The Argonautica

Phoebus, beginning with you, I shall remember the famed deeds of men of old:

men who, down through the mouth of Pontus and onward between

those Cyanean Rocks, at the command of Pelias the king,

drove the well-benched Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece.

For Pelias heard this oracle: a loathsome fate was awaiting

him: to be felled through the counsels of that man, whom he should see

coming from among the people with only a single sandal.

Not long thereafter, true to your own oracle, Jason,

wading on foot through the winter-swollen currents of Anaurus,

saved one from under the mire; but the other one, down in the river,

he left there: a sandal caught fast in the torrent's onrush.

Straightway he came to Pelias, meaning to share in the banquet

Pelias offered to Poseidon, his father, and all other gods;

but Pelasgian Hera he slighted and paid her no honor.

At once Pelias saw him, understood, and set him a task:

a voyage laden with sorrow, so that out on the sea or even among

men of a foreign land he might utterly lose his homecoming.

The ship, how she came to be fashioned, earlier singers relate:

how Argus labored to build her at Athena's prompting.

Now I would tell of the lineage and name of each of the heroes,

the pathways across the long sea and all of the deeds they accomplished

wandering far: may the Muses themselves be the prompters of song.

First name Orpheus, whom Calliope herself once

after she shared Thracian Oeagrus' bed, they say,