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CHAPTER NINE Jason Has the Fleece, Medea Has Jason, Heracles Has

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CHAPTER NINE THE GOLDEN FLEECE Jason has the Fleece, Medea has Jason, Heracles has the apples, and the narrator has triumphed over his poem. Apollonius too has a goal: not just to deceive a reader, but to deceive readers conscious of their own deception. He signals this intention by describing characters inside the poem who allow themselves to be deceived by song and works of art. The song of Orpheus ( 1.496-511), the cloak of Jason ( 1. 721-67), and the golden ball of Zeus (3.13 2-41) are connected both to one other and to the Argonautica itself. 1 The song, the cloak, and the toy offer models of the poem which teach the reader to visualize the globe of the earth and its individual scenes. Made up of golden rings, k-ykla, sewn together, the golden ball is a model of the cosmos described in Orpheus' song. 2 There, the universe was in motion, with the earth, sky, and sea pulling away from each other and ringed by the orbits of sun, moon, and stars. In Zeus's toy, the orb of the earth is formed as a finished product, still ringed around with k-ykla. These k-ykla may allude to the imaginary circles oflongitude and latitude together with their counterparts in the sky (Strabo 2.5.3-5; cf. Aratus, Phaen. 454-558).3 The toy model of the earth is also a model of the Argonautica, as conceived in three dimensional space.4 The imaginary circles dividing the globe in the geographers' models are analogous to the circular voyages traced on the globe inside the story. The Argonauts circle the world from Thessaly northeast to Colchis, then west to Italy, south to Libya, and finally back to Thessaly. The poet defines this circle: Libya is as far from Colchis as the sunset 1 Orpheus' song of creation closes with the reign of Cronus, with Zeus still a child in the Cretan cave, before the Cyclopes made the thunderbolt for him (1.508-11). Mention of the thunderbolt connects the song with Jason's cloak, in whose first scene the Cyclopes hammer out a thunderbol.t ( 1. 730-34 ). Mention ofZeus's childhood in the Cretan cave connects the song with the toy that he played with before he got the thunderbolt (3.132-34). For other parallels, see Hunter, Uterary Studies, 163. 2 For Empedocles' notion that the cosmos was round when governed by love, see Hunter, Book Ill, at 135. 3 For astronomical geography, see Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire, Jerome Lectures 19 (Ann Arbor, 1991 ), 59-60. 4 The Alexandrians used the image of the toy to symbolize their poetry, which was, on the surface, playful and frivolous. See above, chap. 7, n. 24. 144 CHAPTER NINE from the sunrise ( 1.82-85). Another circle is traversed by Heracles. At first, he travels with the heroes, but his journey snaps apart from theirs at the close of Book 1. The two circles intersect just before the poem ends, when the Argonauts miss Heracles by one day in the Libyan desert (4.1436). A third circle on the globe is traced by the two halves of Aeetes' fleet. Two sets ofColchians pursue the Argo in separate arcs of the same circle (4.303--6, 1001-3). With one half of Aeetes' fleet, Absyrtus, Medea's brother, pursues the Argonauts to the mouth of the lster, where he is then murdered by Jason. The other half of Aeetes' fleet takes the southerly route through the Symplegades and meet the Argonauts on the island of the Phaeacians. This circle lacks a section: the distance between Absyrtus' murder and Alcinous' judgment. The reader who fills in the missing arc must visualize a globe, the real world, which then merges with the world within the poem. Once again, the reader who helps create the world is deceived by it. The task of drawing the world is analogous to the task of writing the story. The reader has been called upon before to supply characters have left out of their stories. Jason interrupts his story of Ariadne; the narrator breaks off his account of Euphemus' descendants (3.1096, 4.1764). In the first case, the reader supplies Theseus' desertion of Ariadne, and in the second, Euphemus' descendants from Theras down to Callimachus. We are carried along part of the way. Then the voice stops and our momentum carries us to the end. As we fill in our side of the story with our own knowledge and imagination, we join with the poet in creating a world. Our reward is to be deceived by it. The golden ball helps us envisage the three-dimensional world on which the Argonauts' voyage is traced. Jason's cloak teaches us to see the events that take place in that world. The first six pictures of the cloak correspond to the six sections of the Argonautica, which is divided by book endings and magical rocks (above, pp. 99-100).5 The first picture on the cloak shows the Cyclopes making a thunderbolt for Zeus, which still needs a ray (1.730-34). Another enforcer of Zeus's will, Heracles needs only a few labors before he can fulfill his destiny Zeus and rise to Olympus (1.1317-20). In the second panel, Amphion and Zethus construct the city ofThebes with the contrasting methods of art and force. The corresponding section of the poem, the first half of Book 2, establishes that the poem will be governed by the former. Polydeuces' boxing match demonstrates the superiority of skill over strength; 5 For discussion of the cloak, see Lawall, "Jason as Anti-Hero," 154-58; Collins, "Studies," 65-85; George, "Poet and Characters," 48--52. .
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