阿尔戈英雄纪

The Argo's bow is not ordinary wood. Athena herself fitted it into the hull, and it can speak — warning sailors in the gusting wind, crying out as the ship grazes rocks. The stern is a remnant of Zeus's oak tree, and the steering oar is Athena's gift. Before the fifty rowers even sat down, this ship was already legend.

The ship arrives, and the story begins. The longest voyage in Greek mythology sets sail from here.

The Argonautica comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, a poet of the third century BCE, in four books. It is the earliest surviving long epic in Western literature that tells the full story of the Golden Fleece myth, composed only shortly after Homer. It turned a treasure-seeking legend that had circulated for centuries into a complete expedition with beginning and end: heroes, monsters, love, divine will, all crowded onto one ship.

Posterity remembered two things: the ship itself became the archetype of the "expedition" motif in European literature; and the interior monologue of Medea, the Colchis princess aboard the ship, was the first extended treatment of a woman's inner turmoil in Western literature — a person struck by the god of love, pacing back and forth in her room.

The leader is Jason, prince of Iolcos, driven to the wall by his uncle Pelias with an impossible choice — give up the throne or fetch the Golden Fleece from the ends of the earth. He accepts. The crew is a gathering of heroes from across Greece: Heracles, Orpheus, Castor and Pollux the twins, among others. Heracles is the strongest mortal in Greece; Orpheus plays a lyre that can still the wind. Not one person on the ship is expendable.

At the end of the voyage waits King Aeëtes of Colchis — descendant of the sun god Helios, a hot-tempered man who hung the Golden Fleece on an oak in his family's sacred grove, where it was guarded by an unsleeping dragon. And his daughter Medea, the witch, is the true pivot of this book.

Jason returns to Iolcus to settle accounts with his uncle. Pelias does not face the nephew with swords — he sets a demand for the Golden Fleece, a task on the far side of the map, all but impossible. Jason accepts, and heroes from across Greece come running. Athena delivers the ship, and the goddess's sacred wood is carved into the prow — this timber can speak.

Fifty oarsmen take their places, the sail rises. The Argo leaves the Greek coast and makes for the eastern Black Sea — the area that is now Georgia.

The first stop is the island of Lemnos. The men there were killed by the island's women long ago, and the ruler is Queen Hypsipyle. She hosts the Argonauts for many days, and Jason has an affair with her. She is willing to sail away, but the situation will not permit it — she must stay and guard the island. This affair is seed for later: a woman now lives in Jason's heart.

The second stop is Mysia. Here something happens that changes the voyage. Hylas, companion of Heracles — the strongest Greek — goes to the spring to draw water and is pulled into the water by a nymph. Heracles throws down his oar to chase after him, swearing to bring his companion back. The ship cannot wait any longer, and he leaves the expedition for good. Once he goes, he never appears again at the taking of the Golden Fleece.

At the Thynian coast where the Black Sea begins, the heroes encounter the blind prophet Phineus. For revealing divine secrets, he had been tormented by the Harpies—every time he sat down to eat, they would swoop down, snatch his food and foul it. A man reduced to nothing, trembling at the table. The heroes laid out a feast, set an ambush, and drove the Harpies away. Phineus repaid them with prophecy, telling them how to pass the Clashing Rocks.

The Clashing Rocks are two enormous drifting boulders in the strait, constantly opening and closing, crushing any ship to splinters. Phineus's method was to release a pigeon first and see if it could fly through the moment they closed. The pigeon made it through, but three tail feathers were clipped off by the rocks. The Argo surged forward at full speed, and the rocks bit off the ornament at the stern—but the ship got through.

The ship anchors at Colchis. King Aeëtes sets impossible trials: yoke two fire-breathing bronze bulls to plow a field, sow dragon's teeth, and from the earth will rise a battalion of bronze warriors who turn on each other. Pass these trials or die. It is a death sentence for Jason.

In the higher heavens, Hera and Athena are plotting how to ruin Aeëtes. They send Eros down. Eros looses a golden arrow that strikes Medea, the princess of Colchis. Medea hears news of the Argonaut hero and begins to dream of Jason. In her chamber she struggles repeatedly—she knows the command her father gave her, the command of an alien race, and she knows this arrow will not let her defy it. This soliloquy is the first time Western literature seriously portrays a woman's hesitation.

Medea comes to meet Jason. She brings no soldiers, no guards—she brings a vial of magic ointment, enough to withstand fire for a day. Jason walks into the herd of bronze bulls, cracks his whip, and the fire-breathing bronze bulls bow to obey him. He plows the field and sows the dragon's teeth. The earth cracks open, and from the mud rise a row of bronze spearpoints, fully armored bronze warriors standing up.

Medea's plan comes in handy at this moment—she had told Jason beforehand that when the warriors charge at him, to fling a stone into their midst. Jason does so. The bronze warriors freeze, glance at each other, take each other for enemies, and raise their spears to strike one another. After a clash of armor, the field lies filled with corpses of brothers who have slain their own kind. The trial is passed.

Night. Medea leads Jason through the city of Colchis to the sacred grove of Ares, god of war. In the depths of the oak grove, something golden hangs — the Golden Fleece at the very top, coiled by a dragon. The dragon's scales shimmer cold in the moonlight, its eyes unblicking as it guards.

Medea tells Jason to step back. She takes out another vial of magic potion and sprays it into the dragon's eyes. The dragon's eyelids slowly close, its breathing grows heavy. Jason climbs the oak tree and takes the Golden Fleece from the highest branch. At that moment, golden light bursts in his arms.

Medea knows her father will not let her go. She leaves behind the magic potions, her youth, and her entire family. The Argo carries the Golden Fleece and the traitor princess away from Colchis under cover of darkness. The voyage home has its perils — but at the moment the Golden Fleece returns, the lights of the Greek coast are already glowing.

The story pauses here — Medea's ending belongs to another play, Medea. In the Argonautica, she stays with Jason. The seeds of tragedy are already planted.

On the surface it is an expedition; look deeper and it is a transgression pushed by divine will. Hera and Athena want to bring down Aeetes, and Eros is sent down to shoot an arrow — Medea's love is not chance, it is politics. The god of love waits in the air, the whole game already set. But the reader is struck precisely at this moment: a woman who has been shot, pacing back and forth in her own room. This single stroke has turned myth into something human.

The whole book keeps making one contrast: the hardships that brute force cannot overcome rely on magic potions, prophecies, songs, and strategies. A bronze bull cannot burn a person who has been anointed with ointment; a dragon-tooth warrior can be killed by a stone; the Clashing Rocks cannot stop a clever person who sends out pigeons first. Mythological spectacle paired with civilized methods — that is the coolest undercurrent of this poem.

What a commentary can give you is a map. Which sea the Argo sailed, which island someone stayed behind on, how the Golden Fleece was taken — you already know all that. But the bodily sense that Apollonius of Rhodes writes into three interior monologues, commentary cannot give you: Medea hearing her own heart beat, smelling the spice in her hair, staring out the window waiting for a stranger she has never met. She steps forward and her hair turns gold; she steps back and her earrings brush against her collarbone, making a small sound. In this passage, the source text of myth-fantasy first comes alive as a person.