HKB
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Often appears with: fate, destiny, and necessity · religious persecution and toleration · voyages and seafaring · the city and urban life · styx-like river · revolution and the fall of states · prophecy and revelation · plague, famine, and mass death · pelias · medea's flight · medea escape · marriage and betrothal
Usually: narrative (4) · the test or trial (3) · detachment (3) · commentary or gloss (1) · forbidden love (1) · reunion (1) · curiosity (1) · praise (1) · reverence (1) · wonder (1)
Book I begins with Pelias’ command to send Jason for the golden fleece, explains Jason saving one sandal from the mire, and launches a roll-call of Argonaut heroes and their regions and lineages.
Beginning with thee, O Phoebus, I will recount the famous deeds of men of old, who, at the behest of King Pelias, down through the mouth of Pontus and between the Cyanean rocks, sped well-benched Argo in quest of the golden fleece. Such was the oracle that Pelias heard, that a hateful doom awaited him to be slain at the prompting of the man whom he should see coming forth from the people with but one sandal. And no …
A book-level synopsis states that Book IV follows Medea’s night flight and assistance to Jason, the theft of the golden fleece, pursuit by Colchians, and the later voyage through numerous lands.
SUMMARY OF BOOK IV Invocation of the Muse (1-5).--Grief of Medea, who flies from the palace during the night and joins the Argonauts (6-91).--By the aid of Medea, Jason seizes and carries off the golden fleece, after which the Argonauts depart (92-211).--Pursued by the Colchians, they land in Paphlagonia, where Argus shows them the route to take (212-293).--The Argonauts sail up the Ister, b…
Psyche retrieves golden locks with help from a divine reed, then fails to please Venus’s suspicion, who next orders her to fetch water from the river of the Stygian realm; Psyche cannot reach it due to dragons.
Then spake the gentle and benigne reed, shewing a mean to Psyches to save her life, which she bore well in memory, and with all diligence went and gathered up such lockes as shee found, and put them in her apron, and carried them home to Venus. Howbeit the danger of this second labour did not please her, nor give her sufficient witnesse of the good service of Psyches, but with a sower resemblance of laughter, did say…
Arkesilas’ ode shifts to Jason’s return to Iolkos: his disguised arrival with one sandal leads to recognition by his father, reconciliation with kinsmen, and Jason persuading Pelias to send him on the quest for the Golden Fleece.
women sent me forth secretly in purple swathing-bands, when none but Night might know the way we went, and gave me to Cheiron the son of Kronos to be reared. But of these things the chief ye know. Now therefore kind citizens show me plainly the house of my fathers who drave white horses; for it shall hardly be said that a son of Aison, born in the land, is come hither to a strange and alien soil. And Jason was the n…
Jason performs Aietes’ tasks with the plough of adamant and fire-breathing oxen, learns where Phrixos’ knife and Golden Fleece are, and kills the speckled dragon to escape with Medea to later sow the seed of Euphemos’ line.
of the tasks her father set, and mixing drugs with oil gave him for his anointment antidotes of cruel pain, and they vowed to be joined together in sweet wedlock. But when Aietes had set in the midst a plough of adamant, and oxen that from tawny jaws breathed flame of blazing fire, and with bronze hoofs smote the earth in alternate steps, and had led them and yoked them single-handed, he marked out in a line straigh…