evise to _avenge_ me on my husband for this cruel
treatment;" and the chorus agrees: "Thou wilt be taking a just
vengeance on thy husband, Medea." Creon, having heard that she had
threatened with mischief not only Jason but his bride and her father,
wants her to leave the city. She replies, hypocritically:

"Fear me not, Creon, my position scarce is such that I
should seek to quarrel with princes. Why should I, for how
hast thou injured me? Thou hast betrothed thy daughter where
thy fancy prompted thee. No, 'tis my husband I hate."

But as soon as the king has left her, she sends to the innocent bride
a present of a beautifully embroidered robe, poisoned by witchcraft.
As soon as the bride has put it on she turns pale, foam issues from
her mouth, her eyeballs roll in their sockets, a flame encircles her,
preying on her flesh. With an awful shriek she sinks to the earth,
past all recognition save to the eye of her father, who folds her in
his arms, crying, "Who is robbing me of thee, old as I am and ripe for
death? Oh, my child! would I could die with thee!" And his wish is
granted, for he

"found himself held fast by the fine-spun robe...and then ensued
a fearful struggle. He strove to rise but she still held him
back; and if ever he pulled with all his might, from off his
bones his aged flesh he tore. At last he gave it up, and breathed
forth his soul in awful suffering; for he could no longer master
the pain."

Not content with this, Medea cruelly slays Jason's children--her own
flesh and blood--not in a frenzied impulse, for she has meditated that
from the beginning, but to further glut her revengeful spirit. "I did
it," she says to Jason, "to vex thy heart." And when she hears of the
effect of the garment she had sent to his bride, she implores the
messenger, "Be not so hasty, friend, but tell the manner of her death,
for thou wouldst give me double joy, if so they perished miserably."

PRIMITIVE FEMININE JEALOUSY

A passion of which such horrors are a possible outcome may well have
led Euripides to write: "Ah me! ah me! to mortal man how dread a
scourge is love!" But this passion is not love, or part of love. The
horrors of such "jealousy" are often witnessed in modern life, but not
where true love--affection--ever had its abode. It is the jealousy of
the savage, which still survives, as other low phases of sexual
passion do. The records of missionaries and