The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Chronicles #46 ｜ Euripdes' Medea with Stelios Panagiotou

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about

00:00:18.120 Medea by Euripides, where once again, I'm delighted to be joined by Stelios.

00:00:24.920 Hello, everyone. Thanks, brother Luca, for inviting me about this.

00:00:28.520 quite right we are gonna have a good time yes today's a good day well we always do we always

00:00:33.480 do today's a good day also and i'm really glad you mentioned we did euripides euripides had has

00:00:40.520 a sort of weird reputation especially by those who read nietzsche because nietzsche in the birth

00:00:46.360 of tragedy in the very beginning sort of trashes him yes he says he destroyed tragedy but uh you

00:00:53.560 You reignited my passion for Euripides.

00:00:57.120 Oh, good, good, good.

00:00:57.900 Honestly, Nietzsche is completely wrong.

00:01:00.420 I disagree with Nietzsche on this as well.

00:01:03.240 So one thing we need to talk about is, of course,

00:01:05.240 the fact that this comes not entirely off the bat.

00:01:08.000 In fact, if you're following these week to week,

00:01:10.660 it might seem a little strange to just have that random blip

00:01:14.660 in the middle of talking about King Charles III.

00:01:17.000 But I just wanted to do something to just kind of shift it along a bit.

00:01:20.840 But we meant to revisit this, didn't we?

00:01:23.660 And obviously we'll want to do it

00:01:24.960 whilst the Argonautica is still very fresh in our minds

00:01:27.700 and whilst we've still recently explored that journey.

00:01:31.280 So question, are you saying that the episode you did on King Charles

00:01:35.200 isn't an episode about the events after Jason goes back to Iolkis?

00:01:41.680 Shockingly not.

00:01:43.120 Shockingly not.

00:01:44.200 Good to know.

00:01:45.480 But there is another point to all of this as well,

00:01:48.000 which is that, yes, Medea, the play by Euripides, chronologically takes place after the tale of Jason and the Argonauts.

00:01:56.440 Of course, it is in that tale where we first meet Medea, where she is the daughter of Aedes,

00:02:03.740 who rules as this divine king of Colchis over on the far end of the Black Sea,

00:02:10.640 far at the edges of the known world, and he himself is the son of the sun, the son of the

00:02:17.920 sun god Helios. And so he has a great amount of divine power and authority. And Medea is not just

00:02:25.680 any normal mortal daughter. She comes from a very, very high lineage. She's semi-divine herself.

00:02:33.240 And the other thing as well is that within her own family, there is a great amount of sorcery.

00:02:39.180 She is the niece of Circe, of the Odyssey fame, and Circe, of course, featured in the tale of Jason and the Argonauts herself.

00:02:49.620 And so, though all of this has happened before we're introduced to Medea in this play,

00:02:55.920 I don't want people to think that we're now talking about this as a mere epilogue to that story,

00:03:02.780 Because actually, Medea by Euripides is one of the most famous, the most celebrated, one of the most critically renowned Greek tragedies ever written.

00:03:13.780 And so it really just stands on its own merits.

00:03:16.980 In fact, you know, it's very much Euripides was part of the defining character of Medea.

00:03:24.160 His just vivid creation of her dialogue, her very inner psyche of how volatile she is.

00:03:31.120 You know, it's these things that Apollonius, 200 years later, would go to reflect on in creating his own idea of who Medea is as well.

00:03:40.580 So actually, Euripides is one of the most important writers when it comes to defining her character and the legend and tragedy that we all know her for.

00:03:51.380 Absolutely. And it's one of, as you said, one of the most popular tragedies.

00:03:57.640 And it's interesting because you mentioned her background.

00:04:00.680 it's in a way semi-divine

00:04:03.580 she is

00:04:05.080 from Colchis

00:04:07.260 Aetis was her father

00:04:09.640 and she also

00:04:11.220 I think the ointment

00:04:13.340 the potion she gave to

00:04:15.320 Jason had also the blood of Prometheus

00:04:17.740 so she's

00:04:19.620 definitely a figure that is

00:04:21.480 very mysterious

00:04:22.200 and we are going to look at her 0.96

00:04:25.140 I think she's arguably the worst 1.00

00:04:27.360 woman of antiquity 0.98

00:04:29.040 yeah i think of ancient greek lore yeah um i think you thought clytemnestra was bad folks 0.76

00:04:35.220 you haven't seen nothing yet no no no no she she arguably makes the top five clytemnestra

00:04:41.580 i would place hera as top two oh yeah number two for what she did to heracles we'll talk about it

00:04:48.940 yeah yeah sure but i think media is is just the worst yeah no i i i think it's a hard point to

00:04:56.840 argue to be honest with you however one of the things that Euripides does so well in the in the

00:05:02.520 play is explain to you why she is like this right I want to point out one thing though because people

00:05:10.580 must remember two things last time we did the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes Apollonius

00:05:18.520 comes much after Euripides, but the myth was old. There were many people who wrote about the myth.

00:05:27.320 It was Apollonius, Pseudo-Apollodorus, then Ovid afterwards. Has Hesiod mentioned the myth?

00:05:33.960 I don't think he did. But it would have been known. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. All of these myths,

00:05:41.640 They were essentially local myths.

00:05:44.940 Right.

00:05:45.600 And Hesiod tried to sort of systematize some of the very basic events

00:05:52.940 to structure our understanding of myth.

00:05:55.380 And there's a great writer about myth in the 20th century.

00:06:03.200 He was a disciple of Carl Jung, or a follower, if you'd like to put it better.

00:06:08.780 He was a Hungarian called Karl Kereni.

00:06:11.640 has wonderful books about Greek mythology,

00:06:14.660 and he separates it well in the age of the gods

00:06:17.920 and the age of the heroes.

00:06:20.180 And now we're in the age of the heroes.

00:06:23.480 Jason is in that age.

00:06:26.500 It's late.

00:06:27.060 But all of these myths, they arose spontaneously,

00:06:31.180 and Hesiod comes very late into the picture.

00:06:34.200 It's just that we read Hesiod because that's when, you know,

00:06:36.740 we get it.

00:06:38.640 But all of these myths, they were just,

00:06:41.360 they spontaneously arose absolutely and so let's um let's just begin before we start talking about

00:06:48.380 the play then by just recapping how we got here in the first place because there is a little bit

00:06:54.700 of connective tissue that we don't have as much of now this is actually mentioned in ovid's

00:07:01.280 metamorphosis where it's explained that when um so jason thanks to medea right medea jason does

00:07:10.560 not get the Golden Fleece without Medea. And this is obviously all a part of the divine plan

00:07:16.500 of Hera, who goes to Aphrodite, who goes to Eros, and has Medea hit, penetrated with the arrow of

00:07:25.600 love. So she gets hit by Eros's arrow, and she falls madly in love with Jason, this Greek,

00:07:31.260 civilized, charming foreigner who's come from Hellas on this daring mission, and is now set

00:07:37.420 to defy her father. Because of this overbearing love, this love to the point of destruction 0.88

00:07:43.680 that is kind of like forced onto Medea by divine providence, this puts her in a position where as

00:07:52.960 a result of this, she betrays her father. She helps Jason to win these unwinnable tasks of

00:07:59.580 yoking the fire-breathing giant bronze bulls and also, you know, putting to sleep the dragon 0.73

00:08:05.840 and also, as well, the dragon's teeth as well.

00:08:08.520 He fights these sown men, these warriors born from the ground.

00:08:11.980 Basically, all things that he would not have been able to achieve

00:08:15.080 had it not been for Medea.

00:08:17.660 The entirety of Book 4 of the Argonautica

00:08:20.440 is based on them trying to escape her father and her father's wrath. 0.98

00:08:27.000 Medea is put into a position where if she stays in Colchis, 0.99

00:08:31.780 Aedes will probably murder her. 0.96

00:08:33.680 right he will probably murder her he is deeply betrayed and he does not take it lightly 0.89

00:08:38.920 as a result of this medea leaves behind home place family um you know her own sort of like

00:08:50.200 um her own daily routine in her life where she just goes to pray for the goddess hecat

00:08:56.340 her people her people family yes her polis there there is definitely a sense of her being

00:09:02.140 stranded in a sense of sojourn, her being away from home that she's going to curry till the very

00:09:09.020 end. And one thing to mention, two things actually, was that the gods, Aphrodite, was behind the media

00:09:17.380 falling in love with Jason. And there was a very crucial moment where media did something that

00:09:25.040 It doesn't seem to have been part of the divine plan.

00:09:29.640 She could have done it without it.

00:09:34.000 Right. 0.99

00:09:34.460 She agreed to kill her brother Absurtus. 0.98

00:09:37.700 Yes. 0.99

00:09:38.540 Or for Jason to kill her brother Absurtus. 0.63

00:09:41.240 When Atees ordered Absurtus and the Colchians to start chasing Media and the Argonauts.

00:09:49.780 There was a point where several people from the Argonauts were saying,

00:09:54.700 well, maybe we need to strike, to make a deal with Absurdas or sort it out.

00:10:00.520 He seems like a reasonable man. 0.76

00:10:01.940 Sort it out somehow. He is not Aedes. 1.00

00:10:04.700 No. 1.00

00:10:06.160 But Medea straightforwardly said, no, we have to kill him. 0.99

00:10:09.600 Yeah. And as a result of this, and as a result of many things that go on,

00:10:14.060 whenever it looks like Medea is faced,

00:10:17.320 or where the men are even just considering the prospect of not taking her back with them,

00:10:24.700 She goes on these vitriolic, vengeful monologues about how they've all betrayed her and she's going to make them suffer for betraying them.

00:10:36.760 Now, this is all of very obvious foreshadowing.

00:10:39.340 When they finally get back to Iokos, where Jason has been trying to come back into his birthright and so he can inherit it from his usurper uncle, Peleus,

00:10:51.500 Medea has Peleus' own daughters murder him.

00:10:58.520 And as a result of all of this as well, and her otherness, how foreign she is, her dark sorcery, a whole slew of reasons, the people of Iolkos just reject her.

00:11:10.180 They don't want her. They don't want Jason.

00:11:12.840 And Jason and Medea are forced to flee to Corinth.

00:11:17.480 So we're still in Hellas.

00:11:18.460 We go to Corinth, and this is where we pick up the beginning of the play.

00:11:23.940 And so, as usual, I suppose it makes sense to begin at the beginning,

00:11:29.320 and I'll just read an extract.

00:11:31.580 So we have here, our play begins with the nurse.

00:11:35.220 Now, this is very interesting, because she goes on to show

00:11:38.100 a great amount of empathy for Medea's position.

00:11:41.880 So it reads,

00:11:42.840 If only they had never gone,

00:11:44.660 if the Argo's hull never had winged out through the grey-blue jaws of rock and on towards Colchis,

00:11:52.000 if that pine on Pelion's slopes had never felt the axe and fallen to put alls into those heroes' hands

00:11:58.980 who went at Peleus' bidding to fetch the golden fleece,

00:12:03.000 then neither would Medea, my mistress, ever have set sail from the walled town of Iolkos,

00:12:08.860 mad with love for Jason. Nor would she, when Peleus' daughters, at her instance, killed their

00:12:15.080 father, have come with Jason and her children to live here in Corinth, where, coming as an exile,

00:12:21.860 she has earned the citizen's welcome. While to Jason she is all obedience, and in marriage that's

00:12:28.260 the saving thing, when a wife obediently accepts her husband's will. But now her world has turned 0.62

00:12:34.460 to enmity and wounds her where her affections deepest. Jason has betrayed his own sons and my

00:12:42.220 mistress for a royal bed, for alliance with the king of Corinth. He has married Glauca, Treon's

00:12:48.680 daughter. Poor Medea, scorned and ashamed, she raves, invoking every vow and solemn pledge that 0.95

00:12:55.440 Jason made her and calls the gods as witnesses. What thanks she has received for her fidelity.

00:13:02.040 she will not eat she lies collapsed in agony dissolving the long hours in tears since first

00:13:09.280 she heard of jason's wickedness she has not raised her eyes or moved her cheek from the hard ground

00:13:15.580 and when her friends reason with her she might be a rock or wave of the sea for all she hears

00:13:22.520 unless maybe she turns away her lovely head speaks to herself alone and wails aloud for her dear

00:13:30.060 father, her own land and home, which she betrayed and left, to come here with this man who now

00:13:36.600 spurns and insults her. Poor my dear. Now she learns through pain what blessings they enjoy

00:13:43.280 who are not uprooted from their native land. She hates her sons. To see them is no pleasure to her. 0.94

00:13:50.760 I am afraid some dreadful purpose is falling in her mind. She is a frightening woman. No one who

00:13:57.780 makes an enemy of her will carry off an easy victory as you said before people are scared of

00:14:03.640 her she's a sorceress and she does have a track record of success let's say her cv is not empty

00:14:11.920 when it comes to killing people and also beings that are incredibly powerful like talos the bronze

00:14:18.920 giant in in crete right she is definitely a force to be reckoned with now when it comes to the nurse

00:14:25.960 One of the things I get is that it's so obvious to the nurse that, in a way, media has been wronged, but also that she is a danger to her children.

00:14:40.920 And when we talk about a nurse here, there's a high probability that Euripides wanted to say that the nurse was growing the children up once.

00:14:53.440 So it was not their biological mother, but could have been their mummy in a way.

00:14:59.720 Yes, I see what you mean.

00:15:01.640 But there's a huge amount just in that introduction alone.

00:15:06.480 We understand completely now that every choice that Medea made to go with Jason

00:15:12.340 has been severed away and mismanaged to the point where she regrets all of it.

00:15:18.040 If she could live her life over again, she would not have gone with Jason.

00:15:22.480 Yes, and here is, we have to mention two things, the royal bed that she mentions, and then something else about the way she looks at her children.

00:15:35.520 So at some point, Jason and the Argonauts and Media went to the island of the Phaeacians, and Alkinos was the king of the Phaeacians.

00:15:49.980 He also features in the Odyssey, which concerns events that happened one generation afterwards, basically.

00:15:57.960 Alkinos is the king of the Phaeacians there.

00:16:01.360 And he tells them that the only way that he can grant them refuge is if they get married.

00:16:10.520 So they get married in a rush.

00:16:13.840 So it's like a Las Vegas marriage.

00:16:16.340 It isn't the royal marriage that media had in mind.

00:16:19.980 no and that she could expect given what she was told and what j yeah what jason was expected to

00:16:27.620 inherit on the other side of it yes and then when they go to to greece jason is contemplating

00:16:35.040 marrying another woman and he is being offered another woman yes a princess young beautiful

00:16:42.000 all the things that a man would wish for yes so it's like she she got her wish but she also didn't

00:16:49.040 and then all of that came to nothing.

00:16:52.420 And the second point,

00:16:53.580 which is the most important part of her character,

00:16:56.380 because you could say that on the first case,

00:16:58.720 she has been in a way wronged.

00:17:03.200 And Jason will sort of tend,

00:17:05.900 does tend, as we will see, I'm sure,

00:17:09.140 does tend to completely minimize the extent

00:17:12.760 to which media has helped him

00:17:16.940 and what she has sacrificed. 0.97

00:17:19.040 mm-hmm but the most important thing for her because she is a villain yes yes she is a villain

00:17:26.020 in a way this is jason's tragedy yes so she is the villain in a way who has been wrong but

00:17:33.640 the most weird thing about her is that she looks at her children and instead of looking at

00:17:41.520 her children as

00:17:43.520 their children first

00:17:45.700 she looks at them

00:17:48.000 as like

00:17:49.140 as Jason's children's first

00:17:51.700 she looks at them

00:17:53.980 like Jason's children

00:17:55.440 more than she looks at them as

00:17:57.800 her children

00:17:58.400 it's interesting as well isn't it that actually

00:18:01.940 you would think

00:18:03.340 that she would see her own

00:18:05.860 children as perhaps 0.95

00:18:07.860 the one good thing

00:18:09.500 that came of all of this yes yes and yet it's not yes at all at all and you do hear women who regret

00:18:18.900 spending a significant amount of their life with with a man saying well at least the only good

00:18:27.060 thing was my children yeah you hear this yeah you do when it comes to women who who regret spending

00:18:35.160 a lot of time with a particular man, just if they think they've wronged or if they have been wrong.

00:18:42.080 But media doesn't have this. No, not at all. Well, she's not, there is nothing really maternal about

00:18:49.740 her character whatsoever. And so we see from here that, so in their flight to Corinth,

00:19:00.200 Jason has seen, being the arch pragmatist that he is, a golden opportunity that happens to have

00:19:07.600 found Creon, who is the king of Corinth. He only has one child, which is his daughter,

00:19:12.820 who is unmarried, and so Creon has no male heir to inherit his kingdom. Along comes Jason,

00:19:22.040 and Jason is obviously very, very famous, even though he didn't come into his birthright and 0.53

00:19:27.920 set himself up as king of the Olcos. He is a very renowned figure for his great deeds aboard the Argo

00:19:35.060 and all of the tales and the men that he fought with and the stories that came from it, the legend,

00:19:41.020 right? And so Creon sees an attempt to marry his family into that legend, right? That's really

00:19:47.960 what's happening here. And obviously also to give some peace of mind for the fact that he is an

00:19:52.920 older man, and it will bring some much needed stability to the succession of Corinth after he's

00:20:00.180 gone. Now, Jason looks at this and just says, yeah, sounds good to me, right? Jason first

00:20:10.060 agreed to marry Medea. And I think when I say agreed, I should actually be more technical and

00:20:18.760 say he swore an oath before the gods that he would marry Medea and be faithful to her and love her.

00:20:29.120 And so for Jason to just cast Medea aside for the sake of his own status, his own political

00:20:36.300 expediency, because yes, I needed Medea to get the golden fleece to come back to Eolkos and

00:20:42.980 and rightfully inherit my kingdom but I don't have my kingdom and so the plan needs to change

00:20:49.140 right Jason is just adapting to the latest occurrence whereas Medea is saying no that

00:20:55.080 thing that happened all the way back then that still binds us together and you have no right

00:21:00.580 to try and escape from it yes and one thing that we have to mention is that at the time and for a

00:21:08.160 long time afterwards there was this idea that without your polis you're nobody so she became

00:21:15.620 a nobody in that respect for jason but also jason became a nobody after her action so in this case

00:21:24.580 it's not like he just had the fling and he he met the other woman yes you know they got on and he

00:21:32.580 completely neglected his family,

00:21:34.960 it was that they were essentially exiled.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 09, 2026

PREVIEW： Chronicles #46 ｜ Euripdes' Medea with Stelios Panagiotou

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