Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/150

 118 HISTORY OF GREECE. of Kreon and Glauke, that they dragged the children away from the altar and put them to death. The miserable Jason perished by a fragment of his own ship Argo, which fell upon him while ho was asleep under it, 1 being hauled on shore, according to the habitual practice of the ancients. The first establishment at Ephyre, or Corinth, had been found- ed by Sisyphus, another of the sons of -ZEolus, brother of Salm6- 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 27 ; Diodor. iv. 54. The Medea of Eurypides, which has fortunately been preserved to us, is too well known to need express reference. He makes Medea the destroyer of her own children, and borrows from this circumstance the most pathetic touches of his exquisite drama. Parmenis- kos accused him of having been bribed by the Corinthians to give this turn to the legend ; and we may regard the accusation as a proof that the older and more current tale imputed the murder of the children to the Corinthians (Schol. Eurip. Mcd. 275, where Didymos gives the story out of the old poem of Kreophylos). See also ^Elian, V. H. v. 21 ; Pausan. ii. 3, 6. The most significant fact in respect to the fable is, that the Corinthians celebrated periodically a propitiatory sacrifice to Here Akrxa and to Merme- rus and Pheres, as an atonement for the sin of having violated the sanctuary of the altar. The legend grew out of this religions ceremony, and was so arranged as to explain and account for it (see Eurip. Med. 1376, with tho Schol. Diodor. iv. 55). Mermerus and Pheres were the names given to the children of Medea and Jason in the old Naupaktian Verses ; in which, however, the legend must have been recounted quite differently, since they said that Jason and Medea had gone from lolkos, not to Corinth, but to Corcyra ; and that Mermerus had perished in hunting on the opposite continent of Epirus. Kinaethon again, another ancient genealogical poet, called the children of Medea and Jason Eriopis and Medos (Pausan. ii. 3, 7). Diodorus gives them different names (iv. 34). Hesiod, in the Theogony, speaks only of -Modems as the son of Jason. Medea does not appear either in the Iliad or Odyssey : in the former, we find Agamede, daughter of Augeas, " who knows all the poisons (or medi- cines) which the earth nourishes" (Iliad, xi. 740) ; in the latter, we have Circe, sister of jEetes, father of Medea, and living in the JEsean island (Odyss. x. 70). Circe is daughter of the god Helios, as Medea is his granddaughter, she is herself a goddess. She is in many points the parallel of Medea; she forewarns and preserves Odysseus throughout his dangers, as Medea aids Jason : according to the Hesiodic story, she has two children by Odysseus, Agnus and Latinus (Theogon. 1001). Odysseus goes to Ephyre to Ilos the on of Mermerus, to procure poison for his arrows : Eustathius treats this Mermerus as the son of Medea (see Odyss. i. 270, and Enst). As Ephyre is the legendary name of Corinth, we may presume this to be a thread of the same mytliical tissue.