She criticizes how women become “slaves” to their husbands in marriage while enjoying few of the benefits the institution extends to men. She is aware of the social requirement for women to behave with decorum–she’s more aware than most of the need to fit in, as a foreigner-but injustice compels her to speak. Hearing Medea’s cries from inside the house-she is raving about wanting Jason and her children dead-they convince the Nurse to fetch her. Local Corinthian women, Medea’s friends and neighbors ( the Chorus), emerge to see what’s going on. The Tutor of Medea and Jason’s sons soon arrives with worse news: Creon, the king of Corinth and Jason’s new father-in-law, plans to exile Medea, effective immediately. They finally took refuge here, in Corinth, but now Jason has divorced Medea and married a local Corinthian princess, leaving Medea in a state of depression. The couple and their two sons were exiled from Medea’s homeland, then from Jason’s. The Nurse wishes that the legendary ship, the Argo, manned by Jason and his Argonauts, had never come to Medea’s faraway home of Colchis, and that Medea had not fallen in love with Jason there, agreeing to help him on his adventures.

For ease of reference and discussion purposes, the play has been divided into three parts, but Euripides’s work was not divided this way in antiquity, not did it feature the three- or five-act structure familiar to modern readers.Ī solitary figure stands outside a house in the ancient city of Corinth: Medea’s personal slave, her Nurse from childhood.

This guide refers to the 2006 Oxford University Press edition of its The Greek Tragedy in New Translations series, translated by Michael Collier and Georgia Machemer. His controversial themes-and his close association with progressive thinkers like Socrates-may have seen him required to accept voluntary exile in Macedonia, though ancient sources are unreliable on this point. Euripides nestles his narrative at a nexus of uncomfortable issues for his time and, perhaps, for our own: the second-class treatment of women, the helpless position of slaves, and the ostracization often faced by immigrants.Įuripides was highly respected in his time for his talent, but needled, too, being too clever and intellectual for his own good. Starring a foreign-born, exiled woman who asserts her power to inspiring (and horrific) effect, Medea both entranced and shocked its ancient audience. The youngest of the three canonical Greek tragedians (the others being Sophocles and Aeschylus), Euripides is distinguished from his peers for providing a voice to marginalized members of society: women, slaves, and immigrants, who were afforded little protection in the legal and cultural apparatus of Greek society.

Medea euripides full text