“Hate me.  But I tire of your barking bitterness.” – Euripides’ Medea

If you frequent the coffeehouse at the corner of X and Y,  you probably know the owner’s adorable Labradoodle.  That Labradoodle is one of my closest friends. It sits by my feet and stares at me with love.  That is how it demands a tip – half a scone will do – and then it yaps in sympathy, whatever I say.  

It’s one of those days when I quote The Medea from memory:  “I would rather stand in front of the shield three times than give birth once.” 

 I was a naive reader when I first perused Euripides’ Medea.  I thought she was a feminist! Even when I read it in Greek, I may have regarded Medea as a feminist. Many feminists are monsters, of course: there is a tendency to be simplistic and to think in meaningless cliches. Medea, however, is a murderer.  She cut up bits of her brother and threw them into the sea to slow down her pursuers; and when Jason left her for a princess, Medea killed that unlucky woman with the gift of a  poisoned dress; the king was killed accidentally when he tried to tear the poisoned dress off his daughter; and Medea killed her two sons for the ultimate revenge on Jason.

She is an eloquent politician.  In Euripides’s tragedy, she persuades the chorus to empathize with her.  Of the three tragedians, Euripides is the one who most sympathetically portrays women, and that is why this play can be read and read again, with different shattering interpretations each time.