Medea Rejuvenates 
Herself: Female Roles 
and the Use of the 
Body in Seneca’s 
Medea
Ildikó Csepregi*
INTRODUCTION
One of the central themes for scholars, readers, and spectators of 
Seneca’s Medea is the change of Medea’s various female roles, the 
crescendo through which the abandoned princess becomes a child- 
murdering monster.1 From these different crises of female roles, I 
would like to examine how Seneca sees Medea, following closely the 
text of the tragedy and, ultimately, the testimonies of vase-painting 
that represent her. Both Seneca’s text and the various stratifications 
of the myth and earlier witnesses, but above all the pictorial repre-
sentations, help us to understand how a much more positive image of 
Medea, radically eclipsed by Euripides, was possible, to which Seneca 
also returns. At the heart of this image is Medea’s ability to govern the 
passage of time and the limits between life and death. The aim of this 
paper is to illustrate the arc of the sequence of events through which 
Medea rejuvenates herself – as she had rejuvenated others before her 
as if she were simply disassembling herself and putting herself in her 
own cauldron to be reborn as her younger and stronger self.
1 The research presented in this article is part of my work as a researcher within 
the Grupo GEAT (Grupo de Estudos de Arqueoloxía, e Antigüidade Terri-
torio); an action financed by the Ministry of Universities under application 
33.50.460A.752 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR through a 
María Zambrano contract from the University of Vigo.
doi: https://doi.org/10.4312/clotho.5.2.5-31
* University of Vigo, Department of History; As Lagoas s/n, 32004 Ourense; 
ildiko.csepregi@uvigo.es. 
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI6
PRETENDING TO BE VULNERABLE?
At the beginning of Seneca’s tragedy, Medea might seem vulnerable 
in various aspects: because of her status as a woman, because of her 
social and family status, and because of her current situation. She, 
however, uses her vulnerability as the source of her strength; in a 
surprising way, she takes these states off her shoulders and, using her 
feminine arts, she completes her metamorphosis, her rejuvenation, 
as if she were in her own cauldron, becoming the Medea of legends.
Before rashly dismissing the theme of vulnerability in the figure of 
Medea, it is important to draw attention to a phenomenon that Seneca 
was very fond of and that he used several times in his tragedies: his 
characters sometimes act opposite each other. On the one hand, this 
is simply a successful dramaturgical gesture on Seneca’s part; on the 
other, the theatricality of the work and the play with the spectator-
-reader are also evident. Thus, Atreus or Clytemnestra play a role in 
lulling their opponents into suspicion so that their revenge can be 
carried out even more unrestrainedly. Similarly, Medea pretends to be 
vulnerable in front of Creon: “Even if I am burdened with misfortune, 
even if I am wandering, pleading, alone and abandoned, struck on all 
sides,” quamvis enim sim clade miseranda obruta / expulsa supplex 
sola deserta, undique / afflicta (207–9).
This role-playing is continued, at some point, in front of Jason, 
with pretending for a moment they are fleeing together.2 Soon she 
goes on to play with the idea of revisiting her and their previous 
dwelling places, before discarding them one after the other. The 
deceptive characteristic of her role-playing is subsequently revealed 
not only by the events but also by Medea herself when she says, for 
instance, in an aside that she has discovered Jason’s vulnerability. In 
my reading, Medea also uses the mask of vulnerability to prepare for 
her great revenge, in which she will realize herself and be reborn in 
the fullness of her power.
Those around her do not seem vulnerable at all: Creon, the mighty 
king of Corinth; his daughter Creusa, whom Jason describes as power-
ful and a queen; and even Jason, the most shaken but still the future 
son-in-law and heir to the throne, in a new country, a new marriage, 
with new children.
2 “Fugimus, Iason: fugimus – hoc non est novum, / mutare sedes; causa fugiendi 
nova est: / pro te solebam fugere, discedo exeo, / penatibus profugere quam cogis 
tuis: / at quo remittas?” (449–51)
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 7
When someone on the outside warns her of her vulnerability, 
Medea flatly refuses. In the scene in which Medea’s nurse tries to 
persuade her to take cover and advises her on the conduct befitting 
a woman – silence, deflating her anger, and the need to adapt to cir-
cumstances – the nurse also lists her fragile states:
Abiere Colchi, coniugis nulla est fides 
nihilque superest opibus e tantis tibi. 
Your people are far away, your husband you cannot trust, 
of your power, that was great, nothing remains. (164–65)
 It is surprising that the nurse herself should say this to her, someone 
who was surely aware of Medea’s abilities – why does she say that her 
power has vanished? Could it be for the very same reason that Medea 
claims her powers have grown because she was already a mother?
Medea answers with shocking words: 
Medea superest, hic mare et terras vides 
ferrumque et ignes et deos et fulmina. 
Medea remains: in her you will see the sea and the earth, 
the iron and the fire, the gods and the lightning. (166–67)
Character manifestations of Medea, such as this, play a role in the 
fact that secondary literature writes numerous times that Medea be-
haves like a man, or at least as an androgyne.3 Someone sees in her a 
person who denies her femininity and would like to become a man, 
interpreting line 984: rapta virginitas redit, “my stolen virginity has 
returned,” as a symbol of Medea’s attempt to become a man,4 and in 
a similar way interpreting Medea nunc sum (910), as the culmination 
of the abandonment of all her womanhood.5 This affirmation means 
the opposite, just as the famous image of returned virginity: Medea’s 
3 Moreau, Le mythe de Jason et Médée: le va-nu-pied et la sorcière, 213, or Walsh, 
“The Metamorphoses of Seneca’s Medea,” 71–93. 
4 “Medea’s metamorphosis is not merely about turning back the clock. Inextri-
cably bound to her restoration of a lost past (and the removal of Jason’s presence 
in her life) is Medea’s endeavor to masculinize herself over the course of the 
tragedy, perhaps as a means of asserting an identity when faced with the loss of 
appropriate gender roles.” Walsh, “The Metamorphoses of Seneca’s Medea,” 81.
5 It “seems to culminate also from the banishment of feminine things.” Walsh, 
“The Metamorphoses of Seneca’s Medea,” 82.
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI8
gestures and actions are by all means feminine. They arise from her 
deep awareness of being a woman, with a genuinely magical ability to 
transform her situation, her body, the world, and the people around her.
Where does this wild and masculine image come from? Already, 
Medea’s cunning intelligence has been interpreted as masculine;6 it 
is more often the case that scholars attribute this concept of Medea 
as a male figure to the extraneous presence of violence, the shedding 
of blood, and the series of murders.7 
VIOLENCE
When reading Seneca’s tragedies, one of the striking features is the 
meticulous description of bloody events, the brutality, the crude nar-
ration of amorous passion, in short, the strong presence of the body, 
of physicality in the plays. Thyestes’ messenger recounts in detail the 
horror of Atreus’ cooking, Clytemnestra passionately continues to 
cut off Agamemnon’s already-dead head, Phaedra’s chorus explains 
to Theseus which parts of the dismembered body should be placed 
where or, if a suitable piece is missing, where it fits best.
The strong imagery of physical reality is a natural feature of the 
genre itself: theater wants us to see through action, vision, and spe-
ech. Roman theater is characterized by a more spectacular and raw 
presentation than Greek theater. Think, for instance, of the Roman 
comedy, the mimus, the atellana, the gladiator performances.8 We 
should not see this as a less demanding artistic value but as the need 
for a community with a different mentality and a different theatrical 
tradition.9
In addition to violence, in Seneca, the representation of the imagi-
nary and the physical within the plays is an essential element, a pivot 
point in the relationship between the characters. In his tragedies, 
the spectacle is an important means of dramatic effect, not only the 
spectacle seen by the audience but the spectacle that has meaning for 
the characters, that becomes the basis of the plot or even part of the 
revenge. This is well illustrated, for example, by Euripides’ famously 
different final scene: in the Greek drama, the death of the children 
6 Griffiths, Medea.
7 For this emotional profile of Medea in relation to the murders, see Battistella, 
“Medea and the Joy of Killing,” 97–113.
8 See Tarrant, “Senecan Drama and Its Antecedents,” 213–63.
9 With an important caveat – namely, that there is no scholarly consensus whether 
Seneca’s plays were performed in a theatrical setting; they might have been 
merely recitative or even intended to be read. 
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 9
is announced by a herald, and Medea remains a distant and passive 
character. In the final scene by Seneca, however, Medea acts in the 
fullness of her power, while Jason remains only a powerless spectator.10
Beyond the physical gestures of revenge and violence, even words 
brand Medea as masculine: in a Greek context, being a woman equates 
to pudor, which equates to not acting.
Creon hits the nail on the head when he calls Medea the combi-
nation of masculine and feminine properties: cui feminae nequitia, 
ad audendum omnia / robur virile est, “you combine the perfidy of 
woman with the strength of man” (267–68). In other words, Medea’s 
femininity has a very wide range.
FEMALE ROLES 
“Medea represents all women,” wrote Dolores O’Higgins of her 
figure in Pindar.11 The female roles of Medea and her relationship 
to her femininity have always been the focus of interest, not only in 
the dramatizations of Seneca or Euripides and not only in the field 
of classical philology but from modern theater to film and music, 
through contemporary literature and even politics.12
Strictly in the field of classics, one of the pioneers in this regard, 
from the 1990s, is Ruby Blondell’s introduction to Euripides’ translation 
of Medea, in which she offers a balanced discussion of interpretive 
themes such as Medea “the Other” (where she draws several modern 
parallels); the marriage of Medea and Jason; and how male/female, 
Greek/Barbarian, and human/divine are opposed. “Medea represents 
the threat posed by female subjectivity and independent will, especially 
the active exercise of women’s erotic desire.”13 A series of studies on 
these themes was subsequently published.14 One that stands out is 
the stunning book by C. E. Luschnig, The Granddaughter of the Sun.15
10 Abrahamsen, The Tragedy of Identity in Senecan Drama, 123.
11 O’Higgins, “Medea as Muse: Pindar’s Pythian 4,” 107.
12 A few titles among many: Citti and Neri, Seneca nel Novecento: sondaggi sulla 
fortuna di un classico; Guastella, L’ira e l’onore: forme della vendetta nel teatro 
senecano e nella sua tradizione; Campbell, “Medea as Material: Heiner Müller, 
Myth, and Text”; Corbineau-Hoffmann, “Medea.”
13 Blondell, Women on the Edge, 159.
14 E.g., Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art, the influ-
ential collection Medea nella letteratura e nell’arte. See also Guastella, “Virgo, 
Coniunx, Mater: The Wrath of Seneca’s Medea,” 197–219, about the managing of 
Medea’s social roles.
15 Luschnig, Granddaughter of the Sun.
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Boyle makes a detailed list of all Medea’s female roles: “naive 
princess, knowing witch, faithless and devoted daughter, frighte-
ned exile, marginalized alien, displaced traitor to family and state, 
helper-maiden, abandoned wife, vengeful lover, caring and filicidal 
mother, loving and fratricidal sister, oriental ‘other,’ barbarian savior 
of Greece, rejuvenator of the bodies of animals and men, killer of 
kings and princesses, destroyer and restorer of kingdoms, poisonous 
stepmother, paradigm of beauty and horror, demi-goddess, subhuman 
monster, priestess of Hecate and granddaughter of the sun, bride of 
dead Achilles and ancestor of the Medes, rider of a serpent-drawn 
chariot in the sky.”16
The many layers of the myth and the richness of the Senecan drama 
have given rise to interpretations from many different perspectives. 
Whichever interpretation an analyst chooses, all tacitly agree that 
Medea’s development throughout the play is a kind of crescendo, 
whether seen in terms of anger, vengeance, superhumanity, or even 
the enhancement or loss of her femininity.
Many have also written about how Seneca constructs, step by step, 
as an excellent dramatist, the final act and the spectacular triumph 
of the infanticidal mother. Some write about the development of her 
character,17 others, on the contrary, about the loss of her character.18
Looking at the text itself, Medea expresses, in her very first lines, a 
precise summary of her female roles up to that day: the very first words 
of the play invoking the conjugal deities ominously foreground her 
marriage, naming Lucina to hint at the dramatic role of motherhood, 
and then gradually move from the present situation (Medea the wife 
vs. Medea the mother) to the past. With the mention of the Argo, the 
figure of the acquired stigma for Jason is anticipated, but then also 
the girl in love, ready to sacrifice everything, the savior of life, and 
the wise sorceress. That she is a descendant of the Sun is a kind of 
omen for her marriage, and the reality of this will gradually reveal 
itself in the text. With the mention of Hecate, Medea’s destructive side 
emerges: the priestess of Hecate of the Argonautics, who kills or saves 
at will with her poisons and spells. The past and the future are linked 
at several points: in the summoning of the goddesses of vengeance, 
16 Boyle, “Introduction: Medea in Greece and Rome,” 1.
17 Abrahamsen, The Tragedy of Identity in Senecan drama; Boedeker, “Becoming 
Medea: Assimilation in Euripides,” 141–162; Walsh, “The Metamorphoses of Se -
neca’s Medea.”
18 See Henry and Walker, “Loss of Identity: Medea Superest? A Study of Seneca’s 
Medea,” 169–81, who argue that Seneca’s Medea loses her identity during the 
tragedy.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 11
it is significant that they are the ones who once stood at her nuptial 
bed (quales horridae quandam thamalis meis stetistis [16–17]), but 
that at their repeated summoning they are now sent to Creusa’s bed 
ad novos thalamos (743). Similarly, the words of the tragedy’s prologue 
and finale resonate in a way that resembles other Seneca’s plays: Medea 
is already asking the Sun for the chariot in which to escape (32–34).
We retrace her past with her, not so much along the events as along 
her feminine condition; her gestures and actions can be interpreted in 
relation to them, as Medea suggests, often as a result of her current role 
as a woman. Before she met Jason, Medea was a loved girl, respected 
by her people for her healing and magical knowledge; she was also 
powerful, she was a princess, she had a homeland, she was a sister 
and most importantly, she was a sought-after girl to marry (217–19):
Generosa, felix, decore regali potens 
fulsi: petebant tunc meos thalamos proci, 
qui nunc petuntur. 
Noble and happy and powerful, I shone with a royal light. 
Then I was required to marry princes 
who are now required.
For now, she has lost all this, she is a woman alone, without a country, 
without her family, without her brother, she is a barbarian, a perennial 
outsider, feared, hated for her fame as a sorceress, powerless, threatened 
by the king in a hostile city, humiliated in her role as wife, repudiated 
by her husband, her children taken from her.
On the one hand, it is true that she loses these roles (which is not 
the same as losing her own identity), but on the other hand, by actively 
taking control of her own destiny, she liberates herself from it. That 
is, her self-definition is not that of an exiled poor woman. But being 
Medea is not taken for granted, one must work for it. That is why she 
responds to the nurse’s soothing words as follows (171):
– Medea …
– Fiam!
– Medea …
– I will become!
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THE BODY
To achieve this, to become Medea to the full, Medea largely uses the 
body as an instrument – she not only uses the bodies of others but 
also her own female body. The corporeal motifs in Medea are very 
important, as in the rest of Seneca’s works, not only thinking of the 
tragedies, for it is enough to recall the well-known parallel between 
the portrait of Medea (382–96) and the figure in De ira 2.35. Yet this is 
not only rhetoric but also present already on a more conceptual level 
in Euripides, especially in the consideration of the woman’s body as a 
tool: when in Euripides Medeia speaks of marriage (233), she calls the 
husband a “master for the body” and emphasizes the status of a woman’s 
body as a tool that can be captured and carried off as war booty (256).
Equally strong are the images of the loss of bodily integrity in 
Medea: abducted virginity, childbirth, sword-piercing bodies, lace-
rated limbs, and the opportunity to open a wound in Jason’s body.19
Medea’s hands also take on a life of their own, becoming power-
ful symbols of herself and her actions, identifiable with the sins she 
has committed: si quod urbes barbarae / novere facinus quod tuae 
ignorent manus (127–28) and nota fraus, nota est manus (181); and 
elsewhere thirsting for revenge – like she is: Si posset una caede satiari 
haec manus … (1009).
From Medea, we hear that the body can be taught, and the hands 
can be taught to commit new crimes. And one can also learn from 
the body:
Hoc restat unum, pronubam thalamo feram
ut ipsa pinum postque sacrificas preces 
caedam dicatis victimas altaribus.
Per viscera ipsa quaere supplicio viam.
What remains for me, to immolate victims on altars … 
seek it, in the entrails, the way of vengeance. (36–40)
This sentence, very much at the beginning of the tragedy, shows us the 
body of the sacrificed animal to ask for advice, to read the solution from 
its entrails – and this Medea says even before she thinks of sacrificing 
her children as revenge. Yet this image confirms an equally important 
19 See Nussbaum, “Serpents in the Soul,” 231–32.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 13
female characteristic of hers: to be a priestess.20 Medea invokes Hecate 
in the Prologue when she recalls her past life, and this also has its 
symmetrical counterpart at the end of the play, when she offers the 
serpents to Hecate (773–74). Medea’s role as priestess will be the most 
relevant in the present analysis while tracking down how she performs 
on herself the same rituals she had previously performed on others.
VIRGINITY
The question of Medea’s virginity has already been once decisive in 
her legend when the Colchians join them on the island of Corcyra 
and demand the return of Medea to King Alkinoos, who replies that 
if Medea is still a virgin, he will return her to her father. Meanwhile, 
the king’s wife, the queen of the Phaeacians, quickly “marries” Medea 
off to Jason, whatever that means.21
In this case, the loss of virginity has become the means of escape 
and foreshadows the fact that with Seneca, the woman’s body is also 
a tool. To find confirmation of this in the text, one can mention that 
at one point the chorus recounts that Jason’s first rejection was of 
Medea’s body:
Ereptus thalamis Phasidis horridi, 
effrenae solitus pectora coniugis
invita trepidus prendere dextera … (102–104)
You, Jason, who used to caress the breast of a savage female, 
now torn from her hideous marriage bed, 
you are reluctant to hold out your hesitant hand [toward her] … 
20 Her role as a priestess is emphasized most in the analyses of Isler-Kerényi, 
“Immagini di Medea,” 117–38, and in Moreau, Le mythe de Jason et Médée, 191–
217.
21 Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.9.25: “Having passed by the Island of Thrinacia, where are 
the kine of the Sun, they came to Corcyra, the island of the Phaeacians, of 
which Alcinous was king. But when the Colchians could not find the ship, some 
of them settled at the Ceraunian mountains, and some journeyed to Illyria and 
colonized the Apsyrtides Islands. But some came to the Phaeacians, and finding 
the Argo there, they demanded of Alcinous that he should give up Medea. He 
answered, that if she already knew Jason, he would give her to him, but that 
if she were still a maid he would send her away to her father. However, Arete, 
wife of Alcinous, anticipated matters by marrying Medea to Jason; hence the 
Colchians settled down among the Phaeacians and the Argonauts put to sea 
with Medea.”
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI14
It is noteworthy that a little earlier Medea also speaks of her mar-
riage bed as a horridus thalamus. Equally remarkable is the chorus’ 
repetition: just before they mentioned Diana as the wild virgin, and 
immediately here is Medea called the wild wife.
After the chorus rejoice that Jason is already horrified at touching 
Medea’s breast, they add that now he will be cheered by a virgin and 
say: felix Aeoliam corripe virginem, “take happily this virgin!” (105) 
Moreover, Medea says the same in short order, that the new woman 
is such a tabula rasa as if these women’s bodies were in some sense 
interchangeable.
On the other hand, the most important bodily motif in the play 
is the connection of virginity and motherhood with the ability to 
act and the ability to commit crimes. At the very beginning, Medea 
recounts (not yet referring to the murder of her children) how her 
plan for revenge matured in her, she did not simply plan it, but she 
gave birth to it. Vengeance is born through a birth canal, coming 
out of Medea’s body. And vengeance is possible because Medea is 
a woman who has already given birth to children. The Latin text is 
skillfully ambivalent:
Parta iam ultio est: peperi. (25–26)
My vengeance is born! I gave birth 
[to children or to it, i.e., to vengeance].
Thus, the bodies of the children are the tools of revenge that come 
to light, and the birth-giving body of the mother is also a tool to act 
out her plan. The most explicit expression of this is that when Medea 
is devising a plan, she thinks it out with her body. However, finding 
this plan to punish Jason is itself a harrowing process. (One cannot 
but remember Euripides’ Medea saying, “I would rather go to the 
battlefield three times than give birth once again …”) And the result, 
the “product,” is nothing intellectual, cold-blooded, a cunning move; 
inversely, just as the result of childbirth, it is full of pain, cries, and 
blood – and it means the start of a new life for both Medea and Jason.
Right after this phrase, she immediately states in no uncertain 
terms that as a mother, she can and must commit greater sins than 
when she was a girl:
Vulnera et caedem et vagum funus per artus …
haec virgo feci, gravior exurgat dolor, 
maiora iam me scelera post partus decent. (47–50)
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 15
Wounds, massacres, limbs torn to pieces … – I did them as a virgin, 
those – more heinous are the crimes that are due to me now that I 
have given birth.
There is no doubt that the growth from girl to woman and mother 
has multiplied Medea’s capacities. It is also in this context that one 
can interpret Medea’s words of her hypothetic behavior of not acting. 
In the dialogue with Creon, Medea goes back further in time to her 
childhood and tells how the course of events would have been if she 
had behaved as expected of a girl: “Behold, [if] I, a virgin, set above 
all my modesty …” and lists what would have happened if she had not 
set aside her virginal modesty: all Greek heroes would have died.22
REGAINING VIRGINITY
During the process of revenge, Medea also restores her own female 
status to a new equilibrium: after Jason has deprived Medea of her 
role as wife, Medea wants to become a virgin again, and for this, she 
requests Creon and Jason to give her back her sins; the sins that made 
her a wife and mother. For Medea, it is not impossible for her to become 
a virgin again, for her virginity or motherhood is not a physical state. 
If she has lost her virginity by committing crimes for Jason, she can 
regain it by the same inverted act: by committing crimes against 
Jason. Bodies killed in the past can be atoned for with future bodies 
killed, and she reveals that if she had had more children, the more 
perfect the atonement would be.23 Martha Nussbaum also connects 
a later element to this restored virginity: when Medea speaks of how, 
if she were unknowingly pregnant, she would cut Jason’s fetus with a 
sword: her desire to uproot him, to destroy the piece of him growing 
in her image of success is the fantasy of restored virginity.24
22 “Obici crimen hoc solum potest, / Argo reversa, virgini placeat pudor / paterque 
placeat: tota cum ducibus ruet / Pelasga tellus, hic tuus primum gener / tauri 
ferocis ore flammanti occidet” (236–41).
23 “Utinam superbae turba Tantalidos meo / exisset utero bisque septenos parens 
/ natos tulissem! sterilis in poenas fui / fratri patrique quod sat est, peperi duos” 
(954–57).
24 “Her desire to root it out, to destroy the piece of him that grows in her … her 
image of success is the fantasy of restored virginity.” Nussbaum, “Serpents in 
the Soul,” 232.
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI16
The next motif in Medea, besides the female figure regaining her 
former virginity, is the transformation from virgin to wife, including 
a certain parallelism between Creusa and Medea.
BECOMING A WIFE
The crimes she had committed as a girl helped to make Medea the 
wife of Jason, who was the subsequent recipient of the murders and 
betrayals, while she herself was only the instrument.25
As was already made clear by Medea, the symmetry of the plot 
comes from restoring the balance of sins: the sins committed for 
Jason must be balanced by the sins committed against Jason. At the 
end of this process comes the key scene, the recognition26 that is so 
important for Medea, and the approval:
Coniugem agnoscis tuam? (1021)
Do you recognize your wife?
The phrase is not only the dramaturgical climax but also an interwea-
ving of the two main motives of revenge: the recovery of a lost identity 
(Medea as Jason’s wife) and the claim to power (the infamous sorceress, 
the descendant of the Sun who can give and take life). Identity and 
power are here naturally intertwined because the role of the wife is 
inseparable from the power that Medea as a woman has over Jason. 
This is regardless of the circumstances with which she presents her 
figure at the beginning of the play and of the way an outsider, who 
does not know Medea’s power, but only her roles, might see her: the 
homeless woman, the exiled woman, the barbarian woman, who is not 
a wife in the Greek sense, who, by helping the Argonauts, has disow-
ned her homeland and her father, is no longer one from Colchis, is no 
longer the daughter of her father and mother, is no longer a princess 
and, having killed her brother, is no longer a sister. With Jason’s new 
marriage, not only would she no longer be a wife, but she would be 
forced to leave her children, i.e., her role as a mother would also end.
25 Cf. “Utrumque regno pelle. cur sontes duos / distinguis? illi Pelia, non nobis 
iacet; / fugam, rapinas adice, desertum patrem / lacerumque fratrem, quidquid 
etiamnunc novas / docet maritus coniuges, non est meum: / totiens nocens sum 
facta, sed numquam mihi” (275–80). See also 496–503.
26 On the importance of recognition as confirmation of her self, see Bexley, “Recog-
nition and the Character of Seneca’s Medea,” 31–51.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 17
But for a while, Medea still wants Jason to recognize her as his 
wife again, even though the frequent use of the word coniunx is both 
threatening and ironic; Medea also calls Creusa coniunx. Indeed, with 
the scrupulousness of a feminine rival, Medea investigates Creusa’s 
suitability for this role and how well she holds up to Jason’s sexual 
commitment. She openly asks if his new wife will bear children, to 
which Jason answers yes, in the future; and elsewhere, in a more 
desperate dialogue, she forces Jason to reveal that he has not had 
sexual relations with Creusa until then. Medea confirms her position 
as a sexually active partner between the roles of wife and mother 
when she makes it clear that she might even be pregnant, surpassing 
Creusa in this respect:
In matre si quod pignus etiamnunc latet, 
scrutabor ense viscera et ferro extraham. (1012−13)
If there is in my womb, hidden, a seed of life from you, 
I will frisk my belly with my sword to pluck it out.
In the formulation of the nurse and the chorus, the role of Medea’s 
wife is ended, while Medea wants to restore this role27 – by physically 
destroying her other wife. And when Creusa dies, she succeeds precisely 
because Jason has no other wife but her. Moreover, killing Creusa and 
Creon could only have been done by such an infamous woman: only 
Medea, Jason’s infamous wife, is capable of a Medea-style murder. 
However, when this happens, this female role is no longer important 
to her. Instead, a new clash begins within Medea: her mother and 
non-mother part.
MOTHER
It is the image of the child-killing mother that has eventually overwri-
tten almost everything in the afterlife of the Medea myth. But images 
on vases and the remains of texts predating Euripides illustrate how 
this image of the monster mother was a one-sided and late develo-
pment. Little is said as to why this was so. The two very different but 
pleasingly complementary explanations are that the Persian wars, on 
the one hand, lacerated the image of Medea and, even more so, the 
hostilities with Corinth over the island of Corfu in Euripides’ time.28 
27 Abrahamsen, Tragedy of Identity, 44−46.
28 Beltrametti, “Eros e maternitá,” 43.
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI18
The reason for the degradation of Medea has been interpreted in a 
broader context by Cornelia Isler-Kerényi: “Medea exhausts her ability 
to metamorphose from good to bad, from goddess to woman, not with 
the advent of rational thought but with the definitive establishment 
of dogmatic thought: with the extinction of ancient religion.”29
Medea’s social status as a mother is quite different in Seneca’s 
tragedy from Euripides’ presentation. This diversity surely also stems 
from the very different contexts of woman and wife-in-law and in the 
conception of the family in Rome and classical Greece. According 
to Roman law, in the event of divorce, the children always had to 
remain in the father’s house to guarantee their descent, so Medea’s 
repudiation automatically meant her removal from the house and 
her separation from her children. This is undoubtedly the case in 
the social situation of Rome at the time,30 but in Medea’s words, we 
have the feeling that having freed herself from the role of wife, she 
is consciously turning to her motherhood to weigh that too and that 
the two are well separated for her: 
Materque tota coniuge expulsa redit. (928)
The mother has all come back, the wife is banished.
Medea sees her motherhood as separate, and for her it is bound only 
to her children: if they are alive, she is their mother; if they are not 
alive, she has ceased to be a mother. On a different thread, but with 
a similar conclusion, Guastella, looking at parental roles, originally 
in relation to Jason, comes to the same conclusion: he remains a 
father after the death of his children, an orphan father who mourns 
his children, but Medea ceases to be a mother when her children 
die.31 It is fascinating and ambiguous that, on the one hand, Medea 
forces Jason to recognize her as his wife by killing his children, and 
on the other hand, she loses the last thread that binds her to Jason. 
The killing of her children is Medea’s last gesture to accomplish her 
great feat: to be herself again.
29 Isler-Kerényi, “Immagini di Medea,” 133, my translation.
30 Abrahamsen, “Roman Marriage Law,” 107–121; see also Guastella “Il destino dei 
figli,” 141–44, 152–54.
31 Guastella writes that the pater remains defeated and alone, the mater, on the 
other hand, as if she had disappeared, also erased by a crime. “Il destino dei 
figli,” 162.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 19
KILLING TO BE REBORN OR THE RE-BIRTH OF THE BODY
Medea speaks first of her longing for a return to vigor antiquus and 
her desire to find a way out of impotence – insecurity, just like those 
who asked her to rejuvenate. She goes much further when in right in 
front of our eyes she quickly shrugs off the role of the helpless exiled 
woman, shortly killing the king who is threatening her. By physically 
destroying her rival, she also strips herself of the role of the rejected 
woman. Then, she must take her revenge on Jason, namely by hurting 
him where he is most vulnerable. Jason himself reveals this point: 
their children. That is why the children become the instruments of 
revenge, their little bodies, which Medea uses as a means of escape in 
the same way as the dismembered body of her little brother. To restore 
the balance, not only in her own person, Medea wants to make Jason 
exactly as he made her before: to live as an orphan, exiled, deprived 
of the male roles of prince, husband, and father. On the one hand, the 
price for this is that Medea also renounces the corresponding female 
roles and, on the other hand, this renunciation has a new face: it is part 
of her grand plan to return to her former self, to rejuvenate herself as 
she did the others in her cauldron. And this she succeeds in achieving:
Iam iam recepi sceptra germanum patrem, 
spoliumque Colchi pecudis auratae tenent; 
rediere regna, rapta virginitas redit. (982–84)
The throne, the father, the brother are mine again. 
The golden fleece is in the hands of the Colchians. 
My homeland has returned, my virginity returns.
The past comes alive and becomes the present. The power of Colchis 
taken away from her is replaced by Corinth, taken away from Jason; 
the little man dismembered with the sword of the terrible virgin, 
nefandae virginis, and cut to pieces, thrown one by one, is paid for 
by the children killed by the nefanda mater and the bodies scattered 
before their father. With this rebirth, this change in her new self, she 
becomes Medea, the new, preponderant female role: the infamous 
Medea of the legends.
To achieve this, Seneca makes Medea refer to herself in the third 
person countless times in the text; in fact, she often jumps between 
the first-, second-, and third-person singular in a few lines. She can 
look at herself from the outside. Equally hectic but more exciting is 
how she jumps into the alleys of her past. However, Medea does not 
CLOTHO 12 (4).indd   19 1. 03. 2024   10:35:54
ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI20
use this mythical past in the way we know it from tragedies spanning 
generations. Drawing strength from her past, Medea consciously sha-
pes herself to be more and more like herself. She does not even want 
to draw on other examples, the mythical past or that of her kinship. 
This could be why – even if it is present – Seneca does not emphasize 
the Sun’s history with the love misfortune associated with her female 
descendants. This would create a generational chain of sins under the 
influence of the curse, as the Tantalids do. Medea does not need this; 
she is enough for herself, consciously using her myth and exploiting 
its power. The most significant ability of her past is the rejuvenation 
of the body and the use of the body as an instrument. This is one of 
Medea’s privileges. But where does this power of hers come from?
The first literary mention of Medea is found in Hesiod (ca. 700 BC), 
where she seems to be regarded as a goddess32 married to the mortal 
Jason after completing the tasks imposed on him by Pelias.33 In an 
archaic epic, Medea is said to be the queen of Corinth and Jason the 
king, and Medea is said to bury her children in the temple of Hera as 
soon as they are born in order to make them immortal – and scholars 
agree that such an attempt could only be made by a deity. This seems 
to be the first mention of Medea as an infanticide – but, note, unin-
tentional! – which, however, had no counterpart in the testimonies of 
vase paintings.34 The sixth-century lyric poet Ibycus mentions Medea, 
and he is the first to tell of Medea’s marriage to Achilles in Elysium. He 
is followed by Simonides, in which the scholastics report that Medea 
boils Jason to rejuvenate him and is herself queen of Corinth, while 
Sophocles’ Rhizotomoi (Rootcutters) also focuses on Medea’s magical 
abilities.35 More telling are the iconographical representations of Me-
dea: in Cornelia Isler- Kerényi’s careful and thoughtful reconstruction, 
the chronological stages of Medea’s imagery could be followed.36 She 
points out that the cauldron is part of Medea’s magical equipment in 
the Argonautics and is present in all textual witnesses, even fragmen-
tary ones, and especially in her iconography before 430, the date of 
Euripides’ tragedy. Starting with the earliest known image of Medea 
on the Etruscan olpe of the Villa Julia37 and later in Athenian cera-
32 See on this Moreau, Le mythe de Jason et Médée, 101–15 (Médée la deésse).
33 Theogonia 992–1002.
34 See Johnston, “Corinthian Medea,” 44–70; cf. also Harrauer, “Der korinthische 
Kindermord,” 5–28.
35 For all these mentions and ancient sources see Boyle, “Introduction,” 3.
36 Isler-Kerényi, “Immagini di Medea,” 117–38.
37 Images available online at the website of Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa 
Giulia.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 21
mics, Medea is typically shown with a cauldron, and before Euripides’ 
tragedy, she is never depicted as infanticidal. After Euripides, this is 
almost exclusively the case. Medea uses the cauldron to dominate the 
phases of human life; in a way, she is like Rhea or Demeter – they, too, 
are capable of rescuing with similar methods.
Medea was the goddess of the good cauldron, Isler-Kerényi writes. 
In Seneca’s tragedy, her image near the cauldron is referred to in two 
ways. When Medea confronts Creon, Pelias appears in their speech, 
and shortly afterward we see Medea picking plants in preparation to 
kill Creusa, gathering them as if they were spices.
Tradition ascribes to her various rejuvenation spells or events based 
on her ability to make a human being stronger or even immortal: Jason, 
Talos, Heson, the ram, Pelias, her children’s temptation, and herself.
THE REJUVENATION OF JASON
In the surviving iconographic evidence, Medea first appears while 
performing the ritual of rejuvenating a man (probably Jason) in a 
cauldron (ca. 630 BC). The rejuvenation theme associated with Medea 
(the rejuvenation of a ram/Jason or the boiling of Pelias) remains in 
vase paintings until the 5th century. The first representation comes 
from a funerary context: an Etruscan bucchero vase found in a tomb 
in Cerveteri.38 This scene is also described in Simonides (fr. 548) 
and in Pherecides from the 6th century (3F113). But there are other 
interesting pictorial testimonies that complement this rejuvenation 
of Jason. Among the images showing Jason escaping from the jaws of 
the dragon, there is one that clearly shows a long scar on Jason’s chest, 
a crater from 470–60 BC.39 Alain Moreau suggests that this scar is a 
sign that Medea had previously torn Jason apart and boiled him in her 
cauldron, rejuvenating and strengthening him. Moreau supports this 
hypothesis by stating that, on the one hand, Jason is a teenager, but his 
musculature is not strong, and that the accident may have occurred 
before he began the tasks assigned to him by Aeetes.40
The fact of Jason’s rejuvenation is also mentioned in literary sources: 
Apollonius says that, on the one hand, Hera made Jason handsome, 
and on the other hand, Medea made him extraordinarily strong.41 To 
38 LIMC “Medeia” fig. 1. For a detailed commentary with many illustrations see 
Kobakhidze, “Medea in Etruscan Art,” in Preprints, 19.
39 Moreau, Le mythe de Jason et Médée, 33, fig 2.
40 Moreau, Le mythe de Jason et Médée, 35–36.
41 Argonautica 3.1256ff.
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI22
confirm that the ritual of making Jason stronger would take place in 
the cauldron, Moreau quotes a legendary myth from the enigmatic 
words of Lycophron in the Alexandra where he places the cauldron 
scene between the fight with the fiery bull and the acquisition of the 
golden fleece.42
TALOS
Another episode is also pertinent here: the story of Talos shows that 
although Medea and the Argonauts traveled together for only a short 
time, Medea’s reputation at that time certainly included the ability 
to reanimate, even render someone immortal. And this must have 
been true not only for the Argonauts, who may have witnessed Jason’s 
resurrection, but also for Talos himself, for otherwise, he would hardly 
have agreed that Medea takes him by the hand:
ἐξαπατηθεὶς δὲ ὑπὸ Μηδείας ἀπέθανεν, ὡς μὲν ἔνιοι λέγουσι, διὰ 
φαρμάκων αὐτῷ μανίαν Μηδείας ἐμβαλούσης, ὡς δέ τινες, ὑποσχομένης 
ποιήσειν ἀθάνατον καὶ τὸν ἧλον ἐξελούσης, ἐκρυέντος τοῦ παντὸς 
ἰχῶρος αὐτὸν ἀποθανεῖν.
His death was brought about by the wiles of Medea, whether, as some 
say, she drove him mad by drugs, or, as others say, she promised to 
make him immortal and then drew out the nail, so that all the ichor 
gushed out and he died.43 
This tale is illustrated by a magnificent painting on a vase, a red-figure 
volute krater (dated 425–375 BC), which depicts Talos dying unconscious 
in the presence of the Argonauts while the enchantress Medea stands 
aside, grimly gazing at her victim and holding in one hand a basket 
from which she seems to draw fatal herbs with the other.44
42 Lycophron, Alexandra 1.1309–21: “And second they sent the Atracian wolves to 
steal for their leader of the single sandal the fleece that was protected by the 
watching dragon’s ward. He came to Libyan Cytaea and put to sleep with simples 
that four-nostrilled snake, and handled the curved plough of the fire-breathing 
bulls, and had his own body cut to pieces in a caldron and, not joyfully, seized 
the hide of the ram.”
43 Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.9.26.
44 Ruvo, Jatta Museum, 1501; images and bibliography available online at the 
 Beazley Archive. 
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 23
THE REJUVENATION OF AESON
According to the author of the Nostoi epic, Medea restored Jason’s 
old father to youth:
αὐτίκα δ᾽ Αἴσονα θῆκε φίλον κόρον ἡβώοντα γῆρας ἀποξύσασα 
ἰδυίῃσι πραπίδεσσι, φάρμακα πόλλ̓  ἕψουσ᾽ ἐπὶ χρυσείοισι λέβησιν. 
Then she made Aeson a dear young man in the prime of life
depriving him of old age with wise deeds, boiling in cauldrons of 
gold many medicines.45 
While according to Ovid Medea restored Aeson to youth, not by 
boiling him, but by emptying his body of the ephemeral old blood 
and replacing it with a magical infusion.46 
THE REJUVENATION OF PELIAS (AND OF THE RAM,  
AND ALSO OF MEDEA HERSELF)
On Jason’s return to Iolcos, Pelias, the uncle who had usurped his 
throne, is now old, and his daughters, the Peliads, are fascinated by 
the powers of Medea, who assures them that she is able to rejuvenate 
their father, adopting two subterfuges to convince them: first she 
simulates her own rejuvenation, perhaps by removing make-up from 
her face, and then – this being the decisive proof – she has an old ram 
brought to her, which she tears to pieces and throws the pieces into 
a cauldron, adding her portentous phármaka. Shortly afterward, a 
young lamb emerges from the cauldron.
The story of Medea’s fraud on Pelias is illustrated by several Greek 
vases,47 and they attest to an ancient story in which Medea was regarded 
by all as being able to revive and cure in her capacity as a priestess of 
Hecate. A few examples would be sufficient to exploit the varieties of 
the scene, with ram or lamb emerging, with Pelias present or absent. 
For instance, on a black-figure vase, the ram is seen coming out of 
the boiling cauldron, while Medea and Pelias’ two daughters stand 
looking at it with gestures of delighted surprise, and the white-haired, 
aging king himself sits watching expectantly. Or the only two-sided 
45 Greek text in Allen, Homeri opera 5, 141. Translation mine. Cf. Bernabé Pajares, 
Fragmentos de épica griega arcaica.
46 Met. 7.251–94.
47 Cf. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Vol. 7, Peliades.
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI24
black-figured vase depicting the scene, without Pelias and with a 
Medea gesturing toward the cauldron – or even adding her magical 
ingredients48 (see Figure 1).
Similarly, the lekythos by the Beldam Painter depicts a cauldron 
with an emerging ram in the center, with two women on each side: 
Medea, administering her magic instructions with her right hand 
raised, and one of Pelias’s daughters (with no old man present). A 
recent analysis of the five vases of the Beldam Painter that represent 
Medea confirms that
the vases show the cauldron placed on the centre of the image with 
the fire amidst the flaming wood. We can realize that type of cauldron 
is very ancient, it is large and rustic, and it is known as empyribete. 
Medea shows her expertise at the specific moment when the animal 
is inside the cauldron in process of being rejuvenated. Crossing the 
information between the text and the image, we could state that 
the picture with Medea in these lekythoi vases refer to the remote 
characteristic of hers, and the pictures of the lekythoi belong to the 
Iolkus epic cycle. Medea was designed as the young wife of Jason and 
as a priestess of Hekate with the ability to cure from diseases and to 
rejuvenate the old and sick people.49 
Based on this, Candido arrives at the same conclusion as Cornelia 
Isler-Kerényi, namely that the predilection for this Medea image in 
funerary vases was linked to her perception as a magician-reviver who 
could help the dead. These are only snapshots, while in the extended 
version, a fresco from Pompeii, one finds Medea dressed as the princess 
of Artemis.50 These images are well-known and well-studied, and they 
can be paired with the very scarce textual evidence that illustrates 
the same scenery.
Fragmentary references to Euripides’ lost tragedy Peliades describe 
it in even more detail, surprisingly recounting how Medea first dis-
guised herself, with hair dye and make-up on her face to look older 
– and when one of the Peliades, Alcestis, is still hesitant to take out 
her father after the “ordeal” of the rejuvenated ram, the disguised 
Medea would perform her own rejuvenation (perhaps by removing 
her make-up) and this final gesture would convince all the daughters 
48 Available online at Harvard Art Museums, object 290713.
49 Candido, Medea and the Rejuvenation of Pelias.
50 Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Invent. 111477, dated to 50–63 AD, ori-
ginally Pompei VI 13.2 (Casa del Gruppo dei vasi di vetro).
CLOTHO 12 (4).indd   24 1. 03. 2024   10:35:55
Fig. 1 — Neck Amphora (storage jar): Medea Boiling a 
Ram, ca. 520 BC, Beazley Archive Database #4798,  
Harvard Art Museums / Arthur M. Sackler Museum,  
Bequest of David M. Robinson
CLOTHO 12 (4).indd   25 1. 03. 2024   10:35:55
ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI26
to proceed.51 In a medieval Greek work in verse, the Christus Patiens 
(11th–12th c.) by an anonymous author, there are traces of the tales 
associated with Pelias’ rejuvenation, where one can read the following 
verses describing Pelias’ disappearances in the first person:
λέβητι χρυσέῳ δὲ πέπτων μοι δέμας, 
σοφῇ προμηθείᾳ με ξενίσῃ ξένως·
λυγρὸν γὰρ ἀπὸ γῆρας εὐφυῶς ξέσας
ἀνθρωπολοιγοῦ παμπαλαιᾶς μοι λύπης, 
κοῦρον φίλον θήσειεν ἡβόωντά με· 
ὡς νῦν κάκιστον γῆρας ἅπαντας τρύχει.
Cooking my body in a cauldron,
cautiously surprising me in an unusual way:
depriving me of the pain of old age
and suffering ever baleful to man,
make me a dear boy in my prime,
for now, a malignant old age wears everything down.52 
I leave aside here the hypothesis of the attempted and failed rejuve-
nation of Medea’s children, briefly mentioned earlier, and turn to 
the final story related to Medea in this context: Aeschylus’ Trophoi 
(Nurses) seems to be about Medea’s rejuvenation of Dionysus’ nurses 
and their husbands – although it is rather difficult to pinpoint when it 
might have occurred within her mythological chronology, most likely 
the event was placed after her flight from Athens. A commentary on 
Euripides’ Medea relates that Aeschylus recounts how Medea “re-
juvenated the wet-nurses of Dionysus, together with their husbands, 
by boiling them”53 – as she had done to Jason and his father Aeson in 
other tales, and as she had pretended to do to Pelias.
A scholion to Aristophanes’ Knights 1321 refers to Aeschylus and 
the rejuvenation of the nurses, and cites the fragment from the Nostoi 
about the rejuvenation of Aeson, quoted above:
51 Hartung, Euripides restitutus, 63–65.
52 Christus Patiens 933–38. Translation mine.
53 Fragm. Bernabé 6b.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 27
ὥσπερ ἡ Μήδεια λέγεται, ὡς μὲν Αἰσχύλος ἱστορεῖ, τὰς τροφοὺς τοῦ 
Διονύσου ἀφεψήσασα ἀνανεάσαι ποιῆσαι μετὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν αὐτῶν, 
ὡς δ᾽ ὁ τοὺς Νόστους ποιήσας καὶ τὸν Αἴσονα, λέγων οὕτως …54
According to Aeschylus, they tell the story about Medea that after 
boiling the nurses of Dionysus, she rejuvenated them, together 
with their husbands, and according to the author of the Nostoi, also 
[rejuvenated] Aeson, saying the following words …
A reference to this story by Ovid suggests that Medea did this at the 
request of Dionysus.55 Rejuvenation – in any case, successful rejuve-
nation – is a theme for satyr drama, not a tragedy; Dionysus’ role in 
the story points in the same direction, and there is virtually no doubt 
that this drama was indeed a satyr play.56 A vase painted ca. 460 BC 
may well have been inspired by this play: it shows a woman leading 
an elderly satyr toward a cauldron (similar to the various images of 
Medea with Pelias), and on the other side, the same satyr, now black-
haired and vigorous, with his wife and a child.57
CONCLUSION
Having seen or read the scenes with Medea and the cauldron, one 
is reminded of the scene when Pelops was killed by his cruel father 
Tantalus, cut up into pieces, and served at a banquet of the gods. Out 
of pity, the gods brought him back to life by boiling him in a cauldron, 
from which he emerged safe and even with a new shoulder.58 Cornelia 
Isler-Kerényi writes that the cauldron evokes fundamental cosmo-
logical demarcations: between the primordial age and the present 
age, between the divine and human worlds, between life and death, 
and between death and life.59 Her well-known and well-respected 
capacities account for the popularity of her images on vases used in 
a funerary context.
54 Greek text, schol. ad Aristophanes, Knights, 1321 in Allen, Homeri opera 5, Nostoi 
fr. 6, 141.
55 Met. 7.294–6.
56 Aeschylus, Attributed Fragments, 248–49.
57 Ancona, Museo Nazionale, 3198.
58 Pindar, Olymp. 1.26 (40)ss. For similar stories of magical recovery of youth and 
life, see Frazer: Appendix to Apollodorus, “The Renewal of Youth.”
59 “Il calderone evoca demarcazioni cosmologiche fondamentali: fra età primor-
diale ed età presente, fra mondo divino e umano, fra vita e morte e fra morte e 
vita.” Isler-Kerényi, Immagini di Medea, 121.
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ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI28
Seneca turns back to this fearful but potent figure and brings together 
Medea’s gestures from the past when she returned life and strength 
to the old and weak – and now, in the drama, turns this practice onto 
herself. The imagery of the cauldron and her previous acts of murder 
and rejuvenation, along with the strong body imagery and the use of 
physical transformations, pave the way for her to perform her physical 
transformation. It happens at the cost of murder and the annihilation 
of her own former physical stages.  Seneca uses descriptions and al-
lusions of high impact to characterize the visceral, sexual, maternal 
identity of Medea, to underline that everything that had happened 
to her and all that she had done to others strongly concerns the body.
Medea wants to start again, from the beginning, the image of her 
regained virginity is the tabula rasa that will take her out of the drama 
and into a new life, young, strong, husbandless, and childless, that 
will lead her into a later story, as the wife of Aegeus and a mother 
of his child. In the tradition that relates her to Aegeus, she also uses 
her own body, her female fertility to become his wife and uses in the 
same way the promised future child to shape her new life and female 
identity, becoming thus a sought-after woman to marry, just like 
before meeting Jason, and a giving birth. Medea, in her rejuvenation, 
is, in fact, realizing what Jason would have wanted: a new beginning. 
At the same time, Medea does not really masculinize herself; on the 
contrary, she only shows how much harder it is to do those things 
as a woman. Despite Seneca’s rather creepy portrayal, his Medea is 
not the masculine serial killer who denies herself her femininity but 
rather uses all her strength as a woman, cook, sorceress, virgin, wife, 
mother, and above all, priestess, and quasi-goddess of the cauldron, 
to rejuvenate herself and become – Medea.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 29
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abrahamsen, Laura. The Tragedy of Identity in Senecan Drama. PhD 
dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1993.
-------- . “Roman Marriage Law and the Conflict of Seneca’s Medea.” 
Quaderni Urbinati Di Cultura Classica 62, no. 2 (1999): 107–21.
Allen, Thomas W. Homeri opera. Volume 5. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1912.
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MEDEA REJUVENATES HERSELF 31
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the arc of the sequence of events 
through which Medea rejuvenates herself – as she has rejuvenated 
others before her, she does it as if she were simply disassembling herself 
and putting herself in her own cauldron to be reborn as her younger 
and stronger self. After describing the different and changing female 
roles of Seneca’s Medea, the paper gives a close reading of the text to 
show how Seneca uses images of the body and to underscore the way 
Medea uses her own body to achieve her transformation: to start a 
new life by returning to her earlier self, i.e., by rejuvenating herself. 
To back this argument, the paper also highlights her previous acts 
of rejuvenation in textual and pictorial testimonies and argues that 
Seneca presented Medea as a rather positive figure, a deity, a magician, 
a healer, who is capable of ruling over life and death.
KEYWoRdS: Seneca the Younger, Medea, rejuvenation, female roles, 
body, stages of life
Medeja se pomladi: Ženske vloge in raba telesa  
v Senekovi Medeji  
 
IZVLEČEK
Prispevek obravnava potek in zaporedje dogodkov, preko katerih se 
Medeja pomladi – tako kot je pred seboj pomladila druge, to stori, kot 
bi se preprosto razstavila in se dala v svoj kotel ter se nato prerodila 
v svoj mlajši in močnejši jaz. Članek najprej predstavi različne in 
spreminjajoče se ženske vloge pri Senekovi Medeji, nato pa s pomočjo 
podrobnega branja besedila pokaže, kako Seneka uporablja podobe 
telesa, in se osredotoči na način, kako Medeja uporablja lastno telo, 
da bi dosegla svojo preobrazbo: da bi začela novo življenje z vrnitvijo 
k svojemu prejšnjemu jazu, da bi se torej pomladila. V podporo tej 
tezi članek izpostavi tudi njena prejšnja pomlajevanja, kot so ohra-
njena v besedilnih in ikonografskih virih, ter pokaže, kako je Seneka 
Medejo predstavil kot precej pozitiven lik, kot božanstvo, čarodejko 
in zdravilko, ki zmore upravljati z življenjem in smrtjo. 
KLJUČNE BESEdE: Seneka, Medeja, pomladitev, ženske vloge, telo, 
življenjska obdobja
CLOTHO 12 (4).indd   31 1. 03. 2024   10:35:55