Medea
Euripides431 BCEEuripides created the most shocking heroine in Greek tragedy: a woman who murders her own children to punish the husband who betrayed her.
Read this if you…
- want the most unhinged batshit woman in all of literature
- are okay with crazy bad stories with no redemption
Skip this if you…
- need some warmth in a book
- want a protagonist to root for
Why It Matters
Euripides created the most shocking heroine in Greek tragedy: a woman who murders her own children to punish the husband who betrayed her. The play blew up every Athenian assumption about women, marriage, and justice. Medea's rage is so articulate and so justified that audiences have been arguing about her for 2,400 years.
The 
Take
Theseus just being a kinda bad guy, and not anticipating how crazy his girl is.
Where to go next
- The Iliad by Homer. Medea built on it. - Medea's honor-driven rage is built on the heroic code of Achilles in the *Iliad* — the hero who cannot endure a slight or the threat of being laughed at - Euripides deliberately invokes that epic temper, then twists it: where Achilles relents and gives back Hector's corpse, Medea will not let Jason bury their sons - Reading the *Iliad* first lets you hear the Achillean note in everything Medea says about honor and vengeance
- The Oresteia by Aeschylus. Medea built on it. - *Medea* answers the *Oresteia* — the murder-by-poisoned-robe is patterned on Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon in his entangling robe - Euripides borrows the *Agamemnon*'s language of 'sacrifice' for the killing, and stages Medea over the bodies as Aeschylus staged Clytemnestra over hers - Read the *Oresteia* first and Medea reads as a deliberate response to Clytemnestra — the avenging woman over the corpses, remade
- Poetics by Aristotle. Medea shaped it. - Aristotle puts *Medea* on his dissecting table — he names the play by name when he lays down the rules of plot - Its god-sent chariot ending is his prime example of a resolution wrongly forced by a *deus ex machina*, a fault he warns every dramatist against - He cites Medea's child-murder again as a deed done knowingly — *Medea* is one of the case studies the *Poetics* is built on
- The Aeneid by Virgil. Medea shaped it. - Euripides's betrayed, vengeful heroine is the model Virgil reaches for when he builds Dido in *Aeneid* 4 - The arc is Medea's: the abandoned spouse whose love curdles into wrath and ruin - Virgil transplants that Greek-tragic rage into Roman epic — Dido's language after Aeneas leaves recalls Medea's directly
- Metamorphoses by Ovid. Medea shaped it. - Euripides gave the abandoned wife her terrifying inner voice — and Ovid took it whole - Medea's deliberation on the stage, torn between love and fury, becomes the torn lover's soliloquy of *Metamorphoses* Book 7 - Where Euripides stages one catastrophic day, Ovid stretches Medea across her entire career, folding the tragedy into a continuous epic sweep
Depicted in Art
A wild-eyed Medea, breasts bared, clutches her two terrified children against her body in a shadowed cave, dagger half-hidden, the instant before she stabs them.
Eugène Delacroix, 1838
In a dim chamber Medea bends over a brazier, mixing a steaming potion as a watchful Jason leans in beside her, fascinated and slightly wary.
John William Waterhouse, 1907
Pre-Raphaelite half-length: Medea, wide-eyed and chanting, scatters herbs over a brazier while a toad and coral beads sit before her and the Argo sails across a gilded frieze behind.
Frederick Sandys, 1868
Medea walks slowly down a marble palace corridor in a flowing iridescent gown, a phial of poison in her hand, head bowed in grim resolve.
Evelyn De Morgan, 1889
Medea, arms flung wide in incantation, conjures a swirling vortex of color and spectral figures of her doomed children rising above a tumultuous landscape.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1828
Recommended Editions
Robin Robertson
Free Press · 2008
Robertson is a Scottish poet, and his Medea reads like one. The rage is dramatic, percussive, built for performance. Looser than the scholarly versions but the one that makes you understand why this play still gets staged constantly.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury.”
“Of all things that have life and intelligence, we women are the most wretched creatures on earth.”
More by Euripides
- Alcestis
438 BCE · Tragedy
- The Bacchae
405 BCE · Tragedy