Sacrifice, Death, and Closure in Valerius’ Argonautica Book 1
Sophia Papaioannou
Abstract
The Argonautica is a celebrated case of an open-ended text: book eight breaks midway, at a point where intertextuality (the script of the abandoned heroine by her lover and beneficiary, which Medea and Jason engage in) seems to anticipate a breach with tradition. Precisely because of its very incompleteness, Valerius' epic creates a diverse interpretative potential in the whole work. In the present chapter I argue that part of this interpretative potential may rest with the dialogue between the closure of the entire Argonautica and the closure of the first book of the epic. I identify in the closing section of Argonautica 1 themes and motifs that feature also in the closing episode of the epic, and I stress the prominence of ritual in the articulation of these themes. The closing episode of Argonautica 1 further exhibits indisputable motifs of closure, namely, death and a katabasis, both of which are entwined with ritual: sacrifice, magic, and a necromancy. All these motifs appear again in the portrayal of Medea in Book 8.