MedeaEuripides
About Medea
Euripides' , first performed in 431 BC, opens in Corinth after the Argonautic quest. Jason has cast off Medea, the foreign wife who secured the Golden Fleece for him, in order to marry Glauce, daughter of King Creon. Creon orders Medea and her children into exile. She wins one day's delay.
That day is enough. Medea secures refuge in Athens from the childless Aegeus. She feigns reconciliation with Jason and sends the children to Glauce with a poisoned robe and crown. Bride and father die in agony. Medea then kills her own two sons so that Jason will have no line left, and escapes in a chariot sent by her grandfather Helios, the children's bodies with her. Jason is left with nothing.
The play forces the tradition to face a revenge that is fully conscious. Medea is neither mad nor deceived. She weighs the cost, names her reasons (betrayal, the laughter of enemies, the safety of her children once she has made the city her enemy), and acts. Later treatments of family, punishment, and the claims of the wronged spouse answer Euripides even when they refuse his ending.