This week we started our next book, The Argonautica, sometimes called Jason and the Argonauts. The story involves a sea journey with a motley assorted band of travelers in search of the famous golden fleece. The story contains a variety of tropes common in all epic literature, but the author, Appolonius oF Rhodes, adds a unique twist to the story that sets this text apart from other Greek epics, one that dovetails nicely with some of the questions we explore in civics class.

All stories of epic heroes inevtiably look to interpret the past. The hero has already done his work and lived on in the minds of men. The author then celebrates the hero and his accomplishments. The hero may be a complicated figure, but his mission and his impact is not. Epics usually are about the founding of a city/civilization, (The Aeneid) or the re-founding, or transition between two epochs (like The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps The Iliad and The Odyssey).*

But The Argonautica, written around AD 300, is not like this. The author has a different agenda, which perhaps comes from his different political and historical context.

Right in the beginning of the story, we notice some odd things for a heroic epic:

• The crowd that gathers to see the crew off on their adventure are not cheering, but crying and wailing for those they fear never to see again.
• The men of the ship do not pick Jason to lead them, but Hercules. Hercules defers to Jason, but the choice of Jason as the leader was made by him, not the crew.
• Right after the ship leaves the harbor, we see Jason full of doubt, not confidence. His doubt is immediately contrasted with the swagger of a another crewmember.

Apolloinius wants us to wonder about the nature of Jason’s heroism, or perhaps even question it entirely, again, an odd way to begin an epic poem about a famous hero.

The first known written Greek epic poem was very likely the Iliad, which dates to somewhere around 800 BC. But the story of Jason chronologically predates Homer and the events of the Trojan War (in one scene we see the crew waving to the infant Achilles, for example). Homer wrote in the context of the end of the Bronze Age/Greek Dark Ages and the beginning of the city-state era. Thus, he could look back wistfully in part because he could look forward with hope.

But Apollonius writes in the midst of a free-fall decline of the civilization he inhabited. The third century AD saw Rome continuously involved in civil wars. The Roman Emperor at the time Apollonius wrote was Diocletian (reigned 284-305 AD). Diocletian at least understood the crisis, and did attempt to hold back the tide of Rome’s cultural collapse. Unfortunately, his most significant attempt to restore Rome involved an all-out persecution of Christians, which had the unintended effect of hastening Rome’s demise.

We have no idea what the story of Jason entailed originally. We can guess how Apollonius reinterprets the tale, as he has Jason faced with a serious of impossible choices. Unlike other epic heroes, Jason seems to have limited agency over events. His actions seem scripted for him. At his best, Jason finds a way to negotiate his way out of difficulty. This is certainly an important political skill, but it may not be “heroic.” Jason’s world mirrors that of Apollonius’ world in certain respects. The best one can hope for is to kick the can, and hope that maybe things will turn out ok in the end.

In this structure we see the tragic dimension of much of Greek literature. GK Chesterton may have said it best, when he wrote that,

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy.

Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided.

And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity.

But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.

*Tolkien wrote his great work in the years right after World War II.