Aeson- Greek FigureMortal"Rightful King of Iolcus"

The Usurped King

Aeson was the son of Cretheus, founder and king of Iolcus in Thessaly, and Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus. Tyro had also borne twin sons to Poseidon — Pelias and Neleus — before her marriage to Cretheus. As Cretheus’s legitimate heir, Aeson was the rightful successor to the throne of Iolcus. But upon Cretheus’s death, his half-brother Pelias seized power, either imprisoning Aeson or reducing him to a powerless subject within his own kingdom.

When Jason was born, Aeson feared Pelias would kill the boy as a potential rival. He and his wife — named Alcimede, Polymede, or Polymele depending on the tradition — spread word that the child had been stillborn and staged a mock funeral with mourning rites. They secretly sent the infant to Mount Pelion to be raised by the wise centaur Chiron. While Jason grew up in Chiron’s care, Aeson endured years of subjection under Pelias — stripped of his royal dignity, confined within his own city. When Jason finally reached manhood and returned to Iolcus to claim his birthright, Pelias deflected the challenge by sending him on the seemingly impossible quest for the Golden Fleece, calculating that Jason would never return alive.

Death or Rejuvenation

Aeson’s fate diverges sharply across the sources. In Ovid’s account, Medea rejuvenated the aged Aeson after Jason returned with the Golden Fleece. She slit the old king’s throat and drained the blood from his veins, then filled them with a potion brewed from rare herbs, stones, and the flesh of a screech-owl, boiled in a bronze cauldron under a full moon. Aeson rose from the ritual restored to the vigor of forty years past.

In a grimmer tradition, Pelias forced Aeson to commit suicide by drinking bull’s blood — considered poisonous in antiquity — while Jason was away on the voyage. Some sources add that Aeson’s wife cursed Pelias before taking her own life alongside her husband, and that it was this double death that hardened Medea’s resolve for the terrible revenge she would exact upon the usurper.