One of Euripides’ most powerful and best-known plays, Medea is a remarkable study of injustice and ruthless revenge. In Euripides’ retelling of the legend, the Colchian princess Medea has married the hero Jason. They have lived happily for some years at Corinth and have produced two sons. As the play’s action begins, Jason has decided to cast off Medea and to marry the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth.

It's always surprising how brutal and bloody Greek tragedies are
(but: never nihilistic! The one who wrongs will be pursued by the Gods, and usually the entire bloodline is cursed)

Medea:
Medea is angry that her husband Jason is taking a new wife, he wants to ban her from the city as she's dangerous, she plans revenge and murders the new wife as well as her own children - since that will hurt her husband more. She survives and escapes the city with the bodies of the children.

Hecabe:
Ex-queen of Troy, now slave, has to watch as her daughter is sacrificed by the Greeks looking for good omens to return; she also learns that her son was murdered earlier by a trusted friend, so she plots revenge on Polymestor, and traps him with her friends - they stab out his eyes and murder his children. Agamemnon sends the blind Polymestor away without more bloodshed: after all, he murdered his guest, it was his fault.

O stately royal palace! O once happy home!
O Priam, famed for boundless treasures; famed as father,
And I as aged mother, of children without peer! How we have come to nothing, stripped of our old pride!
And we – we paltry humans – swell with arrogance,
One for the wealth and luxury of his house, another
Because the citizens all call him a great man!
Such things mean nothing; careful schemes, the eloquence
Of boasters – all nothing! The man who day by day
Lives on, escaping misery – he is happiest.

Electra:
Former princess, now married away to a commoner after an usurper conspired with her mother to kill the king Agamemnon and take over the throne (it's also revenge of the mother for the earlier sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon at the start of the Trojan War - the same Iphigenia who survived in Goethe's play Iphigenia in Tauris, a Tragedy). Electra waits for her brother Orestes (the one who later shows up in The Oresteia), who traps the king and murders him, and both murder their mother. They suffer from their great crime of matricide, Orestes is instructed to leave and purge his soul (in a few sentences the story of the Oresteia is foretold).

Heracles:
Yet another usurper, yet another family in peril while the man (here Heracles) is away on adventures. Before the new king can murder the family (after all, young kids are future usurpers!) Heracles appears and kills the king. Since this is a Greek tragedy happy endings are not a good thing - so Madness personified has to appear (some old bloodlines curse or whatevs), Heracles turns mad and kills his sons and wife in a frenzy. His mind returns, and Theseus leads the broken man away.

I need to read more Greek tragedies!

loved the first 2 plays but the other 2 were based on myths i wasn't really interested in

Alcestis, the oldest preserved piece of Euripides, is not such a high flyer: it's weak on action and has no psychological depth, though it contains a beautiful father-son dialogue.
In Medea the psychological deepness, of course, goes much further. A real tragedy, Medea is a woman who is driven by evil (not the gods), she is a helpless victim of it, and she knows that, but in spite of this, she goes on. Jason is a lamentable man, but in fact he is responsible for his own fate.

General Introduction & Notes, by Richard Rutherford
Note on the Text
Further Reading
Chronological Table
Translator's Note

Preface to Alcestis
--Alcestis

Preface to Medea
--Medea

Preface to The Children of Heracles
--The Children of Heracles

Preface to Hippolytus
--Hippolytus

Notes
Bibliography
Glossary of Mythological and Geographical Names

4.0 - All of the plays in this collection were tragedies, but I enjoyed all of them the same. I especially appreciate how three of these stories focused on women and that Euripides painted all these focal women with a sympathetic light. Although he detailed the way they murdered, he also did a great job showcasing how their grief and suffering pushed them to do so. These definitely aren’t by any means icons of feminism, but these plays do feel much more lenient and contemplative towards women than other texts from this time. I also enjoyed each play for its individual story; Medea’s revenge against Jason for marrying a princess, Hecabe’s triumph over the man who killed her last remaining child, Electra’s rage against those who killed her father, and the brutal detailings of Heracles’s horrifying murders. As with most Ancient Greek texts, there is a lot of death and murder, but I find that I didn’t mind it as much in these plays as in other pieces I’ve read due to the well showcased emotional turbulence the titular characters face.

I have mixed reactions to these plays. Medea was superb - I was astonished at how modern the themes were. But Electra was such a disappointment in contrast - the characters never really leapt off the page.

Here are my reviews of the two I have read so far:
http://allthingsbooker.wordpress.com/...

http://allthingsbooker.wordpress.com/...

Tbh if I was her I just would have gotten over it and been normal.

I've reviewed the individual plays from this volume of Euripides' plays (the first of five volumes, all of which I have and will read in order) separately; they are the earliest surviving plays and include the well-known Medea as well as Hyppolytus, which aside from Medea stood out to me in this collection.

Medea - 5/5
Hecabe - 4/5
Electra - 3/5
Heracles - 3/5

Euripides is the best writer of women in the ancient world, maybe ever. There's so much in these stories that read like prophecy for how they'll be told in the future, especially the metacommentary on Helen's reputation, Heracles looking a bit like a dumb jock, but mostly Medea's rage on behalf of women.

Particularly biting are these lines from Medea: "What other creatures are bred so exquisitely and purposefully for mistreatment as women are? Think of how we buy ourselves husbands, power and alliances for them, slavery and conquest over us. Bad enough to have no choice in servitude- but to pay for it and then celebrate a wedding feast adds salt to the wound. Try refusing the arrangement, or later petition for divorce--the first is impossible while the second is like admitting you're a whore."

I swear we haven't summed it up as well in 2000 years. Medea is practically addressing the audience when she says "tell me -- how does it feel with my teeth in your heart?"

Fuck Jason, all my homies hate Jason