Medea
A Colchian sorceress. Medea (Μήδεια) was the daughter of Aeëtes (Aeetes), king of Colchis, and Eidyia (Idyia), daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Medea had a brother named Apsyrtus and a sister who married Phrixus. Medea was also the granddaughter of the sun god Helius and niece of Circe, who was also a sorceress. See the family tree of Helius.
Medée
Alphons Mucha
poster for Medée's play at
Théatre de la Renaissance, 1898.
According to Diodorus Siculus however, he says that Circe and Medea were sisters, not aunt and niece. Circe and Medea were the daughters of Aeëtes and his niece Hecate. In Diodorus' version, Hecate was a sorceress, not a goddess. See the alternative family tree of Helius.
Medea was a very powerful sorceress and the high priestess of the goddess Hecate, goddess of magic and the Underworld. Her power could be used for healing purposes as well as a destructive weapon.
Betrayal and Exile
Medea was the heroine in the Quest of the Golden Fleece. Without her aid, Jason would have died and the Argonauts would have failed in their quest. The goddess Hera knew this. Hera enlisted the aid of the love godddess Aprodite to make Medea fall deeply in love with Jason, captain of the Argo. But Hera had her agenda for aiding Jason and the Argonauts. Hera was seeking the destruction of Pelias, the king of Iolcus and uncle of Jason. The purpose of the quest was to bring Medea to Greece, to kill Pelias.
Medea instantly fell in love with Jason the moment she saw the hero. She could not help herself; she betrayed her father and her country to help the foreigners. When her father set Jason several seemingly impossible tasks, Medea secretly gave Jason magic and advice on how to overcome these tasks. With her magic herb, Jason was able to subdue a couple of fire-breathing bulls, and used them to plough the field and plant dragon-teeth in the soil. She gave Jason advice on how to cause the armed men that sprung out of the field to fight among themselves.
Medea warned Jason when her father tried to stir up the population against the Argonauts. When Jason promised to marry Medea, she used her sorcery to make the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece fall into slumber. Medea escaped with the Argonauts, taking her brother Apsyrtus with her.
When the pursuing Colchian fleet nearly captured Argo, Medea in desperation slew Apsyrtus, cutting up her brother to pieces before throwing them overboard. Aeetes was forced to stop and retrieve his son's body.
Somehow the Argonauts arrived on the island of Aea, home of her aunt Circe. Circe performed purification for her niece for the murder, but when she found Medea had betrayed her father, Circe ordered them to leave.
They next arrived at the island of the Phaeacians. To prevent the Colchians from taking Medea home, the rulers Alcinous and Arete had them married. Medea's magic helped the Argonauts again when they landed on Crete. A brazen giant named Talus, the last of Bronze Age man, was killed when Medea gave the giant the evil eye.
Death of Pelias
The voyage ended when they landed in Iolcus. All the Argonauts returned home. Jason brought home the Golden Fleece, only to find out that Pelias had killed Acastus, Jason's father. Jason asked Medea to help her avenge his father's death.
Medea duped Pelias' daughters into killing their own father. Medea demonstrated magic to Pelias' daughter by making an old ram into a young lamb by cutting up the ram and throwing it into a boiling cauldron. Weaving her spell, the young sheep sprang out of the cauldron. The naive sisters hoped to restore their father's youth, so the daughters killed their father and cut up his body. But Medea had already left the palace. To their horror, Pelias' daughters realised they had been tricked into killing their father.
For Jason's involvement in Pelias' death, the Iolcans banished Jason and Medea from the kingdom.
Tragedy
Jason and Medea stayed in Corinth for ten years. Though Jason took part in several adventures, mostly it was peaceful. They had two sons named Mermerus and Pheres. However, the Corinthians did not like foreigners, and they feared her because of her sorcery. She was an outcast.
One day, Jason decided to divorce Medea and marry the Corinthian princess Glauce (or Creusa), daughter of King Creon. Medea tried to dissuade her husband from abandoning her. She told Jason to think of their children, her love for him. She reminded her husband of the aid she gave to him in his quest, for without her magic he would have never succeeded in his adventure. She had sacrificed everything for him – she had betrayed her father, and she had even exiled herself to become his wife. She had performed a horrible crime of murdering her brother for his sake. Where would she go, she asked Jason? She was without a country of her own, since she had cut off all ties with her homeland.
Jason's arguments were that he was a prince, an exiled prince; he was meant to rule. Jason also told her that as prince, their sons would have a better life. He had fulfilled his promise of marrying her, but he wanted a better life. After he was married to the princess, Jason promised to provide Medea with a better home and security. If Medea continued to refuse to let him divorce her, he threatened to have her banished.
Realising that her husband would not change his mind, Medea was devastated, and her emotions were in turmoil. She wanted to commit suicide. She thought of her sons. She thought of killing Jason. She thought of killing Jason's new bride.
Aegeus, king of Athens, came upon the scene. When he heard news of Jason divorcing his wife, Aegeus offered the sorceress his city as her new home. Medea agreed. She also agreed to marry Aegeus and give him a son and an heir, since he had been childless so far.
Medea's anguish over the divorce was turning to rage, when she remembered her husband's words to her. Though Medea thought of killing Jason, she now decided to punish Jason by killing his new bride. Medea smeared poison on to a dress. She had her two sons deliver the dress to Glauce. When Glauce put on the gown, she experienced the most excruciating agony as the searing poison consumed her. The old king tried to save his daughter by ripping the dress off Glauce's body. Creon, too, died from the poison.
Medea was preparing to flee, but hesitated, not sure if she should leave her sons behind or take them with her. She loved them more than her own life, but did not want to leave them with her ex-husband or the angry mob that would come to punish her. With the hardest decision in her life, she decided to kill her two sons.
Medea exacted the ultimate punishment upon Jason – she took her sons' lives. When Jason arrived with sword in hand, he discovered his two sons on the ground, dead. Helius, the god of the sun, had sent his chariot, drawn by a great dragon, to his granddaughter. Medea escaped in the chariot and fled to Athens.
There are different versions as to what happened to Medea's sons. According to Pausanias, it was the angry Corinthians who had killed her sons for bringing Medea's wedding gift to Glauce. Glauce threw herself into a spring, hoping to quench the burning poison, but she died, so it was called Glauce's Spring. The angry Corinthians stoned the two boys near the spring. By killing the two boys, the Corinthians suffered from the loss of their own infant children through unexplained deaths. The Corinthians had to atone for the boys' murder, so they erected a temple with a bronze statue of Apollo in honour of the two sons of Medea, as well as making annual sacrifices.
In one fragment - one of the many fragments that were attributed to Homer - under The Taking of Oechalia, Medea did poison Creon, but not her sons and there was no mention of Creon's daughter. They were too young for Medea to take with her, so she left them at the altar, hoping Jason would protect their sons. But the Corinthians murdered Medea's sons and then spread the story that Medea murdered them.
According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, Medea at first fled to Thebes where she cured Heracles of his madness, when he had murdered his children. She had hoped that Heracles would protect her from Jason and the Corinthians, but the hero was forced to serve Eurystheus in performing the Twelve Labours. It was only then that Medea fled to Athens. However, this episode caused confusion in the timeframe of Heracles performing his labours and the voyage of the Argo.
By escaping, Medea deprived the Corinthians of a victim whom they could punish, so they turned against Jason. They banished Jason from Corinth. Medea's revenge was complete. Medea had deprived her ex-husband of a bride, a kingdom, and the power to rule. She also deprived him of home and family. After her revenge, no king would allow Jason to woo his daughter, especially when there was a possibility of Medea seeking them out and destroying their family.
Pausanias also gives another version of what happened to Jason and Medea, after Pelias' death. Pausanias says that he got his source from the poem called Naupaktia. They were set to have settled on the island of Corfu where they had four children: Mermerus, Medeius and a daughter Eriopis. Mermerus was killed by a lion that he was hunting on the mainland, opposite of the island of Corfu.
Corinthus, son of Marathon, died childless. The Corinthians sent for Medea because her grandfather Helius was the founder of the city of Corinth. So Medea settled in Corinth and made Jason as king of Corinth. Here, Medea bore more children to Jason, but with each child, she buried them in the sanctuary of Hera because she thought she could make them immortal. Jason discovered the strange murders and refused to reconcile with Medea, so he returned to Iolcus. Medea didn't stay in Corinth, giving the kingdom to Sisyphus. This poem (Naupaktia) Pausanias relates, actually causes confusion in the timeline and the genealogy. It also has no poisoned robe for Glauce.
The Return Home
Medea stayed in Athens with her new husband, Aegeus. She bore him a son named Medus. Medea would have stayed longer had Aegeus' son, named Theseus, not arrived.
Theseus was the great Athenian hero, brought up in Troezen by his mother Aethra. Aegeus failed to recognise his son, but Medea knew of his identity. Medea realised that her own son would lose the throne, and decided to poison the hero. However, Aegeus did recognise the sword he had left for Theseus. Aegeus foiled Medea and prevented Theseus from drinking the poison by knocking the cup out of the hero's hand. Medea fled with her son, to the east.
When her son became a young man, Medus established a new kingdom called Media, west of Babylonia. Medea also returned home, only to find that Colchis was now ruled by Perses, her uncle. Perses had assassinated his brother (Aeëtes) and usurped the throne. Medea avenged her father's death by killing Perses. Her son became the king of Colchis. According to Apollodorus however, Perses had merely deposed Aeëtes of his kingship. Medea killed her uncle and restored her father to his throne.
I had not found anything to indicate that Medea died. She was probably immortal like her aunt (Circe), who was also a sorceress. However, according to Apollodous and Apollonius of Rhodes, they say that she was married to the hero Achilles in the Elysian Fields or Isles of the Blessed, on White Island.
Related Information
Name
Medea, Medeia, Μήδεια (Greek).
Sources
Argonautica, written by Apollonius of Rhodes.
Pythian IV was written by Pindar.
Library, written by Apollodorus.
Medea was written by Euripides.
Fabulae was written by Hyginus.
Library of History was written by Diodorus Siculus.
Metamorphoses was written by Ovid.
Description of Greece was written by Pausanias.
By Jimmy Joe
