🎵 Guess Who Finished The Argonautica By Apollonius Of Rhoooodes 🎵

🎵 guess who finished the argonautica by apollonius of rhoooodes 🎵

the peter green translation served me well and i enjoyed the sizable commentary section, although it probably influenced my interpretation more than i'd like for a first read (green is VERY opinionated and also hilariously bitchy about scholars he disagrees with. the first time i've read such a sarcastic translator's commentary!)

BUT ANYWAY THE EPIC ITSELF:

iiiii have never felt this much anxiety reading an epic before?? there's an ambiguity and sense of danger in this poem's events that aren't necessarily WORSE than in other epics, but there's a feeling that i can't... actually trust the heroes involved. the argonauts are rowdy and reactive, and jason is NOT able to take charge of them -- he shrinks away and goes silent whenever his leader position is called into question. the mob rules, whoever shouts the loudest (often telamon!) in any given situation gets to decide, no thought of consequences.

or maybe reading about a main character who wants to do great things but suffers from debilitating conflict avoidance is a little too real. agh.

(and it's not like the thebaid! you can't trust the heroes in the thebaid either but their hubris and egos makes them PREDICTABLE. there's something unnervingly ambiguous and potentially unsafe about jason and his argonauts, even though they never get up to anything truly horrible. in this version anyway)

jason is incredibly intriguing -- even at his most unlikeable. it's like he tripped and fell into a story he doesn't belong in, he's so awkwardly miscast as a great greek hero and can't live up to the poem's own hype. he's described as heroic at every turn even when he's not actually being heroic, like in an INCREDIBLE passage as he fights the dragon teeth warriors and he's said to "valiantly hide behind his shield". LOOK AT THAT PHRASE!! HE'S BRAVELY COWERING. incredible writing. apollonius is genuinely a master of subtle sarcasm throughout.

like it says a lot that there are MANY variations of the line "but Jason, eyes fixed on the ground, sat there speechless, unmoving, at a loss in this crisis". and baby there are a lot of crises in an epic...

also maiden-coded jason still makes me vibrate! his frequently downcast gaze, his shy passivity, how delicately his body is described, the way he is a sexual object to pursue instead of the pursuer, how unusually tactile he is... one of the most memorable parts to me is when he finally gets the golden fleece, and what does he do? he doesn't raise it above his head in triumph, he doesn't wrap it around himself like a glorious cape and stride to address his men. he disengages completely and, spellbound, pets it and caresses it and combs his fingers through it in almost erotic delight. just. immediate zoned-out personal gratification, we're hitting masturbation parallels, no other greek hero would DO that!

which also makes it interesting that they use the fleece as bedding for their wedding night. i wonder which one jason enjoys lying with most, medea or the fleece...?

yeah so when medea appeared suddenly allllll my affection for jason evaporated. i'm not one of those "yay medea butchering her children is girl power actually!!" girlies (that's five hundred times too reductive a way to engage with a greek tragedy for me), i was prepared for whatever kind of medea apollonius would give me, but WOW SHE IS SO INCREDIBLY SYMPATHETIC (and intentionally so, see how she isn't even the one to kill her brother in this), she is SO ill-treated here. it's SHE who undoubtedly is the gods' plaything in this, not jason!

like how HORRIBLE her experience of being obsessively in love is! (turns out getting shot by eros' arrow is a psychological and emotional NIGHTMARE!!) how painfully aware she is of her own irrationality, how intense her inner life is. at one point she thinks so much about jason all night that she self-induces a (shockingly realistically described) migraine! she loves him so much she wants to kill herself instead of feeling something so intense and unpleasant and overwhelming. JESUS CHRIST it's so evocative.

she torches her whole life, her own safety, her own family for jason, and all he can do (after a lot of pushing) is murmur vague promises. it's HEARTBREAKING the utter helplessness she accepts to live in for him. there is no safety net for her, no way to regain safety if things go wrong (and you are so painfully aware that things WILL go wrong)

generally the argonautica feels more closely related to the odyssey than any of the other epics i've read. not just all the sailing, but the centrality of magic, and of course visiting a lot of the same places -- including the court of alcinous and arete before they had nausicaa (and arete is already the one in charge!)

more moments i keep thinking about:

that first lovely glimpse of the inherent dysfunction of the expedition as the argonauts have gathered for the first time ready for departure, and jason delivers a speech like "men! now that *I*, jason son of aeson, have arranged MY glorious expedition so that *I* can find the glorious fleece and win MY kingdom back, who do we all figure should be captain? 😉" and all the argonauts immediately start chanting "HE-RA-CLES! HE-RA-CLES! HE-RA-CLES!" it's so funny

heracles' role is generally so amazing, what contrast he offers! because HE IS the old-school hero who can do anything, fight any enemy, who has everyone's ear (if not respect -- he seems to be a LOT to handle, even for the other argonauts), who can LEAD. but they FORGET HIM ON AN ISLAND AND LEAVE HIM BEHIND, and now jason, tripped-and-fell-into-epic-heroism jason!, gotta be fully in charge and timidly face every obstacle himself.

i genuinely didn't know hylas getting abducted by the nymphs was from this myth! AND HE'S HERACLES' LOVER, actually the eromenos to heracles' erastes?? and heracles LOSES HIS SHIT TO AN ANIMALISTIC DEGREE at the loss of hylas. this is why none of the other guys brought along their boytoys, dude, this is a disaster.

i REALLY appreciated the introductory rollcall of EVERY argonaut (even if half of them were never mentioned by name again). i always wish we had something like that for odysseus' main crew in the odyssey. it's nice having that overview.

one of the most memorable glimpses into the lives of the gods i've read: eros and ganymede in the garden, playing knucklebones together under the shade of flowering trees and they're both so youthful and so inhumanly beautiful and the scene is so idyllic -- and then aphrodite stomps in and immediately snaps at her son "what are you grinning at, you unspeakable little horror?" she HATES that spoiled teen. it's zeus and ares all over again.

speaking of gods, that one time the argonauts make landfall, and in the distance they see apollo just walking across the land (each footstep thundering) and they're scared stiff and just wait until he's fully passed by... and then can finally get on with their business. no followup, no consequences, just a random incident to freak them out. it reads like an animal encounter, like they saw a huge bear on a hike, i'm obsessed.

i got jumpscared any time the text mentioned "the son of oineus". i'm like WHAT. TYDEUS?? but no, meleager's here, it's fine.

as i mentioned, jason is the one who murders absyrtus (although medea isn't uninvolved) but i'm particularly fascinated by how neutrally we're told about the rituals he performs to not be cursed for it. like there's our wondrous hero, cutting off his murder victim's hands and feet, lapping up the blood and spitting it in the corpse's mouth three times. all done, welp, time we were on our way!

circe can see at first glance that she and medea are related because they both have the sun god's golden eyes, i love that!. and THEN THEY SPEAK TO EACH OTHER IN COLCHIAN, WHICH JASON DOESN'T SPEAK. he's sitting right there and i love that he doesn't understand what these incredibly powerful women are talking about.

obsessed with how jason is described as "walking like the morning star" (bright, promising, bringing good fortune) on lemnos and is then likened to a star of destruction and woe as he's about to meet medea for the first time. aaaaa it's so good.

the argonauts being challenged to a boxing match, and I GUESSED CORRECTLY that they would choose polydeuces as their champion!! i am embarrassingly proud actually. i did not know there was a boxing match (to the DEATH) in the argonautica but i KNEW polydeuces was famous for his boxing.

also i love that when they get to the garden of the hesperides it's a WRECK because heracles was there THE DAY BEFORE!!!! what an incredible sense of time and place, only seeing the IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the labours of heracles.

it's so WEIRD when the argonauts get to libya and they're out of supplies so they all just immediately give up and cry and hug and lie down in the sand to die. until the local goddesses come like "JESUS ARE YOU FOR REAL WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU GIVING UP NOW. GET GOING FOR FUCK'S SAKE."

oh ancient texts, i will never get used to your incestuous dreams of good fortune (no it's GOOD that he cried with shame for passionately fucking his daughter in his dream, that's a very lucky dream to have apparently).

and then apollonius just signs off like "yeah i know they're not home yet but i promise nothing interesting happened after this point. THE END." like he's just NOT gonna touch whatever fuckery happens after, you wanted the argonauts well you GOT the argonauts.