Medea

Not to be confused with Medea, the daughter of King Aeetes or Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea.

Medea is a tragedy by Euripides set in Corinth, where Medea, a foreign princess who once helped Jason win the Golden Fleece, learns that her husband has abandoned her to marry the daughter of the local king, Creon. Creon banishes her and her two sons from the city, and she gains one day. In that day she wins a promise of refuge from Aegeus of Athens, persuades Jason to let her sons carry poisoned gifts to his bride, hears how the princess and her father died, and then kills her own children to punish Jason. She leaves Corinth in a chariot sent by her grandfather Helios, with the bodies, and refuses Jason even the right to bury them. According to the ancient hypothesis, it was produced in 431 BC and finished third and last in the competition. For most readers today it is among the most disturbing and best-known of Greek tragedies.

Date and Historical Background

The ancient introduction (hypothesis) transmitted with the play gives the archonship of Pythodorus, the first year of the 87th Olympiad, that is 431 BC. It says that Euripides competed with Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys and the satyr play Theristai (“Harvesters”), and that the tetralogy was placed third, behind Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, who won, and Sophocles, who was second. Only Medea of these four plays survives. It was produced in the year that the Peloponnesian War broke out, though the play itself says nothing about that war.

The story of Medea was older than the play. In the version that Euripides inherited, which can be read in the mythographer Apollodorus (Library 1.9.16–28), Medea, daughter of Aeetes of Colchis, fell in love with Jason, helped him yoke the fire-breathing bulls, lulled to sleep the serpent that guarded the fleece, fled with him on the Argo, and cut up her brother Apsyrtus to delay her father’s pursuit. At Iolcus she persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut up and boil their father, promising to make him young again. Jason and Medea were then driven out and went to Corinth, where, after ten years, Creon betrothed his daughter Glauce to Jason. Apollodorus follows Euripides in saying that Medea killed her sons and fled to Athens in a chariot drawn by winged dragons. He also records a different tradition, in which Medea left her young children as suppliants at the altar of Hera of the Height (Hera Akraia) in Corinth, and the Corinthians dragged them away and killed them. Pausanias (2.3.6–7) saw the tomb of the children at Corinth; he names them Mermerus and Pheres, says that the Corinthians stoned them to death because of the gifts they had brought to Glauce, and tells how yearly sacrifices were set up for them at the command of an oracle. If that version was the older one, then the deliberate killing of the children by their own mother may be Euripides’ change to the story, but no ancient source settles which version came first.

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Nurse, Medea’s old servant
• Tutor (paidagogos), the old slave who looks after the two boys
• Medea, daughter of Aeetes of Colchis, wife of Jason
• Jason, leader of the Argonauts
• Creon, king of Corinth
• Aegeus, king of Athens
• Messenger, a servant of Jason
• Children, the two sons of Jason and Medea, who speak only from inside the house
• Chorus of Corinthian women

Setting

Corinth, in front of Medea’s house. The roof of the house is used for the entrance of Medea in the chariot at the end.

Summary of Medea

Prologue

The Nurse comes out of the house and begins (lines 1–48) with a wish that the Argo had never sailed through the Clashing Rocks, nor the pine been cut on Pelion to make oars for the heroes who went for the fleece. Then Medea would never have sailed to Iolcus, nor persuaded the daughters of Pelias to kill their father, nor come to Corinth with her husband and children. The Nurse says that as long as Medea and Jason agreed, all went well, but now “everything is hatred and the dearest ties are sick” (lines 16–17), because Jason has betrayed his own sons and his wife for a royal bed and has married Creon’s daughter. Medea lies without food, wasting in tears, and will not listen to her friends. The Nurse fears her, since she has a hard temper and will not endure being ill treated, and she is afraid that Medea may do violence to someone, her husband, or the princess, or herself (lines 37–45).

The Tutor arrives with the two boys (line 49). He tells the Nurse, in a conversation in which they speak briefly and sadly (lines 49–88), that he overheard an old man talking at the draughts-players’ seats near a spring, and that Creon plans to drive Medea and her sons out of the land. The Nurse asks whether Jason will let his sons suffer, even if he is at odds with their mother, and the Tutor answers that old ties give way to new ones and that Jason is no friend to this house (lines 74–77). She tells him to be silent about it, and turns to the boys: “Children, do you hear what sort of father you have?” The Tutor answers that everyone loves himself more than his neighbor (lines 82–88). The Nurse sends the children inside and tells the Tutor to keep them away from their mother in her black mood, since she has seen her glare at them like a bull, as if she meant to do something (lines 89–95). Medea cries out from inside the house, asking for death and cursing her children and their father (lines 96–130). The Nurse says that the anger of a ruling nature, once roused, is hard to cure.

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The Chorus of Corinthian women enters, saying they have heard Medea’s cry and are troubled by it (lines 131–138). They ask the Nurse to bring her out. The Nurse says she will try, but fears that she will not be heard. Medea is heard inside, calling on Themis and Artemis to see what she suffers in return for her great oaths, and wishing to see Jason and his bride crushed with their house (lines 160–165). She cries out to the father and the city she left in shame after killing her brother (lines 166–167). The Chorus say that her wish for death is natural, and the Nurse agrees to go in and bring her out (lines 173–212).

First Episode

Medea comes out and speaks to the Chorus (lines 214–266). She says she has come out so that they will not blame her, because many people are thought proud simply for keeping apart, and she is a foreigner who must adapt to the city. Her sudden misfortune has destroyed her, she says, and she wants to die, because the man in whom her whole life was bound up, her husband, has proved to be the worst of men. She then speaks about the condition of women: “Of all creatures that have life and sense, we women are the most wretched. First we must buy a husband at a great price and take a master of our body... and the struggle is whether we get a bad man or a good one, for divorce is not respectable for women and we cannot refuse a husband” (lines 230–237). The husband, if he is weary of life at home, goes out to cheer his heart; the wife must look to one person only (lines 244–247). Men say that women live a life free of danger at home while they fight with the spear: “Fools! I would rather stand three times in the line with my shield than give birth once” (lines 248–251). She then asks for the Chorus’s silence, if she finds a way to take vengeance on her husband and on the king and bride, and adds that a woman may be timid in other matters, but when she is wronged in her marriage-bed there is no mind more bloodthirsty (lines 259–266). The Chorus promises, saying that she will rightly punish her husband (line 267).

Creon enters (line 271) and tells Medea to leave the country at once with her two sons. He says he is afraid of her, since she is clever and has been injured, and he has heard threats against the bride and her father (lines 282–289). Medea speaks to him with great skill (lines 292–315). She says she bears him no ill will, as he has done no wrong in giving his daughter to whom he pleased; her hatred is for her husband. She asks to be allowed to stay and promises to suffer in silence. He answers that her soft words make him fear her more (lines 316–319). She then goes down on her knees and begs him, by his daughter’s marriage and by his own children, to let her stay for one day, to decide where to go and to find some provision for her sons, as their father cares nothing for them (lines 324–347). Creon says that he is not by nature a tyrant, and that he has often been ruined by pity. He grants her the one day and says that if the sun finds her or her sons in the country the next day, she will die (lines 348–356).

When he has gone, Medea tells the Chorus that she has won what she wanted (lines 364–375). She says that she would never have flattered the man if she did not mean to gain something by it, and that by giving her a day he has allowed her to make three of her enemies corpses, the father, the girl and her husband. She considers several ways: setting fire to the bridal house, or going in silently and stabbing them through the liver in their bed, but she fears being caught, and she prefers to kill them with drugs (lines 376–385). The difficulty is that she has nowhere to go. If a place of refuge appears, she will use trickery and silence; if not, she will take the sword herself (lines 386–394). She swears by Hecate, whom she worships above all others (lines 395–398). The Chorus sings its first stasimon (lines 410–445): the springs of the holy rivers run upward and justice and everything is turned back; men’s plans are treacherous and their oaths by the gods no longer stand firm. The reputation of women will change and honor will come to the female sex, and the Muses of the old songs will stop singing of women’s faithlessness, since Phoebus did not give women the gift of song; otherwise they would have answered the male sex with a hymn of their own (lines 410–430). They tell Medea that she left her home with a raging heart and now has no refuge, and that the grace of oaths is gone from Greece.

Second Episode

Jason enters and speaks first (lines 446–464). He says that he has often seen how a harsh temper is an incurable evil. She might have stayed in the land and the house, bearing lightly the plans of those in power, but because of her idle words she is being exiled. For himself it makes no difference whether she calls him the worst of men, but for her words against the rulers she should think banishment a gain. He has always tried to calm the anger of the kings and wanted her to stay, but she would not stop her folly. Even so, he says, he has come to help, so that she and the boys will not go out without money or needs, since exile brings many evils with it.

Medea answers at length (lines 465–519), calling him a coward and the most hateful of men, and says that she is glad he has come, for it will relieve her to speak and hurt him to listen. She then lists what she did for him (lines 476–487): she saved him, as all the Greeks who sailed on the Argo know, when he was sent to yoke the fire-breathing bulls and sow the deadly field, and she killed the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece and held up for him a light of salvation. She betrayed her father and her house and came with him to Iolcus, and she killed Pelias in the most painful way, by the hands of his own children, and destroyed his whole house. After all this, she says, he betrayed her and took a new bed, when he already had children. If he had been childless, it would have been understandable. She asks what land she can now go to: her father’s, which she betrayed, or the house of Pelias, whose daughters she made killers? She calls on the oaths he swore and on the right hand he clasped (lines 492–498).

Jason begins his reply (lines 522–575) by saying that, like a careful helmsman, he must run under the edge of his sail to avoid her torrent of words (lines 523–525). He says that it was Cypris alone, among gods and men, who saved him on his voyage, and that she, though clever, was compelled by Eros to save him; he does not wish to push the point, since she was useful, but he says that she has received more than she gave, since she lives in Greece, knows law and justice, and has gained a name among the Greeks (lines 526–545). As for the royal marriage, he claims to be showing that he is wise and moderate and a friend to her and to his sons. He came to Corinth as a fugitive, he says, with many troubles, and could find no luckier course than to marry the king’s daughter. It was not because he hated her bed or desired a new bride, nor out of a wish for many children, since those he has are enough. It was in order that they might live well and not be poor, since a poor man is shunned by every friend, and that he might raise his sons worthily and give them brothers to join the house, and so all would be happy (lines 547–567). He adds that women think that if the marriage is well, they have everything, and if it goes wrong, they make the best things their worst enemies; men should be able to get children another way, without women, and then there would be no evil among men (lines 569–575).

The Chorus tells Jason that he has arranged his speech well, but that, even though it may be wrong to say it, in betraying his wife he is not acting justly (lines 576–578). Medea says that she is different from most mortals: for her, the clever speaker who is unjust earns the greatest punishment (lines 579–587). She tells him that he should have discussed the marriage with her instead of doing it behind her back; he answers that she would have been no help, and would not now be able to bear the thought of it even if she were calm (lines 588–605). Jason offers money from his own stores for the boys and for Medea, and letters of introduction to friends, who would treat her well; she would be a fool to refuse (lines 609–615). Medea refuses to take anything from a bad man’s hand and tells him to go and marry, for perhaps, she says, with god’s help, he will make a marriage that he will wish to be rid of (lines 616–626). The Chorus sings its second stasimon (lines 627–662): they pray that Aphrodite will not strike them with excessive desire, that she will grant them modest love and the peace of a well-matched marriage, and above all that they may never lose their native land, for no pain is worse than to be without a country; they say they have seen it, not heard it from others, in Medea’s case.

Third Episode

Aegeus, king of Athens, enters on his way home from Delphi, where he had asked the god how to have children (lines 663–669). The oracle was obscure: he must not “loosen the projecting foot of the wineskin” until he reaches his home again (lines 679–681). He is on his way to Troezen to ask the wise Pittheus to explain it (lines 683–686). Medea tells him how Jason has wronged her and, kneeling, begs him by his beard and knees to take her in, promising to end his childlessness with her drugs (lines 690–718). Aegeus agrees, as a favor to her and for the sake of the gods and the children she promises him, since she has the drugs to end his childlessness (lines 719–722). He says that he will receive her if she comes to his land, but he will not take her out of this one, since he wants to be free of blame with his hosts (lines 723–730). Medea asks for an oath, since the house of Pelias and Creon are her enemies and would demand her if he is not bound by an oath (lines 734–740). Aegeus swears by the Earth, by the Sun, her father’s father, and by the whole race of the gods, never to expel her himself and never to give her up willingly to any enemy (lines 746–753). He leaves for Troezen.

Medea then tells the Chorus the whole of her plan (lines 764–810). Now that Aegeus is a harbor for her plans, she says, she will send a servant to ask Jason to come and talk, speak soft words to him, and say that she agrees with the marriage and thinks it good. She will ask that her sons stay behind, not to leave them in an enemy land to be insulted, but in order to kill the king’s daughter by trickery. She will send them with gifts, a fine robe and a wreath of beaten gold, to the bride, to plead against their exile, and anyone who puts on the gifts, or touches the girl, will die in agony, for she will anoint them with drugs (lines 774–789). Then she says that she weeps for what must be done next: she will kill her own children, and no one will take them away from her. When she has destroyed Jason’s house, she will leave the country, fleeing the murder of her dearest children, having dared a most unholy deed. She says that she cannot bear to be laughed at by her enemies, and wants to be thought a person of the other sort, hard on enemies and kind to friends (lines 792–810). The Chorus asks her not to do it (lines 811–813), and tells her that she will be the most miserable of women if she dares to kill her children; Medea answers that there is no other way, and sends the Nurse to bring Jason.

The third stasimon (lines 824–865) praises Athens, the land of the Erechtheids, whose people are fed on wisdom and move with grace through the bright air, where, they say, golden-haired Harmonia once bore the nine Pierian Muses (lines 824–832). The Chorus ask how the city of holy rivers, the home of the gods, would receive a woman who has killed her children, and beg her, with knees and in every way, not to kill them. They ask how she could have the courage of hand and heart to do it, and say that when she falls at her children’s feet she will not be able to hold back her tears for her murder.

Fourth Episode

Jason comes when sent for (lines 866–868). Medea asks his pardon for her earlier words and says that she has reasoned with herself and called herself a fool for being angry with those who plan well for her, for opposing the rulers of the land and her husband, who is doing what is best for them by marrying a princess and begetting brothers for her sons. She admits that women are what they are, and that he should not copy their faults (lines 869–892). Then she calls the boys out and tells them to greet their father and be reconciled with him as she is; she takes their hands and suddenly weeps as she thinks of “hidden evils”, wondering whether they will ever stretch out their arms to her in the same way again (lines 894–905). Jason praises her change of heart as natural in a woman and tells the boys that he has taken good care of them, and that they will be the first in Corinth with their brothers (lines 908–921). When Medea cries again, she tells him that she is thinking of the children, and that she bore them and wept when he prayed that they might live, wondering whether it would be so (lines 925–931).

She then asks Jason to beg Creon that the boys may not be sent into exile, and to ask his bride to do the same (lines 938–943). Jason says he is not sure that he can persuade them; Medea says she will help: she will send the bride gifts, a fine robe and a gold wreath, and the boys will carry them (lines 946–951). She says the bride will be blessed to have such a husband and to own an ornament that Helios, her father’s father, gave to his descendants (lines 954–955). She gives the gifts to the boys and tells them to take them to the princess. Jason objects: why give away these things, does Medea think the royal house is short of robes and gold? Keep them, he says, for if the bride values him she will put him before property (lines 959–963). Medea answers that gifts persuade even gods, and that gold is worth more to mortals than a thousand words; the girl’s fortune is now great, and she would give her life, not just gold, to keep her sons from exile (lines 964–968). She sends the boys with the gifts to ask the new bride, as their mistress, to spare them from exile, and tells them to put the gifts into her own hands (lines 969–975). Jason and the boys go off together.

The fourth stasimon (lines 976–1001) is the Chorus’s song of lost hope. They say that they no longer have hope for the children’s lives, since they are going to their death, the bride will take the ruin of the gold and robe, and put on the splendor of Hades around her hair. They pity Jason, who does not know that he is bringing his sons to death, and Medea, who will be driven to murder them because of his marriage.

Fifth Episode

The Tutor returns with the boys and tells Medea that the children are no longer exiled, and the princess has received the gifts gladly (lines 1002–1004). Medea cries out, and the Tutor, puzzled, asks why she turns away her face when he has brought good news. She replies that the gods and her own foolish plans have brought this about; she tells him to go in and look after the boys as usual (lines 1005–1020).

She then speaks to the boys (lines 1021–1080). She says that they will have a city and a home where they will live without their mother, while she goes into exile before she has had joy of them, before she has seen them married or raised the wedding torches. She has brought them up in vain and labored in vain; she once hoped that they would look after her in old age and lay her out when she died, but now that sweet thought is gone. She sees their bright faces and smiles, and her resolve breaks: “Let my plans go; I will take my children out of the country” (lines 1044–1045). Then she reasons that if she lets her enemies go unpunished she will be laughed at; she must dare it, and sends the boys inside (lines 1049–1055). Once again she stops herself and says, “Spare the children, wretched one” (line 1057), and then decides: by the avenging spirits in Hades, she will not leave her children to be insulted by her enemies. They must die in any case, and since they must, she who bore them will kill them (lines 1059–1063). The bride already has the crown on her head and the robe on her body, and is dying; she knows it. She says goodbye to the boys, embraces them, and goes in, admitting that her anger is stronger than her reasoning, and that anger is the cause of the greatest evils for mortals (lines 1076–1080).

The fifth stasimon (lines 1081–1115) begins with the Chorus saying that they have often pursued subtler arguments than women should, but that women too have a Muse, though only a few of them. They say that people without children, who have never had them, are luckier than parents, because they are spared many troubles. Those with children are worn down all their lives by care: first how to bring them up well and from what to leave them a livelihood, and then whether all this effort is for good children or for bad, which is not clear. The last and worst evil, they say, is that when children have grown up and turned out well, death may carry their bodies off to Hades. They ask why the gods add this most painful grief to mortals for their children’s sake (lines 1081–1115).

Sixth Episode

Medea comes out and tells the Chorus she has been waiting and watching (lines 1116–1120). A messenger runs in and tells her to flee, by ship or by chariot, because the princess and Creon are dead from her drugs (lines 1121–1126). Medea is glad and asks him to describe how they died, since it will please her twice as much if they died in agony (lines 1134–1135).

The Messenger’s account (lines 1136–1230) tells how, when the two sons and their father came to the palace, the servants were glad to hear that the quarrel between husband and wife was over. The princess first looked eagerly at Jason, but when she saw the boys she turned away her face; Jason told her not to be angry with his friends, and to accept the gifts and ask her father to spare the boys. When she saw the finery she gave in, and promised everything. As soon as Jason and the boys had left, she put on the robe and the gold crown and arranged her hair in a bright mirror, smiling at her lifeless image (lines 1156–1162). Then she walked through the rooms, and suddenly her color changed, and she staggered back and nearly fell. An old servant thought it was a fit sent by Pan or another god, but then saw the white foam at her lips, and her eyes rolling, and gave a cry of grief. The gold crown sent out a stream of devouring fire, and the fine robe began to eat the girl’s flesh. She jumped up and fled, shaking her head and hair to throw off the crown, but the gold held fast, and the fire burned twice as brightly when she shook it. She fell down, unrecognizable except to her father, with her eyes disfigured, blood mixed with fire running from her head, and the flesh dripping from her bones like resin from a pine, an awful sight that no one dared to touch. Her father came in and, not knowing what had happened, threw himself on the body, crying that he wished to die with her. When he tried to lift himself up, he was held fast by the fine robe, like ivy by laurel leaves, and struggled terribly; the more he tried to pull away, the more his old flesh was torn from his bones. In the end he gave up his life. The Messenger adds that he thinks human affairs are a shadow, and that no mortal is truly happy, although one may be more fortunate than another (lines 1224–1230).

The Chorus says that fate has joined many evils to Jason that day, and justly (lines 1231–1232). Medea tells them that her resolve is fixed: she will kill the children as quickly as she can and flee, so that they will not be killed by a more hostile hand. They must die in any case, and she who bore them will kill them. She calls on her heart to take the sword and not to be a coward, and not to remember that they are loved and that she bore them: for this one short day she must forget her children, and then weep afterwards (lines 1236–1250).

In the following song (lines 1251–1292) the Chorus calls on Earth and on the bright light of the Sun to look down on the destroyer of her own children, and begs them to stop her. Then the children’s voices are heard from inside: “Oh, what shall I do? How can I escape my mother’s hands?” “I do not know, dear brother; we are lost.” The Chorus wonders whether to go into the house to save them, and the children cry out that they are already near the net of the sword (lines 1270–1278). The Chorus then sings of Ino, who was driven mad by the gods when Hera sent her wandering from her home, and who threw herself into the sea after killing her children, and says that they know of only that one woman in the past who put her hand to her own children (lines 1282–1289).

Exodos (Exit Song)

Jason enters in a hurry (lines 1293–1305). He asks the women whether Medea is still in the house or has fled, for she must hide beneath the earth or fly into the air unless she pays the royal house for her crime. He says that he is not concerned for himself but for his sons, in case the Corinthians kill them in revenge for what their mother has done. The Chorus tells him that he does not know how deep his misery is, since otherwise he would not have said these words: his sons are dead, killed by their mother (lines 1306–1309). He orders the servants to break the doors down so that he can see both the dead and her, and take vengeance (lines 1314–1316).

Medea appears above the roof in the chariot of the Sun, with the bodies of the children (lines 1317–1322). She tells Jason to stop trying to force the gates, and says that if he wants anything of her he may speak, but cannot touch her; her father’s father Helios has given her this chariot as a defence against an enemy hand. Jason calls her the most hateful of women, to the gods, to him and to all mankind, who dared to put the sword to her own children and destroyed him by leaving him childless (lines 1323–1328). Now that he knows better, he regrets bringing her from her barbarian home to Greece, a betrayer of her father and of her country. He says that her avenging spirit fell on him because she killed her brother at the hearth before stepping on the Argo, and that no Greek woman would have done what she did, whom he preferred to marry. She was a lioness, not a woman, he says, with a nature more savage than the Tyrrhenian Scylla (lines 1334–1343). Medea replies that she would say more if Zeus did not know what she had suffered from him, and that he was not going to dishonor her bed and live a pleasant life laughing at her; the princess and Creon did not get away with it either. “Call me a lioness if you wish, and Scylla who lived on the Tyrrhenian plain; I have touched your heart as I should” (lines 1351–1360). When Jason says that she too is in pain and shares the evil, she agrees, but says that the pain is eased if he cannot laugh at her (lines 1361–1362).

Each blames the other. Jason says that it was not her hand but his insolence and his new marriage that killed the boys; she answers that he thought it a small thing to kill them for the sake of a bed, but that for a decent woman it is not small; he says they are alive as avengers on his head, and she says that the gods know who began the suffering (lines 1363–1372). He asks to bury the bodies and mourn them; she refuses, saying that she herself will bury them with her own hand, taking them to the precinct of Hera Akraia so that none of her enemies may insult them by digging up their graves, and that she will establish a festival and rites for the land of Sisyphus to atone for this unholy murder in the future (lines 1377–1383). She herself will go to the land of Erechtheus to live with Aegeus, son of Pandion. She predicts that Jason will die, as he deserves, struck on the head by a piece of the Argo, after seeing the bitter end of his marriage with her (lines 1384–1388). Jason prays that the Fury of the children and bloody Justice will destroy her, and calls her a murderer and a child-killer; she asks what god or spirit will listen to a perjurer and a deceiver of guests (lines 1389–1392). Jason begs to be allowed to kiss his sons’ lips and touch their soft skin, and she refuses; he calls on Zeus to see how he is being driven away and abused by this polluted lioness who has killed her children, and he calls the gods to witness that she prevents him from touching and burying his sons, whom he wishes he had never begotten to see destroyed by her (lines 1397–1414). Medea departs in the chariot.

The play ends with the five lines that close several of Euripides’ tragedies, spoken by the Chorus: Zeus on Olympus is the steward of many things; the gods bring many things to pass that are not expected; what was expected is not fulfilled, and for the unexpected a god finds a way. “So ended this matter” (lines 1415–1419).

A Brief Analysis

The play is built around Medea’s deliberate choice. She has the whole plot in her hands from the moment Creon gives her the day: the gifts and the killing of the princess are laid out for the Chorus in lines 374–385 and 774–797, and her only moment of doubt comes in the monologue before the children’s death. Each scene shows a different Medea: the grieving foreigner in front of the Chorus, the pleading suppliant who flatters Creon, the accuser of Jason, the clever ally of Aegeus, the false wife who weeps in front of the boys, and the woman who wavers and then decides. The monologue of lines 1021–1080 is the place where Euripides puts the argument for and against the deed into one mind; she changes her mind at least twice, and ends by saying that her anger (thymos) is stronger than her calculated plans (lines 1078–1079).

The play also asks what Medea’s position as a foreign wife means in a Greek city. Her speech at lines 230–251 sets out the case against the situation of women in marriage, the price of a husband, the lack of any respectable divorce, the need to look to one person only, and the claim that a woman’s labor in childbirth is as dangerous as a man’s in battle. The Chorus agrees with her, and it sings in the second stasimon of the hardship of exile. At the same time, Jason’s speech is not that of a plain villain: he gives reasons that a Greek audience might have found practical, the need for money and status, and brothers for his sons (lines 559–567), while his claim that men should be able to have children without women (lines 573–575) shows what he really thinks. The play lets each side speak at length, and does not simply side with one of them.

The end is also not a simple resolution. A god often appears at the end of Euripides’ plays to settle the action, but here Helios sends a chariot to rescue the murderer, and the effect is to leave the crime unpunished in the world of the play. Medea predicts Jason’s death by a falling piece of the Argo (line 1387) and the foundation of a Corinthian festival (lines 1381–1383), and she goes to Athens, where Aegeus has sworn to protect her. The Chorus’s final lines say only that the gods bring many things about in unexpected ways. The Athens ode (lines 824–865) makes the contrast sharper, because it asks whether the sacred land of Athens could receive a child-killer, and the play then shows that it will.

Medea Sources

The Greek text of Medea can be read on the Perseus Digital Library. Line numbers in this article follow it, and the quotations are translated from the Greek. The date, the other plays of the tetralogy and the result of the competition come from the ancient hypothesis printed with the play. For the mythological background see Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16–28, and Pausanias 2.3.6–7 on the children’s tomb and the rites at Corinth.

See Also: Euripides, Jason, Argonauts, Aegeus, Helios, Hecate, Creon