The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
painted Medea calling to her children is similarly lost. The legend itself,
though best known through Euripides’ tragedy, belongs at least as much to
Georgian mythography as to Greek.
Medea herself was the daughter of Aeetes, king of Colchis, which today
is the part of Georgia bordering the Black Sea. The Thessalian prince Jason,
challenged by his uncle Pelias to find the Golden Fleece, sailed up the Phasis
River to Aeetes’ capital, most likely Kutaisi or Vani. Aeetes promised Jason
the fleece if he could yoke two fire-breathing bulls to a plow and sow a
dragon’s teeth, from which an army of men would spring. Medea, a skilled
maker of potions and charms (the modern word “medicine” has its roots in
her name, and Mediko is the Georgian nickname for Medea), gave Jason a
charm that enabled him to survive the bulls, best the dragon, and win the
fleece.
From here the stories diverge. In Euripides’ version, of course, Jason
brings Medea home and spurns her in favor of a career-advancing marriage
to Creon’s daughter Glauce. Medea subsequently descends into mania and
infanticide. Euripides ends his tragedy with her riding off in a chariot drawn
by the sun god, her grandfather. Georgian tradition, however, holds that
Aegeus, king of Athens, eager to gain the favor of such a wise scholar and her
renowned warrior-king father, spirited Medea and her children out of Thessaly
and into Athens, and thence home. The potion she gave her children
temporarily stopped their breathing; she then slaughtered a lamb over them
and presented them—lifeless and bloody—to her husband in order to drive
him mad. Once her ruse had worked, she revived the children, escaped, and
lived a full century as a healer, mother, and counselor (but never bedfellow) to
the Athenian king.
Place of origin: The emerald, saffron, and ultramarine geometric
design around the coin’s edges indicates a Persian influence, as does much
medieval Georgian art. Medea’s wine-dark skin, her attenuated face with
remarkably detailed features and expression (worried, expectant, with raised
eyebrows, hollow cheeks, and slightly parted lips), the folds of her robe, and
the stylized position in which she holds her slender hand are all typical of
Georgian cloisonné iconography. The subject matter is typically Colchian.
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