Fifth-century Athens and the dramatic festivals
Fifth-century Athens was a distinctive place; even other contemporary Greeks thought so. The reason was that probably in 508–507 BC the Athenians established an entirely new form of government, or at least the outline of it, called democracy. While early on the Athenians seemed to have called their political experiment isonomia (equality before the law), and while there were various additions and reforms to the system during the fifth century, we can still assert with some confidence that fifth-century Athens was a democracy. However, we need to be clear that it was not one like the representative democracies with which we are familiar today. Athens was a direct democracy. All citizens – free-born Athenian men over the age of 18 – were entitled to attend the sovereign, legislative assembly (ekklesia) and to serve on the annually selected and very large jury body of 6,000. Citizens over the age of 30 could also be elected by lot to serve for a year in the many of the offices of state, but most importantly perhaps in the boule, the 500-strong executive body of the city. In the funeral oration that appears in Thucydides, Pericles (the dominant Athenian politician of the 440s and 430s BC) asserts that the citizen who minded his own business had no business in Athens at all (Thucydides 2.46). Athens demanded the political and military involvement of its citizens. It is in this highly civic context that tragedies were performed.
Drama at Athens took place at festivals, that is to say, at city-sponsored events with a religious and civic dimension, which occurred at regular times in the festival or ritual calendar. There were a number of dramatic festivals held in various parts of Attica and established at different times, but the most important dramatic festival was the Great or City Dionysia, which took place in central Athens in March of each year. This festival seems to have been established in the 530s BC under the tyrant Peisistratus but, along with other institutions that pre-existed the democracy, the festival seems to have become part of the collection of institutions of fifth-century Athenian democracy. (Most scholars agree that there is something political about the festival; some argue that we should not see it as distinctively democratic.)
What is clear, though, is that the city of Athens was directly involved in the organization of the Great Dionysia. In the fifth century an official called the archon eponymos (a democratic official elected by lot – this is called ‘sortitive’ election) selected the three tragic poets and the five comic poets whose plays would be performed; he also selected the rich individuals (choregoi) who would be asked to pay for the costs of each production (a form of taxation called a liturgy). The cost of funding a tragic production was expensive, almost as expensive as the other main liturgy, namely, paying for the upkeep of a trireme for a year. It is also possible that at some point in the fifth century the city of Athens established a special fund (the theorika) to subsidize the cost of attending the festival. The council (boule) was also involved, organizing the sortitive election of the ten citizens who would judge the contests of both playwrights and actors. The sequence of events is much disputed but it looks as though the festival consisted of a procession with a statue of Dionysus Eleutherios to and back from Eleutheria, some dithyrambic contests, some pre-play ceremonies and the performance of each of the tragedians’ three tragedies and one satyr play, and five comedies, each by an individual playwright. (The dithyramb is a choral song in honour of Dionysus. Satyrs were mythical creatures, partly equine, partly human. They become associated with Dionysus. There is one extant satyr play – Euripides’ Cyclops. Satyr plays, as far as we can tell, dealt with mythical themes in a more rumbustious, perhaps cruder way than tragedy.)
The ceremonies that preceded the plays and the constitution of the audience demonstrate the political nature of the festival, though evidence is shaky in both cases. It looks as though, before the plays, the generals, the highest officers of the city, made offerings to the gods; crowns were awarded to citizens judged to have contributed importantly to the city; on the stage the tribute from the empire was displayed; there was a procession of new citizens (dressed as hoplites), distinctive because their fathers had died in battle and the city had taken over the cost of their upbringing. The audience watching these ceremonies and then the plays was enormous and mainly made of Athenian citizens. We used to think that as many as 15,000 citizens were in the audience but recent archaeological work has shown that that figure is unlikely: the new estimate is between 4,000 and 7,000. But that it is still very large, given that the citizen population of Athens is estimated to have been between 30,000 and 50,000, and that attendance at the assembly is unlikely to have been more than 6,000. We know that there would have been foreign representatives at the Great Dionysia (they would have brought the tribute), but there is still much debate as to whether women and slaves were present in the audience. The fact remains that there was a very large audience mainly made up of Athenian citizens.
Medea was first performed in 431 BC. This was a significant year for Athens. Pericles, who would die a couple of years later, was arguing that Athens should not concede to Sparta’s demands and should be prepared to go to war. The Peloponnesian War was to last off-and-on for twenty-seven years, with Athens losing. Interestingly, Corinth, which is the scene of Medea, was an ally of Sparta and an enemy of Athens. We have no evidence as to how this affected the audience’s response to the play.
Formal aspects of Athenian tragedy
Stage space, actors and so on
Plays at the Great Dionysia were performed at what is now called the Theatre of Dionysus, which sits underneath the Acropolis at the very heart of Athens. The ruins there now are of a later Roman building. Recent archaeological work shows that in the fifth century, it was likely that the stage and the auditorium were made of wood and were erected each year. The audience was probably seated in a large rectangle, as in the surviving stone theatre at Thorikos in Attica. The plays used four connected but distinct spaces for their performance. The space nearest the audience, and the lowest on the vertical axis, was the orchestra, used almost entirely by the chorus. We now think of this as almost circular, but in the fifth century it may have been quadrilateral. Just beyond the orchestra was a slightly raised, shallow platform called the logeion, which was the space from where the actors spoke. Behind the logeion sat the skene, a sort of rectangular hut probably made of wood, decorated but not specifically, which represented offstage space indoors (house, palace, etc.). The top of the skene, called the theologeion, could be used for appearances of gods. Finally, there was a device, a sort of crane, called the mechane, which rose above everything else. Probably originally employed to help with the construction of the stage and auditorium, this too was used for even more striking appearances of the gods (hence the phrase deus ex machina). In a coup de théâtre Euripides uses the mechane at the end of Medea to show Medea with her dead children towering above a distraught Jason. This is a striking use of the possibilities of vertical stage space: has her murder of the children received divine support? Has the murder solved anything?
Actors made their entrances and exits from either side of the skene. These passages were called eisodoi or parodoi and could be used to indicate where a character was entering from, namely, city or elsewhere. Playwrights occasionally used a sort of trolley, the ekkyklema, which came out from the skene and which allowed dying or dead characters to be displayed on stage, though there seems to be no use of this in Medea.
By the time Medea was performed the convention was that there were three speaking actors, all of whom were men. Medea can be performed with two actors, but that would require the part of Medea to be played by more than one actor. What would the effect of using two rather than three actors be? Given the play shows Medea in a series of confrontations and exchanges, might it be best to give the (stunning, virtuoso) role of Medea to one actor, necessitating the use of two others? There seems to have been no limit on the number of mute performers. All the actors, whichever part they were playing, were masked, and probably in a fairly generic way (older men bearded, younger men not and so on). Costumes, depending on the resources of the choregos, were likely to have been splendid. We know this because so much fuss was made about how awful Electra looked in Euripides’play Electra.
The chorus is a distinctive part of Attic tragedy. By the time of Medea, the chorus would have numbered 15 trained dancers and singers (again, all men, indeed citizens). The chorus (the Greek word for ‘dance’) had a number of roles. The choral lyrics, which interrupted the dramatic action, were sung and danced (though we know little about the music or the style of dancing), often in highly lyrical metres. They could be used to comment on the events of the play in various ways. Sometimes choruses represent a sort of collectivity (as in Medea or Sophocles’ Antigone); sometimes they do not, and are not much involved in the action; some choruses are important players (Eumenides and Bacchae are good examples).
Metre
Greek tragedy uses different metres for its various scenes. However, for the most part, the dramatic episodes are conducted in a metre known as the iambic trimeter. Indeed, all of the prescribed text is in this metre.
In order to understand how the metre works, it is important to understand the following rules or conventions (note: this is a simplified version of how the metre works):
• Greek metre generally, including the iambic trimeter, distinguishes between short and long syllables;
• there are syllables that are necessarily long because they contain long vowels, such as η and ω and diphthongs (two vowels together forming one vowel sound);
• syllables are also long when a short vowel is followed by two or more consonants, whether those consonants are in the same word or not;
• a double consonant following a short vowel such as ζ, ξ or ψ also makes the syllable long;
• when the second of the two consonants which follow a short vowel in the same word is λ, μ, ν or ρ, the syllable can be short or long, as the metre requires;
• a short vowel at the end of a word is elided before a word that begins with a vowel (elision). Unlike in Latin, this is marked by an apostrophe;
• a short vowel at the beginning of a word is elided when it is preceded by a long vowel (prodelision). This is also marked by an apostrophe;
• when two words in sequence have a long vowel at the end of a first word and a long vowel at the beginning of the second word, a single long vowel is formed (synizesis).
Modern analysis of the iambic trimeter works on the basis of there being three metra in each line. Each metron is made up as follows, where ∪ = a short syllable, and – = a long syllable and × = the so-called anceps (‘doubtful’) where the syllable can be either long or short:
× – ∪ –
So, a whole line looks as follows:
× – ∪ – || × – ∪ – || × – ∪ – [though, note, the last syllable can be short]
A caesura (‘cutting’) is a natural word break within the line, normally after the fifth syllable (if there are no resolutions; see below), but sometimes after the seventh syllable.
The iambic trimeter is, in theory, a twelve-syllable line. However, because of so-called resolutions, the line may have more syllables. Resolutions are when two short syllables replace a single long syllable, that is, in place of the long syllables at positions 2, 4, 6, 8 (and sometimes 10, at least in Euripides).
However, the scheme described above – apparently easy to understand and clear – is not accepted by all scholars. Some prefer a more traditional approach that stresses the ‘iambic’ rather than the ‘trimeter’. In this scheme there are six feet rather than three metra (this may be to do with the influence of the hexameter, the six-footed line of epic poetry). Below are some of the common metrical units (but in the iambic trimeter the most common are the iamb and the spondee):
Iamb ∪ –
Spondee – –
Tribrach ∪ ∪ ∪
Dactyl – ∪ ∪
Trochee – ∪
Anapaest ∪ ∪ –
Below is iambic trimeter (as understood in the traditional scheme):
It is sometimes argued that the iambic trimeter is the metre most like prose. Certainly, it allows for conversation that sounds natural. As with all metres, a poet can use the scheme to achieve certain effects, but it should be said that there is not much metrical variation in Medea. Of the play’s 1030 iambic lines there are 75 in which a unit other than an iamb or a spondee is used. There are no anapaests in Medea’s iambic trimeters.
Language and style
Euripidean language does not always follow the rules taught to twenty-first-century pupils about ancient Greek. Below are listed some grammatical usages that are rarely found in prose (if at all):
• omission of the article, where it would be expected in prose (as in line 220);
• alternative dative plural forms, i.e. -αισι(ν) and -οισι(ν);
• crasis (the joining of two words to make one word, where the first word is either the article or καὶ) is fairly common (e.g. οὑμὸς at 229);
• placing the preposition after the noun it governs (as at line 217);
• different pronoun forms: accusative plural (394: σφε); dative plural (399: σφιν);
• non-compound forms of verbs that would normally be compounds in prose (e.g. κτενῶ in line 394).
Below are some common features of tragic language:
• asyndeton – the lack of connection – can be used for stylisic effect, as Greek prose normally insists on clear connection between every sentence;
• in stichomythia – an exchange between two actors where each actor speaks one line – the syntax can be interrupted by the other speaker, or the syntax of one speaker’s line might be completed by the other speaker, or by the first speaker in their next line;
• ἐστί is often omitted (as at line 345);
• while there is occasional enjambement, most lines have some form of punctuation at the end of the line;
• word order – flexible in Greek prose – is even more varied in verse.
A brief note on technical terms
Some commentaries and introductions to tragedy like to make not inconsiderable use of technical terms. This author’s view is that it is perfectly possible to respond to Medea in an interesting and sophisticated way without persistent recourse to such terms. However, there is one term that does appear several times, namely, metonymy (a form of metaphor in which one term is used for another). In Medea this is most common with the various words for ‘bed’ (explanations are given in the commentary).
|
aphorism |
a principle or precept expressed pithily. |
|
|
hendiadys |
a stylistic feature whereby a single idea is expressed by two words joined by a conjunction. |
|
|
litotes |
understatement, sometimes by the use of a double negative. |
|
|
metaphor |
non-literal language. |
|
|
metonymy |
a form of metaphor, in which one term stands for another, e.g. ‘Downing Street announced today’. |
|
|
tautology |
repetition or saying the same thing twice. |
Medea – the myth
With a small number of notable exceptions, tragedy took its stories from existing bodies of myth. Medea is no exception to this rule. But, as is often the case with other tragedies, we do not have a full treatment of the various parts of the Medea myth before Euripides’ play. We think that an earlier epic poet called Eumelus may have written an extensive treatment in a lost epic poem, Corinthiaca, and there seems to have been another lost epic, Naupactia (no author known), which dealt with the Medea myth. There are allusions to various parts of the story in Homer, Hesiod and Pindar, but we have no full account of the expedition of the Argonauts until Apollonius Rhodius’ epic of the third century BC. From Apollonius the story of Jason and the Argonauts runs as follows. Jason’s father, Aeson, had his kingship of Iolcus in Thessaly usurped by his half-brother, Pelias. When Jason, on reaching adulthood, tried to claim the kingdom as his birthright, Pelias demanded that Jason first fetch the Golden Fleece from Colchis on the Black Sea. Pelias expected that the task would be impossible. Jason and his comrades built the first ship, the Argo, sailed to Colchis and secured the Golden Fleece with the help of Medea, the daughter of the king of Colchis, Aeetes. To delay her father’s pursuit, Medea killed her brother. When she and Jason returned to Iolcus, Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut up their father and boil him in order to restore his youth. Following Pelias’ not unexpected death, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth.
The important thing to remember is that authors were free to vary the details of the myth (Euripides, for instance, wrote a play in which Helen was never in Troy at all), and were also free to concentrate on one particular section of the story. As with most myths, there is a considerable variety in the different versions, in relation to, for instance, how Medea murders her brother, where Jason and Medea live, the number of children they have and how and by whom the children are killed (in one version it is the Corinthians rather than Medea who murder the children). That said, allusion is made in the play to the Argonauts’ expedition, where Jason was charged to get hold of the Golden Fleece, and also the help that Medea gave Jason to acquire the fleece, including the murder of her brother, Apsyrtus, possibly to slow down Medea’s father as he pursues Jason. Euripides’ play, though, refers to killing Apsyrtus ‘at the hearth’ (line 1334): killing a relative in their home is particularly horrible. Reference is also made to Medea causing the death of Pelias (see lines 9, 486–7, 504–8): it was the usurper Pelias who asked Jason to take on what he thought was the impossible task of fetching the Golden Fleece.
There is some fragmentary evidence that there was a Medea written by an earlier tragedian called Neophron. It is even claimed that Euripides based his play on Neophron’s, or even passed off Neophron’s play as his own. There is a very careful consideration of this in the introduction to Mastronarde’s commentary (Mastronarde 2002: pp. 57–64). While accepting that debate about Neophron’s play is likely to continue, Mastronarde concludes that the fragments we have are likely to come from a play written after Euripides’ version.
In fact, based on the allusions to the myth that occur in earlier authors, it looks as though Euripides may have provided the following innovations: the character of Glauke, Jason’s marriage to her, Aegeus’ involvement, the use of a poisoned robe to kill Creon and his daughter, Medea’s deliberate murder of the children, Medea’s escape in a chariot given to her by her grandfather, the Sun. However, we should not be confident that each of these were Euripidean innovations: we simply lack the evidence to demonstrate that.
Medea is a very powerful play, which has inspired both an extensive body of scholarly work and a large number of modern theatrical productions. This short introduction cannot do justice to the variety of critical approaches (please see the ‘Suggestions for further reading’), but it does try to deal with the structure of the play, some of its important themes, the staging of the play and the reception of the play both in antiquity and in modern times.
The play’s structure
Medea is organized to create as much dramatic and emotional impact as possible. At first, even though she plans a murderous revenge, Medea has the chorus (and the audience in modern productions, at least) on her side. To be able to achieve the revenge she has actually planned, Medea needs to be confident she has a sanctuary after she has committed the murders. This explains the Aegeus scene (even though some scholars have found the plotting unsatisfactory). It is only after this scene that the chorus realize what Medea actually plans to do. The Aegeus scene is surrounded by two contrasting encounters between Jason and Medea. In the first she tells (what she believes to be) the truth about Jason’s treatment of her, and achieves nothing, confronted by Jason’s complacent misogyny. After the Aegeus scene, she has a very different meeting with Jason, where she pretends to be reconciled to his new marriage, and where she offers presents, through which she hopes to secure the deaths of Glauke and Creon. Once news reaches Medea that she has been successful, the play relentlessly leads to the murder of the children, and to her triumph over Jason. The play’s structure is often analysed in rather a technical way, but understanding the structure can also help with understanding plot, theme and character. The following description of the structure is borrowed from Mastronarde’s commentary. To make sense of it, the following technical terms will be useful:
parodos entry of the chorus
episode spoken scene between actors
stasimon sung choral lyric
exodos the last scene of the play (literally: the going out)
Prologue (1–130)
• Nurse’s monologue (1–48)
• dialogue between the Nurse and the tutor (49–95)
• anapaestic exchange between the Nurse and Medea indoors (96–130)
Parodos (131–213)
anapaests of Nurse and Medea, with some choral song
• Medea’s monologue with brief comment from the chorus (214–70)
• dialogue between Medea and Creon (271–356)
• Medea and the chorus (357–409)
First stasimon (chorus) (410–45)
Second episode (446–626)
debate between Medea and Jason
Second stasimon (627–62)
Third episode (663–823)
• dialogue between Medea and Aegeus (663–763)
• Medea and chorus (764–823)
Third stasimon (824–65)
Fourth episode (866–75)
• dialogue between Medea and Jason, with the children brought out by the tutor
Fourth stasimon (976–1001)
Fifth episode (1002–80)
• dialogue between Medea and the tutor (1002–20)
• Medea’s great monologue (1021–80)
Anapaestic interlude, in place of a chorus (1081–1115)
Sixth episode (1116–1250)
• dialogue between Medea and the messenger (1116–35)
• messenger speech (1136–1230)
• Medea and the chorus (1231–50)
Fifth stasimon (1251–92)
Exodos (1293–1419)
• dialogue of Jason and chorus (1293–1316)
• iambic dialogue between Medea and Jason (1317–88)
• anapaestic dialogue between Medea and Jason (1389–1414)
• chorus’ summary (1415–19)
Medea is a very rich and sophisticated play, organized around Medea’s revenge on Jason for his betrayal (revenge is not uncommon as a motivating device in tragedy). It shows an acute interest in Medea’s psychology; it represents Medea as a powerful ‘other’ figure, both as barbarian and as woman; key interests of the play are rhetorical efficacy, sexual politics and religious propriety. The imagery used in the play – naval, medical, animal, military – serves to deepen and sharpen the play’s concerns as listed above (Mastronarde 2002: 34–6 is good but concise on the imagery in the play).
To achieve her revenge Medea has to overcome a number of obstacles. First, she has to overcome her own despair, which dominates the opening of the play; second, she needs someone on her side and looks here for the chorus’ sisterly support; third, she needs a little extra time and manages to persuade Creon to give her a day; fourth, she needs sanctuary once she has committed the murders, and she succeeds in persuading Aegeus to give her a home in Athens; fifth, she needs to win Jason round so that the lethal gifts can be delivered to Glauke and Creon; finally, she needs to overcome her own psychological difficulties.
It is most especially in relation to the killing of the children that Euripides’ complex portrait of a woman divided against herself is seen. This is best demonstrated in her famous monologue (1019–80), where her veering back and forth between preparing to murder her children to shouting the impossibility of such an act for a mother is passionate, powerful and realistic. At the same time, Euripides’ psychological interest is also apparent in the way that the wildly despairing Medea of the early part of the play can become an acute analyst of sexual inequality, a powerful orator arguing against misogyny and unfair dealing, an extremely skilful manipulator of men and – finally – the extreme and extremely vengeful and violent figure whom we see at the end of the play. The portrait, in its compelling variety, is powerful and complex.
One of the reasons for Medea’s acute sense of betrayal is that Jason swore an oath to her, made by joining right hands. Oaths – and the breaking of them – pervade the play (see, for instance, 160ff., 209, 412–13, 439, 492–5, 659–92, 698, 731ff., 745ff., 1352, 1364). Hands are important in relation to oaths (496–8), and as a sign of familial connection (see 899, 1069–73), but they are also important in supplication (e.g. 324ff.) and, more troublingly, as the agents of violence (e.g. 857, 864, 1055, 1239, 1244, 1254, 1279, 1283, 1309, 1322, 1365). This pervasive reference to oaths and supplication, and thereby to Greek gods and religious institutions, demonstrates the complicated relationship that the barbarian Medea has to Greek mores.
It is in the various representations of Medea as ‘other’ – as a woman, as a barbarian, as a barbarian with special magical powers and as a woman whose grandfather is the Sun – that Medea is most extraordinary and most threatening. Commonly described as frightening (e.g. 38ff., 271, 282, 316), as difficult (525), as different (579), both Jason and Medea agree that there is something about Medea’s barbarian origins that marks her out, though there is nothing in the way she speaks Greek or in her attitudes to, say, Greek religious practice that substantiates that view. However, Jason argues that had he not brought Medea to Greece from her barbarian land, she would not be enjoying the rule of law guaranteed by Greek civilization (536–8), so the distinction between Greek and barbarian remains important ideologically. Medea thinks that Jason finds having a barbarian wife no longer respectable (591–2). She also claims to Aegeus that she has a special knowledge of drugs (717–18). Medea seems in many ways special but it is in her confronting of male supremacy that her challenge, her threat is most obvious.
We first hear Medea lamenting from inside the house. Nearly her first words when she appears on stage are ‘I have come out of the house’ (214). Thus she begins her appropriation of what in fifth-century Athenian ideological terms was supposed to be the exclusive possession of men, namely, engaging in rhetoric and violence outside the house (women were supposed to confine themselves inside, and to keep quiet: see the note on 214–15). In her first great speech (214ff.), Medea decries how badly the institution of marriage treats women (though it is not clear she is married to Jason – note, however, line 910 where Jason himself implies that they are married – and the institution she describes looks very fifth-century and very Athenian). At lines 248–51, she offers a direct challenge to male supremacy based on men’s participation in war. She manipulates Creon successfully, even though he is wary, and she makes a passionate though unsuccessful case against Jason in their first debate (i.e. Jason is not persuaded of her case, though the chorus are). She manipulates Aegeus to secure sanctuary in Athens. She manages to keep the chorus complicit, even when they realize that she plans to murder her children. She persuades Jason to take the children bearing presents to Glauke. She brings about the deaths of Glauke and Creon, and manages to kill her own children. Her achievements in persuasion, manipulation and violence are remarkable. In a series of confrontations with (mainly) men, who are characterized as variously fearful (Creon), complacent and unpleasant (Jason) or easily manipulated (Aegeus), she for the most part wins.
Why is Medea such a threat? First of all, it is because she so dominantly and successfully does what men claim they do (that’s the rhetoric and the violence). Second, it is whom she chooses to kill. By killing Glauke, she destroys one part of Jason’s future and one way in which, in a patrilineal society, he can secure his legacy. By killing her own children, she destroys another part of his future. In short, her attack is one against patriarchy itself. No wonder the play may have been perceived as shocking in 431 BC; no surprise that the early twentieth-century suffragettes took up the play as a rallying cry.
It is a typically Euripidean irony, though, that a play seen by many as proto-feminist is one in which a mother kills her own children.
Staging
The skene – the rectangular hut at the back of the stage – represents the house where Medea and Jason have been living in Corinth. It does not quite seem to be in the centre of the city. One of the exits leads to the centre of the city, where Creon’s palace is situated; the other leads to the gates at the city walls. Interestingly, all the characters except Aegeus enter and exit using the city side, though it is not clear whether the chorus entered from both sides. There are few props required for the play: some mark of royalty, such as a sceptre, for Creon and Aegeus; perhaps some weapons for Creon’s attendants; Medea’s gifts to Glauke.
Tragedy at the time of Medea used three male actors. It is likely that the lead actor – the protagonist, who competed in the protagonists’ competition – would have taken the part of Medea. The second actor could perhaps have played the parts of the Nurse, Creon and Jason, while the third could have been the tutor, Aegeus and the Messenger. There are a number of silent parts: the attendants of Creon and Aegeus, and possibly for Jason as well, and, of course, the children.
The masks and costumes of the actors are likely to have been conventional. So Creon would have been bearded but perhaps greying, while Aegeus and Jason would have been bearded but without grey. Costume may have been used to distinguish the free (and indeed noble) from the slaves. Most discussion in this area has centred around Medea herself. The Nurse in the prologue describes her as not eating and as crying continually. It is not clear whether that was reflected in her mask but there is some reason to doubt that it was: appearances that departed from convention are normally commented on in the texts themselves, as in the case of Electra’s rags in Electra and Orestes’ wild hair in Orestes. More interesting is whether Medea was costumed in an overtly non-Greek way, as iconographic depictions of Medea produced after 431 BC have her wearing elaborate eastern robes of various sorts (this is not the case with iconographic representations produced before 431 BC). Another way that Medea’s otherness may have been indicated was by the colour of her skin (Herodotus 2.104 says that the Colchians were dark-skinned like the Egyptians), but no iconographic depiction has her with anything other than light skin.
As already mentioned, the most stunning theatrical effect of Medea is the use of the mechane at the end of the play. This piece of theatre kit allowed characters to appear way above the acting space. What is shocking about the use of it in Medea is that the mechane is normally reserved for gods (in the play the mechane is explicitly said to be the chariot belonging to her divine grandfather, the Sun). Yet here we see a mother with the corpses of the children she has murdered. At the same time, the use of the device visually represents her superiority over Jason but perhaps also the fact that she has left the human realm.
Reception
It seems fairly clear that Euripides’ Medea, though it did not win the first prize in 431 BC, had become, by some time in the fourth century, if not earlier, something of a ‘classic’. Certainly, there seem to have been a number of literary treatments in the fourth century BC, and there is a good collection of iconographic representations of Medea from the fourth century BC which seem to show an interest in Euripides’ version. What is particularly fascinating is how Medea is so often represented in a chariot and also so often in non-Greek clothing (for an interesting online discussion, with images of the vase paintings, please go to ‘The Underworld Painter and the Corinthian adventures of Medea: An interpretation of the crater in Munich’ by Ludovico Rebaudo, which can be accessed at http://www.engramma.it/eOS2/index.php?id_articolo=1380).
The play proved popular among the Romans as well, with adaptations written by Ennius, Accius, Ovid, Seneca the Younger and Hosidius Geta. In the modern era one of the most celebrated of productions was the 1907 production at the Savoy Theatre, using Gilbert Murray’s translation. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘votes-for-women’ production, during which mass arrests of women activists were made. After the Second World War, the French playwright Jean Anouilh translated the play in 1946 and there was a highly popular production on Broadway directed by Robinson Jeffers in 1947. There is a magnificent film released in 1969, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and starring the great opera singer Maria Callas as Medea. The German novelist Christa Wolf published a novel Medea in 1996 (translated as Medea: A Modern Retelling by John Cullen). Recent years have seen some famous productions in London: Diana Rigg starred as Medea in 1993, and Fiona Shaw played the role in 2001. In 2014, Helen McCrory played the part, and in 2015, in another modern retelling by writer Rachel Cusk, Medea was played by Kate Fleetwood.
Clearly, the play retains its power.
Euripides – a brief note
Euripides, born probably in the 480s BC, was one of the three great Athenian tragedians of the fifth century. We have seventeen tragedies in more or less complete form written by Euripides, compared to seven each for Aeschylus and Sophocles. The first sure date of his life is 455 BC, the date of his first production at the Great Dionysia. The earliest play that we have is Alcestis (438 BC). Medea is, in fact, the second of the plays that we have, performed in 431 BC. Euripides died in 406 BC, and two of his surviving plays (Iphigeneia at Aulis and Bacchae) were performed posthumously between 405 and 400 BC.
Euripides had a distinctive reputation in antiquity; he still does. One view – backed up by the fact that he won only four first prizes in the dramatic competition at the Great Dionysia, compared with Aeschylus’ 13 and Sophocles’ possible 20 – was that Euripides was not popular with the Athenian audience. However, the fact that he was granted entry to the dramatic festival on at least twenty occasions (there is evidence that Euripides had 92 plays performed) would suggest otherwise. One common critical response to his relative lack of success in the dramatic competition is to argue that there is something about the plays themselves that the audience found troubling or even scandalous.
One area where this may have been true was the shocking representation of women – and Medea certainly seems to fit into that category. (The plot of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae is based on the hostility of the women of Athens to Euripides because of the dramatic female figures he created.) Another area – again much satirized in Aristophanes – is the pervasiveness in his plays of sophistic thought and rhetoric, used to challenge and even subvert some of fifth-century Athens’ most cherished values. The picture of Euripides as a transgressive, subversive iconoclast is not new; that does not mean, though, that it is not true.
However, we probably do need to provide a slightly more nuanced picture. Aristophanes’ Frogs, produced a year or so after Euripides’ death, confirms that Euripides was already seen as one of the three great tragedians. Challenging and subversive though his plays can be, Euripides can also be seen as an innovative practitioner who contributed to changes in and the development of tragic convention. Certainly, his popularity increased after his death, and his literary influence is significant, not only on the New Comedy of the fourth century but also on authors as different as Ovid and Seneca.
Suggestions for further reading
The critical literature on Medea is vast and still expanding. Below are a few items. Many articles from scholarly journals are now available online at JSTOR.
Commentaries
Elliott, Alan (ed.) Euripides Medea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
Mastronarde, Donald J. (ed.) Euripides: Medea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Mossman, J. (ed.) Euripides: Medea (Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2011) (with facing translation).
Page, D.L. (ed.) Euripides: Medea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938).
Translations
Harrison, J. (ed.) Euripides Medea. Translated by Judith Affleck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Kovacs, David. Euripides Volume I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
Morwood, James. Euripides: Medea and Other Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Rutherford, Richard B. (ed.) Medea and Other Plays. Translated by John Davie (London: Penguin, 2003).
Vellacott, P. Euripides: Medea/Hecabe/Electra/Heracles (London: Penguin, 1963).
Critical treatments
Allan, W. Euripides: Medea (London: Duckworth, 2002).
Barlow, S.A. ‘Stereotype and reversal in Euripides’ Medea’, Greece and Rome 36 (1989): pp. 158–71.
Clauss, J.J. and Johnston, S.I. (eds.) Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Easterling, P.E. ‘The infanticide in Euripides’ Medea’, Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977): pp. 177–91.
Foley, H.P. ‘Medea’s divided self’, Classical Antiquity 8 (1989): pp. 61–85.
Knox, B.M.W. ‘The Medea of Euripides’, Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977): pp. 193–225.
McDermott, E. Euripides’ Medea: The Incarnation of Disorder (Pennsylvania, 1989).
The text is from Diggle, J. Euripidis Fabulae. Tomus 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).