force, without attempting to rationalize her infanticide. It also, as I will ultimately argue, suggests the need for skepticism about the idea that moral character can offer an accurate basis by which to justify punishment. . . . Medea begins with its title character distraught. She has just discovered that her husband, Jason, has abandoned her and their two sons by taking a new wife, Princess Glauke, daughter of Creon, the king of Corinth. In light of his daughter’s new marriage, Creon decides to exile Medea and her sons from Corinth in fear of the vengeance she might take against his house. Medea is devastated and angered by the news. She manages to convince Creon to give her one extra day in Corinth to prepare herself and her children for exile. He reluctantly agrees. On that extra day, Medea crosses paths with Aegeus, the King of Athens. Aegeus agrees to give Medea refuge in Athens in exchange for the promise that Medea will end his childlessness, either by bearing his children or through her skills in magic (It is not clear which), with her refuge secured, Medea enacts her revenge plans. She murders Glauke and Creon by gifting them poisoned robes that burn and melt the skin off their bodies. She stabs her two sons to death with a sword. After a heated exchange with Jason, in which he begs to see and bury his sons, and in which he condemns her, Medea flies away to Athens in a golden chariot, taking the corpses of her sons with her. She escapes not only Jason, but also punishment. Medea’s escape constitutes an unusual ending to a Greek tragedy in which the murder of kin (or any great injustice for that matter) takes place. Rachel Kitzinger notes this irregularity: “Where, then, are the traditional deities who might have appeared in this final scene to comfort Jason and to foretell that Medea, in the end, would pay the price? Their absence from this play is keenly felt given the suffering Medea has inflicted and the outrage she has provoked with her escape” (485). In Aeschylus’s Oresteia, for example, Furies, or Erinyes, monstrous deities of vengeance and punishment, mentally torture the perpetrator, Orestes, by wreaking havoc on his home, until order is restored. In Medea, Jason calls on these avenging deities when he learns that his first wife has killed their sons, but his prayers go unanswered (lines 13631364). Jason also calls on Zeus, and in this case too, his prayers are met with silence (lines 1382-1384). Even if a crime goes unpunished in the course of a tragedy, they often included prophecies of the suffering and ignominy an offender would endure in the future. In Euripides’s Hecuba, for example, it is foretold that the title character would be punished for her murder of King Polymestor’s sons by being transformed into “bitch rock,” a landmark for sailors. But Medea promises no such retribution. She is sent a golden carriage by her grandfather Helios and flies off to her Athenian refuge. 29
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