32 HISTORICAL TALES,

showed himself willing to give Jason his daughter
in marriage, upon which the faithless hero divorced
Medea, who was ordered to leave Corinth. He
should have known better with whom he had to
deal. The enchantress, indignant at such treatment,
determined on revenge, Pretending to be recon-
ciled to the coming marriage, she prepared a poi-
soned robe, which she sent as a wedding-present to
the hapless Glauce. No sooner had the luckless
bride put on this perilous gift than the robe burst
into flames, and she was consumed; while her father,
whe sought to tear from her the fatal garment, met
with the same fate.

Medea escaped by means of a chariot drawn by
winged serpents, sent her by her grandfather Helios
(the sun). As the story is told by Huripides, she
killed her children before taking to flight, leaving
their dead bodies to blast the sight of their horror-
stricken father, The legend, however, tells a dif.
ferent tale. It says that she left them for safety
before the altar in the temple of Juno; and that the
Corinthians, furious at the death of their king,
dragged the children from the altar and put them
to death. As for the unhappy Jason, the story goes
that he fell asleep under the ship Argo, which had
been hauled ashore according to the custom of the
ancients, and that a fragment of this ship fell upon
and killed him.

The flight of Medea took her to Athens, where
she found a protector and second husband in Agcus,
the ruler of that city, and father of Theseus, tho
great legendary hero of Athens,