Chorus – (part of the matrimonial song) When she takes her place in a women’s dance, her face alone outshines them all. So the stars’ beauty fails before the sun, and the clustered Pleiads are hidden when Phoebe in borrowed light clasps her full orb with encircling horns. (93-8)
Medea – Your own crimes must urge you on, every one of them must return: the famous ornament of my kingdom stolen, the criminal girl’s little companion cut apart with the sword, his death thrust in his father’s face, his body scattered on the sea, and the limbs of old Pelias boiled in a cauldron. How often have I spilled blood fatally – kindred blood! And yet I did no crime from anger; the cruelty came from my unhappy love. (130-6)
Nurse – Be silent, I beg you, hide your grievances, lock them away in secret resentment. One who endures deep wounds mutely, with cool patience, can repay them; anger concealed wreaks havoc; hatred declared loses its chance for revenge. (150-4)
Medea – One who can feel no hope need feel no despair. (163)
Medea – One who feels guilty for your sake should be innocent in your eyes. (503)
Creon – Depart with haste, and remove at long last a savage and fearful horror!
Medea – What crime, what guilt is being punished by exile?
Creon – An innocent woman asks the cause of her expulsion.
Medea – If you are acting as judge, investigate the case; if as king, give orders.
Creon – You must endure a king’s command, just or unjust.
Medea – Unjust kingship never remains unbroken.
Creon – Go and complain to the Colchians.
Medea – I am going, but he who brought me away should take me back.
Creon – Your words come too late, my decree is decided.
Medea – He who decides an issue without hearing one side has not been just, however just the decision.
Creon – Was Pelias given a hearing by you before being punished?
But speak on, let us give your excellent case a chance. (190-202)
Nurse – My child, where are you rushing in such haste from the house? Stop, curb your anger, control your aggression!
Like an ecstatic maenad taking erratic steps, crazed and possessed by the god, on snowy Pindus’ peak or Nysa’s ridges, so she keeps running here and there with wild movements, with signs of frenzied rage in her expression. Her face is blazing, she draws breaths, she shouts out, weeps floods of tears, beams with joy; she shows evidence of each and every emotion. She hesitates, threatens, fumes, laments, groans. Which way will the weight of her mind come down? Where will she implement her threats? Where will that wave break? Her rage is cresting. It is no simple or moderate crime she is contemplating: she will outdo herself. I know the hallmarks of her old anger. Something great is looming, savage, monstrous, unnatural. I see the face of Rage. May the gods prove my fears wrong! (380-96)
Medea – My mind has the power and habit, as you know, of disdaining the wealth of kings. Only allow me to have the children as companions in my exile, in whose embrace I can pour out my tears. You have the prospect of new sons.
Jason – I admit I would like to obey your appeal, but fatherly love for them forbids. Not even my king and father-in-law himself could force me to endure that. This is my reason for living, this is the solace for my heart, so scorched by cares. I would sooner be deprived of my breath, of my body, of the light.
Medea (aside) – Does he love his sons so much? Good, he is caught! The place to wound him is laid bare. (540-50)
Medea – Raise your tear-swollen eyes here, ungrateful Jason. Do you recognise your wife? This is how I always escape. A path has opened to heaven: twin serpents offer their scaly necks bowed to the chariot yoke. Now recover your sons as their parent. I shall ride through the air in my winged chariot. (1019-25)
Constellations:
See 670-739. esp. 686-90 [Serpens?]; 694-9 [Draco & Ursa Major & Ursa Minor]; 700 [Python]; 701 [Hydra & Hercules]; 758-9 below [Ursa Major & Ursa Minor]; and 93-8 above [Pleiads].
Nurse – My heart shudders with fear: great devastation is near. It is monstrous how her resentment grows, feeds its own fires, renews its past violence. I have often seen her raging, assailing the gods, drawing down the heavens; greater than that, greater still is the monstrosity Medea is preparing. For after going out with frenzied steps and reaching her inner sanctum of death, she pours out her entire resources, brings forth everything that even she has long feared, and deploys all her host of evils, occult, mysterious, hidden things. Making prayers at the sinister shrine with her left hand, she summons all plagues produced by the sand of burning Libya, and all those locked in the everlasting snow of the Taurus, frozen Arctic cold, and every monster. Hauled out by her magic spells, the scaly throng desert their lairs and approach. Here a fierce serpent hauls its vast body, flicks out its three-forked tongue and casts about for those to whom it can bring death; at the sound of her spell it is mesmerised, twines its swollen body into folds upon folds, forces it into coils.
“Too small,” she says, “are the evils, too ordinary the weapons that earth below produces: I must seek my poisons from heaven. Now is the time to embark on something loftier than ordinary criminality. That snake must descend here who lies like a vast torrent, whose gigantic coils are felt by the two beasts, the greater and the less (the greater useful to Pelasgians, the less to Sidonians); Ophiuchus must finally release his gripping hands and let the venom pour out. My chants must bring down Python, who dared provoke the twin deities; the Hydra must return, with each snake that was cut away by Hercules’ hand, renewing itself through its own laceration. You too must leave Colchis and come, unsleeping serpent, lulled for the first time by my chants.” (690-704)
Invocation of the Tortures of the Underworld:
Medea – I invoke the thronging silent dead, and you the gods of the grave, and sightless Chaos, and the shadowy home of dark-enshrouded Dis, the cavernous halls of squalid Death, enclosed by Tartarus’ streams. Eased of your torments, run, you ghosts, to this strange marriage rite; the wheel that tortures limbs may stop, Ixion touch the ground, and Tantalus may swallow down Pirene’s stream in peace. But may heavier punishment rest on one, my husband’s marriage relation: over the rocks may the slippery stone roll Sisyphus back downhill. And you who are mocked by fruitless toil with pitchers pierced by holes, assemble here, you Danaids: this day demands your hands. Now summoned by my rites appear, you heavenly globe of night, displaying your most hostile looks, with menace in every face. For you I have loosed my hair in the style of my people and paced your sequestered groves with naked feet; I have summoned water out of the rainless clouds, and forced the sea to its depths: Ocean withdrew his heavy waves, as the tides were overpowered. With the laws of heaven confounded, the world has seen both sun and stars together, and the Bears have touched the forbidden sea. I have changed the pattern of the seasons: the summer earth has frozen under my spells, and Ceres was compelled to see a winter harvest. The Phasis turned his violent stream to its source, and the Hister, with so many separate mouths, constrained its savage waters in every branch to stillness. Waves have crashed, the maddened seas have swelled with the wind silent; the shelter of the ancient woods has lost its shade at the bidding of my voice. The moment is right to attend your ritual, Phoebe. (740-70)
Medea – What great deed could be dared by untrained hands, by the fury of a girl? Now I am Medea: my genius has grown through evils. (908-10)
Medea – What is the target of this wild throng of Furies? Whom are they hunting, whom are they threatening with fiery blows? At whom is the hellish band pointing its bloody torches? A huge snake hisses, entwined in a lavish whip. Whom is Megaera seeking with her bludgeon? Whose shade approaches ill-defined with limbs dispersed? It is my brother, he seeks amends. We shall pay them, yes, every one. Drive torches into my eyes, mutilate me, burn me: see, my breast is open to the Furies.
Bid the avenging goddesses draw back from me, brother, and return to the deep shades assured of their purpose. Leave me to myself, and act, brother, through this hand that has drawn the sword. With this sacrifice I placate your shade. (958-70)
Bibliography:
A. J. Boyle, Tragic Seneca: An Essay in the Theatrical Tradition. (London: Routledge, 1997).
Mary V. Bragington, The Supernatural in Seneca’s Tragedies, (Wisconsin, 1933).
C. D. N. Costa. Seneca. Greek and Latin Studies: Classical Literature & its Influence (London & Boston: Kegan Paul, 1974).
J. L. Sanderson & E. Zimmerman, eds. Medea: Myth and Dramatic Form. Five plays by Euripides, Seneca, Jean Aouilh, Robinson Jeffers, Maxwell Anderson. (Boston, 1967).
D. & E. Henry, “Loss of Identity: ‘Medea superset?’? A Study of Seneca’s Medea,” Classical Philology 62 (1967), 169-181.
H. V. Canter, Rhetorical Elements in the Tragedies of Seneca, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 10, (Illinois, 1925).
Villy Sorensen, Seneca: the Humanist at the Court of Nero, trans. W. Glyn Jones (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1984).
See 670-739. esp. 686-90 [Serpens?]; 694-9 [Draco & Ursa Major & Ursa Minor]; 700 [Python]; 701 [Hydra & Hercules]; 758-9 below [Ursa Major & Ursa Minor]; and 93-8 above [Pleiads].
Nurse – My heart shudders with fear: great devastation is near. It is monstrous how her resentment grows, feeds its own fires, renews its past violence. I have often seen her raging, assailing the gods, drawing down the heavens; greater than that, greater still is the monstrosity Medea is preparing. For after going out with frenzied steps and reaching her inner sanctum of death, she pours out her entire resources, brings forth everything that even she has long feared, and deploys all her host of evils, occult, mysterious, hidden things. Making prayers at the sinister shrine with her left hand, she summons all plagues produced by the sand of burning Libya, and all those locked in the everlasting snow of the Taurus, frozen Arctic cold, and every monster. Hauled out by her magic spells, the scaly throng desert their lairs and approach. Here a fierce serpent hauls its vast body, flicks out its three-forked tongue and casts about for those to whom it can bring death; at the sound of her spell it is mesmerised, twines its swollen body into folds upon folds, forces it into coils.
“Too small,” she says, “are the evils, too ordinary the weapons that earth below produces: I must seek my poisons from heaven. Now is the time to embark on something loftier than ordinary criminality. That snake must descend here who lies like a vast torrent, whose gigantic coils are felt by the two beasts, the greater and the less (the greater useful to Pelasgians, the less to Sidonians); Ophiuchus must finally release his gripping hands and let the venom pour out. My chants must bring down Python, who dared provoke the twin deities; the Hydra must return, with each snake that was cut away by Hercules’ hand, renewing itself through its own laceration. You too must leave Colchis and come, unsleeping serpent, lulled for the first time by my chants.” (690-704)
Invocation of the Tortures of the Underworld:
Medea – I invoke the thronging silent dead, and you the gods of the grave, and sightless Chaos, and the shadowy home of dark-enshrouded Dis, the cavernous halls of squalid Death, enclosed by Tartarus’ streams. Eased of your torments, run, you ghosts, to this strange marriage rite; the wheel that tortures limbs may stop, Ixion touch the ground, and Tantalus may swallow down Pirene’s stream in peace. But may heavier punishment rest on one, my husband’s marriage relation: over the rocks may the slippery stone roll Sisyphus back downhill. And you who are mocked by fruitless toil with pitchers pierced by holes, assemble here, you Danaids: this day demands your hands. Now summoned by my rites appear, you heavenly globe of night, displaying your most hostile looks, with menace in every face. For you I have loosed my hair in the style of my people and paced your sequestered groves with naked feet; I have summoned water out of the rainless clouds, and forced the sea to its depths: Ocean withdrew his heavy waves, as the tides were overpowered. With the laws of heaven confounded, the world has seen both sun and stars together, and the Bears have touched the forbidden sea. I have changed the pattern of the seasons: the summer earth has frozen under my spells, and Ceres was compelled to see a winter harvest. The Phasis turned his violent stream to its source, and the Hister, with so many separate mouths, constrained its savage waters in every branch to stillness. Waves have crashed, the maddened seas have swelled with the wind silent; the shelter of the ancient woods has lost its shade at the bidding of my voice. The moment is right to attend your ritual, Phoebe. (740-70)
Medea – What great deed could be dared by untrained hands, by the fury of a girl? Now I am Medea: my genius has grown through evils. (908-10)
Medea – What is the target of this wild throng of Furies? Whom are they hunting, whom are they threatening with fiery blows? At whom is the hellish band pointing its bloody torches? A huge snake hisses, entwined in a lavish whip. Whom is Megaera seeking with her bludgeon? Whose shade approaches ill-defined with limbs dispersed? It is my brother, he seeks amends. We shall pay them, yes, every one. Drive torches into my eyes, mutilate me, burn me: see, my breast is open to the Furies.
Bid the avenging goddesses draw back from me, brother, and return to the deep shades assured of their purpose. Leave me to myself, and act, brother, through this hand that has drawn the sword. With this sacrifice I placate your shade. (958-70)
Bibliography:
A. J. Boyle, Tragic Seneca: An Essay in the Theatrical Tradition. (London: Routledge, 1997).
Mary V. Bragington, The Supernatural in Seneca’s Tragedies, (Wisconsin, 1933).
C. D. N. Costa. Seneca. Greek and Latin Studies: Classical Literature & its Influence (London & Boston: Kegan Paul, 1974).
J. L. Sanderson & E. Zimmerman, eds. Medea: Myth and Dramatic Form. Five plays by Euripides, Seneca, Jean Aouilh, Robinson Jeffers, Maxwell Anderson. (Boston, 1967).
D. & E. Henry, “Loss of Identity: ‘Medea superset?’? A Study of Seneca’s Medea,” Classical Philology 62 (1967), 169-181.
H. V. Canter, Rhetorical Elements in the Tragedies of Seneca, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 10, (Illinois, 1925).
Villy Sorensen, Seneca: the Humanist at the Court of Nero, trans. W. Glyn Jones (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1984).
E. Tavenner, Studies in Magic from Latin Literature, (New York, 1916).
