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Today we are delving back into the History Hit Archive and the podcast I have is one that I feel

you are going to absolutely love.

Why have I got a treat for you? Because it features the one and only,

the brilliant storyteller and fantastic historian of ancient history,

Tom Holland,

talking through the epic ancient Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts.

Now, this talk was originally recorded

at the Chalk Valley History Festival of 2016, so it is a few years

old now, but it has lost none of its quality, as you're about to find out. Here's Tom.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, were I the hero of a Greek myth, I would not need to worry about the appalling arterial traffic in South London on the M3, on the A303, the tractors that block your path as you're driving into Wilton, the people who drive in fernily slowly as you're hurtling towards Ebsbourne Wake.

But unfortunately, I'm not the hero of Greek myth,

so I have only just made it.

There's quite a lot of mud. I've had to run through the mud.

So I hope you'll bear with me if I just try and

catch my breath here. And of course, it's incredibly fitting that I should be late and held up by

traffic because the story I'm going to tell you today begins with a flying ram. and not just any ram.

A ram with something very, very distinctive about it.

But I will come to what is distinctive about the ram in a minute.

Because as in a fairy tale tale so with this Greek myth we begin with an evil stepmother

...