In Greek mythology, a witch, the daughter of Aeetes, the King of Colchis, who assisted Jason in obtaining the Golden Fleece. On their return to Iolcos, she renewed the youth of an aged ram by boiling it in a cauldron, and tricked the daughters of Pelias into performing a similar ritual, so that they destroyed their own father. When deserted by Jason at Corinth, she fled in her aerial chariot after killing her children.
In Greek mythology, Medea (Greek: Μήδεια, "virility") was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis (now a territory of modern Georgia), niece of Circe, and later wife to Jason.
The myths involving Jason also invoke Medea.
Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a myth known best from a late literary version worked up by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BCE and called the Argonautica. But for all its self-consciousness and researched archaic vocabulary, the late epic was based on very old, scattered materials.
Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as being a priestess of Hecate.
Medea and Jason
Medea's role began after Jason arrived from Iolcus in Colchis to claim the Golden Fleece as his own. Jason was forewarned by Medea, however, and knew to throw a rock into the crowd. Medea put the beast to sleep with her narcotic herbs. Jason then took the fleece and sailed away with Medea, who had fallen in love with him. (Some accounts say that Medea only helped Jason in the first place because Hera had convinced Aphrodite or Eros to cause Medea to fall in love with him.) Medea distracted her father as they fled by killing her brother, Apsyrtus. In the flight, Atalanta was seriously wounded, but Medea healed her.
According to some versions, Medea and Jason stopped on her aunt Circe's island so that they could be cleansed after the murder of her brother, relieving her of the blame for the deed.
On the way back to Thessaly, Medea prophesied that Euphemus, the Argo's helmsman, would one day rule over all Libya. According to Apollodorus, Talos was slain either when Medea drove him mad with drugs, deceived him that she would make him immortal by removing the nail, or was killed by Poeas's arrow (Apollodorus 1.140). In the Argonautica, Medea hypnotizes him from the Argo, driving him mad so that he dislodges the nail and dies (Argonautica 4.1638).
While Jason searched for the Golden Fleece, Hera, who was still angry at Pelias, conspired to make him fall in love with Medea, who she hoped would kill Pelias. When Jason and Medea returned to Iolcus, Pelias still refused to give up his throne. Medea conspired to have Pelias' own daughters kill him.
Having killed Pelias, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth.
Many endings
In Corinth, according to ancient historian Didimos, the Corinthian King Creon convinced Jason to desert Medea for Glauce, Creon's daughter. Medea poisoned Creon and fled to Athens but was unable to take her children with her and was forced to leave them in Corinth, where they were later killed by Creon's family in revenge.
Alternatively, Jason is sometimes said to have married Glauce of his own volition, whereupon the enraged Medea bewitched a robe with magic herbs and sent it to the princess as a gift. Medea then killde her own children by Jason and escaped in a chariot sent by Helios, god of the sun.
The tragic situation of Medea, abandoned in Corinth by Jason, was the subject matter transformed by Euripides in his tragedy Medea, first performed in 431 BCE. In this telling, Medea resorts to filicide before her flight to Athens. Euripides was revolutionary in his retelling of Medea's myth because he was the first one to show that she hadn't killed her children because she was crazy or a barbarian, but because she was extremely distressed and furious at Jason for leaving her to marry a princess. Medea then kills her two sons, Mermeros and Pheres, knowing it is the best way to hurt Jason.
Fleeing from Jason, Medea made her way to Athens and married Aegeus. Determined to preserve her own son's inheritance, Medea convinced her husband that Theseus was a threat and that he should be disposed of. As Medea handed Theseus a cup of poison, Aegeus recognized the young man's sword as his own, which he had left behind many years previous for his newborn son to be given to him when he came of age. Knocking the cup from Medea's hand, Aegeus embraced Theseus as his own.
Medea then returned to Colchis and, finding that Aeëtes had been deposed by his brother, promptly killed her uncle, and restored the kingdom to her father.
Some say Medea married Achilles in the underworld. Medea (tragedy, now lost) Seneca: Medea (tragedy) Gaius Valerius Flaccus Argonautica (epic) Pierre Corneille Médée (tragedy, 1635) Franz Grillparzer, Das goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece) (play, 1822) Hans Henny Jahnn, Medea William Morris Life and Death of Jason (epic poem, 1867) Jean Anouilh, Medea Maxwell Anderson, The Wingless Victory Robinson Jeffers, Medea Christa Wolf, Medea (a novel) A. Gurney, The Golden Fleece Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats Heiner Muller, Medeamaterial and Medeaplay Cherrie Moraga, The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (combines the classical Greek myth of Medea with the Mexicana/o legend of La Llorona and the Aztec myth of the lunar deity Coyolxauhqui)
User Comments Add a comment…