Medea

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Medea is recalled by Dante in Canto XVIII of the Inferno as an emblematic example of a woman who was deceived and then took revenge: the poet brings her case alongside that of the young girl abandoned by Jason, noting that "also of Medea is vengeance taken." According to the critical note on the verse, Medea was the daughter of the king of the Colchians and had helped Jason in the quest for the golden fleece; after being seduced and abandoned by him, she is depicted by the ancients as a pitiless sorceress who took revenge by killing the two little sons she had borne to Jason before the eyes of their father. The note further emphasizes that Dante, in the poetic text, gives only a hint of this story, limiting himself to evoking the vengeance as a counterpoint to the guilt of the fraudulent seducers punished in the ditch. The Dantesque reference thus assumes an exemplary function, placing the mythological figure in parallel with historical and contemporary characters cited in the same context.