Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

AN UNKNOWN VERSION OF THE ARGONAUT LEGEND

2016; Volume: 10; Linguagem: Inglês

2346-8459

Ketevan Sikharulidze,

Classical Antiquity Studies

The surviving Argonautic adventure is a version treated in literary terms. It is based on a folk plot, which must have certainly had versions in oral tradition. This is also attested by the fact that ancient authors sometimes provide different information about particular episodes and characters. These versions are not known, but I believe that one of them can be reconstructed with the help of the painting on a red-figured cylix kept in the Vatican Museum. It features a dragon emitting swallowed Jason. Although this scene is not attested in written records, it should be regarded not as the author’s invention, but as the rendering of an episode known to him. Remarkably, painters and sculptors did not interfere with a mythic plot; they normally depicted an important scene of a mythic story, and for this purpose resorted to written records as well as folk patterns. Since some of the scenes could have failed to be reflected in literary works, they could have been cast into oblivion. So, we may often come across artifacts featuring a scene which may not be attested in the surviving mythopoetic tradition. The above-mentioned cylix belongs to such group of artifacts.