1. See Zissos (2008), xxv-xxvi.

2. Additional mentions in the first half of the poem: 1.224-26, 547f., 745; 4.13f., 621-23.

3. See, e.g., Hull (1975), 1; Fucecchi (1996), 128.

4. For discussion of the passage, see Zissos (2004), 319-23.

5. Well discussed by Eigler (1991), 156.

6. The vague reference to Medea's punishment is variously explained, but the idea is probably general: Medea will suffer throughout her ‘exile’ from her homeland, her misery compounded by her reduced circumstances. Already during the return voyage, with the Argonauts trapped on Peuce, Medea herself, in a bitter outburst, conceives of her abject condition as punishment for her crimes against her father (haud hoc nunc genitor putat, aut dare poenas/iam sceleris dominumque pati, ‘this is not what my father is thinking, nor that I am paying the penalty for my crime and suffering under a master’, 8.443f.).

7. On the ‘proem in the middle’ more generally, see Ripoll (2004), 188f.; Zissos (2004), 314-19.

8. The precision of this warning is a deviation from Apollonius' account, where Aeetes is said to have received from his father Helios a prophetic warning to beware the treacherous scheming of his own offspring. Aeetes' suspicion naturally falls on his older daughter Chalciope and her sons by the Greek exile Phrixus (Ap. Rhod. 3.597-605).

9. Martin (1938), 144; cf. the observation of Hull (1975), 6, that ‘one has to look very hard for the clever and ruthless sorceress, of whom there is no sign in Valerius' narrative so far’.

10. Tschiedel (1991), 215; Ripoll (2004), 189.

11. Cf. Soubiran (2002), 43: ‘Médée est encore, chez Valerius Flaccus, une figure touchante de jeune fille impliquée dans un drame qui la dépasse; elle n'est même pas encore “un monstre naissant”; mais la violence de ses sentiments inquiète déjà’.

12. Leitmotif: Garson (1965), 108f.; teleology: Zissos (2004), 342.

13. E.g. 5.338-40, 433-55; 6.43-47, 497-502; 7.249, 310f., 339f., 501-08, 509f.; 8.106-08, 136, 236, 248-51, 318-20, 382-84, 419-22. Cf. Hershkowitz (1998), 15: ‘The anticipations of later [i.e. tragic] events are clustered in Books 5-8. Characters ironically and unwillingly foreshadow what will happen to them, or the narrator motions towards some future event without a long explanation, but in either case, this is done in ways in which the reader can appreciate the full meaning of what is being said.’

14. Garson (1965), 108f.; Hull (1975), 1f.; Ripoll (2004), 192-94; Zissos (2004), 342; Stover (2011), 172.

15. Garson (1965), 108; Hull (1975), 1.

16. For the different versions, see Diod. 4.56; Apollod. 1.9.28; Hyg. Fab. 27.

17. 218-41R³.

18. Arcellaschi (1990), 106-19, offers a detailed reconstruction; Fantham (2003), 108-12, is also helpful; see further Boyle in the introduction to this volume.

19. Arcellaschi (1990), 145, suggesting that Pacuvius' ‘complète réhabilitation de Médée’ was a response in particular to his uncle Ennius' representation of Medea.

20. Arcellaschi (1991), 148.

21. So Arcellaschi (1990), 158f.

22. The connection between Valerius' passage and the Pacuvian drama is made by Fantham (2003), 111.

23. For Medus serving to compensate for the loss of Absyrtus in Pacuvius, see Arcellaschi (1990), 149.

24. Arcellaschi (1990), 146.

25. Stover (2011), 172.

26. In Valerius' account Jason's father Aeson, his mother, and his (younger) brother all perish at the end of Book 1; looking forward to Corinth, Jason will lose his male offspring and new bride: see, e.g., 1.225f. with Zissos (2008), 196f.

27. In the Hellenistic Argonautica the possibility of a felicitous nostos for Medea is explicitly ruled out by Circe at 4.739-42.

28. Bernstein (2008), 42, uncharacteristically goes astray in claiming that, after Aeetes' double-cross of Jason, Medea's expressions of affection towards her father are acts of dissimulation. Among other difficulties, this overlooks the fact that Medea's last and most effusive expression of filial love is delivered to an absent father, so that dissimulation would be pointless.

29. Ripoll (2004), 191, adducing, by way of contrast, Ap. Rhod. 3.724-26, 1009f., 1131.

30. So, e.g., Vessey (1982), 583, opining that in Valerius' delineation of Medea ‘the resemblances to Apollonius are at all times substantial’.

31. Krevans (1997), 82.

32. For Valerius' careful parallelism, see Wijsman (1996), 182; for the passage's complex intertextual pedigree, Hershkowitz (1998), 95f.

33. Hershkowitz (1998), 96.

34. Central motifs in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, as well as the two Ovidian versions (Met. 5.341-661; Fast. 4.417-620).

35. Cf. Harmand (1898), 95.

36. The quote is from Wijsman (1996), 170.

37. There may be as well here a conscious inversion of the Ovidian Medea's fantasy: per… Pelasgas/seruatrix urbes matrum celebrabere turba (‘you will be celebrated as his [Jason's] saviour by throngs of mothers throughout Pelasgian cities’, Met. 7.49f.).

38. Cf. Harmand (1898), 95, on Medea's comportment during her initial encounter with the Argonauts: ‘Romana vere puella, e nobili loco’.

39. Various scholars have noted Valerius' insistence on the characteristically Roman principle of patria potestas, of the necessary obedience of sons and daughters to their father. See, most recently, Bernstein (2008), 26.

40. For Valerius' broad Romanising strategies, see Hershkowitz (1998), 127f. and passim.

41. Martin (1938), 143; similarly Bernstein (2008), 26.

42. With 7.109f. cf. Ap. Rhod. 3.444-47 and see Perutelli (1997), 219f.

43. On this passage see Martin (1938), 143f.

44. The destructive impact of Medea's passion is reinforced by an echo of Virgil's account of Dido's lovesickness at Aen. 1.712: pesti deuota futurae (‘doomed to imminent ruin’).

45. Another emblem of Medea's Colchian domesticity is the fleece-guarding dragon, of which she is the appointed guardian. Valerius downplays the supernatural aspect, transforming the creature into a kind of over-sized pet. In an apostrophe to Medea, Aeetes refers to it as tuum… draconem (‘your dragon’, 7.550), and various scenes indicate an attachment akin to that of mistress for pet. She speaks to it affectionately (8.62f., 95-103) and even gives it a tearful farewell embrace before quitting Colchis (8.93f.). This is one more emotional bond shattered by Medea's flight with Jason. Once again, Valerius' treatment has not won over all critics—see, e.g., Perutelli (1997), 430f.

46. Ripoll (2004), 189f., offers pertinent general observations on the centrality of Valerius' Medea to the action of the later books. The Flavian poet eliminates a number of Apollonius' episodes in which Medea does not figure (e.g. Ap. Rhod. 3.472-75, 576-615, 913-47, 1173-1277). Medea assumes increased importance as a focaliser: Valerius affords her four monologues (7.9-20, 128-40, 198-209, 331-49) as against three in Apollonius (3.464-70, 636-44, 771-801). For Ripoll this treatment reinforces the tragic sensibility of the later books, creating the effect of ‘une pièce de théâtre’.

47. That is, pudor meaning a sense of shame that prevents immoral or inappropriate conduct (cf. OLD s.v.2).

48. Medea is designated amans at 7.23, 7.107, 7.142, 8.31, 8.406; likewise 7.3 (amanti is general, but clearly includes Medea). Medea's mother offers a belated symptomology of her infatuation at 8.159-65.

49. Garson (1965), 108, notes Valerius' emphasis on pudor as ‘the outstanding trait of [Medea's] character’.

50. Eigler (1991), 163, speaking of genus deliberativum and genus iudiciale.

51. Eigler (1991), 163f.; Fucecchi (1996), 129.

52. Well discussed by Ferenczi (1998), 344.

53. See Zissos (2004), 341-43.

54. See, e.g., Eigler (1991), 157; Ripoll (2004), 195f. The latter identifies two elements in Valerius' predominantly pathetic picture of Medea: ‘une apologie morale’ and ‘une victimisation tragique’.

55. Hardie (1990), 6.

56. Venus further associates Hecate and Medea by threatening, should the former intervene directly to save the latter, to afflict Hecate with erotic passion, so that she would be the one to provide supernatural assistance to Jason (7.182-86)—an imagined substitution that imparts a certain arbitrariness to Medea's victimisation.

57. Soubiran (2002), 43, sees Medea as ‘à la fois symétrique et antithétique d'Hypsipyle… L'amour filial les habite toutes deux. Mais s'il a succombé chez la Colchidienne, qui trahit son père Eétès, il avait triomphé avec éclat chez la Lemnienne’. Like other critics, Soubiran has not taken into account Medea's ultimate role as father-saviour.

58. Perutelli (1997), 375, well characterises this final plea as ‘un ulteriore elemento ritardante per il cedimento di Medea’.

59. Jason's denigration of Aeetes would have been more favourably received by Apollonius' Medea, who freely admits her father's moral shortcomings (Ap. Rhod. 3.1106f.).

60. Valerius devoted much attention to Apollonius' Idas. I have observed at Zissos (1999), 294, that 7573-75 constitutes a ‘negative allusion’ to the Apollonian Idas' objections; in this last-ditch appeal, Medea appropriates Idas' argument in a rather more concrete fashion. Medea's earlier question to Venus (disguised as Circe) nec turpe uiro seruire precanti? (‘is it not base to serve a man who begs?’, 7.387) picks up another element of Idas' critique—this time in a contrafactual mode, inasmuch as Venus' report of Jason's entreaty (7.266-79) is a fabrication.

61. Feeney (1991), 327.

62. Or three if one includes Juno's maddening necklace (6.668-74), clearly modelled on that of Virgil's Ailecto (Aen. 7.351-55): see Fucecchi (1997), 224.

63. Hardie (1990), 7.

64. With quascumque Venus archly demonstrates her alertness to Juno's ‘Homeric’ pretence—i.e. that the girdle is to be used on Jupiter. In metaliterary terms, Valerius signals the intertextual appropriation while marking out Juno/Hera's redeployment of the celebrated accoutrement in a different mythic episode with a different victim.

65. Elm von der Osten (2007), 65.

66. Fucecchi (1997), 119f.

67. Cf. Eigler (1991), 160.

68. In such textual reversals, Valerius enacts a metapoetic plot much like the championing of mora (delay) of narrative progress in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile—a technique brilliantly illuminated in the scholarship of John Henderson and Jamie Masters. A prominent element of Valerius' strategy involves play with extremus in the sense ‘extreme’ with respect to furor, and, above all, extremus in the sense ‘last, waning, expiring’ with respect to pudor. In the latter case, Medea's pudor repeatedly revives after being decisively banished. So, describing the effect of Juno's use of the girdle of love, the poet says of Medea extremus roseo pudor errat in ore (‘the last trace of shame steals over her blushing cheeks’, 6.674). At this point Juno takes her leave, assured that her supernatural subterfuge has succeeded (6.681), but Medea's pudor is still in evidence during Venus' visitation (e.g. 7.292-94). Shortly thereafter, it appears to have been decisively vanquished yet again (abscisum quicquid pudor ante monebat, ‘all that her shame had counselled before was torn away’, 7.324), but it continues to register and govern her conduct in the subsequent action (7.386, 411, 435, 514). These recurrences of pudor subsequent to the registering of extremus pudor play out in a Lucanesque fashion: Medea's scruples must be conquered and re-conquered in a drawn-out metapoetic sequence that enacts mora through patterns of repetition and regression on the lingusitic and narrative levels.

69. See, e.g., Ferenczi (1998), 344f.; Soubiran (2002), 41; Ripoll (2004), 196.

70. Martin (1938), 142. The only other significant divine intervention in Apollonius is Hera's prevention of Medea's suicide (3.275-86, 818), which, like Eros' arrow shot, does not preclude allegorical understanding.

71. Medea herself later recalls the experience of compulsion: ne…/iterum durae cogar comes ire sorori (‘may I not be forced again to accompany my cruel sister’, 7.201f.).

72. On Valerius' ‘purification’ of Medea, see Garson (1965), 108.

73. Hull (1975), 5.

74. Hull (1975), 5, following the phraseology of Brooks Otis.

75. A topic well discussed by Stover (2011).

76. Garson (1965), 108.

77. On the passage, see Elm von der Osten (2007), 118-20.

78. Stover (2011), 185-97, offers a detailed examination of Venus' use of doctored exempla and ‘deceptive rhetoric’ in order to sway Medea.

79. As Bessone (1998), 146, notes, Jason's plea, false in Valerius' fictional universe, owes something to that reported by Medea herself at Ov. Her. 12.73-88.

80. Perutelli (1997), 286, citing TLL viii. 438.27 ff.

81. Zissos(1999).

82. Ferenczi (1998), 346.

83. Ferenczi (1998), 343f. Ripoll (2004), 201, reads facta nocens as an echo of Sen. Med. 280 nocens sum facta, with the qualifier nocens in particular marking ‘la première convergence significative avec la tradition tragique’.

84. Garson (1965), 108.

85. The point is nicely made by Eigler (1991), 170, capturing Valerius' reversal of Seneca's treatment with the remark that Medea's conduct might be characterised by the expression Medea ne fiam!

86. For a discussion of Senecan resonances in the subsequent narrative, see Grewe (1998), 179-90; Ripoll (2004), 202-05.