I HAVE LONG BEEN interested in the way in which a close examination of ancient literature and art, taken together, can help to throw light on Greek tragedies, both lost and extant (see March 1987; 1989; 1991–3). In this chapter I shall be considering child-murder. Beginning with Euripides’ Medea, and then focusing specifically on the myth of Tereus, Procne and Philomela, I hope to show how word and image, looked at in tandem, can help to throw light, in this case, on Sophocles’ lost tragedy Tereus. This is the myth of the nightingale, the very image of grief in so much of Greek poetry, who laments on and on forever the death of her son Itys.

Children are killed in several of the Greek myths, and the infanticide par excellence is, of course, Medea. In Euripides’ tragedy of 431 BC she assumes her canonical form, that of the mother who murders her children in revenge for her husband Jason's desertion. After – and only after – Euripides’ play her child-murder becomes a popular theme for vase-paintings. One of the crucial questions about the play is whether this Medea, the Medea who deliberately kills her own children, was in fact the creation of Euripides himself. That it was his own innovation was convincingly argued by Page in his edition of the play (Page 1938: xxi– xxxvi), although certain more recent scholars remain unconvinced and argue for the priority of the shadowy figure Neophron. But the details of this debate need not concern us here: the relevant fact for our purpose is that it was Euripides’ play which hugely influenced the artistic tradition, and it must indeed have had a tremendous impact on the audience at its first production in 431 BC.

Let us begin this investigation into child-murder by considering a passage from the Medea where, just after Medea has killed her sons, the Chorus sing (1282–9):