Jason
Captain of the Argo
JAY-sun
Assembled the greatest crew in Greek myth, won the fleece with a sorceress's help, and lost everything by breaking his word to her.
Domains
VoyagingLeadershipBroken Oaths
Symbols
The ArgoGolden FleeceOne Sandal
The Story
Sent for the Golden Fleece by an uncle who expected him to die trying, Jason built the Argo and crewed it with nearly every hero of the generation. The voyage is the great ensemble story: clashing rocks, harpies, the bronze giant Talos.
Almost nothing at Colchis is his own doing. Medea, the king's daughter, drugs the sleepless serpent, hands him the trick for the fire-breathing bulls, and kills her own brother to cover the escape. Then he sets her aside for a better marriage, and she takes the children. He dies years later, alone, when a beam of the rotting Argo falls on him.
Did You Know?
- Argo Navis, once the largest constellation in the sky, was broken up in the eighteenth century into Carina, Puppis, and Vela, the keel, the stern, and the sails.
- He arrives at his uncle's court wearing one sandal, having lost the other carrying an old woman across a river. The old woman was Hera, and the prophecy the king feared named a man with one shoe.
- The paper nautilus is called the argonaut because it was believed to sail on the surface using two membranous arms as sails. It does not, but the name held.