Greece

A myth was not a single fixed account: storytellers could present its characters and events differently. Here, Medea is both a wronged wife and a woman who deliberately murders her children. Understanding the Athenian presentation means considering how Euripides creates sympathy for her suffering while also making her frightening.

Colchis: love, magic and betrayal

Jason sailed to Colchis in the Argo with the Argonauts to obtain the golden fleece, a quest imposed by his uncle Pelias. Colchis was ruled by Medea’s father, Aeetes. Medea was also the granddaughter of Helios, the sun god: her power had a divine as well as a magical dimension.

Medea fell in love with Jason and helped him overcome the dangers of his quest. Her magical assistance included ointment against the danger of the bulls of Hephaistos and a sleeping potion for the dragon guarding the fleece. Jason’s success therefore depended on the foreign woman who would later become his enemy.

Helping Jason meant betraying her father and leaving her homeland. In the prescribed ending, Jason recalls that she killed her brother ‘beside the hearth’ before boarding the Argo. The hearth belongs at the centre of the home, so this recollection associates her violence with the destruction of family bonds. These earlier actions also establish a disturbing pattern: Medea is willing to harm her own relatives for Jason’s sake.

Iolcus: turning daughters against their father

Medea travelled with Jason to Iolcus, where Pelias ruled. She demonstrated an apparent power to restore youth by cutting up an old ram and using magical herbs. Pelias’ daughters then attempted to rejuvenate their father in the same way and killed him.

The Nurse recalls that Medea persuaded the daughters to kill Pelias. This episode makes her dangerous through intelligence and manipulation, not simply physical strength. She turns an apparently caring aim—helping an ageing father—into the destruction of a family. Jason and Medea subsequently fled to Corinth.

Corinth: a wife without the protection of home

The Nurse opens the play by wishing that the Argo’s voyage had never happened. Looking back to the very beginning makes the present disaster seem rooted in the whole history of Jason and Medea’s relationship.

At first, Medea lived successfully in Corinth with Jason and their children. The Nurse describes her as helpful to Jason and welcome among the citizens. This matters: Euripides does not present her as a foreigner who was always incapable of belonging to a Greek community.

Jason then abandoned her for marriage to the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. Medea understood this as betrayal and dishonour. She appealed to Jason’s oaths, the pledge of his right hand and the gods who witnessed his promises. Her complaint concerns broken obligations, not merely romantic disappointment.

Her foreignness makes the betrayal more severe. She has given up her father, country and home for Jason and now lacks their support. The Nurse describes her refusing food, weeping and keeping her eyes lowered. These details invite sympathy by showing the bodily and emotional consequences of abandonment.

Respectable wife or woman to be feared?

The Nurse remarks that a woman’s greatest security comes from not disagreeing with her husband. This expresses an expectation of a compliant wife whose position depends on harmony with a man. Medea initially appears to have fulfilled that role by supporting Jason and living with their children.

Yet the Nurse also fears her anger. Medea cannot endure mistreatment, takes no pleasure in seeing her children and may commit an ‘awful deed’. The children’s innocent return from their games contrasts with the danger surrounding them. This is foreshadowing: an early warning that prepares the audience for later disaster.

Medea threatens conventional expectations because she refuses to accept humiliation quietly. Her intelligence, magic and determination allow her to act independently of male authority. However, independence alone does not explain the horror of her actions: she also destroys the family she would ordinarily be expected to protect.

Aegeus: securing a refuge before taking revenge

Creon orders Medea into exile from Corinth. A meeting with Aegeus, king of Athens, offers her a way out. Aegeus is travelling after consulting Apollo’s oracle about his childlessness. Medea offers to use her knowledge of spells to help him have children, in exchange for protection in Athens. The powers that make her frightening can also make her valuable to a ruler.

Aegeus agrees to receive her if she reaches Athens herself. He will not take her away from Corinth because he wishes to avoid blame from his allies. Medea then insists on an oath: he must neither expel her nor surrender her to her enemies. He swears by Earth, Helios and the gods.

This is a calculated arrangement, not simply a rescue. Medea recognises that her enemies have wealth and royal power, so she secures protection stronger than an informal promise. Once she has a refuge, she declares that she can proceed with revenge. Aegeus agrees to shelter her before she reveals her murderous plan to the Chorus; he is not knowingly approving the child-murders.

Poisoned wedding gifts and the destruction of a household

Medea pretends to accept Jason’s new marriage and asks that their children be allowed to remain in Corinth. She sends the boys to the princess with a fine robe and a golden crown, apparently as gifts to help secure this favour. In reality, she has poisoned them: wearing the gifts will kill the princess, and contact with her will endanger others too. The poison also kills Creon through contact with his daughter.

Her apparent submission exploits Jason’s expectations. He praises her changed attitude as sensible behaviour for a woman, without recognising the deception. Medea uses the appearance of a compliant wife, beautiful wedding gifts and innocent children to attack the royal household. Like the rejuvenation scheme at Iolcus, something that appears helpful conceals lethal harm.

She then murders her own two sons with a sword. Her revenge destroys both Jason’s new royal marriage and his existing family. The Chorus opposes her plan to kill the children: sympathy with a wronged woman does not extend to accepting everything she chooses to do.

The ending: revenge wounds both parents

Jason arrives hoping to protect the children from retaliation for their mother’s attack on the royal household. He does not know that they are already dead. His attempt to save them therefore creates dramatic irony and makes the Chorus’s announcement especially devastating.

Medea explains that Jason was not going to dishonour her and live happily while laughing at her. Killing the children wounds him through the loss of fatherhood. It also wounds Medea herself: she acknowledges that she shares his grief, but says that her pain is lessened if he cannot laugh at her. Revenge has become more important to her than avoiding her own suffering.

Their argument distinguishes responsibility from motive. Jason insists that it was not his hand that killed the children; Medea blames the insult of his new marriage. His betrayal helps explain her anger, but she remains the person who chose and carried out the murders.

Jason’s language makes Medea an outsider

Jason calls Medea a ‘lioness’ and compares her to the monster Scylla. These images deny her ordinary human identity and portray her as savage. He also claims that no Greek woman would have dared to commit such a deed, contrasting her foreign homeland with his Greek household.

This is Jason’s accusation, not a neutral statement about Greek and foreign women. His grief makes his condemnation powerful, but the earlier account of his betrayal prevents his speech from becoming the only perspective on their marriage.

Medea accepts the insulting comparisons because she has achieved her aim: she has wounded his heart. The audience can recognise the injustice done to her without accepting her revenge as justice. Euripides sustains both responses rather than offering a simple choice between innocent victim and inhuman monster.

Escape towards Athens: power without moral certainty

Jason tries to force the house open, but Medea is beyond his reach in a chariot supplied by her grandfather Helios. Their positions have reversed: the abandoned wife now controls the encounter, while Jason cannot punish her or recover his children’s bodies.

Medea refuses his request to bury the boys. She says she will bury them at the sanctuary of Hera Akraia, protect their graves from enemies and establish sacred rites in return for the ‘unholy murder’. Her own description acknowledges the religious seriousness of what she has done.

She announces that she will go to the ‘land of Erechtheus’—Athens—to live with Aegeus, son of Pandion. His earlier oath has secured her destination; Helios’ chariot supplies the protection that Aegeus did not promise to provide in Corinth. Her prediction that Jason will die after being struck by a remnant of the Argo brings the story back to the ship whose voyage began their relationship.

The escape is unsettling rather than a straightforward happy ending. Divine assistance gives Medea protection, but protection is not the same as moral approval: Jason calls her hated by the gods, while Medea appeals to Zeus’s knowledge of Jason’s wrongdoing.

For an Athenian audience, her intended refuge brings the threat close to home. Earlier, the Chorus praises Athens as a place of wisdom and divine favour, then questions how such a city could receive a mother who murders her children. The contrast makes Athens’ role troubling rather than simply glorious. Medea escapes Jason’s control, but remains both a bereaved mother and the murderer of her children.