Jason and the golden fleece

Long ago Athamas, ruler of a kingdom in Thessaly, decided to put aside his wife, Nephele, and marry a younger woman. Nephele feared that the king’s new wife might pose a threat to Nepheles’ children by Athamas—their daughter, Helle, and their son, Phryxus. She prayed to Zeus for help in getting the children to safety, and Zeus directed the god Hermes to give the queen a flying golden ram, to transport her children to a friendly kingdom. With the children on its back, the ram flew eastward, across the strait between Europe and Asia. Unfortunately, Helle fell from the ram’s back and into the sea. From that time, the place where she fell was called the Hellespont (today, the Dardanelles).

The ram, with Phryxus on its back, finally arrived at Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. After sacrificing the ram to Zeus, Phryxus gave its golden fleece to Aeetes, king of Colchis. Aeetes placed it in a sacred grove, where it was guarded by a sleepless dragon. Thus did Aeetes come into possession of the famous Golden Fleece.

A harsh, suspicious ruler, Pelias had no fear that his own subjects would overthrow him. He only feared the prophecy that said a stranger wearing just one sandal would cause his death.

Once Jason came of age, he was told of his right to rule in Iolcus, and he set out to claim his throne. Along the way he encountered an old woman who begged him to help her get across a river. Jason politely took the old woman onto his back and began to swim. The current was so powerful that it swept one of his sandals right off his foot! Meanwhile, the old woman, who had at first seemed as light as a bundle of twigs, grew heavier as he swam—a lot heavier.

By the time he reached the other side of the river, Jason was exhausted. Helping the old woman down from his back, he discovered that he had actually been carrying the goddess Hera. She had disguised herself as a helpless old woman to test Jason, to see if he was worthy of her patronage. Thus he had won as his benefactress the queen of the gods!

Pelias was doubly distressed when Jason arrived at his court and announced that as Aeson’s son he had come to claim his throne. It was bad enough that Jason wanted to take his place as king, but there was also the matter of the missing sandal. Pelias knew trouble when he saw it.

Pretending to welcome his nephew, Pelias slyly suggested that before taking up the responsibilities of kingship, Jason should first do a little traveling, see the world—and maybe complete some sort of heroic quest, to make a name for himself and to show his new subjects how worthy he was to be their king.

Naturally a suggestion like that appealed to the brave young man, so he asked Pelias what sort of heroic deed he should perform. Pelias spun him a tale about how King Aeetes of Colchis had stolen the Golden Fleece, which rightly belonged to Greece, and that Jason should redress that wrong by returning the prize to Greece. Of course Pelias was lying. But Jason did not know that he Golden Fleece belonged to King Aeetes, not to Greece.

Jason hired the master shipwright Argus to build a ship large enough to hold fifty men, and strong enough to withstand a voyage into unknown and dangerous waters. The ship was named the Argo, after Argus, and those who sailed on it would be known as the Argonauts.

Jason sent out a call to all the bravest, most noble warriors of Greece, who flocked to Iolchus to join Jason on his great adventure. They knew the voyage would be long and dangerous, but such a glorious quest would bring them honor and fame. Among the warriors who accompanied Jason was Heracles, but he did not stay with the Argonauts for the whole trip. In fact, he left fairly early in the voyage to search for his friend Hylas. Of course, if Heracles had stayed with the Argonauts, he probably would be the story’s hero, since hardly anyone else ever got to do heroic deeds when Heracles was around.

In Thrace the Argonauts encountered King Phineas, who was frail and emaciated from starvation. Phineas explained that Zeus had punished him for being too clever. Every time food was placed before him, hideous winged creatures called Harpies, with great wings, sharp talons, and the heads of women, would swoop down and snatch the food. The next time Phineas tried to eat and the Harpies appeared, two of the Argonauts drove them away so fiercely that the Harpies never dared to return.

In gratitude, Phineas told the Argonauts how to sail safely past the great Clashing Rocks that blocked the entrance to the Black Sea. Any ship that tried to pass through them would be smashed to bits when the rocks slammed together.

Following Phineas’s directions, the Argonauts released a dove as they drew near the Clashing Rocks. As it flew between the rocks, they smashed together so suddenly that the bird lost several tailfeathers. As the rocks separated, the Argonauts raced through them, just a moment before they slammed together again.

When they reached Colchis, Jason told King Aeetes that he had come for the Golden Fleece. The king did not reveal his annoyance, but he told Jason he must earn the Golden Fleece by proving his courage and strength. He must harness a pair of bulls, sow, and then harvest a field before sundown. Though Jason accepted the challenge, his heart sank when he saw the huge, fire-breathing bulls with razor-sharp brazen hooves.

Hera still favored Jason, so she told Aphrodite to have her son Eros shoot an arrow into the heart of Medea, King Aeetes’ daughter. Struck by Eros’ arrow, Medea fell instantly in love with the handsome young hero. Nor was Medea just any beautiful princess. She was also a priestess of Hecate, and a powerful, skilled sorceress—just like her Aunt Circe, who had transformed Odysseus’s men into animals. That night Medea approached Jason and secretly slipped him a container of magical oil, which would protect him from the hooves and the fiery breath of her father’s bulls. The next day, Jason fearlessly approached the bulls and harnessed them. With such powerful bulls, Jason made short work of sowing the bag of seed he had been given.

Sowing the seed as quickly as possible, Jason didn’t realize that what he was sowing was actually not seed, but dragon’s teeth. From each sown tooth sprang an armed warrior, until the field was crowded with armed men. Harvesting this crop was going to be the hardest part of the task! The oil that had protected him from the bulls also gave him some protection from the warriors, but no matter how many Jason killed, there were always more to attack him. As Jason became too tired to keep up the battle, Medea decided to help him again. She tossed a rock that hit one of the warriors on the back of his head. Thinking another dragon-warrior had struck him, the first one attacked his comrade. A few more well-placed rocks soon had the entire army of dragon-warriors fighting with each other, until not one was left alive.

But Medea knew that her father was not going to allow Jason to take the Golden Fleece, so that night she led Jason to the sacred grove where the sleepless dragon guarded the Golden Fleece. Near the dragon she uncorked a vial containing a powerful potion. When the dragon smelled the fumes from the potion, it immediately fell asleep, and Jason was able to grab the Golden Fleece.

Accompanied by Medea, Jason and the Argonauts sailed away on the Argo, pursued by Aeetes. Expecting pursuit, Medea had persuaded her young brother to come with them. As Aeetes gained on the Argo, Medea killed and dismembered her brother and scattered his body parts all over the surface of the sea, so her father must stop to gather his son’s remains in order to give him a proper burial.

Once they had returned to Iolchus and married, Jason asked Medea to use her magic to take some years from Jason’s own life and add them to his father’s, for Aeson had grown quite old and frail. Medea told him she would not shorten his life, but would gladly add years to his father’s. After preparing a pot with a magical brew, she cut up an old ram, threw it into the pot, and pronounced a sorcerous incantation. Out of the pot leapt a frisky young lamb. Having seen this evidence of her power, Aeson nervously allowed his new daughter-in-law to take a knife to him. She had put his remains into the pot, said the magic words, and out of the pot stepped Aeson, once again tall and strong, with a youthful head of black hair!

Medea had let the daughters of Peleus witnessed this act of sorcery, so they would approach her to do the same thing for their father. They knew he was too suspicious to submit willingly to the process, so they gave Peleus a sleeping potion Medea had prepared. Then, when their father was deeply asleep, the two daughters fell on him with their knives. Once he was dead, Medea cut him up and placed him in the pot. But instead of saying the magic words, she left the horrified women alone to watch the boiling pot with their father’s remains.

Jason was now king of Iolchus. He and Medea lived happily together for ten years, during which time they had two sons. But as Medea grew older, Jason became interested in Glauce, the daugbter of the King of Corinth. Younger than Medea, Glauce was neither a foreigner nor a sorceress, and so she seemed more attractive than Medea, whom Jason divorced in order to marry Glauce. Embittered, Medea sent Creusa a magnificent robe, soaked in a deadly potion. When Glauce donned the robe, it burst into fire and killed her in an instant. Before fleeing to escape retribution for the murder, Medea also slaughtered her two sons by Jason. Some say that the loss of his bride and his sons drove Jason to despair and suicide. Others say he died many years later, when the prow of the Argo fell on him as he stood beneath it, recalling his days as a great hero leading the Argonauts to capture the Golden Fleece.

Perhaps Jason lost Hera’s favor when he divorced Medea to marry a younger woman. After all, Hera was the goddess of marriage, and also the jealous consort of Zeus, who habitually dallied with mortal women. She couldn’t prevent Zeus’s infidelities, for he was the king of the gods, but she did not have to overlook a mere mortal’s transgressions against marriage.

Besides, Jason had seen that Medea’s love for him made her capable of betraying her father and murdering both her brother and Peleus. She was not a woman to be trifled with. Yet Jason’s pride and his desire for Creusa blinded him not only to what he owed Medea, but also to what he might have to fear from her.