For the mythological background of the play, please consult the Short Summary. Without knowledge of the backstory, the Medea cannot be properly understood.

The setting is before the house of Medea and Jason, in Corinth. The Nurse enters, sorrowfully telling the audience what has recently happened to Medea. Although Medea has committed crimes on Jason' behalf, he has now left her and taken a new wife. Jason's new wife is the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth (not to be confused with the Creon of the Oedipus myth). Medea has been sick with grief since the new development; she turns even from her own children, presumably because they remind her of Jason. The Nurse fears what Medea may do, "for her heart is violent" (l. 38).

The Tutor enters, with the two small children of Jason and Medea. The Tutor brings more bad news: he has heard a rumor that Creon intends to drive Medea and the children out of Corinth. The Nurse is horrified that Jason would allow his family to be treated so; she tells the Tutor to bring the children inside, but warns him to keep them away from their mother. We hear Medea's cries coming from the inside of the house; they make the Nurse afraid, for Medea is a powerful and dangerous woman. Medea is heard cursing Jason and the children, wishing for the whole house to fall. The Nurse muses that the great are not an enviable group.

The Chorus enters, speaking to the Nurse. They pity Medea, but they also seem to think that a woman should learn to endure; Medea is not the first to have an unfaithful husband. Medea is heard crying out, speaking regretfully of what she did to her own family to help Jason. The Chorus asks the Nurse to bring Medea out, so that they might comfort her.

Medea enters, delivering a monologue on her sufferings and the sufferings of woman. Women, though creatures that can think and feel, must endure terrible indignities. Marriage is necessary, and with marriage comes servitude. And though men are free to indulge their appetites and enjoy the company of their friends, women must remain in the house and live for their husbands alone. Men must bear arms, but women must bear children. And Medea tells the Chorus that her problem is still worse: she is a foreigner in Greece, without a family or home, and Jason has treated her like a prize won in a foreign land. Medea secures a promise: if she can find a way to get revenge, she asks the Chorus to vow that they will remain silent. The Chorus does as she asks, telling her she is right to seek revenge.

Creon enters, with attendants, and tells Medea that she and her two children are to be banished immediately. When Medea, distraught, asks why, Creon admits that he is afraid of her. She is a powerful sorceress, and he fears for his daughter's life. Medea speaks about the hatred all people have for the clever. She begs to be allowed to stay, promising to submit to authority, but Creon will not allow it. She continues to beg, pleading to be allowed one more day, so that she can prepare for the journey and decide where to go. Creon, believing that one day is not enough for Medea to do her enemies harm, grants her request. But if she or her children are found in his lands at dawn tomorrow, they will die. Creon and his attendants exit.

Analysis

Euripides has the opening of the play delivered by two slaves, a Nurse and a Tutor. An important feature of his work is allowing slaves to speak, and speak well. The Nurse and the Tutor provide their perspective on the events in the house they serve. Significantly, both of them condemn Jason. The Nurse, after a few brief moments on stage, is already well-defined as a character. She is loyal to the house and to Medea, but she fears Medea and her violent heart. There are differences of attitude between the two slaves, and these differences seem to break down along the lines of gender: the Nurse seems to be shocked by Jason's behavior, while the Tutor cynically remarks that everyone looks out for himself. The slaves provide an outsider's eye on the action, and they are canny enough to predict events. The Nurse's fears foreshadow the terrible fate of Medea's children. And yet the slaves are completely powerless to alter the course of events.

Passion is an important theme of the play. The Nurse reminds us that Medea is here because she followed Jason back to Greece out of love. (For the mythological background of the play, please consult the Short Summary. Without knowledge of the backstory, the Medea cannot be properly understood.) Passion and love motivated Medea to help Jason: it is thanks to her and her mastery of arcane arts that he won the Golden Fleece. But though we know that in the past passion was the motivation for heroic acts, it was also the motivation for Medea's terrible crimes: to help Jason escape, she killed her brother. To win back his rightful place in Iolcus, she turned the daughter of Pelias into murderers. As long as Jason returned her love, Medea's power and passion were enlisted for his aid. But passion also consumes: we here Medea's cries from offstage, as she curses Jason and her own children. Passion has its dark side: possessiveness, jealousy, the means by which love becomes hatred. The Nurse confides to the audience that "Love is diseased" (l. 16); the incredible force of Medea's passion, infected by Jason's betrayal, will now become destructive.

Greatness and pride are two more themes, closely connected. The Nurse speaks of the dangers of great people's passions. Because the great always have their own way, their tempers swerve wildly, unchecked. This theme is very typically Greek, and in Medea it overlaps with the theme of passion. For the Greeks, pride was something of which one had to be wary; at the same time, they had a much more complicated understanding of pride than the Judeo-Christian concept that we have inherited. For Christians, pride is one of the seven deadly sins, opposite of the virtue of humility. The main hero of Christianity, Jesus Christ, is the embodiment of humility. The Son of God is born poor and subjects himself to a humiliating death by crucifixion. In contrast, a reader would be hard-pressed to find a truly humble Greek hero. There is sacrifice and suffering, but one learns to moderate one's pride after a tragic fall. At the same time, the Greeks recognized pride as a necessary part of greatness. Medea sets up parallels between pride and passion: both make Medea's great acts possible. And both lead to her corruption.

Another key theme is the position of women. To say that Euripides was a feminist would be a terrible oversimplification, as well as an anachronism. Nor are his views on women (or any other subject) consistent throughout his career; each new play presents its own vision, its own revelations. But what can be said with certainty is that Euripides was fascinated by women and the difficulties of their position. By examining the treatment of women, Euripides pointed out the injustices and blind spots of his society. He was also extremely savvy about the ways that art has been used to defame woman's character, and smart enough to recognize that many of the cherished myths and fables of the Greeks reinforced male-dominated order by teaching women to accept (and enjoy) subjugation. Medea points out many specifics of Greek life that are nearly universal to pre-industrial societies. A woman, when she marries, must leave her own home and join her husband's. She is therefore always an outsider. Women are not free to socialize in public space as men are; while men roam wild, indulging sexual appetites or enjoying the company of friends, women are expected to stay at home. Medea makes herself the spokeswoman for the suffering of women, and by this act she secures the loyalty and secrecy of the Chorus.

But it would be too simple to see the play as a proto-feminist diatribe against the excesses of patriarchy. One of Euripides great insight, and one of his most discomforting ones, is that the oppressed do not automatically become noble. The greatest victory a Euripidean tragic hero can claim is to learn compassion and wisdom through suffering; however, most of Euripides' characters fall far short of that mark. His plays teach us that those who suffer often become monstrous. Euripides may be deeply critical of male-dominated Greek order, and he may be deeply sympathetic to the position of women, but he does not grant Medea and the women of Corinth the moral high ground. Medea may earn our sympathies in her first speech, but she will soon be revealed as a terrifyingly self-centered and ruthless woman. Euripides shows us injustice without giving us heroes who can correct it: instead, we are given the cold reaction of revenge. We are not brought to greater order through struggle. A society's hypocrisy must be paid for, and the price is high and bloody.

Another key theme is exile. Modern audiences have difficulty conceiving of how horrible exile was for the ancient Greeks. A person's city-state was home and protector; to wander, without friends or shelter, was considered to be a fate as horrible as death. Medea, for the sake of her husband, has made herself an exile. She is far from home, without family or friends to protect her. Also consider that in her overzealous advocacy of her husband's interest, she has made their family exiles in Corinth. Because of her actions in Iolcus, Jason cannot return home. Their position is vulnerable. Jason, hero of the Golden Fleece (although Euripides emphasizes that Medea was the true agent behind the success of the quest) is now a wanderer. His marriage is shrewd and calculating: he takes a bride of Corinth's royal family. The Tutor points out the shrewd nature of Jason's actions, voicing no surprise that men always act in self-interest. Euripides links the themes of exile and the position of women. When emphasizing the circumstances women must bear after marriage (leaving home, living among strangers), Medea is reminding us of the conditions of exile. Her position, then, is doubly grave, as she is an exile in the ordinary sense and also an exile in the sense that all women are exiles. She is also a foreigner, and so to the Greeks she will always be "barbarian."

The Other is a key theme. Medea's foreignness is emphasized from the start: the Nurse, from the very opening lines, reminds us that Medea comes from a distant and exotic land. Several points should be born in mind when reflecting on this aspect of the play. Remember that the Other is a complex and multifaceted concept: it comprises the foreign, the exotic, the unknown, the feared. The Other is also essential for self-definition: as the Greeks ascribe certain traits to barbarians, they are implying certain things about themselves. Barbarians are savage; we Greeks are not. Barbarians are superstitious; we Greeks are rational. But throughout the course of the play, Euripides destabilizes these easy binaries. He will show, as he does in other plays, that the Other is not exclusively something external to Greece. There is much, for the Greeks and for us, that we do not know about ourselves.

Another key point to remember is that the Other (the foreign, the exotic, the terrifying) is an essential component of adventure. Jason's quest, and all the quests of Greek heroes, would not be possible without strange and fearsome lands to visit. For Jason, Medea's Other-ness may have had something to do with her initial attractiveness. Although we cannot know if Jason was sincerely attracted to her or if he merely used her to secure his own ends, or both, it is probable that Medea's uniqueness drew Jason to her. Throughout the play, we hear again and again that Medea is different from Greek women. Jason's marriage to Medea can be seen as an attempt to bring the adventure home with him. Medea describes herself as "something he won in a foreign land" (l. 256). The marriage can be seen as Jason's attempt to subordinate the foreign to the Greek, woman to man; it is an attempt to join the struggle and danger of adventure with the return to home and stability. In Aeschylus' Oresteia, these syntheses/subordinations of seemingly opposite forces lead to order and harmony. In Medea, they lead to chaos.

Another theme is Medea's cleverness. Medea tells Creon that it is better to be born stupid, for men despise the clever. Part of her difficulty is that she has no real outlet for her gifts. Eleanor Wilner calls Medea "a Machiavel without a country to rule" (4). Her force, her intellect, and her strength of will all exceed her station. The Greeks, though they have some respect for her, often treat her smugly because of her sex and her barbarian origins. She is surrounded by people less intelligent and resourceful than she, but social power and respect is theirs. Remember that Aristotle considered the "unscrupulously clever" woman so distasteful as to be a subject unfit for drama; his statement reflects typically Greek attitudes. Medea is despised for talents that should win her praise; she is also terrifyingly free. Because she is an outsider to normal order, she behaves without restraint or morality. Her genius, denied an empire to build, will instead be used on the smaller playing field of personal revenge.

The Chorus pities Medea, but she assures them that twenty-four hours is all she needs to destroy Jason, his new bride, and Creon. She will use her skill in the arts of poison to destroy them, but their remains the matter of safe haven afterward. Medea is determined that no man will wrong her and then live to tell about it.

The Chorus delivers an incredible ode ("Flow backward to your sources, sacred rivers, / And let the world's great order be reversed . . ."); they seem to have been won over to Medea's side, and they are living vicariously through her and her plans for revenge. Finally, women will be paid their due.

Jason enters, reprimanding Medea for her loose tongue, telling her that she has brought her exile on herself. He has tried to speak on behalf of her and her children, but she has ruined herself. He tells her he will make sure that they do not go penniless, and that he still does not hate her even if she despises him. Medea lashes back, calling Jason a coward. She reminds him of the many things she made possible for him: she helped him yoke the fire-breathing bulls, she was the one who slew the giant serpent that guarded the Golden Fleece, and she killed Pelias. All was to protect Jason. She also provided Jason with two children, depriving him of any excuse to take another wife.

Jason's responds with enumerated arguments, neatly organized, about how Medea has benefited more from their marriage than he. He tells her that her love compelled her to act, and so he owes his life to Aphrodite, goddess of love, rather than Medea. He also tells her that she, thanks to their marriage, lives among Greeks and is quite famous. Finally, he argues that he took the new bride to save their house; they came to Corinth as exiles, and they needed to secure their position. If he has children by the new marriage, his children by Medea will have siblings to protect them. He accuses Medea of being irrational and caught up in womanly concern for love. The Chorus tells Jason that he has spoken well, but also says that he has still betrayed his wife.

Medea and Jason bicker: Medea tells Jason that he should have discussed the plan of a new marriage with her first, but Jason responds that she is too irrational. He offers to provide money for Medea, as well as send her to the houses of friends; she proudly rejects the offer.

The Chorus delivers an ode on the dangers and benefits of love: love brings great rewards, but unmoderated or ill-chosen love brings suffering. They continue to sing, speaking of the pain of exile.

Analysis

Medea is a complex and fascinating character. After Creon has left, we learn immediately that she has manipulated him. She has played the role of weak and vulnerable woman, and through it she has secured enough time to destroy her enemies.

She is also fiercely proud. When considering how to kill her enemies, she rules out the direct approach, fearing that she might be caught and give her enemies cause to laugh. The fear of being shamed is one of Medea's driving motivations. The loss of Jason is not only a matter of passion; Medea has been completely humiliated by Jason's decision to take a new bride. Her pride shows again when she refuses Jason's aid. Though her situation is difficult, she would rather destroy all than accept help from one who has wronged her so horribly. Living as a barbarian among Greeks has made her more defensive, more full of hurt pride.

Medea has a powerful effect on the Chorus; she has made them complicit to her plans, and as soon as she promises that she will have her revenge the Chorus responds with glee. Their Choral Ode is a reproach against men: the Chorus recognizes that the domination of women is inseparable from the very order of their culture. Medea's revenge is a chance to strike back, and the rareness of the event is like a miracle: "Flow backward to your sources, sacred rivers / and let the world's great order be reversed" (ll. 410-1). In this ode, they speak of the negative depiction of women in the popular imagination, in art and literature. The Chorus points out that if women were allowed to be poets, the stories would be quite different. Euripides is questioning the fundamental stories of his culture. He is pointing out that art exists in the context of power relations: for every story and every work of art, there is a guiding ideology; there is someone with something to gain and someone else with something to lose. Works that people take for granted as "universal" art are in fact products of a very specific political positioning. A culture has an interest in covering its tracks, effacing its wrongs, justifying its injustices; a civilization accomplishes these tasks in part through art, popular legends, and unquestioned beliefs.

Significantly, Jason is depicted as a hollow shell of a hero. He is calculating, smug, and condescending. His arguments in defense of his actions show that he has studied rhetoric, but the professionalism of his arguments is off-putting. His reasons are tidily enumerated, and his excuses, though well-organized, seem to skirt the important issues. He uses rhetoric to reconstruct truth as he wishes it to be. When the Chorus says that Jason speaks well but still has betrayed his wife, they speak for most audience members as well. Jason's smugness is particularly unattractive because he owes so much to his wife: again and again, she saved his life and completed the quests that he could not. He is an opportunistic man; as in the past, when he used Medea, he now uses the family of Corinth for gain. In their bickering, Jason and Medea show two different ideas of marriage. Jason sees marriage as a social/financial arrangement: he speaks in terms of wealth and security. Medea, though she earlier described marriage as a kind of bondage, still speaks of a more idealistic fashion. She speaks of vows and reciprocity; Jason brushes this talk aside, and treats Medea as if she irrational.

The depth of Medea's passion now manifests itself as rage, and no wonder. Her husband, who owes her everything, has cast her aside. She is constantly at the mercy of those less clever than she. And though in many ways righteousness is on her side, her arguments are brushed aside as womanly irrationality. Many critics have speculated that Medea often speaks with Euripides' rage: like Medea, Euripides was a genius who was not given his due. At the Dionysia, the judges favored others. The Medea itself, now recognized as one of the greatest works of the ancient world, was beaten by now-forgotten plays. Revenge is an important theme, and part of the wonder of the play is the fact that despite Medea's monstrosity, her spell over us is as strong as the hold she has on the Chorus. Her revenge becomes our fantasy, and the depth of her rage usually has some echo, however uncomfortable, in us.

We see more of Medea's fierce pride. She bemoans her fate as an exile, but proudly scorns Jason's offer of aid. To take pity and gifts from the man who wronged her is worse than exile. Though her pride may seem admirable in this case, the same pride will drive Medea to unspeakable acts.

Aegeus, King of Athens and Medea's old friend, enters. He is coming from a visit to the oracle of Apollo. Still childless, Aegeus asked the god to help him, but the oracle's answer only baffled him. He is in Corinth to see an old friend, a wise man, to discuss the oracle's reply. Medea informs him of the sorrows that have befallen her of late, and Aegeus is sympathetic and shocked by Jason' behavior. Medea begs Aegeus to help her, promising that through her medical expertise she will help him to have children. Aegeus, mindful that Medea has been exiled by the powerful king of Corinth, tells her that he cannot help her to reach Athens, but if she comes he will provide her safe haven and hospitality forever. Medea makes Aegeus promise that he will not hand her over to her enemies, no matter what. Aegeus swears by all the gods. Medea wishes him well, and the kindly king exits.

Medea is overjoyed. Now, with promised safe haven from Aegeus, she can execute all of her plans. She will call back Jason, adapting a conciliatory tone. She will beg him to allow her children to remain in Corinth, and she will send the children bearing gifts to Jason's new bride. The gift will be a poisoned dress, bringing death to the princess and all who touch her. These deeds done, Medea will then murder her children.

The Chorus urges Medea not to continue with these plans. Medea replies evenly that there is no room for compromise. She will kill her children to wound her husband. The Chorus delivers another ode ("From of old the children of Erechtheus are splendid"). They sing of the holy rivers of Athens, asking if the divinities of Athens will bless Medea, or the citizens of Athens shelter her, after such an abominable act. The also sing of the horror of the act itself, and the coldness of heart it will require.

Jason enters, with attendants. Medea is fawning, apologizing for her anger, congratulating Jason on his good sense and his new marriage. She calls out the children to greet him. As they reach out to their father, Medea speaks of a feeling of foreboding. She imagines the children, "after a long life" (l. 901) reaching out their arms in this way when they die. She begins to cry. The Chorus, too, becomes teary-eyed. Jason approves of Medea's change of heart, although he is puzzled by her tears. She asks him to try and arrange for the children to be allowed to stay in Corinth; he promises to try. Medea then sends an attendant to get the dress and diadem for the princess of Corinth. Her children will bring these gifts to her. Jason objects to the extravagance, but Medea insists. He exits, with attendants, followed by the Tutor and the children.

Analysis

In her exchanges with Aegeus and Jason, we see Medea as master manipulator. Manipulation is an important theme. She plays perfectly on the weaknesses and needs of both her enemies and her friends. Earlier, we watched as Medea played to Creon's pity and underestimation of the sorceress. With Aegeus, she uses her skills as a bargaining chip and takes advantage of the king's soft-heartedness to win a binding oath from him. Against Jason, she uses his own shallowness, his unmerited pride, and his desire for dominance. She plays the fawning and submissive woman, to her husband's delight and gratification. Jason buys the act, demonstrating his lack of astuteness and willingness to be duped by his own fantasies. Just as he has successfully convinced himself that his marriage to the Corinthian princess is a noble act, he accepts Medea's submissive woman act because it is exactly what he wants to believe.

Manipulation is more complicated than simple lying. Note that with Aegeus, Medea tells the truth, though she omits important details (i.e. she is planning to kill the Corinthian royal family). With Aegeus, we see Medea use the partial truth to achieve maximum advantage for herself. In these various manipulations, we see the depth of Medea's cleverness and skill. She has the know-how to make deadly poisons and drugs of fertility; she has the cunning to manipulate both enemies and friends. But we also are reminded that Medea is barred from the highest circles of power. Her cunning manipulation of others is the act of a desperate woman, outside the structures of power and the bonds of kinship. In a bad situation, Medea uses her wits secure two ends: a brutal, single-minded revenge, and her own survival. We are reminded of Eleanor Wilner's comment that Medea is a Machiavel without a kingdom to rule. Unable to rule the system, she remains nonetheless capable of tearing it all down, though not without great cost to herself.

The scene where Medea weeps for her children to some extent humanizes her, although the effect remains chilling rather than sentimental. Presenting her children to Jason, she becomes wet-eyed thinking about her children's mortality. These moments, and her later speech in which she talks sorrowfully to her uncomprehending young sons, show us that Medea feels remorse for her actions. She imagines their deaths "after a long life"; the dramatic irony is that her children do not have long to live. Medea is not without feeling, nor is she a sociopath. She comprehends the difference between right and wrong, but chooses to follow the dictates of rage.

The Chorus sings with pity of the horrible fate awaiting Jason's bride and Medea's children. All are doomed. The sing of Jason's choices, and how they will make him wretched; they also sing with pity for Medea, who will wet her hands with her own children's blood.

The Tutor returns, children in tow. He comforts Medea: they will be allowed to stay in Corinth. The princess has accepted the gifts. He does not seem to understand Medea's distress. She sends him inside. Medea now has a long speech as she addresses her children, speaking to them of how sorrowful she is to be leaving in exile without them. She speaks of all she hoped to witness: their marriages, their care for her in her old age, their ritual washing of her dead body. She seems to hesitate, and announces that she will not go through with her plans. But she steels herself and resolves once again to carry out her revenge. She spends last moments with the two children, holding their hands and pitying them. Medea and the children exit.

The Chorus sings of the pains of rearing children. After all of the troubles of parenting, even if the child turns out well, the possibility of death remains. And the death of a child is the greatest of griefs.

Medea enters again, telling the Chorus that she watches the horizon, waiting for the messenger to bring the news of her revenge. The Messenger enters: the poison has worked. He is shocked by Medea's calmness, and her unwillingness to flee. She entreats him to tell the story of the girl's death, for Medea's pleasure. The Messenger recounts that the girl was not pleased to see the children, but she was won over by the beauty of the gifts. She tried them on soon after Jason left; she was overjoyed by her own appearance, but she soon began to convulse; a nurse, thinking the convulsions a result of diving ecstasy, cried out praises to God. But it soon became clear that the girl was dying. The death was terrible: the diadem seared her with flame, blood and fire oozing from the girls school, and the poison of the dress ripped the girls flesh from her bones. Creon came and clasped the dead body to him, weeping. He cried out pitifully, hyperbolically wishing, as grievers do, that he had died with her. When the old king tried to get up, he found his flesh was stuck to the dress. The poison worked a second time, and he died as his daughter did.

The Chorus observes that this day has given Jason much grief, but he has deserved it. They speak of their pity for the girl. Medea speaks now of the final part of her plan. She must steel herself and murder her children. With a shriek, she charges into the house.

Analysis

Although Euripides makes Medea an eloquent spokesperson for the evils that befall women, he refuses to give us a simple story of revenge justly taken. Medea is incredibly self-absorbed. Even as she grieves for her children, she seems more moved by what she is depriving herself: she speaks tearfully of how she hoped that her children would one day tenderly wash her body for burial. There is a strong contrast between Medea's false plan, proposed to Jason, and her real plan. In the false plan, we see the ultimate act of selflessness: a mother separating herself from her children for their own good. Despite her sorrow, she would have the children brought up in Corinth because of the greater future it offers them. In the true plan, we have the opposite end of the spectrum. Medea will not only slaughter her children, but she seems to be thinking more about her own grief than the actual deaths. She is moved to tears by sentimental thoughts of being cared for in old age. She thinks selfishly of how she will miss them; the horror of their being dead seems secondary.

Euripides also adds another complicating element to Medea's revenge. Many scholars now believe that Medea's murder of her children was Euripides' original addition to the myth; in older versions, the children were murdered by Medea's enemies in revenge for the death of Creon and his daughter. The shocking addition of having a mother slaughter her own children makes a dark story even darker, and it effectively robs Medea of the moral high ground. Rage and reason are played against each other as Medea's resolve wavers. But she decides to go through with her plan, in part because of her incredible pride. Again and again, she speaks of her children's uncertain future. Their blood is not wholly Greek, and she fears that they will be mocked. Also, the allies of Corinth will seek terrible revenge against the children. As always, Medea cannot stand the thought of being victimized: "This shall never be, that I should suffer my children / To be the prey of my enemies insolence" (ll. 1060-1). She later says that unless she hurries and does the act herself, she will "suffer my children / To be slain by another hand less kindly to them. Force every way will have it they must die. . ." (ll. 1238-40). Medea cannot bear the thought of her enemies destroying her children. Paradoxically, she decides to prevent this grief by killing them herself.

The power and pleasure of revenge are a central theme here. Medea remains one of the most popular of all ancient Greek plays. Although Medea is clearly a monster, she continues to fascinate us. In part, it is because she ruthlessly carries out what most of us are too controlled to do. She is deprived of institutional power, humiliated by her enemies, wronged in love. But she has the means to destroy all who have hurt her. Eleanor Wilner writes, "How many have dreamed of that satisfaction? Or better, how many have not?" (10). One of Medea's greatest frustrations is that she has been beaten by fools. Her husband is hollow. The woman for whom he has left Medea is a vain and silly girl; appropriately, Medea destroys her through her own vanity. With sinister irony, the dress and diadem kill the girl while hideously disfiguring her once-lovely face and body.

Euripides often targets piety in his plays. When an old nurse sees the princess's convulsions, the foolish old woman mistakes the condition as divine possession. She thinks she is witnessing a miracle, but she is proven wrong a moment later, when the princess begins to die. And Creon, weeping over his daughter's body, cries out in overdone fashion that he wishes to die with his daughter. Thanks to the poison of the dress, his rhetorical wish is fulfilled. The play mocks stock sentiments and piety. Speakers of conventional pieties are made to look like fools.

The Chorus cries out to the god Helius, who is Medea's ancestor. They sing of the horrible act Medea is about to commit. From inside the house, we hear the cries of Medea's children as she slaughters them. As the children cry for help, the Chorus considers interfering, but in the end they stay out of it. They deliver another ode on the horror of infanticide.

Jason enters, with attendants. He asks the Chorus where Medea hides; the sorceress will surely die for her act. He has come to take the boys under guard, for fear that the royal house will seek vengeance against them. The Chorus tells Jason that his children are dead, by Medea's hand. Jason is aghast. He orders his men to break down the doors, and he speaks of how he will repay her for her crimes.

Medea appears above the palace, in a chariot drawn by dragons. The corpses of the two children are with her. She laughs at Jason's vain efforts. The chariot is a gift from Helius, god of the sun, her father's father. Jason reviles her, saying that no Greek woman would dare to do as she has. He berates himself for taking this evil bride. Medea responds coldly, saying that Zeus knows all she did for Jason and how Jason repaid her. They bicker, each blaming the other for what has happened. Jason demands the bodies, so that he can bury them.

Medea refuses. She will bury them herself, and establish a holy feast and sacrifice to Hera to atone for her sin. She will go to Athens, where safe refuge awaits her. And Jason, she foretells, will die without distinction. He will die in an accident, struck on the head by a piece of timber from his old ship, the Argo. They bicker again. Jason bewails his fate, and the horrible deaths of his boys. The Chorus ends the play, singing that the gods contrive events in ways that are surprising to man.

Analysis

Facing his wife, who appears in the sky in a divine chariot, Jason brings us back to the theme of the Other. Once again, we are reminded of the difference between Medea and Greek women. He tells her that no Greek women would have done as she has done. But Jason makes this pronouncement without seeming to understand the implications. Consider the Chorus, which has stood by mutely and allowed this slaughter to take place. Consider also that Jason has shown us how Greek men behave. Jason's easy distinctions between Other and Us, Barbarian and Greek, docile woman and righteous man, all seem too simplistic after the events we have just witnessed. He has attempted to bring part of his adventure home with him, and all has ended in disaster. Euripides has refused to hand anyone the moral high ground, but instead has shown us a vicious war between the sexes in which the oppressed, rather than become ennobled, turn against their oppressors with the viciousness that they deserve. He is showing us a world, our world, in which attempts at easy categorizations do not hold; in which synthesis of supposed opposites does not work; in which the very terms by which we know these opposites turn out to be a product of our self delusion.

And Euripides will go farther: he uses Medea to expose the bankruptcy of popular Greek ideas of heroism. Medea has many traits that would be admirable, if only she were a man. She is ruthless, brilliant, cunning, and powerful. But her position is one of weakness: she is not a ruler or a warrior on the battlefield. Euripides gives us qualities that are considered heroic, but he puts them in a woman and reduces the scale, making the playing field one of marriage and spurned love. The fine Homeric speeches of warriors on the verge of combat are reduced to the bickering of an enraged wife and a petty husband. In this play, Euripides calls sacred ideas about heroism into question. Consider, for example, the character of Agamemnon as he is portrayed by Aeschylus in the Oresteia. Agamemnon also kills his own child; and yet, although he is not admired for this act, after his death Aeschylus still gives him his due as a great man and hero. Our reaction to Medea's infanticide is one of unmitigated horror. By granting unlimited self-absorption and ruthlessness to a woman, Euripides exposes these traits for what they are. We become aware of the double standards we use for heroes and heroines. For the thoughtful audience, watching Medea's infanticide changes how we view Agamemnon's. Although in some ways we still admire Medea, we are not allowed to feel as comfortable about this admiration as we are with, say, Agamemnon.

More directly, he changes how we view Jason. Euripides emphasizes Jason as a non-hero, an opportunistic and selfish man who tries to manipulate others to serve his own ends. Even in this chosen task, he fails, as his wife proves to be more adept than he. The greatest difference between Medea and Jason is that she is aware of the gap between ethical behavior and her own actions. Jason manages to deceive himself with his ideas of his own righteousness. Remember Medea's line, spoken not without irony: "And women, though most helpless in doing good deeds, / Are of every evil the cleverest of contrivers" (ll. 408-9). Deprived of a state to rule, the genius becomes a destroyer, and she is fully aware of what she does: "I know indeed what evil I intend to do, / But stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, / Fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils" (ll. 1078-80). Compare this level of honesty with the sanctimonious speeches of Jason, who betrays his wife and children like the fortune-seeking coward that he is, and then pretends that he has done right by them. In this final part of the play, Medea foretells the last part of Jason's story, an unheroic end for an unheroic man: he will be killed by accident, by a falling timber from his own ship.

And finally, there is the question of the gods and their role in these events. Like many Euripidean plays, we end with a kind of deus ex machina, as Medea's escape becomes possible thanks to a chariot that was a divine gift. But although he has been criticized by critics for this device, the end seems fitting for his intentions. Medea, after all, is a woman who is powerless but yet has access to surprising resources. Furthermore, Euripides' universe is one where the intentions of the gods do not make sense; life does not make sense. And one must also remember that Medea's supernatural escape was part of the original myth.

The final argument between Jason and Medea has echoes of the Oresteia. Jason tells Medea that the avenging ghosts of the children will curse her; she coolly brushes the prediction aside. She will bury them herself, and through the aid of the goddess Hera she will atone for their deaths. It is Jason, once again, who will die in ignominy, after having suffered through the death of his new bride and his two sons. The Chorus ends, as many Choruses do, musing about the unpredictability of fate.

What can we make of this ending? In the Theban plays of Sophocles, the gods help even Oedipus to achieve a kind of redemption. His fall, too, has a kind of terrible logic. In the Oresteia of Aeschylus, every death requires an atonement in blood, until Athena and Apollo, in all their glory, descend and help set the world right. So what can we make of Medea, where every death comes about through Medea's unchecked rage? Where many deaths are undeserved, and terrifyingly brutal, even by the standards of Greek tragedy? Where we nonetheless watch with fascination, and even satisfaction, as Medea coldly destroys her enemies and children, one by one, until she has nothing left? Where the Chorus watches but does not interfere, although Euripides makes sure to remind us that they could? Considering these questions, and considering also the elusiveness of divine will in Medea, one begins to see why this play must have been an unsettling spectacle for its first audience. We are left the final tableau of the barbarian sorceress, exultant and destroyed at the same time, having achieved her final victory over her enemies only at the cost of her children's lives. Below her, Jason wails in impotent fury and grief, and the Chorus sings that the gods have had their hand in these events; yet how or why is anyone's guess. Medea establishes the Euripidean universe, one in which heroism is rare, the gods are at worst malicious and at best absent, and suffering falls on the innocent and the guilty with equal brutality. In later plays, his vision is deepened by the possibility of compassion, but that possibility does not exist here. Medea's rage, unchecked and unchanged, carries us from the opening of the play to its final horrific moments. In this way, she is an interesting counterpoint to Achilles of Homer's Iliad. The Iliad is the story of Achilles' rage, and the final transformation of that rage into understanding and compassion; Medea's rage is as central here as Achilles' rage in the Iliad, but no redeeming transformation occurs in Euripides' play. Her hatred indicts her world, the home that is also her prison, the injustices and hollow pieties of Greek civilization. The play also implicates us, as her hatred and rage, though extreme, remain unnervingly and immediately recognizable; the grim satisfaction she takes in her revenge, however brutal and self-destructive, bears at least some resemblance to our own secret and unfulfilled fantasies.

• Biography of Euripides
• About Medea
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• Major Themes
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 1-356
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 357-662
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 663-975
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 976-1250
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 1251-1419
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