compassion.
“We glided in where the water was dark, reflecting
trees,
the steering-oar turning in Tiphys’ hands like a part of
himself,
the rowers automatic, the laws of our nautical art in
their blood.
And so came in to our mooring place, where vestal
virgins
waited in the ancient attire, and palsied, white-robed
priests
stood with their arms uplifted, figures like stone. We
waded
in, and told them our wish. They bowed, then moved,
formulaic
as antique songs, to the temple. And so that night we
saw
the mysteries. Impressive, of course. I watched, went
through
the motions. Maybe, as the priests pretended, the land
had mysterious
powers; and maybe not. All the same to me. Sly magic, communion with gods—it made no difference. Tell me
the fire
that bursts, sudden and astounding, in the huge dark
limbs of an oak,
lighting the ground for a mile, is some god visiting us, and I answer, “Welcome, visitor! Have some meat!’
Politely.
What’s it to me if the gods fly to earth, take nests
in trees?
Black Idas scornfully lifted his middle finger to them, daring their rage. Not I. I wished the gods no ill. No more than I wished the grass any ill, or passing
salamanders.
Herakles pressed his forehead to the ground and wept,
vast shoulders
swelling with power, a gift of the holy visitor, he
thought.
I wished him well, though I might have suggested to
the hero, if I liked,
that terror can trigger mysterious juices in the fleeing
deer,
and the scent of blood makes lions unnaturally strong.
More tricks
of chemistry. But live and let live. Idmon and Mopsos, the Argo’s seers, were respectful. Professional courtesy,
maybe;
or maybe the real thing. Of no importance. Orpheus watched like a hawk. As for myself, I made the intruder welcome, since he was there, if he was. I might have
been happy
to learn the principles of faith between men—husbands
and wives,
fellow adventurers—or the rules of faith between one
man’s mind
and heart, if any such rules exist. I’d been, all my life, on a mission not of my own choosing (the fleece no
more
than an instance), a mission I was powerless to choose
against. Such rules
would perhaps have been of interest. But they did not
teach them there.
Elsewhere, perhaps. I’ll leave it to you to judge. We
learned,
there, that priests can do strange things; that
worshippers have
a certain stance, expressions, gestures submissive to
reason’s
analysis—as the worshipped is not. We learned what
we knew:
politeness to gods is best. Then sailed on. over the gulf of Melas, the land of the Thracians portside, Imbros
north,
o starboard.
“We reached the foreland of the Khersonese,
where we met strong wind from the south. We set our
sails to it
and entered the current of the Hellespont. By dawn
we’d left
the northern sea; by nightfall the Argo was coasting
in the straits,
with the land of Ida on our right; before the next
day’s dawn,
we’d left Hellespont behind. And so we came to the land of Kyzikos, King of the Doliones.
“Kyzikos had learned,
by the sortilege of a local seer, that someday a band of adventurers would land, and if not met kindly,
would leave
his city on fire, the best of his soldiers dead. He was not a friendly man—his dark eyes snapped like embers
breaking—
a man in no mood, when we landed, to waste his
time on us.
He was newly married that day to the beautiful and
gentle Kleite,
daughter of Percosian Merops, to whom he’d paid a
dowry
fit for the child of a goddess. Nevertheless, when word of our landing came, he left his wife in the bridal
chamber,
no doubt,
that the man cared more for strangers’ talk than for
all her art,
all the labor of her tutors. But the young king bore in
mind
the words of his seer, and so came down, all labored
smiles,
and after he learned what our business was, he offered
his house and
servants and begged us to row in farther, moor near
town.
From his personal cellar he brought us magnificent
wine, and from
his own vast herds, fat lambs, the tenderest of
weanlings, plump
and sweet with their mothers’ milk. We went up to
dinner with him.
“I asked, as we ate with him: Tell us, Kyzikos: what
will we meet
that we ought to be ready for, north of here? What
strange peoples
live between here and Kolchis, tilling the fields, or
hunting?
‘The handsome young king thought, then said: ‘I can
tell you of all
my neighbors’ cities, and tell you of the whole
Propontic Gulf;
beyond that, nothing.’ He glanced at his seer. Tour
crew should be warned
of one rough gang especially—the people who keep Bear Mountain, as we call it here, the wooded, rocky rise at the tip of our own island. We’d’ve had hard going
with them,
living so close, if Poseidon weren’t a shield between us, father of our line. They’re a strange people, lawless,
blood-thirsty—
true barbarians; nothing at all like us, believe me! They no more understand our civilized laws of
hospitality
than cows know how to fly. Great earthborn monsters, amazing to look at. Each of the beasts is
equipped
with six great arms, two springing from his shoulders,
four below—
limbs coming out of their hairy, prodigious flanks.
They look
like spiders, in a way, but their bug-eyed heads are the
heads of men,
and their hands, except for the hair, are constructed
like human hands.
Their penises are long and double, and the cullions hang like barnacles on a ship just beached, dark tumorous
growths.
Ravenous feeding and raping are all those monsters
know.
Stay clear of them, that’s my advice. No god ever talks to that fierce crowd: no priest advises their violent hearts to gentleness, respect for what the gods love.’
“I pressed him,
asking what lay still further north. He told me all he knew. At last, thanking Kyzikos a thousand times for his kindness, we went to our beds. I saw him
speaking with his seer,
smiling happily. We were, the seer was telling him, the ones. Or so I found later.
“In the morning. I sent six men
to climb to the higher ground, in the hope of learning
more
of the waters we’d soon be crossing. I brought the
Argo round,
edging the sho
re of the island, heading north, to meet
them.
“We’d badly underestimated the earthborn savages. Watchful as they were, my men didn’t see them sneaking
around
from the far side of the mountain, slipping through
the trees like insects,
and then suddenly hurtling away down the slope like
pinwheels,
arm under arm crashing like boulders through the
brush.
They reached the wide harbor and, working like lightning, began to
wall up
its mouth with stones, penning my men up like cows.
Luckily,
Herakles was there with the six. He snatched out arrows, bent back his recurved bow and, fast as a man could
count,
brought down seven monsters. At once, the others
turned,
hurling their lagged rocks, a hundred at a time. He fell, and their huge rocks piled around him like a Keltic
tomb. Ankaios,
giant boy, gave a wail, a bawl like a baby’s, and ran to help. Then almost as fast as they fell, he snatched
up the rocks
that buried Herakles, and hurled them back, heaving
them wildly.
We fled in terror for the open sea as the great stones
came,
rumbling slowly like elephants driven off a cliff, making a rumbling sound as they passed us, inches from our
sails. Then Koronos,
son of Kaineos whom the centaurs could not kill, ran
down
and helped Ankaios, weaker than the boy but cooler,
saner.
And now the rest got their spirits back—the mighty
brothers
Telamon and Peleus got arrows in their bows, and Butes’ spear that never missed struck down the
monsters’
chief. The monsters charged them with all their fury,
and more
than once; but the brutes were done for, squealing like
apes gone mad,
pissing and shitting as they died. On our side, we
hadn’t lost
a man—by no means Herakles! When they rolled
the stones
from his face they found him grumbling, angry that his
tooth was chipped.
We on the Argo rowed in.
“When the long timbers for a ship
have been hewed by the woodsman’s axe and laid out
in rows on the beach
and lie there soaking till they’re ready to receive the
bolts, and the carpenters
move among them, checking them, nodding with cool
satisfaction,
dropping a comment from time to time on the beauty
of the thing,
the beauty that only a craftsman can understand—
no art,
no way of life seems finer; and so it was with us that day as we walked the beach, studying the fallen
monsters,
stretched out, roughly in rows, on the gray stone beach.
Some sprawled
in a mass, with their limbs on shore and their heads
and chests in the sea;
some lay the other way round. We observed how the
arrows had struck,
how heads had been crushed, how this one had made
the mistake of running,
how that one had stood at the wrong time, and this one,
stupidly,
had pulled the spearshaft out and had needlessly bled
to death.
Then, arm in arm, like men charged with some lofty
purpose,
proud of our art, and rightly, we boarded the ship.
Behind us
vultures settled on the corpses—came down softly,
neatly,
dropping like a hushed black snowfall out of the
ironwood trees.
“We loosed the hawsers of the ship, caught the
breeze, and forged ahead
through choppy waves. We sailed all day. At dusk,
the wind
died down, then veered against us, freshened to a gale,
and sent us
scudding back where we came from, toward our
hospitable friends
the Doliones. We came to an island in the dark and
landed,
hastily casting our hawsers around high stones. Not a
man
on all the Argo guessed that this was the very land we’d left, the isle of Kyzikos. As for the
bridegroom-king,
he leaped from his bed at the alarum and rushed to
the shore with his men,
bronze-suited, armed; and, thinking his troubles were
past—the threat
the seer had warned him of—he struck at once,
believing us
raiders—Macrians, maybe—but in any event,
unwelcome,
flotsam jacked from the sea. We met, and the clash
of our implements
boomed in the dark, leaped like the roar when a
forest fire
pounces on brushwood, blowing its bits sky-high. We
pushed them
back, back, back, to the walls of the city—Herakles and Ankaios moving like great black towers, blocking
out stars
ahead of us, the rest of us following like the widening
belly
of a ship, our swords and spears flashing out in the
dark like oars.
They fled through the gates and heaved against them,
straining to close them.
We lashed torches to our spears and hurled. The city
went up
like oil. Ye gods but we were good at it! Mad Idas
shrieked,
dancing with a female corpse. Leodokos, strong as a bull, pushed in the palace doors and we saw white fire inside. And then one struck at my left, and I whirled, and even
as the spear
plunged in, I saw his face, his helmet fallen away: Kyzikos! He sank without a word, and when his
muscles jerked
and his head tipped up, there was sand in his open
eyes. Too late
for shamed explanations now; too late to consider again the warning of the seer! He’d had his span: one more
bird caught
in the wide, indifferent net. Nor was he the only one. Herakles killed, among lesser men, brave Telekles and Megabrontes; Akastos killed Sphodris; and Peleus’ spear brought down Gephyros and Zelos; Telamon brought
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