Both of them, at one moment, fixed their eyes on the ground in shame; at another they cast glances at each other again, smiling with longing under bright brows. At last, and barely, the girl spoke to him:

Apollonius gives the pair one gesture between them: eyes down in shame, then up again, smiling. ὑπ᾽ ὀφρύσι, "under the brows," is a Homeric phrase; Mooney points to the Iliad, where tears fall from under the brows instead of smiles (13.88). When Medea finally speaks, her instructions run to the end of this excerpt. The ancient commentator notes that Sophocles, in his lost play The Colchian Women, also gave Medea a dialogue in which she counsels Jason about the ordeal.