CHAPTER FOUR HERACLES and JASON Traveling on a Small Ocean
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CHAPTER FOUR HERACLES AND JASON Traveling on a small ocean, the heroes of the Argonautica are ordinary men. Heracles, who towers over them all, gives the reader a sense of relative size. The Argo, which accommodates the other heroes, is too small for him. It bobs down under his feet when he steps aboard ( 1.531- 33 ). 1 Because his statues ranged from colossal to miniature, the viewer's perspective on Heracles was constantly changing. Huge statues por trayed him as he appeared to mortals; tiny statues showed how he looked to the gods in heaven. 2 Experienced in placing Heracles in proportion to their own world, the readers of the Argonautica could imagine him relative to their own size and the size of the Argonauts, ordinary people with minor flaws. A survivor from a primitive era, Heracles was always identified by a lion's skin and club. In art and in drama, in an exalted pose or a comic one, he was defined by his costume. In Euripides, the hero boasted that he had slipped inconspicuously into town (Heracles 598), when he was 1 For studies of Jason and Heracles, see Beye, "Jason as Love-hero," 31-55, and his Epic and Romance, 77-99; Cars~cken, "Ai;iollonius Rhodius," 99-125; Collins, "Stud ies," passim; Gilbert Lawall, Apollonius Argonautica," 121--69; Donald N. Levin, "Apollonius' Heracles," CJ, 67 (1971), 22-28, and his At,ollonius' Argonautica Re Examined, passim; Herter, "Apollonios der Epiker," 35-38. £ichgri.in puts his finger on the problem when he says that Jason's achievement gives one no sense of accomplish ment ("Kallimachos und Apollonios Rhodios," 92-93). For criticisms of Jason's insipidity, see Carspecken, 99-102 (with bibliography); Theodore M. Klein,"Apollo nius Rhodius, Vates Ludens: Eros' Golden Ball (Arg. 3.113-150)," CW, 74 (1981), 225-27. Carspecken supplants Jason as the central hero with the entire crew of Argonauts, among whom he plays a part ( 110-25 ). Lawall restores Jason to the central ~sition and dubs him an anti-hero, for whom the real hero, Heracles, acts as a foil (121--69 ). This view is extended by Beye, who calls the Argonautica an anti-epic, into which Jason, colorless and insignificant, fits quite comfortably as the hero with an cipE'tTI of sexual attractiveness ("Jason as Love-hero," 31-55). Some have attempted to tum Jason into the kind of hero worth reading about: Collins, "Studies"; Clauss, The Best of The Argonauts; and Richard L. Hunter, ""Short on Heroics': Jason in the Argonau, tica," CQ, 38 (1988), 436-53. Collins, Hunter, and Clauss go too far in their zealous defense ofJason (below, nn. 9, 13). 2 For statues of Heracles Ei,itrapezius, both miniature and colossal, see J. J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age ( Cambridge, 1986 ), 50-51, and Onians, Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age, 125-26. For the immediate recognition of Heracles from his club and lion skin, see Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2d ed., rev. John Gould and D. M. Lewis (Oxford, 1968), 186-87 and fig. 49. 48 CHAPTER FOUR dressed as inappropriately for mythological Thebes as for Wall Street today. In Aristophanes' Frogs, Dionysus disguised himself as Heracles by draping the hero's costume over his yellow pajamas (Frogs 45-47). The costume was distinguished from the role when the wearer of yellow pajamas showed himself under the lion's skin. The bond between costume and role further disintegrated when Dionysus and his slave tossed Heracles' costume back and forth, as its wearer was variously invited to a feast or threatened with torture (Frogs 494-673 ). The difference between a man's appearance and his true nature was emphasized in epic and in drama. Paris of the Iliad and the suitors of the Odyssey were handsome, but not heroic. Euripides' Medea lamented that she did not see through Jason's beauty to the man beneath (Med. 516-19). Her remark had greater force for the original audience than for a reader: the actor playing Jason wore a mask. Surface was distinct from reality in drama, where an actor could play different roles in the same play (cf. Lucian, Menippus 16). The beauty of the narrator's Jason is, finally, skin deep.3 Apollonius uses an almost surgical precision to separate the central hero from heroic qualities. The Iliad revolves around Achilles; the Odyssey, around Odysseus. The first book of the Argonautica has two centers in Heracles and Jason, heroes of contrasting costumes. The lion's skin and the cloak define their wearers as primitive or civilized, manly or effeminate.• The contrast between Heracles and Jason parallels the one between Homer and Apollonius. The heroes' rivalry brings to the surface the conflict between the narrator and his characters. In their zeal for a proper epic adventure, the Argonauts elect as leader Heracles, a most appropriate figurehead for an epic poem. The Callimachean narrator gets rid of Heracles, who would have changed the poem into a heroic tale, and imposes Jason on them. Jason is set apart from the others as special, without having any solid qualities. When he goes down to the beach to join the Argonauts, he is compared to Apollo (1.307-10). Homeric heroes are compared to gods, and so, it seems, Jason must be the hero of an epic poem. Yet, the timing is deliberately off. Such a simile is effective only when the character has achieved something worthy of note. Thus, much later in the poem, when Aeetes is compared to Poseidon (3.1240-45), the 3 Carspecken, "Apollonius Rhodius," 100; Collins, "Studies," 109-10. 4 In the two halves of the catalogue (one headed by Orpheus, the other by Heracles); the last of the Argonauts to arrive (one in a cloak, one in an animal skin); ldmon and ldas (prophet and swaggering warrior); Tiphys and Heracles (skill and strength); Polydeuces and Amycus, skill and cloak vs. brute power in an animal skin (The Best of the Argonauts), 29-34, 68, 92-93. .