There are several accounts of how the Agonauts returned to Greece. Some say that Jason and Medea traveled all the way to Italy’s western coast to seek purification from Circe, Medea’s aunt, for the murder of Apsyrtus. At some point during their return, Jason married Medea so that she could not be returned to her father.
Back in lolcus, Jason discovered that Pelias had killed Jason’s parents and newborn baby brother. In order to depose Pelias, Medea told Jason to remain hidden while she ingratiated herself with Pelias’s daughters. She demonstrated to them how she could transform an old ram into a young lamb by mincing and boiling it with some special herbs. She then suggested that the daughters could restore Pelias to youth by using the same method. The daughters killed their father, chopped him up, and boiled the pieces—but Medea had been lying. However, Jason and Medea were unable to profit from this because Pelias’s son Acastus took the throne and expelled them. The couple fled to Corinth, where they found refuge with King Creon.
For 10 years Jason and Medea enjoyed happiness in Corinth and had three children, but eventually Jason’s ambition destroyed them. King Creon offered Jason his daughter Glauce (or Creusa) as his wife. When Medea discovered Jason’s plan to divorce her and marry Glauce, she devised a fearful revenge.
Feigning joy at the prospective marriage, Medea sent the bride a beautiful garment that she had steeped in a lethal poison. The bride died in agony. Creon clasped his daughter in his arms, and he too died from the poison. Medea then slaughtered two of her children by Jason before fleeing to Athens. The story of Medea’s revenge was dramatized by the playwright Euripedes in his tragedy Medea (431 BCE).Without Medea, Jason achieved very little. He never ruled lolcus, and he died when a rotting piece of the Argo fell upon him as he sat beneath it.
World History
