| Medea, Jason and the Argonauts Medea was the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis in Greek mythology, and wife of the mythical hero Jason. She was reputed to be especially skilled in the use of herbs and drugs having cured Herakles of his madness Hera had inflicted on him. Aeschylus in the Nurses of Dionysus, relates that she rejuvenated Dionysus' nurses and their husbands by boiling them. We see this theme repeated over and over even into the more modern times with witch’s cauldrons and the “eating of children.” According to some accounts, like the Argonautica, by Apollonius Rhodius, Medea is depicted as a young, mortal woman. As reported by Euripides: “Jason came to Corinth with Medea and then betrothed himself to Glauke, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. When Medea was about to be exiled from Corinth by Creon, she begged him to let her remain one day; upon gaining her request, as a reward for the favor she sent her children with gifts for Glauke, a dress and golden head band. She tried them on and was consumed and Creon, embracing his daughter, died too. Medea, after killing her own children, riding in a chariot with winged serpents, escaped to Athens where she married Aigeus, the son of Pandion. Pherekydes and Simonides says that Medea made Jason young again by boiling him. Concerning his father Aison, the poet of the Nostoi says the following: At once she made Aison a lad in his prime stripping off his old age with her knowing heart boiling quantities of herbs in golden cauldrons.” (183) In the preceding myth, it’s the golden head band, the chariot driven by winged serpents and herbs boiled in a golden cauldron that reveals the theme of the story. In speaking of the wide varieties of accounts of Medea in relation to the killing of her children and various other dramas, Diodorus Siculus writes in Library of History: “Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvelous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out.” (184) In Greek, we have the word, Iatros, which means “physician.” From this word we derive the name Ia-son, which is Greek for Jason, and means “healer” or “to heal.” (185) Jason comes to us in the Greek myths in the form of Jason and the Argonauts, in which he is the son of Aeson, rightful king of Iolcos, who was married to the sorceress Medea. His uncle is Pelias, who sought to and eventually succeeded in overthrowing his half-brother Aeson. When Pelias overthrew Aeson, he killed all of his sons but Iason, who was protected by the group of women who cried around him as if he were a stillborn and hid him away by sending him off to be raised by the centaur Chiron (kheiron), where he is schooled in the arts of medicine and healing. Pelias had been warned in an oracle of a man wearing only one sandal and when Iason entered Ialchos as |
a young man to claim the throne from King Pelias, he was recognized due to the fact that Iason had lost one of his sandals previously in the river Anauros. The king told Iason he could have the crown if he went and retrieved the Golden Fleece and this challenge Iason accepted. When Iason arrived at Colchis, the king Aeetes, who it belonged to, promised to give it to Iason if he could perform three tasks to which Iason became depressed thinking he could not accomplish it. So, Hera persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes' daughter, Medea, fall in love with Iason. Medea went to work then helping Iason accomplish his tasks. In order to overcome the dragon which protected the Golden Fleece, Medea gave him a potion from herbs which he sprayed the dragon with and made the dragon fall asleep. (186) Iason was also the great-grandson of the messenger god Hermes, through his mother's side. We see the similarities of Achilles to Iason. Achilles had a lame foot, and Iason lost one of his sandals. Both Achilles and Iason were taught medicine by Chiron, the centaur. What is it about this “Golden Fleece” that is so important that we must take notice of it in this myth? The fleece is sheepskin, or sheep’s wool and the sheep’s wool looks like the A. muscaria cap with its scabby veil remnants still attached. This may seem like a far stretch of the imagination however, we must remember that all of this is meant to be encoded in hidden symbolism. We read earlier about the Soma sacrifice and the filtering of the particles with sheep’s wool. We should remember that Abraham sacrificed a ram instead of his son as another example among many. The word “melon” can be used for both apples and sheep and may have been the idea behind changing the golden sheep (fleece) into golden apples. Originally, we have Iason and the Argonauts but we also have the myth of Herakles in the Garden of the Hesperides. This is perhaps the common link as proposed by Joseph Fontenrose in his book, Python, A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins (187). Also, there is a little-known mythical sheep from the Middle Ages called the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which is said to spring up from the ground, and sits perched atop a tree (72c). Hebrew and Medieval literature as well as poetry and philosophy texts all the way up through the Renaissance mention this “vegetable lamb.” Henry Lee, a 19th century naturalist wrote on this lamb on several occasions citing its first appearance in literature around 436 AD, in the Jewish text, Talmud Hierosolimitanum. Sir John Mandeville (1300 - 1371) wrote about them in his travel memoirs. Both Mandeville and Marco Polo’s travel writings had major influence on Christopher Columbus. (188) (183) Healing Gods, p. 365; E. Schwartz, Scholia in Euripidem, vol. 2, Berlin, 1891 (reprinted 1966):137-9 (184) Diodorus Siculus, Library of History Book 4.56.1 (185) Apples of Apollo, p. 58 (186) Ovid Metamorphosis, Book 7 (187) Python, A Study of Delphic Myth & its Origins, 1959, Fontenrose, p. 346 (188) Adams, Percy G. (1988), Travel Literature Through the Ages, New York: Garland |