Insane Quest of Jason & the Argonauts - Greek Mythology Explained

Six armed giants with axes to grind, a murderous, boxing-obsessed tyrant, undead warriors, vengeful gods, fire-breathing bovine, and a monstrous dragon who really doesn't like his nap time being interrupted. Greek mythology is filled with epic journeys fraught with peril and excitement. There's the tale of Odysseus and his encounters with monsters, with magic, and with islands full of lotus eaters. There's Hercules and his quest to complete the Twelve Labourers. And then, there is one of the most epic journeys of all, the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. The story of Jason begins in the city of Iolkos, where King Peleus seized the throne from Jason's father. Jason grew up far away from the city, raised by Chiron, a centaur who also mentored Achilles. Peleus consulted an oracle for guidance on holding onto his throne, and he was warned to be aware of a man wearing only one sandal. Years later, Jason arrived in Iolkos. On his way there, he lost one of his sandals in the river Anaros while helping out an old woman who turned out to be the goddess Hera in disguise. When Peleus saw the young man before him wearing only one sandal, he told him that Jason would only be able to take the throne if he went on a quest to find and retrieve the Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece could be found in Colchis, where it had been gifted to the king after the golden-winged ram was sacrificed to Poseidon. In order to retrieve the fleece, Jason would have to make the long journey to Colchis and somehow get it away from the king. He would need the right ship and the right team in order to complete the quest, and so he prepared the ship built by the shipwright Argos, with the guidance of Athena, and christened the Argo, and recruited a crew of fifty men, the Argonauts. Among the Argonauts was Orpheus, son of the Muse Calliope, Peleus, father of Achilles, Castor, son of King Tendarius, and Polydeuce, son of Zeus. The hero Heracles also joined for a portion of the journey. It was the Avengers of Greek mythology. The Argonauts were no ordinary crew, and the Argo was no ordinary ship. It was equipped with timber from the Dodona, sacred oaks that served as oracles of Zeus. The Dodona was attached to the bow of the Argo, where it could guide and advise Jason. The Argonauts gathered, celebrated, and made a sacrifice to Apollo, then boarded the ship and set off. The first stop for the Argo was the Isle of Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea, inhabited by a race of women punished by Aphrodite for neglecting their worship of her. In return, she made them repulsive to their husbands, who abandoned them. In retaliation, the women killed all the men on the island. Polyxo, the island seer, predicted the coming of the Argonauts and advised Queen Hypsipile to permit the men to visit and use them for breeding. When the Argonauts arrived, they were, let's just say, greeted in a very friendly manner. By the time the Argonauts departed from Lemnos, many of the women were pregnant, and some had already birthed a few children fathered by the Argonauts. After a few years, Heracles chastised the Argonauts for getting distracted from the task at hand, and urged them back to sea. This was rich, coming from Heracles, a hero known for his numerous affairs with different women, but that's a story for another day. After departing Lemnos, the next port of call for the Argo was Arctanesis, the Isle of Bears. This island was home to the friendly Doliones, a race of six armed giants known as the Gigenes. Upon arrival, King Syzicus welcomed them warmly with a great feast. He neglected to warn the men about the Gigenes, however, and the next morning, most of the crew of the Argo left the ship to resupply, and the Gigenes attacked the remaining crew members. Lucky for the Argonauts, one of the guards was Heracles, and he was able to slay most of the Gigenes before the others returned. After the Gigenes had been defeated, the Argonauts set sail again, but unfortunately for them and the Doliones, the Argo became lost in a storm and landed on the same island again at night. The Doliones mistook them for invaders and attacked. The Argonauts fought back, unknowingly killing several of the people who had welcomed them so warmly before, including the king. When the sun came up, the Argonauts realized what they had done. Stricken with grief and horror, they held a funeral for the fallen before taking to the seas once more. Next, the Argonauts landed at Mycenae, on the southern coast of the Propontis. Hylus, a friend of Heracles, went off from the rest of the group to fetch some water when he was lured away to his possible doom by the nymphs there. Heracles refused to leave without his friend, and the Argonauts were forced to leave him behind so he could search. Without Heracles, the party carried on to Bithynia, the home of the Bibraces and their king, Amicus. Amicus challenged anyone passing through his land to a boxing match, having those who lost to him killed. He demanded to fight one of the Argonauts, and Polydeuces accepted the challenge. He killed Amicus with a single punch, the original one-punch man. After that, well, they had to leave the island and fast. Next, the Argo landed on the Strait of Bosphorus, where they encountered a former seer known as Phineas. Once upon a time, Phineas had revealed a few too many of Zeus' secrets, and the vengeful god didn't take kindly to that, striking the man blind in revenge. He also sent harpies to steal Phineas' food every time he tried to eat. Phineas offered to advise the Argonauts on the rest of their journey if they would only get rid of the harpies and give him a chance to have a meal in peace. Zetis and Kalei planned to use their powers of flight to attack the harpies, but Iris, the messenger of the god and a sister of the harpies, pleaded with the men to spare her sister's lives. She promised that in exchange, they would leave Phineas alone from now on. Mercifully able to sit down to a proper meal, Phineas fulfilled his end of the bargain. He offered a warning. Up ahead, the Argo would encounter the Sempligodes, rocks that lay in the water and clash together, threatening to crush any ship that crossed their path. But if they timed their passage correctly, they would be able to make it through. When they reached the rocks, Phineas advised them to release a dove into the air. If the bird passed through the rocks without incident, so too would the ship be able to pass. They followed his advice, and it worked. The bird flew through the stones, and the Argo passed right behind it. The rocks nearly closed around them, but the goddess Athena intervened and held them apart to keep Jason and his Argonauts safe. At this point in their journey, the Argo lost their navigator, Typhus. Depending on the version of the story, he either passed away from a sickness or fell overboard while he was sleeping. Either way, he was gone, leaving the Argonauts to navigate the Black Sea without his expertise. Along the way, they passed the Isle of Ares, where the Stymphalian birds had settled. Thankfully, the crew's old pal Heracles had fought them off once before, and they remembered his stories of driving them away with loud noises. The Argo was approaching Colchis. As hard as the journey had been, the retrieval of the Golden Fleece itself would be even more difficult. Still holding Jason in her favor, Hera reached out to Aphrodite, begging her to send her son Eros to influence the heart of King Aeetes' daughter, Medea. If Medea fell in love with Jason, she would be an immense help to him as he worked to claim the Golden Fleece. King Aeetes agreed to give the fleece to Jason, but only if he could complete three tasks first. They seemed impossible, and Jason was certain he'd be unable to do it, but Medea, now in love with the hero, offered to help him with the tasks. First, Jason was instructed to yoke two fire-breathing oxen, called the Kalkotauroi, and plow a field where dragon's teeth could then be planted. To assist them, Medea offered Jason an ointment that protected him from the oxen's fire. With the ointment keeping him safe, Jason successfully wrestled the oxen and yoked them, plowing the fields as Aeetes had requested. Once the field was plowed, the dragon's teeth were planted there. They transformed into stone warriors that sprang from the ground and attacked Jason. Luckily, Medea had prepared him for this task as well. Before the stone warriors were able to harm him, Jason tossed a stone into the crowd. None of the soldiers could tell where the rock came from, and so they resorted to attacking each other. They destroyed their own ranks without Jason having to fight any of them. There was one more task to complete, sealing the Golden Fleece itself. King Aeetes was secretly plotting to kill Jason and his crew before they could get a hold of the fleece, but Medea offered to help Jason finish his quest if he would agree to take her away with him when he left. He agreed, and with their deal struck, it was time to steal the fleece and run. The oxen were out of the way, but there was another beast guarding the fleece, a sleepless dragon. What happened next depends on the version of the story. In some variations, Medea instructed Orpheus to lull the dragon to sleep with a song. In others, she crafted another herbal potion, which Jason sprayed on the dragon, causing it to fall asleep. In any case, once the dragon was asleep, the Golden Fleece was Jason's for the taking. He snuck past the sleeping dragon and snatched the fleece from the sacred oak where it hung. The king chased after Medea and Jason as they ran, but Medea distracted her father by killing her brother, Absirtas. In some versions of the myth, she threw pieces of his body into the sea, causing her father to stop to retrieve them. In another version, she lured him into a trap so that Jason could kill him, and then chop off his fingers and toes. How's that for a dysfunctional family? But the two escaped, and along with the Argonauts, they set sail once more. According to the myths, there are a few different versions of the route Jason and the Argonauts took to get back home. According to Apollonius' Argonautica, the Argo returned by crossing the Black Sea, then followed what's now called the Danube to the Adriatic Sea, emerging somewhere near Trieste, Italy or Rijeka, Croatia. They passed Italy, then the southern coast of France, then stopped at the island where Circe, the nymph and enchantress lived. There, she performed a ritual cleansing to purify them of the murder of Medea's brother before the journey continued. Next, like Odysseus once had, the Argonauts passed by the Sirens, but Orpheus was an even better musician than they were, and played his lyre so sweetly that it drowned out the Siren song. From there, the Argo stopped for a much-needed rest in Crete. But there would be no rest for Jason and his crew there. Instead, they came up against Talos, a giant, bronze man who guarded the island. As the Argo approached his domain, Talos threw enormous stones at the ship to keep it from getting any closer. Talos was nearly indestructible, except for one single weakness. No, it wasn't his heel. It was his ankle, or rather a single vein of icre that ran all along his body from his neck to his ankle. Held shut by one bronze nail, Medea cast a spell to remove the nail, opening the vein and causing Talos to bleed to death. With them out of the way, the Argo could carry on. Before we see Jason arrive back home, we should acknowledge some of the alternate routes proposed by other writers. The poet Pindar, in Pythian 4, described the Argo's journey home as a trip eastward, following the river Phaseus to the Caspian Sea, then following the river ocean of myth to somewhere to the south of Libya. Then they headed back to the Mediterranean. Hecateus, a geographer, imagined a similar route to this one, though he proposed they sail north up the Nile River. No matter what route the Argo took, it managed to eventually return home to Iolocos. While the Argonauts celebrated a successful journey and a quest completed, Jason was troubled by something. His father had grown old and frail, unable to participate in celebrating the return of his own son. Jason pleaded with Medea to help his father, offering up a few years of his own life to restore his father's strength. Medea agreed, but didn't need to use any of Jason's life force to help his father. She cut Jason's father's neck, draining some blood from his body, and replaced it with an herbal potion that revitalized him, making him young and strong again. Peleus's daughters saw this feat and asked Medea to do the same for their father. She agreed, but with one change to her method. She claimed that she could do an even better job if she chopped up Peleus's body and boiled it with special magic herbs. She demonstrated this with a ram who leaped from the pot as a lamb again. So, Peleus's daughters chopped up their father and threw him in a pot. But Medea didn't add the herbs, so all the women were left with was some dead dad stew. Peleus's son, Acastus, took the throne and cast Jason and Medea out of the country. Together, the couple fled to Corinth. Jason pursued Creusa, the king's daughter, planning to marry her. Obviously, Medea had objections to that, but Jason didn't take her feelings seriously. He wrote them off as nothing more than Eros's interference. Furious, Medea gifted Creusa with a cursed dress. When she wore it, she burst into flames, killing her and her father. Then, Medea took off for Athens, where she would continue her story as the evil stepmother of Theseus. Meanwhile, Jason had betrayed his wife, which in Hera's book is a pretty massive no-no. So, she removed her favor for him. Jason eventually returned home and took the throne, but things were never the same. He met a bitter demise, alone and unloved. He was sleeping beneath the ruins of the Argo one night when the old rotten beams collapsed and the ship crushed him to death. Some historians have suggested that the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece might have a crumb of truth in it. The ancient kingdom of Colchis refers to the Svaneti region of Georgia near the Black Sea. This area was known for its gold, harvested by catching flecks of gold in mountain streams with sheepskin strung across the water like a fishing net. This traditional technique dates back thousands of years and may have inspired the image of the Golden Fleece. Perhaps there was a real Jason who followed the route from Mylokas to Colchis with a small crew of sailors to trade gold there. During the famous California gold rush, the miners who traveled west in search of gold were sometimes referred to as Argonauts, in a nod to the story of Jason. Much like Jason, many of these Argonauts met a bitter end as well, finding only disappointment where they sought their fortune. Not all difficult pursuits lead to riches, all that glitters is not gold. Now check out what the bible actually says about the devil, or watch this video instead.