Medea, after having killed Pelias, goes through several countries to Corinth, where, finding that Jason, in her absence, has married the daughter of king Creon, she sets fire to the palace, whereby the princess and her father are consumed. She then murders the two children which she had by Jason, before his face, and takes to flight.
And unless she had mounted into the air with winged dragons, she would not have been exempt from punishment; she flies aloft, over both shady Pelion, the lofty habitation[46] of the son of Phillyra, and over Othrys, and the places noted for the fate of the ancient Cerambus.[47] He, by the aid of Nymphs, being lifted on wings into the air, when the ponderous earth was covered by VII. 355-365 the sea pouring over it, not being overwhelmed, escaped the flood of Deucalion. On the left side, she leaves the Æolian Pitane,[48] and the image of the long Dragon[49] made out of stone, and the wood of Ida,[50] in which Bacchus hid a stolen bullock beneath the appearance of a fictitious stag; the spot too, where the father of Corythus[51] lies buried beneath a little sand, and the fields which Mæra[52] alarmed by her unusual barking.
The city, too, of Eurypylus,[53] in which the Coan matrons[54] wore horns, at the time when the herd of Hercules[55] departed thence; Phœbean Rhodes[56] also, and VII. 365-382 the Ialysian Telchines,[57] whose eyes[58] corrupting all things by the very looking upon them, Jupiter utterly hating, thrust beneath the waves of his brother. She passed, too, over the Cartheian walls of ancient Cea,[59] where her father Alcidamas[60] was destined to wonder that a gentle dove could arise from the body of his daughter.
After that, she beholds the lakes of Hyrie,[61] and Cycneian Tempe,[62] which the swan that had suddenly become such, frequented. For there Phyllius, at the request of the boy, had given him birds, and a fierce lion tamed; being ordered, too, to subdue a bull, he had subdued him; and being angry at his despising his love so often, he denied him, when begging the bull as his last reward. The other, indignant, said, “Thou shalt wish that thou hadst given it;” and then leaped from a high rock. All imagined he had fallen; but, transformed into a swan, he hovered in the air on snow-white wings. But his mother, Hyrie, not knowing that he was saved, dissolved in tears, and formed a lake called after her own name.
Adjacent to these places is Pleuron;[63] in which VII. 383-396 Combe,[64] the daughter of Ophis, escaped the wounds of her sons with trembling wings. After that, she sees the fields of Calaurea,[65] sacred to Latona, conscious of the transformation of their king, together with his wife, into birds. Cyllene is on the right hand, on which Menephron[66] was one day to lie with his mother, after the manner of savage beasts. Far hence she beholds Cephisus,[67] lamenting the fate of his grandson, changed VII. 389-401 by Apollo into a bloated sea-calf; and the house of Eumelus,[68] lamenting his son in the air.
At length, borne on the wings of her dragons, she reached the Pirenian Ephyre.[69] Here, those of ancient times promulgated that in the early ages mortal bodies were produced from mushrooms springing from rain. But after the new-made bride was consumed, through the Colchian drugs, and both seas beheld the king’s house on fire, her wicked sword was bathed in the blood of her sons; and the mother, having thus barbarously revenged herself, fled from the arms of Jason. VII. 397-401 Being borne hence by her Titanian dragons,[70] she entered the city of Pallas, which saw thee, most righteous Phineus,[71] and thee, aged Periphas,[72] flying together, and the granddaughter of Polypemon[73] resting upon new-formed wings.
[ EXPLANATION.]
Jason being reconciled to the children of Pelias, gave the crown to his son Acastus. Becoming tired of Medea, he married Glauce, or Creüsa, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. Medea, hastening to that place, left her two sons in the temple of Juno, and set fire to Creon’s palace, where he and his daughter were consumed to ashes, after which she killed her own children. Euripides, in his tragedy of Medea, makes a chorus of Corinthian women say, that the Corinthians themselves committed the murder, and that the Gods sent a plague on the city, as a punishment for the deed. Pausanias also says, that the tomb of Medea’s children, whom the Corinthians stoned to death, was still to be seen in his time; and that the Corinthians offered sacrifices there every year, to appease their ghosts, as the oracle had commanded them.
Apollodorus relates this story in a different manner. He says, that Medea sent her rival a crown, dipped in a sort of gum of a combustible nature; and that when Glauce had put it on her head, it began to burn so furiously, that the young princess perished in the greatest misery. Medea afterwards retired to Thebes, where Hercules engaged to give her assistance against Jason, which promise, however, he failed to perform. Going thence to Athens, she married Ægeus.
The story of her winged dragons may, perhaps, be based on the fact, that her ship was called ‘the Dragon.’ In recounting the particulars of her flight, Ovid makes allusion to several stories by the way, the most of which are entirely unknown to us. With regard VII. 402-408 to these fictions, it may not be out of place to remark here, as affording a key to many of them, that where a person escaped from any imminent danger, it was published that he had been changed into a bird. If, to avoid pursuit, a person hid himself in a cave, he was said to be transformed into a serpent; and if he burst into tears, from excess of grief, he was reported to have changed into a fountain; while, if a damsel lost herself in a wood, she became a Nymph, or a Dryad. The resemblance of names, also, gave rise to several fictions: thus, Alopis was changed into a fox; Cygnus into a swan; Coronis into a crow; and Cerambus into a horned beetle. As some few of the stories here alluded to by Ovid, refer to historical events, it may be remarked, that the account of the women of Cos being changed into cows, is thought by some to have been founded on the cruel act of the companions of Hercules, who sacrificed some of them to the Gods of the country. The inhabitants of the Isle of Rhodes were said to have been changed into rocks, because they perished in an inundation, which laid a part of that island under water, and particularly the town of Ialysus. The fruitfulness of the daughter of Alcidamas occasioned it to be said, that she was changed into a dove. The rage of Mæra is shown by her transformation into a bitch; and Arne was changed into a daw, because, having sold her country, her avarice was well depicted under the symbol of that bird, which, according to the popular opinion, is fond of money. Phillyra, the mother of the Centaur Chiron, was said to be changed into a linden-tree, probably because she happened to bear the name of that tree, which in the Greek language is called φιλύρα.