Medea
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This article is about the figure in Greek mythology. For other meanings, see Medea (disambiguation).
In Greek mythology, Medea (Greek: Μήδεια, "virility") was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis (now a territory of modern Georgia), niece of Circe, and later wife to Jason.
The myths involving Jason also invoke Medea. These have been interpreted by specialists, principally in the past, as part of a class of myths that tell how the Hellenes of the distant heroic age, before the Trojan War, faced the challenges of the pre-Greek "Pelasgian" cultures of mainland Greece, and the Aegean and Anatolia. Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and above all Heracles, are all "liminal" figures, poised on the threshold between the old world of shamans, chthonic earth deities, archaic matriarchies, and the Great Goddess and the new Bronze Age Greek ways.
Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a myth known best from a late literary version worked up by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BCE and called the Argonautica. But for all its self-consciousness and researched archaic vocabulary, the late epic was based on very old, scattered materials.
Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as being a priestess of Hecate. She is the granddaughter of the sun god Helios and a niece of the witch Circe.
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[edit] Medea and Jason
Medea's role began after Jason arrived from Iolcus in Colchis to claim the Golden Fleece as his own. In a familiar mythic motif, Aeëtes promised to give it to him only if he could perform certain tasks. First, Jason had to plough a field with fire-breathing oxen that he had to yoke himself. Then, Jason had to sow the teeth of a dragon in the ploughed field (compare the myth of Cadmus). The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors. Jason was forewarned by Medea, however, and knew to throw a rock into the crowd. Unable to decipher where the rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and defeated each other. Finally, Aeëtes made Jason fight and kill the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece. Medea put the beast to sleep with her narcotic herbs. Jason then took the fleece and sailed away with Medea, who had fallen in love with him. (Some accounts say that Medea only helped Jason in the first place because Hera had convinced Aphrodite or Eros to cause Medea to fall in love with him.) Medea distracted her father as they fled by killing her brother, Apsyrtus. She is said to have dismembered his body and tossed the limbs into the sea, knowing her father would stop to retrieve them for proper burial. In the flight, Atalanta was seriously wounded, but Medea healed her.
According to some versions, Medea and Jason stopped on her aunt Circe's island so that they could be cleansed after the murder of her brother, relieving her of the blame for the deed.
On the way back to Thessaly, Medea prophesied that Euphemus, the Argo's helmsman, would one day rule over all Libya. This came true through Battus, a descendant of Euphemus.
The Argo then came to 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 only one 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 (Apollodorus 1.140). In the Argonautica, Medea hypnotizes him from the Argo, driving him mad so that he dislodges the nail and dies (Argonautica 4.1638). In any case, when the nail is removed, Talos's ichor flows out, exsanguinating and killing him. After his death, the Argo lands.
While Jason searched for the Golden Fleece, Hera, who was still angry at Pelias, conspired to make him fall in love with Medea, who she hoped would kill Pelias. When Jason and Medea returned to Iolcus, Pelias still refused to give up his throne. Medea conspired to have Pelias' own daughters kill him. She told them she could turn an old ram into a young ram by cutting up the old ram and boiling it (alternatively, she did this with Aeson, Jason's father). During the demonstration, a live, young ram jumped out of the pot. Excited, the girls cut their father into pieces and threw them into a pot, killing him.
Having killed Pelias, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth.
[edit] Many endings
In Corinth, according to ancient historian Didimos, the Corinthian King Creon convinced Jason to desert Medea for Glauce, Creon's daughter. Medea poisoned Creon and fled to Thebes but was unable to take her children with her and was forced to leave them in Corinth, where they were later killed by Creon's family in revenge.
Alternatively, Jason is sometimes said to have married Glauce of his own volition, whereupon the enraged Medea bewitched a robe with magic herbs and sent it to the princess as a gift. When Glauce put it on, the garment immediately caught fire and burned her to death. Medea then killed her own children by Jason and escaped in a chariot sent by Helios, god of the sun.
The tragic situation of Medea, abandoned in Corinth by Jason, was the subject matter transformed by Euripides in his tragedy Medea, first performed in 431 BCE. In this telling, Medea resorts to filicide before her flight to Athens. Euripides was revolutionary in his retelling of Medea's myth because he was the first one to show that she hadn't killed her children because she was crazy or a barbarian, but because she was extremely distressed and furious at Jason for leaving her to marry a princess. Fueled by a need for revenge, she sends Glauce a poisoned dress and crown that burn her to death. Creon tries to save her by tearing the dress away, but fails, burning alongside his daughter in the process. Medea then kills her two sons, Mermeros and Pheres, knowing it is the best way to hurt Jason. Some contemporary critics of Euripides accused him of accepting a gift of five Attic talents, a huge sum, by wealthy Corinthians who wanted no part of the blame for the children's death.
Fleeing from Jason, Medea made her way to Thebes where she healed Heracles (the former Argonaut) for the murder of Iphitus. In return Heracles gave her a place to stay in Thebes until the Thebans in anger drove her out against Heracles' protests.
And so, after losing her home in Thebes she fled to Athens where she met and married Aegeus. They had one son, Medus. Her domestic bliss was once again shattered by the arrival of Aegeus' long-lost son, Theseus. Determined to preserve her own son's inheritance, Medea convinced her husband that Theseus was a threat and that he should be disposed of. 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 previous for his newborn son to be given to him when he came of age. Knocking the cup from Medea's hand, Aegeus embraced Theseus as his own.
Medea then returned to Colchis and, finding that Aeëtes had been deposed by his brother, promptly killed her uncle, and restored the kingdom to her father.
Some say Medea married Achilles in the underworld. In another version of her legend, Zeus tried to court her but failed; for being the only mortal to ever successfully resist him, she was granted immortality by Zeus' wife, Hera.
[edit] Changing Personification
The classical Athenian view of Medea is that of the scheming murderess; however in the Hellenistic portrayal - chiefly Apollonius - Medea is transformed into what is arguably the first female action hero. Jason in the Argonautica is frankly pathetic, and it is Medea who guides him through most of his tribulations. He more resembles Sargeant Wilson from Dad's Army than an heroic bronze age leader, and in encounters with the likes of Talos, it is Medea who wins the day.
[edit] Trivia
- Medea is considered a great hero in today's Georgia. She is revered and emulated by both Georgian men and women. There are ancient shrines dedicated to her, some of which have been Christianized in the form of Mary or Mary Magdalene.
[edit] Literature
- Euripides, Medea
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica
- Apollodorus, Bibliotheke I, 23-28
- Ovid, Metamorphoses VII, 1-424; Ovid, Heroides XII; Medea (tragedy, now lost)
- Seneca: Medea (tragedy)
- Gaius Valerius Flaccus Argonautica (epic)
- Pierre Corneille Médée (tragedy, 1635)
- Franz Grillparzer, Das goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece) (play, 1822)
- Hans Henny Jahnn, Medea
- William Morris Life and Death of Jason (epic poem, 1867)
- Jean Anouilh, Medea
- Maxwell Anderson, The Wingless Victory
- Robinson Jeffers, Medea
- Christa Wolf, Medea (a novel)
- A. R. Gurney, The Golden Fleece
- Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats
- Heiner Muller, Medeamaterial and Medeaplay
- Cherrie Moraga, The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (combines the classical Greek myth of Medea with the Mexicana/o legend of La Llorona and the Aztec myth of the lunar deity Coyolxauhqui)
- Michael Wood, In Search of Myths & Heroes: Jason and the Golden Fleece
[edit] Music
- Francesco Cavalli Giasone (opera, 1649)
- Marc-Antoine Charpentier Médée (tragédie en musique,1693)
- Georg Anton Benda composed the melodrama Medea in 1775 on a text by Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter.
- Luigi Cherubini composed the opera Médée in 1797 and it is Cherubini's best known work, but better known by its Italian title, Medea.
- Darius Milhaud composed the opera Médée in 1939 to a text by Madeleine Milhaud (his wife and cousin).
- American composer Samuel Barber composed his Medea Ballet Suite Op. 23 in 1947 and derived from that "Medea's Meditation & Dance of Vengeance" Op. 23a in 1955. The musical Blast! uses an arrangement of Barber's Medea as their end to Act I.
- Star of Indiana -- the drum and bugle corps that Blast! formed out of -- used Parados, Kantikos Agonias, and Dance of Vengence in their 1993 production (with Bartok's Allegro (from Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste), between Kantikos and Vengence.
- Michael John LaChiusa scored "Marie Christine," a Broadway musical with heavy opera influence based on the story of Medea. The production premiered at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in December 1999 for a limited run under Lincoln Center Theatre. LaChuisa's score and book were nominated for a Tony Award in 2000, as was a tour-de-force performance by three-time Tony winner Audra McDonald.
- Vienna Teng included a song entitled My Medea on her 2004 album Warm Strangers.
- Khoma feature the song Medea on their 2006 album The Second Wave.
- The Sex Gang Children named their 1993 album 'Medea'.
[edit] Cinema and television
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- In the 1963 film, Jason and the Argonauts, Medea was portrayed by Nancy Kovack.
- In the 2000 Hallmark presentation, Jason and the Argonauts, Medea was portrayed by Jolene Blalock.
- In 1970, the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini directed a film adaptation of Medea featuring the opera singer Maria Callas in the title role.
- In 1987, director Lars von Trier filmed his pre-Dogma Medea for Danish television, using a preexisting script by silent film maker Carl Theodor Dreyer. Cast: Udo Kier, Kirsten Olesen, Henning Jensen, Mette Munk Plum.
[edit] Medea in popular culture
- A "Medea complex" is sometimes used to describe parents who murder or otherwise harm their children.
- Medea is featured in the visual novel game and anime series Fate/stay night as an example of the Caster-class Servant.
- Playwright Christopher Durang wrote a short spoof of Medea.
- Medea is one of the NPC villains in the Freedom City campaign setting for the Mutants and Masterminds role-playing game. Talos, the bronze man of Crete, is also featured as an NPC villain.
