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In Greek mythology, Medea (; ; ) is the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis. In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, she aids Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece. Medea later marries him, but eventually kills their children and his other bride according to some versions of her story. Medea is known in most stories as a sorceress, an accomplished "" (medicinal magic), and is often depicted as a high-priestess of the goddess, Hecate. She first appears in Hesiod's Theogony around 700 BCE,Hesiod Theogony 993–1002 but is best known from Euripides's tragedy Medea and Apollonius of Rhodes's epic Argonautica.
As a daughter of King Aeëtes, she is a mythical granddaughter of the sun god Helios and a niece of Circe, an enchantress goddess. Her mother may have been Idyia.Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3.241–244, 269
She plays the archetypal role of helper-maiden, aiding Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece. In said quest, she uses her magic to save his life and kills her brother to allow Jason to escape. Once he finishes his quest, she abandons her native home of Colchis and flees westwards with Jason, where they eventually settle in Ancient Corinth and marry.
Euripides's 5th-century BC tragedy Medea depicts the ending of her union with Jason, when after ten years of marriage, Jason intends to abandon her to wed King Creon's daughter Creusa. Jason argues that their sons will have a better future in the city if he marries the King's daughter and his sons stay in the same city with him. He claims the sacred vows he has with Medea can be broken because she is a foreigner, which makes their marriage illegitimate. Medea is exiled from Corinth by King Creon, and is offered refuge in Athens by King Aegeus after she offers to help him get an heir with her magic. In revenge against Jason, Medea murders her own sons and Jason's new bride, King Creon's daughter, with a poisoned crown and robes, so that Jason will be without heir and legacy for the rest of his life.
What happens afterwards varies according to several accounts. Herodotus in his Histories mentions that she ended up leaving Athens and settling in the Iranian plateau among the Aryans, who subsequently changed their name to the Medes.Herodotus Histories VII.62i
As she becomes older, Medea marries Jason and together they have children. The number and names of their children are questioned by scholars. Depending on the account, it is two to fourteen children. In his play, Medea, Euripides mentions two unnamed sons.Euripides, Medea According to other accounts, her children were "Mermerus, Pheres or Thessalus, Alcimenes and Tisander, and according to others, she had seven sons and seven daughters, while others mention only two children, Medus (some call him Polyxenus) and Eriopis, or one son Argos." No matter the number of children, Medea eventually leaves Jason in Corinth, and marries the King of Athens (Aegeus) and bears him a son. While with him, it is questioned if that was when she had her son Medeius, who goes on to become the ancestor of the Medes by conquering their lands.
Understanding Medea's genealogy helps define her divinity. By some accounts, like the Argonautica, she is depicted as a young, mortal woman who is directly influenced by the Greek gods Hera and Aphrodite. While she possesses magical abilities, she is still a mortal with divine ancestry. Other accounts, like Euripides's play Medea, focus on her mortality. Hesiod's Theogony places her marriage to Jason on the list of marriages between mortals and divine, suggesting that she is predominantly divine. She also has connections with Hecate, the goddess of magic, which could be one of the main sources from which she draws her magical ties. Although distinct from the Titans known as Perses, who is known for fathering Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica made Perses of Colchis the father of Hecate by an unknown mother; Perses' brother Aeëtes then married Hecate and had Medea and Circe by her.Diodorus Siculus, Historic Library 4.45.2
In some versions, Medea was said to have dismembered her brother's body and scattered his parts on an island, knowing her father would stop to retrieve them for proper burial; in other versions, it was Absyrtus himself who pursued them and was killed by Jason.Euripides, Medea 165–166 However, in the Argonautica, Medea and Jason stopped on her aunt Circe's private isle of Aeaea so that she could be cleansed after murdering her brother, relieving her of blame for the deed. This is one of the times we see Medea use her powers. During the fight, Atalanta, someone helping Jason in his quest, was seriously wounded. Medea was able to use her powers to heal the wound.
On the way back to Thessaly, Medea prophesied that Euphemus, the helmsman of Jason's ship, the Argo, would one day rule over all of Ancient Libya. Pindar alleges that this came true through Battus, saying that he was a distant descendant of Euphemus (by 17 generations).
After the prophecy, the Argo reached the island of Crete, guarded by the bronze man, Talos (Talus). Talos had one vein which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by a single bronze nail. 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. In the Argonautica, Medea hypnotized him from the Argo, driving him mad so that he dislodged the nail, ichor flowed from the wound, and he bled to death.Rhodius, Argonautica 4.1638 After Talos died, the Argo landed.
At some point while in Thessaly, Medea and the Nereids, Thetis (the future mother of Achilles), argued over which one was the most beautiful. They appointed the Cretan Idomeneus as the judge, who declared Thetis to be the most beautiful. In her anger, Medea called all Crete liars, and cursed them to never say the truth.Ptolemaeus Chennus, New History Book 5, as epitomized by Patriarch Photius in Myriobiblon 190.36
Jason, celebrating his return with the Golden Fleece, noted that his father Aeson was too aged and infirm to participate in the celebrations. Medea understood the impact this had on Jason and was able to invigorate him by withdrawing the blood from Aeson's body, infused it with certain herbs, and returning it to his veins. The daughters of King Pelias saw this and asked Medea to perform the same service on their father. Medea agreed.
However, the service was never performed. Hera, who was angry at Pelias, conspired to make Jason fall in love with Medea, who, Hera hoped, would kill Pelias. Hera's plan worked, and the pair fell in love with each other. When they returned to Iolcus, Pelias refused to give up his throne to Jason. Jason had been promised the throne in turn for the Golden Fleece. So, Medea conspired to have Pelias's own daughters kill him. She demonstrated her powers to them by showing her cutting up an old ram and putting the pieces in stew. Once the pieces were in, Medea added some magic herbs and stirred the concoction, a young ram suddenly jumping out of the stew. Excited at the sight, the girls cut their father into pieces and threw him into a pot. Unfortunately, the King never came to life. Having killed Pelias, Jason and Medea fled to Ancient Corinth.
While in Corinth, the couple were married and lived together for 10 years. They had between one and fourteen children depending on the source. The known children are sons Alcimenes, Thessalus, Tisander, Mermeros and Pheres, Medus, and Argos, and a daughter, Eriopis. As well as having children, a myth states that Medea ended a famine in Corinth by sacrificing to Demeter and the nymphs. Zeus then desired her, but she declined his advances in order not to incur Hera's wrath. As a reward, Hera offered to make her children immortal.Scholia on Pindar's Olympian Odes 13.74
According to Euripides's version, Medea took her revenge on Glauce by sending her a dress and golden coronet, covered in poison.Euripides, Medea line 788 This resulted in the deaths of both the princess and the king, Creon, when he went to save his daughter. Medea then continued her revenge, murdering two of her children herself and refusing to allow Jason to hold the bodies. Afterward, she left Corinth and flew to Athens in a golden chariot driven by dragons sent by her grandfather, Helios, god of the sun.
Although Jason in Euripides calls Medea most hateful to gods and men, the fact that the chariot is given to her by Helios indicates that she has the Gods on her side. As Bernard Knox points out, Medea's last scene parallels that of a number of indisputably divine beings in other plays by Euripides. Just like these gods, Medea "interrupts and puts a stop to the violent action of the human being on the lower level" and "justifies her savage revenge on the grounds that she has been treated with disrespect and mockery" so that she "takes measures and gives orders for the burial of the dead, prophesies the future," and "announces the foundation of a cult."B.M.W. Knox. Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, p. 303. This deliberate murder of her children by Medea appears to be Euripides's invention, although some scholars believe Neophron created this alternate tradition.See McDermott 1985, 10–15. Her filicide would go on to become the standard for later writers.Hyginus Fabulae 25; Ovid Met. 7.391ff.; Seneca Medea; Bibliotheca 1.9.28 favors Euripides's version of events, but also records the variant that the Corinthians killed Medea's children in retaliation for her crimes. Pausanias, writing in the late 2nd century CE, records five different versions of what happened to Medea's children after reporting that he has seen a monument for them while traveling in Corinth.Pausanias 2.3.6–11 Fleeing from Jason, Medea made her way to Thebes, where she healed Heracles (the former Argonaut) from the curse of Hera (that led him to slay his sons).Diodorus Siculus, 4.55–4.56
After the murder of her children, Medea fled to Athens, where she met and married Aegeus. They had one son, Medus. Another version from Hesiod makes Medus the son of Jason.Hesiod Theogony 1000-2 Her domestic bliss was once again shattered by the arrival of Aegeus's long-lost son, Theseus. Determined to preserve her own son's inheritance, Medea convinced her husband that Theseus was an imposter, making him a threat and that he needed to be disposed of. To do this, Medea was planning on poisoning him as she previously had other victims. 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 previously for his newborn son as soon as he came of age. Knocking the cup from Medea's hand, Aegeus embraced Theseus as his own., Cleveland Museum.|285x285px]]
Medea returned to Colchis and found that Aeëtes had been deposed by his brother Perses, which prompted her to kill her uncle and restore the kingdom to her father. Herodotus reports another version, in which Medea and her son Medus fled from Athens, on her flying chariot. They landed in the Iranian plateau and lived among the Aryans, who then changed their name to the Medes.
Recounting the many variations of Medea's story, the 1st century BCE historian Diodorus Siculus wrote, "Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvelous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out."
These are extreme actions, yet in many ways understandable, logically situated within the confines of her position and societal constraints. In Euripides' play, Medea is a foreign woman living within the patriarchal society, abandoned by her husband Jason for another woman. Her choices are born from a place of rational calculation to reclaim agency in a world that has taken it from her. In fact, in the analysis of Greek tragedy made by Sarah Iles Johnston, the revenge of Medea serves "as a means of reasserting her identity and ensuring that her enemies pay for their betrayal".Johnston, S. I. (1997). Desire and Deception in Medea. Helios, 24(1), 31-49. Having killed Jason's new bride and their children, she made his betrayal cause suffering and not success. While her actions certainly go against conventional morality, they do follow a tragic logic that is determined by the need for justice and the need of self-preservation. This underlines even further the rational approach of Medea's intelligence and strategic planning, evidenced by how she manipulated others in order to get what she wanted. In a society where women had limited means for justice, Medea's revenge takes the form of balance--however harsh--which is calculated in righting the books. Thus, in the light of her situation, her actions bring out rationality in extreme measures.
Emma Griffiths also adds to the analysis of Medea's character in Euripides's play by discussing the male/female dichotomy created by Euripides. Medea does not fit into the mold of a "normal woman" according to Athenian philosophy. She is depicted as having great intelligence and skill, traits typically viewed as masculine by Euripides's original audience. On the other hand, she uses her intelligence to manipulate the men around her. This manipulation would have been a negative female trait to the Athenian audience. Griffiths also acknowledges the paradox of the methods Medea uses to kill. She poisons the princess, which would have been seen as a feminine way of murder, yet kills her children in cold blood, which is seen as more masculine. Medea is also shown as a 'normal' Athenian mother by having a dialogue about her children and showing a strong maternal love and connection to them. Yet at the end of the play, she is able to kill her children as part of her revenge. It is through these opposites that Euripides creates a complicated character for his protagonist.
Marianne McDonald argues that "Medea's anger turns to violent action, which can make her into a symbol of freedom, and emblem for the colonized turning the tables on the colonizer. Euripides, more than all other tragedians, has predicted many of the horrors that occur in the modern world, showing both the glory and the monstrosity of the oppressed turned oppressor."
Although not the first depiction of Medea, the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes gives a fuller description of events that lead up to Euripides's play, mainly surrounding Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. In this literary work, Medea is presented not as a powerful woman seeking justice, but as a young woman who is desperately in love with Jason. So much in love that she decides to defy her father and kill her brother in order to help him. James J. Clauss writes about this Medea, attempting to unearth another version of this character for scholarship and discussion. He looks into different passages in the original text to define the meaning and draw connection to the different feelings Medea was going through. He argues the feelings of Medea's initial love for Jason, the shame she feels for loving him and for going against her family, and final agreement to help Jason in his quest.
Multiple scholars have discussed Medea's use as a "helper maiden" to Jason's quest. A helper maid is typically a young woman who helps on a hero's quest, usually out of love. Instead of being the center of the story, like she is in Euripides's Medea, this version of Medea is reduced to a supporting role. Her main purpose is to help the hero with his quest. Jason would never have been successful on his quest without Medea's help, something that is pointed out and referenced many times in ancient texts and contemporary scholarly work.
Other, non-literary traditions guided the vase-painters,As on the bell krater at the Cleveland Museum of Art (91.1) discussed in detail by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, "Medea at a Shifting Distance: Images and Euripidean tragedy", in Clauss and Johnston 1997, pp 253–96. and a localized, chthonic presence of Medea was propitiated with unrecorded emotional overtones at Corinth, at the sanctuary devoted to her slain children,Edouard Will, Corinth 1955. "By identifying Medea, Ino and Melikertes, Bellerophon, and Hellotis as pre-Olympian precursors of Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, he could give to Corinth a religious antiquity it did not otherwise possess", wrote Nancy Bookidis, "The Sanctuaries of Corinth", Corinth 20 (2003) or locally venerated elsewhere as a foundress of cities."Pindar shows her prophesying the foundation of Cyrene; Herodotus makes her the legendary founder of the Medes; Callimachus and Apollonius describe colonies founded by Colchians originally sent out in pursuit of her" observes Nita Krevans, "Medea as foundation heroine", in Clauss and Johnston 1997 pp 71–82 (p. 71).
After Medea kills her brother, Absyrtus, she, Jason, and the others stop at her aunt Circe's island, Aeaea, to be absolved of the crime. When they return to Iolcus, in Thessaly, Medea convinces Pelias's daughters to kill their father with trickery. After this, they are, technically, an accessory to a murder—and Pelias corrupt supporters amongst Iolcus's nobility in his own usurpation of his half-brother's throne unite to block Jason's claim to his father's throne to protect their own status—so they're forced to leave.
They go to Corinth, where Jason proceeds to court and marry Glauce, a princess of Corinth, where Jason loses Hera's favor and gains Medea's wrath. King Creon tells Medea that she has twenty-four hours to leave, and if she doesn't she'll be killed. Jason comes to scold Medea and she in turn accuses him of denying his oath to the gods. Despite her previous crimes, Medea seems to have the approval of the gods. Next, Medea resolves her time to kill Glauce with a potion that causes her to catch fire. Her father Creon dies also when he in grief hugs his daughter and dies from the same poison. Medea proceeds to kill her and Jason's children as well, and before Jason can stop her, she is escorted away on a flying chariot sent by her grandfather, Helios.
Later, Medea marries King Aegeus and the two produce a son named Medus. When Theseus returns in an attempt to prove he is Aegeus's son, Medea recognizes that he will be the heir to the throne rather than Medus, and convinces Aegeus to poison Theseus's drink. Aegeus realizes Theseus is his son and throws the drink away. Medea is forced to leave with Medus, where they return to Colchis where Medus eventually claims the title of king. Medea sits in an odd position where though she kills many people, she never seems to face any divine consequence from it. Perhaps her actions are in keeping with the favor of the gods. True or not, Medea is framed as a curiously nuanced figure, something rare for women in Greek Mythology.
"I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong."
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