THE FLEECE AS PURE MYTH
The simplest explanation for the Golden Fleece is also the one that is least frequently cited: That is it simply the product of the human imagination, a cypher invented from poetic fancy. In this view, the Fleece may have had some far-away, half-remembered inspiration, but in the form we have it today, it is simply an imaginary creation, the work of poets and bards, not deep-rooted archaeological or religious-historical truths.
Biblioteca Classica
John Dymock and Thomas Dymock
1833
That the story of the golden fleece is fiction, need scarcely be remarked. Modern ingenuity has been frequently exerted to discover a satisfactory solution of this part of fabulous history. Hitherto, however, no explanation approaching to certainty, has yet been communicated to the public. Some have maintained that the Argo had the figure of a golden ram on the prow, and this they consider sufficient to account for the fiction, although the conjecture is by no means very probable. Others maintain that the Colchans collected the gold dust which the rivers descending from Mount Caucasus brought down, by spreading fleeces at the bottom of the rivers near their mouths, in which the particles of gold remained, and thus they acquired great quantities of that precious metal. Granting that this was a practice of the Colchans, it does not solve the difficulty; besides, that manner of collecting gold was not confined to Asia, but also practised in Europe. In the region of fiction, the investigation of truth seldom attains any satisfactory result. There is often no certain fact to guide the inquirer, or to ascertain in what way he can distinguish truth from fiction.
Source: John Dymock and Thomas Dymock, Biblioteca Classica (London: Longman, 1833), s.v. Vellus (Aureum), 897.
John Dymock and Thomas Dymock
1833
That the story of the golden fleece is fiction, need scarcely be remarked. Modern ingenuity has been frequently exerted to discover a satisfactory solution of this part of fabulous history. Hitherto, however, no explanation approaching to certainty, has yet been communicated to the public. Some have maintained that the Argo had the figure of a golden ram on the prow, and this they consider sufficient to account for the fiction, although the conjecture is by no means very probable. Others maintain that the Colchans collected the gold dust which the rivers descending from Mount Caucasus brought down, by spreading fleeces at the bottom of the rivers near their mouths, in which the particles of gold remained, and thus they acquired great quantities of that precious metal. Granting that this was a practice of the Colchans, it does not solve the difficulty; besides, that manner of collecting gold was not confined to Asia, but also practised in Europe. In the region of fiction, the investigation of truth seldom attains any satisfactory result. There is often no certain fact to guide the inquirer, or to ascertain in what way he can distinguish truth from fiction.
Source: John Dymock and Thomas Dymock, Biblioteca Classica (London: Longman, 1833), s.v. Vellus (Aureum), 897.
Invention: The Master-Key to Progress
Bradley Allen Fiske
1921
The myths invented by the Greeks in their prehistoric period were the products of not only imagination but construction. Each myth was a perfectly connected story, complete in all necessary detail, admirably put together, and told in charming language. The story of Jason's Argonautic Expedition in search of the Golden Fleece cannot be surpassed in any of the elements that make a story good; Penelope is still the model of conjugal devotion, and Achilles the ideal warrior; Poseidon, or his Roman successor, Neptune, still rules the waves; Aphrodite, or Venus, calls up more vividly before our minds than any other name the vision of feminine beauty even to this day. Hercules exemplifies muscular strength, and Apollo still typifies that which is most beautiful in manliness.
The influence of the Grecian myths, "pure inventions" as they were, in the sense that they were fictitious and not true, has been explained and demonstrated at great length and with abundant enthusiasm by poets and scholars for many centuries. They have been generally regarded as inventions, but nevertheless as quite different from such inventions as the steam-engine or the printing press. The present author wishes to point out that the mental processes by which both myths and engines were created were alike, and that the inventions differed mainly in the uses to which they were put.
Source: Bradley Allen Fiske, Invention: The Master-Key to Progress (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1921), 53-54.
Bradley Allen Fiske
1921
The myths invented by the Greeks in their prehistoric period were the products of not only imagination but construction. Each myth was a perfectly connected story, complete in all necessary detail, admirably put together, and told in charming language. The story of Jason's Argonautic Expedition in search of the Golden Fleece cannot be surpassed in any of the elements that make a story good; Penelope is still the model of conjugal devotion, and Achilles the ideal warrior; Poseidon, or his Roman successor, Neptune, still rules the waves; Aphrodite, or Venus, calls up more vividly before our minds than any other name the vision of feminine beauty even to this day. Hercules exemplifies muscular strength, and Apollo still typifies that which is most beautiful in manliness.
The influence of the Grecian myths, "pure inventions" as they were, in the sense that they were fictitious and not true, has been explained and demonstrated at great length and with abundant enthusiasm by poets and scholars for many centuries. They have been generally regarded as inventions, but nevertheless as quite different from such inventions as the steam-engine or the printing press. The present author wishes to point out that the mental processes by which both myths and engines were created were alike, and that the inventions differed mainly in the uses to which they were put.
Source: Bradley Allen Fiske, Invention: The Master-Key to Progress (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1921), 53-54.
Mythology
Edith Hamilton
1942
When the stories were being shaped, we are given to understand, little distinction had been made between the real and the unreal. The imagination was vividly alive and not checked by reason.
Source: Edith Hamilton, Mythology (New York: Mentor Books, 1953), 13.
Edith Hamilton
1942
When the stories were being shaped, we are given to understand, little distinction had been made between the real and the unreal. The imagination was vividly alive and not checked by reason.
Source: Edith Hamilton, Mythology (New York: Mentor Books, 1953), 13.
Black Sea Coast
Erla Zwingle
2002
Jason never existed. And so he had to be invented.
Source: Erla Zwingle, "Black Sea Coast: Crucible of the Gods," National Geographic, Sept. 2002, 80.
Erla Zwingle
2002
Jason never existed. And so he had to be invented.
Source: Erla Zwingle, "Black Sea Coast: Crucible of the Gods," National Geographic, Sept. 2002, 80.
Myth and the Modern Problem
Matthew Kane Sterenberg
2007
The wood with silver leaves, the ram with a golden fleece and the dragon with fire in its belly were all products of the human tendency to remake the world through imagination.
Source: Matthew Kane Sterenberg, Myth and the Modern Problem: Mythic Thinking in Twentieth-Century Britain (Northwestern University, 2007), 150.
Matthew Kane Sterenberg
2007
The wood with silver leaves, the ram with a golden fleece and the dragon with fire in its belly were all products of the human tendency to remake the world through imagination.
Source: Matthew Kane Sterenberg, Myth and the Modern Problem: Mythic Thinking in Twentieth-Century Britain (Northwestern University, 2007), 150.
