Over the sea-cliff to die with her two children.

What horror more can be? O women’s love,

So full of trouble,

How many evils have you caused already!

(Enter Jason, with attendants.)

JASON

You women, standing close in front of this dwelling,

Is she, Medea, she who did this dreadful deed,

Still in the house, or has she run away in flight?

For she will have to hide herself beneath the earth,

Or raise herself on wings into the height of air,

If she wishes to escape the royal vengeance.

Does she imagine that, having killed our rulers,

She will herself escape uninjured from this house?

But I am thinking not so much of her as for

The children—her the king’s friends will make to suffer

For what she did. So I have come to save the lives

Of my boys, in case the royal house should harm them

While taking vengeance for their mother’s wicked deed.

CHORUS

O Jason, if you but knew how deeply you are

Involved in sorrow, you would not have spoken so.

JASON

What is it? That she is planning to kill me also?

CHORUS

Your children are dead, and by their own mother’s hand.

JASON

What! That is it? O woman, you have destroyed me!

CHORUS

You must make up your mind your children are no more.

JASON

Where did she kill them? Was it here or in the house?

CHORUS

Open the gates and there you will see them murdered.

JASON

Quick as you can unlock the doors, men, and undo

The fastenings and let me see this double evil,

My children dead and her—Oh her I will repay.

(His attendants rush to the door. Medea appears above the house in a chariot drawn by dragons. She has the dead bodies of the children with her.)

MEDEA

Why do you batter these gates and try to unbar them,

Seeking the corpses and for me who did the deed?

You may cease your trouble, and, if you have need of me,

Speak, if you wish. You will never touch me with your hand,

Such a chariot has Helius, my father’s father,

Given me to defend me from my enemies.

JASON

You hateful thing, you woman most utterly loathed

By the gods and me and by all the race of mankind,

You who have had the heart to raise a sword against.

Your children, you, their mother, and left me childless—

You have done this, and do you still look at the sun

And at the earth, after these most fearful doings?

I wish you dead. Now I see it plain, though at that time

I did not, when I took you from your foreign home

And brought you to a Greek house, you, an evil thing,

A traitress to your father and your native land.

The gods hurled the avenging curse of yours on me.

For your own brother you slew at your own hearthside,

And then came aboard that beautiful ship, the Argo.