Fabula 24. Iason: Peliades — “Jason: the daughters of Pelias”: Medea’s trick with the cauldron, and Jason’s return. Latin from the standard text, with a new English translation below each paragraph. View:
1
Iason cum Peliae patrui sui iussu tot pericula adisset, cogitare coepit quomodo eum sine suspicione interficeret. hoc Medea se facturam pollicetur.
When Jason, by the command of Pelias his uncle, had undergone so many dangers, he began to think how he might kill him without suspicion. Medea promised she would do it.
2
itaque cum iam longe a Colchis essent, nauem iussit in occulto collocari et ipsa ad Peliae filias pro sacerdote Dianae uenit; eis pollicetur se patrem earum Pelian ex sene iuuenem facturam, idque Alcestis maior filia negauit fieri posse.
So, when they were now far from Colchis, she had the ship put in a hidden place and herself came to Pelias’s daughters in the guise of a priestess of Diana; she promised them she would turn their father Pelias from an old man into a young one, and Alcestis, the eldest daughter, denied that it could be done.
3
Medea quo facilius eam perduceret ad suam uoluntatem, caliginem eis obiecit et ex uenenis multa miracula fecit quae ueri similia esse uiderentur, arietemque uetulum in aënum coniecit, unde agnus pulcherrimus prosiluisse uisus est.
So that she might the more easily bring Alcestis round to her own purpose, Medea cast a darkness over them and with drugs performed many wonders which seemed credible, and threw an old ram into a bronze cauldron, from which a most beautiful lamb seemed to have leapt out.
4
eodemque modo [unde] Peliades, id est Alcestis Pelopia Medusa Pisidice Hippothoe, Medeae impulsu patrem suum occisum in aëno coxerunt. cum se deceptas esse uiderent, a patria profugerunt.
And in the same way the Peliades — that is, Alcestis, Pelopia, Medusa, Pisidice, Hippothoe — at Medea’s prompting cooked their slain father in a bronze cauldron. When they saw they had been deceived, they fled from their homeland.
5
at Iason, signo a Medea accepto, regia est potitus, Acastoque Peliae filio fratri Peliadum, quod secum Colchos ierat, regnum paternum tradidit; ipse cum Medea Corinthum profectus est.
But Jason, on receiving the signal from Medea, took possession of the palace, and gave his father’s kingdom to Acastus, son of Pelias, brother of the Peliades, because he had gone with him to Colchis; he himself set out for Corinth with Medea.
Notes
- Convention: the Latin gives the editor’s supplied letters in full, without brackets; the notes record them as < > for a supplement, [ ] for a deletion, and † for a corrupt word.
- Para 4: [unde] is bracketed (deleted) in the text; <P>isid<i>ce and aën<o> are supplied (the full forms are Pisidice and aëno).
- Para 2 and 4: Alcestis denies in para 2 that the rejuvenation can be done, yet is named in para 4 among the daughters who cooked their father. Hyginus is inconsistent here, or the list is the generic list of Pelias’s daughters; the tension is flagged, not harmonised.
- Para 4: occisum is a perfect passive participle with the agent unstated — “their slain father”; the English does not say who killed him.
- Para 5: Acastus had sailed with Jason to Colchis — he is listed among the Argonauts in Fabula 14, para 22 — which is why Jason gives him the kingdom. Regnum paternum is Acastus’s paternal kingdom, i.e. Pelias’s.
Next fabula: Medea (Fabula 25). Corrections are welcome via the contact form; please say which paragraph you mean.