to do what he asked, if Iason would go
instead of himself to bring the golden fleece. This task the oracle had imposed upon himself,
but he was too old to perform it. Another version of the story is, that
Iason, after completing his education with Chiron, preferred to live in the country; that he
came, with one shoe on, to a sacrifice that Pelias was offering to Poseidon on the sea-shore;
that Pelias asked him what he would do if he were king and had been forewarned of his death at
the hand of a subject; and that, upon Iason answering that he would make him bring the golden
fleece, Pelias gave him the commission. Heré had put that answer into Iason's
mouth, because she regarded him with favour, and wished to punish Pelias for having slain
Sidero in her temple. See
Salmoneus.
The vessel for the voyage, the fifty-oared Argo, is said to have been named after its
builder Argos, a son of Phrixus after his return to Orchomenus, the home of his fathers. The
ship was built of the pines of Pelion under the direction of Athené, like
Heré a protectress of Iason, who inserted in the prow a piece of the speaking oak
of Dodona. The heroes who, at Iason's call, took part in the expedition (fifty all told,
according to the number of the oars), were originally, in the version to which the Minyan
family gave currency, Minyans of Iol
 |
|
Athené superintending the Building of the Argo. (Zoëga, Bassi
rilievi, tav. 45.)
|
cos, Orchomenus, Pylos, and other places. Among them were Acastus the son of Pelias,
a close friend of Iason; Admetus, Erginus, Euphemus, Periclymenus, and Tiphys. But, as the
story spread, all the Greek heroes that could have been living at the time were included among
the number of the Argonauts—e. g. Heracles, Castor and Polydeuces, Idas and Lynceus,
Calaïs and Zetes the sons of Boreas, Peleus, Tydeus, Meleager, Amphiaraüs,
Orpheus, Mopsus and Idmon the prophets of the expedition, and even the huntress Atalanta.
Iason takes the command, and Tiphys manages the helm. Setting sail from Pegasae, the port of
Iolcos, the Argonauts make the island of Lemnos, where only women dwell, and after some
considerable stay there (see
Hypsipylé）
go past Samothrace and through the Hellespont to the island of Cyzicus, where they are
hospitably received by Cyzicus, the king of the Doliones; but, attempting to proceed, are
beaten back by a storm at night, and, being taken by their late friends for pirates, are
attacked, and have the ill-fortune to kill their young king. On the coast of Mysia they leave
Heracles behind to look for
Hylas (q.v.), who has
been carried off by nymphs. On the Bithynian shore, Polydeuces vanquishes the Bebrycian
king
Amycus (q.v.) in a boxing-match. At Salmydessus
in Thrace, the blind seer Phineus, whom Calaïs and Zetes had rid of the Harpies, his
tormentors, instructs them with regard to the rest of their journey, and especially how to
sail through the Symplegades, two floating rocks that clash together at the entrance to the
Black Sea. By his advice Iason sends a dove before him, and as she has only her tail-feathers
cut off by the colliding rocks, they venture on the feat of rowing the Argo through. By
Heré's help, or, according to another account, that of Athené, they do
what no man has done before: they pass through, the ship only losing her rudder. Skirting the
southern shore of the Pontus, they meet with a friendly reception from Lycus , king of the
Maryandini, though here the seer Idmon is killed by a wild boar in hunting, and the helmsman
Tiphys dies of a disease, whereupon Ancaeus takes his place. Past the land of the Amazons they
come to the island of Aretias, whence they scare away the Stymphalian birds (see
Heracles), and take on board the sons of Phrixus, who
had been shipwrecked there on their way to Greece. At length they reach the mouth of the
Phasis in the land of the Colchians. Upon Iason's demand, Aeëtes promises to give up
the golden fleece, on condition that Iason catches two brazen-hoofed, firebreathing bulls,
yokes them to a brazen plough, and ploughs with them the field of Ares, sows the furrows with
dragons' teeth, and overcomes the mailclad men that are to spring out of them. The hero has
given up all hope of success, when Aphrodité kindles in the breast of the king's
daughter Medea an irresistible love for the stranger. Medea gives him an ointment to protect
him from the fiery breath of the bulls, as well as the strength to harness them, and advises
him to throw a stone in among the earth-born giants, who will kill each other. But when all
this is done Aeëtes does not give up the fleece. Then Iason, with the help of Medea,
whom he promises to take home with him as his wife, throws the dragon that guards it into a
sleep, takes it down, and escapes with Medea and his comrades. Aeëtes sends his son
Absyrtus in pursuit, whom Iason kills by stratagem. Another story is that Medea takes her
little brother Absyrtus with her, cuts him to pieces, and throws the limbs one by one into the
sea, so that her father, while pursuing her, might be delayed in picking them up and laying
them out.
As to the return of the Argonauts, the legends differ considerably. One of the oldest makes
them sail up the Phasis into the river Oceanus, and over that to Libya, where they drag the
ship twelve days' journey overland to Lake Tritonis, and get home across the Mediterranean.
Other accounts agree with this in substance, while others, again, mix up the older tradition
with the adventures of Odysseus. The heroes sail up the Danube into the Adriatic, and are
within hail of Corcyra (Corfu) when a storm breaks out, and the piece of oak from Dodona
foretells their ruin unless they have the murder of Absyrtus expiated by Circé.
Hence they sail up the Eridanus into the Rhone, and so into the Tyrrhenian
Sea to the island of Circé, who purifies them. They go past the island of the
Sirens, against whose magic the songs of Orpheus protect them. All but
Butes (q.v.) pass in safety between Scylla and Charybdis with the help of
the gods, and reach the island of the Phaeacians, where Iason marries Medea to evade the
sentence of their host Alcinoüs, who, in his capacity as umpire, has given judgment
that the girl Medea be delivered up to her Colchian pursuers. Already within sight of the
Peloponnesus, a storm drives them into the Libyan Syrtes, whence they carry their ship, saved
by divine assistance, to Lake Tritonis. Thence, guided by Triton (see
Euphemus) into the Mediterranean, they return by way of Crete to Iolcos.
During their absence Pelias has put to death Aeson and his son Promachus, and Iason's mother
has taken her own life. Medea sets to work to avenge them. Before the eyes of Pelias's
daughters she cuts up an old he-goat, and by boiling it in a magic caldron restores it to life
and youth. Promising in like manner to renew the youth of the aged Pelias, she induces them to
kill their father and then leaves them in the lurch. Driven away by Acastus, the son of the
murdered king, Iason and Medea take refuge with Creon , king of Corinth. But, after ten years
of happy wedlock, Iason resolves to marry Creon 's daughter Creüsa, or
Glaucé. On this, Medea kills the bride and her father by sending the unsuspecting
maiden a poisoned robe and a diadem as a bridal gift, murders her own two sons, Mermerus and
Pheres, in her faithless husband's sight, and, escaping in a car drawn by serpents, sent by
her grandfather Helios, makes her way to Aegeus, king of Athens. (See
Medea.) Iason is said to have come by his death through the Argo, which
he had set up and consecrated on the Isthmus. One day, when he was lying down to rest under
the ship, the stern fell off and killed him.
The legend of the Argonauts is extremely ancient; even Homer speaks of it as universally
known. We first find it treated in detail in Pindar; then the Alexandrian poet Apollonius of
Rhodes (q. v.) tried to harmonize the various versions, and was followed by the Latin poets
Valerius Flaccus, Varro Atacinus, and the late Greek PseudoOrpheus. See Roscher,
Ausfürliches Lexicon, 530- 537; LangA. ,
Custom and
Myth, pp. 94-102
(1884); and id. Introduction to Mrs. Hunt's translation
of
Grimm's Household Tales (1884).
