Medea

Medea was born in the remote kingdom of Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, to King Aeetes and the Oceanid nymph Eidyia. Her grandfather was Helios, the Titan who drove the sun across the sky in a blazing chariot, and her aunt was Circe, the sorceress who turned Odysseus's men into swine on her island of Aeaea. From her earliest years, Medea served as a priestess of Hecate, the goddess of magic, crossroads, and the dead, and she learned to handle herbs with a skill that could bend the natural world to her will. She could quench the blast of unwearied flame, stop the course of roaring rivers, and check the paths of the sacred moon. In the halls of her father's palace, she grew into a young woman of extraordinary beauty and even more extraordinary power, the jewel of a court that guarded one of the most sacred treasures in the world.

That treasure was the Golden Fleece, the shimmering hide of a flying ram that had once saved the children of Athamas from sacrifice. It hung in a grove sacred to Ares, the god of war, guarded by a dragon that never slept and by two bronze-footed bulls that breathed fire from their nostrils. When the hero Jason arrived in Colchis aboard the Argo, a ship built from timber of Mount Pelion with a prow of sacred oak from Dodona, he came seeking that fleece. King Aeetes, who had been warned by an oracle that he would lose his kingdom if he lost the fleece, set Jason three impossible tasks: to yoke the fire-breathing bulls and plough a field, to sow dragon's teeth and defeat the armed men that sprang from the ground, and to overcome the sleepless dragon itself. Jason despaired, but Hera, queen of the gods, had taken Jason as her champion ever since he had carried her disguised as an old woman across a river and lost a sandal in the process. Hera persuaded Aphrodite, goddess of love, to send her son Eros to shoot Medea with an arrow of desire. Medea fell in love with Jason instantly and utterly, a love that would cost her everything.

Medea gave Jason a magic ointment to rub over his body and shield, making him immune to the bulls' fire. She told him to throw a stone into the midst of the armed men sprouting from the dragon's teeth, so that they would turn on one another in confusion rather than attack him. She gave him a sleeping potion to pour over the dragon, and while the beast slumbered, Jason seized the Golden Fleece. But Aeetes gave chase with his fleet, and Medea knew they would be overtaken. She had brought her younger brother Apsyrtus aboard the Argo, and now she murdered him with her own hands, chopped his body into pieces, and threw them overboard into the sea. Aeetes, grief-stricken, stopped his ships to gather the remains of his son, and the Argo escaped into the open water. When they reached Iolcus, Medea used her magic to rejuvenate Jason's aged father Aeson, boiling him in a cauldron of herbs until he emerged young again. Then she tricked Pelias, the usurper king who had sent Jason on his quest, by demonstrating her power on an old ram: she slaughtered it, cut it into pieces, boiled them in her cauldron, and produced a young lamb. Pelias's daughters, eager to restore their father's youth, did the same to him. But Medea had used no magic on Pelias, and the old king died in pieces, boiled alive by his own children.

Jason and Medea fled to Corinth, where they lived for at least ten years and had two sons, Mermerus and Pheres. But Jason grew ambitious and cold. He arranged to marry Glauke, the young daughter of King Creon of Corinth, casting Medea aside like a foreign inconvenience. Medea, who had given up her kingdom, her family, and her innocence for this man, was consumed by a fury that no mortal could match. She sent Glauke a gift: a beautiful robe and golden crown, woven with poison and magic. When Glauke put them on, the robe stuck to her skin and burned with an unquenchable fire. Her father Creon tried to tear the garment from her and was caught in the same inferno. Both died screaming in agony. But Medea was not finished. To punish Jason completely, to strip him of his future, his heirs, and his name, she took her two sons and killed them with her own hands. Some say she stabbed them; others say she poisoned them or threw them into a fire. The Corinthians themselves told a different story, claiming that their own people had stoned the children to death after Glauke's murder, and that the dead boys later cursed the city, causing the infants of Corinth to die until an oracle commanded annual sacrifices in their honor. But the version that endured, the version that Euripides made immortal in his tragedy of 431 BCE, was the one where Medea murdered her own flesh and blood, then escaped into the sky in a chariot drawn by dragons, given to her by her grandfather Helios.

Medea found refuge in Athens, where she married King Aegeus and bore him a son, Medus. But when Aegeus's long-lost son Theseus arrived in Athens, Medea tried to poison him, fearing that he would displace her own child. Aegeus recognized his son just in time and cast Medea out. She fled to the lands of Asia, where her son Medus founded the kingdom of Media, named for her. In some accounts, she returned to Colchis and restored her father Aeetes to his throne. In others, she lived out her days in the Elysian Fields, the paradise reserved for the greatest heroes and demigods, a mortal woman who had committed the most unforgivable crimes and yet was welcomed among the blessed dead. No god ever punished her. No hero ever brought her to justice. She simply endured, her name becoming a byword for the destructive power of a love pushed too far, and for the terrible freedom of a woman who would rather burn the world than be betrayed.