Book 5

5. Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, Book Five.

A second dawn, not glad for the men, rose from Olympus: Argive Idmon, by the ravenous diseases and fates, sinks down, not unaware then of his life's end. But the son of Aeson, mindful that Phineus had spoken all too truly, dreads from this other griefs now Idmon is taken. Then he paid the due rites to his comrade, and bestows the coverings of the Doliones' king, carved with much art; Lycus, his host, gives ground and a resting-place. Weeping, Mopsus tears the arms of Idmon from the tall ship; some cut oaks in the woods and bring them to the pyre, some bind the augur's head with white foliage and fillets, and when he was laid on the bier they groaned together; the day and his own grave warn them all.

Behold, amid the tears and amid the last gifts to the men, the one in whose keeping is the course and command of the ship, Tiphys, the violent plague seizes, and all, struck dumb with fear, pour out their sad voices to the stars: 'Lord of the bow, turn now, I pray, at last, Apollo; this head, father, this head restore to us, if any care for our labour moves you, which turns upon the highest hinge and now hangs from these hands alone.' They gave their words to the winds, nor moved the destined fates. As a little band of children weeps for a parent already heavy with sudden doom, and tremblingly pray that he endure for them, weak and still in need of their father, not otherwise do the comrades, in the supreme moment, wish Tiphys to survive before the others. Cold death presses on against them, and Idmon, freshly dead, flits before their eyes. In vain the Minyae with their cries delay the lifeless man and refuse to be torn away; scarcely at last did they lay his stiffening limbs on the pyre and bring to the flames their tears and vain gifts; the funeral heap grows with offerings. But when, wearied, they broke off their last embraces and the swift torches crackled, then the very ship seemed to be burning and to lay down the men in the midst of the sea. The son of Aeson did not bear it, seeing the dear bodies blazing on the twin pyres, but the captain from the depths of his breast groans out such words: 'Why so suddenly hostile, you powers? What penalty have our labours earned? Two funerals (oh horror) rise for me at once on a safe shore. Is the youth of my comrades so great and so numerous? Either the black day snatches my comrades, or I myself leave them, driven on by the guilty Furies. Where is Tiphys? Where Idmon chanting the fates? Where that match for the monster-breeding stepmother? Without you, son of Thespius, shall we move over any more seas? Nor shall I see you watching from the high stern the orbs of the Pleiades and the Bears that drive the nights? To whom do you hand the Minyae and the dear ship, to whom the stars? Who now bids Aeson take his nights free of care? For this did the toil, for this the eyes so often cheated of sweet sleep, and the mind too anxious with Colchis drawn near, avail? Alas, how far has Phasis withdrawn, how far has Aea. Now too, if your cares survive in a thin image, be near, shade, I pray, foreknowing of the sky to come, and warn the steersman of your ship.' When he had said this, he saw only the men's bones amid the falling flames. 'Yet this one comfort which remains on foreign shores,' he says, 'let this earth not part the dear shades, nor cover their bones in a tomb or in separate urn, but together, as you came to the sea with joined fates.' No delay: the comrades mingle the remains and the lamented names; then earth, leafy with living turf, is heaped up, and Jason commends the ashes to Lycus.

All are sad and doubtful, by whose most trusted hand the ship should be steered. At once Ancaeus and skilled Nauplius sought it. The oak itself, by warning fate, calls Erginus, and the beaten masters returned to the oars. And as that bull to whom the royal rule of the herd has passed is borne exulting, all the honour, all the love passes to him alone: so, glad in the first hour, the helmsman enters his course; for the bright night gives sure Helice. Now the prow had stirred the sea, and now, seated at the stern . . . the anchor had let go the lands.

Then, with the south wind pressing, he passes the sad shores of Acherusia, and Callichoron, made famous in the festal night of Lyaeus; nor is the tale vain: in these waters Bacchus washed his thyrsus dripping with eastern blood. Him, after his battle-lines and the farthest barriers of the Red sea, the waters even now remember here, his revel bands at rest, here as he shook the cymbals and bound his dripping horns with the vine-leaf fillet, such as the Boeotian Thyad and unhappy Cithaeron would long to have seen him.

Nay, meanwhile, shameless Fame now flies through the farthest shades and fills with the great praises of the sons . . . added, and now seeking strait after strait, and now the open Cyaneae. They burn to lift their eager faces, those whom piety still touches, those whom rival valour. The fates remain unmoved; the one buried on that shore, they send to the spectacle of the dear throng. Sthenelus goes. Such as the Amazon, child of Mars, beheld him, and as Alcides buried him with his own arms, so, rising from the mound of his sea-borne tomb, he flashed forth; the waves shone, as when the great sun lifts its orb or the sky shakes off a cloud. And scarcely seen by the men, the black night at once bore him off in shadow. He, grieving, seeks again the deep chaos. While Mopsus stands amazed at the omens, he sees the tomb afar on the first beach, and veiling his head he gives wine to the summoned ashes. Nay, songs too, appeasing the ghosts that appeared, the Odrysian leader duly raises, and with mingled voice strikes the sounding lyre and leaves a name upon the sands.

Higher hence the ship takes the winds, and flees all the side of Crobialus, and Parthenium, denied to you, Tiphys, by fate, that river believed before all others faithful to Trivia, and dearer than the mother-spring to Inopus. Soon too the ridges of Cromna and pale Cytorus and you, Erythia, the swift keel hides deep behind. And now the sky was bringing back the night: high Carambis is grazed, and the shadow of great Sinope trembles on the sea. Embracing the Assyrian gulfs stands rich Sinope, once a nymph, who had mocked the alluring fires of Jove, unmoved by the wooing of the gods: deceived by the beloved goddess's guile were Halys not alone, nor Apollo alone. Here by kindly chance Fortune added as comrades Autolycus and Phlogius and Deileon, men who had followed the arms of Hercules; a wandering error had fixed them there. When they saw the Greek band and the Pelasgian ship, swiftly they rush first to the shores and pray to be received as comrades. The captain rejoices that new names join, and that the deserted oars now run for him. He passes Halys and Iris flowing in long windings, and savage Thermodon rolling its murmurs in the mid sea, a river sacred to Gradivus and richest in spoils, to which the maiden gives horses, gives the vowed axes, when she returns in a mighty triumph through the Caspian gates dragging the Massagetes and the Mede. There is a true offspring of his blood, theirs is a god for father. Hence the more the Haemonidae seek the deep and do not scorn Phineus' warnings. But he himself, turned to the faces of his new comrades, 'You now, tell me,' the captain says, 'of the battles and the victorious arms of my Hercules, and your hands meanwhile in the field of Mars.' So speaking, and silent with a sick heart, he hears the course and the labours of the maidens' war, which one first slipped from the loosened reins, which one her father's river bore half-dead in her blood, which one with shield at her side and shoulders bared of quivers fled, soon caught by the wound of a Herculean arrow, and how Wrath spurred on the axe-bearing throngs and the father soon to weep, how great the terror in the leader herself, what fury, with what gold the famed baldric blazed.

In the last of the night, from the closed caverns of the earth, the wakeful labour of the Chalybes is heard: your country-folk, Gradivus, toil at arms; that first hand, mother of war, rings, cruel against all lands. For before they dug out the hard beds of unknown iron and gave swords, sick Hatreds wandered without arms, and Wraths bereft, and a sluggish Erinys. Thence the green lakes give to their backs the rock of Genetaean Jove, and the Tibarenians, where the wife in idle headband binds the unborn and tends the man herself when her own birth is loosed. You too, marvelling at the sails of the unknown keel, Mossynoeci, and you Macrones from your high folds, and the wandering Byzeres, and the shores called by Philyra's name, which Saturn struck with horse's hoof. The last gulf thence, and the savage couch of Prometheus, is seen, the Caucasus rising to the cold north. That day too had by chance brought Alcides, while the Titanian fate delayed him; and now, struggling hard, wrenching from every side the chains, gripped in his hand, with the wreck of the old frost, he had drawn them from the lowest rocks, upright and heavier on his left foot; the vast Caucasus resounds, and the timbers, following at once with the topmost mountain, came crashing down, and the rivers were drawn off to the sea. A crash arises, as if lofty Jupiter had struck the airy citadels, or Neptune's hand the lowest lands. The immense flank of Pontus shuddered, all Iberia shuddered, stretched out before Armenia, and deep within, with the sea recoiling, the Minyae feared the Cyaneae they had left. Then with a nearer groan, iron, and dense, the labour of the mountain heard with its torn rocks, and the Titan crying out heavily while his fixed limbs are wrenched from the crags. But, ignorant on the other hand (for who now would believe that Alcides was in those mountains, or renew his abandoned vows?), the comrades go on their way; they only marvel from the deep that the shores are strewn with shaken-down snow and the rocks burst apart, and at the same time at the huge shadow from above of the dying bird, and the air dripping with black showers.

The Sun flamed nearer on the waters, and the last light had begun now to show the weary the longed-for Colchis, where great Phasis rushes with foaming mouth into the sea that faces it. All alike know the destined places and recall the signs and the races crossed in order, and give the ship to the river. At once Pallas, full of flashing light, and Juno halt the yokes of their wing-footed steeds. And while the captain enters the first mouth with a heavy stroke, he sees the poplar bends and a mound above the green streams, of his kinsman Phrixus, in the midst of a bank, beside whom his unhappy sister stands, a companion of Parian marble, on this side sad with fear of the savage stepmother, on that of the sea, and afraid to lay her hands on the ram. Then he bids the comrades halt and the first cables be bound here, as if he had entered Pagasae and his native river. He himself, duly bearing in a heavy bowl the libations of sacred Bacchus, calls the shade and thus speaks at the altars: 'By our kindred and the labours equal with you, Phrixus, do you, I pray, guide my undertakings and protect me on these shores, who have endured so many seas, so many stars hastening on of harsh winter. Phrixus, be favourable and remember the ancestral lands. You too now, buried in vain in an empty tomb, nod assent, goddess of the sea, and join the number of your own. When shall I myself again be carried back by you? When shall the golden fleece know Sestos and the ill-omened waves? You too, woods, you, shores of the Colchian host, open wide, where the rich pelt gleams on the sacred tree. Then to you, offspring of fruitful Jove, born of the snowy axle, goddess of Arcadia, by your river now, Phasis, calm, suffer the ship of Pallas, nor shall gifts nor altars be lacking in my land; a reverend image of your stream awaits you, Phasis, as great as that wherein lie great Enipeus and father Inachus in his golden cave.' He had spoken, and to him, without the steersman's hand turning, at once the ship returned its prow, by a sure omen, gazing on the river's mouth and the sea. 'As you promise, lo, and as you call, we shall be carried back,' he says. So having prayed, he bids his comrades take out the arms from the high stern. Then the gifts of Bacchus, and Ceres snatched, to strengthen them in all their chances, and in a long line they press the green banks.

Begin now other songs, goddess, and grant me the wars of the Thessalian leader as you beheld them. My mind is not, nor is this mouth, enough. We have come to the furies and the unspeakable pacts of the daughter, and the ship trembling beneath the dreadful maiden: impious battles now rise on the monster-bearing fields. Yet first I will follow the deceits, the guile of faithless Sun-born Aeetes, who deserved to be deceived and deserved to be abandoned, singing thus: now aged in the Scythian city of the Sun, Phrixus had completed the fates of his toil-worn life. At his last funeral suddenly a wondrous flame of the sky, and the Ram, appeared as a great star, stirring all the seas. But in the shade of Mars Phrixus himself had left the fleece, the famed memorial of his peril, clasping the oak with its burning metal. Once too, in the hours of the silent night, he was seen in a vast image, and the great voice, sent forth, terrified his father-in-law: 'O you who suffered me, driven from my native land and seeking homes, to settle in these abodes, and soon sought me for son-in-law with offered offspring, ruin of your realms and griefs await you, when the fleece shall be snatched from the slumbering grove. Besides, she who, now consecrated to infernal Diana, Medea, leads the chaste dances, whatever suitor she may seek by compact, let her stay, nor remain a maiden in her father's realms.' He spoke, and seemed at the same time to hand over with his moving hand the fatal hide: then, poured from the false gold, a gleam ran across the panels of the highest roof. Trembling, he snatches his limbs from the couch and prays to his father's power and the chariots rising from the eastern shore: 'This is your guardianship of my fates, father, all-seeing one: now scatter your light over the lands, your light over all the sea; whether one of mine devises hidden guile or a foreign hand, be you the first to bring me word. You too, to whom the fleece glows red on the consecrated oak, keep watch, Gradivus; let arms present in the grove and trumpets sound, and let your voice stand out in the nights.' Scarcely this, when a serpent, gliding from the Caucasian mountains, not without the god's mind, with outpoured coils enfolded the whole grove and looked back from afar toward the Greek world. Therefore he watches to ward off all the threats and the foretellings of Phrixus, and Medea, not yet of full youth, the maiden is promised in marriage to the Albanian tyrant.

Meanwhile with auguries and threatening portents the god, ever warning before, terrifies the city, and signs are given of late evil; the priest bids the deadly fleece be given back and sent, ill-omened, to the Haemonian lands. Against this the son of the Sun, turning over the precepts of Phrixus, refuses with a sick heart, nor has the tyrant care for the crowd, provided only his own safety be secure. Then next in rank to the king, and his brother by his mother's blood, Perses, upbraids the man; the crowd follows, having found a leader. He, raging with wrath, flings himself from his lofty throne and hurls down the elders, and Perses himself, for daring such things, already sowing himself hope of power by the crowd's fickleness, he attacks with the sword. Thence Perses takes to flight, bearing the cruel standards, and shakes all the north with rumours. And now he was at the city with great thousands of kings, and at first, baffled in the early battles before the opposing walls, had halted. That day, and the next, was given to the burning of the allied dead on both sides, when, the war laid aside, the destined Thessalian leader put in at the Aeaean shores.

Night, pitying the race of men and their hard labours, had brought back to the weary lands the longed-for silences. But Juno and the maiden of highest Jove shared with each other their inmost counsels and the various cares of their breast. The maiden first: 'You see those whom we seek with equal great effort,' she says, 'and what battles the Colchians have, and what state now is theirs. On this side Perses, on that, with no equal forces, Aeetes makes ready his line. With what arms do we join them?' To whom Juno: 'Lay aside your fears, lest perchance I should deny you the battles pleasing here: . . . sweat clings to the aegis and now sweat to our horses. Fixed in my breast it stands to ally Aeetes' hands. I know indeed the king's treacherous heart; he will pay the Minyae no honours. But then I myself will set in motion other guiles, other undertakings.' 'Let these things be, I pray; for your power must be my companion,' Pallas says, 'and let it be allowed to restore to the Greek lands the Aesonian head and the ship which we ourselves built, and at last, after its tossing, to set it in our heaven.' Such things then the gods set in motion for the praise of men.

But never was a night more grievous, nor any passed by the Minyae trembling in such fear; for nothing was achieved with Phasis found, nothing with the waves of the Symplegades subdued, and all things still — until they come to the city of the great king — were doubtful and hung uncertain, the sum of affairs in suspense. Above all an uncertain mind drives the son of Aeson through various surges, billowing with cares and pondering much. As when Jupiter flashes from his high citadel, moving the Pleiades and the rain mingled with thunders or the bristling snow, where every white field is lifted with waters, or the great gates of bloody war, or other risings for races harsh by fate: so then, doubtful with shifting motions on this side and that, the captain shakes his breast with frequent groaning, and longs now for the kindly daybreak and at last the hours of the sure crisis. Then, his eyes fixed on the ground and intent on the silent gathering, turned to the men's faces: 'What you first prayed for in your mighty daring,' he says, 'and what the age of the men of old shuddered at, behold, we are here, and we have sailed over so great a world by the seas. Neither the sea's thousand ways nor fame deceived us, that Sun-born Aeetes reigns beneath the mid-north. Therefore when the light scatters over the deep sea, the city's halls must be sought, and the mind of the unknown tyrant tested. He himself, I think, will consent, nor is what we seek surely inexorable. But if proud he should spurn our prayers and words, even now steel your spirits for refusal, and by what way we may bear back the fleece to our father's lands, let it rather stand fixed: let shame ever be absent in hard straits.' He had spoken, and by lot he seeks those who would accompany him to the Scythian city, and nine are chosen from the whole number. Then they take the road where the nearest stretch of the Circaean field lies, and seek the king now that the light is restored.

By chance Medea, terrified through the night by the gods' various portents, when she had felt the darkness at last driven off, snatched from her couch, was going to the appeasing light of early Phoebus and to the streams that purge the dreadful nights. For while deep rest pressed her slumbering limbs in her silent chambers, and there were no cares in the maiden, she seemed in fear to depart from the chaste groves of Hecate; and while she sought her loving father's face, the sea stood steep between them, and round about she was stunned by the vast deep, her brother yet trying to follow. Soon she had seen the boys stand frightened, intent on death, and her own trembling hands scatter the slaughter and her eyes break with weeping. Troubled by these threats she sought the rivers and the bank of Phasis, an equal band of Scythian girls attending her. As Proserpina led the dances over the flowery ridges of vernal Hymettus or beneath the Sicilian crag, clinging here to the steps of Pallas, joined there to dear Diana, taller, and with none of her companions rivalling her, before she paled and all her beauty was banished at the sight of Avernus: such, with fillets and the light of the twin torches, was the Colchian, not yet hating her wretched parents. When far off, from the cold waters of the farthest river, she first saw the men advance with silent step, she stopped and addressed her nurse with mournful fear: 'What band is this, mother, that as if seeks me with a sure column, that has come, not in arms, never known by their dress? Seek flight, I pray, and look round for safe glades.' The aged guardian of the maiden's modesty hears, Henioche, to whom the care of her first years was entrusted; then, steadying the trembling one with words, she encourages her ward: 'No threats from a foe come near you, nor any force,' she says, 'nor fear; I see already the flame-coloured coverings of foreign purple, already the fillets and the leaf of the peaceful olive. A Greek is here, all so like to Greek Phrixus.'

So she speaks. But Juno, since the leader's beauty was a most lasting care, and to bring forth the leader's great labours, flooded him with a new bulk and the light of rosy youth. Now over Talaus, now over the son of Ampyx, and over the star-haired sons of Tyndareus, he himself towers with a peerless face: not otherwise than when in autumn Sirius makes his fires fiercer, and when the night is kindled with savage gold, crested with light-bearing torches, the Bear grows dim and great Jupiter; but the field would wish him not to swell so in heaven, the rivers would wish it now with their warm springs. The queen, though fear with stunned face makes her dumb and faint, yet marvelled, and drawing back a little her steps, stood amazed at the leader alone. Nor less among so many comrades of an unknown throng does he cling, fixed on one, and feels her leader and mistress of the band. 'If a goddess, if the glory of great Olympus, you come hither,' he says, 'these torches, I believe, this face of the maiden Diana are yours, and you, freed of your quivers and enjoying peace, the Caucasian Nymphs lead to their own rivers. If your home is on earth and hence your race's origin, happy is the parent in such offspring, and happier once shall he be who carries you off and joins you to himself for long years. But bring help, queen, to the men. We, a band of guests, are borne hither, princes of the Greeks seeking your halls. Lead us, I pray, to the face of whoever is your tyrant, and you first teach us the time and the manner of speaking; for to me anxious and ignorant of the place a god has given you; in you I rest my spirit and all our hopes.'

He spoke and stood waiting for the trembling one. She, a little while hesitating with maiden fear, thus began in turn: 'Aeetes whom you seek is my father, and the very walls are close, if you can make out the living paths: under this guide, then, bend your steps; for huge camps and an impious foe beset the other ways.' She had said this, and turns aside the way to her father's river, and as a suppliant offers vain rites to dreadful Night.

But he urges on the undertaking with his servant-guide at once, his way hedged about with mist, and Juno does not let the royal hall behold the man, lest a messenger reach Aeetes first. And now he was among the people, unknown, in the midst of the city, when his companion began to speak. 'We have come to the altars of father Phoebus,' she says. 'Hither now from his ancestral shrines the king will betake himself by custom; here he hears the nobles and the praying peoples, easy in his discourses: the present father warns him of justice.' She had spoken. But they swiftly reach the threshold pointed out. Not otherwise than if they were approaching the face of the radiant god and the true citadels of the eternal light: such a splendour flashes through the halls. Iron Atlas stands in Ocean, and the wave breaks swelling about his knees; but over the back of the old man in the middle the Sun himself drives his shining horses on high and weaves the day with the curving Olympus; behind, with shorter wheel, his sister, and the dense Pleiades follow, and the fires dripping from their wet hair. And no less here the leader, glad at the temple's varied image, turns his face to the twin doors, beholding here the cradle of the Colchian race and its origins: how first Sesostris the king brought war upon the Getae, how, terrified by the slaughter of his own, he led these back to Thebes and his father's river, set these on the fields of Phasis and bade them be called Colchians: they long for Arsinoe and the glad ease of warm Pharos and the rich year without rains, and now exchange their linen for Sarmatian breeches. The barbarian Phasis pursues Aea in his native mountains, mad with love: she casts down her frightened quivers, troubled with maiden fear at his rushings, and now faints, and the god binds the conquered one with a swift wave. The poplar sisters wept for the youth Phaethon, and the black mass went, quivering, into the river Eridanus; but Tethys scarce gathers up the yokes and the scattered axle and Pyrois dreading his father's griefs. Nay, the golden fleece too with prophetic art Mulciber had wrought, and the Achaeans destined to come one day: the Pagasaean pine is woven by the Argive axe, and now the same goddess turns the oars, the same the reins; she herself comes up and calls the bands with bared right hand. The south wind rises, and over all the deep one ship is seen; the seals rejoiced at the Odrysian song. The Colchians appear, frightened, through the mouths of Phasis, and the queen leaving her father crying afar. Here over against was a city, flowed round by a twin sea, where was sport and song and the wedding torches in the night and the bridegroom glad on the royal couch: he deserts the former bride; the avenging Furies watch from the rooftop. The wife faints in the bridal chamber, and, troubled by the rival, prepares the robe and the deadly gift of the jewel-bearing crown, having first bewailed to herself all her labours. With which gift the rival, unhappy, is adorned at her father's altars, and now, seized by the glowing poisons, she wraps the house in flame. These marvels then on the Colchian hide the Lord of Fire had wrought for those who knew not yet, who that labour was, or who should cut the air with winged serpents, dripping with slaughter; yet they hate it and turn their eyes away.

Nay, the same wonder of the work had fixed the Minyae fast, when the Sun-born one entered his ancestral inner halls. Beside him was his son Absyrtus in his first years, worthy of his grandsire, and whom, guiltless, better things should have awaited. Then his son-in-law Styrus, who had come from the Albanian shores, but the wars had put off the marriage; then Phrontis and Argus, sons of Aeolus, and their brother Melas, whom the stranger Phrixus begot; and likewise Cytisorus, light in the spear. After them others, fathers whom the Titanian land chose with chief honour, and kings stirred to battle. Here Jason warns his comrades and bursts from the mist, bearing the face of a star; a new light is shed over Cytaea. They gather and throng about the men and ask what they have dared, or what they bring. After Jason sees the bands gaping at his first words and the murmur now subdued, he brought such words nearer to the wondering tyrant: 'King, son of Hyperion, whom the gods of heaven decreed should be sought over such great seas and be worthy of the first keel, if ever any one sprung of our world used to recount here some Thessaly, if Phrixus told of any Pelasgians, we are seen by you, having measured so many chances, so many dreadful trackless wastes. I myself am of the very blood of Phrixus: for the same Cretheus and Aeolus are the authors of us both, with Jove and Neptune and with the nymph daughter of Salmoneus. Neither now have swords driven me here, nor my father's altars, nor of my own will do I follow your name, though famed in the Thessalian lands. To whom, unbidden, would it be a pleasure to approach so many monsters of the sea? To whom to enter the Cyanean crashes? He who holds the greatest sceptre by lot beneath all the light of Phoebus, Pelias, and so many towns weighing on the slopes, so many fairest rivers with their watchful horn, he presses my head with commands, he gives me labours of every kind, as his own king sends great Alcides far from Argos, he himself sprung of Sthenelus. Yet we endure the harsh yokes of kings, nor, though better, do I refuse to obey. He bids me, through whatever perils, bring back to him the spoils of the golden beast. Let there be thanks to me from you, I pray, and a place for desert, that I received the commands and promised you another than the one Pelias hopes and desires, and better covenants for myself from your right hand. If I had resolved to seek this with the blood of cruel war, Ossa would give ships, and Pindus, and as many as before have followed, kings nor of bold Bacchus nor of Perseus. But naked faith and the power of holy right brought me hither, and the kindred grace of Phrixus between us, and now your grandsons are of our race's stock through you. Nor yet would I approach the Phrygian kings or the fields of raging Bebrycia to be scorned: whether by guile one sought my men or by honour, their gifts were rendered, and they felt us the race of the gods and the ship of great Minerva. Scarcely at last we have reached Colchis, sought with long prayers, and we see you such as fame reported you: only do not envy the Minyae their famous deeds. I seek nothing alien, nor owed to our lands, and if there is any place for truth even in prayers, believe these things granted to Phrixus, that Phrixus bears these to his father's house. Receive in return the gifts I have brought you across the conquered sea, a cloak from the blood of the Taenarian cauldron and reins and a sword girt with flashing gems: this an ancestral honour, this the woven work of a mother's labour, to these the Lapith horseman had grown accustomed. Grant to join gifts, grant to ally our Scythian homes. Let the fierce wrath of my king know what Caucasus, allotting you on the dreadful axle, and how much he softens beneath your reins.'

While he prayed thus, the other, grim with menacing face, long since growls, and burns with hidden furies. As the silent wave swells and beneath the deepest gulf conceives the south winds, so the barbarian draws his wrath from the deep, and now growls at the man's daring, now, alas, at his realms betrayed to the Greeks, nay, and grieves that Phrixus was received with too easy a mind, and that Scythia's fears have perished; now he shakes his head and mocks the youth's empty hopes, what madness he is at, that he asks the fleece from the serpent. And the foreknowing voice of the ancient oracle, remembered, burns him, why Fortune had at once stirred against him both Perses on that side and on this the Thessalian ship; whether the destined end were driving these things, and the cruel Fates now sought the fleece. Meanwhile, since care for the near war and battle is foremost, he feigns a gentle breast with calm words and returns these: 'I could wish you had not come to my halls at such a time, when a grievous foe besets me. For my brother (so for all there is one lust for the sceptre) prepares my ruin and presses me with mighty camps. Wherefore come, first defend your kindred seats, nor, a stranger, let go the glory of war offered you; for the steel itself draws the man. Then the fleece as victor, then by your deserts I will give not it alone.' Against this, ignorant of the guile, 'Then was a steep labour lacking even here to our deeds,' the son of Aeson takes up, 'and as if to those who suffered nothing on the sea, is this day added? Let these wars too come upon these things by my fate. He shall pay this grief with no small slaughter to me, and the delays he has given.' Then he sends Castor to bear to the comrades the answers of the Aeaean tyrant. But them a cruel delay was dragging out in keen cares, and at once, when they saw Castor in the midst of the field, a more frequent dread struck their minds. 'O kindly offspring of Jove, speak, is there any hope of seeing our country, speak,' they all say. He thus began in the midst of the Achaeans: 'Neither is Aeetes fierce, as fame has it, nor does he deny us the golden hide; but pressed meanwhile by an unjust war he seeks our help; the captain bids all the armed men hasten at once; for the ship is safe in the long recess, and the river is defended by the city set beside it.'

No delay: they leap forth, whom neither the Riphaean youth, nor Iberia, nor all the Dawn with her quivers, could withstand. The youth stood first with the line unfolded, and tried at once whether their weapons and limbs would obey. Nor does anyone now look back on the seas or his native cities, but rather they go to the present glory. The driving breeze shakes the crests, the parti-coloured way blooms with varied arms, such as the dancing band clothes the bright sky from Ocean, with such stars the golden night, rising, is girded. The Sun-born one marvels at them with silent and most sorrowful wrath, taken up so rashly, nor would he prefer such strength to having a foe enter the midst of his halls. Meanwhile he allows the banquets with glad array, and beside him challenges the son of Aeson with a great bowl, who now points out to him the sons of Jove and the faces of the Aeacidae beside, now the huge foster-sons of Calydon; he hears too of Alcides left by unspeakable error and of the lamented leaders and the labours of land and sea. But he himself, the son of Aeson, demands arms stirred by such great furies, and his friends, the kings, in order: 'Who is that man afar, whom a baldric rough with knots binds, and who stands nearest, armour-bearer, with drawn bow, as if he prepared a fight and to overturn the laid tables?' Against this, the Persean offspring of the flaming Sun: 'He whom you ask is Carmeius,' he says; 'it is the man's custom ever to have arms at hand, ever to remember the quiver. Why marvel at Latagus, why at river-born Choaspes? See him drinking the blood of a war-horse; nor yet will he go more sluggish when the reins are let loose.' 'Tell me of that one likewise,' says the son of Aeson, 'whose cloak is bristling with devices, and whose supple hair breathes with much breeze.' Aeetes looks back and gives this one too by name: 'Rich Aron; so all his cavalry flings out his saffron perfumes, so his hair is dressed by all his troops: but do not scorn the man and distrust his combed locks. Campesus here in the spoils of a tigress. That one, leaning over deep Odrussian wine; see his broad hairy chest and his stirring the cups with his vast beard.' Here too the guest is amazed at Iaxartes with his bitter words, boundless and heavy of tongue, who, threatening much, has no reverence for the gods nor for the war at hand. But Aeetes against this: 'Not in vain do his great words fly proudly,' he says, 'and arms follow his voice as equals, nor is there rest but that he wearies day and night with war; and when the Riphaean rivers have stood stunned with frost, now the Getae are frightened with their offspring, now the wakeful Mede awaits him, and Iberia with her barriers set across. But what hand, what standards each of these follows, if I should record, the light would loose the moist shade before I finished. Tomorrow you shall see the lines and those discordant realms of leaders, by whose hand the rock-bearing rein's storm rises, which race apt for the light javelin, which has come painted with quivers. Already in your mind look on the huge plains, and on this Euryale, striking bodies with her wing-footed car, in what squadrons the Martial woman exults, and how much she avails with the axe lifted, shield-bearer, dear to me and not the last among my true daughters.' He speaks and pours a libation from the bowl to his setting parent. Then each pours out vows and cups to his own gods, that they grant the battle-line, grant to overcome the warlike labours.

But behold, Gradivus, coming from the Getic caverns and drawing a huge cloud across the northern seas, beholds the Minyae, stunned, in the Aeaean city, and the old man wooed and the fleece promised to the Thessalian ship. Swift to the starry roofs of his highest father he rushes and calls Jove to witness with bitter complaint: 'What rest, great king, for our zeal? Already we gods devise mutual ruin for the sole honours of men, and all these things please you, who do not drive raging Pallas from heaven nor set law against her womanish daring. I do not complain that she herself carried in a built ship the fleece, hoping to turn the sacred fleece from my groves, and that she openly protected the men: so let the rest go on, if she can. With what deceitful snares does she now beset me, that our temples be despoiled of the Phrixean metal? There is no need of help for the Colchians nor of your covenant: both Perses and the Minyae we demand as enemies. Nay come — why do such great nations gather to battle? Why your son of Aeson? — let us go, let us go straightway into the gold-bearing grove and decide it with arms taken up? Or do you alone glide down from the sky, unlooked-for, in the silent darkness: there you shall learn how great a god I am, nor shall you stand by those timbers unpunished. Are the temples of Mars less inviolable, only because to me the grove and the rude mound, and I am worshipped by the nations with that shadow alone? There is love and care of his own things in all, and for you, great father, the offerings of the lands contend: there is honour for these groves too. If I plunder the dear citadels of Mycenae, the virgin heights of Cecrops, soon your wife, soon your daughter shall hold you with groaning and tears, complaining. Let them fear, then, and not be able to do such things.'

Pallas did not bear this in her spirit, but broke the long silence, mocking the noise and threats of Gradivus. 'Not to the Aloidae, on whom you may hurl these wild mutterings, not to the Lapiths, but to Pallas,' she says; 'nor let me be worthy of the aegis, nor be called any longer the offspring of Jove, unless that swelling fall from your heart: I will make you, wretch, hate the trumpets and arms and take your names from the first wars. Nay, mad, you have followed your mother in like heaviness; worthy indeed, who bore such a monster for the gods. Yet what crime have we committed, or by what guilt are we guilty, if we helped a youth who fearless went beneath the seas, the so dread commands of his own tyrant, and seas not yet known, and stirred some hope by great daring? Or ought we to offer no prayers, follow no covenants of the king, but drive all things in blind battle? So the Thracians do, so does that turbulent one, if he seeks anything. I could wish even now that these wars be remitted and that allied hands not arm. Give the fleece, ruler, and behold us in the midst of the sea. But if Mars denies this, and alone stands against our toils, shall we go inglorious, borne over so many seas in vain? I will make him too unable.' So the woman. Here, blazing, Mars began again to rise with answering words. Hence the father takes him up against this, and thus restrains him with his voice: 'Why, madman, do you rage? When you already repent your deed and the sin is enough, then you come to my judgement. In whatever way, by whatever battle, drive those things which you have begun, since furies have their own fates. Yet this I will warn you, wife, and you, my daughter: let it be enough to have driven off Perses, nor let vain hope hold back the Minyae or wish to set an end to the war. For such an order of things, hear it, awaits him: the camp conquered shall now give back, and remit the war, terrified at the leader's coming and the valour of the Pelasgian: soon, when the breezes bear these back to the Thessalian lands, then he shall be present, victor, and hold the homes and the sceptre, until his daughter, after the long exiles of helpless old age, helps Aeetes too, alas, however impious to the great fates, and the Greek grandson sets him back in his realm. This is the labour, and these the trials of both brothers. Go, and let each, as he wills, rush in with hostile arms.'

He had spoken. He renews the tables and brings back peace, and now sends down the night from the starry Olympus. Then the wonted chorus of the Muses is present to render the Phlegraean battles, and Apollo the striker of the lyre, and the Phrygian servant bears round the heavy bowl. They rise to sleep and turn to their own thresholds.