Page 15 - GALIET INFINITE MEDEA: Euripides IV

rejuvenation after deluding them with a ram-to-lamb herbal dream cauldron spa. Medea then flees to Corinth with Jason. Happy they live for ten years (Apol. I.9-28). Until. Calamity hits. In Euripides’ Medea, bitter, Corinthian Medea13 deliberately incinerates, kills. To hell with Jason’s new Corinthian princess bride14 3⁄4 scorched beneath poisoned robe and golden crown 3⁄4 and “away, away” with her two children’s “tender skin, sweet embrace.”15 M e d e a. She kills them to save them from future misfortune and to avenge Jason’s perfidy and infidelity. M e d e a: Saviour and Avenger 3⁄4 Saint and Sinner. In her earlier mythical tradition, Medea had sought her children’s immortality, and historically, they were cult-revered in Corinth (Eur. Med. 1378-83).16 After her icy crime, once more, Medea flees; this time, triumphant, in Helios’ winged-dragon-drawn chariot seeking asylum with King Aegeus in Athens (Eur. Med. 663-758).
after loosing a sandal while carrying Hera, disguised as old woman, across the Anaurus river, marking him to destroy Pelias. When Pelias sees Jason, he knows his doom. He asks Jason what he would do if he had heard such a gloomy oracle. Jason says he would send the stranger to fetch the golden fleece from the Kingdom of Aeetes in Colchis. When Pelias forces Aeson to commit suicide, wife commits suicide, and Pelias kills their infant.
March, Jenny. Cassell Dictionary of Classical Mythology. UK: Cassell, 1998.
13Creon, King of Corinth, offers Princess Glauce’s hand to Jason. Because Medea is not a
Greek, her marriage to Jason seems not recognized. Similar situation between Virgil’s Dido
and Aeneas: Dido believes she is married, and Aeneas does not. Jason thinks himself free to
take a new wife; Medea does not.
14Medea is the indirect agent of King Creon’s death who clings to his daughter in deadly
embrace.
15Part of Medea’s dramatic soliloquy: “O sweet embrace, O tender skin. Sweet Embrace. Away! Away! I cannot bear to see you. I am misfortune’s victim; ill, I know, ill is what I have to do. My own anger is stronger than my thoughts. Anger the cause of all humanity’s most evil deeds”
16Medea’s Corinthian affiliation is time-lined to the Archaic period. In Eumelus’ Corinthiaca,
Aeetes is first King of Corinth and then of Colchis. The Corinthians later summon Jason
and Medea from Iolcus.
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