Legal aspects in Medea’s speech to Jason at Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 8, 415-444

This article focuses on Medea’s speech to Jason at Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 8, 415-444 and investigates the legal language the heroine uses in her attempt to safeguard her status as Jason’s legitimate wife according to Roman law. Valerius seems to build Medea’s speech in a way that allows the reader to reconstruct her possible arguments as a Roman wife who defends her rights in a divorce lawsuit, as if she were in a Roman court. It is argued that Valerius was influenced by the declamation schools and that he presented his narrative as a prequel to Ovid’s and Seneca’s accounts, who had developed certain legal aspects in Medea’s protestations against her abandonment by Jason in Corinth.