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Finally, the Epigoni, descendants of the Seven who had fought Thebes, captured and destroyed that city. Argonauts were described as a band of heroes, who, through perilous and unknown seas, sailed from Iolcos in Thessaly, in the ship "Argo," to Colchis, whence they brought away the golden fleece which had been stolen, and which they found nailed to an oak, and guarded by a sleepless dragon.
That tower was a stronghold of Christianity in the third century, and it was strange to think that Crusaders and mediaeval warriors had looked out from the same tower, over the same glorious sea. Assuredly from the watch-tower of ancient Time all buildings and man's dwellings are but toys. I thought of that when I rowed across the river Phasis, and drank coffee at Poti on the site of Colchis.
"Swear," said she to Medea, "swear by Hecate, the Moon, that you will never speak of something I am going to ask you." Medea swore that she would never speak of it. Chalciope spoke of the danger her sons were in. She asked Medea to devise a way by which they could escape with the stranger from Aea. "In Aea and in Colchis," she said, "there will be no safety for my sons henceforth."
The Golden Fleece you shall have if it lies within the power of my enchantments to get it for you. Wait for me here an hour before midnight." At the appointed hour you might again have seen Prince Jason and the Princess Medea, side by side, stealing through the streets of Colchis on their way to the sacred grove, in the center of which the Golden Fleece was suspended to a tree.
I have returned on my traces and gone northward towards Scythia and Colchis. Wherever I went I heard murmurs and saw movements. The people have awaked; in the temples they prophesied the return of the gods; for men had been left alone to manage their affairs and to guide their destinies, but had done both badly.
And he forbids me to make any more attempts, and positively refuses to give up the Golden Fleece, whether I slay the dragon or no." "Yes, Jason," said the princess, "and I can tell you more. Unless you set sail from Colchis before tomorrow's sunrise, the king means to burn your fifty-oared galley and put yourself and your forty-nine brave comrades to the sword. But be of good courage.
But it was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought to the richly fabled shores of Colchis.
The ram continued his career till he reached the kingdom of Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, where he safely landed the boy Phryxus, who was hospitably received by Aeetes, king of the country. Phryxus sacrificed the ram to Jupiter, and gave the Golden Fleece to Aeetes, who placed it in a consecrated grove, under the care of a sleepless dragon.
Now many words were spoken on both sides touching the differences between them, and in particular Seoses made mention of the land of Colchis, which is now called Lazica, saying that it had been subject to the Persians from of old and that the Romans had taken it from them by violence and held it on no just grounds.
It put him into the worst possible humor, therefore, to hear that the gallant Prince Jason and forty-nine of the bravest young warriors of Greece had come to Colchis with the sole purpose of taking away his chief treasure. "Do you know," asked King Æetes, eyeing Jason very sternly, "what are the conditions which you must fulfill before getting possession of the Golden Fleece?"
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