In the ensuing confrontation between husband and wife the egotistical Jason
cuts a sorry figure. If only she had accepted things and kept quiet, she need not have
been banished. To Medea’s recriminations, he recognizes that he needs all his powers
of speech. Euripides has been criticized for making his characters indulge in clever
talking or sophistry. He certainly has a particular fondness for the cut and thrust of
line-by-line debate, stichomythia (which is present in all the dramatists). If Jason talks
like a sophist here, then his sophistry has dramatic point. He says that she did what
she did for him through eros, though he recognizes a debt. Nevertheless, he, the oath-
breaker, claims in bringing her, a foreigner, to Greece to have given her the benefits
of Greek life under the rule of law, where she is now famous. Moreover, the marriage
will bring prosperity and security not just for him but for her children. The chorus
admire his prowess with words but tell him to his face that he was wrong to betray
his wife. Given his character in Euripides, Jason’s ultimate misogyny and xenophobia
(ll. 1323–1350) can scarcely be imagined to be the main burden of the play’s meaning.
Having gained asylum from the visiting Athenian Aegeus, who also deplores
Jason’s conduct, she reveals her terrible plan for revenge. She will send her children
toGlauce with a gift of a poisonous dress in which she will expire in agony. Then she
will kill her sons. She prefers guilt to the mockery of her enemies (l. 797). The chorus
try to dissuade her and, in a famous ode in praise of Athens, ask how the city of wisdom
and beauty can give asylum to one who has murdered her children (ll. 824–850).
The climax of the play is a long monologue in which Medea wavers over her
intention to kill her children (ll. 1020–1080): ‘Oh, what am I to do?’ – in Aeschylus,
Orestes had asked the same question of Pylades, who had invoked the command of
Apollo. Here, although Medea is in the presence of the chorus, she is really addressing
herself, her own thymos, her own heart or spirit, and there is no interplay between the
human and the divine. The action of the play is entirely determined by the human
agents. In a long self-analysis which reflects the agony of her divided soul and the
various emotional shifts that have brought her to this pass, her maternal feelings
struggle against her desire for revenge against Jason (in particular her desire not to
be a laughing stock). Although she recognizes that her sons will be doomed anyway
as they will be killed for their part in the murder of Glauce, she is fully conscious of
the wickedness of her action:
I learn what evils I am about to do
But passion (thymos) overmasters sober thought
And this is the course of direst ills to human beings
(ll. 1078–1080)We may compare here the words of Phaedra as she contemplates the love that she
feels for her stepson Hippolytus:
160 THE GREEKS