Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

T HE I SLE OF L EMNOS Pelias and the citizens of Iolcos gathered at the harbour to join in the praising and blessing of the Argo’s voyage. Goats screamed under the knives of priests, smoke from their burnt flesh rose up to the gods. Flowers were strewn and grains were sown on the water; flocks of released doves rocketed into the sky; choirs of children sang; dogs barked, fought and mated. On board the Argo laughing stowaway youths were pulled from their hiding places and thrown onto the quayside, into the arms of their whooping, drunken friends. Jason’s mother and father, Aeson and Alcimede, now freed from their imprisonment by the apparently repentant Pelias, stood and waved up from the dockside, conflicted by alternating feelings of pride and consternation. Their young son Promachus was there, stamping his feet and sobbing because he had been deemed too young to join the crew. ‘I’ll be thirteen soon! That’s old enough to go on a voyage.’ Jason had ruffled his hair. ‘When I come back, I’ll let you sail with me on my next voyage. Until then your job is to look after our mother and father. I want you all safe here in Iolcos.’ Those words would haunt Jason one day. A reverential silence fell as Orpheus stood on the prow and struck up a hymn upon his lyre. The brothers Calais and Zetes called on their father Boreas, the North Wind, and on AEOLUS, keeper of all the winds. On the foredeck, Jason, the bright rays of the morning sun seeming to set his hair ablaze, stood hand on hip calling out orders to cast off and set sail. Three girls in the crowd swooned and fainted dead away. Deckhands heaved on the rigging and the people gasped to see the Argo’s sails unroll from their twin masts and stretch to catch the wind. They cheered as Jason sprang down and cried to Tiphys to raise the anchor stone and let slip the mooring ropes. The Argo plunged a little, as if ducking to wet her beak, then came upright and surged serenely forward, the surf streaming from the painted figurehead on her prow. Never had such a ship been seen. Not a roll, not a yaw and not a creak from her timbers. So stable and so sturdy, so swift, straight, trim and true. The citizens of Iolcos stayed to gaze after her until she was no more than a speck on the horizon. Pelias climbed into his litter, glancing back at Aeson and Alcimede who now stood alone on the quay, arm in arm. ‘They can wait till they rot of old age,’ he said to himself, ‘their precious son won’t be coming back.’ Pelias was well aware of the dangers that awaited the Argonauts. He stroked his beard. ‘I wonder where they will first put in? Lemnos would be about right. Oh, I do hope it is Lemnos.’ His malicious hope was to be fulfilled. Myrina, on the isle of Lemnos, was indeed the first port of call planned by Jason. The Argo had sailed eastwards from Iolcos without incident. Jason found the ship everything he had hoped for and more. Never had so well-built or so well-provisioned a vessel put to sea. Morale was high; dolphins leapt in the bow waves, auspicious sea eagles mewed high above them. They had the music of Orpheus to raise their spirits and the knowledge that they were all members of the finest crew of men ever to set out on a quest. ‘Lemnos in an hour, sir,’ Tiphys said to Jason, squinting up at the sun and making his calculations. ‘Gather round, everyone,’ commanded Jason. ‘For those who do not know, let me tell you about Lemnos.’ He was grateful now that he had, for the most part, paid attention during those long lessons when his tutor Chiron patiently took him through the history and practices of the tribes, peoples, provinces, islands and kingdoms of the known world. ‘As I’m sure most of you learned at your mothers’ knees, Lemnos is where the infant Hephaestus was brought up after being cast down from Olympus by his mother, the Queen of Heaven.’ Jason touched the fingers of his right hand to his lips and raised them heavenwards in a salute to his divine protectress, Hera. ‘But since then Lemnos has had a heavy history. There are no men on the island, only women.’ Cheers, laughter and crude expressions of delight from the crew. ‘Yes, yes. But listen. Generations ago, the women of the island began to neglect Aphrodite. We all know how the goddess treats those who insult her, but what she did to the Lemnian women was extreme, even for the Lady of Cyprus. She made the women smell so rancid, disgusting, so foul that the island’s male population couldn’t bear to go near them. So the men took to sailing off to the mainland and bringing back Thracian women and girls instead. The Lemnian wives wouldn’t stand for that so they murdered the men in their beds one after the other, leaving an island of women only. Their queen is HYPSIPYLE fn29 and when we put in you must give me a chance to call on her and make sure we will be welcomed.’ ‘Do they still stink then, these women?’ ‘Well?’ said Jason, directing the question to the figurehead on the prow. Though carved into a likeness of Hera, her voice and manner more resembled those of the talking oaks of Dodona, of whose timbers she was composed. ‘Are you talking to me?’ ‘The women of Lemnos. Are they still cursed with the foul stench?’ ‘You’ll just have to find out, won’t you?’ When they put in at the small harbour, Jason and the crew were met by a knot of stern-looking women from whom no discernible odour arose. Nor did Queen Hypsipyle, who received Jason with warmth and respect, give off anything but an air of friendly welcome. It seemed to all the Argonauts that the curse of Aphrodite must have been lifted, for the women soon showed nothing but delight in the company of men. ‘Let’s stay,’ said Tiphys, who already had his arm round two smiling and blushing Lemnians. Jason, entirely smitten by the beauty of Hypsipyle, willingly assented. The Argonauts stayed long enough for the queen to bear Jason twin sons, EUNEUS and THOAS, the latter named after Hypsipyle’s father, whom she had secretly spared from the general massacre of Lemnian menfolk. ‘I hid my father in a wooden chest and sent him out to sea,’ she confided to Jason. ‘I have since heard word that he survived and is well.fn30 Don’t tell the other women – they’ll never forgive me.’ ‘Such mercy is so like you,’ said Jason lovingly. Mercy was a strange word to use, perhaps. Hypsipyle had willingly allowed every other man on the island to be slaughtered in their sleep, but Jason did not let that spoil the perfect image of Hypsipyle that he carried in his lovestruck mind. He had sworn eternal fidelity and meant it. First love is like that. Another year passed. Then one day Heracles – who had taken no part in the general frolicking and fornicating – paid Jason a visit.fn31 ‘We’re supposed to be searching for a Golden Fleece,’ he grumbled. ‘Not rutting like bloody stags.’ ‘Yes,’ said Jason. ‘Yes. You’re right.’ The goodbyes were fraught. ‘Take me with you,’ begged Hypsipyle. ‘My darling, you know we have a “strictly no women” rule on board.’ ‘Then take the twins. This is no place for them to grow up. They need men to learn from.’ ‘We do have a strict “no children” rule too …’ It was all very sticky, but he and the Argonauts managed to extricate themselves and Lemnos was barely out of sight before Jason was thinking only of what lay ahead. Hypsipyle and their twin sons vanished from his mind as quickly as they vanished from view. On the island, meanwhile, word came to Hypsipyle that rebellion and revenge were in the air. Jason might have let slip to some of his fellow crew members that she had spared her father from slaughter. One or two of those fellow crew members might have let slip that fact to the women on the island with whom they were consorting. Now that Hypispyle’s protector had left, the women were ready to tear their queen to pieces for such treachery. She took her twin boys Euneus and Thoas and fled the island. They were soon captured by pirates and sold as slaves to king LYCURGUS of Nemea.fn32 Euneus was later to return and rule Lemnos. During his reign the island played a small but pivotal role in the outcome of the Trojan War. Some time later it served as a springboard for the Great War’s ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.