the way κηδεύω (lit. "to care for") can mean both "to marry" and "to bury"... κῆδος really is the source of the best and most pointed puns in greek tragedy

medea calls herself ᾗ χρῆν... νύμφῃ τε κηδεύουσαν ἥδεσθαι σέθεν "the one who should have delighted in *caring for* your bride" which means "connecting myself to her through your marriage" and also "overseeing her marriage to you" and also "tending to her dead body"

have to study medea with a class of cis men. killing my own children in rage

TREND ALERT!!!

All the ladies get in formation!

Eyeliner is now making a return and is climbing up fast on the ladder of Colchis’ latest fashion trends. Anyone can make this at home - all you need is some olive oil (courtesy of the great Athene herself <3) and some charcoal! Mix the two together and voila! You’ve got yourself some trendy black liner to make those beautiful ox-like eyes pop!! Hera would be jealous girls ;) 

Until next time ~

M xoxo

i love cassandra's line καὶ μὴν ἄγαν γ᾽ Ἕλλην᾽ ἐπίσταμαι φάτιν, "i know greek speech all too well," after all that fuss earlier with clytemnestra and the chorus trying to figure out whether she understands what they're saying. the chorus doesn't understand what she's just said (in greek) but cassandra knows all too well that it means agamemnon's death and notes the gendered inflection of the words that says that clytemnestra will be the one to do it.

and when medea responds to the tutor after he says θάρσει: κάτει τοι καὶ σὺ πρὸς τέκνων ἔτι, "it'll be okay, you'll come back to your children one day," she says ἄλλους κατάξω πρόσθεν ἡ τάλαιν᾽ ἐγώ, "i'll bring back others first." but κατάγω means both to bring back from exile and to bring down to hades. she's balancing the line on the verb so that she can say what she means and the tutor still hears what he wants to hear. she knows this language inside out and is a master at manipulating it and it's not even her language.

non-greek women who know greek all too well. they have had to learn.

currently thinking that perhaps it's her encounter with aegeus and specifically his promise of welcome in athens that triggers medea's idea of killing her children... in tragedy athens is so often the place that takes in and protects wandering and exiled kinslayers (oedipus, orestes, heracles). if medea knows she is already going to flee to athens and be taken in there and protected from pursuit, there's a certain narrative expectation on her to do the thing that usually makes people flee to athens to be taken in and protected from pursuit.

when medea kills her children inside the skene they have lines, like “help” and “we’re done for” but also. it’s not written in the text but. does the audience hear screams? the actual screams of the actual children who play medea’s children on stage?

but also medea SAYS ἦ πολλὰ πολλοῖς εἰμι διάφορος βροτῶν. "true, in many ways i am very unlike mortals." this woman is not human. she does not play by human rules or human logic. she can step out of the tragedy any time she wants to and she does.

clytemnestra insisting she be the one to bury agamemnon (ag. 1541-1554) and medea insisting she, not jason, be the one to bury and mourn her children (med. 1377-1381)... in a very real way, just because they killed them doesn't mean they can't miss them

jeez but to be in the audience at the dionysia in 431 watching medea's monologue about whether she can bring herself to kill her children when she keeps thinking there must be another way and then telling herself no there isn't and she has to do it-- they didn't know! they really didn't know whether she would go through with it! they surely knew the children had to die by the end of the play but they didn't know by whose hand!

yet another update on medea's use of the first person plural! so there's been nearly 150 years of philological debate over whether the text of 1056-1080 actually belongs in the play BUT in 1056-7 she addresses her heart in the second person (μὴ δῆτα, θυμέ, μὴ σύ γ᾽ ἐργάσῃ τάδε: ἔασον αὐτούς, ὦ τάλαν, φεῖσαι τέκνων, "no, heart, you shouldn't do this, let them live, miserable thing, and spare the children") and then in 1058 she says ἐκεῖ μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ζῶντες εὐφρανοῦσί σε, "they'll cheer you up if they're alive and with us there". and in THIS context, the first person plural does seem apt! it's her and her heart. there are two of them. two minds in her, to kill the children or to spare them.

Medea always makes me think of the last lines of Lorde's liability. Like yes mortals you Will watch me disappear into the sun

the first day of greek tragedy seminar my professor really tried to impress that maybe the most important difference between ancient and modern theatre is that while we think of seeing plays indoors in the evenings, ancient greek theatre was performed outside during the day. mentally flooding the theatre with sunlight absolutely changes the way i think about lots of plays, and medea seems to really make full use of the performance setting under the sun. it ends with her standing up on the skene, the real sun high in the sky behind her as she pledges to fly off into it. her grandfather the sun watches the entire drama play out. she physically ascends to be closer to him.

wait. before euripides… had anybody even told the medea story with a focus on that part??? like it seems likely there were lengthy epic-style oral poems that covered similar ground to apollonius’ later argonautica, probably in circulation alongside homer, and we can probably guess that her role in the theseus cycle was well-elaborated-on at least in athenian folktales or lost textual sources of whatever kind, but had anyone really expanded on what happened at corinth and how jason and medea’s marriage ended? i know we’re pretty sure that euripides was the first to introduce the element of medea killing the children, but was he also the first to even tell that part of the story in extended form???

i love pairing random ancient texts based solely on when i happen to be reading them, for instance creon in antigone and jason in medea end up in the same position at the end of the plays, alone on stage lamenting the loss of wife and son(s) due to their own actions and their own oversight in expecting that haemon and medea respectively would react to the breaking up of their marriages with calm and logical recognition that creon and jason had acted in their best interests

you know what this is actually the right way to end medea

cannot decide whether it supports or completely undermines the plot of medea to cast the title role with a star actress whose name brings crowds all on its own :/