JASON AS DIOMEDES
One of the most commonly repeated falsehoods about Jason is that his original name was Diomedes before Chiron the Centaur christened him the Healer (Jason) upon his graduation from the Centaur’s tutelage. This statement is categorically untrue, but it continues to be repeated in books, websites, and even in scholarly literature.
First, let us look at some of the modern people who have claimed Jason as Diomedes. Then, we shall uncover the secret origin of this untrue claim.
First, let us look at some of the modern people who have claimed Jason as Diomedes. Then, we shall uncover the secret origin of this untrue claim.
Claims that Jason Was Called Diomedes
ABBE ANTOINE BANIER
That Centaur taught him the Sciences, which he himself professed, especially Medicine, and gave him for that Reason the name of Jason, instead of Diomedes, which he had before.
Sentence falsely attributed to the Scholiast on Pindar’s Pythian 4 in Abbe Banier, The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, Explained from History (London: A. Millar, 1740 [original 1711]).
WILLIAM KING
[B]ut his Relations conveyed him away into a Cave belonging to Chiron, who instructed him in the Art of Physick, from whence he had the Name of Jason, or the Healer, whereas before his Name was Diomedes.
William King, An Historical Account of the Heathen Gods (London: 1722 [original 1711]), 212.
BELL'S NEW PANTHEON
He was an infant when Pelias, his uncle, who was left his guardian, sought to destroy him; but being conveyed by his relations to a cave, he was there instructed by Chiron in the art of physic; whence he took the name of Jason, or the Healer, his former name being Diomedes.
Bell’s New Pantheon (1790), s.v. Jason.
ABBE DE TRESSAN
Diomedes (the original name of Jason)
Abbe de Tressan, Mythology Compared with History, trans. H.R. North (London: 1797), 392.
CLASSICAL MANUAL
The original name of JASON was DIOMEDES.
Classical Manual on Pope’s Homer and Dryden’s Aeneid (London: 1827), 194.
NEW QUARTERLY REVIEW
The principal of these [vases with Argonaut themes] are the subjects of Helle and the golden fleece, of the sacrifice of Jason to Jupiter previous to embarkation, where he roasts on spits the richest parts of the victim, or makes a libation under the name of Diomedes, an appellation etymologically connected with Jason and Archenautes, the chief of navigators.
“Graeco-Italian Vases,” New Quarterly Review 8 (1847): 320.
LEONHARD SCHMITZ
JASON, i.e. the healer or atoner, a name which the hero was said to have .received from Cheiron, his instructor, having before been called Diomedes. (Pind. Pytli. iv. 221, with the Schol.)
Leonhard Schmitz in William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849), s.v. Jason.
F. MAX MULLER
The tradition was that Jason had been instructed by Cheiron, and had received from him the name of Jason, i.e. the healer, instead of his former name of Diomedes.
F. Max Müller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology, vol. 2 (Longman, Green, & Co., 1897), 436-437.
ROBERT GRAVES
Now, Aeson had married Polymele, also known as Amphinome, Perimede, Alcimede, Polymede, Polypheme, Scarphe, or Arne, who bore him one son, by name Diomedes. [Hereafter, Graves refers to Jason primarily as “Diomedes.”]
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (1955), s.v. "The Argonauts Assembled."
DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES
Jason (original name Diomedes) is the grandson of Aeolus ….
Patricia Turner and Charles Russell Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Deities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), s.v. Jason.
That Centaur taught him the Sciences, which he himself professed, especially Medicine, and gave him for that Reason the name of Jason, instead of Diomedes, which he had before.
Sentence falsely attributed to the Scholiast on Pindar’s Pythian 4 in Abbe Banier, The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, Explained from History (London: A. Millar, 1740 [original 1711]).
WILLIAM KING
[B]ut his Relations conveyed him away into a Cave belonging to Chiron, who instructed him in the Art of Physick, from whence he had the Name of Jason, or the Healer, whereas before his Name was Diomedes.
William King, An Historical Account of the Heathen Gods (London: 1722 [original 1711]), 212.
BELL'S NEW PANTHEON
He was an infant when Pelias, his uncle, who was left his guardian, sought to destroy him; but being conveyed by his relations to a cave, he was there instructed by Chiron in the art of physic; whence he took the name of Jason, or the Healer, his former name being Diomedes.
Bell’s New Pantheon (1790), s.v. Jason.
ABBE DE TRESSAN
Diomedes (the original name of Jason)
Abbe de Tressan, Mythology Compared with History, trans. H.R. North (London: 1797), 392.
CLASSICAL MANUAL
The original name of JASON was DIOMEDES.
Classical Manual on Pope’s Homer and Dryden’s Aeneid (London: 1827), 194.
NEW QUARTERLY REVIEW
The principal of these [vases with Argonaut themes] are the subjects of Helle and the golden fleece, of the sacrifice of Jason to Jupiter previous to embarkation, where he roasts on spits the richest parts of the victim, or makes a libation under the name of Diomedes, an appellation etymologically connected with Jason and Archenautes, the chief of navigators.
“Graeco-Italian Vases,” New Quarterly Review 8 (1847): 320.
LEONHARD SCHMITZ
JASON, i.e. the healer or atoner, a name which the hero was said to have .received from Cheiron, his instructor, having before been called Diomedes. (Pind. Pytli. iv. 221, with the Schol.)
Leonhard Schmitz in William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849), s.v. Jason.
F. MAX MULLER
The tradition was that Jason had been instructed by Cheiron, and had received from him the name of Jason, i.e. the healer, instead of his former name of Diomedes.
F. Max Müller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology, vol. 2 (Longman, Green, & Co., 1897), 436-437.
ROBERT GRAVES
Now, Aeson had married Polymele, also known as Amphinome, Perimede, Alcimede, Polymede, Polypheme, Scarphe, or Arne, who bore him one son, by name Diomedes. [Hereafter, Graves refers to Jason primarily as “Diomedes.”]
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (1955), s.v. "The Argonauts Assembled."
DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES
Jason (original name Diomedes) is the grandson of Aeolus ….
Patricia Turner and Charles Russell Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Deities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), s.v. Jason.
The Origins of the Claim
Authors from 1711 down to the present have stated explicitly that the source for the claim that Jason’s name was Diomedes was the scholia to Pindar’s fourth Pythian Ode, especially the scholion to verse 211 (old line numbering system). However, no ancient source gives Diomedes as Jason’s name, despite claims to the contrary. Any author who so claims is merely repeating earlier authors’ mistakes without checking the references.
The scholion in question comments on the line in the Ode in which Pindar has Jason say:
“And Jason was the name whereby the divine Beast [Chiron] spake to me.” (line 211, old system)
The scholiast then explains that Cheiron gave Jason his name, but the scholiast does not list any former name for Jason, nor does the scholiast to Apollonius of Rhodes at 1.554, where the same information is repeated.
The origin of the claim rests with Natali Conti, also known as Natalis Comes, sixteenth century Italian mythographer whose Mythologiae, a monumental euhemerist retelling of Greco-Roman myth in Latin that became the standard mythological text of the Renaissance.
In the 1567 first edition of his work, Comes, following the Pindar scholia closely, states that
“When Jason had become a man and had learned from Chiron the healing art, he was called Jason.”
(Mythologiae 6.8, 1567 ed., my own translation)
However, in the expanded edition of 1581, Conti adds a new line:
“When Jason had become a man and had learned from Chiron the healing art, he was called Jason, having first been called Dolomedes.”
(Mythologiae 6.8, 1581 ed., my own translation)
Here, Winifred Warren Wilson noted (“Jason as ‘Dolomedes,’” Classical Review 24 [1910]) that Comes has added material from a completely different scholion, that of the scholiast of Apollonius of Rhodes at 3.26, and misread the Greek word δολόμηδες (“crafty”) as a proper name and attributed it (without warrant) to Jason.
As is obvious, the material attributed to the scholiast on Pindar in Banier (1711) is nothing more than a literal translation of Natalis Comes’ text with the substitution of Diomedes for Dolomedes. How did that happen?
The scholion in question comments on the line in the Ode in which Pindar has Jason say:
“And Jason was the name whereby the divine Beast [Chiron] spake to me.” (line 211, old system)
The scholiast then explains that Cheiron gave Jason his name, but the scholiast does not list any former name for Jason, nor does the scholiast to Apollonius of Rhodes at 1.554, where the same information is repeated.
The origin of the claim rests with Natali Conti, also known as Natalis Comes, sixteenth century Italian mythographer whose Mythologiae, a monumental euhemerist retelling of Greco-Roman myth in Latin that became the standard mythological text of the Renaissance.
In the 1567 first edition of his work, Comes, following the Pindar scholia closely, states that
“When Jason had become a man and had learned from Chiron the healing art, he was called Jason.”
(Mythologiae 6.8, 1567 ed., my own translation)
However, in the expanded edition of 1581, Conti adds a new line:
“When Jason had become a man and had learned from Chiron the healing art, he was called Jason, having first been called Dolomedes.”
(Mythologiae 6.8, 1581 ed., my own translation)
Here, Winifred Warren Wilson noted (“Jason as ‘Dolomedes,’” Classical Review 24 [1910]) that Comes has added material from a completely different scholion, that of the scholiast of Apollonius of Rhodes at 3.26, and misread the Greek word δολόμηδες (“crafty”) as a proper name and attributed it (without warrant) to Jason.
As is obvious, the material attributed to the scholiast on Pindar in Banier (1711) is nothing more than a literal translation of Natalis Comes’ text with the substitution of Diomedes for Dolomedes. How did that happen?
Dolomedes and Diomedes
Now the fun part. Later scholars apparently either misread Dolomedes or Diomedes, or else they conflated the two figures based on references in Lycophron’s Alexandra (631ff) to the dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece being slain by Diomedes, the hero of the Trojan War: “He [Diomedes] shall have slain the Drakon that harried the Phaiakians" (trans. A. W. Mair, Loeb ed., 1921).
The simplest explanation is also most likely correct. The seventeenth-century editions of Comes’ Mythologiae, those used by Banier and the other eighteenth century authors contained a number of misprints (in both the Latin and French editions), and one of the most fateful of these was a misprint of Diomedes for Dolomedes:
The simplest explanation is also most likely correct. The seventeenth-century editions of Comes’ Mythologiae, those used by Banier and the other eighteenth century authors contained a number of misprints (in both the Latin and French editions), and one of the most fateful of these was a misprint of Diomedes for Dolomedes:
Braun supposes that the Frankfort edition of 1584 reads, cum prius Diomedes nominaretur; and Jahn, though taking exception to other points in Braun's argument, does not call this in question. But among the copies to which I have had access, the Geneva edition of 1651 is the earliest that has the reading Diomedes (p. 582). As this edition abounds in misprints (e.g., p. 583: Prixi for Phrixi, Dedonea for Dodonaea, Sulis for Solis, Alaum for Aglaum), it is probable that Diomedes is an unwarranted substitution for Dolomedes. The Lyons edition of 1653, which also has Diomedes, is evidently based on this Geneva edition (cf. p. 583: Phrixi, Dodonea, Sulis, Alaum).
Winifred Warren Wilson, “Jason as ‘Dolomedes,’” Classical Review 24 (1910), 180. |
Even if the early modern scholars recognized the number of misprints in the seventeenth century texts, they would have had no reason to suspect Diomedes was a misprint for an otherwise non-existent name (Dolomedes) born of Comes’ own mistake.
Thus a Renaissance misreading of a scholion and a seventeenth century typographical error gave birth to the false myth that Jason was originally named Diomedes, and fooled some of the greatest classical scholars of the past three centuries.
My thanks to Martin L. West for his invaluable assistance in tracking down the source of this tenacious claim.
Thus a Renaissance misreading of a scholion and a seventeenth century typographical error gave birth to the false myth that Jason was originally named Diomedes, and fooled some of the greatest classical scholars of the past three centuries.
My thanks to Martin L. West for his invaluable assistance in tracking down the source of this tenacious claim.