Women who stand here at the door,

is she still in the house, Medea, who has

perpetrated these heinous crimes, or has she taken flight? 1295

She would need to hide herself in the earth

or lift her body on wings high into the air

if she is to avoid vengeance from the royal house.

Or does she trust that after killing the rulers of the country

she will escape their kinsmen unpunished? 1300

But I am not so concerned about her as about my children.

The family she abused will take care of her,

I have come to save my children’s lives

in case Creon’s relatives do anything to them

exacting vengeance for their mother’s ungodly murder. 1305

Oh, wretched man, you do not know into what a depth of evils

you have come, Jason, or you would not have uttered these words.

What is it? Does she intend to kill me too?

Your children are dead, killed by their mother’s hand.

Oh no! what are you saying? Woman, you have ruined me. 1310

You must think of your children as gone.

Where did she kill them? Inside the house or outside?

Open the gates and you will see your children murdered.¹⁷

Unlock the doors, now, servants,

unfasten the bolts, that I may see the two disasters, 1315

my children dead and her — I’ll make her pay.

Medea (from the rooftop)

Why are you shaking the doors and trying to force them open,

to find the bodies and me who did the deed?

You are wasting your effort. If you need anything of me,

say so, if you want anything, but you will never touch me with your hand. 1320

Such a conveyance the Sun god, father of my father,

has given me, a defense against the hand of my enemies.

You abomination, oh worst, most hateful woman,

to the gods and to me and to the whole human race.

You had the heart to take the sword to your own children 1325

whom you bore, and you have left me childless and devastated.

You did these things and do you still look on the sunlight

and earth, after daring the most appalling deed?

Damn you. Now I see, I didn’t understand it then,

when I brought you, so great an evil, into Greece, 1330

from your home and that barbarous land,

betrayer of your father and the country which reared you.

The gods have hurled against me your avenging spirit.

For you killed your brother at the hearth

and then boarded the beautiful ship Argo. 1335

That is where you started. But after marrying

me and bearing me children

because of the marriage bed you killed them.

There is no Greek woman who would have dared

such deeds, any of whom I could have married, but instead 1340

chose you, a marriage tie that has ruined me,

a lioness, not a woman, with a temper

more savage than Tyrrhenian Scylla.

But not even ten thousand curses could

sting you. Such boldness is in you. 1345

Go, you depraved murderer of your children.

What is left to me but to cry out for my fate?

I will not enjoy my new marriage,

and the children whom I fathered and brought up

I will never be able to speak to them alive, but I have lost them. 1350

I could prolong an answer to your words

if father Zeus were not aware

of what I did for you and what you did in return.

You were not going to disrespect your marriage to me

and lead a happy life, ridiculing me. 1355

And the royal bride and Creon who arranged the marriage for you

were not going to exile me from the country and get away with it.

Remembering this, call me lioness if you wish

and Scylla dwelling in the Tyrrhenian land,

I have wrung your heart as I had to do. 1360

You will suffer too and share in this tragedy.

Be certain of that. But the pain is pleasure if you do not laugh.

Oh children, what a terrible mother you had.

Oh children, how you were destroyed by your father’s disease.

My right hand did not strike them. 1365

But your abuse and your new marriage.

You thought the marriage bed was worth your children’s lives?

Do you think this is a slight wrong for a woman?

If she is a good woman. But to you nothing is good.

These are dead. This will sting you. 1370

These are, alas, a pollution to you.

The gods know who started this tragedy.

Then they know the abomination of your heart.

Hate me. And I hate your bitter voice.

And I yours. The separation is easy. 1375

How then? What shall I do? I too want it.

Allow me to bury my children and mourn over them.

No, never. I shall bury them with my own hand,

taking them to the sanctuary of Hera Akraia

so that none of my enemies will outrage them 1380

by tearing up their tombs. And in this land of Sisyphus

I shall establish a sacred festival and ritual

to last forever for this unholy murder.

And I shall go myself to the land of Erectheus

to live with Aigeus son of Pandion. 1385

But you, as you deserve, a coward, you will die a coward’s death

struck on your head by a remnant of the wreck of the Argo

seeing a bitter end to your marriage to me.

But may the Avenger of children destroy you

and the Justice that haunts murderers. 1390

What god or divine spirit would listen to you

an oath-breaker and deceiver of guests?

Aah, aah, loathsome child murderer.

Go home and bury your wife.

I am going, denied rights to my two children. 1395

Do not mourn yet. Wait for old age.

Oh dearest children.

Medea to their mother, not to you.

And then you killed them.

Medea Yes, to wound you.

Ah me. I long to kiss

the sweet lips of my children. 1400

Now you speak to them, now you love them.

Before you pushed them aside.

Jason In the name of the gods

let me touch the soft skin of my children.

That will not happen. Your words are thrown into the empty air.

Zeus, do you hear how I am driven away 1405

and what I suffer from this loathsome

child-killer, this lioness?

This is left to me, this I can do,

to mourn and cry out to the gods

and to call the divine spirits to witness how she 1410

killed my children and keeps me

from touching them with my hands and burying their bodies.

I wish I had never fathered them

to see them destroyed by you.

Of many things Zeus in Olympus is keeper, 1415

many are the things the gods bring about against all reason,

and what is looked for does not happen after all,

yet a god finds a way for the unexpected.

That is how this story has ended.

17. Usually when a murder is committed in the house the eccyclema ("thing rolled out" a revolve or platform on wheels) was used to reveal the result of the action. In Agamemnon, for example, it was rolled out to show the tableau of Clytemnestra standing over the ensnared bodies of her husband and Cassandra. The audience would expect this and would be watching the doors eagerly. They are doubly surprised, then, when Medea appears on the rooftop in the mechane (machine), the other stage device, which was a crane used to fly in gods (as in Euripides’ Electra). Medea appears, then, in the place where the audience is used to seeing gods, riding in a fantastic chariot drawn by flying serpents. Return to Medea.