And the queen of sharpest arrows, the Cyprus-born, binding the dappled wryneck, spread on four spokes, to an unbreakable wheel, brought that maddening bird down from Olympus to mortals for the first time, and she taught Aeson's skilled son prayers and charms, so that he could strip Medea of her respect for her parents, and so that longing for Greece would drive her, burning in her heart, with the whip of Persuasion. And quickly she showed him the way to finish her father's trials, and she worked drugs into oil, remedies against harsh pains, and gave them to him to rub on himself. And they agreed to be joined to each other in a sweet, shared marriage.

Two kinds of magic meet here. Aphrodite's gift is the ἴυγξ, the wryneck, a small bird that twists its neck. Spread on the four spokes of a wheel and spun, it became a love charm, and the word came to mean the charm itself; two centuries later Theocritus' Simaetha spins one in her own spell (Idyll 2.17). Aphrodite teaches Jason the words to go with it, and their purpose is stated plainly: to strip Medea of αἰδώς, the respect that binds a daughter to her parents. Medea's gift is pharmacy. Φαρμακώσαισʼ means she worked drugs into the oil, and what she hands Jason are ἀντίτομα, "things cut against" pain, the same word the Hymn to Demeter uses for the antidote the goddess knows (line 229). The verb for what Jason does with the oil, χρίεσθαι, "to anoint oneself," is the verb from which χριστός, "anointed," was formed. Pindar wrote the ode for Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, whose chariot won at Delphi in 462 BC.