Pelias

• 1. Introduction

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  Pelias, king of Iolcus in Greek mythology, owes his entire reign to a single missing sandal. When a young stranger arrived in Iolcus wearing only one shoe, Pelias recognized the man at once as his greatest threat. An oracle had warned him years earlier to beware exactly this figure. The stranger was Jason, his own nephew. What follows from that moment is one of Greek mythology's most elaborate chains of manipulation, betrayal, and gruesome revenge. How did Pelias come to rule Iolcus in the first place? Why did he fear Jason above all others? And how did his own daughters become the instruments of his death?

• 2. A King Born of Deception

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  Tyro, the mother of Pelias, was already married to King Cretheus of Iolcus when she fell in love with Enipeus, a river god. Enipeus refused her. Poseidon, drawn to Tyro, disguised himself as the river god and lay with her. From that union, Tyro gave birth to twin sons: Pelias and Neleus. She abandoned both infants on a mountain to die. A herdsman found them and raised them, though one version holds that a household maid was responsible for their survival.

  Pelias and Neleus grew up without knowing their true origins. When they finally found Tyro, they learned she had a stepmother named Sidero who had treated her cruelly. Pelias and Neleus hunted Sidero down. She fled into a temple sacred to Hera. Pelias killed her there regardless, inside the sanctuary. That act of sacrilege earned him Hera's permanent hatred, a grudge the goddess would nurse for the rest of his life.

• 3. The Grip on Power

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  Pelias was power-hungry and wanted to rule all of Thessaly. He banished his twin brother Neleus and his half-brother Pherês. His other half-brother Aeson, the rightful heir to Iolcus, was thrown into the dungeons of the city, near what is now the modern city of Volos. Aeson did not die there; he married and fathered children while imprisoned. His most famous son was Jason.

  Aeson sent Jason away from Iolcus in fear that Pelias would have the boy killed as a rival. Jason was sent to the centaur Chiron, who educated him on the slopes of Mount Pelion. All the while, Pelias consulted an oracle about his future. The oracle's answer was precise: beware a man wearing one sandal.

• 4. The One-Sandal Trap

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  Pelias offered a sacrifice by the sea in honor of Poseidon, and many people were summoned to attend. Jason, crossing the flooded river Anaurus in haste to reach Iolcus, lost one sandal in the current. In the version preserved by Virgil's Aeneid and Hyginus's Fabulae, Hera herself appeared on the riverbank disguised as an old woman, and Jason carried her across, losing his sandal in the process.

  Jason walked into Iolcus wearing one sandal. Pelias, visibly fearful, asked the young man a calculated question: what would he do if confronted with the man destined to bring about his downfall? Jason answered without hesitation. He said he would send that man after the Golden Fleece. Pelias immediately took the suggestion and dispatched Jason on the quest. The fleece hung on an oak tree in Colchis, in a grove sacred to Ares, guarded by a dragon that never slept.

• 5. Fifty Heroes and a Dragon

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  Jason commissioned the shipwright Argus to build a vessel large enough for fifty men. That ship became the Argo, and the crew who sailed on it became known as the Argonauts. On arrival at Colchis, Jason approached the king, Aeetes, to request the Golden Fleece directly. Aeetes set impossible conditions: Jason must yoke a pair of fire-breathing bulls and plow a field with them, then sow dragon's teeth into the earth.

  Medea, the daughter of Aeetes, fell in love with Jason. She used her magical powers to help him survive the bulls and the field. She then cast a spell to put the guardian dragon to sleep, which allowed Jason to take the fleece from the oak tree. Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts fled Colchis. Medea's brother Absyrtus came with them as they began the journey back to Thessaly.

• 6. Medea's Pot

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  During Jason's long absence, Pelias told both Aeson and a man named Promachus that the Argo had sunk. Both men responded by drinking poison and dying. Whether Pelias killed them directly, the source notes, is possible but uncertain.

  When Jason and Medea returned, Pelias refused to surrender the throne. Medea devised a solution. She told Pelias's daughters, who were known collectively as the Peliades, that she could rejuvenate their aging father. She demonstrated by cutting an old ram into pieces and boiling them in a pot. A young ram jumped out alive. The daughters believed what they had seen. They cut their father into pieces and threw him into the pot. Pelias did not emerge.

  The scheme worked, but it did not win Jason his kingdom. Pelias's son Acastus banished both Jason and Medea to Corinth, reclaiming the throne himself. At the funeral games held in Pelias's honor, the hero Atalanta defeated Peleus in a wrestling match, a scene that became a frequent subject in Greek art.