The Last Song of Orpheus Read online

  Whereupon Cheiron the centaur came to me in Thrace and told me that I was essential to the success of Jason’s voyage, and I yielded to the inevitability of the gods’ decree, and so my involvement with Jason and his Argonauts began.

  “Argonauts,” we were called, because the name of our craft was Argo, and that in honor of Argus of Thespiae, who with the help of Athena built that great vessel at Pagasae on the Magnesian coast in Thessaly just east of Iolcus. It was a splendid ship. None so grand had ever been built before, and not until long after our times would its equal be seen on the seas. A well-balanced fifty-oared galley, it was, slender and graceful, built for speed, with a keel and frame of oak and planks of pine brought from the forested slopes of Mount Pelion, all of them fastened in place with bronze nails and caulked with tar. A sturdy mast of fir that would soar far over our heads was nearing completion when I arrived at Pasagae. The bottom had already been finished and the close-set ribs were rising, but I watched that great shipwright put in the long side-planking and construct the half-decks, and fence the hull about with a latticed bulwark to keep the water out, and build a broad oar to steer her with, and fashion a wondrous square sail out of the white linen cloth of Egypt to cling to that mighty mast. For her prow Argus took a great beam from the roof of the royal palace in Iolcus that had come from Zeus’ sacred grove in Dodona.

  The sound of hammering went on day and night. The magnificent vessel, with timbers painted blue and gold and crimson, came rapidly toward completion; and meanwhile the band of heroes who would take her to Colchis was assembling, summoned from far and wide at Jason’s behest.

  Such a group of voyagers had never been brought together before. Heracles himself was among us, that giant among men, and Peleus, the father of Achilles, and Odysseus’ father Laertes. A phalanx of sons of trident-wielding Poseidon would be aboard: Ancaeus of Tegea, Erginus of Miletus, Melampus of Pylos, Nauplius of Argos. It is always good to have sons of Poseidon among one’s shipmates, for the sea-god will look after them and their companions. Nor were the other Olympian gods unrepresented, for also we had bronze-helmed Ares’ son Ascalaphus of Orchomenus, Hermes’ son Echion of Mount Cyllene and also his guileful brother Erytus, and Idmon the Argive, Apollo’s son. Heracles, as everyone knows, was begotten by Father Zeus, and with us as well were two more of Zeus’s get, Castor of Sparta and his brother, the invincible boxer Polydeuces. Then there were winged Zetes and Calais, the sons of the north wind Boreas. We would have had famed Theseus with us too, another hero of Poseidon’s making, but a different task detained him at the time. You will find in the writings of the poets who wrote of our journey in the years afterward the names of many others also, hundreds of them all told, who are said to have sailed aboard the Argo, for every city has its poet and what city would not have wanted to claim its share of that fabled voyage? But I assure you that our ship had but fifty oars. I will not list all the others who actually did go with us: suffice it to say it was an extraordinary gathering of men, and even one woman, Atalanta the long-legged virgin huntress, whose beauty and swiftness of foot impelled Jason to include her in our group.

  It will not surprise you to hear that such a band of proud heroes might be inclined toward quarrelsomeness, especially when wine had been flowing quickly; and so, very shortly, it was made clear to me why the gods had chosen me to accompany them. For only through the calming influence of song could these headstrong and boisterous men be made to remain at peace with one another.

  They were fighting among themselves on the beach at Pagasae when I first came among them. Our captain Jason, for all his strength and valor, and he was richly endowed with both, was a brooding indecisive man. He had been lost in some somber meditation on the wisdom of undertaking the voyage when Idas of Messene drunkenly accused him of cowardice, and then loudly bragged that even if all-seeing Zeus himself sent misfortune to the Argo, Idas would fend it off. Idmon, who was one who laid claim to having been engendered by Apollo, took offense at this boastfulness, and berated Idas for it, as did Polydeuces the boxer, who knocked Idas down when Idas angrily brandished his spear. Then Lynceus, the brother of Idas, came running up, sword in hand, to take his brother’s part, and chaos and bloodshed threatened.

  It was at this moment that I made my appearance in their midst. Brooding, anguished Jason caught me by the wrist and said, “Orpheus! By the gods, you come to us at a welcome time! You who can lure oak trees out of the forest and down to the seashore by the sound of your lyre, quickly play a melody that will soothe these madmen before we are all lost.”

  So that is what he thought, that I have lured oak trees from the forest to the seashore with my music? Well, people think many things of me. I do not confirm them; neither will I deny them. But most assuredly I know the art of calming angry men. So I unslung my lyre and whacked its sounding-board with my hand to get their attention, and struck a chord or two, and began to sing the first song that came to my lips.

  What I sang was the song of the Creation, the song of that time before time when there was neither light nor darkness, but only the primordial dimness, and sky and earth and sea all were one. I sang of how they struggled mightily among themselves, each yearning to escape the others’ grip, until a forceful music arose out of the heart of the universe and they were sundered by it. I sang of the stars in the heavens, and how they travel their appointed courses, each making its own sweet sound as it moves, thereby bringing forth wonderful music as they sail above us, the great song of the cosmos. I sang of the primordial oneness of water and earth, out of which came Phanes, the creator of all, from whom the cosmos had its first origin. I told of how Phanes made the sun and the moon, and the first men, too, who were not of our race, and have long since vanished from the world. I sang then of how Phanes brought forth a daughter, Night, to whom he handed the supreme power when he grew weary of wielding it, and from whom came Gaia and Uranus, the earth and the heaven. From them, I told, came the race of Titans, Cronos, Rhea, and all the rest; and then I sang of how Cronos overthrew his father Uranus, and by Rhea brought forth the next generation of gods, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, and how there was increasing dissension among them until the cosmos was on the verge of degenerating into discord, until Zeus of the lightning-bolts came forth to overthrow his royal father Cronos and take his place atop snowy Olympus and bring the world under his wise rule. And at last I sang of the swallowing of the world-creator Phanes by Zeus, so that he would encompass all things within himself, both the beginning and the end, and could create all things anew, including the race of men that endures today. I might have sung some other version of the tale entirely, and then a different one from that, for there are many such stories of the succession of the eras of the gods, and no two of them are the same, but all of them are true. The one I sang was the proper one for that occasion. By the time I had reached the point in my song that told of the setting aside of Cronos by Zeus, the restoration of order in the world, and the engulfing of Phanes, the Argonauts had recovered from their fit of madness. The swords were sheathed, the spears were laid aside, and they were dancing drunkenly on the beach, even Jason capering nimbly, his arms over his head, his fingers snapping. And that was the end of it; but I had served my purpose. It would not be the last such time.

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  We built the rollers and fastened the ropes and hoisted the Argo to its track and hauled it down to the shore, putting our backs to it and straining to keep her moving forward. Smoke, dark and bitter-smelling, rose from the rollers under the weight of that mighty keel. I will not pretend it was anything but a horrendous struggle to get that ship to the sea. You will hear poets say that with a few chords of my lyre I magicked the vessel into gliding down to the water of her own accord, and it is, as I have made clear, my custom with these tales neither to confirm or deny; but if you are willing to believe that, you will believe anything. Soon enough, at any rate, the Argo approached the sea’s edge and we launched it into the gulf and set the mast and raised the sail; and our voya
ge to Colchis began.

  It was at dawn we left, after sacrificing two robust oxen to Apollo, who presides over the embarkation of mariners. Tiphys of Siphae was our helmsman, a man exceedingly skilled in the ways of the winds and the stars and the signs by which a craft is steered, and he it was who took us eastward from Thessaly across the sea. The winds were contrary that day and we had to make our departure under the power of our oars alone. It was my task to beat time for the oarsmen with my lyre. I set them a good pace, for they were young men and vigorous ones, who sang to my music as they pulled, and the blades of their oars bit keenly into the foaming water. Each bench held two oarsmen, their places having been decided by lot—all but the place of Heracles, who because of his great size and overwhelming strength must of necessity sit amidships, since otherwise the great force of his giant oar would overbalance the vessel and make it difficult to hold her to a straight course. For his benchmate Jason gave him that massive man Ancaeus, one of the several among us who had sprung from the seed of the god Poseidon.

  Soon a favorable wind came to us and we lifted the great mast into position and unfurled our broad sail of white linen from Egypt and tied its lines in place. It swelled in the breeze and we journeyed smoothly on beyond Mount Pelion, where the centaur Cheiron came down to the sea and waded out into the surf to wave to us. Cheiron was accompanied by his wife, the nymph Charicio. She carried in her arms their latest foster-child, Achilles, son of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, and held the babe up so that his father might see him. The world would hear much more of Achilles in the generation to come.

  We left the booming surf and the hissing combers behind and moved out into the open waters. I beat the time and the oarsmen pulled merrily at the oars and we sped along, though despite the strength and elegance of our smooth-sided vessel it was anything but easy work. The angry wind shrieked and roared overhead and the mainsail strained at its creaking ropes, and great waves loomed about us, mountain-high, crashing athwart our bow and sending fountains of cold white spume across our open deck. Now and again, as we headed farther out from shore, we moved through a cloud of low-hanging silvery mist so thick that we could barely see an oar’s length in front of us, and as we surged upward on the breast of a soaring wave some great black fang of rock, glossy with sea-foam, would rise abruptly before us out of the heaving waters; but Tiphys our master helmsman was ever adroit, and used his wits to steer us clear of danger.

  The wind carried us well, though. Soon we moved past headlands sacred to Artemis, and I sang a hymn to her as we went by. A stiff breeze took us swiftly under the shadow of great Mount Athos in Thrace, but at dawn we were becalmed once more, and it was by the strength of our oarsmen alone that we were able to journey on to the isle of Lemnos. The women of this island, angered by the faithlessness of their men, had fallen upon them one night and slaughtered every one of them; but now they had grown weary of life without a man’s embrace, and when we appeared before them they turned to us with unseemly eagerness. Therefore, alas, we wasted much time on Lemnos because foolish Jason became entangled in a dalliance with the island’s voluptuous queen, and many another of us, seeing our captain so entranced by love, behaved in similar fashion, though not I, because for me there could be no woman after Eurydice. It seemed as though we would remain there forever, lost in this lustful idleness; but at last the anger of Heracles awakened Jason from his dream and led him back to his task.

  Thence we went to Samothrace, an island holy to Persephone. Here I felt it needful to pause and take part in the Mysteries that are practiced there in her honor, not only in regard for the aid that Hades’ queen had offered me in my futile quest to regain Eurydice but also because I knew that my shipmates and I must do whatever we could to gain the love of the gods if we were to succeed in this perilous adventure.

  So I clad myself in the white robe marked with a jagged streak of golden lightning that I had brought with me from Egypt and went ashore to meet with the priestess, who could tell immediately, from that robe, that I was an initiate. She agreed to my request, and I returned to the ship and gathered up ten of the Argonauts, those whom I felt would best be able to benefit from the rites in which they would take part. Jason was one of the ones I chose, but when the priestess saw him she hesitated, and seemed about to reject him from the group. Then she relented and let him stay, though plainly she perceived the great flaws in him that were beyond redemption and would lead eventually to his undoing.

  I cannot, of course, sing of the Mysteries except in the most superficial way. Like all Mysteries, they tell of birth and life and death and resurrection. I can tell you that we acted out the rite of Creation first, building the circular mound of earth and surrounding it with a water-filled trench and dancing on it and saying the Words of Coming Forth, and then the serpent was brought out and the gong was sounded and the flutes played, and after that came the rite of the dove and the crab, and the ceremonies of Priapus. At last the acolytes, with faces and bodies powdered with gypsum so that they were snowy white, brought out the little bull-calf for the sacrifice, and shed its blood and sprinkled it on Jason and his companions, after which came the ritual ablution, and the rite of rebirth and the anointing with oil, and then the final rite whose very name cannot be spoken. The men were solemn and silent as we made our way back to the Argo, and I heard none of them speak of what they had witnessed that night, though I knew they had been profoundly shaken by it. In my solitude aforedeck I sang the songs of my love for Eurydice again, softly singing for myself alone, telling myself once more how I had won her and lost her and won her again by Persephone’s favor, and had lost her the second time because that was the path that the gods had made a necessary part of the toilsome journey that is my life. Necessary, yes; but the pain of it will always be with me.

  Our next landfall was along the coast of Mysia as we made our way northward and eastward toward the Hellespont strait that would admit us to the sea where Colchis lay. The wind had been slack for several days, but we were making good headway along that coast by the use of our oars alone, with the prodigious indefatigable Heracles setting an unmatchable pace. Only Jason was able to equal him for a time; and then even Jason fell forward over his oar and collapsed in exhaustion. At that same moment Heracles’ mighty oar snapped in half from the force of his exertions. He glared at the stump of it in fury and disgust. We had no alternative but to put ashore to allow him to search out a tree from which he could make a new one.

  We made camp on the shore. Within a couple of hours Heracles returned from the interior, dragging behind him a colossal fir tree that he set about trimming to shape. Meanwhile, though, Heracles’ squire Hylas, had gone off toward a nearby pool to fetch water, and had not returned. This Hylas was a pretty young man whom Heracles, who had taken him as a lover, had insisted that we bring with us on the voyage. Jason had sent staunch Polyphemus the Arcadian, one of our most sober and reliable men, to find him, and he had not returned either.

  After a while Heracles noticed that Hylas was not in the camp, and when someone told him where he had gone and how long he had been absent, Heracles went rushing off into the forest, frantically shouting his name. What happened after that I learned many years later, when I encountered Heracles in Thrace. In the forest he found only Polyphemus, who had been to the pool and discovered Hylas’ water-pitcher lying abandoned beside it. Of Hylas himself there was no trace, and Polyphemus suggested that the pretty boy had been carried off by nymphs of the pool or forest who had taken a fancy to him. Heracles, with a great roar of rage, cried that they must search until they found him, and so they did, for when dawn came there was no sign in camp of either man, let alone the one for whom they had gone in search.

  Meanwhile a fair breeze had sprung up at last, and to the astonishment of everyone Jason gave the order for us to resume the voyage. “But where is Heracles?” Admetus of Pherae asked, as we settled into our places aboard the Argo. “Where is Polyphemus?” Others—Peleus, Acastus—took up the cry. Jason, glowerin
g, merely shrugged and said the gods wished us to be on our way, and that he was not going to offend them by waiting any longer for Heracles and Polyphemus. Nor did we, though there was a noisy quarrel first, Admetus claiming that Jason was marooning Heracles out of jealousy, because Heracles had humiliated him by rowing so vigorously that Jason had been outmanned at the oars. To this accusation Jason made no answer, but simply went about directing the raising of the mast and the hoisting of the sail. In the end Mopsus the Lapith, who had the powers of a soothsayer, ended the wrangling by going into a trance, or pretending to do so, and announcing that it was the will of Zeus that Heracles and Polyphemus be left behind, for great-thewed Heracles was so rash that he would endanger the expedition when it came to the land of the Golden Fleece, and Polyphemus was needed for some task in another place. So we went on, having lost the services of two of our most valuable shipmates.

  We were to have yet another such unhappy landing farther along. In the land of the Doliones we were given a warm welcome by Cyzicus, their king, but when we took our leave a contrary gale seized hold of us in the night, swinging us about in the sea and sending wild waters spilling across our deck, and carrying us back all unawares to the harbor from which we had just set out; and Cyzicus, thinking his city was being attacked by pirates, led an armed force out against us as we came ashore. In the darkness and confusion we slew our former host and a great number of his stalwart men. I watched the carnage from one side, for I am not a warrior and the taking of life is not what the gods meant me to do; but I knew that this tragic error could not be prevented, and though I did not slay, neither did I do anything to intervene.