Classical Wisdom Litterae - Nov 2019

IX Instead of cursing Medea and defending Jason, the gods are squarely on her side and silent to Jason’s inadequate pleas. Though she has killed four people—two of them her own children, Medea is blessed with support from her Titan and Olympian forebears. Displaying her divinity for the world to see, she rises above the troubles and the carnage —which she herself created—of the human world and flies onto the safety and asylum awaiting her in Athens. The aud i enc e i s incredulous, how can the gods support a monster who kills her own children out of a sense of primal revenge? The chorus, who has the last word in the play states: “…the gods accomplish many startling things. What we expect does not take place, and the gods make way for what we don’t expect.” Alas, the indifferent gods are blind at dispensing human justice. But before we ourselves dispense justice unfairly, it is important to have some background on the mythology hovering around Medea lo these thousands of years. The bones of the story come to us in fragments and precede Euripides by hundreds of years. In fact, Jason and the Argonauts are adventures “well known to all” in Homer’s Odyssey (8th century BCE). The first time we hear from Medea is in Hesiod’s Theogony (8th-7th century BCE) as a divinity who falls in love with a mortal “conquered in love thanks to golden Aphrodite.” Then we discover she has a son named Medeius who was raised in the mountains by one of the Centuars. Evidently then, Medeius goes on to become an adult as the last line reads “…great Zeus’ will was done.” No longer the barbarian, the next time we hear from Medea she is made queen of Corinth. In his poem Corinthiaca , Eumelus, (ca 8th-6th centuries BCE) reveals that Jason becomes king through his marriage to Medea. From this same source, Pausanias (510-461 BCE) reports that in an effort to immortalize the children she bore Jason, Medea concealed them in Hera’s temple and was saddened b y t h e r e s u l t . T h e implication being that somehow the children died. Jason blames her for the children’s passing and leaves Medea, who then hands over the kingship to Sisyphus. Many believe that this accidental infanticide gave Euripides the idea for making Medea a child-slayer. Although her children may have died in some of the myths, it is interesting to note that Euripides was the very first to burden Medea with filicide. Then, from the poet Creophylus, who was —according to Plato—a contemporary of Homer, the Corinthians’ are culpable for the children’s murder. In the myth, as punishment against Medea for killing King Creon, the Corinthians kill her children. That the Corinthians might kill her children is something that Medea often alludes to in the play as a reason for killing them more humanely herself. The most complete pre-Euripidian history “T HE CHORUS , WHO HAS THE LAST WORD IN THE PLAY STATES : ‘… THE GODS ACCOMPLISH MANY STARTLING THINGS . W HAT WE EXPECT DOES NOT TAKE PLACE , AND THE GODS MAKE WAY FOR WHAT WE DON ’ T EXPECT .’”