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Medea

euripides donald j. mastronarde

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This edition presents Medea, the most famous play of the Athenian tragedian Euripides, in ancient Greek, with commentary designed for university Greek classes, from second-year Greek upward. It helps students experience a classic drama as they work through the process of careful translation and gives them an appreciation of the work's artistry and its relation to its culture and performance tradition. The introduction summarizes interpretive and cultural issues raised by the play and provides background on important aspects of Greek tragedy, including language, style, and metre.

431 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,-0431
Places
corinth, 

This edition

Format
431 pages, Paperback
Published
August 15, 2002 by Cambridge University Press
ISBN
9780521643863
ASIN
0521643864
Language
Greek, Ancient (to 1453)
Characters More characters
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About the author

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euripides

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Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 98 votes)
5 stars
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98 reviews All reviews
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Sweeney-Todd
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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¿Es acaso Medea la segunda tragedia griega que leo y ya la considero mi favorita sin haber leído todo lo que me falta? Pues sí. Así es. ¿Es eso posible? A lo mejor no. Tal vez me estoy adelantando a los acontecimientos habiendo tantas tragedias todavía por leer pero no me importa porque Eurípides ha hecho una a la altura de lo que a mí me gusta encontrar en las letras: personajes femeninos que no están solo como decoración.

Me encantó multiplicado al mil como una mujer es capaz de llegar hasta lo más oscuro de su propia naturaleza para conseguir vengarse de la traición que ha recibido. Me recontrafascinó como hace uso de su inteligencia y el poder de manipulación para lograr su anhelado objetivo; que es bastante retorcido. Medea es una auténtica villana que no solo se rebela contra Jasón por haberla utilizado sino que lo hace también con la misma sociedad (a pesar de vivir oprimida) que lo único que espera de ella es que esta cumpla con ciertos roles que le han sido asignados por ser mujer.

Sencillamente estas son las lecturas que para su época me gusta siempre encontrar. ¡Una verdadera maravilla! Medea es inteligente hasta el punto de utilizar su "debilidad" (ser mujer) para lograr su maquiavélico fin; que es demasiado despiadado y a mí me parece el culmen de la venganza dentro de toda la literatura que he leído.
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CreacionDeby
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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I haven't read any of the other translations or "versions" of Medea, but this was a magical place to start. The plot seems to be all there, but the language has been intensely stripped back (in contrast to Iphigenia at Aulis which I just read by an unknown, and which featured old-fashioned sounding speech). Here the language is not modern, exactly, it is just very minimalist.

And now I see my utter ruin!
Troubles come upon me like great waves
And my small ship has no hope of a harbour

Read in a couple of hours. Transformative.
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AM_Woody
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Scrivere qualcosa su questa tragedia è molto difficile. Medea è la donna della passione, dell’Amore e della fedeltà sopra ogni cosa e a tutti i costi, anche quello di sacrificare i suoi figli. E’ la donna dell’odio feroce, del sentimento forte e senza mezze misure. E’ la donna ferita, sminuita, vilipesa e tradita per interesse. Giasone questo afferma: abbandona il letto di Medea per regalare ai suoi figli un futuro più roseo, più ricco sposando la figlia di Creonte, ma non si preoccupa della donna che abbandona. Nulla pensa di lei, viene scacciata come un cane rognoso e questo fomenta ancora più odio nel cuore della donna.
Medea è tutte le donne di oggi, estremizzata all’ennesima potenza. Una storia che da lontano ci riporta tragicamente all’attualità e che mai cambia. M Una denuncia sul ruolo della donna, che già Euripide affronta.
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Azra_Satou
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Medea isn't just about pre-feminist ideals, mental illness, revenge, or betrayal. It is a commentary on society, ostensibly Ancient Greek society, but also our global society today. Euripides does something so revolutionary and foreign that the Greek audiences used to tales of heroes or tragedies driven by men must have been flabbergasted and appalled. Medea is the first all-powerful female character. She makes Electra look like a whiny, helpless, pitiable woman. Medea shows that in ancient Greece, there were challenges to women, but also that there was a male playwright daring enough to focus his master work on a previously completely reviled and evil female character. I feel for Medea, but unlike most women in early literature and drama, she solves her own problems. And while her methods may be extreme, she is still in control. Medea is a master work of Greek drama.

I applaud the translator's modern approach and language. Updating a classic masterpiece is hard, and Robin Robertson does it admirably.
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_Watermelon_19
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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n  "No, per le tue ginocchia,
ti prego, t'invoco, ti supplico,
no, non uccidere i figli!
E dove di mano dominio
attinger potrai, dove d'animo,
che avventi la strage terribile
al cuor dei tuoi pargoli?
L'occhio volgendo su lor,
l'esterminio compier potrai senza lagrime?
Quando con supplici grida
dinanzi essi ti cadano,
tu non potrai con saldo animo
tinger la mano omicida."n

In ogni parola di questa famosa tragedia di Euripide c'è la pesantezza di un atto che rimane carico di tragicità anche nel mondo di oggi. Quante volte sentiamo di madri o padri che uccidono i propri figli in preda a un attimo di follia? Non è esattamente la stessa cosa per Medea, ma il concetto è simile. Medea è tradita e si sente umiliata. E solo facendo soffrire chi l'ha fatta soffrire può vendicarsi e andarsene dal paese. Punirà il marito Giasone uccidendo chiunque gli sia stato caro. La nuova moglie, il re e figli. E quando l'eroe vede lo scempio che la moglie ha compiuto sulla sua stessa prole, capisce di avere, in un certo senso, perso. Medea ha vinto. L'ha fatto soffrire. La madre amava i propri figli, ma l'odio per il marito era tale che voleva a ogni costo vederlo struggersi di dolore. Un capolavoro di poesia e drammaticità.
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FreddyTheMonkey
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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I know infanticide is wrong but I’m still kinda with Medea on this one?? at least Jason is literally the most gaslighting bloke ever like ever line he spoke made me feel progressively more murderous
here’s to the most emotionally complex woman in the classical canon
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Tranquilled
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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|| 4.0 stars ||

This is the definition of female rage (gone wrong).

I was in a constant inner-battle with myself between hating Medea for every disgusting thing she’s done and rooting for her to take revenge on Jason. I kept coming back to the question whether my revulsion towards Medea rivaled the one I felt for Jason. I couldn’t quite make up my mind about what I was feeling, which made this all the more interesting.

If only Medea hadn’t taken her ire out on innocents…
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Caeleb
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Way back in the day, I was at a movie theatre watching a movie, and it was a really weird movie. I had no idea what was going on throughout the entire film. People were just getting up and walking out. At the end of the movie, someone explained it to me, and I thought, “Wow! That’s so interesting! But they really should have handed out a pamphlet before the beginning of the movie to explain it.”

That exactly describes my feelings about this play. It was written in 431 B.C. Before diving in, I read a bit of what this play is or else I would have been entirely lost.

Jason and Medea have an epic love story—Medea betrays her family and helps Jason capture The Golden Fleece. The two burn bridges, but they have each other. They wed, and Medea has two children, sons. However, the play begins as Jason has cast off Medea and his sons in favor of marrying the daughter of the ruler of Corinth. How will Medea handle this news?

This couple deserves each other; both of them are extremely selfish. They never accept ownership for their own actions but constantly bemoan how things would have been better if the other person had done something differently. This play is quite surprising. Medea is certainly not a meek, submissive woman who can be discarded carelessly. She is an impressive strategist.

Overall, this is a tragedy worthy of a read.

This book is one of James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read.

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