Medea's Passionate Poison

Abstract

R.M. Newton: Medea's Passionate Poison13 Medea's Passionate Poison Rick M. Newton The action ofEuripides' Medea begins with a love gone bad. "Stricken in her heart with passion for Jason" (???t? ??µ?? ??p?a???s'??s???? 8), Medea has followed her lover to Greece, only to find that "now all is enmity, and what was greatest love is diseased" (??? d' ????a* p??ta, ?a? ??se? ta f??tata 16). The initial sweetness of passion has given way to unhealthy bitterness. The wife who so deeply loved her husband now punishes him with equal intensity as an arch foe. The children from the marriage, in a shuddering paradox, are spared from their enemies only in being slaughtered by the woman who gave them birth. The touch of Medea's hand, it seems, distorts, perverts, and poisons all relationships with which it comes into contact. The daughters of Pelias, to cite another example, express their love for their father by attempting to rejuvenate him. But Medea's treachery results in a particularly horrendous outcome: a father "dies a most painful death" (?sp?? ????st?? %a?€?? 486) in being killed by his daughters. The nurse's prayer at the end of the prologue is, therefore, well-directed: "May she tum against her enemies, at any rate, not her friends" (e?????? ye µ??t??, µ? f?????, d??se?? t? 95). For it is the mark of Medea to confound the distinction between friend and foe, to transgress the boundary between right and wrong and, consequently, to instill in the spectator a disturbing degree of agitation, ta?a?µ??. It is the purpose of this paper to examine this confounding of human relationships in one of the most disturbing portions of the text: the account of the poisoning of Creon and his daughter (1 1361230 ). In this passage, the longest and most graphic messenger speech in extant tragedy, we see the workings of a poison which only Medea can concoct, a poison which recreates in its victims the "diseased love" of Medea herself. The gifts which Medea sends to the newly-married princess are appropriate to the occasion. A robe of sheer material and a garland offinely-wrought gold will not only appeal to the princess herself but will also enhance her beauty in the eyes ofher new husband.1 Medea is aware to the point of vexation (????? 555) that Jason has 1 The robe is described as fine (???tt??) in 786, 949, 1 188, and 1214. For garlands and robes as enhancers of a woman's attractiveness, cf. Sappho 81LP (XdpiTes" . . . ?st?fa??t??s? 8' ?tt?st??f??ta?) and 92LP. 14Syllecta Classica 1 (1989) been "stricken with longing for his new bride" (?a???? Se ??µf?? ?µ??? pep???µ???? 556). The princess likewise must find her groom as irresistible as Medea did when she first saw him in Colchis and "Eros compelled" (???? s' ?????ase 530) her to save his life. But Medea's treatment of these erotic gifts will make allurement lethal. She "smears" (???s? 789) them with a deadly poison, in a manner which recalls the words of the Chorus from the second stasimon: "Never, Queen Cypris, smear the ineluctable shafts of your golden arrows with longing (?µ??? ???sas' 634) and let them loose at me." Medea's gold crown, furthermore, is of the same material as Aphrodite's golden darts. These gifts of poisoned love will result in a night of disease and death, as Medea herself intimates in 399-400: p?????? d' ??? sf?? ?a? ??????? ??s? ??µ???, p????? Se ??d?? ?a? f???? ?µa? ??????. Medea's real intentions are to be detected in the ambiguity of the word Kf)So?. She asserts on the one hand that she will make Jason's "alliance through marriage" a bitter one. But with the alternate meaning of ??d?? as "funeral," she also makes the implicit threat, "I will make their wedding bitter and mournful, and I will make their funeral bitter." Her next phrase indicates precisely whom she has in mind. With the reference to her "banishment from the land," she clearly intends Creon, the king who this day has exiled her from Corinth. Medea is poignantly aware not only of the mutual love between Jason and the princess, but she also...