In the fall of 2006, our group read and discussed Euripides's Iphigenia at Aulis. That play portrayed a key lead-in to the Trojan War, the sacrifice of the princess Iphigenia to gain favorable winds for the voyage of the Greek fleet.
This month we are reading another Euripides play, Medea. The plot of the Medea comes not from the long saga of the Trojan War but from another great Greek mythic cycle, that of Jason, the Argonauts, Medea, and the Golden Fleece.
Medea was a princess in the far-eastern land of Colchis. In her lineage there was a strong predeliction for sorcery and witchcraft. She assists Jason and the Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece, then returns to Greece as Jason's wife. A string of heroics (with an atrocity or two mixed in) leads them to Corinth in the Peloponnese. There Jason aspires to wed King Kreon's daughter, but is faced with the inconvenient fact that he's already married to Medea and has two sons by her. Medea exacts her vengeance on Jason in an unspeakable fashion, which may or may not have been Euripides own elaboration of the story.
Medea was first performed in 431 B.C. in an Athenian playfest. It took last place. The winning plays, by Euphorion, are lost, as is the Sophoclean trilogy that took second place. The Medea survives both in physical form and in popularity. According to scholar Richmond Y. Hathorn, "[w]ith the enactment of the struggle in Medea's breast between her feelings as spurned wife and as loving mother, the audience was presented with the first complete revelation of inner conflict in world literature."
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