Tag Archives: literary oddities

“Jason * Orpheus (the lyre-playing musician) * Mopsus the seer * Heracles and his male love of the moment, the handsome young Hylas (who gets kidnapped by water nymphs) * Pollux the champion boxer who kills the king of the Bebyrycians * Shape-shifting Periclymenus * Fast-footed Euphemus * Winged Calais and Zetes (sons of the North Wind who repel the Harpies) * and 40 more

The Argo, which had a magical keel crafted out of a sacred oak from the oracle of Dodona, was crewed by fifty heroes of ancient Greece—the Argonauts. Jason was the leader of this warrior band (sometimes referred to as the ‘Minyans’) sent on what was presumed to be a suicidal quest by King Pelias, his usurping half-uncle. Their mission was to sail to Colchis (Georgia) and seize possession of the Golden Fleece of a divine ram what hung from a tree in a grove sacred to Ares, god of war, guarded by a sleepless dragon.

Every city in Greece liked to imagine that they contributed a hero to this mythical band, which means that the list has had to grow in number, though if you examine the text of Apollonius of Rhodes, written in third-century Alexandria, it is easy enough to identify all the named Argonauts. Even this cast, however, numbers fifty-five, though by juggling who comes on, as others go off, the good ship Argo, it is just about possible to keep to fifty.

If you add other famous names and such ubiquitous heroes such as Bellerophon, Nestor, Perseus, Atalanta, and Theseus, you can grow the crew to eighty, which has a hidden harmony with the text of Apollonius, who has embedded eighty aitia in his epic. These are short verse sequences which give the mythical origins or such curious things as the sacred water-carrying race held on the island of Aegina or how the island of Thira is linked with Libya. The final text comprise 6,000 lines, which can be recited in one day to reasonably alert ancient theater audience.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.