Medea a guided tour

431 BCE · Greek tragedy

A foreign woman, betrayed by the husband she gave up everything for, takes a single day to destroy him completely. Medea is the most clear-eyed play in the surviving Greek corpus about what an injured intelligence can become when given nothing else to do.

The book in brief

Medea is the play in which Jason — the hero of the Argonauts, the man who got the Golden Fleece — abandons his wife Medea for a younger princess from Corinth. Medea is a foreigner. She left her own country, betrayed her father, and killed her own brother to help Jason on his quest, and Jason has now decided his future lies with a Greek bride and a royal connection.

The play is the day Medea takes her revenge. Over seven scenes she persuades the king of Corinth to grant her one extra day in the city, secures sanctuary in Athens from a passing king named Aegeus, sends a poisoned robe and crown to Jason's new bride that kills both her and her father, and then murders her own two sons to make Jason childless. She escapes at the end in a chariot drawn by dragons, sent by her grandfather the Sun. Euripides wrote the play for the City Dionysia of 431 BCE — the year the Peloponnesian War began. It came third out of three. The audience seems to have found it shocking. Aristotle disliked it. So did Horace. They did not stop it from being read. Seneca, Corneille, Cherubini, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison have all rewritten it. It has not stopped being staged for two and a half thousand years.

Medea, chapter by chapter

Click through the 7 chapters like a tour. Each card picks up where the last left off — a quick way to read Medea in five minutes. Open any book in depth, or jump straight into the reader.

Scene 1 of 7

Scene 1

The Nurse alone

The Nurse comes out alone, paces, and tells the audience the whole story so far. The Argo, the Golden Fleece, the murder of Pelias, the flight to Corinth, the children, and now Jason's new marriage to the king's daughter. Medea is inside, refusing food, refusing speech. The Attendant brings the children home from play and shares the rumour he overheard at the fountain: Creon is going to expel Medea today. The two slaves agree to keep this from her. From inside the house Medea's voice cries out, cursing the children. The Nurse hurries them inside. Her last lines are a warning: this is a fierce spirit. Few people who rouse her hatred walk away unhurt.

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Scene 2

The Chorus arrives

The Chorus of Corinthian women enters. They have heard Medea screaming from inside and have come to find out what is wrong. The Nurse tells them. From within the house Medea's voice rises again — calling on Zeus, on Earth, on the Light, on the gods who witness oaths, asking for the fire to take her brain. The Chorus answers gently. They beg her not to call death; the sin is on Jason's head. They ask the Nurse to bring her out into the daylight, where words might reach her. The Nurse goes inside to fetch her. The Chorus close the scene with a song about the silence of the old poets on women's grief.

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Scene 3

The day from Creon

Medea comes out and addresses the Chorus — the famous speech on the conditions of a woman's life in Greece, worse for a foreign woman with no kin. The Chorus swear to keep her secrets. Creon arrives to expel her. He is plain about why: he knows what she is, he is afraid for his daughter, he will not have her near. Medea pleads for one more day, on her knees, framed as concern for her sons. He grants it. He says, as he grants it, that he knows he is being foolish. He leaves. Alone, Medea drops the act. The day is what she needed. She has chosen poison.

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Scene 4

Jason and Aegeus

Jason arrives. He offers money and letters of introduction for the exile. Medea unleashes the full account of what she gave up for him — the father, the brother, the murder of Pelias — and rejects every line of his defence. He leaves, having offered nothing she will take. Then Aegeus, king of Athens, walks past on his way home from Delphi, where he has been asking the oracle about his childlessness. He stops to greet her. She tells him her situation. She offers him knowledge that will help him conceive; he swears, with an oath she dictates, to give her sanctuary in Athens. He leaves. The plan is now possible.

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Scene 5

The plan named

Aegeus has left. Medea, alone with the Chorus, lays the plan out. She will send for Jason and pretend to have come around. She will ask him to plead with the bride to let the children stay. The children will carry the gifts — a fine robe and a golden crown, both poisoned. The bride will die wearing them; anyone who touches her will die too. Then she will kill her own two sons, to leave Jason with no future. The Chorus argue against the killing of the children. She refuses to listen. She sends the Nurse to fetch Jason. The Chorus sing of Athens, then turn back to her in horror.

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Scene 6

The gifts and the children

Jason returns. Medea performs repentance — she asks his forgiveness, calls the children out to embrace him, says she has come to her senses. He believes her. She asks him to plead with the bride to let the children stay; he agrees. She produces the gifts and presses him to take them. He hesitates, then accepts. He leaves with the boys for the palace. The Chorus sing for the bride, already wearing the death she does not see. The Attendant returns with good news. Medea breaks. Then comes the long speech alone with the boys — the killing worked through as a deliberation, in front of the audience.

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Scene 7

The messenger and the chariot

A messenger runs from the palace. The bride dressed in the gifts; the crown melted into her flesh and the robe burned her alive; her father, embracing her, was caught in the folds and died with her. Medea hears the report with calm pleasure. She goes inside to the children. The Chorus call on the Sun and the Earth to stop her. The boys' voices come through the barred door — she has a sword. Jason arrives, hoping to save them; the Leader tells him they are already dead. Medea appears above the house on a chariot drawn by dragons, with the bodies. He begs for them. She refuses. The chariot moves.

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Key themes

5 threads that hold the book together. Full analysis →

Betrayal and revenge

The play opens after the betrayal has already happened. What it stages is what one woman, in possession of the full picture, decides to do with the day she has left.

The foreign woman

Medea is from Colchis, at the eastern edge of the world. She is in Corinth because she helped a Greek man. The play is honest about what that costs her, and about how the Greeks around her see her.

The cost of cunning

Medea is the cleverest person in the play. The play is about what happens to a woman whose cleverness has had only one outlet — and what she does when that outlet is closed.

Motherhood and infanticide

Medea kills her own two sons to make Jason childless. Euripides does not look away from it. He stages the decision as a deliberation, with the counter-argument given equal weight to the argument.

The chorus that fails

The Chorus of Medea is sympathetic to her from the moment she comes out. They keep her secrets. They beg her to stop. They cannot stop her. By the end they have stopped trying.

Key figures

The 6 who matter most. More in the full character guide.

Medea

The wife from Colchis

A foreigner, a princess of Colchis at the eastern edge of the world, granddaughter of the Sun. She betrayed her father and killed her brother to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece. She is the cleverest person in the play and the most dangerous, precisely because Jason has given her nothing left to lose. Every man who underestimates her does so to his ruin.

Jason

The Argonaut, in middle age

The leader of the Argonauts, the man who won the Golden Fleece, now in his forties and making the sensible match with Glauce, daughter of Creon king of Corinth. He believes the new marriage benefits everyone, including Medea and the children. The play shows him discovering, scene by scene, that the woman he married is still in the room and still listening.

The Nurse

Medea's old slave

An old slave who has been with Medea since Colchis. She delivers the prologue — pacing outside the house, lamenting that the Argo ever sailed, terrified of what her mistress might do. She loves Medea and is afraid of her in equal measure. The play's opening is the audience's first warning: this woman, who knows Medea best, is praying that something will stop her.

Creon

King of Corinth

Father of Jason's new bride, Glauce. He arrives early in the play to banish Medea from Corinth. He is plain about why: he knows she is dangerous, he knows what she is capable of, and he will not have her near his daughter. Medea persuades him to grant her a single additional day. He grants it knowing he should not. He dies that night, in agony, holding the burning body of his daughter.

Aegeus

King of Athens

He appears at the structural centre of the play — a childless king passing through Corinth on his way home from consulting an oracle about his lack of heirs. Medea offers him knowledge that will help him conceive. He offers her sanctuary in Athens in return. He swears the oath in good faith and leaves with no idea what he has just enabled. After he goes, the plan begins.

The Chorus

Women of Corinth

A group of Corinthian women who sympathise with Medea on hearing her opening speech and promise to keep her secrets. They are the conscience of the play. They know what she is planning. They argue against the killing of the children when she begins to talk about it. They cannot stop her. Their final words are a prayer to Zeus that the audience knows will not be answered.

Go deeper

In 5 minutes — or in depth

Chapter-by-chapter

All 7 chapters summarized. The full plot in detail, told fast or told slow.

Analysis

Themes & meaning

Betrayal, the foreign woman, intelligence as weapon, motherhood undone, the chorus that fails.

Who's who

Eight figures around one house

Medea, Jason, the men she manipulates, the children she will kill, the women who watch.

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