Apollonius of Rhodes · 250 BCE · mediterranean

Apollonius of Rhodes's third-century BC epic. Jason gathers the heroes of Greece aboard the Argo and sails from Thessaly to the far end of the Black Sea for the golden fleece. The return is stranger than the voyage out: up the Danube, out into the Adriatic, along the Po and the Rhone, and home by way of Circe, Scylla, Corfu and a desert crossing in Libya.

1. 1
   Iolcus

   From the port of Pagasae in Thessaly, Jason launches the Argo, the fifty-oared ship built with a prophetic beam of Dodonian oak. King Pelias has sent him on an errand meant to be the death of him: to sail to the far edge of the world and bring back the Golden Fleece. With him go the greatest heroes of the age, among them Heracles, Orpheus, the twins Castor and Polydeuces, and keen-eyed Lynceus.

2. 2
   Lemnos

   The Argo's first landfall is Lemnos, an island peopled only by women, who in a fit of jealous rage have killed all their menfolk. Queen Hypsipyle welcomes the heroes warmly, and the crew lingers in their company, fathering a new generation, until Heracles shames his comrades back to the oars.

3. 3
   Samothrace

   On Orpheus's counsel the Argo puts in at Samothrace, island of the secret rites of the Great Gods, so the heroes may be initiated into mysteries said to protect sailors from the perils of the deep. Then they pass into the Hellespont, the narrow channel where Helle once fell from the golden ram and gave the strait her name.

4. 4
   Cyzicus

   Among the Doliones the Argonauts are received kindly by young King Cyzicus, and they beat back the six-armed earthborn giants that infest the mountain. But after sailing on, a night gale drives them back to the same shore in the dark, and each side takes the other for an enemy; Jason kills his host Cyzicus without knowing him, and the heroes wake to mourn the friend they have slain.

5. 5
   Mysia

   Going ashore in Mysia, Heracles snaps an oar and strides inland to cut a new one, while his beloved young companion Hylas, sent for water, is drawn down into a spring by an enamoured nymph and never seen again. Heracles, searching in a frenzy, is left behind when the Argo sails at dawn, and the sea-god Glaucus rises to tell the grieving crew that his loss is the will of the gods.

6. 6
   The land of the Bebryces

   In the country of the Bebryces the brutal King Amycus lets no stranger pass without facing him in a boxing match to the death. The young Polydeuces takes up the challenge and, with skill rather than brute strength, lays the giant low; when the Bebrycians rush the victor with drawn weapons, the Argonauts rout them and sail on.

7. 7
   Phineus and the Harpies

   On the far shore lives Phineus, a blind old seer whom Zeus has punished for revealing too much of fate: each time he tries to eat, the foul winged Harpies swoop to snatch and befoul his food. The winged sons of Boreas, Zetes and Calais, chase the monsters across the sky, and in gratitude the rescued prophet reveals the course to Colchis and how to survive the rocks ahead.

8. 8
   The Symplegades

   At the mouth of the Bosphorus stand the Symplegades, the Clashing Rocks, two cliffs that hurl themselves together to crush any ship that dares the passage. Heeding Phineus, the Argonauts loose a dove; it darts through and loses only its tail feathers, and as the rocks recoil the crew row for their lives, the Argo slipping clear with only her stern ornament shorn away. From that day the rocks stand forever still.

9. 9
   Heraclea Pontica

   Among the Mariandyni, near the cavern said to descend to the underworld, the Argonauts lose two of their own: the seer Idmon, gored by a wild boar, and then the helmsman Tiphys, who sickens and dies. Heavy with grief, the crew set Ancaeus at the steering oar and press on along the Black Sea coast.

10. 10
    The land of the Amazons

    The Argo skirts the mouth of the river Thermodon, harbour of the warrior women, the Amazons, daughters of Ares. Wisely the heroes do not land among them, and they sail on past the territories of the iron-working Chalybes and the other strange peoples of the Pontic shore.

11. 11
    The Isle of Ares

    On the lonely Isle of Ares the Argonauts are set upon by birds that shoot their bronze feathers like arrows, and drive them off by clashing shields and raising a great shout. There they find four shipwrecked castaways, the sons of Phrixus and grandsons of the very king they sail to confront, who join the crew and guide them the last stretch to Colchis.

12. 12
    Colchis

    At last the Argo reaches Colchis and the river Phasis, kingdom of Aeetes, where the Golden Fleece hangs in the grove of Ares guarded by a serpent that never sleeps. With the help of the king's daughter Medea, struck by love for him, Jason yokes the fire-breathing bronze bulls, sows the dragon's teeth and survives the armed men that spring from them, and lulls the sleepless serpent with a spell to carry off the Fleece at last.

13. 13
    The Ister

    Rather than face the Symplegades again the Argo turns up the Ister - and Apollonius, following a geography his own century already doubted, has the great river fork and carry them clean across Europe to the Adriatic.

14. 14
    The Absyrtides

    On an island in the Adriatic, Medea lures her brother Apsyrtus into an ambush and Jason kills him at the altar - the crime that curses the rest of the voyage and that the poem never lets either of them put down.

15. 15
    The Eridanus

    Driven back by Zeus, they turn up the Eridanus, the Po, into a country of poplars and amber where Phaethon fell out of the sky - and the smell of the burning is still on the water when they pass.

16. 16
    The Rhodanus

    From the Po into the Rhodanus by a channel that exists only in this poem, down through the Celts and the Ligurians to the sea, with Hera hiding them in mist from every tribe along the bank.

17. 17
    Aeaea

    At Circe's island the pair are purified of the murder - she performs the rite before she asks what it was for, and when she finds out, drives her own niece from the door.

18. 18
    Scylla and Charybdis

    The strait where the Odyssey's monsters wait, and the Planctae beyond it - and the Argo is carried through by Thetis and the Nereids tossing her between them like a ball, which is the loveliest thing in the poem.

19. 19
    Drepane

    Among the Phaeacians the pursuing Colchians demand Medea back, and Alcinous rules that she may stay if she is married - so the wedding is held that night, in a cave, on a fleece of gold, several years early.

20. 20
    The Syrtes

    In sight of the Peloponnese a north wind takes them and blows for nine days into the Libyan shallows, from which no ship gets out again - and they haul the Argo ashore and sit down to die.

21. 21
    Lake Tritonis

    They carry the ship on their shoulders for twelve days across the desert to Lake Tritonis, and Triton himself shows them the channel back to the sea. Canthus and Mopsus do not leave Libya.

22. 22
    Crete

    Talos, the bronze giant who circled Crete three times a day, keeps them off the beach until Medea works on him from the deck and he opens the one vein he has, and bleeds out like a felled tree.

23. 23
    Iolcus

    By Anaphe and Aegina and home to Pagasae, with the fleece and with Medea - and Apollonius stops there, well short of what she will do in Corinth, and lets the reader supply the rest.