Greek Tragedy By Euripides ' Medea

Throughout Herodotus’ The History, Oracles, and dreams play an important role. While the gods have almost no presence throughout the book, the Oracles and/or dreams are linked to many of the major events.

Within this primary structure lies a secondary tangential structure. Herodotus tangentially discusses almost everything which is brought up in his historical narrative. Any subject, region, or people that is mentioned within the primary structure is a candidate for secondary structure examination. Most often this comes in the form of a discussion of some land that the Persians conquered. These secondary structure tangents often include their own historical narratives, geographical descriptions, and anthropological observations. The secondary structure of The Histories almost obscures the primary structure, making it difficult for a casual or first time reader to follow the overall narative.

Superficially, Medea is a critique of relations between men and women, the struggle between Jason and Medea; then the struggle between Creon and Medea. However at the deeper level, Medea is a critique of the quality and state of the contemporary culture of Euripides (Arrowsmith 361). The unique symbolism is that

Euripides created a two-headed character in this classical tragedy. Medea begins her marriage as the ideal loving wife who sacrificed much for her husband's safety. At the peak of the reading, she becomes a murderous villain that demands respect and even some sympathy. By the end, the husband and wife are left devoid of love and purpose as the tragedy closes.

The advancements he made while the act of recording the past was just beginning to flourish were substantial enough to be considered still effective today. In his work called The Histories, Herodotus explores a copious amount of topics while keeping not a word impartial and remaining thoroughly unbiased. His main conflict was centered on the civilizations of the East and the West, a topic that has been illustrated over and over again by many of his successors. Although in his time technology was scarce, he took matters into his own hands and began to ask questions of the people at the places he would write about and unveil their histories, customs, artwork, and buildings.

Euripides and Sophocles wrote powerful tragedies that remain influential to this day. The vast majority of work recovered from this time is by male authorship. What remains about women of this time is written through the lens of male authors’ perspective and beliefs about the role of women in Greek culture. The works of these two playwrights frequently characterize women as unstable and dangerous. Agave, Antigone, and Medea are all undoubtedly the driving force behind the tragic action in these plays. It is their choices that lead to the pain and death of the people around them. Through an examination of the evidence from three separate works, Antigone, The Bacchae, and The Medea, the role of women in ancient Greek tragedy becomes clear. The actions of Agave, Antigone, and Medea repeatedly prove their characters instability and danger.

For the women in ancient Greece, justice was far from reach. In the Greek society, men were allowed to abandon their wives in order to marry younger ones and Medea was not invulnerable to this fate. Despite all of her devoutness to her husband, he relinquished her for someone new. “Oh how unhappy I am, how wretched my sufferings. Oh woe is me. I wish I could die”, Medea cried out at the horrendous news (page 3, line 9). Euripides created a tragedy that many women during the ancient Greek time could relate to.

In ‘Medea’, Euripides shows Medea in a new light, as a scorned woman that the audience sympathises with to a certain extent, but also views as a monster due to her act of killing her own children. The protagonist of a tragedy, known as the Tragic Hero is supposed to have certain characteristics which cause the audience to sympathise with them and get emotionally involved with the plot. The two main characters, Medea and Jason, each have certain qualities of the Tragic Hero, but neither has them all. This makes them more like the common man that is neither completely good nor evil, but is caught in the middle and forced to make difficult decisions.

In Euripides' play the title role and focus of the play is the foreign witch Medea. Treated differently through the play by different people and at different times, she adapts and changes her character, finally triumphing over her hated husband Jason. She can feasibly be seen as a mortal woman, Aristotle's tragic hero figure and even as an exulted goddess.

Amongst Euripides' most famous plays, Medea went against the audience's expectations at his time. Indeed, the main character of the play is Medea, a strong independent female who neglected moral and . She was therefore in all ways different to how women were perceived in Ancient Greece. This essay will explore how Euripides' controversial characters demonstrate that his views were ahead of his time.

During the travels with Herodotus, his involvement in feast, rituals, and other events provided him an internal perspective on the Persians. While observing

Recently, I have read a Greek tragedy by the name of Medea, written by Euripides. It was written in Athens in 431 BC and tells the story of a woman named Medea’s mental breakdown and retaliation for her husband, Jason, leaving her and her children for the daughter of a king. Euripides wrote often about those who didn’t fit into the ideals of the Athenian society, such as war victims, slaves, and women. Since Euripides was avid in exposing Athens’ ignorance towards its ‘lesser citizens’ and Medea being written during the Peloponnesian War, Medea probably relates to how the ‘lesser citizens’ felt during that period. In the play, Medea is exiled by King Creon and perhaps that’s how some of the Athenian citizens felt during this time: exiled from

Is tragedy history, or are some histories dramas parading as truth? Throughout this past semester I have had the pleasure of reading eight Greek tragedies that had a variety of fascinating and complex female characters. The leading ladies ranged from vengeful mothers turned usurpers, to loving sisters in desperate pursuit to lay their brother’s soul to rest. Although they often followed their roles in society as keepers of the household, these women often found themselves in positions where fulfilling their womanly duties also put their well being at risk, sometimes resulting in death. Observing these women as portrayed in tragedy one cannot but ask the question if these complex female characters are a tragedy trait created for entertainment purposes, or if tragedy was just a dramatic way of presenting the multifaceted way women were viewed in Ancient Greek society. In other words, can tragedy be viewed as a sociological reenactment or ethnographic evidence of the true perception of women in Ancient Greece? With this question in mind this paper will look to “The Histories” to investigate the various ways that Herodotus (a well respected historian) portrays women in order to achieve two of my main objectives. Firstly, Herodotus’ and the tragedies’ portrayal of women will be used in order to gain a better understanding of the true societal perception of

As the famous Greek playwright Euripides once said: “Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.” Such ideas are portrayed in one of him most famous plays, Medea. This play is a fascinating classic centered on the Greek goddess Medea. Despite its recent fame, during his time, Euripides was unpopular since he used what would be considered a ‘modern’ view where he would focus on women, slaves and persons from the lower classes. In the play, Medea commits filicide, which initially appears extremely horrendous, but as the audience is guided through the play, they develop sympathy towards Medea. In order to achieve this empathy and enhance the understanding of Medea’s pride and ideals, Euripides

This supports the idea that Herodotus could have possibly admired Polycrates for attempting to expand the state he was from. Other supporting statements come from the way Herodotus talked about Polycrates. In the beginning of the readings assigned, Herodotus writes “the power of Polycrates increased rapidly, and there was much fame of it not only in Ionia, but also over the rest of Hellas:” This line shows that the fame of Polycrates grew over many of the people in this location, they would have admired him. Later, Herodotus mentions that Polycrates had set his eyes on the sea and was one of the first leaders to do, going so far as to say that “Of the allegedly mortal race Polycrates was the first;” It is explained in the footnote that Herodotus is distinguishing a historical epoch about the age of heroes. Polycrates is being compared here to some of the ancient mythical heroes of the past that may have also looked to conquer the sea. These two quotes give support to an indirect admiration that Herodotus may have had towards