This document discusses Greek heroines and the myth of Medea in three parts. It begins by outlining five traits shared by Greek heroines, including that they performed extraordinary deeds and obtained immortality through song and cult. It then examines Medea's story and role as a heroine, noting her divine ancestry and acts of killing her brother and sons. The document concludes by exploring how Medea has been received and interpreted in different contexts, such as in Roman art and literature and more modern African American works that draw parallels between Medea and the experiences of slaves.

1. Chapter 11

2. HISTORY
Medea: The Making of a Heroine
Classical Mythology in Context

3. 11.1 Medea kills her son. Red-figure
amphora. Ixion Painter. 340–320 BCE.
Louvre Museum, Paris, France. Erich
Lessing / Art Resource, NY, ART23396.
Five Traits of Greek Heroines
• Heroines share the same five point definition of
heroes:
• Heroines were women who had died
• They performed extraordinary deeds that
may or may not be moral
• They die prematurely, violently, or
mysteriously
• They were worshiped at their gravesites
• They obtained a form of immortality
through song and cult
• There were still differences between the
heroes and heroines

4. Map 11.1 Medea and Other Heroines
Greek Heroines

5. 11.2 Opheltes is strangled by a snake as his nurse,
Hypsipyle, watches. Corinthian sarcophagus. Second
century CE. Museum of Ancient Corinth, Corinth
Greece. Courtesy of the Ephorate of Antiquities of
Corinth.
• The story of Charilla illustrates one type
of Greek heroine
• Her actions are not exemplary, but she
still had the opportunity to bring
suffering to Delphi, and therefore had
to be appeased with ritual
• Children could also be worshiped as
heroes, often because they died
prematurely or violently
Greek Heroines
• Psamathe and her son Linus both die prematurely and are worshiped as
heroine and baby hero by the Greeks in order to prevent Poene, an
avenging spirit, from punishing them

6. 11.4 Asclepius and his daughter Hygeia
(Health) with a snake. Marble funerary relief
from the Therme of Salonika. Fifth century
BCE. Archaeological Museum, Istanbul,
Turkey. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY,
ART21941.
Heroines in Cult
• Heroines rarely had their own cult
shrines, instead they shared them with
heroes, frequently sons, husbands, or
fathers
• Independent heroines include the
prophetess Sibylla, the poet Sappho, and
the Spartan athlete Cyniska

7. 11.3 Medea rides a chariot given to her by her grandfather, the god Helios.
Two winged females variously identified as Poenae (plural of Poene) or Erinyes
watch Medea from above. Lucanian red-figure krater, 400 BCE. Cleveland Museum
of Art, OH, USA / Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund / Bridgeman Images, CVL1761945.
Heroines in Myth
• There are both vertical and horizontal
traditions of the adventures of heroines
• Women make only a few appearances in
epic poetry
• In the Classical period, they were often
protagonists in drama, which was more
concerned with demands of city and
household than epics, which focused on
adventures
• Euripides devoted a significant number of
his plays to women

8. 11.5 The birth of Helen from an egg
set on an altar. Red-figure krater.
Caivano Painter. 340–330 BCE. National
Archaeological Museum of Naples,
Naples, Italy. Scala / Art Resource, NY,
ART310015.
Helen
• Helen was the daughter of Leda and Zeus
• Her life was defined by abductions, first by
Theseus as a child, then later by Paris
• Helen’s beauty is depicted as nearly divine
• After death, she and Menelaus dwell on the
Islands of the Blessed in the Underworld
• She was worshiped with Menelaus in Sparta,
along with her brothers, the Dioscuri
• She was worshiped independently in Sparta
and Rhodes

9. 11.6 The ghost of Clytemnestra attempts
to rouse the Erinyes. Detail. Apulian red-
figure bell-krater. Eumenides Painter. Fourth
century BCE. Louvre Museum, Paris, France.
Hervé Lewandowski. © RMN-Grand Palais /
Art Resource, NY ART150089.
Clytemnestra
• Clytemnestra was Helen’s sister, but her father
was not Zeus but Leda’s mortal husband
• She married Agamemnon, and killed him when
he returned from the Trojan War
• She is then killed by her children, Orestes and
Electra
• Clytemnestra then sends the Erinyes, the
Furies, to pursue Orestes in revenge
• Aeschylus’s trilogy Oresteia tells the story of
her family

10. 11.7 Priam and Hecuba (together, far left)
raise their hands as they watch Achilles
(wearing a plumed helmet) drag their son
Hector’s body from his chariot. Athenian
black-figure hydria (water jug). c. 520–510 BCE.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts,
USA / William Francis Warden Fund / Bridgeman
Images, BST487715.
Hecuba
• Hecuba was queen of Troy, the wife
of Priam
• She sings a lament for her son,
Hector, in the last book of the Iliad
• In Euripides’s plays she seeks
vengeance for her murdered children
by forcing the murderer to suffer the
same loss that she has suffered
• Her actions rank with those of
vengeful spirits

11. 11.8 Medea applies magical drugs to
a ram in a cauldron. Red-figure
hydria. The Copenhagen Painter. c.
470 BCE. © The Trustees of the British
Museum / Art Resource, NY
ART356672.
Medea
• Medea has divine ancestry: her grandfather was Helios,
the sun god, and her mother may have been the goddess
Hecate
• She helps Jason earn the Golden Fleece and helps him
escape her father’s wrath by killing her brother
• She is associated with witchcraft and magical abilities
• Jason exiles Medea so that he can marry the daughter of
King Creon
• Medea kills both Creon and his daughter, and her sons by
Jason
• Corinthians later worshiped Medea’s sons as baby heroes
• She also was said to have lived on the Island of the Blessed after death, possibly as t

12. THEORY
Medea: The Making of a Heroine
Classical Mythology in Context

13. 11.9 Antigone (second from right) is escorted
by two guards to Creon (seated). Detail. Red-
figure nestoris. Dolon Painter. 380–370 BCE. ©
The Trustees of the British Museum / Art
Resource, NY, ART497926.
The Plot of the Heroine’s Story
• Raglan was interested in traditional tales
about heroes, and developed a list of
typical heroic actions
• He concluded that tales about heroes
were modeled on ritual activities
• Greek women were in the charge of a
male guardian for their entire lives
• Greek heroines were unusual in that they
used transitional periods in their lives to
exert their own will
• Antigone’s burial of her brother, against
the will of King Creon, is a perfect
example

14. COMPARISON
Medea: The Making of a Heroine
Classical Mythology in Context

15. 11.10 Medea sarcophagus. Marble sarcophagus with bas-reliefs. Imperial Roman. Museo Nazionale
Romano (Terme di Diocleziano), Rome, Italy. © Vanni Archive / Art Resource, NY, ART372595.
Medea in Rome
Medea was commonly depicted on sarcophagi in Rome in the 2nd and 3rd cent
Some scholars have argued that she had become an agent of death, or that her

16. • Seneca’s Medea depicts her as suffering because she failed to embody Stoic
ideals
• Her failure is in placing too high a value on Jason and her love for him,
therefore she cannot endure his betrayal
• In the Heroides, Ovid portrays Medea as a jilted lover begging Jason to
return to her
• She is shown as subdued and powerless, unlike the Metamorphoses, which
depicts her as a powerful sorceress
Medea in Rome

17. Map 11.2 Medea in Rome
Medea in Rome

18. RECEPTION
Medea: The Making of a Heroine
Classical Mythology in Context

19. 11.11 Margaret Garner or Modern Medea
(1867). Thomas Satterwhite Noble (1835–
1904). From the Collection of the National
Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
African American Medea
• In 1856, escaped slave Peggy Garner was
put on trial for killing her two year old
daughter Mary
• Mary may have been the child of Peggy’s
owner, introducing an element of revenge
to the story
• Her story was compared to that of Medea
• Noble’s painting of the event asks
whether Margaret or the slave catchers
who cornered her are the monsters in this
event
• Medea is unique partially because of her agency in the death of her children a

20. • Modern African American writers have linked Medea’s foreign identity to her
political oppression
• Countee Cullen was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance
• His Medea received mixed reviews at the time as black critics questioned whether
Medea’s experience offered any insight on the African American experience
• The text evokes the experience of a black Medea in white America, and also
explore the obligations of Jason and Medea to their children
• Do they have the right to dispose of them as a possession?
• Owen Dodson, head of the theater department at Howard University, wrote The
Garden of Time, an interpretation that takes Jason and Medea from ancient
Greece to Haiti and Georgia before the Civil War
• Toni Morrison’s Beloved is possibly the most famous treatment of Medea, which
portrays the life of a mother after she is forced to kill her own child
African American Medea