Return to Iolcus and the Death of Pelias (Medea’s Rejuvenation Trick)

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/074-iolcus-pelias-death-medea-apollodorus

Cycle: Heroes — Jason / Argonauts

Version line: Apollodorean (fleece returned; daughters of Pelias deceived; Pelias boiled; exile)

Sources: Apollodorus, *Library* 1.9.27; Pindar, *Pythian* 4.250–262 (return and Medea’s role touched); Euripides, *Medea* 486–487, 504–505 (allusions to Pelias’s death)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/074-iolcus-pelias-death-medea-apollodorus.md

Characters

Acastus — son of Pelias; expels Jason and Medea from Iolcus
Aeson — Jason’s father; restored by Medea in some strands, already dead in others
Alcestis — named among Pelias’s daughters in wider myth (before Admetus)
Argonauts — disbanded after the successful return (background)
Creon of Corinth — future host (next phase)
Jason — returns with the fleece; loses Iolcus after Pelias’s death; flees with Medea
Medea — stages the false rejuvenation; tricks the Peliades; effects Pelias’s death
Peliades — deceived into killing their father
Pelias — king who demanded the fleece; cut up and boiled by his daughters; dies

Places

Cauldron of Medea — instrument of the false rejuvenation
Corinth — refuge of Jason and Medea after Acastus drives them out
Iolcus — homecoming; scene of Pelias’s murder and the couple’s expulsion

Themes

Narrative

Jason brought the Argo home to Iolcus with Medea and the Golden Fleece. He delivered the fleece to Pelias—or showed that the condition was fulfilled—and expected the kingdom promised at the one-sandal meeting. Pelias still clung to power; in many accounts Aeson had already been forced to suicide or was wasting in prison, and Jason’s household was weakened. Medea undertook to clear the throne by craft. She told Pelias’s daughters (the Peliades, including Alcestis in some lists before her marriage) that she could rejuvenate their aged father by her drugs, as she had renewed Aeson (in strands where Aeson still lived) or as she demonstrated on an old ram (or sheep): cut up, boiled in a cauldron with magic herbs, the animal leapt out young. Convinced, the daughters cut Pelias to pieces and boiled him. Medea withheld the true restorative drugs; Pelias did not rise. Thus the oracle of the one-sandaled man was fulfilled through Medea’s deception rather than open war. Acastus son of Pelias drove Jason and Medea out of Iolcus (or the pair fled the scandal). They went to Corinth, where they lived for years as guests of King Creon—setting the stage for the Euripidean catastrophe. Some traditions bury or honor Pelias with funeral games at which further heroic contests occur; the catalogue’s hinge here is the murder-by-rejuvenation and the expulsion toward Corinth.