It is impossible to place the myths contained in The Golden Fleece within an accurate time frame. The events take place before recorded history and were already ancient when Homer composed his Trojan War epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the eighth century B.C.

Whereas archaeological discoveries have determined that some mythological stories—such as that of the Trojan War—are grounded in historical fact, the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece belongs with certainty neither to the world of fantasy nor to that of reality.

The social environment depicted in The Golden Fleece is typical of a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, a sort of "vacant" space in Greek history between the fall of great cities such as Mycenae about 1200 B.C., and the reflowering of advanced civilization several hundred years later. People live in relatively small groups, completely dependent...