ABSTRACT
Clément Marot early sixteenth-century Maguelonne is likened repeatedly to Dido, possibly because he recognized the Medea allusion as a borrowing from the Aeneid but also as a response to intertextual allusions that were already present in the prose romance. Marot's poem, and the allusion itself, are arguably less about erudition than about the network of vernacular texts that underscore Maguelonne's predicament. The most important aspect is the Euripides' tragedy was known to no more than a handful of individuals, while the existence of a Castilian translation of Seneca's Medea only serves to underline how marginal this tradition was to most literary treatments in Western Europe. The dangerous aspect of Medea is in tension with her similarity to other betrayed heroines of Ovid's Heroides such as Dido or Ariadne. Infanticide may be an important element of what modern readers know of Medea but, medieval Medeas were often based on the Heroides and Troy romances.
