Jason

Summary

Jason is the leader of the Argonauts, the crew of the ship Argo, in Greek myth, the man who brought the Golden Fleece from Colchis on the Black Sea, and with it Medea, the king's daughter. His father Aeson was of the line of Aeolus, his mother Polymede was a daughter of Autolycus, and he was raised by the centaur Chiron in his cave; Pindar says it was Chiron who named him Jason.

The fleece has a story before him. Ino, wife of King Athamas, wanted to destroy her husband's children by his first wife, Phrixus and Helle. She persuaded the women to parch the seed wheat so that it did not sprout, then persuaded the king's messengers to say the land would not bear again until Phrixus was sacrificed to Zeus. Their mother snatched the two children away and gave them a ram with a golden fleece, which she had from Hermes, and it carried them through the sky over land and sea. Helle fell into the sea that bears her name, and Phrixus reached Colchis, whose king was Aeetes, son of the Sun, Helios. He sacrificed the ram and gave its fleece to the king, who nailed it to an oak in the grove of Ares, guarded by a sleepless serpent.

Pelias, Jason's uncle, had taken the kingship of Iolcus, and an oracle told him: beware the man with one sandal. Jason crossed a river in flood, lost a sandal in the stream, and came before Pelias with only one. Apollonius of Rhodes says that at that river he carried an old woman across on his shoulders; she was Hera in disguise, testing men, and she loved him from that day. Pelias sent him for the fleece, and Pindar has Pelias say that the soul of Phrixus asks to be brought home, and the fleece with it. Argus, son of Phrixus, built a ship of fifty oars on Athena's advice, and Athena set in its prow a speaking timber from the oak of Dodona; the heroes of Greece sailed in it, among them Orpheus and Heracles. Library 1.9.16; Argonautica 3.66–73; Pindar, Pythian 4.159–162.

When they reached Colchis, Aeetes promised him the fleece if he would yoke, single-handed, two bronze-footed bulls that breathed fire, and then sow a serpent's teeth. Medea, the king's daughter, skilled in herbs and spells, fell in love with him and promised to help him if he swore to marry her and take her with him to Greece. When he swore, she gave him an ointment to rub on his shield, his spear and his body, so that neither fire nor iron could harm him for a whole day, and told him that armed men would spring from the ground where he sowed the teeth, and that when they gathered he should throw a stone among them from a distance. He yoked the bulls and sowed the teeth, and when the men rose he threw stones among them; they fought each other, and he killed them. Aeetes still refused the fleece, so Medea led Jason by night to the grove and put the serpent to sleep with her herbs and her song; he took the fleece from the tree, and they fled on the ship. Pindar, however, says that Jason killed the serpent by cunning.

On the way back Medea killed her brother Apsyrtus, cut him in pieces and threw his limbs into the sea, so that her father fell behind gathering them. At Iolcus they found that Pelias had driven Jason's father to his death. Medea persuaded Pelias's daughters to cut up their father and boil him so that her herbs could make him young again; she showed them a ram she cut up that came out of the pot a lamb, so they did it, and he died. Jason and Medea were driven out to Corinth and lived there ten years. Then Jason took the king of Corinth's daughter as his bride and put Medea away; Medea called on the gods by whom he had sworn, sent the bride a poisoned robe in which she burned together with her father, killed her two sons by Jason, and fled in a chariot drawn by winged serpents given her by the Sun, her grandfather.

The idea the story turns on is the oath. The fleece was won by an oath: Jason swore to Medea that he would marry her, and she betrayed her father and her brother and gave him what he could not do alone. Jason did not win the fleece by his own strength but by the help of others: Hera, whom he carried and who loved him for it, the ship Athena made, Orpheus's song, and Medea's ointment and song. When he broke the oath in Corinth, Medea called on the gods by whom he had sworn, and the help she had given turned into ruin on his house.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Ἰάσων, Iasōn, ends in -ōn, an ending of men's names, leaving Ἰασ-. Greek has a verb ἰάομαι, "to heal, to cure", whose future is ἰάσομαι and aorist ἰασάμην, so in Greek the name is "the healer". The Greek essay writes it Iyāsūn and reads it as āsī: in Lane, asā al-jurḥa is to dress and treat a wound, and the āsī is the physician who treats wounds. The glottal stop is not written in Greek and becomes a vowel at the head of the name, and s is s. On this reading Jason is "the healer", and the Greek sense and the Arabic sense meet. That is what surrounds him in the story: he was raised by Chiron, from whom Achilles learned healing herbs, as the Iliad says, and he married a witch whose casket, Apollonius says, held herbs some for healing and some for killing.

Linguistic Root

Jason and "the healer"

Lane: asā al-jurḥa, he dressed the wound and treated it; the āsī is a physician skilled in treating wounds, plural usāh and isāʾ; and from the same root, asā baynahum, he made peace between them.

The sounds: the Arabic glottal stop is not written in Greek, so its vowel stands at the head of the name; s answers σ; and the final w of ʾ-s-w is a weak letter that drops at the end of a word, as it does in asā itself. What remains is that in Greek the s marks the future and aorist, and the root of the verb is ἰα- without s, while in Arabic the s belongs to the root. So the comparison sets asā beside the Greek verb form on which the name is built.

The essay's other reading

Before āsā the essay puts yaʾisa, and reverses its sense to make Jason "the one who does not despair". Its three letters, y, glottal stop and s, stand in order in Ἰασ-, but in Arabic yaʾs is the cutting off of hope, and the reading has to turn the sense upside down to fit the hero, so it is the weaker one. This wiki reads the name of the greater Ajax from the same root on the y-ʾ-s page.

Medea and "the one who supplies aid"

The Greek lexicon sets Medea's name, Μήδεια, beside the verb μήδομαι, to resolve and to plan a thing skilfully or with cunning, from which come μήδεα, counsels. The essay does not read her name. We read it, proposed on the method, from amadda: take off the ending -eia and Μηδ- remains; m is m, d is d, and the doubled d of madda appears single in Greek. Lane gives amdadtuhu bi-madad, I aided him and strengthened him, and amdadnāhum, we aided them through others. On this reading Medea is al-mumiddah, "the one who supplies", who supplied Jason with what he lacked: the ointment against fire, the counsel about the earth-born men, and the song that put the serpent to sleep. The reading parts from the Greek sense, "the planner", and the Arabic root m-d-d keeps no sense of planning. The Greek lexicon puts μέδω in the same family, the verb from which this wiki reads Medusa's name as "the stretched gaze".

Key Mythic Narratives

The oldest accounts

Homer knows the ship: Circe tells Odysseus that one ship passed the Wandering Rocks, "the Argo known to all", on her way back from Aeetes, and would have been wrecked had Hera not sent her through, because Jason was dear to her. Hesiod says Jason took away the daughter of Aeetes after finishing the hard labours Pelias laid on him, brought her to Iolcus as his wife, and she bore him Medeus, whom Chiron raised in the mountains. In Hesiod Aeetes is the son of Helios and Medea his daughter.

The charm of Prometheus

Apollonius calls the ointment Medea gave Jason "the charm of Prometheus", and says its flower first sprang up when the eagle that tore Prometheus's liver on the crags of the Caucasus let his blood drip to the ground. What protected Jason from fire grew from the blood of the one who stole fire.

Aphrodite's bird

Pindar says Aphrodite brought a bird bound to a four-spoked wheel and taught Jason spells, so that Medea would forget the reverence owed to her parents and burn with longing for Greece.

Medea and Corinth

Pausanias reports from the Corinthian poet Eumelus that Helios gave the land of Corinth to his son Aeetes, and that the Corinthians later sent for Medea and made her queen, so that Jason ruled through her. She hid her children in Hera's sanctuary, believing they would become immortal; when Jason found out he would not forgive her and sailed back to Iolcus, and she left the kingdom to Sisyphus. Pausanias 2.3.10–11.

Symbolic Reading

The essay "Rereading Greek Myths" sets Jason's voyage in its table "sea myths are trade maps" and reads it as a trade in gold with Georgia on the Black Sea: Colchis is a land of gold, and the voyage there is a merchants' route.

In the texts themselves the story begins with a famine made by hand: parched seed that will not sprout, and two children whose sacrifice is demanded so that growth may return, who escape on a golden ram. Then Jason yokes the bulls to the plough, cuts the ground and sows it, and armed men grow out of it. The Library says Jason loved farming and lived in the country. The story begins in the field and returns to it.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The closest story to Medea's is that of Suseri-bime in Japan: Ōkuninushi goes to Susanoo in the deep land, and Susanoo's daughter gives him scarves that keep off the snakes and insects, so he survives her father's ordeals; then he flees with her and her father's treasures, and the father chases him to the border of his land. In both a king's daughter helps the stranger through her father's ordeals and flees with him.

The Greek essay sets Jason beside Gilgamesh in the quest to the ends of the earth. In the North Sigurd kills the dragon Fáfnir and takes the gold it guards, as Jason kills the serpent in Pindar's version, and this guardian serpent is a witness of divine combat with sea and serpent. Medea's tricks, from the ram she brings out of the pot as a lamb to the bronze man Talos, from whose vein she drew the nail so that his blood ran out, set her beside the trickster, and her name in Greek itself comes from a verb for planning with cunning.