ORPHEUS fn1 Who would certainly have been father of Heracles’ unfortunate music teacher, Orpheus’s brother or half-brother Linus. fn2 See Mythos, Vol. I. fn3 Now Cape Matapan. fn4 The Asphodel Meadow was sometimes given as the place where ordinary, non-heroic mortals resided in the underworld. As I mentioned in a footnote on the death of Heracles, there is little consistency across the sources and poets as to what happened to the dead. An asphodel, incidentally, is a white heathland flowering plant. Homer’s Odyssey seems to have the first mention of such a flower carpeting the Elysian Fields of Hades, but it later entered the poetic language across Europe. William Carlos Williams’ poem ‘Asphodel, That Greeny Flower’ is a notable example. fn5 Charon liked to use old-fashioned words like ‘Avaunt’, ‘Nay’ and ‘Forsooth’. He believed they enhanced his dignity. fn6 The three judges were sons of Zeus, mortal kings famed for the righteousness of their rule, who determined on behalf of Hades the fates of the dead in the underworld. Heracles sensibly avoided them during his visit. See the first volume of Mythos (page 143). fn7 The Greeks even had a word for this Dionysian tearing apart, this frenzied dismemberment – they called it sparagmos.
JASON fn1 And are capitalised. fn2 Helios was also Gaia’s son, so she stood as both mother and grandmother to Bisaltes. This is nothing compared to the far more bizarre double and triple relationships of some. fn3 See Mythos, Vol. I, page 257. fn4 Usually pronounced ‘Bee-oh-shuh’. fn5 Although often called ‘the First Hero’, Cadmus more properly belongs in the first volume of Mythos, where you will find his story (page 210). fn6 The tragic effect that Euripides dramatised in his play The Bacchae, and the best known example of Dionysian sparagmos. fn7 In the Book of Genesis, you may remember, the patriarch Abraham was tested by God and told to sacrifice his son Isaac. Just as Abraham’s knife was descending God showed him a ram caught in a nearby thicket and told him to kill the animal in place of his son. One version of the story of Iphigenia and Agamemnon, which helped set in motion both the Trojan War and its tragic aftermath, is another example of this mytheme – but it is not yet time to hear that particular tale. fn8 Today the straits are known as the Dardanelles, which is another name derived from a figure of Greek myth – in this case DARDANUS, son of Zeus and ELECTRA (one of the seven heavenly sisters known as the PLEIADES). Dardanus was the father of Tros, the founder of Troy; it is because of him that Homer sometimes refers to the Trojans as ‘Dardanians’. fn9 Axeinos in Greek. Latterly, the Greeks gave it the wistfully optimistic name Euxinos – the ‘Euxine Sea’ – which means ‘hospitable’. In the same way the ‘Cape of Torments’ had its name changed to the ‘Cape of Good Hope’ by Portuguese navigators in the late fifteenth century. fn10 This backstory takes place before Heracles frees Prometheus of course. fn11 Yet another child of Typhon and Echidna, or (according to Apollonius Rhodus) of Gaia and Typhon. fn12 Some say that the madness that overtook him was sent by Hera, who never tired of punishing anyone who had anything to do with the raising, succouring and support of Dionysus, born of one of Zeus’s most brazen and outrageous affairs. It was enough for Hera that Athamas was married to Ino, and Ino had nursed the young Dionysus. fn13 Ino/Leucothea plays a key role generations later in the adventures of Odysseus. fn14 Athamas did have time to marry again: Themisto, his third wife, bore him four children, one of whom was Schoeneus, who went on to father (and abandon) Atalanta, whose story is told soon. fn15 See Mythos, Vol. I. fn16 We have already encountered both brothers, at a later stage in their careers, in the story of Heracles (here and here). fn17 Sometimes she is called Polymede. fn18 See Mythos, Vol. I, page 251. fn19 Not the same ARGUS PANOPTES whom Hera once turned into a peacock (see the first volume of Mythos, page 191), but Argus the Argive from Argos. His father Darnaus was king of Argos and (according to Apollodorus) the possessor of the first ship ever to set sail on the seas. fn20 Idmon did die, as we shall see. But he also achieved his prophesied fame – for here I am, thousands of years later, writing about him. fn21 It is generally held that, in historical ancient Greece, many grand families from Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes and all over the Greek world laid claim to Argonaut ancestors. Over the generations, poets and historians were paid to include such ancestors in ‘definitive’ accounts of the voyage in order to lend prestige to the pedigrees of the rich and powerful. For this reason there is no single, authoritative, universally recognised crew list or manifest for the Argo. fn22 Although all heroes are, of course, imperfect. fn23 Not to be confused with the Cyclops of the same name whom Odysseus encountered on his way home from the Trojan War. This Polyphemus was married to Heracles’ half-sister Laomene. He was a Lapith, and helped Theseus and Pirithous defeat the centaurs: see the story of Theseus (here). fn24 See the story of Atalanta (here). fn25 Pronounced ‘Calayiss’ and ‘Zee-tees’. fn26 Other versions of or references to the quest for the Golden Fleece have Atalanta playing an enthusiastic role in the voyage and its subsidiary adventures, but the main source on which I and most mythographers rely (the