The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles

On the day that the messengers had set out to bring through Greece the word of Jason's going forth in quest of the Golden Fleece the woodcutters made their way up into the forests of Mount Pelion; they began to fell trees for the timbers of the ship that was to make the voyage to far Colchis.

Great timbers were cut and brought down to Pagasae, the harbor of Iolcus. On the night of the day he had helped to bring them down Jason had a dream. He dreamt that she whom he had seen in the forest ways and afterward by the River Anaurus appeared to him. And in his dream the goddess bade him rise early in the morning and welcome a man whom he would meet at the city's gate - a tall and gray-haired man who would have on his shoulders tools for the building of a ship.

He went to the city's gate and he met such a man. Argus was his name. He told Jason that a dream had sent him to the city of Iolcus. Jason welcomed him and lodged him in the king's palace, and that day the word went through the city that the building of the great ship would soon be begun.

But not with the timbers brought from Mount Pelion did Argus begin. Walking through the palace with Jason he noted a great beam in the roof. That beam, he said, had been shown him in his dream; it was from an oak tree in Dodona, the grove of Zeus. A sacred power was in the beam, and from it the prow of the ship should be fashioned. Jason had them take the beam from the roof of the palace; it was brought to where the timbers were, and that day the building of the great ship was begun.

Then all along the waterside came the noise of hammering; in the street where the metalworkers were came the noise of beating upon metals as the smiths fashioned out of bronze armor for the heroes and swords and spears. Every day, under the eyes of Argus the master, the ship that had in it the beam from Zeus's grove was built higher and wider. And those who were building the ship often felt going through it tremors as of a living creature.

When the ship was built and made ready for the voyage a name was given to it--the Argo it was called. And naming themselves from the ship the heroes called themselves the Argonauts. All was ready for the voyage, and now Jason went with his friends to view the ship before she was brought into the water.

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