The Man with One Sandal — Pelias’ Command

Also called: Jason and Pelias, Monosandalos

A legend handed down over the centuries.

A Greek myth told by Pindar and Apollonius. Warned by an oracle to beware a man wearing one sandal, King Pelias of Iolcus saw his nephew Jason arrive with a sandal lost in a river — and sent him to fetch the Golden Fleece from Colchis at the end of the world.

This Greek myth is told in Pindar’s Fourth Pythian Ode and Book 1 of Apollonius’ Argonautica. In Iolcus in Thessaly, Pelias had seized the throne of his half-brother Aeson. Aeson’s son Jason, raised by the centaur Chiron, came home as a grown man — and lost a sandal while carrying Hera, disguised as an old woman, across a flooded river.

Seeing the one-sandalled man, Pelias feared the oracle and, instead of returning the throne, set Jason the seemingly impossible task of bringing the Golden Fleece from Colchis at the far end of the Black Sea. Jason gathered heroes from all over Greece and with Athena’s help built the Argo, a ship of fifty oars. In antiquity Iolcus was placed near modern Volos in Greece.