Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.1. Introduction
3.4. The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius
Hymn to Demeter, and artistic interpretations do not correspond with Keller’s view. Edwards expands on this with specific reference to the vase painting by the Persephone Painter:
Persephone is represented as a bride, richly crowned and draped, a young woman at the height of her beauty and sexuality. Hekate is characterised as the younger girl by her open peplos. Demeter is a matron, the archetypal mother. The three together constitute the three ages of woman, a notion that connotes not only fertility but also the order of life as established by Zeus.279
In this way, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is an important source in understanding the transitory nature of Hekate’s character: just as she is the goddess of transitions in the poem, she is undergoing her own transformation from a dominant and omnipotent deity of the Earth, Sea and Sky, to a minor goddess living between the earth and Underworld. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter establishes her as a chthonic deity when she chooses of her own will to remain with Persephone in the Underworld, and introduces the elements for her inevitable change into a dark and terrifying goddess. Perhaps the male author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter attempted to restrict the universal power of Hekate as suggested in the Theogony, and thus transformed her into a marginal figure, an attendant rather than a goddess in her own right, and a woman’s deity. These traits come to be exaggerated in later literature.
and how she was experienced and received by the ancient Greeks can be discerned from it than from Euripides’ Medea. I shall pay particular attention to Book 3 of the Argonautica,280 relating the beginning of the love-affair between the Greek hero Jason, on his quest for the Golden Fleece, and Medea, the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis and priestess of Hekate.
Book 3 begins with Hera and Athena conspiring to aid Jason in carrying off the Golden Fleece from Colchis (7 – 166). To achieve this they approach Aphrodite to send an arrow to pierce Medea, thereby consuming her with love for Jason (24 – 76). King Aeetes tasks Jason with yoking bronze-footed, fire-breathing bulls on the plain of Ares, and ploughing the field with dragon’s teeth. From each tooth would spring up a fierce warrior that Jason must overcome in order to complete this test (401 – 420). In accordance with the scheme of the goddesses, Medea fears for Jason, and the two meet at the Temple of Hekate, where she provides Jason with instructions on how to defeat the warriors, and magic drugs to help him accomplish his feat (975 – 1066). Jason sacrifices to Hekate (1194 – 1224) and following Medea’s advice conquers the warriors (1363 – 1395).
Medea herself was a popular and controversial figure in Greek mythology, infamous for crimes against her own blood: the murder of her own brother whom she dismembered (4. 465 – 467), and for the slaughter of her own children to spite her cheating husband, Jason, depicted in Euripides’ Medea (1275 – 1280). In the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, she is the daughter of King Aeetes, son of Helios. On this fascinating figure Johnston states that
‘from at least the early fifth century B.C., Medea was represented by the Greeks as a complex figure, fraught with conflicting desires and exhibiting an extraordinary range of behaviour.’281 It is hard not to see the Medea in Book 3 of the Argonautica as a victim of sorts: as a woman whose emotions are manipulated by the goddesses, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, compelled to help the man she loves to whatever limits. In this way Medea is a helper-maiden, similar to Ariadne, also eventually abandoned by her hero, Theseus, and both are victims of patriarchy. Indeed, if one at this point were unaware of the ultimate outcome of Medea’s character, a destiny as an ominous murderess would seem unlikely. She is a helpful princess, dedicated to her goddess Hekate. Yet herein lies the ambiguity, for although she appears as an innocent maiden, her powers are far from trivial. She is called, ‘Aeetes’ drug-
280 I have used Peter Green’s translation (1997).
281 1997: 6.
wise daughter’ (27) by the goddess Hera, and Argus communicates her exceptional power to Jason and his companions:
There is a certain girl, brought up in Aeetes’ household, to whom the goddess Hekate granted preeminent skill in the lore of all drugs that Earth or Ocean breeds:
with these she can quench the hot blasts of unwearying fire, halt rivers dead when they’re roaring down in spate,
control the stars and the Moon’s own sacred orbits (528 – 533).
It can be discerned from the above passage that Medea’s power threatens the natural order, and this speech hints at her destructive potential. She has the makings of a very dangerous woman with excessive power, and a mighty goddess as her patroness. Moreover, Medea was of marriageable age and could not have been very much older than a teenager, making her proficiency as a sorceress outstanding for her age, as is her confidence in her own skill and ability. She is depicted as a serious practitioner of witchcraft and magic, learned in the properties of herbs and drugs. This is made most evident when Medea prepares an ointment to give a man strength and daring:
Its blackish sap, like the ooze from a mountain oak,
she’d gathered, to make her drug with, in a Kaspian seashell, after bathing first in the seven perennial freshets,
and seven times calling on Brimo – roarer and rearer, Brimo, night-wanderer, chthonian sovereign over
The dead – on a moonless night, wrapped in a black mantle (858 – 863).
The wearing of black, performing spells at night, and ritualistic associations with numbers are generally linked with witchcraft, possibly for instinctive reasons. Black and night are both mysterious, in the same way that Hekate herself is mysterious. It contributes to the eerie and
strange quality of the goddess, while building on the stereotypes about witches and dark magic. Hekate’s epithet, ‘Brimo’, meaning ‘Roarer’ is used here, suggesting a furious, disorderly goddess from the depths of the earth.282 She is also referred to as ‘sovereign over the dead’. Usually this denotes Persephone, but here, I believe rather than implying the Queen of Hades, it stands for one who can control spirits of the dead, or one whom the dead fear. Hekate is more fearsome than Persephone, and by the time of Apollonius, and certainly after, was traditionally known for roaming graveyards with her band of restless ghosts and demons.
The danger in invoking the ‘daughter of Perses’ (3. 467) is obvious when Medea instructs Jason on how he should go about his sacrifice to the goddess (1194 – 1211). After bathing himself, Jason must perform the ritual alone at night, wearing black. He is to dig a pit in which he must sacrifice a ewe and then burn the carcass. A libation is then to be offered. Her elaborate directions end in a warning to do everything specifically as she has stated, and then to withdraw quickly after the ritual without looking back: to do so would result in death. The ritual and sacrifice is typical of those carried out in worship of chthonic deities, the pit signifying the Underworld, the home of the goddess. It is fitting that Jason must invoke the goddess at night, since Hekate wanders the earth by night, and alone. The solitary nature of his ritual reinforces its magical purpose. Hekate is the goddess of magic, and Medea is a witch. Burkert notes that ‘magic is a matter for individuals’283 performed by a solitary practioner. Burkert also mentions purification by water as ‘fundamental’ to ritual, linked to a primitive form of disinfecting,284 and ‘libations which the earth drinks are destined for the dead and for the gods who dwell in the earth.’285 If the ritual is done correctly, the outcome would be strength that matches the gods themselves. A goddess that is capable of bestowing such extreme power on her worshipper must indeed be overwhelmingly potent, and in keeping with her attitude in the Theogony she can be either benefactress or malefactor. Just
282 According to the Christian writer Hippolytos (2nd/3rd c. CE) in Refutation of all Heresies (5.8.39), the name
‘Brimo’ was uttered by the hierophant at the Eleusinian Mysteries conducted by Athenians. This may refer to Persephone, or Hekate, and is thus most certainly connected to the Underworld.
283 1985: 55.
284 Ibid., 76.
285 Ibid., 71.
as she is readily prepared to renounce her favour in Hesiod, here, if she is not appeased in the proper manner, she would be angered. To offend Hekate provokes harsh consequences.
Apollonius offers an almost demonic depiction of Hekate:
[A]ppealing for aid in his struggle to Hekate the Roarer.
Then, his invocation made, he stepped back; from the uttermost depths the dread goddess heard him, and approached the sacrifice Jason had offered. Her whole person was entwined with terrible serpents and oak-saplings, countless
torches dazzled and flared, while all around her
a pack of clamorous hellhounds bayed shrilly. All the meadows shook at her footfall, and awestruck wailing arose
from the nymphs of the marshland and river, all those that hold their dances along the meadows of Amarantian Phasis (1211 – 1220).
Here Hekate does not resemble Hesiod’s glorious goddess. Firstly, she emerges from the depths, signalling her new domain, the Underworld. She does not live on the fringes between two worlds as in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. She has become entrenched as a chthonic deity. Even the earth trembles in fear before her: a sign of her awesome strength. The sacrifice offered here is a sheep; however black puppies were most commonly sacrificed to Hekate.286 Her presence is usually preceded by the barking of dogs, and she is often depicted in art accompanied by dogs. Of course, it can be said that Hekate is identifiable with dogs because, as we have seen in early literature, Hekate is a guardian and a goddess of liminal spaces. Similarly, the dog is a guardian of thresholds, namely the doorways and entrances of homes. This motif is suitable to Hekate since her statues were erected outside doorways to guard against evil. In the passage she is entwined with snakes which emphasise the ferocity
286 Pausanias (3. 14.9) states that in Colophon, a city in Lydia, people ‘sacrifice a puppy, a black bitch, to the
wayside Goddess [Hekate]’ (Jones 1926: 89).
of Hekate, and liken her appearance to a Gorgon. Snakes are also associated with the underworld and the earth, and can be seen as mysterious and threatening. This emphasises Hekate’s chthonic functions. It does not need to be said that her appearance is uncannily similar to that of the snake goddesses from Crete, and perhaps Hekate is meant to be associated with an ancient, primitive goddess.
It is important to question why and how Hekate became connected to Medea in the first place. Prior to her connections with the sorceress, she was a protectress, not the goddess of witchcraft. It is clear that by the time of the Argonautica, Hekate, although retaining great power, has become completely alienated from her original authority and role as seen in the Theogony. Comparatively she has recovered more power than she was allowed in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, but this at the expense of her reputation. The answer to the above question can be found in the way in which Hekate is perceived in the Argonautica.
Firstly, it is significant that Medea is not Greek. She is from Colchis and is essentially a barbarian woman: this instantly marginalizes her, and her favoured goddess, who becomes
“un-Greek” by association. Hekate is therefore in effect segregated from the Greek pantheon in which she is already a minor goddess, or at least a very inconsistent one whose functions and character were constantly changing. This is highlighted in Book 3 when the three mighty goddesses of Olympus scheme against Medea, and Hekate is not only excluded from the proceedings, but she is completely unaware of the conspiracy. She seems to belong to a different pantheon entirely. In addition, while the three Olympian goddesses are given scenes and direct speech within the poem, Hekate is mysterious and inaccessible, usually only spoken of rather than seen, and when she does appear, she is distant, otherworldly and terrifying.
Her extreme power and wild appearance would no doubt have made the typical Greek apprehensive. She is now the unruly, insubordinate, untameable goddess that characterises her throughout the rest of antiquity. Where once she was tender-hearted with a delicate veil, she is now garlanded with snakes. I therefore find the turning point of Hekate’s development her relationship with Medea. She is adapted to be compatible with the barbarian murderess, and to reinforce stereotypes about what kind of behaviour makes a foreign woman dangerous.
It may be that in emphasising the artificial love Medea possesses for Jason, Apollonius is
attempting to stress that she was an irrational woman. This reflects on Hekate who by association with Medea loses the reputation and honours she once was assigned and becomes entrenched as a chthonic, ‘dread goddess’ who is invoked only by the brave at night.