40 pages • 1 hour read
Apollonius of RhodesJason and the Golden Fleece
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Jason’s Cloak
As he prepares to go to Lemnian queen Hypsipyle’s palace, Jason puts on a “double cloak of purple” (diplaka porphyrein in the Greek text), which was a gift from Athena (20). An extensive description of the cloak follows its introduction, an example of a tradition in Greek poetry to render important objects in vivid detail (known as ekphrasis). The cloak’s symbolic function has been the subject of a range of interpretations, depending on how closely it is read against other ancient Greek sources.
The phrase diplaka porphyrein appears twice in the Iliad, at especially significant moments: in Book 3 when Helen weaves scenes of the Trojan war into a cloth and in Book 22 when Andromache weaves flowers into a cloth, not realizing that her husband has been killed. In both instances, the women weave from places of not knowing: Helen about a war still in progress and Andromache unaware that her world has changed irrevocably. In both instances, the outcomes are tragic. The war destroys both Achaeans and Trojans, and the marriage ends with Hector’s death and Andromache’s enslavement. Apollonius’ use of this phrase has been understood to connect Jason’s cloak to a sense of foreboding, whether in this instance (Jason’s becoming distracted from his quest by the Lemnian women) or in the larger narrative arc of the poem.
Jason being identified by a cloak as opposed to a shield, as are Achilles and Ajax in the Iliad, marks him as a non-martial hero. His good looks are frequently remarked upon in the poem, as are those of Paris in the Iliad, who is a kind of mirror for Jason in that Paris does not recover a Hellenic possession but makes off with one, Menelaus’ wife Helen (and her treasure). The (temporary) success of both Jason and Paris rests with Aphrodite, rather than Athena, the war goddess who often walks alongside Homer’s martial heroes. However, the cloak is also a gift from Athena, which may symbolize the gods’ favor, perhaps even a divine destiny. Jason returns a precious magical artifact to Hellas and unites in marriage with an eastern princess, yoking East and West. That audiences would have known the disastrous end to Jason and Medea’s marriage, via the popularity of Euripides’ tragedy Medea, could signal foreboding at or unease with their union.
Clump of Libyan Soil
As in Jason and the Golden Fleece, in Pindar’s Fourth Pythian Ode, Euphemos receives a clump of earth, but a wave washes it off the ship and carries it back to the island of Thera, which already exists. In Apollonius’s adaptation of the myth, the clump of soil is described as an infant child of Triton (which is what Apollonius calls the Nile at the beginning of Book 4) and Libya, bringing Greek and Egyptian cosmologies together and creating an origin story that might justify the Ptolemies’ colonization and potentially attract Greek speakers to Alexandria. In Apollonius’ version, Jason is rendered as the interpreter of divine intention: When Euphemos explains his dream at the end of Book 4, Jason instructs him to toss the clump of soil into the sea so that it can become, eventually, the island of Thera for his descendants to inhabit far into the future, “long after Euphemos” (140).
The Hellenes placed value on the land that they inhabited. Heroes and chthonic gods were associated with it and could be communicated with through it. Apollonius may be speaking to this value through the clump of Libyan earth that Euphemos receives, which can be understood as symbolic of a tangible link between Greek speakers and Egypt.
Plank of Dodona
The plank of Dodona is mentioned twice in the poem. In Book 1, as the Argonauts board their ship, it is described as “fitted in the middle of the keel” with “a divine plank of Dodonan oak placed there by Athena” (15). The second time is in Book 4, in the aftermath of Jason’s murder of Medea’s brother Apsyrtos. Angered by the murder, Zeus determines that they must visit Kirke so that she can perform a purification ritual cleansing them “of the blood of the murder” after “enduring numberless sufferings” (112). The heroes are unaware of this until the plank shouts at them, “with a human voice” but with “the voice and heavy anger of Zeus,” informing them that they cannot escape their suffering until Kirke has cleansed them “for the pitiless murder of Apsyrtos” (112).
Dodona was an oracular site dedicated to Zeus, the second most important in the ancient Greek world (Delphi being the first). The presence of a plank from that site infuses the Argo with a sense of divinely ordained destiny. Though Zeus is referred to, he does not himself appear as a character. The plank represents his presence overseeing and engineering events from a distance.
