{"id":46332,"date":"2022-06-08T08:20:59","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T07:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=46332"},"modified":"2022-06-06T14:11:38","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T13:11:38","slug":"another-civil-conflict-in-valerius-flaccus-argonautica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2022\/06\/08\/another-civil-conflict-in-valerius-flaccus-argonautica\/","title":{"rendered":"A(nother) Civil Conflict in Valerius Flaccus\u2019 Argonautica"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Valerius Flaccus\u2019 Argonautica<\/em> breaks off at a crucial and tantalising moment on the island of Peuce at the mouth of the Hister<\/em> (Danube). With Medea\u2019s assistance, Jason has managed to obtain the golden fleece and the Argonauts have departed Colchis for Greece with Medea in tow. Medea\u2019s parents grieve her betrayal, and her brother Absyrtus assembles a Colchian force to pursue the Argo in hastily-constructed ships. Having taken an alternative route home to avoid revisiting the Symplegades (Jason and his crew are unaware that their first passage through the rocks has rendered them immobile), the Argonauts arrive on Peuce and hold an ill-omened wedding ceremony for Jason and Medea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Colchians approach, Jason\u2019s men urge their leader to abandon his new bride in exchange for their safety, while Medea pleads with Jason to honour his vows to her. Juno\u2019s intervention prevents the feared battle from ever taking place, and we never learn of the outcome of the competing appeals to Jason since Valerius\u2019 narrative comes to an abrupt halt as Jason attempts to master his inner turmoil. The would-be participants in this skirmish are quick to frame their actions as responses to threats posed by hostile foreign enemies: the Argonauts and Colchians forget their earlier cooperation in the Colchian civil war, and both Medea and the Argonauts seek to \u2018other\u2019 one another in competing for Jason\u2019s loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Valerius\u2019 stress on the bonds of affiliation between the various parties within the Peuce episode and the Argonautica<\/em>\u2019s broader discussions of kinship and conflict suggest that the situation here is far more complex. Throughout the Argonautica<\/em>, Valerius depicts varied forms of kinship\u2014between family members, brothers in arms, and individuals or groups joined by alliances\u2014as well as the consequences of violating such kinship, such as during the horrifying violence of the Lemnian women against their menfolk and the tragic unintentional battle between the Argonauts and their former hosts on Cyzicus. Therefore, by the time we come to Peuce, we are primed to recognise internal strife in various forms. Against this narrative backdrop, we come to see that the perception of the conflicts and discord which develop on Peuce by Valerius\u2019 internal characters is at odds with what we as external readers may recognise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This study proposes that we may understand the conflicts which play out on and around the island of Peuce\u2014the interrupted Colchian attack, the discord within the Argonautic party between Medea and Jason\u2019s men, and Jason\u2019s own mental tumult\u2014as examples of specifically civil or internal<\/em> conflict. Valerius\u2019 emphasis upon Jason and Medea\u2019s wedding ceremony as a moment which cements a kind of kinship between the Argonauts and Colchians thus casts a more ominous civil<\/em> shadow over Absyrtus\u2019 attack and the response of Jason and his crew, while his wider presentation of the Argo\u2019s crew as a \u2018brotherhood\u2019 and the framing of Medea as a socia <\/em>somehow cast out from the Argonautic socii<\/em> problematises the Argonauts\u2019 attempts to distance themselves from Medea and Medea\u2019s reluctance to see herself as part of the Argonautic group as each party pleads with Jason. By depicting these complex disputes alongside moments of stasis<\/em> and cosmic dissolution\u2014such as during the storm Juno sends to hinder the Colchian fleet and Jason\u2019s mental impasse when torn between the demands of his men and his wife\u2014Valerius evokes the civil war imagery of the wider Roman literary tradition. We are thus encouraged to recognise the \u2018civil\u2019 nature of these instances of strife and appreciate the fragility of different kinds of kinship whose failure risks the outbreak of destructive internal conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The associated research – KIN CONFLICTS AND STASIS: CIVIL WAR ON PEUCE IN VALERIUS FLACCUS\u2019\u00a0ARGONAUTICA<\/em><\/a> – is out now open access in The Classical Quarterly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valerius Flaccus\u2019 Argonautica breaks off at a crucial and tantalising moment on the island of Peuce at the mouth of the Hister (Danube). With Medea\u2019s assistance, Jason has managed to obtain the golden fleece and the Argonauts have departed Colchis for Greece with Medea in tow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":48434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6],"tags":[7088,212,1897,56,9571],"coauthors":[9572],"class_list":["post-46332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-humanities","tag-caq","tag-classical-association","tag-classical-studies","tag-classics-2","tag-the-classical-quarterly"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48435,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46332\/revisions\/48435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46332"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=46332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}