The Argonautica
has straightway loosed Poseidon’s swift-wheeled car, then do ye pay to
your mother a recompense for all her travail when she bare you so long
in her womb; and so ye may return to the divine land of Achaea.”
Thus they spake, and with the voice vanished at once, where they stood.
But Jason sat upon the earth as he gazed around, and thus cried:
“Be gracious, noble goddesses of the desert, yet the saying about our
return I understand not clearly. Surely I will gather together my
comrades and tell them, if haply we can find some token of our escape,
for the counsel of many is better.”
He spake, and leapt to his feet, and shouted afar to his comrades, all
squalid with dust, like a lion when he roars through the woodland
seeking his mate; and far off in the mountains the glens tremble at the
thunder of his voice; and the oxen of the field and the herdsmen
shudder with fear; yet to them Jason’s voice was no whit terrible the
voice of a comrade calling to his friends. And with looks downcast they
gathered near, and hard by where the ship lay he made them sit down in
their grief and the women with them, and addressed them and told them
everything:
“Listen, friends; as I lay in my grief, three goddesses girded with
goat-skins from the neck downwards round the back and waist, like
maidens, stood over my head nigh at hand; and they uncovered me,
drawing my cloak away with light hand, and they bade me rise up myself
and go and rouse you, and pay to our mother a bounteous recompense for
all her travail when she bare us so long in her womb, when Amphitrite
shall have loosed Poseidon’s swift-wheeled car. But I cannot fully
understand concerning this divine message. They said indeed that they
were heroines, Libya’s warders and daughters; and all the toils that we
endured aforetime by land and sea, all these they declared that they
knew full well. Then I saw them no more in their place, but a mist or
cloud came between and hid them from my sight.”
Thus he spake, and all marvelled as they heard. Then was wrought for
the Minyae the strangest of portents. From the sea to the land leapt
forth a monstrous horse, of vast size, with golden mane tossing round
his neck; and quickly from his limbs he shook off abundant spray and
started on his course, with feet like the wind. And at once Peleus
rejoiced and spake among the throng of his comrades:
“I deem that Poseidon’s ear has even now been loosed by the hands of
his dear wife, and I divine that our mother is none else than our ship
herself; for surely she bare us in her womb and groans unceasingly with
grievous travailing. But with unshaken strength and untiring shoulders
will we lift her up and bear her within this country of sandy wastes,
where yon swift-footed steed has sped before. For he will not plunge
beneath the earth; and his hoof-prints, I ween, will point us to some
bay above the sea.”
Thus he spake, and the fit counsel pleased all. This is the tale the
Muses told; and I sing obedient to the Pierides, and this report have I
heard most truly; that ye, O mightiest far of the sons of kings, by
your might and your valour over the desert sands of Libya raised high
aloft on your shoulders the ship and all that ye brought therein, and
bare her twelve days and nights alike. Yet who could tell the pain and
grief which they endured in that toil? Surely they were of the blood of
the immortals, such a task did they take on them, constrained by
necessity. How forward and how far they bore her gladly to the waters
of the Tritonian lake! How they strode in and set her down from their
stalwart shoulders!
Then, like raging hounds, they rushed to search for a spring; for
besides their suffering and anguish, a parching thirst lay upon them,
and not in vain did they wander; but they came to the sacred plain
where Ladon, the serpent of the land, till yesterday kept watch over
the golden apples in the garden of Atlas; and all around the nymphs,
the Hesperides, were busied, chanting their lovely song. But at that
time, stricken by Heracles, he lay fallen by the trunk of the
apple-tree; only the tip of his tail was still writhing; but from his
head down his dark spine he lay lifeless; and where the arrows had left
in his blood the bitter gall of the Lernaean hydra, flies withered and
died over the festering wounds. And close at hand the Hesperides, their
white arms flung over their golden heads, lamented shrilly; and the
heroes drew near suddenly; but the maidens, at their quick approach, at
once became dust and earth where they stood. Orpheus marked the divine
portent, and for his comrades addressed them in prayer: “O divine ones,
fair and kind, be gracious, O queens, whether ye be numbered among the
heavenly goddesses, or those beneath the earth, or be called the
Solitary nymphs; come, O nymphs, sacred race of Oceanus, appear
manifest to our longing eyes and show us some spring of water from the
rock or some sacred flow gushing from the earth, goddesses, wherewith
we may quench the thirst that burns us unceasingly. And if ever again
we return in our voyaging to the Achaean land, then to you among the
first of goddesses with willing hearts will we bring countless gifts,
libations and banquets.”
So he spake, beseeching them with plaintive voice; and they from their
station near pitied their pain; and lo! First of all they caused grass
to spring from the earth; and above the grass rose up tall shoots, and
then flourishing saplings grew standing upright far above the earth.
Hespere became a poplar and Eretheis an elm, and Aegle a willow’s
sacred trunk. And forth from these trees their forms looked out, as
clear as they were before, a marvel exceeding great, and Aegle spake
with gentle words answering their longing looks:
“Surely there has come hither a mighty succour to your toils, that most
accursed man, who robbed our guardian serpent of life and plucked the
golden apples of the goddesses and is gone; and has left bitter grief
for us. For yesterday came a man most fell in wanton violence, most
grim in form; and his eyes flashed beneath his scowling brow; a
ruthless wretch; and he was clad in the skin of a monstrous lion of raw
hide, untanned; and he bare a sturdy bow of olive, and a bow, wherewith
he shot and killed this monster here. So he too came, as one traversing
the land on foot, parched with thirst; and he rushed wildly through
this spot, searching for water, but nowhere was he like to see it. Now
here stood a rock near the Tritonian lake; and of his own device, or by
the prompting of some god, he smote it below with his foot; and the
water gushed out in full flow. And he, leaning both his hands and chest
upon the ground, drank a huge draught from the rifted rock, until,
stooping like a beast of the field, he had satisfied his mighty maw.”
Thus she spake; and they gladly with joyful steps ran to the spot where
Aegle had pointed out to them the spring, until they reached it. And as
when earth-burrowing ants gather in swarms round a narrow cleft, or
when flies lighting upon a tiny drop of sweet honey cluster round with
insatiate eagerness; so at that time, huddled together, the Minyae
thronged about the spring from the rock. And thus with wet lips one
cried to another in his delight:
“Strange! In very truth Heracles, though far away, has saved his
comrades, fordone with thirst. Would that we might find him on his way
as we pass through the mainland!”
So they spake, and those who were ready for this work answered, and
they separated this way and that, each starting to search. For by the
night winds the footsteps had been effaced where the sand was stirred.
The two sons of Boreas started up, trusting in their wings; and
Euphemus, relying on his swift feet, and Lynceus to cast far his
piercing eyes; and with them darted off Canthus, the fifth. He was
urged on by the doom of the gods and his own courage, that he might
learn for certain from Heracles where he had left Polyphemus, son of
Eilatus; for he was minded to question him on every point concerning
his comrade. But that hero had founded a glorious city among the
Mysians, and, yearning for his home-return, had passed far over the
mainland in search of Argo; and in time he reached the land of the
Chalybes, who dwell near the sea; there it was that his fate subdued
him. And to him a monument stands under a tall poplar, just facing the
sea. But that day Lynceus thought he saw Heracles all alone, far off,
over measureless land, as a man at the month’s beginning sees, or
thinks he sees, the moon through a bank of cloud. And he returned and
told his comrades that no other searcher would find Heracles on his
way, and they also came back, and swift-footed Euphemus and the twin
sons of Thracian Boreas, after a vain toil.
But thee, Canthus, the fates of death seized in Libya. On pasturing
flocks didst thou light; and there followed a shepherd who, in defence
of his own sheep, while thou weft leading them off[37] to thy comrades
in their need, slew thee by the cast of a stone; for he was no
weakling, Caphaurus, the grandson of Lycoreian Phoebus and the chaste
maiden Acacallis, whom once Minos drove from home to dwell in Libya,
his own daughter, when she was bearing the gods’ heavy load; and she
bare to Phoebus a glorious son, whom they call Amphithemis and Garamas.
And Amphithemis wedded a Tritonian nymph; and she bare to him Nasamon
and strong Caphaurus, who on that day in defending his sheep slew
Canthus. But he escaped not the chieftains’ avenging hands, when they
learned the deed he had done. And the Minyae, when they knew it,
afterwards took up the corpse and buried it in the earth, mourning; and
the sheep they took with them.
Thereupon on the same day a pitiless fate seized Mopsus too, son of
Ampycus; and he escaped not a bitter doom by his prophesying; for there
is no averting of death. Now there lay in the sand, avoiding the midday
heat, a dread serpent, too sluggish of his own will to strike at an
unwilling foe, nor yet would he dart full face at one that would shrink
back. But into whatever of all living beings that life-giving earth
sustains that serpent once injects his black venom, his path to Hades
becomes not so much as a cubit’s length, not even if Paeeon, if it is
right for me to say this openly, should tend him, when its teeth have
only grazed the skin. For when over Libya flew godlike Perseus
Eurymedon for by that name his mother called him—bearing to the king
the Gorgon’s head newly severed, all the drops of dark blood that fell
to the earth, produced a brood of those serpents. Now Mopsus stepped on
the end of its spine, setting thereon the sole of his left foot; and it
writhed round in pain and bit and tore the flesh between the shin and
the muscles. And Medea and her handmaids fled in terror; but Canthus
bravely felt the bleeding wound; for no excessive pain harassed him.
Poor wretch! Already a numbness that loosed his limbs was stealing
beneath his skin, and a thick mist was spreading over his eyes.
Straightway his heavy limbs sank helplessly to the ground and he grew
cold; and his comrades and the hero, Aeson’s son, gathered round,
marvelling at the close-coming doom. Nor yet though dead might he lie
beneath the sun even for a little space. For at once the poison began
to rot his flesh within, and the hair decayed and fell from the skin.
And quickly and in haste they dug a deep grave with mattocks of bronze;
and they tore their hair, the heroes and the maidens, bewailing the
dead man’s piteous suffering; and when he had received due burial
rites, thrice they marched round the tomb in full armour, and heaped
above him a mound of earth.
But when they had gone aboard, as the south wind blew over the sea, and
they were searching for a passage to go forth from the Tritonian lake,