The Quest for the Golden Fleece

Jason and the Argonauts

The Beginning of a New Era

• King Athamas + Nephele– Phrixus (son)– Helle (daughter)

– Athamas grew tired of Nephele and marries, Ino, daughter of Cadmus, King of Thebes.

• Two sons

AnEvil Plot

• Princess Ino arranges a trap to have Phrixus (her stepson) murdered.– She parches all the grain– Bribes the messenger of the Oracle to say

that Phrixus must be sacrificed for the grain to grow and to avoid starvation.

– Golden ram appears and carries off Phrixus & Helle

– Helle falls off and drowns

The Golden The Golden FleeceFleeceA golden ram given by Hermes saved the young

prince Phrixus from a wrongful human sacrifice. It carried him to Colchis, where king AEetes (son of Helius, brother of Circe and Pasiphae) took him in. Phrixus sacrificed the ram and gave the golden fleece to AEetes.

Family Ties

• Phrixus had an uncle, Aeson, who was a king in Greece.

• Aeson’s nephew, Pelias, usurped the throne and imprisoned the king.

• The king’s wife gave birth to Jason, but feared that Pelias would kill him.

Pretending that Jason had died, she sent him far

from Iolcus to live with a loyal centaur named Chiron. Chiron cared for and tutored Jason.

Jason grew strong and

smart.

Jason and Jason and PeliasPeliasPelias is the villain of the piece:

•he usurped the throne that rightfully belonged to Jason’s father

•he slighted Hera by refusing to sacrifice to her

•he knew from a prophecy to “beware the man with one sandal”Jason is the hero:

•like Achilles, he was raised by Chiron – though in exile from his rightful kingdom

•when returning home, he helped an old woman across the stream, losing a sandal in the process

•the old woman was Hera, working with and through Jason as his immortal mentor.

Jason and Jason and PeliasPeliasPelias promised to give Jason the throne if he returned

from Colchis with the Golden Fleece. As with the evil king of the Perseus story, Pelias could expect the mission to be fatal.Jason set about building a ship for the mission – the Argo – which had a talking figurehead which relayed advice from Hera.

Athena too supported the mission, and is shown here helping build the phenomenal ship.

The ArgonautsThe Argonauts

•Castor and Pollux

•HeraclesJason gathered together a group of young heroes including:

• Atalanta

•Peleus

•Orpheus

The ArgonautsThe Argonauts

Also included were the fathers of many Trojan war heroes (Achilles, Ajax, etc.), and many other heroes from the generation before the Trojan war.

Some of these had magical powers – for example, Zetes and Callais, sons of the North Wind, who had wings . . .The roster of Argonauts is different in the different stories, and this is one of the myths (like the Trojan War and the Calydonian Boar Hunt) which tended to bring local heroes together into a shared national narrative – a unifying function of some Greek myths.

The ArgonautsThe Argonauts

The Argonauts had several adventures before they reached Colchis, losing Heracles along the way.

•The Lemnian women, who had killed their husbands, greeted them kindly . . .

•They saved the prophet Phineus from the Harpies

•Thetis helped them through the Symplegades (clashing rocks), which were fixed forever after

The ArgonautsThe Argonauts

In Colchis, Aeetes offered to give Jason the fleece if he could defeat the dragon guarding it.

As with Theseus and Ariadne, the king’s daughter fell in love with the foreign hero and helped him against her own father.

Medea, practiced in magic (in some accounts more than in others) gave Jason knowledge and weapons to defeat the dragon.

Jason had to harness fire-breathing bulls, plow a field, sow a field with dragon’s teeth, and when supernatural warriors were born (as from the teeth Cadmus sowed in Thebes), he had to defeat them. Medea gave him ointment to protect and strengthen him.

Who gets the credit? Versions vary:

•Jason bravely killed the serpent and took the fleece;

•or he drugged it with more of Medea’s potions;

•or Medea was responsible:

Jason’s QuestJason’s Quest

This vase painting shows another tradition: Jason is defeated by the serpent, but Athena makes it cough him up.

Medea speaks: I saved you . . . I

killed the serpent, which

unsleeping guarded the

golden fleece, and I brought

you the light of salvation!

Euripides, Medea

Jason seizes the golden fleece (again, with Athena supervising). What happens next varies:

•Jason leaves with Medea, and AEetes pursues him

•AEetes goes back on his word. Medea helps the Argonauts escape with the fleece, and goes with them.

•Medea’s role can be terrible: e.g., she kills her younger brother and throws his limbs over the side so AEetes has to stop to pick them up.

The Argonauts The Argonauts FleeFlee

Pelias’ DeathPelias’ Death

Jason and Medea returned to Iolcus, where Pelias had vowed to return the kingdom to Jason. Now he refused.

Medea used her magic to rejuvenate a ram by cutting him up and boiling him with herbs in a cauldron.

She told Pelias’daughters that they could rejuvenate their father the same way.

They cut him up and cooked him, but all they got was soup.

Jason and Medea were tainted with miasma and were driven out of Iolcus. They fled to Corinth.

Other stories give a very different account of Medea: they define her as hereditary queen of Corinth, which was affiliated with Colchis.

Pelias’ DeathPelias’ Death

MedeaMedea Queen Medea had resisted the advances of Zeus, and Hera offered to reward her by making her children immortal. But when Medea left her children in Hera’s sactuary, they died.

OR: Medea was the enemy of King Creon, and killed him, then fled to Athens, leaving her children in Hera’s sanctuary. The Corinthians killed them in revenge.

There was an altar to Medea’s children in Corinth in historical times.

Both stories agree that Medea went to Athens, where she became the mother of Medus (future king of Persia) by Aegeus.

The playwright Euripides tells a far more frightening story, and one which has become the classic version

of the Medea story: That Medea killed her own children for revenge on Jason.

MedeaMedea

MedeaMedea

In exile, Jason and Medea struggle. When they settle in Corinth, Jason has the opportunity to marry the princess and establish himself. Euripides presents Jason as self-serving and Medea and genuinely wronged. The children are an issue – Jason says they will benefit by

their future step-brothers; Medea thinks they will be worse off whether they go with her into exile, or stay in Corinth.

She sends them to the princess with a gift . . .

a poisoned garment which begins to dissolve her flesh when she puts it on. Creon tries to save his daughter and

is also killed by the poison.

MedeaMedea

MedeaMedeaMedea has already planned her escape – but what about the children?

Women, my task is fixed: to kill my children quickly, and leave this land, and not, by wasting time, let my children be killed by a hand less kindly to them. Force every way will have it that they must die . . . Arm yourself in steel, my heart! Do not hang back from doing this fearful and necessary wrong. Do not be a coward, do not think of them, how sweet they are – weep afterward . . .

MedeaMedea

Having killed her children, and having gotten her terrible revenge on Jason, Medea shows her divine (and therefore inhuman) side and flies away on her dragon chariot.

Jason, like many heroes, has a less than heroic death: the prow of the Argo rots off and falls on him while he is sitting underneath it.

Zeus in Olympus is the

overseer of many doings.

Many things the gods achieve beyond our

judgment. What we thought is not confirmed

and what we did not think, god contrives. And so it happened in this story.Euripides, Medea

finis