altars, was of ill omen (hence [Greek:
hygrai], i.e. gliding gently around the altars with many curves, for which
is put [Greek: hygrotes enantia]); and 2dly, _the upright shooting of the
flame_, [Greek: akran lampada]."

[H] See Dindorf on Orest. 1691. He fully condemns these lines as the work
of an interpolator. They are, however, as old as the days of Lucian.

* * * * * *

MEDEA.

* * * *

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

NURSE.
TUTOR.
MEDEA.
CHORUS OF CORINTHIAN WOMEN.
CREON.
JASON.
AEGEUS
MESSENGER.
SONS OF MEDEA.

_The Scene lies in the vestibule of the palace of Jason at Corinth_.

* * * * *

THE ARGUMENT.

* * * *

JASON, having come to Corinth, and bringing with him Medea, espouses
Glauce, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. But Medea, on the point of
being banished from Corinth by Creon, having asked to remain one day, and
having obtained her wish, sends to Glauce, by the hands of her sons,
presents, as an acknowledgment for the favor, a robe and a golden chaplet,
which she puts on and perishes; Creon also having embraced his daughter is
destroyed. But Medea, when she had slain her children, escapes to Athens,
in a chariot drawn by winged dragons, which she received from the Sun, and
there marries AEgeus son of Pandion.

* * * * *

MEDEA.

* * * *

NURSE OF MEDEA.

Would that the hull of Argo had not winged her way to the Colchian land
through the Cyanean Symplegades,[1] and that the pine felled in the forests
of Pelion had never fallen, nor had caused the hands of the chiefs to
row,[2] who went in search of the golden fleece for Pelias; for neither
then would my mistress Medea have sailed to the towers of the Iolcian land,
deeply smitten in her mind with the love of Jason; nor having persuaded the
daughters of Pelias to slay their father would she have inhabited this
country of Corinth with her husband and her children, pleasing indeed by
her flight[3] the citizens to whose land she came, and herself concurring
in every respect with Jason; which is the surest support of conjugal
happiness, when the wife is not estranged from the husband. But now every
thing is at variance, and the dearest ties are weakened. For having
betrayed his own children, and my mistress, Jason reposes in royal wedlock,
having