Jason and the Argonauts

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Speaker 1 It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.
Today we're exploring arguably the greatest of the mythological Greek adventure stories, and a story that has survived in full.

Speaker 1 The legend of Jason and the Argonauts, their quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece, the fleece of a magical golden-winged ram protected by a dragon and owned by a faraway kingdom east of the Black Sea.

Speaker 1 Jason and his crew of heroes' many adventures during this quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece have captivated people for millennia.

Speaker 1 This is a story that goes from Greece to the Bosphorus, that narrow strait of water where Istanbul is today, to modern-day Georgia and the ancient kingdom of Colchis.

Speaker 1 Before an extraordinary return journey that sees the Argonauts voyage up the river Danube, around the Adriatic Sea, across the Alps, navigating North Africa, before finally returning to Greece.

Speaker 1 It is quite the epic story, full of famous heroes from Greek mythology, a crossover par excellence.

Speaker 1 And it also features many well-known mythical creatures ranging from harpies, to the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece, to the witch Circe, the sirens, the metal giant Talos, and more.

Speaker 1 Joining me to cover this epic ancient voyage from beginning to end is the best-selling author Caroline Lawrence. Caroline has been on the podcast before to cover the story of the Minotaur.

Speaker 1 She has recently written a book about Greek mythology which includes the legend of Jason and the Argonauts and how it is a classic example of the hero's journey, something we see time and and time again in movies today.

Speaker 1 Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 Caroline, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast.

Speaker 14 Welcome back.

Speaker 17 Oh, I am so honored 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm sure we will. And as later, last time was the Minotaur.
This time, you've got just as juicy a topic of ancient Greek mythology. Jason and the Argonauts.

Speaker 1 I mean, Caroline, this feels like this ancient Greek version of the Avengers, this epic story of heroes all together going on a quest to a faraway land.

Speaker 17 Absolutely. And no other story from the Greek myths 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And it's got amazing special effects by Ray Harryhausen, 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But really, he's a very wonderful hero. And his, I think one of the reasons his story is the most retold is it's kind of the primal hero's journey narrative.

Speaker 17 And the hero's journey, as I'm sure you know, is where a hero goes on a quest to get a thing that can... which Alfred Hitchcock calls the MacGuffin.

Speaker 17 It's just something the hero goes for to get them on the journey.

Speaker 17 And along the way, they meet allies and opponents and they undergo tests and trials and they finally return back home and they've learned what they need to learn.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And then the Hollywood screenwriters just ran with it. George Lucas was the first to take the idea of the hero's journey and make it into Star Wars.

Speaker 17 And then another guy, Christopher Vogler, wrote a book called The Writer's Journey. And then Blake Snyder, another Hollywood screenwriter, actually

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 Because it's not just Jason and the Argonauts, is it? There are so many stories of Greek mythology where it is centered around heroes going to do a quest.

Speaker 1 I might immediately think of Heracles or Hercules with his labors. Why do you think that the Greeks loved these stories of heroes going on these epic adventures, going on the hero's journey?

Speaker 1 What made them so popular, do you think, in ancient Greece?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But Jason is fun because he gathers allies, a bit like Neo in the the Matrix, who actually goes on a ship called the Argo and has pals with him.

Speaker 17 That's a fun aspect that there are all these different helpers. It's a team exercise, but also that the Greeks were so interested in their world.

Speaker 17 And in this, Jason sails to these amazing places that they might or might not have heard of. And actually...

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And so it's kind of a travelogue, really. 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.

Speaker 17 That's, of course, explaining how things came to be. For example, how certain races of people founded different cities.

Speaker 17 And I'll tell you about, if we have time, I'll tell you about Euphemus later on, one of the Argonauts, who has a really fascinating story.

Speaker 1 Does the story then of the Argonauts, as I said, if it's not just Jason, of course, he's the main protagonist and we'll get to more of his story in a moment, but it almost feels as it has all of these other heroes on it who all have their own stories attached to them.

Speaker 1 You know, in modern Hollywood today, in films, sometimes you get these great crossovers where you have several heroes who have their own movies, but they come together in a greatly anticipated movie where

Speaker 1 their stories collide and they work together this feels like the equivalent in ancient greece doesn't it this was the epic crossover story of ancient greek heroes

Speaker 17 well yeah and in a way all of greek mythology is this is this spider web of connections and interconnections and what's really interesting about jason is that he's the generation before the Iliad.

Speaker 17 So he's what I called the Caledonian Argonauts.

Speaker 17 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. So we haven't yet had the Trojan War.

Speaker 17 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, Iron teaches Achilles.

Speaker 17 Chiron, the centaur is the great teacher and kind of mentor. So that's really fun.

Speaker 17 And I think that that's something to keep in mind, that these are the generation before the Trojan War, and then we're going to get all these subsequent fantastic stories.

Speaker 1 Well, that leads me nicely into what I was going to ask next, Caroline, which would be, how old do we think the story of Jason and the Argonauts is? I mean, when do we have the earliest mention of it?

Speaker 1 And then when do we finally get the whole text in itself? Or do we get the whole text in the the beginning? What do we know?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Almost everybody mentions him, but let me just tell you who the six main, I found six main poets.

Speaker 17 We've got Pindar in the 6th century BC tells about the quest.

Speaker 17 Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Callimachus, the 4th century BC, Apollonius Rhodius in the the third century, Diodorus Siculus in the first century BC.

Speaker 17 Then you go to the Roman, you've got Ovid and Valerius Flaccus. Ovid kind of straddles the two centuries.

Speaker 17 Valerius Flaccus was a Flavian author who wrote a version called the Argonautica as well in Latin.

Speaker 17 And finally, we've got Apollodorus, who does a really succinct kind of summary at the end of the first century.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 Hypsipole bore to Jason, shepherd of the host.

Speaker 17 Now that's a really interesting little epithet that's given to Jason, the shepherd of the host.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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. So you've got the little snippets that show that

Speaker 17 in the eighth century they knew about him, but there are no complete

Speaker 17 the first complete story of the quest is from Pindar,

Speaker 17 one of his Pythian odes, the fourth Pythian Ode, often considered his best. And that's in, actually, we know the exact date of that.

Speaker 17 It's 462 BCE is the date of the fourth Pythian Ode that first tells the story of Jason. And it's got some of the basic elements in it, but not all.

Speaker 1 But I think that also means we need to raise an important point right now, is it, Caroline?

Speaker 1 And this seems to be something that we hear again and again, that with Greek mythology, although we may love it and we will cover the main beats, is it important to highlight that in these different versions that stretch from classical Greece and Pindar to the Roman period, that they all have their own elements into it?

Speaker 1 You can almost see the story evolving over time and certain characters being there in one version, not there in another version kind of thing.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 One thing I realize 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 these, in the retellings.

Speaker 17 And then you get different flavors according to their

Speaker 17 tastes. For example, Apollonius Rhodius, who's the Hellenistic writer in the so-called Alexandrian style, which apparently means fancy schmancy, showing off your knowledge.

Speaker 1 Yes, as

Speaker 1 2nd century BC, isn't it?

Speaker 17 After Alexandria, he is the third century BC. Yeah, 2nd century BC.
Yeah. He's writing around 250 BC.
So he's apparently he writes the best Medea, apart from Euripides, of course.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So they show their interest, but they play with the same basic tropes. And that's what I think all of those who retell the myths today do.

Speaker 17 We take these basic building blocks of each myth and we emphasize the one that we want to promote our own views with.

Speaker 1 Well, let's start going through these different tropes now, Caroline. And it feels right that we start at the beginning, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 So how does the story of Jason and the Argonauts, how does it begin?

Speaker 1 How are we introduced to this character that is Jason?

Speaker 17 Yeah, well,

Speaker 17 he's great. He's often introduced grown up, and then we have a little flashback to him.
And

Speaker 17 in,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So let me just tell you basically first what the kind of essence of Jason is, what his basic story was.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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. So that's the kind of basic account.

Speaker 17 And most of the accounts give Jason 50 heroes on his journey, one or two give him 100, but he sails in a pentacomter, a ship with 50 oars.

Speaker 17 So it makes sense that you've got 50 heroes, one for each oar. And his name is interesting.
It means healer or atoner.

Speaker 17 And it's actually linked to it's actually linked to the word, the name Jesus in some accounts, or Joshua. So that's interesting.
And he's the son of Eson, grandson of Crutheus,

Speaker 17 and he's the heir to the throne of Yolchis, which is kind of

Speaker 17 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 Volus.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So, that's his most basic story. And we start off with him arriving with one sandal.

Speaker 17 And the ruler of Iolchis, who's, I think, his uncle, Pellias, which should be his kingdom, has been warned about the one-sandaled man. Now, some of the accounts are really fun.

Speaker 17 They have Jason just losing the sandal as he crosses a river. One account has Jason

Speaker 17 saving an old woman in a river who's actually Hira in disguise, and he loses his sandal that way. So that shows he's kind and good and noble, and Hira likes him and she's going to be his helper.

Speaker 17 Unusually, because Hera is usually the enemy of most heroes.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's unusual, isn't it?

Speaker 17 Very unusual. And in the great film, she actually,

Speaker 17 there's a little twist in the film of Jason and the Argonauts where she appears on the riverbank. and makes Peleas,

Speaker 17 the evil king, fall in the water and Jason rescues rescues him. And when they come out, Pelias looks down and sees he only has one sandal.
So that's that's a really good twist.

Speaker 17 So that's the first trope: the prophecy about the man will come. And in Pindar, this is so great.

Speaker 17 Pindar describes, has a wonderful description of Jason arriving in Yolkis, wearing two different types of clothing.

Speaker 17 Get this, a tight-fitting magnesian 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.

Speaker 17 Now that shows he's really young. He hasn't cut his hair yet.
And in almost all the accounts, we emphasize that Jason's quite young and many of them say he just has his first beard.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 Before we go on to the next trope, Caroline, I'd like to ask a bit more about that region. So Thessaly.

Speaker 1 So as you say, imagine Athens and Delphi, a bit further south, Thermopylae is like the southern border of Thessaly, isn't it? And above Thessaly, you have Macedonia, Thessaloniki in modern-day Greece.

Speaker 1 And I believe also, Thessaly, you do have much later, you have a king called Jason, Jason of Pherai. So it almost seems like the name Jason really does stick in that area of the world.

Speaker 1 With the Olcos as well, I mean, I must admit, that's not a name of a place that I would instantly recognise, but I believe it's big in Bronze Age times.

Speaker 1 So if you've also mentioned that the whole setting is a generation before the Trojan War, should we also be imagining that this young Jason, this story of the sands and the river and all of that, this is taking place more than 3,000 years ago in the Bronze Age?

Speaker 1 That is the idea, is it? That's the setting.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And it's absolutely superb because it shows you, it follows Apollonius's version. and it shows you his very circuitous route all around the ancient world and what happens in each place.

Speaker 17 And for me, I'm not good with with geography, so it's good for me to get a vision of where Yolkis is. And it's kind of like, again,

Speaker 17 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, but they don't stop there, but it's a kind of little hint.

Speaker 17 Oh, there's Troy on the starboard bow.

Speaker 1 So you've mentioned that first trope straight away, Caroline. Does the second one follow straight after in the story? Is that the logical place to go next?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Now, we don't have time to go into what the golden fleece was and everything.

Speaker 17 I think you've got another brilliant history hit telling the story of Phrixus and the golden ram that flies and stuff. But he's got to go to the end of the world to get the thing, the golden fleece.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And Apollonius starts off with a great long list of the heroes. 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.

Speaker 17 And Hercules arrives and says, Hercules is here. What do I do? When do I compete? And they go, haha, you don't have to compete, Hercules.
You're just naturally in.

Speaker 17 And then hylas this young boy comes and he says oh i'm too late to compete but what if i can beat hercules or heracles at one task and heracles says the discus

Speaker 17 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 hylas super clever this always impressed me so much He uses the discus like skipping stones on a pond.

Speaker 17 So he uses uses his brain and he hits the rock by skipping the discus. It skips on the water and hits the rock.
And Heracles says, ha ha, Hylas, you can come along. So that's one version.

Speaker 17 In another version, Hylas is Heracles' lover, a boyfriend, and he will get only, they get only so far. And that's another trope that's coming up further.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And they get a bit of magic wood from the Oaks of Dodona, Zeus's sanctuary, and this bit of wood can speak.

Speaker 17 So they put the little speaking bit of wood into the Argo so it can kind of got, it's got a sat-nav for them. It can help guide them along the way.

Speaker 17 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 tells, gives Jason advice.

Speaker 17 So that's the third trope you could could say is wood from the oak of Dodona as part of the Argo.

Speaker 1 And just to jump in there as well, Caroline, that's an interesting point to make, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Because when someone says oracles of ancient Greece, people will go straight away, Delphi, you know, the oracle of Apollo, or they might think of Olympia as well.

Speaker 1 But Dodona in northwest Greece, which was the ancient region of Epirus or Epirus, as you said, oracle to Zeus, a king of the gods, and a very archaic oracle too.

Speaker 1 So even though the name of Dodona is not as big as Delphi today, the fact that you've got wood from this sacred oracle to Zeus in the Argo, I mean, that is a big deal.

Speaker 1 Just because it's not Delphi, don't think that it's less important. Arguably, it's more important in the framing of the story.

Speaker 17 Absolutely. And I love the idea that wood can speak.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And the first place they stop is the island of Lemnos. I don't know if you've ever been to Lemnos.
I've not been to Lemnos, but it's roughly halfway between the eastern seaboard of Greece and Troy.

Speaker 17 And they arrive there.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 all the men on the island. They've murdered their husbands and killed off all the men.
It's all to do with the curse and not worshiping some goddess and getting punished and a bad smell.

Speaker 17 So the Argonauts arrived there first stop, and all these women are there. This is great stuff.

Speaker 17 So they hang around there having fun for a while. And the only woman who didn't kill her father is Hypsipoly,

Speaker 17 who is the kind of queen of Lemnos. And she has a little dalliance with Jason.

Speaker 17 And he's going to have two kids by her.

Speaker 17 So, this is really interesting because, of course, Medea will kill his children, spoiler later on. But these two children, one of them is the one who goes to fight at Troy.

Speaker 17 So, that's where that son comes from. So, they have fun on Lemnos, and finally, Heracles says, Guys, come on, we got a quest.
Let's go. So, they all go.

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Speaker 1 Before we get on to the next part, would you mind explaining a little bit more about who these other heroes are?

Speaker 1 We won't go into their big backstories, but of course we've got the name Heracles there already, and we've got Jason, we've got their ship, the Argo, and if we go with the tradition that it's just 50 of them on this ship, who are some of the other very notable figures that we should think of being part of this crew of heroes assembled together, part of this great crossover?

Speaker 17 Yeah, great, great, great question.

Speaker 17 Well, you've got Castor and Polydeces, 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 much, she's the next generation, isn't she?

Speaker 17 If they're the generation before Troy, we'll just skim over that. So, Castor and Polydeuces, who are good at boxing and

Speaker 17 they're good at horse riding. And each of these heroes has a fun kind of talent.
And one of them, there are two sons of Boreas,

Speaker 17 who are called

Speaker 17 Zetes and Palais,

Speaker 17 and they can fly.

Speaker 11 And they have purple wings.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Then there's another guy I mentioned called Euphemus, and he's the son of Poseidon. He can walk on the water.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 Odyssey, he can kind of play his music and overwhelm their siren song.

Speaker 17 And only one guy jumps in the water to get to them.

Speaker 17 So there's some really cool other heroes. I think, so I've said Castor and Pollux, Orpheus, Heracles, Zetes, and Callaeus, and of course, Euphemus, who can walk on water.

Speaker 17 And then Atalanta, according to some versions, but not in Apollonius's version.

Speaker 1 She's the famous huntress, is it? Or the one with the... the other golden apple story, is it? With the race, or she's a famous athlete and huntress.
Is that the idea?

Speaker 17 Exactly. And I think I mentioned that I call this generation the Caledonian

Speaker 17 Argonauts. So they also, a lot of them go on the Caledonian Boar hunt.
And she's one who went on the Caledonian Boar hunt. And she could run super fast.
And

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 She appears on a lot of Greek vases 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.

Speaker 17 I talk about that in my book about the Greek gods and goddesses, Pantheon, she said, getting in a little plug for her book.

Speaker 1 Right, well, let's continue with the story then.

Speaker 1 these women on the isle of lemnos where jason has a bit of fun and the others have a bit of fun for for a time. Then Heracles is like, no, no, no, no, no, you need to remember what we're doing.

Speaker 1 We're going back on this quest. How does the story go on from here?

Speaker 17 This is a throwaway line in Apollonius. They stop on Samothrace and they're initiated into the mysteries.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And those are the famous clashing rocks, which Pindar describes as being alive, which is really good.

Speaker 17 And they're often confused with the rocks, the other rocks with Scylla and Charybdis down by Sicily, that these are clashing rocks. And again, that's done really in the film.
It's huge fun.

Speaker 17 A giant triton comes up and holds the rocks apart. And there are other methods.

Speaker 17 They, you know, Apollonius, they let a dove through and the dove goes through and the rocks clash and just get its tail feathers.

Speaker 17 And then as they're opening again, they quickly row and get through that way. And again,

Speaker 17 they get their tail feathers kind of clipped off the very back of the ship. What's that called? The stern, yeah.
They get that clipped off. So that's the next fun bit is the clashing rocks.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 They land on another island and people there, Prince is called Syzykus, and he's young again with downy hair and a beautiful young wife.

Speaker 17 And they're very friendly and they welcome the Argonauts and they feast them. And they even let them spend the night with

Speaker 17 the unmarried women, you know, 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,

Speaker 17 which makes them run aground and it's night. And when they get onto the beach,

Speaker 17 the people there start to attack them and they fight back and they kill the people who are attacking them. And when dawn comes, they've killed their hosts from the day before.

Speaker 17 So young Syzykis 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.

Speaker 17 They've killed their hosts from the day before. So they're kind of blundering around.

Speaker 1 You're getting a sense that they're blundering around and it's an interesting part of the world that isn't it i mean just kind of retrace our footsteps in the geography so we've gone from lemnos with the women as you mentioned samothrace there so modern samothrachi

Speaker 1 the hellespont which is the monde dardanelles

Speaker 1 and then propontis which is monde the sea of marmara so just kind of south of istanbul before as you say you get to the black sea and Sisykus, that becomes the name of a prominent Greek city-state on that Anatolian side of the Sea of Marmora, isn't it?

Speaker 1 So, I'm guessing, is that the origin myth of that city?

Speaker 17 Absolutely. Yeah, 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.

Speaker 17 Oh, that's where it gets its name. That guy died there.
So, he's given his name to that place, and he'll always be memorialized with that name.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 and but giving him prophetic powers.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And when poor Phineas sits down to eat, they come and they befoul his food and take it away. Now, in the film, they do an amazing thing.

Speaker 17 And I'm sorry I keep harking on about the film, but it's so brilliant.

Speaker 17 They actually filmed it in Paestum, south of pompeii where there's some ancient greek temples doric temples to hera 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 it's a real net the harpies are cgi or not cgi they're 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 chase the harpies and they fly after them with their swords 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.

Speaker 17 And that's where he's going to meet the harpies later on. So they get to stop there.

Speaker 17 And Strophades actually means turning, the turning, because that's where Zetes and and Callias turn around and fly back with the Argonauts.

Speaker 17 So they've chased away the Harpies, and they're different versions of the Harpies and what they're like, and who Phineas was and everything. That's huge fun.

Speaker 1 So that's the next big one. So far, we've had the killer women on the Isle of Lemnos, Sisykus in the Sea of Marmora, and before that, the Clashing Rocks.
The next stage from there.

Speaker 1 Is there much more before they reach Colchis, or is it quite a straight road once they get there?

Speaker 17 Let's jump to Colchis. And of course, they arrive at Colchis, which is the end of the world.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Now, at Colchis, the king of Colchis is Aietes, the king with too many E's in his name, A-E-E-T-E-S, too many E's.

Speaker 17 And he's the father of

Speaker 17 a couple of daughters and a son named Apsirtis, and Medea is the youngest. And she's a priestess of Hecate.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So she's very torn about whether she should be loyal to him, support him or her father. And Ovid does this a lot too, because Ovid in his metamorphoses really gets into Medea's head.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 She's often so, she's so much more fascinating than Jason, who's quite bland at times.

Speaker 17 She falls in love with Jason because of his beauty.

Speaker 17 Aietes says, okay, you can have the golden fleece, but you must do this task. You must harness my bronze, two bronze bulls which breathe fire and sew some dragon's teeth.

Speaker 17 And if you can do that, I'll let you have the fleece.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And he's able to harness the fire-breathing bulls and sew the teeth. which go back to Cadmus, way back in Cadmus.
Whole other story. The movie does a very clever thing.

Speaker 17 It has him kill the dragon, which doesn't happen in Apollonius, and then use those dragons' teeth to sew them. And of course, that's when these wonderful skeleton warriors pop up out of the ground.

Speaker 17 But in most versions, most of the ancient versions, he has to do the plowing of the teeth first, and then Aetis says he'll give him the fleece.

Speaker 17 But Aetes does not give him the fleece, so he's got to get it by another method.

Speaker 17 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 snake dracon 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

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 He gets the fleece, and now he's gonna go home. So that happened pretty quickly, actually.

Speaker 17 Yes, a lot of it is the traveling there, and then they get there, and it's kind of slightly anticlimactic, except a lot of it's in Medea's head-her torturous inner debate about what she should do.

Speaker 17 And that's, of course, what makes it so fascinating and hers so fascinating.

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Speaker 1 You've highlighted the point there, then, Caroline.

Speaker 1 Is it the fact that actually one of the most, if not the fascinating part of the whole Jason and the Argonauts story is their journey there and their journey back.

Speaker 1 I mean, getting to the kingdom of Cocos and what he does there.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's pivotal to the story and the retrieving of the golden fleece but as you say it's not slaying the monster it's medea helping and putting in putting it to sleep and then i guess it's their returning from what is present day georgia it's that area of the world isn't it the kingdom of colchis so they've got a long way to get back after that they've got a long way to get back and as you're exactly right it's not the thing they get.

Speaker 17 It's not the fleece, the macuffin, the magic potion, you know, the sword, whatever, the princess.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 They go up the danube okay all the way across

Speaker 17 whatever those are called the balkans or whatever to the sea on the right of italy which is i believe called the adriatic the adriatic yeah yeah you've got your boot of italy they go to that bit there the adriat that's where they pop out

Speaker 17 and

Speaker 17 their pursuers aetes takes according to apollonius

Speaker 17 Aetes takes half the Colchian fleet and follows, goes back the way Jason came. But Absurtis, the younger brother, takes half the fleet and follows Jason across the Danube.

Speaker 17 And when they get to the Adriatic Sea, this is where, in Apollonius' version, Medea lures Absurtis to a talk,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And they're called, that place is called the Absurtian Islands or something like that. Again, another etiological.
How did these people from the Black Sea get to this part of near Italy?

Speaker 17 In Apollodorus's version, he's also writing in Greek at the end of the first century AD.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So there are different variations on how Absurtis is used as a kind of terrible distraction.

Speaker 1 so is this the beginning of the story almost and now that medea's on board i'm guessing it's part of the the kind of creation of the story this idea that on the return journey it's no longer jason

Speaker 1 as this wonderful figure this hero to admire this is someone that starts getting a bit more and i guess it's thanks to Medea and how they portray it, a bit more repulsive in the actions that they do.

Speaker 1 And this idea, I'm guessing, that they're they're going to get their comeuppance

Speaker 1 soon because of the

Speaker 1 well, the horrific actions that they've taken. I'd say, first of all, the killing of a sibling and second of all, the kind of, in some cases, the splitting up of the body.
So the burial rites

Speaker 1 will be more tricky and it's an abuse of the dead. Is this all coming to a head at the moment?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But this is a terrible thing they've done. 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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' murder by Jason and Medea.

Speaker 17 They then sail up the river Eridanus, which is the Po, and then they go over the Alps somehow. Don't ask me how.

Speaker 17 Down the Rhone, the Rhone River, and then down by the Tyrrhenian Sea. That's where they meet Circe, according to Apollonius.

Speaker 17 Then they're going down to the home of the sirens, which is down on the Shin of Italy, again in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Speaker 17 Then they go through Scylla and Charybdis, and they go up to Drapane.

Speaker 17 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 Cirtes and that's how they get to North Africa.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Now we get one of the best bits where they go to Crete and they meet Talos, the bronze man.

Speaker 17 And he is amazing. And in the film Jason and the Argonauts, he appears at the very beginning.

Speaker 17 And there's this amazing scene of, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but he's like this giant giant bronze crouching statue on a treasure house.

Speaker 17 And when Heracles steals a golden pin, his head turns with a horrible metallic creaking and he gets down off his plint and follows them.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And in the film, Jason conquers him by unplugging a plug in his heel and letting out the icor,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 and she uses her eye beams and curses him and he then scratches his vulnerable ankle vein on a rock and the icor flows out he crashes to the ground like a great pine coming down at night on the top of a mountain.

Speaker 17 So he's a wonderful character, Teilas, who's there are different origins for him.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 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 it's the worst darkness.

Speaker 17 It's like worse than death. 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.

Speaker 17 And finally they get home.

Speaker 1 To mainland Greece. What adventure that is.

Speaker 17 Guess how long that whole journey takes?

Speaker 1 How long?

Speaker 17 According to Apollodorus, our latest source. Four months.
Pretty amazing. I think it'd be fun to do that, to actually follow in the steps of Jason.

Speaker 17 And it would probably take you about four months to do that, stopping along all those wonderful places.

Speaker 1 Once again, very quickly, because I've now got the map in front of me, trying to get my head around it.

Speaker 1 You know, it starts in the Yorkis, goes through the Hellespont, then there's the Clashing Rocks near Byzantium, modern-day Istanbul, going along the southern shoreline of the Black Sea, ending up at Colchis, modern-day Georgia, gets the Golden Fleece, then around the north part of the Black Sea, past Crimea, up the river Danube, somehow making it to the Adriatic Sea.

Speaker 1 I don't think you can do that today, can you?

Speaker 1 Ending up in the Adriatic Sea, then turning around after the killing of Medea's brother, the son of the king Aetes, the man with too many A's in his name. No, too many E's in his name.

Speaker 17 Too many E's in his name.

Speaker 1 Goes up the river Po in northern Italy, does a Hannibal by crossing the Alps, down the river Rhône in southern France, past Corsica, past Liguria, places like Genoa today, down the western coast of Italy, the Tyrrhenian Sea, where you meet Circe and the Sirens as well, then through that strait, the Strait of Messenia between Sicily and the toe of Italy, Corfu, then ending up in North Africa, in Libya, Tunisia, Morocco that way.

Speaker 1 Finally, Crete with Talos that you've mentioned, Caroline, and that last kind of spooky venture before returning to mainland Greece.

Speaker 1 Have I been able to summarize the geography loosely there of the whole Argonaut story?

Speaker 17 You've done it brilliantly. It's essentially a Mediterranean tour, isn't it?

Speaker 1 It is. It is, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Central Mediterranean and Black Sea.

Speaker 17 And Black Sea, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 I wish we could talk more and more about what happens to Jason after this, because this is an important part of the story, isn't it?

Speaker 1 But this is where Medea really comes to the fore, and we could do a whole another episode on Medea's story.

Speaker 1 But can you wrap up what happens at the end when he finally returns to Iolchis and the evil king? Does Jason...

Speaker 1 Is there a reward because he's done on this journey? Is there a happy ending for him?

Speaker 17 Not really. I think he's got to go to Corinth for some reason, and he can't even have his kingdom.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But shall I just tell you about his death?

Speaker 1 Go on then. Yes.
So what is the story of his death? Is it quite gruesome?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 That's kind of how I want to go. Just sitting under and bonked on the head when I'm gone.

Speaker 1 But it's also the ship, isn't it? The ship is right at the center. The ship is the thing that has endured all of these adventures.
The end of the day with Jason, you know, Medea has...

Speaker 1 killed his children as well, hasn't she? And that's another story. And he's a broken old man.

Speaker 1 As you say, it almost feels quite fitting that he dies beneath the ship that had served him so well for his most famous adventure.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And that's, I think, one of the reasons that makes them so enduringly fascinating and popular.

Speaker 1 And the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, his story and those of the people around him, is it one that has never gone away?

Speaker 1 Is it one that has caught the the attention of artists, of poets, of writers, and of course of film directors down to the present day?

Speaker 17 I think it has. And I think many of these Greek myths have.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 Caroline, this has been fantastic. Last but certainly not least, your book.
which includes the story of Jason and the Argonauts, it is called?

Speaker 17 It's called Pantheon, a companion to to the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, and it's got lots of little fun facts.

Speaker 1 Well there we go. Caroline just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Speaker 18 Thank you. It's been really fun.

Speaker 1 Well there you go. There was Caroline Lawrence talking through the many amazing adventures of Jason and the Argonauts.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Speaker 1 If you would like more of Caroline, then do check out our earlier interview we did with her last year, all about the Minotaur. That was also a really fun chat.

Speaker 1 And don't you worry, we'll cover the end of Jason's story in another episode in the future, exploring figures like Medea in the detail that a character like her definitely deserves.

Speaker 1 But that is for another episode. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients.
Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe.

Speaker 1 Lastly, if you want more ancient history videos and clips, then be sure to follow me on Instagram at Ancient Tristan. That's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.

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