Medea | Stasimon 2 | Summary

Summary

After Jason leaves the Chorus extols moderation in love in a choral prayer to Aphrodite, goddess of love. It asks her not to strike them with passionate love driven by jealousy or desire but to grant them moderation and peace in marriage. The Chorus also prays to their homeland never to be exiled because "there's no affliction worse than losing one's own land." Finally, the Chorus says it could never be friends with Jason because he shamed and was dishonest with his family.

Analysis

This choral pairing of the motifs of moderation in love and desperation in exile brings Medea's suffering to the fore. Medea suffers because she is passionate, not moderate, in her love for Jason. It is made worse because of the "affliction" of exile. Committing crimes against her homeland when she helped Jason acquire the Golden Fleece forced her to flee with him. To ensure their escape, she committed even more atrocious crimes—murdering her brother, chopping up his body, and scattering the remains for their father to find. Later, again for Jason, she forced King Pelias's daughters to kill their father. All these acts were rooted in her passionate love for Jason, and, as long as she was with him, she could bear her exile. But now he has left her to bear it alone—and he doesn't even see this betrayal as important.