The Golden Fleece | Page 4

arms, went swiftly toward the forest arches; then the slave took up the horn and went down the side of the Mountain Pelion. He came to where a horse was hidden, and he mounted and rode, first to a city, and then to a village that was beyond the city.
All this was before the famous walls of Troy were built; before King Priam had come to the throne of his father and while he was still known, not as Priam, but as Podarces. And the beginning of all these happenings was in Iolcus, a city in Thessaly.
Cretheus founded the city and had ruled over it in days before King Priam was born. He left two sons, Aeson and Pelias. Aeson succeeded his father. And because he was a mild and gentle man, the men of war did not love Aeson; they wanted a hard king who would lead them to conquests.
Pelias, the brother of Aeson, was ever with the men of war; he knew what mind they had toward Aeson and he plotted with them to overthrow his brother. This they did, and they brought Pelias to reign as king in Iolcus.
The people loved Aeson; and they feared Pelias. And because the people loved him and would be maddened by his slaying, Pelias and the men of war left him living. With his wife, Alcimide, and his infant son, Aeson went from the city, and in a village that was at a distance from Iolcus he found a hidden house and went to dwell in it.
Aeson would have lived content there were it not that he was fearful for Jason, his infant son. Jason, he knew, would grow into a strong and a bold youth, and Pelias, the king, would be made uneasy on his account. Pelias would slay the son, and perhaps would slay the father for the son's sake when his memory would come to be less loved by the people. Aeson thought of such things in his hidden house, and he pondered on ways to have his son reared away from Iolcus and the dread and the power of King Pelias.
He had for a friend one who was the wisest of all creatures Chiron the centaur; Chiron who was half man and half horse; Chiron who had lived and was yet to live measureless years. Chiron had fostered Heracles, and it might be that he would not refuse to foster Jason, Aeson's child.
Away in the fastnesses of Mount Pelion Chiron dwelt; once Aeson had been with him and had seen the centaur hunt with his great bow and his great spears. And Aeson knew a way that one might come to him; Chiron himself had told him of the way.
Now there was a slave in his house who had been a huntsman and who knew all the ways of the Mountain Pelion. Aeson talked with this slave one day, and after he had talked with him he sat for a long time over the cradle of his sleeping infant. And then he spoke to Alcimide, his wife, telling her of a parting that made her weep. That evening the slave came in and Aeson took the child from the arms of the mournful-eyed mother and put him in the slave's arms. Also he gave him a horn and a ring with a great ruby in it and mystic images engraved on its gold. Then when the ways were dark the slave mounted a horse, and, with the child in his arms, rode through the city that King Pelias ruled over. In the morning he came to that mountain that is all covered with forest, the Mountain Pelion. And that evening he came back to the village and to Aeson's hidden house, and he told his master how he had prospered.
Aeson was content thereafter although he was lonely and although his wife was lonely in their childlessness. But the time came when they rejoiced that their child had been sent into an unreachable place. For messengers from King Pelias came inquiring about the boy. They told the king's messengers that the child had strayed off from his nurse, and that whether he had been slain by a wild beast or had been drowned in the swift River Anaurus they did not know.
The years went by and Pelias felt secure upon the throne he had taken from his brother. Once he sent to the oracle of the gods to ask of it whether he should be fearful of anything. What the oracle answered was this: that King Pelias had but one thing to dread--the coming of a halfshod man.
The centaur nourished the child Jason on roots and fruits and honey; for shelter they had a great cave that Chiron had lived in for numberless years. When he had grown