Medea

There have been many different accounts of Medea's family tree. One of the only uncontested facts is that she is a direct descendant of the sun god Helios (son of the Titan Hyperion) through her father King Aeëtes of Colchis. According to Hesiod (Theogony 956–962), Helios and the Oceanid Perseis produced two children Circe and Aeetes. Aeëtes then married the Oceanid Idyia and Medea was their child. This is where scholars have begun to question the rest of Medea's genealogy. By some accounts, Aeëtes and Idyia only had two daughters, Medea and Chalciope (or Chalkiope) and Apsyrtus (or Apsyrtos) was the son of Aeëtes through Asterodea. According to others, Idyia gave birth to Medea and Apsyrtus and Asterodea gave birth to Chalciope. Medea then marries Jason, although the number and names of their children are contested by different scholars. Euripides mentions two unnamed sons (whom Medea kills), others have suggested three sons (Thessalus, Alcimenes, and Tisander) two sons (Mermerus and Pheres) or a son and a daughter (Medeius and Eriopis). After Medea leaves Jason in Corinth, she marries the king of Athens (Aegeus) and bears him a son. Scholars have questioned whether her son Medeius is the son of Jason or of Aegeus, but Medeius goes on to become the ancestor of the Medes by conquering their lands.

The importance of Medea's genealogy is to help define what level of divinity she possessed. By some accounts, like the Argonautica, she is depicted as a young, mortal woman. She is directly influenced by the Greek gods (through Hera and Aphrodite) and while she possesses magical abilities, she is still a mortal with divine ancestry. Other accounts, like Euripides' play Medea, focus on her mortality, although she transcends the mortal world at the end of the play with the help of her grandfather Helios and his sun chariot. Hesiod's Theogony places her marriage to Jason on the list of marriages between mortals and divine, suggesting that she is predominantly divine. She also has connections with Hecate,[4] who was the goddess of magic, which could be one of the main sources from which she draws her magical ties.

Medea About to Murder Her Children by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix (1862)

In Euripides' play Medea she is a woman scorned, rejected by her husband Jason and seeking revenge. Deborah Boedeker writes about different images and symbolism used in Euripides' play to invoke responses from his original Athenian audience.[18] The Nurse gives descriptions of Medea in the prologue, highlighting comparisons to great forces of nature and different animals. There are also many nautical references throughout the play either used by other characters when describing Medea or by Medea herself. By including these references, Boedeker argues that these comparisons were used to create connections to the type of woman Medea was. She holds great power (referred to by the comparisons to forces of nature), she relies on her basic animal-like instincts and emotions (connections to different animals like bulls and lions), and it draws the audience back her original myth of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece and the sea voyage taken by Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts.

Emma Griffiths also adds to the analysis of Medea's character in Euripides's play by discussing the male/female dichotomy created by Euripides.[4] Medea does not fit into the mold of a “normal woman” according to Athenian philosophy. She is depicted as having great intelligence and skill, something typically viewed as a masculine trait by Euripides' original audience. On the other hand, she uses that cunning in order to manipulate the men around her, and manipulation of other people would have been a negative female trait to the Athenian audience. There is also the paradox of how she chooses to murder her victims in the play. She poisons the princess, which would have been seen as a feminine way of murder, yet kills her children in cold blood, which is seen as more masculine. She also has dialogue about her children and shows a strong maternal love and connection to them, something that was essential to “normal women” in Athenian society. Yet at the end of the play she is able to kill her children as part of her revenge. It is through these opposites that Euripides creates a complicated character for his protagonist.

Marianne McDonald argues that "Medea’s anger turns to violent action, which can make her into a symbol of freedom, and emblem for the colonized turning the tables on the colonizer. Euripides, more than all other tragedians, has predicted many of the horrors that occur in the modern world, showing both the glory and the monstrosity of the oppressed turned oppressor".[19]

Although not the first depiction of Medea, the Argonautica by Apollonios Rhodios gives a fuller description of events that lead up to Euripides's play, mainly surrounding Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. In this literary work, Medea is presented not as a powerful woman seeking justice rather she is a young woman who is desperately in love with Jason. So much in love that she decides to defy her father and kill her brother in order to help him. James J. Clauss writes about this version of Medea, attempting to unearth another version of this character for scholarship and discussion.[20] He looks into different passages in the original text to define the meaning and draw connection to the different feelings Medea was going through. He argues the feelings of Medea's initial love for Jason, the shame she feels for loving him and for going against her family, and final agreement to help Jason in his quest.

Multiple scholars have discussed Medea's use as a “helper maiden” to Jason's quest. A helper maid is typically personified as a young woman who helps on a hero's quest usually out of love. Instead of being the center of the story like she is in Euripides' Medea, this version of Medea is reduced to a supporting role. Her main purpose is to help the hero with his quest. Jason would never have been successful on his quest without Medea's help, something that is pointed out and referenced many times in ancient texts and contemporary scholarly work.

Other, non-literary traditions guided the vase-painters,[21] and a localized, chthonic presence of Medea was propitiated with unrecorded emotional overtones at Corinth, at the sanctuary devoted to her slain children,[22] or locally venerated elsewhere as a foundress of cities.[23]

• Ovid[24]

Heroides XII

Metamorphoses VII, 1-450

Tristia iii.9

• Euripides, Medea
• Neophron, Medea (fragments from the play)
• Hyginus, Fabulae 21-26
• Pindar, Pythian Odes, IV
• Seneca: Medea (tragedy)
• Bibliotheca I, 23-28
• Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica
• Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica
• Gaius Valerius Flaccus Argonautica (epic)
• Herodotus, Histories I.2 and VII.62i
• Hesiod, Theogony 1000-2

• Medusa
• Medus
• Medea gene
• Medes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Medea.

• Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.
• Clauss, J. J. and S. I. Johnston (eds), Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997). ISBN 9780691043760.
• Grant, Michael, and John Hazel.Who's Who in Classical Mythology. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973.
• Griffiths, Emma. Medea. London ; New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Knox, B.M.W.. Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
• McDermott, Emily, Euripides' Medea: The Incarnation of Disorder. (University Park, PA, Penn State University Press, 1985). ISBN 9780271006475.
• Mossman, Judith, Medea: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Aris & Phillips, Warminster 2011) ISBN 9780856687884
• Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London (1873). "Medeia or Medea"
• Wygant, Amy. Medea, Magic, and Modernity in France: Stages and Histories, 1553-1797. (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007). ISBN 9780754659242