Aeetes, king of Colchis and son of Helios, and the Oceanid Idyia bore Medea, Chalciope, and Absyrtus. Medea later murdered her brother to aid her escape with Jason and the Golden Fleece.
Jason married Medea after she betrayed her father Aeetes to help him win the Golden Fleece. They had two sons in Corinth — Mermeros and Pheres — before Jason abandoned her for Princess Glauce, provoking Medea to murder their children.
After fleeing Corinth, Medea married King Aegeus of Athens and bore him a son, Medus, the eponymous ancestor of the Medes.
Medea's sorcery was essential to Jason's success in Colchis. She gave him a fire-proof ointment, told him how to defeat the earth-born warriors, and drugged the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece.
Medea sent a poisoned robe and golden crown to Glauce as false wedding gifts. When Glauce donned them, the enchanted garments burned her alive, and her father Creon of Corinth died clutching her body as the fire consumed him.
Medea slaughtered her own sons Mermeros and Pheres in Corinth to punish Jason for abandoning her, denying him his lineage and future.
Medea murdered her brother Absyrtus during the flight from Colchis, dismembering the boy and scattering his limbs across the sea to slow their father Aeetes's pursuit.
⚠ Apollonius's Argonautica 4.452-481 presents an adult Absyrtus ambushed by Jason at Medea's instigation, while earlier traditions (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.24) describe Medea dismembering a young boy.
Medea tricked the daughters of Pelias into killing their father by promising she could rejuvenate him in a magic cauldron. She gave them the wrong herbs, and Pelias died.
Medea destroyed the bronze giant Talos by removing the nail that sealed his single vein of ichor at his ankle. In Apollonius's Argonautica, she bewitched him with her gaze, causing him to graze his ankle and drain his lifeblood.
When Jason and Medea fled Colchis after murdering Medea's brother Absyrtus, they sought purification from Circe. She performed the ritual but ordered them away, horrified by their crime.
Medea's grandfather Helios sent his dragon-drawn chariot to rescue her from Corinth after she killed Glauce, Creon, and her own sons. She escaped beyond Jason's reach, protected by her divine ancestry.
Jason fled to Corinth with Medea after Pelias's murder, settling there for ten years. When he abandoned Medea for Princess Glauce, the resulting tragedy destroyed both families and ended Jason's glory.
Medea rejuvenated the aged Aeson by draining his blood and filling his veins with a magical potion of rare herbs, restoring Jason's father to the strength of his youth.
⚠ Ovid's Metamorphoses 7.159-293 describes the rejuvenation at length, while the Nostoi fragment (fr. 6 Bernabé) and some later accounts say Aeson was already dead before Medea arrived.
Aphrodite sent Eros to strike Medea with an arrow of irresistible love for Jason. This divine compulsion drove Medea to betray her father, her homeland, and her brother for a foreign hero.
Medea used her sorcery to overcome the ever-wakeful Colchian Dragon. In Apollonius's Argonautica, she sang incantations and anointed its eyes with a potion of juniper, lulling the guardian to sleep so Jason could seize the Golden Fleece.
Medea was a princess of Colchis and priestess of Hecate. She betrayed her homeland and father to help Jason win the Golden Fleece, fleeing aboard the Argo and never returning.
At Aphrodite's bidding, Eros shot Medea with an arrow as she first glimpsed Jason in her father's court, kindling the desperate love that drove her to betray Aeetes, steal the Golden Fleece, and follow Jason to Greece.
Medea anointed Jason with protective salves, taught him to master the fire-breathing bulls, and drugged the sleepless dragon coiled around the Golden Fleece so Jason could tear it from the sacred oak.
Medea served as a priestess of Hecate in Colchis, deriving her powers of pharmakeia from the goddess of witchcraft and the night. She invoked Hecate in her most potent spells and enchantments.
Hera orchestrated Medea's role in Jason's quest, enlisting Aphrodite to make the Colchian princess fall in love with the Argonaut leader. Medea's betrayal of her father served Hera's plan to punish Pelias.
Medea, then wife of Aegeus, recognized Theseus as a threat to her son's inheritance and tried to poison him at a feast. Aegeus dashed the cup away, and Medea fled Athens.
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