ABSTRACT
Euripides has been variously judged a misogynist and the champion of women-a
division which, at the least, testifies to the complexity of his female portrayals. What is
certain is that in the plays of Euripides (perhaps more clearly than in the works of any
other Greek author) women appear as the perpetrators of crimes motivated by passion,
jealousy, and vindictiveness, and committed with deceit and guile. The complicating
factor is that Euripides also presents women’s actions as emanating from the insecurity of
their position. Vindictive ferocity stems from a social impotence in which deception and
guile are the only weapons and where jealousies and hatreds have been born of justified
fear.1 The Ion is a case in point.
