Date: Around 431 BCE
Location: Athens

Before the play:

• Jason and Medea return to Iolcos, where Medea restores Jason's father, Aeson, to his youth. The daughters of Pelias, who had deposed Aeson, ask Medea to rejuvenate their father. She promises to do so, and to convince them of the efficacy of her magic, she boils a ram, using magic herbs, which becomes a lamb. The daughters boil their father Pelias, but Medea neglects to give them the herbs and he dies. Because of this disaster, Medea and Jason must leave Iolcos.
• Jason and Medea find refuge with Creon, king of Corinth, who urges Jason to marry his daughter. Jason feels no qualms about marrying the princess because Medea, as a foreigner, cannot be legally recognized as his wife.

Euripides' play opens with Medea's knowledge that Jason will remarry. She expresses her feelings about his betrayal of her. Her 2 sons' nurse and tutor hear her as the play opens. The Chorus of Corinthian women comment on her words and actions. The nurse, tutor, Jason, and Creon all fear Medea. The nurse says that "The middle way, neither great nor mean, / Is best by far, in name and practice." Medea rehearses her past decision to leave her homeland and murder her brother. She promises revenge. Her speech on about the lot of women (one gathers in fifth-century Athens) is justly famous.

• Medea is visited by Creon, who banishes her, but gives her a day.
• Medea schemes against Jason.
• Medea is visited by Jason, who tries to justify his new marriage by saying he did it to benefit Medea and her sons. Medea reminds him of his vows to her, of her help in obtaining the fleece, of her inability to return home.
• Medea meets Aegeus, king of Athens, on his way home from Delphi. He swears to give her sanctuary at Athens if she needs it.
• Medea pretends to be reconciled to her fate and sends her sons to the princess. They bear poisoned gifts, a robe and coronet, which kill her. Creon is killed trying to save her.
• In her final act of revenge, Medea kills her sons. She and Jason curse one another in the final scene. Medea flies away with her dead sons in a chariot drawn by dragons.
• Euripides is responsible for the perpetuation of this portion of the Medea myth, if he did not in fact invent it. What do you think accounts for the play's power?
• In the play, Jason is characterized as an opportunist, Medea as an Asian or barbarian princess.
• Euripides has been called both a misogynist and a feminist in this play.
• The psychological insights into Medea's actions stem from Euripides' acknowledgement of her plight as a foreign and intelligent wife. Her speeches on the lot of women in ancient Greece are unique. Other women in Greek mythology also avenge the crimes of their husbands by killing their sons. Why do you think this becomes the form the myths take?

Things to consider about Medea:

• She is the granddaughter of the sun, Helios.
• Her aunt is Circe, the enchantress/sorceress in the Odyssey who turns men into swine.
• Medea and her children were historically worshipped as religious cult figures. Her children were said to have been murdered by the Corinthians and the blame to have been placed on her.
• In the fifth century and later, Medea comes to represent the barbarian princess, Jason come to represent the stranger who tempts and steals the young woman from her family. In later myth he is inept and morally less than perfect.