A—
The Catalogue of Argonauts (23–223)

The two-part structure of the Catalogue of the Argonauts, as I have suggested elsewhere,^[16] reflects the structure of the entire Catalogue section of Iliad 2, which comprises both the Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2.494–759) and the Catalogue of the Trojans (ibid. 816–77).^[17] The two halves of Apollonius's Catalogue, however, represent not two opposing armies but two opposing types of hero who achieve the goals of their respective quests with antithetical approaches.

Orpheus and Heracles, who introduce each of the two halves, perform comparable tasks through diametrically opposed means; as Lawall has noted, Orpheus brought oak trees from Pieria to Thracian Zone through the power of his music (28–31), while Heracles transported the Erymanthian Boar from Arcadia to Mycenae by virtue of his great strength (124–29).^[18] This antithesis is echoed at the end of each half of the Catalogue, where Apollonius has set corresponding stories, stories that do not celebrate the exploits of the respective Argonauts themselves, but events leading to the way in which they were begotten. The Orpheus half concludes

with Talaus, Areius, and Leodocus, whose entry contains a brief reference to the fact that these sons of Bias and Pero owe their existence to Melampus, who was imprisoned in Iphiclus's stables (120–21). The story was well known in antiquity.^[19] On behalf of his brother, Bias, the seer Melampus went from Pylos to Phylace to fetch the cattle of Phylacus, which Neleus demanded as the price for the hand of his daughter, Pero. Although caught in the act of taking the cattle and imprisoned by the king, he won his freedom— and the cattle—through his prophetic skills (like Joseph in the Old Testament); the marriage that ensued produced the three Argonauts. At the end of the Heraclean half, Apollonius describes the begetting of Zetes and Calaïs (211–18): Boreas went from Thrace to Attica, where he seized Oreithyia as she danced along the Ilissus River, and, bringing her to the Sarpedonian Rock, there raped her.^[20] Both terminal stories, then, involve distant journeys undergone to win a bride. Success in the case of Melampus, like that of Orpheus, results from his skill of communicating with nonhuman life forms;^[21] Boreas, on the other hand, wins his bride, just as Heracles secured the Erymanthian Boar (and gained possession of Hylas, who is mentioned in the same entry, 131–32)^[22] by brute force.^[23]

In the Catalogue itself, then, Apollonius does more than list the Argonauts in a clever geographical arrangement, imitative of the

Homeric Catalogues. The first half begins and ends with stories involving heroes who achieved their respective feats through their communicative skills; the second half is framed with accounts of heroes who attained the object of their quest through their physical prowess. The Catalogue thus unfolds in such a way that the reader is invited to see the two halves as representative of two types of hero, the man of skill and the man of strength.^[24] Not only will this overall heroic antithesis surface in different forms throughout this book and beyond, but more specifically, the quests undertaken by, or leading up to the births of, the Argonauts who begin and conclude both halves of the Catalogue parallel and, to a certain extent, symbolize the Argonautic expedition, which was getting under way: Jason must travel to a distant land in order to fetch a specific item, and, in the course of his expedition, he too will win a bride. The heroic dichotomy of the Catalogue thus raises an interesting question: since Jason must attempt to accomplish what Orpheus, Heracles, Melampus, and Boreas all did in their respective  , how will he achieve his goal?