Ad Navseam Episode 232: Where’s the Potion?
Welcome, classical gourmands, to episode 232 of the Ad Navseam podcast! Prepare to get your fill with another delectable discussion of Greco-Roman civilization, stretching from the ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans through the Renaissance and right down to the present.
Recording late at night from Vomitorium Central on the slopes of Parnassus, Dave confesses to the post-Halloween blues. His house handed out chips this year, and a couple of trick-or-treaters complained about the selection, while full-grown adults turned up at the Winkles with open backpacks worn on the front. Jeff’s wife dressed as Queen Elizabeth, with their Corgi, Delphi, at her side. Dave, meanwhile, claims he went as Theater Beza, a very weak attempt at a pun. Then comes the end of daylight saving time, which, as far as the hosts can tell, saves nothing at all.
An Autocorrigendum and a New Shop
This week’s corrigendum was not caught by Will Fitzgerald. Dave caught it himself: an autocorrigendum, sprung from his own error like the autochthonous Athenians from the soil. Last episode he said Medea appears in Homer. She doesn’t, though she does turn up in Hesiod’s Theogony (fans may recall the episode “Theogony and the Ecstasy”). A small error, as the saying goes, embiggens the noblest man.
The Ad Navseam website also has a brand-new shop with upgraded shirts, hats, and an orange mug. The old merch, the hosts admit, was a little Mopsus; the new merch is pure Argus.
Ariadne’s Long Shadow
Jeff’s opening quotation comes from Anthony Bulloch’s article “Jason’s Cloak” in Hermes (2006), a mere twenty years ago, which in classics is practically lunchtime. Bulloch argues that Ariadne, though she never appears in person, looms over Jason’s moral world. When Jason meets Medea at the shrine of Hecate, he holds up Ariadne as a model: the princess who helped Theseus and won glory among the stars. Bulloch thinks the example is crass. Either Jason is a fool who misses the implications, or a cynic who doesn’t care how Medea might read them.
Dave wonders whether an ancient audience would have heard it so darkly. Ariadne, after all, was rescued by Dionysus and received what Dave refers to as a constellation prize. Jeff notes that the comparison also cuts against Jason himself: abandoning Ariadne is where Theseus’ own story starts to unravel. And is Jason a fool or a cynic? Dave votes for a third option: he’s just a dolt. Either way, it would make a fine country-western ballad, “You’re My Ariadne,” and the hosts agree the whole tale is a musical waiting to be written.
Mules, Maids, and a Promethean Herb
Jeff reads from the Hackett translation by Stanley Lombardo and Cynthia Polsley, as Medea rises at dawn, binds up her golden hair, and makes herself radiant. Golden? The hosts have always pictured her dark-haired, though the Greeks did love a blond: Homer’s Menelaus is xanthos. Medea then sends her twelve maids to yoke the mules. Not donkeys, Dave insists, in a fine display of pointful pedantry. The maids, robes hitched above their knees, must jog alongside the chariot, which is built for one.
Medea brings a magic herb that springs from the ichor of Prometheus, dripped by the eagle on the Caucasus. Anointed with it, a man is proof against bronze and fire for a single day, like a very short-lived splash of Old Spice. Dave would use it to survive the high-school stairwell. Gathering it is no small chore: seven baths in running streams, seven calls on Brimo, a title of Hecate, by night, in dusky clothes. Jeff pictures a gas-station jumpsuit; Dave proposes a “groutfit,” the gray outfit of Silicon Valley.
Dabbling in the Dark Arts
Jeff, the show’s resident enthusiast for ancient magic (Dave is, by his own account, its resident skeptic), sees more than a recipe here. Medea, niece of Circe, practices herb magic like her aunt, and the scene recalls Hermes handing Odysseus the moly. But Circe and Hermes are immortal, and their magic needs no explanation; it is simply who they are. Medea is mortal, and Apollonius gives her spell a long, creepy backstory. To Jeff, it signals that she is crossing lines she should not cross, and that the lovers’ tender meeting is set, uneasily, at the shrine of a goddess of dark crossroads magic.
A Hero Made by Hera
Argus, the wingman, and Mopsus, the seer and human GPS, escort Jason across the plain. Apollonius claims there was never such a hero, which prompts a round of Bonnie Tyler. The catch is that Hera made him so on that day, in looks and in speech. Lipstick on a pig, Dave suggests: Athena could polish Odysseus, but Odysseus already had his mētis. The hosts see Venus doing the same for Aeneas in Virgil.
Then a crow in a poplar scolds Mopsus as a paltry seer who doesn’t know that no girl will speak sweet words with strangers nearby. It is a plot device to get Jason into the grove alone, and it inspires Dave’s dream of training a crow to collect loose change (to be named Brimo, naturally). Mopsus takes the rebuke cheerfully and sends Jason on alone.
Moonlighting at Hecate’s Shrine
Dave reads Book 3, lines 956 and following, in Greek. Jeff asks listeners to imagine the scene shot through the gauzy lens of Moonlighting. Jason appears like Sirius rising from Ocean, beautiful but bringing harm to the flocks; Medea’s heart sinks, and the two stand silent like oaks or pines until a breeze sets them whispering. A side discussion asks whether ancient love was utterly unlike ours. Dave urges skepticism toward both extremes, citing Pompey’s devotion to Julia, Caesar’s daughter, and the hardworking farm couple who surely loved each other too.
Then Jason speaks. He begins gently, promising he is no braggart. Soon, though, he is talking terms: give me the potions, and you’ll be famous throughout Greece. Jeff hears a car salesman asking what it will take to get her into this Toyota. Where’s the potion? That, Jeff decides, is Jason’s shtick. The fire-breathing bulls must wait.
Sponsors and Support
- Hackett Publishing: Not Stack It Publishing, despite Dave’s best efforts. For almost 56 years, Hackett has brought the classics and many other corners of academia to the public in affordable, attractive volumes, plus Smyth-sewn Signature Editions such as Augustine’s Confessions and Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. Visit hackettpublishing.com and use code AN2026 for 25% off your entire order.
- Ratio Coffee: Tom’s Guide calls the Ratio Four the best coffee maker of 2026 for coffee hipsters, and Jeff brews with one at the office and a Ratio Eight at home. Head to ratiocoffee.com/adnavseam and use code ANRATIO2026 for $20 off the machine of your choice.
Win a Ratio Four! Go to adnavseam.com/giveaway and enter your name, your email, and the secret code word announced in this episode. Entries close December 31, and the drawing is January 1, 2027.
Shop the new merch! Use code TANG for 10% off at adnavseam.com/shop.
To learn Latin or Greek, visit latinperdiem.com and use code 10PLUS. Study Greek with MossMethod and go from neophyte to erudite, or study Latin through Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata and a number of master courses. Dr. Noe’s apps are on the Apple App Store and Google Play, with more on the way in the new year.
Credits & Gustatory Parting Shot
Thanks to sound engineer Mishka and to guitarist Jeff Scheetz (jeffscheetz.com), Kansas City’s champion disc dogger, for Thrill Seeker and Rush Hour. Send questions and comments to dave@adnavseam.com or jeff@adnavseam.com (remember the ‘V’!). Next week the hosts take a short break from Jason before returning to the Argonautica.
We leave you with Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos: “When you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time.”
Thanks for listening, and we will catch you next week for Episode 233!