Page 14 - GALIET INFINITE MEDEA: Euripides IV

Pythian Ode Four and Apollonius’ Argonautica,10 Medea of Colchis, made by Aphrodite to fall in love with Jason, enables him to fetch the golden fleece. She provides Jason with a magic salve, invulnerable to fire, to protect him against father Aeetes’ impossible tasks: yoking of two bronze-hoofed fire-breathing bulls, ploughing and sowing a field with Cadmus’ remaining dragon’s teeth, and killing the sprung-up men; after he has been warned by Helios’ oracle that he will be deceived by a relative.
Medea’s ‘sleeping potion’11 enables Jason to make dragon fall asleep and to puff up with golden fleece glory. [Thief.] They elope. Aeetes’ pursues them. Medea dismembers little brother and straws his remains to delay Aeetes or has Jason ambush and kill him after he, a man, leads Aeetes’ hunt. Medea and Jason marry in Lemnos (Pindar). Medea of Iolcus rejuvenates Jason’s old father, Aeson, and in some versions, Jason himself. Medea, then under Hera’s revengeful spell, persuades the Peliades to kill, cut up and boil father Pelias12 under pretence of
10This version, contemporary to Apollonius’ belongs to Dionysus Scytobrachion, a historian. Unlike Apollonius’ version, this one excludes divine intervention. Aeetes decrees all foreigners to be sacrificed to Artemis to avert prophecy that a stranger will kill him and steal the golden fleece. After Aeetes persecutes pious Medea, cult priestess of Artemis, for having saved many Greeks, Medea seeks asylum at Helios temple. When the Argonauts surprise her, she aligns with them. Aeetes is then killed in a battle between the Colchians and Argonauts. Graf, Fritz. “Medea, the Enchantress from Afar: Remarks on a Well-Known Myth”, Ch. 1 in J. Clauss and S.I. Johnston (eds.), Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art, Princeton 1997: 25.
11In Apollonius’ version, Jason kills dragon with the aid of Medea’s sleeping potion while in Pindar’s, he uses certain skills.
12 Pelias, raised in the wild, finds his mother being abused by her step-mother Sidero. He slaughters Sidero on the altars of Hera’s precinct in punishment. Hence, Hera’s revenge. Pelias usurps the throne of King of Iolcus which belonged to Aeson. Aeson, in fear of Pelias, says his son Jason is stillborn and has him raised by Cheiron, the wise centaur. Pelias learns from an oracle that he must beware of monosandalos stranger who will kill him. Jason returns to Iolcus
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