By Eleanor Clark

Faculty Mentor: Joseph Romero

Abstract

When studying the plays of Euripides, scholars have often focused on the playwright’s social commentary while paying less attention to the relationship between the plays’ plots and the political environment in Greece at the time of their production. This paper seeks to address this gap in scholarship by analyzing Euripides’ Medea while taking into account the political context at the time which it was written and first produced. It proposes that Euripides either selected or invented specific plot points to increase the degree to which Jason paralleled Athens and Medea paralleled the weaker members of the Delian League. This allowed Euripides to instruct his audience on the potential dangers of adopting a foreign policy standpoint that called for conquering as much territory as possible by offering a mythical example of how one man’s greed led to his ultimate destruction.