A priestess, a woman with magical powers, a mother, a lover, a woman abandoned by her husband, and a murderer. There are many faces of Medea. Being a priestess of Hecate, Medea has knowledge of magic and witchcraft. Medea boiling the ram before Pelias She will use this knowledge against her enemies. |395 By that mistress whom I revere before all others and have chosen to share my task, Hekate… Read more
Hereupon Jason snatched the golden fleece from the oak, at the maiden bidding; and she, standing firm, smeared with the charm the monster’s head, till Jason himself bade her turn back towards their ship, and she left the grove of Ares, dusky with shade. And as a maiden catches on her finely wrought robe the gleam of the moon at the full, as it rises above her high-roofed chamber; and… Read more
We are pleased to welcome Professor Richard P Martin, Anthony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in Classics at Stanford University, for an Open House discussion about heroine cult and tragedy, with special reference to the Medea of Euripides. You can find the play at the Kosmos Society Text Library, here. You can download the handout of the slides with readings as a PDF: MEDEA – Richard P Martin You can watch… Read more
Following on from our discussion of biā / biē it seems natural to continue with another, contrasting Core Vocab word: mētis [μῆτις] glossed by Gregory Nagy in The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours[1] and the associated Sourcebook[2] as ‘artifice, stratagem, cunning intelligence’. It’s a word I immediately associate with Odysseus, and in particular his cunning ploy with the Cyclops. There are two words for ‘not’ in ancient Greek, depending… Read more
The Medea “Heroization” Workshop held at CHS, April 7–8, 2016 In 2014 members of Hour 25 shared a revised translation of Sophocles’ Antigone that matches and complements the Sourcebook of Primary Texts in Translation as used in HeroesX. Since then, community members have been using this “heroized” translation of Antigone to reach out to high school students in the US and abroad through through the medium of performance. This year Hour 25… Read more