Episode Details

We continue with my series about gold in pre-history today with one of the earliest and most enduring of the golden myths: Jason and the Golden Fleece. This story, which took place about a generation before the Trojan War, starts out as a hero’s quest, but develops into a story of betrayal and vengeance with, like many a Greek myth, a tragic ending.

In Iolcos, Pelias usurped his brother Aeson, the rightful king, to take the throne. He then had all Aeson’s descendents killed. People were ruthless in those days.

Aeson’s son Jason, however, survived the massacre, saved by a wheeze: when he was born, his mother had all her servants cry to fool Pelias into thinking he was still-born. She then smuggled Jason away to be reared by Chiron, “the wisest and justest of all the centaurs.” Chiron was the son of Cronos and would count among his high-achieving students Achilles, Odysseus, Hercules, Theseus and Perseus.

Meanwhile, an oracle warned Aeson “to fear the man with one sandal”. No doubt feeling guilty about his ill-gotten kingship, he lived in dread of that prophecy.

When Jason was fully grown, he set off to Iolcos to claim his throne. On his way, he chanced upon an old lady trying to cross a river and helped her across. In doing so he lost his sandal. Little did he know, that old lady was Hera, wife of Zeus, Queen of the Gods. She would become his ally.

In Iolcos, Jason was announced as a man in one sandal. He came before King Pelias, revealed who he was and claimed the kingdom. Pelias agreed to cede the kingdom, but only on one condition: that Jason brought him the fleece of the golden ram. He had set Jason an impossible task, a task that would take him beyond the known world (which at this point was about as far as the Black Sea), to the barbarian kingdom of Colchis. But Jason agreed.

The fleece, so the story went, was of a magical ram that had once belonged to Zeus. It hung from a tree in a sacred grove, guarded by bulls with hooves of brass and breath of fire, and a dragon that never slept, whose teeth became soldiers when planted in the ground. The fleece belonged to Aietes, King of Colchis, son of the sun god, Helios, no less. Another oracle had foretold that Aietes would lose his kingdom, if he lost his fleece.

I love how legends and myths are born out of truths and here is a case in point. East of the Black Sea in what today is Georgia - in Colchis in other words - sheepskins were used to pan gold from rivers. The fleeces were stretched over a wooden frame and then submerged in rivers, where the tight curls of the sheep’s coat would catch nuggets and specks of gold carried down in the rushing water from placer deposits upstream. The fleeces were then hung in trees to dry, after which the gold was combed out. If you have a wet fleece full of alluvial gold hanging to dry in a tree, you are going to make sure it is well guarded - by bulls and dragons, if necessary. It’s quite easy to see how this practice had evolved into the myth of a golden fleece as the story spread east from the other side of the Black Sea. 

Three Impossible Tasks

Jason had a ship, the Argo, built. He assembled a crew - the Argonauts - a band of heroes which included such luminaries as Hercules, the twins Castor and Pollux, Peleus (father of Achilles), Orpheus (the musician) and Atlanta (the virgin huntress who would never marry). 

They set off on what is seen by some as the first long-distance voyage ever undertaken, perhaps the first time a Greek had successfully navigated the hostile currents of the Bosphorus. En route, the Argonau