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Greek heroine, mother of Jason

Alcimede

Alcimede is a heroine of Greek mythology, the mother of Jason by Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus. Her story is tied to the tradition of the Minyan daughters and to the legend of the Argonauts.

The myth

According to the myth, Alcimede was the daughter of Clymene, who was herself a daughter of Minyas. She met Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus in Thessaly, when his half-brother Pelias had imprisoned him in caves beneath the city. There she bore Jason to him.

Apollonius of Rhodes, in the Argonautica, stresses that Jason was the son of Alcimede, born of Clymene, and that the Minyans claimed descent from Minyas's daughters, a hint of matrilineal descent. Some versions give Alcimede a different father, Autolycus.

Pelias forced Alcimede and Aeson to take their own lives, along with the child Promachus. Tradition says she either hanged herself or drank bull's blood alongside her husband and the boy.

Ancient sources: Apollonius of Rhodes names her as Jason's mother in his Argonautica.

Trivia

Descent through the mother. Apollonius of Rhodes suggests that the Boeotian Minyans regarded themselves as descended from the daughters of Minyas, which points to an archaic matrilineal descent.
Another possible father. In some accounts Alcimede is called the daughter of Autolycus, and the same is said of Polymele, another possible mother of Jason.

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