Home -> Articoli -> Grecia Fantasmi e magia

The other woman

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The time went by. Medea and Jason had now two sons. Unfortunately at a certain moment, when the children were still in infancy, Jason lost his head for a handsome girl, Glauke. His existence with the witch had been complicated; what he had imagined as a brilliant life, full of emotions and pleasure was probably beginning to wore down his nervous system. The other woman, perfectly normal as she was, gave promise of a more calm marriage and beside her fresh youth was radiant in confront with Medea who, by then, was not so young as before. Jason decided to marry Glauke.
The witch was not the kind of woman to accept with calm the repudiation: Her heart was burning of hate and wanted to get a savage vengeance but to better succeed in it she controlled herself and pretended to be calm and understanding toward them, so everybody got the impression that she had decided to be in good terms with the new couple, She even sent to Glauke a splendid marriage gift: an incredibly beautiful dress, the kind of those that only Athena knew how to do. No woman could resist from the desire to show it. Immediately Glauke, naive as she was, put it on and anyway who could suspect that the thin embroidered tissue was imbued of a mortal poison? Immediately the young woman felt that all her body was burning. She tried to reap the gown away, but the bewitched dress could not be detached from her skin.
Maddened and crying for the pain the young woman began to run aimlessly and at a certain moment she found herself on the top of a big boulder. It was an huge cube of rock from which gushed the water of a pure source fed by four big cisterns dug in the hard stone and filled by a spring coming from the feet of Acrocorinth. Flowing from those reserves the outflow fell on the side of the cliff and collected at its feet forming a blue and transparent basin. The unhappy young woman who felt the fire burning her body, seeing just under her feet that sparkling water so transparent and fresh hoped against hope that it could destroy the enchantment and desperate she throw herself down and there was found dead.
Then Jason and his fellow-countrymen ran to face Medea. But when they reached the house they found only the bodies of their slain children. Hating her treacherous husband, the woman did not hesitate to kill them, then she disappeared on a chariot hauled by winged flying serpents. Thus, after having killed her sons and achieved her vengeance, the cruel and ruthless witch disappeared. The only thing that the town of Corinth could then do was to give the name of the young missed bride to the fountain in which she threw herself. They called it Glauke and it still is so called. Today under the torrid Greek sun the big rock from which the girl collapsed and from which once the crystal clear water flowed in the basin now dry and dusty, is still there to remind us the sad story of the poor girl and of her broken love.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier: L'arte del bere nell'antichità in Archeo, nº 81, novembre 1991, pp.62-105