Jason and the Argonauts (10 page)

Still, I shall foster bitter wrath against you

no longer, grossly slandered though I was,

since it was not for wealth or flocks of sheep

that you succumbed to rage, but for a man,

1790
your comrade. No, no, I sincerely hope

that you would fight like that on my behalf,

should such a thing befall me in the future.”

After these words they both sat down together,

side by side and friendly as before.

1795
As for the two who had been left behind

(as Zeus himself intended), Polyphemus

son of Eilatus was indeed predestined

to found among the Mysians a city

named from the Cius River; Heracles

1800 (1347)
was bound as well to heavy labor under

Eurystheus' thumb. Before he left, though,

he threatened to annihilate the Mysians

right then and there if they did not divulge

the fate of Hylas, whether he was dead

1805
or living. They selected and surrendered,

in pawn, the children of their noblemen

and promised they would never give up searching.

Still today the Cianian people

ask after Hylas son of Theodamas

1810
and recognize a bond with well-built Trachis,

the town where Heracles immured the boys

they gave as pledges to be led away.

All day, all night a stiff wind kept on blowing,

pushing the
Argo
onward, but by dawn

1815 (1359)
nothing was stirring, not the slightest breeze.

They spotted on the coast a jutting headland

which, from the gulf, looked wide and welcoming

and, as the sun came up,
they rowed ashore.

BOOK
2

Haughty Amycus, the Bebrycian king,

kept farms and cattle paddocks near the shore.

Begotten by Poseidon Patriarch

on a Bithynian nymph named Melia,

5
he was the most obnoxious man alive.

It was his savage custom to permit

no visitors to exit his dominions

until they met him in a boxing match,

and he had beaten many of his neighbors

to death.

10
On this occasion King Amycus

came strutting straight up to the heroes' ship

and scornfully dispensed with asking them

who they might be and why they made the journey.

No, he just dropped a challenge on them all:

15 (11)
“Listen to me, you seaborne derelicts,

and learn what you most certainly should know.

The law here stipulates no foreigner

that comes ashore upon Bebrycian land

may ever leave again until he holds up

20
his fists against my fists and fights with me.

So quick, now, pick the strongest man among you

and let him step right up and face the challenge.

Be warned, though: if you spurn our laws, brute force

will grab you, and the outcome will be dire.”

25
So snarled he, certain he was tough, and wild

resentment gripped the heroes at his words.

The challenge wounded
Polydeuces most,

and he leapt up to represent his comrades:

“Hold on. Whoever you presume to be,

30 (23)
it's hardly necessary to insult us

with crass displays of force. We shall obey

your laws and customs. I myself am eager

to satisfy your challenge on the spot.”

Such was his blunt rejoinder, and Amycus

35
swiveled his eyes and glared at Polydeuces,

just as a lion wounded by a spear

and hemmed around by men on every side

focuses solely on the one that first

struck him but failed to land a fatal blow.

40
Tyndareus' son then laid aside

the lightweight cloak one of the girls of Lemnos

gave him as a parting gift. Amycus

undid, in turn, his doubly thick black mantle

clasp by clasp and threw his notched and knotted

45 (34)
olive-wood crook of kingship to the ground.

As soon as
they had found a spot nearby

to function as a ring, they sat their rival

companies separately from one another

along the sand. The two contestants differed

50
greatly in stature and physique: Amycus

looked like the monstrous spawn of grim Typhoeus

or even one of the abominations

Earth herself had brought up long ago

to challenge Zeus. Tyndareus' son,

55
in contrast, shimmered
like the star of heaven

that shoots its brightest beams against the darkness

at evening time. Yes, he was Zeus' son—

a soft down sprouting on his cheeks, his eyes

aglint with joy, he gloried like a beast

60 (45)
in godlike strength. Whereas he shadowboxed

to prove his fists were sportive as before

and not benumbed by handling an oar,

Amycus scorned such exercise. He simply

stood there in silence, glaring at his foe,

65
heart pounding with the urge to shatter ribs

and spatter blood.

Amycus' assistant

Lycoreus set down before their feet

two pairs of tanned and toughened rawhide straps.

Haughtily, then, the king addressed his rival:

70
“No need to bother drawing lots. Go on

and pick whichever set of straps you like—

that way you cannot say I tricked you later.

Go on, now, wrap them round your hands and then

learn well and tell all other men how skilled

75 (58)
I am at toughening and cutting ox hide

and spattering the cheeks of men with blood.”

So spoke the braggart king. But Polydeuces

did not respond in kind, no, he just smiled

and chose the straps that lay before his feet.

80
Castor and Talaus the son of Bias

jogged in and tied the straps on, all the while

pumping him up with fervor for the match.

Aretus and Ornytus did the same

for King Amycus, nor did they suspect,

85
poor fools, his highness was a doomed man facing

his final match.

Soon as the straps were wrapped

around their hands, they squared off toe-to-toe,

hefted their huge fists up before their faces,

and charged in, bringing all their weight to bear

90 (70)
each on the other.
On a choppy sea

a violent wave will rear above a ship,

then, just as it is poised to swamp the deck,

the helmsman's skill will save her by a hairsbreadth,

and off she glides unscathed. Just so Amycus

95
pounded and pounded and allowed no respite,

while Polydeuces with superior skill

baffled the onslaught and remained uninjured.

Once he had learned the strengths and weaknesses

of his opponent's brutish fighting style,

100
he stood his ground and gave him blow for blow.

Imagine shipwrights' hammers, how they pound

tapering dowels into sturdy planks—

the thumping sounds incessantly—that's how

the cheeks and chins of both opponents sounded.

105 (83)
Teeth shattering with constant horrid cracks,

the men did not stop pummeling each other

until sheer lack of breath had overcome them.

They drew apart a spell and, panting, woozy,

wiped streams of perspiration from their brows.

110
Soon, though, they charged again, like bulls in heat

fighting to win a pasture-fattened heifer.

Amycus stretched his torso, stood on tiptoe

like a butcher poised to slay an ox,

then brought the weighty bottom of his fist

115
hammering down. But Polydeuces tilted

his head in time and dodged the brunt of it.

The heavy blow went glancing off his shoulder.

Then Polydeuces leaned in closer, locked

his leg behind his foe's, and with a swift heave

120 (95)
haymakered him above the ear. The skull

cracked, and Amycus crumpled to his knees

in agony. The Minyan heroes cheered

when life came spurting from the big man's head.

Far from abandoning their king, however,

125
his loyal soldiers took up gnarled clubs

and hunting spears and charged at Polydeuces

in one mad rush. The heroes interlocked

their shields before him and unsheathed their swords.

Castor was first to strike. A man ran up,

130
and Castor axed him in the head, the head

split down the middle, and the halves flopped over

onto his shoulders. Straight out of his triumph

Polydeuces felled Itymoneus

and Mimas: with a flying leap he struck

135 (106)
the one beneath the chest and knocked him flat;

then, when the other made a rush, he struck

his left eye with his right hand, tore away

the eyelid, and the eyeball stood there naked.

Amycus' hotheaded squire Oreides

140
wounded Talaus the son of Bias

but missed the kill, because his brazen spear tip

merely grazed the skin beneath the belt

and wholly missed the vitals. Then Aretus

leveled his weather-hardened club and thumped

145
Iphitus, rugged scion of Eurytus.

But Iphitus was not yet doomed to die,

and soon enough Aretus was himself

cut down by Clytius' sword. Ancaeus,

the dauntless son of King Lycurgus, took up

150 (119)
a massive ax and, with his left arm swinging

a shield of black-bear hide before him, leapt

fiercely into the fray. When Telamon

and Peleus, offspring of Aeacus, rushed in

behind him, warlike Jason joined their charge.

155
Imagine how, upon a winter's day,

gray wolves will suddenly descend, unmarked

by herdsmen and precision-sniffing hounds,

to terrorize a flock of countless sheep—

how, as the wolves glare back and forth deciding

160
which one to pounce on first and carry off,

the sheep stand clumped together, tripping over

each other—that's the way the heroes sent

grim panic through the proud Bebrycians.

And as when beekeepers or herdsmen smoke

165 (131)
a giant hive concealed in a rock,

the bees at first are crowded and confused,

abuzz with rage, and then the sooty coils

of vapor suffocate them, and they all

dart from the rock and scatter far and wide,

170
so the Bebrycians did not hold firm

for long, but fled in all directions, bearing

news of Amycus' demise. The fools

had not yet realized another crushing

disaster was at hand. That very day,

175
now that their king was dead, the hostile spears

of Lycus and his Mariandynians

were pillaging their villages and vineyards

(the two were rival peoples, always feuding

over a territory rich in iron).

180 (142)
So the heroes raided all the stalls

and rounded up vast flocks and, as they did it,

this was how they were talking to each other:

“Just think of how those cowards would have fallen

if Zeus had somehow left us Heracles.

185
I am quite sure that, had he been at hand,

the boxing match would not have taken place.

No, when Amycus swaggered up to us

to bray his laws, a thumping would have made him

forget his pride and all his proclamations.

190
We did a thoughtless thing indeed by leaving

that man behind and heading out to sea.

Each one of us will come to know death ruin

intimately, now that he is gone.”

That's how they talked, but Zeus, of course, had brought

195 (154)
the loss of Heracles to pass on purpose.

The heroes spent the night there, bound the wounded,

and, after making sacrifice, prepared

a mighty banquet. After dinner, though,

slumber was far from holding sway beside

200
the wine bowl and the blazing sacrifices.

Once they had crowned their golden hair with laurel

that grew along the same shore where the cables

were bound, the heroes
sang a victory ode

in harmony with Orpheus' lyre,

205
and the unruffled shore enjoyed their singing,

since they were celebrating Polydeuces,

the boy whom Zeus had fathered in Therapna.

But when the sun came over the horizon,

lit the dewy hills and roused the shepherds,

210 (166)
the heroes lugged aboard the spoils that seemed

most useful, loosed the cables from the laurel,

and coasted with a friendly wind behind them

into the roiling Bosporus.

There wave

on wave, like heaven-climbing mountains reaching

215
above the clouds, shoot up before a ship's prow,

hover a while and then come crashing down.

One would assume no vessel could endure

so dire a doom suspended like a savage

storm cloud above the mainmast. But these threats

220
are navigable to a hardy helmsman.

So, guided by the skillful hands of Tiphys,

they coasted onward, frightened but alive,

and lashed their cables on the following day

to Thynia on the opposing coast.

225 (178)
Phineus the son of Agenor

was living in a house there near the shore,

suffering more than any man alive

because of the prophetic skill Apollo

had granted him some years before. You see,

230
he never paid due reverence to the gods,

not even Zeus himself, since he divulged

their sacred will too thoroughly to mortals.

Zeus smote him, therefore, with a long old age

and plucked the honeyed sunlight from his eyes.

235
Still worse, he never could enjoy the lavish

banquets the locals heaped up in his house

when they arrived to ask their fortunes.
Harpies

would always swoop down with rapacious maw

and snatch the food out of his hands and lips.

240 (189)
Sometimes they left behind no food at all

and sometimes just a morsel, so that he

might go on living in despair. Still worse,

they left a foul stench on the leftovers,

and no one dared to lift them to his mouth

245
or even stand nearby, because they reeked

so hideously.

As soon as Phineus

discerned the heroes' footsteps and halloos,

he knew what men had come—those at whose coming

the oracle of Zeus had prophesied

250
he would again be able to enjoy

comfortable meals. He struggled out of bed

like an ethereal dream and then, propped on

a walking stick, tapped over to the door

by fingering his way along the walls.

255 (200)
His joints were trembling with age and weakness

as he divined the exit. Scabrous skin

coated in dirt was all that held his bones