Medea
meh-DEE-uh
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesGranddaughter of Helios, priestess of Hecate, and the most dangerous figure in Greek myth who is not a monster. She gives Jason the fleece and kills for him, and when he sets her aside she kills their children and leaves.
Euripides ends the play with her above the stage in a chariot drawn by serpents, out of reach, with the bodies. The chariot is her grandfather's. It is the one detail of the story that no one can explain away as human cruelty.
The spear she carries against Kalaxes, and the dragon chariot that brings her, answer to that image. The engagement itself is recorded nowhere else.
Sources
- Eur. Med. 1317-1322
- Apollod. 1.9.23-28
- Pind. Pyth. 4
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Discussed in the papers
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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