Jason

:This article is about the Greek mythological hero Jason. For other Jasons, see Jason (disambiguation).

Jason returns

Medea, using her sorcery, claimed to Pelias' daughters that she could make their father younger by chopping him up into pieces and boiling the pieces in a cauldron of water and magical herbs. She demonstrated this remarkable feat with a sheep, which leapt out of the cauldron as a lamb. The girls, rather naively, sliced and diced their father and put him in the cauldron. Medea did not add the magical herbs, and Pelias was dead.

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Pelias' son, Acastus, drove Jason and Medea into exile for the murder, and the couple settled in Corinth. There he married Creusa, a daughter of the King of Corinth, to strengthen his political ties. Medea, angry at Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, got her revenge by presenting Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on. Creusa's father, Creon, burnt to death with his daughter as he tried to save her. Medea killed the children that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be murdered, or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions.

Related Topics:
Creusa - Creon

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Later Jason and Peleus (father of the hero Achilles) would attack and defeat Acastus, reclaiming the throne of Iolcus for himself once more. Jason's son, Thessalus, then became king (the parentage of Thessalus is uncertain - i.e. who was his mother, since Medea killed her children?).

Related Topics:
Peleus - Achilles - Thessalus

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Jason died a lonely and unhappy man with no friends. He was asleep under the stern of the Argo, which was rotten, and it fell on him, killing him instantly. It was said that the manner of his death was due to the gods cursing him for breaking his promise to Medea.

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Though some of the episodes of Jason's story draw on ancient material, the definitive telling, on which this account relies, is that of Apollonius of Rhodes in his epic poem Argonautica, written in Alexandria in the late 3rd century BC.

Related Topics:
Apollonius of Rhodes - Argonautica - Alexandria - 3rd century BC

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The mythical geography of the voyage of the Argonauts has been speculatively explicated by the historian of science and the cartography of Antiquity, Livio Catullo Stecchini, in a suggestive essay "The Voyage of the Argo" that draws upon fragments of the mythic sources Apollonius employed in constructing his poem.

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In the Divine Comedy Dante sees Jason in the eighth circle of Hell among the seducers.

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