apart with the help of Athena, and from that day they
became fixed and harmless. Further on, they came in sight of Mount
Caucasus, saw the eagle which preyed on the vitals of Prometheus, and
heard the sufferer's woeful cries. So their journey was accomplished,
and they arrived at AEa, and the palace of King AEetes.

When the king heard the errand of the heroes he was moved against them,
and refused to give up the fleece except on terms which he thought
Jason durst not comply with. Two bulls, snorting fire, with feet of
brass, Jason was required to yoke, and with them plow a field and sow
the land with dragon's teeth. Here the heavenly powers came to the
hero's aid, and Hera and Athena prayed Aphrodite to send the shaft of
Cupid upon Medea, the youthful daughter of the king. Thus it came about
that Medea conceived a great passion for the young hero, and with the
magic which she knew she made for him a salve. The salve rendered his
body invulnerable. He yoked the bulls, and ploughed the field, and sowed
the dragon's teeth. A crop of armed men sprang from the sowing, but
Jason, prepared for this marvel by Medea, threw among them a stone which
she had given him, whereupon they fell upon and slew one another.

But AEetes still refused to fetch the fleece, plotting secretly to burn
the Argo and kill the heroic Argonauts. Medea came to their succor, and
by her black art lulled to sleep the dragon which guarded the fleece.
They seized the pelt, boarded the Argo, and sailed away, taking Medea
with them. When her father followed in pursuit, in the madness of her
love for Jason she slew her brother whom she had with her, and strewed
the fragments of his body upon the wave. The king stopped to recover
them and give them burial, and thus the Argonauts escaped. But the anger
of the gods at this horrible murder led the voyagers in expiation a
wearisome way homeward. For they sailed through the waters of the
Adriatic, the Nile, the circumfluous stream of the earth, passed Scylla
and Charybdis and the Island of the Sun, to Crete and AEgina and many
lands, before the Argo rode once more in Thessalian waters.

The legend is one of the oldest and most familiar tales of Greece.
Whether it is all poetic myth, or had a certain foundation in fact, it
is impossible now to say. The date, the geography, the heroes, are
mythical; and as in the Homeric poems, the supernatural and seeming
historical are so blended that the union is indissoluble by