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 CHAPTER 2 

MEDEA’S CAULDRON

OF REJUVENATION

IN THE FURTHER adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, the sorceress
Medea again came to their rescue. After capturing the Golden Fleece
and overcoming Talos on Crete, the Argonauts sailed home to Greece
with the precious Fleece. Jason looked forward to returning to Iolcos, his
hometown in Thessaly. But he found his rightful kingdom in the hands
of his uncle Pelias. It was the power- mad Pelias who had commanded
Jason to undertake the daunting expedition in the first place, assum-
ing Jason would never return alive to claim the throne. Now, back in
Iolcos, Jason mourned how frail his aged father, Aeson, had become.
Jason asked Medea to restore his father’s youthful vigor by transferring
some of his own allotted years to Aeson. But Medea rejected the notion
of reducing Jason’s lifespan to increase Aeson’s. She chided Jason that
such an exchange would be unfair, unreasonable, and disallowed by the
gods. Instead she decided to try to make the old man young again through
her own arcane arts. 1
Medea’s mission to revivify Aeson provides a quintessential example
of mythical biotechne to bring about unnaturally extended life, a form of
artificial human enhancement. The many different versions of this myth
speculate, in folklore terms, on how one might reverse aging and increase
natural life expectancy not only by casting a magical spell, but by em-
ploying certain techniques, procedures, special equipment, pharmaka
(drugs), and therapeutic infusions.
The story of Aeson’s miraculous rejuvenation by Medea’s witchcraft
and pharmaka is very old. We know that the episode was described in
the Nostoi (Returns), a Greek saga based on a collection of archaic oral