Euripides lived during the Golden Age of Athens, the city where he was born and lived most of his years. Born in BC, his infancy saw the repulsion of the Persian invasion, a military victory that secured Athens' political independence and eventual dominance over the Mediterranean world.
His death in came as Athens was surrendering its supremacy as a result of its protracted defeat to Sparta, its main rival, in the Peloponnesian War. Sandwiched between these two wars lies a creative period of political, economic, and cultural activity that spawned many of Western civilization's distinctive traits, including the flourishing of tragic drama.
The art was mastered by Euripides' older contemporaries, Aeschylus and Sophocles, playwrights who created the dramatic tradition that he would amplify significantly. Although he is reputed to have written 92 plays, of which 17 more than any other Classical playwright survive, Euripides' standing as a dramatist has often been disputed, especially during his lifetime. While Aristotle heralded him "the most tragic of poets," he also criticized Euripides' confused handling of plot and the less-than-heroic nature of his protagonists.
We see that the play's themes include the classic opposition of Man and Woman. Finally, we see that in Greek culture the social order is maintained by strict adherence within the family to the rule that parents and children reciprocally nurture one another in their respective ages of helplessness. Through the heroine's repeated assaults on this fundamental and sacred value, the playwright most persuasively portrays her as an incarnation of disorder.
This book is for all students and scholars of Greek literature, whether in departments of Classics or English or Comparative Literature, as well as those concerned with the role of women in literature. Emily A. Appearing by chance in Corinth, Aegeus, King of Athens, offers Medea sanctuary in his home city in exchange for her knowledge of certain drugs that can cure his sterility. Now guaranteed an eventual haven in Athens, Medea has cleared all obstacles to completing her revenge, a plan which grows to include the murder of her own children; the pain their loss will cause her does not outweigh the satisfaction she will feel in making Jason suffer.
For the balance of the play, Medea engages in a ruse; she pretends to sympathize with Jason bringing him into her confidence and offers his wife "gifts," a coronet and dress.
Ostensibly, the gifts are meant to convince Glauce to ask her father to allow the children to stay in Corinth. The coronet and dress are actually poisoned, however, and their delivery causes Glauce's death. Seeing his daughter ravaged by the poison, Creon chooses to die by her side by dramatically embracing her and absorbing the poison himself. A messenger recounts the gruesome details of these deaths, which Medea absorbs with cool attentiveness. Her earlier state of anxiety, which intensified as she struggled with the decision to commit infanticide, has now given way to an assured determination to fulfill her plans.
Against the protests of the chorus, Medea murders her children and flees the scene in a dragon-pulled chariot provided by her grandfather, the Sun-God.
Jason is left cursing his lot; his hope of advancing his station by abandoning Medea and marrying Glauce, the conflict which opened the play, has been annihilated, and everything he values has been lost through the deaths that conclude the tragedy.
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