Seneca's Play, Medea: A Critique and Summary

The Medea is probably one of the most popular of Seneca's plays left to us today. It is perhaps because the Medea begins where one of the more popular of classical myths, Jason and the Argonauts, leaves off. Jason and the Argonauts is a tale in which Jason is tasked with the seemingly impossible task of recovering the Golden Fleece from Colchis by his usurper uncle, Pelias. Jason assembles his crew, the Argonauts, which included such famous men as Orpheus and Hercules. Jason and the Argonauts have a number of intermediary adventures during their journey to Colchis, including encounters with harpies and amazon women. Upon arrival in Colchis, Jason announces his purpose and King Aeetes, the ruler of the kingdom, sets Jason on a seemingly suicidal mission which he must complete in order to acquire the Fleece. His tasks would have indeed been suicidal, if it hadn't been for a betrayal that occured to King Aeetes - a betrayal by his magically talented daughter, Medea. Medea fell in love with Jason and he sought her assistance in finding the fleece. She assisted, gifting him and the argonauts with powder that would make them invincible and a stone that would cause their enemies to fight with each other in confusion. With these items, Jason and the Argonauts captured the fleece but were forced to flee, with Medea, from the wrath of King Aeetes. Aeetes sent his son in pursuit and Medea killed him, further cemending her betrayal and new allegiance to Jason. Having returned to Jason's home with the fleece, the expectation was that Pelias would abdicate and Jason would become the rightful king. This did not occur. Pelias was an older man by then, however, and his daughters were astounded when Medea demonstrated a way by which old flesh may be made new again. She cut up an old ram, combined it in a pot with herbs and other magical ingrediants, and a new, young, ram jumped out. They implored her, as she wished them to, to assist them in performing this same right for their old father. She tells them that they will need to do as she did to the old ram and cut their father into pieces and put them into the pot. They did this, and as Medea intended, Pelias remained dead. Things did not turn out so well, however, and Medea and Jason were again forced to flee.

The location to which they fled is the location where Seneca's play takes place. The location is Corinth. Jason and Medea fled here and lived for a number of years - long enough to have two sons, who are young still when the play begins. Eventually, however, Acustus, the son of Pelias and Jason's cousin, comes seeking after Jason and Medea. He has an army and desires revenge for his father. In order to ameliorate the situation, Jason courts and intends to marry Creusa, the daughter of Creon, who was the king of Corinth, thereby obtaining royal protection. Medea, understandably, is enraged by this proposition. She has no say in the matter and the play opens with the inevitability of the marriage and Medea raging about her misfortune, anger, and desire for revenge. Medea fantasizes about potential remedies to her severe emotions; she devises plots to kill the royal family and even her sons, in order to get back at Jason. The nurse enters during once of Medea's diatribes and attempts to use reason to placate and deter Medea from her fantastical paths. At first, she urges her to control her rage, to which Medea responds, "Fortuna fortes metuit, ignavos premit" (Medea, 159). Asserting that she is brave and not to act would be cowardly, and that she will act. The nurse then moves on to a more pragmatic and less idealistic method of protecting her mistress, arguing that it would be best of she hid her greviances and endured her woulds because she will be more effective at enacting her revenge at a later date, once she has calmed down. We see here a common theme in Seneca's servants. At first, they tend to follow their best judgment which just so happens to be the judgment that a philosophically wise stoic would advise. However, after their wisdom has been exhausted, Seneca's servants turn, by degrees, to less and less noble methods of persuasion, always remaining loyal to their patrons. Medea responds to the nurse,

Levis est dolor qui capere consilium potest et clepere sese; magna non latitant mala. Libet ire contra.

She will not be swayed by thoughts of later revenge. Her emotions are such that waiting would be too painful and that waiting would, it is implied, give credence to the notion that her emotions are not as great as she asserts them to be (Medea, 165). The nurse finally resorts to her last option before capitulating, saying, logically, that no hope for her can remain if she carries out her plans to fruition at the present time. Medea responds that she simply does not care. No hope also means, for her, feeling no despair. She goes so far as to say she desires the likely consequence of her action, death, and she disregards her children as inconsequencial due to their relationship to their father who has hurt her so significantly (Medea, 170-175).

After the scene change, however, Medea contradicts herself and we begin to see one of the emotional conflicts that she will experience throughout the play. She can espouse and justify her extreme plans with the nurse for only so long. Directly before Creon, the king of Corinth, enters the scene, Medea gives a hint that she does not truly desire death, but both vengeance and life. For, she says, "fugiam et ulciscar prius," saying that she will first have her vengenance and then escape as well (Medea, 174). As Act three approaches the nurse turns to the crowd and gives her analysis of Medea's state. It is aptly done; Seneca explains what Medea is experiencing in terms that all people - from his contemporaries to us today - would intrinsically, due to human nature, understand. The Nurse, perhaps here more obviously using the voice of Seneca than in any other place, speaks extensively of the range and depth of the emotions that Medea has in so short a time experienced. The case is made that such experiences are incompatible with each other in the extreme, and the prediction is made that Medea is near to bursting (Medea, 380-395).

Shortly after, Medea and Jason have their first dialogue of the play. Medea makes a weak attempt at securing Jason to her side once more, appealing to him that she could overcome the odds set against them - Acaustus and Creon united, if he chose to stay with Medea - presumably by her magical talents. She fails, Jason replies simply and definitively "Alta extimesco sceptra" (Medea, 528). Medea flies into a rage, accusing him of desiring such scepters over her. Jason attempts to subdue her by offering her anything she desires. She asks for her sons, Jason denies her, and in so doing breaks her final straw. Medea has a flash of insight, realizing decietfully that her earlier fantastical notions of infanticide would be the surest and most painful way of hurting Jason, as they are the one thing that he will still refuse her. Hurting Jason she views as her final option, all other having been exhausted.

Medea plots to do just this, bringing her plans from fantasy into reality. She starts practicing her magical arts on gifts that she intends for her sons to deliver to the royal family. The act of her spell casting is given in explicit detail by Seneca's magnificent chorus. The chorus was exceptionally significant in Seneca's plays and served a number of roles. First and foremost it used verse to explore the emotions of the characters more fully than they themselves could do. An example of this is seen in lines 590-595 where the chorus sings,

Caecus est ignis simulatus ira

nec regi curat patiturve frenos

aut timet mortem; cupit ire in ipsos

obvius enses

Which reads, roughly, 'blind is the fire stirred up by anger, / careless of control, impatient of curbs, / fearless of death, desiring to attack / straight against swords'. The audience receives a much fuller picture and understanding of how the emotions experienced by the characters really felt. The feeling of inevitability is exceptionally and tragically conveyed. The chorus also employs the use of historical stories and myths that the audicence would be familiar with to entertain and reinforced the story at hand. The chorus, for example, prays for pardon for Jason who "tamed the sea" and then goes into extensive - and predictive - examples of how the sea is a realm of chaos and despair - how no good has seemingly ever come of it. Mention is made of Phaeton and his driving of the Sun god's chariot. The remnants of what did not burn up in the inferno caused by Zeus's lightning bolt is thought to have crashed into the sea's cold embrace. A song of sung of Tiphys, one of the members of the Argonauts, the helmsman, who died of an illness contracted on the seas. Finally, Hylas, attendant of Hercules is lamented for being "dragged down among safe waters" (Medea, 640-649). There is a compairision made between the boilig cauldron that Pelias ended up in, having been chopped up by his daughters, and the roiling waters of the sea. The chorus ends with a toung-in-cheeck conclusion, saying, "Ite nunc, fortes, perarate pontum fonte timendo," for no matter the extent of bravey that men who venture on the sea possess, they are still subject to the chaotic, ambivilant, and often treacherous actions of the great sea (Medea, 650).

As in act three, act four begins with the nurse - seemingly Seneca's prefered character - discussing Medea's state and current intentions. Act four's beginning is markedly more dreadful than that of act three. There is long digression on the specifics of Medea's magic; how she plans on going about dealing with Jason, his new wife, and her sons. The nurse notes that "every plant that burgeons with deadly flowers, every kind of injurious sap that breeds in twisted roots the sources of harm; all these she handles" (Medea, 715-720). With great specificity, the nurse tells of some herbs that Medea harvests, presumably out of dread necessity, while "Phoebus was preparing day" (Medea, 727) while others were taken at the stroke of midnight. Her concoctions, the audience is told, include various parts of animals and things that even the "artificier of crimes keeps seperate" (Medea, 734). Medea shortly enters and casts her spell which is focused on the gifts she will be giving to the royal family. The gifts are spelled to explode and create a living fire that will seek out the intended targets whom Medea focuses on during her casting. Act five begins, Medea's spell having been a success. King Creon and his daughter, Jason's intended, were killed. The nurse, ever loyal dispite her fundamental disagreements, urges Medea to flee. Instead she turns to the matter of her children. Here Medea explores, in painstaking detail, the matter of potentially murdering her innocent children and the diametrically opposed, almost paradoxical, emotions that she is dealing with. Very uncharacteristically, she says,

Cor pepulit horror, membra topescunt gelu pectusque tremuit. Ira discessit loco materque tota coniuge expulsa redit.

She has a breif and potent moment of realization that she is about to slay her children.

(Medea, 926-928). Themes of love and anger are arguably much more harshly juxtaposed in act five of the Medea than in the other Senecan tragidies. Medea goes on to question what crime her sons have committed, and eventually concludes that the having Jason for a father is crime enough. She reaches a turning point, admitting that the children are free of guilt and blame themselves, but so was her brother whom she herself killed. Individual innocence, it seems, must hold 2^nd place at best in Medea's mind behind what circumstances demand. She traversed a wave; during the incline belaying her feelings of love and value of maternal instincts, peeked upon admitting the innocence of her children, and began declining having remembered her brother's inconsequential innocence and commands her love to give way to her pain (Medea, 944) and for her anger to lead her actions (Medea, 953).

She kills one son in secret and continues to experience conflicting emotions, saying that she regrets what she has done followed, immediately, by exaclaiming that she has been suffused by a great and growing sense of pleasure (Medea, 991), presumably at the pain that she will have caused Jason once he learns of his son's death. She is shortly confronted by Jason who observes her holding on to his other son and discerns her previous action and current intention. He begs her to kill him rather than the second son - fruitlessly, for Medea responds with,

Hac qua recusas, qua doles, ferrum exigam. I nunc, superbe, virginum thalamos pete, relinque matres.

She urges him to go and repeat his crimes of abandoning mothers and creating circumstances that allow him to guiltlessly acquire new wives, virgins, if he dares, but that she will presently punish him (Medea, 1006-1008). She does so, by killing the second son and thereby ending the play.