Medea’s monologue (Ov. Met. 7, 11–71) is the first fully dramatic soliloquy in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and as such has been regarded as the prototype for other dramatic speeches in the poem. The monologue opens the long Ovidian Medea-episode and is in close dialogue with the intertextual tradition regarding Medea. This paper seeks to show how control plays a key role in the monologue both in Medea’s battle with herself and as part of her self-reflection. In my new reading, the moment of definition is central both to the epistemological process by which Medea understands her situation, and to the ethical considerations connected to her decision.