EXODUS (Enter Jason, with attendants.) Jason You women, standing close in front of this dwelling, Is she, Medea, she who did this dreadful deed, Still in the house, or has she run away in flight? For she will have to hide herself beneath the earth, Or raise herself on wings into the height of air, If she wishes to escape the royal vengeance. Does she imagine that, having killed our rulers, She will herself escape uninjured from this house? But I am thinking not so much of her as for The children - her the king's friends will make to suffer For what she did. So I have come to save the lives Of my boys, in case the royal house should harm them While taking vengeance for their mother's wicked deed. Chorus O Jason, if you but knew how deeply you are Involved in sorrow, you would not have spoken so. Jason What is it? That she is planning to kill me also? Chorus Your children are dead, and by their own mother's hand. Jason What! That is it? O woman, you have destroyed me! Chorus You must make up your mind your children are no more. Jason Where did she kill them? Was it here or in the house? Chorus Open the gates and there you will see them murdered. Jason Quick as you can unlock the doors, men, and undo The fastenings and let me see this double evil, My children dead and her - Oh her I will repay. (His attendants rush to the door. Medea appears above the house in a chariot drawn by dragons. She has the dead bodies of the children with her.) Medea Why do you batter these gates and try to unbar them, Seeking the corpses and for me who did the deed? You may cease your trouble, and, if you have need of me, Speak, if you wish. You will never touch me with your hand, Such a chariot has Helius, my father's father, Given me to defend me from my enemies. Jason You hateful thing, you woman must utterly loathed By the gods and me and by all the race of mankind, You who have had the heart to raise a sword against Your children, you, their mother, and left me childless - You have done this, and do you still look at the sun And at the earth, after these most fearful doings? I wish you dead. Now I see it plain, though at that time I did not, when I took you from your foreign home And brought you to a Greek house, you, an evil thing, A traitress to your father and your native land. The gods hurled the avenging curse of yours on me. For your own brother you slew at your own hearthside, And then came aboard that beautiful ship, the Argo. And that was your beginning. When you were married To me, your husband, and had borne children to me, For the sake of pleasure in the bed you killed them. There is no Greek woman who would have dared such deeds, Out of all these whom I passed over and chose you To marry instead, a bitter destructive match, A monster, not a woman, having a nature Wilder than that of Scylla in the Tuscan sea. Ah! no, not if I had ten thousand words of shame Could I sting you. You are naturally so brazen. Go, worker in evil, stained with your children's blood. For me remains to cry aloud upon my fate, Who will get no pleasure from my newly wedded love, And the boys whom I begot and brought up, never Shall I speak to them alive. Oh, my life is over! Medea Long would be the answer which I might have made to These words of yours, if Zeus the father did not know How I have treated you and what you did to me. No, it was not to be that you should scorn my love, And pleasantly live your life through, laughing at me; Nor would the princess, nor he who offered the match, Creon, drive me away without paying for it. So now you may call me a monster, if you wish, A Scylla housed in the caves of the Tuscan sea. I too, as I had to, have taken hold of your heart. Jason You feel the pain yourself. You share in my sorrow. Medea Yes, and my grief is gain when you cannot mock it. Jason O children, what a wicked mother she was to you! Medea They died from a disease they caught from their mother. Jason I tell you it was not my hand that destroyed them. Medea But it was your insolence, and your virgin wedding. Jason And just for the sake of that you chose to kill them. Medea Is love so small a pain, do you think, for a woman? Jason For a wise one, certainly. But you are wholly evil. Medea The children are dead. I say this to make you suffer. Jason The children, I think, will bring down curses on you. Medea The gods know who was the author of this sorrow. Jason Yes, the gods know indeed, they know your loathsome heart. Medea Hate me. But I tire of your barking bitterness. Jason And I of yours. It is easier to leave you. Medea How then? What shall I do? I long to leave you too. Jason Give me the bodies to bury and to mourn them. Medea No, that I will not. I will bury them myself, Bearing them to Hera's temple on the promontory; So that no enemy may evilly treat them By tearing up their grave. In this land of Corinth I shall establish a holy feast and sacrifice Each year for ever to atone for the blood guilt. And I myself go to the land of Erechtheus To dwell in Aegeus' house, the son of Pandion. While you, as is right, will die without distinction, Struck on the head by a piece of the Argo's timber, And you will have seen the bitter end of my love. Jason May a Fury for the children's sake destroy you, And justice, Requitor of blood. Medea What heavenly power lends an ear To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver? Jason Oh, I hate you, murderess of children. Medea Go to your palace. Bury your bride. Jason I go, with two children to mourn for. Medea Not yet do you feel it. Wait for the future. Jason Oh, children I loved! Medea I loved them, you did not. Jason You loved them, and killed them. Medea To make you feel pain. Jason Oh, wretch that I am, how I long To kiss the dear lips of my children! Medea Now you would speak to them, now you would kiss them. Then you rejected them. Jason Let me, I beg you, Touch my boys' delicate flesh. Medea I will not. Your words are all wasted. Jason O God, do you hear it, this persecution, These my sufferings from this hateful Woman, this monster, murderess of children? Still what I can do that I will do: I will lament and cry upon heaven, Calling the gods to bear me witness How you have killed my boys and prevent me from Touching their bodies or giving them burial. I wish I had never begot them to see them Afterward slaughtered by you. Chorus Zeus in Olympus is the overseer Of many doings. Many things the gods Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought Is not confirmed and what we thought not god Contrives. And so it happens in this story. (Curtain.)