Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art 9780691043760, 0691043760

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MEDEA ESSAYS ON MEDEA MYTH,

LITERATURE,

IN

PHILOSOPHY,

AND ART

James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston, Editors

PRINCETON PRINCETON,

UNIVERSITY NEW

PRESS JERSEY

COPYRIGHT

© 1997 BY PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY PRESS

PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET,

For Louise, Gerard, Michael, and Elizabeth Clauss

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540

LeRoy, Tristan, and Pelham Johnston

IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, CHICHESTER, WEST SUSSEX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The cover shows Frederick Sandys' Medea, painted between 1866 and 1868. The painting was accepted for the Royal Academy in 1868 but was not exhibited, which brought storms of protest from the art world of the time. The model for the painting was probably Sandys' mistress, a gypsy named Keomi. The painting is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England. LIBRARY

OF CONGRESS

CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION

DATA

Medea: essays on Medea in myth, literature, philosophy, and art / James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston, editors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-04377-9 (alk. paper). -ISBN 0-691-04376-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Medea (Greek mythology). 2. Medea (Greek mythology) in literature. 3. Medea (Greek mythology) in art. 4. Philosophy, Ancient. I. Clauss, James Joseph. II. Johnston, Sarah Iles, 1957-. BL820.M37M43 1997 292.2 1 13-dc20 96--8537 This book has been composed

in Palatino

Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permarience and durability of the Committee on Producti.on Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

13579108642 (PBK)

PREFACE

ix

James f. Clauss ABBREVIATIONS

xi

INTRODUCTION

3

Sarah Iles Johnston

PART I: MYTHIC REPRESENTATIONS 1

Medea, the Enchantress from Afar: Remarks on a Well-Known Myth 21 Fritz Graf 2

Corinthian

Medea and the Cult of Hera Akraia

44

Sarah Iles Johnston 3

Medea as Foundation-Heroine

71

Nita Krevans 4

Why Did Medea Kill Her Brother Apsyrtus?

83

Jan N. Bremmer

PART II: LITERARY PORTRAITS 5

Medea as Muse: Pindar's

Pythian 4

103

Dolores M. O'Higgins 6

Becoming Medea: Assimilation

in Euripides

Deborah Boedeker

127

viii

C O N T EN T S

PREFACE

7

Conquest of the Mephistophelian Nausicaa: Medea's Role in Apollonius' Redefinition of the Epic Hero 149

T

James J.Clauss 8

The Metamorphosis

of Ovid's Medea

178

Carole E. Newlands

PART III: UNDER PHILOSOPHICAL

INVESTIGATION

9

Medea among the Philosophers

211

John M. Dillon

10

Serpents in the Soul: A Reading of Seneca's Medea Martha C. Nussbaum

PART IV: BEYOND THE EURIPIDEAN

STAGE

11

Medea at a Shifting Distance: Images and Euripidean Tragedy

253

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

12 Medea as Politician and Diva: Riding the Dragon into the Future Marianne McDonald BIBLIOGRAPHY

325

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS INDEX LOCORUM GENERALINDEX

351 353

369

297

219

HE PRESENT COLLECTION of papers began as a panel organized by Sarah Iles Johnston for the 1991 meeting of the-American Philological A;sociation in Chicago, entitled "Maiden and Murderess: Medea's Pori:rayal}:i.9r~~k~~~-g()~9:~~,it~r:?J:ure .." Th; original participants were Dolores M. O'Higgins, Deborah Boedeker, Carole E. Newlands, Sarah Iles Johnston, and myself. Gordon M. Kirkwood closed the panel with his helpful and insightful responses to each of the papers. Because of the success of the program, I suggested that we publish the papers in a collection, especially since it seemed that together the essays provided an interesting picture of this fascinating and influential mythological figure. Professor Johnston and I agreed to be co-editors. Ila.0n µa.0oc;! After the participants agreed to the idea of a joint publication, Professor Johnston and I were for!U_I_"llper-maic:kn," which is found in the fairy tales or myths of virtually all cultures. Later in her story, however, Medea appears as ~lwrathful w-oman whose lust for vengeance drives her to slaughter her own children. In this role, of course, she is the utter opposite of the "good" or "helpful" woman. Indeed, when we look closely at the variant versions of this story, we realize that infanticidal Medea resembles a type of female demon, feared in traditional cultures throughout the ancient and modern world, who specializes in killing children. What could possibly unite these conflicting figures? Further details only make the problem more difficult. We hear of Medea tricking the Athenian king Aegeus into nearly murdering his son Theseus, yet we also hear of her founding cities, which the Greeks and Romans regarded as a strongly positive act. Sophocles and Seneca portray Medea as a famous witch, adept in herbal poisons and surrounded by snakes, yet Ibycus and Simonides tell of her marrying the hero Achilles after her death, in the blessed Elysian Plain, where only privileged souls find rest. 6 In the form that we have received it from antiquity, Medea's mythic history seems to have made some attempts to harmonize these and other disparate elements. For example, as Medea leaves Colchis, where she played the role of helpful princess, she brutally kills and dismembers her brother Apsyrtus, an act that can be understood to foreshadow her infanticide in Corinth. Even in her role as helper6 Soph. frs. 534-36 (Radt) with comments; Seneca, see Nussbaum's contribution to this volume; Ibycus fr. 291 (Campbell) =Simon. fr. 558 (Campbell); Apollonius tells this story as well (4.805f{).

6 INTRODUCTION

l

maiden, Medea uses magic, which for the Greeks was always a frightening and disreputable art in the hands of women. These episodes seem to suggest that the wicked woman always lurked within the helper-maiden. But it is difficult to determine whether such darker elements as fratricide and magic were really always part of the story of Medea and Jason's early life. It is possible that they were in-. troduced by ancient authors who wanted to smooth over the dissonances between the different "Medeas" whom they had inherited\ from tradition. For present purposes, the resolution of this issue is relatively unimportant; what I wish to emphasize is that from at l~r_aj:l_Bo~ciekeralso examirl.~s tlt~ question of what drove Medea' s actions. In "Becoming Medea: Assimilation in Euripides," Boedeker begin~ by observing that there were always alternative Medeas available to ancient authors. E_~,r1within a single episocie, such as the story_9f th~lones M. O'Higii_Ilf:i__ s_l:iows how Medea's myth can be used to explore this dilemma in "Medea as Muse: Pindar's Pythiarz 4." Opening with the observation that Medea "appears both exceptional and typical of all females, as they were generally perceived," O'Higgins suggests that Medea is ·emblematic of all ancient women, who, like ..her: were "outsiders," viewed with distrust even within the families that relied on their services as wives and child bearers. The Muses and other oracular females were similarly regarded; without the Muses, the poet could not create, yet they were a potentially dernptive force, as Hesiod tells us, liable to lie when the poet relied on them to tell the truth. As in the case of Zeus' swallowing of Metis ("Wisdom"), foreign female intelligence had to be skillfully

12

l l"i{ ~re·, nonetheless, some unifying elements. To begin with, the ..basic theme ofMed.~a.'s-p'ir~oria remaini ~-onstant: she is 'who lives outside of the known world or comes to a city from outside; each time she enters a city where she dwells, she comes from a distant place, and when she leaves that city, she again goes to a distant place. This sense of Medea's ''foreignness" ls expressed and articulated differently by each author who portrays her, but it is always there. Characteristic of this element is the ~()clcl~ss with whom she is

a

afcielgnir:

51 52

See Lesky 1931:4&-50. Note that at Hyg. Fab. 50, Perses and Aeetes are called brothers.

39

connected: in Euripides she calls on (besides her ancestor Helios and Themis as the protector of rights) the goddess Artemis (line 160) and the goddess Hecate. Hecate, indeed, is called her personal goddess, "the mistress whom I worship above all others and name as my helper" (,~v ofo1i:otvav ~v iyw / cre:f3wµa.Atcrca n:6.nwv xal