Medea of Euripides Part 14

Not yet! Age cometh and long years.

JASON.

My sons, mine own!

MEDEA.

Not thine, but mine ...

JASON.

... Who slew them!

MEDEA.

Yes: to torture thee.

JASON.

Once let me kiss their lips, once twine Mine arms and touch... . Ah, woe is me!

MEDEA.

Wouldst love them and entreat? But now They were as nothing.

JASON.

At the last, O G.o.d, to touch that tender brow!

MEDEA.

Thy words upon the wind are cast.

JASON.

Thou, Zeus, wilt hear me. All is said For naught. I am but spurned away And trampled by this tigress, red With children's blood. Yet, come what may, So far as thou hast granted, yea, So far as yet my strength may stand, I weep upon these dead, and say Their last farewell, and raise my hand

To all the daemons of the air In witness of these things; how she Who slew them, will not suffer me To gather up my babes, nor bear To earth their bodies; whom, O stone Of women, would I ne'er had known Nor gotten, to be slain by thee!

[_He casts himself upon the earth._

CHORUS.

Great treasure halls hath Zeus in heaven, From whence to man strange dooms be given, Past hope or fear.

And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought: So hath it fallen here.

NOTES TO MEDEA

P. 3, l. 2, To Colchis through the blue Symplegades.]--The Symplegades ("Clashing") or Kuaneai ("Dark blue") were two rocks in the sea which used to clash together and crush anything that was between them. They stood above the north end of the Bosphorus and formed the Gate (l. 1264, p. 70) to the Axeinos Pontos, or "Stranger-less Sea," where all Greeks were murdered. At the farthest eastern end of that sea was the land of Colchis.

P. 3, l. 3, Pelion.]--The great mountain in Thessaly. Iolcos, a little kingdom between Pelion and the sea, ruled originally by Aeson, Jason's father, then by the usurping Pelias.

P. 3, l. 9, Daughters of Pelias.]--See Introduction, p. vii.

P. 4, l. 18, Wed.]--Medea was not legally married to Jason, and could not be, though in common parlance he is sometimes called her husband.

Intermarriage between the subjects of two separate states was not possible in antiquity without a special treaty. And naturally there was no such treaty with Colchis.

This is, I think, the view of the play, and corresponds to the normal Athenian conceptions of society. In the original legend it is likely enough that Medea belongs to "matriarchal" times before the inst.i.tution of marriage.

P. 4, l. 18, Head of Corinth.]--A peculiar word ([Greek: aisumnan]) afterwards used to translate the Roman _dictator_. Creon is, however, apparently descended from the ancient king Sisyphus.

P. 4, l. 40, She hath a blade made keen, &c.]--These lines (40, 41) are repeated in a different context later on, p. 23, ll. 379, 380. The sword which to the Nurse suggested suicide was really meant for murder. There is a similar and equally dramatic repet.i.tion of the lines about the crown and wreath (786, 949, pp. 46, 54), and of those about the various characters popularly attributed to Medea (ll. 304, 808, pp. 18, 46).

P. 5, l. 48, ATTENDANT.]--Greek _Paidagogos_, or "pedagogue"; a confidential servant who escorted the boys to and from school, and in similar ways looked after them. Notice the rather light and cynical character of this man, compared with the tenderness of the Nurse.

P. 5, l. 57, To this still earth and sky.]--Not a mere stage explanation. It was the ancient practice, if you had bad dreams or terrors of the night, to "show" them to the Sun in the morning, that he might clear them away.

P. 8, l. 111, Have I not suffered?]--Medea is apparently answering some would-be comforter. Cf. p. 4. ("If friends will speak," &c.)

P. 9, l. 131, CHORUS.]--As Dr. Verrall has remarked, the presence of the Chorus is in this play unusually awkward from the dramatic point of view. Medea's plot demands most absolute secrecy; and it is incredible that fifteen Corinthian women, simply because they were women, should allow a half-mad foreigner to murder several people, including their own Corinthian king and princess--who was a woman also--rather than reveal her plot. We must remember in palliation (1) that these women belong to the faction in Corinth which was friendly to Medea and hostile to Creon; (2) that the appeal to them as women had more force in antiquity than it would now, and the princess had really turned traitor to her s.e.x. (See note on this subject at the end of the present writer's translation of the _Electra_.) (3) The non-interference of the Chorus seems monstrous: yet in ancient times, when law was weak and punishment was chiefly the concern of the injured persons, and of no one else, the reluctance of bystanders to interfere was much greater than it is now in an ordered society. Some oriental countries, and perhaps even California or Texas, could afford us some startling instances of impa.s.siveness among bystanders.

P. 12, l. 167, Oh, wild words!]--The Nurse breaks in, hoping to drown her mistress's dangerous self-betrayal. Medea's murder of her brother (see Introduction, p. vi) was by ordinary standards her worst act, and seems not to have been known in Corinth. It forms the climax of Jason's denunciation, l. 1334, p. 74.

P. 13, l. 190, Alas, the brave blithe bards, &c.]--Who is the speaker?

According to the MSS. the Nurse, and there is some difficulty in taking the lines from her. Yet (1) she has no reason to sing a song outside after saying that she is going in; and (2) it is quite necessary that she should take a little time indoors persuading Medea to come out. The words seem to suit the lips of an impersonal Chorus.

The general sense of the poem is interesting. It is an apology for tragedy. It gives the tragic poet's conception of the place of his art in the service of humanity, as against the usual feeling of the public, whose serious work is devoted to something else, and who "go to a play to be amused."

P. 14, l. 214, Women of Corinth, I am come, &c.]--These opening lines are a well-known _crux interpretum_. It is interesting to note, (1) that the Roman poet Ennius (ca. 200 B.C.) who translated the _Medea_, did not understand them in the least; while, on the other hand, the earliest Greek commentators seem not to have noticed that there was any difficulty in them worth commenting upon. That implies that while the acting tradition was alive and unbroken, the lines were easily understood; but when once the tradition failed, the meaning was lost.

(The first commentator who deals with the pa.s.sage is Irenaeus, a scholar of the Augustan time.)

P. 15, l. 231, A herb most bruised is woman.]--This fine statement of the wrongs of women in Athens doubtless contains a great deal of the poet's own mind; but from the dramatic point of view it is justified in several ways. (1) Medea is seeking for a common ground on which to appeal to the Corinthian women. (2) She herself is now in the position of all others in which a woman is most hardly treated as compared with a man. (3) Besides this, one can see that, being a person of great powers and vehement will, she feels keenly her lack of outlet. If she had men's work to do, she could be a hero: debarred from proper action (from [Greek: to pra.s.sein], _Hip._ 1019) she is bound to make mischief. Cf. p.

24, ll. 408, 409. "Things most vain, &c."

There is a slight anachronism in applying the Attic system of doweries to primitive times. Medea's contemporaries either lived in a "matriarchal" system without any marriage, or else were bought by their husbands for so many cows.

P. 17, l. 271, CREON.]--Observe the somewhat archaic abruptness of this scene, a sign of the early date of the play.

P. 18, l. 295, Wise beyond men's wont.]--Medea was a "wise woman" which in her time meant much the same as a witch or enchantress. She did really know more than other women; but most of this extra knowledge consisted--or was supposed to consist--either in lore of poisons and charms, or in useless learning and speculation.

P. 18, l. 304, A seed of strife, an Eastern dreamer, &c.]--The meaning of these various "ill names" is not certain. Cf. l. 808, p. 46. Most scholars take [Greek: thaterou tropou] ("of the other sort") to mean "the opposite of a dreamer."

P. 20, ll. 333-4, What would I with thy pains?]--A conceit almost in the Elizabethan style, as if by taking "pains" away from Creon, she would have them herself.

P. 20, l. 335, Not that! Not that!]--Observe what a dislike Medea has of being touched: cf. l. 370 ("my flesh been never stained," &c.) and l.