Medea was the sorceress of Colchis, the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis, and the granddaughter of the sun-god Helios. She helped the hero Jason win the Golden Fleece and then fled with him to Greece, where she married him and bore him two children. When Jason abandoned her for a younger bride, Medea took a terrible revenge, killing the bride, her father, and her own children, before escaping to Athens. Her story has been the subject of plays by Euripides and Seneca, operas by Cherubini and others, and countless works of modern literature, art, and film. The figure of Medea has become a symbol of the wronged woman, the foreign princess, the dangerous foreigner, and the terrifying power of a mother’s love.
The Birth and Family of Medea
Medea was the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis, a kingdom on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, and the granddaughter of Helios, the sun-god. She was a priestess of Hecate, the goddess of magic and witchcraft, and she was trained in the arts of sorcery by her aunt, the witch Circe.
Medea had a brother, Apsyrtus, who would later be killed by her in her flight from Colchis. The myth of Medea and her brother is one of the most disturbing in Greek mythology, and it has been interpreted by some scholars as evidence of the older, more violent nature of the myth.
The Meeting with Jason
Medea first met Jason when he arrived in Colchis with the Argonauts, seeking the Golden Fleece. King Aeetes agreed to give Jason the Fleece only if he could perform several impossible tasks: yoke a pair of fire-breathing bulls, plow a field with them, plant the teeth of a dragon, and defeat the armed men who would spring up from the teeth.
Jason, discouraged, was helped by Hera, who persuaded Aphrodite to make Medea fall in love with him. Medea, in love with Jason, agreed to help him. She gave him a magic ointment that protected him from the bulls’ fire, and she taught him how to defeat the earth-born warriors. With her help, Jason performed the tasks and won the right to the Golden Fleece.
The Theft of the Golden Fleece
When King Aeetes refused to give up the Fleece, Medea helped Jason steal it. She used her magic to put the dragon that guarded it to sleep, and Jason took the Fleece and fled with Medea. Aeetes pursued them, but Medea killed her own brother Apsyrtus and scattered his limbs in the sea, forcing Aeetes to stop to collect them for proper burial.
The Return to Iolcos
The Argonauts returned to Iolcos, where Medea took a terrible revenge on King Pelias, who had usurped the throne of Jason and had killed his father Aeson. She told Pelias’s daughters that she could restore their father’s youth by cutting him up and boiling him. They did so, but Medea did not restore him. Pelias was dead, and his son Acastus became king, expelling Jason and Medea from Iolcos.
The Life in Corinth
Jason and Medea fled to Corinth, where they lived for ten years and had two sons. According to Euripides’s play Medea, Jason then decided to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon of Corinth, to advance his political career.
Medea, in her rage, took a terrible revenge. She sent the bride a poisoned robe and golden crown, which burned her flesh and killed her. When King Creon tried to save his daughter, he died in the same way. Medea then killed her own two children, in a horrifying act of revenge, and escaped to Athens in a chariot drawn by winged serpents, given to her by her grandfather Helios.
The Life in Athens
Medea fled to Athens, where she married King Aegeus. According to one version of the myth, she tried to poison Theseus, the hero who was the son of Aegeus, when he arrived in Athens. She recognized him before he could drink the poison, and she was exiled from Athens. According to another version, she succeeded in poisoning him, and he died.
The Cult of Medea
Medea was worshipped as a goddess in several places, particularly in Corinth, where she was associated with the cult of Hecate and was said to have been buried. She was also worshipped in other parts of Greece, particularly in regions where magic and witchcraft were important.
The cult of Medea in Corinth was particularly important. She was worshipped as a goddess of the underworld, and her image appeared on coins and in art. The shrine of Medea at Corinth was a major religious center, and her cult was said to have been founded by Medea herself.
The Cultural Legacy of Medea
The story of Medea has been one of the most influential myths in Western culture. The play Medea by Euripides, first performed in 431 BCE, is tragedies in the Greek canon, and it has been the model for countless works of literature, art, and film. The play was translated into Latin by Ennius and later by Seneca, whose version became the model for the Renaissance and modern retellings.
The figure of Medea has been interpreted by feminist critics as a symbol of the wronged woman, the foreign princess, the dangerous outsider, and the terrifying power of a mother’s love. The play has been adapted by many modern writers, including Christa Wolf (in her novel Medea: Stimmen), Robinson Jeffers (in his verse adaptation Medea), and many others.
The opera Médée by Luigi Cherubini (1797) is one of the great works of the operatic repertoire, and it has been performed by Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, and many other famous sopranos. The film Medea (1969) by Pier Paolo Pasolini, starring Maria Callas, is a modern adaptation of the myth. The phrase “Medea complex” has been used in psychology to describe a mother’s destructive love for her children.
For more on the mythological context, see our profile of Jason, our guide to the Greek heroes, and our profile of Circe. For more on the cultural legacy, see our guide to Greek mythology in modern culture.