Jason in Greek Mythology: The Argonauts and Golden Fleece

Jason was the Greek hero who led the Argonauts on the ship Argo to Colchis, at the eastern end of the Black Sea, to bring back the Golden Fleece. He was the rightful heir of Iolcus in Thessaly, sent on the voyage by his uncle Pelias, who hoped he would never return. Jason won the fleece only with the help of the Colchian princess Medea, a priestess of Hecate, and his later betrayal of her in Corinth is one of the darkest stories in Greek tragedy.

Jason quick facts

Why did Jason have to find the Golden Fleece?

Pelias, son of Poseidon and Tyro, took the throne of Iolcus from his half-brother Aeson, and the infant Jason was sent away to be raised by the centaur Chiron. Pelias had been warned by an oracle to beware a man wearing one sandal.

Years later Jason came down to Iolcus and lost a sandal crossing the river Anaurus. In Apollonius' Argonautica, Hera recalls that she was waiting at the river disguised as an old woman, and that Jason carried her across. She became his protector, partly because Pelias had neglected her worship. Pelias, seeing the half-shod stranger, set him a task he expected to be fatal. In Apollodorus he asks Jason what he would do with a man destined to kill him, and Jason answers that he would send him for the Golden Fleece. In Pindar, Pelias says the ghost of Phrixus wants the fleece brought home.

Where did the Golden Fleece come from?

When their stepmother Ino plotted against Phrixus and Helle, children of King Athamas of Boeotia, their mother Nephele sent a golden-fleeced ram to carry them away through the air. Helle fell into the strait that was named the Hellespont after her. Phrixus reached Colchis, sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the fleece to King Aeetes, a son of Helios. Aeetes hung it in a grove of Ares, where a sleepless serpent guarded it.

Who were the Argonauts?

The Argo was built by Argus with Athena's help, and Apollodorus says she set into its prow a speaking timber from the oak of Dodona. Ancient crew lists vary widely, but these names appear in Apollonius, Apollodorus or both:

• Heracles, who left the voyage early
• Orpheus, whose music set the rowing pace and outplayed the Sirens
• Castor and Polydeuces, the twin sons of Leda
• Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of the North Wind
• Peleus, father of Achilles, and his brother Telamon
• Meleager, Lynceus the sharp-sighted, the seers Idmon and Mopsus, and Tiphys the helmsman

Apollodorus includes the huntress Atalanta, while Apollonius says Jason refused to take her.

What happened on the voyage of the Argo?

Apollonius tells the outward journey in detail. The main stops:

How did Jason win the Golden Fleece?

Aeetes told Jason to yoke two bronze-footed, fire-breathing bulls, plow the field of Ares, and sow it with dragon's teeth, which would sprout into armed warriors.

Jason could not have done it alone. In Book 3 of the Argonautica, Hera and Athena ask Aphrodite for help, and she sends Eros to shoot Aeetes' daughter Medea with one of his arrows. Torn between father and stranger, Medea gives Jason a drug that makes him invulnerable for a day and tells him how to beat the earthborn men. Jason yokes the bulls, plows the field and throws a boulder among the warriors, who fall on each other. Medea then charms the serpent to sleep, and Jason takes the fleece.

What happened on the way home?

Apsyrtus. Medea's brother pursued the Argo. In Apollonius he is a grown man, and Medea lures him to a meeting where Jason ambushes and kills him. Apollodorus tells a grimmer version: Apsyrtus is a child Medea took with her, and she cuts him up and throws the pieces into the sea so that Aeetes must stop to gather them.

Circe and Phaeacia. Zeus was angered by the murder, and Medea's aunt Circe purified the pair. Among the Phaeacians, Jason and Medea married so that King Alcinous would not hand her back.

Talos. Off Crete, the bronze giant Talos threw rocks at the ship. In Apollonius, Medea bewitches him with her evil eye; he grazes his ankle on a rock, the ichor that serves as his life drains out, and he falls.

What happened to Pelias?

Back in Iolcus, where Apollodorus says Pelias had driven Aeson to suicide, Medea persuaded Pelias' daughters that she could make their father young again, showing them an old ram cut up, boiled and brought out as a lamb. The daughters did the same to Pelias, who never came back. Pelias' son Acastus then drove Jason and Medea from Iolcus. Ovid's Metamorphoses adds a kinder episode: Medea first restores Aeson's youth with her herbs.

What happened to Jason and Medea in Corinth?

The couple settled in Corinth, where Jason agreed to marry the king's daughter, called Glauce by Apollodorus and Creusa by later writers; in Euripides she has no name. In Euripides' Medea, first staged in 431 BC, Medea sends the bride a poisoned robe and crown that burn her and her father Creon to death. She then kills her own two sons by Jason and escapes in a chariot sent by her grandfather Helios. She later turns up in Athens married to King Aegeus, where she tries to poison the young Theseus.

The murder of the children may be Euripides' own sharpening of the story. Pausanias reports that the Corinthians stoned Medea's sons to death for carrying the deadly gifts, and an ancient commentary on Euripides' play also records a version in which the Corinthians killed them.

How did Jason die?

At the end of Euripides' Medea, Medea foretells that Jason will die a miserable death, struck on the head by a piece of the Argo. Later retellings expand this into the picture of an old, broken Jason sleeping under the rotting hull of his ship until a beam falls on him. Diodorus Siculus gives a different end: Jason kills himself in despair.

In the sources

• Pindar, Pythian 4 — the oldest full telling, from the one-sandaled stranger to the fleece.
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica — the complete epic of the voyage, and the main source for Medea's love and the return.
• Euripides, Medea — Corinth, the murders and the prophecy of Jason's death.
• Apollodorus, Library — a compact summary with many alternative versions.
• Homer, Odyssey Book 12, which calls the Argo famous to all; Homer, Iliad Book 7, which names Euneus as Jason's son.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 7 and Heroides 6 and 12; Pausanias, Description of Greece; Diodorus Siculus; Hyginus, Fabulae.

Where the sources disagree:

• Jason's mother. Alcimede (Apollonius) or Polymede (Apollodorus), among other names.
• Why Pelias sent him. Jason's own suggestion (Apollodorus) or the demand of Phrixus' ghost (Pindar).
• Atalanta. On board in Apollodorus, turned away in Apollonius.
• Apsyrtus. An adult killed by Jason (Apollonius) or a child killed by Medea (Apollodorus).
• The children. Killed by Medea (Euripides) or by the Corinthians (Pausanias).
• Jason's death. A blow from the Argo (Euripides) or suicide (Diodorus).

In popular culture

• Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects made this the best-known version of the story. Its famous skeleton warriors grow from the teeth of a hydra, a twist on the armed men who sprout from dragon's teeth in the sources. The film also moves Talos to the outward voyage, guards the fleece with a hydra instead of a serpent, and ends before Corinth.
• Medea (1969). Pier Paolo Pasolini's film, starring Maria Callas, follows Euripides closely in its second half.

For more screen versions of the myths, see our list of Greek mythology movies.

Keep exploring

Medea's later life crosses into Theseus in Greek mythology, and fellow Argonaut Heracles has his own page. Meet Jason's patron Hera, or try the Greek mythology quiz.