But no more talk—you must leave without delay.
I am set on this; you can’t keep your place
among us when it’s clear you wish me ill.
(Medea makes a supplicatory gesture toward Creon’s knees and hand.)*27
MEDEA: By your daughter, newly wed, I beg you, don’t do this.
CREON: You waste your words. You won’t persuade me, ever.
MEDEA: You’ll drive me out? No respect for a suppliant?
CREON: I don’t love you more than my own home.
MEDEA: My country—how dear my memory of you!
CREON: I love mine, too, but my children are dearer.
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MEDEA: pheu, pheu, how great the injuries of passion!
CREON: That depends, I think, on circumstances.
MEDEA: Zeus, remember who has caused these ills.
CREON: Get out! You’re a waste of time. Free me from trouble.
MEDEA: Trouble’s what I have. I don’t need more.
CREON: Soon now my guards will seize and throw you out.
(Medea grasps Creon’s knees and hand in full supplication.)
MEDEA: Spare me that at least, Creon, I beg you.
CREON: Woman, you seem determined to harass me.
MEDEA: I’ll leave, Creon. I wasn’t pleading to stay.
CREON: Why, then, do you grip my hand? Let me go!
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MEDEA: Let me stay just one more day.
Let me finish planning for our exile,
find refuge for my children; it’s up to me
to work this out; their father doesn’t care.
Pity them, since you, too, have children.
It’s only fitting you should wish them well.
I don’t worry about myself when we’re in exile;
I weep for them, for their misfortune.
CREON: I don’t have the spirit of a tyrant:
I’ve often lost by showing others respect.
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Even now I can see I’m making a mistake.
Still, I’ll grant you this, woman. But hear me well:
if the coming dawn shines its light
on you and your children while still in this land,
you will die. I’ve said it and I mean it.
So stay now for one day, if stay you must.
In that time you won’t do the harm I fear.
(Creon exits toward the royal palace.)
CHORUS: (chanting)*28 pheu, pheu, your pain, your misery!
wretched woman,
where will you turn? what stranger’s house,
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what land to shelter from disaster?
Medea, a god has tossed you
into a sea of calamity with no way out.
MEDEA: There’s no good in this, who would deny it?
But don’t think this is how it’s going to end.
There’s a challenge yet for the newlyweds,
and no small upset for the one who made the match.
Do you think I would have groveled as I did
before that man, except to help myself
and further my designs? I wouldn’t have said a word
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or deigned to touch his hand. But he’s a fool.
He lost his chance to ruin my strategy
by casting me out of this land. Instead,
he gave me one more day—one day
in which to make corpses of three enemies:
the father, his daughter, and my husband.
So many roads might lead me to their deaths.
I don’t know which to try first, friends.
Should I put a torch to the newlyweds’ house,
or quietly go in, where they’ve made their bed,
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and thrust a sharp knife through their livers?*29
But there’s one problem: if they catch me
entering the house and carrying out my plan,
I’ll die and give my enemies cause to mock me.
Best to follow a straight path, where I have
the greatest skill: use poisons to destroy them.
Now, say they’re dead—what city will receive me?
Is there someone somewhere to shelter me,
give me asylum, a safe place to live?
No, there’s not. So I must bide my time yet.
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If a stronghold somewhere shows itself to me,
I’ll work their deaths in silence and in stealth.
If there’s no escape, and I’m forced into the open,
I’ll take up my sword and kill them.
Even if it means my death, I’ll dare it all.
May the goddess whom I revere most
be my witness—the one I’ve chosen as my aide
in the deepest reaches of my house—Hecate:*30
not one of them will hurt me and rejoice.
I’ll ruin their marriage, make bitter his royal
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alliance, and my exile from this land.
Come now, Medea. Spare none of your skill
as you devise and execute your plan.
Go forward into danger; test your courage.
Hold their wrongs before your eyes. You mustn’t
suffer the mockery of that Sisyphean marriage.*31
You have a noble father, descended from the Sun.
You have the skill. And, after all, we’re women:
most helpless when it comes to noble deeds,
most skillful at constructing every evil.
strophe
410
CHORUS: Uphill flow streams from sacred springs,
the balance in all things is reversed;
men’s designs are deceitful; their oaths—
sealed by the gods—dissolve.
Common talk will change*32
and a woman’s life will shine with glory.
Honor comes to women:
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The harsh sound of ill repute
will bind them no more.
antistrophe
The muses will silence long-ago songs
that sing of my treachery.
Ours is not the gift of the lyre, the skill
to join it with god-inspired song.
Had Phoebus, lord of singing,*33 given us the gift, we would have
sung in answer to men’s voices.*34
The long stretch of time has much to tell
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of my lot and of men’s.
strophe
You sailed from your father’s house
with madness in your heart, crossed between
the two rocks that bound the Pontus;*35 you’re
in a strange land: no husband
in your bed, your marriage lost,
in misery you’re driven from here—
an exile without honor.
antistrophe
Gone the binding power of oaths; no more
440
does shame abide in mighty Greece;
it’s flown into thin air. And you have no father,
no home to give you shelter from your troubles.
Another woman has taken her place
in that house, her royal bed
a stronger union than yours.
(Jason enters from the direction of the royal palace.)
JASON: (to Medea) This is not the first time; often I’ve seen
that a harsh temper’s impossible to deal with.
You had the choice of living here, having a home,
calmly accepting your superiors’ will.
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But no, for the sake of useless talk, you’ll leave.
For me it’s not a problem. Go on and on
calling Jason the very worst of men.
But consider exile a small price to pay
for what you’ve said against the rulers here—
a profit really. I’ve tried to soothe their rage,
the king’s angry spirit: I’d pre
fer for you to stay.
But you can’t let your folly go. You keep on
slandering the king. And so you’ll leave.
Even so, despite all this, I’ve not come here
460
to disown my loved ones. I’ll look out for you:
you and the children won’t leave without money;
you’ll lack nothing. Exile brings with it
many hardships, and, in truth, I couldn’t
wish you ill, even though you despise me.
MEDEA: Worst of the worst! I can say only this,
the greatest insult I can offer your cowardice.
You have come here, my bitterest enemy, here.*36
This is no sign of boldness or of courage,
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to stand and face the family you’ve wronged.
It’s the worst of all human diseases:
shamelessness. But you’ve done well
to come. I’ll relieve myself by speaking
ill of you, and you will hear, and suffer.
I will begin the story at the beginning:
I saved you, as all those Greeks know
who sailed with you on your boat, the Argo.
You were sent to harness bulls breathing fire,
to sow the fields that sprouted death.*37 I raised
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the torch of safe return for you by killing
the sleepless serpent with his twisted coils
that guarded the Golden Fleece. Then I chose
to betray my father and home, and go
with you to Iolcus, home of Pelias—an act
more zealous than wise. I killed Pelias; he died
in the worst way, at his daughters’ hands;*38
I destroyed his house. And after all I’d done
for you, worst of men, you betrayed me.
We had children, but you took a new wife.
490
Had you been childless, I could forgive
lust for a new woman. Now your oaths
mean nothing. I can’t know if you think
the gods in power then no longer rule,
or now new laws are laid down for men.
For you surely know you haven’t honored
your oath to me. pheu! Right hand and knees
so often clasped by you, evil man—how empty
your supplication! And I’d placed my hopes in you.
Well, now. Let me consult you as a friend—
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not that I expect any good from you;
still my questions will make you look worse.
Where should I turn now? To the house of the father
I betrayed—and my country—when I came with you?
Or to Pelias’ wretched daughters? They would
receive me well, for sure, into the house
where I killed their father! So it is: I’m hated
by my own family, and to help you I’ve
made enemies of those I should not have.
No doubt for this you’ve made me happy
510
in return, as lots of Greek women suppose:
my husband is marvelous, loyal in my misery—
if, that is, I’ll leave this land, an exile,
without friends, alone, with only my children.
A beautiful tale about this brand-new groom:
his children and his savior, wandering in penury.
O Zeus, you gave a sure test for false gold:
why is there none for human baseness?
Why is there no mark stamped on a man’s body
to make us know he isn’t any good?
520
CHORUS: The anger when loved ones battle loved ones
is terrible; there is no easy cure.
JASON: It seems I mustn’t be clumsy in my speech
but, like a skilled helmsman, outrun
with shortened sails the blasts of your empty talk.
Since you inflate your generosity,
I claim that Cypris was savior of my voyage:*39
She, no other god or mortal, saved me.
You have a fine mind, it’s true—but if I told
how Eros aimed unerring shafts and forced
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you to rescue me, I would invite envy.
In fact, I won’t keep that tally too carefully.
It wasn’t too bad, the help you gave me then.*40
But, even so, you got more than you gave
from my salvation, as I will now lay out.
In the first place you live now in Greece, and not
your savage homeland. You know justice and
the rule of law, that doesn’t brook the use
of force. All Greeks know of your skill;
you’re famous. If you were living at the ends
540
of the earth, no one would have heard of you.
I’d wish for the life of a distinguished man
over a house full of gold or the skill
to sing more sweetly than Orpheus.*41
I have spoken, briefly, about my trials
since you set up this contest of words.
As for your reproaches of my royal
marriage: I will show, first, that I was wise,
then that I was prudent, and finally that I acted
as a great friend to you and the children—No!
550
Calm down. When I moved here from Iolcus
I brought with me a mountain of misfortune.
What luckier escape could I find in exile
than to marry the daughter of the king?
I know it gnaws at you but I don’t hate
the bed we share. I wasn’t overcome with lust
for a new bride; I’m not competing for the most
children. Those I have are enough: I’ve no
complaints. No, my main concern was that
we would live well and wouldn’t be in need.
560
I know that everyone runs from a poor friend.
I’d raise children worthy of my heritage,
beget brothers for the boys I had with you
and hold them in equal esteem: two families
in one. I would be happy, and you—what need
have you for children? But I profit when
my living children gain from those to come.
I’ve planned well, no? You would not deny it,
if jealousy didn’t gnaw at you. But you women
are so far gone that you believe you have
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everything, if things go well in bed.
If there’s some failure there, you turn what’s best
and loveliest into what’s most despised.
Really, mortals should reproduce in some
other vessel. The female sex should not exist.
Then no more trouble would afflict mankind.*42
CHORUS: Jason, you have framed your words well,
but, in my opinion—I know you don’t agree—
the betrayal of your wife was not a just act.
MEDEA: I differ from many people in many ways:
580
I think, for instance, the unjust person who makes
clever speeches deserves the harshest penalty.
He’s so sure he can deck out wrongdoing
with pretty words that he’d do any crime.
But he’s not so clever. Nor are you. Don’t pretend
with smart talk that you’re on my side. One word’s
enough to flatten you: You should—if you were decent—
have made me understand your marriage, not kept it secret.
JASON: And you, I’m sure, would’ve cheered this plan on,
if I had told you of it—you, who even now
590
can’t bear to drop the fury in your heart.
MEDEA: That wasn’t your worry. You saw that in old age
a foreign marriage wouldn’t serve you well.
>
JASON: Get this into your head: it wasn’t for the woman
I made the royal marriage I now have.
As I said before, I wanted to protect you,
to father royal children from the same seed
as my two sons, a safeguard for my house.
MEDEA: Not for me a prosperous life that causes
pain, or wealth that gnaws away my heart.
600
JASON: State that differently and you’d seem wiser:
“Let me not think what’s good for me is painful,
nor think that good luck is misfortune.”
MEDEA: Go on! Abuse me—since you are safe and sound!
But I’m alone and go alone into exile.
JASON: That’s your choice. Don’t blame anyone else.
MEDEA: You mean, no doubt, I married and betrayed you?
JASON: You laid blasphemous curses on the king.
MEDEA: And I suppose I’m a curse on your house, too.
JASON: I’m not going to debate you anymore.
610
If you want to accept the help my money
can give you and the children in your exile,
say so. I’m prepared to give without stint.
I’ll send tokens to my friends; they’ll treat you well.*43
You’re a fool, woman, if you’re not willing
to take it. You’ll profit more, if you end your anger.
MEDEA: I wouldn’t make use of any friend of yours
nor would I take anything from you: give me
nothing. The gift of a bad man is no help.
JASON: Well, then, I call on gods to witness that I wanted
620
to help you and the children in every way.
But you’re not pleased by what is for the best.
You’re stubborn and reject friends: you’ll suffer more.
(Jason exits in the direction of the royal palace.)
MEDEA: (shouting after him) Go! Why waste time here when you’re
seized with craving for the girl you’ve won.
(more quietly) Enjoy your bride, for it may be your marriage
will make you weep—the god will prove my words.*44
strophe
CHORUS:
When passions rise too high in a man they bring
630
no goodness, no good name. But if Aphrodite
enters with measured step, no god rivals her grace.
Lady, never release from your golden bow
an arrow anointed with desire,
unerring, at my heart.
antistrophe
May self-control, the gods’ greatest gift, abide by me.
Plague me not, dread Aphrodite, with angry quarrels,
640
endless discord, or yearning for another’s bed;
The Greek Plays Page 60