Colchis

For he says that the laws of the Tyrians forbid men to swear foreign oaths, among which he enumerates some others, and particularly that called Corban, which oath can only be found among the Jews, and declares what a man may call a thing devoted to God.

Nor indeed was Herodotus of Halicarnassus unacquainted with our nation, but mentions it after a way of his own, when he saith thus, in the second book concerning the Colchians.

His words are these, The only people who were circumcised in their privy members originally were the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians.

But the Phoenicians and those Syrians that are in Palestine confess that they learned it from the Egyptians.

And for those Syrians who live about the rivers Stramadon and Parthenius, and their neighbors the Macronais, they say they have lately learned it from the Colchians.

For these are the only people that are circumcised among mankind, and appear to have done the very same thing with the Egyptians.

But as for the Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I am not able to say which of them received it from the other.

The land where the Persians live extends to the southern sea, which is called Red.

Beyond these to the north are the Medes, and beyond the Medes the Saspires, and beyond the Saspires the Colchians, whose country extends to the northern sea, into which the Phasis river flows.

So these four nations live between the one sea and the other.

But west of this region two peninsulas stretch out from it into the sea, which I will now describe.

In this peninsula there are just three nations.

So much for the part of Asia west of the Persians.

But what is beyond the Persians and Medes and Saspires and Colchians, east towards the rising sun, this is bounded on the one hand by the Red Sea, and to the north by the Caspian Sea and the Araxes River, which flows towards the sun's rising.

As far as India, Asia is an inhabited land, but thereafter all to the east is desolation, nor can anyone say what kind of land is there.

Thank you.

Like I just finished The Witch of Colchis about Medea's story.

And there's an entire section, you know, where Medea goes to Cersei to be purified from the very blood on her own hands.

this concept of cleansing your own sins, your own trespasses.

And these two authors said, "Okay, we know this is fiction.

We know that's not a real place, but what could Lewis have been thinking about? What inspired him, and where would it really be? Is there a city this is based off or a place?" The answer is Colchis, C-O-L-C-H-I-S, and they proved it admirably.

It was incredible.

Colchis is an ancient city on the Black Sea, and they started with medieval mappa mundi, maps of the world, and they got into ancient literature and Prometheus Bound and all this incredible sch- It was amazing.

[laughs]

The two of them did a fantastic job, and this went from, "I don't really know what they're gonna be talking about," to, "I am 100% convinced that Glome is Colchis."

[laughs]

It was great.

Okay.

So it's the arrival at Colchis, it's, uh, finding out where the fleece is, and then, uh, most importantly, or probably most dramatically-

Right

...

Mm-hmm.

"With love for Aeëteson's son.

If she is well-disposed and conspires with him, he'll win the Golden Fleece with ease, I think, and return to Colchis.

She's cunning by nature."

Of the many exploits performed in those days by the bravest men, Herodotus thinks that Theseus took part in none, except that he aided the Lapithae in their war with the Centaurs.

But others say that he was not only with Jason at Colchis, but helped Meleager to slay the Caledonian boar, and that hence arose the proverb, not without Theseus.

That he himself, however, without asking for any ally, performed many glorious exploits, and that the phrase, lo, another Heracles, became current with reference to him.

He also aided Adrastus in recovering for burial the bodies of those who had fallen before the walls of the Cadmia, not by mastering the Thebans in battle, as Euripides has it in his tragedy, but by persuading them to a truce, for so most writers say, and Philochorus adds that this was the first truce ever made for recovering the bodies of those slain in battle, although in the accounts of Heracles it is written that Heracles was the first to give back their dead to his enemies.