Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

The Argo reached the river Phasis in Colchis. Jason and chosen companions went up to the city of Aeetes, son of Helios and king of Colchis, who kept the Golden Fleece in the grove of Ares. Hera and Athena had already planned that Aphrodite would make Aeetes’s daughter Medea love Jason, so that her witchcraft would secure the fleece. In Apollonius, Eros strikes Medea at Hera’s bidding during Jason’s audience. Jason asked for the fleece, citing Pelias’s demand and the heroes’ service. Aeetes answered with rage and a conditional challenge: Jason might take the fleece if he first yoked Aeetes’s bronze-hoofed, fire-breathing bulls, ploughed the Field of Ares, sowed the dragon’s teeth that Cadmus had once left (or that Aeetes possessed from the same Theban stock), and slaughtered the armed men who would spring from the furrows—all in a single day. If Jason failed, the king implied ruin for the strangers. Jason accepted, though the tasks seemed mortal. Pindar’s *Pythian* 4 already knows the yoke of fire-breathing bulls and the earthborn warriors as the ordeal Aphrodite’s love-magic helps Jason survive. Apollodorus states the same labors: bulls, sowing of teeth, killing of the sprung warriors. The audience scene sets the Colchian trial as a second “impossible” demand—Pelias’s fleece filtered through Aeetes’s lethal farmwork—and opens the door to Medea’s decisive aid.