Legendary Passages #0087 -XIII ARGONAUTS-
Rejuvenation, from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Previously, the Argonauts returned home with the golden fleece, discovered old King Pelias had killed Jason's father, and then Medea tricked Pelias' daughters into killing him, thinking they were restoring his youth.
In this passage, Jason's father Aeson still lives, although quite old. At Jason's request, Medea flies on her dragons across Greece, searching for magic herbs to make Aeson young again.
She succeeds, and telling the story to the daughters of Pelias, they beg her to do the same for their own father. So Medea changes an old ram back into a lamb, and wins their trust completely.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses7.html#2
Rejuvenation,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
METAMORPHOSES BOOK 7,
trans. by BROOKES MORE,
[159] - [322]
REJUVENATION OF AESON
Now when the valiant Argonauts returned to Thessaly, their happy relatives, fathers and mothers, praised the living Gods; and with their hallowed gifts enhanced the flames with precious incense; and they offered Jove a sacred bullock, rich with gilded horns. But Jason's father, Aeson, came not down rejoicing to behold his son, for now worn out with many years, he waited death. And Jason to Medea grieving said: “Dearest, to whom my life and love are due, although your kindness has been great to me, and you have granted more than I should ask, yet one thing more I beg of you; if your enchantments can accomplish my desire, take from my life some years that I should live and add them to my father's ending days.”—And as he spoke he could not check his tears. Medea, moved by his affection, thought how much less she had grieved for her loved sire: and she replied:—“A wicked thing you ask! Can I be capable of using you in such a manner as to take your life and give it to another? Ask not me a thing so dreadful! May the Gods forbid! -- I will endeavor to perform for you a task much greater. By the powers of Night I will most certainly return to him the lost years of your father, but must not deprive you of your own.—Oh grant the power, great goddess of the triple form, that I may fail not to accomplish this great deed!”
Three nights were wanting for the moon to join her circling horns and form a perfect orb. When these were passed, the rounded light shone full and bright upon the earth.—Through the still night alone, Medea stole forth from the house with feet bare, and in flowing garment clothed—her long hair unadorned and not confined. Deep slumber has relaxed the world, and all that's living, animals and birds and men, and even the hedges and the breathing leaves are still—and motionless the laden air. Only the stars are twinkling, and to them she looks and beckons with imploring hands. Now thrice around she paces, and three times besprinkles her long hair with water dipt from crystal streams, which having done she kneels a moment on the cold, bare ground, and screaming three times calls upon the Night,— "O faithful Night, regard my mysteries! O golden-lighted Stars! O softly-moving Moon—genial, your fire succeeds the heated day! O Hecate! grave three-faced queen of these charms of enchanters and enchanters, arts! O fruitful Earth, giver of potent herbs! O gentle Breezes and destructive Winds! You Mountains, Rivers, Lakes and sacred Groves, and every dreaded god of silent Night! Attend upon me!—When my power commands, the rivers turn from their accustomed ways and roll far backward to their secret springs! I speak--and the wild, troubled sea is calm, and I command the waters to arise! The clouds I scatter—and I bring the clouds; I smooth the winds and ruffle up their rage; I weave my spells and I recite my charms; I pluck the fangs of serpents, and I move the living rocks and twist the rooted oaks; I blast the forests. Mountains at my word tremble and quake; and from her granite tombs the liberated ghosts arise as Earth astonished groans! From your appointed ways, O wonder-working Moon, I draw you down against the magic-making sound of gongs and brazen vessels of Temesa's ore; I cast my spells and veil the jeweled rays of Phoebus' wain, and quench Aurora's fires. At my command you tamed the flaming bulls which long disdained to bend beneath the yoke, until they pressed their necks against the plows; and, subject to my will, you raised up war till the strong company of dragon-birth were slaughtered as they fought amongst themselves; and, last, you lulled asleep the warden's eyes -- guards of the Golden Fleece—till then awake and sleeping never—so, deceiving him, you sent the treasure to the Grecian cities! Witness my need of super-natured herbs, elixirs potent to renew the years of age, giving the bloom of youth.—You shall not fail to grant me this; for not in vain the stars are flashing confirmation; not in vain the flying dragons, harnessed by their necks, from skies descending bring my chariot down.”
A chariot, sent from heaven, came to her—and soon as she had stroked the dragons' necks, and shaken in her hands the guiding reins—as soon as she had mounted, she was borne quickly above, through unresisting air. And, sailing over Thessaly, she saw the vale of Tempe, where the level soil is widely covered with a crumbling chalk—she turned her dragons towards new regions there: and she observed the herbs by Ossa born, the weeds on lofty Pelion, Othrys, Pindus and vast Olympus -- and from here she plucked the needed roots, or there, the blossoms clipped all with a moon-curved sickle made of brass—many the wild weeds by Apidanus, as well as blue Amphrysus' banks, she chose, and not escaped Enipeus from her search; Peneian stretches and Spercheian banks all yielded what she chose:—and Boebe's shore where sway the rushes; and she plucked up grass, a secret grass, from fair Euboean fields life-giving virtues in their waving blades, as yet unknown for transformation wrought on Glaucus.
All those fields she visited, with ceaseless diligence in quest of charms, nine days and nine nights sought strong herbs, and the swift dragons with their active wings, failed not to guide the chariot where she willed—until they reached her home. The dragons then had not been even touched by anything, except the odor of surrounding herbs, and yet they sloughed their skins, the growth of years. She would not cross the threshold of her home nor pass its gates; but, standing in the field, alone beneath the canopy of Heaven, she shunned all contact with her husband, while she built up from the ever-living turf two altars, one of which upon the right to Hecate was given, but the one upon the left was sacred then to you, O Hebe, goddess of eternal youth! Festooning woodland boughs and sweet vervain adorned these altars, near by which she dug as many trenches. Then, when all was done, she slaughtered a black ram, and sprinkled with blood the thirsty trenches; after which she poured from rich carchesian goblets generous wine and warm milk, grateful to propitious Gods—the Deities of earth on whom she called—entreating, as she did so, Pluto, lord of ghostly shades, and ravished Proserpine, that they should not, in undue haste, deprive her patient's aged limbs of life.
When certain she compelled the God's regard, assured her incantations and long prayers were both approved and heard, she bade her people bring out the body of her father-in-law—old Aeson's worn out body—and when she had buried him in a deep slumber by her spells, as if he were a dead man, she then stretched him out upon a bed of herbs. She ordered Jason and his servants thence, and warned them not to spy upon her rites, with eyes profane. As soon as they retired, Medea, with disheveled hair and wild abandon, as a Bacchanalian, paced times three around the blazing altars, while she dipped her torches, splintered at the top, into the trenches, dark: with blood, and lit the dipt ends in the sacred altar flames. Times three she purified the ancient man with flames, and thrice with water, and three times with sulphur,—as the boiling mixture seethed and bubbled in the brazen cauldron near. And into this, acerbic juices, roots, and flowers and seeds—from vales Hemonian—and mixed elixirs, into which she cast stones of strange virtue from the Orient, and sifted sands of ebbing ocean's tide; white hoar-frost, gathered when the moon was full, the nauseating flesh and luckless wings of the uncanny screech-owl, and the entrails from a mysterious animal that changed from wolf to man, from man to wolf again; the scaly sloughing of a water-snake, the medic liver of a long-lived stag, and the hard beak and head of an old crow which was alive nine centuries before; these, and a thousand nameless things the foreign sorceress prepared and mixed, and blended all together with a branch of peaceful olive, old and dry with years.—And while she stirred the withered olive branch in the hot mixture, it began to change from brown to green; and presently put forth new leaves, and soon was heavy with a wealth of luscious olives.—As the ever-rising fire threw bubbling froth beyond the cauldron's rim, the ground was covered with fresh verdure—flowers and all luxuriant grasses, and green plants.
Medea, when she saw this wonder took her unsheathed knife and cut the old man's throat; then, letting all his old blood out of him she filled his ancient veins with rich elixir. As he received it through his lips or wound, his beard and hair no longer white with age, turned quickly to their natural vigor, dark and lustrous; and his wasted form renewed, appeared in all the vigor of bright youth, no longer lean and sallow, for new blood coursed in his well-filled veins.—Astonished, when released from his deep sleep, and strong in youth, his memory assured him, such he was years four times ten before that day!—
Bacchus, from his celestial vantage saw this marvel, and convinced his nurses might then all regain their former vigor, he pled with Medea to restore their youth. The Colchian woman granted his request.
MEDEA AND PELIAS
But so her malice might be satisfied Medea feigned she had a quarrel with her husband, and for safety she had fled to Pelias. There, since the king himself was heavy with old age, his daughters gave her generous reception. And these girls the shrewd Medea in a short time won, by her false show of friendliness; and while among the most remarkable of her achievements she was telling how she had rejuvenated Aeson, and she dwelt particularly, on that strange event, these daughters were induced to hope that by some skill like this their father might regain his lost youth also. And they begged of her this boon, persuading her to name the price; no matter if it was large. She did not reply at once and seemed to hesitate, and so she held their fond minds in a deep suspense by her feigned meditation. When she had at length declared she would restore his youth, she said to them: “That you may have strong confidence in this my promised boon, the oldest leader of your flock of sheep shall be changed to a lamb again by my prized drugs.”
Straightway a wooly ram, worn out with length of untold years was brought, his great horns curved around his hollow temples. After she had cut his scrawny throat with her sharp knife Thessalian, barely staining it with his thin blood, Medea plunged his carcass in a bronze-made kettle, throwing in it at the same time juices of great potency. These made his body shrink and burnt away his two horns, and with horns his years. And now thin bleating was heard from within the pot; and even while they wondered at the sound, a lamb jumped out and frisking, ran away to find some udder with its needed milk.
Amazed the daughters looked on and, now that these promises had been performed, they urged more eagerly their first request.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses7.html#2
This passage continues with the death of Pelias and exile in Corinth, but our next passage previews an unhappy marriage in Medea's Letter to Jason.
