Distant Encounters: The Prometheus and Phaethon Episodes in the Argonautica of Apollonius

Rhodius
Author(s): Calvin S. Byre
Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 117, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 275-283
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1561897
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 DISTANT ENCOUNTERS:
THE PROMETHEUS AND PHAETHON EPISODES
IN THE ARGONAUTICA OF APOLLONIUS RHODIUS

On several occasions in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica, the Ar-

gonauts casually encounter figures from other myths or from the divine
world. These incidents do not affect the further development of the plot,
and there is typically no communication or interaction between the two
parties of the encounter.1 Thematic and structural parallels suggest that
two of these encounters form a pair. Both concern the punishments in-
flicted upon a mythological figure by Zeus, and by their placement they
serve as a sort of frame around the Colchian portion of the poem. The
first occurs in 2.1246-59, when the Argonauts sail within view of the
crags of the Caucasus as they draw near to Colchis. There, they catch
sight of the eagle that torments Prometheus, and they hear the Titan's
cries of agony. The second occurs in 4.596-626, shortly after Jason and
Medea, in possession of the Golden Fleece, have killed her brother
Apsyrtus in order to free the Argonauts from pursuit by him. Sailing on
the river Eridanus, the Argonauts come near the place where nauseous
vapors emanate from the smoldering body of Phaethon, who had been
blasted from the chariot of Helios by a thunderbolt and had fallen into
the outfall of a nearby lake.
Guido Paduano has recently sought to explain the rather haunting
effect of the Prometheus and Phaethon episodes as the result of the sus-
pension of the fixed regularity of the temporal framework within which
most of the events of the Argonautic expedition take place: the Argo?
nauts confront a distant, mythic past that impinges upon the present, and
experience something of the perdurability of the mythic figures' pain
and suffering ("Apparenze" 166-69). But Paduano does not take into ac?
count the poet's handling of point of view in these episodes: the system-
atic contrasts between the information that the narrator gives his audi?
ence about the scenes and what the Argonauts themselves perceive and
know about them. These contrasts, I believe, are central to our under-
standing of the effect of the two episodes.

1Other such episodes include the

epiphany of Apollo on the island of Thynias
(2.669-719), the appearance of the ghost of Sthenelus beside his tomb (2.911-29), and the
distant and indistinct glimpse that Lynceus thinks he has of Heracles, departing from the
land of the Hesperides (4.1461-84).
American
Journal
ofPhilology
117(19%)
275-283
? 19%
byTheJohns
Hopkins Press
University

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276 CALVIN S. BYRE

The Prometheus episode, as Hermann Frankel observed (Noten

318), is presented from two alternating points of view. In the more pre-
cise terms of contemporary narratology, there are alternating "focaliz-
ers" in the episode.2 Lines 1246-47 are a case of what de Jong (Narrators
102-18) would call "explicit embedded focalization": the narrator tells us
that the Argonauts themselves see the inmost part of the Black Sea and
the steep crags of the Caucasus come into view. Lines 1248-50 are focal-
ized by the narrator: in an authorial comment apropos of the Caucasus,
he tells how Prometheus, bound there with bronze fetters, feeds an eagle
with his liver. Lines 1251-53 are again focalized by the Argonauts, telling
how they see (l'5ov) the eagle flying above the ship, near the clouds, mak?
ing the sails flap by its passage. Lines 1254-55 are, in Frankel's analysis,
focalized by the narrator, who attempts to explain the fact that the eagle,
high aloft, is able to move the sails of the ship; while lines 1256-59 return
to focalization by the Argonauts, telling how they soon afterwards hear
(ctiov) the groans and lamentations of Prometheus as his liver is plucked,
until they again perceive (eioevorioav) the eagle returning from the
mountain by the same way.
There is nothing in the text to suggest that the Argonauts see Pro?
metheus himself, nor that they can connect the cries and the eagle with
him. Of the reactions of the Argonauts to what they see and hear we are
told nothing. It may be, however, that lines 1254-55 do contain a hint of
the thoughts and feelings aroused in the Argonauts: "for it did not have
the nature of a bird of the air, but it moved the quill-feathers of its wings
like well-polished oars" (ov yag 6 y' cuOeQioio tyvr\v e/ev oioovolo, / loa

2I am using here the framework developed by de Jong (Narrators) in her analysis of

focalization in Iliad, both because her terminology has gained some currency in classical
scholarship and because her method of analysis works well for the kinds of textual phe?
nomena that we are concerned with. De Jong's framework is based on the theoretical
model of Bal (most conveniently accessible in Narratology 100-18), which in turn is a mod-
ification and extension of that of Genette {Narrative Discourse 185-211; see also his Narra?
tive Discourse Revisited 72-78), who coined the term "focalization" in order to distinguish
the question "who speaks?" from the question "who sees?" in a narrative.
There are considerable differences between Genette's and Bal's models, and there
is considerable disagreement within contemporary narratology about the scope of the con-
cept of focalization and about the classification of focalizations. But these issues need not
concern us here (for recent discussions, and attempts to "fine-tune" the theory, see Kablitz
["Erzahlperspektive"], Nelles ["Focalization"], and O'Neill [Fictions 83-106]. What is im?
portant for our purposes is the fact that the concept of focalization essentially involves a
relationship between what the narrator tells his or her audience about the story and what
the characters of the story themselves know about it (Nelles, "Focalization" 366-67).

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 DISTANT ENCOUNTERS 277

5' eu^eoxoic; coxiijixeQa naXkev eQex^ioic;).3 In the immediate context of

the narrator's explicit report of the Argonauts' visual perceptions of the
eagle in 1251-53, the comparison of the bird to a ship may be read as a
case of what de Jong calls "assimilated" focalization; that is, the narrator
may be describing the eagle in terms that express the Argonauts' own
perceptions and attitudes.4
Read in this way, the lines ironically suggest a sense of empathy on
the part of the Argonauts with the ship-like eagle, whose grim purpose
in speeding overhead they do not understand, and an identification with
its mighty power.5 To us, the audience, the comparison of eagle to ship
suggests points of similarity that extend beyond appearance and power:
both the eagle and the Argo and her crew are carrying out divine plans,
the former in winging to exact punishment from Prometheus, the latter
in sailing to take the Golden Fleece from Colchis.6
In those segments of the Prometheus episode that are focalized by
the narrator himself?and it should be noted that the narrator's focaliza?
tion "intrudes," in de Jong's terminology (Narrators at several
104-9),
points in the passages focalized by the Argonauts?he adopts a spatio-
temporal point of view that is superior to that afforded the Argonauts,
but one that is nevertheless limited.7 The narrator can take in the entire
scene of Prometheus' torment, and it is he, not the Argonauts, who is
able to identify Prometheus by name and who knows that Prometheus is
the eagle's distant destination and the source of the loud cries when his
liver is rent. The narrator indicates, too, that he knows something of the

3The text of the poem that is cited throughout this paper is that of Vian, "Argonau-
tiques."
4For discussion of instances of comparisons and similes in Iliad where the narrator
"assimilates his focalization to a character, i.e., illustrates in the comparison or simile an
event as it is seen, experienced by a character," see de Jong, Narrators 126-36. See also
Fowler ("Deviant Focalisation"), who notes the essential ambiguity of such "implicit em?
bedded focalization." For some examples of assimilated comparisons and similes in Ar-
gonautica, see Schenkeveld (review of Tempo 200-3), who remarks that "Apollonius can
suddenly, in one line only, change the focalization."
5Cf. Frankel, Noten 318-19.
6Williams, on the other hand (Landscape 103), sees in the comparison an allusion to
"the close connection between the torture of Prometheus and both the beginnings of civi-
lization and the voyage of the Argo-Prometheus is being punished by a representation
of the very civilization which he has helped create."
On the divine plans for the voyage of the Argo, and their gradual, and partial, reve-
lation in the course of the poem, see Feeney, Gods 58-65.
7On the concept of "point of view on the spatial and temporal planes," see Uspen-
sky, Poetics of Composition 57-75.

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278 CALVIN S. BYRE

duration of Prometheus' suffering, when he comments that Prometheus

used to feed the eagle,which kept darting back to him, with his liver
(c|)eQ|3e naXi[mETE<; aiooovxa, 1250; <$>eq$e must be a habitual imperfect,
since at this moment in the story the eagle is not near Prometheus).
But the narrator limits himself for the most part to the "narrative
present" of the story and adopts a stance of "knowing" little beyond this.
He scrupulously avoids adverting to anything beyond the largely static
situation of the scene, to any events before or after it in the Prometheus
myth. The focus of interest remains firmly fixed on the eagle and on the
sufferings of Prometheus. We are not told enough to know whether
the Apollonian Prometheus is the Hesiodic or the Aeschylean figure,
whether he is the cunning trickster and hapless source of mankind's
woes punished by Zeus, the supreme master of the universe, or the
proud defier of a harsh and insecure tyrant and the benefactor, and in?
deed and civilizer, of mankind.8 And Zeus' own role is indi?
the savior
cated only obliquely, through the presence of his instrument of punish-
ment, the eagle, his special bird.
The shifts in focalization serve to emphasize the fragmentariness
and the fleetingness of the Argonauts' experience, and to suggest the in-
adequacy and incompleteness of any response that they may have to it.
They perceive only single, disconnected moments of a repetitive and
long-lasting process. They have no realization or knowledge of the cos-
mic events that are going on, or of the divine purpose that is being ac-
complished (significantly, the prophet Phineus made no mention of
Prometheus to the Argonauts in his lengthy exposition of their route to
Colchis, 2.311-407). The information about Prometheus and his torments
that the narrator gives us, the audience, on the other hand, allows us to
see how little the Argonauts know about the world in which they are car-
rying out their mission and how great is the distance that separates them
from the divine realm. But we are not told enough to be able to under?
stand fully and interpret that world and that realm ourselves. We are
made to see, and to see vividly, the suffering that is imposed by Zeus, but
we are not allowed to know what it means.

8Cf. Williams, Landscape 103. Nor is there any hint of the denouement of the story
of Prometheus; in the Hesiodic version of the myth, Heracles apparently freed him from
the torments of the eagle but not from his fetters, while in Aeschylus' version he freed him
from both (see Conacher, "Prometheus Bound" 10-20 and Ganz, Greek Myth 155-62. It
does not seem likely, therefore, that the function of the episode is to remind the audience
that Prometheus will soon be freed from his punishments by Heracles, as Lawall ("Jason as
Anti-Hero" 125 n. 11) and Galinsky {Herakles Theme 111-12) believe.

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 DISTANT ENCOUNTERS 279

The Phaethon episode shows a similar contrast between the expe-

rience of the Argonauts and the knowledge afforded the audience,
knowledge that, again, fails short of certainty and full understanding. But
whereas the focus of the Prometheus episode is the fact of divinely or-
dained punishment and suffering, the primary focus of the Phaethon epi?
sode is the grief and suffering that such punishment occasions in others.
The temporal point of view adopted by the narrator here is vast,
extending from the indefinite time before the Argonautic expedition
when Phaethon was struck by the thunderbolt (jtox', 597), to the present
time of the poet and his audience (f| 5' exi vuv jteq, 599), when steam still
arises fromPhaethon's yet burning body and his sisters, the Heliades,
still mourn for him. Of the antecedent events that led up to Phaethon's
destruction, the narrator says nothing; as in the Prometheus episode,
Zeus' role is only implied, through the instrument of punishment (here,
the thunderbolt).
Little
of the episode, in fact, is devoted to Phaethon himself; in?
deed, little
of it deals with the scene at the "narrative present" of the
story. Much of the episode is given over to authorial comments in
the present tense about the noxious vapors (599b-603a) and about the
grieving Heliades, whose tears of amber are dried by the sun and washed
into the Eridanus (603b-lla). And IVi lines are devoted to the narrator's
report of the Celtic story according to which the amber drops are the
tears shed by Apollo when, angry about what had happened to his son,
he had been exiled from heaven by Zeus (611b-18). Vian ("Argonau-
tiques" 3:37) points out that the poet implicitly rejects this story and sug?
gests that his motive for inserting the obscure and elliptical aetion may
have been to criticize
one of his contemporaries for recounting it.
Hutchinson (Hellenistic Poetry 129) suggests instead that its function is
to increase our intellectual distance from the story. But one of its func-
tions, surely, is to introduce yet another example of the grief and sorrow
associated with the punishments of Zeus on the divine plane.
None of this information is shared by the Argonauts. What they
perceive and feel is described in 619-25, the only part of the episode that
is focalized by them. If in the Prometheus episode the Argonauts, on
their voyage out, are implicitly compared to the eagle coursing with its
mighty wings, they are here, on their voyage home, comparable instead
to the illustrative bird which, the narrator comments, cannot cross that
steaming body of water with its light wings (ktzqo. xoi3(|)a), and dives
into the flames (601-3). The Argonauts have no desire for food or drink,
no glad thoughts. By day, they are weak and exhausted from the oppres-

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280 CALVIN S. BYRE

sive stench of the dead Phaethon; by night, they hear the keening of the
Heliades.
Once again, the narrator's focalization intrudes upon that of the
Argonauts: it is he, not they, who knows that it is the body of Phaethon
that is the source of the vapors, and that the Heliades, who are a consid?
erable distance away, are the source of the sounds of lamentation.9 As in
the Prometheus episode, the impressions of the Argonauts here are frag-
mentary and disconnected, and their understanding limited; they remain
quite unaware of the nature of the cause of their nausea and disquiet.
For us, the audience, however, who are given much more, yet nev?
ertheless restricted, information about the scene, the episode takes on
ironic and ambiguous overtones. The ambiguity here comes not so much
from not knowing the nature of the divine purpose in punishing Phae?
thon, but rather from not knowing what divine purpose, if any, may be
being fulfilled by the oppressive effect of the scene upon the uncompre-
hending Argonauts.
Shortly before the Phaethon episode, Jason and Medea tricked and
killed her brother Apsyrtus in order to escape from the pursuing contin-
gent of the Colchian fleet under his command (4.338-521). Zeus there?
fore became angry with the Argonauts, and decreed that they should
suffer countless hardships on their voyage?at least until they receive
purification at the hands of Circe (4.557-61; 585-88; the purification
takes place in 4.659-752). The hypothesis that therefore springs to mind
is that the Phaethon adventure is one of these divinely decreed hard?
ships.
The analogy of the Argonauts' affliction from the stench of Phae-
thon's body with the affliction of the prophet Phineus, who was punished
for his infractions of Zeus' rules by having his food defiled with a foul
stench by the Harpies (2.191-93,228-31), seems to support this hypothe?
sis, suggesting that the Argonauts, too, are laboring under pollution.10
A connection between the Phaethon episode and the killing of
Apsyrtus (who was, moreover, Phaethon's nephew) is also suggested by
the fact that the narrator has earlier in the poem gone out of his way to
tell us that Apsyrtus was nicknamed "Phaethon" because he was so dis-

9As Vian, "Argonautiques"3:170 points out, the Argonauts sail at a considerable dis-
tance from the Heliades.
10Cf.Beye (Epic and Romance 164-65), who sees in this landscape an objective cor-
relative of the Argonauts' guilt-ridden depression.

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 DISTANT ENCOUNTERS 281

tinguished among the youth of Colchis (3.245-46) and that he served as

the charioteer of his father Aeetes (3.1235-36; 4.224-25). In addition, the
eternal sorrow of the mourning Heliades for their brother seems to
stand in sharp contrast to the complicity of Medea in the murder of hers
(Natzel, Frauen 108).
But the narrator does not provide us with enough information to
connect the few, scattered dots of correspondence between the Apsyrtus
story and the Phaethon myth into a coherent thematic picture.u And
other statements by the narrator seem to east doubt on the hypothesis
that the Argonauts' oppression here is punishment for the killing of
Apsyrtus. The narrator's use of the particle nov (557) in his initial report
of Zeus' anger and of the countless hardships (^iuqux Jtr^avOevxac;, 560)
in store for the Argonauts suggests uncertainty about Zeus' wrath and
will (Feeney, Gods 65). And when the narrator reports how the Dodo-
nian plank of the Argo revealed this wrath and will to the Argonauts, the
hardships are specified as those of the wide sea (SoXixng akoc,, 586) and
as storms, which do not apply to the Phaethon adventure. Moreover, the
Argonauts have come to this place because Hera changed their course
after she took note of the plans and wrath of Zeus concerning the Argo?
nauts and contrived accomplishment of their voyage (Kal xoxe (3ouA,dc; /
d^icj>'auxoic; Zrivog xe ^teyav /oXov ec|)Qdoa9' e,HQr\. I Mrido^ievri 5' avu-
aiv xoio nkoov, 4.576b-78a). It is unclear from the narrator's cryptic
statements whether the Argonauts have come here despite the plans and
wrath of Zeus, or because of them.12 And so the Phaethon adventure,
like the figure of Prometheus, remains ambiguous and its meaning and
significance in this fictional world remain hidden.
The contrast, then, between what the Argonauts perceive and
know about their encounters in these two episodes and the information
that the narrator provides to his audience about them serves to empha-
size the vast distance that separates the Argonauts from the gods. These
episodes bring into the world of the poem a realm of mythological mean?
ing and of divine purpose that the Argonauts can only dimly perceive,
and understand not at all. We, the audience, on the other hand, are per-
mitted to see farther into that realm?but only a little farther. As Rich-
ard Hunter says, speaking of the inscrutability of Zeus in the poem as a

n Cf. Natzel, Frauen 108, who

argues against Fusillo's view of multiple points of cor?
respondence between them (Tempo 42-43).
12Cf.Hunter,"Argonautica" ofApollonius 80.

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282 CALVIN S. BYRE

whole, "Apollonius denies Homeric clarity both to us and to the Argo?

nauts."13 Ultimately, we are permitted to know only that Zeus punishes,
and punishes severely, and that his punishments can carry in their wake
great grief and suffering.14

Calvin S. Byre
University of Oklahoma
CByre@uoknor.edu

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