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 CREON. No tyrannic age Within this bosom dwells, but pity oft Hath warp'd my better judgement, and tho' now Be granted: yet of this must I forewarn thee;; 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. With this devoted house. Can ye suppose Three of thy foes will I destroy, the Sire, Am at a loss to fix on which I first Shall undertake, or to consume with flames Into their bosoms, entering unperceiv'd The chamber where they sleep: but there remains On such emprise, in death shall I afford A subject of derision to my foes. A shelter in his land, or to his hearth (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 Not one of them shall triumph in the pangs With which they wound my heart; for I will render Thy utmost courage. Such a strife demands Hast thou any sense That thou, who spring'st from an illustrious Sire, (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 CHORUS. OD E. I. 1. Now upward to their source the rivers flow, And our whole lives with glory crown'd. I. 2. Nor shall the Muses, as in (14) antient days, 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 |