Medea also uses her children by having them deliver poison in the disguise of gifts, as no one would expect the children to have ill intentions. The children present the gifts as a request to let them avoid banishment, but in reality the gifts have been sent not to aid the children's situation at all. Throughout the play Medea acts like a puppet-master using the children to get her goals accomplished without being detected. They are the perfect cover. In addition to the children being used as a symbol, Euripides also harnesses the use of the sun as a symbol in Medea. The sun is a symbol of the "light" of reason and civilization, in a contrast to Medea's darkness and barbaric nature. Two sun gods, Apollo and Helios, are both used in Medea. "Apollo is the god of order, of art, of moderation and civilization. Helios, on the other hand, is the deity of the older age of the world, the god of wild Nature and barbarism." (Hlabadie) The sun is a dual symbol. Through the appearance of Apollo, the sun is representative of Greek culture...
Through Helios, the sun is the force of nature which both creates as destroys, like Medea herself who is from a barbarian island and both birthed and killed her children.
Women in the Ancient World: Witches, Wives, And Whores One of the paradoxes of the ancient and medieval world is that although women were often discriminated against and treated as second class citizens (or not allowed to be citizens at all); they had an extremely central role in literature of the period. Women fulfilled a symbolic function in literature, representing foreignness, danger, and sexuality. Occasionally, when women's virtue surpassed that of
While the judges can be considered responsible for hamartia, Socrates himself is also accountable for hamartia when considering that he plays an important role in influencing the judges in wanting to put him to death. He actually has a choice, but he is reluctant to adopt an attitude that would induce feelings related to mercy. Ethos is also a dominant concept across Socrates' discourse, as he apparently believed that by influencing
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