Claudia Echevarria
Written by Euripides in 431 BCE, the Hellenic Age of Greece, Medea is a play that shocks by addressing cutting edge issues in a time when outsiders and women were considered inferior to men. Euripides was an innovator, anti-traditional immoralist, and stage sophist. Today, we admire Euripides’ plays for their originality and innovation.
According to Aristotle, kalos, which means fine or beautiful in Greek, usually applies to aesthetic beauty but can also have the narrower meaning of “judging finely.” Doing something finely is connected with doing it
correctly, which leads to ethics. Medea, the contentious play by Euripides, is saturated with ethical and unanswerable questions, such as “What is love?” and “Is murder ever justifiable?” Such questions are brought forth by the actions and the debatable integrity of Jason and Medea, two characters who are agonistic and antagonistic and who do not conform to traditional morals.
Medea, Princess of Colchis, was an outsider and a woman who got what she wanted. After falling in love with the hero Jason, who had traveled to Colchis to attain the Golden Fleece, Medea decides to help him. Her father, the King of Colchis and owner of the Golden Fleece, becomes angry at the thought of his daughter helping Jason. Medea agrees to help Jason escape only if he takes her with him, and in order to escape, Medea chops her brother into pieces and throws him into the sea. Her father is delayed, having to stop to pick up the pieces of his son, and Jason and Medea get away, eventually settling in Corinth. These acts show the extremes Medea goes to for Jason’s love. From the beginning, the violation of ethical behavior is evident.
Euripides starts Medea several years after these events and Medea and Jason have children. Medea is in turmoil and her pain is so great that she wishes to die over Jason’s marriage to Creon’s daughter, the Princess of Corinth. Jason tries to convince Medea that he has married the princess for her and for the children’s sake; by marrying royalty, he will someday become king and Medea and the children will want nothing. However, in truth, he treats Medea as if she were not equal to the women of Corinth. Jason is selfish, self-serving, and lacks honor. If Jason thought of Medea as an unworthy woman, he should not have agreed to take her out of Colchis, but she was a pawn.
Jason was hailed as a great warrior and hero in Greece, and so King Creon did not hesitate to give his young daughter’s hand in marriage to Jason, even though Jason had lived with Medea for many years and had children with her. This is a point to ponder: had Jason been wooing the King and his daughter all of those years? If so, he was a conniving and deceitful man, obviously lacking in moral beauty. Both Jason and King Creon treated Medea as a worthless piece of property, which exceedingly angered her. She was further infuriated when Creon exiled her and her children from Corinth. Both men, however, underestimated Medea.
When Creon confronted Medea about her immediate exile from Corinth, she was able to persuade him to extend her stay until the end of that day, which gave her time to plan for revenge. Medea used her children to delivera golden robe and crown to Creon’s daughter as a token of peace. Upon wearing the beautiful garment and accessory, the princess was set on fire and died a slow, excruciating death. As Creon held his dead daughter in his arms, he too was set on fire and suffered the same agonizing death. Using her innocent children as messengers of death evidently demonstrates Medea’s lack of morality.
Medea’s eloquent soliloquy when pondering the death of her children by her own hand is heartrending. She is divided by her motherly love, remorse for having such wicked thoughts, and her hatred toward Jason. Medea struggles with her moral dilemma and brilliantly justifies children dying by their mother’s hand: she believes this is better than having them tortured and killed by her enemies, so she commits infanticide. Here, she demonstrates superior mental and emotional cunning; however, she lacks compassion and is destructive. Murdering her children is an ultimate self- serving act to satisfy her wounded ego.
On the surface, Medea is a critique of relationships between men and women, Greeks and barbarians, and a contest between self-interest and love. On a deeper level, it is a critique of the quality and condition of one’s culture. Euripides’ dramatic significance is in the the gap between altruism and greed, which Medea and Jason represent. Even today, the same collapse exists. Euripides’ Medea reflects how individual desire, when unchecked by the ideals of a culture, brings about destruction.