Golden Fleece- Greek ArtifactArtifact"The Fleece of the Golden Ram"

The Golden Ram

The Golden Fleece came from Chrysomallus, a winged ram with wool spun from gold. Nephele, the cloud goddess, sent the ram to rescue her two children, Phrixus and Helle, from the sacrificial knife. Their father, King Athamas of Boeotia, had taken a second wife: Ino, daughter of Cadmus. Ino plotted to destroy her stepchildren. She secretly parched the seed grain so that no crops would grow, then bribed messengers sent to consult the Delphic Oracle, instructing them to report that only the sacrifice of Phrixus would end the famine. Athamas, grief-stricken but obedient to what he believed was divine command, prepared to sacrifice his son.

At the last moment, Chrysomallus descended from the sky. Both children climbed onto the ram's golden back, and it soared eastward toward Colchis at the far edge of the Black Sea. Over the narrow strait between Europe and Asia, young Helle lost her grip and fell into the sea. The strait bore her name ever after: the Hellespont, known today as the Dardanelles. Phrixus held on and arrived safely in Colchis, the kingdom of Aeëtes, son of the sun god Helios.

The Sacred Grove of Ares

In gratitude for his deliverance, Phrixus sacrificed Chrysomallus to Zeus Phyxios and presented the golden fleece to Aeëtes. The king received him warmly, gave him his daughter Chalciope in marriage, and hung the fleece in a sacred grove dedicated to Ares. There it was guarded by a dragon that never slept, an enormous serpent with coils vast enough to encircle the grove and eyes that never closed. Its hissing could be heard from the banks of the river Phasis.

Even separated from the ram, the fleece shone with golden light, visible at night, casting its glow on the dark leaves of the surrounding oaks. An oracle had told Aeëtes that his reign and his life would endure only as long as the fleece remained in Colchis. He kept it under the most terrible guard and viewed any Greek ship approaching his shores with suspicion.

Phrixus lived out his years in Colchis and fathered sons by Chalciope. After his death, his ghost appeared to Pelias in a dream, demanding that the fleece be brought home to Greece.

The Quest Begins

The quest for the Golden Fleece began with a usurpation. Jason's father Aeson was the rightful king of Iolcus in Thessaly, but his half-brother Pelias had seized the throne. When Jason came of age and appeared in Iolcus wearing only one sandal, having lost the other helping an old woman across a river (the old woman was Hera in disguise), Pelias recognized the threat. An oracle had warned him to beware the one-sandaled man. To rid himself of Jason without the pollution of direct murder, Pelias demanded that he retrieve the Golden Fleece.

Pelias expected him to die. Jason accepted; refusal would have meant abandoning his father's throne forever. He commissioned the ship Argo, built with Athena's guidance and fitted with a speaking beam from the prophetic oak of Dodona, and called on the heroes of Greece to join him.

The Trials at Colchis

When the Argonauts reached Colchis, Aeëtes set Jason tasks designed to be fatal. He must yoke two bronze-footed, fire-breathing bulls forged by Hephaestus and plow a field. Then he must sow dragon's teeth and defeat the armed Spartoi who would spring from the earth. Even if Jason survived both, Aeëtes planned to burn the Argo and slaughter its crew.

But Hera and Athena had arranged for Aeëtes's own daughter Medea, a priestess of Hecate and powerful sorceress, to fall in love with Jason through Eros's arrow. Medea gave Jason a magical ointment made from the Promethean crocus, a plant grown from the blood that dripped from Prometheus's wound, which rendered him invulnerable to fire and iron for a single day. She taught him to throw a stone among the Spartoi so they would turn on each other. With her sorcery, Jason accomplished the impossible.

The Taking of the Fleece

When Aeëtes refused to surrender the fleece despite Jason's success, Medea led Jason to the sacred grove at night. The dragon was coiled around the oak from which the fleece hung, its vast body gleaming in the golden light cast by the wool. Medea approached with juniper branches dipped in potion and chanted incantations to Hypnos and to Hecate. The dragon's lidless eyes grew heavy for the first time in its existence. Its great head sank to the ground.

Jason lifted the fleece from the oak. The golden light fell across his face and shoulders like the glow of a rising flame, and he felt the weight of the divine wool in his hands: heavy, warm, shimmering. He carried it over his shoulder as he and Medea ran through the darkness to the waiting Argo. They sailed before dawn.

The flight from Colchis cost Medea her brother. In Apollodorus's telling, she killed Absyrtus and dismembered him, casting the pieces overboard to delay her father's pursuit. The blood guilt required purification by Circe on Aeaea before the Argonauts could continue home.

The Fleece in Greece

Once the Golden Fleece reached Greece, it vanished from the story. Jason dedicated it at Orchomenos, the ancestral home of Phrixus's family, fulfilling the ghost's demand.

He and Medea were driven from Iolcus after she murdered King Pelias through trickery. In Corinth, Jason abandoned Medea for a royal bride. Medea destroyed his new wife and her father with poisoned gifts, then killed her own children by Jason. He died alone beneath the rotting hull of the Argo when a beam fell and crushed him.