HKB
of Æson to be brought out to the altars, and stretched it cast into a deep sleep by her charms, {and} resembling one dead, upon the herbs laid beneath him.
She orders the son of Æson to go far thence, and the attendants, too, to go afar; and warns them to withdraw their profane eyes from her mysteries. At her order, they retire. Medea, with dishevelled hair, goes round the blazing altars like a worshipper of Bacchus, and dips her torches, split into many parts, in the trench, black with blood, and lights them, {thus} dipt, at the two altars. And thrice does she[34] purify the aged man with flames, thrice with water, and thrice with sulphur. In the meantime the potent mixture[35] is boiling and heaving in the brazen cauldron, placed {on the flames}, and whitens with swelling froth. There she boils roots cut up in the Hæmonian valleys, and seeds and flowers and acrid juices. She adds stones fetched from the most distant East, and sand, which the ebbing tide of the ocean has washed. She adds, too, hoar-frost gathered at night by the light of the moon, and the ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and a thousand other things without a name, the barbarian {princess} has completed the medicine prepared for the mortal {body}, with a branch of the peaceful olive long since dried up, she stirs them all up, and blends the lowest {ingredients} with the highest. Behold! the old branch, turned about in the heated cauldron, at first becomes green; and after no long time assumes foliage, and is suddenly loaded with heavy olives. Besides, wherever the fire throws the froth from out of the hollow cauldron, and the boiling drops fall upon the earth, the ground becomes green, and flowers and soft grass spring up.
Soon as Medea sees this, she opens the throat[39] of the old man with a drawn sword; and allowing the former blood to escape, replenishes {his veins} with juices. Soon as Æson has drunk them in, either received in his mouth or in his wound, his beard and his hair[40] laying aside their hoariness, assume a black hue. His leanness flies, being expelled; his paleness and squalor are gone. His hollow veins are supplied with additional blood, and his limbs become instinct with vigor. Æson is astonished, and calls to recollection that he was such four times ten years before.
Liber had beheld from on high the miraculous operations of so great a prodigy; and taught {thereby} that youthful years can be restored to his nurses,[41] he requests this present from the daughter of Æetes.[42]
And that her arts[43] may not cease, the Phasian feigns a counterfeited quarrel with her husband, and flies as a suppliant to the threshold of Pelias[44] and (as he himself is oppressed with old age) his daughters receive her; whom, after a short time, the crafty Colchian engages to herself by the appearance of a pretended friendship. And while among the greatest of her merits, she relates that the infirmities of Æson have been removed, and is dwelling upon that part {of the story}, a hope is suggested to the damsels, the daughters of Pelias, that by the like art their parent may become young again; and this they request {of her}, and repeatedly entreat her to name her own price. For a short time she is silent, and appears to be hesitating, and keeps their mind in suspense, as they ask, with an affected gravity.