ABSTRACT
Euripides dramatizes the absolute misery of a woman who has born and raised children for nothing. Euripides’ Medea began the drama lamenting because, as a woman in a male-dominated society, she has been treated little better than a slave. At the end she has triumphed over her enemies, and, although she has suffered great grief herself, she has given much more suffering to Jason, who is now forced to adopt the normally female role of grieving impotently for the lost relatives. The reaction which Euripides forced from the female members of his audience was almost equally drastic. Medea vigorously denounces the inequity of a woman’s lot in the ancient Greece; she asserts the worth of women, and she implies – and the Corinthian Women state openly – that some females possess intelligence equal to, sometimes superior to, that of many men.
