Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection."
—"Julius Cæsar."
This is the condition of Medea from her first appearance on the scene to the last; the "little kingdom" of her being is rent in twain by her injuries, her threatened banishment, her helplessness among strangers and foes, her jealousy, her contempt for the mean-spirited Jason, her contempt even for herself. That she, the wise, the potent enchantress, should have been caught by his superficial beauty, and not read from the first his real character—are all elements of the insurrection in her nature. We behold only the deeply-wronged wife and mother—we do not realise her as she was a few years earlier, before the spoiler came to Colchis, a timid, trusting, and loving maiden, who set her life on one cast. Her picture, as drawn by an epic poet from whom Virgil found much to borrow, may put before us Medea as she was before the ship Argo—"built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark"—passed between the blue Symplegades, and first broke the silence of the Hellespontic sea. She is thus described after her first interview with Jason:—
"And thus Medea slowly seemed to part,
Love's cares still brooding in her troubled heart;
And imaged still before her wondering eyes,
His living, breathing self appears to rise—
His very garb: and thus he spake, thus sate,
Thus, ah, too soon! he glided from the gate.
Sure ne'er her loving eyes beheld his peer,
And still his honied words are melting on her ear."
