Medea- Greek FigureMortal"Princess of Colchis"

The Princess Sorceress

Colchis sat at the eastern edge of the known world, on the shore of the Black Sea, ruled by Aeëtes, son of Helios. Aeëtes' sister was Circe. His daughter was Medea.

Medea served Hecate. She knew which herbs healed and which killed. She could brew a draught to make a man invulnerable or charm a serpent to sleep with a word. Colchis held one treasure the Greeks could not ignore: the Golden Fleece, hung in a grove sacred to Ares and guarded by a dragon that never slept.

The Coming of Jason

When the Argo landed on the shores of Colchis, Hera and Athena knew Jason could never survive what Aeëtes would set before him. They turned to Aphrodite, who sent her son Eros to strike Medea with an arrow of love.

The arrow hit, and fire ran under Medea's skin. She agonized through sleepless nights, torn between her father and the stranger. In Apollonius's Argonautica, she picked up a casket of poisons, put it down, wept, picked it up again. In the end she chose Jason.

The Tasks and the Flight from Colchis

Aeëtes set Jason what should have been fatal tasks: yoke two bronze-footed, fire-breathing bulls forged by Hephaestus and plow a field, then sow it with dragon's teeth from which armed warriors would spring fully grown.

Medea gave him the means to survive. She prepared an ointment from the Promethean crocus, a plant that had sprung from Prometheus's blood on the Caucasus rock. The plant screamed when cut. Its gatherer had to bathe in seven streams and call on Hecate seven times. The ointment made Jason invulnerable to fire and iron for a single day. For the warriors, she told him to throw a stone among them when they rose; in their confusion, they would turn on each other. Jason accomplished every task.

Aeëtes refused to honor his word and planned to attack the Argonauts at night. Medea led Jason to the grove where the Fleece hung, guarded by a serpent that never slept. She charmed it into slumber with incantations and a juniper branch dipped in potion. Jason took the Fleece. They fled to the Argo before dawn.

Aeëtes pursued with his fleet. In the older tradition preserved by Apollodorus, Medea killed her brother Absyrtus during the flight, dismembered his body, and threw the pieces overboard one by one. Her father stopped to collect each piece for burial, and the Argo escaped. In Apollonius's account, Absyrtus led the pursuit himself, and Medea lured him to a meeting where Jason cut him down. Zeus sent storms to punish the Argonauts. They sought purification from Medea's aunt Circe on Aeaea. Circe performed the rites but refused them hospitality, so horrified was she by what they had done.

The Murder of Pelias

In Iolcus, King Pelias still held the throne. He had sent Jason on the quest hoping he would die, and during Jason's absence he had killed his father Aeson and his young brother.

Medea went to Pelias's daughters. She told them she could make their father young again. As proof, she cut an old ram to pieces, boiled the pieces with herbs, and a young lamb leapt from the cauldron. The daughters, desperate to restore their father, did the same. They cut Pelias apart and lowered him into boiling water. Medea withheld the herbs. The king died by his own daughters' hands.

Acastus, Pelias's son, drove the couple out of Iolcus. They fled to Corinth, where they lived for ten years and Medea bore Jason two sons.

The Abandonment

In Corinth, Creon offered Jason his daughter Glauce in marriage. Jason accepted. He told Medea it was for the best: a Greek wife would give their children standing.

Medea had abandoned her home and murdered her own blood for this man. He wanted a younger bride. In Euripides's play, she speaks: "Of all creatures that have breath and sense, we women are the most wretched." Creon ordered her banished from Corinth and granted her a single day.

The Terrible Revenge

Medea sent her sons to Glauce with wedding gifts: a finely woven robe and a golden crown, heirlooms from her grandfather Helios. Both were poisoned.

When Glauce put on the robe and crown, the poison burned through her flesh to the bone. Her father Creon embraced her and was caught in the same fire. They died together.

As long as her sons lived, Jason still had a future. In Euripides's version, Medea killed the boys herself, inside the house. They cried out for help. Jason beat at the doors, too late. She escaped in a chariot drawn by winged dragons, sent by Helios. She took the bodies with her. Jason could not even bury his sons.

The Corinthians told it differently. In their tradition, Medea did not kill the children. The Corinthians themselves stoned the boys at Hera's altar in revenge for the royal deaths. Pausanias records that young Corinthians cut their hair and wore dark garments each year in the children's memory.

Jason was left with nothing. His bride was dead. His sons were dead. He wandered until he sat beneath the rotting hull of the Argo. A beam fell and crushed him.

After Corinth

Medea flew to Athens, where she married King Aegeus in exchange for a cure for his childlessness. She bore him a son, Medus. When Theseus arrived from Troezen to claim his birthright, Medea recognized him before Aegeus did and set poison in his cup at a banquet. Aegeus knocked it from his son's lips when he recognized the sword at Theseus's side. Medea fled on her dragon chariot.

In the tradition recorded by Diodorus, she returned to Colchis, where her uncle Perses had usurped Aeëtes' throne. She killed Perses and restored her father to power.