Medea

A Life

The story of Medea, a maligned and misunderstood woman of Greek mythology, from one of Britain’s foremost classicists

Mothers who kill their children are universally abhorred but perennially fascinating. In this book, the award-winning scholar Edith Hall explores the possibility that Medea, mythology’s archetypal murderous mother, could be based on a historical figure who migrated to Greece in the late Bronze Age.

Medea has appeared in countless works of art—plays, operas, musicals, ballets, movies, poems, paintings, sculptures, and novels—but until now no one has written a biography of her. Through meticulous research and fast-paced narrative, Hall brings new life to Medea’s story, from her lonely childhood on the shores of the Black Sea through her dramatic escape with Jason and the Argonauts, the murders and attempted palace coup in Thessaly, her deadly revenge in Corinth, and her final exile in Athens.

In reframing a figure long reduced to villainy, Hall restores Medea’s humanity, illuminating a woman pushed to extremes by betrayal and displacement—a brilliant, embattled outsider navigating the violent patriarchies of the ancient Mediterranean.

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