Figure 71 Bronze statuette of dancer; height 20.5 cm, third or second century BC. New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971 (1972.118.95).
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971. www.metmuseum.org
(accessed March 29, 2016).
This vignette is matched by another, earlier in the poem, when Jason is on his way to meet another
princess who, like Medea, immediately falls in love with him. Jason is wearing a magnificent cloak,
made for him by the goddess Athena. Apollonius describes the figured scenes with which the cloak is
decorated, one of which portrays Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual allure, wielding the great bronze
shield of Ares, who is both the god of war and Aphrodite’s lover. As she does this her dress slips off her
shoulder and she admires her lovely reflection in the curve of the gleaming shield. Again, the symbolism
is readily apparent: The weapons of war, like their master, are mere playthings in the hands of the
overmastering mistress of passion. This image embodies many of the characteristics of Apollonius’
poetry, indeed of Hellenistic poetry in general: a concern with the erotic and a rejection of the heroic; a
recognition of the force of irrational impulses in human behavior; a delight in paradox, and a sensitivity to
the pictorial. In fact, this scene is found in the visual arts of the period and can be taken as emblematic of
Hellenistic art as well. Figure 72 is a plaster impression (because it reveals the details more readily than
the stone itself) of a gemstone carved by an engraver who lived, like Apollonius, in the third century BC.
The gem is set in a gold ring of a type that was popular in Ptolemaic Egypt, and it may be that the
engraver, like Apollonius, also worked in Alexandria. It is not clear whether Apollonius’ description was