Argonauts
Nonfiction - by Neile Kirk
The classical story of the Golden Fleece has given rise to epic poems, plays, films, comic books and even musical compositions featuring spooky myths, forbidden lovers, murder, revenge, allusions to cannibalism, monsters and witchcraft. In the 1980s a rock opera of the story was produced, appropriately enough, in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, the homeland of the Golden Fleece. That version was a lot of fun, at least in the version I have viewed, dubbed into Russian from the Georgian original. But even in classical times there were attempts to distinguish a material core to the fiction.
Most notable was the work of Strabo about two millennia ago. Strabo was a geographer and historian who lived from about 63 B. C. to about 23 A. D. Strabo is the Latinized form of his not particularly flattering Greek name Στράβων – it means ‘squinter’! While he was active in the incipient Roman Empire, including Rome itself, his Latinized name does not prove that he had an active command of the Latin language since all educated Romans prided themselves on their command of Greek.
As a native of Pontus in Asia Minor, Strabo can hardly have regarded the Black Sea and Colchis as remote parts of the world. After all, before it came under Roman rule, the former Kingdom of Pontus had even included Colchis as part of its territory. Strabos’s most important work was the straightforwardly titled Γεωγραφικά (Geographica).
Strabo wrote of the age-old practice of people putting a fleece into the rivers in ancient Colchis (today part of Mingrelia in Georgia) to catch the gold which was washed down from the higher levels in the mountains. He thought that this had given rise to the legend of the Golden Fleece (τὸ χρυσόμαλλον δέρας) (Schrader 1907:38). [1]
Apollonios of Rhodes was a Greek poet who lived from 295 B. C. to 215 B.C. His epic poem Ἀργοναυτικά has influenced, directly or indirectly, most – it seems to me all – later versions of the Golden Fleece story. The events of the story relate to the second millennium B.C. (Бердзенишвили 1962:29). This is obviously consistent with the fact that there are references to them in early sources such as Homer’s Ὀδύσσεια (Odyssey). Just the same, I think we should keep in mind that much later events and processes are likely to have had an influence on the Ἀργοναυτικά (Argonautica). In particular, the first Greek colonies on the coasts of the Black Sea were set up starting from the eighth century B.C., including Phasis, now known as Poti (Бердзенишвили 1962:38). By the way, the Greek name of this gold bearing river (Φασις, now Rioni in Colchis) lives on in our bird designation pheasant or, in Greek, φασιανός ὄρνις (Phasis bird). [2] According to legend, the Argonauts brought this bird from the region of that river and city to Greece (Svenska Akademiens Ordbok 1926:319). As a reader of the Golden Fleece story, I am struck by the fact that, among the commodities the Greek settlers exported from Colchis, we find not only cloth, leather, metal objects and slaves, but also – gold (Бердзенишвили 1962:38).
On the other hand, back in the second millennium B.C., the most valuable metal had not been gold, but iron. As an illustration of this point, a couple of Soviet Hellenists adduce the iron amulet on the chest of Tutankamun and the gold coffin of that Egyptian Pharaoh (Казанскене, Казанский 1986:66).
Obviously Apollonios’ Ἀργοναυτικά (Argonautica) does not make earlier surviving historical sources such as Herodotos’ Ἱστορίαι (Histories) or earlier literary sources such as Euripides’ play Μήδεια (Medea) or Pindar’s poetry obsolete in any way. For that matter, there have even been a number of remakes of Euripides’ Μήδεια. Already in classical times, the Roman politician, writer and Stoic philosopher Seneca set the scene with his Latin play Medea in about 50 A.D.
On a more pragmatic level, Strabo’s approach to the Golden Fleece story has been followed right into modern times. One influential example was given at the time of the Californian and Australian gold rushes in a lecture by the British geologist Warington Wilkinson Smyth in 1851, subsequently published in multiple editions, for would-be gold prospectors: “The old stories of Midas and of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, the histories of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, the descriptive collections of Strabo and Pliny, all tell the same tale of the wide distribution and early utilization of stream-gold; whilst the discovery of massive golden ornaments in the graves of early tribes, remote from the seats of Mediterranean civilisation, and in lands where little or no gold is now obtained, attests in a wider manner the same facts.” (Smyth 1853:94)
Likewise showing that classics is by no means just the domain of classicists, the famous jurist Sir Redmond Barry, when opening the Ballarat School of Mines in 1870, included a discussion of the Colchian Golden Fleece and referred to such sources as Pseudo-Orpheus, Pindar, Strabo, Herodotus (like Smyth, using the Latin version of his name and that of other Greek authors, as is widespread in English-language treatments), Diodorus Siculus, Timaeus and Seymnus of Chios (Barry 1870:16).
On the wider front of popular usage, it was common for gold prospectors in North America to be referred to as “argonauts” in the second half of the nineteenth century even if they were seeking quartz gold instead of stream gold.
In the new millennium, the European Space Agency’s website has a section about the Argonaut lunar landing vehicle, which explains the classical Golden Fleece quest and informs us that “the individual missions using ESA’s lunar delivery service will be named after the individual mythical Argonauts.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The collocation τὸ χρυσόμαλλον δέρμα has also been in use, though δέρμα can be seen as a
somewhat more general word meaning ‘hide’ or ‘skin’. (By contrast, δέρας tends to be
confined to poetic or dialect use.) This is found to the present day in English, as in other
modern European languages, with such words as dermatitis and dermatology. There’s a
word with thoroughly modern meaning formed from thoroughly ancient Greek roots: δέρμα
(skin) and λόγος (word, concept). The explanation for the -at- in these words is simply that
they are derived from the genitive case of δέρμα, which is δέρματος (Горбачевич 1993:189).
According to the official Swedish Academy dictionary, Swedish gyllene skinnet (golden
fleece) is calqued after Latin pellis aurea, which in its turn calques Greek δέρμα
χρυσόμαλλον. This referred to the sheep skin with golden wool which, according to Greek
legend, Jason took from Colchis (Svenska Akademiens Ordbok 1929:1396). In addition to
the Swedish expression gyllene skinnet being a classical calque, the component adjective
gyllene is a borrowing from Middle Low German gülden.
[2] The Soviet Academy dictionary – published when Georgia was a republic of the USSR – states that the Russian word фазан (pheasant) comes from Greek φασιανός ὄρνις (Phasis bird), on the basis of the name of the river Φασις, as the ancient Greeks called the river Rioni in Colchis (Котелова, Меделец) 1964:1206). Similarly, the Swedish Academy dictionary states that Swedish Danish and German fasan, Dutch fazant, English pheasant and French faisan all come ultimately from Greek φασιανός, a bird from the area of the river and city Phasis in Colchis.
REFERENCES:
Barry, R. 1870 Address on the Opening of the School of Mines at Ballarat, Victoria (Mason, Firth and M’cutcheon, Melbourne)
Schrader, O. 1907 Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte (Hermann Costenoble, Jena)
Smyth, W. W. 1853 The dressing, or mechanical preparation of gold ores. Pp. 91-120 In: Jukes, J. B. et al. Lectures on gold. For the instruction of emigrants about to proceed to Australia (David Bogue, London)
Svenska Akademiens Ordbok 1926 Ordbok över svenska språket (Åttonde bandet) (A.-B. Ph. Lindstedts Univ.-Bokhandel, Lund)
Svenska Akademiens Ordbok 1929 Ordbok över svenska språket (Tionde bandet) (A.-B. Ph. Lindstedts Univ.-Bokhandel, Lund)
Бердзенишвили, Н. А. (Главный редактор) 1962 История Грузии (Том I) (С древнейших времен до 60-х годов XIX века) Учебное пособие Авторизованный перевод (Государственное издательство учебно-педагогической литературы “Цодна”, Тбилиси)
Горбачевич, К. С. (Главный редактор) 1993 Словарь современного русского литературного языка (Том IV) (Издательство “Русский язык”, Москва)
Казанскене, В. П., Казанский, Н. Н. 1986 Предметно-понятийный словарь греческого языка (крито-микенский период) (Издательство “Наука”, Ленинград)
Котелова, Н. З., Меделец, Н. М. (Редакторы тома) 1964 Словарь современного русского литературного языка (Том шестнадцатый) (Издательство “Наука”, Москва-Ленинград)