Golden Fleece
In
In the historical account, the hero Jason and his crew of Argonauts set out on a quest for the fleece by order of King Pelias in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly. Through the help of Medea, they acquire the Golden Fleece. The story is of great antiquity and was current in the time of Homer (eighth century BC). It survives in various forms, among which the details vary.
Nowadays, the heraldic variations of the Golden Fleece are featured frequently in Georgia, especially for Coats of Arms and Flags associated with Western Georgian (Historical Colchis) municipalities and cities, including the Coats of Arms of City of Kutaisi, the ancient capital city of Colchis.
Plot
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Athamas the founder of Thessaly, but also king of the city of Orchomenus in Boeotia (a region of southeastern Greece), took the goddess Nephele as his first wife. They had two children, the boy Phrixus (whose name means "curly", as in the texture of the ram's fleece) and the girl Helle. Later Athamas became enamored of and married Ino, the daughter of Cadmus. When Nephele left in anger, drought came upon the land.
Ino was jealous of her stepchildren and plotted their deaths; in some versions, she persuaded Athamas that sacrificing Phrixus was the only way to end the drought. Nephele, or her spirit, appeared to the children with a winged ram whose fleece was of
Nephele's children escaped on the yellow ram over the sea, but Helle fell off and drowned in the strait now named after her, the
Phrixus settled in the house of Aeëtes, son of Helios the sun god. He hung the Golden Fleece preserved from the ram on an oak in a grove sacred to Ares, the god of war and one of the Twelve Olympians. The fleece was guarded by a never-sleeping dragon with teeth that could become soldiers when planted in the ground. The dragon was at the foot of the tree on which the fleece was placed.[5]
In some versions of the story, Jason attempts to put the guard serpent to sleep.
Evolution of plot
Pindar employed the quest for the Golden Fleece in his Fourth Pythian Ode (written in 462 BC), though the fleece is not in the foreground. When Aeëtes challenges Jason to yoke the fire-breathing bulls, the fleece is the prize: "Let the King do this, the captain of the ship! Let him do this, I say, and have for his own the immortal coverlet, the fleece, glowing with matted skeins of gold".[6]
In later versions of the story, the ram is said to have been the offspring of the sea god
Where the written sources fail, through accidents of history, sometimes the continuity of a mythic tradition can be found among the vase-painters. The story of the Golden Fleece appeared to have little resonance for Athenians of the Classic age, for only two representations of it on Attic-painted wares of the fifth century have been identified: a
Interpretations
The very early origin of the myth in preliterate times means that during the more than a millennium when it was to some degree part of the fabric of culture, its perceived significance likely passed through numerous developments.
Several euhemeristic attempts to interpret the Golden Fleece "realistically" as reflecting some physical cultural object or alleged historical practice have been made. For example, in the 20th century, some scholars suggested that the story of the Golden Fleece signified the bringing of sheep husbandry to Greece from the east;[g] in other readings, scholars theorized it referred to golden grain,[h] or to the Sun.[i]
A more widespread interpretation relates the myth of the fleece to a method of washing gold from streams, which was well attested (but only from c. 5th century BC) in the region of
Strabo describes the way in which gold could be washed:
It is said that in their country gold is carried down by the mountain torrents, and that the barbarians obtain it by means of perforated troughs and fleecy skins, and that this is the origin of the myth of the golden fleece—unless they call them
Iberians, by the same name as the western Iberians, from the gold mines in both countries.
Another interpretation is based on the references in some versions to purple or purple-dyed cloth. The purple dye extracted from the
Main theories
The following are the chief among the various interpretations of the fleece, with notes on sources and major critical discussions:
- It represents royal power.[8][9][10][11][12]
- It represents the flayed skin of Krios ('Ram'), companion of Phrixus.[13]
- It represents a book on alchemy.[14][15]
- It represents a technique of writing in gold on parchment.[16]
- It represents a form of placer mining practiced in Georgia, for example.[17][18][19][20][21][22]
- It represents the forgiveness of the Gods.[23][24]
- It represents a rain cloud.[25][26]
- It represents a land of golden grain.[26][27]
- It represents the spring-hero.[26][28]
- It represents the sea reflecting the sun.[26][29][30]
- It represents the gilded prow of Phrixus' ship.[26][31]
- It represents a breed of sheep in ancient Georgia.[32][33][34]
- It represents the riches imported from the East.[35]
- It represents the wealth or technology of Colchis.[36][37][38]
- It was a covering for a cult image of Zeus in the form of a ram.[39]
- It represents a fabric woven from sea silk.[40][41][42]
- It is about a voyage from Greece, through the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic to the Americas.[43]
- It represents trading fleece dyed murex-purple for Georgian gold.[44]
See also
- List of mythological objects
- Absyrtus
- Gold mining
- Order of the Golden Fleece
- Gideon, another motif represented with fleece in Christian art
Notes
- romanized: Khrysómallos.
- ^ That the ram was sent by Zeus was the version heard by Pausanias in the second century of the Christian era (Pausanias, ix.34.5).
- ^ Theophane may equally be construed as "appearing as a goddess" or as "causing a god to appear".[1]
- ^ Upon the shield of Jason, as it was described in Apollonius' Argonautica, "was Phrixos the Minyan, depicted as though really listening to the ram, and the ram seemed to be speaking. As you looked on this pair, you would be struck dumb with amazement and deceived, for you would expect to hear some wise utterance from them, with this hope you would gaze long upon them.".[4]
- ^ Vatican 16545
- JSTOR 498331.
- ^ Interpretation #12
- ^ Interpretation #8
- ^ Interpretation #10
- ^ Interpretation #5
- ^ Interpretation #17
References
- Karl Kerenyi, The Heroes of the Greeks
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae, 163
- ^ Karl Kerenyi The Gods of the Greeks, (1951) 1980:182f
- ^ Richard Hunter, tr. Apollonius of Rhodes: Jason and the Golden Fleece, (Oxford University Press) 1993:21)
- ^ William Godwin (1876). Lives of the Necromancers. London, F. J. Mason. p. 41.
- JSTOR 1089054..
- S2CID 193032482.
- ^ Marcus Porcius Cato and Marcus Terentius Varro, Roman Farm Management, The Treatises of Cato and Varro, in English, with Notes of Modern Instances
- ^ Braund (1994), pp. 21–23
- ^ Popko, M. (1974). "Kult Swietego runa w hetyckiej Anatolii" [The Cult of the Golden Fleece in Hittite Anatolia]. Preglad Orientalistyczuy (in Russian). 91: 225–30.
- ^ Newman, John Kevin (2001) "The Golden Fleece. Imperial Dream" (Theodore Papanghelis and Antonios Rengakos (eds.). A Companion to Apollonius Rhodius. Leiden: Brill (Mnemosyne Supplement 217), 309–40)
- ^ Lordkipanidze (2001)
- ^ Diodorus Siculus 4. 47; cf. scholia on Apollonius Rhodius 2. 1144; 4. 119, citing Dionysus' Argonautica
- ^ Palaephatus (fourth century BC) 'On the Incredible' (Festa, N. (ed.) (1902) Mythographi Graeca III, 2, Lipsiae, p. 89
- John of Antiochfr.15.3 FHG (5.548)
- Die Fragmente der griechischen HistorikerI (Berlin), IIA, 490, fr. 37)
- ^ Strabo (first century BC) Geography I, 2, 39 (Jones, H.L. (ed.) (1969) The Geography of Strabo (in eight volumes) London "Strabo, Geography, NOTICE". Perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
- .
- ^ "Gold – during the Classic Era". Minelinks.com. Archived from the original on 3 April 2012. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
- ^ Shuker, Karl P. N. (1997), From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings, Llewellyn
- ^ Renault, Mary (2004), The Bull from the Sea, Arrow (Rand)
- ^ refuted in Braund (1994), p. 24 and Lordkipanidze (2001)
- ^ Müller, Karl Otfried (1844), Orchomenos und die Minyer, Breslau
- ^ refuted in Bacon (1925), pp. 64 ff, 163 ff
- ^ Forchhammer, P. W. (1857) Hellenica Berlin p. 205 ff, 330 ff
- ^ a b c d e refuted in Bacon (1925)
- ^ Faust, Adolf (1898), Einige deutsche und griechische Sagen im Lichte ihrer ursprünglichen Bedeutung. Mulhausen
- ^ Schroder, R. (1899), Argonautensage und Verwandtes, Poznań
- ^ Vurthiem, V (1902), "De Argonautarum Vellere aureo", Mnemosyne, New Series, XXX, pp. 54–67; XXXI, p. 116
- ^ Wilhelm Mannhardt, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, VII, p. 241 ff, 281 ff
- ^ Svoronos, M. (1914). Journal International d'Archéologie Numismatique. XVI: 81–152.
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(help) - ^ Ninck, M. (1921). "Die Bedeutung des Wassers im Kult und Leben der Alten". Philologus Suppl. 14 (2).
- .
- .
- ^ Bacon (1925)
- ^ Akaki Urushadze (1984), The Country of the Enchantress Medea, Tbilisi
- ^ "Untitled Document". Archived from the original on 25 November 2005. Retrieved 13 October 2005.
- ^ "Colchis, The Land Of The Golden Fleece, Republic Of Georgia". Great-adventures.com. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
- ^ Robert Graves (1944/1945), The Golden Fleece/Hercules, My Shipmate, New York: Grosset & Dunlap
- ^ Verrill, A. Hyatt (1950), Shell Collector's Handbook, New York: Putnam, p. 77
- ^ Abbott, R. Tucker (1972), Kingdom of the Seashell, New York: Crown Publishers, p. 184; "history of sea byssus cloth". Designboom.com. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
- ^ refuted in Barber (1991) and McKinley (1999), pp. 9–29
- ^ Bailey, James R. (1973), The God Kings and the Titans; The New World Ascendancy in Ancient Times, St. Martin's Press
- ^ Silver, Morris (1992), Taking Ancient Mythology Economically, Leiden: Brill "Document Title". Members.tripod.com. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
Bibliography
- Bacon, Janet Ruth (1925). The Voyage of the Argonauts. London: Methuen.
- Barber, Elizabeth J. W. (1991). Prehistoric Textiles: the Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00224-8.
- Braund, David (1994). Georgia in Antiquity: A History of Colchis and Transcaucasian Iberia, 550 BC–AD 562. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814473-1.
- .
- McKinley, Daniel (1999). Pinna and her Silken Beard: a Foray into Historical Misappropriations. Ars Textrina. Vol. 29. Charles Babbage Research Centre.
External links
- Media related to Golden Fleece at Wikimedia Commons
- The Project Gutenberg text of The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles