The ship herself has a voice. In the one witness wired to served text — Apollodorus's The Library (a Greek mythography compiled in the 1st–2nd century CE) — Jason is sent to fetch the golden fleece that Aeetes had nailed to an oak in the grove of Ares, and for that voyage a ship is made. She is "a ship of fifty oars named Argo after its builder", and into her prow the goddess Athena sets "a speaking timber", cut "from the oak of Dodona". With the vessel finished, the god gives leave to gather "the nobles of Greece" — Orpheus, Castor and Pollux, Hercules, Atalanta, and the rest — and sail, with Tiphys, son of Hagnias, the one "who steered the ship".

The talking timber is no idle marvel. When the crew has put to sea leaving Hercules behind in Mysia, searching for the lost boy Hylas, it is the ship that renders the verdict. The record notes the dispute among the old authorities over how Hercules came to be left: Pherecydes held that he was set ashore "at Aphetae in Thessaly", the Argo declaring "with human voice that she could not bear" him any farther. The heroes do not vote; the plank from Dodona's oak speaks, and one of the greatest of them is put ashore.

Only the Greek witness is served here; the Danish gloss on skib (ship) and the English and Irish authorities filed beside it wait unread. When the vessel that carries the heroes can overrule them in its own voice, who aboard is truly in command?