Episode 842: Medea with Edith Hall

The Greek tragedian Euripides gave the world perhaps the most villainous woman ever created: Medea, the scorned wife who murders her own children. But can we trace this mythological figure back to a real-life historical woman who migrated to Greece in the late Bronze Age? 

In Episode 842, Jacke talks to one of Britain's foremost classicists, Edith Hall, about her book Medea: A Life, which draws upon meticulous research to construct a biography of a woman navigating the violent patriarchies of the ancient Mediterranean – and questions whether the figure long regarded as an abhorrent psychopath should instead be viewed as a brilliant, embattled outsider pushed to extremes.

For more about the ancient world, here are several other books by Edith Hall: