His companions reached out friendly hands to the mighty man, crowned him with garlands of grass and greeted him with gentle words. At once the wondrous son of the Sun told him of the shining hide, where the knives of Phrixus had stretched it out; but he did not expect that Jason would achieve that labor. For it lay in a thicket, held in the most ravenous jaws of a serpent that was thicker and longer than a fifty-oared ship built by strokes of iron.

His companions crowd round him, crown him with grass and greet him with gentle words. Aeetes, "the wondrous son of the Sun," answers by telling Jason where the fleece is: hung in a thicket, where the knives of Phrixus stretched it after the ram was sacrificed, and held in the jaws of a serpent bigger than a fifty-oared ship. Pindar's title for Aeetes is a genealogy. Hesiod makes him a son of Helios, the Sun (Theogony 956–957), which makes Medea the Sun's granddaughter. Pindar also says outright what the king is counting on: he expected that Jason would no longer achieve this second labor. The guardian is a δράκων, the ordinary Greek word for a large snake, and English "dragon" comes from it through Latin.