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The Invention and Use of the Infanticide Motif in Euripides' Medea

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The Invention and Use of the Infanticide Motif in Euripides' Medea SPIRIDON D. SYROPOULOS (Ph. D) University of the Aegean School of Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies THE INVENTION AND USE OF THE INFANTICIDE MOTIF IN EURIPIDES' MEDEA There had been various earlier versions of the Medea myth since her first recorded appearance at Jason's side1. Corinthian tradition had her as benevolent witch and Thessalians had a very similar opinion of her. In the ancient Boeotian and Thessalian tradition Medea rejuvenates the old father of Jason2. Later, connected to the myth of the Argonauts, she helps Jason and his wounded companions. So, she appears as a protector of ancient medicine, in one of its oldest cradles, Thessaly - where the centaur Chiron taught Asclepius. Corinthian myths faintly depict the magic powers of Medea, by her virtue as moon-goddess and her association with Hecate3. According to these myths, Aeetes inherited Efyra4 from his father, the Sun. Medea invited by the Corinthians to receive the inheritance comes from Iolkos followed by Jason, who shares with her the Corinthian throne. The same tradition is followed by Simonides (fr. 35). Even lines 11-12 of the play indicate that she strove to be liked by the Corinthians. In Oichalias Alosis, an epic by Creophilus, Medea kills Creon and flees to Athens, having put her children to sit on the altar of Hera Akraia, hoping that they might be saved by their father. Creon's relatives, however, kill the children and blame the murder on Medea. In Pausanias' time, one could still be shown at Corinth the spring where Glauke, the daughter of Creon, threw herself, in order to be rid of the tortures caused by Medea's poisons. Not far from this spring, one could be shown the grave of Mermerus and Pheres, Medea's children, who were stoned by the Corinthians. The death of the innocent children caused the anger of the gods and plague fell upon the children of Corinth. According to an oracle's advice, the Corinthians established annual purificatory sacrifices and erected a statue to Phobos, * This article is based on material of my unpublished doctoral thesis in 1997 (University of Bristol). 1. Hes. Theog. 956-7. 2. Most vivid account in Ovid Met. 7, 162ff; earliest account in Nostoi, fr. 6. 3. Cf. Eumelus' Korinthiaka, an epic which has not survived. 4. Efyra: ancient name for Corinth, or Thesprotian city (Schol. Odys. 1, 259). The infanticide motif in Euripides' Medea 127 still preserved in Pausanias' time. Those sacrifices ended when Corinth was occupied by the Romans; they also ended the tradition that had Corinth's children with shaved heads and dressed in black5. Another tradition has it that the fourteen children of Medea (seven boys and seven girls), run to the temple of Hera Akraia, but even there the Corinthians killed them. To purify the miasma the Corinthians dedicated each year seven boys and seven girls from the most noble families, who spent the whole year in the goddess' temple offering sacrifices. According to the same tradition Medea fled to Athens where she married Aegeus; but because later she planned the murder of her stepson Theseus, Aegeus exiled her and her son Medus, who became later king of Athens6. By the 5th century Medea's story has a commonly accepted shape7. The question still remains, though: was the infanticide part of the tradition or was it Euripides' invention? According to the tradition that Creophilus used, the Co­ rinthians blamed their own unlawful crime on Medea. In a way, this tradition introduces the elements for Medea's infanticide. Nevertheless, the purificatory rituals of the Corinthians in the honour of Hera are a fact that hints at an unlawful crime that weighed upon the city. On this, one can recall an unverified but interesting anecdote that Euripides received five talents from the Corinthians, in order to ascribe the infanticide to Medea, and so 'free' them, on the Athenian stage, from a tradition that weighed upon their shoulders8. One can even see in lines 1381-3, an attempt of the poet to blend the new element in the old tradition of the Corinthian rituals. The important issue is that Euripides was the first to introduce the infanticide into the myth. Of course there is always the problem of the Medea of Neophron. As was reported in the first Hypothesis of the Medea, Euripides used the work of the Sikyonian tragic poet Neophron. The scholar who wrote the Hypothesis (it is anonymous) calls upon the authorities of Dicaearchus and Aristotle in Hypomnemata (lines 22-23). Diogenes Laertius talks about Euripides' Medea, 'that is said to have been inspired by the Sikyonian Neophron'9. The Scholia on Medea, also, refer to two 5. Paus. 2.3.6. 6. Medus is not mentioned as son of Medea by Pausanias, or Euripides in the present version, because Medus is a son of Medea and Aegeus. The story of Medea's banishment from Athens, where Medus appears, is reported by Hyginus. According to this story Medus helped Medea to kill Perses, brother of Aeetes. Medus is also mentioned in Hesiod Theogony 997. 7. The infanticide was popular among vase-painters in the 5th century, often found on Italiote vases (see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Graecae). It inspired a famous painting by Timanthes, which was probably the prototype of a Hellenistic picture. See S. Brommer, Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensage (Marburg 1960), 163, 348. 8. Scholia on Eur. Med. 10. 9. Diog. Laert., 2.10, par. 134. 128 Spiridon D. Syropoulos extracts from Neophron's play, and a longer one is found in Stobaeus10. However, it is still a very controversial matter whether such a work existed. The problem is that our information about Neophron (or Neophon) comes from Suidas, after the 10th century, and is not very illuminating. It is indicative that Neophron was said to have been killed by Alexander the Great (along with Callisthenes), but he seems to be alive in the 4th century, and even to appear as a predecessor of Sophocles and Euripides. Then, he was supposed to have written 120 works, of which none survives. Aristotle does not mention him in the Poetics, when he talks about the Medea of Euripides. As for Dicaearchus, he is not a reliable authority, and the Hypomnemata is not written by either Dicaearchus or Aristotle. Then, in the Hypothesis by Aristophanes Byzantius, a more reliable source, it is said that neither Sophocles nor Aeschylus dealt with the myth — Neophron is not even mentioned". Even the surviving extracts of Neophron can be considered as imitations of Euripides' play. The truth is that there can be no conclusive decision on whether Neophron's — alleged — play was Euripides' prototype. Even if it was, it was not unusual for a poet to take from an other the successful elements of a myth's texture. Still, Euripides' infanticide remains original in the full extent of her character's analysis. Why did he do it, though? Did he merely wish to add a new dramatic dimension to the stage-action? Did he wish to present Medea as evil? Surely, if his intention was the latter, he need not have invented another reason for the audience to dislike Medea; the myth already contained the elements of Glauke's and Creon's murders — not to mention the old story about Apsyrtus. So, why the use of the infanticide? This will become clear at the end of the article. One thing that would bring the audience to Medea's side is the betrayal of the oaths of faithfulness by Jason. As Easterling points out, Euripides does not 'allow any character to raise the question of the legal relationship between Jason and Medea"2. The validity of this relationship is fundamental to the play's action. However, if we contrast the relationship to the social and moral practices of 5th century Athens we might come to question some of its aspects. Jason is in a relationship with a foreign woman, who, despite her high status as princess and descendant of the Sun, has abandoned her family in no fitting manner. Jason is not an Athenian, but as most plays are to be seen through the socio-moral prism of Athenian beliefs, it would not be inappropriate to consider him judged according to Athenian standards. At the time when the Medea was produced, the law of Pericles concerning citizenship was in force and it was actually taken very seriously13. In order to gain citizen status, one 10. Stobaeus, Anthologia Graeca, 20.34. 11. Arist. Byz., Hypoth. ii, 35-40. 12. P. Easterling, 'The infanticide in Euripides' Medea", YCS XXV (1977): 177-191; 180. 13. Cf. C. Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy (Munich 1988), translated in Greek by The infanticide motif in Euripides' Medea 129 had to be descended from two Athenian parents. Whether such laws are to be regarded as having been valid in Iolkos — especially that of the heroic age — cannot be verified, but it is probably not important14. It is more than likely that the law was in the Athenian audience's mind, when they witnessed Jason's exile. This is not to say that any character in the play suggests that Jason was justified in abandoning Medea because she was a foreigner15. But even if such a citizenship-law did not exist in real Iolkos (not that of the stage), it is obvious that by their flight Jason's children lost all their rights to their father's wealth in Iolkos — and this is something that the Athenian audience could definitely sympathize with. If Medea is considered the main cause of this flight, she obviously takes the blame for the loss of the children's status through inheritance, and subsequently, the destruction of Jason's ancestral oikos.
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