Library
Apollodorus
Apollodorus. The Library. Frazer, James George, Sir, editor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.
Thence they put to sea and came to land at Salmydessus in Thrace, where dwelt Phineus, a seer who had lost the sight of both eyes.[*](As to Phineus and the Harpies, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.176ff., with the Scholiast on 177, 178, 181; Scholiast on Hom. Od. xii.69; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. iv.422ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 19; Serv. Verg. A. 3.209; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 9ff., 124 (First Vatican Mythographer 27; Second Vatican Mythographer 142). Aeschylus and Sophocles composed tragedies on the subject of Phineus. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 83, 284ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 311ff. The classical description of the Harpies is that of Verg. A. 3.225ff.). Compare Hes. Th. 265-269ff. In his account of the visit of the Argonauts to Phineus, the rationalistic Diod. 4.43ff. omits all mention of the Harpies.) Some say he
Being rid of the Harpies, Phineus revealed to the Argonauts the course of their voyage, and advised them about the Clashing Rocks[*](The Clashing Rocks are the islands which the Greeks called Symplegades. Another name for them was the Wandering Rocks (Planctae) or the Blue Rocks (Cyaneae). See Hdt. 4.85; Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.317ff.; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. iv.561ff.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi.32; Merry on Hom. Od. xii.61; Frazer's Appendix to Apollodorus, “The clashing Rocks.” As to the passage of the Argo between them, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.317ff., 549-610; Orphica, Argonautica 683-714; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. iv.561-702; Hyginus, Fab. 19. According to the author of the Orphica, the bird which the Argonauts, or rather Athena, let fly between the Clashing Rocks was not a dove but a heron (ἐρωδιός. )The heron was specially associated with Athena. See D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Glossary of Greek Birds, p. 58.) in the sea. These were huge cliffs, which, dashed together by the force of the winds, closed the sea passage. Thick was the mist that swept over them, and loud the crash, and it was impossible for even the birds to pass between them. So he told them to let fly a dove between the rocks, and, if they saw it pass safe through, to thread the narrows with an easy mind, but if they saw it perish, then not to force a passage. When they heard that, they put to sea, and on nearing the rocks let fly a dove from the prow, and as she flew the clash of the rocks nipped off the tip of her tail. So, waiting till the rocks had recoiled, with hard rowing and the help of Hera, they passed through, the extremity of the ship's ornamented
The Argonauts now arrived among the Mariandynians, and there King Lycus received them kindly.[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.720ff.; Orphica, Argonautica 715ff.; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. iv.733ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 18.) There died Idmon the seer of a wound inflicted by a boar;[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.815ff.; Orphica, Argonautica 725ff.; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. v.1ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 14, 18. According to Apollonius, the barrow of Idmon was surmounted by a wild olive tree, which the Nisaeans were commanded by Apollo to worship as the guardian of the city.) and there too died Tiphys, and Ancaeus undertook to steer the ship.[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.851-898; Orphica, Argonautica 729ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 890; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. v.13ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 14, 18.) And having sailed past the Thermodon and the Caucasus they came to the river Phasis, which is in the Colchian land.[*](As to Jason in Colchis, and his winning of the Golden Fleece, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. ii.1260ff., iii.1ff., iv.1-240; Diod. 4.48.1-5; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. v.177-viii.139; Ov. Met. 7.1-158. The adventures of Jason in Colchis were the subject of a play by Sophocles called The Colchian Women. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 15ff.; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 204ff. ) When the ship was brought into port, Jason repaired to Aeetes, and setting forth the charge laid on him by Pelias invited him to give him the fleece. The other promised to give it if single-handed he would yoke the brazen-footed bulls. These were two wild bulls that he had, of enormous size, a gift of Hephaestus; they had brazen feet and puffed fire from their mouths. These creatures Aeetes ordered him to yoke and to sow dragon's teeth; for he had got from Athena half of the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed in Thebes.[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. iii.401ff., 1176ff. ) While Jason puzzled how he could yoke the bulls,
When Aeetes discovered the daring deeds done by Medea, he started off in pursuit of the ship; but when she saw him near, Medea murdered her brother and cutting him limb from limb threw the pieces into the deep. Gathering the child's limbs, Aeetes fell behind in the pursuit; wherefore he turned back, and, having buried the rescued limbs of his child, he called the place Tomi. But he sent out many of the Colchians to search for the Argo, threatening that, if they did not bring Medea to him, they should suffer the punishment due to her; so they separated and pursued the search in divers places. When the Argonauts were already sailing past the Eridanus river, Zeus sent a furious storm upon them, and drove them out of their course, because he was
And as they sailed past the Sirens,[*](About the Argonauts and the Sirens, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.891-921; Orphica, Argonautica 1270- 1297; Hyginus, Fab. 14.) Orpheus restrained the Argonauts by chanting a counter-melody. Butes alone swam off to the Sirens, but Aphrodite carried him away and settled him in Lilybaeum. After the Sirens, the ship encountered Charybdis and Scylla and the Wandering Rocks,[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.922ff. These Wandering Rocks are supposed to be the Lipari islands, two of which are still active volcanoes.) above which a great flame and smoke were seen rising. But Thetis with the Nereids steered the ship through them at the summons of Hera. Having passed by the Island of Thrinacia, where are the kine of the Sun,[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.964-979, according to whom the kine of the Sun were milk-white, with golden horns.) they came to Corcyra, the island of the Phaeacians, of which Alcinous was king.[*](About the Argonauts among the Phaeacians, see Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.982ff.; Orphica, Argonautica 1298-1354; Hyginus, Fab. 23.) But when the Colchians could not find the
Sailing by night they encountered a violent storm, and Apollo, taking his stand on the Melantian ridges, flashed lightning down, shooting a shaft into the sea. Then they perceived an island close at hand, and anchoring there they named it Anaphe, because it had loomed up (anaphanenai) unexpectedly. So they founded an altar of Radiant Apollo, and having offered sacrifice they betook them to feasting; and twelve handmaids, whom Arete had given to Medea, jested merrily with the chiefs; whence it is still customary for the women to jest at the sacrifice[*](Compare Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.1701-1730; Orphica, Argonautica 1361-1367. From the description of Apollonius we gather that the raillery between men and women at these sacrifices was of a ribald character (αἰσχροῖς ἔπεσσιν.) Here Apollodorus again departs from Apollonius, who places the intervention of Apollo and the appearance of the island of Anaphe after the approach of the Argonauts to Crete, and their repulse by Talos. Moreover, Apollonius tells how, after leaving Phaeacia, the Argonauts were driven by a storm to Libya and the Syrtes, where they suffered much hardship (Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.1228-1628). This Libyan episode in the voyage of the Argo is noticed by Diod. 4.56.6, but entirely omitted by Apollodorus.).
Now Pelias, despairing of the return of the Argonauts, would have killed Aeson; but he requested to be allowed to take his own life, and in offering a sacrifice drank freely of the bull's blood and died.[*](Compare Diod. 4.50.1; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. i.777ff. The ancients believed that bull's blood was poisonous. Similarly Themistocles was popularly supposed to have killed himself by drinking bull's blood (Plut. Them. 31).) And Jason's mother cursed Pelias and hanged herself,[*](Her name was Perimede, according to Apollod. 1.9.16. Diodorus Siculus calls her Amphinome, and says that she stabbed herself after cursing Pelias (Diod. 4.50.1).) leaving behind an infant son Promachus; but Pelias slew even the son whom she had left behind.[*](Compare Diod. 4.50.1.) On his return Jason surrendered the fleece, but though he longed to avenge his wrongs he bided his time. At that time he sailed with the chiefs to the Isthmus and dedicated the ship to Poseidon, but afterwards he exhorted Medea to devise how he could punish Pelias. So she repaired to the palace of Pelias and persuaded his daughters to make mince meat of their father and boil him, promising to make him young again by her drugs; and to win their confidence she cut up a ram and made it into a lamb by boiling it. So they believed her, made mince meat of their father and boiled him.[*](With this account of the death of Pelias compare Diod. 4.51ff.; Paus. 8.11.2ff.; Zenobius, Cent. iv.92; Plaut. Ps. 868ff.; Cicero, De senectute xxiii.83; Ov. Met. 7.297-349; Hyginus, Fab. 24. The story of the fraud practised by Medea on Pelias is illustrated by Greek vase-paintings. For example, on a black-figured vase the ram is seen issuing from the boiling cauldron, while Medea and the two daughters of Pelias stand by watching it with gestures of glad surprise, and the aged white-haired king himself sits looking on expectant. See Miss J. E. Harrison, Greek Vase Paintings (London, 1894), plate ii; Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, ii.1201ff. with fig. 1394. According to the author of the epic Returns (Nostoi), Medea in like manner restored to youth Jason's old father, Aeson; according to Pherecydes and Simonides, she applied the magical restorative with success to her husband, Jason. Again, Aeschylus wrote a play called The Nurses of Dionysus, in which he related how Medea similarly renovated not only the nurses but their husbands by the simple process of decoction. See the Greek Argument to the Medea of Euripides, and the Scholiast on Aristophanes, Knights, 1321. (According to Ov. Met. 7.251-294, Medea restored Aeson to youth, not by boiling him, but by draining his body of his effete old blood and replacing it by a magic brew.) Again, when Pelops had been killed and served up at a banquet of the gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the deities in pity restored him to life by boiling him in a cauldron from which he emerged well and whole except for the loss of his shoulder, of which Demeter had inadvertently partaken. See Pind. O. 1.26(40)ff with the Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 152-153. For similar stories of the magical restoration of youth and life, see Frazer's Appendix to Apollodorus, “The Renewal of Youth.”) But Acastus buried his father with the help
They went to Corinth, and lived there happily for ten years, till Creon, king of Corinth, betrothed his daughter Glauce to Jason, who married her and divorced Medea. But she invoked the gods by whom Jason had sworn, and after often upbraiding him with his ingratitude she sent the bride a robe steeped in poison, which when Glauce had put on, she was consumed with fierce fire along with her father, who went to her rescue.[*](See Eur. Med. 1136ff. It is said that in her agony Glauce threw herself into a fountain, which was thenceforth named after her (Paus. 2.2.6). The fountain has been discovered and excavated in recent years. See G. W. Elderkin, “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth,” American Journal of Archaeology, xiv. (1910), pp. 19-50.) But Mermerus and Pheres, the children whom Medea had by Jason, she killed, and having got from the Sun a car drawn by winged dragons she fled on it to Athens.[*](In this account of the tragic end of Medea's stay at Corinth our author has followed the Medea of Euripides. Compare Diod. 4.54; Ov. Met. 7.391ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 25. According to Apuleius, Meta. i.10, Medea contrived to burn the king's palace and the king himself in it, as well as his daughter.) Another tradition is that on her flight she left behind her children, who were still infants, setting them as suppliants on the altar of Hera of the