|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I have translated it with  , 'marriage', but it can equally well go with 'Helen', for whom being much desired ( ) has led to her being 'much husbanded' ( Aeschylus Agamemnon 62) and so great a threat to the institutions of marriage 40 Apollonius of Rhodes always an instructive reader of Homer twice has Jason use a gown that he has been given by Hypsipyle, the queen of Lemnos whom he slept with and deserted on his journey towards the Golden Fleece and Medea. On the first occasion, Jason is following Medea's advice on how to complete her father's demands by engaging in magic rituals to protect his body. He puts on a robe, a gift of Hypsipyle, described as (3.1206)  , 'a memorial of their intense sex'. As Hunter comments, 'Jason dresses himself in an advertisement of his tendency to leave women behind'.41 The second occasion is when Jason and Medea are luring her brother Apsyrtus to his death. They give him another robe that Hypsipyle had given Jason. This robe ( ) had been used by Dionysus when he had 'clasped the beautiful breasts of Ariadne, whom Theseus had deserted' (4.4324). This cloak still has the 'divine smell' ( 4.430) of that encounter with another deserted and 'much loved' female. For Apollonius, gifts of robes are memorials of past desertions, transgressions and encounters . . . |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Penelope herself uses Helen in an example that has not failed to provoke readers of the Odyssey. As she asks Odysseus for forgiveness for not recognizing him immediately, she explains that her coldness comes from fear of deception. She adds (23.21824): |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
For nor would Argive Helen, daughter of Zeus,
Have made love with a foreign man,
If she had known that the war-like sons of the Achaeans
Were destined to bring her back home again to her dear fatherland.
But god made her do the outrageous deed.
Before that, she did not cherish that bitter madness in her heart,
That madness from which grief has come to us also from the first. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The logic of this exemplum is hard to appreciate and the passage, since the Hellenistic commentators, has often been condemned predictably as |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
40 The Oxford text punctuates with a comma after  to try to remove this ambiguity. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
41 Hunter (1989) ad 12036. See also Rose (1985). |
|
|
|
|
|
