Medea of Euripides Part 16

This first appearance of Medea "above, on the tower" (Scholiast) seems to me highly effective. The result is to make Medea into something like a _dea ex machina_, who prophesies and p.r.o.nounces judgment. See Introduction.

P. 76, l. 1370, They are dead, they are dead!]--This wrangle, though rather like some scenes in Norse sagas, is strangely discordant for a Greek play. It seems as if Euripides had deliberately departed from his usual soft and reflective style of ending in order to express the peculiar note of discord which is produced by the so-called "satisfaction" of revenge. Medea's curious cry: "Oh, thy voice! It hurts me sore!" shows that the effect is intentional.

P. 77, l. 1379, A still green sepulchre.]--There was a yearly festival in the precinct of Hera Acraia, near Corinth, celebrating the deaths of Medea's children. This festival, together with its ritual and "sacred legend," evidently forms the germ of the whole tragedy. Cf. the Trozenian rites over the tomb of Hippolytus, _Hip._ 1424 ff.

P. 77, l. 1386, The hands of thine old Argo.]--Jason, left friendless and avoided by his kind, went back to live with his old s.h.i.+p, now rotting on the sh.o.r.e. While he was sleeping under it, a beam of wood fell upon him and broke his head. It is a most grave mistake to treat the line as spurious.