Kolchis und Rom

Abstract

The quest for the Golden Fleece seems rather straightforward at first glance: Greek heroes try to recover a religious object from the barbarian lands of Colchis. In the negotiations with king Aeetes, however, the poet suggests that the Fleece may rightfully belong to the Colchians, who received Phrixus hospitably and consecrated the Fleece to Mars. Aeetes may be a ruthless tyrant, yet in Valerius, he also appears to be a victim of imperialist aggression. As in the Cyzicus episode, the seemingly clear distinction between center and periphery does not hold in the battle narrative in Arg. 6. The parties doing battle in the Colchian civil war, in which the Argonauts become involved, defy categorization as eastern barbarians and repeatedly evoke Virgil’s people of Latium or Lucan’s Romans. Paradoxically, this war at the end of the world thus seems to be a model for future Roman conflicts – an interpretation that may be confirmed by my reading of the famous simile comparing the self-destruction of the Scythian warlord Ariasmenus and his troops to Roman civil war armies. The mythical events in the Colchian civil war are therefore revealed to paradigmatically mirror Roman civil wars.