d she carried a pitcher of water. He thought how fair Glauce
looked in the light of the morning, how the wind played with her hair
and her garments, and how far away she was from witcheries and
enchantments.

As for Medea, she placed in a heap beside her the magic herbs and
grasses she had gathered. Then she put them in a bronze pot and boiled
them in water from the stream. Soon froth came on the boiling, and
Medea stirred the pot with a withered branch of an apple tree. The
branch was withered it was indeed no more than a dry stick, but as she
stirred the herbs and grasses with it, first leaves, then flowers, and
lastly, bright gleaming apples came on it. And when the pot boiled over
and drops from it fell upon the ground, there grew up out of the dry
earth soft grasses and flowers. Such was the power of renewal that was
in the magical brew that Medea had made.

She filled a phial with the liquid she had brewed, and she scattered
the rest in the wild places of the garden. Then, taking the phial and
the apples that had grown on the withered branch, she mounted the car
drawn by the dragons, and she went once more from Corinth.

On she journeyed in her dragon-drawn car until she came to a place that
was near to Iolcus. There the dragons descended. They had come to a
dark pool. Medea, making herself naked, stood in that dark pool. For a
while she looked down upon herself, seeing in the dark water her white
body and her lovely hair. Then she bathed herself in the water. Soon a
dread change came over her: she saw her hair become scant and gray, and
she saw her body become bent and withered. She stepped out of the pool
a withered and witchlike woman; when she dressed herself the rich
clothes that she had worn before hung loosely upon her, and she looked
the more forbidding because of them. She bade the dragons go, and they
flew through the air with the empty car. Then she hid in her dress the
phial with the liquid she had brewed and, the apples that had grown
upon the withered branch. She picked up a stick to lean upon, and with
the gait of an ancient woman she went hobbling upon the road to Iolcus.

On the streets of the city the fierce fighting men that Pelias had
brought down from the mountains showed themselves; few of the men or
women of the city showed themselves even in the daytime. Medea went
through the city and to the palace of King Pelias. But no one might
enter there, and the guards laid hands upon her and held