In the spring of 431 BC, in Athens, the theatre competition held during the religious festivals in honour of Dionysus, the ‘Great Dionysia’, was won by Euphorion, son of Aeschylus. Second prize was awarded to Sophocles. The third and final prize (a consolation prize for having at least passed the initial selection of the three poets in the competition) went to Euripides, who had presented a trilogy that included Medea.
Euripides wrote this work based on an existing myth and a figure well known to the Athenians, Medea, but it seems that he ‘enriched’ the story with important details! In fact, no source before Euripides explicitly alludes to intentional and violent action on the part of the mother, nor is the death of the children related to Medea’s relationship with Jason.
These are some of the earlier versions of the myth:
- In the 8th century BC, the epic poet Eumelus of Corinth recounts that Medea’s children died in a ritual performed by their mother with the aim of making them immortal. Medea did not want to kill the children, but to try to save them. When Jason discovered what had happened, he abandoned her and returned to Iolcus.
- According to Creophilus of Samos, it was the citizens of Corinth who killed Medea’s children and then cunningly blamed the mother. The state had never accepted Medea and decided to let the children starve to death – other sources speak of lynching – simply because they were the children of a foreigner.
Euripides was well aware of all these narratives, but in his tragedy he tells a different story, describing a mater terribilis, clouded by a thirst for revenge, and transforming the ritual killing of her children into premeditated murder.
Claudius Aelianus (2nd-3rd century AD) cites more than one testimony to support the claim that it was Euripides who attributed the role of infanticidal mother to Medea. Among these testimonies is that of the polygraph of Preneste (170-235 AD), according to whom Euripides wrote the tragedy at the request of the Corinthians: they were the real culprits of the killing of the children and, thanks to the poet’s skill, they wanted a lie to prevail over the truth. Furthermore, the Alexandrian grammarian Parmeniscus (2nd-1st century BC) provides a curious detail: according to him, Euripides received five talents from the Corinthians for attributing the murder of her children to Medea; instead, they had been killed by the Corinthians, exasperated by the fact that a foreign sorceress ruled the city.
According to Pausanias, Medea did not kill her children, but the Corinthians did, because the children had brought Creusa their mother’s incendiary gifts, namely a poisoned crown and peplos.
Historians’ interest in Euripides’ modifications to the myth was linked to critical and literary reasons: the aim was to verify Euripides’ poetics in the light of Aristotle’s theory that myths cannot be altered and that it is the poet’s task to find plots and know how to present those handed down well (‘Commentary on Euripides’ Medea’, Gennaro Tedeschi, University of Trieste, 2010).
In conclusion, it seems that it is ‘Euripides’ fault’ that Medea became the terrible murderer capable of any deed, as tradition tells us.
“If we do not want to believe the reports by Aelian and Parmeniscus, according to which Euripides composed the tragedy at the request and for the remuneration of the Corinthians in order to shift the blame for the crime onto Medea and free themselves from the infamous accusation, then we can think that it was Euripides himself who introduced this formidable and highly provocative variation, skilfully manipulating the traditional material, especially in comparing civilisation and barbarism and addressing the themes of ‘the other’ and ‘the exile’, the outcast from society. Euripides’ tragic poetry creates a new myth, destined to span the centuries, the myth of the mater terribilis’
(M.G. Ciani, “Sul tradurre il greco. Appunti per Medea di Euripide” – Inda, Siracusa 2009).
Perhaps Euripides was only interested in creating a memorable character: infanticide would have caused a scandal and brought a certain fame to the tragedy.