Convening

[aggienaut]

Tuesday, May 16th, 1214 BC – Jason woke with a headache from all the wine the night before. It took him a moment to remember where exactly he was, what ceiling exactly this was spinning above him and why was he here. He groaned a bit remembering. He had sworn in front of everyone yesterday that he would retrieve the golden fleece from far distance Colchis. How would he get there without a boat and by himself?
   As soon as he felt able, he got up. Looking around the room, the main hall of Iolcus, most of the revelers were still asleep on (or under) benches,or in the corners. He quietly went outside, into the fresh morning sun. Palace servants had already put out fresh fruit and bread on some tables for the guests. He glumly ate some olives while thinking about how King Pelias would certainly find a way to have him killed if he didn't come back with the golden fleece.
   He tore off a piece of bread, and was chewing on it thoughtfully when a friendly voice said
   “You should put honey on it.”
   Looking up he saw a young man named Butes whom he vaguely remembered from the night before. Ah, yes, the beekeeper! He laughed to himself that of course he was suggesting honey.
   “Are you really going to go get the Golden Fleece?” Butes asked.
   “Of course I am” Jason replied with feigned nonchalance.
   “If you want any company, I think it sounds like it would be an epic adventure” continued Butes while carefully applying honey from a small clay jar to his piece of bread with a wooden utensil.
   “Who will look after your bees while you're gone?” asked Jason. Only managing not to instead say “Really??” because he happened to have a mouthful of bread at the time.
   “Oh, they can look after themselves for long periods of time” explained Butes, who now appeared to be taste testing the honey with much lip smacking.
   “But yeah, I suppose you can come along” said Jason trying not to sound as desperately relieved as he felt.


   Later, as Jason was walking around the town looking to buy a new sandal to replace one he'd recently lost, an older man named Polyphemus greeted him.
   “Is it true you were raised by centaurs??” the man asked abruptly after a few pleasantries.
   “Well, just one, Chiron.” responded Jason cautiously because this guy seemed a bit unpredictable.
   “I fought the centaurs in the war” growled Polyphemus belligerently. Jason noticed many scars on the old man's still-strong body.
   “Chiron didn't support the war,” explained Jason, “he is only interested in peaceful pursuits like philosophy and medicine.”
   “Ah, okay, okay” mumbled Polyphemus, “well as long as you're not some kind of centaur agent, I was thinking I want to join the adventure” and he thrust his hand out to Jason.

   Jason had told Butes and Polyphemus to meet in the square in the early afternoon to begin what would be a very long journey. He fretted as he hurried toward the rendezvous, would they lose interest when they realized how long and dangerous the journey would be?
   “Ahoy!” Jason was jolted from his thoughts by a hail from a man hurrying up the roadway in the same direction. The man appeared to be wearing a bear skin and holding a double headed bronze axe.
   “Are you Jason?” the man asked
   “Yes?” said Jason cautiously. Was this man sent to kill him?
   “Ahh glad I caught you. I'm Ancaeus. I wanted to join you.” and becoming suddenly self conscious, “this was the best outfit I could find at a moment's notice”
   “Ah, well, come along then!” said Jason laughing. Okay it would be him, a crazy bee guy, a grizzly veteran of the centauromachy, and a guy wearing a bear.

   As he entered the square he was surprised to find quite a crowd standing around there, many with traveling-bundles packed up by their feet or on their shoulders. Jason approached the crowd and tried to find Butes or Polyphemus in it.
   “Jason!” called out a man in the crowd, whom Jason recognized after a moment as Aethalides.
   “What's everyone doing here?” Jason asked him
   “We're all going with you!” the man exclaimed. Jason looked at the crowd in disbelief. There must be fifty of them! he thought to himself.
   “Brave Hellenes,” Jason addressed them awkwardly, “I am greatly honored, but I must admit I don't have a boat that can fit all of you.. or … well I don't have a boat.” He braced himself for the crowd to disperse.
   “but I do!” said a man. Jason struggled to place his name. ...Argus?

(This entry takes place after this one but before this one.

Comments

[karmasoup.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! What a perfect direction to take this topic! It would not have occurred to me, but absolutely, this was not a solitary Herculean effort. I love it - I love how much you humanized this! <3

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I really want to rewrite the argonautica as an actual prose story that's readable. The original is seriously harder to read than legalese. I listened to it as an audiobook and honestly I could barely tell you what was going on most of the time. Even reading the actual text I sometimes have to seriously scrutinize a paragraph to sort it out. Anyway in the original in a paragraph or two they set up Jason coming to this festival and ending up vowing to get the fleece, and then there follows three pages of introductions of people supposed to be on the journey with him, and then tehy start with the journey. It doesn't at all say how he got everyone together or got the boat. The hardest part of this entry was sorting through all the characters introduced in that section to find the few I wanted to focus on. Many never appear again in the text at all so I think they're a relative waste of space (and scholars note they are probably only there because their descendants added them so they'd have an ancestor among the argonauts), and I wanted to only introduce characters that would show up again and be worth getting to know. (:

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

A bearskin seems a seriously odd choice for... well, almost every occasion, really. Except possibly for hunting or for some sort of tribal ceremonial event, which wouldn't be the Greeks in any case.

Please tell me this strange, strange person figures in later installments. ;)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Probably! I had done a search through the whole Argonautica for people's names to try to only spend time on fleshing out the ones that appear more than just in the introduction and "Ancaeus" appears throughout... except there's actually TWO Ancaeuses sooo it remains to be seen. But I really liked the description of him showing up wearing the bear skin and axe, it was possibly the most colorful introduction, so I'm sure I'll fit him in!

In fact his introduction paragraph is the classic example of what tedious reading the original form of it is. Look at this shit:

Moreover from Arcadia came Amphidamas and Cepheus, who inhabited Tegea and the allotment of Apheidas, two sons of Aldus; and Ancaeus followed them as the third, whom his father Lycurgus sent, the brother older than both. But he was left in the city to care for Aleus now growing old, while he gave his son to join his brothers. Ancaeus went clad in the skin of a Maenalian bear, and wielding in his right hand a huge two-edged battleaxe. For his armour his grandsire had hidden in the house’s innermost recess, to see if he might by some means still stay his departure.

I had to read that paragraph three or four times to sort out who of the people being named were going and who was just people's fathers. Like I still don't know who the "brother older than both" is, since as far as I can tell from that the first two are sons of "Aldus" but it says he's the son of "Lycurgus." Nor do they appear to have the same mother from what wikipedia tells me about them. Like, altogether that's a really tedious paragraph!

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Ancaeus followed them as the third, whom his father Lycurgus sent, the brother older than both.
Yes--who is the "brother older than both" in THAT construct? Yikes!

This is dreadful sentence structure-- almost as if someone translated it word-for-word from the Greek, without making any attempt to change the word order to how things would actually be phrased in English.

It seems a poor translation, but there is also the possibility that it's somewhat intentional? As in, "Let us now, in high-worded fashion, intertwine language exceedingly grandiose and archaic, indeed obfuscatory, that we, heralds of this fine work, might adventures epic relate."

/o\

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Very cool take on the topic!

[d0gs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I adored this <3