{ "id": "jason", "type": "entity", "name": "Jason", "summary": "Son of Aeson of Iolcus, the \"man with a single sandal\" whom Pelias sent for the Golden Fleece; leader of the Argonauts, he yoked the brazen bulls and took the fleece with Medea's help, returned in four months, and lost Medea and his children at Corinth. Homer knows him only as the man Hera loved; Hesiod as Medea's husband.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "greek", "heroes", "argonauts", "colchis", "iolcus" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "bibliotheca" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "theogony" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "odyssey" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "hera" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "athena" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "orpheus" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "heracles" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "theseus" } ], "questions": [ "Why was Jason sent to fetch the Golden Fleece?", "Who built the Argo?", "Who were the Argonauts?", "How did Jason get the Golden Fleece?", "Did Heracles sail with the Argonauts?", "How did Jason pass the Clashing Rocks?", "What happened to Jason and Medea in Corinth?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "Apollodorus makes Jason son of Aeson son of Cretheus, living in Iolcus under Pelias, who had been warned by an oracle \"to beware of the man with a single sandal\". Jason lost a sandal crossing the Anaurus on his way to a sacrifice; asked what he would do to a man fated to kill him, he answered \"I would command him to bring the Golden Fleece\", and Pelias sent him for it, to Colchis, where it hung on an oak in a grove of Ares \"guarded by a sleepless dragon\" (Apollod. 1.9.16).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.93 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The ship and crew: Argus son of Phrixus \"by Athena's advice, built a ship of fifty oars named Argo after its builder; and at the prow Athena fitted in a speaking timber from the oak of Dodona\". The roster includes Tiphys the steersman, \"Orpheus, son of Oeagrus\", Castor and Pollux, Telamon and Peleus, \"Hercules, son of Zeus; Theseus, son of Aegeus\", Meleager, Atalanta and Polyphemus son of Elatus (Apollod. 1.9.16).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.93 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "Whether Heracles sailed is disputed inside Apollodorus: in Mysia the ship left him behind searching for Hylas, \"However Herodorus says that Hercules did not sail at all at that time, but served as a slave at the court of Omphale. But Pherecydes says that he was left behind at Aphetae in Thessaly, the Argo having declared with human voice that she could not bear his weight\", while Demaratus and Dionysius had him reach Colchis or even lead the expedition (Apollod. 1.9.19).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.92 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The outward voyage: Lemnos ruled by women under Hypsipyle (Apollod. 1.9.17); the accidental night battle with the Doliones (1.9.18); Phineus freed from the Harpies by the sons of Boreas in exchange for sailing directions (1.9.21); and the Clashing Rocks, passed after testing them with a dove, \"with hard rowing and the help of Hera\", after which they \"stood still\" for ever (1.9.22).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.92 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "At Colchis Aeetes promised the fleece if Jason single-handed yoked two brazen-footed, fire-breathing bulls of Hephaestus and sowed dragon's teeth. Medea, \"a witch, daughter of Aeetes and Idyia\", gave him a drug against fire and iron on his oath to marry her; he yoked the bulls and set the earth-born warriors fighting each other with stones, and when Aeetes still withheld the fleece, Medea drugged the dragon and took it herself (Apollod. 1.9.23).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.93 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The older poets know less and differently. Homer's Circe calls the Argo \"famed of all\" and says Hera \"sent her through\" the Wandering Rocks \"for that Jason was dear to her\" (Od. 12.69–72). Hesiod says the son of Aeson led Medea away from Aeetes \"when he had finished the many grievous labours which the great king, overbearing Pelias\" laid on him, brought her to Iolcus and made her his wife, and that she bore Medeus, reared by Chiron (Theog. 992–1002). Neither mentions the fleece.", "sources": [ "homer-odyssey", "hesiod-theogony" ], "confidence": 0.92 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The return and its costs: the voyage home took \"four months\" in all (Apollod. 1.9.26); Pelias had driven Aeson to suicide, so Medea had his daughters boil him alive on a promise of rejuvenation, and Acastus \"expelled Jason and Medea from Iolcus\" (1.9.27). At Corinth after ten years Jason married Creon's daughter Glauce; Medea burned her with a poisoned robe and killed her sons Mermerus and Pheres, though \"another tradition is that ... the Corinthians removed them and wounded them to death\" (1.9.28).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.92 } ], "takeaways": [ "The complete voyage is Apollodorus's (1.9.16–28); Homer gives one sentence and Hesiod one marriage, and neither names the fleece.", "Apollodorus records four ancient opinions on whether Heracles sailed at all, with the authors' names.", "Medea, not Jason, takes the fleece from the dragon in Apollodorus.", "Hera's love for Jason is the oldest attested motive in the story (Od. 12.72) and drives the Clashing Rocks passage in Apollodorus." ], "faqs": [ { "q": "Why was Jason sent to fetch the Golden Fleece?", "claim": "c1" }, { "q": "Who were the Argonauts?", "claim": "c2" }, { "q": "Did Heracles sail with the Argonauts?", "claim": "c3" }, { "q": "How did Jason get the Golden Fleece?", "claim": "c5" }, { "q": "What happened to Jason and Medea in Corinth?", "claim": "c7" } ], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "theoretical", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "Shows how thin the Homeric and Hesiodic Jason is next to Apollodorus's, and preserves Apollodorus's own record of disagreement (Heracles on the Argo, the children at Corinth) as claims rather than smoothing it away.", "confidence": 0.91, "last_verified": "2026-09-03", "media": [], "x": { "myth": { "pantheon": "greek", "kind": "hero", "domains": [ "seafaring", "the quest for the fleece" ], "symbols": [ "single sandal", "Golden Fleece", "the ship Argo" ], "wikidata": "Q176758" } }, "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/jason", "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/jason.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Jason", "description": "Son of Aeson of Iolcus, the \"man with a single sandal\" whom Pelias sent for the Golden Fleece; leader of the Argonauts, he yoked the brazen bulls and took the fleece with Medea's help, returned in four months, and lost Medea and his children at Corinth. Homer knows him only as the man Hera loved; Hesiod as Medea's husband.", "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/jason", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-09-03", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Hesiod, Theogony — tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb, 1914), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0020/tlg001/tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca) — tr. Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0548/tlg001/tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Homer, Odyssey — tr. A. T. Murray (Loeb, 1919), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0012/tlg002/tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-eng3.xml" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Jason" } }