How should we respond to Medeas escape at the end of the play? What does it suggest about the gods?

The
ancient Greek tragic play
Medea was written by Euripides (c. 484-407 B.C.),
and it
was first performed at the City Dionysia (the Festival of
Dionysus)
in Athens in 431 B.C. According to accounts of the time,
Medea was not
well-received at the Festival, due
primarily to the way in which Euripides changed the Medea
legend to include
the sensationalistic event of Medea's vengeful killing of her own

children.

In the ancient Greek legend, Medea and her children were
killed by
the people of Corinth for Medea's murder of King Creon and Princess
Glauce.

In Euripides's Medea, it
appears that Medea escapes punishment or
even any negative consequence for
her bad behavior, not only for killing her children but also
for a lifetime
of violence which culminated in the play with the murders of Jason's wife,

Princess Glauce; her father, King Creon; and Medea's two young sons, Mermerus
and
Pheres.

It's is not altogether unusual that Medea
didn't suffer directly for
these murders. The tragic heroes of many ancient
Greek plays suffer a tragic fall, but their
punishment is often limited to
the tragic fall itself. Like Oedipus, they go on living, albeit
under
significantly changed circumstances. Those who suffer the ultimate tragic fall,
like
Antigone, die as the result of self-inflicted but otherwise undeserved
punishment.

Medea's fate seems wholly disproportionate to
the gravity of the murders she committed,
particularly the murder of her
sons, which is viewed as particularly heinous.

The sun
god, Helios, sends a chariot of winged dragons to rescue Medea from the
people
of Corinth. She's carried away to bury her children at the mountain of
the goddess Hera, the
Queen of the Gods, then she's taken to Athens to live
out her life.

By the
direct intervention of the gods,
Euripides seems to be suggesting that the gods are sympathetic
to Medea's
plight: that of the wronged women driven to revenge by the oppression of a

male-dominated society.

Another consideration might be that, no
matter where
their sympathies lieeither with Medea or with the many people
she killedthe gods protect their
own. Medea is a niece of Circe, a goddess of
magic, and Medea is a granddaughter of Helios, the
sun god who sent the
chariot of winged dragons to rescue Medea.

This is

emphasized in the closing lines of the play, in which theremarks on the inability of
mere humans
to understand the minds of the gods.

CHORUS. And the end
men looked for cometh not,
And a path
is there where no man thought:
So hath
it fallen here.

As a side note, according to one version
of the
Medea legend, Medea continued her murderous ways in Athens. She married Aegeus, and
they
had a son together. Medea attempted to poison Aegeus's long-lost son,
Theseus, on his return to
Athens in order to secure her own son's
inheritance.

After her failure to
kill Theseus, Medea fled
back to Colchis, where her father, Ae«tes, was King. Ae«tes had been
deposed
by his brother Perses, and Medea killed Perses in order to restore the kingdom to
her
father.

Aside from her own children, who she killed
out of revenge against
Jason, Medea seems to have killed anyone who crossed
her, and she also killed innocent people,
including her brother, Absyrtus, to
thwart anyone who attempted to hold her accountable for her

murders.

Medea seems never to have suffered any remorse for any of
the people
she killed, and she even says that the remorse she felt for
killing her own children was
overshadowed by the joy she felt at having taken
the ultimate revenge against
Jason.