Chapter IV: Valerius Flaccus

What is known of the life of Valerius Flaccus—Romance in his
theme—Predecessors—The story of the _Argonautica_—Apollonius
of Rhodes and Valerius—How was the epic designed to end?—The
Roman element—Comparative lack of vogue—Features of his
language—Metre—Qualities of style.

C. Valerius Flaccus[1279] belongs, at least in part, to the time of Vespasian. If we accept “Balbus Setinus” or “Setinus Balbus,” the additions to his name in _subscriptiones_ of the Vatican MS., then he may have been a native of Setia, but whether that was the Setia in Campania or one of two Setias in Spain it is impossible to determine. No special Spanish qualities are discoverable in him, and he was Roman enough to serve on the committee of fifteen for sacrifices.[1280] Almost at the outset of his _Argonautica_, in invoking the emperor, he refers to Vespasian’s service in British seas, to the recent capture of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70, and to the supposed likelihood that Vespasian’s younger “offspring” (_proles_), Domitian, might celebrate his brother’s exploits:

O thou yet more renowned for opening
The ocean, since the Caledonian wave
(That erst disdained our Trojan-blooded race)
Hath yielded to thy sails, O sire revered,
Raise me above the herd, and cloudy earth.
Show favour to a bard who sings the fame
Of heroes of old days and deathless deeds.
Thine offspring shall unfold (for he hath skill)
Judaea’s fall, and how his brother, smirched
With Salem’s dust, launched firebrands everywhere,
War-maddened all along the towered walls.[1281]

Beginning his epic, therefore, soon after 70, he made slow progress; for in the third and fourth books[1282] he alludes to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, and apparently he never completed the eighth book. Quintilian, writing in the early nineties of the century, is the only classical writer who mentions him. His words of regret over his recent death (_multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus_, X. i. 90) suggest that Valerius died about A.D. 90.

In the Quest of the Golden Fleece Valerius had a subject which no one could make entirely dull. The tale of the earliest of ships,[1283] the Argo, of its hazards by sea and land, of the love between Jason and the outlandish princess Medea, and of the perilous winning of the dragon-guarded treasure contains the same inherent romance as that which colours adventures upon the Spanish Main, so that Heredia’s line in _Les Conquérants_ might equally well have been written of Jason’s crew,

Ils allaient conquérir le fabuleux métal.

Here too were voyagers for whom, under the perpetual imminence of the unknown, each night brought hopes and dreams of heroic morrows. This is the stuff of which epics can be made. Valerius, luckier in choosing such a theme than Lucan and Silius were in drawing upon history, could hardly fail, notwithstanding the trammels of his episodes, to catch and convey some gleams of its pure roseate charm. The story of Statius’s _Thebaid_ stirs in the bosom little perceptible emotion; but it is otherwise with the fortunes of the Argonauts. A primeval glamour plays round a legend which may be older than the tale of Troy: and we can be sure that it is older than the composition of one of the Homeric poems as we have it, for in the _Odyssey_ Jason’s fabled ship is mentioned as in all men’s minds.[1284]

In a story so old, Valerius had many predecessors. He was not even the first Roman poet to handle it. Varro of Atax had based a work on the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius of Rhodes, and a reference in Probus[1285] to Varro makes it likely that his poem was accompanied with a commentary whence Valerius might have derived material. Ancient Greek writers on the myth, Herodotus, the Attic tragedians, Apollodorus and Diodorus seem to have furnished Valerius with subject-matter, but whether directly, or indirectly through _scholia_ on his chief source, Apollonius, it is hard to say.[1286] Later Greek writers also contributed their portion; and his geographical learning, as in the catalogue of peoples in Book VI, came more probably from Eratosthenes than from the elder Pliny. To his material sources Valerius added inventions of his own, and treated the whole in a style upon which the influence of Virgil and of Ovid are unmistakeable.

The hexameters of the eight books reach a total of 5593, and Book I is the longest (851). Greek though the theme be, the poet’s aspiration is that his “utterances may fill the cities of Latium” (l. 21). The narrative opens with the jealousy felt by Pelias, king of Thessaly, towards Jason, the son of his brother Aeson, and his crafty plan to despatch his nephew on the dangerous Quest of the Golden Fleece under the pretext of revenge on Aeetes of Colchis for the murder of Phrixus. Jason feels the lure of glory, prays for the favour of Juno, and at Minerva’s command builds, decorates and solemnly launches the Argo. Heroes flock to man her—Hercules brings the youth Hylas, and Chiron his ward Achilles. Sunset comes and

Dotted along the crescent bay are lights
That show not lands as yet to mariners,[1287]

because there are no mariners! Orpheus whiles away the hours of night with a relevant ballad on the drowning of Helle by falling into the sea from the back of the golden ram, and on the escape of Phrixus, her brother. When the Dawn-goddess comes, “setting the sea a-shimmer with the morning sun,”[1288] it is to display the adventurers in readiness for their start, which takes place after Jason’s parents, Aeson and Alcimede, have given utterance to their grief at the parting. A catalogue of the crew is added in about 130 lines (352-483). Their number is fifty, including Acastus, Pelias’s son, who joins stealthily at the moment of sailing. It is one of Valerius’s many departures from Apollonius that he more subtly represents Jason as inducing his cousin to share the dangerous voyage, whereas Apollonius makes him join voluntarily. Another difference is his introduction of the catalogue at a considerably later point than in Apollonius—an improvement, because he has first roused the human interest in the heroes. To the signal of three trumpet-blasts the galley sets forth, Telamon stroking on port-side and Hercules on starboard, with Orpheus to give time to the rowers, Argus in charge of ship-repairs, and Tiphys as pilot. The sailing has not passed unnoticed in heaven. The Sun-god, sire of Aeetes, whose domain is threatened, complains to Jove, Mars supporting the complaint, while Juno and Pallas oppose it. It is the old celestial machinery conventional in epic. As in Virgil, Jove replies, unfolding destiny with a Roman note prophetic of other empires,[1289] and, again as in Virgil, the hero’s ship is menaced by a storm which Neptune calms. Meanwhile, Pelias’s impotent grief over the secret departure of his son in the Argo is vigorously described. He can strike at Jason through his parents, as he declares in Latin reminiscent of Virgil:

Here too, thou robber, thou canst suffer wounds:
Here there be tears and thy beloved sire.[1290]

But the old folk resolve to forestall the cruelty of the king, and drain a cup of bull’s blood. The death of Aeson and his consort is the occasion for a picture of the under-world strongly marked by Virgilian influence. Both in ideas and language the last twenty lines of the book recall _Aeneid_ VI: _e.g._ the new adaptation of the Twin Gates; the joys of light, dance and song in the abodes of bliss; and the type of life on earth that is a passport to happiness.[1291]

The feeling that the Argonauts were “the first that ever burst” into a silent sea is skilfully suggested early in Book II by the description of sundown:

The sunset hour had doubled every fear,
When now they saw heaven’s face revolve, while hills
And plains were wrested from their eyes, and round
Lay darkness heavy. E’en the peace of things—
The great world’s silences—affrighted them,
And stars, and sky begemmed with streaming locks.
Then, as one who in land unknown is lost,
Still wandering on his journey through the night,
Finds ne’er a rest for eye or ear, but all
Around the blackness of the earth, and trees,
That seem to meet him blacker for their shade,
Deepen his dread of night—not otherwise
The heroes felt alarm.[1292]

Guided by the stars, they make Lemnos; whereupon a digression relates how it came that Vulcan loved and Venus hated the island. Digression though it be, it is a well-told tale (which in turn influenced Statius) concerning the murder by the Lemnian women of their husbands returning from war, and Hypsipyle’s rescue of her royal father in an old ship. Her love for Jason is a copy in miniature of Dido’s for Aeneas. Jason, like the Trojan prince, has to be reminded of his mission; and there is grief in Lemnos when the Argonauts leave. The book contains a further incident—the rescue by Hercules and Telamon of the daughter of Laomedon from the sea-monster, and the scheming of the mean-souled Laomedon to avoid giving the rescuer the promised reward of white horses. Putting to sea again, they pass the narrows between Europe and Asia and are welcomed by King Cyzicus in his town.

Most of Book III is occupied with two incidents—the fight against Cyzicus and the capture of Hylas by a water-nymph. The former is a fatality due to a mistake pathetic in intention but in essence incredibly grotesque. The Argonauts have sailed away laden with farewell gifts from Cyzicus. Now, the goddess Cybele nurses a grudge against the royal house for the slaughter of one of her sacred lions during a hunt. It is, therefore, brought about that Tiphys, the steersman, is sunk in deep slumber and that the Argo drifts back to Cyzicus’s city, where in the dark enemies are fancied to be at hand. The battle thus begun in error lasts, we are expected to believe, through much of the night, and the Homeric slaughter wrought by the Argonauts is told with a realism considerably overdone: bones and jaws resound beneath the blows, and the land is white with scattered brains! (_sparsusque cerebro albet ager_, 166). The mighty boon (_donum ingens_) of being killed by Hercules leads one victim to the knowledge that a dreadful blunder has been made, and after the king has fallen by Jason’s spear, Jupiter intervenes. With the dawn Tiphys realizes that they have been fighting against a friendly state: it is a tragic recognition, like a frenzied Bacchanal’s return to her senses. Jason is filled with grief over his host of yesterday and arranges for elaborate funeral honours. This affords an opening for an exposition of the philosophy of the soul and of conscience by the soothsayer Mopsus, who ordains ceremonies of expiation. Artificial scapegoats are employed, upon which, by a curious ritual magic, the anger of the hell-powers is to be diverted, and so the Argonauts row away light-hearted. The rebound from sorrow to happiness is reflected in the jocular rivalry among the oarsmen and by the humorous description of the “crab” caught by Hercules which smashes his oar and sends him floundering back on several others. Fresh trouble, however, comes with another landing: and some pretty description marks the story of how Hylas in hot pursuit of a stag stoops to drink at a brook and is drawn into it by a water-nymph. A series of similes illustrates the restless anxiety of Hercules as he calls in vain for the missing youth:

“Hylas” again and “Hylas” yet again
He shouts through distant wilds. But naught replies
Save woods and wandering echo’s rivalry.[1293]

The Argonauts become impatient over the prolonged absence of Hercules, and debate (with traces of the rhetoric in a _controuersia_) whether they should sail without him. In the end, after Jason, with reluctance, has loosed the cable, his men grieve to miss the lion’s skin and see the empty bench:

As the ship goes, all yet shout “Hercules”
And “Hylas” all—names lost amidst the waves.[1294]

In Book IV the chief incidents are the appearance of Hylas in a vision to announce his fate to Hercules; the arrival of the Argo at the land of the Bebryces, whose arrogant boxer-king, Amycus, is humbled by Pollux; Orpheus’s song of Io’s transformation into a heifer, in reference to the legendary name of the Bosphoros; the freeing of blind old Phineus from the torment of the Harpies, and his foretelling of the main stages of the Argonauts’ adventures; the narrow escape of the Argo from the Clashing Rocks (“how,” reflects Jason, “could they on their return voyage ever thread their way through again?”—a hint of the poet’s intention to bring them back by a different route); and the attainment of the Euxine, where a dull and unpoetic description is inserted. Their welcome from the prince of the Mariandyni is all the warmer because, like them, he loathed King Amycus: as Valerius remarks in one of his comparatively few _sententiae_,

Sure bond it is to face the selfsame foe.[1295]

At the beginning of Book V death has thinned the number of the Argonauts, and fresh comrades join who relate their exploits in following the arms of Hercules against the Amazons. By night the noise of the Chalybes can be heard at work on implements of war—evil inventions which had brought into activity the Hates, the Angers and the avenging Fury. Caucasus is next sighted—the scene of Prometheus’s torment, and it so chances that Hercules has arrived to free the Titan that very day. Next comes the first sight of the Colchian land, with a fresh invocation to mark a new portion of the epic. Their hardest task is now before the Argonauts, and Jason reminds them that nothing must prevent their bringing back the Fleece:

Necessity should never know a qualm
(_rebus semper pudor absit in artis_).

Medea, King Aeetes’s daughter, after a night of ominous dreams, is early astir with her handmaidens. She is likened to Proserpine:

As o’er Hymettus’ flowery ridge in spring
Proserpina once led the dance, or ’neath
Sicilian crag, by Pallas stepping close,
Yet linked to loved Diana, and more tall
Than any, with no rival in her train
Till that day when she blenched and at the sight
Of Hell had all her comeliness dispelled.[1296]

Valerius describes her, when she first sees the strangers, as a shy girl with nothing in her manner to suggest the sorceress. She depends for reassurance on her old nurse, who recognizes the aliens as Greeks. The mutual impressions of hero and heroine follow: she, reduced to silence, draws back a few steps, but has eyes for him alone; he concentrates attention on her as a princess among the foreign women. Answering his courteous appeal, Medea declares herself daughter of Aeetes and instructs him about his way. So Jason proceeds shrouded in a mist of invisibility to the audience-chamber of the king in the Sun-god’s temple. In all this there is a contamination of epic sources, and a modelling of incidents upon earlier poems. The meeting of Jason and Medea is based partly on Odysseus’s meeting with Nausicaa in Homer, partly on Aeneas’s meeting with Venus under the guise of a huntress in the _Aeneid_. Jason, like Aeneas, proceeds in a miraculous cloud of concealment. The first interview with royalty in the _Argonautica_., as in the _Aeneid_, takes place in a temple. Just as there were tableaux on the walls from the Trojan war to interest the hero of the _Aeneid_, so for Jason there are provided, thanks to the prophetic skill of Vulcan, pictures of the Golden Fleece and the coming expedition of the Argonauts. This parallelism is one of the cramping conditions of ancient epic, and when it passes the bounds of the pleasantly reminiscential the reader feels that the poet has sacrificed his individuality to standard authority.

Jason’s claim to possess the Fleece angers Aeetes, but he dissembles and promises it as recompense if the Argonauts will help him against the menace of his brother Perses. It is a promise which causes commotion among the gods.

Much of the fighting against Perses and his catalogued allies in Book VI is wearisome. It is one of the innovations made on the story by Valerius, but we do not follow Jason on the battle-field with the love-lit gaze of Medea, when Juno, disguised as Medea’s sister, has led her to the town walls to watch the conflict. There is a note of pity for this girl ignorant of coming ill and the victim of a scheming goddess:

So gleams the lily white, pre-eminent
Amid the hues of spring; but short her life:
Her glory hath brief flourishing—e’en now
The dark wings of the South o’ershadow her.[1297]

Jason performs deeds of prowess and Perses is defeated. With nightfall the din of battle dies away.

If Book VI has dull stretches, the last two books are the most attractive and possess great human interest. This is notably true of Book VII; for it traces the growth of Medea’s passion for Jason, the mental conflict between loyalty to her father and love for a stranger, and the avowal of their affection by the lovers in the temple of Diana. The speeches, though coloured inevitably with some rhetoric and some Virgilian echoes, show real emotion.

Aeetes disdainfully breaks his promise and makes a new proposal—the fire-breathing bulls must be yoked by Jason, and the crop of warriors from the dragon’s teeth must be sown. His perfidy meets with a spirited reply from Jason:

Not this the recompense, Aeetes, nor
The hope you offered to the Argonauts,
When first we donned our armour for your walls.
What means this change of faith? What craft is planned
By your commands? Another Pelias,
Another ocean here I see! Nay, come,
Ye princes all, combine to hunt my life
With hate and hests. But ne’er shall my right hand
Or hope desert me. ’Tis my wont to bow
To orders, not to quail before the hard.
One boon I pray for—whether yonder crop
Whelms me with its own spear-growth, or the fire
To-morrow swallows me with threatening maw—
Send hence to Pelias’ cruel ears the news
That here died _men_, and that, had _you_ kept faith,
Jason could have regained his country safe.[1298]

Alarmed for the hero, the lovesick princess wanders distraught in the palace; and still more passion is breathed into her soul by Venus under the form of Circe, daughter of the Sun. Her inward struggle is vividly represented—which shall she favour, father or alien? She is trapped (_prensa_). Would that earth could swallow her, and so she might escape accursed suggestions. Now she will, now she will not betray her father; but at last, overcoming scruples, she turns to her most potent drugs to aid Jason. Possessed of these magical charms, she passes out into the night, and, after a final hesitation, through the city gates. Here Medea is a dual personality, now a timid maiden with a sense of modesty and a regard for duty, now an astonishingly powerful enchantress capable of controlling the passage of Night and the heavenly bodies. In Diana’s temple they confront each other. Jason breaks silence:

Pray, maiden, act not like thy cursed sire;
Unkindness fits no countenance like thine.[1299]

Protesting against the king’s ingratitude and perfidy, he declares his unalterable resolution:

Ne’er shall I quit this land without the Fleece:
Thou shalt not first behold me fail my race.[1300]

Scarce lifting her eyes, the Colchian princess half resentfully, half scornfully, asks Jason why he ever came to her land; why he, a Thessalian foreigner, should look for aid from her. Her final entreaty is that, finding help elsewhere, he should let her go back to her father innocent as yet of treachery. But Jason snatches the proffered charms with avidity; henceforth irrevocably she is the guilty betrayer of her father. Round her lover she must put a sevenfold spell, and instruct him how to face the dread crop of warriors:

Be mindful, pray, of me: Medea’s self
Shall ever in return remember thee.[1301]

She calls him _hospes_ and he calls her _coniunx_, a contrast designed to recall Dido and Aeneas;[1302] and when Jason imprecates fire and destruction upon himself if he should forget Medea’s sacrifice of royalty and home, the tragedy of their broken love (though Valerius never completed the tale) is foreshadowed. The lists are made ready for his ordeal against the fire-breathing bulls and the furrow-sprung warriors; and Jason, with the aid of Medea’s magic and counsel, proves victorious.