Written by Bethany Hicks-Gravener
26/10/25
Euripides’ tragedy Medea, first performed in 431 BCE at the City Dionysia in Athens, explores what happened to Medea and Jason after the myth of the golden fleece. The play takes place over one day in the city of Corinth, and we discover from the nurse who opens the play that Medea and Jason settled in Corinth and had two children. However, Jason has decided to marry the daughter of Creon, the King of Corinth, and this, understandably, angers Medea greatly. Medea decides that Jason shouldn’t be allowed to get away with marrying the princess of Corinth, so she is going to punish him first by murdering his fiancée and then by murdering the children that Jason and Medea had together. Within the Medea, Euripides explores ancient Greek male ideas about female sexuality, and through the character of Medea herself, he portrays for his ancient audience a figure who is antithetical to the ‘ideal wife’, feeding into the male fear of an uncontrolled woman’s sexuality.
In his 1984 article for Greece & Rome, P. Walcot states that “the Greeks believed women to be incapable of not exercising their sexual charms,” and as a result a woman’s sexuality needed to be controlled, otherwise she would become dangerous. Marriages were often arranged when a girl started puberty; this way her sexuality was able to be ‘controlled’ through her husband. As P. Walcot puts it, “she could then indulge her sexuality within the context of legitimate marriage,” and so through this mindset that was held by the ancient Greek populace, Euripides’ Medea becomes very striking.
Prior to the events of the play, Medea and Jason are introduced to us through Apollonius’ Argonautica. This epic poem provides us with the genesis of their relationship, and it is through this text that we are informed that Aphrodite made Medea fall desperately in love with Jason so that she would aid him in his quest for the golden fleece. Effectively, had Jason not received Medea’s help, he never would have been successful in his mission. His hero status exists because of Medea. Falling in love with Jason, though, made Medea turn her back on her family and her home, and by the end of the Argonautica, Medea has nowhere else to go but with Jason—he becomes her only family. Therefore, when Jason turns his back on Medea and the life that they have built together in Corinth, it infuriates her and provides her with the spark needed to enact her revenge on his betrayal. In Corinth, and in Greece as a whole, she is a foreigner—and a female one at that. Only twenty years before Euripides debuted this play in Athens, Pericles’ law on Athenian citizenship was passed and, in the context of this play, it is particularly poignant. In 451 BCE, to be considered an Athenian citizen both your mother and your father had to be Athenian. Therefore, applying this worldview onto the story of Medea, Medea is socially lost without Jason: he is her link into society, and it is because of him that she has a life in Greece. This is the perspective that Euripides’ Athenian audience would have going into this play. Moreover, Aphrodite manifesting in Medea the love that she has for Jason means that Medea has never experienced romantic love ‘naturally’. In fact, we can argue that her love is ‘diseased’; it is a work of fiction, and it is only through Jason’s betrayal that Medea realises this.
So why is Medea’s ‘diseased’ love relevant when we are talking about ancient views on female sexuality? Well, through Medea’s acceptance that Jason doesn’t love her anymore, she realises that the love she felt for him wasn’t real either, and she emotionally removes herself from the marriage that Jason had already physically removed himself from. By accepting that there is no marriage between her and Jason anymore, Medea is put in a unique position for women in antiquity—she is both married and unmarried, putting her in this ‘danger zone’ where her sexuality becomes threatening. Medea registers that she is both free and unfree, and she harnesses that anger and hurt into something that she can weaponise. To Jason she remarks, “you were mistaken if you thought // You could dishonour my bed and live a pleasant life,” (1354-1355). It is in this space of liminality by which Medea takes the situation that Jason has put her in into her own hands. We can then look at her actions, in part, through the lens of sexual jealousy.
The position that Medea finds herself in at the start of Euripides’ Medea is that of a woman who has been displaced. Jason has chosen a new bride for himself and now Medea, and the love that she has for her husband, are unwanted by him. Medea therefore feels a sense of sexual jealousy towards the woman who has replaced her place in Jason’s life: “go on, insult me // … did I make you my wife then abandon you?” (604-607). This sexual jealousy is one of the main driving forces for Medea to murder Jason’s bride, a murder that she commits through poison. R.M. Newton argues that in the murder of the king of Corinth and his daughter “we see the workings of a poison which only Medea can concoct, a poison which recreated in its victims the ‘diseased love’ of Medea herself,” once again bringing us back to this idea that Medea’s love for Jason was tainted and unnatural. What is also worth making note of is that, in her homeland, Medea was a princess in her own right. As a result, Jason’s choice of bride must especially sting because she is basically being ‘traded in for a newer model’. She knows that the princess of Corinth is innocent in this situation, but Medea chooses for her to die for two reasons. The first is that Jason will have to watch her die and know that he can’t do anything to stop it, something that will make him suffer emotionally due to his role within mythology as a hero, much like the position that he has put her in. The second is that the princess of Corinth is the physical manifestation of Medea’s sexual jealousy—she is the catalyst for Medea’s household falling apart. Ed Sanders argues that “this revenge then, is an organic development from Medea’s abandonment as a wife and a woman,” and from the moment that Jason committed himself to his new bride, this fate was sealed.
To conclude, it is interesting to think that when Euripides’ Medea debuted at the City Dionysia in 431 BC it was ranked third—which was also last—place in the drama competition. All the pieces that were performed at this event were trilogies, and the other two plays of Euripides’ trilogy that would have been performed alongside the Medea are lost to us. We do not know what happened within those plays. For all we know, Euripides’ entry could have placed last because those other two plays were not very good, but from what we know about the views on women that ancient Greek males held, an interesting discourse is opened on how the Medea was received by its original audience. Did Euripides place last in 431 BC because the Medea was deemed too ‘dangerous’ with its villainess as the titular character?
Bibliography
Euripides. Medea, edited by Philip Vellacott.
Newton, Rick M. ‘Medea’s Passionate Poison’. Syllecta Classica 1 (1989): 13-20. https://doi.org/10.1353/syl.1989.0001.
Sanders, Ed. ‘Sexual Jealousy and Erôs in Euripides’ Medea’. In Erôs in Ancient Greece, edited by Ed Sanders, Chiara Thumiger, Christopher Carey and N.J. Lowe, 41-57. Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2013.
Walcot, P. ‘Greek Attitudes Towards Women: The Mythological Evidence’. Greece & Rome, 31, no.1 (1984): 37-47, https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/CFB203204C8A7D199358A0B295722856/S001738350002787Xa.pdf/greek-attitudes-towards-women-the-mythological-evidence1.pdf.
Zanker, Graham. ‘The Love Theme in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica’, Wiener Studien 92, (1979): 52-75, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24746951.
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