Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

The Argo’s first major stop after leaving Pagasae was Lemnos. The island’s women, led by Hypsipyle daughter of Thoas, ruled alone. In the year before, Aphrodite had plagued the Lemnian men with a foul smell (or they had brought home Thracian concubines); the neglected wives had slain every male on the island—fathers, husbands, and sons—except that Hypsipyle had secretly spared her father Thoas, setting him adrift in a chest. The women now lived without men and feared the Argonauts as avengers or new masters. Hypsipyle, advised by her aged nurse Polyxo (in Apollonius), offered the heroes hospitality and urged them to settle and share the island’s rule and beds, so that the race of Lemnos might not die out. Jason and Hypsipyle became lovers; many Argonauts took Lemnian partners. The sojourn lasted days or longer until Heracles—who in Apollonius had remained by the ship—rebuked the crew for delaying the quest for the fleece. Ashamed, they prepared to sail. Hypsipyle begged Jason to remember her; he left instructions for any son she might bear (Euneus in later tradition) and departed. The Argo steered toward the Hellespont and the Propontis. Apollodorus compresses the same episode: the women had killed their husbands; the Argonauts consort with them; Hypsipyle bears sons to Jason. The stop is the voyage’s first moral and erotic test—hospitality mixed with the island’s crime—and introduces Jason’s pattern of love and leaving that will climax with Medea.