else to where they could go, being barbarians in a Greek city:"[m]y children, there is none who can give them safety." (793) For these tworeasons, Medea decides that killing her children is the best way to accomplishher plan: getting revenge and keeping her children away from Jason. Whether or not Medea could have accomplished her goal without killingher children is debatable. On one hand, if we look at Medea's objective only asseeking revenge against Jason, then she could have accomplished that withoutkilling her children. Killing the princess, Jason's new wife, would causeenough grief for Jason so that her goal would be accomplished. We can inferthat the death of Jason's wife would be more damaging to him than the deaths ofhis children because Jason was going to let Medea take the children with herinto exile and did not try to keep them for himself. Therefore, once theprincess was dead, killing the children, while it causes additional grief for Jason, really is not necessary. Even though Medea does not seem to believe it, killing her children probably causes more pain for her than Jason. She justdoes not see it because she is so bent on revenge against Jason. On the otherhand, if we define Medea's objective in two parts, one being revenge, and theother to keep the children away, then it is possible that she had to kill herchildren. As for the revenge part, it was not necessary that she kill herchildren for the reasons just discussed. However, she may have needed to killthem to keep Jason from getting them. If Jason decided he wanted his children,there is not much Medea could do about it, other than kill them. Also, it ispossible that she did not want to take them with her into exile because theycould make it more difficult for her to reach Athens. For whatever the reason,however, it is probable that she needed to kill her children to carry out herplan, since she accomplished two different goals through their deaths. The murder of Med...
