DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT AN ANCIENT GREEK SCHOLAR. FOR THE FULL DISCLAIMER, READ HERE.
She’s learned from her catastrophe how much
it matters not to lose your homeland.
(The Nurse; lines 34-35)
Introduction
Medea is the next play by Euripides on the list. Of all of Euripides’ nineteen surviving plays, Medea is one of the most (in)famous (along with The Bacchae). The play takes place years after the famous voyage of Jason in his ship the Argo. Here’s small selection of men who were crewmembers (Argonauts) during this famous voyage:
Heracles (appears in many sources including Shield by Hesiod)
Nestor, the elderly Greek warrior who fought in the Trojan War (Iliad by Homer)
Theseus, one of the legendary kings of Athens and the man who slew the Minotaur (appeared in Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles; will appear in at least one of Euripides’ plays)
Admetus (Alcestis by Euripides, the play I covered in the previous post)
Philoctetes (Philoctetes by Sophocles; briefly mentioned in the Iliad, Book 2)
Peleus, the father of Achilles (mentioned in the Iliad)
Laertes, the father of Odysseus (Odyssey by Homer (Book 24))
Telamon, the father of Telamonian Ajax (the Iliad; Ajax by Sophocles)
Tydeus, the father of Diomedes (Iliad; Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus)
It was quite the crew Jason had gathered to himself. The voyage of the Argo was probably the start of many of their rise to fame in Greek legend and mythology.
Unfortunately, the only complete retelling of Jason’s voyage is a very late source: Argonautica by Apollonius (3rd c. BC). Otherwise, of everything we’ve gone through so far in our journey, you can find mentions of Jason’s voyage in the Odyssey (Book 12) and Hesiod’s Theogony (where you’ll also find mention of Medea). Also, Herodotus, in his Histories (Book 7.62), mentions Medea:
“The Medes were formerly called by everyone Arians, but when the Colchian woman Medea came from Athens to the Arians they changed their name, like the Persians. This is the Medes’ own account of themselves.” (A. D. Godley translation)
Here’s a brief summary of the voyage of the Argo which will serve as important background for the events of Medea:
Pelias, the king of Iolchus (the father of Alcestis), to maintain his power, had locked up Aeson, his half-brother. When Pelias found out about Aeson’s infant son Jason, he tried to kill him, but Jason was sent away just in time. Jason comes back to Iolchus twenty years later and this is when Pelias sends him to retrieve the Golden Fleece—by all accounts a suicide mission. However, if Jason is successful, Pelias promises to relinquish the throne to him.
Jason has his ship, the Argo, commissioned, and gathers a crew of fifty men. A lot happens on Jason’s voyage—the most famous events being the successful navigation through the Clashing Rocks (with the help of a crewmember) and the Wandering Rocks (with the help of the goddess Hera). Jason finally arrives at Colchis, where the Golden Fleece is, and this is where he meets the sorceress Medea who falls in love with him. Medea is a daughter of King Aeetes—the brother of the sorceress Circe (Odyssey, Books 10-12).
King Aeetes tells Jason he can have the Golden Fleece if he yokes a pair of fire-breathing bulls and sows dragon’s teeth into the ground. Medea, using her sorcery, helps Jason yoke the pair of fire-breathing bulls, then puts to sleep the dragon guarding the Fleece and takes some of its teeth to plant in the ground. Jason gets the Fleece and flees Colchis. Aeetes pursues him, but Medea slows down the pursuit after she murders her brother, Aeetes’ son, dismembers the body, and throws pieces of it out of the ship. Aeetes chooses to retrieve the dismembered body parts of his son rather than pursue Jason any further.
Meanwhile, Pelias is convinced that Jason died during his voyage. When Jason returns successful though, Pelias refuses to give up the throne. Medea responds to this by tricking his daughters into believing Pelias’ youth could be restored. If they cut him to pieces and boil him in a pot, she can bring him back younger. Medea even uses her magic to demonstrate this with a ram. The daughters do so and Pelias is killed.
Jason, along with Medea, flee to Corinth due to this crime. The events of Medea start about ten years after their arrival in Corinth and having at least two sons together.
Knowing this background will give you insight as to why Jason made the decisions he did and why Medea was so feared and people found her difficult to trust.
All quotes from Medea are from the Oliver Taplin translation. This translation is found in the Complete Greek Tragedies which were originally edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. I will be using the Third Edition which was edited by Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most.
Summary
Medea’s Nurse, standing outside the house, expresses concern for Medea. She has been devastated by the news that her husband, Jason, has taken another wife. Medea is a foreigner and princess from Colchis who fell in love with Jason during his famous voyage to retrieve the Golden Fleece. She went so far as to betray her city and murdered her brother to help Jason with his mission. She helped him with her sorcery over and over again to ensure his success. They got married, had two sons together, and went into exile in Corinth. Medea gave up everything for Jason—and now he’s in the arms of his new bride: the princess of Corinth. The Nurse is fearful about how Medea is going to react. She knows how powerful Medea is and what she is willing to do to achieve her goals.
As the Nurse reflects on this, the Tutor enters with Medea’s two sons. The two servants begin to converse and the Tutor lets slip that he’s heard a rumor that the king of Corinth wants to drive Medea and her sons out for the sake of his daughter. The Nurse is alarmed by this rumor and warns the Tutor to keep the boys away from Medea. The Nurse sees how resentfully Medea looks at her sons and is afraid she’ll do something to them.
As the Tutor leaves, Medea begins crying out in her grief and anger. This draws the attention of the Chorus, a group of Corinthian women, who request the Nurse bring Medea outside so they can console her and talk her out of doing irreparable harm in her emotional state. Medea appears and apologizes for her lack of hospitality toward the Chorus before asking them if they can help her find some way of getting justice for the wrongs Jason has inflicted upon her. The Chorus agrees to help.
At that moment Creon, the king of Corinth, shows up and tells Medea she needs to take her sons and leave. He is terrified of her power and is aware that that she’s been grumbling against his daughter. Medea tries to assure him she’s only angry at Jason, but he is not convinced and once again orders her to leave. Medea then begs Creon to give her one day to get her affairs in order and find some way to make sure her sons will be taken care of. Creon reluctantly agrees, but warns her if she’s still around by the next morning, he will have her and her sons executed. When Creon leaves, Medea reveals that her begging to Creon was just an act to buy her some time so she can more carefully plot her revenge.
Jason appears and tells Medea it was her threats to the royal family of Corinth that has put her in her current situation and that he can no longer protect her. Medea calls Jason a liar and a cheater and reminds him of everything she did for him. If it weren’t for her, his mission to get the Golden Fleece would have not only failed, he would have died in his voyage. Jason counters by minimizing her role and tells her she got rewards far exceeding the contributions she made: 1) she got to live in Greece rather than remain in some barbarian country, and 2) she’s a celebrity in Greece and her talents are renowned. Jason then tells Medea his marriage to the daughter of Creon was merely political—a means to secure his position in the world for the sake of Medea and their sons. Medea counters that if Jason really believed that he would have consulted her first rather than go behind her back. When it becomes clear the argument is going nowhere, Jason tells Medea that he is willing to give Medea funds and provisions and connect her with friends. Medea refuses his offer and Jason leaves.
Just then Aegeas, the current king of Athens, shows up. He is on his way back from consulting the oracle at Delphi because his wife is barren. Medea and Aegeas exchange pleasantries and during the conversation Medea tells Aegeas what’s going on with her. Aegeas is angered at what Jason is doing, so Medea asks him if she can be his suppliant in Athens. In exchange, she will use her potions to make his wife fertile. Aegeas agrees, but warns her she has to get to Athens on her own because of his treaties with Corinth and Iolchus (both cities that Medea has made enemies of). Medea says she will do that, but makes Aegeas swear an oath to the gods that he will protect her when she arrives in Athens no matter what.
Aegeas leaves and Medea reveals that the final piece of her revenge plot is now in place and tells the Chorus what she’s going to do. First, she’s going to tell Jason that she’s thought it through and now agrees with his marriage to the daughter of Creon. Then, she’s going to send her sons to the daughter of Creon bearing a gift: a fine dress and a headdress coated in poison. She will die a terrible death and any who touch her will also die. Before she flees for Athens though, Medea is going to kill her sons because she won’t be able to travel with them.
The Chorus, who have been sympathetic toward Medea up to this point, are horrified by her plan and try to talk her out of it. Medea, however, has made up her mind and sends a servant to call for Jason. Jason reappears and Medea convinces him she has changed her mind about his new marriage. Jason promises her that he will make sure their sons are taken care of, but Medea is concerned that they’ll be kicked out by Creon. To help ensure their sons will be able to stay in Corinth, Medea suggests their sons go to the daughter of Creon and present gifts. That might win her to their side and she might be able to convince her father to keep their sons in Corinth. Jason is eventually convinced of the plan and leave with his sons and their Tutor to deliver the gifts.
Medea’s sons and their Tutor return soon after delivering the gift to the daughter of Creon. The Tutor goes inside the house, leaving Medea alone with her sons. Medea begins to lose her resolve to kill them but recognizes she has reached a point of no return and steels herself.
After Medea sends her sons inside the house, a Servant of Creon shows up telling Medea that Creon and his daughter are dead. After the daughter of Creon put on Medea’s gifts, she died an agonizing death. When Creon took her in his arms to grieve her, the poison then killed him. Medea is happy to hear the news which leaves the Servant perplexed. He warns her she just brought a death sentence on herself before leaving.
Medea then goes into the house and kills both of her sons with a sword. Jason shows up, weapon in hand, outraged at what Medea has done. He no longer cares about her, but he wants to make sure his sons can be safe from any retaliation that may occur from the murders of the royal family. When the Chorus break the devastating news that Medea has killed his sons, Medea appears above the house in a flying chariot carrying the bodies of the boys. Jason asks for the bodies, but Medea refuses. She will bury them somewhere that her enemies cannot reach. Also, she wants Jason to suffer as much as possible with not only losing his sons, but being unable to properly mourn and bury them. Jason curses Medea and Medea flies off to Athens to put herself under the protection of Aegeas.
Three Types of Men
O Zeus, you’ve given us the clear criteria to test
if gold is counterfeit: so why is there no stamp of guarantee
marked on the human body to discriminate which ones
among our men are fakes?Medea; lines 516-19
There are three named men in Medea: Creon, Jason and Aegeas. Each of them seem to embody a type of (negative) man that you see to this day. I wanted to go through each of them briefly:
Creon: The man who wants to protect, but capitulates at the crucial moment due to manipulation. Creon knows what kind of woman Medea is and knows he needs to protect his daughter from her. Since he’s the king of Corinth, he can and does order Medea to leave immediately. However, he ultimately gives in to Medea’s pleading and lets her have one day to get her affairs in order before leave. Unfortunately for him, this was a trap set by Medea. He should have stuck to his guns, but instead he let allowed himself to be manipulated by some crocodile tears—and it cost him his life as well as his daughter’s.
Today, this capitulation by men could still come from emotional manipulation, but it also from other reasons like not wanting to look politically incorrect. These men would rather let their families be in harm’s way than speak up about a particular person or group because they don’t want to be called nasty words.
Jason: To borrow a colloquialism (which I’m censoring for the sake of the blog): the man who “stuck himself in crazy.” The man who courts a woman whom he shouldn’t court due to her character or mental state. But, because she’s attractive, or good in bed, or is extremely faithful and loyal, he decides to share a life with her. Unfortunately for Jason, this union didn’t cost him some sanity or some broken furniture—it cost him his two sons and his new wife.
This, of course, still goes on to this day. How many single mothers are the result of men not being more careful in choosing mates?
Also, how many marriages (failed or otherwise) are between men and women who have different values? Jason and Medea came from different cultures. You could argue that Medea could not come to terms with Jason’s decision to marry the daughter of Creon because she wasn’t a Greek. To be clear, this isn’t what I’m arguing—I’m simply saying this can be an argument. The point is that Jason and Medea came from two different worlds and this became a (fatal) problem in their marriage.
Aegeas: The man who is too bias, trusting, and sympathetic toward a particular woman or women in general. The internet usually refers to men like him as a “white knight.” Aegeas listened to Medea’s sob story, immediately took her side without talking to Jason to get his side of the story, and made a rash oath to protect her. It didn’t hurt that Medea sweetened the deal by promising him to help with his lack of heirs (in the stories, she solved this by marrying him and bearing him children). Aegeas’ oath, of course, backfires, because Aegeas is now obligated to protect a woman who murdered two members of Corinth’s royal family as well as her two sons. Aegeas now has to protect Medea from Corinth, Jason, Iolchus (because she murdered King Pelias), and Colchis (where she betrayed her family and murdered her brother).
So called “white knighting” and “simping” is very prominent today among men. The male impulse to protect and help women, to give women attention, to seek validation from women, is quite natural. However, it has to be tempered with wisdom or the man is just going to get taken advantage of. Is the woman you are seeking to help trying to turn a new leaf or are you just bailing her out from her mistakes for the millionth time? Is the woman you are seeking attention and validation from actually worth the attention and validation? Or, does she have a rotten character and is using you for her own ends?
Was Jason in the Wrong?
No woman born a Greek would ever have gone through
with such a crime; yet I saw fit to marry you,
in preference to one of them—a loathsome
and destructive union it has proved to be for me.Jason; lines 1339-42
Medea, Aegeas, and the Chorus all believed that Jason’s decision to go behind Medea’s back and marry the daughter of Creon was wrong. Jason, however, had his own logic to the decision he made. We saw a similar situation in Alcestis where Admetus, Alcestis, and the Chorus all condemned Pheres’ decision to not die in place of his son Admetus, but Pheres had his own reasons for not doing so. In that post, I ultimately sided against Pheres.
So, why would someone not side against Jason?
It’s because of Jason’s stated motives. Thanks to Medea, he was living in exile. He lost all hope at becoming the next king of Iolchus when Medea murdered King Pelias. Marrying into the royal family of Corinth meant he could give Medea, and especially his sons, a better life. In other words, unlike Pheres’ decision, Jason’s decision could be seen as less selfish.
On the other hand, you have to wonder if Jason was just using that as an excuse. Maybe he really did want to put Medea away. Maybe he just wanted the perks of being a part of a royal family. Maybe he just wanted a younger wife.
Also, his minimizing of Medea’s efforts during his voyage was in bad taste. So was telling Medea that she “got more than she gave” simply by being able to live in Greece and be renowned among the Greeks. How out of touch with the situation do you have to be to say something like that to your upset and aggrieved wife?
Ultimately, as I strongly implied above, Jason’s biggest mistake was involving himself with Medea. Or, at least, involving himself with Medea to the extent he did. Do you really want a woman who would betray her flesh and blood for the sake of a romantic interest? Especially if that romantic interest was a foreigner?
To be a little fair, though, Jason wouldn’t have survived his voyage without Medea. He would have died trying to get the Golden Fleece most likely. A counterargument to that would be that Jason got the help of the goddess Hera through the Wandering Rocks—making him the first person to ever do so in Greek mythology. Maybe Jason could have continued to rely on the gods rather than rely on a dangerous and morally ambiguous woman like Medea? Who knows.
In any case, after making her his wife, he should have known not to cross her. He saw first hand what she was capable of between her sorcery and how brutally she murdered her own brother and King Pelias.
Jason’s stated motives may have been genuine, but so was his idiocy.
Medea: Feminist Icon?
No one should think of me as slight and weak,
or as compliant—quite the contrary:
I’m deadly to my enemies, supportive of my friends.
It’s people of this sort whose lives are crowned with glory.Medea; lines 807-10
A woman acting in hot blood
is easier to guard against—it is the same with men—
than one who’s clever and stays secretive.Creon; lines 319-21
Medea seems to be propped up, to some degree, as some sort of a feminist icon in modern society. A woman who bucked against “The Patriarchy™”.
My response: feminism can have Medea. She’s all yours feminists.
In fact, Medea is a very appropriate feminist icon. She’s a strong and independent woman who can’t appropriately integrate with the traditional social order, murders her children, and hides behind a man (Aegeas) when she needs a convenient escape from bearing responsibility for her actions. Her only marks against her is she isn’t fat and ugly.
I realize I’ve been pretty venomous in this post. Medea reminds me of just how badly our society is failing. How badly men and women are failing. The relations between men and women are crumbling before our eyes and no amount of “this is what the enemy wants—for us to be divided so they can remain in power” is going to change anything. Right now, the Law, the courts, the universities, businesses, the dating scene, marriage and divorce, all disproportionately favor women over men. And men see that.
Just as the elderly have no reason or incentive to do something about Social Security, just as the poor have no reason or incentive to do something about food stamps and subsidized housing, just as minorities have no reason or incentive to do something about affirmative action and disparate impact… women have no reason or incentive to change the current status quo. Because it favors them.
And because our society is deracinated (a favorite word of the Dissident Right that just means being cut off from one’s cultural roots), most are only thinking of themselves and their immediate future. Few are focused on leaving an inheritance for future generations. This includes women. And men are guilty of this too, but like I said, women hold a lot of the power currently. The only way to reverse course is for men to step up and take charge again and for women to allow it to happen by abdicating a lot of the power they’ve acquired.
My venom will continue when I cover Hippolytus (the fourth play). That post is going to include a rant about the current state of marriage as well as a proposed solution. I doubt the solution will be all that impressive—I’m not an idea’s guy—but I don’t see conservatives, Christians, libertarians, or the Dissident Right proposing any real solutions other than telling men to “be a man” and “man up” and all those other useless and reckless shaming tactics.
Look forward to it, I guess?
That's all for Medea by Euripides.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos Anodos
Click here for the reading list I am going through.
Thumbnail: Medea, with her dead sons, flees Corinth in a chariot drawn by dragons by Germán Hernández Amores, 1887. Public domain.
Well done. I remember reading this play in high school. It would have been helpful to have more of the background you provided.
I remember (some of) the broad strokes, but otherwise, this just filled a gaping hole of knowledge.