What are the Argonauts doing on a stamp about the California Gold Rush?
I’m asking because today’s #stampoftheday, a classic 3-cent stamp, issued on January 24, 1948 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of gold in California, pictures Sutter’s Mill where, it notes, “James W. Marshall’s Discovery Started Rush of Argonauts.”
“Argonauts?” I said to myself. “Isn’t that what comes after the words ‘Jason and…’?”
Indeed, “Jason and the Argonauts” is a classic Greek myth, involving Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece. It’s also the title of a 1963 movie (that has excellent special effects and got an 89 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes). And it’s the title of a Hallmark movie made in 2000 (that only has a 33 percent score from reviewers who said things like it was “an atrocity so hilariously bombastic that you will have a great time watching this garbage only if you were stoned drunk.”)
So how do heroes from one the oldest tales of a hero’s quest, a tale that is set before the Trojan War, wind up on a stamp? The answer, of course, is gold. Nevertheless, when you look more closely it turns out to be something of an odd choice because the myth also is a classic story of betrayal and vengeance that, like many Greek myths, has a tragic ending.
The story begins when Jason’s Uncle Pelias kills Jason’s father, the Greek King of Iolkos, and takes his throne. When, as a young adult, Jason tries to reclaim the throne, Pelias says he must first accomplish a difficult task: retrieving the Golden Fleece from Colchis, which is a place beyond the edge of the known world. The fleece was from a golden ram that Zeus had given to one of Jason’s ancestors. The ancestor brought it Colchis where it was sacrificed by Aietes, the king of Colchis. Because an oracle had predicted that he would lose his kingdom if he lost the fleece, he hung it in a sacred grove guarded by a dragon.
Determined to regain the throne, Jason gathers together an all-star team of heroes (much as Biden is assembling an A-Team to fight the pandemic?) and they sail off in a boat called the Argo (named after it’s builder Argus, which is also the name of Wesleyan’s student newspaper, where I got my start in journalism). The heroes joining Jason were called Argonauts. While those of us who worked at the Argus never called ourselves Argonauts, the name was given to the tens of thousands of people who came to California when they heard that gold had been found in 1848. (The first wave, didn’t arrive until 1849, which is why the Bay Area football team is called the San Francisco 49ers.)
After many adventures, Jason and his buddies arrive in Colchis where the reluctant King Aietes didn’t want to give up the fleece and, presumably, his throne. So he tells Jason that he’ll give him the fleece if he successfully completes a series of tasks that the king thinks are impossible. The king, however, didn’t count on the fact that his daughter, Medea, who was a powerful sorceress, has taken a shine to Jason. With her help, he completes the king’s punch-list. He gets the fleece; they marry; and after a whole other set of adventures, Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts return to Iolkos where Jason reclaims the throne.
There they do not live happily ever after. Instead, as PBS’s “Myths and Heroes” website recounts, “their success is short-lived. Uncomfortable with Medea’s magic, the locals drive Medea and Jason out of Iolkos. They go into exile in Corinth where the king offers Jason his daughter in marriage. He agrees and so violates his vow to the gods to be true only to Medea. Furious, Medea kills the woman, kills Medea and Jason’s children and then ascends to Mount Olympus where she eventually marries Achilles. Jason goes back to Iolkos where his boat the Argo is on display. One day, while he sits next to the boat weeping, the decaying beam of his ship the Argo falls off and hits him on the head, killing him outright.”
The story makes me wonder. Were those who called the many people who came to California “Argonauts” just referring to their quest for gold? Or did they know, at some level, that most of the Argonauts would not prosper or come to a happy end?
In some ways, that question is particularly important because as historian H. W. Brands has noted, the California Gold Rush has come to represent a major shift in the American psyche. “The old American Dream,” he wrote, “…was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard”…of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream…became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter’s Mill.”
Both the Greek and the California Argonauts learned, of course, that the quest will involve a host of unseen and unknown challenges and will be harder than it appears. They also learned that success is fleeting at best.
Perhaps, there’s something to be said for trying to accumulate a modest fortune, a little at a time. As the team Biden has assembled to take on major chores knows, they’re not panning for gold. Rather, what they are trying to do requires what Max Weber famously described as “a strong and slow boring of hard boards” that will take “both passion and perspective.”
“All historical experience confirms the truth – that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.”
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, have a “steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes,” and work for peace.