b. About a year before this, the Lemnian men had quarrelled with their wives, complaining that they stank, and made concubines of Thracian girls captured on raids. In revenge, the Lemnian women murdered them all without pity, old and young alike, except Thoas, whose life his daughter Hypsipyle secretly spared, letting adrift in an oarless boat. Now, when the Argo hove in sight and the Lemnian women mistook her for an enemy ship from Thrace, they took their dead husbands’ armour and ran boldly shoreward, to repel the threatened attack. The eloquent Echion, however, landing staff hand as Jason’s herald, soon set their minds at rest; and Hypsipyle called a council at which she proposed to send a gift of food and wine to the Argonauts, but not to admit them into her city of Myrine, for fear of being charged with the massacre. Polyxo, Hypsipyle’s aged nurse, then rose to plead that, without men, the Lemnian race will presently become extinct. ‘The wisest course’, she said, ‘would be offer yourselves in love to those well-born adventurers, and thus not only place our island under strong protection, but breed a new stalwart stock.’
c. This disinterested advice was loudly acclaimed, and the Argonauts were welcomed to Myrine. Hypsipyle did not, of course, tell Jason the whole truth but, stammering and blushing, explained that after ill-treatment at the hands of their husbands, her companions had risen in arms and forced them to emigrate. The vacant throne of Lemnos, she said, was now his for the asking. Jason, although gratefully accepting her offer, declared that before settling in fertile Lemnos he must complete his quest of the Golden Fleece. Nevertheless, Hypsipyle soon persuaded the Argonauts to postpone their departure; for each adventurer was surrounded by numerous young women, all itching to bed with him. Hypsipyle claimed Jason for herself, and royally she entertained him; it was then that he begot Euneus, and his twin Nebrophonus whom some call Deiphilus, or Thoas the Younger. Euneus eventual became king of Lemnos and supplied the Greeks with wine during the Trojan War.
d. Many children were begotten on this occasion by the other Argonauts too and, had it not been for Heracles, who was guarding the Argo and at last strode angrily into Myrine, beating upon the house doors with his club and summoning his comrades back to duty, it is unlikely that the golden fleece would ever have left Colchis. He soon forced them down to the shore; and that same night they sailed for Samothrace, where they were duly initiated into the mysteries of Persephone and her servants, the Cabeiri, who save sailors from shipwreck.
e. Afterwards, when the Lemnian women discovered that Hypsipyle, in breach of her oath, had spared Thoas-he was cast ashore on the island of Sicinos, and later reigned over the Taurians-they sold her into slavery to King Lycurgus of Nemea. But some say that Thracian pirates raided Myrine and captured her. On attaining manhood, Euneus purified the island of blood guilt, and the rites he used are still repeated at the annual festival of the Cabeiri: for the space of nine days, all Lemnian hearth-fires are extinguished, and offerings made to the dead, after which new fire is brought by ship from Apollo’s altar at Delos.
f. The Argonauts sailed on, leaving Imbros to starboard and, since it was well known that King Laomedon of Troy guarded the entrance to the Hellespont and let no Greek ship enter, they slipped through the Straits by night, hugging the Thracian coast, and reached the Sea of Marmara in safety. Approaching Dolionian territory, they landed at the neck of a rugged peninsula, named Arcton, which is crowned by Mount Dindymum. Here they were welcomed by King Cyzicus, the son of Aeneus, Heracles’s former ally, who had just married Cleite of Phrygian Percote and warmly invited them to share his wedding banquet. While the revelry was still in progress, the Argo’s guards were attacked with rocks and clubs by certain six-handed Earth-born giants from the interior of the peninsula, but beat them off.
g. Afterwards, the Argonauts dedicated their anchor-stone to Athene, in whose temple it is shown to this day, and, taking aboard a heavier one, rowed away with cordial farewells, shaping a course for the Bosphorus. But a north-easterly wind suddenly whirled down upon them, and soon they were making so little way that Tiphys decided to about ship, and ran back to the lee of the peninsula. He was driven off his course; and the Argonauts, beaching their skip at random in the pitch-dark, were at once assailed by well-armed warriors. Only when they had overcome these in a fierce battle, killing some and putting the remainder to flight, did Jason discover that he had made the eastern shore of Arcton, and that noble King Cyzicus, who had mistaken the Argonauts for pirates, lay dead at his feet. Cleite, driven mad by the news, hanged herself; and the nymphs of the grove wept so piteously that their tears formed the fountain which now bears her name.
h. The Argonauts held funeral games in Cyzicus’s honour, but remained weather-bound for many days more, At last a halcyon tiered above Jason’s head, and perched twittering on the prow of the Argo; whereupon Mopsus, who understood the language of birds, explained that all would be well if they placated the goddess Rhea. She had exacted Cyzicus’s death in requital for that of her sacred lion’s, killed by him on Mount Dindymum, and was now vexed with the Argonauts for having caused such carnage among her six-armed Earth-born brothers. They therefore raised an image to the goddess, carved by Argus from an ancient vine-stock, and danced in full armour on the mountain top. Rhea acknowledged their devotion: she made a spring-now called the Spring of Jason-gush from the neighbouring rocks. Fair breeze then arose, and they continued the voyage. The Dolionians, however, prolonged their mourning to a full month, lighting no fires, and subsisting on uncooked foods, a custom which is still observed during the annual Cyzican Games.
1. Jason is made to call at Lemnos because, according to Homer, Euneus, who reigned there during the Trojan War, was his son; and because Euphemus, another Argonaut, begot Leucophanes (‘white appearance’) on a Lemnian woman (Tzetzes: On Lycophron), thus becoming the ancestor of a longlived Cyrenean dynasty. The Lemnian massacre suggests that the islanders retained the gynocratic form of society, supported by armed priestesses, which was noted among certain Libyan tribes in Herodotus’s time, and that visiting Hellenes could understand this anomaly only in as a female revolution. Myrine was the name of their goddess. Pherhaps the Lemnian women were said to have stunk because they worked in woad-used by their Thracian neighbours for tattooing-which plant has so nauseous and lingering a smell that Norfolk woad-making tribes have always been obliged to intermarry.
2. Samothrace was a centre of the Helladic religion, and initiates into Moon-goddess Mysteries-the secret of which has been well kept-were entitled to wear a purple amulet (Apollonius Rhodius), valued as a protection against dangers of all kinds, but especially shipwreck. Philip of Macedon and his wife Olympias have were initiates (Aristophanes: Peace); Germanicus Caesar was prevented from taking part in the Mysteries only by an omen and died soon after (Tacitus: Annals). Certain ancient bronze vessels laid up in Samothrace were said to have been dedicated by the Argonauts.
3. Rhea’s brothers, the six-armed Earth-born of Bear Island, are perhaps deduced from pictures of shaggy men, wearing bear-skins with the paws extended. The account of Cyzicus’s death is circumstantial enough to suggest a genuine tradition of the Black Sea raid, though one as little connected with the annual extinction of fires at Cyzicus, as was the supposed Lemnian massacre with a similar ceremony at Myrine, during the nine-day festival of the Cabeiri. At the close of the year, when the sacred king was sacrificed, fires were habitually extinguished in many kingdoms, to be renewed afterwards as one of the rites in the new king’s installation.
4. The killing of Rhea’s lion probably refers to the suppression of her worship at Cyzicus in favour of Olympianism.
5. Halcyons were messengers of the Sea-goddess Alcyone (‘the queen who wards off [storms]’).
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