Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/148

 116 HISTORY OF GREECE. caldron, trusting that Medea would produce upon him the same; magical effect. Medea pretended that an invocation to the moon was a necessary part of the ceremony : she went up to the top of the house as if to pronounce it, and there lighting the lire- signal concerted with the Argonauts, Jason and his companions burst in and possessed themselves of the town. Satisfied with having thus revenged himself, Jason yielded the principality j>f lolkos to Akastus, son of Pelias, and retired with Medea to Corinth. Thus did the goddess Here gratify her ancient wrath against Pelias : she had constantly watched over Jason, and had carried the " all-notorious " Argo through its innumerable perils, in order that Jason might bring home Medea to accomplish the ruin of his uncle. 1 The misguided daughters of Pelias departed 1 The kindness of Hero towards Jason seems to be older in the legend than her displeasure against Pelias ; at least it is specially noticed in the Odyssey, as the great cause of the escape of the ship Argo : 'AA/l' "Hpr/ no- peirefnf>ev, kird 0tAof qEV 'Iqouv (xii. 70). In the Hesiodic Theogony Pelias stands to Jason in the same relation as Eurystheus to H6rakl6's, a severe taskmaster as well as a wicked and insolent man, v/3piaT7/s IleA^c Kal a.Ta<r&a?io<;, oftpi/ioepyo; (Theog. 995). Apollonius Khodius keeps the wrath of HSrS against Pelias in the foreground, i. 14; iii. 1134; ir. 242; see also Hygin, f. 13. There is great diversity in the stories given of the proximate circum- stances connected with the death of Pelias : Eurip. Med. 491 ; Apollodor. J. 9, 27; Diodor.iv, 50-52; Ovid, Metam. vii. 162, 203, 297, 347 ; Pausan. viii 11, 2; Schol. ad Lycoph. 175. In the legend of Akastus and Pelcus as recounted above, Akastus was made to perish by the hand of Peleus. I do not take upon mo to reconcile these contradictions. Pausanias mentions that he could not find in any of the poets, so far as he had read, the names of the daughters of Pelias, and that the painter Mikon had given to them names (ovofiara <J' avraif TTOITITTJC fiev sdero oiidelf, "tea f tircfat-dfj.eda v/^'fj etc., Pausan. viii. 11, 1 ). Yet their names are given in the authors whom Diodorus copied; and Alkestis, at any rate, was most memorable. Mikon gave the names Asteropeia and Antinoe altogether dif- ferent from those in Diodorus. Both Diodorus and Hyginus exonerate Al kfistis from all share in the death of her father (Hygin. f. 24). The old poem called the Noorot (see Argum. ad Eurip. Med., and Schol. Aristophan. Eqnit. 1321) recounted, that M6dea had boiled in a caldron the old ^Sson, father of Jason, with herbs and incantations, and that she had brought him out young and strong. Ovid copies this (Metam. vii. 162-203) It is singular that Pherkydes and SimonidtJS said that she had performed