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Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' Medea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Shirley A. Barlow
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Extract

The plot of the Medea concerns infidelity, a woman discarded by her husband for another younger woman and a more ‘suitable’ match. Infidelity by the husband was not an unusual occurrence amid the material of Greek myths. In Sophocles' play The Women of Trachis the heroine Deianeira, and wife of Heracles, must reluctantly take into her household Iole, a beautiful slave-girl whom her husband has taken as his concubine. Although she is made to give voice to her regret and to her jealousy, she has no thought of harming the girl or her husband. That Heracles is finally injured is not the result of an intentional act of revenge on her part but a mistake set in train by the malevolence of someone else.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , October 1989 , pp. 158 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

NOTES

1. Eur. Andromache 222ff.

2. i.e. in respect of the contrasting way she welcomes her husband and his concubine home. See Webster, T. B. L., The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), p. 57Google Scholar. On the qualities of character shown here by Deianeira see Kamerbeck's, edition of the Trachiniae, p. 15 and pp. 109–10Google Scholar.

3. A type established by Homer in the Iliad and continued throughout antiquity both in literature and art. See Pauly's, RE 1.2.2 2151–2152Google Scholar under Andromache and note particularly Euripides, Troades 643ff. and Seneca, , Troades 642ffGoogle Scholar. Also for art – Pausanias 10.25.9 and Plutarch, , Brutus 23Google Scholar. Minor characters throughout tragedy, e.g. Ismene, Chrysothemis, provide something of a stereotype.

4. The question of the exact status and legality of Medea's marriage to Jason, given that she is a foreigner, is not raised in the play. I agree with Easterling, P. E., YCS 25 (1977), 180Google Scholar that ‘Jason and Medea are to be regarded as permanently pledged’ and that ‘the theme of their oaths is given repeated stress: 21ff.; 160ff.; 168ff.; 208ff.; 438ff.; 492ff.; 1392’.

5. p. xxi.

6. 1339–40.

7. 259ff. and especially the Chorus' reply at 267ff.

8. 234–5.

9. 236–7.

10. 244–5.

11. 247.

12. There is much discussion in the play of what constitutes a σοϕός or σοϕία both for women and others. E.g. 320, 294ff., 580ff., 190ff. N.b. 385, 409 and, of Medea specifically, 285, 385, 539.

13. 374–5.

14. YCS 25 (1977), 197 and 201–2Google Scholar.

15. See Knox, 196.

16. Heracles is the paradigm of heroic arete in Pindar, e.g. Nem. 1. 33ff.; Pyth. 9. 87ff.; Isthm. 4. 56ff.; Ol. 10. In Euripides' Heracles he takes revenge on his enemy Lycus by killing him and his family (see his speech at 565ff. and the subsequent murder) and much attention is also given to his heroic labours (20 and 348ff.). On καλλίνικος see note 20.

17. Knox, 198, points to other words and phrases later in the play which characterize the hero, particularly the Sophoclean hero, e.g., θράσος rashness (856), and phrases expressing determined resolve, e.g. δέδοκται δεδογμένων (1236, 822.). άγών is a word Euripides applies to the heroic trials of Heracles, e.g. Heracles 787–8, τòν Ηρακλέους/καλλίνικον άγŵνα and later tragically, τòνδ' άγων' έμων Τέκγων.

18. p. xix.

19. 482ff.

20. καλλίνικος a word often used in association with the great Heracles; Archilochus 207 (120D), ὦ καλλίνικε χαĩρ' Hναξ 'Ηράκλεες,/τήνελλα καλλίνικε and Pindar, O1.9. 2 (Wilamowitz on Herakles 80), cf. Eur Herakles 582, 961, 681, 1046; cf. 49, 570, 789.

21. CQ 36 (1986), 343–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Jones, H. Lloyd, Würzburger Jahrbucher NF 6a (1980), 51–59Google Scholar.

22. Particularly strong seem to me to be (i) the inconsistency between 1058 and 1060–61 where Medea imagines the children in Athens, then implies they will be in Corinth; (ii) the fact that 1062–3 have long been regarded as a borrowing from 1240–41; (iii) the fact that if this passage stands, θυμός would be used in two very different ways in two contexts where much stress is upon the word (see Reeve, M. D., CQ 22 (1972), 55)Google Scholar.

23. The theme of children is also important before this speech and in the play as a whole. See Schlesinger, E. in Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1983), pp. 302ffGoogle Scholar.

24. On the force of βουλεύματα and θυμός see Jones, Lloyd, loc. cit., 58Google Scholar and Kovacs, , loc. cit., 351Google Scholar.

25. See Schlesinger, , loc. cit., p. 310Google Scholar.

26. p. 224.

27. ‘The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour; but valour in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate’ (Butcher's translation).

28. Webster, , op. cit. (n. 2), p. 52; Page, Introduction to the Medea, p. xGoogle Scholar.

29. See also Schlesinger, , loc. cit., p. 299Google Scholar.