“Be witness now thy dear head and mine, that surely I will give thee the gift and deceive thee not, if thou wilt strike with thy shaft Aeetes’ daughter.”

She spoke, and he gathered up his dice, and having well counted them all threw them into his mother’s gleaming lap.  And straightway with golden baldric he slung round him his quiver from where it leant against a tree-trunk, and took up his curved bow.  And he fared forth through the fruitful orchard of the palace of Zeus.  Then he passed through the gates of Olympus high in air; hence is a downward path from heaven; and the twin poles rear aloft steep mountain tops—­the highest crests of earth, where the risen sun grows ruddy with his first beams.  And beneath him there appeared now the life-giving earth and cities of men and sacred streams of rivers, and now in turn mountain peaks and the ocean all around, as he swept through the vast expanse of air.

Now the heroes apart in ambush, in a back-water of the river, were met in council, sitting on the benches of their ship.  And Aeson’s son himself was speaking among them; and they were listening silently in their places sitting row upon row:  “My friends, what pleases myself that will I say out; it is for you to bring about its fulfilment.  For in common is our task, and common to all alike is the right of speech; and he who in silence withholds his thought and his counsel, let him know that it is he alone that bereaves this band of its home-return.  Do ye others rest here in the ship quietly with your arms; but I will go to the palace of Aeetes, taking with me the sons of Phrixus and two comrades as well.  And when I meet him I will first make trial with words to see if he will be willing to give up the golden fleece for friendship’s sake or not, but trusting to his might will set at nought our quest.  For so, learning his frowardness first from himself, we will consider whether we shall meet him in battle, or some other plan shall avail us, if we refrain from the war-cry.  And let us not merely by force, before putting words to the test, deprive him of his own possession.  But first it is better to go to him and win his favour by speech.  Oftentimes, I ween, does speech accomplish at need what prowess could hardly carry through, smoothing the path in manner befitting.  And he once welcomed noble Phrixus, a fugitive from his stepmother’s wiles and the sacrifice prepared by his father.  For all men everywhere, even the most shameless, reverence the ordinance of Zeus, god of strangers, and regard it.”

Thus he spake, and the youths approved the words of Aeson’s son with one accord, nor was there one to counsel otherwise.  And then he summoned to go with him the sons of Phrixus, and Telamon and Augeias; and himself took Hermes’ wand; and at once they passed forth from the ship beyond the reeds and the water to dry land, towards the rising ground of the plain.  The plain, I wis, is called Circe’s; and here in line grow many willows and osiers, on whose topmost branches hang corpses bound with cords.  For even now it is an abomination with the Colchians to burn dead men with fire; nor is it lawful to place them in the earth and raise a mound above, but to wrap them in untanned oxhides and suspend them from trees far from the city.  And so earth has an equal portion with air, seeing that they bury the women; for that is the custom of their land.