should be my lone concerns. And yet, my heart
made shameless as a bitch’s, I no longer
shall stand aside but go feel out my sister
850to see if she entreats me to assist
the trial, because she hopes to save her sons.
Yes, that would quell my heart’s rebellious anguish.”
So she resolved, then rose and left the chamber,
barefoot and covered only by a nightgown.
855 (646)She was desperate to see her sister,
yet, when she crossed the threshold of the courtyard,
she lingered for a spell before her chamber,
checked by shame. She turned around, returned,
then stepped outside again, and then again
860shrank back inside. Her feet conveyed her here,
there, nowhere, since, whenever she emerged,
the shame within her turned her steps around.
Whenever shame, though, turned her steps around,
fierce longing turned her back and urged her onward.
865Three times she started and she stopped three times.
The fourth time, though, she whirled about, then tumbled
headlong onto her bed.
Think of a girl,
a bride, bewailing in the marriage chamber
the absence of the blooming youth on whom
870 (658)her parents and her brothers had bestowed her—
how, out of shame and shyness, she does not
make conversation with his household’s servants
but sits apart in grief. Some death has claimed him
before, as man and wife, they had the pleasure
875of one another’s charms. Her heart on fire,
she looks upon her freshly widowed bed
and sobs in silence, worrying that women
will mock and scorn her. So Medea wept.
Just then it chanced that, while she was lamenting,
880one of the servants who attended her
approached and noticed her and right away
bustled next door to tell Chalciope,
who happened to be with her sons, debating
how she might win her sister to their cause.
885 (669)Though busy planning, she did not ignore
the serving woman’s unexpected news
but rushed in wonder straight out of her chamber
into the chamber where Medea lay
distraught, with two fresh scratches on her cheeks.
890Chalciope could see her sister’s eyes
were dim with weeping, so she started thus:
“Dear, dear Medea, why are you in tears?
What’s wrong? What heavy grief has crushed your heart?
What, has some heaven-sent affliction wrapped
895its coils around your body? Have you heard
some dire threat that father has pronounced
against my sons and me? If only I
were not now looking on our parents’ palace
or even on this city but were living
900 (680)off at the world’s outskirts where the word
‘Colchian’ never, ever has been spoken.”
So she exclaimed. The maiden’s cheeks turned red,
and for a long time virgin modesty
restrained her, though she ached to tell her tale.
905At one time words were rising to her tongue’s tip
and at another sinking in her breast.
Time and again they reached her shapely lips
and strained to blossom forth, but no sound came.
When she at last could speak, she lied, because
910the stubborn love gods still were pressing on her:
“Chalciope, my heart is all atremble
over your sons. I fear our father shortly
will cut them down together with the strangers.
Sleeping just now a fitful sleep, I saw
915 (691)such ghastly nightmares. May a god make sure
they never come to pass. Yes, may you never
endure hard sorrow for your children’s sake.”
So she exclaimed to find out if her sister
would come out with a plea to save her sons.
920The story overwhelmed Chalciope
with terror past all bearing. She disclosed:
“I, too, was worrying about this matter
and came to see if you, perhaps, might work
together with me to devise a plan.
925First, you must swear by Heaven and Earth to seal
whatever I reveal inside your heart
and thus be my accomplice. In the names
of all the blessed gods, in your own name,
and those of father and mother, I implore you
930 (702)not to sit by and watch an evil doom
viciously cut my children down or else,
when I have died beside my darling sons,
I shall return hereafter out of Hades
as an avenging Fury to torment you.”
935So she threatened, and a flood of tears
burst forth when she had finished. Then she knelt
and gripped Medea’s knees with both her arms
and laid her head upon her sister’s lap.
Each of them poured out piteous lamentation
940over the other, and the sound of wailing
echoed faintly through the court. Grief-stricken
Medea was the first to speak again:
“How can I help you, sister, when you threaten
Furies and baneful curses? All I want is
945 (713)to save your sons. I summon as my witness
the potent oath code of the Colchians
by which you have insisted that I swear.
I call as well on mighty Heaven and Earth,
the mother of the gods, to witness that,
950as much as there is strength within my body,
you never shall be lacking in support,
provided what you ask is possible.”
So vowed Medea, and her sister asked:
“To save my sons, Medea, could you please
955conjure some trick to help the stranger win
the contest? He is desperate as well.
Argus, in fact, has just now come from him
and asked that I attempt to win your aid.
When I came out, I left him in my chamber.”
960 (724)So she explained. The heart within Medea
leapt up for joy. Her lovely cheeks went flush.
She melted with delight. A mist descended
over her liquid eyes, and she replied:
“Sister, I shall provide whatever aid
965you and your sons would find most beneficial.
Never may dawn again light up my eyes,
nor may my mouth take in another breath,
if I place anything above your life
and that of all your sons. They are my brothers,
970my dear protectors and my playmates. Yes,
I tell you that I am a sister to you
and daughter also, equal with your sons,
because you nursed me at your breast when I
was but an infant, as I’ve heard my mother
many times declare.
975 (736)Go now, but bury
all that I shall perform for you in silence,
so that I can do what I must do
without my parents finding out. At daybreak
I shall be at the shrine of Hecate
980with drugs to beat the bulls and so assist
the stranger who has started all this trouble.”
With that, her sister strode out of the chamber
to tell her sons about Medea’s plan.
Shame, though, and hateful terror gripped the maiden
985when she was left alone. To help a stranger
by weaving schemes behind her father’s back!
Now night was covering the earth in da
rkness,
and sailors from their ships were studying
the stars of Ursa Major and Orion.
990 (746)Travelers and watchmen turned their thoughts
toward sleep,
and deep, deep slumber was relieving even
those mothers who had lately lost their children.
No dogs were barking in the streets; no voices
echoed; silence held the blackening gloom.
995Sweet sleep, however, never eased Medea—
no, worry and her love for Jason roused her.
She feared the bulls, the overwhelming force
beneath which he was all but sure to suffer
shameful destruction on the field of Ares.
1000Her heart was fitful, restless in the way
a sunbeam, when reflected off the water
swirling out of a pail or pitcher, dances
upon the walls—yes, that was how her heart
was quivering. And tears of pity flowed
1005 (759)out of her eyes, and anguish burned her insides
by smoldering into her skin and sinews,
even into the apex of her spine,
the point where torment peaks when the relentless
love gods have filled us up with agony.
1010Sometimes she said, yes, she would offer him
the magic drug to charm the bulls; at others,
no, she would not and she would kill herself;
at others, she would neither take her life
nor offer him the magic, but remain
1015just as she had been, suffering, in silence.
She sat down then and, wavering, exclaimed:
“Which of these woes am I to choose? My mind
is reeling. There’s no respite from the pain.
It burns and burns. It burns. I wish the arrows
1020 (774)of Artemis had struck me dead before
I saw that man, yes, long before the sons of
Chalciope had ever left for Greece.
Some god, some Fury shipped pains overflowing
with grief from there to here, right here, to me.
1025Let Jason perish in the competition,
if he is doomed to perish. If I gave him
the drug, how could my parents fail to learn
what I had done? What reason could I give them?
What lie or ploy would be of any use?
1030If I see him alone, without his friends,
will I acknowledge him? My lot is cruel.
I cannot hope that, even when he dies,
I will be free from anguish. He will be
a curse on me when he has lost his life.
1035 (786)So good-bye, modesty. Good-bye, fair name.
Once I have saved him, let him go unharmed
wherever he desires while I, the day
that he completes the contest, leave this life
by dangling my body from a rafter
1040or taking drugs, the kind that kill the heart . . .
but, when I’m dead, they all will stand there eyeing
my ruin. The entire town will pass
around the story of my fall, and all
the Colchian girls will bear me on their lips
1045everywhere, harshly savaging my name:
She loved that foreigner so much it killed her.
By giving way to lust, she has disgraced
her house and home.
What shame will not be mine?
Ah, mad obsession! No, it would be better
1050 (799)to take my life here in my room tonight
and by an inexplicable demise
escape such dreadful infamy before
I do this shameful and outrageous deed.”
So she resolved and went to fetch the casket
1055in which her many drugs, some good, some baneful,
were kept. She set it on her knees and wept.
Her nightgown’s folds were wet so thoroughly
with tears that streams of grief were flowing from her.
Shrilly lamenting, keening her own death,
1060she wanted to reach out, select, and swallow
poison to end her life. She was already
unfastening the hasps in her desire
to take it out, poor girl. Soon, though, a deathly
antipathy to baneful Hades vanquished
1065 (811)the urge. She was a long time held there, speechless.
The heart-delighting joys of daylight sparkled
before her eyes, and she recalled the countless
pleasures the living relish and recalled
her darling playmates, as a maiden would.
1070So long as she kept going over all
these pleasures one by one inside her mind,
the light of life was sweeter to behold
than it had been before. And so she took
the casket off her knees and set it down.
1075Hera had redirected her intentions.
No longer did Medea waver, no,
she yearned for sunrise, burned to meet the stranger
face-to-face, and offer him the drug.
Over and over she undid the door bolt
1080 (822)and peeped out waiting for the glow of daybreak,
and welcome were the rays that Dawn shot forth.
People throughout the city started stirring,
and Argus bade his brothers stay behind
to monitor the girl’s resolve while he
1085slipped out and went before them to the ship.
Soon as the maiden saw that Dawn had come,
she tied off with her hands the golden tresses
that had been hanging loose in disarray.
Once she had pinched her cheeks and doused her body
1090in fragrant oil, she put a brilliant robe on
and pinned it with exquisite, spiral brooches.
Last of all, she donned a veil—it shone
like silver over her ambrosial features.
And so she pirouetted round her chamber,
1095 (836)oblivious to all the griefs before her
and all those that would multiply with time.
Twelve handmaids, each her age, and each unmarried,
slept in the forecourt of her fragrant chamber.
She summoned them and bade them harness mules
1100beneath a cart to bring her to the goddess
Hecate’s handsome temple. When her handmaids
had gone to rig the cart, Medea opened
the hollow casket and removed a tincture,
a drug called Prometheon.
If a man
1105should first appease the Lone-Begotten Virgin
with nighttime sacrifice and then anoint
his body with this extract, he would be
invulnerable against all strokes of bronze,
unscorchable by blasts of blazing fire,
1110 (850)and greater for a day than any mortal
in might and bravery.
The herb first sprouted
after the flesh-devouring eagle dripped
tortured Prometheus’ bloody ichor
onto the rugged slopes of the Caucasus.
1115Twin stalks emerged and then, atop them, flowers
closest in hue to the Corycian crocus.
Their taproots looked like freshly slaughtered flesh;
their resin, like a mountain oak’s black sap.
Before the girl had used a Caspian seashell
1120to catch the resin and prepare the potion,
she had bathed in ever-flowing waters
seven times and seven times invoked
Brimo the Youth Nurse, Brimo Dark Traverser
and Netherworldly Queen. The night was starless,
1125 (863)and the girl had donned a pitch-black mantle.
When the Titanian root was severed, Earth
shook from her depths and raised a groan because
the son of Iapetus
himself was groaning,
his soul twisted with pain. Such was the drug
1130she took and placed inside the fragrant band
supporting her ambrosial breasts.
She left
her room and climbed aboard the swift-wheeled cart.
When two handmaids had climbed aboard beside her,
she took the reins and braided whip in hand
1135and drove through town. The other handmaids gripped
a basket at the wagon’s rear and jogged
along the broad cart road, their gauzy skirts
hiked as high up as their shining thighs.
Just as when Leto’s daughter Artemis,
1140 (877)after a bath in the Amnisus River
or the Parthenius’ tepid shallows,
ascends her golden car and rides through hills
behind a team of swift-hooved bucks to visit
steaming and fat-rich cattle sacrifices,
1145a retinue of nymphs beside her, some
assembled from the source of the Amnisus,
others from groves and many-fountained summits
and, everywhere around her as she passes,
the wild creatures fawn and whimper—so
1150the young girls sped through town, and all the people
gave way and shunned the royal maiden’s gaze.
Once she had left the well-built city roads
and traveled through a plain, she reined the mules in
before the shrine, jumped from the smooth-wheeled
wagon,
1155 (890)full of desire, and said to her attendants:
“Goodness, my friends, what a mistake I made!
I never stopped to think it wasn’t safe
with all those strangers roaming through our kingdom.
The whole city is wild with turmoil, so
1160none of the women who attend the temple
have come today. Since we are here, however,
and no one else is coming, let’s delight
our hearts with choral song. Once we have picked
these gorgeous flowers from the tender grass,
1165we shall return at our accustomed hour.
And you will go home rich in gifts today
if you agree to do me one small favor:
Argus, you see, will not stop begging me to—
Chalciope as well—oh, but be sure
1170 (903)to keep the words I tell you to yourselves
so that they never reach my father’s ears—
well, it’s about the stranger who agreed
to undertake the trial of the oxen—
you see, they asked me to accept his gifts
1175and keep him safe in that atrocious contest.
Well, once the terms were set, I bade the stranger
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