Euripides’s Medea

... In Euripides's Medea, the title character is portrayed as a vengeful and diabolical woman. While she is vengeful, her actions are not diabolical. By definition, diabolical is devilish or fiendish. That is to say evil or illogical. Yet her actions, though questionable, were not "evil". She kills her husband Jason's new bride and father-in-law, Creon, the king of Thebes. She even goes so far as to kill her own children. This is the action on which my opponents claim of Medea's diabolic nature hinges. It is apparent that alternatives are available to Medea, yet for her revenge to be true, the course of action taken certainly accomplishes more. My opponent believes that Medea's motives behind killing her children were devilish. Who but a devil would kill his or her child much less premeditate it? She does, however, have a "psychomithia" where she agonizes over whether or not she should kill her

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