Son of Pelias, king of Iolcus, and brother of the Peliades. Against his father's will he sailed on the Argo, and when Medea's trickery had brought Pelias to his death he buried him and drove Jason and Medea from the city — afterwards betraying his guest Peleus, whom he had purified, by abandoning him swordless on Mount Pelion.1
Apollodorus names him a son of Pelias, born at Iolcus to Anaxibia, daughter of Bias — though some, the genealogist adds, give Pelias's wife as Phylomache, daughter of Amphion — with sisters Pisidice, Pelopia, Hippothoe, and Alcestis. Hyginus likewise names him son of Pelias and Anaxibia, daughter of Bias, of Iolcus, and pictures him among the Argonauts clad in a double mantle, a comrade who joined Jason of his own accord.2
Apollonius makes him an Argonaut in defiance of his father: the son of mighty Pelias had no will to stay behind in the palace, and he came down from the city with Argus, hastening to the ship despite the will of Pelias, to be numbered among the host. On the voyage he bears his part — in the night battle with the Doliones he slew Sphodris, and when storm pinned the heroes ashore he and Mopsus son of Ampycus kept watch over their sleeping comrades, above whom a halcyon hovered prophesying calm. Ovid too lists him among the hunters of the Calydonian boar, the Argonaut swift of dart.3
When the quest was done, Medea worked the ruin of Pelias: persuading his daughters that an old ram boiled in her cauldron leapt out a lamb, she had them cut their father up and seethe him, promising his renewed youth. Acastus buried his father with the help of the people of Iolcus and expelled Jason and Medea from the city. Hyginus tells it that Jason himself, master of the palace at Medea's signal, handed the rule to Acastus, son of Pelias and brother of the Peliades, because he had sailed with him to Colchis — and departed with Medea for Corinth.4
Apollodorus tells of his blackest deed. When Peleus, fleeing the blood of Eurytion, came to Iolcus and was purified by Acastus, the king's wife Astydamia fell in love with the guest; rebuffed, she wrote to Peleus's wife that he meant to wed Sterope, daughter of Acastus — at which the wife hanged herself — and accused Peleus to her husband of forcing her. Acastus, unwilling to kill the man he had purified, took him hunting on Pelion; there Peleus cut out and pouched the tongues of his kills to prove his prowess against the mockery of Acastus's party, but when he slept Acastus deserted him, hiding his sword in cattle-dung, and left him for the centaurs to slay, until Chiron saved him and restored the blade. Peleus repaid it: with Jason and the Dioscuri he laid Iolcus waste, slaughtered Astydamia, and cut her limb from limb to lead his army through her into the city.5
Pausanias saw him on the chest of Cypselus, presiding over the funeral games of Pelias: among the runners, Iphiclus the winner, and Acastus holding out the crown to him — a figure the traveller judges to be father of the Protesilaus who marched against Troy. The link is Hyginus's, who makes Laodamia, the bride who begged three hours' speech with her dead husband Protesilaus, the daughter of Acastus. Apollodorus in the same book names Sthenele, another daughter of Acastus, as mother of Patroclus in one reckoning of Achilles' companions.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
