Euripides' Medea

Euripides’ Medea is the most read and performed of Euripides’ plays. It was first performed in Athens at the City Dionysia in 431 bce, on the verge of the Peloponnesian War. Euripides’ three tragedies (Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys) and satyr play, placed last in the dramatic competition, perhaps because after murdering her children, Medea finds sanctuary in Athens. Yet Euripides’ striking version of Medea’s calculated filicide became prominent. The complexity of Medea’s character—as an abandoned woman, hero, skilled rhetorician, witch, granddaughter of the Sun—has attracted a wide range of readings. Medea myths, including one where the Corinthians kill her children, preceded Euripides. Jason (leading the Argonauts) sailed to Colchis (modern Georgia) on the Black Sea to capture the Golden Fleece in order to gain the throne from his usurping uncle, Pelias. Medea, princess of Colchis and granddaughter of Helios, falls in love with Jason and arranges for him to complete impossible tasks that her father has arranged to kill him. Medea herself kills the dragon guarding the Fleece (480–2) and kills her brother at the family hearth to escape (1334), sailing off with Jason to Iolcus. Although Jason gives Pelias the Golden Fleece, he refuses to abdicate the throne. Medea then tricks Pelias’s daughters into killing their father, causing Jason and Medea’s banishment. While residing in Corinth as resident aliens, Medea raises their two sons. After some years pass, Jason violates his oaths to Medea by marrying the daughter of King Creon. Euripides’ play begins with the Nurse lamenting past events and the current crisis of Jason’s betrayal of Medea and her concern about Medea’s reaction. The children’s tutor brings news that Creon plans to banish Medea and the children that day. Medea persuades the chorus of sympathetic Corinthian women to keep silent about her revenge plans. She skillfully manipulates all three named male characters. Medea initially plans to kill Jason, his new bride, and the king. However, after the king of Athens, Aegeus, promises her refuge, Medea determines to kill Jason’s sons instead of Jason. In the ultimate revenge against Jason for violating his oaths to her, Medea destroys his present and future progeny and his path to power. The play ends with Medea high above the stage in the deus ex machina chariot of the Sun with her dead children. She states her plan to bury them, predicts Jason’s death, and heads to Athens for refuge.