".
She flies to Aegeus at Athens, and the tragedy closes with the chorus:.
Manifold are thy shapings, Providence! .
Many a hopeless matter gods arrange. .
What we expected never came to pass, .
What we did not expect the gods brought to bear; .
So have things gone, this whole experience through!" .
This drama is a masterly presentment of passion in its secret folds and recesses. The suffering and sensitiveness of injured love are strongly drawn, and with the utmost nicety of observation, passing from one stage to another, until they culminate in the awful deed of vengeance. The mighty enchantress who is yet a weak woman is powerfully delineated. The touches of motherly tenderness are in the highest degree pathetic. The strife of emotions which passion engenders is admirably shown; and amid all the stress of their conflict, and amid all this sophistical and illusive commonplaces which work upon the soul, hate and vengeance win the day. Medea is criminal, but not without cause, and not without strength and dignity. Such an inner world of emotion is alien from the genius of the religious and soldier-like Aeschylus; Sophocles creates characters to act on one another, and endows them with qualities accordingly; Euripides opens a new world to art and gives us a nearer view of passionate emotion, both in its purest forms and in the wildest aberrations by which men are controlled, or troubled, or destroyed.
In Euripides' Medea, as we learn from the nurse in the opening scene, Medea and Jason have lived together as husband and wife in Corinth since fleeing, first Colchis, where Medea betrayed her father King Aaetes, and then Iolcos, where Medea was indirectly responsible for the death of King Pelias. .
1. When Jason landed at Colchis, where King Pelias had sent him to capture the golden fleece, Medea fell in love with him and, despite her father, helped him. .
Medea and Jason have had two children during their life together, but at the opening of Euripides' Medea, Jason and his father-in-law-to-be, Creon, say Medea and her children must leave the country so that Jason may marry Creon's daughter Glauce in peace.
