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THE BLOODY SYRINX: BUCOLIC AND MEDICAL METAPOETICS OF LOVE CURES IN APOLLONIUS RHODIUS’ TALOS EPISODE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2026

Michael Harlin Knierim
Michael Harlin Knierim*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
*
mhknierim@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article argues for a metapoetic reading of the Talos episode in Apollonius of Rhodes, in which Medea symbolically annihilates Theocritus’ Polyphemus, the bucolic hero who had found a pharmakon to cure lovesickness. The distinctive phrases λεπτὸς ὑμήν ‘a thin membrane’ and σύριγξ αἱματόεσσα ‘a blood-filled vein’ are metapoetic signals: ‘a refined Callimachean marriage song’ and ‘bloody pan-pipes’, evoking Theocritus. The Cyclops’s peaceful response to romantic disappointment is well attested in other Hellenistic poems with medical overtones. The Talos episode engages these with other medical and Homeric allusions to contrast Medea’s outward destructive use of the Muses’ sciences with Polyphemus’ inward healing use.

Keywords

metapoeticslovesicknessmedicineTheocritusPolyphemusMedeaTalosichor

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 13
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

The Talos episode marks the strongest display of Medea’s magical power as she destroys a seemingly invincible bronze giant from a great distance. It is her last appearance in the epic, leaving readers with their final impressions as she astonishes the narrator. Scholars recognize the importance of this episode to Apollonius’ entire depiction of Medea.Footnote 1 Yet they disagree in their interpretation of Medea’s character and her precise relation to earlier versions, though most see foreshadowings of Euripides. Some scholars take a positive view of Medea’s magical killing of a monstrous Talos. Fränkel argues that Medea altruistically helped the exhausted Argonauts by temporarily using hatred to destroy Talos with her evil eye without permanent change in her character. According to Mori, Medea’s actions were right since Talos ‘attacked … without provocation’. Paduano saw her action as positive though not necessary.Footnote 2 Other scholars take the reverse view. Rose argues that Talos was doing his duty and readers would identify with him as a victim. Pavlock calls his death a ‘misfortune’ and Medea ‘destructive to society’. Fantuzzi claims that Apollonius rejects Medea’s dark magic, passions and unnecessary attack on Talos.Footnote 3

Neglected intertextual clues in the Talos episode should influence our reading of Medea’s character. When the Argonauts encounter Talos, and the bronze giant keeps them from landing, we find the following intriguing description of his weak point:

And beneath his tendon was a bloody vein by his ankle. But a thin membrane covered this, the border of life and death.Footnote 4

The words at the beginnings of lines 1647–8 have double meanings that render them susceptible to a metapoetic interpretation: a bloody syrinx and a subtle marriage hymn. The fact that they appear at the beginning of successive lines effectively rules out the possibility of chance. The syrinx or panpipes are strongly connected to Theocritus’ bucolic poetry,Footnote 5 while λεπτός ‘thin/slender’ is a key programmatic word used by Callimachus and Theocritus as well.Footnote 6

The scholar-poet Apollonius is well known for metapoetic intertextual references, as are the other major Hellenistic poets, and strong two-way intertextual connections are familiar between Apollonius’ Hylas and Amycus episodes, Theocritus’ corresponding Idylls 13 and 22, and Callimachus’ treatment of Hylas.Footnote 7 DeForest convincingly presents Apollonius’ shallower sea (1.364–6) as a metapoetic reference to Callimachus’ use of the sea as a symbol of epic (Hymn to Apollo 2.106–14), and shows that Apollonius’ simile of the Argo’s wake as a small ἄτραπος (1.545–6) was a metapoetic intertext referring to Callimachus’ small path of poetry (Aetia fr. 1.25–8 Harder); likewise for the broad path Medea takes to see Jason (3.874) and the narrow path by which she flees Colchis (4.43).Footnote 8 Further, DeForest sees Talos as a symbol of epic poetry due to his associations with the Colossus of Rhodes and hence with the Telchines, Callimachus’ poetic opponents whom he named after mythological metal sculptors of Rhodes; thus, for DeForest, Medea’s destruction of Talos’ demise is a victory of Callimachean poetry over Telchinian epic.Footnote 9

Yet scholarship both ancient and modern has neglected the possible metapoetic meanings of the σύριγξ αἱματόεσσα and the λεπτὸς ὑμήν, addressing only their surface anatomical sense. The scholia simply say that Talos ‘had a syrinx on his ankle surrounded by a membrane and syrinx means the bolt’ (ἐπὶ τοῦ σφυροῦ σύριγγα εἶχεν ὑμένι περιεχομένην. σύριγξ δὲ λέγεται ἡ περόνη). They go on to describe the bolt that was Talos’ fated weak point in Sophocles’ play, neglecting to probe why Apollonius used the word σύριγξ.Footnote 10 Fränkel does not address σύριγξ at all; for ὑμήν he simply refers to an article by Kerschensteiner which discusses only non-sexual medical uses of that word.Footnote 11 Hunter’s recent English commentary describes σύριγξ as a ‘medical and technical term’, and translates the phrases as a ‘blood-filled vein’ and a ‘fine membrane’.Footnote 12 Mayor’s monograph on ancient automata similarly states that Apollonius’ σύριγξ is a ‘technical term for blood vessels’.Footnote 13 These medical readings will turn out to contribute to the character of the passage’s intertextual metapoetic force.

Cassidy has explored wedding implications of ὑμήν, arguing that the Talos episode is the culmination of a sequence of wedding imagery that permeate the portrayal of Medea’s character in Books 3 and 4, reconciling Apollonius’ innovative portrayal of her innocent youth with her sinister Euripidean reputation.Footnote 14 According to Cassidy, when Jason leads Medea by the hand through the ship towards Talos as she prepares to attack, this foreshadows how marriage with Jason in this world will lead her to a marriage with Achilles in the underworld since Talos is an Achilles figure; when she destroys Talos through his Achilles’ heel, this bodes ill for both Jason and Achilles.Footnote 15 Cassidy does not further analyse the metapoetics of ὑμήν, however, nor does she address the syrinx and its possibilities for bucolic allusion.Footnote 16

Additional Homeric parallels can help to pinpoint the bucolic reference. Hunter saw Medea’s μῆτις (‘wisdom’, ‘cunning’) in 4.1661 as a dark counterpart to Odysseus’ positive μῆτις in Od. 9.414, 422; Cassidy viewed Medea’s opponent Talos as a positive foil to Homer’s negative Polyphemus, contrasting Talos’ defensive rock-throwing with the Odyssean Cyclops’ vengeful use of such missiles.Footnote 17 An ancient scholion also links the two passages through their use of the word βέλος for such flung rocks.Footnote 18 Buxton sees the Cyclopes in general and Talos as similar boundary crossers.Footnote 19 Dyck makes a brief connection to Theocritus’ Polyphemus, arguing that both Theocritus and Apollonius similarly elicit sympathy for their monstrous characters, but he does not argue for any direct allusion here.Footnote 20 Hunter observed features of the Homeric Cyclops in Apollonius’ Hylas episode and in Theocritus’ Amycus, both episodes shared between these authors.Footnote 21 Dyck further notes that Apollonius chooses the version of Talos’ origins that makes him a love-gift from Zeus to Europa, giving an erotic context to the whole episode.Footnote 22 Cassidy sees vulnerability and ‘ideas of maidenhood’ in the λεπτὸς ὑμήν,Footnote 23 which I argue fits with Polyphemus’ naive inexperience in love in Theocritus. All of these suggest Theocritus’ Cyclops in love as an appropriate target of allusion.

This article will demonstrate that the σύριγξ αἱματόεσσα and λεπτὸς ὑμήν are not only literal (‘a blood-filled vein’ and ‘a thin membrane’) but are also metapoetic signals: ‘bloody pan-pipes’ and ‘a refined/Callimachean marriage song’. Apollonius engages Theocritean and Callimachean portrayals of Polyphemus’ peaceful and healing response to an unhappy romantic relationship. His Medea rejects this cure, foreshadowing her Euripidean fate, distancing Apollonius’ epic from healing bucolic and embedding it in a Hellenistic poetic and medical discourse on cures for disappointment in love. The sections that follow will explore the Cyclops as a well-known exemplar of the healing of love through poetry in poems by Theocritus, Callimachus and Nicias. Then intertextual links between Idyll and Argonautica involving epithets and eyes will be examined, followed by a discussion of how Talos’ lovesick ichor flows into a centuries-long tradition of medical poetry. It will finish with a consideration of the metapoetic force of Medea’s ἀοιδαί and of the epithet πολυφάρμακος.

POLYPHEMUS’ LOVE CURE

Philoxenus was the first poet to present a Cyclops singing in love, but Philoxenus’ Cyclops used a kithara whereas Theocritus made the theme of curing love central to Idylls 6 and 11, and is probably the first to present Polyphemus playing the bucolic syrinx at 6.9 and 11.38.Footnote 24 Therefore Apollonius is probably referring to Theocritus rather than older tellings. An earlier version of the Talos episode depicted on two Attic vases from 440–400 featured a bolt rather than a ‘membrane’ in his ankle.Footnote 25 Similarly Apollodorus (1.9.26) preserves a version in which Talos’ vein (φλέψ) is blocked by a nail (ἧλος).Footnote 26 Therefore Apollonius’ use of the metapoetically rich ὑμήν ‘membrane’, ‘hymen’, ‘Hymen’, ‘marriage hymn’ is deliberate and occurs with its evocatively metapoetic adjective λεπτός at the beginning of the next line after the bloody syrinx. λεπτός is a programmatic word of Callimachus meaning ‘slender’, ‘elegant’, ‘refined’, appearing in his presentation of his divine poetic calling in Aetia fr. 1.24 Harder, and in his praise of Aratus’ scientific poem the Phaenomena in Epigram 27.3.Footnote 27 Together the terms link the Talos episode with Theocritus and scientific medical discourse, since σύριγξ and ὑμήν are also medical terms fitting for this dialogue among medically learned poets on the cures for love, as we will see.Footnote 28

When Apollonius adds Theocritus to his web of subtle allusions, it foreshadows Medea’s coming rejection of the bucolic trope of healing the pains of unhappy love. Idyll 11, the longer of Theocritus’ Cyclops poems, is famous for opening with Theocritus telling Nicias, his doctor/poet friend, how Polyphemus has found a medical treatment for love, namely, the Muses (11.1–3):

It seems to me, Nicias, that there is no other potion nor ointment nor powder [to cure] love other than the Muses.Footnote 29

Equally famously the poem ends, after showing the Cyclops singing of Galatea and himself too, with the statement that ‘thus Polyphemus shepherded his love by following the Muses and did better than if he had paid in gold’ (οὕτω τοι Πολύφαμος ἐποίμανεν τὸν ἔρωτα | μουσίσδων, ῥᾷον δὲ διᾶγ’ ἢ εἰ χρυσὸν ἔδωκεν, 80–1). These verses clearly connect Theocritus’ non-ferocious Cyclops with gentle poetic pharmaka (drugs, medicines) that respond to his disappointment in love. Whether or not he succeeded in curing his own longing does not matter for the present article.Footnote 30 The important point is that he turned inward, became reflective and gentle. Likewise, most of Theocritus’ many other disappointed lovers are non-violent.Footnote 31

THE CYCLOPS’ HELLENISTIC REPUTATION: DOCTOR POEMS

Apollonius’ allusion to the Cyclops does not occur in a vacuum. The Cyclops’ role in love cures was the subject of other competitive Hellenistic poems, indicating that such a bucolic trope was sufficiently developed to receive such an allusion in the Talos episode and for at least some of Apollonius’ intended audience to understand it. After Theocritus told his physician friend Nicias about Polyphemus’ cure for love in Idyll 11 (see above), the doctor poet wrote a poem in response. The first two lines are preserved in the Theocritean scholia:

That is true indeed, Theocritus, for the Loves have taught many to be poets who previously lived without the Muses.

It is not clear whether Nicias agrees that poetry can cure lovesickness, but he acknowledges it as a source of poetic composition, as he contributes to the Hellenistic poetry exchange centred on Theocritus’ gentle lovelorn monster who had a pharmakon for romantic disappointment.Footnote 33

CALLIMACHUS’ EPIGRAM AND THE ELEGANT HUNGER CURE

Callimachus too refers to Theocritus’ Cyclops and makes an even stronger claim about the love cure in an epigram, written to possibly yet another physician.Footnote 34 Both may have been acquaintances of Theocritus and Nicias.Footnote 35 It is written in Doric, the dialect of Theocritus’ Sicilian Cyclops and many of his other works;Footnote 36 four Doric vowels appear in the first line besides numerous Doricisms elsewhere.

Polyphemus found such a good spell for one in love. By the Earth, the Cyclops is not unlearned! The Muses reduce the swelling of love, Philip. Truly wisdom is a cure-all pharmakon.

In claiming that the Muses cure love Callimachus uses a medical term with metapoetic force. κατισχναίνω means to ‘wither’ to ‘reduce swelling’.Footnote 38 In the context of competitive Hellenistic poetics, claiming that the Muses make love less tumid would also mean ‘the Muses edit love poems down to an elegant scale’.Footnote 39 This humorously contrasts with the deliberately Cyclopean length of the ten-line epigram.Footnote 40

On lines 5–6, Callimachus mentions hunger (λιμός) as also effective against love and on 9–10 claims to possess both of them: αἱ γὰρ ἐπῳδαί | οἴκοι τῶ χαλεπῶ τραύματος ἀμφότεραι (‘For at home I have both the charms for the painful wound’). Callimachus, the starving poet, may have been imitating Polyphemus’ hunger too, since the Polyphemus of Idyll 11 mentioned that he was growing ‘thinner’ or ‘more refined’ (ταῦτ’ ἆμαρ ἐπ’ ἆμαρ … με λεπτύνοντα, ‘these things making me thinner day by day’, 11.69). λεπτύνω ‘make thin’ is related to Callimachus’ key programmatic word λεπτός ‘slender’, ‘refined’, ‘elegant’, which he uses to describe his own poetic ideal. It is also used medically,Footnote 41 just as κοῦφον ‘light’, ‘easy’, and ἁδύ ‘sweet’, ‘not bitter’ at 11.3 can have medical and Callimachean metapoetic meanings.Footnote 42 It is not clear in Theocritus whether hunger is a symptom of Eros or part of the treatment or both. However, in Callimachus’ response it is clearly part of the medical treatment that cures love—whether undertaken intentionally or unintentionally. Dietary regimen in ancient as well as modern times has been a major part of medical treatment for many conditions. Theocritus’ Cyclops is growing thinner in more senses than one. By growing thinner he is also becoming more human. Philostratus’ later version of the Polyphemus Galatea non-love affair explicitly has the Cyclops give up eating people to please the nymph.Footnote 43 This detail is not explicit in Theocritus but may be implied. Further, by becoming a more λεπτός, ‘thin’ or ‘refined’ poet, Polyphemus comes closer to the Callimachean ideal refining his art and character, redirecting his disappointed energies into his craft.

Hunger is also implicitly present in the Talos episode, yet not in a curative form. The Argonauts are low in provisions when they reach Crete and Talos prevents them from landing. They ‘are weary with thirst and pain’ (ἀμφότερον δίψῃ τε καὶ ἄλγεσι μοχθίζοντες, 4.1652). ἄλγος applies equally to physical or mental pain. This is the main reason for Medea to destroy Talos, since otherwise, it would take far more rowing and sailing before they could reach a safe harbour, something that they would not be able to do anywhere on Crete which Talos could circle three times in a day. They might have food on board, but without potable water it will do them little good. Hunger is a component of the Polyphemus love cure. When Medea destroys a Polyphemus-like monster and the Argonauts are able to reach provisions, she has symbolically destroyed giant epic, yet fails to become bucolically or Callimacheanly λεπτή. The only genre left for her future is tragedy.

POLYPHEMUS AND TALOS’ VULNERABLE EYES

Eyes and their enchanting qualities are another link between Apollonius’ Talos episode and Theocritus’ Cyclops poems.Footnote 44 This common theme increases the probability that they are composed in dialogue and provides another locus for their contrasted poetics of the healing or non-healing of love by song.

Theocritus’ Polyphemus is self-conscious about his one eye (Idyll 11.33):

The eye is the centre of much of Polyphemus’ vulnerability. As a lover, it draws him to Galatea yet he worries that it makes him unattractive. Later as the monstrous opponent of Odysseus, it is his weak point through which he is blinded, something of which he is already partially aware through prophecy in Idyll 6.Footnote 45

For Medea, eyes are a weapon used to destroy Talos through his eyes. Just before approaching the bow of the Argo to begin her magic, she veils her eyes from the sides (1661–3), thus gathering concentration and protecting the Argonauts from her dangerous eye-contact.Footnote 46 Medea’s spell has been considered a manifestation of the Evil Eye, which is generally connected with envy or hatred.Footnote 47 Though Talos is an obstacle, Medea has no normal reason to hate him, but she summons up evil spirits of death and the passion of hatred as a weapon. The open frontal vision can be seen as the culmination of Medea’s gradual loss of shame (αἰδώς), and a loss of control over herself and her outwardly destructive power (1669–72):Footnote 48

Putting on a bad mind, she used her hate-filled eyes to bewitch Talos’ eyes, and in a violent rage she gnashed bitter gall against him and sent out destructive/invisible images.Footnote 49

Talos is destroyed by phantoms unleashed by Medea that are visible to him.Footnote 50 Thus his faculty of seeing is his weak point, as Polyphemus was undone through his eye by Odysseus who came from the sea, and as the Theocritean Cyclops had earlier been conquered by the enchanting sight of Galatea from the waves in yet another parallel between the episode and the Idyll.Footnote 51

LEAD, ICHOR, WASTING AWAY IN LOVE AND HELLENISTIC MEDICAL POETRY

The transformation of gentle love poetry into epic violence in Apollonius’ Talos episode is vividly encapsulated by another word with a double meaning hidden within a medical simile embedded in intertextual discourse. When Talos has been struck by Medea’s phantoms and has damaged his membrane on a rock (4.1679–80):

the ichor flowed out of him (Talos) like melting lead.

τήκομαι is frequently used of those ‘melting’ or rather ‘wasting’ or ‘pining away’ because of love. A Doric compound variant is used of Polyphemus in Idyll 11.13–14.Footnote 52 The compound is used of Daphnis wasting in love like melting snow in 7.16 and in active form for Thyrsis in Epigram 6 melting his eyes in weeping over a goat. The simple middle verb is applied to Daphnis and a generic goatherd to which he is compared in Idyll 1, lines 65, 81, 87 and 91. The latter two emphasize wasting in the ‘eyes’ (ὀφθαλμώς). It is also used of Simaetha’s witchcraft in Idyll 2.20, 28, 29, as she ‘melts’ barley grains and wax on the fire in an effort to ‘melt’ her jilting lover Delphis, just as her own beauty had melted or wasted away at the sight of him in 2.93. It is used of ‘melting in envy’ (ἐτάκευ βασκαίνων) over possession of a fleece in Idyll 5.12–3.Footnote 53 In 6.27 it is applied to Galatea whom Polyphemus hopes is wasting in jealousy (ζαλοῖ … καὶ τάκεται) as he pretends to have another woman.

τήκομαι only occurs three times in the Argonautica, always in line-initial position, twice as participles. The only person characterized by it other than Talos is Medea, directly and via a simile on adjacent lines (3.1020–1):

melting like dew among roses that melts warmed at the light of dawn.

Jason and Medea have just met at the temple of Hekate and the preceding lines had stated that Medea was ready to give her soul (ψυχή) to Jason, not just the necessary drugs (3.1015–16), for ‘such was the Eros that flashed its sweet lightning flame from Jason’s fair head and captured the sparks of her eyes’ (3.1017–19). Medea had been willing to give her soul after being captured by her eyes; now she takes Talos’ soul through his eyes. As she had melted in love, now she melts another by a power that acts at a distance and through the eyes as Eros does, whereas Polyphemus channels his pain into the rich genre of bucolic song.

Another intertext eerily likens Talos’ state to that of someone in love. μόλιβος (a rare epic form of μόλυβδος) is a Homeric hapax legomenon that also only occurs once in the Argonautica, intertextually connecting Talos’ death with that of the newly married warrior Iphidamas of Iliad 11.221–47, who had not yet been with his wife and thus was very much in love when he was killed by Agamemnon.Footnote 54 This intertextually connects Talos to the love pains of a Homeric hero in addition to those of the bucolic characters noted above and the intratextual link to Medea’s melting in love. This Homeric reference might be too recherché for casual readers of Apollonius, but not for fellow librarians and poets whom he cites and who cited him in return.Footnote 55 In comparing ichor to μόλιβος, Apollonius cites the earlier physician poet Numenius, who could have been a contemporary of Apollonius.Footnote 56 This would not be lost upon Theocritus, Nicias and other medically educated poets or their successors, and increases the likelihood that the Talos episode is deeply engaging the medical discourse on poetry as a cure for love.Footnote 57 Indeed, Numenius’ and Apollonius’ use of μόλιβος and ἰχώρ are both referenced in wound descriptions in Theriaca 235–56 by the medically-minded Nicander, who could have been a younger contemporary of Apollonius or have lived in the second century b.c.e.Footnote 58 Thus Talos’ wasting ichor is embedded in a set of centuries-long medico-poetic intertexts, including a lovesick Homeric hero strengthening the bloody syrinx’s allusion to medical Cyclops poems by Theocritus, Callimachus and Nicias.Footnote 59

When Talos grazes his ankle on a rock, the location of the wound also corresponds to ancient theories of bloodletting and sexual desire. The ankle is an especially good location for bloodletting to relieve pain in the groin and genitals, according to the Hippocratic On the Nature of Man (11), and to Polybus as cited in Aristotle, History of Animals 512b14–32, since they connect to the (ancient) ‘jugular’ veins or σφαγίτιδες that were thought to run through both locations and into the head.Footnote 60 Liapis demonstrates that the pain in Polyphemus’ πόδες or lower legs and his headache in Idyll 11.70–1 could have been read as a medical symptom of unfulfilled sexual desire.Footnote 61 Normally therapeutic bloodletting would be performed along a vein connected to but distant from the area of pain (Nature of Man 11). Medea is not trying to heal Talos, but destroy him, yet the presence of medical symptoms and ‘treatments’—if we can give that term to the result of Medea’s lethal attack—along the sites of the ‘jugular’ veins link the two giants in a discourse of medicine and sexuality, since Apollonius may be signalling other myths that depict Talos as the founder of homosexuality on Crete.Footnote 62 Callimachus had used Polyphemus as an example of a cure for the φιλόπαιδα νόσον ‘boy-loving disease’ (line 6). Apollonius here alludes to and acknowledges Callimachus’ use of a heterosexual myth as an exemplar for pederastic love by hinting at a sexualized homoerotic Talos identified with a Theocritean Cyclops who is part of a bucolic genre characterized by both kinds of unhappy lovers. Medea’s victory has scientific medical overtones, but not healing ones.

MEDEA’S METAPOETIC EΠΩΙΔΗ AND ΦΑΡΜΑΚΟΝ

The phantoms that cause Talos to waste away due to a damaged membrane/wedding song (ὑμήν) are conjured by Medea’s ‘sung incantations’ (ἀοιδῇσιν) which, in a deliberate contrast, are as far from the ‘sung charm’ (ἐπῳδή) of Callimachus’ Polyphemus and from Theocritus’ cure as possible. Medea sings like Polyphemus, but her magic has no consolatory qualities. Her song crosses the ‘borders of life and death’ (4.1648) to become the opposite of a ‘wedding song’ (ὑμήν). Instead of celebrating the move of a woman into a new life, union and the creation of new life, she summons the spirits of death to devour Talos’ soul (4.1665–6):

Then she propitiated with songs and celebrated the soul-eating deaths

This results in his ichor wasting away through the ὑμήν as fear-inducing phantoms destroy his θυμός, the Platonic locus of courage.Footnote 63

The discourse on healing and destructive songs and φάρμακα ‘medicines’ is also engaged by the last epithet that Medea receives in her final appearance in the epic just as Talos gives way to her might after the narrator’s exclamation of horror (4.1676–7):

Thus, though he was bronze, he gave way to be mastered by the might of Medea of the many pharmaka (drugs, medicines).

Medea the polypharmakos has rejected Polyphemus’ pharmakon. Footnote 64 She does not turn to his gentle cure, nor will her story ultimately be a peaceful bucolic one. Apollonius signals this by means of yet another reference to the Theocritean Cyclops. The epic ultimately looks towards Euripides’ tragic conclusion. Pavlou observed that when Talos falls like a pine (πεύκη, 4.1682–8), this directly foreshadows the language of Euripides’ Medea 1200–1, where the princess Eurydice, Jason’s would be bride, melts like pine resin (πεύκινον δάκρυ).Footnote 65 Though Euripides’ verb for melting is ἀπέρρεον, not τήκομαι, the connection is still strong enough to combine with the medical references to bucolic love cures to emphasize that Medea’s pharmaka and ‘songs’ do not soothe her heart within but destroy her enemies without.

CONCLUSION: THE CONSOLATION OF PAIDEIA

This article has analysed the metapoetic force of the ‘bloody syrinx’ (σύριγξ αἱματόεσσα) and ‘subtle marriage song’ (λεπτὸς ὑμήν) of Argonautica 4.1647–8 in the context of Theocritus’ Idylls 6 and 11, and Callimachus’ Cyclops epigram, citing further parallels between episode and Idylls involving the theme of vulnerability through the eyes, a rich intertextual poetic discourse on lovesick ichor, bloodletting veins, as well as a final consideration of Medea’s ἐπῳδή and the significance of her epithet πολυφάρμακος.

To round out this presentation of the place of Medea, Talos and Polyphemus in Hellenistic scientific/poetic discourse, let us reconsider the precise nature of the cure that Medea rejects. As is well known, Hellenistic poetry is permeated by the sciences. However, scholars have tended to neglect this when interpreting Polyphemus’ cure.Footnote 66 Yet in the opening of Idyll 11, Theocritus addresses Nicias as a ‘doctor and especially beloved of the nine Muses’ (ἰατρὸν ἐόντα | καὶ ταῖς ἐννέα δὴ πεφιλημένον ἔξοχα Μοίσαις, 5–6). Nicias emphasizes that the Loves have taught those to be poets who had lived without the Muses, while Callimachus calls the Cyclops ‘not unlearned’ (οὐκ ἀμαθής). The scholia on Theocritus 11.1–3 even claim ‘it seems to me that Polyphemus’ pharmakon is nothing other than paideia and the Muses’.Footnote 67 By Hellenistic times, the Muses were the patron goddesses of paideia, philosophy, scholarship and many sciences.Footnote 68 Polyphemus would need to study poetry to be able to compose it, even if he is not far along just yet. For comparison, poets in medieval Persia were advised to memorize tens of thousands of lines of traditional and contemporary verse before composing their own.Footnote 69 It is clear from the degree of intertextuality in Hellenistic poets that they must have trained themselves by memorizing similar quantities of their predecessors and contemporaries. There is a psychological component to the act of learning and the physical act of memorizing poetry redirects the mind away from painful thoughts.Footnote 70 Moreover, the poetic corpus included many didactic works. Polyphemus exhibits an increasing scientific knowledge of the world even in the midst of his social missteps as he wishes that he were born with gills so that he could swim with Galatea or as he clumsily apologizes for being unable to bring her flowers that do not bloom in the same season (11.54–9). Thus, the process of acquiring knowledge inwardly transforms Polyphemus, a barbarian who is becoming a civilized Greek.

Also a barbarian, Medea already brings tremendous technical knowledge that gives her much outward power, but fails to bring her peace. She rejects the Theocritean and Callimachean poetics of the healing of love just as Apollonius rejected their small scale by taking up the epic genre while retaining their scientific learning.Footnote 71 Her song is indeed a ‘blood-drenched bucolic’, a αἱματόεσσα σύριγξ, as revealed in the intertextual references of the ‘subtle marriage song’ (λεπτὸς ὑμήν) that turns into a magical chant that she sings in the textual presence of Jason, Talos, Achilles and Polyphemus to devastating effect as she proceeds to heal disappointment in love by killing others as Apollonius metapoetically distances her from Theocritus, Callimachus and Nicias’ love cure of the Μuses by destroying their exemplary Cyclops through Talos in this refined and bloody tribute.

Both Medea and Polyphemus practice sciences or τέχναι. Both use them to master powerful giants. But Polyphemus masters himself, and his poetic art makes him more gentle. Medea’s channelled rage will not be controlled forever. Though her destruction of Talos is temporarily useful, the combination of tremendous outward power with a lack of control over the emotions that wield it will prove the bane of Medea, Jason, their families and perhaps of all technological civilization.Footnote 72 Yet the Muses win in the end as Apollonius enfolds the destruction of poetry, science and healing within the order of his poem.

Footnotes

*

Many thanks to Jackie Murray and Antony Augoustakis, my Hellenistic poetry mentors; and to Clara Bosak-Schroeder, Honora Chapman and CQ’s reader for advice.

References

1 For instance, H.F. Färber, ‘Zur dichterischen Kunst in Apollonios Rhodios’ Argonautica: die Gleichnisse’ (Diss., Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Berlin, 1932), 105 thought that her transformation into the ‘grausame Zauberin der Sage’ was completed here.

2 H. Fränkel, Noten zu den Argonautika des Apollonios (Munich, 1968), 612–16; A. Mori, The Politics of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (Cambridge, 2008), 49, 84; G. Paduano, ‘L’episodio di Talos: osservazioni sull’ esperienza magica nelle Argonautiche di Apollonio Rodio’, SCO 19/20 (1970/1971), 46–67, at 48.

3 A. Rose, ‘Clothing imagery in Apollonius’s Argonautika’, QUCC 21 (1985), 29–44, at 43; B. Pavlock, Eros, Imitation, and the Epic Tradition (Ithaca, NY, 1990), 67; M. Fantuzzi, ‘Which magic? Which eros? Apollonius’ Argonautica and the different narrative roles of Medea as a sorceress in love’, in T.D. Papanghelis and A. Rengakos (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Apollonius Rhodius (Leiden and Boston, 20082), 287–310, at 300–1.

4 Translations from Greek are mine unless otherwise noted. Quotations from Apollonius’ Argonautica come from W.H. Race, Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica (Cambridge, MA, 2008).

5 R. Hunter, Theocritus: A Selection. Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13 (Cambridge, 1999), 69–71, 160, 218; see also 64–5 on Daphnis and the syrinx.

6 On Callimachus, see the section ‘Polyphemus’ Love Cure’ and note 27 below. On Theocritus, see B. Acosta-Hughes, ‘Among the cicadas: Theocritus and his contemporaries’, in P. Kyriakou, E. Sistakou and A. Rengakos (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Theocritus (Leiden and Boston, 2021), 537–58, at 552–4; Hunter (n. 5), 225–6; and the section ‘Callimachus’ Epigram and the Elegant Hunger Cure’ below.

7 See Acosta-Hughes (n. 6); R. Hunter, Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 46–76; A. Köhnken, ‘Hellenistic chronology; Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius Rhodius’, in T. Papanghelis and A. Rengakos (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Apollonius Rhodius (Leiden and Boston, 20082), 73–94, at 83–94. See also Köhnken (this note), 75 on metapoetic statements in Theocritus’ Idyll 7 and S. Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge, 1991), 249–62, on Idyll 11.

8 M.M. DeForest, Apollonius’ Argonautica: A Callimachean Epic (Leiden / New York / Cologne, 1994), 44–5, 123–4.

9 DeForest (n. 8), 29–30, 137.

10 G. Lachenaud, Scholies à Apollonios de Rhodes (Paris, 2010), 523.

11 Fränkel (n. 2), 613; J. Kerschensteiner, ‘Zu Leukippos A 1’, Hermes 87 (1959), 441–8, at 443.

12 R. Hunter, Apollonius of Rhodes: Argonautica Book IV (Cambridge, 2015), 300.

13 A. Mayor, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology (Princeton, 2018), 27.

14 S. Cassidy, ‘Wedding imagery in the Talos episode: Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.1653–88’, CQ 68 (2018), 442–57, at 442–4.

15 Cassidy (n. 14), 445, 450–2.

16 Cassidy (n. 14), 445–6 n. 15.

17 Hunter (n. 12), 301 on 1661; Cassidy (n. 14), 448–9, 445.

18 Lachenaud (n. 10), 523. M. Aguirre and R. Buxton, Cyclops: The Myth and its Cultural History (Oxford, 2020), 32, 59–60, 190–3 compare the Cyclopes with Talos, rock throwing Centaurs and other primordial marginal figures like Telchines.

19 R. Buxton, Myths & Tragedies in their Ancient Greek Contexts (Oxford, 2013), 77–8.

20 R. Dyck, ‘On the way from Colchis to Corinth: Medea in Book 4 of the Argonautica’, Hermes 117 (1989), 455–70, at 469 n. 21.

21 Hunter (n. 7), 62–3.

22 Dyck (n. 20), 468.

23 Cassidy (n. 14), 445.

24 See J.H. Hordern, ‘Cyclopea: Philoxenus, Theocritus, Callimachus, Bion’, CQ 54 (2004), 285–92, at 285, 288–91, who also notes that the love theme already appears in Middle Comedy.

25 Mayor (n. 13), 16–17, also 11–12, 21–2, plate 2; Buxton (n. 19), 81–5.

26 On such variations in Talos’ physiology see Buxton (n. 19), 78.

27 Cf. similar use of ὀλίγη at Hymn to Apollo 112 and at Aetia fr. 1.9.1 Harder. If A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995), 323–8 is right that λεπτός is more directly associated with Aratus, that only strengthens my overall argument about science.

28 G. Sissa, ‘The hymen is a problem, still. Virginity, imperforation, and contraception, from Greece to Rome’, EuGeStA 3 (2013), 67–123, 76 observes that the hymen is not discussed in surviving ancient medical literature until Soranus’ second century c.e. Gynecology where he denies its existence. Even so, Soranus’ argument at 1.3.17 assumes that there had been previous folk or philosophical use of this term in anatomical contexts.

29 The text of Theocritus’ Idylls is taken from A.S.F. Gow, Theocritus (Cambridge, 19522).

30 Many scholars have diverging opinions about whether and how Polyphemus cured his love. L.G. Samson, ‘The philosophy of desire in Theocritus’ Idylls’ (Diss., University of Iowa, 2013), 15–16 presents a useful summary of scholarship. Other valuable treatments not in her list include Gow (n. 29) 2.211; H. Parry, Thelxis: Magic and Imagination in Greek Myth and Poetry (Lanham, MD / New York / London, 1992), 184; H. Lühken, ‘Heilender Gesang – Überlegungen zu Theokrits elftem Idyll’, GFA 3 (2000), 1–11; K. Gutzwiller, ‘The bucolic problem’, CPh 101 (2006), 380–404, at 394, 396, 399–401; and C. Faraone, ‘Magic, medicine and eros in the Prologue to Theocritus’ Id. 11’, in M. Fantuzzi and T. Papanghelis (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (Leiden and Boston, 2006), 75–90, at 88–9.

31 C. Meillier, ‘La fonction thérapeutique de la musique et de la poésie dans le recueil des Bucoliques de Théocrite’, BAGB (1982), 164–86, at 165 considers human psychology and healing to be the main theme of Theocritus’ bucolic poems; see also Gutzwiller (n. 30). Idyll 2’s non-pastoral Simaetha does magically coerce and consider killing her lover but does not inflict lasting damage and seems calmer by poem’s end. For contrasting views of Simaetha, see I. Petrovic, ‘Φαρμακεύτρια ohne φάρμακον: Überlegungen zur Komposition des zweiten Idylls von Theokrit’, Mnemosyne 57 (2004), 421–44, at 441; A. Duncan, ‘Spellbinding performance: poet as witch in Theocritus’ second Idyll and Apollonius’ Argonautica’, Helios 28 (2001), 43–56; Meillier (this note), 172–3.

32 See Gow (n. 29), 2.208–9 for Nicias’ opening lines, his possible authorship of poems in the Anthology and his friendship with Theocritus.

33 See Gow (n. 29), 2.208–9; E.W. Spofford, ‘Theocritus and Polyphemus’, TAPhA 90 (1969), 22–35, at 30.

34 A.W. Bulloch, ‘Hellenistic poetry’, in P.E. Eastering and B. Knox (edd.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (Cambridge, 1985), 541–621, at 573 thought it likely that Philip is a doctor given the medical allusions in the poem addressed to him. V. Kostopoulou, ‘Polyphemus and Galateia: variations on a theme’ (Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007), 135 notes that Callimachus deliberately contrasts with Theocritus by being clear about the efficacy. Callimachus also wrote a Galateia but nothing survives of it other than the Deipnosophists’ quotation on fish: G.R. Mair, Callimachus and Lycophron (London and New York, 1921), 238–9; D. Clayman, Callimachus: Miscellaneous Epics and Elegies, Other Fragments, Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2022), 2, 8–9.

35 Kostopoulou (n. 34), 146 thinks it likely that Theocritus and Callimachus were acquainted being contemporary Alexandrian poets.

36 On the the Doric Idylls: 1–7, 11, 14, 15, 18, 26; those with many Doric elements: 13, 16, 17, 24 and the Doric pseudo-Theocritean: 8, 9, 19–21, 23, 27, see Gow (n. 29), lxxii–vii; Hunter (n. 5), 22–4; Hunter (n. 7), 28–46.

37 Text from D. Clayman, Callimachus: Hecale; Hymns; Epigrams (Cambridge, MA, 2022), 436.

38 Faraone (n. 30), 81–2 notes that this term was used medically but also of victims of the Erinyes.

39 Kostopoulou (n. 34), 133–4 and n. 204 argues for the metapoetic usage of the word here, citing an example from Aristophanes’ Frogs which Callimachus would have known well. Apollonius’ love epic consciously flouts this.

40 Kostopoulou (n. 34), 151–2 sees deliberate significance in the Cyclopean length of Callimachus and Posidippus’ Cyclops epigrams.

41 J. Farr, ‘Theocritus: Idyll 11’, Hermes 119 (1991), 477–84, at 482; Hunter (n. 5), 240.

42 See Hunter (n. 5), 225–6.

43 Kostopoulou (n. 34), 194.

44 R. Hunter, The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies (Cambridge, 1993), 166 n. 57 observes that Polyphemus and this Talos are both vulnerable through their eyes.

45 As is evident from the reference to Telemus’ prophecy in lines 22–4: οὐ τὸν ἐμὸν τὸν ἕνα γλυκύν, ᾧ ποθορῷμι | ἐς τέλος (αὐτὰρ ὁ μάντις ὁ Τήλεμος ἔχθρ’ ἀγορεύων | ἐχθρὰ φέροι ποτὶ οἶκον, ὅπως τεκέεσσι φυλάσσοι), ‘nay, by my one sweet eye … wherewith may I see to the end—let Telemus, the seer, carry home the enmity he prophesies for me and keep it for his children!’ (transl. A.S.F. Gow). For ironic foreshadowing in Theocritus’ epic characters see J. Klooster, ‘Theocritus’, in I.J.F. de Jong and R. Nünlist (edd.), Time in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden and Boston, 2007), 97–111, at 102–6.

46 M. Dickie, ‘Talos bewitched: magic, atomic theory and paradoxography in Apollonius Argonautica 4.1638–88’, in F. Cairns and M. Heath (edd.), Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar: Sixth Volume 1990: Roman Poetry and Drama, Greek Epic, Comedy, Rhetoric (Leeds, 1990), 267–96, at 268–9 argues that Medea veils herself to protect them and gives ancient parallels. F. Vian (ed.), Apollonios de Rhodes, Argonautiques: Chant IV (Paris, 1981), 205–6 says this helps her to concentrate and not damage them. Paduano (n. 2), 49 notes the importance of methods of separating practitioners from ordinary space in magic.

47 E.g. Fränkel (n. 2), 614–15. See I. Schaaf, Magie und Ritual bei Apollonios Rhodios: Studien zu ihrer Form und Funktion in den Argonautika (Berlin, 2014), 311, 316, and Aguirre and Buxton (n. 18), 101–2 for this passage and ethnographic bibliography on the evil eye.

48 M. Pavlou, ‘Reading Medea through her veil in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius’, G&R 56 (2009), 183–202, at 201.

49 A. Rengakos, Apollonios Rhodios und die antike Homererklärung (Munich, 1994), 112 notes that μεγαίρω does not mean ‘enchant’ in Homer but indicates envy, which is its usual post-homeric meaning, and he includes more bibliography on this point. For this word, see also Dickie (n. 46), 270–1 who notes that Medea invokes Allecto, Megaera and Tisiphone, the Furies of rage, envy and vengeance respectively, 268 on the perception that the evil eye was often powered by envy and hatred, and 270–1 on Medea’s internalization of the Erinyes; Paduano (n. 2), 46 on Medea’s hate as a weapon; Mayor (n. 13), 28 on Plutarch’s view of projected malevolence through the eyes for certain people; Hunter (n. 12), 302–3 who notes that anger as well as envy is connected with the evil eye.

50 For a discussion of Democritus and Apollonius’ phantoms see N. Powers, ‘Magic, wonder and scientific explanation in Apollonius, Argonautica 4.1638–93’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 48 (2002), 87–101; Dickie (n. 46); Parry (n. 30), 179, 191 n. 24.

51 W. Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions (Cambridge, MA and London, 1996), 43 connects the myth of Polyphemus’ blinding with fear of the evil eye.

52 ὃ δὲ τὰν Γαλάτειαν ἀείδων | αὐτὸς ἐπ’ ἀιόνος κατετάκετο φυκιοέσσας, ‘But he wasted/melted away singing of Galatea upon the sea-weedy shore.’

53 The connection is tempting, but the particular word for ‘fleece’, νάκος, does not appear in Apollonius.

54 The word occurs at 11.237. See P. Kyriakou, Homeric Hapax Legomena in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius: A Literary Study (Stuttgart, 1995), 56–7. On the rarity, see F. Overduin, Nicander of Colophon’s Theriaca: A Literary Commentary (Leiden and Boston, 2015), 284. On its sole occurrence in the Argonautica, Hunter (n. 12), 305. Iphidamas’ spear bends like lead when he tries to stab Agamemnon who then kills him along with his brother Coön. A. Thornton, Homer’s Iliad: Its Composition and the Motif of Supplication (Göttingen, 1984), 79–80 notes that the brothers are actually Menelaus’ guest-friends and Agamemnon kills them unwittingly after a series of increasingly violent slayings of pairs of brothers. Therefore this intertext emphasizes the pathos of Talos’ senseless death.

55 Many readers would have been alert to Homeric references here, since, as scholars have noted, Medea’s action resembles a Homeric duel, e.g. Cassidy (n. 14), 447–8; Hunter (n. 12), 301; id. (n. 12), 305 on the Homeric woodcutter simile of Talos’ heroic death; Hunter (n. 44), 166 n. 57 on Medea’s speech of challenge; Kyriakou (n. 54), 56 compares Talos’ death with the wounding of the Iliad’s ‘bronze’ Ares.

56 On the citation, see Vian (n. 46), 206 on line 1680. A.S.F. Gow and A.F. Scholfield, Nicander: The Poems and Poetical Fragments (Cambridge, 1953), 7 place him in the mid third century which would make him an older contemporary of Apollonius; this is still possible though some more recent scholars have placed him at the end of the fourth century according to Overduin (n. 54), 10–11.

57 According to Gow (n. 29), 1.xix–xxi, Theocritus demonstrates considerable botanical knowledge, some possible medical terminology and was acquainted with the island of Cos; he might have met the doctor poet Nicias at the medical school there.

58 See Overduin (n. 54), 278, 284 on this passage and 6–12, for Nicander’s date and medical qualities. For Nicander’s engagement with Theocritus, see F. Overduin, ‘The anti-bucolic world of Nicander’s Theriaca’, CQ 64 (2014), 623–41.

59 Polyphemus’ place in Hellenistic discourse on poetry, science and lovesickness also extends to a fourteen-line epigram by Posidippus, possibly also composed in the mid third century b.c.e. On Posidippus’ date and use of Theocritus see D. Petrain, ‘Homer, Theocritus and the Milan Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309, Col. III.28–41)’, CJ 8 (2003), 359–88, at 363. Posidippus appears to directly allude to Theocritus’ Cyclops according to Hunter (n. 5), 3. Though the epigram is focused on a boulder, Polyphemus is named twice, near the centre on lines six and seven. The boulder is called τοῦ Πολυφημείου σκαιοτέρ[η]ν θυρεοῦ | οὐκ ἄ[ν] μιν Πολύφημος ἐβάστασε, σὺν Γαλατείᾳ | πυκνὰ κολυμβήσας αἰπολικὸς δύσερως, ‘more awkward than Polyphemus’ doorstone. Polyphemus would not have been able to carry it, the goatherd unlucky in love who frequently dove with Galatea.’ (Text from Petrain [this note], 359–60). The awkwardness can probably be applied to the Cyclops as well. The boulder epigram is by far the largest in a Λιθικά section on gemstones. This probably recalls Callimachus’ oversized epigram. Love gifts and scientific/technical wonder are prominent in Posidippus’ other Lithika epigrams, A–B 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 15, 16. Therefore Posidippus’ Polyphemus also belongs to a learned discourse on poetry, science and the healing of lovesickness. See Kostopoulou (n. 34), 132–3, 144 for other lyric poems which oppose Muses and Eros, including works by Callimachus and Posidippus.

60 Buxton (n. 19), 89–94 discusses Hippocratic bloodletting at the inside ankle for genital pain with implications for Apollonius’ Talos’ sexuality and impaired procreation. See also Mayor (n. 13), 26–8.

61 V. Liapis, ‘Polyphemus’ throbbing πόδες: Theocritus Idyll 11.70–71’, Phoenix 63 (2009), 156–61.

62 See Buxton (n. 19), 79, 89–92; Ath. Deipn. 603d; Ibyc. fr. 309 PMGF and Suda θ 41 Adler. The brief primary sources mention neither Talos’ size nor whether he was bronze.

63 Courage is the virtue characteristic of the θυμός or spirited part of the soul in Platonic philosophy: C. Cavarnos, Fine Arts as Therapy: Plato’s Teaching Organized and Discussed (Belmont, MA, 1998), 18–22.

64 As Fantuzzi (n. 3), 290 points out, πολυφάρμακος is Medea’s first epithet at 3.37 before she is even named, and it is her last here in the Talos episode forming a ring composition. See also Kyriakou (n. 54), 59–60. R.J. Clare, The Path of the Argo: Language, Imagery, and Narrative in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Cambridge and New York, 2002), 258–60 notes that this final epithet emphasizes her fully revealed and largely evil power.

65 See Pavlou (n. 48), 201–2; cf. DeForest (n. 8), 138.

66 For bibliography on the love cure, see n. 30 above.

67 οὐδὲν ἔρωτός μοι δοκεῖ φάρμακον πεφυκέναι εἰ μὴ ἡ παιδεία καὶ αἱ Μοῦσαι: C. Wendel, Scholia in Theocritum vetera (Leipzig, 1914), 241. The manuscript title on page 240 also implies an educational value for the readers: ἐκ παιγνίων λάμβανε διδασκαλίαν λόγον στορεστὴν τυγχάνειν παθημάτων, ‘From [poetic] games gain the teaching that the word can soothe the emotions.’

68 P. Murray, ‘The Muses and their arts’, in P. Murray and P. Wilson (edd.), Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousikē in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford, 2004), 365–99, at 374–86.

69 E.G. Brown, Revised Translation of the Chahár Maqála (“Four Discourses”) of Niżámí-i-’Arúdí of Samarqand (London, 1921), 32.

70 E.B. Holtsmark, ‘Poetry as self-enlightenment: Theocritus XI’, TAPhA 97 (1966), 253–9 has described Polyphemus’ cure as a process of steps of realization. Parry (n. 30), 183–4 also speaks of Polyphemus’ poetry as a way of working through his chaos. Besides the voluminous literature on art therapy, J. Shay, Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (New York etc. 2002), 154 praises the production of art as a means of psychological healing in a different context.

71 Theocritus had expressed his allegiance to Callimachus in favour of small ornate poetry as opposed to long epics in Idyll 7.45–9; see Gow (n. 29), 1.xxii–iii, 2.143–4; Bulloch (n. 34), 576.

72 As Pavlou (n. 48), 201 notes: ‘From this point onwards Medea exercises control only over others.’ Similarly, Clare (n. 64), 231–60 contrasts Medea’s destructive magic with the ordering enchantments of the archpoet Orpheus. Meillier (n. 31), 172–3 too contrasts poetry’s soothing qualities with the disorder magic brings on the user.