The Medea by Euripides.
Title: The Medea.
Author: Euripides (translated by Rex Warner).
Genre: Fiction, literature, play, classical lit, crime, tragedy.
Country: Greece.
Language: Ancient Greek.
Publication Date: 431 BC.
Summary: The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a barbarian and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by killing Jason's new wife, as well as her own children with him, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.
My rating: 8/10.
♥ Nurse: It is right, I think, to consider
Both stupid and lacking in foresight
Those poets of old who wrote songs
For revels and dinners and banquets,
Pleasant sounds for men living at ease;
But none of them all has discovered
How to put to an end with their singing
Or musical instruments grief,
Bitter grief, from which death and disaster
Cheat the hopes of a house. Yet how good
If music could cure men of this! But why raise
To no purpose the voice at a banquet? For there is
Already abundance of pleasure for men
With a joy of its own.
♥ Medea: ...For in other ways a woman
Is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold
Steel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love,
No other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood.
♥ Medea: Let me have no happy fortune that brings pain with it,
Or prosperity which is upsetting to the mind!
♥ Chorus: When love is in excess
It brings a man no honor
Nor any worthiness.
But if in moderation Cypris comes,
There is no other power at all so gracious.
O goddess, never on me let loose the unerring
Shaft of your bow in the poison of desire.
Let my heart be wise.
It is the gods’ best gift.
On me let mighty Cypris
Inflict no wordy wars or restless anger
To urge my passion to a different love.
But with discernment may she guide women’s weddings,
Honoring most what is peaceful in the bed.