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Episode 38, the Epic Anti Hero.

This is the first of two shows that will do on the Argonautica, commonly known as Jason and the Argonauts.

In this show, we're going to explore the first two books of this famous epic

written sometime in the mid 200s b.C. by an erudite librarian called Apollonius of Rhodes.

The epic is about the hero Jason's Apollonius of Roads.

The Epic is about the hero Jason's journey, over 9,000 miles in total to the eastern

lands at the edge of the Black Sea, to the Danube, and then the Adriatic, the Po and Rhine and Rhone rivers, Libya and

Tenesia, and then finally back to the familiar waters of the Aegean.

Over the course of this journey there will be dragons and giants, witchcraft and diabolical

prayers, fighting and murder foul monsters and cursed profits, loyalty and betrayal, and a thousand

dawns with the sun breaking over bright saltwater coves, gloomy inland river valleys, headlands, and rocky islands, palaces and desolate stretches of empty countryside.

It's a gigantic narrative populated with a broadcast of characters. But at its heart is a dark love

story, a tale of a rather unexceptional young Greek named Jason and a powerful woman who can shatter giants and summon hell itself to her aid.

We've met her once before in a play by Eurypides. Her name is Medea. We won't meet her until the next episode, but when we do, she

will be, as she was before, one of the most overwhelming characters in ancient literature.

A lot about this epic is overwhelming, actually.

Appelonius wrote it at a time of geographical expansion and discovery when the Greek-speaking world had very recently become dizzyingly

larger through the conquests of Alexander the Great.

There is, in the Argonautica, a contagious sest for adventure and almost a travel writer's

enthusiasm for describing places.

Appelonius describes the trees and landforms and ocean currents of places the heroes

...