Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T18:36:13.757Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Magic, wonder and Scientific Explanation in Apollonius, Argonautica 4.1638–93

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Nathan Powers
Nathan Powers
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The last serious challenge faced by the Argonauts in Book 4 of Apollonius is Talos, a gigantic creature of bronze who keeps them from making a sorely needed landing on Crete. Exhausted from several days of uninterrupted rowing, Jason and his heroes despair of circumventing the brute. Medea, however, has a plan. With an extraordinary mental effort, she concentrates an immense rage in her face and eyes; this anger magically befuddles the giant, causing him to lose balance, scrape his ankle (the one vulnerable spot on his brazen body), and topple to his death. This is the final act of witchery performed by Medea in the Argonautica, and it is qualitatively different from her previous feats. Medea abandons the box of drugs and potions that have up to this point facilitated her magic, and casts a spell by ‘setting her mind to evil’ (θ∈μένη δὲ κακὸν νόον, 1669); the spell's effects are immediate and devastating. The reader is left with a vivid impression of Medea as a powerful sorceress, with magical capacities not necessarily expected in the shy young enchantress of Book 3. The Talos episode thus plays an important role within the epic as a whole, by gesturing to the larger story beyond it (best known to us, as to Apollonius, from Euripides' Medea) and to the yet more terrible powers Medea will reveal in time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 48 , 2002 , pp. 87 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED IN NOTES

DK = Diels, H. and Kranz, W. (1952) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Berlin.Google Scholar
DPA = Goulet, R. (ed.) (1989–) Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, Paris.Google Scholar
LfgrE = Snell, B. et al. (eds.) (1979–) Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, Göttingen.Google Scholar
LS = Long, A. A., and Sedley, D. N. (1987) The Hellenistic philosophers, 2 vols., Cambridge.Google Scholar
RAC = Klauser, T. (ed.) (1969–) Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Asmis, E. (1984) Epicurus' scientific method, Ithaca.Google Scholar
Beye, C. R. (1982) Epic and romance in the Argonautica of Apollonius, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Bonitz, H. (1955) Index Aristotelicus (2nd edn.), Graz.Google Scholar
Burns, R. M. (1981) The great debate on miracles: from Joseph Glanvill to David Hume, East Brunswick.Google Scholar
Burkert, W. (1977) ‘Air-imprints or eidola: Democritus' aetiology of vision’, Illinois Classical Studies 2, 97–109.Google Scholar
Bychkov, O. (1999)‘ἡ τοῦ κάλλους ἀπορροή: a note on Achilles Tatius 1.9.4–5, 5.13.4’, CQ 49, 339–41.Google Scholar
Chantraine, P. (1999) Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots (2nd edn.), Paris.Google Scholar
Clay, D. (1983) Lucretius and Epicurus, Ithaca.Google Scholar
Daston, L. and Park, K. (1998) Wonders and the order of nature, 1150–1750, New York.Google Scholar
Dickie, M. W. (1990) ‘Tabs bewitched: magic, atomic theory and paradoxography in Apollonius, Argonautica 4.1638–88’, Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 6, 267–96.Google Scholar
Dickie, M. W. (1991) ‘Heliodorus and Plutarch on the Evil Eye’, CP 86, 17–29.Google Scholar
Dodds, E. R. (1951) The Greeks and the irrational, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Feeney, D. C. (1991) The gods in epic: poets and critics of the classical tradition, Oxford.Google Scholar
Fortenbaugh, W. W. et al. (eds.) (1992) Theophrastus ofEresus: sources for his life, writings, thought, and influence, vol. 1 pt. 1, Leiden.Google Scholar
Fränkel, H. (1968) Noten zu den Argonautika des Apollonios, Munich.Google Scholar
Fraser, P. M. (1972) Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols., Oxford.Google Scholar
Furley, D. (1987) The Greek cosmologists, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gantz, T. (1993) Early Greek myth: a guide to literary and artistic sources, 2 vols., Baltimore.Google Scholar
Gaskin, J. C. A. (1988) Hume's philosophy of religion (2nd edn.), London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giannini, A. (1963) ‘Studia sulla paradossografia greca I – da Omero a Callimaco: motivi e forme del meraviglioso’, Istituto Lombardo (Rend. Lett.) 97, 247–66.Google Scholar
Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962–1981) A history of Greek philosophy, 5 vols., Cambridge.Google Scholar
Huby, P. (1978) ‘Epicurus' attitude to Democritus’, Phronesis 23, 80–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, R. L. (1987) ‘Medea's flight: the fourth book of the Argonautica’, CQ 37, 129–39.Google Scholar
Hunter, R. L. (1993) The Argonautica of Apollonius: literary studies, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, G. O. (1988) Hellenistic poetry, Oxford.Google Scholar
Kirk, G. S. et al. (1983) The Presocratic philosophers (2nd edn.), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Livrea, E. (ed.) (1973) Apollonii Rhodii Argonauticon, liber quartus, Florence.Google Scholar
Llewelyn, J. (1988) ‘On the saying that philosophy begins in thaumazein’, in Benjamin, A. (ed.) Post-structuralist Classics, London, 173–91.Google Scholar
Morel, P.-M. (1996) Démocrite et la recherche des causes, Paris.Google Scholar
Mossman, J. (1997) ‘Plutarch's Dinner of the seven wise men and its place in symposion literature’, in ead.Google Scholar
Mossman, J. (ed.) Plutarch and his intellectual world: essays on Plutarch, London, 119–40.Google Scholar
Paduano, G. (1970–1971) ‘L'episodio di Talos: osservazioni sull'esperienza magica nelle Argonautiche di Apollonio Rodio’, Studi Classici e Orientali 19–20, 46–67.Google Scholar
Sedley, D. N. (1976) ‘Epicurus and his professional rivals’, in Études sur l'Epicurisme antique, Cahiers de philologie 1, 119–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedley, D. N. (1982) ‘Two conceptions of vacuum’, Phronesis 27, 175–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedley, D. N. (1998) Lucretius and the transformation of Greek wisdom, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. F. (ed.) (1993) Diogenes of Oinoanda: the Epicurean inscription, Naples.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. F. (1982) Lands and peoples in Roman poetry: the ethnographical tradition, Cambridge.Google Scholar
van Lieshout, R. G. A. (1980) The Greeks on dreams, Utrecht.Google Scholar
von Fritz, K. (1953) ‘Democritus' theory of vision’, in Underwood, E. A. (ed.) Science, medicine, and history: essays on the evolution of scientific thought and medical practice, vol. 1, London, 83–99.Google Scholar
Zanker, G. (1987) Realism in Alexandrian poetry, London.Google Scholar