Voyage of the Argo- Greek EventEvent

Origins of the Quest

The Voyage of the Argo began with a dynastic crime. Pelias, king of Iolcos in Thessaly, had seized the throne from his half-brother Aeson, Jason's father. When Jason came of age and appeared at court wearing a single sandal—having lost the other crossing the river Anauros—Pelias recognized the fulfillment of an oracle warning him to beware a man with one shoe. To dispose of this threat, Pelias sent Jason on what he believed was a suicide mission: to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Colchis, a kingdom at the far eastern edge of the known world on the shores of the Black Sea. What Pelias did not know was that the quest served Hera's own design—the goddess despised him for failing to honor her, and she intended Jason's voyage to bring Medea to Greece as the instrument of his destruction.

The Golden Fleece itself had its own tragic history. It was the skin of the divine ram Chrysomallos, which had carried Phrixus and Helle through the air to escape their murderous stepmother Ino. Helle fell into the strait that bore her name (the Hellespont), but Phrixus reached Colchis safely, sacrificed the ram to Zeus, and gave the fleece to King Aeetes, who hung it in a sacred grove guarded by a sleepless dragon.

Building the Argo

Jason's first task was to build a ship capable of the voyage. Argus, a master shipwright, constructed the Argo with timber from Mount Pelion under Athena's direct guidance—the goddess taught him how to measure the timbers and fitted a beam of prophetic oak from the oracle at Dodona into the prow, giving the ship the power of speech. Athena planed the keel herself, and the ship's hull was sturdy enough to carry over fifty armed warriors and their provisions across seas no Greek vessel had crossed before. Ancient tradition called the Argo the first longship ever built, and even in Homer's day it was already "known to all." The speaking prow guided the crew throughout the voyage and prophesied their route home. The Dodona beam could think and feel through Athena's enchantment, and wept when the crew was in danger.

Assembling the Crew

Jason's call drew heroes from across Greece. Orpheus brought his divine lyre, an instrument that would matter more than any weapon before the voyage ended. Heracles joined the crew, though he would not see Colchis. The winged sons of Boreas could chase anything through the sky, and Polydeuces came with his fists — he would need them. Tiphys took the helm; the seer Mopsus read the gods' will in birdsong and flight. Among the rest sailed fathers whose sons would outshine them: Peleus and Telamon, remembered later chiefly for siring Achilles and Ajax.

The Outward Voyage

The Argo sailed from Iolcos into the Aegean, and the crew found trouble at every landfall. At the island of Lemnos, they encountered women who had killed all the men on the island after being cursed by Aphrodite. The Argonauts stayed and consorted with the Lemnian women, with Jason fathering children by Queen Hypsipyle, before Heracles shamed the crew into resuming the voyage.

In Mysia, the youth Hylas—Heracles' beloved companion—was pulled into a spring by enamored water nymphs. Heracles refused to leave without him and searched the wilderness in anguish. The Argo sailed on without him. Among the Bebrycians, King Amycus—a brutal son of Poseidon who forced all visitors to box with him—challenged the crew. Polydeuces accepted and defeated Amycus in a celebrated bout, killing or humbling the tyrant depending on the source.

At the court of the blind seer Phineus in Thrace, the Argonauts found the old prophet tormented by the Harpies, who snatched or defiled his food at every meal. Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of Boreas, chased the Harpies away. In gratitude, Phineus revealed how to navigate the Symplegades—the Clashing Rocks that guarded the entrance to the Black Sea. Following his advice, the Argonauts released a dove first; when it passed through losing only its tail feathers, they rowed with all their might. The Argo passed through with only its stern ornament clipped, and the rocks became fixed forever, the passage permanently opened.

Colchis and the Tasks of Aeetes

Arriving in Colchis, Jason presented himself to King Aeetes and demanded the Golden Fleece. Aeetes, unwilling to surrender it, set seemingly impossible conditions: Jason must yoke two fire-breathing bronze-hoofed bulls (the Khalkotauroi), plow a field with them, sow the teeth of a dragon, and defeat the armed warriors (Spartoi) who would spring from the earth.

Jason would have perished, but Hera and Aphrodite conspired to help him. They sent Eros to make Aeetes' daughter Medea—a powerful sorceress and priestess of Hecate—fall desperately in love with Jason. Medea provided Jason with a magical ointment that made him invulnerable to fire and iron for one day, and she told him to throw a stone among the Spartoi so they would fight each other rather than him. Jason completed all the tasks.

When Aeetes still refused to surrender the fleece, Medea led Jason to the sacred grove by night. She lulled the guardian dragon to sleep with her incantations and herbs, allowing Jason to seize the Golden Fleece. The Argonauts fled Colchis immediately, with Medea aboard.

The Return Voyage

The homeward journey proved even more perilous than the outward voyage, and ancient sources describe different routes. In Apollonius's account, the Argonauts fled up the Danube (Ister) to evade Aeetes' pursuing fleet. During the pursuit, Medea murdered her own brother Absyrtus. In one tradition she dismembered the body and scattered the pieces so that Aeetes, forced to stop and gather his son's remains, fell behind.

The Argo wandered through rivers and seas that defied ordinary geography, passing through the Adriatic, up the Po (Eridanus), along the Rhone, and into the Mediterranean. The crew encountered the Sirens, whose deadly song would have lured them to destruction had Orpheus not played his lyre louder and more beautifully, drowning out their voices. They navigated past Scylla and Charybdis with divine aid from Hera and the Nereids.

Near Crete, the bronze giant Talos—forged by Hephaestus to guard the island—hurled boulders at the Argo. Medea defeated him through sorcery, exploiting the single vein that ran from his neck to his ankle, sealed by a bronze nail. When the nail was removed, Talos's ichor drained away and the automaton collapsed.

Aftermath

The Argonauts returned to Iolcos with the Golden Fleece, but Jason's troubles were far from over. Pelias had murdered Jason's family during his absence. Medea took revenge by tricking Pelias's daughters into killing their own father—she demonstrated her magic by cutting up an old ram and restoring it to life as a young lamb, then persuaded the daughters to do the same to Pelias, but withheld the restorative spell. Hera's long design was fulfilled: the goddess had orchestrated the entire voyage to bring Medea to Greece for precisely this purpose.

Pelias's son Acastus drove Jason and Medea from Iolcos, and the couple took refuge in Corinth, where the final catastrophe of their story would unfold. The Argonauts dispersed to their homelands. By the time of the Trojan War the voyage was already old legend—when Circe warned Odysseus of the Clashing Rocks, she spoke of the "Argo known to all."

The Fate of the Argo

The ship itself was eventually dedicated to Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth, where it slowly decayed. Jason met his death beneath the rotting hull. He was sitting in the shadow of the beached Argo in his old age, friendless and despised, when a timber from the prow fell and killed him — the speaking beam of Dodona oak that Athena had once fitted to guide him.

The ship was set among the stars as the constellation Argo Navis. Aratus described it in the Phaenomena sailing stern-first across the heavens, prow hidden below the horizon, as though it were still plowing through dark waters on an endless voyage.