This isolation was the worst feature in a Greek woman’s life: to a clever woman it was soul-destroying, and Medea is incomparably cleverer than any man in the play. The scenes where she forces the two old men, ‘King’ Creon and ‘King’ Ægeus to do, not what they want, but what she wants, are masterpieces of satirical humour. With her husband her cleverness fails her: she is too angry to reason: she hisses her scorn and foams her disgust. Jason keeps cool and so far has the best of the argument. ‘You certainly are a clever woman,’ he says, ‘but you are only a woman. I am a very fine figure of a man: you fell in love with me; and it was only natural.’ Jason is in many ways like Admetus. Both are lovers of outward show and have a great regard for men’s opinion. Both say with some emphasis that a family of two children is quite large enough. Both have the same opinion of women; and this is how Jason concludes—‘Men ought to be able to get their children from some other source: the female sex should not exist: and then there would be no trouble for mankind.’ Such sentiments naturally fail to please either the chorus or Medea. The comment of the chorus is, ‘You have made the best of your case, but still, surprising though it may seem to you, I think you are acting unfairly in betraying the woman who has shared your bed.’ Medea gives full vent to her anger: she contemptuously refuses the help in money which Jason says he is ‘ready to give with an ungrudging hand,’ and at last scornfully dismisses him—‘Be off with you. You are yearning for the new girl you have broken in, all the time that you linger outside her house. Go and play the bridegroom with her.’ But in the next scene Medea has mastered her temper and pretends to submit. ‘We are but what we are,’ she says, ‘just women. You must not take pattern by the evil nor answer folly with foolishness. I give way: I acknowledge that I was wrong.’ Jason is patronising and friendly in his answer: ‘I approve your present attitude, and, indeed, I do not blame your past behaviour: it is only to be expected: woman is a thing of moods.’ He consents to ask his new wife for a remission of the children’s exile. ‘Certainly I will, and I fancy that I shall persuade her.’ ‘Yes, indeed, you will,’ Medea says, ‘if she is one of us: all women are alike. But I will help you once again in this enterprise, too.’ And as in the past she had given him an antidote against the fire-breathing bulls, so now she gives him the fiery robe which is to destroy the young bride. Then comes the crucial scene of the play: Medea kills her children and we are faced by the problem—when is killing murder?