Play· -431· Drama

Μήδεια (Medea)

by Εὐριπίδης Euripides

Μήδεια (Medea): 1 recorded work traces back to it.

Open on the map

What Μήδεια (Medea) influenced

Works that record this one as a source, with the evidence a contributor gave.

Medea

Play · 55

AdaptationHIGH

Seneca's Medea is a Roman rewriting of Euripides' play, the same story with the same title, and the Greek version is the one every later Medea descends from. The plot is unchanged: Jason abandons Medea for a royal marriage, she destroys the bride and then kills their children. What Seneca changes is the register. Euripides gives Medea long arguments with a chorus that is asked to judge her; Seneca gives her rhetoric, incantation and violence described in detail, and has the children killed on stage rather than reported from off it. The Roman version is the one Renaissance Europe read first, which is how the Greek play reached later drama.

About the work

Μήδεια (Medea)

It was first performed in 431 BC as part of a trilogy, the other plays of which have not survived. Its plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis and the wife of Jason. She finds her position in the world threatened as Jason leaves her for a princess of Corinth and takes vengeance on him by murdering his new wife, his new father-in-law, and her own two sons. She then escapes to Athens to start a new life.