down Basileus;
Idas killed Promeus, and Klytius, Hyakinthos, called the Good. And there were more — the men Polydeukes
killed,
fighting with his fists when his spear had snapped, and
the men who were killed
by Kastor, and those that the boy Ankaios killed. There
are stones
on the island, marked with their names — brave men
known far and wide
for skill, unfailing courage.
“So the battle ended, unholy
error. We hurried through fire and smoke, helping the
people,
moving them up to the hills, above where the city
burned.
For three days after that we wept with the Doliones, wailing for the king, his young queen, and their
beautiful palace—
crumbling walls, charred beams. Then built him a
splendid cairn
that moaned in the wind like a widow sick with sorrow,
made
by Argus’ subtle craft. And we gave him funeral games and all the noble old ceremonies that men hand down from age to age — solemn marches as angular as the priests’ hats; dances darker and older than the
hills;
poems to his virtue, the beauty of his queen.
“For twelve days then
there was murderous weather — high winds,
thunderstorms, soot-black rain,
the angry churning of the sea. We couldn’t put out. At
last
one night as I slept — my cousin Akastos standing watch, reasoning out, full of anguish, the whole idea of war, its pros and cons (wringing his fingers, hammering
the rail),
the old seer Mopsos watching and smiling — a halcyon came down and, hovering above my head, announced,
in its piping
voice, the end of the gales. Old Mopsos heard it all and came to me. He woke me and said: ‘My lord,
you must climb
this holy peak and propitiate Hera, Mother of the Gods, and then these gales will cease. So I’ve learned from
a halcyon:
the seabird hovered above you as you slept and, lo! so
it spoke!
The queen of gods rules all this earth, the sea, and
snow-capped
Olympos, home of the gods. Rise up and obey her!
Be quick!’
“With one eye part way open, I studied the graybeard
loon.
His eyewhites glistened, as sickly pale as the albumen of an egg, and his heavy lips, half hidden in beard and
moustache,
shook. He was serious, I saw. I rubbed my eyes with
my fists,
laboring up out of dreams. Then, seeing he gave me
no choice,
I leaped up, feigning belief, and I hurried from cot to
cot,
waking the others, rolling my eyes as seemed proper,
telling
the news, how Mopsos had saved us, he and a halcyon. None of them doubted. Mopsos nodded as I told them
the story,
backing up all I said. And so, within that hour, we started work. The younger of the men led oxen out from the stalls and began to drive them up the steep
rock path
to the top of Bear Mountain (the spider people asleep
at its foot.
sending skyward the unpleasant scent of sixteen-day-old death). The others loosed the Argo’s hawsers from the
rock
and rowed to the corpse-strewn harbor. Leaving four
on watch,
they too climbed through the stench. It was dawn. From
the summit you could see
the Macrian heights and the whole length of the
Thracian coast:
it seemed you could reach out and touch it. You could
see the entrance to the Bosporos
and the Mysian hills, and in the opposite direction the
flowing waters
of Aisepos, and the city on the plain, Adrasteia.
“In the woods
stood a hundred-year-old vine with a massive, shaggy
trunk,
withered to the roots. We chopped it down; then crafty
Argus
hacked out a sacred image of the queen of gods, long
gray hair
flying as he wheeled his axe. He skilfully shaped it,
gray ears
cocked to the whisper of Athena. When he finished, we
set it up
on a rocky eminence sheltered by dark, tall oaks, and
made
an altar of stones nearby. Then, crowned with oakleaves
(night
had fallen now, the dark storm howling around us), we began the sacrificial rites. I poured libations out, shouting to the goddess to send those flogging winds
away.
Mopsos and Orpheus whispered. Then, at Orpheus’
command,
the Argonauts, in all their armor, circled the fire in a high-stepping dance, beating their shields with their
swordhilts, drowning
the noise of the Doliones, far below us, still mourning their king. More wildly than the storm mute Phlias
danced, their leader.
Louder and louder their armor rang in the night, and
the flam
of drums. I could hardly hear myself, yelling to Hera—
much less
hear the howling of the winds, the howl of the
mourners. Then—
strange business! — the trees began shedding their fruit,
and the earth at our feet
magically put on a cloak of grass. Beasts left their lairs, their burrows and thickets, and came to us wagging
their tails. Nor was
that all. There had never been water — there was neither
spring nor pool—
before that time on Bear Mountain. Now, though no one
touched
a spade, a stream came gushing from the earth, a stream
that flows
even now, called Jason’s Well. And so, it seems, the
goddess
heard us. We finished our rites with a feast — all this
according
to ritual. By dawn, the wind had dropped. We could sail.
“Old Mopsos said — we were standing in the woods
alone, when the rest
had walked back down to the harbor—: ‘My son, you did
that well!
Never have I witnessed a more auspicious flush of signs! Such miracles! Surely the goddess Hera loves you, boy! Surely the crew of the Argo is in divinely favored hands!’ I bowed. He studied me, picking at his lip. He
said,
eyes wicked, grinning in spite of himself: ‘You’re
unimpressed.
Some trick, you imagine? You think the goddess of
will (all praise
to her name) may not have been here with us?’ Then
I too smiled.
“We made a good deal of noise,” I said, and avoided his
eyes.
‘ If I were a mountain, a stormy sky, and were shaken
to the heart
by noise like that, I might do almost anything — goddess or no goddess.’ The old seer chuckled, crazy-eyed. ‘Shrewd observation,’ he whispered, bending close.
‘Bravo!
All very well for a big ignoramus like Herakles to shudder and shake at magic tricks. We know better,
you and I!
Mopsos, king of all augurers, marching to his death—
and for what?
And Jason, robbed of his Lemnian beauty, forced on a
senseless,
pointless mission — abandoning his mother to
ignominious
death, wasting his wonderful oratory (“Jason of the
Golden
Tongue,” as they say) outshouttng cacophonous winds
and drums:
pawn of the fates, murderer of friends that he meant
no harm to,