The influence of tragedy

The murder of Apsyrtus is the central crisis of the voyage of the Argo. The ambush and its consequences, especially the alienation of the Argonauts from Zeus, illustrate the limits of mortal knowledge and divine retribution, both of which have been considered in Chapter 5. But the ambush also raises questions about the representation of Jason and Medea, the central characters of a poem that is in many ways patterned on Homeric epic and is often responsive to the expectations generated by it. Although the relative prominence of Jason and Medea makes them comparable to figures like Achilles, Odysseus, or Penelope, they are, unlike their Homeric counterparts, involved in the treacherous murder of a family member. The narrator is careful to explain the circumstances of the murder in the first section of Book 4: Jason and Medea are under the influence of Eros, and the Argonauts have been surrounded by a much larger Colchian force that seeks to return Medea to Aeëtes. Still, even with these justifications it is difficult to understand how the fatal trap set by Medea for her own half-brother can appear in a favorable, let alone heroic, light. What accounts for such a dramatic shift in the characterization of the epic hero?

The circumstances of the ambush are as follows.