159The Haemonian mothers and aged fathers bring gifts for their sons' return, and melt heaped incense in the flame, and the vowed victim falls with gold laid on its horns. 162But Aeson is absent from the rejoicing, now nearer to death and worn out with the years of age. 164Then the son of Aeson spoke thus: 'O wife, to whom I confess I owe my safety, although you have given me everything and the sum of your services has surpassed belief, yet if they can do this (for what can spells not do?), take from my years and add what you take to my father.' 169Nor did he hold back his tears.
169She was moved by the devotion of his request, and the thought of Aeetes, left behind, stole into her heart, so unlike his. 171Yet without confessing such feelings, she said, 'What crime, husband, has fallen from your lips? 172Do you think, then, that I can transfer a span of your life to anyone? 174Hecate would not allow it, nor is what you ask fair. 174But I shall try to give a greater gift than the one you ask, Jason. 176By my art I shall attempt to renew your father's long life, not with your years: only let the three-formed goddess help, and be present and assent to this mighty venture.' 179Three nights were wanting before the horns would meet completely and make the orb.
180After the moon shone at her fullest and looked on the earth with solid form, she goes out of the house, dressed in ungirt robes, barefoot, her bare hair spread over her shoulders, and, unaccompanied, directs her wandering steps through the mute silences of midnight. 185Deep rest had released men and birds and beasts: the hedges are silent without a murmur, and the motionless leaves are silent, the damp air is silent; 188only the stars twinkle. 188Stretching her arms to them, she turned round three times, three times sprinkled her hair with water taken from the stream, and three times opened her lips in wailing cries, and, kneeling on the hard ground, said: 'Night, most faithful to mysteries, and you golden stars, who with the moon succeed the fires of day, and you, three-headed Hecate, who come knowing my undertakings and as helper of the spells and arts of magicians, and you, Earth, who furnish magicians with potent herbs, and breezes and winds and mountains and rivers and lakes, and all you gods of the groves, all you gods of the night, be present.
199With your help, when I have wished it, rivers have run back to their sources while their banks marvelled; by my chant I calm troubled seas and trouble calm ones, I drive away clouds and bring on clouds, I drive off winds and summon them, I burst the jaws of serpents with words and song, and I move living rocks, and oaks torn from their soil, and forests, and I bid mountains tremble and the ground bellow and the ghosts come out of their tombs. 207You too, Moon, I draw down, although Temesan bronze lessens your labours; 208my grandfather's chariot too pales at my song, Dawn pales at my poisons.
210You dulled the bulls' flames for me and pressed the neck that would not bear a burden under the curved plough; you turned savage war upon themselves for the serpent-born, and put to sleep the guardian that knew no slumber, and, deceiving its defender, sent the gold to Greek cities. 215Now there is need of juices by which old age, renewed, may return to its bloom and gather back its earliest years. 217And you will give them. 217For not in vain have the stars glittered, nor in vain is the chariot here, drawn by the necks of winged dragons.' 219There was the chariot, sent down from the sky. 220As soon as she mounted it and stroked the bridled necks of the dragons and shook the light reins with her hands, she is carried aloft and looks down on Thessalian Tempe beneath her, and steers her serpents to chosen regions: and she surveys the herbs that Ossa bore and lofty Pelion, and Othrys and Pindus and Olympus, greater than Pindus, and those that pleased her she partly tore up by the root, partly cut with the curve of a bronze sickle.
228Many herbs too pleased her on the banks of Apidanus, many too on the banks of Amphrysus, nor were you exempt, Enipeus; 230Peneus too, and the waters of Spercheus too, contributed something, and the reedy shores of Boebe. 232She plucked too at Euboean Anthedon the life-giving grass, not yet famous through the changing of Glaucus' body. 234And now the ninth day and the ninth night had seen her traversing all the fields with her chariot and the dragons' wings, when she returned. 236And the dragons had been touched by nothing but the smell, and yet they shed the skin of their long years of age.