And that was your beginning. When you were married

To me, your husband, and had borne children to me,

For the sake of pleasure in the bed you killed them.

There is no Greek woman who would have dared such deeds,

Out of all those whom I passed over and chose you

To marry instead, a bitter destructive match,

A monster, not a woman, having a nature

Wilder than that of Scylla in the Tuscan sea. *

Ah! no, not if I had ten thousand words of shame

Could I sting you. You are naturally so brazen.

Go, worker in evil, stained with your children’s blood.

For me remains to cry aloud upon my fate,

Who will get no pleasure from my newly wedded love,

And the boys whom I begot and brought up, never

Shall I speak to them alive. Oh, my life is over!

MEDEA

Long would be the answer which I might have made to

These words of yours, if Zeus the father did not know

How I have treated you and what you did to me.

No, it was not to be that you should scorn my love,

And pleasantly live your life through, laughing at me;

Nor would the princess, nor he who offered the match,

Creon, drive me away without paying for it.

So now you may call me a monster, if you wish,

A Scylla housed in the caves of the Tuscan sea.

I too, as I had to, have taken hold of your heart.

JASON

You feel the pain yourself. You share in my sorrow.

MEDEA

Yes, and my grief is gain when you cannot mock it.

JASON

O children, what a wicked mother she was to you!

MEDEA

They died from a disease they caught from their father.

JASON

I tell you it was not my hand that destroyed them.

MEDEA

But it was your insolence, and your virgin wedding.

JASON

And just for the sake of that you chose to kill them.

MEDEA

Is love so small a pain, do you think, for a woman?

JASON

For a wise one, certainly. But you are wholly evil.

MEDEA

The children are dead. I say this to make you suffer.

JASON

The children, I think, will bring down curses on you.

MEDEA

The gods know who was the author of this sorrow.

JASON

Yes, the gods know indeed, they know your loathsome heart.

MEDEA

Hate me. But I tire of your barking bitterness.

JASON

And I of yours. It is easier to leave you.

MEDEA

How then? What shall I do? I long to leave you too.

JASON

Give me the bodies to bury and to mourn them.

MEDEA

No, that I will not. I will bury them myself,

Bearing them to Hera’s temple on the promontory;

So that no enemy may evilly treat them

By tearing up their grave. In this land of Corinth

I shall establish a holy feast and sacrifice

Each year for ever to atone for the blood guilt.