Medea: Lines 1201-1300 Summary & Analysis

Human affairs, the Messenger philosophizes, are only shadows. No mortal is happy. One can only be more or less fortunate, not happy. His long, expository monologue concludes and the Chorus says that Jason earned this great calamity. It pities the Princess for her attachment to Jason.

Medea tells the Chorus she is resolved to kill the children and leave Corinth. She says she won't leave them for another to kill, that they have to die, and so, since she gave them birth, she would rather kill them herself. She questions herself for hesitating and tells her hand to take the sword. She tells herself to forget her children for this one day and then mourn. She exits with the children through the door.

The Chorus begins its fifth choral ode. It asks Earth and Sun (Helios) to look down at what Medea is doing. She is Helios' granddaughter, so he should take special interest. It begs Helios to stop her. Have all Medea's travails been for nothing? It calls it terrible for a mortal to shed a family member's blood. The gods punish it. The children are heard screaming offstage. One of the children asks (from offstage) what he can do to escape. The other says he doesn't know.

The Chorus asks if it should enter the house. The children cry for help. The Chorus calls Medea miserable and made of stone for killing her children. Only one woman that they know of, Ino, killed her own sons when she was driven mad by the gods. She killed herself and her children by jumping with them into the sea.

Jason enters and questions the Chorus if Medea is still in the house. He says she will either have to hide beneath the earth or fly into heaven if she is to escape punishment. He cares about the children, however, and is worried his new relatives might do something to them to avenge Creon and the Princess's murder. The Chorus pities Jason's ignorance. He thinks that the Chorus means she intends to kill him. They let him know that his children are dead.

Jason asks where the children were killed. The Chorus tells him to open the door. He commands his servants to undo the bolts. He wants to see the bodies and take vengeance on Medea. Medea asks why they are rattling and battering the doors. She says if Jason wants her, then he should say what he wishes, but, she adds, he will never lay hands on her again.

Medea appears in a flying chariot drawn by chimeras sent by Helios, her grandfather. The notes for the staging don't survive in the manuscript, but the chariot is either on the roof of her house or suspended over the stage by a crane. She has with her the bodies of her dead children.