On Unbelievable Stories (30-34)

The story that they tell about Phrixos is that the ram warned him that his father intended to sacrifice his own children, so he took his sister and climbed up onto its back with her. They crossed the sea and arrived at the Black Sea, completing the entire journey in about three or four days. This in particular is fanciful – that a ram could swim through the sea faster than a ship, and to do this carrying two people, and sufficient food and water for himself and for them. (Presumably they could not survive without food for such a length of time!)

And then – so the story goes – Phrixos slaughtered the ram who had warned him and had brought him to safety. He flayed him and gave the fleece to Aietes as a bride price for his daughter. (Aietes was king of that region at the time.) See how rare fleeces were then: a king took a sheepskin in exchange for his own daughter! Or did he consider his own daughter worth so little? To avoid ridicule some now say that the fleece was golden. But if the fleece really had been golden, the king ought not to have taken it from a foreigner. It has also been said that it was for this sheepskin that Jason set out in the Argo with the best of the Greeks. Phrixos would not have been so ungrateful as to murder his protector, nor would the Argo have sailed in search of the skin even if it had been studded with emeralds.

The truth is as follows. Athamas, son of Hellen’s son Aiolos, was king of Phthia. He had entrusted his property and his kingdom to a man whom he considered especially loyal and greatly deserving. His name was Crios (‘Ram’). When Phrixos' mother died, Athamas gave his kingdom to him, since he was the elder. …[*] Crios learned about the plot and said nothing to Athamas, but instead spoke to Phrixos and instructed him to leave the country. Crios prepared a ship, placed in it all of Athamas’ valuables, and loaded it with his property and wealth. Amongst these was a statue of the mother of Merops, daughter of Helios, whose name was Cos (‘Fleece’). She had used her own money to have a life-sized statue of herself made out of gold. (It was a huge amount of gold, so the story surrounding it became legendary). Anyway, Crios loaded all this onto the ship along with Phrixos and Helle, and they left. Helle became sick and died during the voyage. (It was after her that the Hellespont was named). The others arrived in Phasis and settled there. Phrixos married the daughter of Aietes, king of Colchis, and gave the golden statue of Cos as a bride price. Later, when Athamas died, Jason sailed on the Argo in search of this golden statue of Cos, and not for a ram’s fleece. This is the truth.

The story told about these women is much more laughable: that Phorcys had three daughters who had a single eye they each made use of in turn. The one using it would insert it in her head in order to see; she would then hand the eye over to the next one, and this is how they all saw. Perseus crept up behind them silently and grabbed their eye. He said that he would not give it back unless they showed him where to find the Gorgon. So they showed him the way. After Perseus cut off the Gorgon's head, he went to Seriphos, showed it to Polydectes, and thus turned him to stone. But this is even more laughable: a living man turning to stone after seeing the head of a corpse? What is the power of a corpse?

What happened was something like this. Phorcys was a Cernaian. The Cernaians were descendants of the Ethiopians who lived on the island of Cerne outside the Pillars of Heracles. They worked Libyan land by the river Annon, [*] directly opposite Carthage. They were exceptionally rich in gold. This man Phorcys ruled the islands (there are three) outside the Pillars of Heracles and he made a golden statue of Athena, four cubits tall. The Cernaians call Athena ‘Gorgon’, just as the Thracians call Artemis ‘Bendis’, the Cretans ‘Dictyna’, and the Lacedaimonians ‘Oupis’. Anyway, Phorcys died before the statue could be dedicated in the sanctuary, and left behind three daughters: Stheno, Euryale and Medousa. The women didn’t want to marry anyone, so they divided up their father's estate and each ruled one of the islands. Regarding the Gorgon, the women decided neither to dedicate it in the sanctuary nor to divide it between them. Rather, each in turn kept it in her own treasury. Phorcys had a companion, a handsome and noble man, who helped them in all matters, just as if he were their eye.

Perseus was an exile from Argos and was raiding along the coast with ships and a band of men. After learning that there was a kingdom ruled by women, rich in gold, and few in fighting men, he travelled there. He lay in wait in the narrows between Cerne and Sarpedonia, and then captured the Eye when he was sailing through from one island to another. The Eye explained to Perseus that there was nothing worth taking from the women except the Gorgon, and revealed that it was made entirely of gold. When the Eye had not arrived at the agreed-upon time, the women gathered in one place and began accusing one another. Each denied having him, so they began to wonder what had happened. While they were gathered there Perseus launched an attack against them with his ships. He announced that he had the Eye and said that he would not give him back unless they revealed where the Gorgon was. He threatened also to kill the three of them if they did not obey. Medousa refused to disclose the location, but Stheno and Euryale did. So Perseus killed Medousa and handed over the Eye to the other two. He took the Gorgon and dismantled it. He fitted out a trireme, set the head of the Gorgon on it and gave the ship the name ‘Gorgon’.

He sailed around in the trireme exacting money from the islanders and killing those who refused to hand it over. So one day he sailed to the island of the Seriphians and demanded money from them; they asked him for a few days to gather the money. They brought together stones the height of men, deposited them in their agora, and then abandoned Seriphos. Perseus sailed back again for the money that he had demanded, but on entering the agora he found no one there, only stones the height of men. And so Perseus would say to other islanders, when they did not give him his money, Beware that you don’t suffer what the Seriphians did, who gazed at the head of the Gorgon and were turned to stone!

What I say about the Amazons is that they were not women who fought in battle, but they were foreign men who wore full-length tunics, like Thracian women do, and tied up their hair with bands and shaved their beards like the men of Patara on the Xanthos river [*] do even now. Because of this, they were called women by their enemies. This race of Amazons was good at fighting. It is unlikely that an army of women ever existed, for there’s no such thing anywhere today.

False, too, is the myth about Orpheus: that four-legged beasts, reptiles, birds and trees would follow him when he played the cithara.

I think that this is how things came to pass. Bacchants in their frenzies tore livestock to pieces in Pieria; amongst the other violent things they did, they decamped to the mountains and spent their days there. While they were up there the townsfolk, worried about their wives and daughters, had to summon Orpheus to devise a plan to get them down from the mountain. After sacrificing to Dionysos, he led down the frenzied women playing his cithara. They came down from the mountain holding then for the first time stalks of giant fennel and branches from all sorts of trees. People watching were amazed by the foliage and said, Even the forest comes down from the mountain when Orpheus plays his cithara. And from this event the myth was fabricated.

The story about Pandora is not acceptable: that she was moulded from clay and then passed on her likeness to others. I don’t think this is the case.

Rather, Pandora was a very wealthy Greek woman and, whenever she went out, she would adorn herself by applying a lot of clay to her skin. She was the first to discover how to use a lot of clay to enhance her complexion. (Many women do this now, but none of them attracts comment for it because it's so common). That was the actual event, but the story was turned into something impossible.