Argonauts (Greek mythology); Jason -- (Mythological character); Medea, consort of Aegeus, King of Athens (Mythological character)
But into Medea's heart Hera cast most grievous fear; and she trembled
like a nimble fawn whom the baying of hounds hath terrified amid the
thicket of a deep copse. For at once she truly forboded that the aid she
had given was not hidden from her father, and that quickly she would
fill up the cup of woe. And she dreaded the guilty knowledge of her
handmaids; her eyes were filled with fire and her ears rung with a
terrible cry. Often did she clutch at her throat, and often did she drag
out her hair by the roots and groan in wretched despair. There on that
very day the maiden would have tasted the drugs and perished and so have
made void the purposes of Hera, had not the goddess driven her, all
bewildered, to flee with the sons of Phrixus; and her fluttering soul
within her was comforted; and then she poured from her bosom all the
drugs back again into the casket. Then she kissed her bed, and the
folding-doors on both sides, and stroked the walls, and tearing away in
her hands a long tress of hair, she left it in the chamber for her
mother, a memorial of her maidenhood, and thus lamented with passionate
voice:
"I go, leaving this long tress here in my stead, O mother mine; take
this farewell from me as I go far hence; farewell Chalciope, and all my
home. Would that the sea, stranger, had dashed thee to pieces, ere thou
earnest to the Colchian land!"
Thus she spake, and from her eyes shed copious tears. And as a bondmaid
steals away from a wealthy house, whom fate has lately severed from her
native land, nor yet has she made trial of grievous toil, but still
unschooled to misery and shrinking in terror from slavish tasks, goes
about beneath the cruel hands of a mistress; even so the lovely maiden
rushed forth from her home. But to her the bolts of the doors gave way
self-moved, leaping backwards at the swift strains of her magic song.
And with bare feet she sped along the narrow paths, with her left hand
holding her robe over her brow to veil her face and fair cheeks, and
with her right lifting up the hem of her tunic. Quickly along the dark
track, outside the towers of the spacious city, did she come in fear;
nor did any of the warders note her, but she sped on unseen by them.
Thence she was minded to go to the temple; for well she knew the way,
having often aforetime wandered there in quest of corpses and noxious
roots of the earth, as a sorceress is wont to do; and her soul fluttered
with quivering fear. And the Titanian goddess, the moon, rising from a
far land, beheld her as she fled distraught, and fiercely exulted over
her, and thus spake to her own heart:
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