Medea

Also known as: MED. · Family: Colchian · Role: wife of Jason · First appears: Euripides, Medea — Scene 1

Medea is Jason’s wife, but at Corinth their marriage breaks when he betrays her and enters a royal marriage with Glauce, leaving her and their children behind. Creon orders Medea and the children into exile; she asks for one additional day and receives it. She sends Glauce a robe and golden chaplet through the children, killing Glauce and Creon when he embraces her, then kills the children and escapes to Athens in a chariot drawn by winged dragons. There she marries Aegeus.

Medea recounts that she abandoned her father and city after killing her brother, and that she killed Pelias through the hands of his own children before coming with Jason to Iolcos. She regards Jason as having betrayed her by taking another wife and fathering children, though she recalls that love compelled him to preserve her life and once calls herself “thirdly a great friend to thee.” She also invokes Themis, who conducted her to Greece, and Hecate, whom she reveres and chooses as her assistant.

When Creon again banishes her, Medea resolves to poison her enemies and secretly carry out her plans. Aegeus agrees to receive her safely if she reaches his house and swears not to expel or surrender her, so she chooses his city as her refuge. She deceptively reconciles with Jason, sends their sons with wedding gifts for Glauce, and, after the gifts are accepted and the children reprieved, decides that they must die by her own hand. She kills them, refuses Jason permission to bury or mourn them, declares that she will carry them to Hera’s shrine, and announces that she will leave for the land of Erectheus to dwell with Aegeus, leaving Jason childless.