Now when she had dismissed the fears of her nightly visions, straightway she fared backwards, and in her subtlety she bade the heroes follow, charming them on with her hand.  Thereupon the host remained stedfast at the bidding of Aeson’s son, but Jason drew with him the Colchian maid.  And both followed the selfsame path till they reached the hall of Circe, and she in amaze at their coming bade them sit on brightly burnished seats.  And they, quiet and silent, sped to the hearth and sat there, as is the wont of wretched suppliants.  Medea hid her face in both her hands, but Jason fixed in the ground the mighty hilted sword with which he had slain Aeetes’ son; nor did they raise their eyes to meet her look.  And straightway Circe became aware of the doom of a suppliant and the guilt of murder.  Wherefore in reverence for the ordinance of Zeus, the god of suppliants, who is a god of wrath yet mightily aids slayers of men, she began to offer the sacrifice with which ruthless suppliants are cleansed from guilt when they approach the altar.  First to atone for the murder still unexpiated, she held above their heads the young of a sow whose dugs yet swelled from the fruit of the womb, and, severing its neck, sprinkled their hands with the blood; and again she made propitiation with other drink offerings, calling on Zeus the Cleanser, the protector of murder-stained suppliants.  And all the defilements in a mass her attendants bore forth from the palace—­the Naiad nymphs who ministered all things to her.  And within, Circe, standing by the hearth, kept burning atonement-cakes without wine, praying the while that she might stay from their wrath the terrible Furies, and that Zeus himself might be propitious and gentle to them both, whether with hands stained by the blood of a stranger or, as kinsfolk, by the blood of a kinsman, they should implore his grace.

But when she had wrought all her task, then she raised them up and seated them on well polished seats, and herself sat near, face to face with them.  And at once she asked them clearly of their business and their voyaging, and whence they had come to her land and palace, and had thus seated themselves as suppliants at her hearth.  For in truth the hideous remembrance of her dreams entered her mind as she pondered; and she longed to hear the voice of the maiden, her kinswoman, as soon as she saw that she had raised her eyes from the ground.  For all those of the race of Helios were plain to discern, since by the far flashing of their eyes they shot in front of them a gleam as of gold.  So Medea told her all she asked—­the daughter of Aeetes of the gloomy heart, speaking gently in the Colchian tongue, both of the quest and the journeyings of the heroes, and of their toils in the swift contests, and how she had sinned through the counsels of her much-sorrowing sister, and how with the sons of Phrixus she had fled afar from the tyrannous horrors of her father; but she shrank from telling of the murder of Apsyrtus.  Yet she escaped not Circe’s ken; nevertheless, in spite of all she pitied the weeping maiden, and spake thus: