Medea : A Life

Description

Author: Edith Hall

Ancient Greece

Published on 8 September 2026 by Yale University Press in the United States.

Hardback | 256 pages, 23 b-w illus.
144 x 224 x 27 | 372g

The story of Medea, a maligned and misunderstood woman of Greek mythology, from one of Britains foremost classicistsMothers who kill their children are universally abhorred but perennially fascinating. In this book, the award-winning scholar Edith Hall explores the possibility that Medea, mythologys archetypal murderous mother, could be based on a historical figure who migrated to Greece in the late Bronze Age.

Medea has appeared in countless works of artplays, operas, musicals, ballets, movies, poems, paintings, sculptures, and novelsbut until now no one has written a biography of her. Through meticulous research and fast-paced narrative, Hall brings new life to Medeas story, from her lonely childhood on the shores of the Black Sea through her dramatic escape with Jason and the Argonauts, the murders and attempted palace coup in Thessaly, her deadly revenge in Corinth, and her final exile in Athens.

In reframing a figure long reduced to villainy, Hall restores Medeas humanity, illuminating a woman pushed to extremes by betrayal and displacementa brilliant, embattled outsider navigating the violent patriarchies of the ancient Mediterranean.