but does not bring them kleos. Medea’s attachment to her honor and reputation engages the model of Homeric
From her perspective, the charis that she expected in return for her help in Colchis has been annihilated (506–19).8
in Medea’s view, Jason’s new marriage amounts to a destruction of their bond. Her revenge, especially the infanticide, precisely enacts that view. As Christopher Gill (1996: 168–69) has emphasized, by killing the children, Medea destroys the tangible proof of her relationship with
Jason; by causing their death, she acts out in the most literal and irreversible manner the vanity of his oaths (496–98) and, ultimately, of their shared past.
(1) At the beginning of the play, Medea finds herself in a critical situation.
The circumstances of her departure from Colchis, combined with Jason’s marriage to the princess, place her in a state of utter isolation, epitomized by her exile decreed by Creon. Several nautical images uttered by Medea herself
(257–58, 278–79), the nurse
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Medea’s untraditional role portrays two separate cultural aspects of the times, but essentially, she is categorized as a barbarian, residing within the Greek ethos of an unsympathetic Hellenic culture. The injustices committed against Medea arose from the consequences of her fate and “free will” in life’s choices. She unconditionally pursued Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece and allowed herself to be manipulated by his pervasive guile. She gave up everything in believing that Jason’s professions of love were sincere and even turned on her own father, willing to live in exile with Jason, as an outsider by Greek cultural standards. His calibrated motives to influence Medea were simple to anticipate, because he would not have fulfilled the quest, without her