Medea

The Choice

In the myth as it existed before Euripides, Medea’s children were killed by the Corinthians in retribution after Medea murdered the princess. Euripides changed this: in his version, Medea herself kills her children, deliberately, as the most complete revenge on Jason possible — taking from him not just what he abandoned but what he will remember for the rest of his life.

This change made the play — and makes it still — one of the most disturbing works in the dramatic canon. Medea is not mad when she acts. She debates herself in a soliloquy that Aristotle found problematic. She makes a choice.

The Soliloquy

The speech before the killing is the first sustained depiction of internal moral conflict in Western literature. Medea is fully aware of what she is about to do and why it is monstrous. She does it anyway. Euripides does not explain this away or resolve it. The play ends with Medea escaping in a divine chariot, and Jason below, destroyed.

What Distinguishes This Book

Among the qualities that set Medea apart: Euripides’s decision to make Medea’s infanticide deliberate rather than accidental makes the play psychologically modern; Medea’s soliloquy before the killing is the first sustained depiction of internal moral conflict in Western literature; and The play’s sympathy for its protagonist — a woman, a foreigner, a social outcast — was radical in its context. These strengths are evident from the first pages and sustain across the whole work.

Themes

The thematic concerns of Medea give it weight beyond its surface narrative. Euripides invented Medea’s deliberate infanticide — in earlier versions it was accidental — creating a protagonist who chooses the absolute over survival. The famous soliloquy in which Medea debates herself is the first depiction of psychological interior conflict in Western drama. Medea is both victim of Jason’s betrayal and perpetrator of an atrocity — Euripides does not resolve this, which is what makes the play endure. These ideas emerge from the texture of the work rather than explicit statement, which is the mark of ambitious fiction done well.

Why It Endures

Medea has remained one of the most performed and adapted of all Greek tragedies for two and a half millennia, and its endurance rests on Euripides’s refusal to resolve the moral problem at its heart. Medea is simultaneously a wronged woman — betrayed and discarded by Jason, a foreigner with no protections in a society that grants her none — and the perpetrator of an act of almost unthinkable horror. Euripides extends genuine sympathy to her plight while never softening or excusing what she does, and that unresolved tension is what makes the play feel startlingly modern. Its central figure was, in her context, triply marginal — a woman, a foreigner, and an outcast — yet Euripides grants her the most powerful voice on the stage and the first sustained depiction of psychological interior conflict in Western drama, in the famous soliloquy where she debates herself before the killing.

The play’s afterlife has been vast: it has drawn the greatest actresses to its title role, inspired Pasolini’s film starring Maria Callas, and been radically reimagined by writers like Christa Wolf, who recast Medea as innocent and the infanticide as Corinthian propaganda. That a tragedy which finished last at its first competition in 431 BCE should become one of the most enduring works in the canon is among the great ironies of theatrical history — and a testament to how far Euripides saw beyond his own audience. For readers of Greek tragedy, of feminist classical reception, or simply of the timeless psychology of betrayal and revenge, Medea is essential.

Limitations

The divine machinery at the end — Medea escaping in a sun-chariot — is the weakest element. Jason is less fully drawn than Medea. These are worth knowing before starting, though they are unlikely to diminish the experience for the readers the book is written for.

Who This Is For

Readers of Greek tragedy and anyone interested in the psychology of revenge, women in antiquity, and the limits of dramatic sympathy.

Our rating: 4.3/5 — Euripides’s most radical work — a character who chooses the absolute, depicted with full psychological force.

Reading Guides

• Where to Start with Euripides
• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles — Full Review
• The Oresteia by Aeschylus — Full Review

First Performance and the Question of the Infanticide

Medea was first performed at the City Dionysia in 431 BCE, where it came third out of three competing productions — last place, in a competition won by Euphorion, son of Aeschylus. The play’s third-place finish is one of the great ironies of theatrical history: one of the most powerful tragedies in the Western canon was rejected by its original judges.

The question of who kills Medea’s children has exercised scholars since antiquity. A note attributed to the ancient production records (didascalia) suggests that in earlier versions the children were killed by the Corinthians in retaliation for Medea’s murder of their princess; Euripides may have been the first dramatist to make Medea herself commit the act, a change that shifted the moral weight of the play entirely. Aristotle, writing in the Poetics, noted that some productions attempted to have the killing occur offstage; others brought it into direct view.

The play’s influence on modern literature and film has been extensive. Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea cast Maria Callas in her only dramatic film role — a choice made for the vocal and physical power she brought to stillness rather than for acting experience. Christa Wolf’s Medea: Stimmen (1996), published in English as Medea: A Modern Retelling, inverted the myth entirely: Wolf’s Medea is innocent, and the infanticide narrative is propaganda invented by the Corinthian court to discredit her. The reimagining has become an important text in feminist classical reception.