西概筆記Week 12

Today's mentions:

1.Medea

 Medea is a sorceress who was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis,niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of Corinth, offers him his daughter, Glauce. The play tells of Medea avenging her husband's betrayal by killing their children.
 The myths involving Jason have been interpreted as part of a class of myths that tell how the Hellenes of the distant heroic age, before the Trojan War, faced the challenges of the pre-Greek "Pelasgian" cultures of mainland Greece, the Aegean and Anatolia. Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and above all Heracles, are all "liminal" figures, poised on the threshold between the old world of shamans, chthonic earth deities, and the new Bronze Age Greek ways.
 Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a myth known best from a late literary version worked up by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC and called the Argonautica. However, for all its self-consciousness and researched archaic vocabulary, the late epic was based on very old, scattered materials. Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as being a priestess of the goddess Hecate or a witch. The myth of Jason and Medea is very old, originally written around the time Hesiod wrote the Theogony. It was known to the composer of the Little Iliad, part of the Epic Cycle.

2.Jason

Jason was an ancient Greek mythological hero who was famous for his role as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcos. He was married to the sorceress Medea. Because he belongs to mythology, he may have existed before the Greek Dark Ages (1100–800 BC.) The people who wrote about Jason lived around 300 BC.
Jason appeared in various literary works in the classical world of Greece and Rome, including the epic poem Argonautica and the tragedy Medea. In the modern world, Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his myths, such as the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts and the 2000 TV miniseries of the same name. Jason is also the main character in the British TV series Atlantis.
Jason has connections outside the classical world, being the mythical founder of the city of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

3. Argo

In Greek mythology, Argo was the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcos to retrieve the Golden Fleece. She was named after her builder, Argus.

4.Aeson

 Aeson  was the son of Cretheus and Tyro. He had two other brothers Pheres and Amythaon. Aeson was the father of Jason and Promachus with Polymele, the daughter of Autolycus.Other sources say the mother of his children was Alcimede or Amphinome.Aeson's mother Tyro had two other sons, Neleus and Pelias, with the sea god Poseidon.
Pelias was power-hungry and he wished to gain dominion over all of Thessaly. To this end, he banished Neleus and Pheres and locked Aeson in the dungeons in Iolcus. Aeson sent Jason to Chiron to be educated while Pelias, afraid that he would be overthrown, was warned by an oracle to beware of a man wearing one sandal.
Many years later, Pelias was holding the Olympics in honor of Poseidon when Jason, rushing to Iolcus, lost one of his sandals in a river while helping Hera (Juno), in the form of an old woman, cross. When Jason entered Iolcus, he was announced as a man wearing one sandal. Suspicious, Pelias asked him what he (Jason) would do if confronted with the man who would be his downfall. Jason responded that he would send that man after the Golden Fleece. Pelias took that advice and sent Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece.
During Jason's absence, Pelias intended to kill Aeson. However, Aeson committed suicide by drinking bull's blood. His wife killed herself as well, and Pelias murdered their infant son Promachus.
Alternatively, he survived until Jason and his new wife, Medea, came back to Iolcus. She slit Aeson's throat, then put his corpse in a pot and Aeson came to life as a young man. She then told Pelias' daughters she would do the same for their father. They slit his throat and Medea refused to raise him, so Pelias stayed dead.


Words:

1.fidelity (n.) when you are loyal to your husband, girlfriend etc, by not having sex with anyone else

2.heroine (n.) a woman who is admired for doing something extremely brave