40 pages • 1 hour read
Apollonius of RhodesJason and the Golden Fleece
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Reimagining An Ancient Epic for a New City
Apollonius of Rhodes cannot be precisely dated, but he was active in the third century BC during the period of ancient Greek history that scholars typically refer to as the Hellenistic Period. The dates of this period are highly approximate and continue to be debated, but in the broadest terms, the Hellenistic period has been said to encompass the years between the death of Alexander of Macedon in 323 BC and the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when the Ptolemaic Empire fell to the Roman Empire. After the death of Alexander, his successors divided the lands he had conquered into three empires: the Seleucids in Asia, the Antigonids in Macedonia, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. During and after Alexander’s conquests, colonization and immigration expanded the Greek-speaking world, and what it meant to be a Hellene continued to evolve.
The Hellenistic empire that most concerns readers of Apollonius is the Ptolemies, who ruled from a new city, Alexandria, named after Alexander. Unlike the city-states of archaic and classical Hellas, which claimed ancient and mythic origins, Alexandria was a city founded in the historical present by the people who lived there. In addition to being new, it was an ethnically mixed city of Greek-speaking immigrants from around the Hellenic world and indigenous populations. Under the Ptolemies, Alexandria also became a center of intellectual activity. Among the first institutions they created were the Museum and Library of Alexandria. The former was dedicated to studying and preserving the past, and the Library sought to house a copy of every extant Greek text. According to one legend, ships that entered the harbor were searched for books, and any that the Library did not already have a copy of were requisitioned. Here, scholars and poets worked under the attention of emperors, creating an identity for a new city that wished simultaneously to associate itself with Greek prestige and incorporate itself into existing Egyptian institutions.
Against this backdrop, Apollonius’ Jason and the Golden Fleece was composed, self-consciously engaging in contemporary myth-making and identity-shaping. Apollonius himself is believed to have been from Alexandria (rather than, as with other poets associated with the city, an immigrant to it), to have been a scholar of Homer and Hesiod, and possibly to have served as tutor to the future Ptolemy Euergetes. Homer’s epics were ideal poems for Apollonius to engage in crafting his new epic because they already had a panhellenic association and were an educational cornerstone for Greek speakers, no matter their origins. Apollonius interweaves Homeric tropes, narrative patterns, characters, and language across his poem, from the catalogue of heroes in Book 1, to the play on the figures of the helpful seer and local princess in Books 2 through 4, to the travel narrative of Book 4 that charts for the Argonauts a course similar to that of Homer’s Odysseus. In the process, he creates a “modern” epic for his new city, paradoxically by stretching further into the mythic past, locating narratives and figures with a connection to Egypt and plotting them on Jason’s quest.
Heroism and the Tension Between Tradition and Innovation
From the opening sentence, Apollonius effectively announces that he will simultaneously situate himself within and differentiate himself from the Homeric epics: “Taking my start from you, Phoibos, I shall recall the glorious deeds of men of long ago” (3). Setting Apollonius’ opening against the invocation of the Muse in Homer’s two epics reveals a progression, across all three, in the relationship between singer/poet and divine source. By locating his narrator at the end of this progression but his heroes further into the mythic past than Homer’s, Apollonius demonstrates the cyclical relationship between tradition and innovation.
In the Iliad, the narrator asks the Muse to “sing” through him, perhaps reflecting the poem’s composition within oral song culture. In this conception, the bard is an instrument through which divine knowledge flows. The Odyssey’s narrator asks the Muse to “tell” him about a “man/husband of many devices,” possibly suggestive of transitional periods between both orality and literacy and the mythical age of heroes (in which the Trojan war and the golden fleece quest are set) and the historical present. The Muses remain sources of inspiration, but the distance between mortals and gods has increased. Apollonius’ narrator takes his cue from Apollo, god of poetry, rather than memory (the Muses), to “recall” past deeds of great men (3). While Apollonius’ narrative is set in the distant mythical past, further back than Homer’s Trojan war and its aftermath, its narrator is located firmly in the historical period, a literate age, where poetry and prose continue to be experienced orally but, through texts, can travel beyond the boundaries of their context. Apollonius continues to work within the tradition of Olympian gods and heroes, but as cultures and technologies evolve, so does the tradition.
This dynamic is best exemplified through Apollonius’ characterization of Herakles. In addition to functioning as a character within the narrative, Herakles may represent the Hellenic past that Greek speakers carry with them into the new age, in which a handful of competing empires replaced hundreds of independent city-states, and the boundaries of the Greek-speaking world expanded. In particular, Herakles may stand for the tradition of hero myths that poets composing in Greek inevitably both compete with and adapt for their own time. This is evident from the outset, when Herakles is given the seat of honor on the Argo “above the other heroes,” and the place where he sits dips lower than the others, owing to his excessive weight (12).
The memory of Herakles, then, may either inspire and protect the Argonauts or weight them down, depending on how they engage with it. Apollonius may be using the figure of Herakles to reflect on the weight of tradition on Greek-speaking poets seeking to shape a new identity. These traditions—of myth and place, hero and story—are never entirely left behind but woven into the consciousness of Greek speakers as they move forward into a new era.
Free Will Versus Divine Intervention in Hellenic Literature
The struggle between free will and divine intervention in the epic recalls Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Euripides’ Helen. Homer’s epics revolve around Zeus’ cosmic plan to transition from the mythical, heroic age to the historical present of archaic and classical Athens. Euripides’ tragedy was performed in a sacred context, bringing residents of Athens together to honor the gods of the city. These contexts inevitably dictate not only the narratives themselves, but also their meaning: to explore the dynamic between mortals and immortals. The context of Jason and the Golden Fleece impacts both narrative and meaning: Apollonius’ epic is composed for a new empire of disparate populations, immigrant and indigenous, Hellenes and Egyptians. It is concerned with the construction of myth that can explore the dynamics among disparate peoples living under the Ptolemies. Human motivations and dynamics are foregrounded, and divine intentions recede.
Zeus does not appear as a character in Jason and the Golden Fleece, a marked difference from Homer. Zeus’ presence enters the epic primarily via the plank of Dodona (his oracular site) installed in the Argo. It speaks once, to effectively order Jason and Medea to visit Kirke for purification of Apsyrtos’ murder, but there is no sense that Jason and Medea’s narrative is connected to a larger plan of Zeus’ to which they are essential. The epic contains only one scene on Olympus, featuring Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, and when they act to protect Jason and the Argonauts, their intervention is presented primarily as a product of their affection for the heroes. The struggle Homer’s gods experience to let their favorite mortals suffer and die is absent from Apollonius.
While the goddesses play an essential role in the successful outcome of the quest, Apollonius focuses attention on human motives and struggles. Jason’s anxieties and insecurities surface repeatedly, with the Argonauts providing emotional and practical support. They boost his confidence when he feels down, step in when he is not up to the task, and scold him when he is excessively negative. Medea’s internal struggle makes up a core part of the narrative in Books 3 and 4. She is afflicted by love for Jason but feels ashamed that she is betraying her father and people. Fear of her father’s punishment forces her to flee with Jason, but being isolated from her people renders her vulnerable and fearful. Jason is under pressure to lead when he does not feel up to the task, to protect Medea but also his Argonauts, and falls in love with Medea because, the narrative implies, she is a pretty girl crying and asking for his help. Again and again, even as Apollonius gives the gods their due, since the Argonauts’ success hinges on their support, he shifts his gaze back to the intimate and domestic.
