Medea is a fascinating character.  She was fascinating to the ancient Greeks, and she remains fascinating to many of us today.  According to the ancient story, the Greek hero Jason was dared by his uncle to go to Colchis, a distant, foreign city on the Black Sea in Asia, to steal the Golden Fleece.  Jason took up the dare and gathered together the greatest heroes of Greece to help him, including Hercules, Orpheus, Meleager, Castor, and Pollux.  He had a magnificent ship built (called the Argo), and when all was in readiness, he and his heroic shipmates (called the Argonauts) set off for Colchis.

After many, many adventures (including one in which Hercules got left behind and lost out on his chance to be one of the Greeks to win the Golden Fleece), the Argonauts reached Colchis and were welcomed there by the king Aeetes (who was the brother of Circe/Kirke of Odyssey fame).  They found Colchis to be a very wild and exotic place, filled with magical monsters and strange, barbaric customs.  They also discovered that the Golden Fleece was protected by a series of traps and security measures, culminating in a dragon that coiled itself around the trunk of the tree on which the Fleece hung.

The young heroes posed as adventurers at the court of Aeetes, and they got to know the daughters of the king, one of whom was named Medea.  Medea and Jason fell in love, and knowing what Jason was really after, Medea agreed to help.  In the end, she betrayed and murdered her own father, killed the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece, and helped Jason and the Argonauts escape Colchis with their prize.  In return, Jason married her, and she bore him two sons.

The play Medea begins in Corinth, where Jason has now repudiated his marriage to Medea in order to wed the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth.

Euripides wrote the play 27 years after the Oresteia, and by that time, much had changed in Athens.  The Persian Wars were long over, and instead, trouble was brewing between the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta, leading (in the very same year that Medea was first performed) to the long and costly Peloponnesian War.

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. As you read the play, focus on Jason and Medea.  What are we supposed to think of this man and this woman?  Who (if anyone) are we supposed to sympathize with in the play?  Whose side are we supposed to be on?  What is Euripides trying to say to us about men and women, about passion and reason, about Greek and foreigner?  What (if anything) does Euripides believe in?  What does he value?  How optimistic is this play?
2. How does Medea compare to the Oresteia?  Does it share the same values and optimism, or does it question those values and optimism?  Are Jason and Medea just Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra all over again?  If so, does Euripides come to the same conclusions and the same resolution as Aeschylus?  If not, what about the conflict or its resolution is different for Euripides?