On the Justice Dealt to Amykos and Phineus
Part Eight On Orpheus' Argonautika
This is Part Eight of an ongoing series in which we examine the Orphic Argonautica. Here are the links for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, and Part Seven.
You can find links to buy/download our full translation of the poem in this post:
Recently on our quest for the Golden Fleece, we saw the Argonauts accidentally kill the friendly hero Kyzikos, atone for that wrong, and then lose Herakles and Hylas when the two set out to catch dinner. The poem continues:
But at dawn we approached gloomy land,
where Amykos over the overbearing Bebrykes was king,
who also Zeus Panomphaios’ law not respecting
a contest for strangers of neighboring men,
whoever to dwellings and unshaken home might come,
he established presumptuous boxing to be tested.
Him indeed then annihilated by force powerful Polydeukes,
having hit unexpectedly the head with hard straps;
and the people in turn of the Bebrykes the Minyans with bronze cut down.1
After losing Herakles and Hylas in the previous section, the Argonauts set sail and reach Amykos’ Bebrykian kingdom at dawn. Amykos is described as ‘not respecting Zeus Panomphaios’ law’. Madeła notes that Zeus’ epithet Panomphaios is usually related to divination, but she suggests a link here to an Iliad scholia which clarifies it as meaning “he who is honored by every voice and tongue”2, which would yield a more strict translation of the epithet as “Of-All-Voices” rather than the usual “All-Voicing”. This is an important distinction, and this rarer definition shifts Amykos from somebody who does not respect divination (which does not stand out as a particularly strange position to take, even in ancient times) to somebody who does not respect the Gods at all.
Amykos, as somebody who does not respect the laws of the widely-honored chief of the Gods, does not care for xenia, the ancient Greek cultural notion of hospitality or guest-friendship we discussed in Part Six. Xenia would normally dictate that the king welcome his guests warmly, treat them to dinner and song, offer them a place to rest, and send them on their way ‘fat and happy’ so to speak.
Amykos, not respecting this custom, is hostile to anyone who approaches. He has established that anyone who arrives to his kingdom shall fight him in a boxing match. Amykos must have been a good boxer, because the poet reminds us that his home at this point is “unshaken”. Polydeukes, however, is famed for his boxing skills. In a few short lines we’re told that he “annihilated [Amykos] by force” with a fatal blow to the head, and then the Bebrykes sought revenge, only to be slain by the Argonauts’ bronze weaponry.
Amykos is the opposite of Kyzikos, the friendly hero slain accidentally in Part Six. By disrespecting xenia and the Gods, Amykos has cut himself off from divine providence, even though his home remains “unshaken” until now. This seemingly-safe period of time before the Argonauts’ arrival, plus the unlikely coincidence that Amykos is a homophone to amicus (Latin for ‘friend’), suggest that the king symbolically represents a spiritual advisor (or other such person) who appears to be truthful and friendly on the surface, but is actually hiding something. Amykos’ boxing contests make him the ultimate gatekeeper, and he beats every newcomer (or new experience, or new question) into submission, leaving his home (and his beliefs) unshaken.
In Part One, we saw that Polydeukes and his twin brother Kastor represent ‘the duality of man’ and the harmony of opposites. Polydeukes, the immortal son of Zeus, cut his own immortality in half simply to share it with his brother. Thus the twins also represent the perfect expression of xenia, which is indistinguishable from brotherly love. This episode chronicling Amykos’ anti-xenia is brought to an end by the rightful restoration of the truest expression of xenia.
The poem continues:
And from there having set out, and under rowing becoming tired,
of Bithynians the great city we beached at the deep shore
hastening at river-mouths and in snow-white woods,
evening-ones* having made camp we prepared supper.
There once grim-married Phineus with overbearing spirit
blinded his two sons by throwing them to rocks, and
to beasts as prey he set them forth because of a woman’s love-charms.
But them both unharmed and seeing again made
the two sons of glorious Boreas; and to Phineus, for him they bestowed ruin
of painful wrath and they took away light’s rays.
But when raging Boreas by whirling gusts
having seized rolled him under dense thickets and forests
of Bistonia, so that destructive doom and destiny he might meet.3
* [evening-ones simply refers poetically to the Argonauts at night.]
From the kingdom of the Bebrykes, the Argonauts depart and land at the city of the Bithynians. In other versions of the myth, this is where the Argonauts meet Phineus. In our version, the Argonauts don’t meet anything, but the poet recalls that here Phineus once blinded his sons and cast them out “to beasts as prey” due to his being overcome by love-charms. Boreas, however, saved the sons and blinded Phineus, eventually tossing him around “under dense thickets and forests” in Bistonia, killing him.
In the more popular versions, Phineus is given a choice between death or blindness, and he chooses blindness, living to help the Argonauts on their journey. Here though, our Orphic poet leaves no room for misinterpretation: Phineus acted unjustly and was punished with the same fate he gave his sons. Plato, in his seventh Letter, says the following:
And we must always firmly believe the sacred and ancient words declaring to us that the soul is immortal, and when it has separated from the body will go before its judges and pay the utmost penalties. Therefore we must count it a lesser evil to suffer great wrongs and injustices than to do them, though this is a saying that the avaricious man, who is poor in goods of the soul, will not give ear to;4
Thus we can see, as Plato elaborates, that the version of the Phineus myth told in Orpheus’ Argonautika is a warning which says essentially “what goes around comes around”. Plato elaborates further in his Laws:
The ‘myth’ or ‘explanation’ (μῦθος ἢ λόγος), or whatever the right word is, has come down to us in unambiguous terms from the lips of priests of long ago.
Justice stands on guard to exact vengeance for the spilling of blood of relatives; She operates through the law we have just mentioned, and Her decree is that a man who has done something of this kind is obliged to suffer precisely what he has inflicted.5
Plato specifies that this idea is called both a myth and a λόγος. The latter is translated here as “explanation”, but it is notable as part of a phrase which is used by Orphics to describe a sacred text or doctrine, ἱερὸς λόγος. A plural version of this phrase is what is translated in the Letter excerpt above as “[the ancient and] sacred words”6. It is safe to say then that Plato is likely speaking in both excerpts of Orphic doctrine, and that this doctrine is what’s being explained in the two passages from Orpheus’ Argonautika.
Thus, in Part Eight of our examination, we have seen that while Kyzikos earlier is shown to be a pious and friendly hero whose death was accidental and atoned for, Amykos and Phineus are presented as cautionary tales, examples of how the initiated reader ought not to conduct oneself.
Moreover, their deaths (which mirror their atrocoties) are presented as deliberate reciprocal justice commanded by the Gods, clearly outlining that it is Cosmic Law that one will be punished or rewarded according to how one lived. While these things may seem easy for critics to dismiss, Plato is sure to clarify that it is only one “who is poor in goods of the Soul” that “will not give ear to” this notion.
Works Cited
Madeła, Alexandra. The Argonautika by Orpheus: Writing Pre-Homeric Poetry in Late Antiquity. Brill, 2025.
Orpheus’ Argonautika translated by Tiberius Caelius Quadratus. Orphicaeum, 2026.
Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.
Footnotes
Orpheus’ Argonautika lines 658—666; p.39
Madeła p.57 n.28
Orpheus’ Argonautika lines 667—679; p.39, p.41
Plato Letters 7.335a—7.335b; Complete Works p.1654
Plato Laws 9.872e; Complete Works p.1531
For whatever reason, the translator chose to rearrange these words in the English. The original Greek for ‘the ancient and sacred doctrine’ is as follows: “τοῖς παλαιοῖς τε καὶ ἱεροῖς λόγοις”.