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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The story of Medea as pieced together from the numerous references in both Greek and Latin literature represents to my mind a most fascinating picture, both because of the enormity of the crimes she commits and the impunity with which she commits them. She is not the only wicked character in Greek mythology: there are others who are distinguished for their atrocious crimes; but while in almost every other instance the guilty character pays the penalty for his or her crimes, ultimately either with his or her life, like Clytemnestra, or wins release from punishment through the ritual of purification or the intervention of some divine personality, like Orestes, Medea seems to be the one possible exception, whose life history presents an unbroken series of murders, including the most heinous of crimes, child murder, coupled with a constant triumph over her enemies, so much so that her Nurse can confidently assert: ‘Not easily will anyone who clashes with her in hatred carry off the palm of victory’ (44–45). In fact so successfully does she get away with her deeds of wickedness that Aristotle might well have chosen her to exemplify the type of successful villain least suitable as the hero of Greek tragedy.
page 54 note 1 The references in parentheses are to Euripides' Medea.
page 54 note 2 Poetics 1452b35.Google Scholar
page 54 note 2 Flaccus, Valerius, Argonautica vii. 212 ff.Google Scholar
page 56 note 1 Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths (London, 1955), ii. 238Google Scholar; Val. Fl. op. cit. vii. 475 ff.
page 56 note 2 Ap. Rh. Argonautica iv. 212–502.Google Scholar
page 56 note 3 Apollodorus i. 9. 24 ; Ovid, , Tristia iii. 9Google Scholar; Cic. Leg. Man. 9. 22.Google Scholar
page 56 note 4 Val. Fl. op. cit. i. 777; Diod. Sic. iv. 50. i; Apollod. i. 9. 16.
page 57 note 1 Hypothesis to Euripides' Medea; Ovid, Met. vii. 251–94.Google Scholar
page 58 note 1 Grube, G. M. A., The Drama of Euripides (London, 1941), 148.Google Scholar
page 59 note 1 Poetics 1461b 20.
page 61 note 1 Hypothesis to Eur. Med.; Ovid, Met. vii.Google Scholar