Medea of Euripides
against the three guilty persons. It is both courageous and, judged by
the appropriate standard, just. (2) She wants to save her own life, not
from cowardice, but simply to make her revenge more complete. To kill
her enemies and escape is victory. To kill them and die with them is
only a drawn battle. Other enemies will live and "laugh." (3) Already in
this first soliloquy there is a suggestion of that strain of madness
which becomes unmistakable later on in the play. ("Oh, I have tried so
many thoughts of murder," &c., and especially the lashing of her own
fury, "Awake thee now, Medea.")
P. 24, l. 405, Thief's daughter: lit. "a child of Sisyphus."]--Sisyphus,
an ancient king of Corinth, was one of the well-known sinners punished
in Tartarus. Medea's father, Aietes, was a brother of Circe, and born of
the Sun.
P. 24, l. 409, Things most vain for help.]--See on ll. 230 ff.
P. 24. ll. 410-430, CHORUS.]--The song celebrates the coming triumph of
Woman in her rebellion against Man; not by any means Woman as typifying
the domestic virtues, but rather as the downtrodden, uncivilised,
unreasoning, and fiercely emotional half of humanity. A woman who in
defence of her honour and her rights will die sword in hand, slaying the
man who wronged her, seems to the Chorus like a deliverer of the whole
sex.
P. 24. l. 421, Old bards.]--Early literature in most countries contains
a good deal of heavy satire on women: _e.g._ Hesiod's "Who trusts a
woman trusts a thief;" or Phocylides' "Two days of a woman are very
sweet: when you marry her and when you carry her to her grave."
It is curious how the four main Choruses of the _Medea_ are divided
each into two parts, distinct in subject and in metre.
P. 25, l. 439, Faith is no more sweet.]--Copied from a beautiful passage
in Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 198 ff.: "There shall be no more sweetness
found in the faithful man nor the righteous. . . . And at last up to
Olympus from the wide-wayed earth, shrouding with white raiment their
beautiful faces, go Ruth and Rebuking." (Aidos and Nemesis: _i.e._ the
Ruth or Shame that you feel with reference to your own actions, and the
Indignation or Disapproval that others feel.)
P. 27, ll. 478 ff., Bulls of fiery breath.]--Among the tasks set him by
Aietes, Jason had to yoke two fire-breathing bulls, and plough with them
a certain Field of Ares, sow the field with dragon's teeth, and reap a
harvest of earth-born or giant warriors which sprang from the seed. When
all this was done, there remained the ancient serpent coiled round the
tree where the Golden Fleece was hanging.
P. 29, l. 507, The first friends who sheltered me.]--_i.e._ the kindred
of Pelias.
P. 29, l. 509, Blest of many a maid in Hellas.]--Jason was, of course,
the great romantic hero of his time. Cf. his own words, l. 1340, p. 74.
Pp. 29 ff., ll. 523-575.--Jason's defence is made the weaker by his
reluctance to be definitely insulting to Medea. He dares not say: "You
think that, because you conceived a violent passion for me,--to which, I
admit, I partly responded--I must live with you always; but the truth
is, you are a savage with whom a civilised man cannot go on living."
This point comes out unveiled in his later speech, l. 1329, ff., p. 74.
P. 30, ll. 536 ff., Our ordered life and justice.]--Jason has brought
the benefits of civilisation to Medea! He is doubtless sincere, but the
peculiar ironic cruelty of the plea is obvious.
P. 30, ll. 541 ff., The story of Great Medea, &c. . . . Unless our deeds
have glory.]--This, I think, is absolutely sincere. To Jason ambition is
everything. And, as Medea has largely shared his great deeds with him,
he thinks that she cannot but feel the same. It seems to him
contemptible that her mere craving for personal love should outweigh all
the possible glories of life.
P. 31, l. 565, What more need hast thou of children?]--He only means,
"of more children than you now have." But the words suggest to Medea a
different meaning, and sow in her mind the first seed of the
child-murder. See on the Aegeus scene below.
P. 34, l. 608, A living curse.]--Though she spoke no word, the existence
of a being so deeply wronged would be a curse on her oppressors. So a
murdered man's blood, or an involuntary cry of pain (Aesch. _Ag._ 237)
on the part of an injured person is in itself fraught with a curse.
P. 35. ll. 627-641, CHORUS. Alas, the Love, &c.]--A highly
characteristic Euripidean poem, keenly observant of fact, yet with a
lyrical note penetrating all its realism. A love which really produces
"good to man and glory," is treated in the next chorus, l. 844 ff., p.
49.
Pp. 37 ff., ll. 663-759, AEGEUS.]--This scene is generally considered
to be a mere blot on the play, not, I think, justly. It is argued that
the obvious purpose which the scene serves, the provision of an asylum
for Medea, has no keen dramatic interest. The spectator would just as
soon, or sooner, have her die. And, besides, her actual mode of escape
is largely independent of Aegeus. Further, the arrival of Aegeus at this
moment seems to be a mere coincidence (_Ar. Poetics_, 61 b, 23), and one
cannot help suspecting that the Athenian poet was influenced by mere
local interests in dragging in the Athenian king and the praises of
Athens where they were not specially appropriate.
To these criticisms one may make some answer. (1) As to the coincidence,
it is important to remember always that Greek tragedies are primarily
historical plays, not works of fiction. They are based on definite
_Logoi_ or traditions (_Frogs_, l. 1052. p. 254) and therefore can, and
should, represent accidental coincidences when it was a datum of the
tradition that these coincidences actually happened. By Aristotle's time
the practice had changed. The tragedies of his age were essentially
fiction; and he tends to criticise the ancient tragedies by fictional
standards.
Now it was certainly a datum in the Medea legend that she took refuge
with Aegeus, King of Athens, and was afterwards an enemy to his son
Theseus; but I think we may go further. This play pretty certainly has
for its foundation the rites performed by the Corinthians at the Grave
of the Children of Medea in the precinct of Hera Acraia near Corinth.
See on l. 1379. p. 77. The legend in such cases is usually invented to
explain the ritual; and I suspect that in the ritual, and,
consequently, in the legend, there were two other data: first, a pursuit
of Medea and her flight on a dragon-chariot, and, secondly, a meeting
between Medea and Aegeus. (Both subjects are frequent on vase paintings,
and may well be derived from historical pictures in some temple at
Corinth.)
Thus, the meeting with Aegeus is probably not the free invention of
Euripides, but one of the data supplied to him by his subject. But he
has made it serve, as von Arnim was the first to perceive, a remarkable
dramatic purpose. Aegeus was under a curse of childlessness, and his
desolate condition suggests to Medea the ultimate form of her vengeance.
She will make Jason childless. Cf. l. 670, "Children! Ah God, art
childless?" (A childless king in antiquity was a miserable object:
likely to be deposed and dishonoured, and to miss his due worship after
death. See the fragments of Euripides' _Oineus_.)
There is also a further purpose in the scene, of a curious and
characteristic kind. In several plays of Euripides, when a heroine
hesitates on the verge of a crime, the thing that drives her over the
brink is some sudden and violent lowering of her self-respect. Thus
Phaedra writes her false letter immediately after her public shame.
Creusa in the _Ion_ turns murderous only after crying in the god's ears
the story of her seduction. Medea, a princess and, as we have seen, a
woman of rather proud chastity, feels, after the offer which she makes
to Aegeus in this scene (l. 716 ff., p. 42). that she need shrink from
nothing.
P. 38, l. 681, The hearth-stone of my sires of yore.]--This sounds
as if it meant Aegeus' own house: in reality, by an oracular riddle, it
meant the house of Pittheus, by whose daughter, Aethra, Aegeus became
the father of Theseus.
P. 43, l. 731, An oath wherein to trust.]--Observe that Medea is
deceiving Aegeus. She intends to commit a murder before going to him,
and therefore wishes to bind him down so firmly that, however much he
wish to repudiate her, he shall be unable. Hence this insistence on the
oath and the exact form of the oath. (At this time, apparently, she
scarcely thinks of the children, only of her revenge.)
P. 46, l. 808, No eastern dreamer, &c.]--See on l. 304.
P. 47. l. 820, _The_ NURSE _comes out_.]--There is no indication in the
original to show who comes out. But it is certainly a woman; as
certainly it is not one of the Chorus; and Medea's words suit the Nurse
well. It is an almost devilish act to send the Nurse, who would have
died rather than take such a message had she understood it.
P. 48, ll. 824--846, The sons of Erechtheus, &c.]--This poem is
interesting as showing the ideal conception of Athens entertained by a
fifth century Athenian. One might compare with it Pericles' famous
speech in Thucydides, ii., where the emphasis is laid on Athenian "plain
living and high thinking" and the freedom of daily life. Or, again, the
speeches of Aethra in Euripides' _Suppliant Women_, where more stress is
laid on mercy and championship of the oppressed.
The allegory of "Harmony," as a sort of Kore, or Earth-maiden, planted
by all the Muses in the soil of Attica, seems to be an invention of the
poet. Not any given Art or Muse, but a spirit which unites and
harmonises all, is the special spirit of Athens. The Attic connection
with Eros, on the other hand, is old and traditional. But Euripides has
transformed the primitive nature-god into a mystic and passionate
longing for "all manner of high deed," a Love which, different from that
described in the preceding chorus, really ennobles human life.
This first part of the Chorus is, of course, suggested by Aegeus; the
second is more closely connected with the action of the play. "How can
Medea dream of asking that stainless land to shelter her crimes? But the
whole plan of her revenge is not only wicked but impossible. She simply
could not do such a thing, if she tried."
Pp. 50 ff., l. 869, The second scene with Jason.]--Dicaearchus, and
perhaps his master Aristotle also, seems to have complained of Medea's
bursting into tears in this scene, instead of acting her part
consistently--a very prejudiced criticism. What strikes one about
Medea's assumed role is that in it she remains so like herself and so
unlike another woman. Had she really determined to yield to Jason, she
would have done so in just this way, keen-sighted and yet passionate.
One is reminded of the deceits of half-insane persons, which are due not
so much to conscious art as to the emergence of another side of the
personality.
P. 54, l. 949, Fine robings, &c.]--Repeated from l. 786, p. 46, where it
came full in the midst of Medea's avowal of her murderous purpose. It
startles one here, almost as though she had spoken out the word "murder"
in some way which Jason could not understand.
P. 56, l. 976, CHORUS.]--The inaction of the Chorus women during the
last scene will not bear thinking about, if we regard them as real human
beings, like, for instance, the Bacchae and the Trojan Women in the plays
that bear their name. Still there is not only beauty, but, I think,
great dramatic value in the conventional and almost mystical quality of
this Chorus, and also in the low and quiet tone of that which follows,
l. 1081 ff.
P. 59, ll. 1021 ff., Why does Medea kill her children?]--She acts not
for one clearly stated reason, like a heroine in Sardou, but for many