Two-Faced Medea Victoria Katashev College

The mythological figure of Medea and her story has been told throughout the centuries, her deeds encouraging many moral and ethical debates. However, writers from different periods represent her in different ways, no retelling quite the same as the next. Ovid and Euripides were two writers that approached Medea and her story. Though they tackle the same character they choose to focus on two very different parts of her story. This results in a drastically different portrayal of the character between the two works. However, a commonality between the two works is Medea’s portrayal as a woman especially skilled in the arts, giving her an upper hand on the men around her. The two authors, Ovid and Euripides, take the mythical Medea’s story and show her in two very different lights, one a naive young girl and the other, a vengeful, older woman.

In Book VII of Metamorphoses, Ovid chooses to focus on the beginning of Medea’s story. He heavily recounts her first meeting Jason and assisting him in winning the Golden Fleece from her father. Since he writes about an earlier portion of her story, she is portrayed as young and naive, a girl who’s fallen in love for the first time. He writes, “When she saw Jason...straight the smoldering...