Summoning the Argonauts

Pelias confidently expected Jason to fail in this quest, because the fleece was guarded by a sleepless dragon, but Jason intended to prove himself and commissioned a 50-oared ship, called the Argo. To man the ship he summoned the best youths in Greece. Known as the Argonauts, they included Heracles, Theseus, Meleager, Orpheus the musician, the twins

Castor and Pollux, Zetes and Calais (winged sons of Boreas, the north wind),Telamon (Ajax’s father), Peleus (Achilles’s father), and Augeas (whose filthy stables Heracles cleaned for his fifth labor). Some accounts say the group also included the athlete Atalanta, but others say that Jason rejected her, fearing that a woman would cause trouble.

The Argonauts sailed at dawn one morning and were to have many adventures before reaching Colchis. Landing first on Lemnos, they found an island with no male inhabitants. Sometime earlier the men of Lemnos had rejected their wives because of their unbearable smell, a curse put upon them for insulting Aphrodite. The men had taken Thracian girlfriends and the Lemnian women had murdered them in revenge. However, the women now realized that their population was in danger of dying out. They welcomed the Argonauts with open arms, and many children were conceived before the Argo set sail again.

After sailing through the Hellespont, the strait that separates the Aegean Sea from the Sea of Marmara, the

Below: The Argonauts, by Italian artist Cesare Dell ’Acqua (1821—1904), depicts the adventurers leaving their homeland.

The Legend of the Golden Fleece

The Golden Fleece had once graced the back of a miraculous flying and talking ram. The story of the fleece began in Thebes, where the firstborn children of King Athamas, a boy Phrixus and a girl Helle, incurred the hatred of their stepmother, Ino, who wanted her own son to succeed to the throne. When the crops failed, Ino announced that an oracle had decreed that Phrixus must be sacrificed to avert famine. As Athamas prepared to slaughter his son, Hermes, messenger of the gods sent a golden-fleeced ram to Phrixus and Helle. They jumped on the creature's back and were whisked away.

During the flight Helle lost her grip on the ram and fell to her death in the sea named for her, the Hellespont. Phrixus held on until the ram reached Colchis. He settled there, sacrificed the ram to Zeus, and hung the fleece in a grove dedicated to the god Ares. However, when Phrixus died (some sources say he was murdered), he was not given a proper burial, and an oracle proclaimed that the land of Iolcus would fail to prosper until the Golden Fleece was brought back to Greece and the ghost of Phrixus liberated.

Above: This Roman sculpture depicts King Aeetes watching Jason as he grapples with one of two fire-breathing bulls before harnessing them to plow a field and sow dragon’s teeth, as commanded by the king.

Argonauts landed at Arcton, where they were welcomed and feasted by the Doliones people. The Argonauts set sail for the Bosporus, the channel leading to the Black Sea, but were blown back to Arcton by a headwind. In the darkness the Doliones mistook their former guests for pirates and attacked them. Many died on both sides, including the Doliones’ king, and the Argonauts hastened away again.

Some time later, during a rowing contest between Jason and Heracles to see who could row the longest, Heracles broke his oar. The Argonauts landed so that he could cut another. Heracles’s lover, a beautiful youth called Hylas, also disembarked and went in search of water. At the pool he was seen by a water nymph, who fell in love with him and abducted him. Heracles searched for the boy in vain. At dawn, when neither Hylas nor Heracles had reappeared, the Argo sailed, leaving both behind.