Thresholds or announced changes in Apollonius of Rhodes Published: “Limiares ou Mudanças Anunciadas, em Apolónio de Rodes”, Ágora. Estudos Clássicos em Debate 23 85-92. ISSN 0874-5498. Ana Alexandra Alves de Sousa1 orcid.org/0000-0001-6515-1668 (CEC-ULisboa/ CECH-UC; Universidade de Lisboa – Portugal) Abstract: The term οὐδός, “threshold”, appears in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica as Homeric heritage. Occurring five times, the term is the privileged lieu for diegetic changes: for Phineus it is the end of his curse; for the Argonauts, their mission’s success. The usage of this term allows for different intersections and the association of Phineus and Medea: this creates a subtle interpretative line which casts a bad omen onto this young couple’s loves. Keywords: threshold; diegetic changes; Phineus; Medea; curse. The term οὐδός, which in Ancient Greek means “threshold” or specifically “threshold of a house”, appears in the Homeric Poems and in Hesiod as an actual place, meaning “polished threshold” (Od. 18.33; 22.72), “bronze threshold” (Il. 8.15; Hes. Th. 811), “courtyard” (Od. 1.104); or as the time which precedes death, in which case it is complemented with the word ‘old age’ (Il. 22.60; Od. 15.348; Hes. Op. 331).2 The reader may find the term οὐδός five times in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (2.203, 428; 3.219, 280, 647), clearly influenced by those Homeric contexts in which the term bears only a spatial meaning. What is remarkably different from Homer is the possibility to Text received in 21.09.2020 and accepted for publishing in 20.12.2020. 1 sousa1@campus.ul.pt. 2 On the etymology of the term, cf. CHANTRAINE (1999) 836. associate this term with the concept of change. Indeed, as we shall see, Apollonius explores in various ways la symbolique du lieu as an in-between place. This term first occurs in the episode of Phineus, a character whom the Argonauts find in their outward voyage to Colchis3. Zeus blinded Phineus because he revealed Gods’ purposes to men. In addition to this punishment, Zeus granted Phineus a lasting old age, cursing him with the Harpies, which ceaselessly polluted his feeding. Phineus, however, knew the divine purpose according to which he would be delivered from his abominable hunger. Thus, when he listens ‘clearly the voice of the Heroes’, he becomes aware that his curse had come to an end (2.194196). Then, he left his house and stopped on the courtyard, unable to advance due to extreme physical weakness (2.202-203)4. The place where Phineus stops acquires thus a special meaning, since we know that he is awaiting the arrival of those who will free him. Note that the narrator does not mention simply the courtyard – which symbolically would be transitional enough: Phineus is also on the threshold, which places him on the verge of change. Consciously seating in this particular place, the character finds himself in the threshold of expectation of his own deliverance from pain. His attitude is passive, since who delivers him is the incoming troupe of heroes. In this very episode the threshold is yet again mentioned when, after dominating the Harpies, Zetes and Calais land with their feet on the threshold coming from the skies. They are going to tell the other Argonauts and Phineus about the fight and pursuit they had had with the former (2.427-428). This time the Argonauts are inside the house, where the banquet in honour of Phineus took place. They are waiting, their hunger already satisfied, for their comrades (2.307-308). Then, the logic of verticality is explored, since the young men descend from the skies and, thus, are forced to enter by the opening in the megaron’s roof. Therefore the end of Phineus curse is announced in a place of transition between the superior and the inferior, symbol of the conciliation of the upper level where are the gods and the lower level where are the men. 3 The whereabouts of this country have been object of controversy. For a long time, it was thought to have been in Abyssinia, as argues DÉLAGE (1930) 123-124. However, the most accepted thesis, after the works of Wendel and Fränkel, mentioned in VIAN (2002) 130-131, is that the Hellenic poet distinguishes Asian Bithynia from European Thynia, where he situates Phineus. 4 Some argue that Phineus presents the symptoms of the καταφορή mentioned in the medical treatises. Vide HUNTER (1993) 91, n. 81. The third time οὐδός occurs, Eros passes through a threshold in Aeetes’ palace. The god is about to shoot his love arrow at Medea (3.280)5. This passage is meaningful since it places the concept of ‘threshold’ on the diegetic turn of the poem’s second half. Thus, this transitional place is closely related to the surpassing of Aeetes tasks: these would be impossible to overcome without Medea’s love. In short, we are on the threshold of the mission’s success. In Book III, Apollonius strategically places this event between other two: the one in which Jason and some other Argonauts go towards the king’s palace, and the other where Medea, in her room, muses over her wish to join her sister Chalciope. It is possible to observe a dual structure in this poem: Books I and II on the one hand, and Books III and IV on the other. The lexical correspondences underlining the parallel between characters and episodes reinforce this distinction6. Therefore it does not surprise that other occurrences of the term οὐδός are to be found. After Phineus’ luck changes, the key characters – Jason, the propelling agent of the trip, and Medea, the maid who allows the mission to be successful7 – will themselves go through decisive changes. This occurs over two changing moments: a) when Aeetes imposes the deleterious tasks to the son of Aeson; and b) when Medea overcomes the modesty which prevented her from giving herself to the love of the Greek. Arriving in Ea, Jason, Telamon, Augeas, and the sons of Phrixus start to the palace and tranquilly cross the threshold (3.229). Any expectations they may have entertained due to the king’s grandchildren having been chosen to their embassy are, however, frustrated. This threshold symbolizes a turn which the characters do not yet know. Speaking with Aeetes, Jason understands the unfeasibility of any diplomatic means8. To obtain the Golden Fleece, Jason is ordered by the king to complete insurmountable tasks. This grants him a feeling of amechania (3.423). This threshold announces the probable failure of the Argonauts’ mission; therefore it represents yet again another turn in the events. 5 THALMANN (2011) 137, n. 64, explains that scholarship hesitates about the precise local of Eros in this passage: ‘a vestibule within the house’s outside gate (…) or a columned porch in front of it’. In this last case, the surpassed threshold would bring the god to the main room, where the preparation of the meal would still be occurring. The allusion to slaves preparing the meal (3.299) leads the academic to opt for the first hypothesis, with which VIAN (2009) 121 agrees. 6 On the relevance of the terms in the proemium of Argonautica’s Book IV, vide SOUSA (2013b). 7 In fact, as argues HUNTER (1987) 132, Medea ‘alone holds the key to success’. 8 The mildness, μειλιχίη, that defines the diplomatic path coopted by these heroes will be object of analysis in our forthcoming paper “The Words in the Heroic World in Alexandrian Epic Poetry’. Strategically after this, comes the episode where Eros shot Medea with his arrow. So Jason becomes aware that he is on the threshold of death, precisely when he also is (although unawares) on the threshold of love, which will save him and his mission. Actually by now the narrator had already declared that Medea was burning with love for Jason (3.286-287). When the Argonauts are exiting the palace the threshold is mentioned no more. The place has already accomplished its function: to announce the change which Aeetes’ order introduces in the moment of their arrival. The final threshold is associated with the next turn. The word appears when Medea is full of anxiety wishing to go to Chalciope’s room. The young princess hoped that the sister, worried about her children, would ask for her help. In that moment, though, Medea leaves her rooms and goes into the vestibule, which separates her room from the court, the πρόδομος, where her personal female slaves would sleep (3.646-647). But she stops and turns back, repeating this movement thrice, until she throws herself over the bed, where she twists herself in anguish (3.651-655)9. The threshold symbolizes her resistance in letting her sister find out about her feelings for Jason. This is a mere step in the new change which is gradually announced: the transition from the threshold of death to the threshold of success, for Jason; and for Medea, from the threshold of a plain life in Colchis with her parents to a husband, on to the foreign unknown, in the Greek lands. The in-between room prepares the incoming transition10. Just as Jason understands that he must accept Aeetes challenge, Medea becomes aware that she must overcome her maiden modesty which confined her existence. For this reason, when Chalciope enters her room, the aphasia still dominates her, but the princess soon appears able of some initiative, transforming her modesty in a deceit – the act of deceiving her sister into believing that what moves her, Medea, is merely the care for her nephews, Chalciope’s sons. VIAN (2009) 130 considers ἄμειψεν more adequate than the infinitive ἀμεῖψαι chosen by FRÄNKEL (1988) 167. The infinitive would be syntactically dependent of the verbal form λελίητο, meaning that Medea would not have crossed the threshold. If we accept Vian interpretation, according to whom οὐδός would link the θάλαμος, ‘bedroom’, to πρόδομος, ‘vestibule/anteroom/hall’, Medea would already have crossed the threshold, naturally, in order to be able to stop in the bedroom vestibule. If so the infinitive is absurd, as Vian says: “le seuil (v.647) fait communiquer le θάλαμος et le πρόδρομος (cf. 3.278-280), ce que condamne la conjecture ἀμεῖψαι”. Fränkel and Hunter’s choice for ἀμεῖψαι sprungs from the idea that this threshold would link the bedroom’s vestibule to the courtyard to which the princesses’ rooms led. 10 For HUNTER (1989) 167, the vestibule signifies the ‘secure and chase world of the young girl’, and, thus, we add, it is adequate to the aporia experienced by the character. THALMANN (2011) 138, in his study on the spatiality of this poem, does not underline the relevance of the bedroom’s vestibule, interpreting the bedroom of Medea, in its whole, as ‘the expression of her innocence and sense of modesty’. However, in his commentary to the verse 3.278 he considers that in 3.647 πρόδομος ‘is an enclosed space like a vestibule’, (2011) 137, n. 64. 9 Phineus and Medea are both on a threshold, although the former is a passive target of fate and the latter, only apparently passive. Actually, although Medea displaces herself without leaving her bedroom in a continuous repetitive movement which reflects the suffering caused by an imminent change, she crossed her bedroom’s threshold when she goes into the vestibule11. The symbolic turn is therefore assured by the attitude that presents this character as an agent of change. Briefly in what concerns Phineus we have an expected change, but in what concerns Medea the change is feared. The passive aspect of Phineus seating on the courtyard’s threshold, after having risen from his bed with so much effort on his part, bears, in a certain way, parallel in Medea’s prostration in her own bed, after walking to and fro in the vestibule. Phineus and Medea are, thus, linked by the threshold of change. Another term, which occurs only twice, in the poem, unites these two apparently antithetic characters – an ageing man debilitated by a curse and a young maiden in the spring of her age, burning with love: ἅψος, ‘limb’ (2.199-200; 3.674-676)12. The term appears three verses before the threshold and describes Phineus’ physical weakness and his difficulty in rising from bed and walking through the courtyard. In Book III, Chalciope mentions her sister’s asthenia when she enters Medea’s bedroom, and asks if she is feeling some sickness sent by the gods. This hypothesis of physical weakness having origin in the gods underlines the parallel between Medea and Phineus. To him the cause was Zeus’ curse; to her, Eros’ arrow, originated in Hera’s decision. The lexicon creates a link uniting these two characters. We may also remember Phineus and Medea’s contributions to the success of the mission: Phineus, with his prophecies, facilitates their arrival to Colchis (2.1051, 1090, 1135) and even the homeward voyage (3.549-5450, 555-556, 943); Medea helps with her supernatural resources, namely the drugs that provides Jason with protection against the bulls (3.1042-1049) and the If we consider that the term ‘threshold’ heralds a change and that there is a relation between threshold and those who go through it, there is no doubt that Medea is the one who does that action; in fact, she will operate the diegetic turn. For THALMANN (2011) 138, the going through the threshold in 3.647 is symbolic, but the character that actually crosses the threshold is, in his view, Chalciope. In order to come into her sister’s room, she, undoubtedly, must go through its entrance (the threshold), but one should note that the term οὐδός in this passage does not describe Chalciope’s action, but Medea’s. 12 RENGAKOS (2001) 202 comments on the meaning of the term ἅψος in these two passages. He verifies that this meaning coincides but is slightly different from that Aristarchus proposes in his commentary to Od. 4.794. However, this scholar does not bring together Medea and Phineus, for his aim is exclusively philological. 11 chants that will make the dragon snake guarding the Fleece fall asleep (4.156-159) and that will overcome the giant Talos (4.1668-1670)13. This close relation between Phineus and Medea allows us to read her love with Aeson’s son as a bad omen. Indeed, while Phineus is freed from his curse, Medea unexpectedly receives hers, unware of her sinister fate as Jason’s wife. Therefore a bad omen hoovers over the future of the young couple in an imperceptible line of interpretation. One ought to remember as well that the reader knowing Achilles marries Medea in Hades (4.811-814) understands that the Colchian will not find idyllic happiness in her relationship with Jason14. In conclusion, thresholds are always, in the Argonautica, heralds of change. For Phineus it is the end of his curse. For him the threshold is where he must wait for those who will deliver him and the place where Zetes and Calais announce him the end of the curse. For Jason it is the feeling of his mission’s failure, which does not occur. Indeed this changes when the threshold is crossed by Medea. But for Medea, the threshold is the beginning of a curse. The term οὐδός is one of the many words exemplifying the thorough care with which Apollonius creates his poem. 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