Jason and Medea lived in Corinth for 10 years, where Medea bore her husband two sons, Mermerus and Pheres. However, when King Creon of Corinth offered his daughter Glauce to Jason, Jason was quick to accept, and divorced Medea. In vengeance, Medea sent a poisoned dress to Glauce. It clung to her skin and burned her to death, and it also killed her father, who tried to rescue her. Most sources agree that Medea then murdered her own two small sons in order to complete her revenge on Jason. However, according to another version of the story, Medea fled Corinth, leaving her sons in the sanctuary of the goddess Hera. The citizens of Corinth stoned them to death. The ghosts of Medea’s sons terrorized the city, taking the lives of its citizens’ children until yearly sacrifices were established in their honor.
Above: This illustration of Medea charming the serpent that guarded the Golden Fleece is by British artist Maxwell Armfield (1881—1972). After Medea lulled the serpent with her charms, allowing Jason to obtain the Golden Fleece, she fled with him aboard the Argo and murdered her own brother to delay her father’s pursuit.
In this version of the myth, Medea took refuge in Athens after her escape. There she married King Aegeus and bore him a son, Medus. When Theseus, Aegeus’s son by another union, arrived incognito in Athens, Medea persuaded Aegeus to allow her to poison him. At the last second, Aegeus recognized Theseus by the carved sword-hilt he carried, a family heirloom, and struck the poisoned cup out of his hand. Medea fled again. She returned to Colchis and discovered that her father had been deposed by his brother Perses, whom she killed, restoring Aeetes to his throne. This was her last recorded act. No one tells the story of her death, but Apollodorus and Apollonius say that she married the Greek hero Achilles and lived with him in a paradise known as the Isles of the Blessed.
Medea’s story has inspired artists and composers through the ages. The myth has been reproduced in operas by Luigi Cherubini in the 18th century and Giovanni Mayr in the 19th century and by Rolf Libermann in the 20th, as well as in the score Medea, written for ballet by American composer Samuel Barber (1910—1981). French painter Eugene Delacroix and English painter John William Waterhouse (1849—1917) painted scenes from her life, and her story influenced Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987).
Laurel Bowman
Bibliography
ApoUodorus, and Robin Hard, trans. The Library of Greek Mythology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. New York: Penguin, 1993.
World History
