Literature and history dot come. Oh, Hello and

episode 39, Medea and the Argonauts.

This is the second of two episodes we're doing on the later ancient Greek epic

Jason and the Argonauts written by the poet Apollonius of Rhodes in the

mid 200s b. C.C. in the city of Alexandria, Egypt.

If you're just jumping in, it'll be a lot clearer if you start in episode 38, so you can hear the backstory of how and why

Jason and the Argonauts made their eastern journey into the far reaches of the

Black Sea. In this show we'll cover books three and four of this great epic, books dominated by

the legendary sorceress, Medea. The Let's start with a quick recap. Handsome young Jason is the rightful air to a kingdom called

Eolcus, a city on the Greek mainland about a hundred miles north northeast of Athens.

Jason's father's throne was usurped by a half divine king named Pelius,

and Pelius, because he was convinced by a prophecy that Jason would kill him, sent

Jason on a quest so dangerous and so impossible that Wicked King Pelius assumed that it would be the end of Jason.

The problem for Pelius was that a large and formidable crew enlisted with Jason, and

Jason also got hold of a peerless ship called the Argo after which the

Argonauts are named. In the previous episode we joined Jason and the Argonauts for the first

thousand miles of their quest to the northeast.

They slept with women on the all female island of Lemnos.

They accidentally killed a promising young king on the island of the Dolyones.

They helped a poor old prophet named Phineas, who was plagued by Harpies.

The Argonauts were nearly crushed to death between a pair of clashing rocks.

And that takes us to more recent history, history that you need to know about for the sake of today's

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