64 Chapter 4
The effects of the drug as described in the Argonautica put one in
mind of synthetic psychoactive stimulants: for example, modern street
drugs chemically related to but much stronger than cathinone from qat
plants which can cause users to feel that they have superhuman strength
and goad them into ferocious acts. Today’s military pharmacologists are
creating “human enhancement” concoctions that could supercharge sol-
diers mentally and physically, making them behave much like Jason under
the influence of the Promethean ichor. Millennia ago in Homer’s Odyssey
(4.219– 21), Helen of Troy mixed an elixir called nepenthe, imagined as
opium and wine, to dispel the traumatic memories, “anger, and grief ”
of the shell- shocked veterans of the Trojan War. Now military scientists
seek drugs and other neurotechnological brain interventions that would
allow troops to go without sleep, sense no physical pain, exceed normal
Fig. 4.1. Prometheus bleeding ichor on the ground, as Zeus’s Eagle pecks his liver. Laconian cup,
sixth century BC. Vatican Museum. Album / Art Resource, NY.