Glauce’s voice is particularly difficult to listen to
Wolf manages to pull off making her characters both mythic symbols and real people, and nowhere better than with this 13-year-old girl whose life is destroyed by her father’s ambitions.
Unlike Agameda, he actually does wield power over the lives of others. And he convinces himself that everything he does – the lives he destroys – is all for the good of Corinth. Echoing Jason, “we must do quite a few things that give us little pleasure” (p. 90) and “of course, the price one might be called upon to pay for this could be very painful.” (p. 95) But Wolf uses that echo of Jason’s complaint to illustrate how, ultimately, Akamas is as powerless as the Argonaut.
AKAMAS: Akamas is the villain of the piece
While he admires Medea, Akamas has no qualms in abetting the schemes of Agameda and her other enemies among the Colchians or fanning the fears of the Corinthians. It removes a disruptive influence from the politics of Corinth.
MEDEA: Medea is the ideal. The only truly adult person developed in the course of the novel. (We are introduced to Oistros, her lover, and Arethusa, a Cretan exile, who share her beliefs and live their lives as they wish but they’re secondary characters.) Her charisma is palpable to everyone she meets as is apparent in this excerpt where Jason describes their first meeting: