Medea, the women, and Creon

Medea comes out and faces the Chorus. The opening speech is one of the famous pieces of rhetoric in the Greek corpus. She lists the conditions of a woman's life: the dowry that buys a master, the new house, the new laws, the husband free to walk out the door while the wife waits chained to a single soul. She is making an argument, not asking for sympathy. Then she turns to her own situation. She has none of what the women of Corinth have — no city, no father's house, no kin within reach. She asks one thing: if she finds a way to make Jason pay, do not betray her. The Chorus swear they will not.

Creon arrives with armed attendants. He is direct. He has come to see Medea and her sons leave Corinth today. He tells her why: he is afraid of her, afraid of what she might do to his daughter, afraid of her reputation. Medea, on her knees, pleads. She is no threat to a king — she is a powerless woman with two children. She asks not for the order to be revoked but for one extra day, to gather provisions. Creon grants the day knowing as he grants it that he should not. He says so as he leaves.

Alone with the Chorus, Medea drops the supplication. She has the day she needed. She runs through the options. Sword by night — she will be caught at the door. Fire — too obvious. The path she chooses is poison: a sealed gift, sent in someone else's hand, so the woman who opens it will die without seeing who sent it. She has no escape route yet — a problem she names but cannot solve. The Chorus close with a song about anger between former lovers. There is no worse hatred, they say, in the world.