Now do thou thyself, goddess Muse, daughter of Zeus, tell of the labour
and wiles of the Colchian maiden. Surely my soul within me wavers with
speechless amazement as I ponder whether I should call it the lovesick
grief of mad passion or a panic flight, through which she left the
Colchian folk.

Aeetes all night long with the bravest captains of his people was
devising in his halls sheer treachery against the heroes, with fierce
wrath in his heart at the issue of the hateful contest; nor did he deem
at all that these things were being accomplished without the knowledge
of his daughters.

But into Medea's heart Hera cast most grievous fear; and she trembled
like a nimble fawn whom the baying of hounds hath terrified amid the
thicket of a deep copse. For at once she truly forboded that the aid she
had given was not hidden from her father, and that quickly she would
fill up the cup of woe. And she dreaded the guilty knowledge of her
handmaids; her eyes were filled with fire and her ears rung with a
terrible cry. Often did she clutch at her throat, and often did she drag
out her hair by the roots and groan in wretched despair. There on that
very day the maiden would have tasted the drugs and perished and so have
made void the purposes of Hera, had not the goddess driven her, all
bewildered, to flee with the sons of Phrixus; and her fluttering soul
within her was comforted; and then she poured from her bosom all the
drugs back again into the casket. Then she kissed her bed, and the
folding-doors on both sides, and stroked the walls, and tearing away in
her hands a long tress of hair, she left it in the chamber for her
mother, a memorial of her maidenhood, and thus lamented with passionate
voice: