Argonauts (Greek mythology); Jason -- (Mythological character); Medea, consort of Aegeus, King of Athens (Mythological character)
"I now bid you embark while it is still night, and take with your oars
the passage opposite to that which the enemy guards, for at dawn when
they see their plight I deem that no word urging to further pursuit of
us will prevail with them; but as people bereft of their king, they will
be scattered in grievous dissension. And easy, when the people are
scattered, will this path be for us on our return."
Thus he spake; and the youths assented to the words of Aeacus' son. And
quickly they entered the ship, and toiled at their oars unceasingly
until they reached the sacred isle of Electra, the highest of them all,
near the river Eridanus.
But when the Colchians learnt the death of their prince, verily they
were eager to pursue Argo and the Minyans through all the Cronian sea.
But Hera restrained them by terrible lightnings from the sky. And at
last they loathed their own homes in the Cytaean land, quailing before
Aeetes' fierce wrath; so they landed and made abiding homes there,
scattered far and wide. Some set foot on those very islands where the
heroes had stayed, and they still dwell there, bearing a name derived
from Apsyrtus; and others built a fenced city by the dark deep Illyrian
river, where is the tomb of Harmonia and Cadmus, dwelling among the
Encheleans; and others live amid the mountains which are called the
Thunderers, from the day when the thunders of Zeus, son of Cronos,
prevented them from crossing over to the island opposite.
Now the heroes, when their return seemed safe for them, fared onward and
made their hawsers fast to the land of the Hylleans. For the islands lay
thick in the river and made the path dangerous for those who sailed
thereby. Nor, as aforetime, did the Hylleans devise their hurt, but of
their own accord furthered their passage, winning as guerdon a mighty
tripod of Apollo. For tripods twain had Phoebus given to Aeson's son to
carry afar in the voyage he had to make, at the time when he went to
sacred Pytho to enquire about this very voyage; and it was ordained by
fate that in whatever land they should be placed, that land should never
be ravaged by the attacks of foemen. Therefore even now this tripod is
hidden in that land near the pleasant city of Hyllus, far beneath the
earth, that it may ever be unseen by mortals. Yet they found not King
Hyllus still alive in the land, whom fair Melite bare to Heracles in the
land of the Phaeacians. For he came to the abode of Nausithous and to
Macris, the nurse of Dionysus, to cleanse himself from the deadly murder
of his children; here he loved and overcame the water nymph Melite, the
daughter of the river Aegaeus, and she bare mighty Hyllus. But when he
had grown up he desired not to dwell in that island under the rule of
Nausithous the king; but he collected a host of native Phaeacians and
came to the Cronian sea; for the hero King Nausithous aided his journey,
and there he settled, and the Mentores slew him as he was fighting for
the oxen of his field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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