Download Medea Dramaturgy

Medea Dramaturgy
ANCIENT GREEK CULTURE
Religion
It wasn’t like this….
The 12 (Kinda
Gods
13) Olympian
Zeus
King of the gods and ruler of Mount Olympus; god of the sky
and thunder. Youngest child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea.
Symbols include the thunderbolt, eagle, oak tree, scepter and
scales. Brother and husband of Hera, although he had many
lovers. Brother of Poseidon and Hades.
Hera
Queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage and family.
Symbols include the peacock, pomegranate, crown, cuckoo,
lion and cow. Youngest daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Wife
and sister of Zeus. Being the goddess of marriage, she
frequently tried to get revenge on Zeus' lovers and their
children.
Poseidon
God of the seas, earthquakes and tidal wave. Symbols include
the horse, bull, dolphin and trident. Middle son of Cronus and
Rhea. Brother of Zeus and Hades. Married to the Nereid
Amphitrite, although, like most male Greek Gods, he had
many lovers.
Demeter
Goddess of fertility, agriculture, nature, and the seasons.
Symbols include the poppy, wheat, torch, and pig. Middle
daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Her Latin name, Ceres, gave
us the word "cereal".
Dionysus
God of wine, celebrations and ecstasy. Patron god of the art
of theatre. Symbols include the grapevine, ivy, cup, tiger,
panther, leopard, dolphin and goat. Son of Zeus and the
mortal Theban princess Semele. Married to the Cretan
princess Ariadne. The youngest Olympian, as well as the only
one to have a mortal mother.
Apollo
God of light, knowledge, music, poetry, prophecy and archery.
Son of Zeus and Leto. Symbols include the sun, lyre, bow and
arrow, raven, dolphin, wolf, swan and mouse. Twin brother of
Artemis.
Artemis
Goddess of the hunt, virginity, childbirth, archery, the moon,
and all animals. Symbols include the moon, deer, hound, shebear, snake, cypress tree and bow and arrow. Daughter of
Zeus and Leto and twin sister of Apollo.
Hermes
Messenger of the gods; god of commerce, thieves and
games. Symbols include the caduceus (staff entwined with
two snakes), winged sandals and cap, stork and tortoise
(whose shell he used to invent the lyre). Son of Zeus and the
nymph Maia. The second-youngest Olympian, just older than
Dionysus. He married Dryope, the daughter of Dryops, and
their son Pan became the god of nature, lord of the satyrs,
inventor of the panpipes and comrade of Dionysus. Also
transported the dead to the underworld.
Athena
Virgin goddess of wisdom, handicrafts, defense and strategic
warfare. Symbols include the owl and the olive tree. Daughter
of Zeus and the Oceanid Metis, she rose from her father's
head fully grown and in full battle armor after he swallowed
her mother.
Ares
God of war, violence and bloodshed. Symbols include the
boar, serpent, dog, vulture, spear and shield. Son of Zeus and
Hera, all the other gods (except Aphrodite) despised him. His
Latin name, Mars, gave us the word "martial."
Aphrodite
Goddess of love, beauty, and desire. Symbols include the
dove, bird, apple, bee, swan, myrtle and rose. Daughter of
Zeus and the Oceanid Dione, or perhaps born from the sea
foam after Uranus' semen dripped into the sea after being
castrated by his youngest son Cronus who then threw his
father's genitals into the sea. Married to Hephaestus, although
she had many adulterous affairs, most notably with Ares. Her
name gave us the word "aphrodisiac", while her Latin name
gave us the word "venereal".[B]
Hephaestus
Master blacksmith and craftsman of the gods; god of fire and
the forge. Symbols include fire, anvil, axe, donkey, hammer,
tongs and quail. Son of Hera, either by Zeus or alone. Married
to Aphrodite, though unlike most divine husbands, he was
rarely ever licentious.
And last but not least… Hades. Technically not an
Olympian God because he lives in hades, but he’s
important.
Hades
Goddess of the hearth and of the right ordering of domesticity
and the family; she was born into the first Olympian generation
and was one of the original twelve Olympians, until she gave
her throne to Dionysus in order to keep the peace, making her
the most generous and gentlest of the gods. She is the first
child of Cronus and Rhea, eldest sister of Hades, Demeter,
Poseidon, Hera, and Zeus. Also the eldest of the Olympians.
-Biggest thing to remember about the Gods is that, to the Greeks,
they were REAL. Really real. They saw everything you did, controlled
your fate and they were touchy, touchy beings. Very human in
nature. Spiteful, unfaithful, lying, cheating, violent, lustful,
mischievous, immortal, and powerful. Bad mouth them, look at them
the wrong way, don’t do what they say, don’t go to their temple
enough or do sacrifice? Bad things can go down. Do not mess with
them. However, they can also bestow great gifts with the right
persuasion. Omens, prophecies, oracles and curses were to be taken
seriously as well.-
Mount Olympus: The beautiful mountaintop realm of the gods and
goddesses. It’s actually a real place! Seen below.
Hades/The Underworld: Where souls go after death. Ruled by,
Hades. Of course. There were several different parts:
-The Rivers• The Styx is the river that flows at the entrance of Hades. You must
cross it in a boat driven by a soul named Charon. You also must
have a coin to pay him or else you cannot cross, which is why the
Greeks buried people with a coin in their mouth! Cerberus, an
enormous 3-headed dog stood guard here. Cerberus is described as
having many rows of teeth so that he can strip the dead of their
clothing, belongings, and flesh, transforming them into only
skeletons. People go in, no one comes out on his watch.
• The Acheron is the river of pain.
• The Lethe is the river of oblivion. It is associated with the goddess
Lethe, or the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion.
• The Phlegethon is the river of fire. According to Plato, this river led to
the depths of Tartarus.
• The Cocytus is the river of wailing.
-Tartarus• The scary, dark, dank, awful part of Hades. This is not where you
want to end up. It is the place where people are punished for their
sins for all eternity, and is the most similar part of the Underworld to
a Christian idea of Hell. Some more famous residents of Tartarus
include Tantalos, who betrayed the trust of the gods by killing and
boiling his son, then feeding it to them. He is suffering torment by
having food and drink eternally beyond his reach. Also doing time is
Sisyphus, who tried to cheat death, must eternally roll a boulder up a
hill, only to see it roll back down again. The Titans also reside here.
-Asphodel Meadows• The grayish, hazy, flower strewn place for ordinary or indifferent
souls who did not commit any significant crimes, but who also did
not achieve any greatness or recognition that would warrant them
being admitted to the Elysian Fields. It was where mortals who did
not belong anywhere else in the Underworld were sent.
-Elysian Fields• The golden, bright, glorious and luxurious place for the especially
distinguished. Souls that dwelled there had an easy afterlife and had
no labors. Usually, those who had proximity to the gods were
granted admission, rather than those who were especially righteous
or had ethical merit. Heroes were transported here after their deaths.
RIVER STYX
Normal people who lived righteous and virtuous lives could also gain
entrance, such as Socrates, who proved his worth sufficiently
through philosophy.
A “Map” of Hades
The Mythos of the Characters
Medea’s Family Tree
1
Helios (Sun God) Perseis (Oceanid) Circe (Nymph/Wtich King Aeëtes (Of Colchis*) Pasiphae Queen Eidyia (Oceanid) Chalciope Apsyrtus Medea Jason Mermeros Pheres *Colchis was a foreign land located in what is modern day Western Georgia. The Story of Jason and Medea
Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often
depicted as being a priestess of the goddess Hecate*2 or a witch. The
myth of Jason and Medea is very old, originally written around the time
Hesiod wrote the Theogony.
Medea's role began after Jason arrived from Iolcus to Colchis, to
claim his inheritance and throne by retrieving the Golden Fleece. In the
most complete surviving account, the Argonautica of Apollonius, Medea fell
in love with him and promised to help him, but only on the condition that if
he succeeded, he would take her with him and marry her. Jason agreed. In
a familiar mythic motif, Aeëtes promised to give him the fleece, but only if
he could perform certain tasks. First, Jason had to plough a field with firebreathing oxen that he had to yoke himself. Medea gave him an unguent
with which to anoint himself and his weapons, to protect him from the bulls'
fiery breath. Then, Jason had to sow the teeth of a dragon in the ploughed
field (compare the myth of Cadmus). The teeth sprouted into an army of
warriors. Jason was forewarned by Medea, however, and knew to throw a
rock into the crowd. Unable to determine where the rock had come from,
the soldiers attacked and killed each other. Finally, Aeëtes made Jason
fight and kill the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece. Medea put the
beast to sleep with her narcotic herbs. Jason then took the fleece and
sailed away with Medea, as he had promised. Apollonius says that Medea
only helped Jason in the first place because Hera had convinced Aphrodite
or Eros to cause Medea to fall in love with him. Medea distracted her father
as they fled by killing her brother Absyrtus. In some versions, Medea is
said to have dismembered his body and scattered his parts on an island,
knowing her father would stop to retrieve them for proper burial; in other
*Hecate is the goddess of magic, witchcraft, herbs and poisonous plants, necromancy, and sorcery. versions, it is Absyrtus himself who pursued them, and was killed by
Jason. During the fight, Atalanta, a member of the group helping Jason in
his quest for the fleece, was seriously wounded, but Medea healed her.
According to some versions, Medea and Jason stopped on her aunt
Circe's island so that she could be cleansed after the murder of her
brother, relieving her of blame for the deed.
On the way back to Thessaly, Medea prophesied that Euphemus,
the helmsman of Jason's ship, the Argo, would one day rule over all Libya.
This came true through Battus, a descendant of Euphemus.
The Argo then reached the island of Crete, guarded by the bronze
man, Talos (Talus). Talos had one vein which went from his neck to his
ankle, bound shut by a single bronze nail. According to Apollodorus, Talos
was slain either when Medea drove him mad with drugs, deceived him that
she would make him immortal by removing the nail, or was killed by
Poeas's arrow (Apollodorus 1.140). In the Argonautica, Medea hypnotized
him from the Argo, driving him mad so that he dislodged the nail, ichor
flowed from the wound, and he bled to death (Argonautica 4.1638). After
Talos died, the Argo landed.
While Jason searched for the Golden Fleece, Hera, who was still
angry at Pelias, conspired to make Jason fall in love with Medea, who Hera
hoped would kill Pelias. When Jason and Medea returned to Iolcus, Pelias
still refused to give up his throne. So Medea conspired to have Pelias' own
daughters kill him. She told them she could turn an old ram into a young
ram by cutting up the old ram and boiling it. During her demonstration, a
live, young ram jumped out of the pot. Excited, the girls cut their father into
pieces and threw him into a pot. Having killed Pelias, Jason and Medea
fled to Corinth. This is much like what she did with Aeson, Jason's father.
In Corinth, Jason abandoned Medea for the king's daughter, Glauce.
Medea took her revenge by sending Glauce a dress and golden coronet,
covered in poison. This resulted in the deaths of both the princess and the
king, Creon, when he went to save her. According to the tragic poet
Euripides, Medea continued her revenge, murdering her two children by
Jason. Afterward, she left Corinth and flew to Athens in a golden chariot
driven by dragons sent by her grandfather Helios, god of the sun.
-Creon• NOT the same king from Antigone. In Greek mythology, Creon, son
of Lycaethus, was a king of Corinth and father of Hippotes and
Creusa or Glauce, whom Jason would marry if not for the
intervention of Medea. According to a lost play by Euripides
summarized in the Bibliotheca, Alcmaeon entrusted to Creon's care
his two children by the captive seeress Manto - a son Amphilochus
and a daughter Tisiphone. The latter grew up to be so pretty that
Creon's wife sold her away as a slave, fearing that Creon might
abandon her in favor of the maiden. Tisiphone was bought by her
own father Alcmaeon, who failed to recognize her and did not get to
know the truth until he came to Corinth to fetch his children. Creon is
best known in connection with the myth of Jason and Medea
mentioned above. He showed hospitality towards the couple, and
later expressed consent for Jason to marry his daughter. Ultimately,
he fell victim to Medea's subsequent revenge, getting burned to
death as he was attempting to rescue his daughter from similar fate.
-Aegeus• An archaic figure in the founding myth of Athens. Gave his name to
the Aegean Sea, was the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian
institutions, and one of the kings of Athens. pon the death of the king
his father, Pandion II, Aegeus and his three brothers, Pallas, Nisos,
and Lykos, took control of Athens from Metion, who had seized the
throne from Pandion. They divided the government in four and
Aegeus became king. Still without a male heir, Aegeus asked the
oracle at Delphi for advice. Her cryptic words were "Do not loosen
the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height
of Athens, lest you die of grief." Aegeus did not understand the
prophecy and was disappointed. This puzzling oracle forced Aegeus
to visit Pittheus, king of Troezen, who was famous for his wisdom
and skill at expounding oracles. Pittheus understood the prophecy
and introduced Aegeus to his daughter, Aethra, when Aegeus was
drunk.[3] They lay with each other, and then in some versions,
Aethra waded to the island of Sphairia (aka Calauria) and bedded
Poseidon. When Aethra became pregnant, Aegeus decided to return
to Athens. Before leaving, he buried his sandals, shield, and sword
under a huge rock and told her that, when their son grew up, he
should move the rock and bring the weapons to his father, who
would acknowledge him. Upon his return to Athens, Aegeus married
Medea, who had fled from Corinth and the wrath of Jason. Aegeus
and Medea had one son named Medus.
A Brief History of Medea
• Medea was written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and
Medea, and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the
barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world
threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason
who has betrayed her for another woman. Euripides produced
Medea along with the lost plays Philoctetes, Dictys and the satyr
play Theristai, earning him last place at the City Dionysia festival for
that year.
• Although the play is considered one of the great plays of the
Western canon, the Athenian audience did not react so favorably,
and awarded it only the third place prize at the Dionysia festival in
431 BC. A possible explanation might be found in a scholium to line
264 of the play, which asserts that traditionally Medea's children
were killed by the Corinthians after her escape;[5] Euripides'
apparent invention of Medea's filicide might have offended its
audience just as his first treatment of the Hippolytus myth did.[6]
In the 4th century BC, South-Italian vase painting offers a number of
Medea-representations that are connected to Euripides' play — the
most famous is a krater in Munich. However, these representations
always differ considerably from the plots of the play or are too
general to support any direct link to the play of Euripides - this might
reflect the judgement on the play. However, the violent and powerful
character of Medea, and her double nature — both loving and
destructive — became a standard for the later periods of antiquity
and seems to have inspired numerous adaptations thus became
standard for the literal classes. With the rediscovery of the text in
1st-century Rome (the play was adapted by the tragedians Ennius,
Lucius Accius, Ovid, Seneca the Younger and Hosidius Geta, among
others), again in 16th-century Europe, and in the light of 20th century
modern literary criticism, Medea has provoked differing reactions
from differing critics and writers who have sought to interpret the
reactions of their societies in the light of past generic assumptions;
bringing a fresh interpretation to its universal themes of revenge and
justice in an unjust society.
Words you might look at in the script and
say, ”What?”
Argo: the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcos to
retrieve the Golden Fleece. It was named after its builder, Argus.
Pelias: King of Iolcus in Greek mythology, the son of Tyro and Poseidon.
Mount Pelion: a mountain at the southeastern part of Thessaly in central
Greece, forming a hook-like peninsula between the Pagasetic Gulf and the
Aegean Sea.
Argonauts: a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before
the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the
Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, the Argo.
Golden Fleece: the fleece of the gold-hair winged ram, which was held in
Colchis. It figures in the tale of the hero Jason and his band of Argonauts,
who set out on a quest for the fleece by order of King Pelias, in order to
place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly.
Corinth: city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece.
Themis: an ancient Greek Titaness. She is described as "of good counsel",
and is the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom. Themis means
"divine law" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in
place".
Furies: Also known as Erinyes; literally "the avengers". They were female
deities of vengence. They were three netherworld goddesses. If you break
an oath or are involved in a blood curse, they may come for you. They
aren’t to be messed with.
Hellespont: a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean
Sea to the Sea of Marmara.
Sisyphus: a king of now known as Corinth punished for chronic
deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only
to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever. He killed, lied,
cheated, tattled on Zeus and tried to cheat death by tricking Persephone. It
didn’t work out.
Iolcos: An ancient city ruled by Pelias. It was the city of departure for Jason
and the Argonauts.
Pittheus: son of Pelops, father of Aethra and Henioche, and grandfather of
Theseus. He was the King of Troezen, which he had named after his
brother Troezen. When Aegeus asked Pittheus for advice as to how to
understand an oracle he received in response to his inquiry whether or not
he was going to ever have children, Pittheus got him drunk and Aegeus
ended up spending the night with Aethra.
Troezen: one of the children of Pelops and Hippodamia, eponym of the city
Troezen.
Pelops: King of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the
House of Atreus through his son of that name.
Athens: a powerful city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and
philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum,[3][4] it is
widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of
democracy.
Maia: one of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes. The goddess known
as Maia among the Romans may have originated independently, but
attracted the myths of Greek Maia because the two figures shared the
same name.
Harmonia: the immortal goddess of harmony and concord. Her Roman
counterpart is Concordia, and her Greek opposite is Eris, whose Roman
counterpart is Discordia.
Pandion: a legendary king of Athens.
Erechtheus: an archaic king of Athens.
Muses: he goddesses of the inspiration of literature, science and the arts.
They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for
centuries in the ancient culture that was contained in poetic lyrics and
myths.
Muse
Domain
Emblem
Calliop
e
Epic poetry
Writing tablet
Clio
History
Scrolls
Erato
Love poetry
Cithara (an ancient Greek musical instrument
in the lyre family)
Euterp
e
Song and
Elegiac poetry
Aulos (an ancient Greek musical instrument
like a flute)
Melpo
mene
Tragedy
Tragic mask
Polyhy
mnia
Hymns
Veil
Terpsic
Dance
hore
Lyre
Thalia
Comedy
Comic mask
Urania
Astronomy
Globe and compass
Cephisus: a river god in Greek mythology, associated with the river
Cephissus in Boeotia, Greece.
Eros: the Greek god of love. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire").
Some myths make him a primordial god, while in other myths, he is the son
of Aphrodite.
Scylla: a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water,
opposite its counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait were within
an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid
Charybdis would pass too close to Scylla and vice versa. Scylla was the
daughter of the river god Crataeis and was loved by Glaucus, but Glaucus
himself was also loved by the sorceress Circe. While Scylla was bathing in
the sea, the jealous Circe poured a potion into the sea water which caused
Scylla to transform into a monster with four eyes, six long necks equipped
with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth. Her
body consisted of twelve tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail while four to six
dog-heads ringed her waist.
The 1970’s in a Nutshell
In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the
1960s, such as increasing political awareness and political and economic
liberty of women, continued to grow. The hippie culture, which started in
the latter half of the 1960s, waned by the early 1970s and faded towards
the middle part of the decade, which involved opposition to the Vietnam
War, opposition to nuclear weapons, the advocacy of world peace, and
hostility to the authority of government and big business. The
environmentalist movement began to increase dramatically in this period.
-Important Social MovementsAnti-war protests
The opposition to the War in Vietnam that began in the 1960s grew
exponentially during the early 1970s. One of the best-known anti-war
demonstrations was the Kent State shootings. In 1970 university students
were protesting the war and the draft. Riots ensued during the weekend
and the National Guard was called in to maintain the peace. However, by 4
May 1970, tensions arose again, and as the crowd grew larger, the
National Guard started shooting. Four students were killed and nine
injured. This event caused disbelief and shock throughout the country and
became a staple of anti-Vietnam demonstrations.
Environmentalism
The 1970s started a mainstream affirmation of the environmental
issues early activists from the 1960s, such as Rachel Carson and Murray
Bookchin had warned of. The moon landing that had occurred at the end of
the previous decade transmitted back concrete images of the Earth as an
integrated, life-supporting system and shaped a public willingness to
preserve nature. On April 22, 1970, the United States celebrated its first
Earth Day in which over two thousand colleges and universities and
roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools participated.
Feminism/Women’s Roles
The role of women in society was profoundly altered with growing
feminism across the world and with the presence and rise of a significant
number of women as heads of state outside of monarchies and heads of
government in a number of countries across the world during the 1970s,
many being the first women to hold such positions.
The Feminist Movement in the United States which began in the
1960s carried over to the 1970s, and took a prominent role within society.
The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution (which legalized female suffrage) in 1970
was commemorated by the Women's Strike for Equality and other protests.
In addition, the Supreme Court's 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade that
constitutionalized the right to an abortion brought the women's rights
movement into the national political spotlight.
Most efforts of the movement, especially aims at social equality and
repeal of the remaining oppressive, sexist laws, were successful. Doors of
opportunity were more numerous and much further open than before as
women gained unheard of success in business, politics, education,
science, the law, and even the home. Though most aims of the movement
were successful, however, there were some significant failures, most
notably the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution with only three more states needed to ratify it (efforts to ratify
ERA in the unratified states continues to this day and twenty-two states
have adopted state ERAs). Also, the wage gap failed to close, but it did
become smaller.
Civil Rights
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s began to fracture in the
1970s, as social groups began defining themselves more by their
differences than by their universalities. The Black Nationalist movement
grew out of frustrations with the "non-violent" strategies of earlier Civil
Rights Activists. With the assassinations of both Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Senator Bobby Kennedy, many were compelled to
reject ideas of negotiation and instead embrace isolation.
The gay movement made a huge step forward in the 1970s with the
election of political figures such as Harvey Milk to public office and the
advocating of anti-gay discrimination legislation passed and not passed
during the decade. Many celebrities, including Freddie Mercury and Andy
Warhol, also "came out" during this decade, bringing gay culture further
into the limelight.
Vietnam
The Vietnam War (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh Việt Nam) was a Cold
War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war
followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam,
supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam,
supported by the United States and other anti-communist countries. The
Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly
armed South Vietnamese communist common front directed by the North,
largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region.
The Vietnam People's Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more
conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and
South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming
firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground
forces, artillery, and airstrikes.
The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to
prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider
strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong
viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed
by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S.
puppet state. American military advisors arrived in what was then French
Indochina beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early
1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S.
combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned
international borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. American
involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the Tet Offensive.
After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy
known as Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all
parties in January 1973, fighting continued.
U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the
Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of
Saigon by the Vietnam People's Army in April 1975 marked the end of the
war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The
war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War
casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians
killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000
Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members
also died in the conflict.