Journal Prompt
Medea, the character:
- Maternal?
- Monstrous?
- In between? Both? Something else altogether?
If (a), how do we process her killing her children?
If (b), aren't there true maternal feelings of hers that mustn't be ignored? She's still human, right?
If any of the above, explain.
This is a complicated question, more complicated than the above lets on. Indeed, it's not altogether clear that she is entirely human. (There's kind of a big reveal in the deus ex machina scene at the end — see image, below.)
Theme for Ancient Tragedy, Greece & Rome, Part 2
Is tragedy pointless?
In Anouilh’s Antigone, the Chorus states, "In drama you struggle, because you hope you’re going to survive. It's utilitarian — sordid. But tragedy is gratuitous. Pointless, irremediable. Fit for a king!" (p. 102).
Does that statement by the Chorus in Anouilh’s play find support in texts read for this class? In theoretical or thematic frameworks explored this semester? In what your gut tells you?
Text Access
Euripides. 10 Plays. Trans. Paul Roche. New York: Signet Classic, 1998. (Available via bookstore or Kindle)
Background
Playwright
- Euripides born ca. 485 BCE (Athens)
- Died ca. 406 (Macedonia)
- Perhaps as many as 88 plays
- Five victories
- Intellectual, sophistic interests
- Dramatic experimenter (ordinary, non-tragic characters; snippets of everyday life)
- Comic reputation for misogyny ("hatred of women"), violation of the canons of tragic style and dignity, too much newfangledness overall — do you agree?
Play
Produced in 431 BCE, the 1st year of the Peloponnesian War. Placed third!
Main Characters
- Jason: From Iolcus, in Thessaly, in northern Greece. NOTE: He's a Greek. (It matters. . .)
- Medea: A beautiful barbarian princess and sorceress from Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. NOTE: she's a barbarian. (It matters . . .)
- Jason and Medea's two sons
- Creon: Not Creon from Thebes but the king of Corinth. He's "hosting" Jason and Medea now that they're in exile from Iolcus. ("Creon," in English, "ruler," is just a generic royal name)
- Creon's daughter, now betrothed to Jason. (She's mentioned but not seen or heard)
- Aegeus: King of Athens and father of Theseus (we met Theseus as king of Athens in Oedipus at Colonus), is a past acquaintance
of Medea's.
- How Aegeus knows Medea is, so far as I can tell, nowhere explained: not in this play, not anywhere. Some have found Aegeus' sudden and all-too-convenient arrival at, and departure from, Corinth puzzling, contrived, or inept. Extraneous to the plot, however, it is not. Mastronarde correctly points out that not only does Aegeus offer Medea a refuge; he confirms Medea's skill and intelligence and the unfairness with which she is being treated. I would add that the scene, which has Medea and Aegeus as good pals, suggests strong networking skills on Medea's part, ones that she adroitly deploys to her advantage and that complement her skill with persuasion. She is also tacitly manipulative of Aegeus. She (and we) can easily guess at the meaning of the oracle that baffles him. As for Medea, by holding back on the oracle's correct interpretation, she offers herself as a fertility expert once she flies into Athens by dragon-drawn chariot. (Aegeus went to Delphi to seek guidance on how to beget a child by his wife. Little does he know that he'll do so, though not by his wife, on the way back from Delphi.) So the scene really does fit the plot, though I'll admit that this crisscrossing of mythological stories feels a bit like one of those movie cameos that are entertaining and puzzling in equal measure.
- Nurse: She cared for Medea as a child and continues in Medea's service. The "nurse" stereotype in Euripides and later tragedy is of a servant fearful for the well-being of her mistress and for her own job. Thus she often plots and connives to protect both. How much of that is operative here?
- Tutor of Jason's and Medea's two boys: Maybe in a position similar to that of the nurse. In real life, a "tutor" (Greek paidagōgos) would have accompanied boys to school, guarded them, and participated in their education
- Chorus of women, Medea's handmaids, from Colchis
Backstory
Jason's father Aeson was king of Iolcus, in northern Greece, but Aeson has been overthrown by his brother (and Jason's uncle), Pelias. To put Jason off from seeking the throne for himself — i.e., to get Jason out of the way — Pelias assigns a dangerous task to his nephew: to fetch the Golden Fleece from the land of Colchis, at the far end of the Black Sea. Jason and the Argonauts (named for the ship, the "Argo") sail to Colchis, where Jason employs the assistance of Medea, a beautiful barbarian princess, to get hold of the Fleece. At some point, Medea slays Apsyrtus, her brother, "in his home." (In other versions of the myth, she kills the brother at sea, en route to Iolcus.) After Jason and Medea arrive in Iolcus, they are forced to flee once again — why? Medea has tricked Pelias' daughters into boiling their father alive. She's got them to think that it'll magically rejuvenate him. It won't.
At our play's start, Jason and Medea are living in Corinth, guests of Creon, the city's king.
Character and Action — Your Reactions
- Do you think Jason is/isn't a sympathetically drawn character?
- Do you think Medea is/isn't a sympathetically drawn character?
- Do you think Jason is/isn't justified in his actions?
- Do you think that Medea is/isn't justified in her actions?
- If Medea isn't human, exactly, what is she?
Word/phrase notes
No page numbers, sorry!
"the winged oars of the Argo" — ancient Greek ships often employed both oars and sail.
"gnashing blue fjords" — The Bosporus straits, at the entrance to the Black Sea.
"pines in the dells of Pelion" — Pine trees, felled for ships' timbers, in Greece.
"if we ship this second wave before we've bailed the first" — We mustn't let Medea learn this most recent bad news (that Creon intends to expel Medea's boys from Corinth) before she's had a chance fully to process Jason's impending marriage to Creon's daughter.
"Flagrantly killing my brother!" — See above, "Prequel."
"Your mission was to yoke the fire-breathing bulls and sow the death-bearing plot of dragons’ teeth" — Medea mentions to Jason ordeals that Medea's father set Jason to prevent him from successfully carrying out his mission, namely, to bring the Golden Fleece back to Greece. Her point: That without her help, Jason never could have managed.
"I killed King Pelias — a horrid death, perpetrated through his daughters — and overturned their home" — See above, "Prequel."
"Hellas" — Greece.
Aegeus — see above, "Main Characters."
"there — the nub of the world of prophecy?" — Delphi, Apollo's place of prophecy, was considered the navel (omphalos, "nub"), i.e., the middle point, of the earth.
"AEGEUS: Why, just this: 'Do not uncock the foot of the wineskin till' . . . until I’m back home again." Aegeus has just gone to Delphi to learn from Apollo if he'll ever beget children; Medea gets Aegeus to tell her what the god said. As typically in ancient Greek literature, Apollo's oracular response comes in the form of a riddle. The imagery ("foot of the wineskin") is clear enough; what the god means is, basically, that whomever Aegeus next has sex with, that'll be the mother of his child. If Aegeus wants children by his wife (which is what he wants), he should abstain until he returns home. Medea withholds the correct interpretation of the oracle from Aegeus, as she wants Aegeus to welcome her, a supposed fertility expert, to Athens. In the event, Aegeus stops off in Troezen to see his pal, Pittheus. Pittheus, no dunce, knows what the oracle means and contrives a fateful meeting between Aegeus and Pittheus' daughter, Aethra. The result is Theseus, future king of Athens.
"MEDEA: [relentlessly] Good . . . But if you break your word, what penalty? AEGEUS: The penalty for sacrilege" — Aegeus wishes destruction on himself if he breaks his oath.
"citadel of Pallas" — Pallas = Athena. Her citadel is the Acropolis at Athens.
"charnel house" — A place for corpses or bones.
"SECOND WOMAN: One other only, one have I known murderously handle the fruit of her womb: Ino the maniac, god-driven one" — The story of Ino is a bit complicated and with multiple versions. She seems to have angered the goddess Hera by rearing Dionysus, the product of a love affair between Zeus, Hera's husband, and the mortal woman Semele. (See Bacchae Study Guide.) In Euripides' Medea, the idea seems to be that Ino was driven mad by Hera — mad enough to kill her own children. (The SECOND WOMAN evidently doesn't know the story of Philomela, who similarly killed her son out of anger at his father.)
"MEDEA: This chariot my father’s father the Sun gave me to save me from my enemies" — The play ends with a clever coup de théâtre: Medea herself as deus ex machina, "god suspended by crane," flying in to save . . . herself.
"on your own brother too, cut down in his home" — See above, "Prequel."
"a viciousness more fierce than any Tuscan Scylla" — In myth, Scylla and Charybdis are monsters who destroy ships and seize sailors venturing into the straits of Messina, between Italy and Sicily. "Tuscan" (tursēnos) here = "Italian."
"the shrine of Hera on the Cape" — This temple of Hera was located on a cape overlooking the Gulf of Corinth, several kilometers west of the city of Corinth. Medea's choice of Hera's shrine as burial site for her boys likely is meant to protect their bodies from mistreatment by Creon and his Corinthian subjects. But it also may have something to do with Hera's role in protecting marriage, which Medea believes Jason to have desecrated.
"I shall inaugurate a solemn festival with rites in perpetuity to exorcise this murder" — In Euripides' plays, it's typical for the deus ex machina, here, Medea, to inaugurate a cult, i.e., to establish special rituals associated with a particular god or gods. The cult itself often is one that existed for real in the historic period. One function of Greek myth is to explain the origins of things, including cults. Something like that may be happening here.