Quest for the Golden Fleece, a Greek Myth Ebook
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JASON: QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN FLEECE, A GREEK MYTH PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Jeff Limke,Tim Seeley,Barbara Schulz | 48 pages | 01 Apr 2008 | Lerner Publishing Group | 9780822565710 | English | Minneapolis, United States What is the Story of Jason and the Golden Fleece? - In return for this favor, Phineas revealed to Jason the location of Colchis and how to pass the Symplegades , or The Clashing Rocks, and then they parted. The only way to reach Colchis was to sail through the Symplegades Clashing Rocks , huge rock cliffs that came together and crushed anything that traveled between them. Phineas told Jason to release a dove when they approached these islands, and if the dove made it through, to row with all their might. If the dove was crushed, he was doomed to fail. Jason released the dove as advised, which made it through, losing only a few tail feathers. Seeing this, they rowed strongly and made it through with minor damage at the extreme stern of the ship. From that time on, the clashing rocks were forever joined leaving free passage for others to pass. Jason arrived in Colchis modern Black Sea coast of Georgia to claim the fleece as his own. It was owned by King Aeetes of Colchis. The fleece was given to him by Phrixus. Aeetes promised to give it to Jason only if he could perform three certain tasks. Presented with the tasks, Jason became discouraged and fell into depression. However, Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes' daughter, Medea , fall in love with Jason. As a result, Medea aided Jason in his tasks. First, Jason had to plow a field with fire-breathing oxen, the Khalkotauroi , that he had to yoke himself. Medea provided an ointment that protected him from the oxen's flames. Then, Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field. The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors spartoi. Medea had previously warned Jason of this and told him how to defeat this foe. Before they attacked him, he threw a rock into the crowd. Unable to discover where the rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and defeated one another. His last task was to overcome the sleepless dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece. Jason sprayed the dragon with a potion, given by Medea, distilled from herbs. The dragon fell asleep, and Jason was able to seize the Golden Fleece. Medea distracted her father, who chased them as they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of his body into the sea; Aeetes stopped to gather them. In another version, Medea lured Apsyrtus into a trap. Jason killed him, chopped off his fingers and toes, and buried the corpse. In any case, Jason and Medea escaped. On the way back to Iolcus, Medea prophesied to Euphemus , the Argo's helmsman, that one day he would rule Cyrene. This came true through Battus , a descendant of Euphemus. Zeus , as punishment for the slaughter of Medea's own brother, sent a series of storms at the Argo and blew it off course. The Argo then spoke and said that they should seek purification with Circe , a nymph living on the island of Aeaea. After being cleansed, they continued their journey home. Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus , the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens —the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer 's epic poem the Odyssey. The Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands called Sirenum scopuli and sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which resulted in the crashing of their ship into the islands. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs. The Argo then came to the island of Crete , guarded by the bronze man, Talos. As the ship approached, Talos hurled huge stones at the ship, keeping it at bay. Talos had one blood vessel which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail as in metal casting by the lost wax method. Medea cast a spell on Talos to calm him; she removed the bronze nail and Talos bled to death. The Argo was then able to sail on. Thomas Bulfinch has an antecedent to the interaction of Medea and the daughters of Pelias. Jason, celebrating his return with the Golden Fleece, noted that his father was too aged and infirm to participate in the celebrations. He had seen and been served by Medea's magical powers. He asked Medea to take some years from his life and add them to the life of his father. She did so, but at no such cost to Jason's life. Medea withdrew the blood from Aeson's body and infused it with certain herbs; putting it back into his veins, returning vigor to him. Medea, using her sorcery, claimed to Pelias' daughters that she could make their father smooth and vigorous as a child by chopping him up into pieces and boiling the pieces in a cauldron of water and magical herbs. She demonstrated this remarkable feat with the oldest ram in the flock, which leapt out of the cauldron as a lamb. The girls, rather naively, sliced and diced their father and put him in the cauldron. Medea did not add the magical herbs, and Pelias was dead. In Corinth, Jason became engaged to marry Creusa sometimes referred to as Glauce , a daughter of the King of Corinth, to strengthen his political ties. When Medea confronted Jason about the engagement and cited all the help she had given him, he retorted that it was not she that he should thank, but Aphrodite who made Medea fall in love with him. Infuriated with Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her revenge by presenting to Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on. Creusa's father, Creon , burned to death with his daughter as he tried to save her. Then Medea killed the two boys that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be murdered or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions. When Jason came to know of this, Medea was already gone; she fled to Athens in a chariot of dragons sent by her grandfather, the sun-god Helios. Although Jason calls Medea most hateful to gods and men, the fact that the chariot is given to her by Helios indicates that she still has the gods on her side. As Bernard Knox points out, Medea's last scene with concluding appearances parallels that of a number of indisputably divine beings in other plays by Euripides. Later Jason and Peleus , father of the hero Achilles , attacked and defeated Acastus, reclaiming the throne of Iolcus for himself once more. Jason's son, Thessalus , then became king. As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He was asleep under the stern of the rotting Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly. Jason's father is invariably Aeson, but there is great variation as to his mother's name. According to various authors, she could be:. Jason was also said to have had a younger brother Promachus [16] [18]. Though some of the episodes of Jason's story draw on ancient material, the definitive telling, on which this account relies, is that of Apollonius of Rhodes in his epic poem Argonautica , written in Alexandria in the late 3rd century BC. The poem ends abruptly with the request of Medea to accompany Jason on his homeward voyage. It is unclear if part of the epic poem has been lost, or if it was never finished. A third version is the Argonautica Orphica , which emphasizes the role of Orpheus in the story. Jason is briefly mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy in the poem Inferno. In it, he is seen by Dante and his guide Virgil being punished in Hell's Eighth Circle Bolgia 1 by being driven to march through the circle for all eternity while being whipped by devils. He is included among the panderers and seducers possibly for his seduction and subsequent abandoning of Medea. The story of Medea 's revenge on Jason is told with devastating effect by Euripides in his tragedy Medea. The mythical geography of the voyage of the Argonauts has been connected to specific geographic locations by Livio Stecchini [24] but his theories have not been widely adopted. Jason was a character in Greek mythology who went on a quest with some of the mightiest heroes of his time, and it became one of the most famous stories in mythology. Their mission was to retrieve a golden fleece from the King Aeetes of Colchis. His father was Aeson, king of Iolcos in Thessaly. She could have been Alcimede, who was the daughter of Clymene, or Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus. Jason was stillborn as a baby, so Aeson sent him to Chiron, a centaur in Greek mythology who later became the constellation Sagittarius. Chiron raised Jason until he was an adult, at which time Jason tried returning to Iolcus, where he was born. The reason why Jason needed to find the Golden Fleece in the first place is because of the order given by Pelias. Pelias came up with the idea from Jason, who conversed with his uncle on what he would do to keep someone away.