Jason, then Aegeus

Jason arrives offering help — money for the exile, letters to friends abroad. He is calm; he believes himself reasonable; he believes she has made things worse by railing against the royal house. Medea answers with the long speech of grievances. She saved him. She tamed the bulls of fire. She killed the unsleeping serpent. She betrayed her own father and fled in his ship. She murdered Pelias. After which he has cast her off. Jason responds: the new marriage is wise, it will provide for her sons, it is not love but political sense. They argue line for line. He offers gifts again. She refuses. He leaves.

The Chorus sing about Love that becomes a curse, and about exile, and about the man who breaks open a friend's clean heart. They are wrapping up the lyric when a stranger appears from the left with attendants. It is Aegeus, king of Athens, on his way home from Delphi, where he has gone to ask the oracle why he has no children. He stops to greet Medea, whom he knew years before. He asks why her face is so wasted. She tells him. Jason has betrayed her. Creon has expelled her. She has nowhere to go.

Aegeus is appalled. Medea makes the offer that hangs the rest of the play together. If he will give her sanctuary in Athens, she — who knows certain herbs — will help him have a child. Aegeus agrees, with one condition: she must make her own way to Athens; he will not seize her from Creon's land. Medea wants the agreement under oath, and she dictates the wording. He swears it — by Earth, by the Sun her grandfather, by all the gods together. If he breaks it, may the ordinary punishment of perjurers fall on him. He goes. The Chorus sing him a farewell.