PHINEUS had warned the Argonauts of the terrifying rocks, called Symplegades, or Planctae, or Cyaneae which, perpetually shrouded in sea mist, guarded the entrance to the Bosphorus. When a ship attempted to pass between them, they drove together and crushed her; but, at Phineus’s advice, Euphemus let loose a dove or, some say, a heron, to fly ahead of the Argo. As soon as the rocks had nipped off her tail feathers, and recoiled again, the Argonauts rowed through with all speed, aided by Athene and by Orpheus’s lyre, and lost only their stern ornament. Thereafter, in accordance with a prophecy, the rocks remained rooted, one on either side of the straits, and though the force of the current made the ship all but go forward, the Argonauts pulled at their oars until they bent like bows, and gained the Black Sea without disaster.
b. Coasting along the southern shore, they presently touched at the islet of Thynias, where Apollo deigned to appear before them in a blaze of divine glory. Orpheus at once raised an altar and sacrificed a wild goat to him as Apollo of the Dawn. At his instance, the Argonauts now swore never to desert one another in time of danger, an oath commemorated in the Temple of Harmonia since built on this island.
c. Thence they sailed to the city of Mariandyne-famous for the near-by chasm up which Heracles dragged the dog Cerberus from the Underworld-and were warmly welcomed by King Lycus. News that his enemy, King Amycus, was dead had already reached Lycus by runner, and he gratefully offered the Argonauts his son Dascylus to guide them on their journey along the coast. The following day, as they were about to embark, Idmon the seer was attacked by a ferocious boar lurking in the reed-beds of the river Lycus, which gashed his thigh deeply with its great tusks. Idas sprang to Idmon’s assistance and, when the boar charged again, impaled it on his spear; however, Idmon bled to death despite their care, and the Argonauts mourned him for three days. Then Tiphys sickened and died, and his comrades were plunged in grief as they raised a barrow over his ashes, beside the one that they had raised for Idmon. Great Ancaeus first, and after him Erginus, Nauplius and Euphemus, all offered to take Tiphys’s place as navigator; but Ancaeus was chosen, and served them well.
d. From Mariandyne they continued eastward trader sail for many days, until they reached Sinope in Paphlagonia, a city named after the river Asopus’s daughter, to whom Zeus, falling in love with her, had promised whatever gift she wished. Sinope craftily chose virginity, having her home here, and spent the remainder of her life in happy solitude. At Sinope, Jason found recruits to fill three of the vacant seats on his benches: namely the brothers Deileon, Autolycus, and Phlogius, of Tricca, who had accompanied Heracles on his expedition to the Amazons but, being parted from him by accident, were now strand in this outlandish region.
e. The Argo then sailed past the country of the Amazons; and that the iron-working Chalybians, who neither till the soil, nor tend flocks but live wholly on the gains of their forges; and the country of the Tibarenians, where it is the custom for husbands to groan, as if in child bed, while their wives are in labour; and the country of the Moesynoechians, who live in wooden castles, couple promiscuously, and carry immensely long spears and white shields in the shape of ivy leaves.
f. Near the islet of Ares, great flocks of birds flew over the Argo dropping brazen plumes, one of which wounded Oileus in the shoulder. At this, the Argonauts, recalling Phineus’s injunctions, donned their helmets and shouted at the top of their voices; half of them rowing, while the remainder protected them with shields, against which they clashed their swords. Phineus had also counselled them to land on the islet, and this they now did, driving away myriads of birds, until no one was left. That night they praised his wisdom, when a huge storm arose and four Aeolians clinging to a baulk of timber were cast ashore close to their camp; these castaways proved to be Cytisorus, Aegeus, Phrontis, and Melanion, sons of Phrixus by Chalciope, daughter King Aeëtes of Colchis, and thus closely related to many of the present. They had been shipwrecked on a journey to Greece, when they were intending to claim the Orchomenan kingdom of their grandfather Athamas. Jason greeted them warmly, and all together offered sober sacrifices on a black stone in the temple of Ares, where its foundress, the Amazon Antiope, had once sacrificed horses. When Jason explained that his mission was to bring back the soul of Phrixus Greece, and also recover the fleece of the golden ram on which he has ridden, Cytisorus and his brothers found themselves in a quandary though owing devotion to their father’s memory, they feared to offer their grandfather by demanding the fleece. However, what choice has they but to make common cause with these cousins who had saved their lives?
g. The Argo then coasted past the island of Philyra, where Cronus once lay with Philyra, daughter of Oceanus, and was surprised by Rhea in the act; whereupon he had turned himself into a stallion, and galloped off, leaving Philyra to bear her child, half man, half horse-which proved to be Cheiron the learned Centaur. Loathing the monster she now had to suckle, Philyra prayed to become other than she was; and was metamorphosed into a linden- tree. But some say that this took place in Thessaly, or Thrace; not on the island of Philyra.
h. Soon the Caucasus Range towered above the Argonauts, and they entered the mouth of the broad Phasis river, which waters Colchis. First pouring a libation of wine mixed with honey to the gods of the land, Jason concealed the Argo in a sheltered backwater, where he called a council of war.
1. The Clashing, Wandering, or Blue Rocks, shrouded in sea mist, seem to have been ice-floes from the Russian rivers adrift in the Black Sea; reports of these were combined with discouraging accounts of the Bosphorus, down which the current, swollen by the thawing of the great Russian rivers, often runs at five knots. Other Wandering Islands in the Baltic Sea seem to have been known to the amber-merchants.
2. Cenotaphs later raised by Greek colonists to honour the heroes Idmon and Tiphys may account for the story of their deaths during the voyage. Idmon is said to have been killed by a boar, like Cretan Zeus, Ancaeus, and Adonis-all early sacred kings. The name Idmon (‘knowing’) suggests that his was an oracular shrine and, indeed, Apollonius Rhodius describes him as a seer.
3. Mariandyne is named after Ma-ri-enna (Sumerian for ‘high fruitful mother of heaven’), alias Myrine, Ay-mari, or Mariamne, a well-known goddess of the Eastern Mediterranean. Chalybs was the Greek for ‘iron’, and ‘Chalybians’ seems to have been another name for the Tibarenians, the first iron workers of antiquity. In Genesis their land is called Tubal (Tubal-Tibar), and Tubal Cain stands for the Tibarenians who had come down from Armenia into Canaan with the Hyksos hordes. Modified forms of the couvade practised by the Tibarenians survive in many parts of Europe. The customs of the Moesynoechians, described by Xenophon-whose Anabasis Apollonius Rhodius had studied-are remarkably similar to those of the Scottish Picts and the Irish Sidhe, tribes which came to Britain in the early Bronze Age from the Black Sea region.
4. Jason’s encounter with the birds on the islet of Ares, now Puga Islet, near the Kessab river, suggests that the Argo arrived there at the beginning of May; she will have navigated the Bosphorus before the current grew too powerful to stem, and reached Puga at the time of the great spring migration of birds from the Sinai peninsula. It appears that a number of exhausted birds, having flown across the mountains of Asia Minor, on their way to the Volga, found their usual sanctuary of Puga islet overcrowded and alighted on the Argo, frightening the superstitious crew nearly out of their wits. According to Nicoll’s Birds of Egypt, these migrants include ‘kestrels, larks, harriers, ducks and waders,’ but since the islet was dedicated to Ares, they are credited by the mythographers with brazen feathers and hostile intentions. Heracles’s expulsion of the Stymphalian birds to an island in the Eastern Black Sea is likely to have been deduced from the Argonauts’ adventure, rather than contrariwise as is usually supposed.
5. Cheiron’s fame as a doctor, scholar, and prophet won him the title Son of Philyra (‘linden’); he is also called a descendant of Ixion. Linden flowers were much used in Classical times as a restorative, and still are; moreover, the bast, or inner bark, of the linden provided handy writing tablets, and when torn into strips was used in divination (Herodotus). But Philyra island will have derived its name from a clump of linden-trees which grew there, rather than from any historical ties with Thessaly or Thrace. None of these coastal islands is more than a hundred yards long.
6. Colchis is now known as Georgia, and the Phasis river as the Rion.
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