The Scent of Ancient Magic by Britta K. Ager;

Author:Britta K. Ager; [Ager, Britta K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS002010 History / Ancient / Greece, HIS002020 History / Ancient / Rome, LIT004190 Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (limited)
Published: 2022-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

τοῖα παραιφαμένη θελκτήρια φάρμακ᾽ ἔπασσεν

αἰθέρι καὶ πνοιῇσι, τά κεν καὶ ἄπωθεν ἐόντα

ἄγριον ἠλιβάτοιο κατ᾽ οὔρεος ἤγαγε θῆρα. (4.442–44)

. . . after beguiling [the messengers] thus, she scattered enchanting herbs to the wind and air, drugs which could bring a distant beast of prey down from the high mountain.

Either Apsyrtos will be drawn by Medea’s magical herbs like an animal following a scent down a mountain, or else he is actually drawn by the scent itself, that being, as with the soporific herbs that overcome the dragon, the means through which the pharmaka work. The scene resembles Aelian’s much later description of leopards being drawn down from a mountain or out of a ravine or forest into a trap by the tantalizing smell of rotting meat (NA 13.10), which Aelian compares to the attractive force of the magical iunx. Other records of charms to lure animals in via magical scents are found in the ancient agronomists. The Geoponika (14.3) says that you can attract pigeons to join your flock in several ways: you can smear your existing pigeons with perfume, which will make wild ones follow them home; you can feed your pigeons cumin seed, which will both make them return home and attract new ones by the smell clinging to them; or you can make cakes of chaste-tree seed, wine, and vetch, which will entice Page 123 →pigeons in by the smell. Fumigating the pigeon house with sage and frankincense will also make them readier to come inside. Other scents in the Geoponika are meant to attract vermin and predators so they can be killed. If you dig a hole and put pounded oleander leaves in it, flies will collect in that spot (13.12); it also works on fleas (13.15). You can draw wolves in to be killed by making a bonfire upwind of where they live (18.14). On this fire, burn a mixture of the fish called blenni, which the text notes are also called “wolves,” and chopped mutton, and the smell will draw all the wolves in the area to the fire and put them to sleep, when you can kill them. Pliny (HN 28.149–51) similarly notes that snakes will be drawn to a fire on which stag’s blood or the upper bones of a deer’s neck are burned. Medea’s lures work as intended: Apsyrtos comes to meet his sister, is ambushed by Jason, and is killed.

One sequel to the episode of Apsyrtos’ murder may use odor obliquely to highlight the horror of Medea’s deception and the pollution that clings to her and Jason. The Argonauts, depressed by the knowledge that Zeus has seen the crime and will oppose their progress until Circe cleanses them of guilt, spend a day making slow progress up the Eridanos, an eerie landscape that highlights the limbo into which their quest has fallen.243 The region is polluted by the death of Phaethon, who had been struck out of the sky by Zeus’ thunderbolt and plunged into the Eridanos, which at the time the Argonauts pass by still breathes out fumes that reek unbearably of Phaethon’s burning wound.

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