Trevet's Medea: A Reading of Seneca's Medea Through Nicholas Trevet's Medieval Commentary.

In 1314, the Oxford Dominican monk Nicholas Trevet was commissioned to write a commentary on Seneca's tragedies. Trevet's interpretation of character and plot in Seneca's Medea differs in many ways from 21st-century classical scholars. Because Trevet relied on a single manuscript from the A tradition, he and his readers did not have access to a Senecan Medea who asks Jason whether he 'recognizes his wife' before departing Corinth in a flying chariot drawn by serpents because the last nineteen lines of the play did not exist in A. Trevet did not know a Medea who told her Nurse that she 'would become' Medea. It is Trevet's Medea, and not Jason, who is being pursued by Pelias's son Acastus. For Trevet, Jason's alliance with Creon's daughter Creusa is calculated not to protect himself and his sons from an angry and dangerous Acastus, but in order to save Medea's life. Furthermore, the theme of Medea as Jason's saviour, and this act of salvation itself as the cause of crime, informs Trevet's reading (and misreading) of important passages. Finally, when Medea argues back and forth with herself, Trevet attributes Medea's regard for her sons as 'not mine' to her loss of power over them because of her exile from Corinth, without any mention that the sons might now belong to Jason's new wife Creusa. These are all subtle interpretations that cumulatively form a unique 'reading' of Seneca's Medea offered by the very first commentator on all of Seneca's plays, seven hundred years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]