Medea. In Greek mythology, Medea is the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, a niece of Circe and the granddaughter of the sun god Helios. Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, appearing in Hesiod's Theogony around 700 BC, but best known from Euripides' tragedy Medea and Apollonius of Rhodes' epic Argonautica. Medea is known in most stories as a sorceress and is often depicted as a priestess of the goddess Hecate. There have been many different accounts of Medea's family tree. One of the only uncontested facts is that she is a direct descendant of the sun god Helios through her father King Aeëtes of Colchis. According to Hesiod, Helios and the Oceanid Perseis produced two children Circe and Aeetes. Aeëtes then married the Oceanid Idyia and Medea was their child. This is where scholars have begun to question the rest of Medea's genealogy. By some accounts, Aeëtes and Idyia only had two daughters, Medea and Chalciope and Apsyrtus was the son of Aeëtes through Asterodea. According to others, Idyia gave birth to Medea and Apsyrtus and Asterodea gave birth to Chalciope. Medea then marries Jason, although the number and names of their children are contested by different scholars. Euripides mentions two unnamed sons, others have suggested three sons two sons or a son and a daughter. After Medea leaves Jason in Corinth, she marries the king of Athens and bears him a son. Scholars have questioned whether her son Medeius is the son of Jason or of Aegeus, but Medeius goes on to become the ancestor of the Medes by conquering their lands. The importance of Medea's genealogy is to help define what level of divinity she possessed. By some accounts, like the Argonautica, she is depicted as a young, mortal woman. She is directly influenced by the Greek gods and while she possesses magical abilities, she is still a mortal with divine ancestry. Other accounts, like Euripides' play Medea, focus on her mortality, although she transcends the mortal world at the end of the play with the help of her grandfather Helios and his sun chariot. Hesiod's Theogony places her marriage to Jason on the list of marriages between mortals and divine, suggesting that she is predominantly divine. She also has connections with Hecate, who was the goddess of magic, which could be one of the main sources of which she draws her magical ties. Jason and Medea redirects here. For other uses, see Jason and Medea. Medea's role began after Jason came from Iolcus to Colchis, to claim his inheritance and throne by retrieving the Golden Fleece. In the most complete surviving account, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, Medea fell in love with him and promised to help him, but only on the condition that if he succeeded, he would take her with him and marry her. Jason agreed. In a familiar mythic motif, Aeëtes promised to give him the fleece, but only if he could perform certain tasks. First, Jason had to plough a field with fire-breathing oxen that he had to yoke himself; Medea gave him an unguent with which to anoint himself and his weapons, to protect them from the bulls' fiery breath. Next, Jason had to sow the teeth of a dragon in the ploughed field, and the teeth sprouted into an army of warriors; Jason was forewarned by Medea, however, and knew to throw a rock into the crowd. Unable to determine where the rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and killed each other. Finally, Aeëtes made Jason fight and kill the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece; Medea put the beast to sleep with her narcotic herbs. Jason then took the fleece and sailed away with Medea, as he had promised. Apollonius says that Medea only helped Jason in the first place because Hera had convinced Aphrodite or Eros to cause Medea to fall in love with him. Medea distracted her father as they fled by killing her brother Absyrtus. In some versions, Medea was said to have dismembered her brother's body and scattered his parts on an island, knowing her father would stop to retrieve them for proper burial; in other versions, it was Absyrtus himself who pursued them and was killed by Jason. During the fight, Atalanta, a member of the group helping Jason in his quest for the fleece, was seriously wounded, but Medea healed her. According to some versions, Medea and Jason stopped on her aunt Circe's island so that she could be cleansed after murdering her brother, relieving her of blame for the deed. On the way back to Thessaly, Medea prophesied that Euphemus, the helmsman of Jason's ship, the Argo, would one day rule over all of Libya. This came true through Battus, a descendant of Euphemus. The Argo then reached the island of Crete, guarded by the bronze man, Talos.