Gianni Guastella Virgo, Coniunx, Mater the Wrath of Senecas Medea (1)

Virgo, Coniunx, Mater: The Wrath of Seneca's MedeaAuthor(s): Gianni GuastellaReviewed work(s):Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 20, No. 2 (October 2001), pp. 197-220Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ca.2001.20.2.197 .Accessed: 11/05/2012 15:47

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GIANNI GUASTELLA

Classical Antiquity. Volume 20, Number 2, pages 197–219. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).Copyright © 2001 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions.University of California Press, 2000 Center Street, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

Seneca’s Medea is inevitably marked by the signs of wrath which are her liter-ary inheritance, such as the frenÀn barÌj xìloj of Euripides’ Medea (Medea1265).1 Yet the wrath of Seneca’s Medea also takes shape in its own distinctivecontext.2 Speci� cally, I will argue that the behavior and actions of Seneca’s Medearecall still more closely a character such as the Atreus of Seneca’s Thyestes,3

although the revenge unleashed by Medea’s wrath will prove even more com-plicated, elaborate, and methodical than in the case of Atreus and Thyestes. Tounderstand the “logic” of Medea’s revenge, I will analyze the way in which herrevenge, ultio, is driven by wrath, ira, based on the model of revenge whichSeneca himself proposed in his treatise De ira.4 The basic idea is that ira is apassion that has gotten out of control, causing a sort of madness in the injuredparty. The resulting desire for vengeance lacks any sense of justice and insteadseeks to repay the original injury with a crime that is entirely disproportionateto the initial oVense. This model of ira and ultio provides the basis for a new andcomplex understanding of Medea’s story, in which the subject matter of the myth,the literary tradition, and Roman cultural reality are all inextricably intertwined.

An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 1998 Heller Colloquium at Berkeley, organizedby James Ker and Laura Gibbs, who also translated the original Italian text of this article. I wishto thank her for her help and valuable suggestions. I am also grateful for some useful commentsfrom an anonymous reader.

1. See Knox 198. See also the famous Horatian prescription (Ars poetica 123): sit Medea feroxinvictaque .

2. For Euripides’ Medea, see Guastella 2000.3. For an analysis of Seneca’s Thyestes in these terms, see Guastella 1994.4. This notion is developed in Books I and II of De ira, and especially in 2.3.4–2.4.2.

classical antiquity Volume 20 /No. 2/ October 2001198

In particular, I will focus on the way in which the Romans understood therole played by kinship, especially the bonds of matrimony and of maternity, in thestory of Medea’s ira and ultio. The central issue of Seneca’s play is the problem ofending a marriage, and he addresses this problem in particularly Roman terms.In the plot of this play, and also in its rhetorical construction, Seneca consistentlyinvokes the juridical terminology and reality of his day: these aspects of the storythus depend on Roman ideas about marriage, and cannot be easily understoodoutside this Roman context.5 Obviously, we should not expect to � nd that atragedy based on ancient Greek mythology would perfectly reproduce in everydetail the social reality of imperial Rome,6 but it is also true that the text insistentlyinvokes some speci� c terms such as repudium and motifs such as the restitution ofthe dowry which can be directly compared to the actual reality of Roman divorce.7

Jason’s rejection of Medea is something that she absolutely refuses to accept:the divorce deprives her former life of any meaning, confusing the whole series ofcrimes which Medea committed against her own family of origin in order to assistthe hero Jason and win his love. After all that she had done for him in the past, Jasonnow abandons his coniunx, yielding to the demands of Creon, the ruler of Corinth,who wants Jason to marry his daughter Creusa. Medea’s revenge, which consistsof burning down the royal palace and then killing her own children, is de� nitelymeant to in� ict injury on Creon and on Jason, as was the case in Euripides’ play.In Seneca’s version, however, there is an additional dimension to this story ofvengeance and criminality: Medea’s actions now become a way of reconstructingher own identity—an identity thrown into disarray by her separation from Jason—while at the same time exacting a compensation for the crimes she had committedin the past.

THE PREMISES OF THE REVENGE

Already in the play’s opening lines, we encounter the motif of ultio, revenge,as Medea invokes the Furies, the ultrices deae:

5. See Pratt 90–91 and Seidensticker 132. On the relationship between the De ira and Seneca’stragedies see Staley, who pursues an even closer relationship between these texts, forcing thetragedies to serve as a kind of on-going demonstration of the Stoic theory which Seneca advancesin his philosophical writing. However close the connection between these texts may be, Staley’swork is perhaps too much focused on the philosophical side of the question.

6. As opposed to the recent eVort of Abrahamsen who tries to demonstrate that the relationshipbetween Jason and Medea can be described as a matrimonium iniustum . Yet it is certainly the casethat many of the diVerences between the Senecan tragedy and Euripides’ Medea do depend onthe presence of these speci� cally Roman elements. It is enough to consider the situation of thechildren: in Euripides’ play, Medea refuses to accept Jason’s proposition that the children be raisedas illegitimate children in the house of Creon, while in Seneca’s version the children always remainwith their father, as would normally occur in a Roman case of repudium . On this topic, see Guastella2000.

7. On this topic, see Treggiari 323–64 and 435–82.

guastella: Virgo, Coniunx, Mater 199

nunc, nunc adeste sceleris ultrices deae,crinem solutis squalidae serpentibus,atram cruentis manibus amplexae facem,adeste, thalamis horridae quondam meisquales stetistis: coniugi letum novaeletumque socero et regiae stirpi date.

Medea 13–18

Be present, be present you goddesses who avenge crime, your hair foulwith writhing snakes, grasping the smoking torch with your bloody hands,be present now, as once you stood dreadful beside my nuptial bed; bringdestruction upon this new wife, and destruction on this father-in-law andthe whole royal lineage.

The “ill-omened wedding” was a popular element in Roman literature, at leastas early as its use by Vergil in the Aeneid, along with several such episodes inOvid.8 Seneca, however, puts this traditional material to a highly original usewhen Medea links the funereal ritual of Jason’s � rst wedding to his subsequentmarriage to Creusa. Both weddings are attended by the Furies, the goddesses ofrevenge. The Furies had attended Jason’s � rst wedding as a result of Absyrtus’murder—and this murder will prove to be central to the development of Seneca’splay. As we will see later on, Medea actually interprets her brother’s death asa loss which she had to bear, a crime committed against herself which must beavenged by the murder of her sons.9 For the moment, however, Medea limitsherself to invoking the Furies so that they might now bring disaster upon thehouse of Creusa, just as the Furies had brought disaster down upon her own housewhen she married Jason. It is as if Medea were projecting onto this new weddingthe vengefulness which the shade of her brother had previously cast upon her ownwedding to Jason.

The parallel between Medea’s past and her present is the fulcrum of whatwe might call the “psychology” of Seneca’s Medea. Her life is split in two bythis divorce: after the repudium, everything that Medea had previously done towin her coniugium with Jason has suddenly been rendered null and void. Thisdimension of the plot—the full force of Medea as an active character, makingchoices and committing crimes in her original adventures with Jason—is stronglyemphasized by Seneca. We can see this, for example, in the way that both Jasonand Creon attempt to make Medea assume full responsibility for all of her crimes.

8. For a discussion of the motif, see Cleasby 45–46, Cazzaniga 8–16, Bomer 124–26, andPease on Vergil’s Aeneid 4.168. For Ovid, see Metamorphoses 10.1–8 and Heroides 2.117–20 and7.96 (and compare Seneca Oedipus 644–46 and Trojan Women 1132–36). Quite similar to Medea’swording is a passage in the Metamorphoses where Ovid describes the wedding of Procne and Tereus(6.428–34). Even more directly connected with Medea’s story is what Hypsipyle says in the Heroideswhen she describes her own wedding with Jason (6.45–46). In all of these passages, we are dealingwith weddings that came to catastrophic ends.

9. On the literary precedents of this theme, see Bremmer 83–88.


This eVort to exonerate Jason requires considerable sophistry on their part, giventhat Jason was certainly the bene� ciary of Medea’s crimes, even if he did notactually commit the crimes himself.10 Medea admits her guilt,11 and tries in vainto show that this is precisely what binds her to Jason, whose destiny Creon plansto sever from hers. Despite all her eVorts, however, Medea is unable to regain theconiunx acquired by the criminal acts she committed.12 As a result, those crimesrecoil against Medea, who is now left completely isolated, bearing all alone theburden of her guilt.

But if Medea is now alone, what purpose, what meaning, can be assignedto all her past and the crimes that she committed? What was the point of choosingto abandon her own royal family and her homeland? What was the point of havingassassinated Absyrtus, a crime which aroused the Furies against Medea herself?For whose sake did Medea dare such things, if the very bene� ciary of those deedsnow pushes her away? This seems to be the point from which Seneca beganto develop his version of the myth of Medea. Seneca’s Medea reveals a deepdivision between the Medea of once upon a time, the love-struck virgo readyto do anything for Jason, and Medea the coniunx /mater, who has attained theobject of her love and consolidated her union with Jason by having borne himtwo sons. It must be clearly emphasized that the functions of coniunx and materrepresent two sides of the same coin in Roman culture: the children are actualtokens, pignora, whose existence, whose very bodies attest to the commingling ofthe mother’s blood with the father’s.13 This is why I would make a clear distinctionbetween Medea the virgo on the one hand and Medea the coniunx /mater on theother hand, although we will see that Medea’s maternal function will becomeincreasingly problematic as the plot unfolds. The divorce strips away the meaningof everything that the virgo Medea did in order to become the coniunx /mater.Creon’s demands, following the normal rules of a Roman divorce, deprive Medeaof her coniunx and also of her sons.14

10. Medea not only admits to having committed these crimes but also implies that this violatedthe norm of behavior for a virgo: that is, the expectation that a virgo should defend her pudorand be loyal to her pater (see Medea 238–41: virgini placeat pudor / paterque placeat: tota cumducibus ruet / Pelasga tellus, hic tuus primum gener / tauri ferocis ore � agranti occidet ). On theacknowledgement of guilt, see especially Medea 245–51, which is highly reminiscent of some linesin Heroides 12 where the theme of conscious guilt is developed at length (see Heroides 12.106–32and the discussion in Bessone ad loc., who supplies a long list of parallel passages).

11. Seneca’s Medea tries, for her part, to separate the idea of being guilty from the idea of beingresponsible (see Perrenoud). These crimes are what link her destiny to Jason’s, since he was thebene� ciary of the crimes which she materially committed.

12. For a discussion of the end of Jason and Medea’s marriage, see Guastella 2000.13. For a discussion, see Guastella 2000.14. Medea 143–46: Culpa est Creontis tota, qui sceptro impotens / coniugia solvit quique

genetricem abstrahit / gnatis et arto pignore astrictam � dem / dirimit . About the fact that in a Romandivorce the children are supposed to follow the father, see the discussion in Guastella 2000. Giventhat the function of marriage was to assure a male line of descent from the domus of a paterfamilias ,and that divorce usually involved the removal of the wife from her husband’s house, it is clear that


Medea’s revenge is thus based on a logic of awesome precision, meticulouslymatching the crimes she committed to become coniunx /mater with even greatercrimes that she will now commit in order to re-establish the identity thrown intototal disarray by Jason’s repudium:

Quodcumque vidit Phasis aut Pontus nefas,videbit Isthmos. EVera ignota horrida,tremenda caelo pariter ac terris malamens intus agitat: vulnera et caedem et vagumfunus per artus—levia memoravi nimis:haec virgo feci; gravior exurgat dolor:maiora iam me scelera post partus decent.Accingere ira teque in exitium parafurore toto. Paria narrentur tuarepudia thalamis: quo virum linques modo?Hoc quo secuta es. Rumpe iam segnes moras:quae scelere parta est, scelere linquenda est domus.

Medea 44–55

Whatever horror Pontus or Phasis has seen, Isthmos will see. My heartdeep inside is planning wild deeds, unheard-of, horrible calamities atwhich heaven and hell alike will tremble—wounds, slaughter, death,creeping from limb to limb. Too trivial are the deeds I mentioned; suchwere my crimes when I was a girl. Let my grief rise stronger; greatercrimes become me now that I am a mother. Arm yourself with wrath, andbe prepared for deadly deeds with the full force of madness. Let the storyof your divorce match the story of your marriage. How will you leaveyour husband? Just as you followed him! Break oV now dull delay; thehome you gained by crime, by crime must be abandoned.

Seneca’s Medea declares that scelus, crime, has been the guiding thread of herlife, and so it will supply the means by which she can attempt to reconstruct herown identity.15

This � erce barbarian woman, whose cultural marginality constitutes a dangerfor the city which has taken her in, is the ideal character to dramatize the eVects ofunrestrained ira and of a furor that exceeds the very limits of rationality. Butthis ira is also subject to a precise and perverted ratio, a reckoning which isextraordinarily accurate in all its calculations. Thus, just as the marriage betweenJason and Medea was the unconventional and unethical union of a Greek hero anda barbarian virgo, their divorce also takes on a clearly anomalous and criminalcharacter: it is a separation whose “procedures” basically observe the requirements

the sons would need to remain, in normal circumstances, in the house of their father. See Treggiari466–71 for a discussion of the rare exceptions to this rule.

15. In her last attempt to induce Jason to remain with her, Medea invites him to run awaytogether, even if it is a crime (scelus , 515). Alternatively, Jason could remain, as always, innocens ,leaving it up to Medea to destroy every possible enemy (521–28).


of the Roman institution, but which will also involve drastic criminal acts. BecauseMedea brought about her marriage with Jason by means of a series of crimescommitted against her own family in her future husband’s favor, the dissolutionof that marriage, in Medea’s perverse frame of mind, must now be accompaniedby a new series of crimes balancing out her past actions, or even exceeding thoseold crimes with a new, unprecedented ferocity.

CREDITS AND DEBITS

As Medea herself describes the development of her revenge,16 she begins byconsidering the merita, the credits she had earned by helping Jason in his struggle:

Hoc facere Iason potuit, erepto patrepatria atque regno sedibus solam exterisdeserere durus? merita contempsit meaqui scelere � ammas viderat vinci et mare?

Medea 118–22

Did Jason have the heart to do this—having robbed me of my father,homeland and kingdom, could he so cruelly leave me alone in a foreignland? Has he scorned my well-deserved merits, having seen � ames andsea conquered by my crime?

Medea here juxtaposes her merita, which were systematically the result of criminalactivity,17 with three items she claims to have lost as a result of helping Jason.These losses are, speci� cally, her father, her homeland, and her royal position.It is important to keep these items in mind, because they will return again later(along with others) in Medea’s accounts of “giving” and “getting” as she calculatesher revenge. Unlike earlier literary versions of this myth, Seneca’s Medea doesnot list her merita as an oVering of help made in vain to an ungrateful man;instead, Medea expresses herself in terms of losses which she has suVered, andfor which she demands some form of compensation.18 When she followed Jasoninto uncertain exile, Medea had to renounce her family and her homeland, thusalso renouncing the safe asylum they would have been able to oVer her in case she

16. Medea, like Atreus, elaborates this plan in a sort of slow and painful “gestation.” On thistopic see Picone 1995 and on the traits shared by Atreus and Medea, see Staley 107 (and passim),Seidensticker 126, Picone 1984: 111–12, Picone 1989: 59–63, and Picone 1995: 149n. 9. Morerecently, see also Burnett 10–18.

17. For merita, see also Ovid Heroides 12.21–22 and the discussion in Bessone 90–93. AlthoughSeneca’s Medea does not dwell on reproaching Jason with the things she did on his behalf (as bothEuripides’ Medea (see Medea 465–72) and Ovid’s Medea do), Seneca’s Medea’s way of talkingabout her past merita resembles that of Ovid’s Medea in the � rst half of her letter in the Heroides .

18. Liebermann 205 has treated this problem thoroughly: “Medea fordert bei Seneca nicht Lohnfur gute Taten, sondern schlicht Schadenersatz.” Inside the frame of his revenge plan, Seneca isemphasizing the motif of loss and deprivation that was already at work in Euripides’ Medea (forthis speci� c aspect of Euripides’ tragedy, see Menu 119–21).


was abandoned by her husband. Moreover, to free herself of her family and herhomeland, Medea committed a series of crimes, most important of which wasthe murder of her brother Absyrtus.19

How then is Medea going to be compensated for these losses? At this point,Medea begins to imagine a series of future crimes that will parallel those crimesof the past:

Unde me ulcisci queam?Utinam esset illi frater! est coniunx: in hancferrum exigatur.

Medea 124–26

Whence can I get vengeance? I wish he had a brother! He has a wife;let the sword strike her heart.

Medea wishes that Jason had a brother so that the murder of this brother couldcompensate for the murder of Medea’s brother Absyrtus. But Jason doesn’t have abrother—what he has is a wife, and it is this wife who will be the � rst of Medea’svictims.

MYTHS OF INFANTICIDE: THYESTES AND PHILOMELA

Yet by itself, the murder of Creusa will not be enough: in order to fully realizeher revenge, Medea intends to repeat all the crimes of the past with exact precision.The crimes of the past have to “come back” (cuncta redeant , 130),20 recreating thesame circumstances in which the virgo Medea had once found herself:

Scelera te hortentur tuaet cuncta redeant: inclitum regni decusraptum et nefandae virginis parvus comesdivisus ense, funus ingestum patri

Medea 129–32

Let your own crimes urge you on, and let them all come back—the brightornament of the kingdom stolen, and the wicked virgo’s little companiontorn to pieces with the sword, his murder forced upon his father.

Medea does not see the murder of her brother simply as the loss of a blood relative,but more precisely as an injury in� icted on a father: funus ingestum patri. Theimportance of understanding Absyrtus’ death in these terms becomes clear if wecompare these lines from Seneca’s Medea with a parallel passage from Seneca’sThyestes, along with another close parallel in Ovid’s famous account of Procne

19. This is also the Ovidian version of Absyrtus’ story: see Heroides 6.129–30 and especiallyTristia 3.9.

20. For the notion of redire and retro verti in Seneca’s tragedies see Schiesaro 91–95.


and Philomela in the Metamorphoses; taken together, these passages constitutewhat seems to me a highly signi� cant cluster of allusions.21

Let us take the Thyestes passage � rst, where Atreus contemplates the horriblecrime that he is about to commit, using words very similar to Medea’s funusingestum patri:

tota iam ante oculos meosimago caedis errat, ingesta orbitasin ora patris.

Thyestes 281–83

Already before my eyes � its the whole picture of the slaughter; his lostchildren heaped up before their father’s face.

Seneca’s description of orbitas, the lack of sons, ingesta...in ora patris bringsus to Ovid’s text, where we � nd a similar expression used to describe the momentwhen Philomela throws Itys’ severed head at his father Tereus, in ora patris:

Ityosque caput Philomela cruentummisit in ora patris.

Metamorphoses 6.658–59

and Philomela threw the bleeding head of Itys in his father’s face.

In both cases we are dealing with children who are killed in order to carry out arevenge that punishes a guilty father. This is not precisely the situation in the caseof Medea’s father, Aeetes: although Aeetes is a tyrant, his son is murdered only inorder to put a stop to his pursuit of Medea and Jason.22

Nevertheless, Medea considers this act of infanticide to be an injury in-� icted on the victim’s father.23 The words Medea uses to describe the murder

21. While I believe it is worthwhile to read these texts together in order to see more clearlythe cultural elements which are the common parameters of stories that are so fundamentally similarto one another, I am not attempting to establish which of the plays was written � rst, a task whichseems to me impossible to achieve. For a review of the hypotheses on the dating of Seneca’s plays,see Fitch, Zwierlein 1983: 233–48, and Tarrant 10–13.

22. There is also an analogy between these stories of infanticide and the story of Harpalyce(Parthenius Erot. 13; Hyginus Fab. 206, and Euphorion frag. 24a), who takes revenge on her father,Clymenus, who committed incest with her and killed her husband. Harpalyce supposedly fed to herfather the � esh of her brother (or, according to one version of the myth, of the child she herselfbore to her father).

23. Ovid too had already described in a similar way both the killing of Absyrtus and that ofItys. In Tristia 3.9, Ovid describes Medea’s deeds in a way that is very similar to Metamorphoses6.619–60, where Procne’s infanticide is described. In both cases the child accidentally comes intothe room while the woman is seeking a solution to her dilemma; in both cases the child does notunderstand what is happening; and in both cases when the body has been dismembered it is the handsand feet which are shown to the father (Tristia 3.21–31: Dum quid agat quaerit, dum versat in omniavultus, / ad fratrem casu lumina � exa tulit. / Cuius ut oblata est praesentia: “Vicimus, inquit; / hicmihi morte sua causa salutis erit.” / Protinus ignari nec quicquam tale timentis / innocuum rigidoperforat ense latus / atque ita divellit divulsaque membra per agros / dissipat in multis invenienda


of Absyrtus—funus ingestum patri—point both towards the murder of Thyestes’sons and to the murder of Itys, a comparison that will achieve its full realization inMedea’s � nal crime: by murdering their children, Medea punishes Jason in a waythat is analogous to the way in which Procne punished her husband Tereus (inrevenge for Tereus’ having raped her sister) and the way in which Atreus punishedhis brother Thyestes (in revenge for Thyestes’ having committed adultery withhis wife).

FROM AMOR TO IRA

As Medea gradually unfolds her plans for vengeance, we see that there aretwo juxtaposed emotions which drive Medea’s crimes, past and present:

et nullum scelusirata feci: saevit infelix amor.

Medea 135–36

None of my crimes did I do in wrath: my unfortunate love rages on.

The scelera of the past were prompted by amor, but from now on it is no longerlove but wrath, ira, which will drive Medea’s revenge.24 As the chorus itselfobserves, this revenge will arise from a fusion of ira and amor:

Frenare nescit irasMedea, non amores:nunc ira amorque causamiunxere: quid sequetur?

Medea 866–69

Medea does not know how to curb her wrath or her love: now that wrathand love have joined cause, what will the outcome be?

The criminal career of the virgo Medea was driven by love,25 while that of theconiunx /mater will be marked by the consequences of that same love, now deeplywounded. 26 It is this fusion of amor and ira that will give Medea the means to

locis— / neu pater ignoret, scopulo proponit in alto / pallentesque manus sanguineumque caput— /ut genitor luctuque novo tardetur et, artus / dum legit extinctos, triste moretur iter; compare, forexample, Metamorphoses 6.513 with vicimus here at line 23). For the analogies between these twoaccounts, see Degl’Innocenti Perini 153–54.

24. The theme of Medea’s ira as a result of her wounded love had already been developed byOvid: see, for example, Ars amatoria 2.373–86, Remedia amoris 55, and Tristia 2.387–88: tingeretut ferrum natorum sanguine mater / concitus a laeso fecit amore dolor .

25. See Kullmann 158–59. Ovid’s version in Heroides 12, following the rules of elegy, onlyhints in the last line at the crimes that will follow. On the possible literary implications of this line,see Spoth 202–204, Barchiesi 343–45, Hinds 34–43, and Bessone 32–41.

26. After her dialogue with Creon, Medea herself will equate her past feelings and her presenthate, caused by her earlier love (Medea 397–99): Si quaeris odio, misera, quem statuas modum,


reassemble the shattered pieces of her identity, now that she has lost all that hadonce been hers:

NVT. Abiere Colchi, coniugis nulla est � desnihilque superest opibus e tantis tibi.ME. Medea superest: hic mare et terras videsferrumque et ignes et deos et fulmina.

Medea 164–67

Nurse. The Colchians are no longer on your side, your husband hasproved faithless, and there is nothing left of all your wealth. Medea.Medea is left—in her you see sea and land, and sword and � re and godsand thunderbolts.

Nihil superest , Medea has lost everything: in this dialogue the nurse emphasizesthe material loss of Medea’s homeland as well as the end of her marriage, theloss of her coniugis � des. But Medea superest, Medea remains, and she declaresthat she will take what is left and put the pieces of her life back together:

NVT. Profuge. ME. Paenituit fugae.NVT. Medea— ME. Fiam. NVT. Mater es. ME. Cui sim vide.NVT. Profugere dubitas? ME. Fugiam at ulciscar prius.

Medea 170–72

Nurse. Run away. Medea. I don’t want to. Nurse. Medea— Medea. Iwill be. Nurse . You are a mother. Medea. You see for whom. Nurse. Doyou hesitate to run away? Medea. I’ll run away but � rst I’ll be avenged.

Fiam: Medea is not lost, but she must “become” herself. Her identity as aconiunx /mater no longer makes sense without Jason, who has rejected her (theprecise meaning of this cui is a point to which we will return). Medea must thusavenge herself in a way that allows her past to regain the meaning which wasdestroyed by the divorce. It is precisely the logic of this revenge that will allowMedea to reacquire her identity.

MEDEA’S ‘‘DOWRY’’

Among the losses which Medea has lamented so far, we could list her pater,patria, regnum,27 and also her coniugis � des. The theme of loss is also emphasized

/ imitare amorem. Regias egone ut faces / inulta patiar? In her dialogue with Jason, Medea willthen try for the last time to use the power of amor (465–90).

27. Among Medea’s losses we can also include the nobility and the opes mentioned by the nurse(Medea 164–65). Medea comes back to this point several times. During her dialogue with Creon, forexample, she complains about her former identity as a noble descendant of the Sun (209–10), thedaughter of a very powerful and rich king (211–16), a bride very much courted (218–19). Medeasays she has lost all of this in order to save the Argonauts, taking only Jason for herself (225–35).


in Medea’s dialogue with Jason, as Medea reminds him that she had been willingto commit any sort of crime in order to follow him into exile:

Ex opibus illis [ . . . ]nil exul tuli

nisi fratris artus: hos quoque impendi tibi;tibi patria cessit, tibi pater frater pudor—hac dote nupsi. Redde fugienti sua.

Medea 483–89

Of all that wealth [ . . . ] I brought away nothing in my exile but mybrother’s limbs. Those too I spent for you; for you my country has givenway, my father, my brother, my chastity—with this dowry I married you.Give me back what is mine now that I am banished.

Medea now explicitly includes her brother and her former status as a virgo pudicain the list of other losses which she has suVered (regnum, pater, patria),28 and shelinks this � nal, catastrophic reckoning of accounts to the Roman institution of thedowry. Medea considers these losses to be the equivalent of a dowry paid to herhusband. Of course, this can only be a metaphorical dowry: Medea’s marriage wascompletely unusual, without any of the normal guarantees required by a propermatrimonial exchange.29 The dowry was not paid by Aeetes as it should havebeen, but by Medea herself, and at her own loss. Seneca’s rhetoric thus imposes akind of formal metaphorical order on an irregular and criminal union, treating thatunion as if it followed all the rules of a regular marriage. Insofar as Jason andMedea’s wedding is assumed to follow the rules of marriage, it is only logicalthat their divorce should do the same, and in the case of a repudium the rejectedwoman’s dowry must be returned to her family of origin.30 Yet here the logic fails:Jason cannot give anything back to a father-in-law who had not even agreed to themarriage. Indeed, it would not be Medea’s father who requires compensation,but Medea herself, since it was Medea who paid the price, so to speak, of herwedding. Medea’s belief that a dowry was paid is already a paradox; so too isthis request for its return.

In Heroides 12, Ovid’s Medea also demands the restitution of her dowry, butin a far less radical sense:31

28. These are the same elements found in Ovid Heroides 12.109–14: proditus est genitor,regnum patriamque reliqui, / munus in exilio quodlibet esse tuli; / virginitas facta est peregrinipraeda latronis; / optima cum cara matre relicta soror. / At non te fugiens sine me, germane, reliqui!/ De� cit hoc uno littera nostra loco.

29. See Guastella 2000: 152–57.30. See Treggiari 325 and 446–82, especially 466: “The legal eVect of divorce was normally

considered to be the physical separation of the coniuges and the restoration of the dowry, apart fromwhatever the husband retained on account of children, fault, expenses, gifts, or things taken away.”

31. It could be argued that Ovid might have developed this theme in his own Medea becauseOvid’s Medea in the Heroides brings her speech to an abrupt end exactly when she gives herselfover to wrath and to vengeful designs, pronouncing a threat in the last line of the letter. Similar


Dos ubi sit, quaeris? Campo numeravimus illo,qui tibi laturo vellus arandus erat.

Aureus ille aries villo spectabilis altodos mea, quam dicam si tibi ‘Redde’, neges.

Dos mea tu sospes, dos est mea Graia iuventus;i nunc, Sisyphias, improbe, confer opes!

Quod vivis, quod habes nuptam socerumque potentes,hoc ipsum, ingratus quod potes esse, meum est.

Quos equidem actutum—sed quid praedicere poenamattinet? Ingentes parturit ira minas.32

Heroides 12.199–208

You ask where my dowry is? I counted it out on that � eld which youhad to plow so that you could carry away the � eece. That goldenram, with his remarkably thick coat of wool, that is my dowry, thedowry which you would deny me when I tell you to give it back. Mydowry is you, safe and sound, my dowry is those Greek youths—gonow, traitor, and compare your Sisyphian wealth. The fact that youare alive, that you have a bride and a father-in-law who are power-ful, the very fact that you can be ungrateful, that is all due to me.And as for them, I am going to—but what does it matter if I saywhat the punishment will be? Awesome are the perils being hatchedby my wrath.

Within the epistolary framework, the words of Ovid’s Medea become a mererhetorical device, an utterly impossible demand.33 Seneca’s Medea, on the otherhand, not only expects the return of her “dowry”34 but constructs her revengein such a way that she can paradoxically claim that she has in fact receivedcompensation. Ovid’s Medea speaks about a dowry only in order to construct ametaphor, but Seneca’s Medea takes that metaphor and pursues it according tothe cultural model on which it depends, thus de� ning the rules that her revengewill ultimately follow.

motifs can be found, although diVerently distributed, in the dialogues of Seneca’s Medea with bothCreon and Jason. The theme is also found in Hypsipyle’s letter to Jason (Heroides 6.137–38: quidrefert, scelerata piam si vincit et ipso / crimine dotata est emeruitque virum?).

32. Already according to Leo 168–69, Seneca was quoting these lines in Medea 486–89. Formore recent discussions about the signi� cance of Seneca’s citation of these lines, see Bessone 266–86and Heinze 206–19.

33. Ovid’s Medea seems willing to acknowledge that Jason not only would not give her backthis dowry, but that this would be impossible to do.

34. Medea asks for the restitution of her dowry using almost the same words she uses to askfor the restitution of her coniunx (Medea 272–73: redde fugienti ratem / vel redde comitem). Forthe juridical value of such words, see Perrenoud 495–97, who interprets the expression at line 272 interms of the notion of “reddere crimen” found in lines 244–46.


MEDEA NUNC SUM

The infanticide which makes it possible for Medea to punish her coniunx inthe very body of his children is conceived and carried out in haste, all within thelast “act” of Seneca’s tragedy. Yet this is in fact the core of Medea’s revenge, thereal focus of her eVorts. The murder of Creon and his daughter is of considerablyless importance in Seneca’s version of the story than in Euripides, and constitutesonly a small part of Medea’s overall project.35 There is absolutely no comparisonbetween the logical and rhetorical eVorts which Seneca devotes to the murderof Medea’s children and the scant attention which he pays to the fates of Creonand Creusa. Medea herself describes her revenge as unfolding in two stages, withthe � rst stage serving as a mere prelude that is by itself incomplete:

Pars ultionis ista, qua gaudes, quota est?Amas adhuc, furiosa,36 si satis est tibicaelebs Iason. Quaere poenarum genushaut usitatum iamque sic temet para.

Medea 896–99

How much of your revenge is this, that you are so happy with it? You arestill in love, madwoman, if it is enough for you that Jason is unmarried.Look for a kind of punishment no one has ever tried and prepare yourselffor this.

The real revenge, the more terrible punishment, has yet to begin, but the elaboraterhetoric of Medea’s long monologue shows clearly that this is where the whole plothas been leading. It is only now that the heroine starts to untangle the confusionof her past life that has been created by Jason’s repudium. Here is where wecan discern the project that will unite all of these aspects of Medea’s life intoa meaningful whole, an aspiration that is as clear and articulate as it is utterlyinsane:

35. Seneca seems to have wanted to quickly discharge his debt to the literary tradition, in whichthe myth involved the murder of Creon and Creusa. In Seneca’s play, this murder does not havethe same importance as in Euripides’ version (see Guastella 2000). Before the sudden preparation ofthis crime, the only allusions to the need to kill Creon and Creusa are found at lines 125–26 and143–49. Even during the long scene of witchcraft, no reference is made to the reasons why Medeaneeds to kill her rival, apart from a generic hint to the hated novi thalami (743). Seneca devotes only12 lines to the messenger speech about Creon and Creusa’s death (879–90), compared to the morethan 90 lines in Euripides. Seneca has mostly used this crime in order to construct an impressivescene of witchcraft, according to the literary taste of his own times. The atmosphere of this scene(670–848) owes much to the character of Medea as presented by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (seeNewlands 186–92 on the subject of “Medea the witch”).

36. The correction furiose , which was proposed by Bentley and is now accepted by both Costaand Zwierlein, is unnecessary. The correction is not needed for the meter, and I do not think thatit is so unlikely that Medea would brie� y interrupt her apostrophe to the animus in order to addressherself. Indeed, it seems to me instead rather improbable that Medea would address her animus,rather than herself, as “still in love.”


Prolusit dolorper ista noster: quid manus poterant rudesaudere magnum, quid puellaris furor?Medea nunc sum; crevit ingenium malis:iuvat, iuvat rapuisse fraternum caput,artus iuvat secuisse et arcano patremspoliasse sacro, iuvat in exitium senisarmasse natas. Quaere materiam, dolor:ad omne facinus non rudem dextram aVeres.

Medea 907–15

In them my grief was but practicing; what great deed had my inexpe-rienced hands the power to do? What, a girl’s rage? Now I am Medea;my identity has grown through crime: glad am I, glad, that I tore oV mybrother’s head, glad that I carved his limbs, that I robbed my father ofhis guarded treasure, glad that I armed daughters for an old man’s death.Seek the right stuV, my grief: no untrained hand will you bring to anycrime.

Once again Medea makes an account of the wrongs committed in her earliercriminal career, those deeds that Medea the virgo committed in a puellarisfuror. These crimes are now interpreted as the means to a new end, a prepa-ration for redemption (iuvat, as Medea insists four times in three lines). Atlast, by means of all her suVering, Medea can achieve a full realization ofher identity: Medea nunc sum.37 Medea’s identity thus emerges in three dif-ferent phases:38 beginning with the total disorder in which only the � erce en-ergy of the abandoned woman continued to function (Medea superest , 166),followed by Medea’s intention to put her ruined life back together (Medea—Fiam, 171) and � nally the realization of the actual revenge. When she is � n-ished, Medea’s life will have regained a new meaning. We have now reachedthe moment in which the virgo Medea will be integrated with the spurnedconiunx /mater so that Medea, at last, will be able to become “herself” onceand for all.

37. See Kullmann 161–64, who has correctly noted that this line is the culminating momentof the progress of Medea’s ingenium over the course of the play.

38. See Liebermann 189, who provides a useful schema of the three phases of Medea’s characterdevelopment. About the extraordinary fortune of the theme “Medea � am” in later versions of thisstory, see Friedrich 227–37. For the Ovidian precedent, see Heroides 12.5, 12.25, and 12.182, with adiscussion in Bessone ad loc. In comparison to these lines of Ovid (along with Heroides 6.127–28and 6.151), Seneca multiplies his variations about the name Medea throughout the play (see lines8, 166, 171, 179, 362, 496, 517, 524, 567, 675, 867, 892, 910, 934). Both Traina and Segal 1982discuss the repeated “naming” of Medea in the course of the play.


CONIUNX VERSUS MATER

Now that she must persuade herself to kill her own children, Medea relieson a series of expressions which dramatize the incompatibility of her identity as amother with the reality of her divorce. Separated from her children, Medea tries tomake herself believe that her children in fact belong to Creusa, the stepmotherunder whose jurisdiction the children now live.39 But despite the monumentalrhetorical eVort, Medea’s decision remains unthinkable, and she must undergothe internal questioning traditionally associated with the heroines of myth whomurder their own children:

Ira discessit locomaterque tota coniuge expulsa redit.Egone ut meorum liberum ac prolis meaefundam cruorem? Melius, a, demens furor!Incognitum istum facinus ac dirum nefasa me quoque absit; quod scelus miseri luent?Scelus est Iason genitor et maius scelusMedea mater—occidant, non sunt mei;pereant, mei sunt. Crimine et culpa carent,sunt innocentes, fateor: et frater fuit.40

Medea 927–36

Wrath has given way; the mother has all come back, the wife is banished.Can I shed the blood of my children, of my own oVspring? Ah, mad rage,say not so! Let not that unheard-of deed, that accursed guilt attend evenme! What sin will the poor boys atone? Their sin is that Jason is theirfather, and, greater sin, that Medea is their mother. Let them die, they arenot mine; let them be lost—they are my own. They are without crime andguilt, yes, they are innocent. I acknowledge it; so, too, was my brother.

Medea � nds herself having to overcome the gap between her maternal identity(mater tota, 928; Medea mater, 934) and her marital identity (coniunx, 928).At the moment of her divorce, these two aspects of Medea’s identity became

39. Medea 921–22: Quidquid ex illo tuum est, / Creusa peperit . See also 924: liberi quondammei. For a discussion, see Guastella 2000: 157–62.

40. Nussbaum 227 has proposed a quite interesting punctuation for this line: Pereant. Meisunt, crimine et culpa carent, / sunt innocentes— fateor: et frater fuit. In this reading, the childrenbelonging to Medea would be, for this same reason, innocent, so that they would turn out to beinnocent victims in exactly the same way as Absyrtus had been. However, I am afraid this wouldrepresent a banalization of the text. Apart from the improbable undoing of the strong syntacticalparallelism (which is typically Senecan, as well as Ovidian), such a solution also cancels an importantthematic element. Medea has said (933–34) that her children share the scelus that comes from beingborn as a result of a criminal union. Medea is here proposing a twofold reason for the infanticide:the children are to die because they are at this time both Creusa’s and Medea’s sons and becausethey must share the same destiny as Absyrtus (only this second aspect would remain in the text aspunctuated by Nussbaum).


incompatible. For whom, cui, is Medea now a mother? The problem is statedquite clearly in the dialogue between Medea and the nurse which was cited earlier(Medea 171): “NVT. Mater es. ME. Cui sim vide.” Medea is saying that a “mother”(a Roman mother, we might add) is not a mother in some absolute sense, but isa mother only with respect to someone else’s bene� t (cui).

It is here that we � nd the central element in the logic of the infanticide, as wecan see by comparing Medea’s words to analogous expressions found in similarmyths, such as Ovid’s account of Procne in the Metamorphoses . Procne is alsosuVering a crisis of identity, vacillating between her role as a “sister” who wantsto avenge the rape of Philomela and her role as “mother” who does not dare tomurder her son Itys:

quam vocat hic matrem, cur non vocat illa sororem?Cui sis nupta, vide, Pandione nata, marito.Degeneras! Scelus est pietas in coniuge Tereo.

Metamorphoses 6.633–35

When he calls me mother, why does she not call me sister? See whomyou have married, you, Pandion’s daughter! Will you betray your birth?With such a husband as Tereus, aVection due to kin is a crime.

Cui sis nupta, vide: Procne’s words are a terrible sophism, but at the sametime they reveal a great deal about the Roman notion of marriage. To be themother of Itys and to be the wife of a despicable man like Tereus are two sidesof the same coin, a situation which manages to somehow justify a crime (theelimination of their common oVspring) which would otherwise be unthinkable.Sarah Iles Johnston has recently observed that the fascination which is stillexerted today by Medea and her story “owes much to the fact that a mother’sdeliberate slaughter of her children undermines one of the basic assumptionsupon which society—indeed humanity—is constructed: mothers nurture theirchildren.”41 In� ecting this argument according to the cultural paradigms of ancientsociety, we would need to add that this nurturing function of the mother doesnot take place in isolation, but to someone else’s advantage, as Medea herselfobserves.42 To be a wife and to be a mother were functions both linked to thebene� t of one and the same man. As a result, the sacri� ce of the children isthe culmination of the divorce, a visible manifestation of the need to make thisseparation into a loss not only for the woman who has been abandoned, but aboveall for the man who had previously bene� ted from the union, and who wouldotherwise continue to pro� t from its fruits, keeping the sons for himself. Thusmany ancient stories of infanticide involve not so much the complete negation

41. Johnston 44.42. Both Seneca’s Medea and Ovid’s Procne use the dative cui, which is normal in Procne’s

case, but less so in Medea’s, since Medea is not discussing “whose mother she is” (as Procne isdiscussing “whose wife she is”) but “for whom she is a mother.”


of all the rules, but rather involve a method—an extreme method, but with aclearly de� ned aim—which can be used either to dissolve erroneous marriagesor to punish the (male) parents who engage in sexual relations with prohibitedpartners.43

Thus, in order to propose a correct anthropological account of the dichotomybetween Medea coniunx and Medea mater as depicted here by Seneca, we mustbegin with the following question: for whom, cui, is Medea now a mother? Theanswer is that she is a mother for a coniunx who has rejected her. As a result,her sons remain linked to her by blood since she is still their mater, but at the sametime they are alienated from her insofar as she is alienated from the father, the manfor whom, cui, she had assumed the role of mother. This rejected coniunx, carriedaway by ira, can imagine the possibility of killing those children, even though themater, still moved by amor and pietas, is horri� ed by this idea.44 In this momentof con� ict, the children’s innocence will not be enough to avert Medea’s fatalblows, even though she is their mother, just as once upon a time the innocenceof Absyrtus had not been able to restrain the fatal blows struck by his sister (etfrater fuit, 936).

MEDEA AND THE ACT OF INFANTICIDE

There is thus a fundamental con� ict here between relations of blood kinship(Medea as mater) and relations with kin acquired by means of marriage (Medeaas coniunx). To better understand the signi� cance of this con� ict in a story likeMedea’s, we can compare Medea’s situation to that of two analogous characters,Procne (again) and Althea,45 although I will only be able to brie� y outline thecomparison here. In Ovid’s version of Procne’s story (Metamorphoses 6.627–35)

43. The valuable ancient and modern evidence collected twenty years ago by Easterling needs tobe reexamined in this light. I suspect that the cultural reasons underlying these crimes changes overtime. For instance, in our culture the psychological attitude seems to be the same for both parentswho might commit infanticide: the man and the woman aim at harming their partner in more or lessthe same way by killing their children. In ancient myth, however, this seems to be a crime intended toinjure fathers, not mothers (see also Segal 1996: 16, who cites the case of Procne and also that ofHecuba, who kills the sons of Polymestor in Euripides’ Hecuba). Even in stories where infanticideseems to be directed against a mother (as in the story of Ino and Athamas), the woman is usuallynot punished by the father of the child, but by some other character (in Ino’s case, by Hera). AsSegal observes (1996: 16): “Her [sc. Medea’s] behavior here departs from modern patterns of childmurder, for modern society does not place so much emphasis on the father’s need for children tocontinue the male line.”

44. Medea 943–44: ira pietatem fugat / iramque pietas—cede pietati, dolor. Compare thedescription of Medea’s crime in Ovid Metamorphoses 7.396–97 (after the killing of the novanupta): sanguine natorum perfunditur inpius ensis / ultaque se male mater Iasonis effugit arma.Liebermann 190–91 rightly points out that the last part of this tragedy is centered upon the oppositionspietas /dolor, amor /ira, mater /coniunx .

45. Althaea’s story is explicitly evoked by the chorus (Medea 779–80). For the similaritiesbetween these two stories, see Friedrich 202–203.


and also in his account of Althea (Metamorphoses 8.462–84),46 there is a similarcon� ict in kinship loyalties. Both women decide to kill their children in orderto avenge the victimization of their siblings by their enemies: Procne avengesher sister’s rape by her husband and Althea avenges her brothers’ murder by herson. In both cases, the women must choose between loyalty to their acquiredfamily and loyalty to their family of origin. In other words, they must decidewhether to be a good mother or to be a good sister. Of course, Medea’s situationis somewhat diVerent, since it was in fact Medea herself who committed thecrime against her family of origin, killing her own brother. Yet even thoughMedea does not face a con� ict between her role as a mother and as a sister“synchronically” (that is, Medea is not choosing now between being a goodmother and the alternative of being a good sister, as Procne and Althea do), shedoes face this dilemma “diachronically.” That is, Medea’s renunciation of herrole as a mother reproduces her earlier refusal of her sisterly identity in an actof revenge that is meant to expiate the original crime by means of another, entirelyanalogous infanticide. By killing her children, Medea does aYrm her role as asister, but in a delayed and perverted way, avenging the death of her brother ather own hands by later killing her own children. Ultimately, Medea’s murderof her children is imagined as a sacri� ce oVered to the Erinyes of her brother,those same Furies evoked in the opening lines of the play. In the end, Medeagives herself over completely to dolor and is surrounded by the Furies urgingher to carry out her crime,47 until the actual ghost of her dismembered brotherappears before her, turning her hand (perhaps even literally) to the murder of her� rst child.48

Seneca’s Medea, therefore, does not punish Jason simply because he hasbetrayed her, as is the case in Euripides. Instead, in this version of the storyMedea’s wrath unleashes a much wider-reaching strategy. Medea does not intendonly to deprive Jason of his progeny, but also to obtain compensation for the

46. Ovid Metamorphoses 8.475–77: Incipit esse tamen melior germana parente / et, consan-guineas ut sanguine leniat umbras / inpietate pia est. Compare Medea 779–80: piae sororis, impiaematris (about Althaea). For a discussion of these passages, see Jakobi 59, who comments also on thestylistic similarities between Medea 939–44 and Ovid Metamorphoses 8.470–77, providing a listof parallel passages.

47. Medea might have seen the Furies on stage, if the tragedies had theatrical performances.The theme of Medea urged by the Furies was traditional, as in Neophron’s tragedy (frag. 2.10–12:see Dingel 1074). In Euripides (Medea 1333–35), Jason remarks that he is the victim of divinevengeance being exacted for Medea’s fratricide. Ovid (Heroides 12.160) also has Medea say, albeitin a diVerent context, that the divorce was celebrating the inferiae of her brother’s umbra (inferiasumbrae fratris habete mei).

48. Medea 963–71: Cuius umbra dispersis venit / incerta membris? Frater est, poenas petit:/ dabimus, sed omnes. Fige luminibus faces, / lania, perure, pectus en Furiis patet. / Discedere a me,frater, ultrices deas / manesque ad imos ire securas iube: / mihi me relinque et utere hac, frater,manu / quae strinxit ensem—victima manes tuos / placamus ista. Hosidius Geta actually made theumbra Absyrti a speaking character in his cento (390–91). Friedrich 211–12 discusses the subsequentversions in which this same detail can be found.


losses that she suVered in order to marry Jason in the � rst place.49 The twodisconnected “halves” of Medea’s identity thus � nally seem to achieve a sort ofunity. Originally, Jason was the “bene� ciary” of a crime which had Medea asits “subject,” and which injured Medea’s father by means of Absyrtus’ murder.Now the situation is reversed: (Aeetes by means of) the ghost of Absyrtus isthe “receiver” of a crime, whose “subject” is once again Medea, who injures thefather Jason by means of his children.50 With the parallelism that is typical ofultio, revenge, the original iniuria suVered by the house of Medea is compensatedfor by an analogous iniuria suVered by the house of Jason.

In Ovid, too, this motif emerges in the words that Hypsipyle addresses toJason in the Heroides, in the form of a series of curses against Medea, who hasstolen Jason from her in a way that parallels the way in which Creusa in turn willdeprive Medea of her coniunx. Hypsipyle’s � nal wish is that the barbarian womanwill suVer all the same things which Hypsipyle herself has had to suVer, and thatMedea will commit precisely those crimes which her literary destiny condemnsher to carry out:

quam fratri germana fuit miseroque parenti� lia, tam natis, tam sit acerba viro.

Heroides 6.159–60

A bitter sister to her brother, a bitter daughter to her wretched father, mayshe be as bitter to her children, and as bitter to her husband.

Here in Ovid we see the same method that Seneca will use to juxtapose the crimesof Medea’s past with the crimes she commits after her divorce, based on valuesthat have a strongly marked cultural content. Yet what was a purely verbal exercisein Ovid emerges in the action of Seneca’s play in a more radical form, exploitingthis approach for all of its narrative and dramatic potential.

Medea thus emerges as the inversion of the ideal bride: instead of eVecting analliance between two houses, Medea instead brings disaster on both her familyof origin and on the family that she acquires by marriage. More precisely, thelogic of Medea’s revenge demands that a parallel injury be in� icted on her familyby marriage as compensation for the injury this marriage in� icted on her familyof origin.51 The plan to avenge the crimes committed against Medea’s family

49. Revenge is also inserted into the larger context of the nefas committed by the Argonauts.They were haunted by a series of divine punishments, recalled in the third choral ode (Medea 579–669); for a discussion, see Lawall 426. There is also a folkloric prohibition against having a murdereron board a ship. Both Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica 4.557–91) and Ovid (Heroides 12.117–18)feature this motif; for a discussion, see Heinze 166, who provides a list of parallel passages.

50. See Morse 51. The perfect parallelism in Medea’s strategy of revenge has been highlightedvery well by Hass, who also emphasizes the damage which the loss of the children in� icts on thefather.

51. On these aspects of Medea’s myth see Visser 153–59, who clearly shows that the mythical� gure of Medea radically reverses the unifying role of the wife by destroying both of the families(her own and Jason’s) which she would be expected to unite.


of origin is completely absent from Euripides’ play but in Seneca’s version thisaspect of Medea’s revenge is what actually motivates the infanticide. When Medeawelcomes Jason’s arrival on the stage, she gives a shout of victory, announcingthat she has now requited those earlier injuries:

Iam iam recepi sceptra germanum patrem,spoliumque Colchi pecudis auratae tenent;rediere regna, rapta virginitas redit.O placida tandem numina, o festum diem,o nuptialem! Vade, perfectum est scelus—vindicta nondum: perage, dum faciunt manus.

Medea 982–87

Now, now have I regained my regal state, my brother, my father; andthe Colchians have once more the spoil of the golden � eece; restoredis my kingdom, my ravished virginity is restored. Oh, divinities, atlast propitious, oh, festal day, oh, nuptial day! Come, the crime isaccomplished; but vengeance is not yet complete; � nish it while thereis still work for your hands.

Similarly, in Seneca’s Thyestes, when Atreus sees that he has achieved his goal,he also shouts that his revenge has restored to him what he had thought he had lostbecause of the iniuria he suVered at his brother’s hands (Thyestes 1096–99):

Nunc meas laudo manus,nunc parta vera est palma. Perdideram scelus,nisi sic doleres. Liberos nasci mihinunc credo, castis nunc � dem reddi toris.

Thyestes 1096–99

Now I praise my hands, now is the true palm won. I had wasted my crimeif you did not suVer like this. Now do I believe my children are my own,now may I trust once more that my marriage-bed is pure.

With this rhetorical formulation Atreus nourishes the illusion that he has erasedthe eVects of Thyestes’ adultery with his wife Aerope, thereby restoring hiscon� dence in the legitimacy of their oVspring.52 Likewise, Medea declares thatshe has succeeded in picking up the broken thread of her life, having recoveredeverything that she had given up “for Jason’s sake”: her royal status, her brother,her father, the golden � eece, and even her own original identity as a virgo, thewhole list of losses which Medea has been lamenting throughout the � rst half ofthe tragedy, the so-called “dowry” which Medea had paid in order to get marriedto Jason.53 If only in the logic of a paradoxical metaphor, Medea has recouped

52. See Guastella 1994: 145–47.53. See Medea 209–20 and 483–89.

guastella : Virgo, Coniunx, Mater 217

her losses; her revenge creates the illusion that “everything has come back,”rediere / redit (984).54

CONCLUSIONS

By the time the play reaches its close, the seduced virgo and the abandonedmater have both been avenged; Medea can � nally show herself to Jason in theterms he had refused to accept: no longer as the rival of Creusa, but as his oldconiunx, the companion of his exile. Medea then � ies oV into the cloudless sky,her identity as a “mother” discarded and the events of her past annulled. At theend of the tragedy, Jason has not put Medea aside, but instead it is Medea whoputs Jason aside, having requited the crimes, scelera, she had once committedon Jason’s behalf with crimes now committed against him. Medea had become amother to Jason’s pro� t, but now she has ceased to be a mother, and has doneso at a loss to him. In this way Medea has succeeded in doing just what shepromised at the end of the play’s prologue (Medea 55): quae scelere parta est,scelere linquenda est domus.

University of Sienaguastella@unisi. it

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figures 1–2 joyce

Fig. 1: Punishmentof Dirce with Amphionand Zethos apprehendingLykos. Sicilian CalyxCrater. Staatliche Museenzu Berlin, AntikenSammlung, F 3296.Photo by Isolde Luckert.bpk, Berlin.

Fig. 2: Dirce under anIthyphallic Bull. AugustanCarneol. Staaliche Museenzu Berlin, AntikenSammlung, FG 6897.bpk, Berlin.

Documents

Gianni Guastella Virgo, Coniunx, Mater the Wrath of Senecas Medea (1)