s
head.

Pelias took down a torch and stood before the beast. Vigorous indeed
was the ram, and its wool was white and grew evenly upon it. They could
not tether it again, and when the servants were brought into the
chamber it took two of them to drag away the ram.

The king was most eager to enter the vat and have Medea put in the brew
and speak the incantation over it. But Medea bade him wait until the
morrow. All night the king lay awake, thinking of how he might regain
his youth and his strength and be secure and triumphant thereafter.

At the first light he sent for Medea and he told her that he would have
the vat made ready and that he would go into it that night. Medea
looked upon him, and the helplessness that he showed made her want to
work a greater evil upon him, or, if not upon him, upon his house. How
soon it would have reached its end, all her plot for the destruction of
this king! But she would leave in the king's house a misery that would
not have an end so soon.

So she said to the king: "I would say the incantation over a beast of
the field, but over a king I could not say it. Let those of your own
blood be with you when you enter the vat that will bring such change to
you. Have your daughters there. I will give them the juice to mix in
the vat, and I will teach them the incantation that has to be said."

So she said, and she made Pelias consent to having his daughters and
not Medea in the chamber of the vat. They were sent for and they came
before Medea, the daughters of King Pelias.

They were women who had been borne down by the tyranny of their father;
they stood before him now, two dim-eyed creatures, very feeble and
fearful. To them Medea gave the phial that had in it the liquid to mix
in the vat; also she taught them the words of the incantation, but she
taught them to use these words wrongly.

The vat was prepared in the lower chambers; Pelias and his daughters
went there, and the chamber was guarded, and what happened there was in
secret. Pelias went into the vat; the brew was thrown into it, and the
vat boiled and bubbled as before. Pelias sank down in it. Over him then
his daughters said the magic words as Medea had taught them.

Pelias sank down, but he did not rise again. The hours went past and
the morning came, and the daughters of King Pelias raised frightened
laments. Over the sides of the vat the mixture boiled and bubbled, and
Pelias was to be seen at the bottom with his limb