shield and spear. For a
whole day afterwards neither sword nor fire should hurt him, and he would
thus be able to master the bulls. So he found it; he made them draw the
plough, and then he sowed the teeth, which came up, like those sown by
Cadmus, as armed men, who began to attack him; but, as Medea had bidden
him, he threw a stone among them, and they began to fight with one
another, so that he could easily kill the few who spared each other.

Still AEetes refused to give him the fleece, and was about to set fire to
the Argo, and kill the crew; but Medea warned Jason in time, and led him
to the spot where it was nailed against a tree. Orpheus lulled the
guardian dragon to sleep with his lyre, while Jason took down the fleece;
and Medea joined them, carrying in her arms her little brother, whom she
had snatched from his bed with a cruel purpose, for when her father took
alarm and gave chase, she cut the poor child to pieces, and strewed his
limbs on the stream of the Phasis, so that, while her father waited to
collect them, the Argo had time to sail away.

[Picture: The Argo] It did not return by the same route, but went to the
north, and came to the isle of the goddess Circe, who purified Jason and
Medea from the blood of the poor boy. Then they came to the isle of the
Sirens, creatures like fair maidens, who stood on the shore singing so
sweetly that no sailor could resist the charm; but the moment any man
reached the shore, they strangled him and sucked his blood. Warned by
Medea, Orpheus played and sang so grandly as to drown their fatal song,
and the Argo came out into the Mediterranean somewhere near Trinacria,
the three-cornered island now called Sicily, where they had to pass
between two lofty cliffs. In a cave under one of these lived a monster
called Scylla, with twelve limbs and six long necks, with a dog's head to
each, ready each to seize a man out of every ship that passed; but it was
safer to keep on her side than to go to the other cliff, for there a
water-witch named Charybdis lived in a whirlpool, and was sure to suck
the whole ship in, and swallow it up. However, for her husband Peleus'
sake, Thetis and her sister Nereids came and guided the Argo safely
through.

When the crew returned to Iolcus, they had only been absent four months;
and Jason gave the fleece to his uncle Pelias, and dedicated the Argo to
Neptune. He found his father AEson grown very old, but Medea undertook
to restore him