by Euripides
ADM. By no means slighting thee, nor considering thee among mine enemies, did I conceal from thee the unhappy fate of my wife; but this had been a grief added to grief, if thou hadst gone to the house of another host: but it was sufficient for me to weep my own calamity. But the woman, if it is in any way possible, I beseech thee, O king, bid some one of the Thessalians, who has not suffered what I have, to take care of (but thou hast many friends among the Pheræans) lest thou remind me of my misfortunes. I can not, beholding her in the house, refrain from weeping; add not a sickness to me already sick; for I am enough weighed down with misery. Where besides in the house can a youthful woman be maintained? for she is youthful, as she evinces by her garb and her attire; shall she then live in the men’s apartment? And how will she be undefiled, living among young men? A man in his vigor, Hercules, it is no easy thing to restrain; but I have a care for thee. Or can I maintain her, having made her enter the chamber of her that is dead? And how can I introduce her into her bed? I fear a double accusation, both from the citizens, lest any should convict me of having betrayed my benefactress, and lying in the bed of another girl; and I ought to have much regard toward the dead (and she deserves my respect). But thou, O lady, whoever thou art, know that thou hast the same size of person with Alcestis, and art like her in figure. Ah me! take by the Gods this woman from mine eyes, lest you destroy me already destroyed. For I think, when I look upon her, that I behold my wife; and it agitates my heart, and from mine eyes the streams break forth; O unhappy I, how lately did I begin to taste this bitter grief!
CHOR. I can not indeed speak well of thy fortune; but it behooves thee, whatever thou art, to bear with firmness the dispensation of the Gods.
HER. Oh would that I had such power as to bring thy wife to the light from the infernal mansions, and to do this service for thee!
ADM. Well know I that thou hast the will: but how can this be? It is not possible for the dead to come into the light.
HER. Do not, I pray, go beyond all bound, but bear it decently,
ADM. Tis easier to exhort, than suffering to endure.
HER. But what advantage can you gain if you wish to groan forever?
ADM. I know that too myself; but a certain love impels me.
HER. For to love one that is dead draws the tear.
ADM. She hath destroyed me, and yet more than my words express.
HER. Thou hast lost an excellent wife; who will deny it?
ADM. Ay, so that I am no longer delighted with life.
HER. Time will soften the evil, but now it is yet in its vigor on thee.
ADM. Time thou mayst say, if to die be time.
HER. A wife will bid it cease, and the desire of a new marriage.
ADM. Hold thy peace — What saidst thou? I could not have supposed it.
HER. But why? what, wilt not marry, but pass a widowed life alone?
ADM. There is no woman that shall lie with me.
HER. Dost thou think that thou art in aught benefiting her that is dead?
ADM. Her, wherever she is, I am bound to honor.
HER. I praise you indeed, I praise you; but you incur the charge of folly.
ADM. Praise me, or praise me not; for you shall never call me bridegroom.
HER. I do praise thee, because thou art a faithful friend to thy wife.
ADM. May I die, when I forsake her, although she is not!
HER. Receive then this noble woman into thine house.
ADM. Do not, I beseech thee by thy father Jove.
HER. And yet you will be acting wrong, if you do not this.
ADM. Yes, and if I do it, I shall have my heart gnawed with sorrow.
HER. Be prevailed upon: perhaps this favor may be proved a duty.
ADM. Ah! would that you had never borne her off from the contest!
HER. Yet with me conquering thou’rt victorious too.
ADM. Thou hast well spoken; but let the woman depart.
HER. She shall depart, if it is needful; but first see whether it be needful.
ADM. It is needful, if thou at least dost not mean to make me angry.
HER. I too have this desire, for I know somewhat.
ADM. Conquer then. Thou dost not however do things pleasing to me.
HER. But some time or other thou wilt praise me; only be persuaded.
ADM. Lead her in, if I must receive her in my house.
HER. I will not deliver up the woman into the charge of the servants.
ADM. But do thou thyself lead her into the house if it seems fit.
HER. I then will give her into thine hands.
ADM. I will not touch her; but she is at liberty to enter the house.
HER. I trust her to thy right hand alone.
ADM. O king, thou compellest me to do this against my will.
HER. Dare to stretch out thy hand and touch the stranger.
ADM. And in truth I stretch it out, as I would to the Gorgon with her severed head.
HER. Have you her?
ADM. I have.
HER. Then keep her fast; and some time or other thou wilt say that the son of Jove is a generous guest. But look on her, whether she seems aught to resemble thy wife; and being blest leave off from thy grief.
ADM. O Gods, what shall I say? An unexpected wonder this! Do I truly see here my wife, or does the mocking joy of the Deity strike me from my senses?
HER. It is not so; but thou beholdest here thy wife.
ADM. Yet see, whether this be not a phantom from the realms beneath.
HER. Thou hast not made thine host an invoker of spirits.
ADM. But do I behold my wife, whom I buried?
HER. Be well assured thou dost; but I wonder not at thy disbelief of thy fortune.
ADM. May I touch her, may I speak to her as my living wife?
HER. Speak to her; for thou hast all that thou desirest.
ADM. O face and person of my dearest wife, have I thee beyond my hopes, when I thought never to see thee more?
HER. Thou hast: but take care there be no envy of the Gods.
ADM. O noble son of the most powerful Jove, mayst thou be blest, and may thy father, who begot thee, protect thee, for thou alone hast restored me! How didst thou bring her from beneath into this light!
HER. Having fought a battle with the prince of those beneath.
ADM. Where dost thou say thou didst have this conflict with Death!
HER. At the tomb itself, having seized him from ambush with my hands.
ADM. But why, I pray, does this woman stand here speechless?
HER. It is not yet allowed thee to hear her address thee, before she is unbound from her consecrations to the Gods beneath, and the third day come. But lead her in, and as thou oughtest, henceforward, Admetus, continue in thy piety with respect to strangers. And farewell! But I will go and perform the task that is before me for the imperial son of Sthenelus.
ADM. Stay with us, and be a companion of our hearth.
HER. This shall be some time hence, but now I must haste.
ADM. But mayst thou be prosperous, and return on thy journey back. But to the citizens, and to all the tetrarchy I issue my commands, that they institute dances in honor of these happy events, and make the altars odorous with their sacrifices of oxen that accompany their vows. For now are we placed in a better state of life than the former one: for I will not deny that I am happy.
CHOR. Many are the shapes of the things the deities direct, and many things the Gods perform contrary to our expectations. And those things which we looked for are not accomplished; but the God hath brought to pass things not looked for. Such hath been the event of this affair.
MEDEA
Translated by Theodore Alois Buckley
This famous tragedy was first produced in 431 BC and the plot centres upon the barbarian protagonist and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason, who has abandoned her for another woman. Euripides produced Medea along with the lost plays Philoctetes, Dictys and the satyr play Theristai, earning
him last place at the City Dionysia festival for that year. All of the other plays are now lost.
The action of the play is set in Corinth, where Jason has brought Medea after the adventures of the Golden Fleece and he has now left her in order to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon. The play opens with Medea grieving over her loss and with her elderly nurse fearing what she might do to herself or her children. Creon, also fearing what Medea might do, arrives determined to send her into exile. Medea pleads for a day’s respite and Creon begrudgingly gives in. In the next scene Jason arrives to confront her and explain himself. He believes he could not pass up the opportunity to marry a royal princess, as Medea is only a barbarian woman, but hopes to eventually join the two families and keep Medea as his mistress. Medea and the chorus of Corinthian women do not believe him. She reminds him that she left her own people to follow him and that she saved him and slew the dragon. Jason promises to support her after his new marriage, but Medea spurns him and so begins planning her terrible and bloody revenge.
‘Medea About to Kill her Children’ by Eugêne Delacroix, 1838
CONTENTS
PERSONS REPRESENTED.
THE ARGUMENT.
MEDEA.
‘Jason and Medea’ by John William Waterhouse, 1907
PERSONS REPRESENTED.
NURSE.
TUTOR.
MEDEA.
CHORUS OF CORINTHIAN WOMEN.
CREON.
JASON.
ÆGEUS
MESSENGER.
SONS OF MEDEA.
The Scene lies in the vestibule of the palace of Jason at Corinth.
THE ARGUMENT.
JASON, having come to Corinth, and bringing with him Medea, espouses Glauce, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. But Medea, on the point of being banished from Corinth by Creon, having asked to remain one day, and having obtained her wish, sends to Glauce, by the hands of her sons, presents, as an acknowledgment for the favor, a robe and a golden chaplet, which she puts on and perishes; Creon also having embraced his daughter is destroyed. But Medea, when she had slain her children, escapes to Athens, in a chariot drawn by winged dragons, which she received from the Sun, and there marries Ægeus son of Pandion.
MEDEA.
NURSE OF MEDEA.
Would that the hull of Argo had not winged her way to the Colchian land through the Cyanean Symplegades, and that the pine felled in the forests of Pelion had never fallen, nor had caused the hands of the chiefs to row, who went in search of the golden fleece for Pelias; for neither then would my mistress Medea have sailed to the towers of the Iolcian land, deeply smitten in her mind with the love of Jason; nor having persuaded the daughters of Pelias to slay their father would she have inhabited this country of Corinth with her husband and her children, pleasing indeed by her flight the citizens to whose land she came, and herself concurring in every respect with Jason; which is the surest support of conjugal happiness, when the wife is not estranged from the husband. But now every thing is at variance, and the dearest ties are weakened. For having betrayed his own children, and my mistress, Jason reposes in royal wedlock, having married the daughter of Creon, who is prince of this land. But Medea the unhappy, dishonored, calls on his oaths, and recalls the hands they plighted, the greatest pledge of fidelity, and invokes the gods to witness what return she meets with from Jason. And she lies without tasting food, having sunk her body in grief, dissolving all her tedious time in tears, after she had once known that she had been injured by her husband, neither raising her eye, nor lifting her countenance from the ground; but as the rock, or the wave of the sea, does she listen to her friends when advised. Save that sometimes having turned her snow-white neck she to herself bewails her dear father, and her country, and her house, having betrayed which she hath come hither with a man who has now dishonored her. And she wretched hath discovered from affliction what it is not to forsake one’s paternal country. But she hates her children, nor is she delighted at beholding them: but I fear her, lest she form some new design: for violent is her mind, nor will it endure to suffer ills. I know her, and I fear her, lest she should force the sharpened sword through her heart, or even should murder the princess and him who married her, and after that receive some greater ill. For she is violent; he who engages with her in enmity will not with ease at least sing the song of victory. But these her children are coming hither having ceased from their exercises, nothing mindful of their mother’s ills, for the mind of youth is not wont to grieve.
TUTOR, WITH THE SONS OF MEDEA, NURSE.
TUT. O thou ancient possession of my mistress’s house, why dost thou stand at the gates preserving thus thy solitude, bewailing to thyself our misfortunes? How doth Medea wish to be left alone without thee?
NUR. O aged man, attendant on the children of Jason, to faithful servants the affairs of their masters turning out ill are a calamity, and lay hold upon their feelings. For I have arrived at such a height of grief that desire hath stolen on me to come forth hence and tell the misfortunes of Medea to the earth and heaven.
TUT. Does not she wretched yet receive any respite from her grief?
NUR. I envy thy ignorance; her woe is at its rise, and not even yet at its height.
TUT. O unwise woman, if it is allowable to say this of one’s lords, since she knows nothing of later ills.
NUR. But what is this, O aged man? grudge not to tell me.
TUT. Nothing: I have repented even of what was said before.
NUR. Do not, I beseech you by your beard, conceal it from your fellow-servant; for I will preserve silence, if it be necessary, on these subjects.
TUT. I heard from some one who was saying, not appearing to listen, having approached the places where dice is played, where the elders sit, around the hallowed font of Pirene, that the king of this land, Creon, intends to banish from the Corinthian country these children, together with their mother; whether this report be true, however, I know not; but I wish this may not be the case.
NUR. And will Jason endure to see his children suffer this, even although he is at enmity with their mother?
TUT. Ancient alliances are deserted for new, and he is no friend to this family.
NUR. We perish then, if to the old we shall add a new ill, before the former be exhausted.
TUT. But do thou, for it is not seasonable that my mistress should know this, restrain your tongue, and be silent on this report.
NUR. O my children, do you hear what your father is toward you? Yet may he not perish, for he is my master, yet he is found to be treacherous toward his friends.
TUT. And what man is not? dost thou only now know this, that every one loves himself dearer than his neighbor, some indeed with justice, but others even for the sake of gain, unless it be that their father loves not these at least on account of new nuptials.
NUR. Go within the house, my children, for all will be well. But do thou keep these as much as possible out of the way, and let them not approach their mother, deranged through grief. For but now I saw her looking with wildness in her eyes on these, as about to execute some design, nor will she cease from her fury, I well know, before she overwhelm some one with it; upon her enemies however, and not her friends, may she do some [ill.]
MEDEA. (within) Wretch that I am, and miserable on account of my misfortunes, alas me! would I might perish!
NUR. Thus it is, my children; your mother excites her heart, excites her fury. Hasten as quick as possible within the house, and come not near her sight, nor approach her, but guard against the fierce temper and violent nature of her self-willed mind. Go now, go as quick as possible within. But it is evident that the cloud of grief raised up from the beginning will quickly burst forth with greater fury; what I pray will her soul, great in rage, implacable, irritated by ills, perform!
MED. Alas! alas! I wretched have suffered, have suffered treatment worthy of great lamentation. O ye accursed children of a hated mother, may ye perish with your father, and may the whole house fall.
NUR. Alas! alas! me miserable! but why should your children share their father’s error? Why dost thou hate these! Alas me, my children, how beyond measure do I grieve lest ye suffer any evil! Dreadful are the dispositions of tyrants, and somehow in few things controlled, in most absolute, they with difficulty lay aside their passion. The being accustomed then to live in mediocrity of life is the better: may it be my lot then to grow old if not in splendor, at least in security. For, in the first place, even to mention the name of moderation carries with it superiority, but to use it is by far the best conduct for men; but excess of fortune brings more power to men than is convenient; and has brought greater woes upon families, when the Deity be enraged.
NURSE, CHORUS.
CHOR. I heard the voice, I heard the cry of the unhappy Colchian; is not she yet appeased? but, O aged matron, tell me; for within the apartment with double doors, I heard her cry; nor am I delighted, O woman, with the griefs of the family, since it is friendly to me.
NUR. The family is not; these things are gone already: for he possesses the bed of royalty; but she, my mistress, is melting away her life in her chamber, in no way soothing her mind by the advice of any one of her friends.
MED. Alas! alas! may the flame of heaven rush through my head, what profit for me to live any longer. Alas! alas! may I rest myself in death, having left a hated life.
CHOR. Dost thou hear, O Jove, and earth, and light, the cry which the wretched bride utters? why I pray should this insatiable love of the marriage-bed hasten thee, O vain woman, to death? Pray not for this. But if thy husband courts a new bed, be not thus enraged with him. Jove will avenge these wrongs for thee: waste not thyself so, bewailing thy husband.
MED. O great Themis and revered Diana, do ye behold what I suffer, having bound my accursed husband by powerful oaths? Whom may I at some time see and his bride torn piecemeal with their very houses, who dare to injure me first. O my father, O my city, whom I basely abandoned, having slain my brother.
