In Euripides' Medea, Plutarch's Sayings of Spartan Women, Lycurgus and Xenophon's Spartan Society, it is made clear that filicide is a by-product of the dichotomy honor vs. society of shame. Medea, the barbarian wife of a man who remarries to gain citizenship, decides to inflict what she believes to be equal amounts of pain and shame on those who have hurt her. On the other hand, in Plutarch's more historical approach, though still saturated with rhetoric and a kind of mythical esteem, Sayings of Spartan Women conveys individual accounts of the pride that several Spartan townspeople felt in raising brave young men ready for battle, as in opposition to their grave horror of any offspring whose fear and timidity in war brought them home. However, in Lycurgus, Plutarch deals with Sparta as a whole and illustrates how the city's laws and practices took preventative measures to avoid any acquisition of shame by a cowardly Spartan. Xenophon culminates the aforementioned notions of honor versus shame and then demonstrates how these actions lead to the obedience and fluidity of Spartan society. Contextually, this theme is addressed in a variety of different ways, however the causal connection between all of these readings is the punishment or prevention of shame. The following paragraphs explore how the intertwining of cultivated honor and shame enabled and plausibly mentally justified one of humanity's most despicable actions and the reasoning behind it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Dishonored by her husband after betraying her homeland for him (p 74. 31-32), Medea laments the sequence of events that led to her current feelings of shame and humiliation. Numerous thoughts of death and uselessness consume her. According to her nurse (p 74. 24-26), "... she abandons her body to pain, and has spent nights and days with tears, since she first discovered that she had been treated unfairly by her man." Knowing the complexity of her character and scheming nature, Medea's nurse could predict that the children's lives were at stake simply by the way their mother stared at them whenever they were near. For Medea, her two children represented the life she and Jason had built and the very thing he was so ready to reject. Her children were fresh, young, and fragile, just like the newer, quieter lifestyle she and her husband were beginning to develop in Corinth. Although they were not citizens of the city, Medea managed to do well for herself and her family while supporting it. She undoubtedly clung to Jason as her only source of familiarity, and at such a low level of desperation, she felt as if her life was meaningless without him. After the loss of her most prized possession, Jason, Medea feared nothing and would therefore take anything that risked causing the same amount of chaos in her life that he had so innocently caused hers. When you find yourself in a situation where you have nothing to lose, you tend to take the most radical actions without remorse or repentance. In this case, Medea believed that the only way to punish the public shame of Jason's actions was to destroy his entire house (p 106. 794), culminating in the murder of his own children. Adding insult to injury, he not only slaughtered the boys, but also took away any chance Jason had of giving them a proper burial, something he knew he would beg for so desperately. The shame Jason would feel at being left to surrender.