Medea of Euripides
My claws have gripped thine heart, and all things shine.
JASON.
Thou too hast grief. Thy pain is fierce as mine.
MEDEA.
I love the pain, so thou shalt laugh no more.
JASON.
Oh, what a womb of sin my children bore!
MEDEA.
Sons, did ye perish for your father's shame?
JASON.
How? It was not my hand that murdered them.
MEDEA.
'Twas thy false wooings, 'twas thy trampling pride.
JASON.
Thou hast said it! For thy lust of love they died.
MEDEA.
And love to women a slight thing should be?
JASON.
To women pure!--All thy vile life to thee!
MEDEA.
Think of thy torment. They are dead, they are dead!
JASON.
No: quick, great God; quick curses round thy head!
MEDEA.
The Gods know who began this work of woe.
JASON.
Thy heart and all its loathliness they know.
MEDEA.
Loathe on. . . . But, Oh, thy voice. It hurts me sore.
JASON.
Aye, and thine me. Wouldst hear me then no more?
MEDEA.
How? Show me but the way. 'Tis this I crave.
JASON.
Give me the dead to weep, and make their grave.
MEDEA.
Never! Myself will lay them in a still
Green sepulchre, where Hera by the Hill
Hath precinct holy, that no angry men
May break their graves and cast them forth again
To evil. So I lay on all this shore
Of Corinth a high feast for evermore
And rite, to purge them yearly of the stain
Of this poor blood. And I, to Pallas' plain
I go, to dwell beside Pandion's son,
Aegeus.--For thee, behold, death draweth on,
Evil and lonely, like thine heart: the hands
Of thine old Argo, rotting where she stands,
Shall smite thine head in twain, and bitter be
To the last end thy memories of me.
[_She rises on the chariot and is slowly borne away._
JASON.
May They that hear the weeping child
Blast thee, and They that walk in blood!
MEDEA.
Thy broken vows, thy friends beguiled
Have shut for thee the ears of God.
JASON.
Go, thou art wet with children's tears!
MEDEA.
Go thou, and lay thy bride to sleep.
JASON.
Childless, I go, to weep and weep.
MEDEA.
Not yet! Age cometh and long years.
JASON.
My sons, mine own!
MEDEA.
Not thine, but mine . . .
JASON.
. . . Who slew them!
MEDEA.
Yes: to torture thee.
JASON.
Once let me kiss their lips, once twine
Mine arms and touch. . . . Ah, woe is me!
MEDEA.
Wouldst love them and entreat? But now
They were as nothing.
JASON.
At the last,
O God, to touch that tender brow!
MEDEA.
Thy words upon the wind are cast.
JASON.
Thou, Zeus, wilt hear me. All is said
For naught. I am but spurned away
And trampled by this tigress, red
With children's blood. Yet, come what may,
So far as thou hast granted, yea,
So far as yet my strength may stand,
I weep upon these dead, and say
Their last farewell, and raise my hand
To all the daemons of the air
In witness of these things; how she
Who slew them, will not suffer me
To gather up my babes, nor bear
To earth their bodies; whom, O stone
Of women, would I ne'er had known
Nor gotten, to be slain by thee!
[_He casts himself upon the earth._
CHORUS.
Great treasure halls hath Zeus in heaven,
From whence to man strange dooms be given,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not,
And a path is there where no man thought:
So hath it fallen here.
NOTES TO MEDEA
P. 3, l. 2, To Colchis through the blue Symplegades.]--The Symplegades
("Clashing") or Kuaneai ("Dark blue") were two rocks in the sea which
used to clash together and crush anything that was between them. They
stood above the north end of the Bosphorus and formed the Gate (l. 1264,
p. 70) to the Axeinos Pontos, or "Stranger-less Sea," where all Greeks
were murdered. At the farthest eastern end of that sea was the land of
Colchis.
P. 3, l. 3, Pelion.]--The great mountain in Thessaly. Iolcos, a little
kingdom between Pelion and the sea, ruled originally by Aeson, Jason's
father, then by the usurping Pelias.
P. 3, l. 9, Daughters of Pelias.]--See Introduction, p. vii.
P. 4, l. 18, Wed.]--Medea was not legally married to Jason, and could
not be, though in common parlance he is sometimes called her husband.
Intermarriage between the subjects of two separate states was not
possible in antiquity without a special treaty. And naturally there was
no such treaty with Colchis.
This is, I think, the view of the play, and corresponds to the normal
Athenian conceptions of society. In the original legend it is likely
enough that Medea belongs to "matriarchal" times before the institution
of marriage.
P. 4, l. 18, Head of Corinth.]--A peculiar word ([Greek: aisumnan])
afterwards used to translate the Roman _dictator_. Creon is, however,
apparently descended from the ancient king Sisyphus.
P. 4, l. 40, She hath a blade made keen, &c.]--These lines (40, 41) are
repeated in a different context later on, p. 23, ll. 379, 380. The sword
which to the Nurse suggested suicide was really meant for murder. There
is a similar and equally dramatic repetition of the lines about the
crown and wreath (786, 949, pp. 46, 54), and of those about the various
characters popularly attributed to Medea (ll. 304, 808, pp. 18, 46).
P. 5, l. 48, ATTENDANT.]--Greek _Paidagogos_, or "pedagogue"; a
confidential servant who escorted the boys to and from school, and in
similar ways looked after them. Notice the rather light and cynical
character of this man, compared with the tenderness of the Nurse.
P. 5, l. 57, To this still earth and sky.]--Not a mere stage
explanation. It was the ancient practice, if you had bad dreams or
terrors of the night, to "show" them to the Sun in the morning, that he
might clear them away.
P. 8, l. 111, Have I not suffered?]--Medea is apparently answering some
would-be comforter. Cf. p. 4. ("If friends will speak," &c.)
P. 9, l. 131, CHORUS.]--As Dr. Verrall has remarked, the presence of the
Chorus is in this play unusually awkward from the dramatic point of
view. Medea's plot demands most absolute secrecy; and it is incredible
that fifteen Corinthian women, simply because they were women, should
allow a half-mad foreigner to murder several people, including their
own Corinthian king and princess--who was a woman also--rather than
reveal her plot. We must remember in palliation (1) that these women
belong to the faction in Corinth which was friendly to Medea and hostile
to Creon; (2) that the appeal to them as women had more force in
antiquity than it would now, and the princess had really turned traitor
to her sex. (See note on this subject at the end of the present writer's
translation of the _Electra_.) (3) The non-interference of the Chorus
seems monstrous: yet in ancient times, when law was weak and punishment
was chiefly the concern of the injured persons, and of no one else, the
reluctance of bystanders to interfere was much greater than it is now in
an ordered society. Some oriental countries, and perhaps even California
or Texas, could afford us some startling instances of impassiveness
among bystanders.
P. 12, l. 167, Oh, wild words!]--The Nurse breaks in, hoping to drown
her mistress's dangerous self-betrayal. Medea's murder of her brother
(see Introduction, p. vi) was by ordinary standards her worst act, and
seems not to have been known in Corinth. It forms the climax of Jason's
denunciation, l. 1334, p. 74.
P. 13, l. 190, Alas, the brave blithe bards, &c.]--Who is the speaker?
According to the MSS. the Nurse, and there is some difficulty in taking
the lines from her. Yet (1) she has no reason to sing a song outside
after saying that she is going in; and (2) it is quite necessary that
she should take a little time indoors persuading Medea to come out. The
words seem to suit the lips of an impersonal Chorus.
The general sense of the poem is interesting. It is an apology for
tragedy. It gives the tragic poet's conception of the place of his art
in the service of humanity, as against the usual feeling of the public,
whose serious work is devoted to something else, and who "go to a play
to be amused."
P. 14, l. 214, Women of Corinth, I am come, &c.]--These opening lines
are a well-known _crux interpretum_. It is interesting to note, (1) that
the Roman poet Ennius (ca. 200 B.C.) who translated the _Medea_, did not
understand them in the least; while, on the other hand, the earliest
Greek commentators seem not to have noticed that there was any
difficulty in them worth commenting upon. That implies that while the
acting tradition was alive and unbroken, the lines were easily
understood; but when once the tradition failed, the meaning was lost.
(The first commentator who deals with the passage is Irenaeus, a scholar
of the Augustan time.)
P. 15, l. 231, A herb most bruised is woman.]--This fine statement of
the wrongs of women in Athens doubtless contains a great deal of the
poet's own mind; but from the dramatic point of view it is justified in
several ways. (1) Medea is seeking for a common ground on which to
appeal to the Corinthian women. (2) She herself is now in the position
of all others in which a woman is most hardly treated as compared with a
man. (3) Besides this, one can see that, being a person of great powers
and vehement will, she feels keenly her lack of outlet. If she had men's
work to do, she could be a hero: debarred from proper action (from
[Greek: to prassein], _Hip._ 1019) she is bound to make mischief. Cf. p.
24, ll. 408, 409. "Things most vain, &c."
There is a slight anachronism in applying the Attic system of doweries
to primitive times. Medea's contemporaries either lived in a
"matriarchal" system without any marriage, or else were bought by their
husbands for so many cows.
P. 17, l. 271, CREON.]--Observe the somewhat archaic abruptness of this
scene, a sign of the early date of the play.
P. 18, l. 295, Wise beyond men's wont.]--Medea was a "wise woman" which
in her time meant much the same as a witch or enchantress. She did
really know more than other women; but most of this extra knowledge
consisted--or was supposed to consist--either in lore of poisons and
charms, or in useless learning and speculation.
P. 18, l. 304, A seed of strife, an Eastern dreamer, &c.]--The meaning
of these various "ill names" is not certain. Cf. l. 808, p. 46. Most
scholars take [Greek: thaterou tropou] ("of the other sort") to mean
"the opposite of a dreamer."
P. 20, ll. 333-4, What would I with thy pains?]--A conceit almost in the
Elizabethan style, as if by taking "pains" away from Creon, she would
have them herself.
P. 20, l. 335, Not that! Not that!]--Observe what a dislike Medea has of
being touched: cf. l. 370 ("my flesh been never stained," &c.) and l.
496 ("poor, poor right hand of mine!"), pp. 22, and 28.
P. 22, l. 364, Defeat on every side.]--Observe (1) that in this speech
Medea's vengeance is to take the form of a clear fight to the death