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  Apsyrtus had been lured aboard the Argo by his elder sister, Medea, who then cold-bloodedly killed him, chopped his body to pieces and threw them in the sea, knowing that the shock and horror of the act would stop Aeetes from pursuing them. Her plan worked—Aeetes gave up the chase. But as he turned back, he cursed that his daughter would never find happiness with the man for whom she had betrayed her father and killed her brother.

  The Argo arrived in Greece after a long and complex journey. Guided by Medea, instead of going through the Bosphorus, the ship sailed via a route known only to witches.

  Grateful for Medea’s help and moved by her unconditional love, Jason agreed to marry her, thus returning to Greece, not just with the Fleece, but also with a witch for a wife.

  In other versions of the tale, Apsyrtus pursues his sister and Jason on a ship and is killed in a fight with Jason. Atlanta is wounded in this fight and healed by Medea.

  Having murdered her brother, Medea goes to her aunt, the witch Circe, who performs rituals to cleanse her of the violent act.

  Medea

  On returning to Iolcus, Jason gave Pelias the Golden Fleece, which the king accepted grudgingly.

  The people of the city were fascinated by Medea. They watched how, with her magical herbs, she cured the sick, and made beautiful the ugly.

  Pelias’s daughters saw how she cut up an old and sick goat, threw the pieces of its flesh in a cauldron full of herbs and brought it back to life as a young and healthy lamb. They watched her kill and restore to life Jason’s old father, Aeson.

  ‘I can do the same for your father,’ she whispered in their ears.

  The daughters believed the witch and while their old father slept, they murdered him, cut his body into many pieces and threw them in Medea’s cauldron of herbs. Only this time, the meat cooked itself with the herbs and there was no sign of resurrection. Thus did Medea fool the girls and kill Pelias, the man who had sent her husband on a dangerous mission.

  Medea had hoped that by killing Pelias she would make her husband king. But the people of Iolcus were not so forgiving. They drove the witch and her husband out of the city, and the couple took refuge in the city of Corinth.

  In the medieval mythology of Nath yogis, the wandering hermits of India, there is the story of how Goraksha-nath uses his yogic powers to kill and bring back to life the son of his guru Matsyendra-nath by the Amazon queen Pramila. He does this to prove that life and death are delusions and to liberate his guru from the sexual snare of his wife.

  In Hesiod’s Theogony, the marriage of Jason and Medea is listed as one of the marriages between mortals and immortals, suggesting that Medea is divine.

  Medea is often linked to Hecate, the goddess of magic.

  Medea embodies a woman who is both powerful and frightening. She is representative of the exotic Eastern woman for the Greeks who preferred their women more submissive.

  Creusa

  Medea was deliriously happy with Jason in Corinth, where she gave birth to two children. Jason, however, was not happy being a householder when he could have been a king. He felt frustrated and angry, until the king of Corinth made a proposal: ‘Marry my daughter, Creusa, and rule this land with her as your queen.’

  Jason wondered what would happen to Medea, but the king told him that no one in Greece considered the eastern witch his wife; she could stay in Corinth as his concubine. This thought appealed to Jason but when he told Medea she was heartbroken. But witch that she was, she cold-bloodedly plotted her revenge.

  She gifted Creusa a beautiful robe to wear on her wedding night. As soon as Jason’s new bride wore it she burst into flames. A horrified Jason and the king of Corinth rushed to Medea’s chambers to seize and punish her, only to find that she had killed her own children, and was flying away towards the sun on a chariot drawn by flying serpents.

  An angry Jason chased after her, but he could only make it as far as the sea while Medea flew beyond the horizon. Frustrated, angry and miserable, a homeless, wifeless, childless Jason walked along the beach till he came upon the ruins of the Argo, decaying beside the sea. Jason rested in its shadow, recollecting his great adventures, and his tryst with Medea. As melancholy consumed him, the prow of the old rotting ship broke and fell on him, crushing him to death.

  Like Jason, Ram of the Hindu epic Ramayana abandons his wife. But while Ram does it to uphold the family reputation, Jason does it for personal ambition. Ram never remarries while it is Jason’s desire to remarry that sparks the crisis. Both Jason and Ram die heartbroken: Jason for betraying his wife, and Ram for being unable to hold on to her.

  In older versions of the story, the Corinthians kill Medea’s children after her escape. The wilful killing of her children seems to be the invention of the playwright Euripides in the fifth century BCE.

  In some tales, after leaving Corinth, Medea goes to Thebes, cures Heracles of his madness that made him kill Iphitus, and is given refuge until the residents drive her away, Heracles’ protests notwithstanding. She then takes refuge in Athens where she marries Aegeus. Unfortunately for her, Aegeus’s son Theseus comes back and claims the throne she hoped would go to her children. Thus rejected by the Greeks, she returns to Colchis.

  Medea’s story makes us wonder about justice and revenge in an unjust society. It also reveals the tension and discomfort that follow powerful foreign women.

  Eventually the Argo was turned by the Olympians into the constellation of Argo Navis found in the southern hemisphere. In the eighteenth century, this rather large constellation identified by the ancient Greeks was split into three: the keel, the deck and the sails.

  Orpheus

  Amongst the Argonauts who accompanied Jason to Colchis was Orpheus, the son of Apollo and a Muse. He could play the lyre and sing songs that could move rocks, and make animals weep and trees dance. After his return from Colchis, he fell in love with and married Eurydice.

  Orpheus and Eurydice lived together happily until a satyr tried to rape Eurydice and she died during the attack. Heartbroken, Orpheus sang tragic songs that filled the Olympians with such melancholy that they begged him to stop. They told him to go to the land of the dead and convince Hades to let Eurydice return to the land of the living.

  Moved by his music, Hades granted Orpheus’s wish, but had one condition: ‘Her ghost will follow you but you must not turn back to look upon it until you reach the land of the living.’

  Orpheus agreed but in his anxiety, just before they reached the land of the living, he turned around to check if Eurydice was truly following him or if Hades was fooling him. Instantly, the ghost of Eurydice disappeared, returning to the land of the dead, and Orpheus came back alone.

  Orpheus lost all interest in love after this. The Maenads, worshippers of Dionysus, invited him to join them, but he refused. Angry that he preferred music and men to them, they attacked him with sticks and stones, but the sticks and stones, enchanted by his music, refused to hurt him. So the women tore at him with their bare hands and ripped him to shreds. His head floated downstream, singing songs of his beloved Eurydice.

  The theme of not looking back is found in other mythologies as well: the Biblical story of Lot’s wife turning back to see the burning Sodom and thus turning into a pillar of salt, and the Odia folk tale of Sakshi Gopal where Krishna turns into stone when a young devotee turns around to check if Krishna, who is supposed to act as witness in a case against him, is still following him.

  Orphism believed in the divinity and immortality of the soul and the mortality of the flesh that had to suffer the material world. It promoted asceticism and is said to have been inspired by Indic monastic traditions such as Jainism that possibly reached Greece 2500 years ago. This belief in rebirth, known as metempsychosis, was very different from traditional Greek beliefs. In time it came to be closely associated with Dionysian mysteries, for Orpheus, like Dionysus, did encounter the dead and come back to the land of the living.

  According to the Greek poet Phanocles, who lived in the third