Golden Fleece the Twelve Olympians. The golden fleece was defended by bulls with hoofs of brass and breath of fire. It was also guarded by a never sleeping dragon with teeth which could become soldiers when planted in the ground. The dragon was at the foot of the tree on which the fleece was placed. Pindar employed the quest for the Golden Fleece in his Fourth Pythian Ode (written in 462 BCE), though the fleece is not in the foreground. When Aeetes challenges Jason to yoke the fire-breathing bulls, the fleece is the prize: "Let the King do this, the captain of
Colchis the Golden fleece. It was also described as a land rich with gold, iron, timber and honey that would export its resources mostly to ancient Greece. Colchis was populated by Colchians, an early Kartvelian-speaking tribe, ancestral to the contemporary Western Georgians, namely Svans and Mingrelians, as well as the related Lazs. Its geography is mostly assigned to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Abkhazeti, Svaneti, Racha; modern Russia’s Sochi and Tuapse districts; and present-day Turkey’s Rize, Trabzon and Artvin provinces. The kingdom of Colchís, Kolkhís or "Qulḫa"