all too well that Medea will wreak a terrible vengeance on Jason. The Nurse also fears that Medea and Jason's young sons will play a part in Medea's revenge against Jason.

An Attendant appears with the children and tells the Nurse that Creon intends to banish Medea for vowing revenge against Jason. This causes the Nurse to be even more concerned for the safety of the two boys.

The Nurse confides her fears to the Attendant.

NURSE. Go: run into the house, my little ones:
All will end happily! ... Keep them apart:
Let not their mother meet them while her heart
Is darkened. Yester night I saw a flame
Stand in her eye, as though she hated them,
And would I know not what. For sure her wrath
Will never turn nor slumber, till she hath ...

At this point, Medea's voice is heard from inside her home calling out in grief and pain, and the Nurse and the Attendant break off their conversation.

In time, Medea affects her revenge. She kills her children, Creon, and Creon's daughter, Glauce, leaving Jason alive to suffer the rest of his life in loneliness and grief.

Although Medea suffers from excessive selfishness and pride (hubris)—flaws shared by many of the tragic characters in ancient Greek tragedies—her greatest and most tragic flaw (her hamartia) is an excess of passion. Medea is driven to her murderous behavior by her excessive jealousy, hatred, rage, and overwhelming need to take revenge on anyone who wrongs her.

It's true that Medea is wronged by Jason and Creon, and she's suffered terrible misfortune in her life, but is Medea a person for whom the audience can feel sympathy? Is Medea any less to blame for her circumstances than Pelias, Creon, or Jason?

While many audience members can feel pity for Medea and experience fear at her self-destruction—which Euripides no doubt intended them to feel—few members of the audience can truly sympathize with Medea or emphasize with her by putting themselves in Medea's situation. They simply wouldn't kill their own children, no matter the motivation or provocation.

First of all, Euripides presents Medea as a wronged woman, cruelly and callously discarded by the man she loves. Medea had made great sacrifices for Jason, and yet now she finds herself a stranger in a strange land, abandoned by her husband and without any support network to help her. Jason hasn't simply dumped Medea; he's subjected her to public shame and dishonor, and in this society that means an awful lot.

Women in ancient Greece were expected to be seen and not heard. One of the few things they had in life was their sense of honor. Yet even that has now been taken away from Medea, and so she's regarded as somewhat less of a woman as a consequence. She has lost not just lost her home and her husband but her whole identity as a woman in ancient Greek society. Though this cannot entirely justify her subsequent actions, Jason's reduction of Medea to the status of a non-person does at least elicit the audience's sympathy in the earlier parts of the play.

Archaic tales of Medea depict her as a savage sorceress and princess who was gifted with superhuman powers. A Greek prince owes her his very life but ends up betraying her. When he betrays her, jealousy and hate cause her to kill her children and then herself.

Euripides does not quite portray her as such, though. In Medea, she is the highly intelligent and cultured daughter of a king who is the sole reason that Jason is able to obtain the Golden Fleece. Jason spurns her for higher ambition—he has the chance, after he marries Medea and she gives him two sons—to marry another princess. This second marriage would be most favorable for him, and he plans to abandon Medea and his sons to make the marriage. Medea kills her children not in jealousy and hate but out of mercy: she wants to spare them any further wrongs. In simple language, Jason is a cad, and Medea is a wronged woman in Euripides's version.

Seneca is much less sympathetic because such a plot would be unacceptable to the Roman mores of his time. He goes back to the earlier tale in which Medea was savage and vindictive and Jason's motives were not unambiguously self-serving. Seneca takes away any motivation for Medea's horrific actions, and he deprives her of the richness of character that Euripides imbued her with.

There are two main ways in which Euripides make Medea more sympathetic to the audience than Seneca.

First, Euripides makes Medea into a victim, who acts out of her pain. She is the one who is forlorn and devastated by the actions of her husband Jason. Euripides also has a third person speak of Medea's plight and pain (the nurse). In this way, the audience is called to share the sympathy of the nurse.

Sencea's version of Medea is much more active. She has been wronged and she will now wrong Jason. She is a frightful person of exacting vengeance. Since she is portrayed in this active way, there is little sympathy that the audience can give. She is more than capable.

Second, Euripides makes much of the gods. What happens to Medea has been the horrible lot of the gods. She has been cursed. In this way, Medea is put into the category of a innocent victim. She even asks the gods for mercy. Seneca's Medea uses the gods for vengeance. She even says, "Vengeance, O God, come to me now!" This is very different than Euripides' Medea who says, "Would that I could die!"

In conclusion, the passive nature of Medea in Euripides evokes sympathy, whereas the active nature of Medea in Seneca evokes fright.

Two passages from the plays will help make the contrasts clear.  In the play by Euripides, here is the final speech before Medea goes off to kill her children; obviously she is tortured by the mere thought of what she is about to do:

My friends, I am resolved upon the deed; at once will I slay my children and then leave this land, without delaying long enough to hand them over to some more savage hand to butcher. Needs must they die in any case; and since they must, I will slay them-I, the mother that bare them. O heart of mine, steel thyself! Why do I hesitate to do the awful deed that must be done? Come, take the sword, thou wretched hand of mine! Take it, and advance to the post whence starts thy life of sorrow! Away with cowardice! Give not one thought to thy babes, how dear they are or howthou art their mother. This one brief day forget thy children dear, and after that lament; for though thou wilt slay them yet they were thy darlings still, and I am a lady of sorrows.

These are the very last words she speaks, and her killing of her children takes place off stage and is reported, very briefly, to Jason at the end of the play.  In contrast, here is the comparable moment in Seneca's play; notice how vicious and bloodthirsty this Medea seems as she slays her children not only on stage but in front of her husband, and notice how she glories in her deeds:

JASON
[Discovering her.]
[995]See, there she is herself, leaning over the sheer battlement! Someone bring fire that she may fall consumed by her own flames.

MEDEA
[997] Nay, Jason, heap up for thy sons their last funeral pyre; build them a tomb. Thy wife and father have already the services due the dead, buried by me; this son has met his doom, and this shall suffer like fate before thy eyes.

JASON
[1002] By all the gods, by our flight together, by our marriage couch, to which I have not been faithless, spare the boy. If there is any guilt, ‘tis mine. I give myself up to death; destroy my guilty head.

MEDEA
[1006] Here97 where thou dost forbid it, where it will grieve thee, will I plunge the sword. Go now, haughty man, take thee maids for wives, abandon mothers.

JASON
[1008] One is enough for punishment.

MEDEA
[1009] If this hand could be satisfied with the death of one, it would have sought no death at all. Though I slay two, still is the count too small to appease my grief. If in my womb there still lurk any pledge of thee, I’ll search my very vitals with the sword and hale it forth.

JASON
[1014] Now end what thou hast begun – I make no more entreaty – and at least spare98my sufferings this suspense.

MEDEA
[1016] Enjoy a slow revenge, hasten not, my grief; mine is the day; we are but using the allotted99 time.

JASON
[1018] O heartless one, slay me.

MEDEA
[1018] Thou biddst me pity – [She slays the second son.] ‘Tis well, ‘tis done. I had no more atonement to offer thee, O grief. Lift thy tear-swollen eyes hither, ungrateful Jason. Dost recognize thy wife? ‘Tis thus100 I am wont to flee. A way through the air has opened for me; two serpents offer their scaly necks bending to the yoke. Now, father, take back thy sons. [She throws the bodies down to him.] I through the air on my winged car shall ride.
[She mounts the car and is borne away.]

SOURCES:

http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.html

http://www.theoi.com/Text/SenecaMedea.html