Book 7

7. The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Book Seven.

You too the late evening now parts from your Thessalian guest, and now your joys, O maiden, are leaving you, and night comes rushing down, no friend to one who loves alone. So when, with feet that lingered on the threshold's edge, she reached her sick bed and her mind took fire in the dark, then through long sleeplessness she turned her shifting laments, trying to learn from what sickness she suffered, and at last she dared to confess a little to herself, and spoke thus in her grief: 'Now by what chance, or thus forever wakeful, am I, willing, dragged into my own wandering? Surely this night was not mine before I saw your face, O bravest of young men. Why do I, mad, recall it again and again, parted by so wide a sea? What is this stranger alone to my mind? Let him rather take now the fleece of my kinsman Phrixus, which alone he seeks and which is the single cause of his toil. For when will he look again upon these halls? And when will my father journey to the cities of Aeson's land? Happy are they who dared to give themselves to the open waves and did not fear such roads, nor, having followed such a man, this man and then a husband—yet even so, let such a one depart.' Then, tossed upon her couch, having tried the whole bed over, behold, she sees the threshold whiten with the faint dawn; and the risen light refreshed the sleepless lover no less than when a gentle shower lifts the drooping ears of grain and welcome breezes now come down to oars grown weary. But now their care for the long voyages reminds the Minyae, and in that very hour, in vain, they seek the king to claim their joy and their reward. Jason, allowing them first to make their vows and kindle their captured spoils to the gods, leans forward and holds his eyes afar, to see whether already the golden fleece and the hall grow bright with the offered wool. But the king, just as Jason is making ready his look and his words, forestalls him, breaks off delay, and into the very face of the man who lingers leaps, and pours himself out in such wrath: 'You, sown in another world, having your own shores and realms, what madness drove you across so many waves to these coasts? What so great a love of me? You are the first cause of my ills, you, Phrixus, my son-in-law. Would that the sea had drowned you as it did your sister, that I, happy, might know no Greeks by name. What king is Pelias, what Thessalian, or what is Greece, what race of men do I behold, or where are the rocks of the Cyaneae? See, a guest has come into Scythian coasts. That fifty exiles—shame, alas—should Jason have pierced through to Asia, and that he alone should so scorn me above all others, one ship alone, to carry off plunder from a living king? Let him bid me offer my own groves, bid me throw them open, and think it worth no war at all to win his victory! Why not, come, snatch the consecrated gifts from all the temples, and lead away the very daughters from their parents' arms, O robber, if you please? Should I believe you have homes, have parents—you whom one ship alone feeds on unspeakable plunder, you whom cruel storm sustains, and whom—if we trust them— their own king dashed against the sea and forbade to return? No doubt that he might gain the gold of the Aeolian ram! Sooner shall my Caucasus sink down with its shade cut away, and sooner shall it seek again the Haemonian spoils beyond the sea, or sooner shall I set up Helle with funeral fillets . . . Yet if you persist otherwise, refusing to yield this land, and shame at a fruitless return stirs you, and there lies hidden in one ship I know not what greater purpose than its men, I myself will not hold back what you seek; only fulfil my command first. Before the city lies a field of Mars, rough with long years, and bulls that breathe fire and that once knew me too as I pressed the plough, bulls that even now are slow at times to know me. To these our old age has now given more and more its fury and rankness, and their fire, prouder than its wont, roars from the mouth. Succeed, O bravest, to my glory, and cultivate my fields, my guest. Nor will the seed be wanting that I once sowed myself, nor the harvests I alone reaped. One night is enough for counsel; turn over with yourself, and with your own gods, these my commands; and if there is in that strength of yours aught, you will come to the fields of the foretold toil. I myself, still uncertain, could wish you straightway wrapped in those shadows and those flames, or rather to hold out a while, until you cast the seed upon the ploughed field, and until the Cadmean serpent's soldiery springs from your teeth and the new-broken furrows flower with an armed crop.' His daughter, first to wonder at the savage tyrant's voice, stopped, and turned her pale face toward the young man, and trembled with fear, lest in ignorance the stranger dare, and lest, poor wretch, he think himself able. Horror had gripped even him, and he stood fixed in sullen anger. Not so does the Tyrrhenian and Ionian helmsman stand dazed, who, even as he watches you, Tiber, and the bright lighthouse on its serene height, suddenly sees the harbor nowhere, nowhere Ausonia, and the cruel Syrtes drawing near. Yet then he gathers what answers to give the monstrous tyrant, and at last rises from his deep brooding gaze. 'You did not,' he says, 'O Aeetes, give this homecoming, not this hope, to the Minyae, when first before your walls we took up arms for you. Where is your faith now turned? What guiles do your commands roll over? I see another Pelias here, other seas. Come then, all of you, press upon this head with a tyrant's hatreds and commands; never will my right hand fail me, nor my hope; my way is to endure commands and not to yield to hardship. One thing I ask: whether that crop overwhelm me with its spears, or tomorrow's fire devour me with its opposing jaws, let a messenger be sent from here to the cruel ears of Pelias, that here the heroes perished, and that I, had there been any faith in you, might have been brought back home to my fatherland.' At such words he leaves both daughter and father stunned, and headlong rushes out from the faithless hall. But trembling, and forsaken amid her parents, the maiden is silent, and could not keep her eyes fixed a moment on the ground, nor keep from turning her sorrowing face; she looked back at the doors and still found him departing, and the stranger, alas, then seemed more beautiful to the wretched lover as he left: such shoulders, such a back he leaves behind. She longs that he, and the very doorposts, would come on a little, and she holds her burning steps within the threshold. As when wandering Io feels the last sands of the shore and bears her foot back and forth, whom the Fury drives to cross the swelling seas, and the matrons of Pharos call across the deep: not otherwise she circles and hangs about the open doors, in case a kinder father should call the Minyae back; and seeking the face of the stranger, she grieves, faint upon his lonely bed, or comes into the lap of her dear sister and shrinks away again, and tries to speak, then falls silent, and again withdrawing asks how the stranger Phrixus came to settle on Aeaean shores, how the winged dragons carried off Circe. Then in pity she takes joy in the sight of her companions and cannot have her fill, and suddenly clings to her parents more fondly, and presses kisses upon her father's hand. So a dog, used to the couch and to her master's sweet table, sick now with a new plague and the madness to come, before her flight roams, whimpering, through all the house. At last she chides herself thus in tender anger: 'You go on, madwoman,' she says, 'and his image torments you, and your care for him, who perhaps in flight holds the high keel, and who will carry off my name, not his, to his native cities. Yet why does he so move me—whether he overcomes the labors or falls, and Greece is troubled with so great a grief? At least, if the last fates were already bearing off the hero, would he had been bidden rather to go to tyrants unknown, O would he were, and were not dying at last in this city. For he is said to be of the blood of our starry Phrixus, and I saw my dear sister grieve for him, and she says that he, poor man, was driven by commands to cross these waves. But let him return by whatever means, and let him not know that I prayed thus, and let him not hate my father.' She had said this, and had flung her heavy limbs upon the bed, if pitying rest would come, when sleep, more savage still, troubles and drives her: here the suppliant guest is stretched out, here her father. She breaks her slumbers with fresh dread and rises from the couch; she knows her handmaids and dear home, but a moment ago swept through Thessalian cities: as Orestes, distraught with the avenging Furies and blind terrors, snatches his sword and strikes the ranks of his cruel mother; the serpents shake him, the wrath of the dread-sounding scourge shakes him, and again he believes he rages, driving on to the slaughter of the hostile Spartan woman, and returns wearied from the false carnage of the goddesses, and collapses into his wretched sister's face. When Juno sees the Colchian wavering with these cares in vain, and not yet yielding to the final frenzy, she no longer keeps the borrowed face and voice of Chalciope. Since her ardor grows dull and shame the lighter . . . and her mind set firm against the evil, she is borne aloft into the thin air and seeks out Venus on golden Olympus. 'I remember how you shared the labor with me; but she remains too hard, and turned to wrath and frenzy she grieves, and now, deceived, has left me. Go, I pray, and conquer that love by which she mocks me, conquer it, I pray, that she may dare at last to escape her father's house, and by some chance defend my Aeson's son from every peril: that power lies in the sacred poison she trusts. And the serpent, too, that stands guard the whole night through, who fills all his grove and the golden fleece (look further on) with so many coils, so many windings— let her beguile him, and loose him into sleep from the great ash tree. This is yours; the rest I entrust to the Furies and to her.' Then Venus, mother of the winged Loves, speaks thus: 'Nor when you first set out to bend the maiden's senses and to touch her soul with an unknown care were we wanting to you, since at once my girdle was given to her, the soil shaken, so that she gave way, dislodged from her place. That is not enough; my own self is needed, and her hesitating heart demands me, and her wavering shame: I will soon make her herself seek the bond of Aeson's son and fear delay. You—let her come quickly to the shrine of light-bearing Diana, where the Colchian woman is wont to pour out the sacred torches and circle her mistress with an even troop of companions. And let no fear of Hecate come upon you now, nor fear that by chance I hinder your enterprise; rather I desire that she dare: love will pass at once, and with triple-tongued chant I will force her to subdue the very fire-breathing bulls.' . . . and with an embrace she seeks; then she sees winged Iris, and bids her hasten to obey the bidding of Dione and set the son of Aeson in the appointed grove. Straightway from here Iris sought the Minyae, Cytherea sought the Colchian; on the Caucasian crags Juno sat as watcher, holding her dazzled gaze upon the Aeaean walls between hope and fear, and as yet ignorant of what should come. Scarcely had Venus, hidden, seen the first towers, when, behold, a strange faintness begins to grip the maiden's mind; her fevers redouble with renewed laments. So once more, turning over her shifting thoughts about the stranger, she grieves, and to him, absent, speaks such things in vain: 'If only your mother could help you now with Thessalian charms, and—alas, if there is one—if any wife could help you. What can I, a maiden, do but weep for your labors? This is enough . . . Ah me, lest I be forced even to watch your last hours, and again to go as companion to my hard sister. And now he thinks that no one is moved by his lot, that no one remembers him, and with all the rest he hates me too. Yet if ever there shall be any power in me, that man—whatever last ash shall cling to the dreadful fields, and the bones the bull and the savage fire shall have spared— I will gather, and give a resting place. Then it shall be right for me to have loved the hero's shade, and to render these cares to his tomb.' She had spoken. Behold, Venus sat unforeseen upon the couch, just as she was, transformed into the goddess and feigning, in painted robes and with a magic wand, the Titan's daughter Circe. The girl, as though deceived by the image of lingering sleep, so holds her uncertain eyes, and little by little thinks her the sister of her great father. Then, weeping for joy, she sprang up and of her own accord gave kisses to the cruel goddess, and spoke first: 'O at last, scarcely at last given back, harsh Circe, to your own, what flight drove you from here with twin serpents? Or what delay was dearer to you than your native shores? Even before, the Thessalian keels sought the Phasis, and unhappy Jason came in vain through so many shoals, sooner than love of country moved you.' Then Venus breaks off the rest and meets her: 'You are now the only cause of my journeys, you alone; long since I come, made idle for your youth. Spare the rest of your complaints, and do not blame me for following the better course; for indeed the gifts of the gods will be claimed again. Believe rather that this world is shared by all living things, and the gods are shared. Call that your country, then, where the day returns and goes, and let no grudging power, O child, have shut us up forever under this one frost of one month. It is right for me, and right for you, to leave the hostile Colchians. And now I am the royal wife of Ausonian Picus, nor do the pastures bristle for me there with fire-breathing bulls, and you see me mistress of the Tuscan sea. But what suitors, poor girl, are these Sauromatae of yours? To what Iberian do you go (ah me), or to what savage Gelonian, no single bride?' But the daughter had long since begun to spurn the goddess's words. 'You do not find me,' she says, 'so forgetful of great Perseis, that I should be forced, unhappy, into such a marriage. Go, I pray, and on my behalf dismiss that fear. But rather, since you can, snatch this wretched girl from these cares, whence comes my dread and fever, and the bitter things, O mother, I have long endured, the burnings of a hard mind. No rest for my soul, no sleep, the dry . . . Seek some rest for my ills, and set my mind again in place, give me back day and night, let me grasp the robes that bring sleep, and with the wand itself compose my eyes. You too help me nothing, mother; I was braver before, alone. I see grim marriages and all things hostile, and serpent locks rising upon your very head.' Such words she gave, and, sinking down, wept in the lap of cruel Venus, and showed the plague hidden in her bones and the fire in the depth of her heart. Venus seizes her in an embrace and plants frenzied kisses, and breathes love mingled with hatred; and while she encircles her grieving with shifting words and holds her in other talk, 'But hear this,' she says, 'and raise your cheeks,' and thus, with tears welling up, she begins: 'When but now I glided down to you from the gods through the upper air, by chance I saw a ship clinging to the first edge of the shore, such as my island would never wish to send away from its harbor, the island that still detains all sailors. There one before all others, who then seemed to me more beautiful than all (and I myself marveled long at their leader), flies up, and thinking me one of your companions, says: "By any power, if there is one—you who behold the dread of a man about to die, one you would not see meet such undeserved monsters—this I pray, this carry to the ear of your mistress maiden: show her my tears; to her these words I send, as I may, and these hands I stretch, as I can, from the shore. The goddesses themselves, whom I dragged with me through a thousand perils, have failed; my hope and only path of safety is what she will give, if perhaps she gives it. Let her not reject my prayers, not mine; and so many lives, such as she will never see again, tell her, I pray, let her aid with her help, and save these names." He poured it all out, and turning to look at the throngs of suitors made known at once, at last he shuddered at his father's spheres, and said: "If Minos's daughter herself gave her brother to death, why should it not be right to help worthy strangers? You too—bid the Aeaean fields grow gentle. Let the Cadmean race fall at last in everlasting death. Ah me, that here I can pay no thanks. Yet let her know that this body, saved from cruel death, this life, is her own. Will she then pity me? Tell me," he says, "or rather—" and he rushed upon his drawn sword. "I promised; do not fail me, I pray." And when I myself was moved by the man's address and his plight, I let myself be entreated rather than you; you are worthier of new praise, you of a worthy suppliant; my fame is now enough won by my poisons.' That girl had long been turning her eyes with a heavy face, scarcely holding her spirit and her hand back from flying into the very face of the speaking goddess: with such anger does shame seethe, guarding its words; horror had seized her tender years. And now upon her couch the unhappy girl buries her trembling ears, and sees no way to carry her flight, no way to turn, caught fast; she longs now to be buried and pressed down by the broken earth, and to escape the dreadful words. The goddess bids her follow, and waits in the very gates. As savage Bacchus abandons Pentheus in the Echionian hall, his horns wreathed about with dewy fillets dipped in dye, when the man holds the god, and his mother's shame-bearing garments and the drums, and the wretch suddenly takes the soft spear: not otherwise, forsaken, she is afraid, and casts her eyes all around through everything, and refuses to leave the house. Against her is savage love, against her doomed Jason presses, and the words she heard grow louder in her breast. Alas, what is she to do? She sees herself, hard girl, betraying her father to a foreign man, and now foresees the report of her own crimes, and wearies the gods with lament, the gods and Tartarus; she beats the ground and murmurs with crooked hands, of the night, calling on Dis, that they at last be willing to help her with death and send the man himself down to death too, for whom she rages; absent, most savage, she demands now Pelias, who with such wrath would destroy the young man; often she resolves to promise the wretch her arts, then refuses, and rather decrees that all be settled in one hour; and she cries out that she will never yield to so base a love, nor give aid and strength to a stranger, and lies flung upon her couch—when she seemed to be called again, and the doors sounded on their driven hinge. So when she feels herself conquered deep within by some power she knows not, and that whatever shame had warned before is cut away, then she seeks the inmost chamber, seeking the greatest aids she knew, on behalf of the king of the Haemonian keel. And as from afar the chambers breathing with magic poisons, and the cruel doors, lay open, and all things spread before her that she had bought from the sea, from the deepest shades, and what she had drawn from the bloody face of the moon, 'Then,' she says, 'will you follow, or suffer anything shameful, when you have so many deaths and so brief an escape from so great a crime?' Saying this, while no plague was swifter than she through all the world, in vain she scans with all her sight and lingers above it, and, about to die, gathers her wrath. O day too sweet, the dearer at the very edge of death: she stood, and marveled at her own raging. 'You are perishing, alas; can you bear this in your first youth? You will see,' she says, 'no joys of the light, none of youth, nor your brother's cheeks growing soft with their first down? This man too, whoever he is, cruel girl, you do not know perishes by your death—Jason, who now calls on you alone, who entreats, and whom I first saw on our shore? Why did it please you then to join treacherous hands, father, and not at once to destroy the young man with these monsters? I myself, I confess, even then, even then I wished it. I call to witness your words, dear Circe, daughter of the Titan, with you leading I follow, your counsels weary me, aged one, and I yield, the lesser, to your warnings.' When she had said this, again to the care and the fear of the Haemonian youth she turns, glad to live for his sake alone, or to die, whatever he should wish. She prays for greater spells, for Hecate to send greater powers upon her now, nor did she stand content with her known poisons. Then her bosom is girded, and—where no force is more faithful to her—she draws forth the flower of Prometheus's blood, the Caucasian flower, and the herbs nourished by his torment, which the sacred gore hardens and feeds amid the snows and grim frosts, when the vulture, its flesh devoured, rises from the crags and sprinkles dew from its open beak. This same blood does not droop within the bounds of long age, flourishing immortal; this same blood stands against the lightning, and the herbs bloom in the midst of fire. First Hecate brought the sickle hardened in Stygian springs, and dug the mighty stalks from the rocks; then the harvest was shown to her handmaid, which, ripened by Phoebe's lamp under the tenth orbit, she reaps, and rages through all the remnants and the gore of the god; he groans in vain, gazing at the Colchian's face; then all his limbs draw together with pain, and all his chains tremble beneath the sickle. With such poisons the unhappy girl arms herself against her own realm, and trembling enters the dark night. Venus gives her hand, and, fearful, mingles coaxing kisses with her words, and with joined step draws her through the walls. As a mother, pale at the last, has led her tender brood from the high nest out into the air, and urges them to follow and rise on their short wings; the first horror of dark Olympus strikes them, and now they beg to return, and seek their accustomed tree: not otherwise through the walls of the blind city she fails, advancing, and dreads the silent houses, Medea. Here again, on the threshold of the outermost gate, in vain she stopped, and again her courage and her resolve dissolved, and she looked back at the goddess, and clung a moment to these words: 'Does Jason himself ask for me, does he himself implore me? Is there no fault beneath it? No stain upon my modesty, no love, nor shame for a man to serve one who entreats?' The goddess answers nothing, and breaks off the empty words. And now already through the dark silence the Colchian had begun to go with magic sound, and to hide the faces of the mountain powers, and turn the rivers aside with their hills. Now upon the stalls and flocks fear, upon the tombs a din, had fallen; night herself stands amazed, slowed by heavy shade; and now trembling Venus follows from afar; and when they had come beneath the high beams and into the shade of the triform goddess, here suddenly before her eyes, not yet hoped for, Jason flashed out, and the terrified maiden saw him first, and from here the daughter of Thaumas, in flight, raised herself on her winged wings, and from there Venus slipped from the hand that held her. As when in the late night a panic flings the herdsmen and the flock together, or as through the deep void blind shades without voices meet one another, so, no otherwise, in the midst of the darkness of night and grove they had fallen upon each other, both astonished, and drew near, like silent firs or motionless cypresses that the swift south wind has not yet stirred. So, as each stood with downcast face in silence and night went on its way, Medea longs at last to lift her face and to be the first to speak to Aeson's son. As soon as he saw her, trembling, with tears poured out and burning cheeks and wretched shame, he gave at last these words and consoled the loving girl: 'Do you bring any hope of light?' he says; 'do you come, I think, pitying my toil? Or will you yourself rejoice at my death? Do not, I pray, O maiden, bear yourself like your unspeakable father; harshness ill befits such a face. Was it fitting that these thanks, these awaited gifts of my labors, be given thus? That I be sent back with you as witness— is it right, O maiden? Grant to my words just hearing: tell me, what did your father mean by setting me against such monsters, what had I deserved, or why did he wish me to pay such penalties? Is it because Canthus now lies dead by a foreign spear, and because my Iphis fell before your walls, or so great a band of Scythia thence? He should have bidden me go, the treacherous king, and yield his realms to me at once. By what perils, and on what terms, he gives back the hope he promised, you see. We can at last die, and that is settled, rather than undergo whatever commands your father gives; never without the fleece will I depart from here, nor will you be the first to see me a coward.' So he speaks. She, trembling, when she sees the suppliant's face, the man fallen silent, and now her own words demanded, sees not, distraught, with what to begin, nor in what order, nor how far, longing to pour out everything at the first word; but shame gives no first words to her fear; she falters, and scarcely lifting her eyes at last she speaks: 'Why, I pray, have you come into our land, Thessalian? Whence any hope of me for you? And these great labors, why did you not yourself, trusting in your own valor, attempt? Surely, if I had feared to leave my father's house, you had perished; surely tomorrow a cruel death awaited this life of yours. Where now is Juno, where now the Tritonian maid, since I alone am present to you in such great straits, a queen of a foreign house? You yourself marvel too, I think, and these woods do not now know Aeetes' daughter. But I am conquered by your fates; take, a suppliant, the gifts that are not mine; and if Pelias seek again to destroy you, and send you into other perils, to other cities, alas, do not trust to your own beauty.' And now the Titan's daughter had begun to bring from her bosom the herbs and the Persean powers, and again she addresses Jason with these words: 'Yet if you place any hope either in these gods or in your own valor to lead you out from present death, if perhaps it can, even now I beg you, stranger, let me be, and send me back, innocent, to my wretched father.' She had spoken: at once (for the ripe stars were not yet rushing down, and Bootes still sufficed at the edge of the sky), with a groan and much weeping she sets the charms before the youth, as if, all at once, she casts away her country and her fame and her honor. He takes them in his hand and seizes all their power. Then, when the shame that makes her guilty and is never to be recalled yielded from her face, and a nearer Fury filled her, she now rolls the charms and fixes them through all the limbs of Aeson's son, and over his whole shield is borne with a sevenfold murmur, and gave the man a heavier spear, and now the bulls' fires grow faint while they are absent. 'Now come, take up these crests and this helmet,' she says, 'which but now Discord held in her death-dealing hand. Hurl it through the midst of the crop, when you have ploughed the field; at once the whole phalanx will go, turned against itself in frenzy, and the father himself, raging, will marvel, and on me perhaps will look.' Then, having spoken thus, more and more she bore her mind over the high seas, and now she saw the Minyae spreading their sails without her. Then indeed, struck with the final grief, she seizes Aeson's son by the right hand and humbly speaks: 'Be mindful of me, I pray; I in turn will remain mindful of you, believe me. How far will you be from here, tell me, I pray, of the deep? What quarter of the sky shall I behold? But let some care for me touch you too, in whatever place, through whatever years; and may you wish to remember that it was you, and to confess my gifts, nor be ashamed to be saved by a maiden's art. Ah me, why do no tears wring your eyes? Or do you hide from me that I shall soon die, deserving it, by my father's wrath? You the happy realms of your people, you a wife and children await; I shall go forth, betrayed; nor do I complain, and for your sake I will even gladly leave the light.' At once the stranger to this (for with silent chants she had bent him and long since breathed a like love into him) says: 'Do you believe that Aeson's son could wish anything, left behind, or endure any place without you? Give me back rather to the tyrant, take back your thankless chants and strip them away. What love of the light have I? Why should I wish for my country more, if my father Aeson does not embrace you too first, and Greece, rejoicing, watches you shining afar with your fleece, and sinks down at the first waves to meet you? Look upon these words, and now, I pray, consent, my bride. By you, who are more powerful than the gods above and below, and by these stars that return at your nod, O maiden, and by these hours of our peril I swear: if ever I should be forgetful of this deserving night, if you should perceive that you have left scepter, home, and parents, and that I then keep not these my promises, then may it profit me nothing to have escaped the bulls and the fierce earth-born, then may your fire and your arts trouble me in my very house; let no man be able to aid one ungrateful, and if there be anything then crueler than this, may you add it, and leave me in the midst of terror.' She heard him, and at once the Fury, ever the avenger of lovers' complaints, pledged perjury to its deserved penalties. When these words were said, yet both stand fixed, and now they lift their faces, glad with bold youth, faces that as often steal away each other's sweet glances, now sick shame casts down their looks, and a delay is given to their words, and again the maiden terrifies Jason: 'Hear what perils await you next, the bulls once tamed, and what guardian remains to you at the Aeolian fleece; not yet, I confess, have I fulfilled for you all I promised. A toil more savage remains in the mighty tree of Mars, believe me—would that there were such trust in me and in nocturnal Hecate, and in my power . . .' She had spoken, and that she might teach the man what monsters remained, straightway she troubles the serpent reclining in vast coils, and suddenly casts before it the shade of the Haemonian leader. It—a thing it had never done—stood up and shot out its trembling hisses, and after, in fear, it raised itself about its fleece, and all the tree shuddered with its coils, it begins then to follow, and rages through the air with empty jaws. 'What crash is this? What ruin so great, tell me, maiden?' cries Aeson's son, standing cold with drawn sword. She, laughing, draws him on, and at last, the snake checked, says: 'This my father's wrath prepares for you as the last, alas, poor man, alas, dear to me again at such great perils. O would that I were to see you through no labor at all face the ash tree foul with its dark coils, and trample the very eyes of the ever-watchful monster: may it then befall me to die twice over.' So speaking she fled, and bore herself back into the city beneath the last shadows. And now empty hope had raised the king at the crimson dawn, to learn through what waves one night had carried Aeson's son, whether his face was free now on the open straits, and whether, as before, the whole sea was silent. And while he tries to explore that from afar, Arcadian Echion comes toward him bearing word: that already on the Circaean fields of Mars the man stands, and bids that the bronze-footed bulls be given for battle. . . . and 'See, I am summoned of their own accord,' he said, 'and hope has lent me wings. You now for the first time, O bulls, turn into flames for me the plains; now open and roll out all your blasts. Let the memorable harvest come forth for the Haemonian husbandman, and you, my daughter, give your serpent to the Greek, your father's. At his very sight let them perish upon the fleece, and let the hide itself, stained, keep the dread gore for me.' He speaks, and bids the plains be opened by the loosed bulls. Some come up bearing the monstrous seeds of the Echionian tooth, some carry the heavy timber of the dread plough. But his own Pagasaean youth, on the other side, escort the great-hearted man and throng about their leader; then each gave his greatest words, and from afar withdrew into the savage fields. He had set his stride, and out of the whole company alone he stood, like one left by his farthest comrades, whom the weary day and the burning sands of the south now— or as one who, standing again toward the Riphaean heights, the snow and the fierce horror of dark Boreas has carried off— when suddenly the long wave of astonished Phasis, and the Caucasian beams, and all the Aeaean land, flashed, and the stalls poured forth their burning darkness. And as, when from a single cloud, gleaming Jove has hurled his twin fires upon mortals, or when two winds at once have burst their bonds and given themselves to flight: so then from their pen each bull escaped, and breathed forth flames in a monstrous whirlwind, lofty, and rolling its fires in a black tide. The legion of the Argo's ship shuddered, the bold Idas shuddered, who but now wept to be saved by a maiden's chants, and looked toward the Colchian with unwilling face. Jason himself did not bear the delays, and flung himself in; after he sees them go apart, he shakes the threatening helmet and with his right hand rouses the wandering fire to meet him. . . . . . . Having hesitated a little, suddenly it rages. Not so do the seas, angry, rush upon the rocks and recede again, broken, backward. Twice with lightning blasts it bears down and clouds the man over, but the Colchian does not let the fires breathe upon him, and the cold flame is dashed against the shield, and the fire pales at the sight of the poison. Aeson's son thrusts in his right hand and lays hold of the burning horns, then, leaning with all his strength, he clings. That bull, refusing the man and then you too, Medea, shakes him, and bears him, strained though he is by all the wrath of the chant, yet helpless; at last, receding, it begins to bellow more heavily, and, conquered, to lower its weary horn. From here Aeson's son looks back at his comrades, demanding the huge fetters, and now grips its mouth and is dragged, and drags, and, straining on his knee, overcomes it and forces the trembling muscles beneath the bronze yokes. Then the turbulent Colchian disarms the other, and offers it sluggish and feebly threatening, and as he draws near wraps it in night; it, fainting, falls forward upon its head and shoulders by the very weight of its mass and its rage. Jason rushes in, and presses with his whole weight from above, and forces it, fixed, beneath his breath, and when he had given it to the chains and bound it to the strong plough, he raises it himself with his knee and drives it on besides with the cruel spear, just as if from the midst of an opening in the earth the back of a fresh-made horse, and the first murmur, broke upon him with the reins, and the Lapith appeared on the height of Ossa. He, as though he were cutting the fields of Libya and the rich farmlands of fertile Nile, so with full hand rejoices to scatter the seeds over the fields and loads the new furrows with war. Here the warlike clangor of Mars first, thrice poured forth by the very share, and from every furrow the horns rang out; then the battle-clod is shaken, and at once a phalanx is created and armed, and rises over all the fields. The hero withdrew and drew back a little toward his comrades, waiting where the first ranks the earth should give him. But truly, when he saw the country now retreat from the topmost crests, and saw them brandishing the earth from their menacing helmets, he flies up, and where the ground lies nearest the lowest neck, and the shoulders have not yet seen the day, he first with the pursuing sword levels the trunks to the ground; the gleaming breastplate of the next, or the first hands from their mother, he presses, meeting it before, nor for those thousands or these beyond does he suffice, more than when the Tirynthian, wearied at the dread hydra's ranks, looks back to the Palladian fires. So once again he turns to the Colchian's friendly arts, and scatters the helmet's fastenings and the bonds at its rim, yet he hesitates, and himself longs to meet the whole war; no hope is given, so on every side the earth-born leaders crowd their standards, and the shout and the trumpets. And now all see the man, now all their weapons against him flash. Then indeed, frantic at so great a crisis, the helmet which Medea but now with Tartarean poison . . . he hurled into their midst; at once their spears were turned about. As when the yearly wrath of the mournful Mother lacerates the astonished Phrygians, or Bellona tears her gashed long-haired priests, no otherwise Medea suddenly entangles the kindled cohorts and drives the wretched brothers into her own battles: there each thinks he lays Aeson's son low, in all of them such wrath there was. Aeetes is amazed, and of his own accord longs to call the raging men back, but all the ranks lay fallen, nor did anyone rush first or any survive above the rest, and suddenly the earth drank down its own slain. Straightway into the river, his arms smoking, flies Aeson's son, as Mars from Getic dust enters on his horses and scorches the Hebrus heavy with sweat, or as the black Cyclops from his caverns, and from the heat of the ruddy lightning, when he rages and gasps in the Sicilian sea. Restored here at last, and embracing his exulting comrades, he no longer deigns to demand of the lying king the promised reward; nor, if the king should of his own accord throw himself at his feet, he who made the pact, would Jason wish to return to peace and the clasped hand any longer; both fierce, both withdrew uttering threats.