When Jason arrived in Colchis King Aeetes greeted him and said, “Golden Fleece?
Sure, you can have the Golden Fleece, only you gotta do three itsy-bitsy chores.”
Naturally, these chores were doozies.
Luckily, the Princess Medea – and this is the way it always happens –fell in love with Jason and helped him out.
She said "I'll help you get the Golden Fleece, but you gotta marry me." Jason was all like, "Okey-dokey," but secretly he was thinking if something better came along later, he could always dump her. (This was a big mistake.) For Jason’s first task, he had to plow a field with fire-breathing bulls.
Trying to plow anything with a bull is a bad idea, especially if it breathes fire.
1 The flames did not harm Jason because of a special salve Medea had given him, so he lived to perform his second task which was sowing a bagful of dragon’s teeth.
This does not sound like such a big deal, except if you know anything about dragon’s teeth, you know if you throw one on the ground, a soldier is bound to spring up.
So Jason sowed the dragon’s teeth, and presto!
Suddenly there’s an entire battalion armed and ready to kill them.
But these soldier were really stupid – you heard the expression “born yesterday,” well, they were born more recently than that, so, following Medea’s advice, Jason threw a stone into the middle of them.
The soldiers turned to face it and hacked each other to pieces.
Next Jason had to overcome the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece.
Using another potion, Medea put the dragon to sleep.
2 Before they set sail, Medea invited her brother Apsyrtus, “Hey, why don’t you come along too.”
Medea never invited Apsyrtus anywhere, so naturally he jumped at the chance.
When King Aeetes’ ships pursued them, Medea killed Apyrtus and threw his body, one piece at a time, overboard.
Aeetes’ ships had to slow down to retrieve the prince’s corpse, giving Medea and Jason time to escape.
1. Plowing a field with a fire-farting bull would be even worse, but Aeetes didn't have one of those.
2. Which seems sort of anti-climactic.
