Jason (
Greek:
Ἰάσων,
Laz:
Yason) was a late
ancient Greek mythological figure, famous as the leader of
the
Argonauts and their quest for the
Golden Fleece.
He was the son of
Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus
. He
was married to the sorceress
Medea.
Jason is considered to be one of the heroes of Greek mythology,
along with such others as
Herakles and
Odysseus.
Jason appeared in various literature in the
classical world of Greece and Rome,
including the epic poem
Argonautica and tragedian play,
Medea. In the modern world,
Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his
myths, such as the film
Jason and the
Argonauts.
Jason has
connections outside of the classical world, as he is seen as being
the mythical founder of the city of Ljubljana
, the capital of Slovenia
.
Early years
Pelias (Aeson's half-brother) was very
power-hungry, and he wished to gain dominion over all of
Thessaly. Pelias was the product of a union between
their shared mother,
Tyro ("high born Tyro")
the daughter of
Salmoneus, and allegedly
the sea god
Poseidon. In a bitter feud, he
overthrew Aeson (the rightful king), killing all the descendants of
Aeson that he could. He spared his half-brother for unknown
reasons.
Alcimede I (wife of Aeson) already
had an infant son named Jason whom she saved from being killed by
Pelias, by having women cluster around the newborn and cry as if he
were still-born. Alcimede sent her son to the
centaur Chiron for education,
for fear that Pelias would kill him - she claimed that she had been
having an affair with him all along. Pelias, still fearful that he
would one day be overthrown, consulted an
oracle which warned him to beware of a man with one
sandal.
Many years later, Pelias was holding
games in honor of the sea god and his alleged
father, Poseidon, when Jason arrived in Iolcus and lost one of his
sandals in the river
Anauros ("wintry
Anauros"), while helping an old woman (the Goddess
Hera in disguise), to cross. She blessed him for she
knew, as goddesses do, what Pelias had up his sleeve.
When Jason entered
Iolcus (modern-day city of Volos
), he was
announced as a man wearing one sandal. Jason, knowing that
he was the rightful king, told Pelias that and Pelias said, "To
take my throne, which you shall, you must go on a quest to find the
Golden Fleece." Jason happily accepted the quest.
The Quest for the Golden Fleece
Jason assembled a great group of heroes, known as the
Argonauts after their ship, the
Argo. The group of heroes included the
Boreads (sons of
Boreas, the
North Wind) who could fly,
Heracles,
Philoctetes,
Peleus,
Telamon,
Orpheus,
Castor and
Pollux,
Atalanta, and
Euphemus.
The Isle of Lemnos
The isle
of Lemnos
is situated
off the Western coast of Asia Minor
(modern day Turkey
). The
island was inhabited by a race of women who had killed their
husbands. The women had neglected their worship of
Aphrodite, and as a punishment the goddess made
the women so foul in stench that their husbands couldn't bear to be
near them. The men then took
concubines
from the
Thracian mainland opposite, and the
spurned women, angry at Aphrodite, killed every male inhabitant
while they slept. The king,
Thoas, was saved
by
Hypsipyle, his daughter, who put him
out to sea sealed in a chest from which he was later rescued. The
women of Lemnos lived for a while without men, with
Hypsipyle as their queen.
During the visit of the Argonauts the women mingled with the men
creating a new "race" called
Minyae. Jason
fathered twins with the queen. Heracles pressured them to leave as
he was disgusted by the antics of the Argonauts. He hadn't taken
part, which is truly unusual considering the numerous affairs he
had with other women.
Kyzicos
After Lemnos the Argonauts landed among the
Doliones, whose king
Kyzicos
treated them graciously. The Argonauts departed, losing their
bearings and landing again at the same spot that night. In the
darkness, the Doliones took them for enemies and they started
fighting each other. The Argonauts killed many of the Doliones,
among them the king Kyzicos. Kyzicos' wife killed herself. The
Argonauts realized their horrible mistake when dawn came.
Mysia
When the Argonauts reached
Mysia, they sent
some men to find food and water. Among these men was Heracles'
servant,
Hylas. The
nymphs of the stream where Hylas was collecting were
attracted to his good looks, and pulled him into the stream.
Heracles returned to his Labors, but Hylas
was lost forever. Others say that Heracles went to
Colchis with the Argonauts and he got the Golden
Girdle of the Amazons and slew the
Stymphalian Birds at that time.
Phineus and the Harpies
Soon Jason reached the court of
Phineas of
Salmydessus in Thrace. Phineas had been given the gift of prophecy
by
Apollo, but was later given the choice of
being blind and having a long life, or having sight and having a
short life, for revealing to humans the deliberations of the gods.
He chose to be blind.
Helios the sun god sent
the
Harpies, creatures with the body of a
bird and the head of a woman, to prevent Phineas from eating any
more than what was necessary to live, because he was enraged that
Phineas had chosen to live in a continual state of darkness than
live in the sun he provided. Jason took pity on the emaciated king
and killed the Harpies when they returned (In other versions
Calais and Zetes chase the Harpies away). In
return for this favor, Phineas revealed to Jason the location of
Colchis and how to cross the
Symplegades, or The Clashing Rocks, and then
they parted.
The Symplegades
The only way to reach Colchis was to sail through the
Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), huge rock cliffs
that came together and crushed anything that traveled between them.
Phineus told Jason to release a dove when they approached these
islands, and if the dove made it through, to row with all their
might. If the dove was crushed, he was doomed to fail. Jason
released the dove as advised, which made it through, losing only a
few tail feathers. Seeing this, they rowed strongly and made it
through with minor damage at the extreme stern of the ship. From
that time on, the clashing rocks were forever joined leaving free
passage for others to pass.
The Arrival in Colchis
Jason and the Snake
Jason
arrived in Colchis (modern Black Sea
coast of Georgia
) to claim
the fleece as his own. King
Aeetes of
Colchis promised to give it to him only if he could perform three
certain tasks. Presented with the tasks, Jason became discouraged
and fell into depression. However,
Hera had
persuaded
Aphrodite to convince her son
Eros to make Aeetes's daughter,
Medea, fall in love with Jason. As a result,
Medea aided Jason in his tasks. First, Jason had to plow a field
with fire-breathing oxen, the
Khalkotauroi, that he had to yoke himself.
Medea provided an ointment that protected him from the oxen's
flames. Then, Jason sowed the
teeth of a dragon into a field.
The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors. Medea had previously
warned Jason of this and told him how to defeat this foe. Before
they attacked him, he threw a rock into the crowd. Unable to
discover where the rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and
defeated one another. His last task was to overcome the Sleepless
Dragon which guarded the
Golden
Fleece. Jason sprayed the dragon with a potion, given by Medea,
diluted from herbs. The dragon fell asleep, and Jason was able to
seize the Golden Fleece. He then sailed away with Medea. Medea had
to distract her father, who chased them, as they fled by killing
her brother
Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of
his body into the sea, which Aeetes had to stop for and gather. In
another version, Medea lured Apsyrtus into a trap. Jason kills him,
chops off his fingers and toes, and buries the corpse. In any case,
Jason and Medea escaped.
Return journey
On the way
back to Iolcus, Medea prophesised to Euphemus, the Argo's helmsman, that one day he
would rule Libya
. This
came true through
Battus, a descendant of
Euphemus.
Zeus, as punishment for the slaughter
of Medea's own brother, sent a series of storms at the
Argo and blew it off course. The
Argo then spoke
and said that they should seek purification with
Circe, a
nymph living on the
island called Aeaea. After being cleansed, they continued their
journey home.
Sirens
Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of
Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass
the
Sirens — the same Sirens encountered by
Odysseus in
Homer's
epic poem the
Odyssey. The Sirens lived on three small, rocky
islands called
Sirenum scopuli and
sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which
resulted in the crashing of their ship into the islands. When
Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his
lyre
and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out
the Sirens' bewitching songs.
Talos
The
Argo then came to the island of Crete
, guarded by
the bronze man, Talos. As the ship
approached, Talos hurled huge stones at the ship, keeping it at
bay. Talos had one blood vessel which went from his neck to his
ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail (as in metal casting by
the lost wax method).
Medea cast a spell on
Talos to calm him; she removed the bronze nail and Talos bled to
death. The
Argo was then able to sail on.
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.
[It should be noted that
Thomas
Bulfinch has an antecedent to the interaction of Medea and the
daughters of Pelias. Jason, celebrating his return with the Golden
Fleece, noted that his father was too aged and infirm to
participate in the celebrations. He had seen and been served by
Medea's magical powers. He asked Medea to take some years from his
life and add them to the life of his father. She did so, but at no
such cost to Jason's life. {See Thomas Bulfinch, page 134; compare
to Shakespeare's witches in
Macbeth.}
Pelias' daughters saw this and wanted the same service for their
father.] Pelias' son,
Acastus, drove Jason
and Medea into exile for the murder, and the couple settled in
Corinth.
Treachery of Jason
In Corinth, Jason became engaged to marry
Creusa (sometimes referred to as
Glauce), a daughter of the King of Corinth, to
strengthen his political ties. When Medea confronted Jason about
the engagement and cited all the help she had given him, he
retorted that it was not she that he should thank, but Aphrodite
who made Medea fall in love with him. Infuriated with Jason for
breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her
revenge by presenting to 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, burned to death
with his daughter as he tried to save her. Then Medea killed the
two boys that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be
murdered or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions. When
Jason came to know of this, Medea was already gone; she fled to
Athens in a chariot sent by her grandfather, the sun-god
Helios.
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.
Because he broke his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his
favor with
Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He
was asleep under the stern of the rotting
Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly.
The manner of his death was due to the deities cursing him for
breaking his promise to Medea.
In classical literature
Epic poetry
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.
Another
Argonautica was written by
Gaius Valerius Flaccus in the late
1st century AD, comprising of eight books in length. The poem ends
abruptly with the request of
Medea to
accompany Jason on his homeward voyage. It is unclear if part of
the
epic poem has been lost, or if it had
ever been finished. A third version is the
Argonautica
Orphica, which emphasizes the role of
Orpheus in the story.
Jason is briefly mentioned in
Dante's Divine
Comedy. He appears in the Canto XVIII. In it, he is seen
by Dante and his guide
Virgil being punished
in Hell's Eighth Circle (Bolgia 1) by being driven to march through
the circle for all eternity while being whipped by devils. He is
included among the seducers (possibly for his seduction and
subsequent uncare of Medea).
Drama
The story of
Medea's revenge on Jason is told
with devastating effect by
Euripides in
his tragedy
Medea.
Non-fiction
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.
Notes
See also
References
Bibliography
- Publius Ovidius Naso. Metamorphoses.
- Powell, B. The Voyage of the Argo. In Classical Myth.
Upper Saddle River, NJ. Prentice Hall. 2001. pp. 477-489.
- Alain Moreau, Le Mythe de Jason et
Médée. Le Va-nu-pied et la Sorcière. Paris : Les
Belles Lettres, collection « Vérité des mythes », 2006 (ISBN 10
2-251-32440-2).
- Bulfinch's Mythology, Medea and Aeson.
- King, David. Finding Atlantis: a true story of genius,
madness, and an extraordinary quest for a lost world. Harmony
Books, New York, 1970. (Based on works of Olof Rudbeck
1630-1702.)
Notes
- Note: In "Hercules, My Shipmate" Robert Graves claims that Heracles
fathered more children than anyone else of the crew.
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