Because even in the darkness of the earth where you are buried, Aphrodite’s anger which has broken over you, your chastity and virtue will be rewarded by many and great honours.
I, personally, will see that justice will be granted to you with these unerring arrows of mine, by shooting them at another mortal, whoever is the dearest to her.

Work: Hippolytus

Speaker: Artemis

Significance: Revenge plot, gods endless cause immortal and never change, humans must forgive and are potentially ethically superior

And you, dear friends, only give me good advice.
This day, I shall please Cypris, the goddess who so wants to destroy me, by shedding my life. I am weaker than this bitter passion.
My death though will hurt someone else. A man who shall learn not to rejoice over my ill fate. This man will take his share of my misfortune and doing so will learn about humility.

Work: Hippolytus

Speaker: Phaedra

Significance: Revenge Plot on the human level- plans to frame Hippolytus falsely for rape to keep her good reputation but also in vengeance because he arrogantly rejected her

Yet since we should not imitate the young when their thoughts are like these. I shall pray, in words befitting a slave, to your statue, my lady Cypris. One should be forgiving: if youth makes someone's heart stiff with pride and he utters folly, pretend not to hear him. For gods should be wiser than mortals. 

Work: Hippolytus

Speaker: Hippolytus' Attendant

Significance: revenge plot- mortals are potentially ethically superior in their ability to forgive

Your oaths mean nothing to me these days.
Nor do I care what you think about gods. Are they the same as they always were or are they different?  Nor do I care if there are new laws for mortals to obey.   To me you’ve broken all oaths, old and new – and you know it!
She raises her right hand
Poor hand! He has grasped you so often. Poor knees!  Hand and knees!  How often we were deceived by this coward!  How often we’ve missed out on our hopes!

Work: Medea

Speaker: Medea

Significance: Medea speaking in the agon, describing Jason's supplication and oath and how he broke it

The order of things has changed. The holy waters of the rivers flow upwards.

Justice and all things human turn backwards.

Men’s thoughts are evil now and their belief in the gods is gone.

And I can see that the coming stories will turn women’s reputation to that of a glorious and honourable gender.

Their name will not longer be foul.

Work: Medea

Speaker: Chorus

Significance: Jason's failure to behave ethically and honour his oath to Medea has allowed Medea to take the position of the hero 

Come, my heart, arm yourself.  This is no time for equivocations. Need has forced this evil.  So why wait?  Come terrible hand, pick up the knife!  Take it and take also the final, the most bitter step, the last step of life.  Don’t be a coward now.  Don’t think about the love you have for them, the life you gave them.
Today, forget that you have any children at all!  Leave the crying for another day.
So what if you’re their murderer?
Their love will follow you for ever – just as misery will.

Work: Medea

Speaker: Medea

Significance: language marked by military colouring that reflects her masculine heroism

We need to spend a fortune to buy us a man who… what will he do? He will become the master of our bodies!  And, it’s obvious, that this dangerous thing we do, becomes even more dangerous when we don’t find the right husband. Is he a good husband? Or is he a bad one?  By the time you find that out it’s already too late.
And then, for a woman to leave her husband is neither proper nor possible.  To live in a place where new laws and customs apply one needs to be a prophet, since even your own folk don’t tell you how you should behave towards your husband.
And if all these things work out well and our husband lives with us without thinking the marriage yoke to be too heavy, well that would indeed be a great life. If not, though, only Death opens his arms for us. Only Death awaits us.
Whereas the husband, however, if he finds the house to be too great a burden for him, he leaves the place, he finds a friend or someone of similar age and immediately his heart shrugs off that weight. We, on the other hand, we, women, can only let our eyes fall upon one person and one person only, our husband.
Then people also say that while we live quietly and without any danger at home, the men go off to war.  Wrong!  One birth alone is worse than three times in the battlefield behind a shield.

Work: Medea

Speaker: Medea

Significance: Medea is speaking of herself and women in general w/ in the historical context of the drama (5th century Athens) rather than the original mythological context.

This is not the first time I’ve noticed what a great evil excessive anger is.

No, I’ve noticed this many times. You, for instance, could have easily stayed on here, in your own home, if only you had obeyed the wishes of your superiors and kept your mindless words to yourself.  It’s because of these mindless words of yours that you’re being sent away.
I don’t care about myself. I don’t care if you never stop yelling that I, Jason, is the worst of all men. But you’ve also uttered evil words about the king.  Far too many words and far too evil. And now you’re paying the price of that excess.
Exile!
I’ve often softened the king’s anger against you because I wanted you to stay here but you, you’ve never stopped uttering your insults against him.  So, here’s your reward for it.
Exile!

Work: Medea

Speaker: Jason

Significance: part of agon, Jason says he does not care how Medea talks of him and yet it was fundamental for heroes to care about their reputation

You, who have never fought the Trojans, married my mother improperly and murdered her husband, the leader of the Greek army.
You were such a fool, thinking that marrying my mother and dishonouring my father’s bed, she would stay faithful to you. Yet everyone should know this: when a man seduces another man’s wife with secret love and then is forced to marry her, he is a fool to think that she’d be honest with him if she wasn’t with her first husband.
You lived in misery yet you didn’t suspect it and felt, instead, that you were happy. Of course both of you knew your union was unholy. Unholy marriage, unlawful husband.
You two, being evil, hid each other’s misery: she hid yours and you hid hers. All the Argives would say, “Look, there goes Klytaimestra’s husband” and not, “there goes Aigisthus’ wife!”
It’s a great shame to see a house being ruled by the woman and not by the man. I turn away from any child whom the city calls not a father’s son but a mother’s. This is because if the man marries a woman of a far better standing than his and far more noble than him, the citizen will never speak about him but about his wife.

Work: Electra

Speaker: Electra

Significance: Electra's ethical outlook is for women is teh culturally prescribed one, that women should support the men in their lives and not be known or spoken about as independent agents

“For her part (Clytemnestra's) she has received justice, but what you have done is not just.” 

Work: Electra

Speaker: Castor

Significance: Electra's obsessive anger caused her to persue the matricide beyond moral limits

It is impossible to judge a man’s virtue with accuracy.  There’s always great confusion in the nature of mortals.
I, myself, have seen worthless children born of a virtuous man and from evil parents born brilliant children.  I have seen a small, poor mind in a wealthy man and in the soul of a poor man, a great one. How then can someone judge a man when he must consider all these attributes? By wealth? No, he will be a bad judge.  By his poverty? No, because poverty brings misery and makes the man turn to evil by necessity.  Should I consider arms? Would you believe that a man is brave simply by the fact that he’s holding a spear? Much better if one leaves all this to Fate’s judgement.  This man here is not great amongst the Argives, nor does he puff his chest up in pride about his ancestors but one sees him as being quite apart from the masses. Speaking to the audience. You, however who, with mindless opinions fall astray, will you never think wisely and consider weighing mortals by their manner and the virtuous among them by their character?

Work: Electra

Speaker: Orestes

Significance: Character and Class- praising the Peasant for is noble actions, comments on how wealth is not an accurate measurement of character

And you, Aigisthus, because of your lack of intelligence, fell into a big trap which is that you thought that the great wealth made you important. Yet wealth is not something you can have for long.
A man’s strength is his nature, not his wealth because that is what stays with us and that is what defeats our troubles. When the unjust joy falls into sinful ways, it blossoms in the house for a very short time before it flies away again.
I am not going to talk openly about your behaviour towards women; a virgin must not do so but if I speak of them in hidden terms they will still be easy to understand.
You dishonoured them because, they say, you had royal palaces and beauty.

Work: Electra

Speaker: Electra

Significance: Character and Class- neither Aigisthus' wealth nor his good looks was indicative of his anoble character

680
You have received from me all that you may justly ask for. You are now the ruler of many people and, as well, I will leave you much land –all the land that was left to me by my father so, what is it that you think I owe you? How have I wronged you? What have I taken away from you?  Life? No! I won’t ask you to die on my behalf and you should not ask me to die on yours.

You love the light of the day. Do you think your old father doesn’t?
I have no doubt at all that life in the underworld will be very long and that life here is very short. Short, yes, but sweet, nevertheless! Sweet, indeed and that’s why you fought without the slightest bit of shame, to stay alive long past your fated hour.
You have avoided death because you have killed her! And you have the audacity to say that I have no courage? No, you’re the coward, here! You’re the one who lacks courage! You’re the one who is beaten in courage by a woman! A wife, who died to save her husband! And what a husband, ey? Such a… such a fine young, brave husband!

Work: Alcestis

Speaker: Pheres, Admetus' father

Significance: he refused to die on his son's behalf and is bitterly reproached by his son, believes all life is precious, even if only a little of it remains, as w/ himself

The situation of all mortals –every one of them, every single one of them- is the same: They’ll all die!  They must! And none of them know if they’ll still be around tomorrow. Fate’s feet walk on uncharted paths. No one can tell us where they’re walking. No philosopher can make it clear for us.
Take this lesson from me, my friend: Enjoy life! Drink and call each day your own. The rest is Fate’s business.

Work: Alcestis

Speaker: Heracles

Significance: drunken discussion w/ servant, humans are doomed to die, so one must take pleasure and happiness that one can in the moment, this is to accept one's humanity

My friends, though others might think the opposite, I believe that my wife’s Fate was better than mine. Not only will she now be free of pain but she has escaped much anguish, with glory!
I, on the other hand, I, whose lot was to die, will now go on living a life of misery. I certainly know that now.
I don’t have the courage to enter this palace any more. Whom will I greet with joy when I enter it and who will greet me with joy in return?
Where do I turn?
The emptiness in that house will send me away. The moment I see the bed my wife slept in, the chair she sat in, both empty, the moment I see the floors unswept, the children grabbing at my knees, crying for their mother, the moment I see the servants mourning the loss of such a great mistress, all this will send me away!
And then, while all this is going on inside the house, outside it, the people will go on having weddings and the women will go on gathering together, all things that will be driving back indoors!
How could I even look at women my wife’s age again?
And then, all my enemies will point their finger at me and say, “look there! Look at this shameful man. He lives on because he is a coward! He didn’t have the courage to die when his Fate dictated he should but he escaped his death by making his wife die in his place. Can we call him a man? And he also hates his parents because they wouldn’t die for him!”
That’s the sort of gossip I’ll have to add on top of my misery!

Work: Alcestis

Speaker: Admetus

Significance: Admetus loses his heroism by cheating death, his failure to accept his fate led to Alcestis becoming the hero