The Last Song of Orpheus

12

The story of our voyage up the Euxine Sea to Colchis is something everyone knows, for the tale has been told again and again by the poets. But the daily toil, the pain, the struggle—ah, who can know of that who was not there? For me the suffering was a required ordeal, part of the education that the gods had designed for me; what it signified for the others, I cannot say. But though we suffered greatly, we none of us uttered a word of complaint. Through suffering comes purification.

Day after day we followed along the edge of those great waters, a voyage such as few had ever made, day succeeding day, pink dawn and golden noon and red twilight and purple night, and dawn again and noon and night, and dawn again, and noon and twilight and night, and on and on we went on the breast of that arduous sea. There was salt in our lungs, the salt of the sea-breezes that we inhaled with every pull of the oars. The blazing sun baked our skins. The hard dry wind out of the east assailed our aching eyes. Along the shore tall cities flamed in the sun, stone buildings, gold-fretted temples, courses of white paving-stones leading down to the sea, bright in the blaze of the morning light. Rarely did we halt at any of them, but continued going ever deeper into the unknown, moving past the mysterious kingdoms of the Euxine that nestled in the blue valleys descending between the great round mist-wrapped hills.

The land of the Bithynians, Phineus had told us, lay on our right, but he warned us to make no landing there. We went past it and the mouth of the River Rhebas and the Black Cape and, with our provisions beginning now to run low, we made our first landfall on the little low-lying isle of Thynias to seek meat and fresh water. There Apollo appeared before me in all his divine splendor, golden hair streaming in the wind, his silver bow in his left hand and the ground atremble beneath his feet as he strode by, and I built an altar in his honor and sacrificed a wild goat to him, and pledged myself anew to his service.

Beyond there we traveled awhile without going ashore, but when we drew near the city of Mariandyne, King Lycus’ land, Jason, feeling fretful and anxious and desirous of diversion and sport, ordered us to put the Argo into its harbor. It was an unlucky choice, one of many that our uneasy captain was destined to make.

There is at Mariandyne an entrance to the Netherworld that no one had ever entered and survived, though Heracles, some years hence, would go down into it and return—a frightful chasm through which the icy waters of the Acheron come bursting to the surface, coating the surrounding rocks with glittering frost. Perhaps it was the cold wind that endlessly blows there from below that brought us ill luck, for at Mariandyne we lost Idmon the Argive, a hot-tempered man but a tireless and valuable one. Idmon had some gift as a soothsayer, and had dreamed, the night before, a dream that seemed to foretell his death; but nevertheless he took part in a boar-hunt the next morning, and as he passed beside a reedy meadow a great white-tusked boar sprang up from the side of a stream and gored him in the thigh, so that a fountain of blood spurted from it. Peleus and Idas carried him back to the ship, but he died in their arms before they reached it.

Even while we were still mourning for Idmon we suffered an even more grievous loss, a true catastrophe. In the family of Tiphys the helmsman it was a tradition that no man could live longer than the age of nine and forty years, for there was a curse on his line: Tiphys’ grandfather had been imprudent enough once to cut down a sacred oak, and forty-nine was the number of the years that that oak had lived before it was felled. Tiphys now had reached the same age, and had known from the start of the voyage that he would not survive it. In Mariandyne he fell ill and wasted quickly away, despite the efforts of those among us who understood the medicinal arts; for the most efficacious medicines in the world are helpless against the inescapable decrees that shape our fates.

So Tiphys the irreplaceable was lost, and it was our task to replace him. Jason looked to those sons of the sea-lord Poseidon who were in our midst, of course, Nauplius of Argos, Erginus of Miletus, Melampus of Pylos, and Ancaeus of Tegea, and for a time we debated their various merits among ourselves. In the end Jason gave the nod to Ancaeus, whose strength and courage in time of crisis were beyond debate. And indeed he served us well throughout the remainder of the voyage, though no man could ever have matched Tiphys in his guileful mastery of the sea. After twelve unhappy days in Mariandyne we took to the water once more.

The wind was strong behind us and our oarsmen enjoyed a holiday as the breezes carried us along. To Sinope in Paphlagonia we went, where Jason recruited the brothers Deileon, Autolycus, and Phlogius to fill three of the empty seats on our benches, and then past the river called the Thermodon, that has only four branches short of a hundred, and amidst whose headlands the Amazon women are said to dwell, and after that to the land of the Chalybes, who dig iron from the ground and refine it in an everlasting cloud of black smoke to sell to neighboring tribes. Phineus had advised us to halt next at the Isle of Ares, which we found to be a place infested by huge swarms of such fierce predatory birds that we had to drive them off by pounding on our helmets and shouting with all our might. This we did, and the birds fled, but we wondered why Phineus had told us to put in at this inhospitable site. Soon we had our answer when we came upon four castaways, who said they were brothers, the sons of Phrixus, he who had been carried to Colchis on the back of the ram that bore the fleece of gold. They had been shipwrecked here, they said, while attempting to return from unfriendly Colchis to the land of their grandfather Athamas in distant Thessaly.

Jason, greatly surprised, let them know that he was the grandson of Athamas’ brother Cretheus, and therefore he and they were cousins. He explained that we were even then en route to Colchis to bring home not only the Golden Fleece but the troubled wandering spirit of his uncle Phrixus, their father; and we took them aboard to swell our number.

Now our goal was within reach. Nightfall brought us to an island called Philyra, which had its name because the centaur Cheiron was engendered there long ago by Cronos, king of the Titans, deceiving his wife the goddess Rhea with Philyra, the daughter of Ocean. Cronos, surprised by Rhea in the very act, transformed himself into a stallion and went galloping away, leaving Philyra impregnated with a strange creature that took on half the form of the stallion itself. Or so the story goes. I have never asked Cheiron about the truth of it. At any rate, we passed Philyra and several countries upwater from it, traveling now at great speed before a friendly wind, and saw the lofty peaks of the Caucasus before us, where the Titan Prometheus was chained after his defiance of Zeus and suffers the eternal torment of having an eagle gnaw at his liver, and then the Euxine came to its end.

In front of us now was the mouth of the broad swift-flowing river called the Phasis, which is the river that waters Colchis. We wept with joy, knowing that our quest was nearly done. Jason poured out a libation of wine and honey in gratitude to the gods who had carried us this far, and then up the river we sailed, until the city of Aea, capital of the land of Colchis, lay before us on the left. On our right was the sacred grove of great close-ranked trees where the serpent-guarded Golden Fleece was hanging, as it had hung since the arrival of Phrixus in Colchis, on the branches of a leafy oak. It was the fiftieth day since we had set sail from Pasagae.

Of our arrival in Colchis, of Jason’s involvement with the witch Medea, and of our theft of the Golden Fleece itself, I will try to make a brief telling, since the tale is all so familiar. You will already know how cautious Jason decided not to approach King Aietes at once, for the sons of Phrixus had advised him that Aietes was a dark-souled, dangerous man. Instead Jason ordered us to put the Argo into a sheltered marshy backwater while we discussed the strategy he had in mind. And so we lowered and stowed the sail and yard, and unstepped the mast and lay it beside them, and amidst that reedy, stinking, sweltering marsh we came together in council to hear our captain’s plan.

Trying to seize the wondrous Fleece by force was obviously impossible. It would be just a sparse handful of us against a whole city. What Jason proposed to do was to take the same simple, straightforward approach with Aietes that he had taken in Iolcus that time when, placing his trust in the gods, he went before his usurping uncle Pelias and asked that he restore the rightful king Aeson to his throne. He meant now to go to Aietes and request that the Fleece be given to him as a sign of favor, because he was the kinsman of Phrixus who had brought the Fleece to Colchis in the first place and an oracle had foretold that it was his destiny to return the Fleece to the land of Phrixus’ people.

It was a simple plan indeed, too simple, and there was no reason why it should succeed. Hera, Jason’s patron goddess, had indeed caused Pelias to greet Jason pleasantly and pretend to accede to his request, but then Pelias had sent him off on this voyage, where he might have lost his life a hundred times. Aietes, I knew, would do the same. To me, for whom the future is an aspect of the past and the present is an eternal reality, the outcome was clear: Jason would gain the Fleece, yes, but not in the easy way he hoped for. But I kept silent and the men voted their approval of Jason’s scheme without hesitation.

So Jason, with the four sons of Phrixus as his guides, went unarmed from the Argo into the city of Aea and presented himself before Aietes, King of Colchis. With them also went the wise Peleus and his noble brother Telamon. I was not there; what I know of Jason’s first audience with the king, I know only by the reports I had from others. But I think it is a fair rendition of the things that took place.

This Aea was then among the greatest of cities. A high wall surrounded it, fashioned of smooth well-squared stones of such immense size that only giants or gods could have hoisted them into place, and within it stood a royal palace as grand as any that any king had ever had. Indeed it was as splendid as the palace of Pharaoh in sun-smitten Egypt, where I had spent so many years learning the ancient magic of that land. Egyptian sorcerers had come long ago to Aea, too, bringing their wisdom and teaching it, and in front of Aea’s palace, an imposing marble structure with cornices of bronze, were great pillars inscribed with long passages in the secret writing of Egypt, though I think that in Aietes’ time no citizen of Aea still remembered how to read them. Behind them stood a row of white stone columns entwined with vines, and four awesome fountains, which, so the people of Colchis firmly maintain, had been built for some ancient king of their land by none other than Hephaestus. Indeed they were godly in their majesty, those fountains, one giving forth clear water, and the next one milk, and another oil, and the fourth one wine, gushing freely into basins of iron, bronze, silver, and gold.

Jason and his companions were met first, as he told us afterward, by Chalciope, the king’s daughter, who had been the wife of Phrixus. She was surprised to see her sons returning so soon from their voyage to Thessaly; but they simply told her that they had come back to aid Jason in his quest for the Fleece, and forthwith she brought Jason before the king to make his request.

Aietes was then a man of great age, white-haired and bent, but his green eyes were unfaded and keen, and they had a tiger’s ferocity. Beside him on his throne was his second wife, Eidyia by name, with her son the prince Apsyrtus at her side. Also there was the witch-priestess Medea, who like Chalciope was Aietes’ daughter by his dead first wife. This Medea was a golden-haired woman, very beautiful, with skin of a dark olive hue very strange for one so fair-haired; she had her father’s penetrating green eyes, and her brows were heavy and closely knitted together, as though some hidden anger forever raged within her.

The sight of Phrixus’ sons back at his court once more drove Aietes instantly to fury. He thought that they had returned with the intent of seizing his throne, bringing some dangerous stranger with them, and coldly ordered them gone, telling them that he would have had their tongues torn out and their hands lopped off, but that they once had dined at his table. Jason, though, stepped calmly forward. You are in no peril, neither from the sons of Phrixus nor from me, is what he said, for they are merely acting as my guides and I have come here only to fulfill the decree of the oracle concerning the return of the Golden Fleece. He told Aietes also that he had brought with him a band of heroes. Peleus and Telamon, here, were just two of them, and they both could trace their ancestry back to Zeus; and many another man of his company was of godly descent as well. He and those who had come with him would perform any service Aietes might require of them by way of compensation for the Fleece—for example, subduing some hostile tribe that stood in need of conquest.

As Jason should have understood, Aietes had no more desire to hand over the Fleece than he would have had to offer his crown to the first passing beggar who asked for it. But the king kept his own counsel and, though I suspect he was tempted to have Jason taken off and slain on the spot, he assumed an amiable guise and told him that he might well bestow the Fleece upon him if Jason and his band would first carry out one or two little tasks for him. It was much the same tactic that Pelias of Iolcus had adopted when Jason had come to him to ask him to abdicate. The little tasks Aietes had in mind were as hazardous as the voyage to Colchis was—not only the conquering of nearby troublesome tribes, but also some things involving fire-breathing bulls that needed to be yoked to a plow, and the slaying of certain invincible warriors spawned from dragons’ teeth, and other such well-nigh impossible enterprises. Jason maintained a sturdy facade, though surely his heart must have been downcast upon hearing of all that Aietes required of him.

Well, you know the story. That day Eros had struck Jason with his shaft at his first view of Medea, and had smitten Medea in the same way; and what had passed between them in that moment was the same fiery thing that had passed between Eurydice and me, a burning pain so sweet that the heart overflows with it, a force so great that it cannot be withstood. Jason had felt that force more than once before—you will recall that when we were at Lemnos he had nearly let the whole purpose of our voyage slip from his mind, so infatuated was he with that island’s queen—but for virginal Medea all this was new, and it took full possession of her soul. Of Jason’s manly magnificence—and he was, in truth, a man of great and heroic beauty, almost godlike in his strength and splendor—she would from that moment on think day and night, to the exclusion of all else. And he too became obsessed with her: by a mighty oath he swore to make her his wife once he had succeeded in his quest. But he respected her maidenhood and did not at that time let the overwhelming desire he felt for her carry him away. There were great tasks to be done first, and they both understood how risky it would be to let Aietes perceive that Jason and his daughter were forming a league against him.

For then and there, linked as they were by the sudden bond of passion, Medea and Jason had silently made a compact with each other to work together to fulfill Aietes’ requests, and to take the Fleece from him after that. I have said that she was a witch and a priestess of mysterious Hecate, and indeed she was. All manner of skills were at her command, the use of magical herbs, of poisons, of spells. Then, too, not only was her heart consumed with love for Jason, but it had long been full of hatred for her father Aietes and his city, for he had neglected her grievously after her mother’s death, and she had lived in his palace almost as a maidservant might, embittered and forlorn, a lonely, forgotten woman whose only solace lay in the dark cult of her mistress the moon-goddess Hecate. So with her sister Chalciope’s help she had herself secretly conveyed to Jason a little while afterward, and offered him the aid of her witchcraft in performing the tasks that Aietes had laid upon him, and so it was agreed.

When Jason had dealt with the fire-breathing bulls and the magical warriors who had to be overcome, and so forth, making use of a potion Medea had brewed from the blood-red juice of the crocus flower that blooms in the Caucasus in the places where the blood of the tortured Prometheus has spilled, he ordered the Argo brought from its hiding-place in the marsh. That was no easy task for us, pulling the vessel free of the heavy muck into which it had settled. We anchored it at a wharf in the city harbor in a place called “the Ram’s Couch.”

Aietes, ever suspicious, was dismayed at the sight of the great craft and its formidable band of heroes. He was certain now that Jason had come to Colchis to overthrow him. When the news was brought to him soon after that Jason had achieved all that he had been ordered to accomplish, the king was consumed by a high fury and resolved that he would put the Argo to the torch and slaughter all her crew, rather than keep his promise to surrender the Fleece.

Unaware, though, of all that had passed betwen Jason and Medea, Aietes was injudicious enough to let slip something to her concerning his intentions. Hastily Medea carried word of that to Jason, telling him that he must seize the Fleece that very night—she would aid him in that, she told him, using one of her potions to lull the serpent that kept watch over it—and then he must set out to sea immediately thereafter. She would, she said, leave Colchis with us, for she was confident that Jason would make good on his pledge to take her as his wife once the expedition had returned to the Hellene lands.

“So be it,” said Jason, buckling on his sword.

Then Medea turned to me and said, “You must come along with us today, Orpheus. My drug alone will not be sufficient to close the serpent’s eyes.”

I understood. Indeed, I had been expecting the request.

So we set out together in the darkness, Jason and Medea and I, toward the sacred forest called the Precinct of Ares, some six miles away from our mooring-place. There the fabled Golden Fleece hung all agleam from a bough of a gigantic oak tree. It was near to dawn when we got there; and when the first pink glow fell upon us out of the east, we beheld not only the tree and the wondrous dazzling Fleece, so bright even in that early light that the eye could barely stand to look upon it for long, but also saw the terrible guardian of the Fleece, lying coiled in casual heaps about the base of the tree, a monstrous mottled green-and-gray thing so thick around that I doubt that even Heracles could have encompassed its girth with his arms.

The snake was sleeping when we approached. But it sensed us quickly, opening first one chilly red-rimmed eye and then the other, and lifted its enormous head and hissed a warning to us to be gone. “By Hera,” said Jason in a hoarse whisper, “it would be greater in length than the Argo itself, if it uncoiled,” and I looked at him and saw him pale and bloodless, with unmistakable terror showing on his face, a thing which I had never seen before. I realized that he must believe now that everything he had struggled for all these many months was slipping from his grasp in this one moment, for surely it would be impossible to gain the mastery over this stupendous monster.

But Medea showed us then, as she would on many occasions thereafter, that she was a woman born without any sense of fear. She went forward until she stood face to face with the beast, so close that she could almost have reached out and tapped it on its scaly snout. It hissed once more and, slowly, almost lazily, drew its huge jaws apart as though it meant to devour her at a gulp. Medea, weaving from side to side very much as if she were a serpent herself, murmured an incantation of some sort, a low rhythmic chant in a language I had never heard before. From the bosom of her gown she drew a small green phial sealed with a waxen stopper and broke the seal, and with a quick gesture splashed the potion that the phial contained across the serpent’s slitted nostrils.

A different kind of hiss came from the serpent then, a muzzy soft-edged sound that seemed almost like one of bafflement. A mist came over those hard ophidian eyes and the great eyelids began to grow slack and the beast’s head swayed sleepily from one side to the other. But its fanged jaws were still gaping, and even as the creature struggled against the power of Medea’s drug it thrust its head malevolently in Jason’s direction as though it meant to snap him in two if it could manage to reach him.

“Now,” she cried. “Play, Orpheus! Play!”

Yes. I played.

There is music to stir the soul and make a man leap forward eagerly to his death on the battlefield, and there is music to spur the oarsmen of a great ship to pull against the angriest of seas, and there is music that can soothe any creature into the trance of utmost peace. I knew my task and I had the skill. I took my lyre in my hands and from it came such tones as even a monster like this could not withstand. The shallow drowsiness that Medea’s potion had induced became deep slumber. The ponderous jaws slowly closed and the huge head sagged and sagged again, until it fell nestling into the creature’s tangled coils. I swear by bright-eyed Athena and her father the lord of thunder that the thing had begun to snore.

Quickly Jason broke free of his terrors, sprang forward past the helpless serpent, reached up and pulled the Fleece from the tree. In that same moment the dawning sun came fully into the sky and its brilliant radiance, striking against the Fleece like a bolt of lightning, lit Jason from head to foot so that he seemed to shine with a golden flame. For an instant it seemed that I was looking not upon the mortal son of Aeson but on Apollo himself.

“Come,” he cried hoarsely, and we fled from that grove and hurried back to the Argo where it lay in harbor. There Jason displayed his glittering prize to our astonished comrades, who gathered round, murmuring in awe. Medea came aboard with us, as she had said she would. We said the words that we hoped would bring the restless spirit of dead Phrixus on board too, for that was part of our task. That having been done, we cut our hawsers then and there, and with a furious splashing of oars we pulled out into the open water.