Medea schemes to send a poisonous gift to Jason’s bride-to-be.
ἐπεὶ κακῶς κακὴν θανεῖν σφ ̓ ἀνάγκη τοῖς ἐμοῖσι φαρμάκοις
I understand the sense. The other woman must die an awful death. Perhaps it is a silly question, but I don’t why κακὴν is feminine. Does it refer to the other woman? To ἀνάγκη? I would be grateful for any ideas.
The other woman. It belongs with σφ(ε), an all-purpose 3rd pers. acc. pronoun. Medea isn’t fond of her.
Acc .& inf. (σφε θανεῖν), dep. on ανάγκη (same construction as with δεῖ). Here σφ(ε) = αὐτήν, poetic diction and metrically convenient.
κακήν in agreement with σφε. For κακῶς κακήν in juxtaposition cf. κακὸν κακῶς in your thread on Aristophanes’ paratragic εἰ μὴ φράσεις γάρ, ἀπό σ’ ὀλῶ κακὸν κακῶς.
(Once again I forget how to link to other posts.)
Thank you both.
There’s an English idiom, but I don’t know if it has any equivalent in Greek:
to die a coward
to be shown a traitor
to escape unharmed
I bring this up, because Medea simply calling Glauke κακή here struck me as a little insipid: “Since there is need for this bad girl to badly die by my poisons.”
If Greek had something like this English idiom – and I can’t easily think of a classical example, though I did find one from the 15th c. – the idea could be: “Since there is a need for her to badly die an evildoer by my poisons.”
EDIT: Bringing an example a few centuries closer with Josephus, “σὺ δ’ ἂν μὲν ἑκὼν θνήσκῃς, Ἰουδαίων στρατηγός, ἂν δ’ ἄκων, προδότης τεθνήξῃ”. “…die a general / … die a traitor”. I think this is basically Smyth 1613, with θνησκω functioning as a verb of final disposition, maybe. Not really Smyth 1579.
805-6 > κακὴν κακῶς I θανεῖν : > understand the participle οὖσαν with κακήν: > ‘being a wretch she must die wretchedly’> ; compare 1386 below (spoken to Jason by Medea) κατθανῇ κακὸς κακῶς. Both phrases are versions of a type of imprecation that draws strength from the juxtaposition of adj. and adv. from the same root: see LSJ s.v. κακός D.2; Watson (1991) 35 n. 152; for occurrences in inscriptions and a > defixio> , see Strubbe (1997) nos. 31, 155; Voutiras (1998) 8.
D. 2 is very illuminating about Tragic diction
Adv. and Adj. freq. coupled in Trag., Att., etc., κακὸν κακῶς νιν . . ἐκτρῖψαι βίον S. OT 248; κακὸς κακῶς ταφήσῃ E. Tr. 446 (troch.); ἀπό σʼ ὀλῶ κακὸν κακῶς Ar. Pl. 65, cf. Eq. 189, 190, D. 32.6, Procop. Pers. 1.24; κακοὺς κακῶς ἀπολέσει αὐτούς Ev.Matt. 21.41; κακοὺς κάκιστα S. Aj. 839; in reversed order, ὥσπερ ἀξία κακῶς κακὴ θανεῖται E. Tr. 1055; with intervening words, κακῶς . . ἀπόλλυσθαι κακούς S. Ph. 1369, cf. E. Cyc. 268, Ar. Eq. 2. (Perh. cogn. with Avest. kasu-, Comp. kasyah-, Sup. kasišta- ‘small’, Lith. nukašëti ‘grow feeble, thin’, Germ. hager. )
Medea reserves her special disdain for Jason:
“ὦ παγκάκιστε, τοῦτο γάρ σ᾽ εἰπεῖν ἔχω
γλώσσῃ μέγιστον εἰς ἀνανδρίαν κακόν,” 465-6
One of my favourite lines in the play.
(incidentally Charlie did you transpose κακὴν κακῶς to κακῶς κακὴν?)
Edit: I should have made clear that the first quote is from Mastronarde’s commentary.
A lot of good lines there in that second block. Interesting that the participle suggested by the commentator (Mastronarde?) doesn’t seem to show up in any of them. I suspect that it’s a bad explanation. Note especially: ὥσπερ ἀξία κακῶς κακὴ θανεῖται. “…die a wretch”, not “being a wretch, die”. My earlier post is claiming that the same is the case here.