Medea's Revenge at Corinth
Jason abandons Medea for the daughter of King Creon of Corinth, and Medea answers the betrayal with a devastating revenge.
The Story
Jason and Medea eventually came to Corinth.
For years they remained together.
But Jason decided to abandon Medea and marry the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth.
Pseudo-Apollodorus names the princess Glauce.
Other traditions later call her Creusa.
For Medea, Jason's decision was more than the end of a marriage.
She had abandoned Colchis, betrayed her father, helped Jason obtain the Golden Fleece and shared the consequences of the journey home.
Now Jason intended to build a new royal marriage without her.
Creon ordered Medea to leave Corinth.
Medea asked for a short delay.
She used the time to prepare her revenge.
She sent gifts to Jason's new bride.
The gifts were poisoned.
When the princess put them on, they killed her.
Creon attempted to save his daughter and died as well.
Medea then turned against Jason in the most terrible way possible.
In Euripides' tragedy, she kills their children herself.
Their deaths ensure that Jason loses not only his new marriage but also the family line he hoped to preserve.
Medea escapes Corinth, leaving Jason alive to suffer the consequences.
The relationship that began with Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece therefore ends in complete destruction.
Jason had once depended upon Medea to survive.
At Corinth, the same intelligence and power that saved him in Colchis were turned against him.
Key Figures
Why It Matters
The Corinthian catastrophe completes the story of Jason and Medea and transforms the heroic success of the Golden Fleece expedition into one of Greek tragedy's most famous stories of betrayal and revenge.
Traditions & Variations
The death of Medea's children was not told identically in every ancient tradition. Euripides makes Medea deliberately kill them herself, while other early traditions gave different accounts of their deaths. Creon's daughter is called Glauce by Pseudo-Apollodorus and Creusa in some later traditions.