|
|
| Medea, Scott Bodenheimer 1997, woven color plates, 27" x 14", 71 x 36cm |
|
|
Today, Medea is mostly known as a wronged woman, who to revenge on her husband Jason, murdered her two young sons. This story comes from an eponymic play by Euripides, but ancient sources for the Medea legend tell a much more complex story. When Jason and the Argonauts arrived in Colchis to capture the Golden Fleece, even having the power of Heracles and charm of Orpheus wasn't enough. Medea, princess and priestess of Hecate, the earth mother snake-goddess, had the knowledge and magic to help Jason, she made Jason swear to all the gods to be faithful to her forever.
He consented, and at every setback, she was there to instruct him on how to escape with the Fleece and his own skin intact. |
She betrayed her own people, and caused the death of her own half-brother, Absyrtus. As her father Aeetes pursued her and the Argonauts across the Black Sea, she killed Absyrtus and cut him into pieces, tossing piece after piece overboard and causing her father to stop and gather each one.
After a long voyage, where Jason and the Argonauts were repeatedly saved by Medea’s wisdom and sorcery. The Argo finally reached home. Medea organized the death of Jason’s uncle Pelias, who had refused to hand over the throne of Thessaly. After butchering an old ram, and boiling the pieces in a cauldron, she caused a young lamb to spring forth. Promising Pelias youth, she tricked his daughters to drain his blood and cut him up as she had the ram. |
But Medea withheld the necessary spells, and Pelias remained dead in his pot, so Medea won the kingship for Jason. But he was afraid of the revenge of Pelias’ son, the Argonaut Acastus, so he left Thessaly for Corinth, where Medea was the rightful heir, and where she claimed the throne for Jason.
After bearing Jason seven sons and seven daughters, he tired of her, and betrayed her, and planned a marriage with Glauce the princess of Thebes. Medea protested, but then appeared to yield. She sent her children with a wedding present for Glauce, an enchanted robe. When she wrapped it around her, it burst into flames, killing the princess, her father King Creon and all of the assembled Theban wedding guests. |
|
The Corinthians seized Medea’s children, who had had no idea of the deadliness of their mother’s gift, and put them to death, a sin which maligned Corinth for hundreds of years. And then in 431 B.C.E. Euripides wrote his play Medea for the Dionysus Festival, in which the plays became part of religious ritual. He wrote that Medea killed her own two boys from Jason as revenge for his betrayal. Some ancient writers reported that Euripides had been paid a fortune in silver by the Corinthians to alter the myth, and absolve them of the calumny of having put innocent children to death.
After her children were killed, Medea fled, and left Jason behind to reign over Corinth. |
But having broken his oath to the gods to be faithful to Medea, Jason lost their favor and his power, and finally died scorned and derelict, when the rotting prow of the Argo fell down upon his head. Medea still flourished though. She had escaped to Athens, in a chariot harnessed to dragons, and she used her magic to give King Aegeus a son, Medeius. She nearly poisoned Theseus, Aegeus' son by a previous encounter. And then she fled again to Asia, where her son Medeius became the king of the Medes. Medea herself never died, she became an immortal, and ruled in the Elysian Fields. |
This work in the series of headless torsi called The Desecrations represents the desecration of knowledge. It's composed of images of intelligent and powerful women: St. Catherine of Alexandria, Catherine de Médicis, Catherine II of Russia, Lady Emma Hamilton, the Delphic Sibyl, Cleopatra, Judith. The picture points to how our culture’s overbearing misogyny can strip respect from historic women figures, so that all that remains of those unique qualities that distance them from generic wife and mother roles: their intellects, courageous acts, and initiatives, in essence their power, is whittled down to little gossipy asides, and these heroines are turned into women of shady and lascivious character, into mere witches. |
|
