death, that they might fight for their country and their Queen?
No, children, there is a better thing on earth than wealth, a
better thing than life itself; and that is, to have done something
before you die, for which good men may honour you, and God your
Father smile upon your work.

Therefore we will believe--why should we not?--of these same
Argonauts of old, that they too were noble men, who planned and did
a noble deed; and that therefore their fame has lived, and been
told in story and in song, mixed up, no doubt, with dreams and
fables, and yet true and right at heart. So we will honour these
old Argonauts, and listen to their story as it stands; and we will
try to be like them, each of us in our place; for each of us has a
Golden Fleece to seek, and a wild sea to sail over ere we reach it,
and dragons to fight ere it be ours.


And what was that first Golden Fleece? I do not know, nor care.
The old Hellens said that it hung in Colchis, which we call the
Circassian coast, nailed to a beech-tree in the war-God's wood; and
that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram who bore Phrixus and
Helle across the Euxine sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the
children of the cloud-nymph, and of Athamas the Minuan king. And
when a famine came upon the land, their cruel step-mother Ino
wished to kill them, that her own children might reign, and said
that they must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of
the Gods. So the poor children were brought to the altar, and the
priest stood ready with his knife, when out of the clouds came the
Golden Ram, and took them on his back, and vanished. Then madness
came upon that foolish king, Athamas, and ruin upon Ino and her