Where to Buy
Affiliate links coming soon. Purchases will help support this project.
Read / Listen Free
Medea
9Euripides
Euripides's play of a woman who murders her own children to revenge a faithless husband — the most disturbing portrait of female rage in ancient literature.
GBM Assessment (Score: 9/10)
Euripides' Medea is the most psychologically complex tragedy to survive from ancient Greece, plumbing the depths of betrayal, rage, and vengeance with an intensity that continues to shock audiences. The play laid the foundation for feminist criticism by centering the perspective of a woman who defies every expectation placed upon her by a patriarchal society.
In the play, Medea, betrayed by Jason, exacts the ultimate revenge, challenging Greek assumptions about gender, barbarism, and the boundaries of human action. Pier Paolo Pasolini's celebrated 1969 film adaptation and Luigi Cherubini's opera brought the story to new audiences, while Toni Morrison's Beloved draws upon the Medea archetype in its exploration of motherhood under slavery.
Classical Athens: The Golden Age, c. 480-430 BC
Athens defeats Persia at Marathon and Salamis, inaugurating the most concentrated cultural flowering in Western history. Under Pericles, the Parthenon rises. Athenian democracy reaches fullest expression. The Great Dionysia produces tragedy and comedy. Herodotus invents history. The population of Athens — smaller than modern Reno — shapes Western civilization forever.
Awards & Adaptations
Pasolini film (1969). Cherubini opera. Morrison's Beloved draws on archetype.
Recommended Edition
Gilbert Murray (1910); A.S. Way (Loeb 1912)
