RE-AIR: Conversations: Taking Inspiration from the Furies, Seneca’s Medea w/ Dr Lauren Ginsberg

This episode originally aired in summer of 2023. So! Much! Seneca! Lauren Ginsberg joins Liv to RAVE about Seneca's Medea, and provide some helpful and fascinating Roman context, among so many other things. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content! http://www.patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So, check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 0:41Speaker 01

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• 1:39Liv Albert?

  Hello, dear listeners. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv. And now, on Tuesday and Wednesday, I brought to you a revised slash, I didn't actually do any revisions, but I recorded a new introduction version of the episodes I did on Seneca's Thiestis, because I love how visceral and violent and utterly, wahahaha! And that's like, that's meant to be like a horror scream, but like without, you know, doing any damage, um, just like, ah, you know? It's just really good. And the story actually behind how I came to to read Seneca's Thiestes

• 2:25Liv Albert?

  is that I first, like I said in the introduction for for earlier this week's episodes, I first covered Medea, and I think because I was just going in search of like anything Medea that I hadn't already done. And then I was like, Oh, my God, Seneca is quite the tragedian. Now, he is a philosopher, and I don't even want to get into that because I think he was pretty terrible. And I don't even know. No one likes a philosopher man. Sorry, not sorry. It's true. But as a playwright, as a tragedian, wow, was there a lot going on?

• 2:56Liv Albert?

  Like, just, oh, my God, so much. I don't know. He just liked the dramatization that he was capable of, but particularly because like technologically speaking, things had changed so much, right? Because like Seneca would be writing this play, or the Medea, he was writing these, any of these plays, like, I don't know, 500 years minimum after people like Euripides were writing. And so even just like the evolution of stagecraft was huge. And so he was capable of writing these much more like onstage, like dramatic scenes, whereas in the ancient Greek world, the theater capabilities were more simplistic. And so the the plays were sort of written with that in mind, right? Like, all the wildness happens offstage and all of that. But

• 3:41Liv Albert?

  as you listen to in that incredible Thiestes, Seneca was not bound by those same constraints. And that's what makes his work quite interesting as this sort of like other piece from the much later ancient world. And when I did those episodes of Medea, I fell so in love that I went in search of a guest who could talk to me about not only Medea, but Seneca's Medea and Seneca more broadly. And I found the incredible Lauren Ginsberg. We had an amazing conversation. We had oh, I such a good conversation about Seneca's Medea. And it's Lauren in this episode that you are about to listen to right now, who tells me that he wrote a Thiestes. And I'm pretty sure this is also me remembering things from two years ago, but like,

• 4:27Liv Albert?

  I'm pretty sure I lose my damn mind. And so you can kind of have this like reverse idea of like, how how I discovered that there was a Thiestes for me to sink my teeth into.

• 4:38Liv Albert?

  And along the way, it's just an incredibly interesting conversation about not only Seneca's Medea, but Roman stagecraft and tragedy and all of these things that are so different in Rome than they are in Greece. You're gonna love it.

• 5:05Liv Albert?

  Conversations, taking inspiration from the Furies. Seneca's Medea with Dr. Lauren Ginsberg.

• 5:27Liv Albert?

  So I don't really have like a plan so much as I just want to talk so much about this play. So, you know, we like emailed back and forth with a few things, which I'm happy to talk about everything, but having just finished it and like my listeners will have also just finished listening to my last episode on it. So that's kind of perfect, but it is. I mean, I loved it all the way through, but yeah, the last page, the last page and the last line. It's just some of the wildest stuff I've ever read. Um, in the best possible way. So I would love to know, and I don't want to put you on the spot because I read your email about things ahead of time, far too late. Um, but I would love to know what you might know just totally off the top of your head about like, because this is not forming

• 6:09Liv Albert?

  a question very well, but basically, you know, like I've read so many Greek tragedies. I've read, you know, Euripides' Medea many times and I love it.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's also awesome.

• 6:19Liv Albert?

  It is. It's wonderful. And but now reading this, I'm like, oh, they are. I mean, I, I like, I don't feel like I am prepared to suggest that I like this one more, but I won't say that it is not crossing my mind.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  It holds its own. It holds its own.

• 6:34Liv Albert?

  Holy shit, does it? It's so good. And like, just, I mean, I think this is just the nature of Roman versus Greek. And obviously, like, you know, what is it like 600 years between these two guys?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Little bit.

• 6:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, just a little bit of time. Things have changed and Rome is a very different place generally. So, you know, even though he's writing about Greece, he's writing it in Rome. You can tell by all the references to like India and the Genghis. It's so cool.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  And imperialist conquest?

• 7:02Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God, yeah, like it's, yeah, it's so Roman while being still so Greek. But I just like Roman tragedy. I know he's the only surviving, you know, tragedian. So I imagine we don't know a lot like what I was reading in the introduction. It seems like, you know, much like the Greek, we don't know how they were staged, but maybe we know even less about how Roman tragedy was staged than Greek.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  So we have like this weird divide in that we know a whole lot about how Roman tragedy was staged in the Republic, where we have absolutely no surviving play, but we have like chunks of fragments and then we could look at comedy and kind of try to see where the similarities might be. So we know a lot about how like Aeneas' Medea was staged and that it was like a blockbuster and it's very close to Euripides and everybody loved it. But by the time we get to Seneca and imperial tragedy, we don't know a lot, even though there are so many more permanent stone theaters in the Roman world at that point than there were in the Republic. There's a lot of other competing dramatic forms that I actually think intersect with Seneca pretty well and happy to talk about them, but like pantomime, so dance.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  The idea that like people would recite tragedies or perform just scenes of tragedies. So exerting them either for small concert halls or for dinner parties. So I think sometimes when we ask how were they performed? We think that the only answer can be, oh, they were performed in a theater of Pompeii in front of tens of thousands of people. And if we can't say that for sure, well, then I guess we can't talk about performance. Whereas I like to think about all of the ways that we know Roman tragedy could and was being performed at that time, even if it's for very small audiences. And to try to see how, one of the things I have my students do is to see how the same scene would take on different meanings if you imagine different kinds of performance contexts. So that's why it's kind of a hard question to answer because there are some like diehard

• 8:52Speaker 02

  people that just think absolutely not, they weren't being performed in the empire. I happen to be on the other side that think that there, not only could they be performed and where they performed in big theaters, but they also could be performed in small spaces and that doesn't make performance less important.

• 9:08Liv Albert?

  That is so identifiable to me because like, so I, I don't know if, did you listen to my first episode? It sounded like you did.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:15Liv Albert?

  Thank you. Um, I normally wouldn't ask because I don't want to put people in the spot, but it definitely sounded like you had.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:20Liv Albert?

  Thank you. But so one of the things I'm facing with this is like, it happens when I, whenever I read any tragedy where I'm like, I just want to recite huge chunks of this text, but legally I can't, except when I find a public domain translation, you know? So I've been reciting little, just quotes here and there from the Emily Wilson, but then like when there's something that's so beefy and I just want it, like I've been using this like very old, um, Miller translation. And it's worth it for that. Also, I've been adapting it and changing all the vows and the yeas and stuff, which is highly beneficial. But like, I just want to recite her whole speeches. And so I can totally see that being a thing that is kind of in itself a way to, yeah,

• 10:04Liv Albert?

  perform, to perform these tragedies.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  And it's compelling and interesting.

• 10:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Especially where she's just talking to herself and is trying to logic herself into various decisions. I think the fact that Seneca leans so hard into like the inner brain of Medea being where the site of excitement and the tragedy is, because like, let's be clear, she's smarter than everyone else in the play. She's writing the play as she's going. She's the only one that's done the reading and the homework. Like she knows everything. And so the real drama is like what's happening in her head. And I think Seneca does a really great job, especially towards the end with those monologues of showing like exactly what's going on in her brain, even when it's confusing. And that would have been so cool to see recited, danced, sung by itself, part of a larger, part of the whole play.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Any way you want to do it, I would be there for it. I would buy a ticket.

• 10:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure by the time that this episode comes out, uh, cause I, I've kind of already decided I have to do it. I'm just going to release a bonus episode where I just recite some of those speeches.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:08Liv Albert?

  Cause I just desperately want to. I'm like, I don't care if anyone listens to this. I just want to read it into a microphone because it's become one of my favorite things. And like, they're just too good. Like it's impossible not to. And I, I feel like I could bounce around to all these different things, but like, I mean, that's really just interesting generally that we know that, that they would have done things like that. And I think. I don't even, I don't even know. My thoughts are going everywhere because it's just so good and I just want to talk about everything. But one of the things, and maybe this is like a total leap already, but one of the things that really interests me is the chorus and how differently it functions from Greek mythology, or from Greek tragedy, rather, also not particularly Greek mythological

• 11:51Liv Albert?

  in it, but it's just like a fascinating thing. So do we, do we know anything about like, I think we don't, based on what you were telling me in email, but like, kind of what his intention was, or if this was like a standard way of writing choruses, you know, in imperial tragedy, or like, you know, if he was doing something different? Do we know anything about that, basically?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yes and no, is always the question when it comes to that. But, so like, we have Horus's Ars Poetica, where he talks about how you should have five acts, and Seneca clearly is aware of that prescription and gives it the middle finger sometimes, because he doesn't always do that. And so there's that idea that by that time, choruses were a little bit like act dividers. And Seneca, whether or not this was common for others, is really good at always having his chorus kind of be a total tonal shift from the scene that just came. And your first episode talked about that a lot, with the epithelemia versus Medea's curse. But then, you know, the next scene is Medea coming in saying, oh, God, I hear wedding bells, like, I'm really hosed now. And so it's really good at like, shifting

• 12:54Speaker 02

  the audience around. But unlike, say, Euripides' Medea, actually, the chorus never interacts with Medea.

• 13:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Like, we, we can't even tell if they're occupying the same stage. We can tell probably that this chorus is made up of a whole lot of Corinthian citizens, so men and women, unlike Euripides, because it's an epithelemia. And so there are male parts and there are female parts that are singing. And we know in those rituals, all members of society would be coming together. So if we take that as what that form is in the first Choral Ode, It's all of the Corinthians coming together and they're like totally against Medea. They don't like her at all, but she never acknowledges their presence. She's just, she's not here for it. She doesn't care. She knows she's alone. And I think she actually kind of relishes the fact that she's alone, except for this relationship she has with the nurse. And I also love the nurse in this play.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Um, so then a question becomes, okay, it's clear then that if she doesn't acknowledge them and they're not on stage, that Roman choruses must be allowed to come on and off the stage, unlike Greek choruses.

• 13:54Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  So that's something that seems to have changed. We also know that in Rome, people sat in the orchestra, like those were the expensive seats, kind of like they are in modern theaters today. So the chorus has to be like on the stage with the actors. So from already we can, they're coming on, they're coming off. Um, their entrances are usually queued one way or another, but not always in some of the plays. And that must mean they're a lot smaller. Uh, because if they're occupying the same stage space as the main actors, as opposed to an orchestra, they can't be very big. So just with that information, you can see people have all sorts of opinions. Should it be three people? Is it one person? Is it 12 people? We have no idea. No one will tell us that one way or another. But the chorus both seems to be a little bit more disconnected from the action.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  But I think they are no, they're equally invested in like thematically contributing to the play. Um, some people like to sort of ignore them. I actually think the chorus in the Medea is fascinating. Cause I think they bring out a lot of themes that the people inside the house who are privy to information and power aren't that concerned with. So like, what is the implication of imperialism? What happens to Corinth when Medea says she's gonna burn it to the ground? It's not just Creon's problem. It's everybody's problem. And I think the chorus does reflect society in that way. Um, but not necessarily in the way that people often assume Greek choruses where like the Greek chorus is like close to the audience. And so is modeling an audience response. I don't think we're supposed to want to respond like the chorus to this play. I don't think they're the people that are telling us how we're supposed to respond to Medea.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Cause they seem both confused and to really not like her. And I don't think that's how we're supposed to respond.

• 15:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, I mean, the idea that they're not important or like adding so much to this play seems crazy to me because I've, you know, this is my only Seneca, but like they are vital. They are so interesting and yeah, especially that opening scene where they're just singing that epithelium like.

• 15:47Liv Albert?

  They're just, I mean, it's such a tonal shift. It's such a, I mean, it's also, it's so mean. And it's like, and it's, it's just so over the top and it just goes on and on. Like the way they love on Jason was mind blowing to me.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  He deserves a nice little virgin Greek bride, not that hussy foreigner that he brought over.

• 16:08Liv Albert?

  Yes. Okay. That actually led, leads me straight into a question I just jotted down right before we got on this, which is that like, so one of my kind of obsessions is this idea of like, quote unquote, virginity in, in ancient Greece, and then therefore in the texts. Um, and so I'm curious whether by this point, we know whether there was like a major difference in terms of how they saw virginity. Like, is it more of, you know, what the word kind of implies now versus just unmarried? Like, was there a more distinctly sexual aspect? Do you know?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  That's a really good question because weirgo can still mean just unmarried in Latin. But I think in this place, certainly they mean like a virgin bride, like she is someone who's just on the cusp of marriage, like imperial princess, nobody there before, that kind of a thing. I think it's a very patriarchal association. Probably not in all uses of the word, but I think when we're talking about marriage and like a princess that's ready for marriage, we, they really mean virginity and that idea that she is, she's the pure one who's going to bear Jason, the real children.

• 17:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Okay. That, that makes sense. I mean, certainly fits here, but also in my head.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Unless add a barf noise to that also, like.

• 17:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, oh, absolutely. Fucking disgusting. It's revolting. Like, I, I, it just, it stood out to me because I recently recorded a conversation. They won't have aired yet, um, but it was about like Athenian women, you know, and very like classical period, I think. Cause that tends to be all I care about. But if they, the idea that like, not only did it just mean unmarried often in, in the ancient Greek context, but in some cases actually didn't even, you didn't, you didn't even lose your like quote unquote virginity until after you'd physically had your first child.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:51Liv Albert?

  Which is like fascinating to me, but that was, I think, more in like a legal sense.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:55Liv Albert?

  But it's just so interesting because, you know, obviously we have come at it from this like Western Christianized lens of like what we now are forced to think of as virginity and then like really backtrack in these cases and look at what it meant in these contexts. So it makes sense that it would mean that kind of like purity, like.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Well, and also because Medea really thematizes her own virginity in this play. Like she constantly calls Jason alternating between a seducer and a rapist. Like she allows this idea that he stole something from her. And so I think when the chorus says like, oh, you want a pure princess, a virgin bride, they mean their own like homegrown princess. But of course, that's exactly Medea's story. She was a virgin princess of another land and Jason did take her and have a lot of children with her. And Medea wrestles with that a lot in the way that she wants to tell herself what that story means now that she understands who he is and sees him for who he is. And so I think that that thematizing of virginity and what does it mean for a young princess to sort of be taken by a man like Jason, even

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Medea later to Creon writes says, um, oh, be careful. He's teaching all those tricksy wiles to your virgin daughter right now, like back there after the wedding. So there's this idea that he's this corrupter of virgin princesses and that maybe, um, I mean, Medea knows her own power, but this idea that he is sort of this, um, this almost STD of a Greek hero walking around.

• 19:17Liv Albert?

  Take a minute for that. That's so Jason.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I'm not a Jason plan.

• 19:20Liv Albert?

  Oh, I mean.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  A Jason fan.

• 19:21Liv Albert?

  I mean, no.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Who is?

• 19:23Liv Albert?

  The only nice thing I say about Jason ever on this show is that Theseus is worse.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 19:30Liv Albert?

  But that's it. But also this Jason and like, okay, hold on, because I want to talk about this Jason a lot, but I, I feel like I, I only started highlighting like literally in the last page, which was stupid because I should have highlighted everything, but I was too busy writing it. Oh, there it is. Okay, great. There is a line. Where like, is it after she's killed? Oh, no, it's like literally when she's preparing to kill the first child before she knows that Jason is watching.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:57Liv Albert?

  And she is like, I think it's that maybe she's killed the first child. It's not totally clear. Like when exactly that happens?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Which is an important question for performance to people that say this wasn't performed. I'm like, then why do you think he wrote this in the way that he did?

• 20:12Liv Albert?

  Oh, God, yeah. Like, it's not remotely clear.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Right? It's not a problem that would exist in performance. You would know exactly where and how. And so Seneca could have made it clear in a text if he wanted.

• 20:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's so true. Well, and I love, I mean, just the idea that this is all happening on stage comparatively to the Euripides. Fucking incredible.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Another middle finger to Horace, where Horace says, you know, Medea really shouldn't kill her kids on stage. And Seneca's like, watch me.

• 20:36Liv Albert?

  It's so good and fucked up and I love it. But so she has this line like, right after Jason spots her.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:45Liv Albert?

  And she says, now I have regained my throne, my brother and my father, the Colchians keep the treasure of the golden ram. My kingdom comes back to me. My stolen virginity returns.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:57Liv Albert?

  And just like, and so I think, I mean, that to me kind of implies you killed your oldest child.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:04Liv Albert?

  But yeah, like in that moment.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  She's going back in time.

• 21:07Liv Albert?

  Exactly. She's taking it all back. But what you were talking about earlier too, like when it comes to, yeah, you know, you wanted to call her Glauca. I wrote Glauca like five times in the script. And then I was like, Liv, it's Creusa in this one. Go back. Anyway, um, Creusa, like she does mirror, like she's always mirrored Medea.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:28Liv Albert?

  But it is way more explicitly laid out in this play.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:32Liv Albert?

  The idea that literally everything that's happening with Creusa is already what Jason did. I also appreciate the way that Medea lays out literally everything he did. Like,

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:43Liv Albert?

  In a way.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Which is both nothing and everything.

• 21:45Liv Albert?

  Oh, exactly. Yes. Which is Jason, right? Like, he's the most passive piece of shit in the world who does so much damage with that passivity. But he like, she's so much more Medea, I mean, is so much more like self-aware and just like aware and wants to lay it all out. Like the Medea in Euripides is gonna tell you what Jason did. She's gonna sound strong and great, but this one is like, let me tell you what I did for Jason and how it saved your ass completely. Like the entire Greek world. They bring in the rest of the Argonauts in this in a way that I don't think Euripides does. Like she takes credit for

• 22:29Liv Albert?

  every single one of the Argonauts coming home and that is so meaningful.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  And what she gave up to make that happen.

• 22:38Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  That Greece basically owes its entire heroic system to her and to her interventions. And I love that she, one of the things I like in the way that she, because Jason, much like in Euripides, is kind of belated when he comes in. And so we get a lot of time to like hear about him and think about him before we actually see him. And I like that this Medea, like you can see her as a lawyer in the courtroom where she sort of tells the audience, because you know, maybe the audience, maybe they would be on Jason's side. I don't actually think anyone in early Imperial Rome would think anything quite high of Jason, but all right, where she says, all right, granted, maybe someone told him he had to marry this girl or die. And she sort of briefly allows twice, like, okay, let's try to see things from Jason's point of view

• 23:24Speaker 02

  before she's like, well, I mean, you could always die. People die for love all the time. And so before Jason can even come in and utter those like utterly ridiculous lines when he comes in, like, oh, everyone else made me to, and you know, I'm just doing what I have to. Like she's already raised, it's almost like she's giving a pre-speech in a courtroom. Like she's already raised the only possible defense he has and has shown the audience, not once, but twice, that it's idiotic on the face of it, that it doesn't make any sense.

• 23:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Because she's smart. Like she knows, she knows she's talking to us and she knows that she's gonna get us on her side. And I think that it's incredibly exciting to watch that, even though she's a villain too. I'm not trying to say that she's, she's an awesome moral exemplar. But she's the one that bonds with us. She's the one that, you know, tells us about her plan. Like she shares with us this like higher plane of knowledge because we've all done the reading. We all know this story and no one on the stage does. So it's a really interesting way that she manages to dramaturgically at least, like make us excited for what she's gonna do.

• 24:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and I think like for all that that Seneca's Medea is that is like your Ripley's Medea times 100 in terms of everything you just were talking about, like how smart she is and how much she wants to lay it all out and make it all very clear. Um, Jason is so much dumber.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  So much dumber.

• 24:46Liv Albert?

  And I didn't think that was possible. I honestly didn't.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Like, yeah.

• 24:50Liv Albert?

  The idea that Jason, who I have hated forever and has perpetually argued that like while he is the worst, Theseus is worst because Jason, all of his bad is that he like basically does nothing. He has everyone do it all for him. And like, that, I mean, that's how I've always seen him. That's how he always appeared. And literally Seneca was like, hold my beer. Like, I'm going to make him such a, I mean, he's, he's just absurd. The fact, I think it's one of his first lines to Medea where he like asks her, like, what crimes he, she thinks he did. And she's like, well, like literally everything I just told you.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:29Liv Albert?

  What, were you not listening? And then I forget if there's something that comes in between, but at some point he just says like, oh, well, that's what I wanted to hear. Like, you've made all of your crimes my fault. And it's like, yeah, dude, they are your fault.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  It's called complicity.

• 25:45Liv Albert?

  And like, do you think that she just set out to be like, yeah, I'm gonna get this random dude's daughters to kill him? Like, she didn't even know who Pelias was. Like, there's no reason to suggest that that has anything to do with her own desires.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  And to be clear, she didn't hesitate because this lady loves some magic murder.

• 26:04Liv Albert?

  But for sure. She is Medea, but yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  But she did it for love. Yeah, I like that she, and she does this with Creon too, because Creon also is not the sharpest knife in the drawer in this play, because both Jason and Creon come in basically telling the audience, this woman is tricksy and she's evil and she's really dangerous. And then she manages to tell them, again, in both of these speeches, "I did this and this and this. I'm so amazing. I've done all of these things for you. You should be grateful." And all of them highlight that she's trixy and she's dangerous. And then in the end of both of her interactions, she manages to do this like thing that would be amazing to see performed of, "I'm just a little girl. It's so hard to be a little girl. What harm can a woman do?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  I just need one day." Or, "Oh, dear sweetie Jason, the only thing I want is that you don't remember me poorly. Just remember me as the nice little girl that I am." And both men are like, "Okay, seems legit." Like, "How are you?" And that's also why I think the chorus is so interesting, because they're so much further removed from Medea, but they never once underestimate her. Like, they know throughout, they recognize her much more than the men that she's like much more intimately connected with and close to do, but she's just so able to harness, like, the misogyny of these men that think that women can't be heroes, that women can't accomplish things, and she uses it against them in a way that's so satisfying.

• 27:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah. It's so explicit, too, the way, like, even Creon, when he's like, what does he say to her? He says like something about her femininity and then she, he's like, "You're being like smart like a man," or something like that.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:43Liv Albert?

  Where it's like this, like, yeah, I mean, just the explicit nature of like, "Oh, all the masculine parts of her, that's the scariest part," is so interesting.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  He has no idea. Exactly.

• 27:54Liv Albert?

  No. Yeah.

• 28:09Liv Albert?

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• 29:46Liv Albert?

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• 30:49Liv Albert?

  It's just, okay, so the chorus too, the chorus is wonderful throughout this, but it was so interesting to me at the end where the chorus, like the first time they interact, actually, I think with anybody, it's the messenger.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:05Liv Albert?

  And it's like this really brief thing where they're finally serving like a kind of more explicit purpose. Like I think they very much serve a purpose throughout, but they are like interacting with the play. But then at the same time, like

• 31:19Speaker 02

  There's no messenger speech, so it's sort of

• 31:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah, because it all happens on stage. Like literally, he's like, they're dead, everything's on fire.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yep. And the chorus is like, oh, it was scary.

• 31:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah, put it out. And you're like, well, I think he probably already thought of that. I don't think that's a brand new information.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  There's a magic kind of water. We need a magic kind of water and we don't have that here.

• 31:41Liv Albert?

  I just, they, it also seems to me like based on the lines as we have them, that like the chorus and the messenger are probably kind of like, maybe even on one state, side of the stage, talking about this while Medea and the nurse are kind of like looking as if they're kind of hiding and talking just to each other, like whispering.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:03Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting and feels like quite unique.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  If I just, so I just spent a month at the NEH Seminar in Roman Comedy in Boston. And the similarities, as I'm rereading this, of the way that stage space is used, the way that you have these two characters that like we've bonded with. Cause I think we also bond with the nurse. Like the nurse, I think is a very compelling, compellingly written minor character. And she and Medea are clearly on one side. And the nurse, I think is like, oh goodness, this is where everything ends. And Medea is probably cackling. She's so excited that people are reacting to this thing that she's done. And I think, yeah, it creates these hierarchies of knowledge and like, who are you looking at on stage at this point? Like usually the messenger would come on and you would think like, wow, gruesome speech about to happen. And like Seneca can do a gruesome mess.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Messenger speech, the messenger speech in the Thiestes is disgusting. But in this one, we've already had the whole witchcraft scene twice. And so we don't need a messenger to tell us what's gonna happen. Also, Euripides also had a really great messenger scene, and maybe we don't need to do that again. So instead, the messenger and the chorus, like they fulfill their standard role, which is messenger comes on, chorus interrogates, both sides go, ah! Um, but no information is actually provided to the audience that is necessary in that scene. And so it's interesting that they're sort of placeholders for what they should be doing. But we've already been like captivated by the magic that we've seen in the previous scene.

• 33:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they almost feel like they're kind of like a fake out even too, right? Like you're saying, yeah, you're expecting this messenger to come on and like give this whole thing. And then it's like, no, no, no, we're not done. Medea is gonna do the rest on stage. Like, yeah, she already explained what was gonna happen to Creos and Creon. So like, you can assume we know how it all went down. And now she's here to like, do the rest physically on stage.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  She wants an audience. That girl loves an audience.

• 33:50Liv Albert?

  My god, does she ever? She deserves one. I get it. Killing your children is bad. This play is so good. Um, like.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Not an endorsement of infanticide, but she's a very well drawn villain.

• 34:02Liv Albert?

  She's so good. I love her. Yeah, I, I probably should be, you know, a little bit more critical of her, but I just can't. And I do this, this is me in the Greek one too. So who knows? But the, uh, I think the nurse doesn't interact with anyone but Medea either.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:20Liv Albert?

  That's interesting.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:22Liv Albert?

  I almost had like.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Sometimes not even Medea. Sometimes she's just talking to us.

• 34:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, it often feels like, like Medea is kind of like off in her own world. And so the nurse has to kind of like relay a little bit of what's happening. And then she kind of like can get Medea's attention. And they're, hey, like, I, I also need to talk to you, like.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love when she first comes on and they're talking because as you noted in the first episode, like all of a sudden this play opens with just Medea already knowing about all of these things and kind of like at the height, well, at what we think is the height of her anger and we learned that it can actually get worse. So when the nurse comes on, you kind of wonder, oh, what is her role going to be? Has she been subordinated? And I love that line where the nurse is trying to get Medea to calm down. And that's a really standard thing in Seneca and Tragedy. It's almost always in act two. There's always like a secondary figure that's trying to get the main figure to like deescalate their passion. But their motivations for it are sometimes different. And I love that this nurse has the bait and switch at the end of her first lines where she says, if you're loud about

• 35:23Speaker 02

  your plans for vengeance, you're gonna get caught. I want you to be sneaky because sneaky vengeance is what actually ends up winning in the end. Like, that's the vengeance that actually meets its end. So the nurse immediately is like, oh, I'm complicit and I'm here for it. But then the nurse starts to get increasingly more worried as the play goes on. And I think she's worried that Medea is not going to be able to get away versus worried necessarily about what she's gonna do. And I think that is also so interesting because it means that the first person we see interact with Medea is someone who's inherently on her side and sort of complicit in the things that she's going to do. And so we can identify with her, I think, more than many of the other characters.

• 36:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Okay, I, I wonder how much of a stretch it would be, or may, I mean, I think it's probably a complete stretch, but more so, I wonder how interesting it would be to stage a performance of this with the implication that the nurse is a figment of Medea's imagination.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Oh, that's amazing. Sort of like, yeah. Oh, that's very Shakespearean, but I love it.

• 36:30Liv Albert?

  Right? Like, she's

• 36:31Speaker 02

  That idea that's there.

• 36:32Liv Albert?

  Well, and she kind of like, she sees her brother later.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:36Liv Albert?

  And the Furies. And, and like, seeing the Furies is so expected. It's like, well, yeah, you're gonna kill your children. You're gonna see the Furies. Like, that's how this works.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  She also called on them in the first

• 36:44Liv Albert?

  That too.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  They showed up.

• 36:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they listened. Um, yeah, I mean, also, she, the, the fact that she is Like here for the Furies is so great and such like a perfect juxtaposition to their function in, I don't know if it's like a Seneca thing, but like certainly in Greek tragedy, for the most part, finding the Furies in front of you is very bad and it's going to cause you trouble. And she's like, no, no, hi, like, come on in. It's nice to see you. Bring my brother with you. But like, she, she sees her brother in this way that feels, I mean, it's quite, it's quite different to suggest that like, she's straight up sees him. She's like, I'm going to offend you. Like, I don't think we really ever otherwise get a version of her that is quite so sorry that she killed her brother. And that's really interesting. Like,

• 37:33Speaker 02

  That's her big trauma.

• 37:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Like, she did it and she seriously regrets it and she's trying to do everything she can to take it back. But yeah, the idea that like, that also the nurse, because I think that it could work, because she doesn't talk to anyone about Medea. And she does kind of surface as like, kind of other side, this like, yeah, like, it's like, almost like, there's a side of Medea that does want her to calm down, that wants her to be sneakier, like you said, because she's so complicit that it's not like she's telling Medea not to.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:59Liv Albert?

  She's just telling her to be smarter about it.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's that wonderful scene. I think it's the start of, of what in the translation is labeled Act Four, where the Medea, it's before Medea is revealed and actually like performs the black mass on the front of the stage, but the nurse sees her, and I think it's implied that we don't see her, and sort of narrates the magic that she's doing. But then like ventriloquizes her, like the nurse starts speaking as Medea before Medea is seen on stage. And that's a scene a lot of people point out, would be really effective as pantomime, because that seems to be what pantomime is, where someone is singing a song that includes first person speech and not, and then someone would be dancing and miming the various activities on the stage. And that was clearly a very compelling and popular form of entertainment. So sometimes I've had students like, think

• 38:44Speaker 02

  about what that would look like if it was pantomimed. But if we take it that that's a sort of a figment of Medea's imagination, that's yet another scene that would be really effective, I think, because half of it is said in Medea's voice. It's just said by this nurse figure.

• 38:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I hadn't clocked how odd that is. Like, I noticed it, but yeah, that's really interesting. Like,

• 39:03Speaker 02

  I think you would really like to play the Thiestes, by the way, because it starts with a fury in hell.

• 39:08Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God. Okay. So

• 39:09Speaker 02

  And then the rest of the play takes place inside, but the Thiestes and the Medea have a lot in common, except for the Thiestes has no women in it, which is a bummer, except for the fury.

• 39:19Liv Albert?

  Well, I mean, I guess they're there. Yeah. I, uh, so the Thyestes was already the one where I was like, okay, I fucking love this Seneca play. Like, he has a Thyestes. Holy shit. And then, then when you said that it was, I, I wonder what word you used, but like, in my head, it's gotta be just gross. That messenger scene.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Oh, gross.

• 39:38Liv Albert?

  Uh, like, I just, yeah, I wanna know it. I want, I mean, I have a real thing for that cursed family and all its many curses. And yeah, no, I, I mean, maybe I'll just follow up this play with the one where not only do they kill children, but eat them.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  They eat them too. Why not?

• 39:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Just like, take a step up.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  And where the Furies aren't just in Medea's head, but are also onstage delivering the opening monologue.

• 40:05Liv Albert?

  That's incredible. That reminds me that, like, of course, I can't think of whether this is actually unique in the Greek, but like, the Greek, I mean, the Greek, they usually just call them the humanities, which I think is important that Seneca's like, no, no. Like, we're not using a euphemism here. Like, these are the Furies. But he also names them. I don't know if he named more than Magara, but he named Magara.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:29Liv Albert?

  Which is really interesting. And I can't imagine a Greek tragedian naming them.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:35Liv Albert?

  But I, yeah, like, it just feels like, it's like the same reason why you use the humanities. You use this like kinder term to them, because you don't wanna anger them.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  They're often called the old three Ks as well. So the Avengers, um, is the word that's there. Uh, and I think that Seneca is really into naming. Magara is the one that he names the most. Uh, Electo shows up and that's clearly from the end of the Aeneid and so, or the second half of the Aeneid. And so I think like post-virgil Roman poets are like all about, oh, maybe poetic creativity actually comes from the Furies. Like, maybe that's where it comes from. Like, we don't need muses. We need Furies that are there. And Medea, clearly, that's what she thinks, that her powers of creativity come from the Furies. And she is here for it and very excited about it, because she is her own playwright.

• 41:21Liv Albert?

  I fucking love all of that. Oh, my God, the idea you do that the Furies serve that purpose. I mean, certainly from Medea, but broadly, that's wonderful.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Because the Romans like do use that word of like poetic inspiration like furor, like frenzy as one of the things and ensania, like those are words that Romans use when they talk about poetic inspiration, like the feeling of being taken over by the muses. And because it's it's sort of aligned to being a priest, a wates. And so when we see it then deployed with like these ultimate creative villains and Seneca and tragedy, like they're talking in the language of poetic inspiration, but they're also talking literally about their contact with like the powers of vengeance and evil, namely known as the Furies. So it's this amazing way of saying that like, no, like Seneca and tragedy really comes from below. Like it comes from the cathodic region and is here to take you out.

• 42:11Liv Albert?

  I never wish that my show was video, but I do feel like my face conveys a lot right now that I can't in words. I just love this so much. And it's not, it's not helpful to just say how much I love it, but like.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Well, you said in the first episode, one thing that was like bigger, better, better. And that's actually a phrase that I use a lot when I teach Seneca and tragedy because it's a motif of like, A, everything is always the same. So like, if it's been bad in the past, it's bad now, but it's worse. It's like both the same and worse. So it's escalating. And so I think all Seneca and villains want it to be bigger, better, better. Like they're all competing with a past version of themselves, both like who they were and like mythological history, but they also all seem to be competing with past literary versions of themselves, like past constructions of themselves. And they want this play to be one that stands out, that's more exciting, that does more. And I think that's really cool because it's kind of how we think about being a belated author as well. Like tragedy is a well established

• 43:09Speaker 02

  genre at Rome, let alone in Greece by the time Seneca is trying his hand. And so how do you make something like exciting when the whole audience knows that this play is going to end with Medea killing her children? Because once Euripides has that ending, like that's just the ending that throughout all time. So how do you make it exciting? And I think when Medea talks about how this is going to be bigger and it's going to be Badder and it's going to be better and it's going to be worse. Like, we know the fact of what that will be, and so there has to be something else that makes it exciting. And I think that's, that's Medea, it's the character. It's the way that she talks to us. It's the way that she lets us inside her brain. It's like the bananas magic that she does on stage. Like, all of this is extremely exciting and would be very compelling if performed.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  But also is just, as you've seen, like, very compelling if you're just reading it to yourself.

• 43:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, all of that. And like, the, the magic, just because we have not talked enough about the magic yet. So magic is, it's so witchy. And it reminds me so much of Ovid. Um, because I, you can tell that Seneca was very inspired. I don't, I wish I knew how inspired he was by Ovid's Medea. But we do know he was certainly inspired by Metamorphoses because, like, it is so reminiscent of those moments when she's flying around in her dragon chariot and picking up all those ingredients. And like, even the way the nurse explains like where everything came from. It's really wonderful and we get this, like, it is a very strong callback to Ovid and to this.

• 44:39Liv Albert?

  Like, because he wrote the witchiest before Seneca then also was like, I'm gonna do a bigger and better and better.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I also, so I have this weird fascination that's come up through, I've talked to, um, some people about Roman witches on the show and like, I've covered a couple, I think, maybe, I don't know. They don't really interest me as much because of this thing that I've noticed, which is that, at, at least in terms of like, so what we have that survives, Greek witches, you know, in the vein of Circe and Medea. Whether they're written in Greek sources or Roman, are these like, larger-than-life, incredible figures that are just like, they're, I mean, they're very, like, I don't want to say that they're, you know, written positively, but they are, if you compare them to a lot of the Roman witches,

• 45:30Liv Albert?

  like, in Apuleius and in, it's Catullus, I think, right? Who has, do you know, that has that one witch?

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Horus.

• 45:37Liv Albert?

  Kind of obsessed with, is it Horus? Okay.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Horus, yeah.

• 45:40Liv Albert?

  And yeah, like this, like they're weird crone-like witches often in the Roman and they're kind of like often comedic even like they're not, they don't seem to be taken all that seriously. Whereas we get like Medea and you're like, this is a, that's a witch that I want to know. You know, it's so interesting that kind of the difference. I don't really, I think I had a point that I lost it, but it's just interesting the way that it seems to be like, if you write a Greek witch, you can kind of write them in a different way than maybe was like, I don't know, socially allowed or socially acceptable when you're writing about a more Roman one.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  I think there's an idea and many people know more about this than I do, but an idea of Roman witches where they're both othered by their gender. So it's a very female thing, which is true in Greece as well. But in the Romans, it seems a really codified way to separate religion that is acceptable from religious practice that is not acceptable. And there are so many laws against witchcraft and aspects of witchcraft that it seems to have been like a really strong paranoia amongst the male power holding elite of this like other channel towards power and religious power in connection with the gods that certain types of women could have. But it's also classed. So most stereotypical witches are of a lower class or are foreigners in origin. There's often a great association with easternness

• 46:58Speaker 02

  and all of the sort of xenophobia that that brings. And so I think that's, that's a perfect set of stereotypes for Medea to step into it and say, but no, you're going to take me fucking seriously. You are abs, like I will, I will show you everything. And the fact that all of her ingredients, as you say, come from basically the known Roman world. Like it's an imperialist list of things that she's able to get. It's also a list that so Roman witches often are much more connected with the idea of necromancy. I think as part of their stereotype. So I think of Lucans or Rixo, who like literally raises the dead at one point in order to predict the outcome of Varsalus. And Medea's being written around, around the same time as that epic ish, who knows which one came

• 47:40Speaker 02

  first. But there's this idea that her power is both classing her as an outsider in all of the ways, but boy, is it anxiety. Producing for the male power structures around her like they're terrified of the fact that she has this. And we get to see it on stage like think of the reveal. When it's no longer just the nurse talking, but we actually get to see Medea at an altar, doing all of these things. And describing how they're going to work. I I have no idea the special effects in the Roman theater that could make that come alive. I don't think it's necessary, but I think that that would just be so visually bananas to see. Like that would be a scene I would love to see staged today.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  And I think it's what it is what sort of harnesses a lot of the reception of Seneca's Medea versus Euripides is it's a lot of investment in. Witchy women, women who are thought of to have access to cultic or religious practices that aren't the patriarchal norm. And I think that's a powerful strand of like empowering women. And so even if Seneca. Writes her as somewhat of a an overblown cliche in this way. I think that cliche is doing a lot of work.

• 48:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, still taking it all in again. Yeah, the the Roman witches.

• 48:53Liv Albert?

  I forgot how much like, I mean, sort of, obviously, it's inherently tied to them being women. But yeah, they the the women aspect of them is really focused on as this like. Bad part, like the thing that makes them so dangerous. And.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Oh, and Roman, Roman witches can cause impotence. And that's something that frequently shows up in the humorous aspect of them. So in Horus and Epileus. And they show up in um elegy a lot witchy behavior. And so I like if that's not a metaphor for male anxiety about like women's access to the gods, direct access is impotence. I think. That must be on. So given all of the erotic language in this play, I think that also has to be part of it as well as she can unman all of these men. But in a way bigger way than just their penis.

• 49:34Liv Albert?

  Yes. Yeah, it's so much more tied to like, yeah, just absolute male fear. For women. That's so interesting. It feels so Roman, just so Roman, like not to say the Greeks weren't a patriarchal mess, but it's just different.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  A different kind of patriarchal.

• 49:49Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  I mean, speaking of the women and witches, I do think it's important to recognize that like Roman women had significantly more rights than Greek women. I mean, the fact that they could be property owners, the fact that they could divorce. I mean, divorce being such a common Roman thing. I know you mentioned that in your opening episode.

• 50:08Liv Albert?

  I thought I was right.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  They were much more legally and financially enfranchised than Greek women. And then also when Seneca's writing, imperial women have foregrounded like the dangers of soft power. Um, and by dangers again, I'm focalizing the sort of male paranoia that's there rather than, you know, my objective assessment of those women. But this idea that we have women now at the center of power that make sort of senatorial men extremely anxious. And then also we're in a world in which women have a lot more economic and property and social power um in the law than they did in Greece. I think like heightens the stakes of trying to keep women in their box. Because when you've given them more power, there's a lot of anxiety that then goes into making sure they know the limits of that power.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  And I think that's also something we can see with Medea. Like she should be a divorced woman that just slinks off into the ether, according to Jason. But nope, she's not going anywhere.

• 51:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, it draws such a clear line to to their fear of these witches because they have reason to fear. Whereas, you know, and I mean, it it's tough with something like Circe because she's, you know, from the Odyssey and we don't really have any idea kind of what was going on. But when it comes to certainly like Euripides' Medea, like they don't have a reason to fear women in the same way because they, especially in Athens, it like subjugated them to the point of just being completely comfortable with the situation. The men were obviously, I don't think the women were. Um, but yeah, so there was no reason to have this fear. Whereas, yeah, it's so interesting to to have this completely different world. I mean, 600 years, I have to remind my listeners of that all the time because I think it's

• 51:49Liv Albert?

  one of those things like if you're just coming at mythology and and the like ancient Greece and Rome, um, you know, from a just general interest standpoint, you pick up some random book of Greek myths you find, you know, it, you don't get the sense that there is so much time in between these sources. You know, so often people be like, well, why does Ovid say this and Homer says that? And it's like, well. Because there's like many, many, many centuries in between and like so much changes. Just imagine how much has changed for us in the last 600 years. And so, yeah, you get this story that is said in ancient Greece. It is ancient Greece. I mean, he really emphasizes the Argo as the first boat. That was really interesting.

• 52:31Liv Albert?

  So he's both like putting it in the past in this really important and like obvious way, putting it in the ancient Greek past. But then, as you were saying, like has all these imperial ties and it has all these ties and obvious, you know, implications for where Rome was at at the time. That it just becomes this kind of fascinating blend of so many different things. And there's so many different like little aspects to be able to look at. The divorce thing was really interesting. Like it's, yeah, you're divorcing, whereas the whole like crux of Euripides is basically that it doesn't, yeah, it wasn't a real marriage to begin with, so it doesn't matter.

• 53:13Liv Albert?

  And I mean, it's also is, has a lot of implications for Medea's exile. Like, we get a much better sense in the Euripides of like why exile is so bad for her. Like for me, I won't pretend I haven't like somewhat justified why she felt that she had to kill her kids in Euripides. Because it is far more explicit that it's kind of like either your children live in the same poverty as you because you're an exiled foreigner with absolutely zero rights, you know, or, or they don't. And whereas here, it's kind of like she does, she kills the children to explicitly punish Jason.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:59Liv Albert?

  And that's so different and so much more evil and also fascinating.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  But it's also this idea of like exile in the Roman world. Someone, a teacher of mine, a long time ago, said that like Seneca's tragic world is claustrophobic because of its engagement with Roman imperialism. So when you feel like the power structures of Rome control everything, like exile is just separating you from a support base, but it's not. There's no freedom associated with it. You can't remake yourself. And if we think also about how many powerful women in the generation before Seneca were exiled, especially Julio Claudian imperial women, that was where you sent away inconvenient uppity women who weren't doing things. You charged them with treason and you sent them to live out their days on an island. Granted, none of them had access to a supernatural dragon chariot. And so

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Medea does have an out clause that other women do not at that point. But I even think of like, the, I don't even, I won't say it as a joke, but the reference she makes to abortion, and this also seems to be like, both that and divorce, show the sort of social power that a Roman woman at that time had over her own reproductive labor. And many people have been quite off put by that line of, you know, if, if you know, we've had sex recently enough, and like, I have a fetus inside of me, I would also abort that fetus to punish you. And you can see why people would find that a grotesque thing to say. But I think it does show, not only Medea's single mindedness on vengeance, but also that that was just a pretty acceptable practice amongst elite women at that time, access

• 55:30Speaker 02

  to that kind of reproductive biological control. And that would be totally out of place in a Greek play. You would never find a Greek tragic heroine saying something like that.

• 55:40Liv Albert?

  That's so true. And I just have to say that, and granted, you know, it's because I wasn't making a practice of highlighting, but that line that you're talking about is like, 10, 11. Therefore, like, literally in the last 100 lines of the play, and it is the first line that I highlighted.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Because it is, it's a memorable one.

• 56:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah, because I read it and I said, holy shit, out loud, in my apartment. And then I learned how to highlight in my iPad explicitly for that it's not hard.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  To remember that one.

• 56:14Liv Albert?

  But yeah. And then it automatically highlighted it as red. And I literally was like, ooh, that's good. Like, I'm

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 56:21Liv Albert?

  I'm doing a lot here. I'm saying a lot about myself. But like, I will have quoted it in the episode, so I won't, I won't feel like I need to know. But it's so good. Because it's not only just like a line about abortion, it's like, that's detailed. She's like, I will scrape it out.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  She was like, I have that power because through all of this, I mean, in Roman divorce, the man would keep the children. Um, and so Jason is within his legal rights when Medea says, send the children with me. Although Medea at that point doesn't really seem to be saying that earnestly. She wants Jason to confess that that's a point where she can hurt him. Um, and that's her first beautiful aside when she says like, oh, he likes his children so much. Great. I have a plan. Um, but Jason's within his rights to say, no, you can't have them. But the way he says it is so weeny where he's like, piety overcomes me. I could not live a day without these children that are there. Uh, and so in the end, when Medea is like, you actually don't have as much control over our reproductive history as you think you do.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Like Rome slash Corinth has given you legal control over the children, but like I am their mother and I can do these things that you did not anticipate because the law did not anticipate.

• 57:32Liv Albert?

  It's just so interesting. I'm so glad to have you on to talk about this because the Rome of it all is all the things that escaped me. Like there's so many things that I just kind of like have a good idea because I thankfully, you know, did cover Roman history in my degree, but it was a very long time ago and it's not my interest point. So I was like, you know, I'm pretty sure I'm right about divorce and we're going to confirm it on this episode, which I was, but like that it's so interesting to consider these things that that are so explicitly Roman and then therefore would have been so much more impactful to the audience and just there's just like Seneca was starting shit. And that's really interesting. Do you have any thoughts about like, it like why he would choose to push so many buttons?

• 58:18Liv Albert?

  Like, I know there's so much to his history and we won't get into it, but like.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  I mean, so we just don't know when this play was written. Um, I'm pretty convinced by the idea that he wrote tragedies for his whole career. Um, John Fitch has this great article where he looks at stylistic development and compares it with what we know of Euripides and what we know of, um, Shakespeare. And so that really shows that it's over a long period of time that he develops his tragic art. I'm also pretty convinced that the Thiestes and the Phoineisai, which is his final play, were written under Nero. Um, but the rest of these could have been written under Claudius. And when you look at the other literature of that time, you look at Lucan, you look at Perseus, like they're kind of in this age of the villain. And I'm sure we could make many political points to it, but I like to think that that was an age that like Christopher Nolan would have loved. They would have loved Christopher Nolan

• 59:06Speaker 02

  movies because everything is a little bit dark. Everything is more invested in the villain's origin story, or like seeing the villain do something that's even more villainous than they could before with like a blue tinged shade over everything. Like that's whole aesthetic really seems to be what's exciting to people of that time. And so that might be because they were living in an oppressive regime at that point. They also might have just liked it. Like that might have just been something that was anxious. So I think a lot of people say like, oh, do you think Seneca was writing coded messages about Nero? I think Seneca was writing open messages about Nero at a certain point in his career and it didn't work out well for him. But I don't think that that explains the whole era, especially

• 59:49Speaker 02

  when you go back into Claudian Rome's like love of these villain characters because they're clearly the most exciting characters in the plays. So if we're not supposed to be excited by what they're doing, I don't know why these tragedies have survived and why Shakespeare was so invested in like writing his own villains in these styles. Like Richard the Third would be right at home in a Seneca play. So I think, I don't like to push too hard on the politics because I think that that can flatten what is instead like an extremely compelling female character where we see like the limits of rage and anger and vengeance and intelligence. And that's probably very scary to some people in the audience, but also probably very exciting to other people in the audience.

• 1:00:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah. It's funny you said that. I mean, it's deeply connected, but I was literally just gonna be like, I see so much Shakespeare in Seneca in a way that I don't in the Greek. And I know that's, I think, I mean, I'm gonna say this with confidence as if I have any idea, but I've gotten the sense over reading whatever I've read over the years, that there was like a really long period where we didn't really have the Greek to work from. It was all Latin, right? So like Shakespeare probably would have had better access to Latin than anything.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, or Latin translations of the Greek plays. Yeah, but I think Shakespeare was also, it wasn't just because he didn't have Euripides and Aeschylus in the same way. I think he, he really loved Seneca and Tragedy. And there's a long, uh, sort of, he's not the first, and there are many others in the Renaissance that seem to have found like the darkness and the claustrophobia and the like horrific power differentials without any attempt to teach you a moral message in a lot of these very compelling and exciting theater. Um, and I find them compelling. I mean, I like Christopher Nolan movies also, so I also find them compelling. It's been easier to teach Seneca and Tragedy now than ever in the past because we are in this era of the villain where people end up finding it very interesting.

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• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  We haven't actually talked about though, my favorite line in the whole play, which I want to make sure we do.

• 1:02:44Liv Albert?

  Please.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  Is when Jason, in the end, it's, I am actually even going to find the exact line where he suggests that he can't recognize her. And she says, do you rec, don't you recognize your wife? This is how I always leave. And it's this amazing line where she has her dragon chariot. And of course, on one level, and I think Emily Wilson's translation takes it this way. She's just saying like, I always flee. After having done terrible crimes, I always flee. But the Latin is ambiguous. It almost looks like this meta theatrical comment of like, duh, the dragon chariot. Like, this is my big finish. What's wrong with you that you don't know this? It's like her ultimate frustration that she's tied to this character in her final scene that like,

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  hasn't done the reading, but like, doesn't know that this is the woman that he's married to. And I think it just sums up so much about the differentiation in their relationship. Uh, her as a character, the fact that she has known from the beginning that this is the ending and she's just been waiting for it. Uh, and that he is just caught totally blind. Like he has, he has no idea what's coming for him. And all he can say is, there are no gods in the end. But I just love that line. I think it would have elicited a guffaw from some people in the audience. Like, don't you recognize your wife? This is how I always leave.

• 1:04:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that is the next line that is highlighted in mine. Um, and it's just like, this is the way I always leave a country too, which like, it, it's just like an added, it's like the exile of it all. The like, just this is what her life is. And I, but they also, the next, or like a two lines down, the I, and I'm assuming this is a translation, but if you have insights into the Latin, I would love to know because see, like, in a way that feels like a total departure or just like one upping everything. Medea says, now daddy, take your children back.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:43Liv Albert?

  And my brain might have exploded a little bit like, so do you know what the Latin would be to have her translated as daddy?

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  I'm positive that it's pater. Um, but I think it is one of the only times where Medea acknowledges his, his social role and his biological role as father. I think other, I would have to go back and look, but she doesn't, he, she uses the language of maternity a lot for herself, but she doesn't acknowledge, like she calls him a father when she says, oh, he loves his children. Like there are these moments of realizations she has where like Jason's paternity becomes the key to what she's trying to achieve. But I love that translation of daddy because I think it just. It's so well encapsulates, encapsulates the dripping scorn that she has for him in that moment. And it's another one of these moments where I think the audience would be tempted to laugh.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  And whether that's a laugh of I'm deeply uncomfortable because you're murdering children on stage, or whether it's a laugh of how stupid is Jason? Or even a laugh of like, wow, that's a good line, or all of those things at once. Like, I think there are moments in this play that would elicit laughter. And I don't know, it's because they're always funny. Um, but she's like really witty. She's a very, very witty character. Uh, and her, the people she goes up against are not. And so I think that's another way that she bonds with us.

• 1:06:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, it broke me. I just like, there is a few moments because I, I basically have like the last hundred lines to get through uh, for the actual script. So I just like made sure that I had read them before we got on this call.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Liv Albert?

  And, and I just like screeched a number of times because the last hundred lines of this play is like, I mean, the whole thing is amazing. And then it's ju- he just ups it all with every passing line. It's just so good.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  And that moment just before that where Jason says, like, okay, like you've killed our one child. You're obviously going to kill the other one because you're nuts. So like, just, just do it already. And she's like, no, no. It's almost like she looks at the clock of the timing and is like, I have 10 minutes yet, buddy. We are not ending this thing until every last second of my screen time is over. And she talks about the pleasure in taking slow crime. And I gotta say, if you're in the audience and you're sitting there and you've kind of been rooting for Medea in whatever way you are, again, not moral endorsement, but in that she's creating interesting theater. I think that's a moment where you reflect on yourself and you're like, ooh.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Because you have been looking forward to this final moment, but you also are with Medea in wanting to make Jason hurt as much as possible in the end. And it's like this great moment of like, where does pleasure in watching a tragedy like this come from? Like, the answer is really uncomfortable. And I think Medea really likes to linger in how uncomfortable that is for Jason and for us.

• 1:07:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I'm going to use it as like, I'm going to say that the reason, because I was just going to say like, I don't feel uncomfortable at all, but I think that that is.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  You also haven't seen children killed on stage in front of you right now.

• 1:07:52Liv Albert?

  No. Um, and there's, so there's a lot of things happening in that with me, but I'll also like, I'll just, the easiest one is the sheer volume that I have talked about Medea on this podcast. And I have lost all shame because like, I mean, this is like, probably going to be my 10th episode covering her in whatever way, because anytime I find it, she's incredible and she's just so interesting. And so I've just gotten over trying to like, you know, make clear that like, obviously my love of Medea does not condone child murder. Because it's just, she's so interesting. Like, I don't want to be her. I don't want to be friends with her, but oh my God, I would read about her to the end of time.

• 1:08:35Liv Albert?

  No, the closest is the nurse and I'm kind of now convinced that she's in her head.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's, she doesn't really want friends. She doesn't want us as friends, but she does want our, our excitement.

• 1:08:45Liv Albert?

  Yes. Oh my God, she has it. Like, I just, I, the, the last line.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Comes up in the Latin a lot, and this is also happens in the Thiestes in a couple of his other plays. Like words for pleasure just start being heaped towards the end of the play. And I think that is, I mean, why do you go to the theater? You go to the theater because you want something entertaining. What is entertaining? It's pleasure, even if it's something that is like disturbing in front of you. And I think Seneca really leans in hard in the end of this through Medea of, there is supposed to be pleasure here. It is supposed to be exciting and interesting. You're supposed to feel something at the end of this. And I do not think that thing in Seneca theater is catharsis. I do not think that is what he is going for. He is going for, well, Luptas, pleasure. And I think, I don't feel bad either. Like, it's just, it's so compelling.

• 1:09:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and I think Euripides, he didn't do the same thing, but he did something really similar with Medea in a, in a kind of departure from the sort of like tradition of the other tragedians, which is that like, you do like her. You understand why she did what she did. And I mean.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  The chorus really helps in Euripides because the chorus is like, we shouldn't be on her side, but we are, kind of.

• 1:09:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like that's the thing you appreciate her. And I mean, I love Euripides more than the others by like a long shot. And it has so much to do with Medea. I mean, even just the using of the Deus ex machina as her, when that was otherwise like reserved for an actual divine intervention. And then she's like, here are my dead children in my chariot. Let me fly off into the sunset. Like, so I think Euripides really primed us and obviously Seneca's audience too, to be like, you know what, like, this woman has valid, you know, reasons to be angry. And, and of course, in Seneca's, he's like, you know, for all that Euripides convinced us that her anger

• 1:10:40Liv Albert?

  was valid, Seneca was like, here is why it's so much more valid than you even thought. You know, like, he just adds so many details and so much like righteousness. But what you're saying about the pleasure, because I was just scrolling through to try to find these lines, because they really stood out to me, is like, right towards the end, she starts talking about, you know, basically trying to, I think it's when she's going to convince herself that she can kill her kids. And she says, like, I'm happy that I ripped my brother's head away. I'm happy I sliced his limbs and glad I stripped my father of his ancestral treasure. I'm glad I set on the daughters to murder the old man. Like, yeah, she is, she's not unhappy about anything that she has done.

• 1:11:25Liv Albert?

  And it's reminiscent to when the nurse is like, you know, when, when it's revealed that, that Creus and Creon are dead. And the nurse is like, go now, like, this is your time. You need to leave. And she's like, if I wasn't leaving then, I'm not leaving now. Like, I, I've done this. I'm keeping going.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Because she needs an audience. She needs to see how people have reacted. Like, without that reception, it's nothing to her. And I love that her last line is this idea, I will fly amid the winds on my chariot with wings. Like, she's taking the language of Horus and Ovid and all of these like poets, that's the language of poetic immortality. At the end of their works, when they say, like, this, I'm gonna last forever. The things that I did are so impressive, that people are going to be talking about them and reading them until the end of time. And Medea says that throughout, but then it like gets really, really meta poetic at the end. This idea of like, oh, no, like, I'm gonna live on in poetic immortality. This version of Medea is gonna stick with you all in the end. And all Jason can say is, there are no gods.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  She owns it. She owns who she is. She doesn't like when people undercut it.

• 1:12:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's so interesting that you used those points to connect to, you know, these Roman poets who I'm not as familiar with because, and I'm gonna find it, because there's this moment that was like just epic, epic poetry in like a line. And she, oh, here. It's like her using an epic simile in a way that I think is fresh in this because I, it stood out to me immediately. I was like, oh, this is, this is an epic simile. When she's like, as when the wild winds make their brutal wars and on both sides, the seas lift up discordant waves. And she keeps going on and on. But like, yeah, it's just like, it's the most epic poem line. And yeah, so she's just calling on all of

• 1:13:15Liv Albert?

  these different traditions.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  In her own voice. And it's another thing that I think is much more pronounced when there's not a messenger speech, because like messenger speeches are often in Greek tragedy, where we come so close to epic. And that happens in some Seneca tragedies. But in this one, like, no, the longest speeches are hers. And she controls all the genres. And then she also is like constantly analogized both by herself and other people to forces of nature. And so she just is this like larger than life character, but who is also allowed, like even in her witchiness, and even in her supernatural powers, like she still is a human woman in this throughout as well. Like, he doesn't make her so grotesque that she's not recognizable as a person. And you could have, like, there are ways you can

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  tell the story that lean into the fact that she isn't quite human, or that she has this immortal legacy. And I think that's important, too, because I think, again, it all comes back to this anxiety of like, female anger is a really big theme in this play. And Seneca's message seems to be, it can take you out.

• 1:14:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I like, because he makes some, he makes a lot of divine connections in a way that I found really interesting. Like, there's a lot of reminders of where she comes from and who she's related to. Like, she calls Bithon her cousin, which I love that. I also mythologically have, I have so many thoughts. I realize I could absolutely talk about this play forever, but I've, I'm gonna try to lay out my thoughts, because we've got 20 minutes. But, okay, mythologically, I'm so curious, and maybe you don't know, because this is my, you know, my Greek, my knowledge of myth is very Greek. And so he's made some changes that are relevant to the Roman period. So one being that, like, he's got that later conflation of Apollo with

• 1:15:01Liv Albert?

  Helios and the sun. So it's like, her grandfather is Apollo, which is really interesting. And like, obviously, it's not Seneca inventing this, but it makes her so much more impressive than it being Helios. Like, Apollo is way bigger. But there's also this connection that, again, is not, you know, prevalent in, you know, the classical period and earlier, which is what I know, where Diana, as a, when she becomes so explicitly a moon goddess, then gets connected with Hecate.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31Liv Albert?

  So she's like calling on Diana a lot for this, which adds so many things. Like, there's that virgin kind of aspect, that like huntress, but then melding with Hecate.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Liv Albert?

  I just...

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Liv Albert?

  It's fascinating.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the Apollo connection, the sort of smushing of all of the gods of the sun in various ways, also has metapoetic connotations, right? Like, it can, that's, he is the patron god of most Roman poets. And so she also gets to claim descent from that as a creator. And I think the Diana aspect allows her to take this Olympian, but also connect it to her powers, which are much more cathartic. Even though she's constantly being connected and connecting herself to heavenly gods, she clearly finds her inspiration, her power source, to be gods of the underworld, the Furies included, but not just, not only the Furies, others that are there. And I love that. That separation, like she controls the heavens, she controls hell, but she chooses to get her powers from hell.

• 1:16:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, yeah, she's so explicitly when, when she's calling up like all of her magic and all of that, like one, she calls like all the snakes in the world, which is like the most cathartic thing you can do.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Liv Albert?

  Like every snake.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  And Roman as well.

• 1:16:39Liv Albert?

  Oh, great.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  Fear of snakes.

• 1:16:41Liv Albert?

  Oh, really?

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  I think from Virgil on, it's like snakes bad. We don't like snakes.

• 1:16:47Liv Albert?

  Interesting. Okay, I identify with that.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  I do too. There are a lot of snakes where I live in North Carolina and they scare me.

• 1:16:55Liv Albert?

  No, it's gross and awful. Um, yeah, no, snakes are not my jam, except for in textual imagery, I guess, because this was like a moment that I was so deeply here for. Just don't show me a real snake.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:06Liv Albert?

  Um, I say that looking down at my own hand where I have a snake tattoo, but that's because it doesn't look real and it's for Dionysus. Oh, which connects me to, this is a question I had earlier and then I got caught up with the Apollo. Um, oh, no, okay, sorry. Now I'm bouncing around. Um, we, so the, uh,

• 1:17:25Liv Albert?

  back to the cathonic nature. So she pulls up all these snakes and then not only that, but she, um, she calls on like everyone who's in Tartarus and like gets them to stop all of their punishments. She's like Ixion's wheel is gonna stop, like Tantalus is gonna have a drink, Sisyphus is gonna have that boulder roll back on him. Like, yeah, the, the connections that she makes so explicitly with the underworld and with all of these kind of cathonic ideas is just so powerful. Um, but I also, she gets connected, she gets referred to as a main ad a lot of times.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Liv Albert?

  And I'm curious about what the implication is there. Like, were in Roman, do you know if they were? Like, less positively viewed? That was poorly phrased, but...

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  No, I know what you mean. Um, yeah, so it becomes this sort of, uh, Lily Punicia has a really great chapter of this in a book that she just wrote. Like, the stereotype of Roman, sort of, bacchens or minnads is of, like, the most terrifying unhinged woman that you can imagine, which, of course, is present in the Greek imagination. Um, but in the Romans, there was actually even a sort of legal precedent for that. There was the sort of fear in the mid-republic of Bacchic worship and this law that was passed as Synodus consultam ultimum against the worship of Dionysus and against the Bacchanalia. And it clearly didn't take, because these rites remain a central part of Roman religion, um, but not actually a central part of Roman theater in the way that they were in Athens.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  And so it sort of comes to be associated with extremely, again, from the Roman patriarchal imagination, unhinged women that are tapping into types of power that can't be controlled, that are extremely dangerous to patriarchal structures, um, and that threaten sort of the sanctity of the state. And I think Seneca is sort of getting it almost directly from, um, Virgil's Aeneid, where often women out of control from Dido on forward are analogized to bacchens. And in Dido, the idea is like, oh, well, you should be lucky she didn't have a baby with Aeneas, because what would she have done to that child? Which I think Medea then circles full with, but often Virgil and then later epic poets, when women are acting in a way that is particularly not conducive to what the epic narrative

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  needs, or the male characters in the epic, or society needs, they're analogized to bacchens, even if they're doing, like, pretty normal things. Um, like, Amata doesn't want her daughter to marry the stranger that just came in. Why does she have to be called a bacchan, for wanting what seems to be a pretty realistic marriage for her child? Uh, so I think all of that is tapping into this idea that Medea is being connected to the stereotype. But I think what's so interesting about Seneca's Medea is, like, she's doing things that, from the male point of view, seem... Crazy, but Seneca is very careful to underline the extreme rationality of her position.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  He gives her a lot of powers of reason and logic and deduction, and she feels emotion, but there's no sense of this binary that we have that's both ancient and modern of, oh, if you're emotional, you're not rational. She's both. She is in touch with her emotions. She can label her emotions, but she is probably the most rational character in the play. And so I think the characters that label her a bacchanter see one part of her, like they're reacting to what they see in front of them. But we, as the audience, get to see inside her brain because of all of the monologues that she gives and the things that she shares with us. And I think we can see that that's a totally inappropriate image because it's just reacting to what they see as opposed to who she is, which is a very rational and therefore much more terrifying person.

• 1:21:12Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, and every time she, she gives these rational speeches, it's like, at least, you know, when she's talking to Creon and Jason, it's like in one ear and out the other, like neither of them actually, when they respond after she's given this like epic list of why she's right, like Creon literally, when, once she gives the whole list of like how she basically saved Greece single-handedly, Creon is just like, why haven't you left yet?

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're still here.

• 1:21:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like that's it. Like it's, it's like she can, you know, defend herself with all of the rationale in the world. Like she's, I've never used the word shrewd, I think, in a podcast before until this. And I'm like, that's just so perfect for her. And, you know, but it's like she can do that and, and the audience can take in every single thing she said and they can understand every single thing about her and it doesn't get her anywhere.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Liv Albert?

  It's both satisfying and frustrating and like.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Well, because you get frustrated with her. Like you are starting to feel the frustration that she feels, especially when Creon says things like, well, I'm obviously not a tyrant. And you think, I mean, you've just checked all the boxes of tyrannical behavior on stage in front of us. But what I love about that, when he says, you're still here, is like he can sort of come off as this tough guy, but when he first comes on, right, there's that scene where there are a bunch of silent characters on stage that must be his armed guards and he's really concerned that she's going to touch him. And he just keeps saying like, keep her away, keep her away. And there's no sign that those people leave the stage. And so I like to imagine, if we imagine a full performance, that there's just this like. Phalanx of people between Kriya and Medea, and he doesn't like when she moves closer. And so he's acting like, oh, you're this little fly. I'm just gonna swat you.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  But he clearly is terrified of her. Doesn't actually want her to get close. And I think that that would have some comic import. In addition to that, I'm obviously not a tyrant, which Medea kind of rolls her eyes at.

• 1:23:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I wonder how they would have her dressed. Like, just hearing that, I can imagine her. And, and the way she behaved with Jason at the end. Like, I can see they having her performed as though she is this like little helpless woman. So she like visibly would look like that and then behave as she does. And that would just be so powerful.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Visually consuming. I would, I would love, and this is not at all ancient, but if I were staging this in the modern world, I would want her to have a tearaway outfit where she was like in rags. And so there is that visual disconnect between what she's capable of in this. And then in the end, when she leaves, she just gets like this bright purple, like flaming sort of outfit as she goes out. Because that's who she's truly been all along.

• 1:23:45Liv Albert?

  Yes, I mean, that would be so good.

• 1:23:50Liv Albert?

  I don't know why that is the thing that reminded me of this, but do you, do you listen to Taylor Swift at all? If I made a Taylor Swift reference, great. So I, I don't know what it is about the album Folklore, but I have it playing when I write a lot. Like, it just works brilliantly with my ADHD to like focus my brain into what I need to be doing. And so I just listen to it over and over again. And, but while I was writing some of these last bits, the song Mad Woman came on. And I'm like literally writing this and then listening to these lines. And I was like, oh, like, I just think this song is Medea. And now that, as the audience will know by the time this episode comes out, that is the title of the last episode is There's Nothing Like a Mad Woman. Because like, oh, it just fit so perfectly,

• 1:24:34Liv Albert?

  but came on as I was writing and I was like, well, this is just, this is picturesque.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  To me, I have to say, uh, my soundtrack for Seneca is Medea is, um, Silver Springs. Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, Silver Springs. Especially the performance, like their reunion performance where she's just staring him down and getting closer and closer as she sings these lyrics against him. That is the vibe. Also, I, I kind of imagined Medea in a Stevie Nicks-esque outfit, like with all the drapes and the drama. And so to me, that's her song.

• 1:25:04Liv Albert?

  Hell, yes. No, that's so perfect.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  We can make a Medea soundtrack. I think that would be great.

• 1:25:08Liv Albert?

  It's so, this is perfect. So I, I made a playlist on Spotify of all my, well, what it was originally was just all the episodes that I've done on Medea. For people who want to like recap, um, cause I've done a lot. And then once I heard Mad Woman and Connect That, I was like, I'm just gonna toss that on. Why not? Um, and then I made the cover of it, the tweet that I know you've seen that I did, uh, which is she's everything and he's just Jason. I was like, I just think all of this works, not least because,

• 1:25:38Liv Albert?

  cause the word barbarian is how we get the word Barbara, which is how the word, how we get the name Barbie. And I just need that to be said, uh, which I've already done on the podcast, but here we are. It's just all, it's just all perfect. Um, but yes, if you have any other songs, I'm going to just start tossing things into this playlist along with it. Cause Silver Springs is going in next.

• 1:25:57Liv Albert?

  Oh, it's just so good. Um, okay. We are very much running out of time, but I want, um, to mention the last line again, uh, which you brought up, cause it's just so good. Cause Jason, like, you know, there's a couple of last lines, but the very last words that Jason says are basically, there are no gods wherever you go. Um, and I think maybe like looking at it again, it doesn't quite make the same connection I kind of had in my head briefly. But it did make me immediately think of, um, Sophocles' Trichiniae, where the last line is all that you've seen here is God. And like, I think it's a stretch to connect them, but I want to anyway, you know, cause it just feels kind of right. There's also like some very strong.

• 1:26:39Liv Albert?

  I wanted to say Heraklion, but we are talking about Rome. So Herculean references in here. Like she uses Nessos's like blood poison really explicitly. And she's like, this is the stuff that killed Hercules. So.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Oh, we know that the Trachidae in particular was like super popular in Rome. They really liked it. And then the Hercules Waitias kind of tells the same story in a interesting way where Deonera like becomes Medea. There's like all this weird intertextual windows there. What I love about that final line is also like, so the final word in the Latin is gods, because Latin can do that. And the first word in the play is gods.

• 1:27:17Liv Albert?

  God damn.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  And so there's this beautiful ring composition of the play opens with us knowing there are gods, knowing there are gods above, below, knowing Medea is in touch with all of them, that they are all listening to her, that she is claiming authority over them as well as dissent from them. So it's yet another way in the end where Jason is just super out of touch. Cause I think what he must mean is like, there are no gods that are on my side, or like there are no gods. If there are gods, I don't recognize this world. And of course that's true. Like Jason clearly doesn't understand the world that he's been living in, the marriage that he's experienced, the story that he's living out, all of these things. But I just love that, that helplessness that Jason feels in the end, because the only comfort he can imagine is if she's wrong.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  If she's not going to get away with this, and if she's not going to get to go and live this like sequel life that she has. But of course, we know she is.

• 1:28:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I, she also, there's one point where she tells Jason that she's gonna like leave his gods behind.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:18Liv Albert?

  Which, yeah, there's, yeah, there's some great, oh, there's some great god imagery. Oh, this is just, it's just so good and fun. Um, okay. I, I could talk about this forever. I won't keep you longer though. Um, thank you. Um, okay. I'm just trying to make sure. Is there anything else that you feel like we haven't missed? And also like, or, or if you also have somewhere to be in the five minutes I gave you, uh, that we have left, that's fine too.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think. I mean, I think we have covered it all. Like, I wanted to make sure we talked about, um, like, one of the things that Medea is so concerned about is satisfaction. Like, not just vengeance, but what is satisfying vengeance? And it's clear to her, in the end, that the murder of Kryon and Kryusa is just not that satisfying. Um, it didn't bring her much pleasure. And when she kills the first child, she thinks that's satisfying because she knows it will hurt Jason, but Jason didn't see it. And so it's not satisfying. And that's another big thing with Seneca and villains that I think plays into, a word I tell to my students is "enuffitude." Like, what is enough, this concept? And these villains never seem to realize what is enough until the end.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  But I think Medea is one of the only characters that actually ends the play satisfied. So there's always yet another thing, like, "Oh, I wish I'd done it this way," or "I wish that this existed so I could do that." Like, there's this constant feeling of nothing is enough in other villains. But Medea seems really damn self-satisfied by the end of this play. And I think that's really interesting, because I also think that is uncomfortable, um, in the best way, in the way that I love.

• 1:29:56Liv Albert?

  Yes, yes. I did love that moment where she, they're dead and she's just kind of like, "Yeah, that was not enough." Like, "That's not it. Like, what else can I do?"

• 1:30:05Speaker 02

  I was expecting to feel something, and I don't feel something. "Oh, Jason's here. He can see it now. That's what I've been missing." I want to see his face. And of course, we then get to see his face if he watches this, because it's not being reported. Um, and I think when she says that, the audience is probably also like, "Yeah, I also want to see his face." So again, we're right there with her.

• 1:30:28Liv Albert?

  Well, especially with this particularly clueless Jason.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Liv Albert?

  Like, just absolutely off-the-wall ridiculous man, who just does not seem to take in any single thing that happens around him.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  And yet he thinks that he has it all locked in.

• 1:30:45Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  His excuses are fine. He thinks he can just, he thinks that Medea's, that Medea is overcome with erotic jealousy. So he just misreads her from the beginning because she couldn't care less who he's sleeping with. I think she makes that pretty clear. Um, it's everything else. It's the lack of respect for her heroism and her role. It's makes her mad. So he just, he just misreads it every possible option.

• 1:31:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, that does make me think though, like there were a few moments where it seems like she wants him back. Like it seems like she would take him back and those really surprised me.

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Liv Albert?

  Like, yeah. Do you, do you think they stand out or there's something more in there?

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  I think so. I think there are moments where the character genuinely is open to him still having feelings for her. Um, but I think she also points out throughout all of this, how close love and hate are as emotions. And I think what she's really afraid of is being forgotten. Um, that he can just so easily excise her from his lived experience. And she even makes fun of him when he leaves the stage, when he's like placated by whatever bullshit she's just fed him. And she's like, really? Like you've forgotten who I am? How dumb are you? And I think that's where contempt starts to come in for Jason and she's no longer that interested in getting him back.

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  Um, but before that, I think it's like a whole constellation of like sexual desire, but also like they were a team and a partnership. And how dare he forget that? Like, how dare he not acknowledge that that's there? And so I think part of her, her desire for him to still recognize her and still want her is less to do with, I want my man back and is more to do with, I just want some goddamn respect.

• 1:32:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that makes sense. That really.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  And who doesn't identify with that?

• 1:32:28Liv Albert?

  Hell yeah. No, that, that, that fixes her for me. So thank you. I was like, these are the things that don't work for me. Like, I don't know why she would do that, but that, yeah. Cause it's not about him. It's not about him.

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:39Liv Albert?

  Cause no one wants him. I don't understand.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  About love.

• 1:32:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  It's about respect.

• 1:32:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. Well, clearly I could keep going on forever, but we will. This was, I mean, this was the greatest play, but I'm also just so glad that I was able to talk to you about it. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  This was so fun.

• 1:32:57Liv Albert?

  I'm so glad. I really like, this reminds me of when I read the Alcestis. Because I didn't know, yes, and I didn't know anything about it, really. And I, I just opened it as like a play to cover because I love Euripides and I was like, what is this? This is incredible. And then I had on Ellie Mack and Roberts, who equally was like, it's just like the very same vibe. I'm going on a guest. I mean, like, I just want to talk about how incredible this play is.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Here for it. Very excited. I did love your tweet of like the, I think I might love a Roman tragedy.

• 1:33:33Liv Albert?

  I can't explain how much it's broken my brain. And then also hearing all of the Roman context, which is exactly what I wanted because I knew there would be so much. But like, it's just so much more interesting having all of the information that you had. So, thank you. And also, like, I mean, totally selfishly, like, I had to talk to somebody about this.

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, as I said, I was just talking to these graduate students actually at this NEH workshop. And one of them said, I think Seneca's Medea is better than Euripides and I won't name them. They asked me not to. And everyone said, oh, bold. And I was like, but have you read it though? And they hadn't. And I was like, okay. And I gave them my pitch. I was like, super witchy, super subaltern, smarter than everyone, like, anger takes down the patriarchy, like, all these things. But in the end, they said, all right, we'll give it a chance. And I was like, okay.

• 1:34:24Liv Albert?

  Because you can't.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't think we have to choose which one's better because I think Seneca's Medea could not exist without Euripides Medea. And I wouldn't say that about most Seneca tragedies. I don't actually think they're that close all the time to what sometimes claimed as their Greek model. But I think he really expects you to know Euripides Medea and to take a number of those things for granted. So that he can totally flip the script in different places and surprise you. Like, that's fun to him.

• 1:34:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I think I needed that reassurance because I've been having some thoughts. Some thoughts about how much I love Seneca's Medea, but it's funny, like, I can't even think of how many times I've had on a guest who's been like, but Seneca's Medea, and I'm like, no, I don't, I don't know. I am not convinced. And now I'm like, oh shit, they were right. Everyone was right.

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  Turns out you just have to read it. And it's amazing.

• 1:35:11Liv Albert?

  It's so good. It's so good. Oh, my God.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  And my pitch for the Thiestes is that even though it's the play that doesn't have female characters, Atrius takes as his inspiration Prakne and Philomala from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and he like legit just says that repeatedly. So it's like this amazing mass of Ovid fandom, but like one-upping Ovid in grossness and horror and child eating. And it's, I think if you liked the Medea, you will also like that.

• 1:35:41Liv Albert?

  I mean, frankly, I was sold on it based on the fact that it exists. Like, after having read this, I was like, there's a Thiestes, I'm doing it. That helps even more. But I also think that there's something really to be said for a lack of female characters in that play. Because it's, I think that's kind to women.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:36:02Liv Albert?

  Not, not involving them in that absolute fucking mess.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Except for the Fury who is here for it.

• 1:36:08Liv Albert?

  Right, of course.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  Like, I'm gonna take this stuff down.

• 1:36:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, that's her job. So of course she'd be there.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Liv Albert?

  But otherwise.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  In the background.

• 1:36:15Liv Albert?

  Yes, like, that's the only thing a woman would do. Let's be on it. No, I mean, you know, I'm being unfair because Medea exists. But still, it's not unheard of or unreasonable to suggest that there were no women involved in everything that happens there. Oh, my God. Spooky season is coming up, so I know what I'm doing now. Jesus. Okay. Thank you so much. Do you, do you have anywhere that you want, you know, anything you want to share with my listeners in terms of like, reading more from you, or following you, or anything that you might want to promote?

• 1:36:45Speaker 02

  Is it okay if I say no?

• 1:36:47Liv Albert?

  No, it's absolutely fine, too. I usually give that out. Because also, it's like, so putting on the spot. Yeah. Also with Twitter, the way it is, God.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm just happy people are gonna think about Seneca's Medea. Honestly, that just brings me joy.

• 1:36:59Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God. Yeah. No, it's, oh, my God, it's so fucking good.

• 1:37:17Liv Albert?

  Well nerds, I mean that play and that conversation was really something. I am, I am so sold on Seneca's plays. I am sold. Thaestes is absolutely coming for spooky season because frankly, I was already planning to handle that cursed family in more detail during that season because like who doesn't love a murderous and cannibalistic family of famous Greek heroes? But having this play and hearing how good and violent it is, oh, I am so excited. It is made for my spooky season episodes, so you just stay tuned. Huge thank you to Lauren for speaking with me about this. It was so much fun. My ADHD went wild a few times there because there's just too many things I wanted to talk about, too many ideas and incredible moments that I wanted to learn more about and Lauren just went with me on the whole journey. So thank you. What a ridiculously

• 1:38:01Liv Albert?

  fun and supremely informative episode, if I do say so myself. And I do. Let's talk about Myths Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians, perhaps more colloquially known as the assistant producer. I've gotta get that word colloquial out of this. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron, where you'll get bonus episodes and more. Visit patreon.com/MythsBaby or click the link in this episode's description. I am Liv and I love this shit.

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