Colchis in 218 B.C.

Colchis — Spring 218 BC · The Land of the Golden Fleece.

Colchis — the fabled country at the far eastern corner of the Euxine, where the river Phasis comes down through marsh and forest to the sea. This is the land of the legends: the kingdom of Aeëtes and his daughter Medea, the home of the Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts came to carry off. In 218 BC it is no single kingdom but a patchwork country of Colchian tribes, each under its own skeptouchos — its "sceptre-holder" — ruling a valley or a stretch of coast, with no high king to bind them. The river-lands are rich beyond telling: famed linen woven from the local flax, timber and pitch for ships, and the gold that the mountain torrents wash down, caught (men say) on fleeces of sheep pegged in the streams. Greek merchants from old Miletus planted colonies long ago on this shore — Dioscurias under its twin gods and Phasis at the river-mouth — and through them the produce of the inner country passes out to all the world.

At the eastern end of the Euxine, where the navigable sea reaches its furthest limit, lies Colchis — the land the poets sing of as the goal of the Argo. While the great kings make war over Syria and the Aegean, this watered country keeps to its own ancient rhythm. It is not a kingdom in the manner of Pontus or Bithynia: the old royal line of Aeëtes is long gone, and Colchis in 218 BC is a weave of tribes — Lazoi and Apsilai, Sanigai and the wild Soanes of the high mountains — each obeying its own skeptouchos. Down the Phasis and the lesser rivers the people grow flax and weave the famous linen, fell timber for shipbuilding, and gather river-gold on wool. On the coast the Greek colonies of Phasis and Dioscurias gather this wealth for the sea-trade, while inland the strongholds of the valleys — Vani, Sarapanis, Surium — guard the routes up toward Iberia and the Caucasus passes.