Medea’s Family

Abstract

Medea plays a very important role in Seneca’s rewriting of Attic tragic theatre. Compared to Euripides’ model, its distinctive feature is the haunting memory of past crimes – her betrayal of the family because of Jason. The obsessive anamnesis of fratricide and the consequent rereading Seneca offers of Medea’s infanticide are striking. Hers is not only a terrible revenge on Jason, but also an expiatory self-destructive gesture to soothe her remorse towards both father and brother. The mythographic version followed by Seneca finds the heroine guilty of the murder and dismemberment of Absyrtus who is significantly a child. Thus fratricide appears to be an ominous prefiguration of infanticide and the picture of Absyrtus as infans hypostasizes a short-circuit between past and present and opens