The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMedea of EuripidesThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Medea of EuripidesAuthor: EuripidesTranslator: Gilbert MurrayRelease date: March 2, 2011 [eBook #35451]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Watson and the Online DistributedProofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEDEA OF EURIPIDES ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Medea of EuripidesAuthor: EuripidesTranslator: Gilbert MurrayRelease date: March 2, 2011 [eBook #35451]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Watson and the Online DistributedProofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
Title: Medea of Euripides
Author: EuripidesTranslator: Gilbert Murray
Author: Euripides
Translator: Gilbert Murray
Release date: March 2, 2011 [eBook #35451]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Barbara Watson and the Online DistributedProofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEDEA OF EURIPIDES ***
TheMedea, in spite of its background of wonder and enchantment, is not a romantic play but a tragedy of character and situation. It deals, so to speak, not with the romance itself, but with the end of the romance, a thing which is so terribly often the reverse of romantic. For all but the very highest of romances are apt to have just one flaw somewhere, and in the story of Jason and Medea the flaw was of a fatal kind.
The wildness and beauty of the Argo legend run through all Greek literature, from the mass of Corinthian lays older than our present Iliad, which later writers vaguely associate with the name of Eumêlus, to the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar and the beautiful Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. Our poet knows the wildness and the beauty; but it is not these qualities that he specially seeks. He takes them almost for granted, and pierces through them to the sheer tragedy that lies below.
Jason, son of Aeson, King of Iôlcos, in Thessaly, began his life in exile. His uncle Pelias had seized his father's kingdom, and Jason was borne away to the mountains by night and given, wrapped in a purple robe, to Chiron, the Centaur. When he reached manhood he came down to Iôlcos to demand, as Pindar tells us, his ancestral honour, and stood in the market-place, a world-famous figure, one-sandalled, with hispard-skin, his two spears and his long hair, gentle and wild and fearless, as the Wise Beast had reared him. Pelias, cowed but loath to yield, promised to give up the kingdom if Jason would make his way to the unknown land of Colchis and perform a double quest. First, if I read Pindar aright, he must fetch back the soul of his kinsman Phrixus, who had died there far from home; and, secondly, find the fleece of the Golden Ram which Phrixus had sacrificed. Jason undertook the quest: gathered the most daring heroes from all parts of Hellas; built the first ship, Argo, and set to sea. After all manner of desperate adventures he reached the land of Aiêtês, king of the Colchians, and there hope failed him. By policy, by tact, by sheer courage he did all that man could do. But Aiêtês was both hostile and treacherous. The Argonauts were surrounded, and their destruction seemed only a question of days when, suddenly, unasked, and by the mercy of Heaven, Aiêtês' daughter, Mêdêa, an enchantress as well as a princess, fell in love with Jason. She helped him through all his trials; slew for him her own sleepless serpent, who guarded the fleece; deceived her father, and secured both the fleece and the soul of Phrixus. At the last moment it appeared that her brother, Absyrtus, was about to lay an ambush for Jason. She invited Absyrtus to her room, stabbed him dead, and fled with Jason over the seas. She had given up all, and expected in return a perfect love.
And what of Jason? He could not possibly avoid taking Medea with him. He probably rather loved her. She formed at the least a brilliant addition to the glory of his enterprise. Not many heroes couldproduce a barbarian princess ready to leave all and follow them in blind trust. For of course, as every one knew without the telling in fifth-century Athens, no legal marriage was possible between a Greek and a barbarian from Colchis.
All through the voyage home, a world-wide baffled voyage by the Ister and the Eridanus and the African Syrtes, Medea was still in her element, and proved a constant help and counsellor to the Argonauts. When they reached Jason's home, where Pelias was still king, things began to be different. An ordered and law-abiding Greek state was scarcely the place for the untamed Colchian. We only know the catastrophe. She saw with smothered rage how Pelias hated Jason and was bent on keeping the kingdom from him, and she determined to do her lover another act of splendid service. Making the most of her fame as an enchantress, she persuaded Pelias that he could, by a certain process, regain his youth. He eagerly caught at the hope. His daughters tried the process upon him, and Pelias died in agony. Surely Jason would be grateful now!
The real result was what it was sure to be in a civilised country. Medea and her lover had to fly for their lives, and Jason was debarred for ever from succeeding to the throne of Iôlcos. Probably there was another result also in Jason's mind: the conclusion that at all costs he must somehow separate himself from this wild beast of a woman who was ruining his life. He directed their flight to Corinth, governed at the time by a ruler of some sort, whether "tyrant" or king, who was growing old and had an only daughter. Creon would naturally want a son-in-law to support and succeed him. And where in all Greece could he find one stronger or more famous than the chief of the Argonauts? If only Medea were not there! No doubt Jason owed her a great debt for her various services. Still, after all, he was not married to her. And a man must not be weak in such matters as these. Jason accepted the princess's hand, and when Medea became violent, found it difficult to be really angry with Creon for instantly condemning her to exile. At this point the tragedy begins.
TheMedeais one of the earliest of Euripides' works now preserved to us. And those of us who have in our time glowed at all with the religion of realism, will probably feel in it many of the qualities of youth. Not, of course, the more normal, sensuous, romantic youth, the youth ofRomeo and Juliet; but another kind—crude, austere, passionate—the youth of the poet who is also a sceptic and a devotee of truth, who so hates the conventionally and falsely beautiful that he is apt to be unduly ascetic towards beauty itself. When a writer really deficient in poetry walks in this path, the result is purely disagreeable. It produces its best results when the writer, like Euripides or Tolstoy, is so possessed by an inward flame of poetry that it breaks out at the great moments and consumes the cramping theory that would hold it in. One can feel in theMedeathat the natural and inevitable romance of the story is kept rigidly down. One word about Medea's ancient serpent, two or three references to the Clashing Rocks, one startling flash of light upon the real love of Jason's life, love for the ship Argo, these are almost all the concessions made to us by the mercilessdelineator of disaster into whose hands we are fallen. Jason is a middle-aged man, with much glory, indeed, and some illusions; but a man entirely set upon building up a great career, to whom love and all its works, though at times he has found them convenient, are for the most part only irrational and disturbing elements in a world which he can otherwise mould to his will. And yet, most cruel touch of all, one feels this man to be the real Jason. It is not that he has fallen from his heroic past. It is that he was really like this always. And so with Medea. It is not only that her beauty has begun to fade; not only that she is set in surroundings which vaguely belittle and weaken her, making her no more a bountiful princess, but only an ambiguous and much criticised foreigner. Her very devotion of love for Jason, now turned to hatred, shows itself to have been always of that somewhat rank and ugly sort to which such a change is natural.
For concentrated dramatic quality and sheer intensity of passion few plays ever written can vie with theMedea. Yet it obtained only a third prize at its first production; and, in spite of its immense fame, there are not many scholars who would put it among their favourite tragedies. The comparative failure of the first production was perhaps due chiefly to the extreme originality of the play. The Athenians in 432B.C.had not yet learnt to understand or tolerate such work as this, though it is likely enough that they fortified their unfavourable opinion by the sort of criticisms which we still find attributed to Aristotle and Dicæarchus.
At the present time it is certainly not the newness of the subject: I do not think it is Aegeus, nor yetthe dragon chariot, much less Medea's involuntary burst of tears in the second scene with Jason, that really produces the feeling of dissatisfaction with which many people must rise from this great play. It is rather the general scheme on which the drama is built. It is a scheme which occurs again and again in Euripides, a study of oppression and revenge. Such a subject in the hands of a more ordinary writer would probably take the form of a triumph of oppressed virtue. But Euripides gives us nothing so sympathetic, nothing so cheap and unreal. If oppression usually made people virtuous, the problems of the world would be very different from what they are. Euripides seems at times to hate the revenge of the oppressed almost as much as the original cruelty of the oppressor; or, to put the same fact in a different light, he seems deliberately to dwell upon the twofold evil of cruelty, that it not only causes pain to the victim, but actually by means of the pain makes him a worse man, so that when his turn of triumph comes, it is no longer a triumph of justice or a thing to make men rejoice. This is a grim lesson; taught often enough by history, though seldom by the fables of the poets.
Seventeen years later than theMedeaEuripides expressed this sentiment in a more positive way in theTrojan Women, where a depth of wrong borne without revenge becomes, or seems for the moment to become, a thing beautiful and glorious. But more plays are constructed like theMedea. TheHecubabegins with a noble and injured Queen, and ends with her hideous vengeance on her enemy and his innocent sons. In theOrestesall our hearts go out to the suffering and deserted prince, till we find at last that we have committed ourselves to the blood-thirst of a madman. In theElectra, the workers of the vengeance themselves repent.
The dramatic effect of this kind of tragedy is curious. No one can call it undramatic or tame. Yet it is painfully unsatisfying. At the close of theMedeaI actually find myself longing for adeus ex machinâ, for some being like Artemis in theHippolytusor the good Dioscuri of theElectra, to speak a word of explanation or forgiveness, or at least leave some sound of music in our ears to drown that dreadful and insistent clamour of hate. The truth is that in this play Medea herself is thedea ex machinâ. The woman whom Jason and Creon intended simply to crush has been transformed by her injuries from an individual human being into a sort of living Curse. She is inspired with superhuman force. Her wrongs and her hate fill all the sky. And the judgment pronounced on Jason comes not from any disinterested or peace-making God, but from his own victim transfigured into a devil.
From any such judgment there is an instant appeal to sane human sympathy. Jason has suffered more than enough. But that also is the way of the world. And the last word upon these tragic things is most often something not to be expressed by the sentences of even the wisest articulate judge, but only by the unspokenlacrimæ rerum.
G. M.
Medea,daughter of Aiêtês, King of Colchis.
Jason,chief of the Argonauts; nephew of Pelias, King of Iôlcos in Thessaly.
Creon,ruler of Corinth.
Aegeus,King of Athens.
Nurseof Medea.
Two Childrenof Jason and Medea.
Attendanton the children.
A Messenger.
Chorusof Corinthian Women, with theirLeader.Soldiers and Attendants.
The scene is laid in Corinth. The play was first acted when Pythodôrus was Archon, Olympiad 87, year1 (B.C.431).Euphorion was first, Sophocles second, Euripides third, with Medea, Philoctêtes, Dictys, and the Harvesters, a Satyr-play.
The Scene represents the front ofMedea'sHouse in Corinth. A road to the right leads towards the royal castle, one on the left to the harbour. TheNurseis discovered alone.
Nurse.
Would God no Argo e'er had winged the seasTo Colchis through the blue Symplêgades:No shaft of riven pine in Pêlion's glenShaped that first oar-blade in the hands of menValiant, who won, to save King Pelias' vow,The fleece All-golden! Never then, I trow,Mine own princess, her spirit wounded soreWith love of Jason, to the encastled shoreHad sailed of old Iôlcos: never wroughtThe daughters of King Pelias, knowing not,To spill their father's life: nor fled in fear,Hunted for that fierce sin, to Corinth hereWith Jason and her babes. This folk at needStood friend to her, and she in word and deedServed alway Jason. Surely this doth bind,Through all ill days, the hurts of humankind,When man and woman in one music move.But now, the world is angry, and true loveSick as with poison. Jason doth forsakeMy mistress and his own two sons, to makeHis couch in a king's chamber. He must wed:Wed with this Creon's child, who now is headAnd chief of Corinth. Wherefore sore betrayedMedea calleth up the oath they made,They two, and wakes the claspèd hands again,The troth surpassing speech, and cries amainOn God in heaven to mark the end, and howJason hath paid his debt.All fasting nowAnd cold, her body yielded up to pain,Her days a waste of weeping, she hath lain,Since first she knew that he was false. Her eyesAre lifted not; and all her visage liesIn the dust. If friends will speak, she hears no moreThan some dead rock or wave that beats the shore:Only the white throat in a sudden shameMay writhe, and all alone she moans the nameOf father, and land, and home, forsook that dayFor this man's sake, who casteth her away.Not to be quite shut out from home . . . alas,She knoweth now how rare a thing that was!Methinks she hath a dread, not joy, to seeHer children near. 'Tis this that maketh meMost tremble, lest she do I know not what.Her heart is no light thing, and useth notTo brook much wrong. I know that woman, aye,And dread her! Will she creep alone to dieBleeding in that old room, where still is laidLord Jason's bed? She hath for that a bladeMade keen. Or slay the bridegroom and the king,And win herself God knows what direr thing?'Tis a fell spirit. Few, I ween, shall stirHer hate unscathed, or lightly humble her.Ha! 'Tis the children from their games again,Rested and gay; and all their mother's painForgotten! Young lives ever turn from gloom!
[TheChildrenand theirAttendantcome in.
Attendant.
Thou ancient treasure of my lady's room,What mak'st thou here before the gates alone,And alway turning on thy lips some moanOf old mischances? Will our mistress beContent, this long time to be left by thee?
Nurse.
Grey guard of Jason's children, a good thrallHath his own grief, if any hurt befallHis masters. Aye, it holds one's heart! . . .MeseemsI have strayed out so deep in evil dreams,I longed to rest me here alone, and cryMedea's wrongs to this still Earth and Sky.
Attendant.
How? Are the tears yet running in her eyes?
Nurse.
'Twere good to be like thee! . . . Her sorrow liesScarce wakened yet, not half its perils wrought.
Attendant.
Mad spirit! . . . if a man may speak his thoughtOf masters mad.—And nothing in her earsHath sounded yet of her last cause for tears!
[He moves towards the house, but theNursechecks him.
Nurse.
What cause, old man? . . . Nay, grudge me not one word.
Attendant.
'Tis nothing. Best forget what thou hast heard.
Nurse.
Nay, housemate, by thy beard! Hold it not hidFrom me. . . . I will keep silence if thou bid.
Attendant.
I heard an old man talking, where he sateAt draughts in the sun, beside the fountain gate,And never thought of me, there standing stillBeside him. And he said, 'Twas Creon's will,Being lord of all this land, that she be sent,And with her her two sons, to banishment.Maybe 'tis all false. For myself, I knowNo further, and I would it were not so.
Nurse.
Jason will never bear it--his own sonsBanished,—however hot his anger runsAgainst their mother!
Attendant.
Old love burneth lowWhen new love wakes, men say. He is not nowHusband nor father here, nor any kin.
Nurse.
But this is ruin! New waves breaking inTo wreck us, ere we are righted from the old!
Attendant.
Well, hold thy peace. Our mistress will be toldAll in good time. Speak thou no word hereof.
Nurse.
My babes! What think ye of your father's love?God curse him not, he is my master still:But, oh, to them that loved him, 'tis an illFriend. . . .
Attendant.
And what man on earth is different? How?Hast thou lived all these years, and learned but nowThat every man more loveth his own headThan other men's? He dreameth of the bedOf this new bride, and thinks not of his sons.
Nurse.
Go: run into the house, my little ones:All will end happily! . . . Keep them apart:Let not their mother meet them while her heartIs darkened. Yester night I saw a flameStand in her eye, as though she hated them,And would I know not what. For sure her wrathWill never turn nor slumber, till she hath . . .Go: and if some must suffer, may it beNot we who love her, but some enemy!
Voice(within).
Oh shame and pain: O woe is me!Would I could die in my misery!
[TheChildrenand theAttendantgo in.
Nurse.
Ah, children, hark! She moves againHer frozen heart, her sleeping wrath.In, quick! And never cross her path,Nor rouse that dark eye in its pain;That fell sea-spirit, and the direSpring of a will untaught, unbowed.Quick, now!—Methinks this weeping cloudHath in its heart some thunder-fire,Slow gathering, that must flash ere long.I know not how, for ill or well,It turns, this uncontrollableTempestuous spirit, blind with wrong.
Voice(within).
Have I not suffered? Doth it callNo tears? . . . Ha, ye beside the wallUnfathered children, God hate youAs I am hated, and him, too,That gat you, and this house and all!
Nurse.
For pity! What have they to do,Babes, with their father's sin? Why callThy curse on these? . . . Ah, children, allThese days my bosom bleeds for you.Rude are the wills of princes: yea,Prevailing alway, seldom crossed,On fitful winds their moods are tossed:'Tis best men tread the equal way.Aye, not with glory but with peaceMay the long summers find me crowned:For gentleness—her very soundIs magic, and her usages.All wholesome: but the fiercely greatHath little music on his road,And falleth, when the hand of GodShall move, most deep and desolate.
[During the last words theLeaderof the Chorus has entered. Other women follow her.
Leader.
I heard a voice and a moan,A voice of the eastern seas:Hath she found not yet her ease?Speak, O agèd one.For I stood afar at the gate,And there came from within a cry,And wailing desolate.Ah, no more joy have I,For the griefs this house doth see,And the love it hath wrought in me.
Nurse.
There is no house! 'Tis gone. The lordSeeketh a prouder bed: and sheWastes in her chamber, not one wordWill hear of care or charity.
Voice(within).
O Zeus, O Earth, O Light,Will the fire not stab my brain?What profiteth living? Oh,Shall I not lift the slowYoke, and let Life go,As a beast out in the night,To lie, and be rid of pain?
Chorus.
Some WomenA.
"O Zeus, O Earth, O Light:"The cry of a bride forlornHeard ye, and wailing bornOf lost delight?
B.
Why weariest thou this day,Wild heart, for the bed abhorrèd,The cold bed in the clay?Death cometh though no man pray,Ungarlanded, un-adorèd.Call him not thou.
C.
If another's arms be nowWhere thine have been,On his head be the sin:Rend not thy brow!
D.
All that thou sufferest,God seeth: Oh, not so soreWaste nor weep for the breastThat was thine of yore.
Voice(within).
Virgin of Righteousness,Virgin of hallowed Troth,Ye marked me when with an oathI bound him; mark no lessThat oath's end. Give me to seeHim and his bride, who soughtMy grief when I wronged her not,Broken in misery,And all her house. . . . O God,My mother's home, and the dimShore that I left for him,And the voice of my brother's blood. . . .
Nurse.
Oh, wild words! Did ye hear her cryTo them that guard man's faith forsworn,Themis and Zeus? . . . This wrath new-bornShall make mad workings ere it die.
Chorus.
Other Women.
A.
Would she but come to seekOur faces, that love her well,And take to her heart the spellOf words that speak?
B.
Alas for the heavy hateAnd anger that burneth ever!Would it but now abate,Ah God, I love her yet.And surely my love's endeavourShall fail not here.
C.
Go: from that chamber drearForth to the dayLead her, and say, Oh, sayThat we love her dear.
D.
Go, lest her hand be hardOn the innocent: Ah, let be!For her grief moves hitherward,Like an angry sea.
Nurse.
That will I: though what words of mineOr love shall move her? Let them lieWith the old lost labours! . . . Yet her eye—Know ye the eyes of the wild kine,The lion flash that guards their brood?So looks she now if any thrallSpeak comfort, or draw near at allMy mistress in her evil mood.
[TheNursegoes into the house.
Chorus.
A Woman.
Alas, the bold blithe bards of oldThat all for joy their music made,For feasts and dancing manifold,That Life might listen and be glad.But all the darkness and the wrong,Quick deaths and dim heart-aching things,Would no man ease them with a songOr music of a thousand strings?Then song had served us in our need.What profit, o'er the banquet's swellThat lingering cry that none may heed?The feast hath filled them: all is well!
Others.
I heard a song, but it comes no more.Where the tears ran over:A keen cry but tired, tired:A woman's cry for her heart's desired,For a traitor's kiss and a lost lover.But a prayer, methinks, yet riseth soreTo God, to Faith, God's ancient daughter—The Faith that over sundering seasDrew her to Hellas, and the breezeOf midnight shivered, and the doorClosed of the salt unsounded water.
[During the last wordsMedeahas come out from the house.
Medea.
Women of Corinth, I am come to showMy face, lest ye despise me. For I knowSome heads stand high and fail not, even at nightAlone—far less like this, in all men's sight:And we, who study not our wayfaringsBut feel and cry—Oh we are drifting things,And evil! For what truth is in men's eyes,Which search no heart, but in a flash despiseA strange face, shuddering back from one that ne'erHath wronged them? . . . Sure, far-comers anywhere,I know, must bow them and be gentle. Nay,A Greek himself men praise not, who alwayShould seek his own will recking not. . . . But I—This thing undreamed of, sudden from on high,Hath sapped my soul: I dazzle where I stand,The cup of all life shattered in my hand,Longing to die—O friends! He, even he,Whom to know well was all the world to me,The man I loved, hath proved most evil.—Oh,Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow,A herb most bruised is woman. We must payOur store of gold, hoarded for that one day,To buy us some man's love; and lo, they bringA master of our flesh! There comes the stingOf the whole shame. And then the jeopardy,For good or ill, what shall that master be;Reject she cannot: and if he but staysHis suit, 'tis shame on all that woman's days.So thrown amid new laws, new places, why,'Tis magic she must have, or prophecy—Home never taught her that—how best to guideToward peace this thing that sleepeth at her side.And she who, labouring long, shall find some wayWhereby her lord may bear with her, nor frayHis yoke too fiercely, blessed is the breathThat woman draws! Else, let her pray for death.Her lord, if he be wearied of the faceWithindoors, gets him forth; some merrier placeWill ease his heart: but she waits on, her wholeVision enchainèd on a single soul.And then, forsooth, 'tis they that face the callOf war, while we sit sheltered, hid from allPeril!—False mocking! Sooner would I standThree times to face their battles, shield in hand,Than bear one child.But peace! There cannot beEver the same tale told of thee and me.Thou hast this city, and thy father's home,And joy of friends, and hope in days to come:But I, being citiless, am cast asideBy him that wedded me, a savage brideWon in far seas and left—no mother near,No brother, not one kinsman anywhereFor harbour in this storm. Therefore of theeI ask one thing. If chance yet ope to meSome path, if even now my hand can winStrength to requite this Jason for his sin,Betray me not! Oh, in all things but this,I know how full of fears a woman is,And faint at need, and shrinking from the lightOf battle: but once spoil her of her rightIn man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well,No bloodier spirit between heaven and hell.
Leader.
I will betray thee not. It is but just,Thou smite him.—And that weeping in the dustAnd stormy tears, how should I blame them? . . .Stay:'Tis Creon, lord of Corinth, makes his wayHither, and bears, methinks, some word of weight.
Enter from the rightCreon,the King, with armed Attendants.
Creon.
Thou woman sullen-eyed and hot with hateAgainst thy lord, Medea, I here commandThat thou and thy two children from this landGo forth to banishment. Make no delay:Seeing ourselves, the King, are come this dayTo see our charge fulfilled; nor shall againLook homeward ere we have led thy children twainAnd thee beyond our realm's last boundary.
Medea.
Lost! Lost!Mine haters at the helm with sail flung freePursuing; and for us no beach nor shoreIn the endless waters! . . . Yet, though stricken sore,I still will ask thee, for what crime, what thingUnlawful, wilt thou cast me out, O King?
Creon.
What crime? I fear thee, woman—little needTo cloak my reasons—lest thou work some deedOf darkness on my child. And in that fearReasons enough have part. Thou comest hereA wise-woman confessed, and full of loreIn unknown ways of evil. Thou art soreIn heart, being parted from thy lover's arms.And more, thou hast made menace . . . so the alarmsBut now have reached mine ear . . . on bride and groom,And him who gave the bride, to work thy doomOf vengeance. Which, ere yet it be too late,I sweep aside. I choose to earn thine hateOf set will now, not palter with the moodOf mercy, and hereafter weep in blood.
Medea.
'Tis not the first nor second time, O King,That fame hath hurt me, and come nigh to bringMy ruin. . . . How can any man, whose eyesAre wholesome, seek to rear his children wiseBeyond men's wont? Much helplessness in artsOf common life, and in their townsmen's heartsEnvy deep-set . . . so much their learning brings!Come unto fools with knowledge of new things,They deem it vanity, not knowledge. Aye,And men that erst for wisdom were held high,Feel thee a thorn to fret them, privilyHeld higher than they. So hath it been with me.A wise-woman I am; and for that sinTo divers ill names men would pen me in;A seed of strife; an eastern dreamer; oneOf brand not theirs; one hard to play upon . . .Ah, I am not so wondrous wise!—And now,To thee, I am terrible! What fearest thou?What dire deed? Do I tread so proud a path—Fear me not thou!—that I should brave the wrathOf princes? Thou: what has thou ever doneTo wrong me? Granted thine own child to oneWhom thy soul chose.—Ah,himout of my heartI hate; but thou, meseems, hast done thy partNot ill. And for thine houses' happinessI hold no grudge. Go: marry, and God blessYour issues. Only suffer me to restSomewhere within this land. Though sore oppressed,I will be still, knowing mine own defeat.
Creon.
Thy words be gentle: but I fear me yetLest even now there creep some wickednessDeep hid within thee. And for that the lessI trust thee now than ere these words began.A woman quick of wrath, aye, or a man,Is easier watching than the cold and still.Up, straight, and find thy road! Mock not my willWith words. This doom is passed beyond recall;Nor all thy crafts shall help thee, being withalMy manifest foe, to linger at my side.
Medea(suddenly throwing herself down and clinging toCreon).
Oh, by thy knees! By that new-wedded bride . . .
Creon.
'Tis waste of words. Thou shalt not weaken me.
Medea.
Wilt hunt me? Spurn me when I kneel to thee?
Creon.
'Tis mine own house that kneels to me, not thou.
Medea.