FIRE-BREATHING BULLS
 Jason Taming the Bulls of Aeetes, Jean Francois de Troy, 1742-3. (Wikimedia Commons) |
The test of the fire-breathing bulls is one of three Jason must complete to win the Golden Fleece, and yet it is one that has received the least scholarly attention. |
"Voyage of the Argonauts"
F. A. Paley
1879
[Jason] is ordered by King Aetes, as a condition of carrying off the Golden Fleece, to tame certain brazen-footed and fire-breathing bulls, and yoke them to a plough of adamant. This task he performs by the aid of the enchantress Medea. The bulls are expressly said to have been made by the god Hephaestus for the Sun, because when he had become weary in the conflict against the giants, the Sun had received him, the fire-god, in his car. "Therefore," says the poet [Apollonius of Rhodes], "he made for him bulls with brazen mouths and brazen feet, and a plough of adamant."
Source: F. A. Paley, “Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts,” The Dublin Review (1879): 164-182.
F. A. Paley
1879
[Jason] is ordered by King Aetes, as a condition of carrying off the Golden Fleece, to tame certain brazen-footed and fire-breathing bulls, and yoke them to a plough of adamant. This task he performs by the aid of the enchantress Medea. The bulls are expressly said to have been made by the god Hephaestus for the Sun, because when he had become weary in the conflict against the giants, the Sun had received him, the fire-god, in his car. "Therefore," says the poet [Apollonius of Rhodes], "he made for him bulls with brazen mouths and brazen feet, and a plough of adamant."
Source: F. A. Paley, “Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts,” The Dublin Review (1879): 164-182.
Dionysiaca
Nonnus
c. 450 CE
The very late antique poet Nonnus discussed the similarities between the fire-breathing bulls and the horses of the Cabieri, the gods who reigned on Lemnos and Samothrace, two stops on the Argonauts' journey:
"[The Kabeiroi] rode in a car of adamant; a pair of colts beat the dust with rattling hooves of brass, and they sent out a dry whinnying from their throats. These father Hephaistos had made with his inimitable art, breathing defiant fire between their teeth, like the pair of brazenfooted bulls which he made for Aietes the redoubtable ruler of the Kolkhians, with hot collars and burning pole. Eurymedon [one of the Kabeiroi] drove and guided the fiery mouths of the ironfoot steeds with a fiery bridle."
Source: Nonnus, Dionysiaca, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940).
Nonnus
c. 450 CE
The very late antique poet Nonnus discussed the similarities between the fire-breathing bulls and the horses of the Cabieri, the gods who reigned on Lemnos and Samothrace, two stops on the Argonauts' journey:
"[The Kabeiroi] rode in a car of adamant; a pair of colts beat the dust with rattling hooves of brass, and they sent out a dry whinnying from their throats. These father Hephaistos had made with his inimitable art, breathing defiant fire between their teeth, like the pair of brazenfooted bulls which he made for Aietes the redoubtable ruler of the Kolkhians, with hot collars and burning pole. Eurymedon [one of the Kabeiroi] drove and guided the fiery mouths of the ironfoot steeds with a fiery bridle."
Source: Nonnus, Dionysiaca, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940).
