The quest led by Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Colchis at the eastern end of the Black Sea, undertaken to reclaim the throne of Iolcus his uncle Pelias had usurped from his father, who set the impossible task as a condition of restoring it. Jason assembled a crew of Greece's greatest heroes, the Argonauts, named for their ship the Argo, and sailed through a series of trials including the clashing rocks of the Symplegades before reaching Colchis, where King Aeetes set further tasks that Jason completed only with the help of the king's daughter Medea, a sorceress who fell in love with him and betrayed her own father to see him succeed. The fullest surviving account is the Hellenistic epic Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, though Homer already refers to the story as familiar audience knowledge centuries earlier, suggesting a tradition older than its surviving telling.
Facts
Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteAmong the Argonauts named across the various ancient crew lists are Orpheus, whose music calms storms and is said to have out sung the Sirens when the ship passes them, Heracles, who leaves the voyage partway through to search for his lost companion Hylas, and Atalanta, the huntress, whose inclusion itself varies between different ancient sources. 1 Scholarly NoteSome scholars read the Argonauts' voyage east to Colchis, on the Black Sea's far shore, as mythologized memory of early Greek trade and colonization routes into the region, though the story's own supernatural elements, a fire breathing bronze bull, sown dragon's teeth warriors and a fleece that heals and enchants, place it as fully within the realm of myth as any Greek hero tale. 2 History
Historical NoteAeetes sets Jason a specific trial to earn the fleece: yoke a pair of fire breathing bronze bulls to plow a field, sow it with dragon's teeth, and defeat the armed warriors that spring up from the furrows, a task Jason survives only with Medea's protective ointment and her advice to throw a stone among the warriors to turn them against each other. 1 Historical NoteReferences to the Argonauts' voyage appear already in Homer's Odyssey as a story assumed familiar to everyone, centuries before Apollonius of Rhodes wrote the fullest surviving account. 2 Sources
Primary SourceArgonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, the fullest surviving account; referred to as already familiar by Homer centuries earlier 2 Meaning
Central MotifAn impossible task set to remove a rightful heir; a foreign princess whose magical help is bought at the cost of betraying her own family 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeAncient sources disagree on the fleece's origin and color, gold in most tellings but described as purple by some authors, and disagree too on precisely how many and which heroes made up the Argonaut crew. 1 Point in DisputeTo slow her father Aeetes's pursuing fleet, Medea kills her own brother Apsyrtus and scatters pieces of his body into the sea, forcing Aeetes to halt and gather the remains for burial, an act of family betrayal some later tellings soften or omit outright. 1 Learn More
Pelias's Impossible Task
Pelias had seized the throne of Iolcus from his half brother Aeson, Jason's father, and when the adult Jason returned to the city to claim what was his by birth, an oracle had already warned Pelias to beware a man wearing only one sandal, which Jason happened to be doing after losing one crossing a river on his way into the city, helping an old woman who was in fact the goddess Hera in disguise. Rather than refuse Jason outright, Pelias set a task calculated to remove him permanently: bring back the Golden Fleece, the hide of a divine ram with golden wool, kept under guard by a sleepless dragon in the distant kingdom of Colchis.
To make the voyage possible, Jason had the shipwright Argus build the Argo, said to be the first long ship of its kind, and called together heroes from across Greece to crew it, a roster later tradition swelled to include figures such as Heracles, the twins Castor and Pollux, the musician Orpheus, and Atalanta, though which names belonged to the earliest versions of the story and which were added later is not settled among the ancient sources themselves. The voyage out took the Argonauts through a sequence of trials, most famously the Symplegades, a pair of rocks at the mouth of the Black Sea that clashed together to crush any ship attempting to pass, which the Argo cleared by sending a dove through first to gauge the timing and losing only the tip of its stern to the closing rocks.
Medea's Help, and a Homecoming Built on Betrayal
King Aeetes of Colchis, unwilling to give up the fleece, set Jason a further set of tasks he expected to be fatal: yoking a pair of fire breathing, bronze hoofed bulls to plow a field, sowing the field with dragon's teeth that sprang up as armed warriors, and getting past the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece itself. Jason succeeded at each only with help from Aeetes's own daughter Medea, a priestess of Hecate skilled in magic, who fell in love with him at the goddess Aphrodite's prompting and gave him an ointment to protect him from the bulls' fire, instructions for turning the sown warriors against one another, and a drug to lull the dragon to sleep so the fleece could be taken.
Medea left Colchis with Jason and the Argonauts, and later tellings make her betrayal of her father complete: in the version most often followed, she killed and dismembered her own brother Apsyrtus and scattered his remains behind the fleeing ship, forcing the pursuing Aeetes to stop and gather them for burial rather than continue the chase. The Argonauts eventually returned to Iolcus with the fleece, and Medea again used her craft against Pelias, persuading his own daughters to kill and dismember him in a promised rejuvenation ritual that never restored him, a final act of vengeance that secured Jason no throne of his own and left the couple to a marriage in Corinth that later myth remembers ending in Medea's own act of vengeance against Jason himself.
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