and to reinstate it as the central genre against the moral objections of Plato, who
hadexcluded all poetry but encomia of famous men and hymns to the gods from
his ideal republic.
Euripides (c. 485–406)
The earliest surviving play by Euripides, the latest of the three tragedians, is his Medea
of 431. The nurse acting as prologue recalls how Medea out of love for Jason had
helped him gain the Golden Fleece and had been involved in the murder of his uncle
Pelias, as a result of which they had fled with their children to settle in Corinth. But
Jason has betrayed Medea for a marriage to Glauce, daughter of Creon the king of
Corinth. Medea bitterly records the solemn oaths given to her by Jason. Euripides
then has her speak of her plight in such a way as to show great sympathy with the
actual social position of women in the Greek society of his times, and the power-
lessness of foreign women in particular:
Surely of all creatures that have life and will, we women
Are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum,
We have bought a husband, we must then accept him as
Possessor of our body. This is to aggravate
Wrong with worse wrong. Then the great question: will the man
Weget be bad or good? For women, divorce is not
Respectable; to repel the man, not possible.... If a man grows tired
Ofthe company at home, he can go out, and find
A cure for tediousness. We wives are forced to look
To one man only.
(ll. 230–51)
In Aristophanes’ comedy The Poet and the Women, Euripides is tried by a court of
women on the charge of misogyny; like other comic shafts against him, this barb has
stuck. But a true misogynist would not have represented Medea sympathetically as
Euripides does at the beginning of the play. The chorus of Corinthian women agree
that her desire for revenge upon Jason is just. Creon then enters and orders Medea
to take her sons into exile; in spite of his fear of her, he grants her request that sentence
be delayed for a day. In a remarkable ode, the chorus see a great reversal of roles: it
is men who break oaths; women’s reputation for faithlessness will be ended. If Apollo
had granted his gifts to women, they would counter the misogyny of men, for time
records good and bad of men and women alike (ll. 410–430).
LITERATURE 159