Colchis — Land of the Golden Fleece

How the Fleece Reached Colchis

The Golden Fleece came to Colchis from Boeotia. Athamas, king of Orchomenus, had two children, Phrixus and Helle, by the cloud-goddess Nephele. His second wife Ino plotted against them. She arranged a famine by roasting the seed-grain and bribed messengers to report that Delphi demanded Phrixus be sacrificed. Nephele rescued her children on a golden-fleeced, flying ram sent by Hermes. Helle fell off over the strait that took her name, the Hellespont. Phrixus reached Colchis, sacrificed the ram to Zeus Phyxios ("god of escape"), and gave the fleece to King Aeëtes, who hung it on an oak in a grove sacred to Ares. Aeëtes gave Phrixus his daughter Chalciope as wife. In Apollonius of Rhodes their four sons, Argus, Melas, Phrontis and Cytisorus, are shipwrecked on their way back to Greece and rescued by the Argonauts. They then help guide Jason to their grandfather's court. For the wider quest see The Golden Fleece.

The Royal House of Aeëtes

Aeëtes was a son of Helios and the Oceanid Perse, which made him brother to Circe and to Pasiphaë, the queen of Crete. Hesiod's Theogony names his wife as Idyia, a daughter of Oceanus, and calls her the mother of Medea. Apollonius gives Apsyrtus a different mother, the nymph Asterodeia, which makes him Medea's half-brother. The Corinthian poet Eumelus added a different link. In his account Helios first gave Aeëtes the city of Corinth, and Aeëtes left it to go east. That is one way ancient writers explained why Medea later claimed a right to the throne of Corinth.

The kingdom's capital was usually called Aia, beside the river Phasis (the modern Rioni). In the earliest poetry Aia was not clearly in the Caucasus. Mimnermus places it by the stream of Ocean where the rays of the Sun are stored, a land of sunrise rather than a fixed point on a map. Once Greek colonists settled the eastern Black Sea in the 6th century BC, at Phasis and Dioscurias among other places, Aia and Colchis were firmly placed there.

Variant Versions of the Escape

The ancient sources disagree sharply over the death of Apsyrtus. In Apollonius' Argonautica Apsyrtus is a grown man who commands the Colchian fleet. Medea lures him to a parley at a temple of Artemis on an island near the mouth of the Ister (Danube), and Jason ambushes and kills him there. In Apollodorus' version, which goes back to older writers such as Pherecydes, Apsyrtus is a small child whom Medea took aboard. She cut him to pieces and threw the limbs into the sea, and Aeëtes had to stop and gather them. Ovid's Tristia links this version to Tomis, the place of his own exile, and derives the town's name from the Greek for "cutting".

Apollonius also brings in two more members of the Sun's family. Medea's main weapon against the fire-breathing bulls is a drug made from a flower that sprang from the ichor of Prometheus, who was chained on the Caucasus nearby. The Argonauts hear the eagle that tormented him as it flies overhead. On the way home Jason and Medea visit Circe, who purifies them of the murder of Apsyrtus but refuses to shelter them once she learns what they have done. A later sequel, told by Apollodorus and Diodorus, has Aeëtes overthrown by his brother Perses, and Medea returns to restore him, or her son Medus kills the usurper.

The Real Colchis

Strabo explained the legend in practical terms. Mountain streams in the region carried gold dust, which local people caught on fleeces laid in the water. Excavations at Vani in western Georgia have found rich gold jewellery from the Classical and Hellenistic periods, which shows that the region's reputation for wealth had some basis. Herodotus made the odd claim that the Colchians descended from soldiers of an Egyptian army left behind by the pharaoh Sesostris, citing their dark skin, their linen-working and their practice of circumcision. The theory says more about Greek ethnography than about Colchian origins. The English word "pheasant" comes from the Phasis river, by way of the Greek phasianos, "the Phasian bird".

Ancient sources

• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica Books 2–4 — The fullest account of Colchis. It covers the sons of Phrixus, Aeëtes' tasks, the Promethean drug, the ambush of Apsyrtus and the visit to Circe.
• Hesiod, Theogony 956–962 — Hesiod gives Aeëtes' descent from Helios and Perse and names Idyia as the mother of Medea.
• Pindar, Pythian 4 — Pindar's ode retells Jason's voyage, including the yoking of the bulls and Aphrodite's gift of the love-charm to Jason.
• Apollodorus, Library 1.9 — Apollodorus tells the story of Phrixus and Helle, the dismemberment version of Apsyrtus' death, and Medea's later return to Colchis.
• Strabo, Geography 11.2 — Strabo describes Colchis, its rivers, its gold-washing with fleeces, and its Greek colonies.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Colchis today?

Colchis lay in what is now western Georgia, along the eastern Black Sea coast and the valley of the Rioni, which the ancients called the Phasis.

Was the Golden Fleece real?

No fleece survives, but Strabo records that the people of the region panned gold with sheepskins, and archaeology confirms that Colchis was rich in gold. Many readers take this as a likely seed of the legend.

Who guarded the Golden Fleece?

A sleepless serpent or dragon guarded the fleece in the grove of Ares. In Apollonius, Medea lulls it to sleep with song and a drug sprinkled from a juniper sprig. Some vase paintings show Jason being disgorged from the dragon's jaws, a variant no surviving text tells.

Was Medea's brother a child or an adult?

It depends on the source. Apollonius makes Apsyrtus an adult commander killed by Jason. Apollodorus and Ovid make him a child whom Medea dismembered.