Absyrtus- Greek FigureMortal"Prince of Colchis"

Prince of Colchis

Absyrtus was the son of King Aeetes of Colchis and brother of the sorceress Medea. Apollodorus names his mother as the Oceanid Idyia, making him Medea's full sibling; Apollonius gives a different mother, the Caucasian nymph Asterodeia. His story exists in two versions.

The Murder: Earlier Tradition

In the older version, Absyrtus is a young boy. When Medea flees Colchis with Jason and the Argonauts after stealing the Golden Fleece, she takes her brother aboard the Argo as a hostage. As Aeetes's fleet closes in on the fleeing ship, Medea murders the child, dismembers his body, and casts the pieces into the sea behind them. Aeetes, forced to stop and gather the scattered remains of his son for proper burial, falls behind and loses the pursuit.

The Murder: Later Tradition

In Apollonius's retelling, Absyrtus is not a child but a young man who leads the Colchian fleet in pursuit of the Argonauts. When the fugitives are cornered among the islands of the Adriatic, Medea lures her brother to a meeting on a sacred island of Artemis under the pretense of negotiation. Jason ambushes him and strikes him down. As Absyrtus dies, he scoops his own blood in his hands and smears it on Medea's silver veil. Jason then ritually mutilates the corpse — cutting off the extremities and licking and spitting out the blood three times to avert the pollution of murder, a practice called maschalismos.

Zeus was angered by the treacherous killing, and the Argonauts were compelled to seek purification from Circe on her island of Aeaea before they could return home. The Apsyrtides Islands (modern Cres and Lošinj in Croatia) bore his name, and the city of Tomi on the Black Sea derived its name from the Greek tome, "cutting," after his dismemberment.