Medea

In Act I, Medea delivers a long soliloquy; in Act II, she engages in dialogue with two other characters. The first exchange occurs between Medea and the Nurse, a character who is loyal but also has misgivings about Medea’s commitment to violent revenge. For example, the Nurse pleads with Medea to “hide your grievances/In a secret bitterness” (II.150-151). In speaking these lines, the Nurse hints at how women would have been expected to tolerate infidelity and suffer in silence. Divorce was legal and freely available to upper-class Romans in the Julio-Claudian era in which Seneca was writing; it was not uncommon for a Roman woman to learn, like Medea, that she was being discarded so that her husband could pursue a more advantageous match. The Nurse does not deny the validity of Medea’s pain, acknowledging her “deep wounds” (II.151), but she urges Medea to suffer in silence.

Medea and the Nurse engage in a rapid-fire, back-and-forth dialogue as they debate the legitimacy of Medea’s desire for revenge. The use of alternating single lines being exchanged between two characters—especially while engaged in debate or disagreement—is known as stichomythia, and Seneca regularly used this technique in his tragedies, especially when characters are being (ineffectually) warned to turn away from reckless acts of violence or lust. For every point that the Nurse tries to make, Medea has a ready rebuttal. When the Nurse urges her to “fear the king!” (II.165), Medea snaps back, “My father was a king” (II.165, emphasis added), reminding the Nurse of Medea’s defiance towards authority even as a young girl. The Nurse’s attempts to dissuade Medea from her plans of vengeance serve only to reinforce Medea’s commitment to bloodshed, revealing her stubbornness as a character and her commitment to fulfilling her dark destiny.

Medea also engages in a dialogue with Creon, who appears in the play as a figure of absolute power. Creon flatly tells Medea, “You must submit to power, just or unjust” (II.195). Seneca wrote these lines during an era when Roman Emperors held vast power, but were also in constant danger of being murdered or deposed; anyone familiar with the Imperial court would have known that power went hand-in-hand with danger. Thus, Creon’s arrogance and confidence in his authority do not guarantee his security and foreshadow that he is in greater peril.

While Creon begins by pronouncing his sentence for Medea’s crimes, she insists on a version of a trial in which she has the opportunity to defend her actions. Medea asserts, “Let Fortune press what charge she will upon me/To have saved such heroes needs no saying sorry” (II.242-243). Medea is not interested in being modest, and makes it clear that she takes credit for “saving heroes” in recounting her exploits with the Argonauts. Interestingly, heroes in need of saving (particularly by a woman) may not be heroes at all, and thus Medea’s comments come dangerously close to undermining traditional mythology, while simultaneously elevating her own achievements to the level of heroism. Medea’s subversion of gender expectations seems to unsettle Creon more than earn his sympathy, as he comments, “your daring/Shows masculine strength, ignoring what men say” (II.267-268, emphasis added).

Medea not only argues that she deserves praise rather than blame for her actions, but she also raises a key philosophical argument within the play: is Jason guilty of, or at least complicit in, crimes which she committed out of love for him? Medea is insistent that he is, and that punishing only her is therefore profoundly unjust. As she explains, “I have done so much harm, but never for myself” (II.280). Creon, however, argues that Jason “is clean/As long as he is not tainted by your company” (II.264-265). By referring to Medea as a source of contamination, Creon reveals both a misogynistic tendency to regard women as bad influences, and discrimination against Medea’s foreign origins. Contamination typically occurs when a foreign substance is introduced; by coming to Greece, Medea has spread a kind of poisonous influence. The language of poison and being tainted also foreshadows how Medea will eventually use poison to kill both Creon and his daughter.

The theme of Distrust of Foreignness is further developed when the Chorus gives their second speech in the play. They lament the arrogance of the individuals who first began to explore far-off places, stating, “That man was too bold who first in a boat […] went watching his homeland receding behind him” (II.301-303) and speak longingly of a long-ago time when “each person lived an unambitious life, at home” (II.331). Rather than a personal attack on Medea, in this speech, the Chorus criticizes a broader cultural tendency towards celebrating exploration and contact between far-off lands. The Chorus maintains a xenophobic perspective that it is dangerous and unseemly for different peoples and cultures to come in contact with one another, complaining that “the world was once divided into strict partitions/But those were broken by the pinewood ship” (II.335-336).

The Chorus’ speech is also interesting in the historical context that Seneca was writing. During his lifetime, the Roman Empire continued to expand as it conquered new provinces and encountered new civilizations. Notably, Seneca lived during the period when Rome successfully conquered Britain, which had long been seen as lying outside the known bounds of the Mediterranean world and being populated by exotic and barbaric peoples. The Chorus’ speech may have been intended to provoke reflection on the seemingly unquenchable Roman thirst for conquest and expansion.