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Well That Escalated Quickly: Infanticide And Duality In Euripides’ Medea As An Expression Of Athenian Anxieties In 431 Bc, Molly B. Hutt

Molly B Hutt

Euripides wrote his Medea at a time when normative and transgressive behaviors were confounded. After fighting one war against the barbarian Persians and in between two wars with the other Greeks from the Peloponnese, the Athenians could not be sure what to think about barbarians, other Greeks, and even themselves. It is against this background that I have read the Medea and closely examined it for the purposes of this paper. Euripides’ version of this myth emerged at a time when the lines between man and woman, Athenian and barbarian, and normative and transgressive were being blurred in Athens, and …