Sympathy for Medea, Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, Orlando Furioso and HamletEuripedes tugs and pulls our emotions from all angles through Medea. It forces us to feel sympathy for the characters mistreated by Medea, while also feeling sympathy for Medea. These conflicting feelings create a sense of confusion and anxiety about the unfolding plot. At the beginning, the Nurse reveals the recent events that have caused Medea so much torment: “She herself helped Jason in every way” (13) and now he “has taken a royal bride to his bed” (18 ). We are immediately angry at Jason for breaking his marriage vows, and we develop sympathy for Medea as the nurse describes her acts of suffering. When we first see Medea, she speaks passionately to the women of Corinth and convinces them to side with her. She evokes their sympathy by drawing more attention to her suffering and speaking in terms that bring them all closer to common ground. Aegeus becomes Medea's first victim when he unknowingly provides the final element of her plan for revenge against Jason. We sympathize with Aegeus in his ignorance. Medea is now confident in her plan, so she reveals it to the women of Corinth. She is going to send her children to Jason's fiancée with a poisoned dress that will make her die in excruciating pain. We are still forced to sympathize with Medea at this point because she has justified her reasons for seeking revenge. However, the princess is unaware of Medea's plot; she will accept the gift for her beauty and then meet an unexpected and agonizing death. The image of pain and agony also arouses our sympathy. Medea gives her most evil speech when she explains how she will kill her own children and then flee Corinth. These actions alone provoke pure disgust, but Euripides developed Medea's character as a coercive force; we still sympathize with her for her plight, but we also hate her for her decisions. The women of Corinth try to dissuade her from this morbid choice, but their arguments are ineffective. Euripides uses stichomythia in the exchange between the women and Medea to show that Medea breaks down the boundaries between self and other, which prevent sympathy (811-819). Euripedes focuses on suffering, ignorance, and rhetoric to leave us torn in our sympathy for each character. Vergil arouses reader sympathy at the beginning of The Aeneid when the characters suffer physically and emotionally..