Oh hi, hello there, this is Let's talk about Mitt's baby, and I am your host, that woman who just well love's mythology. I am live. You all know how much I love my conversation episodes. It's so much fun to get to speak with people who have such specialized and fascinating knowledge, and today's episode is yet another instance of that. I spoke with Helen Lovett, who quite literally wrote the book on the Argonautica. Helen is a professor of Classics at Nottingham University in the UK, and join me to talk all things Argo. I have covered that story for all of you before even read you all the Argonautica itself. But one thing I haven't been able to dive into until this conversation is just how old and how widespread the myth of Jason and the Argonauts really is. It was known as far back as the Homeric epics, where it's referenced to having already happened, and it spanned all the way into the Roman period and far beyond. Jason maybe one of the most boring, if not one of the most malicious heroes, but fortunately there is so so much more to the story of the Argonautica than just Jason. This was such a fun conversation. We talked about so many different bits and pieces of the Argonautica story, from its origins all the way into some of the modern representations of it. We talked about Medeia obviously myth, broadly sourcing because I always want to talk about sourcing, and my not so new obsession with the island of Samothrace because well, the Argonauts went there. Conversations a Journey aboard the Argo, the many myths of the Argonautica with Helen Lovett the Argonauts. I'm really excited about this because obviously the Argonauts, but I find lately I've been talking to so many people about historical things that I'm thrilled when I get like an explicitly I guess not even explicitly because there's so much history kind of around it, but these people are explicitly mythological at the very least, absolutely like myth. The cool thing about the argonaut stories are just so many weird versions of it, and it's completely an example of what missus like right from the beginning. Yeah, yeah, so I mean, lest I've right into that. So I'm I've covered the Argonautica story like typically I've been using the Appollonius, obviously because it's like the longest, most complete one that we have, but I've also seen all those different variations, So like how far back does it go, Like what are the earliest kind of sourcing on these wild people looking for a golden fleece? Yeah, well, it's it's sort of hard to know. In that there are definitely some really early things that possibly go back to the ancient Near East. So the Hercules stories amongst the oldest strata of myth, and there's pretty good sense from the Homeric homes that the Jason's story was already really well known. So there's a little bits in the Iliad talking about the children of Jason by hip Side, and there's little bits in the Odyssey where Sarcy talks about them going through the wandering rocks and she says there's only one ship that's ever managed to do this, and that is the Argo, well known to all. So it's a story it's already well known by the time of the Odyssey, which which means, you know, perhaps a lot of episodes in the Odyssey that looked like episodes in the Argonautica were actually based on an earlier oral Argonautica. But it looks because we're looking at it from the Vanche point of Apollonius in the Hellenistic period, it looks like it's so much newer story, but actually it's a really old one that is amazing. That's my favorite thing about anytime I'm encountering or trying to explain, I guess, like how these stories were transmitted to people. I just did like a I've been trying to get on TikTok and be young, so I just did like a TikTok video about the oral transmission of stories and that the way that happens. And this is such an amazing example. I'd forgotten how explicitly, like I don't think i'd kind of clocked or just it's been a long time since I've read the Iliad, but those bits. But of course, yeah, source makes these really explicit references to that already having happened, which is just sorry. Then my mind starts exploding on the like what we don't have, which is every yeah, yeah, yeah, And there's loads there were lots of foundation epics from the sort of sixth fifth century BC that like there were once from the Corinthian area because corinth was quite strongly associated with the Armormouth and sometimes i Et use the bad guy in col kiss U is also Corinthian and has a claim on the Corinthian throne, which is one of the reasons why Jason Emadia go there. So there's all this stuff associated with different places in Greece as well. So there's just loads of and then the visual and material culture stuff as well. M One of the things that just occurred to me about I've been really deep in talking and thinking about Thebes lately, and one of my favorite connections between those two things is this idea that, like Cadmus goes and found Thebes, he kills the dragon, he sows the dragon teeth, and some of those dragon teeth don't get stown there in Thebes, and they get like eventually given off to i Ets. And that's just so like specific and interesting and do you have any thoughts on where that connection might have come in. It's an interesting one, isn't it. I mean, so this is from Appollonius, and Apollonius is so such a playful author, so he's so self aware in the way he takes alternative mythical traditions and puts them next to each other, or reworks them, or uses alternative versions, or makes little references back to them without actually telling the audience he's doing it, and like it would work really well if he was also working with a sort of the bid tradition that he was playing around with and developing in his own way, and then he's sort of saying, well, look, you know, I took the seeds from somewhere else. And of course one of the key versions before Appollonius is pinned our pithy and four and Pinndar was like in a Theban context, so you can really think about it as it might. It might well have been an established part of the tradition, but it also works really well as one of these little poetic games where they're playing around with how the different bits of story relate to each other. Yeah. Yeah. One of the other interesting things that that I've come across would haven't looked into into too much detail, but is like the variations on who was on that ship? Oh my god, so many I got I built. I made a spreadsheet. I'm not normally a big spreadsheet person, but I just felt it was necessary. So so I have like one hundred and seven different Argonauts spreadsheet. But I go all the way because the book I was writing was a study of the tradition right from the beginnings up to the present day. So it's got things like the board game Oh wow, deck of Cards and things like that in it um and uh yeah, computer games and so on. But it was really interesting to see how people like to pick the coolest, most recognizable names. But then almost every version would also add in some random guy that they invented, So like the nineteen sixty three film, for instance, has Spiros the amazing swimmer, right, yeah, yeah, So Adalanta is the one that always occurs to me because like, I don't think we have much in the way of details of her being there, but sometimes she's there, right, So she's there in Apolodorus. Okay, So yeah, Apolodorus is that it is because he's a sort of handbook of lots of different versions, and so there's there's a reasonable chance that there was quite an early version in which Atlanta was one of the Argonauts and us there's quite a strong set of connections between the Caledonian ball hunt and the Argonaut right sort of crew, in that a lot of the Argonaut crew were involved in the ball hunt, and that's obviously something she's always involved in. So so when Apollonia says we cannot have any women on this ship, it would make a mess. That's another one of those things where he's where he's saying in other versions saying clean, I'm not going to you because I am a super misogynist. But although he sort of isn't, sort of isn't, I was going to say, yeah. So I started reading that because I've covered the story, and then I actually did like a full reading of like it was an old translation because I have to do public domain like copyright free translations to read them. But I did this full reading series on the show where I read the whole of the r an Artica, and I kind of went into it thinking that, thinking like, Okay, there's no women. He's making a whole point of it, like there's not a lot going on. But then when you get to Madea, like she's a very cool character. Yes, his version of Madea is very cool in a way that I was not expecting, Like reading it into my microphone, Wow, she's very she's very she's very heroic. She's very much like a Homeric hero. She has a sort of authority in power. And also I feel like he's part of a long sequence of people who were, you know, pissed off with Euripides, you think, so, yeah, yeah, a lot of people like get really drawn into Euripides Medea and want to sort of understand where she came from. And they say it's a sort of rehab the rehabilitation, but also the foreshadowing, so showing this innocent, idealized but still powerful and witchy character. Yeah that makes sense. I love Euripides this version of her obviously, but but yeah, I mean if you're if you're trying to like wrap your head around that one, which is so like we don't really have much in the way before Euripides of her. We just know that she was a thing um. But that his version two. I love, Like how explicit he is. This is like Apollonius, I mean, how explicit he is that like she is under a love spell, like this is not her actions in a way that I felt very vindicating. Yeah, I mean it's an interesting one, isn't it. And we always, my students always get really obsessed about this because they can't get their head around it. And they you know, they want to blame, but there's there's definitely a sort of double causation that happens in epic where where it's both fate and the actions of the people. And I was actually, I'm actually just listening to Emily Wilson's Odyssey at the moment for as a sort of therapeutic act. And uh, and I just heard the bit on while I was on the tram the other day where where a Dissey says, well, you know, fate has brought them to their end the seat is but their own you know, and their own actions. It's a really clear expression of that double causation. Well, I always try to explain it too to my listeners of like, yeah, it's both, but it's also like the two in this context are so interlinked that you almost like can't separate them. Like it's it's how I try to describe and in this fits perfectly too. But like the idea of love, it's like love is aphrodite. Aphrodite inflicts love, but also your love is real because Aphroditie has inflicted your love. So it's like, yeah, it's fate, it's always going to happen, but also it's real, like because there is no alternative, you can't form it explicitly on your own, like she has to do it in a way that. Yeah, So I think that's how I kind of think that God is both the personification of the psychological phenomenon and the character and an anthropomorphic character that has plans and designs of their own, and all of those things are happening at the same time, so exactly. Yeah, Like it's just one. You can't have one without the others, so you can't blame one and not the other like they're they're just working together in that so explicit way. It's interesting because in Pinda it's it's Jason who is who uses the spell to enchant Medea. So he gets Aphrodite's help to design this sort of magical thing called a junks which involves a bird and we don't really know how it works, but it's some sort of magic spell, some sort of love spell, and he basically makes her fall in love. So he's got a lot more agency in Pindar's version, whereas in Appelenis he's a lot more sort of hapless and passive. Yeah, I haven't read enough Pinder. I don't know why, well, I guess I do know why. So much of it is tied into like just talking about people who won games and so I have. But it's so gorgeous as well. I'm not beautiful. But for me, I have to turn that into a story for my letters, and so translating that into like a story that I'm not just reading Pindar to them, Like if I could just read it aloud, then I would. You know. It's one of those that's my struggle constantly. But that is really interesting. I think PITTI and four is a really nice way into pinball because it's his longest one and one of his most narrative, and it does although it's and the frame is quite an obvious and interesting story in itself in that the man who commissioned it was exied from Syrene, and then you've got these clear parallels where he's trying to basically persuade the king not to act like a tyrant and take him back. But so it's this idea of positive kingship runs through it, and also of healing social divisions, and so it's you know, you've got Medea in there as a profit figure talking about the foundation of Cyrene, which is usually very at the very end of the arghost voyage, and it's a sort of it sort of folds in on itself. It's really narrative, very complex narrative, and then he obviously stops at the key moment of killing the dragon because he's maximum annoying guy. I like that. That's that was what surprised me on finishing the Ragon Artica too, is that it stopped before I imagined it would. Yeah. Yeah, I also read. I was like, what, You're not even going to get back to Grease. What's happening? We're like, yeah, we we just we just did this water carrying thing and it was fun and then we went got back by Yeah exactly, thanks by what is happening? But that's very appalenious because you know, his his in the Hellenistic period, they were sort of experimenting with poetic form and um and just you know, overturning and undermining all the ways everything worked before. So he's he's just having a lot of fun with the epic genre. And that's in a way what the deep dive into media's characterization is part of that, because you're not supposed to spend an entire book with a love sick princess. No, I would imagine, not mad time. Yeah, that's It always fascinates me to to specifically look at things like like Appollonia's compared to the earlier epics, because it's such an interesting difference to see something that was written so intentionally versus compiled over an oral tradition. You know, like he went in with a point of what he wanted to write, which is something that we don't often have, or certainly we don't for the Iliad and the Odyssey, and then so like looking at those decisions as actual choices being made versus just like the result of a tradition. Yes, it's actually quite hard to know what degree of authorial intention you can envisage for the Iliad or the Odyssey, because exactly at some point someone decided what to include, but a lot of that was was going on, you know, maybe in the editing process at the time Appollonius was writing. Yeah, there's just so many versions. So before I jump into also wanting to hear your thoughts on the orphic one, which I have not read any of. I just know it exists, but I'm curious about like locations within it and what those say about I mean, I guess the time, like what was going on, Like what kind of what is there in the really specific like stops they make along the way, because a lot of the time they feel really they can be like really brief and seem like they have no point at all, or they can be like really extensive and you're like, why have you spent so much time, you know, explaining this thing. I'm so curious about them. Yeah, well, I mean one of the things Appollonius is participating in is the Hellenistic interest in travel narrative, So he gives a lot of detail about the you know, the specific rivers and what it's like. And there's a brilliant sort of experimental archaeology book by Tim Severin, the guy who did all those Cool Voyages, which was part of a nineteen eighties TV series, where he takes Appolonius and he uses it to sort of reconstruct what an actual voyage was like with a reconstructed Mycenaean boat, and and he really looks at, say, the description of the clashing rocks and compares it to the currents in the Bosphorus, and it's really really interesting and persuasive in the sort of level of detail that Appollonius gives about the landscape. He's clearly, you know, really fascinated by the geographical realities. There's that, and then there's also the Hellenistic obsession with ideology, so telling stories about how things happened and foundation stories, and also the interest in in sort of colonize the wider Greek world and annoizing other areas, um like the Black Sea. Um so. Quite a lot of the places that they stop at them later on reinvent themselves a sort of Argnau town, and it's every it's all over I mean, so, you know, because the return journey, there's so many different versions of it, pretty much anywhere I could claim to have had the orginals go through all the way back. Libya has a big tradition. Interesting that that just made you realize to the there's a tradition and I'm not remembering if it's in a Polonius or not, but where they stop on Samothrace, which is obsession, it is, okay, I love it's so I went there in June and my life has never been the same, and now I don't think about anything else. Um So I bring it up, I time a dog to anyone in case I can connect it. But there's a distinct connection because they go there, and is it in a Polonius or I don't know if it's just a tradition of that time, but like they're in I could into the mystery. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't say very much about it. He just says that Orpheus told them to go there, and they did it, and then after that they were much safer. But but I think it probably comes from Easchalis kabey Roy, which is any fragmentary, which is the cabe Roy where the gods on Samothraki, so that the initiation right seems to have been the central aspect of that. And it's the argonauts you do it, So that seems to be quite an old part of the story as well. Why did I not know that eschol has wrote about them? Okay, so now I'm taking men home. I know I know about that because of Emmaicle's awesome article about Punch Drunk's immersive theater where they were doing that. They did a version of the cabe Roy in London where people like walked around London being initiated into things and had to go into the British Museum and look at artifacts and then ended up in a warehouse and oh my god, it sounds so cool. Immersive theater. Oh, London has so many of those right now, because there's a there's a bird sitting. Yes. So many people have told me about it and they're like, you have to do it. I'm like, did you think it's easy for me to get to London? I live in the Pacific Northwest crag, Like I really wanted to go, but I'm too blind because it would involve a lot of hanging out in the dark and falling over things, like just saying thing, I could do it. No, ye oh yeah. I've had a bunch of people tell me about it, like okay, I can't go. Oh my gosh um, but that's amazing. Yeah. The the Samothrace of it, well, I never know what to call it, but I'm going to call it Samothrace. But when I'm in it doesn't matter. I just I guess I went there, so it was Samothraky. You know. It's exactly how I do. Even though I'll be talking to people in Victoria and I'll switch between the two, and they're like, what, I'm sorry. I did learn that I cannot say Samothrace over there. They do need me to say Samothrak and I don't blame them. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I know. It's uh, it's become a complete obsession. I'm already thinking about like when I could go back there. But it's so so beautiful. It's it reminded me like both of where I come from and like not at all in these really interesting ways, like Therma is like basically home in a way that I was like, I was not expecting this, and it's it's just wild. Yeah, no, it's a yeah. I spent two weeks there alone in June and now sorry, now I'm just thinking about it. It's when when my husband and I were interrailing back in nineteen ninety six, we stopped there the first place we stopped after Istanbul, and we got just like we were just in love with it and couldn't bear to leave. So we eased up so much for interrailing. Ticket just sitting on Sammathraki. I mean, there there's nothing wrong with that. It is September and empty and the weather was gorgeous, and there were stars and waterfalls i I saw, and I will start because I don't know how much of this is gonna stay in the episode of just like fawning over Sammothraky. But so I stayed in this basically the closest place I could find tom to the mysteries, because that is all like I've been writing a novel about Cadmus and harmony and it, and over the past year became like, oh, I have to write in about seth Reki, like there's no question, And so that's why I went. It's I don't know if I'll ever finish it, but I'm now obsessed with the island at least um. But so I got like the closest place I could find to there, to the sanctuary, and I had heard like for when I was there in Junes. It was also empty and and I think pandemic might have hit them harder, which I wouldn't surprise me. So because like so many things were just like completely nothing, but I hung. I had a drink with one of the people working at the site, and she had talked about how she'd seen dolphins like just off the coast, like while walking on that road around the island, and I was like, I haven't seen dolphins yet, Like I'm so disappointed. And I walked back to my hotel and this guy had just brought in like sixty sheep to just like do their sheepy thing like on the ground right by the water between the road and the ocean. And he was just like, only didntber he can't come from Like he'd like seemingly walked there with his like shepherd crook and just like hanging out with the sheep. Yeah. This incredible. I don't know what I'm winning saying. And I was so obsessed with trying to figure time watch and see where he brought the sheep that I went back to my hotel which could see the water, and I was like watching these sheep and the sheep dolphins went right behind the sheep. They were like ten. I was like, this island is magical Okadian paradise, just like this place is another world anyway, Oh my god. Yeah, I'm actually attempting to write a novel about the Algonauts at the moment, and I'm stuck on lendos so you close. Uh yeah, that that would be that would be a zing too. I would love the novel about the Argonauts, So I think it would be fun. It's it's uh yeah, the central character is a castus, so so that we get to have in our head the whole time the question of is he going to be the baddie or not? Oh, remind me who, because he's the son of Kim Pelias the one, and in the nineteen sixty three film he's the baddie who betrays Jason, right, so I thought he'd been an interesting character too, and then he has to like make a decision about how he's going to handle the stuff when they get back to Yokos. Yeah. I like that also because like Jason would be really hard to write, because he's really boring. I don't know you can pull that back to the episode itself, which is my version of Jason is one of these people who's like um, sort of traumatized by his own beauty. That feels very Jason. Yeah, yeah, very bad at making decisions, but also sort of charismatic and caring. And yeah, because I quite like Jason. I want I want him to be you know, the notsk not toxic masculinity passion, but the one he tries hard but just gets everything wrong. Yeah. That feels that feels very Jason. I so sorry. Now I'm trying to pull it back to it because I don't know if you want anything about your novel in the episode, which I've talked about it quite a few times. Yeah, well, um, well, because Jason in in the various like versions of everything, like I've always kind of had to, you know, pull everything together and form this idea on him. And and I obviously, like you know, part of my show is also comedy. So I'm like a little bit over the top sometimes and Jason is easy for that. Yeah, But it's interesting to me because so many people come to me like, oh, isn't Jason the worst? Like Jason's the worst hero? And I think Jason is not. Like if we're you know, if we're collecting the typical heroes, like who is the you know, least hero arc maybe like I do will always stand by theseus. I have all my various things that I will use his evidence. But in the case of Jason, like I find him to just be like he just he can't do anything for himself, Like everything not enough. Yeah, yeah, American us. He's he's without resources, like like the opposite of Odysseus polymeric and ask so yeah, there's like a word for it. Yeah, yeah, so he does. Yeah. But the thing about Jason is he's different in every single version. Um. And in Pinda he's he's actually pretty resourceful and effective and impressive. Um. And maybe that was that, maybe that reflected the early tradition, but we don't really know, because Pinda was also trying to make him look good to impress Kessels and get his patrons, you know, to be allowed to go back to Cyrene. Yeah. Well and it's interesting and im to mention this when you brought it up too. So, so Jason in Pindar, Jason actually is the one who has Midaya fall in love with him, which yeah, it is both to me like kind of and also very not Jason like. It is him, Yeah, him doing something, him actually taking control of the situation an interesting way. And he and the big part of the narrative in Pindar is the confrontation with Pelias and then the confrontation with i et. So it's the two bits of the narrative and then the feats that he gets to do, and it's him who deals with the dragon, not madea so it's it's so you know, much more, much more positive, strong, heroic Jason. Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I like that. I'm glad that Jason gets, you know, another version of himself. I usually focus on euripity Is just because it's Midday is my favorite play. It's it's it's very very influential. Yeah, he got some really really negative Jason's like Henry Treesy's nineteen sixty one novel where he is just I mean, he's worse than in Euripides. He's like incredibly cowardly, has no redeeming features, is always trying to manipulate people, you know, rapes, rapes, Afathanta when she's scared, and you know, there's just loads of He's just really really horrendous is and he's the first person narrator, so Teresa is playing around with you know, how evil can he make it his narrator and people will still read the story. Interesting. I hadn't heard of that. That sounds both dark and fascinating. But yeah, yeah, the Heroldes version is so interesting because I mean, obviously it's explicitly like against Jason, because that's who is writing these letters. But it's interesting to have these two different people who experienced him in such different ways, like writing about what he did. And there's some really cool versions of Hipsipoly particularly they're like the medieval tradition where it is super important because they didn't have a lot of the Greek stuff, so or at least it wasn't well known. And so there's a really cool um sort of a romance novel by lefevre Um where where there's another woman as well called Mirror, who he originally falls in love with, the then Hipsipoli seduces him, then Mania seduces him, and then on his way back, Hipsipoli sees them and commits suicide. So it's wow. Yeah, that reminds me. I was recently looking for like an image of her and and there was so many medieval versions and I didn't really realize why. Yeah. And there's a brilliant opera by Cavali from sixteen forty nine called Jasone where which is all just basically dodgy erotic stuff um and if you look on YouTube there's quite a good performance of it and the uh and it's it's basically soft porn, and at the end of it he ends up with hip Sippoli, not with Medea. Wow, that kind of thing back then. That feels surprising, And and basically they spend the whole time on this island doing sort of dodgy romantic subports and try to deceive each other and persuade each other to jump off cliffs. That sounds wonderful. So it was very popular in the seventeenth century, but we doesn't get performed now because there's sort of no canonical like a score for it, so they have to recon every time someone performs it. They have to sort of reconstruct it. Oh yeah, that's there's so much Oh my gosh, okay, um, that's fascinating. But so maybe the the Orpheus, Yeah, what is, Like I said, I haven't read it. I just recently did a series on on the orphic tradition in whatever way that I could in three episodes, which kind of broke my brain a little bit, And so I'm like vaguely familiar now with the tradition itself, But yeah, what is the deal with this orphic organautica which is basically like Orpheus takes almost the role of Jason, right, Like he's like the leader, is the narrator, but he's still he's still there as a sort of he's the first person who arrives, and he is an Appollonius as well, and he's he takes a much more important role, so there's a lot more ritual um and when they're sorting out, when they're trying to get the fleece in Culcus, he does lots of ritual activity to make it happen, and he's there when they get the dragon and so on. But um and it also misses out all the love stuff, so it basically just skips over it, so it's not um. It's not as different as all that. It's clearly still got a lot of connections with Appollonia. So there's also quite a bit of valarious flaccus in it, I think as well, which I'd like to have fun with, because mostly people assume the Greek traditions don't read the Latin stuff, and I'm not sure that's true. But the fun thing is that the orphic Argonautica, you think, is a pretty obscure text. There's there's no lub of it, there's no sort of canonical translation, and there's some slightly dodgy ones that are out there, but there isn't a decent published translation of it yet, so we're you know, hardly anyone reads it. And yet Charles Kingsley's The Heroes, which was like a really really popular children's book in the late nineteenth century, Charles Kingsley picked the Orphic Argonautica to basis Jason in the Golden Fleece on, so it's parts of quite a lot of it. It's actually a translation of the Orphic Argonautica. And for him, I think he must have done that because he thought it was the earliest version, because he talks about it as what an old tailor, so I think he actually believed it was by Orpheus, whereas actually it's a fifth century a d text. So and I think there was some scholarship where they didn't know that, but he obviously didn't think that. H that's really interesting. Yeah, I mean all the Orpheus stuff is so I mean complex and not complex with the idea of yeah, like that he that he wrote anything, or that he was a person. So do they leave out Medea entirely or is she there like without a romance plot. She's there, but it's just like summarized super quickly in three lines she's like not concerned with her really, no, not really so. And then Orpheus does a lot of the stuff that Medea would normally do, right, right, you got to give him that. That's really interesting that Valerious Flaccus, what is that? Oh, it's the way I sort of came to the Argonauts through Valerius Flacus, because I did my PhD on Statius, which was written about which was about the same sort of time, and they share a hypsipili episode. Sous. Valerius Flacus was writing at the end of the first century, a d under the emperor either Vespasian, Titus or Demission or maybe all of them. And and he's it's very much a Roman Argonautica, so he obviously knows Appollonius really well and plays around with it, but it's actually not very much like Appolonius, and that it has lots of Virgil in it as well, and lots of Ovidum, and it's a really cool debt, it's really fun, and that his media is actually very like Virtuous. So she takes her a lot longer to fall in love with Jason. She has an entire book of watching Jason fight battles and being manipulated by person by a like both Gino and then Venus herself actually like going down and making her fall in love that she resists really hard. Oh that's great. That reminds me. I was also recently speaking about Ovid's take on Medea in in the Metamorphosis, specifically because that's fun too. It is, I mean it doesn't really I mean it includes Jason obviously, but it's not as much about the Argonautica as much as it is like just madea flying around in a dragon chariot, like being quite like. I like that because she's basically taken over the Argonaut journey, so instead of getting the Argonauts, she get media flowing around in her chariot. Twice, she gets two trips around in her chariots. Yeah no, I mean you know, we're we're viewing it from her point of view. So yeah, no, it's that's a that's that's coming out in the episode I have on next Friday, because I spoke with Stephanie Macarter. But her new translation of oh cool, Yeah, it's very but there's a lot of Medea and her dragon chariot in there, but it's it is Interestingly, I hadn't thought about it in that way though, where it kind of like subsumes the Argonautica, like he chooses not over the Argonautica. He's like, nah, like, I want to talk about all the weird magic that Madeia does. And yeah, that's that's quite interesting, especially and it's rejuvenating. She's rejuvenating the story. Well that's true and literally yeah, yeah, and all the different herbs and that that sort of version that a Vidian version is really influential later on as well. So all the nineteenth century art quite often has images of Medea walking around in forests gathering herbs, which is really a Vidian It may have come through William Morris, because you know William Morris, the Arts and crafts movement guy. He actually wrote a complete epic, The Life and Death of Jason, which has got a lot of of it in it as well as lots of medieval stuff. Wow, I don't know that either. There's so much I love that. I mean, of course you wrote a book about it, but yeah, all the ways that it has been used later is really interesting. Alan, And I even only saw the like nineteen sixty three. Yeah, I only saw that like last year for the first time, which is bad. And I haven't even seen the Titanos of one. I don't know why I'm so bad at this, but but that one was incredible, like I was not expected. It's hard, you know, like going stop. The stop motion animation is amazing, it's incredible. And just the skeletons, oh my god. That's second. It makes me wish that they were in the in the book, like this idea of that being. And it's funny how after that all the all the picture books and all the images have skeletons instead of warriors in armor. It's like up to about two thousand when it starts to tail off, and then you get a sort of more authentic sort of well it makes you think of his Maday or his Medusa rather in Clash of the Titans becomes like the canonical Medusa. Like everyone now Medusa's is like bottom half snakely. Yeah, that's not in any bit of Greek myth. Like that's Harry Harrison massively influential. Yes, I mean because it's beautiful stuff, but um yeah, that's that's although his media is very disappointing. Yeah, she's just basically a dancing girl and she doesn't really get to do anything. So yeah, Verry James Bond, Verry Bond girl. Yeah, he definitely likes Jason more than Jason Strong nineteen sixties matcho Jason with lots of like skepticism about the gods. Great score though, the score by Bernard Herman is really good. And the Talos I could look like all that is amazing. Yeah, that tell Us is in the is in Apollonius is take right, Yeah, yeah right at the end though, So what Harry House and what the scriptwriters have done is to swap it around so that they avoid the like the Hilas episode, and they have a different way, of a non sexualized way of getting rid of Hercules, right, and they already and then media is not able. You know, it's not her power that deals with Tarlos, it's Jason. So it's it's all um, you know, carefully fitting things into expectations in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that bit, of course. Yeah, they're not They're not going to make Heracles leave because he was in love with a man. Yeah, although there's quite a good dynamic between the two and the Hilas is pretty camp, so I think subtext is there it's just they don't want to make it too obvious. Yeah. Yeah, when it comes to like other like earlier, I guess, like between pindar and and Appollonius, do we have a lot of references or rather, I guess I don't know if that's a fair question, because that's there's quite a bit of it's mostly fragmentary. There's there's a lot of tragic fragments, and there's a lot of my mythography in fragments as well. So Farakidis did a there's quite a lot of rationalizing stuff. Um so the idea that the ram was actually a guy called ram or the bulls were guards that were Turian, so hence TAROI. Yeah, so there's there's a strong rationalizing tradition that goes back to their fifth century. Interesting, and there's quite a lot of historians who wrote about it as well, which is then reflected in say Diodooras Ciculous, who's writing in I think first century BC, and his version is totally different for him. The Argonauts is a sort of subset of Heracles, so Heracles is with them the whole time, and they basically they just help him do stuff like they help him get rid of put Priam on the throne in Troy. They help him get rid of Phineas and replace him with someone else. So it's it's all, um, it's all just a Heracles thing. Interesting, So probably there were there were two traditions. Probably there was a Heracles version and adjacent BSh. Which is quite fun because often in the modern like uh say, Young Young Hercules is Hercules adjacent and um, some of the films, like the nineteen fifty eight Fatigacule is also a mashup where Hercules is sort of in charge. Interesting, I forgot it. I haven't watched Young herculess I was young, and I always want to go back to that though. I mean, God, yeah, Canadian pride Um, the Tragic Fragments, how many like were there a lot of plays that we think are these guys quite quite a lot of different players. He is mostly focused on particular episodes, so like, um, so the killing of Pelias when they get back. There's quite a lot of iolk or stuff. There's some there's the root Cutters, which is that's yeah, so that's Pelias's daughter's killing him off. There's there's also quite a few Phineas tragedies. I think all three of the tragedians wrote about Phineas. So Phineas is the guy with the harpies, the prophet in Um and in Apollonius, he just he's a good guy and they're saving him from these horrible harpies who are destroying it in an Apollonius's version has completely sort of overwritten everything else. But when you look at the tragedies, you find that as a strong alternative tradition in which he was a really nasty piece of work. He'd put aside his first wife. He was Cleopatra, the sister of the sons of Boreas zts in Calais, and so she's their sister. He's put her aside in then he's either killed, imprisoned, or blinded her sons and taken another wife, and the wife the second wife wanted to get rid of her. So it's a you know, he's an evil villain and is being punished with the harpies and with blinding for a really good reason. And then when the sons of borry Us turn up in Apollonius, they rescue him, but they've they spent quite a lot of time like saying you sure, we should do this, it seems a bit risky. And in the Orphic Argonautica they actually they all punish him and the argonauts borry Us blows him off into the wilderness where he dies. So it's it's a totally different tradition that is basically under the surface. And because Appollonius has dominated all the later versions, hilarious everything set the Orphic Argonautica. And it's interesting because Kingsley in that point has is really unsure what to do, and there he includes all their ships. So he's just like there are some that say this and some that say that. Interesting. Yeah, I mean it sounds like what I do every time I talk about anything these days. Yeah, I can't pick one version. I have to tell you everything. I'm sorry. One of the things that's destroyed me for that, And I realized I had heard about the root cutters through that is the Timothy Gants Greek or early Greek myths. Oh my god, I love Gants so much, so helpful. And also I think that he has definitely caused my podcast to be like a lot more in the weeds, and it like necessarily needs to be very good nerdy stuff. Yeah, So lovely. That's how I know about Faara Kite's at all, because it's so fragmentary that, like it's really hard to come across any of his stuff outside of that work I find. But meanwhile, like, yeah, you have to go to Bob Fowler, which is all still in greeting, not translated. So yeah, that's not good to me. Yeah, actually pretty good. The Lord fragments, the great tragic fragments in the Lord are good now, m yeah, I need to I need to get more of those. Also, Um gosh, there's it's I've never I don't know why I didn't consider how many fragmentary like tragic pieces there would have been about that, which is interesting. But of course, like you have Jason and Medea, so like why wouldn't there be so many more? Um? Oh, one thing, I don't know if it connects as well, and I've I've been told many times that I need to read it and I haven't yet. Um, but I'm curious with your thoughts on what is his name? This is me not being good at Rome, but the Roman guy who wrote the Tragedy of Medea Accus no Seneca. Yep, there are quite a few of them, So that's why I'm confused. Accus is only fragmentary, so we don't have that many we don't really know how he played it um. But Seneca, Yeah, Senecas madea is fun and his Medea is um a lot, so his his Jason is a lot more like an Eneas figure. He's sort of like driven by obligation and trying his best in difficult circumstances. So he's he's trying to sort of rehabilitate Jason. There's such a long tradition of trying to rehabilitate Jason. I feel like Appollonis is right out at the edge of the spectrum for most rubbish Jason, and you know, like Europodes is most hated Jason, and then everybody who comes later is like, no, no, Jason was actually okay. Let's try and make him okay. Apart from Henry Frieze, do you think that's a Roman thing trying to hero wise Jason. Yeah, I mean there's definitely. The figure of a Nius is quite important because Virgil drew so so much on Appollonius, Like Appollonis was really influential, and Virgils aneered and then people who are a bit iffy about a Nius, Like, Okay, he's act she really liked Jason, so that they're sort of rehabilitating in ears by rehabilitating Jason. Interesting. Yeah, they're definitely very similar as someone who doesn't care for either of them. All. Yeah, that's interesting. I I often I like to consider what Rome was doing and why, but usually it comes back to like, yeah, or think about how Rome treated a lot of women characters versus Greece. Well, I don't know, because I mean Medea is valarcist. Medea, I think is a strong character. Well and I say that, and then Ovid's is as well. Arvids Madia is pretty great. Yeah, yeah, I mean I feel like in some ways they're like less monstered as it were. So you've got the Etruscan model of femininity, which contributed to Roman femininity, which which which was actually quite independent, and you know, Roman women could own property and have quite influential roles in a ways you know that go beyond a lot of Greek culture, and to an extent that's true in the Hellenistic period um because you know, if you're a really you know, the power thing trumps the gender thing. If you've got the wealth and power. That's what really matters. Um. And that's sort of true of Roman women as well. Um, so I feel like they're not made into monsters as much, but obviously it's still an incredibly misogynistic culture. Yeah, I know. And I'm just also like very biased towards Greece and realizing you shouldn't be. It's just where my interests are. Also, it's like classically be a Latinist, she says, it's fear. I talked to a lot of them. It's fine. And I also really don't even just as you're taking about Hellenistic, I'm like, I also don't dive into the Hellenistic period enough I need to probably, Yeah. Yeah, it's more just like I mean, when it comes to mythology, it is like I just tend to have, you know, the the early sources as my interest point, but I'm also using Timothy Gants and stuff, so it's getting everything thankfully. I also quite often the evidence for the early sources comes from a lot later periods, so in order to understand that evidence you have to sort of because there's some really interesting bits of hilarious um that you know, like Hercules deals, with the sea months to trying to eat at Troy. So that's a taking a different episode that you mostly don't encounter in in the Argonauts story, but it's a big episode in a Sorry, yeah, I have told that stround the podcast, So I am sure that I've read him and didn't just forgot about it because I was like a year ago now because I do. I it's that's an interesting story that I think. I mean, I guess it was definitely one that he was working on an older tradition, right, because the idea, yeah, boy, yeah, it's very ancient. Yeah. The Greek and Roman stuff is just sort of not really you can't divide it up. It's one big culture, that is, because we owe so much of our understanding of Greek traditions to Roman preservations of it. So it's it's, you know, it's just all mixed up together. Yeah, yeah, in a very satisfying way. Yeah, which leads me to speaking of all the sources that tend to be so helpful for us when we don't have earlier sources. Apollodorus like, how much does he work off of Appollonius versus versus women have interesting So one of the things I did was to look in my spreadsheet of argonauts. I looked at how much overlap there was between different catalogs of argonauts, and they were all different. Yeah, and Hygienus was had more overlap with with Appollonius than Apolodorus. Did. I think Hygieneus restoring from the tragic traditions. So it's it's really it's really interesting. A Polo Doors is actually quite different from a Plains interesting and I guess he's storing from some of the prose traditions or maybe some of the other early poems. Yeah, I find it interesting. I was just looking at um, those two writers for another story, and the way that they can vary a lot in ways where just leaves all these open ended questions about like what they were working off of, because we have these two Like in my case, I was looking at um the story of I know of the yeah and yeah between Yah, Yeah, Yeah, I guess it really relates closely to where they are place um. But it's interesting because you know, I'm I'm looking at the Gants and so much else. And uh, she is not named as like the stepmother villain of the Praxis and Helly bit until people like Hygenis and Apollodorus, whereas like before that, in the sources that we have, it's like an unnamed stepmother and so it could be like a different Athamas and it doesn't necessarily need to be, I know, And it's an interesting thing of going to navigate that. And it's like, Okay, well but those two guys or sources name her as I know, and like what are they working off of? And yeah, like Jason's mom is very confusing as well. She has laters of different names. Interesting, Yeah what Jason's Yeah, I realized I don't think I know much about her at all, Like what are the different versions of who she was? So I think there are three or four different names. Alchimedie is the one that the Appollonius uses, and he actually gives her quite a lot of air time. So they have that whole because he was taken away as a baby and then just came back and then she has to let him go again, probably to die. And actually that that mother relationship in the whole emotional thing is big in the two thousand TV version, the Hallmark one, which can picture that one. I don't know if I've seen pretty interesting. So it also plays around with um, like it has a bizarre scene as Zeus tries to seduce Medea. Oh interest. But yeah, and some of the things that at the time I was like, this is just completely out there. I then looked up and found that, you know, they were actually early variants that had stuff like this in there. So I was like, oh, okay, there was me thinking they'd made that bit up, but actually maybe he found it. So yeah, like actually maybe they were going so deep into like some wild fragment that they actually like were weirdly accurate. That's interesting. Yeah that somehow that reminded me, though they're deeply unrelated. Um. One of my favorite things in looking at the story of Jason is that piece of pottery. I forget what physically it is, but it's the one where Jason's like getting spat out by that Doris cup. Yeah so cool. Yeah, it's so cool. And we don't have like an actual surviving source that that it describes that happening right like him actually, but we like I feel I theories, yeah, mainly Jason Calavito. He has many theories, but yeah, I mean it could it could be some version. There are other there are other visual representations with the same thing on it, so it's not only the one. So it seems to be a separate iconographic tradition, and the iconographic traditions and the textual traditions are not always the same. So and it could be some sort of rejuvenation narrative. I think there's something stuff in the Tragic Fragments in which media rejuvenates Jason. Um. And it could have been some sort of rejuvenation ritual, or it could be like a sort of genera in the whale narrative where you get sort of stow but come come find your way out again. Um. And it's interesting that in the VARs in the Doors Cup it's it's um, it's Athena helping him, not media. So there are quite a lot of older versions that don't give much sort of of a role to Medea. And it may be that she was a fairly straightforward sort of UM. I think it's in I think it's in the catalog of women where they just get married and everything's happy and fine, and she is presented as being the goal of this quest rather than the fleet. So it sounds about right. That sounds like he's heard if it was easier. There's there's also the possibility she was a goddess from that fragment, because it's in amongst a whole bunch of other goddesses that marry mortal men. Well interestingly technically should be right like based on her parentage, but she's pretty mortal granddaughter of Helios. So if if and Cerci is her aunt, so Cerci is a this that's the thing apparently right, Yeah, that's the thing. By by all of that genealogy, you would think that she was like comparatively to anyone else in that situation and certainly and like most hence hence getting the dragon the dragon chart. Yes, exactly, well she's got it. Yeah, I mean, Helious is going to give her that that thank you. That reminded me the So I back when I very first started this podcast, like five years ago, when I just honestly really had no idea what I was doing and just like picked up a book of Greek myths that I found so basically before I started working off of almost as almost exclusively primary sources. I remember I had read some version in some like you know, compendium of Modern Retelling of Greek Myths, where it was described that like Medea gave Jason like a poison, I guess, and explicitly told him to get eaten by the dragon so that he could like poison the dragon from within and then get spat out. And that was interesting. It is interesting now thinking about like somebody reconstructing part of the story based on that pottery, but not based on any kind of like textual example, but like also adding in so much like that's like an fully invention of the idea of like, yeah, well he's doing it strategically because it's like a poison and this is all going to work out, and that's how it's going to defeat the dragon. Like that is Daniel Ogden's line. Oh if I'm I don't think. I mean, if he was on my podcast two weeks ago, that's what he told me. He thinks. Anyway, well then I beg you. I definitely wasn't reading him back then. But maybe this person had written I think it was Robin water Field, okay, which I don't look back on. It's probably a theory that's been around for a while because there are a lot of rationalizations or explanations of things that have a sort of venerable tradition of their own, like the idea of the clashing rocks beIN icebergs, which goes back at least I thank Kingsley uses it in you know, eighteen sixty seven or whatever it was, eighteen fifty five. Actually, I think for any part of the Mediterranean that we could cold enough for icebergs. Well, I think the if you're going to take that line, it's either that the climate was a lot colder then and they had come all the way down through the Black Sea, or that cul Kiss is not at the edge of the Black Seat somewhere else, or that the voyage actually involved going a lot further north, which it does in the Orthic Argonautica. So on the return journey they they go either through the English Channel or even further up, you know, around the top of Scandinavia. Wow, so they go really far north. And there's also a version where they go really far south as well and find you know, go around Africa or find the Okanos and go all the way around the world. Oh, I love that. That's really interesting. I'd never imagine something going that far. Makes me think of all people trying to rationalize Atlantis, and is there any kind of like I didn't think there's any argonauts in Atlantis except for the TV series that is actually very cool. I want to write about that. Yeah, I watched a couple of episodes for that for another podcast I was on. Um I forgot about that. Yeah, that was a wild thing where it's like suddenly all of Jason's things are in Atlantis. Um. Yeah, and why just someone That's exactly what I was just gonna say. Like, I do think that they just picked the names that were both like somebody people had heard of and and probably in the case of Jason, like I almost wonder if they were like, well, like Hercules has been overdone, but like we also want someone whose name is like easy for people to remember. We're not gonna go with like Cadmus or like I mean, Theseius. I guess maybe you could have, But Jason is just such like a it's the one Greek name I think that sounds so completely English in a way that like, yeah, I guess that's why why Rickfield and uses it in the Heroes of Olympus as well, does he use Yeah? Yeah, yeah, uh, that's that's interesting. Yeah, I forgot about that Atlantist show. It was like, actually actually think I watched the whole sort of it. It was Yeah, I got bored in like the second episode of the second season or something and stopped. I should watch the rest of it, Like the I liked m I like the mashup of the Theseus Smith with the Jason Smith because that that actually already happens in Appollonius. So because he talks, he talks about he uses thesis as an example to persuade media, and it doesn't work in terms of temporality because um, he would apparent me before, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, but that feels to me like what they try to do with Theseus, which like, and I don't have any concrete evidence for this, but in my head, Theseus is just so much of like a rewrite to put Athens into all the important So I guess Appollonius refusing to have Thesis in the Argonautica is like one in the ife Athens. Yeah, because he is also included in the Argonautica in some versions right on your spread, Yeah, he's in some of the quite early pots. I mean, there's definitely an early pot with the Gathering of the Argonauts which includes Thesis. Interesting, isn't it Athenia or Attica. I think it is at Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, the Athena versions so like that Athena is then the person in charge of everything, which connects with the other thing I'd thought and then forgotten, so thank you. Um. That's the only thing that interests me about the Argonautica and Jason specifically, is like he is basically the only hero who is helped by someone who isn't Athena, like who is helped by HERA hero doesn't do a lot of helping heroes, and Athena almost explicitly helps. I mean I think she helps every other hero. Yum. Yeah, it's it's an interesting that's a really early part of the story as well. So that's that's mentioned in US, that's mentioned in Cercis speech. I think hero loves Jason so um. And that's something they do in the two thousand film. They have a very explicit, like erotic thing where here is trying to wind up Stews bye bye, like going on about how beautiful Jason is. She is getting angrier and angrier, which they do is sort of thunderstorms eruptic. I have to find that version. It's actually a lot of fun. I mean, I can picture the like cover because like as someone who was like a pre teen in that time that the actor whose name is also Jason Jason, thank you. He was in like everything and then now I feel like he's like completely disappeared. But like I can picture him as like the two thousands actor and then playing that role and everyone hated him so much. There's some brilliant reviews. So someone like Jason Jason was like a bowl of soggy corn flakes, And I'm like, yes, this is the Jason I know and love. That's exactly like that is Jason. Like, I don't think that's the actor. That is Jason. I had as the goal I had on a guest we talked about Medea and Jason, and she described him as having the personality of a used dish cloth. Yep, Like, I just think that's what makes him him. It's not necessarily an insult all the time. It's just like that is Jason. He's just kind of like a blank slate. Well that's it. That's that's what I think. I think that every version comes up with their own Jason. So there are also some really powerful dark Jason's as well. There's this really interesting trilogy. I fancy No Alls by a guy called Robert Holdstock, and his Jason is really violent and sort of compelling and exciting, but vicious and nasty, and that's quite an interesting one. That's I think the darkest Jason interesting, darker than the other one you're talking about where he's like a rapist too. Yeah. Yeah, well the tree Swan I think is more like more the dishcloth, but with a lot of emphasis on the yeast such a I see. This is why I can't hate Jason in the way that like I do love to hate Thesis like I do. I love that part of it because I just think it's fun to point out everything that makes him a mess. But when it comes to Jason, like I just think he is fascinating in the way that he is this blank slate, that he is just kind of like this malleable like thing. He's he is so many different things. He is so usable by the people around him. He's just kind of this like figurehead who's there in name but then really just like leaves everything up to everyone around him. Yeah, I think I think Appollonius is um really he's the key for that. He definitely is he's made Jason that that's yeah, I mean he as the like, you know, undoing epic heroism. Yeah. So do you think that was intentional? Yeah? Yeah, he was just that he was like I mean that that lovely election scene, it's just so brilliant, the bit where the bit where Jason's got everyone together and they're all ready to go, and it's all very exciting, and he's sort of full of himself and he's just been compared to Apollo. And then he's like, Okay, everyone, I think we should decide he's going to lead us, because it needs to be someone who's really good and can speak well and too, and and everybody goes Heracles and then then he's and Heracles is like, no, no, I'd be rubbish. You have to go with him. He's only called us. It's and it's so like it's very much like that bit in the Iliad where Agamemnon tries to motivate everyone and they all tried to go home. Yeah, and it's just how rubbish a leader he is, and and it's all just gone horribly wrong. It's totally backfired, and it's just massively awkward and embarrassing. And Hercules also comes out as a bit of a twat, so that you know there's no there's just no good character in there. Yeah, that's great. I gotta re like I thought i'd read it so recently, but it's those little details that like I know at the time that I probably lasted through my reasons of it. But it's just so much of it and it's so rich. And the scolia are also amazing sources for the early versions as well. There were because it was quite a detailed commentary on it, and that's where Gants gets a lot of his his stuff, um, for the early things. So the fragmentary stuff, a lot of them come from the Appolonius scolia. M hmm. Interesting. Yeah, so as I think that I did all my jacent episodes before I got those books, um, because they were my little investment. But what um like is there is there references to kind of what Appollonius is doing or like what he might have changed from earlier versions that we don't have or yes, um, so yeah, that's that's why we find out about quite a lot of the tragic fragments. So like the Absiotus episode for instance, where Jason murders Medea's brother, and all the different versions of that, there are so many of them. That's where the some of the tragic fragments come in, because there was I think it's Escla's version where they had a feast in the palace in Colchis and she realized they'd all the fleece seems to have been in the palace in this version, which actually happens quite a few times in the later traditions. But and she basically uses aphrodite. Aphrodite distracts i Ets by making him have sex with his wife, and that's how they managed to get out of the palace and the and she brings the fleece with her and also her tiny little baby brother. She then cuts into pieces to put off the hunt. So that's where the it's one of the best the media child killer thing starts. Yeah. Yeah, so you mentioned Jason doing it, So is there times when it's Jason who kills absurd Us and not in Appollonius, it's Jason who is so but he's in that versions he's much older, and he's leading the pursuit and he right, it's almost fine. You know, it's not exactly a fair fight because it's an ambition media. Luis in there, but he is trying to attack Jason, and Jason is trying to attack him, and is it it's all a lot less problematic, it's a quite problematic. And there's this bizarre Mascalismos ritual where where Jason cuts off all the extremities of his body to try and like get rid of the pollution and not be pursued by his ghost, which is like one of the most interesting bits of evidence for Greek purification rituals. Oh, this is the problem with having read so many different versions, they all blur together in my head. So all I could picture is is the media doing it when as soon as we are talking about it, like I now, yeah, fully remember the like getting lord there and it being like an actual kind of fight between them. Um so the purification rituals. So do does that suggest that that that it was ever like a common thing to cut somebody up and to a bunch of pieces, So they didn't your ghost didn't pursue them? Or like no, maybe I mean it's yeah, I mean there are there quite a lot of interesting purification rituals in the Argonau tradition. And so I was working on. There's also the Kaisacus episode. Do you remember that one, the one where the king that where the argonauts get blamed back to the island where they've they've had you know, they made friends of the king and then they accidentally end up fighting and killing them and everyone dies. Yeah. Well, in Valarious, they they purify, they try to purify themselves. So in Appollonias, they purify themselves by making a big statue of Cubla and um, you know, doing rituals for Cuba. In Valarious, they make statues of the dead people and try to persuade the ghosts to go into the wooden statues of the dead people, which is they're called colossal and they're really weird and cool. So there's that and um and this the dark fantasy guy Robert Holdstock, he takes those and then he turns into this thing where Jason resurrects his argonauts who's who through these wooden figures that they gave him, which then is a way of taking them out of their previous lives like an episode of depression. Wow. Oh, these rituals, I mean, just the way that I think a lot of the interest in ritual in the argonaut myth in the modern reception of it comes from Robert Graves, who was absolutely obsessed with it. I know, I like, I also used to go to Graves more before I kind of realized how much he just seems to have. Yeah. Yeah, oh my god, Robert Graves is annoying. I hate so much. The worse is, like it's just so hard as somebody who came to this, like I have a degree, but I hadn't you know, studied it. I only have a BA and like I hadn't studied it in like five years by the time that I started the podcast. And I also just started very casually of being like I'm just gonna like read these myths and tell them to people. And then it exploded and thankfully, like I also have a keen interest and obsession with making sure that I am like doing it, you know, accurately in the way that myth can be accurate, Like here are the ancient sources, here's what all the different versions are, blah blah blah, but authentically yeah, yeah, exactly, like I am looking at the ancient world. But it took me so much like trial and error of like, oh, I'm gonna look at Graves because look, his book is everywhere and it seems like he's making joints. Literary authors really love him. So you know, these really posh, well respected people who think aren't do a bit of great mythology, they go straight to Graves. There's still a real reliance on it. Yeah, yeah, need's a good debunking. The problem is is like book sales too, right, Like it's in public domain so anyone can do it, and it just like I assume it is, or else they just a bunch of publishers just have so they're still reissuing it. Oh exactly, yeah, I mean I yeah, I was wondering. Yeah, because I have this like beautiful one which is the for the listeners, the one of the one where it looks like a comic book. But also people are often really disappointed when they open it and there's literally not like it's not like they made it into a comic book. They just made it like comic book, which is great. Um, And like I have friends who work at Penguin because I used to do, and so one of my friends just sent that to me once where she was like, look at this, thanks, But it was again before I knew that like don't don't look at graves, Like, well, he is interesting because he's got this obsession with with like female power and women, you know, like and the whole of the his retelling of the Golden Fleece was before he wrote the Greek myths, so it's sort of how he got into it all. And and he starts off with this theory about the theme the Great Mother Goddess, the Triple Mother Goddess who was replaced by the Olympians, and then that the whole thing is about a conflict between the Mother Goddess and the Olympians all the way through. So he's got this obsession with mother goddess power, which is very attractive to sort of goddess worship communities. But at the same time he's still really misogynist in all sorts of ways objectifies and sexualizes women. So it's it's really bizarre. M Yeah, and I suppose I mean, like I don't use it now for for sourcing, but it is certainly interesting to like kind of look at what his thought process was too, because like he clearly thought a lot about everything that he was writing. It's just a matter of like how much he also then invented or like made these sort of wild connections that he then describes almost as fact. Kind of he would say, he would say, clearly got this wrong. The version in my novel is correct, right, that's that's rational. Yeah, that's and it's clear that he on some level he believed his fiction. Yeah, and a lot of people do that that conviction, which is sort of mad, it does actually affect people. Yeah, I struggle with exactly the opposite, Like I can't. My biggest struggle with writing my novel is that, like, I have so much trouble inventing myth because I am now so obsessed with sticking to the ancient sources that like, I've even picked characters that like there's all there's very little story about them, and and like and then I've picked Samothrace, where there's a very little about this island, and I'm still like, I can't. I can't invent it. I need to find an acient sources, but like that doesn't exist. Yeah, there are so many different ancient sources that you can just pick amongst them. So oh yeah no, and I do, thankfully, like I've got a very invented world where I also have had to read some of Nonas because he's like the only person who is great person He's ever said that. Every time I mentor how much mentioned how much Nonas I've read, people just like, oh, you're brave like that I've been. When I wrote my Epic Gaze book, I had Quintus of Smyrna in the next letter review of the Black Quintus of Smyrna, and I was like, oh, this is fun, so I'll put some of that in. And it came back with the reader's report and the reader's report was like you, if you're including Quintus, you should definitely have Nonae. And I was like, oh, nice. And then I started reading it and I was like, wow, Nae Nae is so cool. I love it. He's got such fascinating stuff. I mean, specifically, he's the only author I've ever found to devote really almost any time to anything happening on samoth Race, and he devotes a lot of it. There's like three books on Samothrace with Cadmus and Harmonium, so like it's been Hu theban stuff, any Seben stuff. He just loves that exactly, which is all I need because everything else is super fragmentary or plays that none of them talk about Cadmus or like enough, you know, I'm not counting back, guy, that's not the I it's not very helpful thought my cadmus. Uh. But yeah, no, it's interesting. I do. I love known as. I have not read all of it because it is the longest thing ever long, but I've definitely read all the theban stuff or or all the Cadmus and harmonious stuff. And and also like his his take on Dionysius and Impellis. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, great, great boy, yes, which like is such like a tool thing. Well yeah, it's more just in hey than it's like lines and every other source. It's like this thing happened, and you're like, thank thanks, that's super helpful, thank you. And then Nona says like, let me tell you this like epic, beautiful little love story about these cute guys, and like, yeah, oh it's so fun. Glad somebody else as you would read it, let a little likes Oh, you should talk to my colleague Emily. She's a she's a specialist in the like Greek epic. Oh my gosh, I might talk about that later. Um yeah, yeah, okay, well, I feel like we've gone on to so many different topics because this is just fun. I love talking about ancient sourcing broadly. Um, but before I keep you for too much longer, is there any other like, I don't know, fun weird things we should know about the argonautica. Your favorite details are I don't know. Sometimes it's hard putting it vink on spot, but yeah, I don't know. I mean, the the most My favorite version at the moment is a new one I've just discovered, which is a science fiction novel by by Samuel Delaney from nineteen sixty nine called no which is sort of passes itself off as a quest Grail quest, but it's actually definitely got so many argonaut features. So I'm really excited about that because it's a black author version and there are not that many, so that's really great. But that's not um other cool things about Apollonius. Ah, Yes, very specific question. I just like to make sure I didn't like stop anyone from from sharing the most exciting thing they love. Um, well, why don't you want to tell my listeners a bit about your book about this, because obviously you have so much challenge. Yes, yeah, so I wrote a book called In Search of the Argonauts, which is out with Bloomsbree UM, and it basically goes through the story of the Argonauts and then also looks at all the different versions right up to the present day. And uh. And it's it's sort of looks at it in a thematic way, and we look at gender and sexuality and ethnicity and others, and we sort of try, I try to think about the way, you know, the ways people are interested in the meaning of the Argonaut myth and the sort of fascination with you know, acquisitiveness and um, the associations with the gold Rush and all of them. So there's there's that idea of exploration and it's used by science and all these different um versions of the Argonauts story um, and what it can what it can do in in different cultural contexts. Um. So I had had a lot of fun with that UM and uh, yeah, I don't I don't know what else to say about it other than that really great. It also led me to and I just really quickly, I'd love to hear your thoughts, because I realized this didn't come up. But one of the things that I always find so interesting and like to empathize to my listeners. Is Medeia being mothered and like being this person from the east, like a quote unquote barbarian Um. And I'm not totally I don't recall quite how much it comes into playing Appollonia as I just think about it in terms of Medea Broadley, But yeah, like, do you have any thoughts on that? I didn't think. Yeah, So, I mean there's the there's a theory that I mean, Argos, son of Phrixus, when they're in when they're deciding how to come back, mentions this idea that the Calkins were actually founded by sisosteris from Egypt, and so there's a tradition of the Colkians being black, which doesn't give quite a different and Christa Wolfe in her Medea, for instance, has madea as black. And so yeah, thinking about the different races around the Black Sea and the different tribes, there's a lot going on there where I say Appollonius for instances showing how you know, Greeks react into different cultures. And then Valerious has got a sort of different take on it because he's got actual experience, you know, the Romans had actual experience of going to amongst the Black Sea people, so he has a lot of fun representing all of them. But yeah, and there's also quite a lot of interest in the idea of a sort of a black colkin um and of media as a sort of refugee or um. And that's they're also in Diodorus where where she escapes from She's not interested in Jason, she's not in love with Jason. She just uses Jason to escape from her dad. Who is is he trying to kill off too many people? I forgot about that piece from Diodorus I because yeah, that's where he has this whole wild thing about like Hecta is her mother. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and yeah and then between Hecta and i Ets they're like they're like murdering people for fun and like testing poisons on them and yeah yeah, and then Medea wants to get away from them. I forgot about that. I love that. It's great. Yes, I realize I've covered it on like episodes where I talk about witches, because it is such like an explicitly like dark version of of like Greek witches, except that Medea is not dark in this one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's like it makes Hecta very much darker than she appears in the ancient Greek sources or like the earlier sources, versus Medea, who is more evil in like Euripides obviously so like in an earlier Greek source, and sort of turns that on its head, yeah, whereas Crystal Wolf turns her into it basically a medic say, hmm, so she's she's escaped, she's leading her migrant community, and then she's trying to make everyone better and happier, and it's a really like positive and um like sort of rehabilitation. If Medea, Yeah, I I love madea. I think she deserves to be rehabilitated. I definitely have spent way too much time justifying how im While I don't support it, I understand why she had to kill her children in Euripides, like I think he makes a valid point for why she felt it was necessary. Anywhere, I am very promitated all around. Um, well, I could probably keep talking about the others for ages. So I wish you'd come up earlier, but I won't keep you the loncer. But I'm glad. I'm glad it came up. Um, is there anything else you want to share with my listeners in terms of like where they can find more or or if they want you want them to follow you anywhere or whatnot. I'm on Twitter as Helen love it too. I've got an Instagram as well. Um. I do sometimes write about argonauts and argonauts and emperors and um and I'm hoping I'm going to write more argonauts stuff in the future, so look look out for it. And the book is available from Bloomsbury, and um, yeah, I think that's it wonderful. Well, I'll include some links in the episode's descriptions so everyone can find it. And I realized today that I don't own your book. I just knew all about it, so I'm gonna have to go pick up one too, because that sounds fascinating. And now I need to talk more of its argonauts on the show. That's what happens. Every time I talked to anyone, I was like, well, okay, now I have a bazilion more topics to show. Thank you so much for doing this. It was so much fun. I'm brilliant. I've really enjoyed it. Oh, Nerds, Nerds, nerds as always, thank you so much for listening. Gods, I love these conversation episodes, and it's nice to have one like this that is so explicitly myths. I'm always here for the history and the culture, but i mean, who doesn't love to learn about all the intricacies of a myth like this one. It was so much fun speaking with Helen about it, such a joy to record. We did actually talk all the way back in October and recorded so many conversations that I even still have a few from back then. There's just too many amazing people who are willing to nerd out with me. HiT's the best anyway. You can learn more about all the versions of the Argonautica through Helen's book In Search of the Argonauts. I've linked to it in this episodes description, along with her Twitter if you want to follow gods. These conversations are so much fun. The argo a bunch of heroes jammed on a boat together. What fun they must have had. Let's talk about Miss Baby is written and produced by me liv Albert MICHAELA. Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians handle so many podcasts related things from running the YouTube, to creating promotional images and videos, to editing and research. Stephanie Foley works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and accessibility. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology, by and the Intermediterranean. By becoming a patron, we'll get bonus episodes and more. Visit patron hocom Flash Miss Baby, We're click the link of this episode description. Thank you for listening. You're cool and nice. I am live and I love this shit.