Books: The Golden Fleece

HERCULES, MY SHIPMATE—Robert Graves—Creative Age Press ($3).

What the Golden Fleece really was—a cloak tossed to earth by Zeus when he was drunk, or a sheepskin book of alchemic secrets, or the gilded epidermis of a young human sacrifice named Mr. Ram—nobody knows. But Robert Graves is quite sure that, whatever the Golden Fleece was, the voyage of Jason and his Argonauts really happened. His story of “how it really happened” shows the legendary cruise as one of the bawdiest, bloodiest, most boisterous expeditions of all time.

In I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, Author Graves brought the teeming life of Rome in the Claudian Age so vividly alive that the books became bestsellers. In last year’s not-so-successful Wife to Mr. Milton, his blend of imagination and scholarship projected his readers into 17th-Century England and the bedchamber temper tantrums of the great blind poet-politician.

With Hercules and his shipmates, Graves becomes an ancient Greek, moving among demigods and goddesses, myths and monsters with an easy familiarity and a wealth of erudite detail; both sometimes seem too much of a good thing. Atomic-age readers, ill-attuned to the leisurely, formal talk of Myth-Age Greeks, may find themselves skipping some of the longer speeches.

Princely Crew. Most of the Argo’s 50-oar crew were royal princes, each with his special talent and gift of the gods. The only woman aboard was a princess: Atalanta of Calydon, the virgin huntress, who could outrun any man in Greece. Argus, who built the Argo, was the world’s finest shipwright. Castor and Pollux, sons of Leda and the swan (Zeus), were champion prizefighters. Nauplius was an unrivaled navigator (naturally: his father was Poseidon, the sea god). Orpheus could make sticks & stones dance when he played his lyre. Hercules of Tiryns was the strongest man in the world; he would have captained the Argonauts were it not that in moments of insanity he murdered friend and foe alike.

The captaincy devolved on Jason of lolcos—a man nobody liked or trusted, but who had a power denied to all the others: women instantly fell in love with him. Even surly Hercules agreed that that was a quality worth all the rest.

Holy Serpents! Backed by the blessings of the gods and the winds of the spring equinox, the Argonauts set sail. On the Island of Lemnos, which was peopled solely by women, the Argonauts generously stopped off to help out with the spring sowing. Nine months later, 200 children were born on Lemnos, of whom no less than 60 were said to be the spitting image of Hercules.

On the Island of Samothrace, the Argonauts were initiated into the sacred mysteries. The Goddess of All Being mated with the Serpent Priapus, and was delivered of a bull. Then the sacred nymphs leapt on the Argonauts and scratched and bit them until even Hercules passed out. Thereafter, the Argonauts glowed with “a faint nimbus of light.”

The Argonauts boldly pushed on through the dangerous Hellespont and entered the Black Sea. To their dismay, Hercules deserted, was later summoned home to perform another of his mighty labors. “Holy Serpents!” he growled. “Tell me what [it is] this time?” The job—cleaning the Augean Stables—didn’t take Hercules long. Afterwards, he stayed around with the high priestess of Lydia—who in due time bore male triplets. In gratitude, the priestess taught Hercules how to spin, and tied up his hair in blue braids; he was crazy about it, and admitted confidentially that he had always wanted to be a woman.

The Argonauts went on without Hercules. But when they reached Colchis, it was the goddess Aphrodite who won the Fleece for them. She made her son Eros wait behind a pillar with his bow until handsome Jason strode into the King of Colchis’ palace. Then Eros shot Medea, the King’s daughter, through the heart, and the love-smitten princess helped to get the Fleece from her father’s temple. Mythology’s most famous voyage had reached its goal, but Author Graves takes 150 more pages to wind things up.