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... enter. Medea, a woman who honors the ways upheld by the old, now 'foreign' gods, represents forces that the Athenians were increasingly overlooking. Jason's suffering at her hands displays some of the consequences of a self-assured civilization's blindness to the power of its repressed values.
While the cultural resonance of Medea's characters will be explored more in the succeeding commentary, it should simply be recognized here that Jason's perspective bears more than a personal prejudice; his limits belong to his place and time as well. Lines 660 - 868 Summary Aegeus, King of Athens, greets Medea as an old friend and recounts the story of his visit to the Oracle at Delphi. Seeking a cure for his sterility, Aegeus was given advice in the form of a riddle by the Oracle, who told him 'not to unstop the wineskin's neck' (line 679). Aegeus is passing through Corinth on his way to seeing the King of Troezen, Pittheus, a man famous for his skill in interpreting oracular pronouncements.
Medea relates to Aegeus the circumstances of her banishment from Corinth, to which he responds by expressing his sympathy for her predicament. Pleading with Aegeus for sanctuary in Athens, Medea offers him a gift in exchange -- magical drugs that can restore his fertility. Aegeus seals his promise to offer Medea refuge with an oath before the gods. Alone on stage after Aegeus' departure, Medea screams out the names of the Olympian gods in excitement. The last obstacle to her plans for revenge has been cleared.
Because of Aegeus' promise, Athens now stands as an unconditional sanctuary for her, even in her eventual condition as a polluted murderess. While the nurse listens in secret, Medea discloses the details of her plans. She will begin by pretending to agree with Jason's earlier arguments. Having drawn him into her confidence, she can then ask him to accept their two boys into his new family. The children will be used in a ploy to kill Glauce by bearing her gifts -- a beautiful dress and gold coronet -- which will be poisoned and kill anyone who touches them. Lastly, Medea will take the ultimate step of killing her own sons.
Her revenge against Jason will then be total; the death of his own children along with that of his new bride will be the most severe injury he is capable of suffering, even if it means Medea must hurt herself in the process: 'Yes, I can endure guilt, however horrible; the laughter of my enemies I will not endure' (lines 796 - 797). The chorus, which had been entirely sympathetic with Medea's decisions, now warns her against violating the laws of human existence through her planned infanticide. Offering an ode to the city of Athens, praised for being a kingdom of 'Grace' and 'Knowledge, ' the women of Corinth question the possibility of Medea's acceptance into such a civilized society after committing the unnatural act of murdering her children. The chorus concludes its speech by expressing disbelief in Medea's ability to gather enough resolution to complete with her intentions.
At the moment of crisis, she will break down and give in to her natural affections as a mother. Commentary The Aegeus scene has been pointed out as an example of Euripides' clumsy handling of plot. He arrives apparently out of nowhere, and his offer of sanctuary to Medea turns around the course of events without any logical justification. Yet, despite its abruptness, Aegeus' appearance does extend some themes of the play in often unacknowledged ways.
Most obviously, the questions surrounding children continue to be highlighted. Aegeus's trinity makes him an easy target for the assaults of Medea's cunning. Children and marriage are a constant source of conflict in Medea. The sympathies they inspire cause characters to sever ties to home and family, form strange new allegiances, and even, as we will see in Creon's case, suffer death willingly. At a more abstract level, the play's symbolic structure depends upon Medea's implication in the foundation of Athens. Athens' reputation for being synonymous with high culture and refined civilization, rehearsed by the chorus in its ode, was well-deserved but obviously only a partial truth.
Unjustified cruelty existed there to the same extent as it did everywhere else. The exploitation of women and slaves, addressed in Medea and other Euripidean dramas, was much more severe in Athens than in many surrounding cultures. An ancient culture's myths, especially those that recounted its origins, served as the primary tool for fostering its self-image. The tales of mythic Athenian kings such as Aegeus, who established rule under the approving eyes of the Olympian gods, became arguments justifying the privileged status of Athenian customs and institutions. The presence of Medea, then, a barbarian sorceress and infamous murderess, at the beginnings of Athenian civilization challenge this simplistic picture of its origins and influence; despite Athens' pretensions towards enlightened greatness, it had already wed itself to primal, unrestrained powers at its very mythical roots.
Freedom and refinement are not the whole story of the culture; a background of murderous intrigue underlies it and testifies to the persistence of injustice into Classical times. The Aegeus scene, while slightly contrived, adds this crucial thematic depth to the play. Medea's speech after Aegeus' departure, her most self-confident to this point, rings with an oddly heroic tone. Her exuberance previews the complete transformation from despair to poise she will have undergone by play's end. From the beginning of the tragedy, she claims to be acting without respect to human norms, a judgment with which the chorus does not entirely corroborate until she clearly expresses a wish to kill her children at this stage.
At times she attempts to justify their deaths through pragmatic arguments: Creon's family will kill them regardless, better that she accomplish the deed herself than watch them suffer at another's hands. Echoed in later moments, her statement in this speech that she would prefer enduring punishment than humiliation (lines 796 - 797) seems a more convincing account of her decision. The heroes of ancient Greece often display unswerving convictions to principles that do not conform to common sense, but the extremity of Medea's response to her betrayal forces a recognition of the ambivalence inspired by heroic temperaments; their willingness to let their pride run unrestrained makes them admirable and offensive at once. Lines 869 - 1001 Summary When Jason returns at the nurse's request, Medea begins to carry out her ruse. Expressing regret over her previous overreaction to Jason's decision to divorce and remarry, Medea goes so far as to break down in tears of remorse. Announcing a full reconciliation with her husband, she concedes each of the arguments that Jason made in their last discussion and releases the two boys into his embrace.
Fully aware of Medea's expressed intentions, the chorus nevertheless hopes that she has actually changed her mind and decided to curb her desire for revenge. Pleased with how events are now panning out, Jason re imagines his future destiny: after growing into young warriors under the watchful eye of the gods, his children from both marriages will come together and make him a proud father by campaigning against his enemies. Medea once again breaks down into tears. When Jason inquires into the source of her weeping, she first responds by saying that tears come instinctively to women, then elaborates by saying that she remains upset about being forced to leave. The defensiveness and lack of force behind her statements hint that she may now feel a degree of ambivalence surrounding her planned course of action. Determined, however, she asks Jason that he appeal to Creon to allow their children to stay in Corinth.
When Jason indicates uncertainty over being able to convince the King, Medea tells him to ask his wife, Creon's daughter, to make the plea for him. Medea then offers to bring Glauce the coronet and dress as gifts in exchange for her help. She emphasizes that the gifts must be delivered directly into her hands. The chorus laments the now-assured doom of Medea's children. They imagine Jason's bride being unable to refuse the attractiveness of Medea's gifts, a perfect enticement for bringing a young and beautiful woman to her unsuspected death. The irony of Jason's position is also acknowledged: confident in his belief that events are unfolding in a manner that will secure the honor of his lineage, Jason is actually serving as an unwitting accomplice in the destruction of everything holding value for him.
Commentary The balance of the play will continually evidence one of the hallmarks of dramatic art: irony of situation. Irony involves a cleft between appearance and reality. It can manifest itself in a play when a character, such as Jason, lacks a knowledge held by the audience or reader, such as Medea's plans to murder her children. Thus, Jason can be fully confident that Medea has changed her earlier convictions, while we understand that she only means to deceive him. The chorus, which stands apart from the action, often comments directly on the irony of a situation, and its speech in this section (lines 977 - 1001) serves to point out the complexity, one of the basic symptoms of irony, behind each character's evolving fate. The art of tragedy, which repeatedly stresses the limits of human knowledge, depends on irony to advance its themes; it produces the gap between what characters know and what they think they know.
Like the great tragedians before him, Euripides displays a complex approach to this stock dramatic device. When Medea erupts into tears at the mention of her children, she could be simply acting her part to elicit more of Jason's sympathy, or she could also be struggling internally with the decision she has made to murder them. In either case, her words to Jason are a front, and the audience or reader must look past them to infer her real motivations. Because Medea exhibits some complexity as a character, the reality behind her many appearances may be uncertain or vary from time to time. Deciphering her real moods and motivations requires interpretation within a broader context; for example, Medea's initial curses against her children would seem to challenge the veracity of her present sympathy for them. At times, however, it seems that by acting out false emotions, Medea reveals to herself true ones she had not previously considered.
Jason's deeply ironic vision of his children's heroic future (lines 908 - 923), instigated by Medea's fake reconciliation with him, actually forces her to realize that she also partly desires a successful future for them, making their deaths (which are being sealed at the present moment) even more distressing to her. While the 'real' or internal drama being enacted on stage manifests a degree of ambiguity at this point, Medea continues to plot the outward course of her revenge without much hesitation. Jason is totally duped into carrying out her will, and the chorus now considers a great deal of suffering and death to be hopelessly inevitable. Lines 1002 - 1116 Summary The tutor returns with news that the children are 'reprieved from banishment' (line 1002) and that Jason's bride has warmly accepted Medea's gifts.
The children no longer have any enemies in the city. Recoiling in horror, Medea admonishes herself, 'How Cruel! How Cruel
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