Medea | Historical Context
The End of the Golden Age of Athens
The year Euripides produced Medea, the devastating Peloponnesian War (431-404 B. C.) began, The tensions which precipitated this conflict between Athens and its neighbors on the Peloponnesian peninsula, primarily the cities of Sparta and Corinth certainly existed before the first recorded battle and possibly led Euripides to set his play in Corinth. Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.) claims that the true cause of the war was Athen's rise to greatness, which made Spartans...
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