I went into this with great expectations, because Euripides’ Medea is probably my favourite tragedy ever, but if anyone could do it better, that would be Seneca. So is it better? I’m still processing it (also it doesn’t have to be a competition), so please excuse the rambling as I try to put my feelings and thoughts into words.

The first striking difference I noticed, this being my first Roman play, was the heightened violence, physical and verbal. This version of Medea pulls no punches, is not going for sympathy, she’s going straight for revenge. In Greek theatre, deaths typically happen off stage, so I was all the more shocked to picture Medea killing her boy right in front of the audience, tossing the small bodies aside. Brutal, I love it. I’m sure Nero would also have appreciated that detail. Anyway, moving on.

As I mentioned, this version of Medea is direct and to the point. Creon has a very small part, Aegeus is gone, which at first I thought it might weaken the plot, but in the end it worked great. We mostly get Medea herself, talking to her nurse, absolutely boiling with rage. She is clearly eaten up by regret and shame, after having sacrificed everything for Jason, her reputation tarnished, and now finally discarded. Throughout the play, I think one of the major themes is agency, in particular her coming to terms with it on one side, and Jason perpetually rejecting his on the other. 

Their confrontation, the first one especially, is the high point of the play. Jason is a lot more unlikeable to me than in Euripides’, he is so quick to throw all the dirt in Medea’s face. He refuses to accept that she did it all for him, and obviously we know that’s just vicious behaviour on his part given the circumstances, it’s just such an excellent breaking point for Medea. She finally realises that if she is going to be painted by a villain by ungrateful Jason, she might as well become one. 

As heartbreaking as the murders are in Euripides, the coldness in which she goes about killing them in Seneca is possibly even more stunning. Not that she lacks passion, on the contrary; yet, it’s the lack of compassion, the thirst to hurt Jason above all, the way she refuses to spare the second one that dominates the scene. What good would that do? Wouldn’t bring anyone back, wouldn’t make her any less of a monster in everyone’s eyes if she did. And this time, she fully takes responsibility for her actions. It’s all her this time, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy after all. 

Ultimately I get what Seneca is trying to say, and I also understand why the chorus would support Jason’s decision, rationally, to avoid turning a second king against him when he already needs protection from one. But I still think, even though Seneca doesn’t spend as much time with Medea in an introspective way, that he does make a compelling case for her madness. She has been used and abused, even in this version. Her mistake is letting herself being ruled by emotions, rather than logic, which leads her on a scorched earth path which ultimately hurts herself, destroying what’s surely most dear to her and losing everything, winged dragon or not. 

It goes without saying that nobody is learning about virtue from Medea. But I will never cease to be amazed by how ancient authors loved to play with her story, and were never banal in their rendition. Medea is never flat, never a caricature. In Seneca, Medea becomes a godlike force, capable of punishing mortals who cross her, unbound by piety and all-powerful. Maybe she’s not as feminist as in Euripides, our resident soft boy tragedian, but she is truly something to behold, and the profound ambiguity in which she is portrayed, after all, makes this play endlessly entertaining. And the dialogue between Medea and Jason is probably one of the highest points of literature, ever.