Jason.
Jason · Captain of the Argonauts
The captain of the Argo — a crew of fifty heroes sent to fetch the Golden Fleece from a kingdom at the edge of the known world.
Son of Aeson, displaced king of Iolcus. Leader of the expedition to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The ship Argo became the (now-defunct) constellation Argo Navis.
Jason · Jason · Captain of the Argonauts
Son of Aeson, displaced king of Iolcus. Leader of the expedition to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The ship Argo became the (now-defunct) constellation Argo Navis.
Jason was the rightful heir to the throne of Iolcus, displaced as a child by his uncle Pelias. Hidden away with the centaur Chiron and raised on Mount Pelion, he returned to claim his kingdom as a young man. Pelias agreed to step down — on the condition that Jason first retrieve the Golden Fleece, the hide of the ram Chrysomallus, kept in the kingdom of Colchis on the far side of the Black Sea, guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Jason commissioned the ship Argo and gathered a crew of fifty heroes — the Argonauts — including Heracles, the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), Orpheus, and Atalanta. They survived the Symplegades (the clashing rocks at the Bosphorus), a battle with the Harpies, the Sirens, and the bronze giant Talos. At Colchis, King Aeëtes set Jason impossible tasks; the king's daughter Medea, falling in love with him, used her magic to help him pass each one and finally to put the dragon to sleep.
"Medea cast the dragon into a sleep with her drugs, and Jason carried the Golden Fleece down to the Argo."
Jason took the fleece and Medea fled with him. The voyage home was almost as hard as the journey out. He returned to Iolcus to find his father dead; his revenge on Pelias, carried out by Medea, drove him into exile. Years later, having abandoned Medea for the daughter of the king of Corinth, he was killed in his sleep by a beam falling from the rotting hull of the Argo itself — pulled up onto a Corinthian beach as a relic. The ship was placed among the stars by Athena as Argo Navis (now broken into Carina, Vela, and Puppis).
Where this comes from.
Mythology
- Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica
- Apollodorus Bibliotheca 1.9.16–1.9.28
- Pindar Pythian 4
Paintings & illustrations
- Jason returning the fleece to Pelias — Apulian red-figure krater, Darius Painter circle (c. 340 BCE) · Wikimedia · PD
- Jason with the Golden Fleece — Erasmus Quellinus II (1630) · Wikimedia · PD
- Jason and Medea — John William Waterhouse (1907) · Wikimedia · PD
For fun · sources cited. We don’t publish horoscopes, personality readings, or compatibility takes — just astronomy + classical mythology, with public-domain art where available. See all 88 constellations.