Medea

Theseus travelled from Troezen to Athens by land, across the Isthmus of Corinth, although the sea route was shorter and easier. On the road he defeated Periphetes, who killed travellers with a bronze club; Sinis, who tied victims to bent pines; Sciron, who pushed travellers from cliffs; and Procrustes, who forced them to fit his bed by stretching them or cutting off their limbs. Theseus subjected each man to the treatment he had inflicted on others.

When Theseus reached Attica, the sons of Phytalus purified him beside the river Cephissus from the blood he had shed, especially the blood of Sinis, who was his maternal kinsman. They then received him as a guest. Theseus entered Athens on the eighth day of the month Cronius, later called Hecatomboeon. As he passed the nearly completed temple of Apollo the Dolphin, masons mistook him for a girl because of his long garment and plaited hair. When they mocked him for travelling unescorted, he threw an ox from their cart high above the temple roof.

Theseus became popular, and Aegeus invited him to a meal. Medea, Aegeus’s wife, knew by sorcery that the stranger was his son. She had fled to Athens from Corinth in her winged car and had gained great influence over Aegeus. Fearing that Theseus would disturb her position, she persuaded Aegeus to poison him. The poison was placed in a cup, and Theseus moved forward to drink it. He then drew the sword that revealed his identity. Aegeus recognised the sword and knocked the cup to the ground before the poison could take effect. Medea escaped to Asia.

Aegeus embraced Theseus, called a public assembly, and acknowledged him as his son and heir. Fires were lit on every altar, gifts were placed before the gods’ images, and garlanded oxen were sacrificed throughout the palace and city.

Jason stood before Aeetes in Colchis and asked for the golden fleece. Aeetes promised to give it to him if he yoked two bronze-footed bulls, ploughed with them, and sowed the teeth of a dragon. The bulls were enormous gifts from Hephaistos. Their hooves were bronze and they breathed fire. Aeetes had received the dragon’s teeth from Athene, after Cadmus had sown teeth at Thebes. Armed men would rise from the ground where Jason planted them.

Jason accepted the terms, but when the task approached he could see no way to master the bulls. Medea, Aeetes’ daughter and a sorceress, had fallen in love with him. She feared that the bulls would kill him, so she offered to help him in secret from her father. Jason promised to marry her. They called on Hecate at an altar, and Medea gave him a magical potion. She instructed him to rub it over himself before facing the bulls. She also told him how to survive the armed men that would spring from the dragon’s teeth.

Jason rubbed the potion over his body and went to the grove where the bulls were kept. Aeetes and the Colchians watched as the gates opened and the creatures charged, breathing sheets of flame. The potion protected Jason from their fire. He seized one bull by the horn and struggled with it until it fell to its knees. He then mastered the second, yoked them both, and made them draw the plough. After this, he sowed the dragon’s teeth and ploughed them into the earth.

Armed men sprang up from the ground and rushed at Jason. He fought them for a time, but their numbers threatened to overwhelm him. He then threw a stone among them, as Medea had instructed. The men turned their weapons against one another and continued fighting until none remained alive. Jason had completed Aeetes’ demands, but the king did not yet hand over the fleece.

Aeetes refused to surrender the Golden Fleece after Jason had yoked the fire breathing bulls. He planned to burn the Argo and kill its crew. Medea guided Jason to the fleece by night and used her drugs to send its guardian dragon to sleep. She took the fleece and returned to the ship with Jason. Her brother Apsyrtus went with them. During the night, the Argonauts put out to sea.

When Aeetes discovered their escape, he pursued them with his fleet. As his ship drew near, Medea killed Apsyrtus, cut his body into pieces, and threw them into the sea. Aeetes stopped to gather the remains of his son. This delayed the pursuit, and the Argonauts escaped. Aeetes turned back, buried the parts he had recovered, and named the burial place Tomoi.

Another account says that Apsyrtus remained in Colchis and led the pursuit of Jason and Medea. Medea sent him a false message, saying that she longed to return home and would give him the fleece if he met her at a certain place that night. He came without suspicion. Jason struck him down, and his blood stained Medea’s silvery robe as she moved away. With Apsyrtus dead, his army scattered and the route to the sea opened.

A further version places the meeting at a temple of Artemis on an island at the mouth of the Danube. Jason ambushed and killed Apsyrtus there, then hid his body. An earlier form has Medea take an infant from his bed in Colchis on Jason’s orders, after which Jason joins her in killing and dismembering him.

Medea went to the palace of Pelias after Jason had returned with the Golden Fleece and sought revenge on his uncle. Pelias had kept Jason from his kingdom. Medea gained the confidence of Pelias’s daughters by telling them that she had restored Jason’s father, Aeson, to youth. The daughters wished the same for their ageing father and asked what payment she would require. Medea delayed her answer, which increased their eagerness, then agreed to perform the transformation.

To prove her power, she brought an old ram before the daughters. She cut it into pieces and placed them in a cauldron of boiling water with herbs. After she uttered her charm, a lamb sprang from the cauldron and ran away. The daughters believed that Medea could restore their father’s youth. She prepared another cauldron and arranged for Pelias to be placed under a powerful sleeping draught. At night, she entered his chamber with the daughters while the guards and the king slept under her spells.

Medea urged the daughters to cut Pelias into pieces and put them into the cauldron. They hesitated because he was their father, but their hope of making him young again overcame their fear. They dismembered him and boiled the pieces, then waited for Medea to speak the words that would restore him. Medea had already left the palace and the city. The daughters then understood that they had killed their father. Jason had gained his revenge on Pelias. Another story says that Medea restored Jason’s father to life and youth, and gave Jason the secret of perpetual youth.

Medea sent Jason’s children to the palace with wedding gifts for Creusa, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. The gifts were a poisoned robe and a headdress, described in some accounts as a crown or coronet. Medea had prepared them with deadly poison. She acted after Jason became engaged to Creusa and Medea was ordered to leave Corinth. She could not accept Jason’s new marriage and used the children to deliver the gifts to the palace.

Creusa put on the robe and headdress. The poison took effect, and she burst into flames. Her flesh burned and dissolved. The gifts were so deadly that anyone who touched them could also perish. The shining dress and headdress became instruments of her death as she prepared for her wedding. The poison remained dangerous after the garments had been put on, so the attempt to help Creusa also brought death.

Creon tried to rescue his daughter. He became stuck to the poisoned garments and died with her. Medea therefore caused the deaths of Creusa and Creon before leaving the matter of Jason’s marriage to its final consequences. The accounts also state that she killed her own children with her own hands. Creusa’s death followed the gifts, while Creon died when he embraced his daughter and came into contact with the poison.

Medea sent Glauce a robe steeped in poison after Jason put her aside. Jason married Glauce, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, after he and Medea lived there together for ten years. Medea called the gods whom Jason swore by as witnesses. She reproached Jason for his ingratitude, then sent the poisoned gift to his bride. When Glauce put it on, a raging fire consumed her. Creon tried to save his daughter and was consumed as well.

Medea then killed Mermeros and Pheres, her children by Jason, with her own hands. In this telling, she acted knowingly. A god did not drive her mad. She killed the children to punish Jason for his betrayal and new marriage. This differed from the stories of Agaue, who killed Pentheus, and Heracles, who killed his children after divine madness. The chorus also recalled Ino, who killed her children after the gods drove her out of her mind.

After the murders, the Sun gave Medea a chariot drawn by winged dragons. She fled in it to Athens, while Jason remained below and could not reach her. Medea's father, Aietes, was a son of the Sun. In another telling, Medea abandoned the very young children at the altar of Hera Acraia while she fled. The Corinthians forced them away from the altar and inflicted fatal injuries on them. Their deaths then came from others rather than from Medea's own hands.

Jason asked Medea to take some years from his life and give them to his father, Aeson, who was worn down by age and close to death. Medea rejected the exchange. She said that her art could lengthen Aeson's life without shortening Jason's. Her promise moved her to act.

At the next full moon, Medea went out alone while all creatures slept. She addressed the stars and the moon, Hecate, the goddess of the underworld, and Tellus, the goddess of the earth, whose power produces plants used in enchantments. She performed rites at an altar and prepared a cauldron. Into it she put magical herbs, seeds and flowers with sharp juices, stones from the East, sand from the shore of the ocean, moonlit hoar frost, a screech owl's head and wings, a wolf's entrails, tortoise shell fragments, a stag's liver, and the head and beak of a crow said to have lived for nine generations of men. She added other unnamed substances and stirred them with a dry olive branch.

Medea then had Aeson brought to her. She cast him into a deep sleep with a charm and laid him on a bed of herbs, like a dead man. Jason and everyone else were kept away so that no uninitiated eyes could witness the rites. With her hair loose, she moved three times around the altars, dipped burning branches in blood, and placed them on the fire. She cut Aeson and removed his old blood. From the cauldron she prepared new blood with the magical ingredients, then put it into his wounds. The hot mixture renewed his body.

Aeson rose restored to youth. In another account, Medea's mixture first makes a withered olive branch turn green, sprout leaves, and bear berries. Flowers and fresh growth appear wherever the scalding mixture falls. These signs accompany the work that renews the old man's life.

After Medea’s death, later mythographic tradition transported her to the Isles of the Blessed, a home for those whom the gods had released from death. There she married Achilles, who had become immortal. Other accounts placed the couple in Elysium, a similar abode for immortalised human beings. One tradition instead said that Medea, rather than Helen, married Achilles in Hades.

Before this union, Medea escaped a deadly scene in a chariot belonging to Helios. She went to Athens and married King Aegeus, whom she had previously met. She promised to obtain a son for him and bore Medus, whose name was connected with the Asian Medes. Aegeus had another son, Theseus, born to Aethra. When Theseus came to claim his inheritance, Medea tried to poison him. After this was discovered, Aegeus banished her.

Medea then left Athens. One account says that she fled to Italy and later married an Asian king. Another says that she returned to Colchis with Medus. A further tradition places her earlier in Thebes, where she sought protection from Heracles after handing the kingdom to Sisyphus. She had cured Heracles of madness. In that account, Hera had promised to make Medea’s children immortal if she sacrificed them, and Medea carried out the sacrifice.

The tradition of her marriage to Achilles belongs to later accounts of her fate. Achilles himself was placed in different locations after death. Homer sent him to Hades, where he lamented his condition. Other poets said that Thetis made him immortal and conveyed him to the White Island or the Isles of the Blessed. Ibycus and Simonides placed Achilles in Elysium with Medea.