Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal): Aventura na Grécia, Almanaque Disney 303, Abril, 1996 (Brazil), trans. unknown. 2nd ed. Almanaque Disney 356, Abril, 2004 (Brazil). 3rd ed. Disney Big 2, Abril, 2009 (Brazil). 4th ed Disney de Luxo 19, Abril, 2017 (Brazil). 5th ed. Seleção Disney (Encadernada, 2a Serie) 7, Abril, 2017 (Brazil). 1st ed. Hiper Disney 9-03, Abril, 1997 (Portugal). 2nd ed. Tio Patinhas 222, Edimpresa, 2004 (Portugal).

Finnish: Arkadian vaasi Aku Ankka – Jumbo 16 Kesäherkku, Sanoma Magazines Finland, 2009, trans. unknown.

German: Die arkadische Urne, Micky Maus no. 32 (Part 1), Micky Maus no. 33 (Part 2), Ehapa Verlag, 1995, trans. unknown.

Dutch: De Arcadische vaas, Ducktales 28, 1994, trans. unknown. 2nd ed. DuckTales Omnibus 5, 1996. 3rd ed. Big Fun 9, Sanoma Uitgevers B.V, 2007.

Norwegian: Blått til lyst, Mikke Mus 1994-05, 1994, trans. unknown.

Swedish: Den blå krukan, Musse Pigg & Co 1994-05-06, 1994, trans. unknown.

English: The Arcadian Urn, Uncle Scrooge 399, Boom!, 2011, trans. unknown. 2nd ed. Uncle Scrooge: DuckTales 2, 2011 (USA).

Source: inducks.org (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Scrooge McDuck, his three great-nephews (Louie, Huey and Dewey) and Webby Vanderquack, the granddaughter of the triplets’ nanny, attend an auction where McMoney, one of Scrooge’s greatest enemies, sells an Ancient Arcadian vase for millions. Unhappy with how much money his rival has made, Scrooge decides to find Arcadia himself and bring back valuable artefacts. 

Bringing along his nephew, Donald Duck, and his personal pilot, Launchpad McQuack, Scrooge and the team set off to Greece in order to find the secret entrance to Arcadia. Upon reaching Greece, the team begin losing hope of finding this place until Webby accidently trips and falls into an underground cave with a pool, revealing the entrance to Arcadia. Launchpad decides to jump into the pool and the team follows. Upon resurfacing, they come across the beautiful pastoral paradise of Arcadia. They decide to explore the city and come across a beautiful treasure. Scrooge enquires about it but quickly finds out that it is a prize for whoever defeats the mighty and mysterious Mogadon. They agree to fight Mogadon and are escorted to the royal palace to meet with King Metaxa, who will decide if they are worthy of taking the challenge. 

They meet with the king and explain their intentions after which the king allows them to take on the Mogadon. However, the king’s nephew, Prince Domestos, overhears this and interferes, as he also wishes to take on the Mogadon with a machine that he has been building. The king is reluctant to allow his nephew to fight the Mogadon, so Domestos challenges the team to a fight, where the winner is granted the honour of fighting the beast. The team proceed to get ready to fight and choose Launchpad as their champion, but they soon find that the prince has also chosen someone else as his fighter. They quickly defeat this champion and thus are granted the opportunity to fight Mogadon for the prize. They begin journeying into the mountains and find that Mogadon is a fire-breathing dragon. 

Donald tries escaping the beast, and in doing so, accidently releases rocks which fall on Mogadon, making him fall into the lake. This in turn seems to stop the dragon’s heartburn and thus he stops breathing fire, abandoning the area. The team return to the king who awards them the treasure and invites them to a feast. Before they can return to Duckburg, however, the prince attempts to poison the king and blames it on the team. The king believes his nephew and sends them to prison. Launchpad comes up with a plan alongside Webby and everyone manages to escape, picking up the treasure on the way. However, as they try to evade the guards and the prince’s catapult, they drop all the treasure, but the whole team makes it safely back on the ship. Scrooge however, is distraught by the fact that they went through all that trouble and didn’t manage to bring anything back from Arcadia. Noticing this, Webby asks if anyone is hungry and pulls out a blue urn with olives which had been given to her when they were exploring the city. 

The Arcadian Urn presents an interesting motivation for the adventure. Scrooge’s spirit of adventure is his main motivation, as it is in all the works he features in. In various other comic books, and even the television series DuckTales, Scrooge’s backstory heavily involves gold-mining, treasure hunting, and antiques collecting. However, Scrooge also decides to find Arcadia as he does not want his rival, who is selling a blue Arcadian Urn, to become the world’s richest duck. 

As the story goes on, it is possible to ascertain that the Arcadia which the team seek is not the one in the Peloponnese, but rather, a mythical land. The strongest evidence of this is when Webby reads out from her "Chickadee field guide" as follows:

According to my littlest chickadee field guide, the ancient Greeks found a magic underground pool somewhere on these islands [The Ionic islands]

She further explains that the Greeks found the pool to contain a microcosm to Arcadia. This refers to the renaissance myth of the utopian land of Arcadia which shaped music, art and poetry with its pastoral influences. Created in the 16th Century by various renaissance artists, Arcadia represents an “Idyllic, pastoral paradise”, and indeed, this is what we observe when the team arrive in Arcadia. To the left, there is a waterfall, and in the far distance, there are fields and a small settlement, which the story proceeds to focus on. This is very much unlike the Arcadia found in the Peloponnese which is surrounded by various mountains and is often commented by Classical writers as being a desolate land which no one desires to inhabit, with the exception of Virgil, who writes in Eclogue 10 that Arcadia is an idyllic pastoral paradise. Whether or not this is what Virgil meant, the idea is nevertheless carried forward by various writers and poets from the Renaissance, including Jacopo Sannazaro and the Countess of Pembroke. Even in modern popular culture, this myth can also be found and is often alluded to, as is the case for this story.

The city itself has plenty of Classical elements, including typical columns and houses. In the market place, pottery is used to store items, the inhabitants and guards walk around in classical garments, including togas and head wreaths, or Roman-style helmets for the guards. It is however interesting to note that where the fight against Domestos’ champion takes place very much resembles a cross between a colosseum and a hippodrome. The fighters are dressed in gladiator outfits, specifically with Thracian-style gladiator helmets, which Launchpad keeps on when fighting the dragon.

This ties in with the next observation, the dragon itself. Fire-breathing dragons existed in Greek mythology, but not as they are commonly depicted today. The Chimaera was one of the few fire-breathing creatures in Greek mythology. It is also the precursor to the more typical fire-breathing European dragon, which we are used to finding in stories and iconography, such as the red dragon on the Welsh flag. Typically, they have snake-like bodies with four legs, whereas Mogadon in the story, has two legs, two arms and a large torso.

The rest of the story does not present many other points of note. There is a brief feast which king Metaxa holds as a celebration for defeating the dragon Mogadon. During this lavish feast, with plenty of food and drink, the king presents the heroes with their promised prize. However, after the prince manages to get them imprisoned, as they are escaping, he brings out a catapult. This catapult could very possibly resemble the “Ballista Fulminalis” which is spoken of in De Rebus Bellicis, Chapter XVIII. Unfortunately, we cannot be certain of this as the observation was made based on the arrows the catapult is armed with, as the full catapult is not visible in the comic strip.

Version used for this entry:

Halas, P., Anderson, T., Lopez, J., Aventura na Grécia, in Tio Patinhas 222, 2nd ed., Lisbon: Edimpresa, 2004, story pp.: 19, total pp.: 112, trans. unknown.

Also used: 

Halas, P., Anderson, T., Lopez, J., The Arcadian Urn, in Uncle Scrooge 399, 1st ed., Boom!, 2011, trans. unknown.