‘But do remember, if you ever reach your home. Remember the name of Medea, and I for my part will remember you when you are far away. But now, pray tell me where you live. Where are you bound for when you sail across the sea from here? Will your journey take you near the wealthy city of Orchomenus or the Isle of Aea? Tell me too about that girl you mentioned, who won such fame for herself, the daughter of Pasiphae my father’s sister.’

As he listened to this and noted her tears, unconscionable Love stole into the heart of Jason too. He replied: ‘Of one thing I am sure. If I escape and live to reach Achaea; if Acetes does not set us a still more formidable task; never by night or day shall I forget you.’

Jason anoints himself and defeats the bulls and earthborn men grown from the teeth. He then sets his sights on the golden fleece which is protected by an enormous serpent. He and Medea carefully make their approach.

A path led them to the sacred wood, where they were making for the huge oak on which the fleece was hung, bright as a cloud incarnadined by the fiery beams of the rising sun. But the serpent with his sharp unsleeping eyes had seen them coming and now confronted them, stretching out his long neck and hissing terribly. The high banks of the river and the deep recesses of the wood threw back the sound, and far away from Titanian Aea it reached the ears of Colchians living by the outfall of Lycus, the river that parts from the loud waters of Araxes to unite his sacred stream with that of Phasis and flow in company with him till both debouch into the Caucasian Sea. Babies sleeping in their mothers’ arms were startled by the hiss, and their anxious mothers waking in alarm hugged them closer to their breasts.