Medea

Edith Hall is a professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is the author of numerous books, including Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s “Iliad” in the Fight for a Dying World and Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me. She lives in Cambridgeshire, UK.

“An impressive, innovative blend of storytelling and cultural history. Drawing on her encyclopedic knowledge of ancient sources and modern retellings, and her own travels to the sites of Medea’s adventures, Hall gives a compelling account of antiquity’s most provocative heroine and her rich, ongoing legacy.”—Sheila Murnaghan, translator of Medea“Serial killer or tragic heroine? Or both? Edith Hall’s ‘biography’ of this mythical figure both touches all the relevant intellectual bases and tugs at all the relevant heartstrings. Eccentric it may be to attempt such a project of recuperation, but Professor Hall accomplishes it magnificently with all her customary unequalled insight and panache.”—Paul Cartledge, author of Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece“A rousing journey through Medea’s story that gleams in the telling, Edith Hall’s Medea provides a detailed and invigorating biography of one of Greek myth’s most famous women; the accompanying essays offer insights on why Medea matters, from one of tragedy’s great scholars.”—Emily Hauser, author of Penelope’s Bones

• MapsFamily TreeIntroductionAct One. A Colchis ChildhoodAct Two. Escape on the ArgoAct Three. Trouble in ThessalyAct Four. Crisis in CorinthAct Five. Asylum in AthensMedea’s AfterlivesMedea as Women’s HeroineNote on SourcesNotesFurther ReadingAcknowledgmentsIndex