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00:00Of all the world's great myths, the earliest is the tale of the Hero's Quest.
00:24And one story has been told for more than 3,000 years.
00:30The story of Jason and the Arguments is a classic tale of the Hero's Quest, a sort of ancient Greek Mission Impossible.
00:42It's got all the ingredients of fairytale, heroes and princesses, magic and dragons.
00:49It's got a dark strain of tragedy at its heart.
00:52It was also the story of a sea voyage, a journey into the unknown, to reach the land where the sun rises.
01:05Jason's task, to paraphrase a modern version of the myth, was to boldly go where man had never been before.
01:12The Hero's Quest
01:42Like many Greek myths, the tale begins in bloodshed.
01:54Jason's wicked uncle, Pelias, seizes the throne of the Orkos
01:58and deposes the rightful king, Jason's father.
02:04Please.
02:06Nephew!
02:08To be secure, Pelias must kill Jason.
02:11But the boy is whisked away.
02:17For Jason, the gods plan a different destiny.
02:41So, like Hamlet, or the Lion King, or Harry Potter, the boy knows about death and loss.
02:53He grows up here on Mount Pelion in central Greece, a magic mountain.
03:00It's the summer resort of the gods.
03:05The gods used to move from Olympus and spend the summer here in Pelion.
03:10Scolapius, you call him, Scolapius?
03:12The father of medicine, the god of medicine, yeah.
03:15He lived here.
03:16Awesome.
03:17Yes.
03:18Yes.
03:19It's the mountain of the centaurs, especially the most important and the more centaur hero.
03:25He was the one who taught Achilles.
03:27Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War.
03:30Yes.
03:31Even today, when you talk to Greeks, the gods and heroes are real.
03:43Many people have argued that these stories have some kind of historical basis, because
03:48they seem so rooted in real places, like Mount Pelion here, but you always have to remember
03:53with myths that they mingle fantasy and fairy tale and real life detail in a completely haphazard
04:02and delightful way.
04:03The story of Jason's like that begins with a little boy who has lost his mother and father
04:11being brought up here on Mount Pelion by a kindly centaur, half man, half horse.
04:18From the very beginning, you're entering the world of magic.
04:28In Greek myth, Chiron the centaur was the first practitioner of medicine.
04:34There's plenty of healing herbs here.
04:42Yeah, you can smell it everywhere, can't you?
04:46And Jason's name, a Bronze Age name, means the healer.
04:58Wow, look at that, isn't that amazing?
05:02So this is the cave where Jason was brought up by Kyron.
05:14In ancient times, tales were told of strange rituals up here, how men came to the cave dressed
05:19in freshly killed rams fleeces.
05:21Some said human beings were sacrificed.
05:25So, Stathis, in ancient Greece, there used to be a festival every year here in the summer
05:31where people came up to the cave and dressed up in sheep skins and things like this.
05:38Have you ever heard of any festival like this that survived into modern times?
05:42It was as recent as the third of the century.
05:48A hundred years ago.
05:49Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:50Amazing.
05:51You can imagine it though here, can't you?
06:00So there's a first clue to the ancient beliefs from which Jason's tale is spun.
06:09Like fairy tales, myths express our deepest thoughts, hopes and fears.
06:15But in myths, especially Greek myths, the hero doesn't always live happily ever after.
06:28When he's 20 years old, Jason leaves Mount Pelion to claim his birthright, his father's kingdom.
06:34On the way, he loses a sandal carrying an old woman across a river.
06:39She's his protectress, the goddess Hera, in disguise.
06:44And then Jason heads down into the plain of Iolkos, to his uncle's palace.
06:56Though King Pelias sat upon the throne of Iolkos, he was uneasy.
07:03A prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi had warned him to beware a stranger who would come wearing just one sandal.
07:11So when Jason arrived and boldly claimed the throne, the king was afraid.
07:17The sacred law of hospitality forbade him from harming Jason directly, but Pelias was cunning.
07:25Tell me, young man, he said to Jason, if you were me, and you were faced with a challenger to your throne, what would you do?
07:37Jason replied, I would set him a task that none but the gods could hope to perform.
07:45Very well then, said Pelias.
07:48If you would wear my crown, you must first bring me the golden fleece.
07:56But what was the fleece?
08:08Well, the fleece came from a marvellous golden ram, a gift of the king of the gods Zeus himself.
08:17Ram had flown east to the land where the sun rises.
08:22There the king, son of the sun god, had sacrificed it and hung the fleece in a sacred tree guarded by a dragon.
08:30A wondrous portent in a land no human had ever seen.
08:36Greek tradition set the tale of Jason in the Age of Heroes, the time of the Trojan War, what we call the Mycenaean Age.
09:02Of course, it sounds like fairy tale, but Troy itself was a fairy tale till the archaeologists dug it up.
09:09And in 2001 came another amazing discovery, the Bronze Age palace of Jason Ziolkos, frozen in the moment of its final destruction.
09:23For Dr. Adrimis Sismani, the fruit of a lifetime's quest.
09:32These are new, they haven't been used.
09:38They haven't been used.
09:45So this is a room in the Mycenaean palace of Yolkos, next to the kitchen block, destroyed, nobody's sure what the reason would be, towards 1200 BC, so after the time of the legendary time.
10:05But the marks of the catastrophe everywhere on the walls, a shelf or something like this has fallen down, with these unused pieces of pottery around it.
10:14So what you're looking at is the actual destruction debris of the last Mycenaean palace of Yolkos, in the position where it fell 3,000 more years ago.
10:26It's staggering, isn't it?
10:28So the key question, could this be the palace Jason knew?
10:35Is this the place that the poetic tradition is remembering?
10:38But despite such a wonderful find, when dealing with myths, historians always have to be cautious.
10:53It's very possible to happen.
10:55Dr. Adrimis Sismani is saying, of course, as a professional archaeologist, I can't say this is the palace of Jason until I actually find his name inscribed here.
11:03But all I can say is that this was the great center of Mycenaean power at this time.
11:08So the tale has a place and a time.
11:18In the Late Bronze Age, around 1400 BC, Yolkos was the northernmost Greek kingdom, a seafaring place since prehistory.
11:27If there ever was such an adventure, it surely began here.
11:50But to go to the end of the earth, you need a boat.
11:53And not just any boat.
11:57This is going to be a 50-awed Mycenaean boat, reconstruction of the Argo, made from wood from Mount Pelion.
12:08Its name, Argo, means swift.
12:11The Greeks say it was the first boat to have a name and a personality.
12:23So why are you, why are you putting water on the wood?
12:26Of course we'll have to keep it dry, to keep it wet.
12:29Yeah.
12:30To take the right shade.
12:33So it enables you to bend the wood?
12:35Oh right, yeah, yeah.
12:37Just look at it.
12:38Yeah.
12:39Like pieces of tree just bent.
12:40Like.
12:41And this technique of just taking like three great big pieces of a tree and putting them
12:56together, this is an ancient technique.
12:58It's absolutely mind-blowing, isn't it?
12:59It's so primitive, isn't it?
13:00You put three trees together, you sail it to the Black Sea.
13:05So do you think something like this could sail, you could sail it to the Black Sea?
13:10Yes, of course, yes.
13:11To the ponders?
13:12Yes, of course, to the ponders.
13:13Very strong.
13:14When they build the Argo, they put a piece of wood in from Dodona.
13:20You know the magic wood, which is it?
13:23The magic wood is this, the wood which speaks.
13:27Yeah, yeah.
13:28This is oak.
13:30The magic oak from Dodona.
13:34This is the magic oak from Dodona.
13:36This is the magic oak from Dodona.
13:44All Jason needed now was a crew.
13:58But not just any crew.
14:00He didn't wander the waterfront of Volos looking for deckhands.
14:03The legend, as it's come down to us, is a roll call of every great name from the age of heroes.
14:09The most famous crew that ever was.
14:13This is the monument to the Argo and its crew.
14:18And here's the crew.
14:19All the most famous heroes in Greece.
14:22Hercules, Heracles, Orpheus, Castor.
14:27They're all here.
14:29Kolidevkis, Aesios.
14:34They're like the Magnificent Seven.
14:36Everyone has their great talent or quality.
14:40And down here, Atalante, the great runner.
14:43The girl, the only female member of the crew.
14:51The legend says that Jason sailed from Greece to Kolkis, today's Georgia.
14:56But the way the earliest poets saw it, the Black Sea was part of the great ocean which circled the earth.
15:02It was literally a voyage to the edge of the world.
15:14At the start of the journey, Jason is young, inexperienced in the ways of man.
15:19And as Mount Pelion fades into the distance, he bursts into tears.
15:24There's something strangely unheroic about Jason.
15:29All the things that happened to him almost happened by chance.
15:32You think of the other great Greek heroes.
15:34I mean, Achilles, his great quality is killing people without thinking.
15:39Odysseus.
15:41Wilderness and cunning.
15:43He's always two steps ahead of everybody else.
15:45They're the kind of models by which young men should live their lives by and define themselves as men.
15:52Jason's different.
15:54Jason's not macho.
16:01He's not a killer.
16:03And he's receptive to the power of women.
16:12In fact, Jason's relations with women will be his fate.
16:17As with other great heroes in the world's myths, Gilgamesh, King Arthur, even James Bond,
16:23he achieves his quest only with the help of a divine woman.
16:35And so the journey, as some ancient writers understood it, was also an inward voyage.
16:42A tale of initiation.
16:44And Jason's first test was on the island of Lemnos.
16:59As they approached the island, the Argonauts realized with alarm that a host of warriors had come out to meet them.
17:06To their surprise, though, they soon discovered that the warriors were women.
17:11Their queen, Hypsipile, was the first to speak, blushing in a most unwarlike fashion.
17:18Stranger, she said to Jason.
17:21Do not be afraid.
17:23We are unprotected.
17:25We have lost all our men.
17:27And she told Jason how the women of Lemnos had been cursed by the goddess of love.
17:33And how, as a result, all their men had abandoned them for other women and left the island.
17:38So, she continued, we invite you all to stay here with us.
17:45And if the prospect pleases you, to come to our beds.
17:49Of course, it sounds like another fairy story, but the tale of the Lemnian women was already well known to Homer in the 8th century BC.
18:02The place where it happened, Bronze Age Lemnos, was the earliest town in Europe, and strangely enough, it imported metals from the Black Sea coast on the way to Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece.
18:16It's astonishing to think that Poliocne was founded in the 5th millennium BC.
18:36That's before the pyramids, before Stonehenge.
18:40It was the most advanced Neolithic culture in the Aegean Sea.
18:43And in a volcanic island, it was a metal-working place.
18:48Homer calls it smoke-shrouded Lemnos.
18:51And it lasts all the way through to the Trojan War.
18:54So this was the Lemnos of the Greek myths.
18:58This was the town that the Argonauts came to in the story.
19:02And the place where the Lemnian women received them.
19:08But the Lemnian women, don't forget, had been cursed by the goddess of love.
19:13She'd given them a stink so foul that they repelled all men.
19:18But where did that weird tale come from?
19:22Well, the women in Bronze Age Lemnos were skilled in dyeing cloth.
19:27They used a dye made from the glands of a sea snail mixed with human urine.
19:31It produces the richest colour and worst stink on earth.
19:37A clue to a Bronze Age reality behind the tale?
19:41By making love to the women, the Argonauts broke the curse.
19:46You are all the children of the Argonauts.
19:48Yes, we are the Argonauts.
19:49Yes, we are the Argonauts.
19:51Yes!
19:52By making love to the women, the Argonauts broke the curse.
20:05You are all the children of the Argonautists.
20:08Yes, we're the Argonautists, yes!
20:18But the women of Lemnos had a dark secret.
20:22What they hadn't told Jason was that they'd murdered all their men.
20:28Got them drunk one night, stuffed them in sacks, and thrown them into the sea.
20:37So this is the cliff.
20:39Place where they threw them off.
20:41Petaxa, Greek.
20:42Petaxa.
20:43Throw.
20:43Peta, throw.
20:44Throw. Wow.
20:45So the name of the cliff preserves the legend.
20:48Petaxa is to throw in Greek.
20:50This, in the legend, is the place where the Lemnian women threw them off the cliff into the sea.
20:55As so often in Greek myths, the fairy tale turns out to be strange and cruel.
21:08Queen Ipsipili fell in love with Jason and asked him to stay and see his sons grow up.
21:16But Jason was a hero on a quest, and he had to go on.
21:20So we've had high winds for the last two days, and we couldn't get off the island, but the ferries finally arrived.
21:29In the Bronze Age, the Age of Heroes, the name of the month of May, Ploistio, meant the time when sailing began.
21:39In winter, it was best to stay in harbor.
21:46Even today, few Greeks, unless they have to, venture out of season across the wine-dark sea.
21:54Jason's quest, I'm sure, was a summer voyage.
22:00He wouldn't risk the wrath of Poseidon, the god of the sea.
22:15But as insurance, Jason landed at the island of Samothrace, home of the mysterious great gods,
22:22to get their magic protection before passing beyond the limits of the known.
22:35To reach the Black Sea, the Argonauts now needed to navigate the fierce currents pouring out of the great ocean through the Bosporus.
22:45We're arriving in Istanbul.
23:14Once Constantinople, the greatest city in the world.
23:21Now a great Turkish city, Istanbul has always been the crossroads between Europe and Asia.
23:27It was founded by the Greeks around 700 BC.
23:34In one version of the legend, it was Jason himself who built the first shrine on this spot.
23:40The beginning of one of the great colonizing adventures in history, which opened up the Black Sea and southern Russia to Greek civilization.
23:49So this was built in the middle of the sixth century, and for nearly a thousand years was the main church of the Greek Orthodox world.
24:08The centre of the Greek Christian world that succeeded the world of the ancients.
24:17But in the myth, all that is a dream of the future.
24:24For Jason, the straits of the Bosporus were guarded by a terrifying obstacle that crushed all ships trying to pass.
24:32The clashing rocks.
24:35Only one man knew the secret of how to sail through.
24:38Phineas the Seer, who'd been blinded by the gods for telling too much of the future.
24:44Listen, Jason, said Phineas.
24:54About your destiny, I can only reveal what the gods permit.
24:59For Zeus, the king of the gods, wills it that humanity shall never see all of heaven's design.
25:06But for the clashing rocks, as you approach the cliffs, release a dove to fly on ahead.
25:14The rocks will clash shut.
25:16As they reopen, you must seize your chance and row through with all your might.
25:21But sir, said Jason, will we get safely back to Greece?
25:28That's what we want to know.
25:31My son, said the old man, I can say no more.
25:37But remember this, your best ally is Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
25:42The success of your quest depends on her.
25:45Ask me no more.
25:48So Jason was the first sailor ever to pass the Straits into the new world of the Black Sea.
26:04So once the Argo whooshed through between the clashing rocks, they stayed open forever.
26:21So that's them, according to the story.
26:23The landmark at the end of the Bosphorus.
26:28And ahead of them, for the first time, for any Greek, according to the legend, there was open sea.
26:36A bare horizon.
26:38Glory, your fire inflames men's souls, says a Roman poem on Jason.
26:55You are the siren song that drives men to risk their all.
27:02But are they heroes or mere dreamers?
27:07The golden fleece is a present, first of all, of God to the Greeks.
27:22It is a way of travelling to this new world, which is rich in metals and in the knowledge of working the metals.
27:38So you think they actually got into the Black Sea even in the late Bronze Age, even in the Age of Heroes.
27:45Of course.
27:46But the root story comes from this.
27:47Of course.
27:48Is there a real journey behind it at some point?
27:51Hundreds of journeys.
27:52Hundreds of journeys.
27:53Hundreds of journeys during the late prehistoric, the late Bronze Age, trying to get through the Bosphorus, into the Black Sea, because this was the richest part of the world.
28:07So it's a kind of El Dorado for these early peoples.
28:11Of course.
28:12And all these sagas, and all these tales, and all these poems, and all these tragedies, and all this money, richness, wealth.
28:22They are wealthy people.
28:23Wealthy people.
28:24Wealthy people.
28:25Yeah.
28:26I think that finally became one story.
28:29Okay.
28:30Jason.
28:31Jason's journey along the Black Sea coast is a mix of real geography and fantasy.
28:44The Argonauts pass Amazons and fight off arrow-shooting birds.
28:48But on the way, you can still find traces of what seems like a real voyage.
28:59At one point, Jason lands in what sounds like an ancient industrial estate.
29:03The land of the iron people.
29:09This is where experimental archaeology comes in.
29:18Okay.
29:19I brought with me a magnet.
29:26Isn't that great?
29:33There you are.
29:40There did work iron here.
29:43In fact, the old metal workings are everywhere in the back of these hills.
29:49It's led many people to think that maybe this part of the story doesn't come from the Bronze Age.
29:54Of course.
29:55But from the Iron Age.
29:57It just goes to show you how many layers go into a legend.
30:03That night, we camped at a place the Turks still call Cape Jason, just as the ancients did.
30:19And here, the locals have a great twist to the story.
30:23This, they say, is as far as Jason got, because the Argo sank here,
30:28and Jason and his brothers settled down and married local girls.
30:32There were three ancient Greek brothers who were called Yasson, which is Jason, Gerason, and Samson.
30:52And Yasson stayed here.
30:54Gerason, am I right?
30:56Yes.
30:57Samson, back at the city of Samson, down there.
30:59So it's the local legend.
31:01It's a kind of tale of colonization.
31:02Isn't that interesting?
31:03Really amazing.
31:04Civilizations rise and fall.
31:05Religions change.
31:06But not the human imagination, which hands on the gifts of the past,
31:11almost like a genetic code.
31:25Civilisations rise and fall, religions change,
31:29but not the human imagination,
31:31which hands on the gifts of the past,
31:34almost like a genetic code.
31:39In the abandoned Greek monastery of Sumela,
31:42there's a sacred cave.
31:44Come on, come and look at this.
31:46Isn't that sensational?
31:49Here you can see the Christian world,
31:51which over-painted Jason's pagan universe.
31:55But they still share the same myths,
31:57the divine woman, the supernatural powers,
32:00and the heroes.
32:04You can see Jonah and the whale
32:06looking very like Jason being delivered from the dragon, isn't he?
32:11The hero's task is still to enter the realm of death.
32:14The saints, the heroes.
32:17And by his courage and steadfastness,
32:22gain everlasting fame.
32:26It makes you realise that all the great myths of humanity,
32:29the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece included,
32:32are really about the conflict between good and evil,
32:35and facing up to death.
32:37It's just getting ready to run if they come this way, okay?
32:38It's just getting ready to run if they come this way, okay?
32:42It's just getting ready to run if they come this way, okay?
32:47It's just getting ready to run if they come this way, okay?
32:50I'll just get ready to run if they come this way, okay?
33:10Just before the Georgian border, I stumbled on a bull festival straight out of Jason's world.
33:16You think of all those Greek myths, like Zeus, the king of the gods, takes the form of a bull to seduce Europa.
33:26It's the bull that comes out of the sea to father the minotaur, the bull-headed monster that inhabits the labyrinth.
33:35There's something about our dreams here. Just look at this.
33:41Jason doesn't know it yet, but that's one of the tests that lies ahead.
33:46And so we entered Georgia, ancient Colchis, a land of the Golden Fleece.
34:11Georgia has a wonderfully rich history. For centuries, it's been a bridge between East and West.
34:23And that bridge was first created by the ancient Greeks, who began to found colonies here after 600 B.C.,
34:29as they saw it, following in the footsteps of the Argonauts.
34:34And the Greeks are still here.
34:52This is Michael's mom, and the children are preparing pictures for us.
34:59Oh, my God. You're not going to believe this. Look at this.
35:03Look at this. Do they know any of the people here, or it is?
35:13Of course I know all of them.
35:15No.
35:16Yes, it is my father.
35:17It is my father.
35:18Who?
35:19Who?
35:20The faces of the people.
35:23The lyre player could almost be Orpheus.
35:26There's Atalante, the runner.
35:28And there's young Jason himself, big-boned, open-faced.
35:33Oh, it's fantastic.
35:50After sweeping along the coast of Kolkis, the Argo entered the mouth of the river Phasis.
35:58In early Greek myth, this was the edge of the world.
36:08You see the surf line there, which is the waves meeting the river as it pours out.
36:13We're going to try and get through that.
36:17Today, the Phasis is called the Rhioni.
36:22We've struck land already.
36:27He's just walking across the estuary now, just to see whether there's anywhere where
36:34the water is deep enough for us to get in.
36:41Ancient heroes may have sailed into the Phasis, but, of course, people don't do that today.
36:48We've got ports to the other side.
37:00No problem.
37:01Fantastic.
37:02Can you remember the way out?
37:05Yeah.
37:06Now, strange as it may seem, the Argonauts had got all the way to Kolkis without stopping
37:18to think how they would get hold of the Fleece.
37:22So they held a council of war.
37:24Some of the heroes favored using force, but Jason suggested a more subtle tack.
37:29My friends, he said, you stay here on board while I go and parley with their king.
37:35I'll sound him out, see if he's arrogant and confident in his power, or if he's friendly.
37:42Maybe we can strike a bargain.
37:44In exchange for the Fleece, the heroes of Greece could offer to vanquish his enemies.
37:50To the ancient Greeks, Kolkis was a sinister, alien land, ruled by a cruel king, Aetes,
38:06whose power depended on keeping the Golden Fleece.
38:13They called his city Eia, and they placed it somewhere in the waterways and lakes behind the coast.
38:20But was it a real city?
38:31Needless to say, archaeologists have combed this part of Georgia looking for the city of the sun god.
38:43In the 1870s came rumours of fabulous finds near the town of Varni.
38:47After every torrential rain, out of the hillside were washed gold ornaments, jewels, rings and necklaces.
38:57The whole hill, said one of the newspapers, is full of gold.
39:01The gold of Kolkis even drew the legendary excavator of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann,
39:15the man who found the jewels of Helen and the mask of Agamemnon.
39:19Perhaps Schliemann hoped to find the Golden Fleece itself.
39:34Modern archaeologists have found much more gold at Varni, and a walled native Kolkian city.
39:39So what have you got here? Do you know yet?
39:44Its heyday was from 600 BC, long after the Bronze Age,
39:48but just the time when the Greeks were planting their first colonies here,
39:52when the myth had become fixed in Georgia.
39:55Do you think there could possibly have been an expedition here to this place in the Bronze Age to Kolkis?
40:04Maybe in the myth, some memory preserved about the first explorers of the Black Sea area.
40:11And maybe this is connected with the period of Greek colonization.
40:14In the 8th century, when literally was fixed this myth of the Argonauts or the Golden Fleece country,
40:22it was the Kolkis where it stopped.
40:24The traveling of the smith stopped in Kolkis,
40:27and after this I think Kolkis is this country rich in gold.
40:31The El Dorado of the ancient Greeks.
40:35Fantastic.
40:36It's actually rich in gold.
40:38And it is rich.
40:39It actually was rich in gold.
40:40Rich in gold, yeah.
40:41Wow.
40:42Who were Argonauts, they are a good, well-organized band of robbers.
40:53A band of robbers?
40:55A simple act of piracy?
40:57Could that be the truth behind Jason's quest?
41:00What a nice town, isn't it?
41:01Yeah.
41:02A Roman writer says that in his day, the descendants of King Aetis still ruled here,
41:15and mined gold in Svani, today's Svanetti.
41:19This is Richard.
41:20Richard.
41:21Richard, Richard.
41:22Right, I'm Michael.
41:23Very nice to meet you.
41:24Svanetti is a wild valley up in the Caucasus.
41:30Only days before we arrived, it was still closed to outsiders, and we could only go there with the protection of local families.
41:39So we've been given a few rules.
41:41Don't look at the men for too long in the eye.
41:44Be taken as a threat.
41:45Don't look at the women at all, and never show fear.
41:49Heracles, no doubt, said the same thing to Jason.
42:19This is a place where, in my opinion, Argonauts turned to that side, because that time the routes were going in a different way, not like today.
42:33And this was the main caravan road.
42:36This was?
42:37Which would go to Mestia and everywhere.
42:39Across the Caucasus.
42:40Wow.
42:49Up here, the Greek writer Strabo offers another explanation of the legend.
42:59He says they panned for gold using fleeces.
43:07You create a kind of wooden box.
43:09You put the branches in at the bottom, and when you put the fleece in and pin it down, you put the whole thing into the water,
43:16so the water rushes through it like a little sluice.
43:24This is the gold, like, top quality. We call it Bajavalo.
43:31It's from this river, yes.
43:34Another little clue to add to the myth, isn't it?
43:37All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.
43:39You're welcome.
43:46Hello.
43:47Nice to meet you.
43:48Hello.
43:49Hello.
43:50Hello.
43:51Hi.
43:52Hello.
43:53Hello.
43:54Hi.
43:56Not yet.
43:57Oh, not yet.
43:59Bit early in the day for that.
44:02What brought the soldiers up here?
44:05It's internal troops.
44:07All right.
44:08It's basically police.
44:09For the moment they came to guard you.
44:12Cool. Thank you very much.
44:13Thank you very much.
44:14Yeah.
44:15Well, there was some potential trouble on the road yesterday.
44:18Potential trouble here can rapidly turn to.
44:21AK-47 has been fired.
44:23And several centuries of blood feud.
44:26It was best to send the police in.
44:36Hello.
44:37Hi, guys.
44:38Hello.
44:39Here in Svaneti, you can still get a sense of the Colchis portrayed by the Greek and Roman writers.
44:46It's just fantastic, isn't it?
44:48These towers have been built since ancient times for defence against their own neighbours, against blood feuds carried on for generations.
45:03To the ancient Greeks, this was the very image of the barbarian.
45:10This was the very image of the barbarian.
45:15In a society like that, loyalty to the clan is paramount.
45:19Hospitality is a sacred duty, but also a way of showing your power and your influence.
45:25Women are zealously guarded.
45:27The men rule.
45:28And daughters must obey their fathers absolutely, especially in matters of marriage.
45:35That they give the children of God that are of actually special thanks to him.
45:44Svanetti is so isolated that although they're Christian up here,
46:06songs and beliefs still survive from the pagan past.
46:09Songs like this, an ancient hymn in praise of the sun god,
46:16the sort of thing Jason might have heard.
46:32Bravo!
46:33That's a little like it.
46:35That night, the Argonauts were invited by King Aeetes to a banquet.
46:41As the drink flowed, Jason calmly asked the king for the fleece.
46:45The king reacted with murderous fury.
46:51But remember, the success of Jason's mission will depend on the goddess of love.
46:56Now, the whole story changes in tone.
47:01In fact, it becomes a different story.
47:03It becomes almost a Greek clash with the other, a clash of cultures.
47:12And a new character appears in the story who will take the story over.
47:15A character who will turn out to be one of the greatest characters in all of myth and literature.
47:23The daughter of the king of Colchis, Medea.
47:27Now, an oracle had foretold that if King Aeetes were to lose the fleece,
47:43he should forfeit his throne.
47:46He wanted to kill Jason then and there,
47:48but he could not break the law of hospitality.
47:51So he, too, set Jason a task that none but the gods could hope to fulfill.
47:59In my meadow, I have two fire-breathing bulls, he said.
48:06Yoke them.
48:08Plow the field.
48:09Sow it with dragon's teeth.
48:11And then defeat the army that will spring from the ground.
48:16Do this, and I'll give you the fleece.
48:19The king thought the tasks impossible,
48:23but Aphrodite, the goddess of love, had done her sweet work.
48:28She made the king's daughter, Medea, fall in love with Jason.
48:32That night, Medea visited him and gave him a magic ointment
48:37that made him impervious to the fire of the bulls and the swords of the earth-born men.
48:42In return, Jason promised to be her husband
48:47and to take her back to Greece.
49:00As with all great myths, there are many strands to this tale and many meanings.
49:04The last stage of our journey here in Georgia was to find the fleece itself.
49:10Up in the remote region of Peshavi, you can still visit the sacred grove.
49:29Here they still sacrifice the ram and show the fleece.
49:32And you can still meet Medea's descendants, the women oracles.
49:43They're Christians today, but they did these things in the age of heroes.
49:49And after the sacrifice, they eat the flesh and drink to life.
50:08They do vegetarian, too.
50:30Thank you, thank you.
50:38Jason and Medea enter the sacred grove.
50:43Medea has prepared a magic potion from her herbs,
50:46which she anoints on the eyes of the serpent to make it go to sleep.
50:51And then Jason takes the fleece down from the tree.
50:54In some versions, he actually kills the serpent.
50:56But in one ancient version, he seems to have been swallowed by it.
51:00And he's only regurgitated and brought back to life
51:03by the intervention of the goddess herself.
51:06And maybe that gives us a clue to the original form of the story.
51:10Perhaps, in origin, it's a kind of initiation story
51:14in which the young hero undertakes an impossible quest,
51:18enters the realm of death,
51:20and is redeemed only by the divine woman herself,
51:24whose lover he must become.
51:26So with the golden fleece in his hands,
51:44Jason swears by the everlasting gods
51:46he will be true to Medea forever.
51:48The ancient storytellers told many versions of Jason's return to Greece.
52:18Some took the Argo round the eastern part of the world
52:24and up through the deserts of Africa.
52:29Others, through the frozen wastes of the Arctic,
52:33past Britain and through the pillars of Hercules.
52:38Apollonius says they went up the Danube
52:40and carried the Argo through central Europe to the Mediterranean.
52:48But all agree that they arrived here,
52:51at the little island of Anafi,
52:53which the god Apollo made rise up to save them from a last storm.
52:57And there, you might have thought,
53:05the story ended.
53:07Jason and Medea go back to Greece,
53:10swear on dying love,
53:12and live happily ever after.
53:13But Greek myths are not like that.
53:18It's given to few mortals to live happily ever after.
53:22Human beings can be almost children of the gods.
53:27They can fulfil every oracle,
53:29protected by the queen of the gods herself.
53:32But if you overstep the mark,
53:36if you fail to show due reverence both to the gods
53:39and to your fellow human beings,
53:42if you break your most solemn vows,
53:46then fate will catch up with you,
53:49and your true destiny will be revealed.
53:52So Jason returned to Iolkos
54:03with a golden fleece and his bride, Medea.
54:07His wicked uncle, King Peleus,
54:09was astonished to see him.
54:12But Medea used her magic to destroy Peleus.
54:15She persuaded his daughters
54:17that they could rejuvenate him
54:19if they chopped him up and boiled him in a cauldron.
54:23So Peleus died.
54:25Jason was made king,
54:27and the oracle was fulfilled.
54:30For a while they prospered,
54:32and Medea had three sons.
54:35But the people of Iolkos
54:36were afraid of Medea and her witchcraft,
54:39and in the end,
54:41they drove Jason and his family
54:43into exile.
54:52They came south to Corinth.
55:03This is where the story
55:04enters the most cruel and dark side
55:07of human nature.
55:11It's the bit that they never tell
55:13in the Hollywood and TV versions,
55:15but it's the bit that makes it
55:17a great Greek myth
55:18rather than just a fairy tale.
55:20Here in Corinth,
55:33the famous Jason was made king.
55:39He was offered a beautiful young princess
55:41as a wife,
55:43and he accepted
55:44and broke his solemn promise
55:47to Medea.
55:54Now, of course,
55:55Medea was a larger-than-life character.
55:57She had gods among her ancestors
55:59as well as humans,
56:00and her passions
56:02were correspondingly extreme.
56:05In revenge for what her husband had done,
56:08she murdered their children.
56:17Medea's crime, you might think,
56:20is a pure creation of the poets.
56:23And so it is,
56:25except for a strange discovery
56:27in a lonely bay
56:28just over the water
56:30from Corinth.
56:32The ancients connected those events
56:35with a headland
56:37where there was
56:40a temple to Hera,
56:42the queen of the gods,
56:44a temple dedicated
56:45by Medea herself,
56:47and the tomb
56:48of the murdered children,
56:50and a weird statue
56:52of a frightening woman
56:53simply known
56:54as the Terror.
56:58And Medea's punishment?
57:14She was immortal,
57:16and the gods protect their own.
57:19They took her back
57:20to Mount Olympus
57:21and gave her a new husband,
57:23the great Achilles himself,
57:25a true hero.
57:31And as for Jason,
57:33well, he ends the story
57:35as he began it,
57:37alone in the world
57:38with one sandal.
57:40And he wanders back to Iolkos
57:42to the thing that made his fame,
57:45his old boat,
57:46the Argo itself,
57:48whose rotting hulk
57:49was now lying on display
57:51by the seashore.
57:53And sitting,
57:54weeping in its shadow,
57:56the magic beam,
57:58the speaking prow,
58:00crashes down on his head
58:01and kills him.
58:03Made by the gods,
58:06destroyed by the gods,
58:08his destiny
58:09had been fulfilled.
58:10one of her own
58:13before the end
58:15to the moonlight
58:15was born,
58:35theوتria-hulk
58:36and this lady