Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/73

Rh run. The record of his early work is, as we had reason to expect, terribly defective. But we do happen to know the name and subject of the first play for which he "was granted a chorus." It was called the Daughters of Pelias. Its story was based on the old ritual of the Year-god, who is cut to pieces or scattered like the seed, and then restored to life and youth. Medea, the enchantress maiden from the further shores of the Friendless Sea, had fled from her home with the Greek adventurer Jason, the winner of the Golden Fleece. She came with him to Thessaly, where his uncle Pelias was king. Pelias had usurped Jason's ancestral crown and therefore hated him. The daughters of Pelias doubtless sneered at Medea and encouraged Jason's growing distaste for his barbarian prize. The savage woman determined at one blow to be rid of Pelias, to punish his daughters, and reconquer Jason's love. She had the power of renovating the life of the old. She persuaded the daughters of Pelias to try her method on their father, with the result that he died in agony, and they stood guilty of a hideous murder. Medea, we may conjecture, was triumphant, till she found she had made Jason a ruined man and taught him really to hate her. The