Summary

In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece (Ancient Greek: Χρυσόμαλλον Δέρας Khrysómallon Déras) is the fleece of Chrysomallos, a ram with large wings on which Phrixos and Hellé fled to escape their stepmother Ino. Arriving in Colchis, Phrixos sacrificed the ram in honor of Zeus and gave the fleece as a gift to King Eetes, who hung it from an oak tree and had it guarded by a dragon and armed men. The quest for the Golden Fleece is at the heart of the myth of the Argonauts led by Jason.

The ram with the golden fleece (Chrysomallos in ancient Greek), sometimes also depicted as having large wings, is a marvelous animal sent by the gods to two children, Phrixos and Hellé, who ride it to escape their stepmother Ino. Upon arriving in Colchis, Phrixos sacrifices the ram in honor of Zeus and gives the fleece to King Eetes, who hangs it from an oak tree and has it guarded by a dragon and armed men.

Pelias orders his nephew Jason to steal the Golden Fleece. Medea betrays her father Eetes and helps Jason and the Argonauts to seize it. During their escape, she cuts her brother Absyrte into pieces and throws them into the water to slow down Aetetes, who stops to gather the pieces of Absyrte and give him a funeral in a place then called Tomis ("cut up"), giving the Argonauts time to escape.

The golden fleece is a solar symbol. Conquering it leads to hero status and, for some heroes, sovereignty.

Solar talisman for obtaining fortunes and hero status

Linking the golden fleece to the Avestic myth of the hvarnah, which takes the form of a ram in the Persian legend of Ardešir from Ferdowsi's Book of Kings, Jean Haudry, following in the footsteps of Henri de La Ville de Mirmont, considers that the image of the ram "who procures the sun" is that of the conquest of the sun, which means "reaching the beautiful season, emerging from winter", then "obtaining fortune and

Thus, the pretext invoked by Pelias is to satisfy a request of the deceased Phrixos, "to bring back the thick fleece of the ram." Pelias wants his native country to benefit from the solar talisman he abandoned to foreigners. In archaic Greece, gold and royal fortune were linked.

This is also why Jason and Medea use the fleece as a cover for their first union, which Alain Moreau (1994: 149) considers "a hieros gamos, a sacred marriage, the reward for successful trials."

She also has the gift of healing any person or living thing.

Initiatory test and royal rite

The interpretation of this Greek myth is to be sought first and foremost in the culture and beliefs of ancient Greece. Jason's ordeal begins with a journey into a mysterious afterlife, from which he must return transformed: the symbolism of such a journey is similar to that of a descent among the dead, and takes on the value of an initiation. The golden fleece of the marvelous ram he must bring back represents a talisman of power, even immortality, in Achaean royalty, and is a guarantee of fecundity: we see this with the lamb bearing a golden fleece that appeared in Argos and of which Euripides speaks: the city's herald invites the Mycenaeans to come and "contemplate the apparition that heralds a blessed reign". The golden fleece is in fact the harbinger of Thyestes' reign for the House of Atreides. Such symbolism derives from the magical properties attributed to the skin of the sacrificial animal, particularly the woolly one. According to the authors who recount this legend, this fleece has a golden or purple sheen: it is purple in Simonides of Céos; it is sometimes white, sometimes purple in Apollonius of Rhodes. In its golden or purple sheen, it is a symbol of immortality, enveloping its owner in a living radiance.

René Roux's book confirms that the Golden Fleece represents a royal rite. This is also the sense in which Pindar relates the episode of the Golden Fleece: Jason must return, after a conquest carried out at the risk of his life, worthy of his father's scepter. This is what his uncle Pelias asks of him:

"Consent to accomplish this feat, and I swear that I will yield the scepter and the kingship to you."

- Pindar, Pythics, IV, verse 165.

But this myth also has an initiatory symbolism, since Jason's feat was depicted on the stuccoes of the Pythagorean basilica. The quest for the Golden Fleece thus symbolizes a rite of passage to a higher form of human life.

For Alain Moreau (1994: 144), too, "the golden fleece is doubly linked to sovereignty: Jason will only obtain the kingdom of Iolcos if he brings it back to Pelias; Aietetes loses the kingdom of Aia once Jason has taken possession of the talisman: he is dethroned by his brother Perses."

Historical rapprochement

Calvert Watkins likened the Golden Fleece to the Hittite aegis KUŠkuršaš, which is a skin, as confirmed by the sumerogram. Its qualifier warhui-"hairy, velvety, shaggy"-indicates a fleece similar to the Greek aegis, which is a goatskin. Valérie Faranton and Michel Mazoyer take up this comparison, which is based on three precise concordances: the Hittite aegis hangs from an evergreen tree, as does the fleece from an oak tree; it represents the king's fortune in the Telipinu myth, but the king can lose it; finally, like the golden fleece, it is associated with two movements in opposite directions.

Alchemy

The Souda (10th century) provides the first formal evidence of an alchemical interpretation of the myth of the Golden Fleece:

"The Golden Fleece was not what the fable says it was, but a book written on a skin that taught how to make gold by alchemy."

Eustathius, Pico della Mirandola, Robert Vallensis, Trismosin, Siebmacher, Augurelle, Pierre-Jean Fabre, Vigenère and Pernety, among others, are all in the same vein.

The physician-philosopher Michael Maier, in his Most Secret Arcana, claims to apply the whole story of the Golden Fleece to "the most secret operations peculiar to philosophers, namely golden medicine, the efficacy of which derives from the golden medicine of mind and body".

This type of explanation can be found in the Library of Chemical Philosophers:

"The fable of the golden fleece that was in Colchos could, with more foundation and reason, be used as an experiment and proof of the great work. All the circumstances in this story are so closely related to the operations and effects of the Philosopher's Stone that it cannot reasonably be explained otherwise."

Other

In the myth of Love and Psyche, recounted by Apuleius in L'Âne d'or or The Golden Ass or The Metamorphoses, one of the trials imposed by Venus on Psyche is to bring back a sample of the Golden Fleece from ferocious sheep, which attack human beings during the day. A talking reed advises Psyche to collect, in the evening, bits of their golden wool left clinging to the vegetation.

Much more pragmatic, Strabo gives a geopolitical interpretation of the myth in his Geography (tome 1, chapter 2, 39): "(...) and the riches that Colchis currently derives from its gold, silver and iron mines, give us a good idea of what must have been the real motive behind the Argonauts' expedition, the same motive that had apparently already pushed Phrixus towards the shores of the Phase".

In modern times, commentators have made other connections. In Georgia, for example, the Svanes (Georgian ethnic people living in the mountains of the Great Caucasus), northern mountain people who pan for gold in the rivers of the Caucasus, have always used sheep's fleeces to collect the abundant gold flakes. The legend of the Golden Fleece is set in Colchis, part of present-day Georgia.

These elements are part of the various contributions that have enriched the legend of the Argonauts in historical times, including in particular the Golden Fleece, which probably derives its origin from the use of sheepskins to collect the flakes, and its location in Colchis, a region that produced gold, silver and iron at the time.

Sources

1. Golden Fleece
2. Toison d'or
3. a b c d et e Jean Haudry, Les origines de la légende argonautique, Marie-Ange Julia (dir.) Nouveaux horizons sur l'espace antique et moderne, pp. 109-128, Pessac, Ausonius Editions, 2015.
4. ^ Ancient Greek: Χρυσόμαλλος, romanized: Khrysómallos.
5. ^ 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).
6. ^ Theophane may equally be construed as "appearing as a goddess" or as "causing a god to appear".[1]
7. ^ 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]
8. Higino: Fábulas 188. Ovidio: Las metamorfosis vi, 117.
9. Diodoro Sículo tem o costume de explicar vários mitos gregos de forma racional; nota-se, nesta passagem, a ausência da referência ao Dragão da Cólquida, presente em outras versões do mito.
10. Nubes é a versão romana de Nefele, mãe de Frixo e Hele.