Colchis

Colchis was a region at the eastern end of the Black Sea, in the south of the Caucasus, in the area of modern Georgia. In Greek myth it was the land of King Aeetes, the son of Helios, and the place where the Golden Fleece hung in a grove guarded by a dragon. It was the goal of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts.

The Land of Aeetes

The ruler of Colchis in the myths was Aeetes, the son of Helios and the Oceanid Perseis, and the brother of Circe (Hesiod, Theogony 956–958). He married Idyia, another daughter of Ocean, and their daughter was Medea (Theogony 958–962). In Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica 3.215–234) his palace at the city of Aea was the work of Hephaestus, with four fountains flowing with milk, wine, oil and water, and Hephaestus had also made for him the bronze-footed bulls that breathed fire and the plough of adamant. Medea, his daughter, was a priestess of Hecate (3.251–252). Diodorus (4.45) gives a different family: Aeetes and Perses were the two sons of Helios, Aeetes king of Colchis and Perses of the Tauric Chersonese; Aeetes married his niece Hecate, Perses’ daughter, and Circe and Medea were their daughters. In this account Aeetes, warned by an oracle that he would die when strangers carried off the fleece, sacrificed all strangers who landed, and Medea secretly saved them (4.46–47).

Phrixus and the Golden Fleece

The fleece came to Colchis before Jason. Phrixus, fleeing from Boeotia on the golden ram with his sister Helle, who fell into the sea on the way, landed in Colchis, sacrificed the ram to Zeus Phyxius and gave its fleece to Aeetes, who nailed it to an oak in a grove of Ares. Aeetes gave Phrixus his daughter Chalciope in marriage, and their sons Argus, Melas, Phrontis and Cytisorus were born in Colchis (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.1).

Apollonius places the Argonauts’ arrival at the mouth of the river Phasis (2.1260–1285), where Jason poured libations of wine into the stream to win the favour of the land. The dragon that guarded the fleece in the grove of Ares was said never to sleep (2.1268–1270; 4.123–166).

The Argonauts in Colchis

In the myth of the Argonauts, Jason was sent to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece by Pelias, the king of Iolcus, who had taken the throne from his half-brother Aeson, Jason’s father. Jason organised the expedition and sailed with his shipmates in the Argo. At Colchis, Aeetes would give him the fleece only if he first passed a number of trials: to yoke the brazen-footed, fire-breathing bulls that Hephaestus had given Aeetes, to plough a field with them, to sow dragon’s teeth there, and to defeat the armed men who came up from the ground (Apollodorus 1.9.23). The whole voyage is told on the Argonauts page.

Medea fell in love with Jason after the intervention of Hera and Athena, who had asked Aphrodite to send Eros (Apollonius 3.1–167). She gave him a drug to protect him from the bulls’ fire, and he overcame the earth-born men by throwing a stone among them so that they killed each other (Apollonius 3.1246–1390). Medea then put the dragon to sleep, and Jason took the fleece (Apollonius 4.1–162).

Flight from Colchis

When Aeetes found what Medea had done, he set out in pursuit. Apollodorus (1.9.24) says that, when she saw him close, Medea killed her brother Apsyrtus and cut him into pieces which she threw into the sea; Aeetes stopped to gather the limbs, buried them, and named the place Tomi. Apollonius (4.452–481) tells instead that Jason killed him in an ambush on an island of Artemis that Medea had arranged, and that his bones still lay there among the Apsyrtians. In both versions she left her home for ever and went with Jason to Greece. Because of the killing, the Argonauts later sought purification from Circe, the sister of Aeetes, at Aeaea (Apollonius 4.552–749).

Colchis and Georgia

The Greeks knew Colchis as a real country on the Black Sea coast, in the area of the river Phasis. Herodotus (2.104) believed that the Colchians were descended from Egyptian soldiers left behind by the pharaoh Sesostris, and Strabo (11.2.19) reports that the mountain streams of the country carried gold, which the natives caught in fleecy sheepskins, and suggests that this was the origin of the Golden Fleece. Today the region corresponds to western Georgia, and the name Colchis is still used for it.

See Also: Jason, Argonauts, Golden Fleece, Phrixus, Pelias, Medea, Aeetes, Helios, Circe