Jason & Medea, John William Waterhouse (1907)
Source Guide
Jason & the Argonauts / Medea
The myth of Jason & the Argonauts, and couched within it the myth of Medea, is one of the best represented stories in the Greco-Roman mythological canon. Writers took on these characters and events from the earliest days of Greek writing through to the Christian era of the Roman empire, and new works are still being crafted today. Below is a chronological guide to the writers who treated this myth in classical antiquity.
I’ve only included the major sources - that is, sources that cover the myth in any considerable detail or who contribute important details. References to Medea in passing flood the Greek and especially Latin poetic canon, but I won’t trace them all here. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Greek and Latin texts are from Perseus. English versions of each source are linked.
Sarcophagus with the story of Medea & Creusa, Roman marble (ca. 150 CE)
Hesiod, Theogony
Hesiod’s Theogony briefly mentions Medea in the context of her parentage and her marriage to Jason, the son of Aeson. It says:
ἠελίῳ δ᾽ ἀκάμαντι τέκεν κλυτὸς Ὠκεανίνη
Περσηὶς Κίρκην τε καὶ Αἰήτην βασιλῆα.
Αἰήτης δ᾽ υἱὸς φαεσιμβρότου Ἠελίοιο
κούρην Ὠκεανοῖο τελήεντος ποταμοῖο
γῆμε θεῶν βουλῇσιν Ἰδυῖαν καλλιπάρῃον.
ἣ δέ οἱ Μήδειαν ἐύσφυρον ἐν φιλότητι
γείναθ᾽ ὑποδμηθεῖσα διὰ χρυσέην Ἀφροδίτην.
(956-962)
“And to the untiring sun god the renowned daughter of Oceanus Perseis bore both Circe and Aietes the king. And Aietes, the son of Helios who brings light to men, by the will of the gods married fair-cheeked Iduia, a daughter of Oceanus of the fullest stream. And she bore to him fair-ankled Medea, overpowered in love through golden Aphrodite.”
κούρην δ᾽ Αἰήταο διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος
Αἰσονίδης βουλῇσι θεῶν αἰειγενετάων
ἦγε παρ᾽ Αἰήτεω, τελέσας στονόεντας ἀέθλους,
τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐπέτελλε μέγας βασιλεὺς ὑπερήνωρ,
ὑβριστὴς Πελίης καὶ ἀτάσθαλος, ὀβριμοεργός.
τοὺς τελέσας Ἰαωλκὸν ἀφίκετο, πολλὰ μογήσας,
ὠκείης ἐπὶ νηὸς ἄγων ἑλικώπιδα κούρην
Αἰσονίδης, καί μιν θαλερὴν ποιήσατ᾽ ἄκοιτιν.
καί ῥ᾽ ἥ γε δμηθεῖσ᾽ ὑπ᾽ Ἰήσονι, ποιμένι λαῶν,
Μήδειον τέκε παῖδα, τὸν οὔρεσιν ἔτρεφε Χείρων
Φιλυρίδης: μεγάλου δὲ Διὸς νόος ἐξετελεῖτο.
(992-1002)
“And the daughter of Aietes, the king dear to Zeus, the son of Aison by the will of the everlasting gods led away from Aietes, after he had finished his troublesome labors, the many great labors that the overbearing king had assigned to him, the arrogant and presumptuous doer of violence, Pelias. With those completed the son of Aison arrived at Iolcos, having suffered much, leading onto the ship the swift-eyed girl, and made her his wedded wife. And yoked by Jason, shepherd of the people, she bore a child Medeios, brought up on the mountain by Chiron the son of Philyra: and the will of great Zeus was completed.”
Although brief, Hesiod’s account gives the general overview of the story: Pelias gave Jason difficult tasks, and after he finished them he married the daughter of Aietes. This account gives us the genealogy for both Medea and Jason, and this is important to understand going forward.
On Jason’s side, he is the son of Aison and lives in Iolcos in Thessaly. We know from other sources that Pelias is his uncle, and that the entire line is descended from Aeolus, a god of winds. We also learn from other sources that his ancestors were Phrixus and Helle, whose flight from Iolcos to Colchis brought the golden ram to Aietes’ court.
Medea is the daughter of Aietes who is himself the son of Helios. Both are born from Oceanid nymphs. In this version of the family tree, Aietes’ sister is Circe, who plays a role in the story, especially in the Argonauticae of Apollonius of Rhodes and Valerius Flaccus. Other sources have different mothers for Aietes. Other sources give us two siblings for Medea: an older sister Chalciope, who was married to Phrixus before he died, and a brother Apsyrtus/Absyrtus, who seems to be younger. Diodorus Siculus (below) has a very different family tree for the Colchians.
Pindar, Pythian Ode 4
There are two major things going on in this poem. First, prophecy dominates the poem. Arcesilaus’ chariot wins victory at the Pythian games, which take place in the sacred precinct of Delphi, known primarily as a holy site of prophecy and pilgrimage dedicated to Apollo. Because this poem was performed at and celebrating a victory at this prophetic site, prophecy is a fitting subject. The other thing that is going on is that Pindar uses prophecy as a vehicle to honor the family of Arcesilaus, whose ancestor Battus founded the settlement at Thera, modern-day Santorini. Arcesilaus later went on to rule the settlement at Cyrene, a colony of Thera situated in northern Africa (modern-day Libya). Colonization was a huge part of archaic Greek life, particularly in the 6th c.. The mother-city, metropolis, would send out colonists to form an apoikia, literally a home-away-from-home. The metropolis of Sparta sent colonists to Thera, where they made an apoikia. Later, the Therans as metropolis sent out colonists to a new apoikia at Cyrene. In this poem, Pindar has Medea predict the founding of Thera by Battus in a prophecy she gives.
The synopsis of Jason & the Argonauts’ adventure aligns with the later, more detailed, accounts, and I won’t cover it much here. But I will say that this is the earliest extant version of the myth that says that the gods conspired to make Medea fall in love with Jason so that a) she would help him complete the tasks, and b) she would return to Iolcos and destroy Pelias. Pindar says:
κτεῖνε μὲν γλαυκῶπα τέχναις ποικιλόνωτον ὄφιν,
ὦ Ἀρκεσίλα, κλέψεν τε Μήδειαν σὺν αὐτᾷ, τὰν Πελίαο φόνον:
(249-250)
“He killed the gleaming-eyed dappled serpent with cunning, o Arcesilaus, and he stole Medea with her own help, who would be the murderess of Pelias.”
And finally, Pindar’s version is the only one that includes an episode on Thera when the Argonauts arrive and are greeted by a god in disguise. The god is surprised, or pretends to be, by their arrival and so he hastily grabs a clod of Thera’s earth to act as a gift of hospitality. Medea, because of her prophetic knowledge, tells the Argonauts to keep the clod of earth protected on the ship because (unbeknownst to them) it will be a sign that their descendants will colonize Thera in the 4th generation. They lose the clod, and as a result the colony on Thera is delayed until the 17th generation, which is Arcesilaus’ ancestor Battus. This episode is an outlier in the Medea canon so I wanted to point it out.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Histories
We’ll cover Herodotus very briefly. He only gives us one brief note about Medea in a line of notes about the kidnapping of women at the very start of his history. He says that conflict between Greece and their eastern neighbors was the result of a series of back-and-forth kidnappings - first Io was taken by the Phoenicians from Argos to Egypt. Then the Greeks took Europa from Phoenicia as revenge. But the Greeks also later took Medea from Aea, a city of Colchis, and although Aietes demanded her return, the Greeks refused. And so later, Paris of Troy stole Helen from her husband Menelaus in Sparta, figuring that it was only fair. This is the full extent of Herodotus’ account. It’s worth noting only because it completely sidesteps the supernatural parts of the story and makes no mention of Jason. And because Herodotus is well-known today, I wanted to reference it.
Euripides, Medea
This tragic play was performed in 432-431 BCE, where it won 3rd place. Playwrights typically entered plays in groups of 4: 3 tragedies followed by a comical satyr-play. Euripides entered this play along with Philoctetes, Dictys, and the satyr-play the Harvesters, none of which exist in complete form. The archon Pythodorus oversaw the competition.
This play is absolutely explosive. You could spend (and I have spent) months on just this work. But I’ll do my best to point out some of the highlights.
Firstly, the play has very little magic. Medea is known to the Corinthians as a magical practitioner, but we don’t see her perform much magic, apart from giving poisoned robes to Jason’s new bride. The play focuses instead on the pathos and tragedy of Medea’s circumstances. She is an outsider left alone with nowhere to go, no resources, and very few options. We watch Medea deteriorate over the course of the play until the big explosive ending, where - spoilers - Medea murders not only Jason’s new bride and father-in-law, but also her own children.
Euripides focuses in this play on the darkness and loneliness that drives Medea to madness. Her actions are not celebrated, and through the various choral odes we are reminded that Medea’s attempts to hurt Jason will hurt her too. There are no winners in this story. In her opening speech, Medea’s nurse gives us the state of things: “But now the world is angry” (Murray ln. 18).
I want to call attention to one of the most famous passages, Medea’s first speech to the Corinthian women. She describes the desperation of her situation as an indictment on the society she finds herself in. Women, she says, suffer above all. They must leave their homes, marry a stranger, and go through the pains of labor to produce children for “this thing that sleepeth at her side” (Murray 282). She says women must have prophecy or magic to deal with such a situation. But, she adds, at least the Corinthian women have their home, their language and customs, their native society. As an unwelcome foreigner, Medea finds herself totally alien to her neighbors, and since Jason abandoned her she is utterly alone. She says, “But I, being citiless, am cast aside by him that wedded me, a savage bride won in far seas and left - no mother near, no brother, not one kinsman anywhere for harbour in this storm” (Murray 299-303). This point is driven home throughout the play until its bitter end.
Another theme that comes up in the play is the tragedy of broken families. Medea herself has betrayed her parents and, as we learn in other sources and which is referenced in this one, she has murdered her brother. She builds a family with Jason, only for him to break that family in favor of a more politically expedient match for himself. His new father-in-law, king Creon, banishes Medea purely out of fear for his daughter (and his instincts turn out to be correct). And when Glauke (the princess) is consumed in flames by the poisoned robe, her father throws himself into the fire to die alongside her. Lastly, Medea’s infanticide is familial destruction in its purest form. Mothers give life to their children in gestation, birth, and nursing, and they nurture them throughout their lives until they create families of their own. A mother taking the lives of her own children is a dark perversion of this loving relationship.
We’ll leave Euripides with this. At the end of the play, after Medea murders her own children and leaves their bodies with their distraught father, she escapes from Corinth on the chariot of her grandfather, the sun god Helios. This isn’t just any chariot; it’s the sun bark itself, a flying quadriga that lifts Medea up into the sky, out of reach of everyone who pursues her. Practically, this was done with a series of pulleys that lifted the actor up, probably from a second-story set. This was called a θεός από μηχανή (theos apo mechane), more commonly known as a deus ex machina, when a god appears to save the plot which otherwise couldn’t be resolved. Actors playing gods would be lowered and lifted from the stage by these pulleys. You can imagine the spectacle. But Medea isn’t a god, is she? In the context of the play, no. Although it’s clear that she is not quite human, given her supernatural powers. There is some evidence of early cult activity for Medea and her children at Corinth, and I’d like to get into that at some point. But not now.
For this series & guide, I read through Gilbert Murray’s 1906 translation for the first time and absolutely loved it, especially its introduction. It’s in rhyming verse, which doesn’t exactly mimic the original, but I found myself understanding this better than any other translation I’ve read that tries to render the play into prose. If you have any experience with Shakespeare, you’ll find this familiar.
Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica
Apollonius’ epic was written in Hellenistic Alexandria, Egypt, a place of multicultural and academic flourishing. The Library was a hub for thinkers of all kinds, and people traveled to live and study there. The Argonautica is written as an epic in the style of Homer and there are Homericisms and references to Homeric stories throughout. Apollonius was a scholar, and this work was written in the context of academia. I’ll admit, the Greek is really dense and kind of tortured. It’s a very difficult read. But what this work does is give us a different dimension to the earlier accounts of the myth.
Firstly, this is the first long form, extant account of the adventures of Jason and his band. What’s great about a travel narrative like this is that the author can write a number of stories-within-stories as the heroes come to different places and encounter new people and creatures. The first two books cover the quest from Greece to Colchis, with tons of little side quests along the way.
Another innovation of Apollonius is the way he presents Medea. In the earlier accounts, we meet Medea in her fullest form - already accompanying the argonauts or even years later, mother (and murderer) of two children. But here, we meet her before she ever leaves home, as a young girl. She is a priestess of Hekate and a skilled herbal practitioner, but she isn’t the wild woman who flies off Euripides’ stage. This Medea is a victim of her circumstances.
Which leads me to the final point about this Argonautica. As an epic, the gods are directly involved and personally invested in the course of events. Here, we have Hera and Athena as the helpers and protectors of Jason. They conspire to make Medea fall in love with him so that she’ll help him. To do this, they recruit Aphrodite and her son Eros, who shoots Medea with his arrow. We see the detrimental effect this has on her, which is the subject of the first video in this series (watch it here).
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica
Diodorus Siculus is writing a historical account, and you can tell immediately from reading it that he is trying to demythologize the myth and give “realistic” explanations for its various parts. For example, he explains that the tasks given to Jason in the myth - to slay the fire-breathing bulls and to take the fleece from the ever-watchful serpent monster, have a more mundane origin. Colchis is near to the Taurian Chersonnese, which was ruled by Aietes’ brother Perses, and so the bulls are actually derived from that name (ταύρος, taurus). The dragon, δράκο/draco, comes from the Draconian cruelty of Aietes. We get the phrase “Draconian laws,” which describes a harsh set of laws, from the Athenian laws established by Drako in the 7th c. BCE. Each of the supernatural elements in the myth is given this treatment.
First let’s establish the genealogy (because it conflicts with Hesiod and other accounts) and the plot which also is unique. In this version, Helios had two sons, Aietes and Perses. Perses had a daughter Hekate, who was cruel and violent, in addition to her skill with herbal magic. I don’t think this is supposed to be Hekate, goddess of witchcraft and other things, but in other versions of the myth the goddess Hekate does play a role.
After killing her father and becoming queen of the Taurian Chersonnese, she marries her uncle Aietes and has two children, Circe and Medea. Both of them are trained in herbalism, but Circe takes after her mother and uses it for evil, while Medea uses it to heal and save foreigners from her father, who had a policy of killing visitors to Colchis. This was because he had received a prophecy that he would be killed by strangers who came to take the Golden Fleece. Rather than take any chances, he just killed anybody who came to his kingdom.
Meanwhile, the Argonaut story is embedded in a narrative about Heracles, who is part of the expedition and in this version its leader. So the side quests and adventures are all related to him. When the Argonauts reach Colchis, Medea agrees to help them get the fleece and avoid her father, in exchange for marriage with Jason. She isn’t influenced by the gods at all, but wants to escape the cruel kingdom. They go on to live in Corinth, where the plot of Euripides’ play is borne out.
Two important scenes show up in this version that we need to address now. Both of these are reworked in later versions. The first involves Jason’s parents, who are stuck in Iolcos under the evil rulership of Pelias. Pelias forces Jason’s father Aeson to drink bull’s blood, although Diodorus doesn’t elaborate on why or what the effects of it are. Jason’s mother throws herself down at the hearth of Pelias and curses him, then commits suicide. This scene gets reworked by Valerius Flaccus (below) into a gnarly necromancy scene.
The second scene to note is the only time Medea performs magic in Diodorus’ account. When the Argonauts return to Iolcos, Medea wants to get rid of Pelias in order to save the crew and Jason. She uses an elaborate scheme to convince Pelias’ daughters to murder him. This gets reworked in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (below), where Medea’s murderous intentions come from her evil & ambitious nature more than a desire to help Jason.
Ovid, Fasti, Metamorphoses, Heroides 12
Ovid is a prolific writer who is well-versed in mythology. His Fasti, Metamorphoses, and Heroides are, in a way, compendia of myths both well-known and obscure. In each of these poems he treats the Jason & Medea story, giving glimpses of different parts.
In the Fasti, we learn the backstory of how the fleece came to Colchis, which also appears in Apollonius of Rhodes and Valerius Flaccus. Jason’s ancestors, Phrixus and Helle, fled from their wicked stepmother in Iolcos on the back of a ram whose fleece was made of gold. Helle couldn’t hold on and fell off the ram into the Hellespont, the small channel named for her (Helles/Pontus - “the sea of Helle”). Phrixus went on to Colchis, where he married Chalciope and sacrificed the ram. The fleece was placed in the sacred grove of Mars, where it remained until Jason arrived.
The Metamorphoses narrates the episode where Medea kills Pelias by means of deception, which shows up also in Diodorus Siculus. Medea first uses magic to revive Jason’s father Aeson. When the Argonauts return, Aeson is elderly and doesn’t have much longer to live. Jason begs Medea to help him and even offers his own years to be transferred to his father. Medea rejuvenates Aeson back to a youthful stage of life. Then she gets the idea to murder Pelias to get him out of Jason’s way, so that he and his father can regain the throne of Iolcos. To do this, she enlists Pelias’ daughters to perform a ritual on him, pretending that it’s the same rejuvenation ritual. But in fact, Medea lied, and Pelias’ daughters unknowingly murder him. As a result, Medea and Jason are driven out of Iolcos as murderers.
Finally, Ovid takes on the entire story in his Heroides, which is a series of poems written as letters from mythological characters. Heroides 12 is a letter from Medea to Jason, narrating the entire story from start to finish and justifying her actions to him. She doesn’t pretend to be innocent - I did all these things, she says, but I had good reason.
Ovid’s works give us snippets of the story that are less well-known and he focuses, as he so often does, on the emotional dimension. Medea is a woman scorned, and she mourns her situation in the Heroides. Like Euripides, and Seneca, we get a glimpse into the pathos of Medea, her own inner struggle dealing with the course of events that is both her fault and the fault of divine indifference.
Seneca, Medea
Seneca the Younger was a philosopher, writer, and tutor to the emperor Nero. He lived in an era when Rome was transitioning from the republic to a more centralized, authoritarian system. Although he was highly placed in the imperial court, he witnessed the indulgence and hedonism of the rulers, particularly Nero. He was exiled by Claudius but returned to take up his post as Nero’s tutor. Eventually, he was implicated in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero and was sentenced to death. His nephew, the writer Lucan who wrote the epic Belllum Civile, met a similar fate.
At this time in Roman history, literary tastes were trending towards darker themes. Horror, violence, dark magic, were all popular at the time. This period produced Petronius’ Satyricon with its embedded werewolf story, and Lucan’s Bellum Civile is a dreary, depressing look at how a nation eats itself alive - complete with its own gnarly witch, Erichtho. Seneca’s other dramatic efforts include the Thyestes, a play about cannibalism.
His take on Medea follows the plot of Euripides’ play, but adds a few elements that are either distinctly Roman or distinctly darker. The first choral ode is the epithalamion, or wedding song, that the Corinthian women sing to Jason and his new bride - whose name has been changed to Creusa in the Roman sources. It is a classic Roman song that reminds me of Catullus’ wedding song.
Seneca likely expected his audience to know the ending, since Euripides’ play made quite a splash and was famous thereafter. So he doesn’t hesitate - Medea opens the play with a speech in which she lays out her whole plan and prays to her grandfather Helios to borrow his chariot. As you go through the play, your expectations are different than with Euripides; instead of suspense, the plot drives towards inevitable destruction. Jason also presents himself differently: we see a loving father who would do anything for his children, which drives Medea to make the fateful decision at the end of the play. Seneca spells it out explicitly - this is the way she can hurt him the most.
The Romans were, all told, much more into magic than the Greeks of Euripides’ day, and we do see a bit of magic in this one. When Medea gives the poisoned robes to Jason’s new wife, it is referenced in Euripides but not spelled out. All we get is a second-hand report of the effects the robes had on her and her father. But Seneca gives us the full ritual, the spell ingredients, the incantations, the gods that are invoked.
To drive home the point about the dark and miserable atmosphere Seneca writes, the play ends with Medea on the roof, getting ready to fly off in a chariot, and she leaves Jason with the haunting conclusion that there are no gods in a world that allows such unnatural violence. Euripides has Jason’s parting lines call out to the supernatural world, begging it to bear witness to Medea’s crimes - and by implication to seek revenge, and the play closes with the chorus reminding everyone that Zeus and fate sometimes don’t work out in your favor. Seneca in turn ends his play with Jason’s closing line to Medea as she flies away, “Go on through the lofty spaces of high heaven and bear witness, where thou ridest, that there are no gods” (Miller ln. 1026).
Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica
Valerius Flaccus, like Seneca, continued the tradition of reworking the Jason & Medea story into Latin for a Roman audience. His epic follows the Argonautica of Apollonius, but adds and expands it to eight books, instead of Apollonius’ four. Like its predecessor, it’s an adventure story where the Argonauts complete lots of side quests and meet different people and creatures. They come to Colchis, meet Medea, and take the Golden Fleece back with them. The story is unfinished, but ends shortly after they set out for Greece.
If Seneca’s Medea is a dark take on Euripides, Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica is a dark take on Apollonius. What he adds are a number of supernatural elements. The spirits of Phrixus and Helle appear in the story - the Argonauts meet Helle as a water nymph when they cross the Hellespont, and Phrixus gives a prophecy to Aeetes in a dream. And back in Iolcos, Jason’s parents perform a necromancy ritual which ends with their double suicide.
This Roman Argonautica emphasizes the role of Mars, one of Rome’s favorite/paternal gods, more than the Greek sources emphasize Ares. The fleece is kept in the grove of Mars, and Mars takes an interest in its fate for that reason. He tries to stop the course of events, complaining to Jupiter that the Argonauts taking the fleece is disrespectful to him, since it’s in his grove. He argues that if another deity were disrespected in this way, they wouldn’t stand for it, and that Jupiter - as the arbiter of divine justice - should intervene. But more than arbitrating justice, Jupiter is the enforcer of the will of Fate, something above his own power. He cannot let Mars’ displeasure overrule what must be done, and in the end he lets the Argonaut quest continue.
Orphic Argonautica
Our final source is the Orphic Argonautica, a late addition to the Medea canon. It comes from the mystery tradition of Orphism, and contains bits of Orphic doctrine embedded in the narrative. It tells the story of the Argonaut expedition from the perspective or Orpheus himself. Orpheus is usually included in the list of Argonauts, although his prophetic and magical abilities aren’t as emphasized as other figures like Mopsus and Idmon. But here, Orpheus and his skills are front and center - he performs a number of rituals both by himself and alongside Medea, as well as delivering several prophecies.
When the Argonauts first set out, Jason has Orpheus construct a loyalty ritual to bind the crew and prevent them from double-crossing him or straying from their purpose. He charms the Clashing Rocks and battles the Sirens, saving the Argo and its crew twice. With Medea, he performs a ritual to Hekate to charm the snake that guards the fleece - a ritual that is described in detail. Finally, he leads the crew through an expiation ritual to atone for the death of Medea’s brother Apsyrtus.
Although this text is part of the Medea tradition, it serves a unique purpose. Throughout the narrative we get snippets of Orphic doctrine - their vision of creation and universal laws, initiatory rites, and metaphysical principles. The actual narrative follows the other sources reasonably closely, differing only in that Orpheus narrates and his role in things is emphasized. Because of this, it stands outside the tradition, telling us more about Orphism perhaps than about Medea or the Argonauts.
Lost & Fragmentary Sources
The sources above represent a rich, varied, and deep tradition of telling and retelling this myth. We’re lucky to have as many sources as we do - some of them were previously lost and eventually rediscovered in one or more manuscripts. Some were unknown until as late as the 1500s. But the sources we have still don’t reflect how popular this myth was with Greek & Latin writers. We know of a number of sources that are either entirely lost, or exist only in small fragments quoted in other works.
Neophron, Medea - Euripides was not the first tragedian to tell Medea’s story, although he may have been the inventor of its shocking ending (for which he was censured). His contemporaries produced their own versions of the myth, including the tragedian Neophron, of whose work we have just a few lines.
Ovid, Medea - A lost play by Ovid also reflects the tragic Medea tradition. We know he wrote it, but we don’t have any of it. Tragedy indeed.
Varro Atacinus, Argonautica - We have fragments of this first-century BCE writer’s various works, including a translation of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica into Latin. Ovid himself mentions Atacinus: “Of Varro too what age will not be told/And Jason's Argo and the fleece of gold?” (Amores 1.15.22-23, tr. Melville 2008)
Even these likely don’t give us the full catalog of versions. How many are lost both in fact and to memory? How many other writers told this story whose names we don’t know, and whose pages we don’t have?
Medea on Screen
A catalogue of retellings of Medea’s story since the end of antiquity would be too much for this project. But I do want to mention two film adaptations of the myth that I absolutely love.
Jason & the Argonauts (1963) - This sword-and-sandal adventure incorporates elements from Apollonius of Rhodes and others as Jason & his crew set out for the fleece. They fight monsters crafted by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and are watched over by the gods, who view them on a sort of chessboard. Two things I love about this film are:
The emphasis on divine indifference - the gods “play” the story as a game, with little regard for the fate of the “pieces.”
Medea’s line, “I have no country now. And I love you.” - Medea betrays her family and country to follow Jason, influenced (in the ancient sources although not in the film) by the love spell placed on her by the gods.
Medea (1969) - This art film follows Euripides’ play and emphasizes the pathos and suffering of its titular antihero. Pasolini attempts to demythologize the myth, only hinting at the supernatural and explaining away magical elements. Chiron as a centaur is explained as a feature of Jason’s childhood imagination, and he returns later as a human. Highlights for me are:
The contrast between Colchis and Greece - the costumes and customs are drastically different. When she arrives in Colchis, Medea is stripped of her elaborate priestess attire and given white robes which match the other Corinthian women. The Colchians perform exotic and noisy rituals outdoors, but we meet Greeks in quiet halls.
The scale, both grand and small, of the story elements - the landscapes are broad and bare, with only a few sheep and rocks for miles, but the Argo itself is a tiny raft that drifts along the water, rather than a huge seafaring vessel with rows of oars and huge sails.