Part Ten: Politics in Corinth

Where are the citizens? The dramatic action of Medea consists of a series of men who come to the house of Medea with messages of various kinds. Two are slaves; two are kings; and the third is her treacherous husband (who comes on three times).

Citizens of Corinth are mentioned very little in the play. The very oldest of their number are said to be sitting at the Pessoi (68, a place where a games of dice or a board game is played) sharing the latest news about the royal family (the tyrannoi). For the opinion of the ordinary people about what is going on both on the personal and political levels we must look to the chorus, a group of free women of citizen stock.

The chorus from the beginning shows personal sympathy with Medea. She politicizes them with her first speech. making them see a more general context for her plight and their part in it. Their response to her threat of vengeance against her husband, the king and his daughter (374-5) is to sing of a complete reversal in the order of the world with recompense coming to women (410ff.). They announce the approach of Creon, but say not a word to him. Neither he nor any of the men who come on stage after him acknowledges the presence of the chorus until Jason addresses them as "women standing near the house" (1293). They respond to Jason in his first scene, telling him he speaks well, but does wrong in betraying his wife (575-7). Although they do not address Aigeus during his scene, they sing a farewell to him as he departs (759-63). Their immediate response to Creon's harsh command is to feel pity for Medea.

Creon, though he may be just a typical stage tyrant (with the word tyrannos used in a neutral sense), displays many of the characteristics of a tyrant in the bad sense: he comes in with a bodyguard through whom he threatens to do violence to Medea (335). He has not shown respect for the sanctity of the individual households in the polis, but has violated one of them in choosing or accepting a husband for his daughter.

By declaring himself brabeus (274, "the judge who makes the final decision"), Creon shows that there is no appeal from his stern decree. He uses his authority to benefit himself and his household. His daughter is implicated in his misuse of power: of the twenty-two times tyrannos and its derivatives are used in the play, only one (348) is unambiguously about Creon alone and this is where he denies that his temper is tyrannical. The others are about the royal family, the marriage, the house, and the princess. Medea tries to use political arguments with Creon, but is reduced to personal persuasion and (a pretense of) abject submission.

Medea learns from the men in the play, all free, successful, powerful Greek men. And using their rules she teaches them something. Partly it is that the orderliness of men's lives is a fragile, elusive thing that can be easily returned to primal chaos before all things were differentiated into polar oppositions. A woman can be a hero. Can she (or her creator) also be hinting that the humanity of those denied a voice, denied the right to say no, is potentially explosive enough to destroy the false and fantastic structure that excludes them?

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