tells the children: “I wish you happiness, but not here in this world./ What is here your father took” (ln. 1073-4). In addition, she assassinates Creon and his daughter by lacing a dress and diadem with a gruesome poison. Jason commits crimes of a different nature. He acknowledges that in the past he did use Medea’s help in his quest for the Golden Fleece, but once she is no longer advantageous to his career he discredits her in order to make himself look more accomplished – favored more by divine will than by Medea the foreign sorceress:
“My view is that Cypris was alone responsible/ Of men and gods for
the preserving of my life. … it was love’s inescapable/ Power that compelled you to keep my person safe.” (ln. 527-8, 530-1) He is selfish and arrogant; when mourning the deaths of his children, bride, and father-in-law, he focuses on his own pain before considering the suffering of the victims. “For me remains to cry aloud upon my fate,/ Who will get no pleasure from my newly wedded love,/ And the boys whom I begot and brought up, never/ Shall I speak to them alive. Oh, my life is over!” (ln. 1347-50)
In his unflattering portrayal of these two characters, is Euripides
criticizing the shortcomings of both systems? Is he making a comment about how the selfish extreme of each ideal can cause more pain than benefit in the long run? The reviewer Marianne McDonald points out that “Euripides has his Medea confront Jason, opposing a barbarian to someone ‘civilized.’ The civilized Jason is more barbaric in his emotional callousness than the barbarian Medea, but by the end of the play she exacts a barbaric penalty” (“Theater…Medea”). Euripides may be arguing that while the code of the Homeric heroes died out because of its inefficiency and because its justice system was punitive, the Athenian democratic ideal, too, will not survive unless its leaders remain loyal to their allies and not merely to their own interests, and, more generally, unless the people work together and uphold the rule of law.
When examined closely, the Ajax and the Medea are remarkably
similar tragedies. Both Ajax and Medea represent a dying way of life, and in Excellence in First-Year Writing 2012 73