Jason & the Greasy Fleece

Scientists, who go after everything with a fine-tooth comb, are always taking the fun out of mythology. Now they are currying the Golden Fleece. According to Greek legend, the fleece first belonged to a ram provided by the god Hermes to help two children, Helle and Phryxus, dodge an untrustworthy stepmother. The ram took off through the air with the children on its back. Helle fell off and was drowned (hence the Hellespont, now the Dardanelles), but Phryxus reached the eastern shore of the Black Sea. He ungratefully sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave its fleece to the King of Colchis, who put it in a sacred grove guarded by a dragon.

Jason, a relative of Phryxus, decided to get the fleece back. He outfitted a ship, the Argo, and manned it with big-muscled demigods, including Hercules. After some thrilling adventures with shipwrecks, sorcery, brazen bulls and aggressively amorous women, the Argonauts snatched the fleece and brought it home to Thessaly.

For over 3,000 years, this yarn has been good enough for millions of people.* But in the current issue of American Scientist, Dr. Arthur F. Taggart belittles it to pieces. The Golden Fleece, Dr. Taggart explains, was probably nothing but a detail of Heroic Age mining technique. The early Greeks lined their gold-washing sluices with sheepskins. The gold dust stuck to the natural grease in the wool. The same principle (the selective attraction of oily substances for certain mineral particles) is widely used today in the flotation process of concentrating metallic ores. Jason, then, according to Dr. Taggart, was perhaps no better than a sneak thief loitering around a primitive refinery.

* According to Hercules, My Shipmate, by Robert Graves, the Golden Fleece was a bone of contention in divine power politics. Helle and Phryxus, tools of the "old religion" faction, stole it to spite Zeus, and Phryxus took it to Colchis. Jason, who was pro-Zeus, won it back.

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