Stop before the Messenger speaks.
1. Aigeus is the son of King ______________.
2. What does Aigeus want most in the world?
3. What does Medea offer to do?
4. What will Aigeus do for her in return?
5. What will Aigeus not do for her?
6. Now that her plan for a safe harbor has been made, what will Medea first do? How wills he treat her husband? Lines 758-763.
7. What will she ask Jason to do for their children?
8. What will Medea give to the bride? What will that gift do to Kreon's daughter?
9. What reasons does Medea give for "having to" kill her children?
10. What do you make of "For it is not bearable to be mocked by enemies" (781)?
11. Medea very rationally admits to her mistakes. Which ones?
12. Note this: "Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, / A stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite,/ One who can hurt my enemies and help my friends;/ For the lives of such persons are most remembered" (791-794).
Again, she is being cool and rational here. It's all about her fame and fortune. She will, by doing this, make herself immortal!
13. What does the Chorus advise just after she finishes that speech (794)?
14. How does Medea respond to this very rational advice?
15. What reason does Medea give for killing her children?
16. Ultimately, the Chorus thinks she will not be able to do it.
17. Note how Medea works on making Jason believe that she is like any other female: She begs him to forgive her, and admits to having a temper. "I have talked with myself about this and I have / Reproached myself. 'Fool' I said, 'why am I so mad? / Why am I set against those who have planned wisely?/ Why make myself an enemy of the authorities /And of my husband, who does the best thing for me/ By marrying royalty and having children who/ Will be as brothers to my own? What is wrong with me? /Let me give up anger, for the gods are kind to me. Have I not children, and do I not know that we / In exile from our country must be short of friends?' / When I considered this I was that I had shown/ Great lack of sense, and that my anger was foolish" (847-859).
18. Jason must be "as dumb as a stump," because he actually buys what she says in lines 860-880. What should clue Jason into the fact that she means harm?
19. Jason "approves" and even shows compassion: "It is natural/ For a woman to be wild with her husband when he / Goes in for secret love. But now your mind has turned / To better reasoning. In the end you have come to / The right decision, like the clever woman you are" (883-889). Medea starts to react emotionally. How? How does Jason react?
20. How does Medea respond? What is ironic about that particular response?
21. Note how Medea plays right into the ancient Greek male's beliefs and prejudices about women: "It is not that I distrust your words,/ But a woman is a frail thing, prone to crying" (903-904).
22. What does Medea tell Jason about how she feels about the fact that Kreon has banished her?
23. Medea follows up with a request for Jason and Medea's children. What does she request?
24. How will Jason accomplish this?
25. How does Jason react when Medea gets the children to bring int eh beautiful dress and diadem?
26. How does Medea talk Jason into allowing this to happen? What are her arguments?
27. What do you make of the Chorus' response? Why don't they do anything?
28. What news does the Tutor bring to Medea?
29. Note the Tutor's wise words: "Others before you have been parted from their children./ Mortals must bear in resignation their ill luck" (991-992).
30. Note Medea's speech after the tutor leaves:
"O children, O my children, you have a city, / You have a home, and you can leave me behind you,/ And without your mother you may live there for ever" (995-997). Do you think that she is jealous of her children? Might that be one of the things that motivates her to kill them? Or is she being compassionate?
31. "But I am going into exile to another land/ Before I have seen you happy and taken pleasure in you,/ Before I have dressed your brides and made your marriage beds / And held up the torch at the ceremony of wedding./ Oh, what a wretch I am in this my self-willed thought! / What was the purpose, children, for which I reared you?/ For all my travail and wearing myself away?/ They were sterile, those pains I had in the bearing of you./ O surely once the hopes in you I had, poor me, / Were high ones: you would look after me in old age,/ And when I died would deck me well with your own hands; / A thing which all would have done. O but now it is gone,/ That lovely thought. For, once I am left without you, / Sad will be the life I'll lead and sorrowful for me./ And you will never see your mother again with / Your dear eyes, gone to another mode of living. / Why, children, do you look upon me with your eyes? / Why do you smile so sweetly that last smile of all?/ Oh, Oh, what can I do? My spirit has gone from me,/ Friends, when I saw that bright look in the children's eyes. / I cannot bear to do it. I renounce my plans / I had before. I'll take my children away from /This land. Why should I hurt their father with the pain/ They feel, and suffer twice as much of pain myself?/ No, no, I will not do it. I renounce my plans./ Ah, what is wrong with me? Do I want to let go / My enemies unhurt and be laughed at for it? / I must face this thing. Oh, but what a weak woman/ Even to admit to my mind these soft arguments. / Children, go into the house. And he whom law forbids/ To stand in attendance at my sacrifices, /Let him see to it. I shall not mar my handiwork" (998-1029). Do you notice the degree of thought, consideration of consequences, and determination?
32. Medea then rationalizes something else about her children's fate. What is that?
33. Note what the chorus reveals about the "nature" of women:
"Often before / I have gone through more subtle reasons, / And have come upon questionings greater / Than a woman should strive to search out. / But we too have a goddess to help us/ And accompany us into wisdom. / Not all of us. Still you will find / Among many women a few, / And our sex is not without learning./ This I say, that those who have never/ Had children, who know nothing of it, / In happiness have the advantage / Over those who are parents. / The childless, who never discover / Whether children turn out as a good thing / Or as something to cause pain, are spared / Many troubles in lacking this knowledge./ And those who have in their homes/ The sweet presence of children, I see that their lives/ Are all wasted away by their worries./ First they must thing how to bring them up well and / How to leave them something to live on./ And then after this whether all their toil/ Is for those who will turn out good or bad, / Is still an unanswered question. /And of one more trouble, the last of all, /That is common to mortals I tell. / For suppose you have found them enough for their living, / Suppose that the children have grown into youth/ And have turned out good, still, if God so wills it, / Death will away with our children's bodies, / And carry them off into Hades. / What is our profit, then, that for the sake of / Children the gods should pile upon mortals/ After all else/ This most terrible grief of all? (1054-1089).
