Over the glowing hill

The Temple of Aphaia/Aphea on Aegina, formerly known as the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius

okay THIS is a structure i recognize. unlike my other seneca reads so far (troades, phoenissea) here's a chorus doing their chorus things, and clearly divided acts, and, delightfully, apparently some mechane action at the end

this play also put into sharp relief that although i've seen several stagings of euripides's medea -- arguably the way it's intended to be experienced -- i've never read it and so i haven't really digested it the way i do all these other plays. i get wrapped up in casting and staging choices and the glitz, so i don't really feel confident in comparing the medeas of seneca and euripides at all. note to self to read greek plays i've only ever seen performed.

but immediate things that stood out to me: the focus on the occult (a hefty section is devoted to actually watching medea perform her magic rites, which is very cool), how sympathetic jason is depicted (he cried and pleaded with creon on medea's behalf; he offers his own life in exchange for his child's'; no "by GOD i wish men could get pregnant" tirades against women.)

ALSO THAT ENDING IS WILD. THE KIDS ARE KILLED ONSTAGE. MEDEA LUGS A CORPSE AROUND WHILE PULLING THE LIVE SON UP ON THE ROOF TO KILL HIM THERE. CRAZY!!

anyway shades of the orestes with a disaster unfolding until there's no place to go but the roof. #disasterontheroof #roofsacrifice. love when tragedies go the die hard route to wrap stuff up

this medea feels so enmeshed in her past, she is constantly referencing her prior experiences (especially her brother's murder!) and the colchian culture she left behind. the way the text directly acknowledges how she's walked barefoot and freed her hair, wearing it like a colchian again! obviously there's so much happening in this story in regards to barbarity-vs-civilization but the hair really got to me

i really love when she reminds creon of how the argonauts would never have survived without her help, and she lists them, saying how all of greece owes her for each of them yet she is magnanimous and only wants one of them for herself... jason.

like i already mentioned medea is INCANDESCENTLY FURIOUS right from the very first page, but she still can't help her affection for jason, at times almost breaking down in tenderness for him. "No, speak more kindly, raging pain. If he can, may he live as he was, as my Jason; if not, may he still live, remember me and be gentle with the gift I gave him [i.e. his life]". it reminds me so much of her characterization in apollonius' argonautica, this helplessness that comes from loving jason. that's why severing all ties to him is such a dramatic thing, even beyond the brutality of her methods: who is medea when she's not devotedly obsessed with jason?

"Today—today will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak of." AH WHAT A LINE

IDMON MENTIONED and he apparently prophesized about little ajax?? implying that he was killed as punishment both for his own sins and his father's! BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY he foresaw how "Thetis' husband will wander in exile". HAHA GET WRECKED PELEUS. i hope he told you to that to your face ya LOSER.

medea's nurse talking us through the rituals as medea performs them yessss. i especially like how medea is using magics she's never dared use before. i'm just really into medea who knows all these arcane mysteries and in her despair she uses the ones that terrify even her

again, SUPER moral jason is a little weird to get accustomed to, but that doesn't mean that medea's arguments -- about the hopelessness of her position, about everything she sacrificed for him, how each of her crimes where this has HE needed done, how there's nowhere an already exiled person like her can flee to -- are no less heartrending

her logic in killing her children -- that jason is stealing them from her, so he deserves to have them stolen from him as well -- is so. god how many family tragedies haven't been caused by that exact line of reasoning. chills.

ALSO again, the child murder is SO much more direct oh my gosh, and then her menacing jason with their last living son:

JASON: By every divinity, by our shared exile and our shared bed, not betrayed by any infidelity of mine, spare our son now. If there is any guilt, it is mine. I surrender myself to death, sacrifice my guilty life. MEDEA: I shall drive the sword just here where you forbid me to, where it hurts you.