Ovid And Medea

Myth Clash II: Ovid vs. Euripides for Medea, a sadness of love

As one of the most well known ancient Roman love poets, Ovid has demonstrated bountiful talents within his writing. When reading myths from his book titled Metamorphoses, you gain an enlightening insight of how he viewed mythology. To Ovid, love was the origin of everything. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that most of his poems relate to the theme of love. However, not all poets are the same and every re-telling of a myth has its own unique perspective. In this paper I will compare and contrast the myth of Medea in Euripides Medea and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 7. I will then explain how Ovid’s approach to love and loss correlate to his general approach to myth as a whole. I will support my belief with evidence from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 14.
To begin comparing Euripides Medea and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 7, we need to look at three components: context, characters, and themes. Both Euripides and Ovid tell the story of Jason abandoning Medea for another woman; however, they do not always share a perspective on the female protagonist’s traits, behavior, and purpose. Euripides portrays a woman who reacts to discrimination by beginning a battle to gain revenge all who harmed her, which she is prepared to follow through with even if it means resorting to the most despicable methods. Ovid, on the other hand, tells of a much less severe figure whose modest goal is only to persuade Jason to return. Despite these written differences, both of their Medea’s create trouble by acting with emotions instead of with reason, and as a result, put themselves in undesirable situations. Euripides and Ovid present two different sets of motivations for Medea's behavior wh...

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... is one example of how he used a poem to write about what the power of love can do to someone, i.e. bring someone to his or her demise. This kind of approach to myth telling is also prominent in another myth written by Ovid, which can be found in Book 14. This is the story of Dido and Aeneas. In this instinct Dido is tricked and deceived by Aeneas, when he takes advantage over her and uses her. Therefore Dido is left on her own and since her passion of love towards Aeneas was so great, she then finds herself depressed and kills herself. This action is called upon from the power of love and by killing herself she deceived others as well. Now, this is not the exact same comparison as to Medea’s story but it does depict what beholds those who have fallen deeply in love. Good reasoning and justice falls second when it comes to women’s emotions of passion and persuasion.