Medea’s Self-Division: The Myth and the Sources

An extremely multifaceted figure, Medea has been variously interpreted throughout the centuries as a godlike being or demon, an abject mother or unfortunate woman, a sorceress, a femme fatale;¹psychological and anthropological approaches have read Medea as an example of divided self, dissociation, and hysterical behavior.² The Euripidean drama monopolized Medea’s later reception,³ including her depictions in works by Latin authors such as Ovid and Seneca.⁴ As a consequence of such a complex background, the Medea of Heroides 12 appears as a liminal, heterogeneous character, in a threshold space between past and present, epic and tragedy, masculinity and femininity, barbarity and civility, youth and maturity, naivete and power, weakness and violence, maternal love and infanticide.⁵ Like other Ovidian heroines, Medea represents a coincidence of opposing thoughts and behaviors, but the self-dissociation that allegedly occurs in Euripides is still in its germinal phase, although in continuous development, in Heroides 12.⁶

When (Ovid’s) Medea writes her epistle, she has already been abandoned by Jason (Her. 12.1–6, 173–174) and heard about his new liaison with Creusa (see Her. 12.25, 143–146), but she has not yet accomplished her murderous plan against Creusa, nor has she definitively resolved to kill her own children.⁷ However, knowledgeable readers of Heroides 12 must have remarked the allusions to Medea’s future crimes within the epistle (see 181–182, 207–212), which were well known from the previous tradition.⁸ Although Apollonius and Euripides easily can be acknowledged as the main models of Heroides 12 (at least, among fully extant works),⁹ the Ovidian Medea, like other heroines, reshapes the previous narratives, thereby redefining her own story by exploiting the peculiar features of the ignotum … opus, that is, how the Heroides are defined by Ovid himself in Ars amatoria 3.346. The elegiac and quasi-autobiographical discourse of the Heroides allows us to hear—for a moment—Medea’s subjective voice.

Heroides 12 is not the only Ovidian depiction of Medea. Despite the fragmentary state of the almost entirely lost Ovidian drama, Medea,¹⁰ scholars have rightfully maintained that Ovid showed himself to be very interested in and quite sympathetic toward Medea as a character, since he focused on her narrative (at least) three times: besides Heroides 12, there is the lost drama and Metamorphoses 7.1–424, which offers a more comprehensive account of Medea’s narrative than the epistle, from her encounter with Jason in Colchis to her infanticide and subsequent flight to Athens.¹¹ By providing a bridge between Apollonius’s and Euripides’s Medea, Heroides 12, similarly to other epistles, fills the gaps in the mythological tradition. The Heroidean Medea is certainly aware of her Apollonian background, which is often recalled in her letter through, for instance, the references to her encounter and dialogue with Jason (71–90), the trials (13–20, 39–50, 93–102), or more generally her Colchian past. Concurrently, in Heroides 12, Medea shows a certain awareness of her Euripidean future as a murderer, thereby casting herself as a character in transition.¹² Among the various appearances of Medea predating the Ovidian epistle, it is beneficial to focus in more detail on two aspects of Euripides’s Medea: the internal struggle between reason and anger, which can be read as gendered in terms of, respectively, the masculine and feminine selves; and Medea’s self-dissociation vis-à-vis her (abject) motherhood.

In Euripides’s drama, Medea appears to be totally aware of her unfortunate condition as woman and barbarian/foreigner (see 214–266), most notably when she exclaims:¹³

In light of passages like this, scholars such as David Schaps and Jeffrey Zorn have claimed that Medea seems to speak on behalf of women who are particularly marginalized.¹⁵ Beyond being a woman, Medea is also a foreigner, which enhances her otherness, as well as her alienation from the values of Greek society.¹⁶ At the same time, later in the play Medea rejects her status as a woman and mother, becoming somehow “masculine” and suspending her maternal instinct to kill her children.¹⁷ Accordingly, because of her concerns about reputation and honor (see, e.g., Eur. Med. 392–398, 403, 797, 807–810, 1354–1355), Medea has been linked to tragic or epic male heroes (like Ajax or Achilles) and has also been said to escape from her confinement in the segregated space of the house, insofar as she enters public life and rejects her allegedly stereotypical female role.¹⁸

This transition from feminine to masculine roles, however, is only partially completed, and Medea’s attitude fluctuates between her opposite (gendered) selves:¹⁹ rational and irrational drives are interwoven with male and female gender, in a relationship that is not always consistent. While Medea is urged to kill her children and save her reputation through her “male” heroism, her female maternal instinct almost convinces her to desist (see Eur. Med. 1040–1080). At the same time, it is her female proclivity toward magic and plotting that allows her to accomplish her boulēumata (“plans”), which enhance her heroic, male, reputation.²⁰ This conflict between reason and passion, masculinity and femininity, and boulēumata and thymos (“emotion”; “heart”) is articulated in Medea’s monologue at lines 1021–1080. Medea’s self-dissociation is particularly clear in the transition from lines 1040–1048, where her maternal self appears to dominate her, to 1049–1055, where, “in a counter-reaction, she affirms totally her other self, that of avenger, dissociating herself from her maternal self.”²¹ Medea subsequently refers to herself in both negative and positive terms simultaneously (1056–1057), and at 1058 she distinguishes between “us” (Medea as a mother) and “you” (1058). Eventually, Medea realizes that she cannot resist her thymos and resolves to kill her children (1076–1080).²²

Compared to the Euripidean model, Ovid’s Medea has been seen as simpler and more naive, without the complexity that characterizes the dramatic heroine.²³ By contrast, in the following discussion of Medea’s storytelling in Heroides 12, which is in line with the more appreciative judgments of the Ovidian epistle,²⁴ the heroine emerges as a remarkably polysemous character. While Heroides 12 develops Medea’s transformation into a murderous woman that was already taking place in Apollonius (see book 4), the epistle does not attain the excesses of her Euripidean Doppelgängerin. By remaining suspended between her literary past and future, between her naivete and corruption, between maternal affection and violence, the Ovidian Medea parallels, perhaps even surpasses, her Euripidean alter ego in complexity. This complexity emerges from the Ovidian Medea’s construction of her motherhood and relationship with her children, which are recontextualized from her Euripidean monologue. Ovid’s Medea enters into conversation with her models, in order to challenge, reshape, and modify them.

Despite these contrasting internal tendencies, the Euripidean character accomplishes the prophecy, or the destiny, implied in one of the possible etymologies of her name (μήδομαι, “to plot,” “to plan cunningly”) and becomes Medea. In Heroides 12, this process of becoming is in fieri and the heroine’s identity appears as fluid, unstable, and “queer” as ever.²⁵ This instability is particularly enhanced by a temporary suspension of Medea’s status as a mother,²⁶ which has been read as the expression of her self-dissociation, following the Euripidean archetype.²⁷ In the Ovidian letter,²⁸ I argue, Medea not only undergoes a self-dissociation similar to that in the Euripidean drama, but her identity remains more profoundly undetermined, as it is still influenced by her portrayal as a “simpler” character in Apollonius. Medea’s self-dissociation is only a part, a stage, of Medea’s process of becoming, autopoiesis, and subjective self-determination.

Genre and Gender Fluidity: Ovid’s Medea

In Heroides 12, Medea’s oscillation between feminine and masculine attitudes implies a somewhat undetermined and fluid gender, which transcends the more antipodal gendered self-division of her Euripi‑ dean counterpart. Medea’s gender “queerness” articulates the fluidity of her subjectivity, which is constructed by transitions and continuous becoming(s), and culminates in the rejection of her motherhood. This (re)interpretation of Ovid’s Medea through the concepts of becoming(s) and perennial self-construction is theoretically grounded in posthuman feminism, drawing in particular from the work of Rosi Braidotti, who merges Luce Irigaray’s concept of sexual difference with Felix Guattari’s and Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the nomadic or rhizomatic subject (a kind of undetermined subject, who consists of transitions, shifts, and becomings and does not long for a fixed identity), thus combining feminism and posthumanism.²⁹

Braidotti encourages her readers to look at subjectivity not as a matter, but as a process that, especially with respect to female subjects, is related to the concept of becoming-woman, a reappropriation of the female body and a rejection of Oedipal law, which linguistically and ontologically sanctions the supremacy of male agency and fosters heteronormativity. To proceed to the deterritorialization and redefinition of Western dichotomies, such as the opposition subject-object, same-other, male-female, we must embrace a nomadic perspective that allows us to (re)think the (female) subject in terms of flexibility and possibility, as well as relationality with other inanimate objects, nature, and animals.³⁰ Through continuous becoming and redefinition, the female subject shapes herself as a flowing impulse perpetually in the making, thereby blurring the boundaries between human and nonhuman, living and nonliving, as well as escaping from fixed gender categories and a binary view of social relationships.³¹

Medea’s construction of herself as a fluid, unfixed subject is interwoven with her contradictory relationship with her motherhood, which is simultaneously affirmed and denied through the continuous blurring of gender boundaries, as well as through gender role reversals. This sort of “psychological androgyny” culminates in a never-ending process of transitional shifts and transformations, which characterizes Medea as a subject-in-becoming, to put it in posthuman terms.³² The fluctuation between a masculine and feminine self, and accordingly motherhood and revenge, features prominently in Medea’s epistle, from its very beginning.

The letter’s opening rather abruptly recalls (see at, a strong adversative conjunction; 1)³³ the opposition between the help that Medea provided to Jason in the past (“ars mea … ferret opem”; 2), which hints at her agency, and her abandonment and helplessness, which draw the contours of a more traditionally passive and forlorn Ovidian heroine. The latter connotation is introduced by Medea’s reference to her memory (memini, “I remember,” 1), as opposed to Jason’s traditional forgetfulness (inmemor, “forgetful,” 16).³⁴ The verb memini is a well known marker of an Alexandrian footnote, which hints at Jason’s request for help in Apollonius (Argon. 3.975–1007). It also recalls the lexical context of Catullus’s Ariadne (see Catull. 64.58, 117, 123, 135, 148, 231, 248), the quintessential abandoned heroine (also mentioned by Jason in Argon. 3.997–1004), thereby stressing by implication Medea’s adherence to the stereotypical motif of forlorn women.³⁵ As a counterbalance to this model, Medea’s mention of her ars (2)—namely, her magical skills—as a means to help Jason points to her active role in accomplishing the trials. It also alludes to another kind of “art,” the Ovidian art of love, which, however, the heroine does not seem to master (see Ars am. 3.29–42).³⁶ The double meaning implied in the word ars articulates Medea’s internal struggle between (male) heroism, or agency, and the elegiac complaint that she shares, at least on a surface-level reading, with other heroines.

This coexistence of opposite tendencies leads to the development of a self-identity in perennial movement and transition, which destabilizes gender dichotomies and will cause Medea’s affirmation of and at the same time disidentification from her maternal self later in the epistle. When the heroine exclaims that, if she had not helped Jason, she could have died “with honor” as Medea (“tum potui Medea mori bene”; 5), she experiences a sort of self-dissociation: the old, somehow heroic Medea, who was yet untouched by her love for Jason, has been replaced by or entered into conflict with the new Medea, who is weakened by her passion.³⁷ Through the topos of a good and honorable death, the storyteller and third-person omniscient narrator Medea adopts a male and epic-based perspective on the events, thus enhancing her fluctuation between masculine and feminine selves, epic and elegy, fictional narration and reality. The expression “produxi vitam” at line 6 literally means “I lived,” but the verb produco, which can also be used to indicate the “composition” of literary works and “childbirth,” may be understood as both a metaliterary allusion to Medea’s poetic production and a metaphorical innuendo regarding childbirth, as well as an ominous foreshadowing of Medea’s infanticide.³⁸

Medea’s oscillation between genders, attitudes, and roles also emerges from her multiple, almost obsessive, references to the fact that Jason was able to accomplish Aeëtes’s trials only because of her help (see 13–20, 39–50, 93–108, 163, 165, 171, 195–196, 199–202).³⁹

Through the use of jussive pluperfect subjunctives (isset, 15; iecisset, 17; perisset, 19), the heroine implies that Jason would have died (19–20) if he had fought the bullocks (16) and the warriors generated by the seeds (17–18) non praemedicatus (“not anointed,” 15), without the help of her magic filters. The adjective praemedicatus (“anointed,” “protected by charms”), which is probably an Ovidian hapax,⁴⁰ refers to Medea’s dangerous potential as a magician, as well as recalling the pharmaka she gave to Jason in Apollonius (see Argon. 3.1042–1051, 1246–1267).⁴¹ This reference suggests that the help Medea gave to Jason (and which she regrets having given) was essential for him to overcome the trials and, eventually, gain his heroic status.⁴²

Accordingly, Medea’s help is what causes her to play an active role in Jason’s story, and her own. The repeated references to the trials are a way to emphasize Medea’s agency and power, and conversely to underline Jason’s passivity, dependency, and lack of heroic temper. At the same time, Medea’s help is the result of her falling in love with Jason, which causes her abandonment and gives voice to the most stereotypically feminine part of herself. The role as an abandoned woman that Medea plays, according to the patterns of the genre, is always accompanied by, and interwoven with, a more heroic attitude. This allegedly manly component of her personality leads her to the murder of her children, which is only forecast (but not enacted) at the end of Heroides 12. Such a fluctuating attitude is an expression of Medea’s gender queerness or psychological androgyny,⁴³ which are better-suited definitions than the Euripidean self-division to draw the contours of the Heroidean Medea. These outline the continuous overlap between genders, as well as delineating Medea’s transitional, perpetually-in-the-making (sexual) identity. The intersection between heroic (male) agency and the feminine arts (Medea’s magic skills), between heroism and falling in love, revenge and maternal instinct, encourages nonbinary and fluid interpretations of Medea.

The struggle for a definition of her self-identity also emerges at line 25, where the heroine again names herself (after line 5) and mentions that she was in Colchis what Creusa is now for Jason, thereby highlighting that she has been replaced by Jason’s new bride: “hoc illic Medea fui, nova nupta quod hic est” (There I, Medea, was what here your new bride is). The opposition between Medea fui and the nova nupta sounds like a bad omen, and anticipates Medea’s ensuing murderous acts, which include the murder of Creusa.⁴⁴ Moreover, this comparison between her past (see fui, 25) and present selves also manifests in Medea’s difficulty in defining her new self after the displacement of her previous one. As emerges at the end of the epistle, this crisis does not entail the achievement of a stable identity, but rather one of perpetual development. Ambiguity and fluctuation are intrinsic not only to Medea’s storytelling but also to Jason’s words, which recast Jason and Medea’s first dialogue in Apollonius (Argon. 3.973–1130) and are reported (by Medea) in direct speech in Heroides 12. The opening couplet of Jason’s suasoria (persuasive, rhetorical speech) hints at a legal frame, as Jason states that “chance” (fortuna, 73) has entrusted to Medea the “right” (ius, 73) and “power” (arbitrium, 73) over his safety, and his own destiny lies in Medea’s hands: “inque tua est vitaque morsque manu” (And in your hand my life and death lie; 74). Both ius and arbitrium pertain to legal language and the reference to the manus seems to allude to the conventio in manum, the part of the marital contract according to which the woman was delivered to her husband.⁴⁵ Jason is thus not just suggesting a marriage to Medea (see Argon. 3.1128–1130) but is also describing a potential liaison that is characterized by a reversal of traditional gender roles.

Although this marriage will never happen, and Medea’s status will never be entirely legitimate,⁴⁶ the allusions to a marital relationship are further enhanced by the use of the word potestas (“power,” 75), which is semantically linked to both ius and arbitrium (73).⁴⁷ If read alongside the reference to the manus (and thus to the conventio in manum), such vocabulary may recall the institution of patria potestas (literally, “the power of the father” over his wife and the members of his family). The pater familias had the ius vitae necisque (“right of life and death”) over his children and, in cases of marriages cum manu, his wife as well. Given these linguistic references, Jason seems to acknowledge that this power (potestas) over his children’s (and his own) life and death lies in Medea’s hands (see 74), thereby de facto entitling Medea to kill them, according to a ius that pertains to the pater (not mater) familias.⁴⁸ By having Jason attribute to her the role of a Roman pater familias, the heroine plays with the Roman legal frame, thus overturning interfamilial relationships.

While Jason’s speech contains references to the Roman legal system, Medea also casts herself as being very well-versed in law. She uses legal language to support her rhetoric within the epistle, thus (re)interpreting and manufacturing Roman legislation for her own purposes.⁴⁹ As Jason’s words ambiguously hint at Medea’s (patria) potestas, so the heroine refers several times to the legal notion of a “dowry” (dos) in Heroides 12 (53, 103, 199–204). It is worth noting that Medea uses dos as an ambivalent concept: first, in a rather traditional way, as something that she was expected to give to Jason as an endowment for their union (103–104; see Eur. Med. 232–233); second, she maintains, her dos consists of the help she gave him with the trials (199–204). By attributing a new semantic value to the concept of dowry, alongside its traditional meaning, Medea subverts the gendered aspects of it, insofar as she takes a highly stereotypical notion of dowry as a gift offered by the woman’s family and changes it into a materialization (or symbol) of the active role that she played in accomplishing the trials. The dos is therefore another way to enhance her agency within the narrative vis-à-vis Jason’s passivity.

The depiction of Medea as a dominant character is further articulated by Jason’s reference to her gloria (“sed tibi servatus gloria maior ero,” But to save me will be greater glory for you; 76), a conventional feature of male heroism in epic (see the Homeric κλέος), in order to convince Medea to help him.⁵⁰ By stressing his weak position and lack of resolution (73–82), Medea has Jason rhetorically take advantage of traditionally feminine features and subvert established gender categories.⁵¹ Despite overturning gender roles, Medea is also depicted as being the bearer of highly stereotypical feminine traits (see, e.g., virgo, “maiden,” 81), which enhance the instability of her gender identity.

After another reference to her agency in accomplishing the trials (163–172), the heroine remarks, with disappointment, that she has preserved Jason only to see Creusa (paelex, “concubine,” 173)⁵² reap the rewards of her own efforts (“et nostri fructus illa laboris habet,” And she gets the fruit of my labor; 174).⁵³ Medea’s frustration is due not only to her jealousy of Creusa, but also to her suspicion that Jason may speak ill of her (175–176) and attribute to her nova crimina (“unknown crimes,” 177), with Creusa laughing at his words (l78). As we saw, the substantive crimen is often linked to adultery within elegiac poetry;⁵⁴ yet, at line 177 it is used within a rather epic (and tragic) context, which is expressed in Medea’s concerns about her honor and reputation (175–178). By appearing concerned with how others speak about her, that is, her reputation (Greek timē), Medea aligns herself with the paradigm of the epic hero, as well as evoking the tragic version of her own character.

This tragic connotation is recalled in the following lines by her proleptic allusions to the killing of Creusa (and Creon) as well as her own children (179–182), which become particularly threatening at the very end of this passage (see “hostis Medeae nullus inultus erit,” No enemy of Medea will go unpunished! 182). The emphasis on vengeance represents a highly tragic topos and connects lines 179–182 to the Euripidean drama, thereby giving line 182 an undertone of both prophecy and threat.⁵⁵ While Medea the narrator does not actually know how the plan that she is conceiving will develop, her allusive language, alongside the prolepsis (anticipation) of events that occur later in the fabula, plays with knowledgeable readers, who are expected to be fully aware of the dangerous potential of the Euripidean Medea. The allusivity of Medea’s discourse is enhanced by certain stylistic choices, particularly the litotes (nullus inultus, “no foe … unpunished,” 182), which has an epic connotation,⁵⁶ and the mention of Medea’s own given name (see 5, 25), which marks her attempt to redefine and stress her identity.⁵⁷ The search for self-definition leads Medea first to create distance from and then reappropriate herself, and is characterized by fluctuation and conceptual inconsistency, which are expressed by the permeability of gender divisions and dichotomies. What we have defined as psychological androgyny, namely, a fluctuation between masculine and feminine behavioral attitudes, ultimately serves to justify Medea’s momentary rejection of her motherhood, which materializes at the end of the letter with her mention of “something greater” (quid … maius, 212) that she is conceiving: the killing of her children. This murder is anticipated throughout the epistle by the ambivalence of Medea’s attitudes, which becomes particularly evident when she addresses her two sons.

By using an expression that recalls, contrastively, the famous Virgilian “meminisse iuvabit” (It will be useful to remember; Aen. 1.203), Medea remarks how painful may be the knowledge of some circumstances and how it would be better if they remained unknown (147).⁵⁸ At the same time, the heroine hints at her sensitivity: although she did not consciously know exactly what was happening, she felt sad, as though she had a sort of premonition (148). Medea’s (partial) foreknowledge of Jason’s marriage also functions as an ominous allusion to the destiny of her (and Jason’s) children, so line 148 (“mens mea tristis erat”) may be read as a hint at this future infanticide. Before realizing that her children will become tools of her vengeance (an awareness that Medea does not fully achieve within the Ovidian letter, as we shall see), the heroine must go through a process of crisis and resolution, which arises from her internal struggle between motherhood (and maternal love) and her hatred of Jason.

Medea’s suspension of her motherhood is propelled through the displacement of her children as otherness belonging to Jason, not to her.⁵⁹ After exhorting his mother to come out, one of Medea’s sons points at his father (151–152).⁶⁰ As Medea never refers to Jason directly by name, thus diminishing his individual identity as well as status as a hero, Medea’s son is the only one within the epistle to call Jason by his given name. In this case, the naming of Jason is highly stressed, as the child not only pronounces his name but also mentions it immediately after having designated him as his father (pater … Iason, 151). The mention of Jason’s name by his (and Medea’s) son materializes his active presence within the narrative. For a moment, this mention restores the status of Jason that the heroine has tried to reduce throughout the epistle, by avoiding saying his name and underlining her own prominent role in the trials.⁶¹

Moreover, the phrasing pater … Iason (151) stresses the connection between father and son, as well as hinting at the child’s belonging to the father (note the closeness of the two words). Given the weight of the “similarity-to-the-father” motif in the previous, and future, literary tradition, which is noticeably addressed by “wicked” mothers as a reason for infanticide,⁶² the irruption of the children in Medea’s storytelling, as well as the emphasis on their link to Jason, must be read as a textual marker of the heroine’s revenge. This connotation is confirmed by Medea’s words at lines 187–190, where she explicitly describes her children as being very similar to Jason, thereby stressing their belonging to their father, as well as foregrounding her temporary disidentification from her role as a mother.⁶³

By presenting her children as a rhetorical argument to move Jason, the heroine forecasts their murder, that is, the enactment of her revenge. The antithesis between Medea’s reference to her sons as communis (“shared,” 187) and their being too similar to Jason (189) articulates the heroine’s fluctuating attitude toward her children.⁶⁴ This similarity of the children to their father, which in other circumstances is considered to be a positive feature and a confirmation of legitimacy, here becomes a dangerous and sinister pattern.⁶⁵ The ambivalent reference to Medea’s tears at 190 enforces this ominous frame. While on a surface-level reading the tears are supposed to be caused by the fact that Medea’s children remind her of Jason’s abandonment, they also anticipate Medea’s allusions to her crime. Alongside the possibility that they will be assigned to their noverca (“stepmother,” 188), that is, Medea’s rival Creusa, the affinity between the children and Jason is what pushes the heroine toward infanticide.⁶⁶

This passage (187–190) represents a transition from maternal instinct to vengeance and anticipates the moment in Medea’s myth when her hatred of Jason overcomes the love for her children. Such a moment, which is continuously, almost obsessively, foreshadowed within the letter, is never fully reached by the Ovidian Medea. As both the author of her epistle and the main character within her storytelling, Medea skillfully arouses her educated reader’s expectations, but she never fulfills them in the letter, thus generating a narratological vacuum. This vacuum hypostasizes the fluidity of Medea as a character and subjective narrator, who finds herself in a perennial phase of transition, readjustment, and redefinition of her self-identity. Such a process of development expresses the (self-)construction of Medea as a female subject-in-becoming.

Becoming-Medea

Medea’s process of becoming continues, and appears particularly enhanced, in the second half of her epistle, culminating with her denial and, simultaneously, reappropriation of her motherhood. At 113–130, the heroine recollects some of the stages that have marked her transformation from the naive young girl she was in Colchis to a powerful, demonic, and ultimately murderous creature. Giving her help to Jason, and thus betraying her father, is the first step toward her self-development, which is further nurtured by the murder of her brother.

With a bitter irony, Medea remarks that, while fleeing, she did not leave her brother behind without her (“sine me, germane, reliqui”; 113), because she caused his death. The vocative form germane (“brother,” 113) to indicate Absyrtus enhances the pathos and emotional involvement of the heroine.⁶⁷ The trauma generated by the recollection of such a dramatic episode reverberates in Medea’s writing, which is said to “fail (only) at this point” (114). The line is subject to various interpretations because of its use of an apparently generic vocabulary: the iunctura of littera nostra (114) can be read either as a metonymy indicating the writing process, or as a more concrete and specific reference to the actual text Medea is writing, which is precisely an epistle (littera);⁶⁸loco can refer to the particular passage of the text that the heroine indicates, to the relevant episode in Medea’s life (the murder of her brother), and/or to an actual geographical place, Colchis. Medea’s polysemous writing style articulates her fluid subjectivity and anticipates her interior struggle between different versions of herself.

The coexistence of conflicting attitudes and personas is also conveyed by the overlap between writing and life. Medea’s right hand, which dared to perform the murder of her brother, is said to be unable to report this in the written text (“quod facere ausa mea est, non audet scribere dextra”; 115):⁶⁹ the proleptic position of quod and mea (which is linked to dextra) produces a stylistic tension in the line by creating an expectation. The reference to certain past events in Medea’s narrative underlines how the writing (of the letter) and Medea’s actual life are intertwined, as we have already seen at the beginning of Heroides 12. One may argue that the overlap of storytelling and life does not actually take place in this case, since the writing is apparently not suited to expressing reality (because of the brutality of Medea’s actions). Equally, the heroine’s reference to her brother recalls his murder and plays with knowledgeable readers by means of omission (the impossibility of describing the event) and allusion (the actual reference to the event). By hinting at the most violent and murderous version of herself, (Ovid’s) Medea also anticipates her infanticide at the end of her epistle.

Medea’s reference to the killing of her brother and the consequent impossibility of writing in more detail about the event allude to the well-known plot of her myth. In particular, her inability to openly recount Absyrtus’s murder recalls the shame of her Apollonian Doppelgängerin, who covers her face with a veil so as not to see Jason’s assault on her brother (see Argon. 4.465–467). At the same time, Medea’s mention of her dextra (“right hand,” 115) evokes a motif within the Heroides, namely, a reference to holding a pen in one hand and a sword in the other hand (or in the lap; see Dido in Her. 7).⁷⁰ In this case, Medea corrects this topos with a sort of variatio on the same theme, as the hand through which the heroine allegedly pursued (or facilitated) the murder of her brother is in fact the same (right) hand with which she is writing the epistle. Leaving aside that the “right hand” may well imply a metonymic or metaphorical value, since it appears implausible (and incorrect, according to the Apollonian account) that Medea killed her brother with only her hand, the coincidence of writing and action is highly symbolic. This coincidence enhances not only the coexistence of life and storytelling, but also produces an overlap between (female) writing and agency, as well as self-empowerment. The lack of a clear threshold between reality and fiction, or storytelling, is another expression of Medea’s construction of her self-identity through her writing, which reflects the instability, discontinuity, and fluctuation intrinsic to her process of becoming-subject.

While Medea seemingly claims to be unable to speak of the murder of her brother in her letter (which is reminiscent, perhaps, of her unwillingness to watch it at Argon. 4.465–467), she recalls the episode precisely by denying it a presence within her writing. Insofar as it represents the materialization of a lack or negation, Medea’s writing is the avant-la-lettre expression, as well as the literary transposition, of the role of women within a patriarchal society (that is, the Lacanian Symbolic order).⁷¹ Medea’s writing is as imperfect as women are imperfect or incomplete men, that is, objects shaped by an androcentric perspective. Medea’s incapable, lacking, writing translates women’s incapability to express themselves freely and effectively.⁷² However, while denying her role as a trustworthy narrator, capable writer, reliable autobiographer, and thus as a female independent subject, Medea is stressing that role through the allusions and corrections to her literary past, as well as intertextual parallels, and by equating her writing to her active agency. The interplay between omissions and allusions articulates the fluctuation of Medea’s writing style, which parallels the fluctuation of Medea’s subjectivity. Medea’s alleged inability to write expresses women’s struggle to construct themselves as independent subjects. The continuous pursuit of a subjectivity-in-becoming is, in fact, the acknowledgment of this struggle and its intrinsic contradictions, that is, a nonachievement, a lack of a definition, an aporia.⁷³

The ambiguous reference to her writing thus reflects the complexity as well as ineluctability of Medea’s process of self-affirmation as an autonomous entity, as a subject on her own, but in a process of continuous change. Such an affirmation implies contradictions, discontinuities, and breaks. One of these breaks is represented by the murder of Absyrtus, which can also be interpreted, through an anthropological lens, as a rite of passage leading the heroine to another life stage. By killing a member of her family, and particularly her own sibling, Medea appears to have destroyed a part of herself, thus enacting the shift toward a new phase of her life.⁷⁴ At the same time, the reference to the murder of her brother as being performed with her own hand suggests an appropriation of Absyrtus’s traits, tasks and characteristics, as well as his identity, so that Medea in a way replaces her brother and takes on a powerful, dominant male role.

The murder of Absyrtus can be linked to the process of succession, as well as an appropriation of the dominant male role within patriarchal tribal communities, which is described by Freud in Totem and Taboo.⁷⁵ This was enacted by the sons through the killing and the subsequent cannibalistic eating of their own father, who had previously acted as a leader of the community. Although Medea does not actually kill her father (but only betrays and escapes from him), this motif seems to be applicable to the killing of her brother, especially if we read it vis-à-vis the following mention of the episode of Pelias’s daughters (129–130). The daughters of Pelias are not only deceived and then convinced by Medea to kill their father, but they also dismember and cook his body, which may anticipate and at the same time allude to a cannibalistic act. Medea’s development, which leads her to overcome and destroy a version of herself, as well as embrace a new (self-)identity, contributes to the destabilization of her subjectivity. The endless process of becoming-subject lies precisely in the permanence of this destabilization, namely, the blurring of boundaries between different identities, literary genres, and genders.

This search for a self-identity in continuous redefinition and becoming is boosted by the recollection of other murders. At lines 129–130, as anticipated, Medea refers to the daughters of Pelias and how she persuaded them to kill their father.⁷⁶

The reference to the virginea … manu links these lines to 115, where Medea’s right hand is said to have accomplished the murder of Absyrtus. While the manus are often mentioned to indicate how an action is ultimately carried out, the adjective virgineus, which is connected to the sphere of sexuality and eroticism, links the naivete and innocence of the daughters of Pelias to Medea’s attitude before she met and was somehow corrupted by Jason.⁷⁷ This new Medea, the brutal, violent, yet powerful version of herself is not only the direct (or, in other versions of the myth, indirect) author of murderous actions but is also the instigator of other murders, as well as being responsible for the corruption and defilement of other innocent girls, whose naivete is linked to her own previous innocence. After a sort of initiation, which is represented by the murder of her brother, Medea discovers and takes advantage of a new nature, which will ultimately lead her to kill her children.⁷⁸ This series of crimes represents the price Medea pays to construct her new identity and subjectivity, de-objectifying herself.

The heroine’s dangerous potential becomes more tangible when Medea begins to realize that Jason is marrying Creusa (137–142): wedding invocations, litanies, and songs (Hymen cantatus, 137; socialia carmina, 139) find their way to Medea’s ears (nostras … ad aures, 137), and wedding torches light up the street (138).⁷⁹ The festive atmosphere of the wedding procession is a cause of grief for Medea and the joyful tibia (“flute”), which celebrates Jason and Creusa (139), changes into a funeral tuba (“trumpet”) from Medea’s perspective: at mihi funerea flebiliora tuba (“but for me a strain more tearful than the funereal trumpet,” 140).⁸⁰ The strong adversative conjunction at (see line 1) enhances the opposition between wedding and funeral, which is a leitmotif throughout the Heroides.⁸¹ In this passage, the coexistence between marriage and death—which are also both linked to rites of passage—confirms Medea’s ability to overcome expected categories, as well as to blur the boundaries between dichotomies.

The blurring of opposite elements is amplified by the coexistence of different times, the past, present, and future. Medea’s premonition at 141–142 anticipates her ominous feelings at line 148 (“mens mea tristis erat”; see above): even though the heroine was unaware of the precise events (141), “her entire heart” was permeated by “coldness” (“sed tamen in toto pectore frigus erat”; 142).⁸² In these lines, (Ovid’s) Medea plays with various temporal dimensions and narratological levels, as the Medea who is writing the epistle in the present (the narrating “I”) is aware of the outcome of the events, while the Medea of the past (the narrated “I”) was only able to foresee what was about to happen. The liminality between different temporal dimensions, and the precognition of the following events, are further developed in the final lines of the letter, when Medea foreshadows her infanticide. This multitemporality, the fluctuation between different attitudes and narratological levels, as well as the permeable threshold between storytelling and reality, demonstrate that Medea is a subject in constant development and becoming, as her self-construction is characterized by a continuous metamorphosis across temporal, metaliterary, thematic, textual, and narratological dimensions.

These processes of becoming and development of a nomadic subjectivity are crystallized in Medea’s motherhood. At lines 191–198, the heroine mentions her children in order to convince Jason to rethink his decision (to abandon her and marry Creusa). This plea, however, is highly ambiguous and serves as anticipation, as well as justification, of the infanticide. The reference to her sons as pignora (nostra, 192) finds many parallels within the Heroides, but as usual Medea’s discourse is highly ambiguous, since it plays with the double meaning of pignus as “child” and pignus as “guarantee.”⁸³ While the existence of the children was supposed to secure Medea’s yet unofficial union with Jason, that is, to be a “guarantee,” the pignora are not actual pignora, that is, the “children” do not represent an actual “pledge” or “guarantee” for the heroine. The negation of the pignora as a “guarantee” foreshadows and parallels, both discursively and ontologically, the rejection of the pignora as “children,” which will be effected through their murder. The infanticide is the “absent referent” in the last section of Medea’s letter, where she casts the final lines of her epistle as a rhetorical speech to proleptically justify the killing of her children.

The imperative expression redde torum (“restore me to the marriage bed”) at 193 anticipates the imperative form at 202, redde, which this time refers to Medea’s “dowry,” dos.⁸⁴ That this dos is represented by Medea’s support for Jason is suggested by the remainder of line 193, where the heroine indicates the marital bed (torum, 193) she shared with Jason as the reason why she left everything behind her (“tot res … reliqui”; 193). By asking Jason to be consistent with his words and to return her favors (194),⁸⁵ Medea points out both his inconsistency and his unreliability, which is a leitmotif of the whole epistle. This couplet echoes her speech in Argonautica 4.355–365, and also implies a certain degree of tragic irony. Not only is Medea the writer (the narrating “I”) perfectly aware that Jason will not come back to her, but Medea the character (the narrated “I”) has also already realized that there is no hope in this regard. Her plea thus serves to forecast, and justify, her future decision to kill her children.

The following four lines (195–198) further contribute to creating the premises for Medea’s murders. By claiming that she is not urging Jason to overcome the tauros and viros (“bulls,” “men,” 195) as well as the dragon (serpens, 196), Medea refers via negationis to the crucial role she played in Jason’s trials.⁸⁶ The heroine scores a further rhetorical point by underlining that she is not asking Jason to accomplish these deeds at the present moment simply because she never asked for it before; on the contrary, Jason begged her for her help and intervention (see 73–88). Far from merely expressing her complaint and desperation, Medea enhances the agency she has taken on within her relationship with Jason, alongside downplaying his status as a hero.

Thus, Medea takes on a dominant role, thereby “masculinizing” herself. Indeed, her reasoning follows masculine codes, where her honor is comparable to the kleos of a male (epic/tragic) hero. Accordingly, she rightly demands that Jason give her what she deserves and what he promised to her, as a sort of obligation for her contribution to his achievements (“te peto, quem merui, quem nobis ipse dedisti”; 197).⁸⁷ Similarly, Medea restates her rights to her children, as though she were a pater familias (the head of the family), by claiming that she has been made a parent by Jason in the same way that Jason became a parent by her, thereby de facto expunging their gender difference: “cum quo sum pariter facta parente parens” (198). The adverb pariter, together with the polyptoton, or adnominatio (parente parens), suggests that Medea thinks she has (at least) the same rights as Jason over her children.⁸⁸ Therefore, as the father has the ius vitae necisque (“right of life and death”) over his children, so Medea also feels entitled to judge their lives (and deaths). As observed, Ovid has Medea play with Roman laws within her epistle, and this manipulation of Roman juridical institutions is a part of her self-empowerment.

The (re)interpretation of Medea’s construction of her (heroic) identity through the filter of contemporary posthuman theory shows us that her power derives precisely from her transitional state, her continuous becoming as well as her nonunitary identity, which contribute to creating a self-conscious subjectivity.⁸⁹ As a subject undergoing an uninterrupted process of becoming, the heroine overturns and departs from patriarchal-based categorizations, casting herself as an “Other of the other,” that is, a negation of the objectified version of women. This erasure from the phallic regime is enacted through a continuous metamorphosis, that is, an endless rejection of the (phallogocentric) “Same” that stigmatizes what is different as negative “otherness.”⁹⁰ Medea’s nomadic subjectivity, as well as the overturning and reinterpretation of her sexuality, becomes, in Braidotti’s words, “the force that can break the eternal return of the Same and its classical Others.”⁹¹ Since the loss of the mother, as well as the separation from the maternal body, is crucial for the construction of the subject within the Symbolic order (as it entails the break of the eternal return of “the Same”), by killing her sons, Medea rejects her children’s (and her own) inclusion within the patriarchal system, thereby constructing herself as an autonomous subject.⁹²

Medea’s continuous change and fluid subjectivity mean that the rejection of her motherhood will never be fully accomplished within the Ovidian letter, but her maternal instinct is only temporarily suspended, in order to let her pursue the infanticide.⁹³ This suspension implies that her maternal body is simultaneously the stereotypical site of female objectification and the origin of female jouissance and materiality. In other words, the liminal status of her maternity is the starting point for the construction of her female, nomadic subjectivity.⁹⁴ Both becoming and motherhood cooperate in the formation of Medea’s subjectivity as a self-standing nomadic subjectivity, which is articulated by the very last lines of the epistle.

In this passage, the heroine confesses that something abominable will happen, but that there is no point in revealing it in advance, whereas the only thing Medea knows is that her anger is generating ingentis … minas.⁹⁵ The verb parturit (208), which is a frequentative form of parior, is linked to the idea of childbirth, procreation, as well as plotting and writing.⁹⁶ The choice of such a word denotes a moment of tragic irony—as it foreshadows the infanticide—and at the same time establishes an opposition between Medea’s actual body (the concrete site of procreation) and Medea’s ira, which metaphorically gives birth to huge threats (208).⁹⁷ These lines emphasize how Medea’s procreative function shifts from the maternal power of giving birth to an opposing, antimaternal attitude, which will ultimately lead her to kill her children. Through this last, and most horrible, murder, Medea not only reclaims possession of her own creations (namely, her children) but is also somehow reversing and nullifying the process of childbirth. The reversion and annihilation of childbirth are linked to a reappropriation of her own body, as well as (female) subjectivity.⁹⁸ This subjectivity is firstly denied by the appropriation of a male role and subsequently restated through the process of autopoiesis and becoming(-woman).

Killing her sons means, for Medea, to free them and herself from the sociopolitical categories, along with the mental structures, that are imposed by heteronormativity. The final four lines of the epistle suggest that this construction of a new heroic identity is pursued through a continuous reshaping and readjustment of her own self; temporary suspension of motherhood is only a component of the formation of nomadic subjectivity, to put it in posthuman terms.⁹⁹ The fluctuation of gender categories and gender self-division (or psychological androgyny) are also elements of this autopoiesis.¹⁰⁰ Medea says that she will follow her ira, “fury,” wherever it will lead her (209);¹⁰¹ she may repent of her future actions, but she already regrets having trusted an infidus vir (209–210: the polyptoton pigebit/piget underscores this sense of regret). The god who has taken possession of her heart will take care of what she will do, and what she will become (211), as something greater, though inexplicable, is surely going to happen: line 112, “nescio quid certe mens mea maius agit,” ironically recalls Propertius’s reference to the Aeneid as “something greater than the Iliad” (“nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade”; 2.34.66).¹⁰² The mention of both the deus (“god,” 211) and her own mind (mens mea, 212)¹⁰³ is not only an expression of Medea’s divided self, but also hints at the fact that this internal struggle is constitutive of and intrinsic to the heroine’s subjectivity; furthermore, the language evokes the context of poetic creation (see the Propertian intertext).¹⁰⁴ The internal conflict leads to transformation, and transformation leads to autopoiesis—as well as poiesis in its etymological meaning—and self-(in)determination.

The last lines of Medea’s letter have been rightly said to anticipate the subsequent events in the mythological narrative.¹⁰⁵ Beyond recasting and at the same time foreshadowing the “intertextual” life of the heroine (see Medea’s full myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apollonius, Euripides, and Seneca), however, these lines represent the extratextual and extrafictional Medea, the Medea becoming-subject. This last section of the letter hypostasizes the heroine’s internal struggle, but this conflict and continuous change, rearrangement, and fluctuation are precisely the elements that shape her identity. The heroine’s motherhood not only helps us to understand this process as being intrinsic to the Ovidian Medea, but also articulates her everlasting metamorphosis. In Heroides 12, Medea’s masculine self is not totally embraced; her motherhood is neither fully denied nor fully accepted. As Medea has no stable identity, her motherhood should thus be seen not as a concept but as a process. The transformation is not merely an intrinsic component of the subject but is precisely the female, (anti)heroic, self-determined, and self-constructed new subject.

1. E.g., Knox 1979, 297–298, 303–306; Segal 1996, 15–44; Martina 1997, 15–45; Perotti 1999, 71–74; Schmidt 1999, 243–272; for Medea’s myth, see Lesky in RE XV 29–64, s.v. “Medeia.”

2. For a discussion of these approaches, see Hall 2010, 16–24; on Medea’s “dissociation,” see also Verducci 1985, 80.

3. “Euripides’ tragedy of 431 B.C., it is agreed, gives Medea her canonical identity” (Boedeker 1997, 127).

4. Among other pre-Ovidian accounts of Medea, it is worth mentioning Sophocles’s Scythai and Colchides (not extant); Ennius’s Medea exul, Pacuvius’s Medus, and Accius’s Medea, of which some fragments still survive: see Cowan 2010, 39–52; also Jacobson 1974, 109–112.

5. Davis 2012, 33; Verducci 1985, 71.

6. On Medea’s self-division, see Gill 1987, 25–26; for the modern concept of dissociation in psychology, see Dell 2006, 1–26; Dell and O’Neil 2009.

7. For the content and context of Her. 12, see Jacobson 1974, 109–123; Bessone 1997, 11–41; Heinze 1997, 25–41.

8. These lines anticipate the events taking place in Euripides’s tragedy and (possibly) Ovid’s lost Medea as well as Met. 7 (see Spoth 1992, 202–205; Williams 2012, 49–50) and are an example of Ovid’s tragic irony (see Barchiesi 1993, 343–345; Huskey 2004, 282).

9. Jacobson 1974, 110.

10. Nikolaidis 1985, 383–387.

11. Medea also features at some length in Tr. 3.9. For the links between Her. 12 and Met. 7, as well as the evolution of Medea through Ovidian works, see Newlands 1997, 178–208; Gildenhard and Zissos 2012, 88–130; also Hinds 1993, 9–47; Williams 2012, 49–70; for Ovid’s possibly sympathetic attitude toward Medea, see Verducci 1985, 79–80.

12. Verducci 1985, 71. In terms of reception, alongside Ovid’s lost tragedy, Heroides 12 is likely to have also influenced Seneca’s drama to some extent: see Trinacty 2007, 63–78; Trinacty 2014, 93–118; Hinds 2011, 22–33; Battistella 2015, 446–470.

13. Being both a woman and a barbarian enhances Medea’s marginalization from the social and political context of the Greek polis. Medea, in short, combines three features that according to Greek culture and imaginary determine alterity and abhorrence: animality, femininity, and barbarity (Sala Rose 2002, 293–294).

14. The Greek text is from Kovacs 1994; the translation is from Mastronarde 2002, with changes. For a commentary on these lines, see Mossman 2011, ad loc.

15. Schaps 2006, 590–592; Zorn 2006, 129–130.

16. Medea’s “impossible integration” into Corinth may reflect the difficult integration of foreigners in Athens (Voelke 2014, 142–150). For general remarks on the condition of women in classical Athens vis-à-vis their representation in the comic and tragic genres, see Cohen 1989, 3–15.

17. See Barlow 1989, 158–171; Katz 1994, 98 (on the intrinsic contradiction of Medea’s “masculinity”).

18. For Medea’s “virility” and male heroism, see Barlow 1989, 161; Williamson 1990, 24–25, with bibliography; Bevegni 1997, 209–227.

19. For Medea’s gender “queerness,” see Susanetti 2014, 4, 18–22.

20. The etymology of the name Medea has been linked to the Greek verb μήδομαι, which means “to plan cunningly,” “to plot,” “to invent”; see Beltrametti 2000, 47; also Lesky in RE XV 30, s.v. “Medeia”; Pister 2013, 137. Medea’s magic skills are pervasive features in Met. 7.1–424: see Wise 1982, 16–25; Segal 2002, 11–19. For Medea’s self-division and fluctuation between gender categories, see Foley 1989, 61–85 (republished with minor revisions as Foley 2001, 243–271).

21. Gill 1987, 27.

22. For a reading of Euripides’s Medea as an articulation of the Aristotelian theory of the bipartite self—that is, as an example of conflict between rationality and emotion, see Fortenbaugh 1970, 233–250.

23. According to Jacobson (1974, 123), Her. 12 is characterized by “sameness and a simplicity which plague hardly any other of the Heroides.”

24. Verducci 1985, 83–85; Davis 2012, 46.

25. Following Sedgwick (1993, 8), here I take “queer” as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically.”

26. See Guastella 2000, 149. For Medea’s killing of her children as a break of a sort of “maternal contract,” see Emmett 2015, 255–260.

27. Verducci 1985, 80.

28.Heroides 12—perhaps more than other epistles—has given rise to issues concerning its authorship. Alongside those who have shown how problematic the attribution of the epistle to Ovid is (e.g., Knox 1986, 207–223), other scholars support its authenticity (e.g., Hinds 1993, 9–47; Casali 1994, 173–174; Bloch 2000, 197n1, 201n23).

29. Braidotti 2002, 1–10. In her most recent works, Braidotti has updated her position toward a more posthuman philosophy, where the anthropocentric notion of the human male as a representative of all species is further decentralized (see Braidotti 2013; Braidotti 2016, 13–32; Braidotti 2017, 36; Braidotti 2019, 31–61); see also the definition of “the human as a non-fixed and mutable condition” (Ferrando 2013, 27).

30. Braidotti 1994, 146–190; Braidotti 2019, 31–61.

31. Braidotti 2013, 163–169 and passim. For posthuman approaches to the classics, see the volumes by Bianchi, Brill, and Holmes 2019; Chesi and Spiegel 2019; Selsvold and Webb 2020; on the Heroides, see Martorana 2020b, 135–160.

32. Braidotti 2002, 65–116; Braidotti 2013, 132; Ferrando 2013, 27.

33. Some manuscripts report an alternative opening couplet, which, however, has been mostly considered an interpolation: for a discussion, see Bessone 1997, 60. For other examples of abrupt openings in elegy, see Prop. 1.8.1, 2.27.1; Ov. Am. 3.7.1; see also the opening of Aen. 4 (at regina . . .).

34. Memory is a leitmotif in Medea’s narrative: see Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.1069–1071, 1109–1116; 4.355–359, 383–385; Sen. Med. 48, 140–142, 465–466, 553–557, 560–562.

35. For memini as a marker of literary allusivity in connection to Ariadne’s narrative, see Hinds 1998, 1–5; see Ariadne in Her. 10 (42, 79–80, 96).

36. Medea is mentioned in this passage together with other “heroines,” namely, Ariadne, Phyllis, and Dido.

37. Bessone 1997, 68–69.

38. See Ramminger in TLL online, X 2, 1630–1645, s.v. “produco.”

39. The trials are also mentioned by Hypsipyle in Her. 6.10–14, 32–37; see also Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.1278–1407; Met. 7.100–158. For textual issues and variant readings of lines 13–20, see Goold 1977, 142; Bessone 1997, 86–88.

40. See Bessone 1997, 84. According to Heinze (1997, 102), the form praemedicatus recalls the (pseudo)etymology of Medea’s name (connected to mederi, medicamen).

41. See also Pind. Pyth. 4.221–222, 233; Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.23.

42. Bloch 2000, 199–200.

43. For the contemporary notion of psychological androgyny, see Bem 1974; Keener and Mehta 2017, 525–528. The concept of psychological androgyny has been revised more recently, depolarized, and developed according to a more heterogeneous, nonbinary view of gender (Bem 1993, 120–121; see Fine, Dupré, and Joel 2017, 670, on humans as holding a “mosaic of both feminine and masculine characteristics”).

44. This phrasing seems to anticipate the moment when Medea will effectively become or return to be “Medea,” the one who plots, the murderer, goddess, or demon of tradition; see Sen. Med. 166 (Medea superest), 910 (Medea nunc sum).

45. See Hey in TLL online, II 0, 410–415, s.v. “arbitrium”; Teßmer, Hübner, and Primmer in TLL online, VII 2, 678–704, s.v. “ius”; see Gai. Inst. 1.108–115; see Treggiari 1991, 16–17.

46. The relationship between Medea and Jason cannot be defined as a regular marital union (matrimonium) from the perspective of Roman law, since Medea would be categorized as a peregrina, “a foreigner”; by contrast, it should be attributed to the category of the iniustum matrimonium (see Ulp. 5.3–7; Treggiari 1991, 49–57).

47. See Kamptz in TLL online, X 2, 300–321, s.v. “potestas”; Berger 1953, 621, 640.

48. See Clark 1981, 194–197. For the definition of patria potestas, see Dig. 50.16.195.2; see also Berger 1953, 621; Lacey 1986, 121–144; on patria potestas vis-à-vis illegitimacy, see Rawson 1989, 10–41. According to Roman law, Medea’s children should actually have followed her, as she would have been counted among the peregrini (foreigners)—and children were supposed to inherit the status of their mother (see Ulp. 5.8–10; see Weaver 1986, 145–154; Treggiari 1991, 45). Medea not only claims possession of her children as a barbarian (see lines 105–106), i.e., a peregrina, but also claims the right to decide for them according to the Roman legal system (see Alekou 2018, 323–324).

49. See Alekou 2018, 311–334.

50. See Met. 7.47–50, 93–94; also Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.990–994, 1005–1006, 1122–1127.

51. On Medea as overcoming Jason’s masculinity, see Verducci 1985, 57–58.

52. The reference to Creusa as a paelex sounds rather paradoxical, as Medea was not the legitimate bride of Jason, whereas the union between Jason and Creusa reflects the canons of a Roman wedding ceremony (see 137–152). While Medea contradictorily indicated Creusa as nova nupta at line 25, Medea is addressed as a paelex by Hypsipyle (Her. 6.81, barbara paelex; 149) and refers to herself as a paelex in Sen. Med. 462 and 495.

53. Medea’s complaint recalls Hypsipyle’s concerns at Her. 6.73–75: “adde preces castas immixtaque vota timori— / nunc quoque te salvo persolvenda mihi. / vota ego persolvam? votis Medea fruetur!” (Add the pure-hearted prayers, and vows mingled with fears—vows which I must now fulfil, since you are safe. And am I to absolve these vows—vows that Medea will enjoy?), with Jacobson 1974, 377; see also Met. 7.38–41.

54. See above, chapter 2.

55. Medea’s vengeance is noticeably a leitmotif in Euripides’s Medea (see 44–45, 765–767, 807–810, 1049–1050).

56. See Verg. Aen. 2.670 (numquam … inulti), 10.739, 11.846–847; Ov. Met. 9.415; Fast. 2.233.

57. On Medea’s epistle as a way to (re)build her identity, see Michalopoulos 2021, 62, with bibliography.

58. Cf. Dido in Verg. Aen. 4.296–306.

59. According to Aristotle’s physiology, procreation is actively fostered by the semen of the father, and the mother plays no active role in the process but represents a mere repository (Gen. an. 1.2; see Connell 2015, 42–52, for Aristotle’s treatment of sex difference as more nuanced). Also, according to Roman law, the children normally belonged to the father (see patria potestas); however, as we have seen, Jason’s patria potestas is somehow questioned by Medea.

60. This representation recalls a Roman triumphus: see, e.g., Am. 1.2.25–28, 42; Mart. 8.65.10; Deianira’s portrait of Iole in Her. 9 (discussed above). Duco (152) is also the technical verb featuring in the expression uxorem ducere and may thus allude to Jason’s marriage with Creusa (see Hey in TLL online, V 1, 2135–2165, s.v. “duco”).

61. Heinze 1997, 188.

62. See Eur. Med. 90–118, 894–905, 928–931; also Ov. Met. 6.619–623 (Procne); Sen. Med. 926–957; Hosidius Geta, Medea 382–385; Hypsipyle at Her. 6.123–124.

63. Speaking of Seneca’s Medea, Battistella (2015, 447) observes, “After being forced to lose her role of coniunx because of Jason’s betrayal, she [scil. Medea] will also give up her function of mater.”

64. See OLD, s.v. “communis.” See Met. 6.624–628 (“invitique oculi lacrimis maduere coactis,” And, unwillingly, the eyes became wet due to forced tears; 628: Procne while meditating to kill her son). Medea’s tears recall Jason’s tears at 91, as well as other heroines (e.g., Her. 3.3, 4.175–176, 10.137–138, 15.97–98).

65. On the ambivalent meaning of these lines, see Jacobson 1974, 122n32; Bessone 1997, 256–257. For the resemblance between father and son, see Ov. Her. 8.3; Met. 4.290–291; 9.264–265; Tr. 4.4.3; Pont. 2.8.31.

66. See Hypsipyle’s concern regarding the opportunity to send her children to Medea (Her. 6.125–130, below). Line 188 (see partus, which is a rather concrete substantive to indicate the children: see Kruse in TLL online, X 1, 536–543, s.v. “partus”; see esp. 540.18–19) allusively hints at Medea’s abominable acts against her own offspring; see Rosati 1988, 305n3.

67. According to Jacobson (1974, 110–111), the form germanus (instead of frater) indicates that in Ovid’s version Absyrtus was the biological brother of Medea, instead of her stepbrother (see Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.241–244): this would make Medea’s crime even more horrible. For the episode of the murder of Absyrtus, see Eur. Med. 167; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.452–481; Hyg. Fab. 23; Sen. Med. 47–48, 130–132, 278, 473–474, 487, 963–964; also Ov. Tr. 3.9.25–32 (with Huskey 2004, 274–289); Ib. 435–436.

68. For littera as epistula, see McKeown 1989, 324–325, on Am. 1.12.2; Barchiesi 1992, 201, on Her. 3.1, with references; for locus as a (literary) passage, see Kuhlmann in TLL online, VII 2, 1593.62–1595.47, s.v. “locus.”

69. See Hypermestra in Her. 14.19–20: “quam tu caede putes fungi potuisse mariti, / scribere de facta non sibi caede timet” (She you think capable of having compassed her husband’s death fears even to write of murder done not by herself!). The reference to Medea’s hands, which are repeatedly mentioned in the sources (see Huskey 2004, 276–278), hints at the infanticide: see Eur. Med. 1055, 1244–1246, 1253–1254; also Sen. Med. 127–129, 181, 479–480, 680–681, 809, 952–953.

70. See Her. 7.183–186, 11.3; also 8.60.

71. See Irigaray 1985, 112–129.

72. Women have always been perceived (by society) as essentially inferior to men. Such inferiority—and deficiency—was initially supported by Pythagorean and Aristotelian philosophy. In the Metaphysics (986a), for instance, Aristotle lists some principles within the so-called Table of Opposites: here, “female,” together with “bad,” “darkness,” and “oblong,” opposes “male,” “good,” “light”; see McLaughlin 2004, 7–25.

73. Braidotti 2002, 111–116; Braidotti 2013, 132.

74. For Absyrtus’s sparagmos in Apollonius as a ritual mutilation, see Ceulemans 2007, 97–112; for a broader anthropological angle on twin rituals concerning death and (symbolic) murders (followed by regeneration and rebirth), see Turner 1969, 44–93. According to a pseudo-etymology (see Gell. NA 13.10.4), a brother (frater) was a sort of second self (fere alter): “In other words, similarity was the constituting factor of the Roman fraternal identity” (Bremmer 2008, 62).

75. Freud 1919, 116–187.

76. For this episode, see Met. 7.297–349; Eur. Med. 486–487, 504–505; also Sen. Med. 258–261, 475–476; Pelias’s sparagmos is thematically linked to the murder of Absyrtus.

77. See OLD, s.v. “virgineus”; see lines 81, 111.

78. For initiation rites, see Van Gennep 1960, 65–115.

79. For Hymen cantatus, see Her. 6.44; see Rhem in TLL online, VI 3, 3140–3141, s.v. “hymen”; for the use of socialis in relation to a marital union, see Am. 3.11.45; Her. 4.17 (above, chapter 3); Met. 7.800, 14.380; see Heinze 1997, 182–183. The reference to a sound, a message, or a song coming to the aures often forecasts catastrophic events: see Ov. Her. 3.59–60; Met. 14.749–750; Sen. HF 414–417; Pha. 850; Ag. 397–399; HO 1128–1129; also Her. 11.73–74.

80. See Prop. 2.7.11–12. The tibia was a traditional instrument used during wedding ceremonies (see, e.g., Plaut. Cas. 798; see Vetter in RE VI A, 808–812, s.v. “tibia”), while the tuba was used at funerals (Hor. Sat. 1.6.42–44; Verg. Aen. 11.192; Tac. Ann. 14.10; see Lammert in RE VII A, 749–752, s.v. “tuba”).

81. See Her. 2.117–118; 6.42, 45; 7.95–96; 11.103–106; 14.25–28; for a broader study on the conflation between wedding and funeral rituals in Greek tragedy, see Rehm 1994.

82. See Penelope at Her. 1.22; Sappho (15.112); Hero (19.192).

83. See Her. 4.120, 9.150; see Manigk in RE XX 1, 1239–1284, s.v. “pignus.”

84. The torus may refer, through a metonymy, to the presumed lawfulness of Medea and Jason’s union; see lines 82, 86; Met. 7.91 (promisitque torum); Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.1128–1129; for a similar metonymy, see, e.g., Prop. 3.12.6, 4.4.62; the form redde also hints at a legal frame (see Plaut. Aul. 829; Ars am. 3.449–350; Petron. Sat. 57.5; Sen. Ep. 18.14); see Alekou 2018, 327–328.

85. See line 72; Met. 7.46–47; for the motif of the violated fides, see above, chapter 5.

86. As observed, the trials recur insistently throughout the epistle: for the defeat of the dragon, see 49, 60, 107, 171; also OLD, s.v. “quiesco,” 6a.

87. See Jason’s plea at line 82.

88. See line 187, communis … natos; Her. 6.61–62: “quod tamen e nobis gravida celatur in alvo, / vivat, et eiusdem simus uterque parens” (However, what lies heavy in your womb from me may come to live and may we both be its parents); Sen. Med. 921–925, 933–935: “scelus est Iason genitor et maius scelus / Medea mater. occidant, non sunt mei; / pereant, mei sunt” (The crime is having Jason as their father, and the worse crime is having Medea as their mother. Let them die, since they are not mine; let them perish, since they are mine).

89. Braidotti 2002, 39–52; Ferrando 2013, 27.

90. Braidotti (2002, 60), who draws on Irigaray; see also Braidotti 1994, 133, 180–190.

91. Braidotti 2002, 74.

92. See Braidotti 2002, 44: “The maternal is the laboratory for the elaboration of the ‘other of the Other’, that is to say the virtual feminine which is activated by feminists in a process that is both political and conceptual.”

93. On Procne, Agave, and Ino in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and their infanticide as a means to appropriate agency, see Salzman-Mitchell 2021, 25–50.

94. As per Braidotti 2002, 49, building upon Irigaray: “The maternal body provides both the site of destitution and of recovery for the female feminist subjectivity, understood as a virtual reality of a collectively re-negotiated referential bond.”

95. See Eur. Med. 371–375, 803–806; Sen. Med. 146–154, 174–175; on this passage vis-à-vis Medea’s literary history, see Landolfi 1998, 57–89.

96. See Hypsipyle’s reference to Medea in Her. 6.157: “nec male parta diu teneat peiusque relinquat” (Nor may she long keep her ill-gotten produces but leave them in worse conditions; with Rosati 1988, 305–309); Sen. Med. 25–26, 50, 55. For the metaphorical meaning of parior/parturio, see, e.g., Cic. Mur. 84; Hor. Carm. 1.7.16, 4.5.26–27; see Röck-Blundell in TLL online, X 1, 534.51–535.9, s.v. “parturio.”

97. For Medea’s furor, see, e.g., Eur. Med. 38–45, 287–291; Sen. Med. 174–175, 409–410, 856. This is a specifically tragic motif: see Rem. am. 375, “grande sonant tragici; tragicos decet ira cothurnos” (Tragedians sound a noble strand: anger is appropriate to tragic cothurni).

98. Childbirth is characterized by the annihilation and at the same time the redetermination and reappropriation of the feminine body: see Kristeva 1985, 138.

99. See Braidotti 2002, 65–116.

100. “Non-unitary identity implies a large degree of internal dissonance, that is to say, contradictions and paradoxes” (Braidotti 2002, 40).

101. See Eur. Med. 1078–1080; Sen. Med. 953 (“ira, qua ducis, sequor,” Anger, wherever you lead, I follow); also 123, 895, 916–917.

102. See Barchiesi 1993, 343–345. See also Sen. Med. 917–919: “nescioquid ferox / decrevit animus intus et nondum sibi / audet fateri” (The spirit within me has determined on I do not know what brutality, but dare not yet acknowledge it to itself); also Eur. Med. 106–110, 171–172, 907, and one of two extant lines from Ovid’s lost Medea (“feror huc illuc, vae, plena deo,” I am carried from one side to the other, alas, possessed by the god; Sen. Suas. 3.7); Procne in Met. 6.613–619. The form maius recalls the iunctura of maius opus, which hints at either the epic or tragic genre (on this, see Michalopoulos 2021, 74, with bibliography). While the alliteration characterizing this last line appears to also evoke Medea’s given name (mens mea maius), the concept of maius agere recalls the etymology of the name of the heroine—from μέδομαι, the “one who plots” (see Bessone 1997, 285).

103. See Sen. Med. 45–47: “effera ignota horrida, / tremenda caelo pariter ac terris mala / mens intus agitat” (Savage, unheard-of, horrible things, evils fearful to heaven and earth alike, my mind stirs up within me); also Eur. Med. 1056, 1078–1080.

104. Ovid’s Medea seems to ironically play with the elegiac topos that depicts amor as a god ruling the soul (see Tib. 2.1.79–80, 2.6.15–18; Ov. Am. 1.2.8, 17; 2.9.25–28; Ars am. 3.718), and by implication with the creation of erotic poetry. In this case, however, the deus is a darker and more dangerous hypostasis of Medea’s plans.

105. Hinds 1993, 9–47; Trinacty 2007, 63–78.