Magic, wonder and Scientific Explanation in Apollonius, Argonautica 4.1638–93

Abstract

The last serious challenge faced by the Argonauts in Book 4 of Apollonius is Talos, a gigantic creature of bronze who keeps them from making a sorely needed landing on Crete. Exhausted from several days of uninterrupted rowing, Jason and his heroes despair of circumventing the brute. Medea, however, has a plan. With an extraordinary mental effort, she concentrates an immense rage in her face and eyes; this anger magically befuddles the giant, causing him to lose balance, scrape his ankle (the one vulnerable spot on his brazen body), and topple to his death. This is the final act of witchery performed by Medea in the Argonautica, and it is qualitatively different from her previous feats. Medea abandons the box of drugs and potions that have up to this point facilitated her magic, and casts a spell by ‘setting her mind to evil’ (θ∈μένη δὲ κακὸν νόον, 1669); the spell's effects are immediate and devastating. The reader is left with a vivid impression of Medea as a powerful sorceress, with magical capacities not necessarily expected in the shy young enchantress of Book 3. The Talos episode thus plays an important role within the epic as a whole, by gesturing to the larger story beyond it (best known to us, as to Apollonius, from Euripides' Medea) and to the yet more terrible powers Medea will reveal in time.