Sophia-sophós dans la Médée d'Euripide

Abstract

Sophia appears fourteen times in Euripides. In Medea, 844, she is personified and in 827 ff. Erechtea's children find their sustenance in the most celebrated wisdom. Moreover, an innovation is to be noted : it is a woman who speaks out the substantive, claiming that the cultivation of wisdom is not something foreign to women. Sophos is to be found 213 times in our poet. In Medea there appear scathing aspersions against professional orators as artful speakers (583 ff.). New is the criticism on the results of education in lines 295 and 298. Important are the lines 303-305, in which the heroine is aware that she is learned and therefore seems odious to some, overbearing to others and disturbing to still others : « But I have not too much knowledge ».