CREON.

Except my children, I hold nought so dear.

MEDEA.

To mortals what a dreadful scourge is Love!

CREON.

As Fortune dictates, Love becomes, I ween, Either a curse or blessing.

Away, vain woman, free me from my cares.

MEDEA.

No lack of cares have I.

CREON.

Thou from this spot

Shalt by my servants' hands ere long be torn.

MEDEA.

Not thus, O Creon, I your mercy crave.

CREON.

To trouble me, it seems, thou art résolv'd.

MEDEA.

I will depart, nor urge this fond request.

CREON.

Why dost thou struggle then, nor from our realm

Withdraw thyself?

MEDEA.

Allow me this one day

Here to remain, till my maturer thoughts

Instruct me to what region I can fly,

Where for my Sons find shelter, since their Sire

Attends not to the welfare of his race.

Take pity on them, for you also know
What 'tis to be a Parent, and must feel
Parental love as for myself, I heed not
The being doom'd to exile, but lament
Their hapless fortunes.

CREON.

No tyrannic age

Within this bosom dwells, but pity oft

Hath warp'd my better judgement, and tho' now
My error I perceive, shall thy bequest

Be granted: yet of this must I forewarn thee;;
If when to-morrow with his orient beams
Phoebus the world revisits, he shall view
Thee and thy children still within the bounds
Of these domains, thou certainly shalt die,
Th' irrevocable sentence is pronounc'd.
But if thou needs must tarry, tarry here
This single day, for in so short a space

Thou canst not execute the ills I dread. [Exit CREON.

CHORUS.

Alas! thou wretched woman, overpower'd By thy afflictions, whither wilt thou turn, What hospitable board, what mansion, fiud, Or country to protect thee from these ills? Into what storms of misery have the Gods Caus'd thee to rush!

MEDEA.

On every side distress.

Assails me: who can contradict this truth?

Yet think not that my sorrows thus shall end.
By yon new-wedded pair must be sustain'd
Dire conflicts, and no light or trivial woes
By them who in affinity are join'd

With this devoted house. Can ye suppose
That I would e'er have sooth'd him, had no gain
Or stratagem induc'd me? else to him
Never would I have spoken, nor once rais'd
My suppliant hands. But now is he so lost
In folly, that when all my schemes with ease
He might have baffled, if he from this land
Had cast me forth, he grants me to remain
For this one day, and ere the setting Sun,

Three of thy foes will I destroy, the Sire,
The Daughter, and my (11) Husband: various mean
Have I of slaying them, and, O my friends,

Am at a loss to fix on which I first

Shall undertake, or to consume with flames
The bridal mansion, or a dagger plunge

Into their bosoms, entering unperceiv'd

The chamber where they sleep: but there remains
One danger to obstruct my path; if caught
Stealing into the palace, and intent.

On such emprise, in death shall I afford

A subject of derision to my foes.
This obvious method were the best, in which
I am most skill'd, to take their lives away
By sorceries. Be it so; suppose them dead.
What city will receive me for its guest,
What hospitable foreigner afford

A shelter in his land, or to his hearth
Admit, or snatch me from impending fate?
Alas! I have no friend. I will delay
A little longer therefore, if perchance
To skreen me from destruction, I can find
Some fortress, then I in this deed of blood
With artifice and silence will engage
But, if by woes inextricable urg'd
Two closely, snatching up the dagger, them
Am I resolv❜d to slay, altho' myself
Must perish too; for courage unappall'd
This bosom animates: By that dread Queen,
By her whom first of all th' immortal Powers
I worship, and to aid my bold emprise

(11) "It may be asked how it came to pass, that Medea did not carry "into execution this threat of killing Jason. She was prevented by the messenger, who, immediately after the deaths of Glaucè and Creon, "terrified her by saying, it was necessary for her to fly with the utmost "speed; she therefore had not time to accomplish this design against "her husband." SCHOLIAST.

Have chosen, the thrice aweful Hecaté
Who in my innermost apartment dwells,

Not one of them shall triumph in the pangs

With which they wound my heart; for I will render
This spousal rite to them a plenteous source
Of bitterness and mourning, they shall rue
Their union, rue my exile from this land.
But now come on, nor, O Medea, spare
Thy utmost science to devise and frame
Deep stratagems, with swift career advance
To deeds of horror.

Thy utmost courage.

Such a strife demands

Hast thou any sense
Of these indignities? nor is it fit

That thou, who spring'st from an illustrious Sire,
And from that great progenitor the (12) Sun,
Should'st be derided by the impious brood
Of (13) Sisyphus, at Jason's nuptial feast

(12) Hesiod, in his Generation of the Gods, informs us, that the Sun begot on Perseis one of the Daughters of Ocenaus and Tethys, the enchantress Circe, and Eetes king of Colchos, and that Eetes, with the peculiar approbation of the Gods, married Idya, one of the sisters of his mother Perseis, and by her was father to Medea.

(13) Barnes in his note interprets this as spoken of Creon, whom he calls the son of Sisyphus; but the Scholiast, in his observations on the 20th verse of this Tragedy, asserts, that Creon's father was Lucaithus, who succeeded Bellerophon, Sisyphus's Grandson, in the throne of Corinth, but does not appear to have been of that family. It appears from Homer, that Bellerophon incurred the hatred of the Gods, and was expelled from his hereditary dominions; but that, in consequence of his having married the Daughter of Iobates king of Lycia, his two Grandsons Sarpedon and Glaucus were in possession of the sovereignty of that country at the time of the Trojan war, at which period it does not appear that any of the posterity of Sisyphus were left at Corinth. Jason may without any great impropriety be called cupos, as he was in fact the Great-nephew of Sisyphus; Apollodorus having informed us, that Sisyphus and Cretheus, whose son Eson was the father of Jason, were both of them sons of Eolus. These circumstances induce me to think that Loup here means Jason. In Palmerius de Grentemesnil, Exercitationes in Auctores Græcos, it is supposed that the king of Corinth here spoken of is the elder Glaucus, who was the son of Sisyphus, and father to Bellerophon, and that he bore two names, or rather that the name of

Expos'd to scorn: for thou hast ample skill
To right thyself. Altho' by nature form'd
Without a genius apt for virtuous deeds,
We women are in mischiefs most expert.

CHORUS.

OD E.

I. 1.

Now upward to their source the rivers flow,
And in a retrogade career
Justice and all the baffled virtues go.
The views of man are insincere,
Nor to the Gods tho' he appeal,
And with an oath each promise seal,
Can he be trusted. Yet doth veering Fame
Loudly assert the female claim,
Causing our sex to be renown'd,

And our whole lives with glory crown'd.
No longer shall we mourn the wrongs
Of slanderous and inhuman tongues.

I. 2.

Nor shall the Muses, as in (14) antient days,
Make the deceit of womankind

Creon is here given him by Euripides merely as King; Kgv, regnans, imperans, dominus. This explanation accords much better than that of the Scholiast with the period of Medea's residence at Corinth, which was only a few years subsequent to the Argonautic expedition; but not with the usual accounts of the death of Glaucus, who is represented as having been torn in pieces by his mares called Potniades, from having been trained by him at Potnia, a city in Boeotia, who, according to one of the Scholiasts on the Phonissæ, v. 1141. edit. King, became so furious, that they at length devoured their Lord.

(14) "Alluding to the Poems of Archilochus, who was an antient "writer in respect to Euripides, though not in respect to Medea." Dr, Musgrave. This Ode treating of the faults of the two sexes and their mutual reproaches, is particularly calculated to remind the reader of the controversy and festive taunts mentioned by Conon, as having passed between Medea and her female attendants on one part, and Jason and the comrades who sailed with him in the Argo on the other, after they had