THE FLEECE AS PURPLE
AND OTHER TYPES OF CLOTH AND COMMERCE
In the ancient world, the most valuable fabric dye was Tyrian purple, made from the ground shells of the murex, a type of mollusc. The color of Tyrian purple was a sort of deep, dark red, leading to modern translations of terms referring to it as both "purple" and "red." In the ancient world, purple typically referred to this dark red color rather than the secondary color made from blue and red we today call purple. Due to the expense of the dyed fabric, in Roman times it was used as the color of the vestments of the emperor. The first reference to the Golden Fleece as made of purple occurs in a preserved fragment of the poet Simonides. This brief mention would spawn more than 2,500 years of specualtion and theories. |
Ancient Sources
Simonides
556-468 BCE
Scholiast on Euripides' Medea:
Some call it all-gold [the Golden Fleece], others purple. Simonides in his hymn to Poseidon says it was dyed with the sea-purple.
Source: David Campbell, Greek Lyric: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others, Greek Lyric Vol. III (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 199.
Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica:
Many have called it [sc. the fleece] golden, and Apollonius has followed them, but Simonides sometimes calls it white, sometimes purple.
Source: David Campbell, Greek Lyric: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others, Greek Lyric Vol. III (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 199.
556-468 BCE
Scholiast on Euripides' Medea:
Some call it all-gold [the Golden Fleece], others purple. Simonides in his hymn to Poseidon says it was dyed with the sea-purple.
Source: David Campbell, Greek Lyric: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others, Greek Lyric Vol. III (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 199.
Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica:
Many have called it [sc. the fleece] golden, and Apollonius has followed them, but Simonides sometimes calls it white, sometimes purple.
Source: David Campbell, Greek Lyric: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others, Greek Lyric Vol. III (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 199.
Some scholars have connected this with the ancient practice of dying wool purple or red, as Virgil relates in Georgics 3 and in the Bible in Exodus 25:5, when God demands an offering of precious goods:
Virgil, Georgics 3.305ff.
These goats, too, we must guard with no lighter care, and not less will be the profit, albeit the fleeces of Miletus, steeped in Tyrian purple, are bartered for a high price.
Source: Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, trans.Fairclough (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916).
These goats, too, we must guard with no lighter care, and not less will be the profit, albeit the fleeces of Miletus, steeped in Tyrian purple, are bartered for a high price.
Source: Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, trans.Fairclough (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916).
Exodus 25:3-7
These are the offerings you are to receive from them: gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows; acacia wood; olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece. (New International Version)
These are the offerings you are to receive from them: gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows; acacia wood; olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece. (New International Version)
Modern Theories
Based on these sources, modern theorists, primarily those who specialize in ancient commerce, have speculated that the Golden Fleece was in either purple-dyed wool, the secret to dyeing wool purple, or symbolic of commerce between Colchis and Greece whereby gold was exchanged for purple-dyed fleeces (in one direction or the other).
Of the Early Use of Wool in Other Countries
Thomas Hale
1756
All old historians mention the care of flocks, and value of their wool: the Greeks used it for the purposes of clothing, and they refer to times much earlier than their own, as familiar in the same use; the Tyrian purple was employed in dyeing woollen cloth, and the early expedition of the Argonauts to Colchis for what was called the golden fleece, was no more than a voyage in search of this commodity. Naturalists may suppose their voyage was in search of gold, and the adepts pretend the secret of the philosopher's stone was couched under this mystery; but plain reason and the most authentic accounts of this transaction say nothing more than this: that the people of Colchis understood the management of sheep, and the manufacturing of their wool, better than any other nation of that time, and that Jason and his partners in that expedition, after encountering many dangers at sea, brought back a quantity of the wool, and a number of the natives to manage the same article in their country. The city of Corinth became afterwards a general mart for wool; and after Pompey had dispersed the pirates, the same article was a very considerable branch of the commerce carried along the coasts of the Mediterranean.
Source: Thomas Hale, The Compleat Body of Husbandry, vol. 3, 2nd. ed. (London: Thomas Osborne, 1768), 292.
Thomas Hale
1756
All old historians mention the care of flocks, and value of their wool: the Greeks used it for the purposes of clothing, and they refer to times much earlier than their own, as familiar in the same use; the Tyrian purple was employed in dyeing woollen cloth, and the early expedition of the Argonauts to Colchis for what was called the golden fleece, was no more than a voyage in search of this commodity. Naturalists may suppose their voyage was in search of gold, and the adepts pretend the secret of the philosopher's stone was couched under this mystery; but plain reason and the most authentic accounts of this transaction say nothing more than this: that the people of Colchis understood the management of sheep, and the manufacturing of their wool, better than any other nation of that time, and that Jason and his partners in that expedition, after encountering many dangers at sea, brought back a quantity of the wool, and a number of the natives to manage the same article in their country. The city of Corinth became afterwards a general mart for wool; and after Pompey had dispersed the pirates, the same article was a very considerable branch of the commerce carried along the coasts of the Mediterranean.
Source: Thomas Hale, The Compleat Body of Husbandry, vol. 3, 2nd. ed. (London: Thomas Osborne, 1768), 292.
Commentary on Exodus 25:5
Adam Clarke
1837
It is a fact attested by many respectable travellers, that in the Levant sheep are often to be met with that have red or violet-coloured fleeces. And almost all ancient writers speak of the same thing. Homer describes the rams of Polyphemus is having a violet coloured fleece.
Homer, Odyssey 9.425
Rams there were, well-fed and thick of fleece, fine beasts and large, with wool dark as the violet.
Pliny, Aristotle, and others mention the same. And from facts of this kind it is very probable that the fable of the golden fleece had its origin.
Source: The Holy Bible, vol. 1, ed. Adam Clarke (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1837), 426.
Note: A standard English translation has been substituted for the Greek text of Homer.
Adam Clarke
1837
It is a fact attested by many respectable travellers, that in the Levant sheep are often to be met with that have red or violet-coloured fleeces. And almost all ancient writers speak of the same thing. Homer describes the rams of Polyphemus is having a violet coloured fleece.
Homer, Odyssey 9.425
Rams there were, well-fed and thick of fleece, fine beasts and large, with wool dark as the violet.
Pliny, Aristotle, and others mention the same. And from facts of this kind it is very probable that the fable of the golden fleece had its origin.
Source: The Holy Bible, vol. 1, ed. Adam Clarke (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1837), 426.
Note: A standard English translation has been substituted for the Greek text of Homer.
Taking Ancient Mythology Economically
Morris Silver
1992
...the story of the Argonauts reflects a trade pattern dating to the second half of the second millennium in which Greek wool/cloth was purple-dyed at Lemnos and then exchanged for the gold of Kolchis on the Black Sea.
Source: Morris Silver, Taking Ancient Mythology Economically (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 151.
Morris Silver
1992
...the story of the Argonauts reflects a trade pattern dating to the second half of the second millennium in which Greek wool/cloth was purple-dyed at Lemnos and then exchanged for the gold of Kolchis on the Black Sea.
Source: Morris Silver, Taking Ancient Mythology Economically (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 151.
Related Theories
Similar to the theory that the Fleece was an actual commodity of trade are three other theories: 1. that the Fleece was a different type of cloth, called byssus, 2. that it was a type of yellow-wooled sheep native to Georgia (Colchis), and 3. that it symbolized commerce between Greece and the Black Sea.
1. Byssus or Silk
Byssus is a type of extremely fine linen cloth made from fibers spun by molluscs. Also called "sea silk," it was highly prized and valuable in the Middle Ages, primarily because it was light and exceedingly white. Strangely, most recent references to the theory that the Golden Fleece was made of byssus cite "many historians" or "some" people as thinking it, usually without a firm attribution. As best I can tell, the theory dates back to the early nineteenth century, when J. Hager attempted to prove that the Golden Fleece indicated Greek contact with China, arguing that the Fleece was byssus, that byssus was in fact silk, and silk was Chinese. As discussed in a review in the Classical Journal for 1810:
Byssus is a type of extremely fine linen cloth made from fibers spun by molluscs. Also called "sea silk," it was highly prized and valuable in the Middle Ages, primarily because it was light and exceedingly white. Strangely, most recent references to the theory that the Golden Fleece was made of byssus cite "many historians" or "some" people as thinking it, usually without a firm attribution. As best I can tell, the theory dates back to the early nineteenth century, when J. Hager attempted to prove that the Golden Fleece indicated Greek contact with China, arguing that the Fleece was byssus, that byssus was in fact silk, and silk was Chinese. As discussed in a review in the Classical Journal for 1810:
Semiramis florished before Jacob, and in her reign byssus was invented; this, which afforded materials for the richest garments, has often been used to designate silk. The royal apparel, which Mordecai received from King Ahasuerus, was, without doubt, says Dr. H. a Medic garment [...] Jason then conceived the design of seeking in Asia the famous golden fleece; in his time lived Medea, princess of Colchis, to whom the Medic habit has been ascribed. Jason went into Colchis and into Media, and it appears that the golden fleece was the Medic habit. [...] it may be said, that [Jason] went to seek a fleece and not silk, now the ancients called silk a fleece. [...] Silk, therefore, might have been this fleece; in its natural color it resembles gold; the raw silk often appears like threads of gold; and if ears of corn, if light colored ringlets, are denominated golden, surely the poets might give to silk the title of a golden fleece. In the time of Aurelian silk was equal in price to gold; and the epithet derived from gold seems highly applicable to silk, when we consider the admirable union of both in the brocades of Persia, manufactured in very early ages.
Source: Review of Pantheon Chinois by J. Hager, The Classical Journal 1, no. 2 (June 1810): 179-181.
Source: Review of Pantheon Chinois by J. Hager, The Classical Journal 1, no. 2 (June 1810): 179-181.
Modern adherents of this theory are typically scholars with a specialization in oceanography, molluscs, and related topics. Jacques Cousteau supported the theory in his 1975 book, The Riches of the Sea:
Byssus was first woven into cloth in the Kingdom of Colchis on the Black Sea. Jason and the Argonauts called the elusive golden fleece"Colchis," giving rise to the modern theory that the fleece was made from byssus.
Source: Jacques Cousteau, The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau. Vol. 17: The Riches of the Sea (Danbury Press, 1975), 54.
Source: Jacques Cousteau, The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau. Vol. 17: The Riches of the Sea (Danbury Press, 1975), 54.
2. Yellow Wool
One current theory that pops up from time to time in archaeological journalsm, usually to be dismissed, is that Colchian sheep may have a genetic trait that gives their wool a tawny (hence golden) color. M. Ninck first proposed this in 1921, and so the theory that the Fleece represents a special type of Colchian sheep is often claimed as a modern theory, but it too has older antecedents, such as the following 1839 discussion of the Fleece as fine wool, or 1836 discussion of sheep as the wealth of Colchis:
One current theory that pops up from time to time in archaeological journalsm, usually to be dismissed, is that Colchian sheep may have a genetic trait that gives their wool a tawny (hence golden) color. M. Ninck first proposed this in 1921, and so the theory that the Fleece represents a special type of Colchian sheep is often claimed as a modern theory, but it too has older antecedents, such as the following 1839 discussion of the Fleece as fine wool, or 1836 discussion of sheep as the wealth of Colchis:
The Greek poets have written the most absurd fables on the golden fleece, from which we here deduce the historical part. Numerous herds of sheep and the fine wool of their fleece, produced a treasure to Aeetes, king of Aea, the capital of Colchis, a country of Asia, (now Mingrelia.) The ship which exported constantly the wool from Colchis into Greece, was called the Golden Fleece, and its flag bore a dragon and the fleece of a golden ram, which were the badges of Colchis. These signs became the theme of fables.
Source: Alexander M. Brunet, The Regal Armorie of Great Britain (London: Henry Kent Gauston, 1839), 72.
By this [myth of the Golden Fleece] the ancients no doubt meant to intimate, either that Boeotia, the birth-place of so many talented Greeks, furnished the people of Colchis with sheep, or that they sent them sums of money in exchange for tbe wool of Caucasus. That the latter is the more probable, is apparent from Ovid's account of the Argonantic expedition, in which be shows the hardships that Jason encountered in his successful endeavours to bring the golden fleece from Colchis back to Greece, implying the value of the article, and leading us to believe that the Colchians had, by the aid of severe penalties, long monopolized the growth of wool. Moreover, Mount Caucasus and its neighbourhood, form the favoured nursery from whence the improved fleece-bearing animals have gradually spread over the rest of the world, and as such would be looked upon, at the time we speak of, by adjacent tribes with jealousy and hatred, for where is tbe nation that can calmly behold a compeer engrossing a hoard of wealth, nor struggle to dispute their prices by a market of their own.
Source: "The Sheep," The Farmer's Magazine 5, no. 3 (Sept. 1836): 187.
Source: Alexander M. Brunet, The Regal Armorie of Great Britain (London: Henry Kent Gauston, 1839), 72.
By this [myth of the Golden Fleece] the ancients no doubt meant to intimate, either that Boeotia, the birth-place of so many talented Greeks, furnished the people of Colchis with sheep, or that they sent them sums of money in exchange for tbe wool of Caucasus. That the latter is the more probable, is apparent from Ovid's account of the Argonantic expedition, in which be shows the hardships that Jason encountered in his successful endeavours to bring the golden fleece from Colchis back to Greece, implying the value of the article, and leading us to believe that the Colchians had, by the aid of severe penalties, long monopolized the growth of wool. Moreover, Mount Caucasus and its neighbourhood, form the favoured nursery from whence the improved fleece-bearing animals have gradually spread over the rest of the world, and as such would be looked upon, at the time we speak of, by adjacent tribes with jealousy and hatred, for where is tbe nation that can calmly behold a compeer engrossing a hoard of wealth, nor struggle to dispute their prices by a market of their own.
Source: "The Sheep," The Farmer's Magazine 5, no. 3 (Sept. 1836): 187.
A final version of the theory of the Fleece as the wool of yellow sheep comes from Robert Graves, who in the novel The Golden Fleece (a.k.a. Hercules, My Shipmate) (1944), wrote that pollen colored the fleece of the sheep on Mt. Ida, where the infant Zeus slept. As a result, a precious fleece of Zeus was created from yellow wool with a golden fringe sewn on from thread arranged to look like woolen locks. This fleece was used as a covering for a cult image of Zeus in the novel.
3. Trade between Colchis and Greece
As is obvious from the foregoing, many authors have seen in the Fleece some aspect of trade between Colchis and Greece. In the context of the above, this was related explicitly to the wool trade. However, other authors have seen the Fleece as symbolic of more generalized trade. Support for this theory comes from the archaeological remains of ancient Colchis, which was an important center of gold-working. However, the dates for this metalworking appear to be too late to have coincided with the Mycenaean Greece of the Argonauts.
The trade theory originates in the work of the Byzantine scholar Eustathius of Thessalonica, who reports a fragmant of the 2nd century CE author Charax that explicitly states that the Argonauts' mission is one of trade.
Charax, preserved in Eustathius, paraphrased closely in "A View of the Progress of Navigation."
The voyage of the Argonauts, according to that author, was both military and merchantile. Their object was to open the commerce of the Euxene Sea, and by making settlements at convenient distances to secure it to themselves. In order to effect this purpose, a fleet and troops were necessary. The armament of the Argonauts was, in effect, composed of several vessels, and they planted colonies in several parts of Colchis.
Source: "A View of the Progress of Navigation," The Litarary and Biographical Magazine and British Review 10 (1793): 268.
The trade theory was current in the eighteenth century, when the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica rejected it, and it formed the conclusion of Judith Bacon's most important work, The Voyage of the Argonauts (1925), which concluded that Georgian wealth was the motive for an actual Black Sea voyage undertaken in the Bronze Age.
As is obvious from the foregoing, many authors have seen in the Fleece some aspect of trade between Colchis and Greece. In the context of the above, this was related explicitly to the wool trade. However, other authors have seen the Fleece as symbolic of more generalized trade. Support for this theory comes from the archaeological remains of ancient Colchis, which was an important center of gold-working. However, the dates for this metalworking appear to be too late to have coincided with the Mycenaean Greece of the Argonauts.
The trade theory originates in the work of the Byzantine scholar Eustathius of Thessalonica, who reports a fragmant of the 2nd century CE author Charax that explicitly states that the Argonauts' mission is one of trade.
Charax, preserved in Eustathius, paraphrased closely in "A View of the Progress of Navigation."
The voyage of the Argonauts, according to that author, was both military and merchantile. Their object was to open the commerce of the Euxene Sea, and by making settlements at convenient distances to secure it to themselves. In order to effect this purpose, a fleet and troops were necessary. The armament of the Argonauts was, in effect, composed of several vessels, and they planted colonies in several parts of Colchis.
Source: "A View of the Progress of Navigation," The Litarary and Biographical Magazine and British Review 10 (1793): 268.
The trade theory was current in the eighteenth century, when the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica rejected it, and it formed the conclusion of Judith Bacon's most important work, The Voyage of the Argonauts (1925), which concluded that Georgian wealth was the motive for an actual Black Sea voyage undertaken in the Bronze Age.