Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(68)

Of course, Medea cannot perform this role in the Harryhausen movie because the plot has been reordered. For Apollonius, the encounter with Talos happens on the way home from collecting the golden fleece. In the film, it is one of the obstacles they face on the way there. But the erasure of Medea’s heroic deeds happens several times, irrespective of the order. The film is named for Jason, and we’re left in no doubt that he must carry out all the heroic deeds himself, even if a goddess has to intervene and tell him what to do. In order to claim the fleece, Jason fights a Hydra which guards the precious object from marauding adventurers. What kind of hero would Jason be if he couldn’t even kill a giant multi-headed snake? Pindar, in his fourth Pythian Ode, has Jason killing a multi-coloured, grey-eyed snake8 before going on to steal Medea away with him. But for Euripides, Jason doesn’t kill a snake of any shade, with one or many heads. You guessed it: Medea does that too.9 She and Jason are having an almighty row at this point in the play, and even then he doesn’t question her assertion that she killed the snake, which she describes as aupnos – ‘unsleeping’. So it’s not like she simply crept up on this mighty reptile while it snoozed. In the film, Medea dies from an arrow wound during Jason’s altercation with the Hydra, and has to be revived with the healing powers of the fleece, which shimmers gold as she is brought back to life. This is a much less impressive Medea than that of our ancient sources, who would certainly not let anything as trivial as an arrow stop her.

Perhaps the most terrifying moment for us as children watching this film was when Medea’s father Ae?tes sows the Hydra’s teeth into the ground, and skeleton warriors rise up to fight Jason. The special effects may look a little shaky now, but I promise that in the nineteen-eighties they were genuinely scary. Again, this moment is in Apollonius, although his chthonic warriors are giants and spring from the teeth of an Aonian serpent, slain long ago by Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes. As so often in Apollonius, Medea is the reason that Jason survives his encounter. Before the giants rise out of the earth (they are not skeletal in the Argonautica),10 she tells him that he can use a trick to defeat them: throw a large boulder among them and they will seize on it like wild dogs and destroy each other. In the Argonautica, this happens directly after Jason has survived another test set for him by Ae?tes, who orders the young hero to yoke a pair of fire-breathing bulls and plough a field. I’m sure you have already guessed who helps Jason with this impossible task. Medea provides him with a protective salve to rub over his skin, which makes him invulnerable for a day. She digs it out of a box which contains many drugs or potions.11 The same story appears in Pindar’s fourth Pythian Ode,12 where Medea again provides a potion to make Jason impervious to fire. For Pindar, Medea is a romantic heroine, forced into this by Aphrodite who is helping Jason on his quest and who makes Medea fall in love with him. And for Apollonius too, in the third book of the Argonautica, Medea is a love-struck girl. She is persuaded by her sister Chalciope to help this handsome stranger, and much of this book centres on the tension building as we follow Medea’s decision to betray her father because she has fallen in love with Jason.

The parallels with Ariadne and Theseus – a daughter who decides to assist a visiting adventurer with the lethal tasks her father has set – are explicitly drawn by Jason,13 when he asks Medea to bear Ariadne’s choice in mind as she ponders whether to help him or obey her father. Medea asks to hear more about Ariadne (who is her cousin – Pasipha? and Ae?tes are sister and brother), but Jason sensibly changes the subject before Medea finds out what happened to Ariadne after she had chosen to abandon her family and elope with Theseus.

So Medea – even as a young woman – is an interesting double-figure. She is both an innocent, like Ariadne before her, falling for a hero and helping him on his quest, which involves seemingly impossible tasks imposed by her father. She is persuaded by Aphrodite or her sister to help Jason. But in the Argonautica, a four-book epic, we have time to see her character develop, and we realize she is no ordinary princess. Ariadne simply needs to betray her family and offer Theseus a spool of thread, but Medea has a whole box full of potions and powers. She is not just an innocent, but also a formidable witch, as the Argonauts discuss before Jason goes to meet her and plead with her for help. Argus tells Jason he has heard from his mother that a girl in the palace (Medea) is highly skilled and has been taught by the goddess of witchcraft herself, Hecate.14 She can stop full-flowing rivers, or a star in its course, or even the moon. Medea is thus presented as this dual character: young and naive, but simultaneously powerful and strong. And, as we see when the Argonauts meet Talos, she can do things that no one else can: her knowledge of dark magic and her connections with the goddess Hecate make her the most powerful figure on the Argo – a ship filled with heroes. She goes toe-to-toe with Talos (actually, in Greek, it is eyes-to-eyes)15 and her malevolence beats his.

All those heroes who have embarked on quests to battle or overthrow monsters – Perseus, Theseus, Jason – all of them need assistance in their crucial moments. Medea does not: she has learned her skills from Hecate, can summon up her own power when required. This is somewhat different from having a god swan in and help out with a protective hat or special sword. But still, in matters of love, she is scarcely more than a girl, and doesn’t even know – at least, as Apollonius tells it – the salutary lesson from her cousin Ariadne’s dalliance with Theseus. We have a strong hint from these descriptions of her magical power that Medea is a very valuable ally and a formidable opponent. You would think the person most aware of that would be Jason.