Caroline Lawrence
Appearances
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And in Pindar, this is so great. Pindar describes, has a wonderful description of Jason arriving in Yolkis wearing two different types of clothing. Get this, a tight-fitting magnesium tunic that clung to his superb limbs and a leopard skin to protect him from shivering showers. And his long hair flows down his back. Now that shows he's really young. He hasn't cut his hair yet.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And in almost all the accounts, we emphasize that Jason's quite young and many of them say he just has his first beard. So he's like 20 years old. He's quite young and good looking. So this is very impressive. So that's our first trope.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yes, I think we can firmly place it in the Bronze Age, especially the oral traditions and the kind of establishment of who are these people in different areas of ancient Greece. By the way, there's a great resource on the internet, which is the World History Encyclopedia, and there's a map of the hero Jason and his quest with the Argonauts.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And it's absolutely superb because it shows you it follows Apollonius's
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
version and it shows you his very circuitous route all around the ancient world and what happens in each place and for me i'm not good with geography so it's good for me to get a vision of where yolkus is and it's kind of like again the middle right coast of greece and you can just sail across the troy and in fact one of their places they sail by troy in the argo
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
but they don't stop there, but it's a kind of little hint. Oh, there's Tri on the starboard bow.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yeah, second one follows, as ever, the king says, and they do this in various ways. You can have the kingdom if you do this task, if you complete this task. Go get the golden fleece. Now, we don't have time to go into what the golden fleece was and everything. I think you've got another brilliant history hit telling the story of Phrixus and the golden ram that flies and stuff.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
But he's got to go to the end of the world to get the thing, the golden fleece. So Jason says, yes, I will go to the end of the world and I'll get lots of heroes. So that's the next trope kind of is the gathering of heroes. And he's got to gather all the heroes. And Apollonius starts off with a great long list of the heroes.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And the movie has a really fun version where they have games to compete to see who will come, who gets to go on the Argo. And Hercules arrives and says, Hercules is here. What do I do? When do I compete? And they go, ha ha, you don't have to compete, Hercules. You're just naturally in. And then Hylus, this young boy comes and he says, oh, I'm too late to compete.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
But what if I can beat Hercules or Heracles at one task? And Heracles says, the discus. Hit that rock out to sea. And of course, Heracles throws the discus with his immense strength and it hits the rock way out at sea. And then Hylus, super clever. This always impressed me so much. He uses the discus like skipping stones on a pond. So he uses his brain and he hits the rock by skipping the discus.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It skips on the water and hits the rock. And Heracles says, ha ha, Hylus, you can come along. So that's one version. In another version, Hylus is Heracles' lover, boyfriend. And they get only so far. And that's another trope that's coming up further.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Another fun trope is they get a bit, they make the Argo, then they build the ship and they get a guy called Argo to build it, Argus to build the ship, name it after him. And they get a bit of magic wood from the Oaks of Dodona, Zeus's sanctuary. And this bit of wood can speak. So they put the little speaking bit of wood into the Argo so it can kind of, it's got a sat nav for them.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It can help guide them along the way. And of course, in the great film, they do a figurehead of Irhira at the back of the ship, and she opens her eyes and gives Jason advice. So that's the third trope, you could say, is wood from the Oak of Dodona as part of the Argo.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Absolutely. And I love the idea that wood can speak. That's so great, isn't it? And again, you've got the idea of the approval of the gods, the presence of the gods are here. So that's super fun. Then they set off. And the first place they stop is the island of Lemnos. I don't know if you've ever been to Lemnos.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
I've not been to Lemnos, but it's roughly halfway between the eastern seaboard of Greece and Troy. And They arrived there. And there are all these women and no men on the island. Because unbeknownst to them, the women, for a various reason, have killed off all the men on the island. They've murdered their husbands and killed off all the men.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It's all to do with the curse and not worshipping some goddess and getting punished and a bad smell. So the Argonauts arrive their first stop and all these women are there. This is great stuff. So they hang around there having fun. for a while. And the only woman who didn't kill her father is Hypsipyle, who is the kind of queen of Lemnos. And she has a little dalliance with Jason.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And he's going to have two kids by her. So this is really interesting because, of course, Medea will kill his children, spoiler alert, later on. But these two children, one of them is the one who goes to fight at Troy. So that's where that son comes from. So they have fun on Lemnis. And finally, Heracles says, guys, come on, we got a quest. Let's go. So they all go.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Oh, I am so honoured to be back. Thank you so much for inviting me back. It was really good fun last time and I hope we'll have fun today.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yeah, great, great, great question. Well, you've got Castor and Polydeuces, also known as Castor and Pollux, who are slightly problematic because they're supposed to be the brothers of Helen of Troy, but she's the next generation, isn't she, if they're the generation before Troy? We'll just skim over that. So Castor and Polydeuces, who are good at boxing and they're good at horse riding.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And each of these heroes has a fun kind of talent. And one of them, there are two sons of Boreas. who are called Zetes and Palaeus, and they can fly. And they have purple wings. According to Pindar, they have purple wings. Now, they'll come into play when... Jason meets the harpies when they chase the harpies away. And Apollonius totally blows it.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
He could have a great scene where they're flying after the harpies and stuff, but he just has them kind of ambiguously chasing the harpies. So those guys can fly. Then there's another guy I mentioned called Euphemus, and he's the son of Poseidon. He can walk on the water.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Is that not cool? I mean, I can totally see a film of these guys. You know, two guys can fly with purple wings. One guy can walk on the water. And then you've got Orpheus, of course, who plays music so beautifully that when they come to the island of the sirens, instead of having to plug up their ears with wax like Odysseus, he can kind of play his music and overwhelm their siren song.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Only one guy jumps in the water to get to them. So there's some really cool other heroes, I think. So I said Castor and Pollux, Orpheus, Heracles, Zetes and Callais, and of course, Euphemus, who can walk on water. And then Atalanta, according to some versions, but not in Apollonius' version.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Exactly. And I think I mentioned that I call this generation the Caledonian Argonauts. So a lot of them go on the Caledonian boar hunt, and she's one who went on the Caledonian boar hunt.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
and she could run super fast and she her father didn't want her to marry so he said or she didn't want to marry so she said you can only marry me if you can beat me in a race and the guy who beat her threw a golden apple three golden apples to distract her and managed to win the race that way so this is before she has run the race she's appears on a lot of greek vases
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
wrestling Peleus, the father of Achilles. That's apparently some fun story that we've kind of lost, but it's on a lot of pots, Greek pots, so that's lots of fun. I talk about that in my book about the Greek gods and goddesses. Pantheon, she said, giving in a little plug for her book.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
This is a throwaway line in Apollonius. They stop on Samothrace and they're initiated into the Mysteries. Then they get to the famous clashing rocks because they're coming up to the Hellespont, which is a narrow channel of water that goes from the Aegean, I believe, into the Propontis and then the Black Sea.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And those are the famous clashing rocks, which Pindar describes as being alive, which is really good. And they're often confused with the rocks, the other rocks with Scylla and Charybdis down by Sicily. But these are clashing rocks. And again, that's done really in the film. It's huge fun. A giant triton comes up and holds the rocks apart. And there are other methods. They...
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Absolutely. And no other story from the Greek myth has been retold in as many different ways by as many different authors as Jason and the Argonauts. And it's one of my favorites. I think it started off being one of my favorites because of the 1963 film, Jason and the Argonauts, which is so cheesy, but it's so wonderful. And it's got amazing special effects by Ray Harryhausen.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
In Apollonius, they let a dove through and the dove goes through and the rocks clash and just get its tail feathers. And then as they're opening again, they quickly row and get through that way. And again, they get their tail feathers kind of clipped off the very back of the ship. What's that called? The sternum. They get that clipped off. So that's the next fun bit. It's the clashing rocks.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
But then we go to Propontis, which is a little mini sea before they get to the Black Sea. And a very sad thing happens here. They land on another island. And people there, Prince is called Sisychus. And he's young again with downy hair and a beautiful young wife. And they're very friendly. And they welcome the Argonauts. And they feast them. And they even let them spend the night with them.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
The unmarried women, again, being very, very generous here. Argonauts are great. Everybody's happy in there. Bye-bye. So the Argonauts sail off. That night there's a terrible storm, which makes them run aground, and it's night. And when they get onto the beach, the people there start to attack them, and they fight back, and they kill the people who are attacking them.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And when dawn comes, they've killed their hosts from the day before. So young Sisychus has been murdered, and his wife is so destitute that she hangs herself. And they try to do funeral games in apology, but it's no good. They've killed their hosts from the day before. So they're kind of blundering around. You're getting the sense that they're blundering around.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Absolutely. I'm impressed, so impressed by your knowledge of geography. And this is what I'm saying. You've got the exotica of these traveling to these amazing places, but also the etiology. Oh, that's where it gets its name. That guy died there. So he's given his name to that place and now he'll always be memorialized with that name.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So yeah, and we're getting more and more exotic and more and more strange things happen. And then they come to a really fun island or the place where Phineas the blind prophet lives. And of course, this is the story of the harpies. and how Phineas, again, he snubbed some god, I think it was Zeus, and Zeus punishes him by making him blind, but giving him prophetic powers.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So Phineas knows that Jason's going to come save him from the harpies, which are these horrible, Half women, half birds, who in some accounts have rooster heads and female bodies and claws. And they defecate and drip saliva everywhere. And they befoul all the food so that you can't even stand the smell. And when poor Phineas sits down to eat, they come and they befoul his food and take it away.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Now, in the film, they do an amazing thing. And I'm sorry I keep harking on about the film, but it's so brilliant. They actually filmed it in Paestum, south of Pompeii, where there's some ancient Greek temples, Doric temples, Tuhira. And they actually have the actors climbing on one of these temples. They wouldn't be able to do it today. And they put a big net over it. And it's not CGI.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It's a real net. The harpies are claymation, and they actually catch the harpies with this net. In Apollonius, this is where Zetes and Callias, the flying sons of Boreas, come in, and they chase the harpies, and they fly after them with their swords.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
all the way going west, west, west, west, west, to some islands called the Strophades, which are little islands off the left-hand side of Greece, which is the west, and where Aeneas will go. And that's where he's going to meet the Harpies later on. So they get to stop there. And Strophades actually means turning, the turning, because that's where Cetes and Callias turn around and fly back.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
including gods that grow in puffs of smoke and Jason being taken to Mount Olympus and put on a board like he's a little chess piece, and Talos, the bronze man who turns his head and chases them slowly around the island, and the skeletons that Jason has to fight. It's just so visually stunning. We watched it again last night, and it's just so cheesy and so fun.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
with the Argonauts. So they've chased away the Harpies and there are different versions of the Harpies and what they're like and who Phineas was and everything. That's huge fun.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Let's jump to Colchis. And of course, they arrive at Colchis, which is the end of the world. And there are various ways where they meet Medea. But in most of them, I'm afraid the gods have a part to play and make her fall in love with him so that she will help him. Now, at Colchis, the king of Colchis is Aetes, the king with too many E's in his name. A-E-E-T-E-S. Too many E's.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And he's the father of a couple of daughters and a son named Absurtus and Medea is the youngest. And she's a priestess of Hecate. She's a sorceress, a witch. She's very young in Apollonius and quite vulnerable and very sympathetic. And she falls in love with Jason. So she's very torn about whether she should be loyal to support him or her father.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And Ovid does this a lot, too, because Ovid and his metamorphoses really gets into Medea's head. And I think we were talking before that she, as soon as Medea appears, all the focus goes on her and away from poor Jason. She's so much more fascinating than Jason, who's quite bland at times. She falls in love with Jason because of his beauty.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And Aetes says, okay, you can have the golden fleece, but you must do this task. You must harness my bronze, two bronze bulls with breathe fire and sew some dragon's teeth. And if you can do that, I'll let you have the fleece. And of course, it's an impossible task, except that Medea gives him some special anointing oil to put on himself and his weapons to protect him from the flames.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And he's able to harness it. the fire-breathing bulls, and so the teeth, which go back to Cadmus, way back in Cadmus. Whole other story. The movie does a very clever thing. It has him kill the dragon, which doesn't happen in Apollonius, and then use those dragon's teeth to sew them. And of course, that's when these wonderful skeleton warriors pop up out of the ground.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
But in most versions, most of the ancient versions, he has to do the plowing of the teeth first, and then Aeetes says he'll give him the fleece. But Aeetes does not give him the fleece, so he's got to get it by another method. Now you'd expect him to be a brave soldier, or rather not soldier, but warrior, and use his sword to kill the dragon and everything.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
The snake, Drakon, means the same thing. And it's described as being as big as the Argo. So this is not your ordinary snake or dragon. It's a snake as big as the Argo ship. What he does is Medea just uses a charm to put it to sleep, which is a little bit anticlimactic. And again, in the film, they make it a hydra and he stabs the hydra and kills it that way.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
He gets the fleece and now he's going to go home. So that happened pretty quickly, actually. A lot of it is the traveling there. And then they get there and it's slightly anticlimactic, except a lot of it's in Medea's head, her torturous inner debate about what she should do. And that's, of course, what makes it so fascinating and her so fascinating.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
But really, he's a very wonderful hero. And I think one of the reasons his story is the most retold is it's kind of the primal hero's journey narrative. And the hero's journey, as I'm sure you know, is when a hero goes on a quest to get a thing, which Alfred Hitchcock calls the MacGuffin. It's just something the hero goes for to get them on the journey and along the way they meet
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
They've got a long way to get back. And you're exactly right. It's not the thing they get. It's not the fleece, the MacGuffin, the magic potion, the sword, whatever, the princess. It's the journey that's important and what the hero learns and who he meets and who he fights and who he falls in love with and who he loses and who he mourns that's important.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And again, he'll come back to the he comes back to the same place at the end. And again, if you look at that wonderful map of his journey, he's going all over the place, including many across land. And so they're now they're warned by an oracle. Don't go back the way you came. So they decide to go by a different route. So they sail up the Danube.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
They go up the Danube all the way across, whatever those are called, the Balkans or whatever, to the sea on the right of Italy, which is, I believe, called the Adriatic Sea.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yeah, you've got your boot of Italy. They go to that bit there, the Adriatic. That's where they pop out. And their pursuers, Aetes takes, according to Apollonius, Aetes takes half the Colchian fleet and follows, goes back the way Jason came. But Absurtus, the younger brother, takes half the fleet and follows Jason across the Danube.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And when they get to the Adriatic Sea, this is where, in Apollonius' version, Medea lures Absurtus to a talk. And Jason kills him. And then when he's dead, they go and kill everybody on his ship. And the rest of the fleet are so discouraged that they decide to not go home and just settle there. And that place is called the Absurdean Islands or something like that. Again, another etiological.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
How did these people from the Black Sea get to this part of near Italy? In Apollodorus' version, he's also writing in Greek at the end of the 1st century AD, he's the one who tells how Medea chops up her brother, takes him with him on the ship, chops him up in bits and tosses him in the sea so her father, who's pursuing them, stops to pick up the bits.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So there are different variations on how absurdus is used as a kind of terrible distraction.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Absolutely right. They start off with the most noble of motives and they deteriorate as they go along the way. And Jason, again, is often shown to be indecisive in Apollonius' version. And we also, as you say, get this focus on some of the other characters like Medea or on some of the other heroes who, again, have an etiological function to perform. But this is a terrible thing they've done.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It's such a terrible thing. Killing ordinary people is bad, but killing your own flesh and blood is abhorrent to the gods and they need purification. So they're now told that they need to go to see Circe on her island and that she will cleanse them from purification. So this is quite surprising.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Circe's the witch, of course, who had Odysseus on her island for quite a while and did lots of fun things with him. But she is now the one who can purify them. So they've now got to go to the home of Circe somewhere off the western coast of Italy. So that's another one of the tropes, the cleansing of Absurtus's murder by Jason and Medea.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
allies and opponents and they undergo tests and trials and they finally return back home and they've learned what they need to learn and the hero's journey of course is joseph campbell coined that phrase and said that all world myths can be summed up in this cycle the hero's journey and then hollywood screenwriters just ran with it george lucas was the first to take
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
They then sail up the river Eridamus, which is the Po, and then they go over the Alps somehow. Don't ask me how. Down the Rhône, the Rhône River, and then down by the Tyrrhenian Sea. That's where they meet Circe, according to Apollonius. Then they're going down to the home of the Sirens, which is down on the shin of Italy, again in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Then they go through Scylla and Charybdis, and they go up to Drapane. I'm looking at the map here because there's no other way to understand it. Drapane is, again, near Albania or maybe Corfu. Then they sail down to Syrtis, and that's how they get to North Africa.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
They get blown off course, and that's where Jason meets three nymphs, the guardians of Libya, and he's instructed to carry the Argo across the desert. And then they go to Lake Triton, which is where they meet Triton, the son of Poseidon, who reveals a secret passage back to the sea. We're almost done here. You'll be glad to hear the end is in sight.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Now we get one of the best bits where they go to Crete and they meet Talos, the bronze man. And he is amazing. And in the film, Jason and the Argonauts, he appears at the very beginning. And there's this amazing scene of, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but he's like this giant bronze crouching statue on a treasure house.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And when Heracles steals a golden pin, his head turns with a horrible metallic creaking and he gets down off his plinth and follows them. Like if you can imagine the Colossus of Rhodes, a great gigantic bronze statue. clomping after tiny ant-like men. It's absolutely brilliant, chilling, fantastic.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And in the film, Jason conquers him by unplugging a plug in his heel and letting out the ichor, the magic juice or blood. But in Apollonius... He's vanquished by Medea, who from a distance from the ship gives him the evil eye using magical incantations and calling down spirits of death. And she uses her eye beams and curses him.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And he then scratches his vulnerable ankle vein on a rock and the ichor flows out. He crashes to the ground like a great pine tree. coming down at night on the top of a mountain. So he's a wonderful character. Thales, there are different origins for him. One is that Hephaestus made him. And I like the origin that he's made to guard the island of Crete, which he can run around three times each day.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And he even appears on coins of Crete, this giant bronze man. So he's huge fun. We only have one more thing to happen. before they get home. And that's this really spooky kind of incident where after they leave Crete, this terrible darkness comes down upon them and they can't see where they are. And it's the worst darkness. It's like worse than death.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And Jason and his men pray to Apollo, who lights the night with his flashing arrows until dawn comes. And they find themselves on this little island and they're nearly home. And finally they get home.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
the idea of the hero's journey and make it into Star Wars. And then another guy, Christopher Vogler, wrote a book called The Writer's Journey. And then Blake Snyder, another Hollywood screenwriter, actually coined a genre, the Golden Fleece Story, which is the hero's journey. So he actually calls it the Golden Fleece genre, where the hero goes on a quest to get a thing and comes home again.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
According to Apollodorus, our latest source, four months. I think it'd be fun to do that, to actually follow in the steps of Jason. And it would probably take you about four months to do that, stopping along all those wonderful places.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
You've done it brilliantly. It's essentially a Mediterranean tour, isn't it?
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Not really. I think he's got to go to Corinth for some reason, and he can't even have his kingdom. And of course, then that's where he meets another woman and he abandons Medea or wants to marry this other woman. And I think that's a whole other story that many people know so much better than I do. But shall I just tell you about his death?
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
No, it's quite sad. He's an old man and he goes to remember his glory days and he sits under the Argo in the shade of the Argo and a bit falls off and bonks him on the head and he dies. That's kind of how I want to go. Just sitting under and bonked on the head. But I'm gone.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yeah, he's broken definitely after what happened with Medea and his own weakness. And that's a fascinating thing about the Greek heroes is they're often anti-heroes. They're like us. And that's, I think, one of the reasons that makes them so enduringly fascinating and popular.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
I think it has. And I think many of these Greek myths have. But as we were saying at the beginning, this is the quintessential hero's journey with lots of adventures along the way and lots of lessons to be learned.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It's called Pantheon, a companion to the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. And it's got lots of little fun facts.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yes, you get the single hero, the lone hero, you know, who goes off on his own, maybe with gadgets like Perseus. You know, he's got lots of gadgets to help him. And Heracles has his weapons. But Jason is fun because he gathers allies, a bit like Neo in The Matrix, who actually goes on a ship called the Argo and has pals with him. That's a fun aspect that there are all these different helpers.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
It's a team exercise, but also that the Greeks were so interested in their world. And in this, Jason sails to these amazing places. that they might or might not have heard of. And actually, the journey always changes as people, the poets keep retelling it and get more knowledge of the geography. They get more and more accurate about where he's going. And so it's kind of a travelogue, really.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
You can travel and go to these amazing places and meet amazing characters. So I think those are fascinating. And there's also an etiological element. That's, of course, explaining how things came to be. For example, how certain races of people founded different cities. If we have time, I'll tell you about Euphemus later on, one of the Argonauts who has a really fascinating story.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Well, yeah. And in a way, all of Greek mythology is this spider web of connections and interconnections. And what's really interesting about Jason is that he's the generation before the Iliad. So he's what I called the Caledonian Argonauts. They went on the Caledonian boar hunt and they went on the Argo. And they're often the fathers, like Peleus, the father of Achilles, is on the Argo with Jason.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So We haven't yet had the Trojan War. And in fact, Jason was raised by Chiron the centaur. And when he sets off on his quest, he waves bye-bye to Chiron, who's holding little baby Achilles, because of course, Chiron teaches Achilles. Chiron the centaur is the great teacher and kind of mentor. So that's really fun.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And I think that that's something to keep in mind, that these are the generations before the Trojan War, and then we're going to get all these subsequent fantastic stories.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
I'm glad you asked. I think it's probably got an oral tradition, as the Iliad and the Odyssey did, so a lot of oral stuff was already there. Almost everybody mentions him, but let me just tell you who the six main, I found six main poets. We've got Pindar in the 6th century BC, tells about the quest. Herodotus in the 5th century BC. Callimachus, the 4th century BC.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century. Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC. Then you go to the Roman. You've got Ovid and Valerius Flaccus. Ovid kind of straddles the two centuries. Valerius Flaccus was a Flavian author who wrote a version called the Argonautica as well in Latin. And finally, we've got Apollodorus, who does a really succinct kind of summary at the end of the first century.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So they all told the quest, but the earliest mention we get is in the Iliad, where Homer actually mentions Jason's son, which is really fun. He doesn't mention the quest. He just says, Many ships were there from Lemnos, bearing wine, sent forth by Jason's son Euneus, whom Hypsipyle bore to Jason, shepherd of the host.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Now that's a really interesting little epithet that's given to Jason, the shepherd of the host. And it's also used by Hesiod, who's about the same time as Homer, who mentions Jason marrying Medea and also calls him a shepherd of the people or shepherd of the host.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And then you also get a mention in the Odyssey, one line, that the Argo was the only ship that ever went through the clashing rocks safely. They've got the little snippets that show that in the 8th century, they knew about him, but the first complete story of the quest is from Pindar. One of his Pythianodes, the fourth Pythianode, often considered his best.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And that's in, actually, we know the exact date of that. It's 462 BCE is the date of the fourth Pythianode that first tells the story of Jason. And it's got some of the basic elements in it, but not all.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yeah, it does. It does. What it does is it stays pretty much the same. You've got the tropes, but they will emphasize what they want to emphasize for their political... One thing I realized is that poets were political in the past, that the fourth Pythian Ode was actually written, probably commissioned by a man who wanted to be reinstated in favor with a certain king.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So he got Pindar to write this ode to the king who'd won a chariot race with hints of, you know, I'm your pal, reinstate me. And of course, we know that Virgil wrote the Aeneid to promote Octavian, who became Augustus. And so there's a lot of political stuff in the retellings. And then you get different flavors according to their tastes.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
For example, Apollonius Rhodius, who's the Hellenistic writer in the so-called Alexandrian style, which apparently means fancy schmancy, showing off your knowledge.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
He is the 3rd century BC. Yeah. 2nd century BC. Yeah. He's right in around 250 BC. So apparently he writes the best Medea, apart from Euripides, of course. He writes a really good Medea, but his Jason is insipid. Whereas Valerius Flaccus is said to write a really good Jason, but Medea is kind of skimmed over. So they show their interest, but they play with the same basic tropes.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And that's what I think all of those who retell the myths today do. We take these basic building blocks of each myth and we emphasize the one that we want to promote our own views with.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Yeah, well, he's great. He's often introduced, grown up, and then we have a little flashback to him. And in, I think, probably the best, one of the most famous accounts is Apollonius of Rhodes, the one who wrote around 250 BC, his Argonautica. He starts off with Jason arrives with one sandal, essentially. So let me just tell you basically first what
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
the kind of essence of Jason is, what his basic story was. All the traditions agree that Jason is a hero who goes with a bunch of other heroes called the Argonauts to get a fleece from a faraway country called Colchis. the country of Aetes, father of Medea. He's got to overcome lots of tasks and he's got to get the fleece from the dragon and bring it back to claim his kingdom.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So that's the kind of basic account. And most of the accounts give Jason 50 heroes on his journey. One or two give him 100. But he sails in a pentaconter, a ship with 50 oars. So it makes sense that you've got 50 heroes, one for each oar. And his name is interesting. It means healer or atoner. And it's actually linked to the word, the name Jesus in some accounts. or Joshua. So that's interesting.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And he's the son of Eson, grandson of Cruthias, and he's the heir to the throne of Iolcus, which is kind of In Greece and Thessaly, and if you imagine Athens and Olympia up north, halfway between, kind of on the coast there, that's Thessaly, and it's now a place called Volos.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
So he's going to set out from Colchis, go to the end of the world, which is essentially he's going to go to Colchis, which is the Black Sea. That's that big body of water above Turkey on the right-hand side. I'm not good with east and west, so the very right-hand side. Go there. through all sorts of places, and then come back again. So that's his most basic story.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
And we start off with him arriving with one sandal. And the ruler of Eolkus, who's, I think, his uncle, Pelias, which should be his kingdom, has been warned about the one-sandaled man. Now, some of the accounts are really fun. They have Jason just losing the sandal as he crosses a river. One account has Jason...
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
saving an old woman in a river who's actually Hera in disguise, and he loses his sandal that way. So that shows he's kind and good and noble, and Hera likes him and she's going to be his helper. Unusually, because Hera is usually the enemy of most heroes.
The Ancients
Jason and the Argonauts
Very unusual. And in the great film, there's a little twist in the film of Jason and the Argonauts where she appears on the riverbank and makes Plius, the evil king, fall in the water and Jason rescues him. And when they come out, Plius looks down and sees he only has one sandal. So that's a really good twist. So that's the first trope is the prophecy about the man will come.