The voyage of the Argo is one of the oldest adventure stories in Europe. When Homer’s Odysseus sails past the Wandering Rocks, the poet remarks that only one ship had ever passed them before: “the Argo, famous to all.” That fame rested on a story of a ship full of heroes sailing to the edge of the known world — into the Black Sea, to the kingdom of Colchis at the foot of the Caucasus — to bring back a treasure hanging in a sacred grove. This page follows the outward voyage and the winning of the fleece, largely as told in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. For the background and aftermath, see Jason: The Leader of the Argonauts.
The Departure
The Argo was launched from Pagasae, the harbour of Iolcus. It had fifty oars, one for each hero, and a speaking beam of Dodona oak set in its prow by Athena. Before setting out, the crew elected a leader. Many wanted Heracles, the strongest among them, but Heracles refused and insisted that Jason, who had assembled the expedition, should command. The seer Idmon foretold that the fleece would be won, but that he himself would not return.
Orpheus played his lyre to keep time for the rowers, and the ship sailed north along the coast of Thessaly and out into the Aegean.
The Women of Lemnos
The first landfall was the island of Lemnos, which was inhabited only by women. The Lemnian women had neglected the worship of Aphrodite, and the goddess had cursed them with a foul smell, so that their husbands took Thracian captive women instead. In revenge the Lemnian women murdered every man on the island. Only Hypsipyle, the queen, secretly spared her father Thoas.
Needing men to father children, the Lemnian women welcomed the Argonauts. The heroes lingered for months, and Jason became Hypsipyle’s lover; she later bore him twin sons. Only when Heracles, who had stayed with the ship, angrily reproached his comrades did they return to the voyage.
Cyzicus: A Tragic Mistake
Passing through the Hellespont into the Sea of Marmara, the Argonauts were received kindly by Cyzicus, young king of the Doliones. After they left, contrary winds drove them back to the same shore at night. The Doliones, not recognizing their guests in the dark, took them for raiders and attacked. In the confusion Jason killed King Cyzicus. At dawn both sides saw what had happened. The Argonauts held funeral games in his honour, and his young wife hanged herself in grief.
The Loss of Heracles
At Cius in Mysia, Heracles broke his oar and went into the woods to cut a new one. His young companion Hylas went to fetch water from a spring, where the water-nymph, enchanted by his beauty, reached up and drew him down into the pool. Heracles searched frantically through the night, calling Hylas’s name. By dawn the Argo had sailed without him. The sea-god Glaucus rose from the waves to explain that it was the will of Zeus: Heracles had his own labours to complete.
Amycus the Boxer
In the land of the Bebryces, the brutal king Amycus forced every stranger to box with him, and had killed all who tried. Polydeuces, the finest boxer in Greece, accepted the challenge and killed Amycus with a blow above the ear.
Phineus and the Harpies
On the Thracian coast the Argonauts met Phineus, an old blind king and prophet. He had revealed too much of Zeus’s plans to mortals, and the gods had punished him: whenever food was set before him, the Harpies — foul winged creatures with the faces of women — swooped down, snatched most of it, and fouled the rest with their stench.
The winged brothers Zetes and Calais, sons of the North Wind Boreas, chased the Harpies across the sea until the goddess Iris stopped them and swore that the creatures would never trouble Phineus again. In gratitude, Phineus told the Argonauts how to pass the next and deadliest obstacle.
The Clashing Rocks
At the entrance to the Black Sea stood the Symplegades, or Clashing Rocks — two great cliffs that drifted apart and crashed together, crushing anything that tried to pass between them. Phineus’s advice was to release a dove first. If it passed through, the ship could follow; if not, they should turn back.
The dove flew through and lost only the tips of its tail feathers as the rocks slammed shut. As the rocks opened again, the Argonauts rowed with all their strength. Athena herself pushed the ship through with one hand, and the rocks closed only on the ornament at the stern. From that day on the Symplegades stood fixed, since it was fated that once a ship passed them safely they would move no more.
Along the Black Sea Coast
The heroes sailed east along the southern shore of the Black Sea, now called the Euxine (“hospitable”) Sea by the Greeks, perhaps hopefully. They lost two comrades: the seer Idmon, killed by a wild boar, as he had foreseen, and the helmsman Tiphys, who fell ill and died. They passed the land of the Amazons, the iron-working Chalybes, and the island of Ares, where birds shot bronze feathers like arrows; the Argonauts drove them off by clashing their shields over their heads. On that island they picked up the shipwrecked sons of Phrixus, who had been trying to sail from Colchis to Greece, and who now guided them back.
At last, below the snowy Caucasus where Prometheus lay chained, they heard the groans of the Titan and saw the eagle that fed on his liver passing overhead. They rowed into the mouth of the River Phasis, and Colchis lay before them.
The Tasks of Aeëtes
King Aeëtes, son of Helios, received the Greeks with suspicion. When Jason politely asked for the fleece, the king was furious but hid his rage behind a challenge. Jason must, in a single day:
- Yoke two bronze-hoofed, fire-breathing bulls, made by Hephaestus.
- Plough the Field of Ares with them.
- Sow the field with the teeth of a dragon — part of the serpent slain long ago by Cadmus at Thebes.
- Defeat the armed warriors who would spring up from the furrows.
Aeëtes had performed these tasks himself, and expected the stranger to die in the attempt.
Medea’s Help
Here the goddesses Hera and Athena intervened. They persuaded Aphrodite to send her son Eros, who shot an arrow into the heart of Aeëtes’s daughter Medea, priestess of the goddess Hecate. Apollonius’s portrait of Medea’s sleepless night — torn between loyalty to her father and her overwhelming love for the stranger — is one of the finest passages of ancient psychological writing.
Medea met Jason secretly at the temple of Hecate. She gave him a magical ointment, prepared from a flower that had sprung from the blood of Prometheus, that would make his body and weapons invulnerable for a day. She told him to sacrifice to Hecate at midnight and not to look back. And she told him how to defeat the earth-born warriors: throw a stone into their midst.
The Contest
The next day Jason, anointed with the charm, faced the bulls. They charged him in a blast of flame, but he felt nothing. He forced them to their knees, yoked them, and ploughed the field. He sowed the dragon’s teeth, and at evening armed men sprang up from the earth all over the field. Jason threw a great boulder among them, and the warriors, each believing another had struck him, turned on one another. Jason cut down the survivors as they emerged.
Winning the Fleece
Aeëtes had no intention of honouring the bargain. He began planning to burn the Argo and kill its crew. Medea, knowing her father’s mind, fled to the Argonauts by night and led Jason to the sacred grove of Ares. The fleece hung on an oak tree, gleaming like a cloud lit by the rising sun. Coiled around the tree was the serpent that never slept.
Medea sang to it and called on Hecate and Sleep. Then she sprinkled its eyes with a potion from a sprig of juniper, and the great coils slackened. Jason took the fleece from the oak, and the two ran back to the ship. The Argonauts rowed out of the river with the prize, as the Colchians poured after them.
In an older version, known from vase paintings, the serpent actually swallowed Jason, and Athena forced it to disgorge him. The Greek artists, it seems, knew stories that the poets did not tell.
The Meaning of the Fleece
Why a golden fleece? The ancient geographer Strabo reported that in the Caucasus, people collected gold dust from mountain streams by laying fleeces in the water — a practice that has been observed in Georgia (ancient Colchis) into modern times. Others have read the fleece as a symbol of kingship, of the sun, or of fertility. Whatever its origin, the fleece is the perfect quest object: beautiful, precious, far away, and guarded — something a hero could spend his whole life seeking.
Last reviewed: September 2026.