Now to sing of Jason: like Phrixus a man of Thessaly and indeed his kinsman, Jason was the son of Aeson, who ruled the kingdom of Iolcus, close beside the land where Athamas, the father of Phrixus, was king; and Aeson was a son of Cretheus, brother of Athamas, so Aeson and Phrixus were cousins. Jason’s name at birth was Diomedes. King Aeson was a mild and gentle man, but his warlike half-brother Pelias, coveting the throne, forced him to yield his crown to him when Aeson’s son Diomedes was only a babe, though Pelias promised that when Diomedes reached manhood he would surrender the royal power to him. Aeson was kept a prisoner thereafter in Pelias’ palace; as for Diomedes, a kindly servant saw to it that he was smuggled out of Iolcus to Mount Pelion, where he was placed in the care of the centaur Cheiron. The centaur gave him the new name of Jason, meaning “healer,” and raised him there until he was grown. This much I know to be true, for Cheiron told me so himself.
The usurper Pelias, ruling unchallenged in Iolcus, was haunted by the ghost of his cousin Phrixus, who told him in dreams that neither Pelias nor any of his kin would flourish until both Phrixus and the fleece of the golden ram that had carried him to Colchis were brought back to Thessaly. Pelias also was troubled by an oracle’s tale that a man with one sandal would come to his city and overthrow him. And indeed one day a man with one foot bare did arrive in Iolcus: none other than Jason, now full-grown and intending to restore his father to the throne. He had lost the sandal while helping the goddess Hera, in the guise of an old woman, to cross a river, and by so doing had won the gratitude and the protection of the queen of the gods.
Jason was taken before Pelias, and boldly—or, one might say, foolishly—told him that the name he bore was one that his foster-father Cheiron had given him, but before he was Jason he had been Diomedes, son of King Aeson. He demanded that Pelias step down from the throne, as he had sworn to do long ago; and the deceitful Pelias, pretending great love for his brother and his brother’s son, replied without hesitation that he would, but on one condition.
“And what may that be?” asked Jason.
“This land is under the curse of our kinsman Phrixus, whose spirit wanders unhallowed in Colchis. An oracle has told me that there will be no peace for our family until he is returned to the city of his birth, and that must be done only in a certain way. Therefore build a ship and sail to Colchis, and bring the ghost of Phrixus home to Iolcus aboard that ship, and bring with it the fleece of the golden ram that had carried him as a fugitive to Colchis before you were born.”
That seemed to Pelias the perfect way to rid himself of Jason; for the sea voyage to Colchis was so fraught with perils that it was almost impossible to survive, and in any event stealing the Golden Fleece from under the baleful glare of that unsleeping dragon was something that no one could achieve. But Jason, as I have said twice now, was a great fool, though a brave man, and he set out forthwith to build the ship and bring Phrixus and the fleece home from Colchis.
Whereupon Cheiron the centaur came to me in Thrace and told me that I was essential to the success of Jason’s voyage, and I yielded to the inevitability of the gods’ decree, and so my involvement with Jason and his Argonauts began.
“Argonauts,” we were called, because the name of our craft was Argo, and that in honor of Argus of Thespiae, who with the help of Athena built that great vessel at Pagasae on the Magnesian coast in Thessaly just east of Iolcus. It was a splendid ship. None so grand had ever been built before, and not until long after our times would its equal be seen on the seas. A well-balanced fifty-oared galley, it was, slender and graceful, built for speed, with a keel and frame of oak and planks of pine brought from the forested slopes of Mount Pelion, all of them fastened in place with bronze nails and caulked with tar. A sturdy mast of fir that would soar far over our heads was nearing completion when I arrived at Pasagae. The bottom had already been finished and the close-set ribs were rising, but I watched that great shipwright put in the long side-planking and construct the half-decks, and fence the hull about with a latticed bulwark to keep the water out, and build a broad oar to steer her with, and fashion a wondrous square sail out of the white linen cloth of Egypt to cling to that mighty mast. For her prow Argus took a great beam from the roof of the royal palace in Iolcus that had come from Zeus’ sacred grove in Dodona.
The sound of hammering went on day and night. The magnificent vessel, with timbers painted blue and gold and crimson, came rapidly toward completion; and meanwhile the band of heroes who would take her to Colchis was assembling, summoned from far and wide at Jason’s behest.
Such a group of voyagers had never been brought together before. Heracles himself was among us, that giant among men, and Peleus, the father of Achilles, and Odysseus’ father Laertes. A phalanx of sons of trident-wielding Poseidon would be aboard: Ancaeus of Tegea, Erginus of Miletus, Melampus of Pylos, Nauplius of Argos. It is always good to have sons of Poseidon among one’s shipmates, for the sea-god will look after them and their companions. Nor were the other Olympian gods unrepresented, for also we had bronze-helmed Ares’ son Ascalaphus of Orchomenus, Hermes’ son Echion of Mount Cyllene and also his guileful brother Erytus, and Idmon the Argive, Apollo’s son. Heracles, as everyone knows, was begotten by Father Zeus, and with us as well were two more of Zeus’s get, Castor of Sparta and his brother, the invincible boxer Polydeuces. Then there were winged Zetes and Calais, the sons of the north wind Boreas. We would have had famed Theseus with us too, another hero of Poseidon’s making, but a different task detained him at the time. You will find in the writings of the poets who wrote of our journey in the years afterward the names of many others also, hundreds of them all told, who are said to have sailed aboard the Argo, for every city has its poet and what city would not have wanted to claim its share of that fabled voyage? But I assure you that our ship had but fifty oars. I will not list all the others who actually did go with us: suffice it to say it was an extraordinary gathering of men, and even one woman, Atalanta the long-legged virgin huntress, whose beauty and swiftness of foot impelled Jason to include her in our group.
It will not surprise you to hear that such a band of proud heroes might be inclined toward quarrelsomeness, especially when wine had been flowing quickly; and so, very shortly, it was made clear to me why the gods had chosen me to accompany them. For only through the calming influence of song could these headstrong and boisterous men be made to remain at peace with one another.
They were fighting among themselves on the beach at Pagasae when I first came among them. Our captain Jason, for all his strength and valor, and he was richly endowed with both, was a brooding indecisive man. He had been lost in some somber meditation on the wisdom of undertaking the voyage when Idas of Messene drunkenly accused him of cowardice, and then loudly bragged that even if all-seeing Zeus himself sent misfortune to the Argo, Idas would fend it off. Idmon, who was one who laid claim to having been engendered by Apollo, took offense at this boastfulness, and berated Idas for it, as did Polydeuces the boxer, who knocked Idas down when Idas angrily brandished his spear. Then Lynceus, the brother of Idas, came running up, sword in hand, to take his brother’s part, and chaos and bloodshed threatened.
It was at this moment that I made my appearance in their midst. Brooding, anguished Jason caught me by the wrist and said, “Orpheus! By the gods, you come to us at a welcome time! You who can lure oak trees out of the forest and down to the seashore by the sound of your lyre, quickly play a melody that will soothe these madmen before we are all lost.”