Customer Reviews

Hercules, My Shipmate. A Novel.

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If you like Greek myth, adventure and the classics, you're not likely to dislike this one. Graves, a renowned poet and classicist (and rather eccentric iconoclast) here retells the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, bringing these rather rambunctious fellows to life in a manner which is surprising, yet wholly consistent with the original material. Putting his own gloss on the mythic times celebrated afterwards in classical Greece and Rome, Graves posits a culture of ancient origin in the Mediteranean, totemic and cult-like, onto which the pantheon of the sky gods of the invading Greek tribes was subsequently grafted. To Graves, the myths handed down to the classical writers (and which they preserved and elaborated on, and then handed on to us) reflected the clash of these two religious views. The mythic creatures we came to know as centaurs and nymphs, for instance, would, on his telling, have been people not unlike ourselves, but affiliated with one or another of the ancient cults (rooted in belief in the divinity of the ancient "triple goddess").

Like primitive tribesmen in many societies, these folk built their lives around their ritualistic practices and fetishes. The centaurs are called such, for instance, because they live in fraternal clans in semi-primitive conditions revering the centaur totem and mating with this or that college of nymphs, as the need arises and in accordance with the ritualistic requirements of the times. The institution of marriage (considered in this telling an affront to the "triple goddess") is brought in by the sky peoples from the north -- those who would later become the Greeks known to classical antiquity, after these had supplanted and absorbed the older peoples they found in the territory they conquered.

So this tale is set in the time when these two peoples were first encountering one another and is presented as a conflict which grew out of the tension between the differing religious views and backgrounds. In this context, the story tracks Jason as he raises a crew to reclaim a fleece trimmed with gold which was sacred to the new sky god, Zeus, but which had apparently been spirited away by adherents of the triple goddess. Jason, rather unprepossessing as a hero though a remarkably handsome fellow, pulls into his orbit many of the great heroes and most accomplished adventurers of his day, including the mighty Hercules -- a rather likeable, if brutish, lout who gets by on his prodigious strength and amazing good luck.

But Hercules doesn't make it through the entire voyage (his attention span is not overly long it seems) and he becomes sidetracked in a search for Hylas, his adopted son (taken after he killed the boy's parents), when Hylas makes his getaway. (Hercules seems to have had a more than fatherly interest in the boy, which doesn't sit well with Hylas when he discovers the beauteous possibilities to be had in a local college of nymphs.) Even without the redoubtable Hercules however, the Argonauts press on (in fact they have conspired to abandon him in order to save themselves from his clumsy and dangerous excesses), and navigate the Black Sea to the land of Colchis where the fleece, object of their quest, is kept.

There they engage in all the appropriate deceptions in order to steal the prize from under the unwitting eyes of the Colchians (aided by the Colchian king's daughter, Medea, who is quite smitten with the handsome, if inconstant, Jason). The rest of the tale recounts their escape and the killings they must involve themselves in to make good their theft, and the ritualized atonements they must undertake thereafter.

Graves manages to convey a sense of the magical and mysterious without resort to the clumsy mythological creatures of ancient Greek tale, by relying on the mystic elements of the ancient religions his characters practiced (whether of the old or new variety). No one gets turned into a beast except metaphorically, and perhaps in spirit, and the biggest monster seems to be an overly large Python which the Colchians keep to guard the purloined fleece -- or perhaps the biggest monster is really Hercules himself.

Even the Hellenes are presented in a fetchingly realistic manner when we see these blonde, blue-eyed men painting their bodies and doing a sort of war dance on the beach before they embark on the first leg of their journey, or when we watch them posturing and posing like so many primitives in the flush of battle. Women get treated rather well in this context since the older society is matriarchal in nature and dominated by various powerful priestesses and nymphs.

The tale is driven as much by the interplay of the many fascinating characters (Orpheus the clever musician and adept of the triple goddess, Atalanta the virgin warrior and her various suitors, on board the Argo and off) as by the adventure of the quest itself. And the end takes the surviving players through to their respective fates, always consistent with the characters they have shown themselves in the course of their adventures to be. It may seem overly long to the contemporary reader in some parts and somewhat episodic, but it takes us back to a time which might really have been and gives us a slant on things which we don't ordinarily get from a straight reading of the classics.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

If you are able to put this book down, you are not a lover of Greek myth or a cracking good story. Robert Graves has woven together myth, humor and storytelling mastery to give us one of his all time best reads.

These days the story of the Golden Fleece is known through the 1963 film and more popular media than the ancient telling by Apollonius of Rhodes or Valerius Flaccus. The telling of the adventure depends on the author. Robert Graves did extensive research on the existing ancient sources of the story that included Apollonius, Apollodrus, Theocritus, Hyginus and more modern retellings of the story. The resulting novel steers a scholarly course. For example, the harpies are not supernatural beings but a trick perpetrated on Phineus by his Scythian wife. Although scholarly in research, Hercules, My Shipmate is an exciting adventure tale.
Hercules, My Shipmate (1945) was (first published as in England as The Golden Fleece in 1944) was written by Robert Graves a few years before he published The White Goddess. His ideas about the Triple Goddess are at the center of his story as he describes the ascendancy of the Olympian gods over the goddess. Robert Graves writes with excitement and a beautiful style that conveys the poetry of the ancient epics into a modern novel. With his deep knowledge of the Greek myths Mr. Graves has spun an exciting adventure story that even though does not contain walking giant bronze statues or horrid looking harpies but has the feel of a real quest for the fleece.
Jason is realistically portrayed as a capable captain but flawed. He sometimes cannot make a decision and even broods without saying anything leaving the decision making to others. Medea is a sympathetic character who is consumed by a love for Jason that motivates her to betray her father, help Jason to steal the fleece and be complicit tin the murder of her brother. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Classical mythology and who, like Robert Graves, can imagine the distant ancient world as a real place populated by real people.

When i was in Cuba around the year 1982, i read this book in the Spanish language(i didn't know English at that time); as part of a course of preparation for my Law carrer, i still remember vividly the passages of this unforgetable vogage. It was the content, not the material of the book what impressed me. In my opinion if i read it now i will find it more interesting. In other words, if we take serious all this adventures our values will be the first things in every time in our lives.

I hate to have to be the one who gives this book less than 5 stars, but it just wasn't PERFECT. _The White Goddess_ was the first Robert Graves book I read, and it blew me away. Next I read _King Jesus_ and I was deeply impressed. Now I've read this, a re-telling of the voyage of the Argo .. and it was an enjoyable experience, but it didn't really measure up to my expectations. Another reviewer already pointed out the constant references to the Triple Goddess, and it seems that perhaps Graves was formulating his ideas for _The White Goddess_ or working on it at the same time he was researching and writing _Hercules, My Shipmate_. The themes are undeniably similar; the main difference being that TWG was a work of scholarly "nonfiction" and HMS is a "historical novel" that tells a story.

The title is misleading in two ways. First, I expected the story to be told in first-person by somebody who sailed with Hercules aboard the Argo. But no, the novel is NOT narrated by anyone who could call Hercules "my shipmate." The narrator is an anonymous third-person-omniscient supposedly writing sometime around 200 B.C. nearly a millennium after the events described. Second, based on the title I expected Hercules to be the main character ... but he's only in the story for about 1/3 of the book and is gone the rest of the time.

This is an interesting re-telling of the story of Jason & the Golden Fleece which dispenses with most (but not all) of the magic that most of us associate with the story from versions we learned in school or saw in movies. It's all very plausible and quite convincing, but the style of the writing is so dry, and there are so many characters to keep track of that at times the plot seems lifeless and artificial. Although .. some passages were quite lively, and I laughed out loud a few times - something I rarely do while reading. So it's a mixed bag as far as literary tone is concerned.

The first few chapters are a preamble to establish the cultural setting (conflict between the old Goddess religion and the new Olympian religion) and to tell what the Golden Fleece was and how it ended up in Colchis. During the voyage Graves takes numerous side-tracks away from the story to relate snippets from Greek mythology. Orpheus spent an entire chapter telling the tale of Daedalus and Icarus, which - though interesting - seemed completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. Much of the book has an episodic flavor: The Argo lands somewhere, the Argonauts have a mini-adventure, then pile back on board and sail to the next point of interest. The voyage links these episodes together but they don't really add up to a "plot" per se. There IS an overarching plot if you focus on the stated mission of the Argo (to recover the Golden Fleece) but the story is heavily padded out with extra fluff that happens along the way.

I read the 1945 Grosset's Universal Library paperback edition, which might be different from the current edition. The chapter titles often give away what happens (hard to be in suspense when the chapter title tells you "The Colchians are Outwitted.") My edition also contains a "Historical Appendix" in which Robert Graves discusses the classical source material for the Argo legends and defends the choices he made in his own re-telling. I found this appendix to be almost more fascinating than the novel itself.

Anyway, this is a good book and you won't regret reading it. To me, it just felt like a "lite" version of _The White Goddess_ which was a lot more satisfying. I gave that one 5 stars, therefore I can only award this one 4.

If you have read many of Graves' other works you will understand what I mean when I say, "Enough with the Triple Goddess, already!"

Anyway, despite the frequent insertion of his favorite White Goddess, here we have a fascinating novel depicting the journey of the Argonauts in a way that strips down most of the magic, usually included in stories from this era, and presents the story in a semi-realistic depiction. These primitive Europeans seem more like real people and less like mythological creatures.

For example - the Centaurs are not half man / half horse but fully human men who are members of a horse cult. The variety of ancient religions and customs described is remarkable.

Also - here we have Hercules - a very large, strong, and partially insane man (not a god, naturally) - depicted as having what would now be called post traumatic stress disorder! Hercules is periodically tortuously haunted by the voices of dead children and is prone, during these flashbacks, to horrible acts of random violence. Although it wasn't called that at the time the novel was written, I imagine that Graves, a World War I combat veteran (See *Good Bye To All That*), has had some first hand experience with PTSD!

This is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE books. To be read more than once.
The work of a true scholar. if you love the Odessey and the Aenead then this is a must.