Jason and the Argonauts Read Online Free PDF Page B

beyond it,
    mainland again, the coastline of Magnesia,
    790 and Dolops’ barrow under sunny skies.
    That afternoon a stiff wind rose against them,
    and they were forced to run the ship ashore.
    Then, as they roasted joints of sheep at twilight
    to honor Dolops, surges riled the sea.
    795 (588) Two days and nights they idled on the beach
    and on the third again launched
Argo,
spreading
    her ample sail. That shore is known today
    as
Argous Aphetai
(or “
Argo
’s Launch”).
    From there they sped along past Meliboea,
    800 marveling at the cliffs and storm-swept shore.
    They spotted Homola at dawn, a city
    slanted toward the sea, and sailed on past it.
    A little farther, and they would have skirted
    the mouth of the Amyrus. Next they spotted
    805 Eurymenae and the eroded gorges
    of Ossa and Olympus. As they sped
    that night before the panting of the wind,
    they passed the Pallenean cliffs beyond
    the headland of Canastra, and at dawn
    they still were dashing onward.
    810 (601) There was Athos,
    the Thracian mountain, rising up before them.
    The shadow from its utmost summit reaches
    eastward to Myrina Promontory
    on Lemnos—leagues a well-trimmed ship would need
    815 from dawn to noon to travel. All day long
    a mighty wind was blowing, and the sail
    rippling, but the gale expired at sunset.
    So the heroes rowed to rugged Lemnos,
    land of the venerable Sintians.
    820 Here, in the previous year, the womenfolk
    had mercilessly slaughtered all the menfolk—
    inhuman massacre! The men, you see,
    had come to loathe and shun their lawful wives
    and suffer a persistent lust instead
    825 (611) for captive maidens they themselves had carried
    home across the sea from raids in Thrace.
    (This was the wrath of Cyprian Aphrodite
    exacting vengeance on the men because,
    for years, they had begrudged her any honors.)
    830 Stricken with an insatiable resentment
    that would destroy their way of life, the women
    cut down not only their own wedded husbands
    and all the battle brides who slept with them
    but every other male as well, the whole
    835 race of them, so that no one would survive
    to make them pay for their atrocious slaughter.
    Hypsipyle alone of all the women
    thought to save her father—aged Thoas
    who, as it chanced, was ruler at the time.
    840 (622) She hid him in an empty chest and cast him
    into the ocean, hoping he would live.
    Fisherman caught him off an island called
    Oenoa then but later on Sicinus
    after the child Sicinus whom Oenoa
    845 (a water nymph) conceived from her affair
    with Thoas.
    Soon enough the women found
    animal husbandry, the drills of war,
    and labor in the wheat-producing fields
    easier than the handcrafts of Athena
    850 to which they were accustomed. Often, though,
    they scanned the level sea in grievous fear
    that Thracian soldiers would descend upon them.
    So, when they saw the
Argo
under oar
    and heading toward their shore, they dressed in armor
    855 (637) and like a mob of Maenad cannibals
    dashed through Myrina Gate onto the beach.
    They all assumed the Thracians were at hand.
    Hypsipyle, the child of Thoas, joined them,
    and she had donned the armor of her father.
    860 There they mustered, mute in their dismay,
    so great a menace had been swept against them.
    Meanwhile the heroes had dispatched ashore
    Aethalides, the posthaste messenger,
    whose work included overtures and parleys.
    865 He held the scepter of his father Hermes,
    and Hermes had bestowed on him undying
    memory of whatever he was told.
    Although Aethalides has long since sunk
    under the silent tide of Acheron,
    870 (645) forgetfulness has never seized his spirit—
    no, he is doomed to change homes endlessly,
    now numbered with the ghosts beneath the earth,
    now with the men who live and see the sun . . .
    wait,why have I digressed so widely, talking
    about Aethalides?
    875 On this occasion
    his overtures convinced Hypsipyle
    to grant his comrades harbor for the night,
    since it was getting on toward