CLA232H1 Lecture Notes - Richmond Lattimore, Metic, Diadem
Document Summary
Euripides medea adds a spin of horror to the story of jason"s adventures. In the myth, after retrieving the golden fleece jason brings his foreign wife to settle in corinth. There jason falls in love with the local princess, whose status in the city will bring jason financial security. Medea takes revenge by killing the new bride and her father, the king of corinth. One variation of the myth says that medea then accidentally kills her two sons by jason while trying to make them immortal. Euripides takes the myth into a new direction by having medea purposely stab her children to death in order to deprive jason of all he loved (as well as heirs that would carry on his name). In one of literature"s most intensely emotional scenes, medea debates with herself whether to spare her children for her own love"s sake or to kill them in order to punish her husband completely.
