Medea
Euripides · -431
A woman betrayed by her husband murders their children to punish him. Euripides gave the barbarian sorceress a voice of terrifying rationality, and Athenian audiences didn't know what to do with it. The play still shocks. Every few years someone stages a new Medea, and the argument about whether she's a monster or a hero starts over.
The case against
Punishment never arrives. Medea murders her children, then exits in a flying chariot, untouched; a god's machine waves away the moral arithmetic the play spent ninety minutes setting up. The gore happens offstage in a messenger's monologue, the chorus mostly stands around agreeing, and you need the Argonaut backstory before the opening lines make sense.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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