Exodos (1293-1419)
Women who stand here at the door,Jason
Chorus
Oh, wretched man, you do not know into what a depth of evils
you have come, Jason, or you would not have uttered these words.
Jason
What is it? Does she intend to kill me too?
Chorus
Your children are dead, killed by their mother’s hand.
Jason
Oh no! what are you saying? Woman, you have ruined me. 1310
Chorus
You must think of your children as gone.
Jason
Where did she kill them? Inside the house or outside?
Chorus
Opening the gates you will see your children murdered.
Jason
Unlock the doors, now, servants,
unfasten the bolts, that I may see the two disasters, 1315
my children dead and her — I’ll make her pay.
Medea
Why are you shaking the doors and trying to force them open,
to find the bodies and me who did the deed?
You are wasting your effort. If you need anything of me,
say so, if you want anything, but you will never touch me with your hand.
1320
Such a conveyance the Sun god, father of my father
has given me, a defense against the hand of my enemies.
Jason
You abomination, oh worst, most hateful woman,
to the gods and to me and to the whole human race.
You had the heart to take the sword to your own children1325
whom you bore, and you have left me childless and devastated.
You did these things and do you still look on the sunlight
and earth, after daring the most appalling deed?
Damn you. Now I see, I didn’t understand it then,
when I brought you, so hideous a monster, into Greece, 1330
from your home and that barbarous land,
betrayer of your father and the country which reared you.
The gods have hurled your avenging spirit against me.
For you killed your brother at the hearth
and then boarded the beautiful ship Argo. 1335
That is where you started. But after marrying
me and bearing my children,
because of the marriage bed you killed them.
There is no Greek woman who would have dared
such deeds, any of whom I could have married, but instead 1340
chose you, a marriage tie that has ruined me,
a lioness, not a woman, with a temper
more savage than Tyrrhenian Scylla.
But not even ten thousand curses could
sting you. Such boldness is in you. 1345
Go, you depraved murderer of your children.
What is left to me but to cry out for my fate?
I will not enjoy my new marriage,
and the children whom I fathered and brought up
I will never be able to speak to them alive, but I have lost them.1350
Medea
I could prolong an answer to your words
if father Zeus were not aware
what you have gotten from me and what you did in return.
You were not going to disrespect your marriage to me
and lead a happy life, ridiculing me. 1355
And the royal bride and Creon who arranged the marriage for you
were not going to exile me from the country and get away with it.
Remember this, and call me lioness if you wish
and Scylla dwelling in the Tyrrhenian land,
I have wrung your heart as I had to do.1360
Jason
You will suffer too and share in this tragedy.
Medea
Be certain of that. But the pain is pleasure if you do not laugh.
Jason
Oh children, what a terrible mother you had.
Medea
Oh children, how you were destroyed by your father’s disease.
Jason
My right hand did not strike them. 1365
Medea
But your abuse and your new marriage.
Jason
You thought the marriage bed was worth your children’s lives?
Medea
Do you think this is a slight wrong for a woman?
Jason
If she is a good woman. But to you nothing is good.
Medea
These are dead. This will sting you.1370
Jason
These are a pollution to you.
Medea
The gods know who began this tragedy.
Jason
Then they know the abomination of your heart.
Medea
Hate me. And I hate your bitter voice.
Jason
And I yours. The separation is easy.1375
Medea
How then? What shall I do? I too want it.
Jason
Allow me to bury my children and mourn over them.
Medea
No, never. I shall bury them with my own hand,
taking them to the sanctuary of Hera Akraia
so that none of my enemies will outrage them 1380
tearing up their tombs. And in this land of Sisyphus
I shall establish a sacred festival and ritual
to last forever for this unholy murder.
And I shall go myself to the land of Erectheus
to live with Aigeus the son of Pandion. 1385
But you, a coward, you will die a coward’s death as you deserve,
struck on your head by a remnant of the wreck of the Argo
seeing a bitter end to your marriage to me.
Jason
But may the Avenger of children destroy you
and the Justice that haunts murderers. 1390
Medea
What god or divine spirit would listen to you
an oath-breaker and deceiver of guests?
Jason
Ah, ah, loathsome child murderer.
Medea
Go home and bury your wife.
Jason
I am going, denied rights to my two children. 1395
Medea
Do not mourn yet. Wait for old age.
Jason
Oh dearest children.
Medea
to their mother, not to you.
Jason
And yet you killed them.
Medea
Yes, to wound you.
Jason
Ah me. I long to kiss
the sweet lips of my children.1400
Medea
Now you speak to them, now you love them.
Before you pushed them aside.
Jason
In the name of the gods
let me touch the soft skin of my children.
Medea
That will not happen. Your words are thrown into the empty air.
Jason
Zeus, do you hear how I am driven away 1405
and what I suffer from this loathsome
child-killer, this lioness?
This is left to me, this I can do,
to mourn and cry out to the gods
and to call the divine spirits to witness how she 1410
killed my children and keeps me
from touching them with my hands and burying their bodies.
I wish I had never fathered them
to see them destroyed by you.
Chorus
Of many things Zeus in Olympus is keeper, 1415
many are the things the gods bring about against all reason,
and what is looked for does not happen after all,
yet a god finds a way for the unexpected.
That is how this story has ended.