Three nights passed before the entire horn of the moon came together and completed the orb.  When the moon blazed its strongest and gazed upon the earth, appearing in its entirety, Medea went out from the house, clothed in loose, flowing garments, with bare feet, and her unbound hair spread upon her shoulders.  She, unaccompanied, carried her wandering steps through the still silence in the middle of the night.  Deep repose relaxed both men, birds, and beasts alike.  With no rustling, the hedges and undisturbed foliage were still, as was the damp air.  Only the stars twinkled.  Stretching her arms up to them, she turned herself around three times.  Three times she sprinkled her hair with water taken from the river.  Three times she loosened her lips with ululations.  And with her knee lowered on the hard ground she said this, “Night, most faithful to secrets, and golden stars, who with the moon succeed the lights of the day, and you, Triple-Headed Hecate, who being aware of our undertakings come as a helper to the incantations and arts of magicians, and you, Earth, who provides powerful herbs to the same magicians, and you, breezes, winds, mountains, rivers, and lakes, and all the gods of the groves, and all the gods of the night, be present!  For with your help, when I willed it, the rivers turned back from their astonished banks to their sources.  I stay the turbulent waters, and make turbulent the still waters by my spell.  The clouds I drive away, the clouds I gather together.  I banish and summon the winds.  I break the serpent’s necks by my words and song.  Living boulders and oaks torn away from their earth and forests I move.  I order the mountains to tremble, the ground to rumble, and the spirits of the dead to come forth from their tombs.
        And you also, Luna, do I pull towards me, however much the Temesaean bronzes lessen your troubles.  Also by our song does the chariot of my grandfather grow pale, and Aurora by our potions.  You dulled the flames of bulls for me and pressed down their necks, which had not yet endured a burden.  You gave savage warfare against themselves to the serpent-born offspring, and lulled unconscious the guardian, not touched by sleep, and having deceived the protector, you sent the Golden Fleece to Grecian cities.  Now I need juices, by which an aged man, having been revived, might return to the prime of his youth, and gather again those principal years; and you will give them to me.  For the stars did not twinkle without reason, nor did my chariot come pulled by the necks of my winged dragons without reason.”
        The chariot, descended down from the sky, was present.  She boarded it at once and stroked the bridled necks of the dragons.  She shook the light reins with her hands, and through the sky she was carried off.  She looked down on Thessalian Tempe and steered the serpents toward certain regions.  She inspected the herbs which Ossa bore, those which lofty Pelion bore, and Othrys, Pindus, and that even greater than Pindus, Olympus.  Those, which are pleasing to her, some she pulled out by the root, others she cut off with the curve of a bronze sickle.  Many grasses from the banks of the Apidanus were acceptable, also were many from the Amphrysian River.  Nor were you free from inspection Enipeus!  The water of the Peneus and the Spercheus also contributed something, as did the reedy shores of the Boebe.  She plucked the long-living grass from Euboetian Anthedon, which had not yet been made famous for the changed body of Glaucus.  Now the ninth day and the ninth night saw her travelling over every field in her chariot and by her winged dragons, when she returned.  The dragons had not been touched except by the odour of the herbs, nevertheless they put aside their skin of old years.  On arrival she stood firm on this side of the threshold and the doors; she was sheltered only by the sky.  She avoided male contact, and erected two altars from sod, the far right one to Hecate, and on the left to Youth.  Upon these she wreathed garlands from the wild woods.  Not far off with two trenches dug up from the earth, she performed the sacred rites.  She cast a knife into the throat of a black sheep and drenched the open ditched with the blood.  Then, pouring over one goblets of flowing wine, over the other goblets of warm milk, at the same time she poured out words and invoked the earthly gods and requested the king of the shades together with his seized bride that they not be hasty to swindle the limbs of the old man the spirit of life.
        When she had pleased them with prayers and a long murmur, she ordered the worn-out body of Aeson to be brought out under the heavens, and like a corpse, she stretched him out on a bed of herbs.  From here she ordered the son of Aeson and the attendants to go, and warned them to move their profaned eyes away from the secret mysteries.  They dispersed at her bidding.  Medea, with disheveled hair as is the custom of the Bacchantes, walked around the blazing altars.  She dipped splintered torches in the black trenches of blood and she set afire the stained torches in the twin altars.  Three times she purified the old man with flames, three times with water, and three times with sulfur.
        Meanwhile the powerful drug in the bronze cauldron boiled, jumped up, and grew white with swollen foam.  Therein roots reaped from the Haemonian valley boiled, as did seeds, flowers, and black juices.  She added stones fetched far from the outermost Orient and sands, which the ebbing sea of Oceanus washes.  She put in frost taken during the full moon, and the wings of the notorious screech owl with the carrion itself, and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf that was accustomed to change its beastly appearance into that of a man.  Nor was the scaly skin of the small Cinyphian chelydrus missing from these, nor the liver of the long-living stag.  In addition to these she added the eggs and head of a crow that had experienced nine lifetimes.  With these and with a thousand other nameless things she prepared the intended brew that was greater than anything man made, and mixed all of it with a branch, dry for a long time now, of a ripe olive tree, and mixed it well from the top to the bottom.  And look!  The old branch in the boiling cauldron turned green with youth, and in short time put on leaves, and was burdened under the weight of olives.  And wherever the fire spouted out foam from the hollow cauldron, and where hot drops fell onto the ground, the earth sprouted life, and flowers and soft grasses sprung.  And Medea saw this at once, and she opened the throat of the old man with a narrow knife.  She then with the ancient blood drained, replenished the stretched out corpse with the juices.  After Aeson had swallowed these, either receiving it through his mouth or the wound.  His beard and hair drove off the grayness and put on a black color.  His leanness flees, being expelled, and his pale complexion and decay went away.  His deep-channeled wrinkles were filled up with added flesh, his limbs were luxuriate.  Aeson was amazed and remembered him as he was forty years before.

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