Jason- Greek HeroHero"Leader of the Argonauts"

The Rightful King

Jason was born to be a king. His father Aeson was the rightful ruler of Iolcus in Thessaly, but his half-brother Pelias had usurped the throne, imprisoned Aeson, and killed most of the family. To save the infant, his mother pretended the child had died at birth and secretly sent him to the centaur Chiron on Mount Pelion. For twenty years Jason lived on the mountain, learning war and healing from the centaur who had raised Achilles.

When he came of age, Chiron told him the truth. On his way down to claim his birthright, Jason came to the River Anaurus in flood, where an old woman sat helpless on the bank. He carried her across on his shoulders, losing one sandal in the current. The woman was Hera in disguise. She had her own reason to destroy Pelias: he had killed a suppliant at her altar and neglected her sacrifices.

The Impossible Quest

Jason arrived in Iolcus wearing only one sandal, clad in a leopard skin with his hair uncut. Pelias's blood ran cold. An oracle had warned him to beware a man with one sandal, a descendant of Aeolus who would be his doom. Rather than kill Jason openly and turn the people against him, Pelias set the young man an impossible task.

He promised to surrender the throne if Jason brought him the Golden Fleece from Colchis. The fleece hung in a grove sacred to Ares at the eastern edge of the Black Sea, in the kingdom of Aeetes, son of Helios. It was guarded by a dragon that never slept. As Pindar tells it in his fourth Pythian Ode, Pelias "devised for him a voyage from which there could be no return."

The Argo and the Voyage

Jason commissioned the shipwright Argus to build the Argo, and Athena fitted its prow with a beam of speaking oak from Dodona. He sent heralds throughout Greece. The heroes who answered, Heracles and Orpheus among them, filled fifty oars.

They lost Heracles at Mysia. Nymphs enchanted by his young companion Hylas pulled the boy underwater, and Heracles refused to sail on without him. At the mouth of the Black Sea, the Argo slipped between the Clashing Rocks on the advice of the blind prophet Phineus, whom the Argonauts had freed from the Harpies that fouled his every meal. After months at sea, the Argo reached the shores of Colchis.

The Trials of Colchis

King Aeetes had no intention of surrendering the fleece. He set Jason three tasks designed to kill him: yoke two fire-breathing bulls with bronze hooves and plow a field, sow dragon's teeth in the furrows and defeat the armed warriors that sprang from the earth, then take the fleece from its sleepless dragon guardian.

But Hera had not forgotten her champion. She and Athena enlisted Aphrodite, who sent Eros to strike Aeetes's daughter Medea with desire for Jason. Medea was a sorceress and priestess of Hecate, granddaughter of Helios. She spent a sleepless night torn between loyalty to her father and her longing for the Greek stranger. At dawn she gathered the herbs that would save his life. She gave Jason an ointment proof against fire and told him to throw a stone among the earth-born warriors so they would fight each other. The sleepless dragon she drugged herself. In exchange, Jason swore eternal love and marriage by all the gods.

The Return and Pelias's Death

To slow her father's pursuing fleet, Medea murdered her own brother Absyrtus and scattered his limbs in the sea, forcing Aeetes to stop and gather them for burial. This crime required purification from Circe, Medea's aunt, on her island of Aeaea. Circe performed the rites but was horrified and ordered them to leave.

The Argo reached Iolcus at last, bearing the Golden Fleece. But Pelias refused to honor his bargain. Medea convinced his daughters they could rejuvenate their aged father by cutting him up and boiling him in a cauldron with magic herbs. She demonstrated on an old ram that emerged as a lamb. When the daughters tried it on Pelias, Medea withheld the herbs. The king died in agony. Driven from Iolcus by Pelias's son Acastus, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth.

The Betrayal of Medea

In Corinth, Jason and Medea lived for ten years and had two sons. But when King Creon offered his daughter Glauce in marriage, Jason accepted. He tried to justify the abandonment: his sons would benefit from a royal connection. Medea saw only broken oaths sworn before the gods.

In Euripides's Medea, her revenge was terrible. She sent Glauce a poisoned robe and golden crown that burned the princess alive. King Creon rushed to save his daughter and was consumed by the same fire. Then Medea killed her own sons rather than let them be raised by another woman. She escaped to Athens in a chariot drawn by winged serpents sent by Helios, leaving Jason with nothing: no wife, no children, no kingdom, no glory.

The Death of Jason

Jason lived out his days wandering and alone. He died beneath the rotting hull of the Argo at the Isthmus of Corinth, killed when a beam from the decaying ship fell and crushed him as he slept in its shadow. The speaking prow of Dodona was silent.