Part 13

It was Neptune, the god of the sea, and Glaucus discovered that he felt quite at home in the chariot. He was no longer a dweller of the earth, but had become a citizen of that boundless country that lay beneath the waves. The fisherman was completely changed in form. His hair was sea green and trailed behind him through the water. His shoulders broadened, and his limbs took the shape and use of a fish's tail. He had never known such freedom and joy as now when he spent whole days doing nothing but following the ebb and flow of the tides and learning the use of his newly found fins as a bird tries its wings on first leaving the nest.

But Glaucus still retained powers of thinking and of action which are denied the inhabitants of the sea. One day he saw the beautiful maiden, Scylla, one of the water nymphs, come out from a sheltered nook on the shore and seat herself on a rock, dipping her hands in the water and bringing up sea-shells for twining in the water weeds to make a necklace. Glaucus had never seen so fair a creature as Scylla and he moved toward her through the waves, rising at last and stopping at the place where she sat as he murmured his affection for her above the singing of the sea.

But Scylla was very much terrified at the sight of this strange personage, half youth and half fish. She turned to run as soon as she saw him and did not stop until she had gained a cliff that overlooked the sea. Here she waited for a moment and turned around to look in wonder as Glaucus raised himself upon a rock and the sun touched his green hair and scaly covering until he shone in its light. He called to Scylla.

"Do not flee from me, maiden! I am no monster or even a sea-animal, but have been transformed from a poor fisherman to a god of the sea." Then Glaucus told Scylla the whole story of his amazing adventures and tried to describe to her the kingdom of Neptune with its playing dolphins, the castles of rose colored and white coral, and the never ending music of the waters.

"Come with me, and descend to Neptune's realm," he begged, but Scylla would not remain to even listen. She fled and left nothing to console Glaucus but her scattered sea shells lying in bright heaps on the rocks.

Glaucus did not pursue Scylla but he felt that he could not give her up. He remembered the strange charm of the sea that there had been in the herbs on his native island, and he wondered if he might, by chance, find some such power for giving the nymph, Scylla, the desire for the sea that had drawn him to Neptune's kingdom. But Glaucus could not explore his little fishing island, for it was a long way off and he had forgotten its direction even. So he made what proved to be an almost disastrous decision. He set out for the island of Circe, the enchantress, to ask her help in winning Scylla.

Circe was, in the beginning, a daughter of the sun but she had put her light of learning to wicked uses and had made herself into a powerful sorceress. She lived in a palace embowered with trees and those were the only signs of vegetation on her island. But if a shipwrecked crew came up the shores, hoping to find a welcome and timber for building a new bark, they were immediately surrounded by lions, tigers and wolves who had formerly been men but had been changed by Circe's magic to the form of beasts.

The brave hero of Greece, Ulysses, came in his travels to Circe's isle once, and his crew heard the sounds of lovely music coming from the castle in the trees and the tones of a maiden's sweet singing. They had endured the raging of the sea and all its perils for many days and they hastened to the palace where Circe, who had the appearance of a princess, greeted them and ordered a feast for them. As they ate, she touched them one by one with her wand and the men were all changed to swine. They kept the thoughts of men, but they had the head, body, voice and bristles of these despised creatures, and Circe shut them up in sties and fed them with acorns. Ulysses persuaded the sorceress to release his men, but he, the hero, was not able to resist her charms and remained in her palace a year, his work and country forgotten.

Surely Glaucus was setting out on a mad errand when he decided to go to Circe. But he persisted and landed on her island. He told her how Scylla had looked upon him with terror, and he begged to have a charm by means of which he might make Scylla love the sea as the herb had made him a subject of Neptune.

"Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean and sea weed on the mountain peaks than I will cease to love Scylla and her alone," Glaucus told Circe.

The enchantress looked on Glaucus and she began to admire him as much as Scylla had been frightened by him. He was really quite a distinguished looking personage, for he had the power to take on human form when he wished, and his trailing robes of green seaweed looked almost kingly.

"I will brew a potion as you wish with my own hands and carry it to Scylla," Circe told Glaucus, but she had decided to work harm on the innocent nymph in order to keep Glaucus forever on her island.

Circe's potion was mixed of the most poisonous plants which grew on her island. She blended them with deadly skill and then took her way to the coast of Sicily where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the coast where Scylla loved to come in the middle of the day when the sun was high to bathe in the cool waters. Circe poured her poison into the clear blue bay and muttered incantations of mighty power over it. Then she returned to her island.

Scylla came that day as usual when the sun was high and plunged into the waters up to her waist. What was her horror to discover that she was sinking to her shoulders and then to her head. The waters covered her before anyone heard her frightened calls for help and where she had stepped so happily into the waters which she loved, there were only a few ripples on the surface of the bay and soon even they were gone. Circe's charm had taken effect and the lovable Scylla had been carried down to Neptune's kingdom, but not as Glaucus had desired, for she was without motion or sight or speech.

Glaucus, meanwhile, forgot Scylla in the enchantment of Circe's island and remained in the waters near there, taking human form when he wished and enjoying the luxuries of her palace. Perhaps he might never have remembered that he was a subject of Neptune if his attention had not been attracted one day to the wild beasts which prowled about the island. They were speaking to each other with the voices of men and bewailing the fate by which they had been led there from their ships and brought into Circe's power.

Glaucus, hearing them, understood what might be in store for him. He began to hate the powers of the wicked enchantress and the memory came to him of Scylla as she had appeared to him on the rock, her hands full of bright shells. He plunged into the water and was soon a long distance from the fatal island.

Glaucus began then to search for Scylla through the many leagues of the ocean but he could not find her. That was because Scylla, through the design of Circe, had gone down as mortals do and been drowned. The sea was full of such, and as Glaucus wandered about among the gardens of sea anemones and along the shell strewn roads of Neptune's kingdom, he felt a new desire in his heart. He knew how those mortals felt whose loved ones had been taken away from them by the sea, and he began using his power to restore the drowned to life again. For a thousand years Glaucus went up and down through the sea restoring mortals who had loved to each other again. And in all his following of the tides he was searching for Scylla.

After a thousand years had passed and it seemed to the gods that Glaucus had expiated the wrong he had done in appealing to Circe, he found Scylla in the green depths. And the nymphs say that the two lived always happily together in a coral palace with a sea garden of anemones and green water plants all about it.

THE WINNING OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

Jason was having a boat built in which he planned to set sail on a kind of pirate expedition. He was going as far as the eastern shore of the Black Sea to try and capture and bring home the Golden Fleece.

This golden fleece was a prize indeed, for it was a good deal like the magic carpet in a fairy tale. In very ancient times Mercury, the god with the winged shoes, had given the queen of Thessaly a ram whose fleece was of pure gold. There came a time when the queen found it necessary to send her son away from the kingdom for safety as quickly and secretly as possible. So she sent him on the back of this ram, who leaped into the air, crossed the strait that divides Europe and Asia, and landed the boy without accident in Colchis in the Black Sea.

Ever since then its fleece of gold had hung in a sacred grove of Colchis guarded by a dragon who never slept. It was said that the fleece could carry one through the air as far as he wished to go, and its gold was the finest and purest in the world. A great many adventurers had equipped expeditions for getting the golden fleece, but so far none of them had been successful. Jason had a different idea about it, however, than any youth of Greece who had set out for the fleece before. He felt that it was his right, in a way, because he was going to be a king if he could bring it home.

Jason's uncle, Pelias, was the king of a part of Thessaly. Because the golden fleece had belonged in Thessaly in the first place, Pelias had an idea that any king in Thessaly who could get it might keep it, and enjoy its magic powers. But Pelias did not want the trouble of going for it. He was willing to give up his throne to the lad, Jason, if he could bring the golden fleece home. And Jason was quite willing to be the head of such a pirate expedition with the promise of this advantage at the end.

Jason did not even build his ship, but paid a vast sum of money to have it done for him. It was a stupendous task in those days to make a boat that would weather a sea voyage. About the only boats that the Greeks had were small ones shaped like canoes and hollowed out from the trunks of trees. Jason had decided to take fifty of his friends with him, and that meant the building of a larger boat than had ever been launched before from Thessaly. A gigantic tree had to be cut down and gouged and shaped by hand. New looms had to be set working to weave wide enough cloth for the sails. For months the sound of axes and chisels echoed along the beach, until at last this great boat, the Argo, was finished and launched, and Jason brought his friends, whom he called the Argonauts, to board her.

Jason chose his crew well. They were all fine, well born youths of Greece, and everyone of them made a name for himself later on. Hercules was of the Argonauts, and there has never been any such strength as his. There was Theseus, who could move rocks and capture robbers single-handed. There was also Orpheus, the son of Apollo, who could tame, wild beasts with the beautiful music of his lyre. Nestor, who grew up to be a famous warrior of Greece, went with them. They seated themselves with their leader, Jason, in the ship, a whistling breeze filled her sails, and they shot swiftly before the wind toward Colchis.

It was a long voyage, but they reached this foreign shore with no serious mishap, leaped onto the bank, and went at once to the king of Colchis, demanding from him the golden fleece. The Argonauts thought in the pride of their youth that no one could resist them or refuse them anything, but the king looked serious over the matter.

"You must earn the fleece, Jason," he said. "Nothing so valuable can be had for only the asking. Are you brave enough to yoke my bulls to a plough and plant a field full of dragon's teeth?"

Jason gasped. He knew these bulls of Colchis by reputation, although it had never occurred to him that he might be called upon to harness and drive them. They had brazen teeth and breathed fire from their nostrils that consumed whatever it touched. The sound of their breathing was like the roar of a furnace, and the smoke of their breath was suffocating.

In spite of his fear, though, Jason had another thought. The king had said that the fleece must be earned, that nothing so golden could be had for the asking. That was really true, Jason thought, and he began to feel a great courage. He was growing into the hero that he always had been at heart, being a youth of Greece.

"Send out your bulls," he said to the king of Colchis.

Something happened then that is very apt to happen when anyone makes up his mind to dare a seemingly impossible deed. Help came to Jason. Medea, the daughter of the king of Colchis, gave Jason a charm that protected him from fire. The bulls rushed into the field toward Jason, sending forth their burning breath like dragons, but Jason advanced boldly to meet them. His friends, the Argonauts, watched him in terror, but he went straight up to the bulls and his voice seemed to soothe their rage. He stroked their necks fearlessly, slipped on the yoke and harnessed them to the plough.

Dragons' teeth were a strange kind of seed to plant. As Jason ploughed straight furrows and dropped in the teeth, the people of the kingdom and the Argonauts gathered at the edge of the field to watch, and it came to his mind that perhaps the king was making a joke of him. There would have been some sense in having that pair of fiery bulls use their great strength to plough in corn and wheat, Jason thought, as he plodded up and down the field. But suddenly a cry from the crowd startled Jason and he looked back. A strange sight met his eyes.

The clods of earth that covered the teeth of the dragon began to stir, and the bright points of spears thrust their way up through to the surface. Helmets with nodding plumes appeared next, and after them came the shoulders and arms and limbs of men. In a moment the field was alive with armed warriors advancing upon Jason.

He was only one hero against all of this foe, but the sight put the same courage that had come to him into the heart of each one of the Argonauts and they rushed to help their leader. Jason led valiantly against the warriors, but there would have been no hope for him and the Greeks if his courage had not been rewarded a second time. Medea sent a charmed sword to the hero. He threw it into the ranks of the warriors and they suddenly ceased attacking the Greeks, fell to fighting among themselves, and were destroyed.

There was still another danger for Jason to face, the dragon who guarded the fleece with eyes that never closed. His new courage was equal to it. He entered the grove that sheltered the golden fleece, took the glittering blanket from the oak tree where it hung, escaped the dragon and embarked with the Argonauts for the return trip to Greece.

The people proclaimed Jason king when he and the rest of these young heroes of Greece landed in Thessaly. They chose him for his valor, not for his spoils, and it seemed to add to his new glory that he had started out an adventurer and returned a victor in a great fight.

The strangest part of the story is that no one knows what became of the golden fleece after Jason and the Argonauts brought it home with them. No one seems to have ever heard of it again. Perhaps even such a treasure as that was grew dull and lost its value in comparison with the golden prize of courage in achievement that the Argonauts found and kept all the rest of their lives.

MEDEA'S CALDRON.

If a boy of to-day could have lived in the days of the ancient Greeks, learning by means of self restraint and all the arts of soldiery to be a hero in warfare, it is possible that his captain would have told him a strange story as part of his training. The boy would have wondered why he had to hear such a grim tale, and what it all meant, for it was one of the myths which rivalled almost all the rest in its hidden meaning. It was the story of Medea, the dark sorceress, and how she worked her art on Aeson, the father of Jason.

Jason brought Medea home to Thessaly with him at the same time that he brought the fleece of gold whose capture had been his great adventure. She was the princess who had helped him with her sorcery to brave a fire breathing dragon, but she was ill suited to the court of Greece, never having taken any pleasure in the arts that most maidens delighted in, needlework, weaving and the other crafts needful in making a home. Instead Medea was wont to flee from the feasts and the games of the court and sit by herself on a cliff beside the sea, her long black hair blowing about her pale face and her lips muttering incantations to the wild accompaniment that the waves sang.

She had a fondness for the hero, Jason, though, in her own strange way, and pride in the mighty deeds he had dared. She heard him speak one day of his greatest wish.

"There is only one thing lacking in my triumph and the homage that the nation is paying me," Jason told Medea, "I would that my father were able to take part in the rejoicing but he is growing daily more feeble and helpless. I would willingly give enough years from my life to make him young and strong again."

Medea replied nothing in answer to this wish, but to herself she said,

"My power has been mighty in the aid of this hero and I will try it still farther. If my sorcery avails me anything, the life of Jason's father shall be lengthened without the cost of the sacrifice of any of the youth's own years."

So, when the moon was next in the full, Medea made her way silently and alone out of the palace when it was the dead of night and all creatures slept. She moved swiftly along the fields and groves murmuring strange words as she went, and addressing an incantation to the moon and to the stars. There was a goddess, named Hecate, who was supposed to represent the darkness and terror of the night as Diana represented its beauties. At dusk she began her wandering over the earth, seen only by dogs who howled at her approach. Medea followed Hecate, imploring her help, and she also called to Tellus, that goddess of the earth by whose power those herbs that could be brewed for enchantment were grown. And Medea invoked the aid also of the gods of the woods and caverns, of valleys and mountains, of rivers and lakes, and of the winds and vapors.

As Medea took her enchanted way through the night, the stars shone with an unusual brilliancy and presently a chariot, drawn by flying serpents descended to meet her through the air. Medea ascended in it and made her way to distant regions where the most powerful plants grew and brought them back before the day's first light for her uses. Nine nights Medea rode away in the chariot of the flying serpents, and in all that time she did not go within the doors of her palace or shelter herself under any roof, or speak to a human being.

Hebe was the goddess of youth and one of the cup bearers of the gods. When Medea had gathered the herbs which she needed for her potion, she built a fire in front of a nearby temple to Hebe and over the fire she hung a very wide and deep caldron. In this caldron she mixed the herbs with seeds and flowers that gave out a bitter juice, stones from the far distant east, and sands from the encircling shore of the ocean. There were other ingredients, also, in this brew; a screech owl's head and wings, hoar frost gathered by moonlight, fragments of the shells of tortoises who of all creatures are the most long lived, and the head and beak of a crow, the birds that outlives nine generations of men.

Medea boiled all these ingredients together to get them ready for the deed she proposed to do, stirring them with a dried branch from an olive tree. And, strange to say, the branch did not burn, but when the sorceress lifted it out it instantly turned as green as it had been in the spring, and in a short time it was covered with leaves and a luxuriant growth of olives. The potion in the caldron bubbled and simmered and sometimes rose so high as it boiled that it spilled over the edge and down on the ground. But wherever the drops touched the earth, new green grass shot up and there were flowers as bright and fragrant as the most prized blossoms of the May.

The sorceress wished to further test her brew, though, and she put an old sheep, one of the most ancient of the flock, in the seething potion. Instead of being cooked, the creature was quite unhurt and when Medea removed the cover, a little new lamb, soft and white, jumped out and ran frisking away to the meadow.

So Medea knew that her spell was ready and she commanded that Jason bring his aged father, Aeson, to her.

"I would like to know him," she explained, "and hear from his lips of the deeds you did in your youth."

Then Jason, all unsuspecting, sent for his father and conducted him to the spot near the temple of Hebe where Medea waited. And as soon as she saw Aeson, Medea threw him into a deep sleep by means of a charm and placed him on a bed of herbs where he lay with no apparent breath or life in him.

"Wicked sorceress, you have killed my father whom I so greatly loved," Jason cried.

Then, even as he spoke, Medea advanced toward the old man and wounded him deeply, so that all his blood poured out. After this she dipped into her caldron and poured the charmed brew into Aeson's mouth and bathed his wound with it.

As soon as he had imbibed it and felt its wonderful power, Aeson's hair and beard lost their whiteness and became as black as they had been in his youth. His paleness and emaciation disappeared, for his veins were full of new blood and his limbs were vigorous and robust. Aeson was amazed at himself as he ran toward Jason, for he was as he remembered himself to have been two score years before. The sorceress Medea had made his years drop away from him.

It would be very pleasant to end this story by saying that Medea always used her art for a good purpose as she did in this case, but that was not what happened. She did all manner of things that were wrong, such as riding her serpent-drawn chariot in the pursuit of revenge, sending a poisoned dress to a bride, and setting fire to a palace. What a strange, unusual kind of a story is this one of Medea!

What did it mean to the young Greeks who heard it?

It meant for them just what it means for us to-day. Medea and her caldron signified those times of cruel war and change that come to every nation. They may result in evil. But sometimes, when the world has become old and feeble, it may be made young and strong again through bitter pains, as Aeson was made young through Medea's caldron of such bitter brewing.

HOW A GOLDEN APPLE CAUSED A WAR.

No one, as far as could be found out, had invited Eris to the party. Indeed everyone would have desired to keep her away, for it was a very great wedding feast attended by both the immortals and men, and Eris was the goddess of discontent.

There was a beautiful nymph of the sea named Thetis whom even Jupiter had looked upon with favor, and she was given in marriage to a mortal, Peleus. The gathering was being held on Mount Olympus and just when the merrymaking was at its height and Ganymede, that comely Trojan youth whom Jupiter in the guise of an eagle had borne away to be the cupbearer of the gods, was offering his nectar to all, a golden apple fell in their midst.