Background for Euripides' MEDEA

Jason, prince of Iolkus, and the Argonauts sailed in the good ship Argo to Kolchis in search of the Golden Fleece. On the way they encountered many an exotic peril of the sea. For example, they had to brave the Sirens...and the Symplegades which were these enormous rocks that smashed into one another periodically flattening or pulverizing-perhaps making paste of- whatever tried to pass between them, thus protecting the entrance to the Black Sea.

Once in Kolchis, Jason was obliged by Aeetes, the king of Kolchis, to yoke a particularly nasty pair of fire-breathing bulls with which he then had to plow a field. Last, and certainly most perilous of all, Jason had to get around a very large and unpleasant serpent {seen on the left with Athene) that guarded the Golden Fleece . And, of course at last seized the fleece and made off with it (the image upper right). Our hero Jason was able to accomplish these things only with the aid of the exotic sorceress Medea, who also happened to be the daughter of Aeetes, and thus princess of Kolchis. She helped him not out of disloyalty to her father, but because Jason was a stunner and she had, as they say, "fallen for him" rather hard.

When the semi-happy couple tried to flee to Iolkus with the Golden Fleece" they were naturally pursued by Aeetes at the head of a very angry lynch mob. Medea slowed them up a bit, however, by chopping up her little brother and tossing his body parts on the sea in a grisly extension of Atalanta's ploy.

When they arrived safe, if not sound, in Iolkus, they found that Jason's uncle, Pelias, had killed Jason's father Aison and usurped the throne. To avenge her hubby's wronged family, Medea convinced Pelias' daughters that they could restore the old boy's youth by cutting him up in little tiny pieces and boiling them with a mixture of special magic herbs. She did this by cutting up Jason's aged father, boiling him in her special magic herbs and restoring him to vigorous youth. She repeated the procedure with an old ram, and the girls were hooked. (Never mind that Pelias had killed Jason's father-this is mythology-and some versions say she just did it with the ram anyway. And maybe, Pelias had only usurped the throne…details!) Pelias' son did not take kindly to having his father offed, so he drove Jason and Medea into exile. They turned up in Korinth, where Jason, true to his nature, went after the daughter of the ruler, Kreon, princess Kreusa (some legends call her Glauke), and married her. The boy did not lack cheek.

This is where Euripides starts his play...

An interesting note: The murder of Medea's children at her own hand may have been invented by Euripides as the incident seems to appear for the first time in his play.