Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment

Euripides persuades us that love is what makes us human

Kate Fleetwood as Medea, in a production directed by Rupert Goold at the Almeida theatre, London, in 2015.
Kate Fleetwood as Medea, in a production directed by Rupert Goold at the Almeida theatre, London, in 2015. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Charlotte Higgins is right to see Medea, in Euripides’s tragedy, as heroic (Greek tragedies like Medea are an ethical nightmare. That’s why we need them, 11 March). Euripides presents Jason, Medea’s husband, as blind to the power of Aphrodite, and therefore doomed to suffer horribly.

There is a vital speech from Medea, when, having decided to kill her own and Jason’s children, she says: “Yes, I know what sorts of evil things I am going to do, but passion, which is to blame for the greatest evils for mortals, is greater than my considered thoughts.”

Euripides does nothing to justify Medea’s infanticide. It simply stands as a measure of her passion: she loved Jason enough to kill her own children. It is hard to imagine a greater or worse love.

This is not to say that we ordinary mortals will have our children murdered or our second wives consumed by poisoned robes if we do not understand Aphrodite. Euripides can, however, through the cathartic extremes of tragic drama, persuade us that love is what makes us human and that we ruin, waste and trivialise human life by ignoring that.
Michael Bulley
Chalon-sur-Saône, France

• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.