Euripides and Medea The Golden Fleece

1. Euripides and MedeaThe Golden Fleece Week 15

2. EURIPIDES 480-406 B.C. Alice Y. Chang

3. Euripides 「舞台上的哲學家」的美稱 悲劇內容大多以家庭生活為題材，討論戰爭、民主、貧富、宗教、婦女地位…等問題 討論雅典奴隸民主制衰弱時期的社會思想 寫實 現存十八部作品，是傳世作品最多的古希臘悲劇家 Alice Y. Chang

4. The Works of Euripides Alcestis   Written 438 B.C.E Andromache   Written 428-24 B.C.E The Bacchantes   Written 410 B.C.E Hecuba   Written 424 B.C.E Helen   Written 412 B.C.E    Translated by E. P. Coleridge The Heracleidae   Written ca. 429 B.C.E    Translated by E. P. Coleridge Alice Y. Chang

5. Works of Euripides Iphigenia At Aulis   Written 410 B.C.E Iphigenia in Tauris   Written 414-412 B.C.E    Translated by Robert Potter Medea   Written 431 B.C.E    Translated by E. P. Coleridge Rhesus   Written 450 B.C.E The Suppliants   Written 422 B.C.E    Translated by E. P. Coleridge The Trojan Women   Written 415 B.C.E Alice Y. Chang

6. Medea • an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medeaand first produced in 431 BC. • The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman. Alice Y. Chang

7. The Golden Fleece

8. sources This is the title of a long poem, very popular in classical days, by the third-century poet Apollonius of Rhodes. He tells the whole story of the Quest except the part about Jason and Pelias which I have taken from Pindar. It is the subject of one of his most famous odes, written in the first half of the fifth century. Apollonius ends his poem with the return of the heroes to Greece. I have added the account of what Jason and Medea did there, taking it from the fifth-century tragic poet Euripides, who made it the subject of one of his best plays.

9. Journey by water The first hero in Europe who undertook a great journey was the leader of the Quest of the Golden Fleece. He was supposed to have lived a generation earlier than the most famous Greek traveler, the hero of the Odyssey. It was of course a journey by water. Ships did not sail by night, and any place where sailors put in might harbor a monster or a magician who could work more deadly harm than storm and shipwreck. High courage was necessary to travel, especially outside of Greece.

11. the ship Argo No story proved this fact better than the account of what the heroes suffered who sailed in the ship Argo to find the Golden Fleece. It may be doubted, indeed, if there ever was a voyage on which sailors had to face so many and such varied dangers. However, they were all heroes of renown, some of them the greatest in Greece, and they were quite equal to their adventures.

12. The Argonautic expedition

13. Jason and Argonauts the Golden Fleece is the fleece of the gold-haired winged ram. It figures in the tale of Jason and his band of Argonauts, who set out on a quest for the fleece in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly.

14. Lemnos The isle of Lemnos is situated off the Western coast of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). The island was inhabited by a race of women who had killed their husbands. The women had neglected their worship of Aphrodite, and as a punishment the goddess made the women so foul in stench that their husbands couldn't bear to be near them.

17. King Phineus & the Harpies, Athenian red-figure hydria C5th B.C., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu

18. The Amazons

19. The Amazons • a nation of all-female warriors in Classical and Greek mythology • Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia (modern territory of Ukraine). • Other historiographers place them in Asia Minor or Libya or India.

20. Mounted Amazon in Scythian costume

26. Colchis • ancient region at the eastern end of the Black Sea south of the Caucasus, in the western part of modern Georgia • In Greek mythology Colchis was the home of Medea and the destination of the Argonauts, a land of fabulous wealth and the domain of sorcery.

27. Medea avenges herself on Jason by slaying her own children upon the altar, and destroying Kreon and Glauke by fire in the palace (not shown). Triptolemos arrives on the scene with a flying, serpent-drawn chariot to assist Medea in her escape.

28. Medea

30. Medea the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children: Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of Corinth, offers him his daughter, Creusa or Glauce. The play tells of how Medea gets her revenge on her husband for this betrayal.

31. Meda--an enchantress Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as being a priestess of the goddess Hecate or a witch. The myth of Jason and Medea is very old, originally written around the time Hesiod wrote the Theogony.

32. Medea kills her son, Campanian red-figure amphora, ca. 330 BC, Louvre (K 300)

33. Jason & the Dragon

34. Chimaera –noun, plural -ras.1.(often initial capital letter ) a mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. 2.any similarly grotesque monster having disparate parts, esp. as depicted in decorative art.3.a horrible or unreal creature of the imagination; a vain or idle fancy: He is far different from the chimera your fears have made of him. 4.Genetics. an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues, as an organism that is partly male and partly female, or an artificially produced individual having tissues of several species.

35. Centaur centaurs were notorious for being overly indulgent drinkers and carousers, given to violence when intoxicated, and generally uncultured delinquents, each Centaur was also wild and lusty.

36. A Great Teacher in Greek Mythology Chiron

37. Chiron—a great teacher! In Greek mythology, Chiron or Cheiron or Kheiron ("hand") was held as the superlative centaur among his brethren. Chiron, by contrast, was intelligent, civilized and kind. He was known for his knowledge and skill with medicine.

38. An Excellent teacher A great healer, astrologer, and respected oracle, Chiron was said to be the last centaur and highly revered as a teacher and tutor. Among his pupils were many culture heroes: Asclepius, Theseus, Achilles, Jason, Peleus, Telamon, Heracles, Phoenix…

39. Chiron and Achilles in a fresco from Herculaneum

40. Greek Tragedy, Euripides and Medea Week 15 Alice Y. Chang

41. The fifth century BCE and intellectual revolution Alice Y. Chang Most of these plays date from the last half of the fifth century B.C.; they were written in and for an Athens that, since the days of Aeschylus, had undergone an intellectual revolution. It was in a time of critical reevaluation of accepted standards and traditions that Sophocles produced his masterpiece, Oedipus the King, and the problems of the time are reflected in the play.

42. Mysterious + contemporary Alice Y. Chang • The use of the familiar myth enabled the dramatist to draw on all its wealth of unformulated meaning, but it did not prevent him from striking a contemporary note. • Oedipus, in Sophocles’ play, is at one and the same time the mysterious figure of the past who broke the most fundamental human taboos and a typical fifth-century Athenian. • His character contains all the virtues for which the Athenians were famous and the vices for which they were notorious.

43. Pericles and Oedipus Alice Y. Chang • The Athenian devotion to the city, which received the main emphasis in Pericles’ praise of Athens, is strong in Oedipus; his answer to the priest at the beginning of the play shows that he is a conscientious and patriotic ruler.

44. Jason bringing Pelias the Golden Fleece Alice Y. Chang

45. Medea Alice Y. Chang Euripides’ Medea, produced in 431 B.C., the year that brought the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, appeared earlier than Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, but it has a bitterness that is more in keeping with the spirit of a later age.

46. Alice Y. Chang

47. Alice Y. Chang

48. Prologue of Medea NURSE Oh how I wish that ship the Argo      had never sailed off to the land of Colchis,      past the Symplegades, those dark dancing rocks     which smash boats sailing through the Hellespont.      I wish they'd never chopped the pine trees down      in those mountain forests up on Pelion,      to make oars for the hands of those great men      who set off, on Pelias' orders,      to fetch the golden fleece. Alice Y. Chang

49. Nurse Then my mistress,      Medea, never would've sailed away       to the towers in the land of Iolcus,      her heart passionately in love with Jason.      She'd never have convinced those women,      Pelias' daughters, to kill their father.      She'd not have come to live in Corinth here,         with her husband and her children—well loved      in exile by those whose land she'd moved to.      She gave all sorts of help to Jason. Alice Y. Chang

50. Jason and Medea fled to Corinth. When Jason and Medea returned to Iolcus, Pelias still refused to give up his throne. Medea conspired to have Pelias' own daughters kill him. She told them she could turn an old ram into a young ram by cutting up the old ram and boiling it (alternatively, she did this with Aeson, Jason's father). During the demonstration, a live, young ram jumped out of the pot. Excited, the girls cut their father into pieces and threw him into a pot. Having killed Pelias, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth. Alice Y. Chang