The monster in his sheath of horny scales rolled forward his interminable coils, like the eddies of black smoke that spring from smouldering logs and chase each other from below in endless convolutions. But as he writhed he saw the maiden take her stand, and heard her in her sweet voice invoking Sleep, the conqueror of the gods, to charm him. She also called on the night-wandering Queen of the world below to countenance her efforts. Jason from behind looked on in terror. But the giant snake, enchanted by her song, was soon relaxing the whole length of his serrated spine and smoothing out his multitudinous undulations, like a dark and silent swell rolling across a sluggish sea. Yet his grim head still hovered over them and the cruel jaws threatened to snap them up. But Medea, chanting a spell, dipped a fresh sprig of juniper in her brew and sprinkled his eyes with her most potent drug; and as the all-pervading magic scent spread round his head, sleep fell on him. Stirring no more, he let his jaw sink to the ground, and his innumerable coils lay stretched out far behind, spanning the deep wood. Medea called to Jason and he snatched the golden fleece from the oak. But she herself stayed where she was, smearing the wild one’s head with a magic salve, till Jason urged her to come back to the ship and she left the sombre grove of Ares.

Lord Jason held up the great fleece in his arms. The shimmering wool threw a fiery glow on his fair cheeks and forehead; and he rejoiced in it, glad as a girl who catches on her silken gown the lovely light of the full moon as it climbs the sky and looks into her attic room. The ram’s skin with its golden covering was as large as the hide of a yearling heifer or a brocket, as a young stag is called by hunting folk. The long flocks weighed it down and the very ground before him as he walked was bright with gold.

MEDEA’S REVENGE

Medea

Euripides

Translated by Gilbert Murray, 1910

Medea was furious when, having helped Jason to steal the golden fleece from her homeland (see previous story), he abandoned her for Glauce, a princess of Corinth. Medea had turned her back on her family to help Jason, even killing her own brother so as to help Jason escape. In this extract from Euripides’ tragedy, first produced in 431 BC, she exacts revenge not only on young Glauce, to whom she has sent a poisoned robe, but on Jason himself, in the most shocking way imaginable. This translation by Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, was very popular in its time.

MEDEA. I will endure.—Go thou within, and lay

All ready that my sons may need to-day.

[The ATTENDANT goes into the house.]

O children, children mine: and you have found

A land and home, where, leaving me discrowned