Jason appeared in various literary works in the classical world of Greece and Rome, including the epic poem Argonautica and the tragedy Medea.

[1] Aeson's wife Alcimede I had a newborn son named Jason, whom she saved from Pelias by having female attendants cluster around the infant and cry as if he were stillborn.

Fearing that Pelias would eventually notice and kill her son, Alcimede sent him away to be reared by the centaur Chiron.

Pelias, fearing that his ill-gotten kingship might be challenged, consulted an oracle, who warned him to beware of a man wearing only one sandal.

[1] The group of heroes included:[2]: 485 The isle of Lemnos is situated in the north Aegean Sea, near the Western coast of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey).

The men then took concubines from the Thracian mainland opposite, and the spurned women, angry at Aphrodite, killed all the male inhabitants while they slept.

What lived in the land beyond Bear Mountain were the Gegeines, which are a tribe of Earthborn giants with six arms who wore leather loincloths.

Jason arrived in Colchis (modern Black Sea coast of Georgia) to claim the fleece as his own.

However, Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes' daughter, Medea, fall in love with Jason.

Medea distracted her father, who chased them as they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of his body into the sea; Aeetes stopped to gather them.

Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens—the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.

When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs.

Talos had one ichor vessel which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail (as in metal casting by the lost wax method).

Medea withdrew the blood from Aeson's body and infused it with certain herbs; putting it back into his veins, returning vigor to him.

[5] Pelias' son, Acastus, drove Jason and Medea into exile for the murder, and the couple settled in Corinth.

Infuriated with Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her revenge by presenting to Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on.

Then Medea killed the two boys that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be murdered or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions.

As Bernard Knox points out, Medea's last scene with concluding appearances parallels that of a number of indisputably divine beings in other plays by Euripides.

Just like these gods, Medea "interrupts and puts a stop to the violent action of the human being on the lower level, ... justifies her savage revenge on the grounds that she has been treated with disrespect and mockery, ... takes measures and gives orders for the burial of the dead, prophesies the future", and "announces the foundation of a cult".

[6] Later Jason and Peleus, father of the hero Achilles, attacked and defeated Acastus, reclaiming the throne of Iolcus for himself once more.

As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy.

Another Argonautica was written by Gaius Valerius Flaccus in the late 1st century AD, eight books in length.

William Morris wrote an English epic poem, The Life and Death of Jason, published in 1867.

Padraic Colum wrote an adaptation for children, The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles, illustrated by Willy Pogany and published in 1921.

The mythical geography of the voyage of the Argonauts has been connected to specific geographic locations by Livio Stecchini[23] but his theories have not been widely adopted.