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 332 MEDEA MEDIA MEDEA, a mythical princess, a daughter of J-A-U-S, king of Colchis, by the oceanid Idyia, or I locate, daughter of Perses. She was famous for hor skill in sorcery, and enabled Jason, with whom she had fallen in love, to possess himself of the golden fleece. (See ARGONAUTS.) Medea accompanied her lover to Greece, and lived with him as his wife, but was subse- quently deserted by Jason for Creusa, daugh- ter of Creon, king of Corinth. In revenge Medea destroyed her own children by Jason, and sent to Creusa a poisoned garment which burned her to death. Then, fleeing to Athens in a chariot drawn by winged dragons, she there married ^Egseus, by whom she had sev- eral sons. Having been afterward detected in laying snares for the destruction of Theseus, she was driven from Attica, and went to Asia accompanied by her son Medus, who became the founder of the Median nation. Medea has been made the subject of tragedies both an- cient and modern, among which are those of Euripides, Seneca, and Corneille. MEDFORD, a town of Middlesex co., Massa- chusetts, at the head of navigation on Mystic river, and on the Boston and Lowell and a branch of the Boston and Maine railroad, 5 m. N. W. of Boston; pop. in 1870, 5,717. It manufactures tin ware, leather, rum, crackers, casks, cabinet ware, harnesses, woollens, cot- tons, buttons, bricks, carpets, oil silk, boots and shoes, &c., and was formerly noted for ship building. It has a savings bank, public library, reading room, weekly newspaper, 21 schools, besides a high school, and 11 churches, and is the seat of Tufts college. (See TUFTS COLLEGE.) MEDHURST, Walter Henry, an English mission- ary, born in London in 1796, died there, Jan. 24, 1857. He was educated for the ministry, and in 1816, under the auspices of the church missionary society, started on a tour through India and Malacca, and resided chiefly in Ba- tavia, Java, from 1822 to 1830. During this interval and for several years afterward he pursued his missionary labors also in Borneo and on the coasts of China. After a residence of two years in England, he settled in 1843 in Shanghai. Subsequently he passed six years in the interior of China, and in 1856 returned in ill health to London. Besides a Chinese version of the Bible, his principal works are Chinese Repository" (20 vols., Canton, 1838 -'51) ; " Chinese Miscellanies " (3 vols., Shang- hai, 1849-'53) ; a " Chinese and English Dic- tionary " (2 vols., Batavia, 1842-'3) ; and an 'English and Chinese Dictionary" (2 vols Shanghai, 1847-'8). His " China, its State and Prospects " (London, 1838), has been a text book for those interested in missionary enter- prises in China. MEDIA (Old Pers. Mada ; Heb. Madai), an ancient country of Asia, bounded N. by Ar- menia, from which it was partly separated by the A raxes (Aras) river, and the Caspian sea, E. by Hyrcania, Parthia, and the desert of Aria, S. by Persia, S. W. by Susiana, and W. by Assyria and Armenia. It thus correspond- ed nearly to the modern Persian province of Irak-Ajemi. It formed the westernmost part of the table land of Iran, being for the most part fertile, and producing wine, figs, and or- anges, and an excellent breed of horses. The most important mountain range in the interior was the Caspian (now Elburz) mountains, the territory between which and the Caspian sea was inhabited by independent tribes. Media was well peopled, originally by Turanian Scyths. In the time of Herodotus, and according to his statement, it was occupied by six tribes, who are said to have been a kindred race to the Persians, that is, a branch of the great Aryan family. In the time of the Persian power they, or at least a large part of them, spoke the same language as the dominant race, and had the same laws, manners, and religion. But there is great difficulty in determining when the supremacy of the Aryan element over the original Turanian or Scythic began, how far the two were blended together, and what relation they occupied to each other du- ring the period of special Median history. Ac- cording to Ctesias, the Medes revolted from the Assyrians and became independent under Arbaces about 875 B. C. ; but his whole story about the fall of that empire and the death of its king Sardanapalus is now discredited. About the same period the Medes first appear in real history, occupying the region S. of the Caspian, when the Assyrian monarch whose expeditions are recorded on the black obelisk in the British museum made the earliest au- thentic assault on their independence. The list of eight successors to Arbaces on the throne of Media given by Ctesias can find no credit, as his names and dates are at variance with those given by Herodotus. According to the latter, Media, having been for centuries un- der the sway of the Assyrian monarchs, afford- ed the first example of a successful revolt to the nations suffering under the same yoke, ap- parently in the latter half of the 8th century. The people, however, having elected no com- mon chief, suffered greatly from anarchy until Deioces, a popular judge, secured by stratagem his appointment as ruler of the united state (about 708), by common consent of the Medes, when he founded a fortified capital, Ecbatana. He was succeeded by his son Phraortes, who, says Herodotus, " not being satisfied with a do- minion which did not extend beyond the single people of the Medes," attacked and subdued the Persians, and with the united forces of these two nations engaged in war with the Assyrians, but perished with the greater part of his army about 633. The authenticity of this account of the first two Median reigns is rejected by Rawlinson as inconsistent with the monuments ; but it seems probable that the principal facts of Herodotus can be reconciled with the mon- umental history, by supposing his Deioces and Phraortes to have been either half independent viceroys of the Assyrian monarchs, or rulers