Euripides' MEDEA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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57 pages - You are on Page 53

Jason: Accursed woman! by gods, by me and all mankind abhorred as
never woman was, who hadst the heart to stab thy babes, thou their
mother, leaving me undone and childless; this hast thou done and still
dost gaze upon the sun and earth after this deed most impious. Curses
on thee! now perceive what then I missed in the day I brought thee,
fraught with doom, from thy home in a barbarian land to dwell in Hellas,
traitress to thy sire and to the land that nurtured thee. On me the
gods have hurled the curse that dogged thy steps, for thou didst slay
thy brother at his hearth ere thou cam'st aboard our fair ship, Argo.
Such was the outset of thy life of crime; then didst thou wed with
me, and having borne me sons to glut thy passion's lust, thou now
hast slain them. Not one amongst the wives of Hellas e'er had dared
this deed; yet before them all I chose thee for my wife, wedding a
foe to be my doom, no woman, but a lioness fiercer than Tyrrhene Scylla
in nature. But with reproaches heaped thousandfold I cannot wound
thee, so brazen is thy nature. Perish, vile sorceress, murderess of
thy babes! Whilst I must mourn my luckless fate, for I shall ne'er
enjoy my new-found bride, nor shall I have the children, whom I bred
and reared, alive to say the last farewell to me; nay, I have lost
them.

Medea: To this thy speech I could have made a long reply, but Father
Zeus knows well all I have done for thee, and the treatment thou hast
given me. Yet thou wert not ordained to scorn my love and lead a life
of joy in mockery of me, nor was thy royal bride nor Creon, who gave
thee a second wife, to thrust me from this land and rue it not. Wherefore,
if thou wilt, call me e'en a lioness, and Scylla, whose home is in
the Tyrrhene land; for I in turn have wrung thy heart, as well I might.

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