With a focus on the shifting use of the concept of the barbarian, Anna Albrektson positions the figure of Medea within the context of colonial expansion. Euripides labels Medea a barbarian, but this identity is pinned on Jason in several versions from the 1770s and 1780s, when a concomitant sentimental strategy enhances Medea’s position as woman and victim of male cruelty. The idea of the ‘ethical barbarian’ becomes a cultural commonplace within eighteenth-century literature. By the 1790s, however, Medea is translated once more into an ethnic barbarian in versions that abandon the Enlightenment idea of human universality. The interplay between Enlightenment discourses, colonial experiences, and aesthetic experimentations form the context for these often divergent representations of Medea from several European nations.