The Jason Voyage Q5+: Add your own question!
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Did anyone else think the only place Severin was over-reaching in his explanation is with the clashing rocks? Well... I'm probably alone there.
I liked the idea with the Clashing Rocks that the sudden changes in current and wind might well see like Athene giving them a boost at just the right time. But otherwise see my comments to another starter thread in which I ramble on about how at times the approach seems a little too rationalistic, as though everything has to have a sensible explanation.
Another interesting area that Tim Severin (sensibly) glossed over was the return journey. His book was focused just on "lets get to Colchis and make some cool historico-archaeological discoveries along the way". But of course his account is incomplete - ship and crew have to get back home. One presumes that many of the crew just got planes or whatever, and somehow the ship was rowed back in order to do the Ulysses Voyage that @Apocryphal mentioned. But those things are irrelevant to him.
However, in the original context, getting back was important. Whether you were a trader who had gone there for gold, or a trail-blazer opening up the route in the first place, if you didn't get back then the whole thing was pointless. (And likewise, in most though not all stories, true voyage is return).
Now the really interesting thing about the original Jason voyage, which Tim Severin briefly mentions but doesn't explore, is that there are multiple variations. If the original version was "really about" a trade journey then it would be important that they got back home with the gold. Likewise if it was "really about" opening up a trade route it's crucial that others get to hear. And the obvious route is just back the same way, with slightly different obstacles and a much easier passage through the Hellespont.
But in fact the various versions differ, and frequently go via wildly different (and to modern geographic eyes impossible) routes, eg up the Danube and then somehow back into the Med. What's this about? Clearly the modern Argo couldn't possibly follow such a route, and nor could anyone back then... and my suspicion is that the navigators of the time knew this perfectly well. So the story here stops being about a real external journey, and converts into something else, trying to tackle the question, how do you get home?
Hmmm... I like that interpretation of the variations, @RichardAbbott! My feeling about some things in the original story - like the clashing rocks or the Harpies - is that they were inserted by storytellers in the process of mythologizing the story. The Greeks knew what seagulls were. They also knew what harpies were. Harpies made the story better! In my long ago second RPG - which I took off the market quickly and never replaced - I postulated that the Elves dealt with their long long lives by mythologizing their own lives, remembering things sharper, clearer, and more exciting than they actually were. Making a story into myth is a process.
> Another interesting area that Tim Severin (sensibly) glossed over was the return journey. His book was focused just on "lets get to Colchis and make some cool historico-archaeological discoveries along the way". But of course his account is incomplete - ship and crew have to get back home. One presumes that many of the crew just got planes or whatever, and somehow the ship was rowed back in order to do the Ulysses Voyage that @Apocryphal mentioned. But those things are irrelevant to him.
That was in the epilogue in my copy. They put the boat on a train to the coast, then the _Tovarisch_ towed it to Istanbul.
Don't we all
Yes, mine too - not only was the return journey covered, but the various improbable routes up the Danube or around the world ocean were mentioned. Did the kindle edition omit this part of the text, I wonder?
No, it was all in my kindle edition...
Mine too - I'd just forgotten about the train plus towing section to get Argo back from Colchis.
My musing was mainly around the fact that in the original, the details and route of the return journey was not a matter of agreement between the different ancient versions, and that this element was discarded by Tim Severin. I think this was a sensible choice for a travelogue, and it would be a bit anticlimactic to say "then we got back in the boat and rowed a whole lot more" - when there wasn't a clear signpost which way to go from antiquity. But from a storytelling point of view, and also from an ancient-world trading point of view, the return journey is crucial.
As it stands with what we have, modern Argo is the Enterprise, never having to go back to a place where things went awry. But ancient Argo would of necessity have had to revisit places where they'd argued with or fought with the occupants. Hence - perhaps - the very diverse routes like the Danube, as though to avoid difficult re-encounters. It all makes me curious about how the ancient world perceived return - after all, Ulysses had a pretty easy journey from Ithaca to Troy, and a really terrible one home again. Maybe there's a theme there to do with ancient Greek thought - going back to where you started is really hard?
Yes - interesting take!