Oaths and Supplication
Medea: O mighty Themis and my lady Artemis, do you see what I suffer, I who I have bound my accursed husband with mighty oaths (orkois)? May I one day see him and his new bride ground to destruction, and their whole house with them, so terrible are the unprovoked wrongs they dare to commit against me! O father, O my native city, from you I was parted in shame, having killed my brother! (160-7)
Chorus: I have heard her loud groans, the shrill accusations she utters against the husband who betrayed her bed. Having suffered wrong she raises her cry to Zeus's daughter, Themis, goddess of oaths (orkian), the goddess who brought her to Hellas across the sea through the dark saltwater over the briny gateway of the Black Sea, a gateway few traverse. (205-212)
Medea: Do not [exile me], I beg you by your knees and by your newly wedded daughter!
Creon: You waste your words. You will never win me over.
Medea: But will you banish me without the regard due a suppliant?
Creon: Yes: I do not love you more than my own house. (324-7)
Medea (to Jason): Respect for your oaths (orkon) is gone, and I cannot tell whether you think that the gods of old no longer rule or that new ordinances have now been set up for mortals, since you are surely aware that you have not kept your oath (euorkos) to me. O right hand of mine, which you often grasped together with my knees, how profitless was the suppliant grasp upon me of a knave, and how I have been cheated of my hopes! (492-8)
Medea (to Aegeus): But I beg you by your beard and by your knees and I make myself your suppiant: have pity, have pity on an unfortunate woman, and do not allow me to be cast into exile without a friend, but receive me into your land and your house as a suppliant. (709-713)
Medea (to Aegeus): I trust you. But Pelias' house is hostile to me, and Creon as well. If you are bound by an oath (orkioisi), you will not give me up to them when they come to take me out of the country. (734-6)
Chorus (to Medea): Think on the slaying of your children, think what slaughter you are committing! Do not, we beseech you by your knees and in every way we can, do not kill your children!
How will you summon up the strength of purpose or the courage of hand and heart to dare this dreadful deed? When you have turned your eyes upon your children, how will you behold their fate with tearless eye? When your children fall as suppliants at your feet, you will not be hardhearted enough to drench your hand in their blood. (851-865)
Philoi (Friends) & Ekthoi (Enemies)
Nurse. “Now all is hatred: love [‘philtata’: beloved things] is sickness-stricken.” (16)
Pedagogus. “Old bonds of love are aye outrun by feet / Of new: – no friend [philos] is he unto this house.” (76-7)
Nurse. “…to his friends [philous] he stands convicted of baseness.” (84)
Pedagogus. “…no man loves [philei] his neighbour as himself…” (86)
Nurse. “To foes [‘ekthrous’: enemies] may she work ill, and not to friends [‘philous’: beloved ones]!” (95)
Medea to Chorus. “Thine is this city, thine a father’s home, / Thine bliss of life and fellowship of friends [philos]; / But I, lone, cityless, and outraged thus / Of him who kidnapped me from foreign shores, / Mother nor brother have I, kinsman none, / For port of refuge from calamity.” (252-8)
Upon Creon’s pronouncement of her banishment – “Nay, – by thy knees, and by the bride, thy child!” (324)
Medea to Jason. “Out on this right hand, which thou oft wouldst clasp, – / These knees! – I was polluted by the touch / Of a base man, thus frustrate of mine hopes! Come, as a friend [philos] will I commune with thee – …/…/…thus it is – a foe [ekthra] am I become / To mine own house [‘oikothen philois’ my friends at home]: no quarrel I had with those / With whom I have now a death-feud for thy sake.” (496-9 & 506-8)
Jason’s to Medea. “ - for I know full well / How all friends [‘philos’] from the poor man stand aloof, - ” (560-1)
Medea. “No profit is there in a villain’s gifts.” (618)
Medea to Aegeus, “But I beseech thee, lo, thy beard I touch, – / I clasp thy knees, thy suppliant am I now –” (710-11) This becomes a kind of contract in friendship. She promises him children in return for protection from enemies ‘ekthrois’ (750) and then enforces it as a bond, “were oath-pledge given for this / To me, then had I all I would of thee.” (731-2)
Medea to Chorus. “…unendurable are mocks of foes [‘ekthros’]” (795)
Medea to Chorus. “Let none account me impotent, nor weak, / Nor spiritless! – O nay, in other sort, / Grim to my foes [ekthrois], and kindly to my friends [philoisis].” (807-10)
Medea to Chorus. “Over my foes triumphant now, my friends [philai], / Shall we become: our feet are on the path / Now is there hope of vengeance [dike] on my foes [ekthrous].” (1116-7)
Jason to Glauke [Messenger reporting] “Nay, be not hostile to thy friends: / Cease from thine anger, turn thine head again, / Accounting friends whomso thy spouse accounts.” (1151-3)
Select Bibliography:
Shirley A. Barlow, 'Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' Medea,' Greece & Rome 2nd Ser., Vol.36, No. 2 (1989) 158-171.
Deborah Boedeker, 'Euripides' Medea and the Vanity of Logoi,' Classical Philology Vol. 86, No. 2 (1991) 95-112.
Elizabeth Bongie, 'Heroic Elements in the Medea of Euripides,' Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 107 (1977) 27-56.
Anne Burnett, 'Medea and the Tragedy of Revenge,' Classical Philology Vol. 68, No. 1 (May 1973) 1-24.
Malcolm Davies, 'Deianeira and Medea: a Foot-note to the Pre-history of Two Myths,'Mnemosyne 4th Ser., Vol. 42 (1989) 469-472.
Helene Foley, 'Medea's Divided Self,' Classical Antiquity Vol. 8, No. 1 (1989) 61-85.
Helene Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Ingrid E. Holmberg, "Mhtis and Gender in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica," Transactions of the American Philological Association 128 (1998) 135.
David Kovacs, 'On Medea's Great Monologue (E. Med. 1021-80),' Classical Quarterly Vol. 36, No. 2 (1986) 343-352.
David Kovacs, 'Zeus in Euripides' Medea,' American Journal of Philology, Vol. 114, No. 1 (Spring 1993) 45-70.
C. A. E. Luschnig, 'Interiors: Imaginary Spaces in Alcestis and Medea,' Mnemosyne, 4th Ser., Vol. 45 (1992) 19-44.
Emily A. McDermott, Euripides' Medea: the Incarnation of Disorder, London, PA: Penn State University Press, 1989.
Jennifer March, 'Euripides the Misogynist?' in Anton Powell, ed., Euripides, Women, and Sexuality, London: Routledge, 1990, 32-75.
S. P. Mills, 'The Sorrows of Medea,' Classical Philology, Vol. 75, No. 4 (1980) 289-296.
Robert B. Palmer, 'An Apology for Jason: A Study of Euripides' Medea,' Classical Journal, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Nov. 1957) 49-55.
M. D. Reeve, 'Euripides' Medea 1021-1080,' Classical Quarterly, New Ser. Vol. 22, No. 1 (May 1972) 51-61.
Margaret Visser, 'Medea: Daughter, Sister, Wife, and Mother. Natal Family versus Conjugal Family in Greek and Roman Myths About Women,' in Cropp, Fantham, & Scully, eds. Greek Tragedy and its Legacy: Essays Presented to D. J. Conacher, Calgari, Alberta: University of Calgari Press, 1986, 149-165.
Margaret Williamson, 'A Woman's Place in Euripides' Medea,' in Anton Powell, Euripides, Women, and Sexuality, London: Routledge, 1990, 16-31.
Ian Worthington, 'The Ending of Euripides' Medea,' Hermes, Vol. 118, No. 4 (1990) 502-505.
