A lost sandal told a usurping king that Jason had come for his throne
An oracle warned King Pelias to fear a man wearing one sandal. Years later Jason strolled into Iolcus with a bare foot, having lost the sandal while carrying a disguised goddess across a river. To get rid of him, Pelias sent him after the Golden Fleece, launching the voyage of the Argonauts.
Jason was the son of Aeson, rightful king of Iolcus in Thessaly. Aeson's ambitious half-brother Pelias, said to be a son of the sea god Poseidon, seized the throne and hunted down Aeson's descendants. Jason's mother, Alcimede, fooled him by having her attendants weep around her newborn as though he had died, then sent the boy to be raised by the wise centaur Chiron.
Grown up, Jason arrived while Pelias was holding games for Poseidon. On the way he had helped an old woman over the wintry river Anauros; she was Hera in disguise, and she blessed him. Recognised as the one-sandalled man and claiming his birthright, Jason accepted Pelias's condition: bring back the Golden Fleece. He gathered heroes aboard the Argo, a ship named after its builder, Argus.
The voyage was a string of strange episodes. On Lemnos they met women who had killed their husbands and lived under Queen Hypsipyle, with whom Jason had twins. Among the Doliones, whose king Cyzicus welcomed them, Heracles fought off six-armed earthborn giants; then, blown back to the same shore at night, the Argonauts mistook their hosts for enemies and killed the king, discovering the error only at dawn. In Thrace, Jason freed the starving King Phineus from the harpies that stole his food, and in return learned the route to Colchis.
The key was passing the Symplegades, cliffs that slammed together on anything between them. Following Phineus's advice, Jason released a dove; it slipped through, losing only a few tail feathers, and the crew rowed hard behind it, escaping with slight damage to the stern. Afterwards the rocks stayed fixed, leaving the passage open. Jason later married the sorceress Medea, granddaughter of Helios, and his story runs through the epic Argonautica, the tragedy Medea and the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts.
Source: Jason
