Medea

Medea is one of the most multifaceted female characters in tragedy of all time: woman and matchmaker, wife and lover, daughter, sister and mother, symbol of the woman humiliated and vengeful to the extreme of her own pain. Abandoned by her husband Jason, who wants to marry the daughter of the King of Corinth, she feels cheated and slighted and acts accordingly: first she murders her rival and then kills the children she had with Jason. Euripides was born in Salamis around 480 BC and is one of the three great tragic poets along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. He wrote around ninety plays, including Alcestis, The Suppliants and Electra and, despite not having much success in life, won four prizes in the Athenian contemporary competitions. After his death around 406 BC at the court of King Archelaus of Macedonia, where he had moved, his fame spread throughout the Greek world. His works exude great skepticism towards religious beliefs and an approach to the human way of dealing with and solving problems.