Chapter V: The Works of Euripides (2)

The scene is laid in Thrace, where the Greeks are encamped after the fall of Troy; the background is a tent wherein captive Trojan women are quartered. The ghost of Polydorus, Priam’s youngest son, tells how he has been murdered by the Thracian king, Polymestor; he has appeared in a dream to his mother Hecuba. On his departure, Hecuba enters, and soon learns that her daughter Polyxena is to be sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles. Odysseus comes to fetch the maiden, who welcomes death as a relief from slavery. Soon Talthybius enters, summoning Hecuba to bury Polyxena, whose noble death has filled the Greeks with admiration. Hecuba sends a woman to fetch sea-water for the obsequies, and this messenger returns with the body of Polydorus. Hecuba exclaims that the murderer is Polymestor: her dream has told her. Agamemnon enters, and she induces him to connive at her taking vengeance upon the Thracian, his ally. Next she sends for Polymestor and his children, and (after a beautiful ode on the last hours of Troy), they arrive. Polymestor is induced to go with his little sons within the tent, where they are slaughtered and he himself blinded. His cries bring back Agamemnon, who rejects the pleas of Polymestor. The Thracian, in his despair, prophesies the strange end both of Agamemnon and of Hecuba. He is dragged away, and the drama ends with preparations for the voyage to Greece.

This tragedy, let it be said plainly, is on the whole poor and uninteresting.[512] It has been frequently noted, for example, that the plot is “episodic,” that it falls into two divisions, the story of Polyxena and the vengeance upon Polymestor, which are really two small dramas with no genuine connexion. To this it has been replied that the spiritual history of Hecuba supplies unity to the whole; that these episodes bring out her development from a victim into a fiend.[513] But this is scarcely satisfactory. For the two parts are developed so completely along their several lines, they have so little dependence upon one another, that they could stand apart; and that is the real test. Further, the poet himself is uneasy. He is anxious to make some sort of connexion, but it is curiously adventitious. His device, that the corpse of Polydorus is discovered by the woman sent for water wherewith to bathe the body of Polyxena, has won too high praise. An attempt to strengthen it, or rather to draw attention to its neatness, is supplied in the conversation between Hecuba and Agamemnon:[514] “How did he die?” “By the hands of his Thracian host.” ... “Who brought his body hither?” ... “This woman. She found it upon the sea-shore.” “_Was she looking for it, or busied with some other task?_” The last question is absurd; Agamemnon has no reason to ask it. Other little hooks,[515] less obtrusive than this, are provided here and there to connect the two parts. If the play were an unity they would not be needed.

Again, the favourite charge against Euripides, that he delights in quasi-judicial disputes, is brought in here also. The accusation is generally unfair. Critics have been so eager to condemn this poet that they forget the trial scene of the _Eumenides_, the altercation between Œdipus and Creon in the _Œdipus at Colonus_ and various other passages in the earlier tragedians. If a dispute occurs at all, it is in accordance with the genius of Greek tragedy to set it out in formally opposed speeches. One might as well complain of Hamlet’s soliloquies. But in the _Hecuba_ there is more than this. The queen has a gusto not merely for eloquent appeals or invective, but for self-conscious rhetoric, “Filled with lament, not destitute of tears,”[516] is abominable. One is not surprised to learn that the queen is interested in professional teachers of rhetoric,[517] and one remembers that Gorgias, the greatest of them, paid his first visit to Athens a year or two[518] before this play was produced.

The whole piece in its tone and method is far below the best of Euripides’ work. Certain things are undoubtedly excellent—the famous chorus[519] already mentioned, and above all the speech[520] of Polyxena and the narrative of her death.[521] The whole work has not enough calibre. The pathos has no subtlety; the characterization is machine-made; the style, though clear and even elegant—one must allow that the first speech[522] of Polymestor, as a piece of conversational Greek, is unobtrusively perfect—has remarkably few of those feats[523] of idiom which delight us elsewhere.

Polyxena is charming, but a slight sketch only compared with the Medea and the Phædra who have preceded her. Agamemnon the cautious prince, Odysseus the opportunist, Polymestor the brutally wicked barbarian, are characters whom dozens of Euripides’ contemporaries could have produced with ease. Talthybius the herald, still more shadowy, claims remembrance by his naïve conceit.[524] Hecuba herself is hardly better. True, the poet has shown admirably how she progresses from weakness to frightful strength under the pressure of injustice, but without any very sympathetic psychology we fall short of genuine tragedy and touch only melodrama. And she is more than a little grotesque. Her strange passion for rhetorical studies we have already noted. She has, moreover, a taste for inopportune theorizing,[525] even concerning theology.[526] Her griefs themselves command our respect, and she can in one or two flashes of inspiration speak of them in language[527] not unworthy of Shakespeare himself; but there is too much repetition of merely melancholy adjectives, and though there should be only one emotion in us towards a woman who has lost all her children, we can hardly retain it when she reminds us that they were fifty in number.[528]

The apparition of the murdered Polydorus is an interesting element in the action. First, we view the early part of the drama with greater sympathy for the queen, knowing as we do the new horror which awaits her. Secondly, it is necessary that Hecuba should know how Polydorus died. Though but vaguely affected by the vision at first,[529] when parts of it are fulfilled, she remembers and believes definitely in the rest, and knows that Polymestor is the murderer.[530]

The ANDROMACHE (Ἀνδρομάχη) is perhaps the next[531] extant play in the order of time. It was not originally brought out at Athens.[532]

The action takes place before the house of Neoptolemus, prince of Phthia in Thessaly; at one side of the orchestra is the shrine of Thetis. Andromache delivers the prologue. After the fall of Troy she became the prize of Neoptolemus to whom she has borne a son, Molottus. Later the prince married Hermione, daughter of the Spartan king Menelaus. Andromache has hidden the child and herself taken sanctuary in the shrine of Thetis; the boy’s father is from home, having gone to Delphi to ask Apollo’s pardon for demanding reparation for Achilles’ death. Andromache now sends a fellow-slave to ask the aid of Peleus, king of Phthia and her master’s grandfather. Soon she is joined by the chorus, a company of Phthian women who sympathize but urge submission. Hermione enters, and after a spiteful altercation, in which she tries in vain to make the captive leave her sanctuary, departs with threats. Menelaus enters, leading Molottus; he offers Andromache her choice: will she submit to death, or see the boy slain? Andromache gives herself up, whereupon Menelaus announces that, while she must die, Molottus lies at the mercy of Hermione. By this treachery Andromache is goaded into the most bitter invective to be found in Euripides. The chorus dwell upon the folly of domestic irregularities such as those of Neoptolemus. Next Menelaus leads forth Andromache and Molottus for death, when Peleus hurries in and releases them. After a violent quarrel Menelaus throws up his daughter’s cause and departs. Peleus leads the captives away while the chorus sing his youthful exploits. From the palace comes Hermione’s nurse: deserted by her father and dreading her husband’s vengeance the princess is seeking to destroy herself. Next moment Hermione rushes out in distraction and the nurse is attempting to calm her when Orestes enters, explaining that he has called to inquire after his cousin Hermione. She begs him to take her away to Menelaus before her husband returns. Orestes agrees, reminding her that she has in the past been betrothed to him; now Neoptolemus shall pay for his insults by death at Delphi. After their departure the chorus sing of the gods who built but abandoned Troy, and of Orestes’ vengeance upon Clytæmnestra. Peleus returns, having heard of Hermione’s flight. In a moment arrives a messenger who tells how Neoptolemus has been murdered by Delphians at the instigation of Orestes. The body is borne in, and Peleus laments over it until interrupted by the goddess Thetis, his bride of long ago. She comforts him with a promise of immortality. Andromache is to marry Helenus, king of Molossia,[533] and her son is to be ancestor of a dynasty in that land.

Certain remarkable difficulties in the plot must be faced.

First is the breakdown of Menelaus in the presence of Peleus. The first half of the play has exhibited his unswerving resolve to destroy Andromache and her child. Every conceivable argument save one has been addressed to him in vain. That one argument is physical compulsion, and Peleus certainly does not offer it.[534] After a storm of mutual abuse the Spartan withdraws from the whole situation, muttering an excuse which is scarcely meant to be taken seriously: he is in a hurry to chastise an unfriendly state.[535] He goes just far enough to embitter his enemies to the utmost and not far enough to redeem his threats; and he retires without a word to his daughter after committing her to a deeply dangerous project. Menelaus has faults, but crass stupidity is not one of them; on the contrary he is reviled as the type of base cunning. Why, then, does he act with such utter futility at a crisis which anyone could have foreseen?

In the second place, when was Neoptolemus murdered? Orestes declares that the prince will be slain at Delphi, and at once departs with Hermione. After a choric song Peleus comes back, and almost at once receives the news of his grandson’s death. When Orestes utters his prophecy the messenger from Delphi can hardly be more than a mile from the house. Has he already committed the murder as a prelude to an innocent and irrelevant pilgrimage to Dodona? And, if so, why does he reveal, or rather not reveal, the fact? And why has he risked himself in Phthia when the news of his crime may at any moment be revealed?[536]

Thirdly, there is a grave difficulty in the structure, independent of Menelaus’ conduct and the dating of Orestes’ crime. The play seems to fall into two halves with but a slight connexion—the plight of Andromache and the woes of Neoptolemus’ house.

The late Dr. Verrall’s theory[537] of the play explains all these things together. Menelaus has come to see that it is to his interest that his daughter should be the wife of the Argive rather than of the Phthiote prince. He and Orestes therefore concoct a plan to this end. Two things must be achieved: Neoptolemus must be removed, and Hermione, passionately as she loves her lord, must be induced to accept his assassin. The cunning of Menelaus fastens upon the failings of his son-in-law as the path to success. First, he has offended the Delphians, and thus Orestes finds it easy to compass his death. Second, he has caused bitterness in his own house by his connexion with Andromache. Menelaus, while Orestes is at Delphi, urges Hermione into action which her jealousy approves but which her intellect (when it is allowed to speak) must and does condemn. The Spartan has no intention of killing the captives, but he sees to it that Hermione is, in the eyes of Peleus and his subjects, irretrievably committed to such an intention, which will beyond doubt incense Neoptolemus most bitterly—or would, were he still alive as Hermione supposes. Then, when she has committed herself, he calmly bows to the outburst of Peleus and leaves her ready to snatch at any hope in her hysterical despair. At this moment, carefully awaited by the plotters, Orestes appears. He has already murdered Neoptolemus, and is now ready to take Hermione away. But this is not enough. She must appear to come by her own suggestion, and it must appear that she has known at the moment of her elopement what has happened at Delphi. As she hurries from the scene he utters, apparently in consolation of her (though really she is out of hearing), so that it may lodge in the minds of the chorus, a prophecy of Neoptolemus’ fate. Later, she is to be reminded by her father and her new suitor how completely she is involved in suspicion of complicity. Thus she will be thrown into the arms of Orestes, and whatever blame there is will be laid upon Delphi.[538]

This view should in its essentials be adopted. Every dramatist commits faults; but these apparent faults in the _Andromache_ prove too much. They tend to show not that Euripides is here inferior in construction and psychology to Sophocles, but that he is insane. Few readers could compose a speech like that of Andromache beginning ὦ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν ἔχθιστοι βροτῶν, or like the messenger’s narrative. But we could all manage the exit of Menelaus better. There is one great general objection to Verrall’s theory. Is it not much too subtle? If readers have always missed the point, would not spectators do so even more certainly? Verrall, in answer, points to a passage in the Greek _Argument_: τὸ δὲ δρᾶμα τῶν δευτέρων, which he takes to mean “this play is one of the sequels”.[539] He believes that the audience had a sufficient knowledge of the earlier part of the story to follow the _Andromache_ with no perplexity. Whether this knowledge was given by an earlier play of Euripides is not of course certain, but may be regarded as likely.

We next note a feature of equal importance—the atmosphere. Every reader observes strange anachronisms of sentiment and allusion—Hermione’s outburst[540] against women who destroy the confidence between husband and wife, Peleus’ comments on Lacedæmonian society,[541] and the like, which have no relevance to the “Homeric age” of the Trojan war. But the whole tone of the play is unheroic; even if these special features were removed it would remain quite unlike a Sophoclean drama. Euripides has, in fact, written a play about his own generation with a definite purpose. He takes stories from myths as the foundation of his plays, but his interest is in his own time. In spite of “thy mother Helen” and “the hapless town of the Phrygians,” his work concerns essentially fifth-century Athenians. Hence the almost complete absence of poetic colour, which is only found in the conventional lyrics and the goddess of the epilogue, who is no more in tune with the rest of the piece than a fairy-queen would be at the close of _A Doll’s House_. His chief concern is the danger to family life involved in the practice of slave-holding. Neoptolemus loses his life, and Hermione consents to the wreck of her own happiness, simply because of Andromache’s position in the home. She is the fulcrum which the astute villains employ; without her Hermione would never have been manageable.

In harmony with this realistic spirit is the character-drawing. None of the personages is of heroic stature, but all are amazingly real, however disagreeable. The two conspirators, Menelaus and Orestes, of course, do not reveal their natures plainly. The latter, as far as this incident alone is concerned, might strike one as almost featureless; but there cling to him significant little fragments from the earlier history of Hermione. A sinister faithfulness actuates him. In spite of his repulse he has not forgotten his affection for Hermione, not even her last words of renunciation.[542] Nor has he ceased to brood on the insults of Neoptolemus—perhaps nothing in the play is more effective than the gloomy triumph with which he flings back the hated word: “and the matricide shall teach thee”.... Menelaus, as a study in successful villainy combined with the domestic virtues, is quite perfect in his kind; _ces pères de famille sont capables de tout_. But it is upon the three victims, Hermione, Andromache, and Peleus, that the poet has lavished his skill most notably. Each has precisely the virtues and the failings which are fit to make them answer with the precision of machinery to each string pulled by the Spartan diplomatist. Peleus may be relied upon to provide Menelaus with an excuse for retiring when he wishes, and to utter wild language which can be used to prove that he is responsible for Hermione’s flight.[543] Andromache, earning and receiving our pity for her past woes and her present anguish, yet alienates us by her arrogance and a certain metallic brutality in repartee and invective which again are invaluable to the men whose puppet she is. That she should not cower before Hermione or her father is natural, but that is not the point; her trampling tactlessness[544] is a positive disease. She is indeed (except in her love for Molottus) as callous as Menelaus. This is a point of absolutely fundamental import. That interview early in the play, which might have been priceless to both women, ends only in the hopeless embitterment of Hermione. The latter is the best-drawn character of all. Swayed by strong primitive impulses, jealousy and fear, without any balance of mind or emotion, curiously liable to accept the domination of a stronger personality, she is fatally suited to the machinations of her father. When she first appears, it is fairly plain that she has come to suggest a compromise to Andromache.[545] What she wishes is not blood, but servility. Spiteful and vulgar, she cannot forgive the captive for the effortless dignity which she has inherited from Trojan kings. Hers is no vision of a murdered rival: how petty yet how horribly natural it is—she wishes to see Andromache scrubbing the floor![546] But vulgar and spiteful as she is, the princess can be wrought upon, as the later part of the action shows, and if only to self-respect Andromache had added tact and sympathy Hermione would have been her passionate friend before thirty lines had been spoken. The pathos of the scene lies above all in the misunderstanding which pits the two women against one another, where they should have combined against the callous craft which was using them both for the ends of politics.

The deities whom we find in this play need detain us only a moment. Thetis is no more than sweetening for the popular taste. Soothing and beautiful as are her consolations to the aged sufferer, such a personage has no real concern with a drama so utterly secular. As for Apollo, it is here plainer than usual that his name is nothing but a convenient short term for the great priestly organization at Delphi. That there is a genuine divine person who has aided Orestes and punished Neoptolemus we cannot believe. The only touch of religious awe to be found lies in the messenger’s report. When the assassins are fleeing before their courageous victim, “from the midst of the shrine some one raised an awful voice whereat the hair stood up, and rallied the host again to fight”.[547] It is this same speaker, however, who thus sums up his account of the whole event: “And thus hath he that gives oracles to others, he who for all mankind is the judge of righteousness, thus hath he entreated the son of Achilles who offered him amends. Like a man that is base hath he remembered an ancient grudge. How, then, can he be wise?” To the simple Thessalian confronted for the first time with doubts of Olympian justice, such phrasing is natural. For Euripides the conclusion is that Apollo does not exist at all. “Apollo” does not take vengeance upon the blasphemer at the time of his offence, but waits unaccountably till his second visit, when he comes to make amends and when by an accident, fortunate for the god, a conspiracy of villainous men happens to make his enemy their victim.[548]

In keeping with all this is the literary tone of the work. The lyrics are of little interest to a reader, though one[549] of them markedly sums up the situation and forces home the moral. For the rest, the dialogue is utterly unheroic and unpoetical but splendidly vigorous, terse, and idiomatic; in this respect the _Andromache_ is equal to the best work of Euripides. Could anything of its kind be more perfect than the first speech of Hermione[550]—this mixture of pathetic heart-hunger, of childish snobbery and petulance, this terribly familiar instinct to cast in the teeth of the unfortunate precisely those things for which one formerly envied them, these scraps of ludicrously inaccurate slander against “barbarians” picked up from the tattle of gossiping slaves, and the heavy preachments about “the marriage-question” which cry aloud their origin from the lips of Menelaus? In

δεῖ σ’ ἀντὶ τῶν πρὶν ὀλβίων φρονημάτων
πτῆξαι ταπεινήν, προσπεσεῖν τ’ ἐμὸν γόνυ,
σαίρειν τε δῶμα τοὐμόν, ἐκ χρυσηλάτων
τεύχεων χερὶ σπείρουσαν Ἀχελῴου δρόσον,
γνῶναι θ’ ἵν’ εἶ γῆς,[551]

the last phrase is marvellous. The very sound and fall of the words, with the two long monosyllables, can only be described as a verbal box on the ears. Observe too the great speech[552] of Andromache. In the lines

νῦν δ’ ἐς γυναῖκα γοργὸς ὁπλίτης φανείς
κτείνεις μ’· ἀπόκτειν’, ὡς ἀθώπευτόν γέ σε
γλώσσης ἀφήσω τῆς ἐμῆς καὶ παῖδα σήν,

one can hear the words gurgling in her throat before they issue in speech; at the end she is positively hissing. Peleus, too, ineffectual as he may be in argument, is a master of pungent rhetoric.[553]

For readers who admire exclusively the Sophoclean type of play, the _Andromache_ is a painful experience to be forgotten as soon as possible. For any who find interest in the behaviour of ordinary beings at a great testing moment, this work is an endless delight.

The HERCULES FURENS[554] or _Mad Heracles_ (Ἡρακλῆς Μαινόμενος) is perhaps the next play in order of time. Most critics place it about the year 420 B.C. or a little earlier; the chief reason for this is the celebrated chorus about old age—it is natural supposition that the poet had recently passed beyond the military age, and so would now be just over sixty.

The scene is laid before the house of Heracles at Thebes. Amphitryon, reputed father of the hero, explains the situation. Heracles, leaving his wife Megara and his three sons with Amphitryon, has departed to Hades in quest of Cerberus. In his absence one Lycus has seized the throne and intends to murder Heracles’ family. Megara would submit, but Amphitryon still hopes for Heracles’ return. Certain aged Thebans, who form the chorus, arrive, followed by Lycus who, after sneers at Heracles, orders his henchmen to burn his victims in their house. Megara begs of Lycus that they be given time to array themselves for death. He consents, and the sufferers retire. Lycus departs, and soon the sad procession returns. Suddenly Heracles himself enters. He tells that he has brought back Cerberus and released Theseus, King of Athens, from the lower world; he promises to destroy Lycus and goes within. A splendid ode laments the weakness of old age but glorifies the Muses. Lycus returns, enters the house, and is slain; the chorus greet his yells with delight and hail Heracles as now proved the son of Zeus. Suddenly Iris and Frenzy sweep down from the sky, sent by Hera to drive Heracles mad. Frenzy herself is reluctant, but enters the house, and the chorus raise cries of horror, amid which the house totters in ruin. A messenger relates how Heracles, after slaying Lycus, has been seized with madness and destroyed his wife and children. The eccyclema shows the hero sunk in stupor. He awakes and, realizing his situation, meditates suicide, but Theseus arrives and wins him back to courage; after terrible outbursts against Heaven he departs to live with Theseus in Athens.

After a cursory reading of this play one’s impressions are doubtful. Many features excite warm admiration, such as the superb lyric[555] on old age, the speeches[556] of Megara about her fatherless boys, Heracles’ replies[557] to Theseus; even the wrangle between Lycus and Amphitryon is full of idiomatic vigour.[558] But to be blunt, what is the play about? It works up to a climax in the deliverance of Amphitryon and his kin, and then begins again. Long before the close we have forgotten Lycus. We feel that the play is structureless, or (which is worse) that it falls so clearly into two dramas that we cannot view it as a single piece of art. But if we seriously seek for unity, we naturally look for it in the fortunes of Heracles himself. This granted, we shall expect to find that the incident which in a bare summary seems to disjoint the whole is specially treated. Looking then at the incursion of Lycus, we find that at every moment the events are considered from the point of view of Heracles, in terms of his actions, and the sentiments which cling to his personality. We are only prevented from seeing this at first by the modern supposition that the culmination of a tragedy is the death of a leading person, not a spiritual crisis. The discussion between Amphitryon and Megara about instant submission is dominated by despair of the hero’s return in the latter’s mind and by hope of it in the former’s. As soon as Lycus arrives, he asks: “What hope, what defence find ye against death? Believe ye that the father of these lads, he who lies in Hades, will return?” Whereupon he proceeds to a long tirade in abuse of the hero, and Amphitryon’s even more garrulous response deals almost solely with his son’s achievements and the gratitude which he merits from Thebes and Greece. As the doomed party go indoors the old man reminds Heaven itself of the help it owes to Heracles, and the following lyrics are an elaborate chronicle of his marvellous exploits. Finally, when at point to die, Megara in a beautifully natural manner turns her farewell to her sons into a painful memory of the plans which their father used to make for them. In this way the danger of his family is considered as a test of Heracles’ powers and greatness. Will he make good the promise of his past glories? Will he return and free them from Lycus?

Dr. Verrall[559] follows this line of thought, giving to it far greater precision and colour. He believes that the subject of this play is the miraculous tone investing the traditional stories about Heracles. According to popular belief in the poet’s day, Heracles was a son of Zeus; he performed many exploits which were definitely superhuman, culminating in a descent to Hades and return therefrom. These stories are untrue. The play indicates this simply and directly, giving, however, most attention to the method by which they won credence. In a primitive civilization, when men had not yet attained to clear thinking, remarkable but human feats like those of Heracles were extolled as miraculous by the uncritical. Such are Amphitryon and the chorus, who when challenged by Lycus are capable only of violent reiteration of their belief, but offer, and can offer, no proof that the miracles happened. It is a curious symptom of the former’s vague credulity that while loving and defending Heracles as his own son, he yet claims[560] the help of Zeus on the ground that the god is himself Heracles’ father. The Theban elders join[561] in this irrational belief—as soon as it appears that the divine parentage is established by the return from Hades, which even if true would of course have nothing to do with the question. It is in such minds as this that belief in the miraculous life of Heracles first sprang up. But this belief rests largely upon the accounts of his adventures given by Heracles himself; thus we come to the heart of the tragedy, the mental condition of the hero.

Near the end he exclaims against the consolations of Theseus: “Alas! such words as thine are too trivial for my sorrows. I think not that the gods love unlawful unions, and that they put chains upon one another is a belief I never held nor will I ever. God, if he be God, in truth needs naught. These are but poets’ wretched tales.”[562] Plainly, the sober and reasonable speech which begins thus repudiates the highly-coloured but pernicious stories of tradition to which Theseus has just appealed. Heracles believes in one God utterly above human weaknesses. Then what of Zeus’ love of Alcmena, the jealousy of Hera, the whole basis of his suffering as conceived by the orthodox? And what of his own semi-divine nature, the foundation again of his superhuman deeds? They are delusions. Heracles is no demi-god; his exploits, however great and valuable, are in no sense miraculous. This view, moreover, is precisely that which we ought to gain from the early part of the drama. Lycus is no doubt an insolent bully, but would certainly not brave annihilation (whether at the hands of Zeus or of his son) by slaughtering a demi-god’s family. That he acts so proves that he does not believe in the divine parentage of Heracles; and the support so readily given by Thebes to his policy shows as plainly that to the mass of citizens no real proofs of superhuman nature have been offered. In brief, the actions and language of every one in the play except Heracles himself, Amphitryon, and the chorus—of every one, including Theseus and even Megara, imply that in this play Heracles is indeed a person of note, but an “eminent man” of no very startling eminence.

But the hero himself long before this repudiation of “poets’ wretched tales” has himself given them authority. He tells his father that in truth he has visited Hades, dragged Cerberus thence, and rescued Theseus. At many places[563] in the drama he refers without misgiving or query to legendary monsters which he has quelled, and to his safe return from Hades. This inconsistency, according to Dr. Verrall, is the root of the drama. Heracles suffers from a growing tendency to madness; in his sane moods he knows that all his story is human, all the nobler for its humanity, but in his dark hours he accepts the vulgar splendours which rumour throws round his adventures, at such times lending nascent myth the support of his own false witness. The tragedy of his life has been this mental distemper, which has finally caused him to destroy his wife and children. It appears in dreadful paroxysms throughout the first speech which he addresses to Theseus—first an attempt to account for his murderous outbreak by an account of purely human events; then inconsistently a reference to Zeus’ fatherhood and the attempt of Hera upon his infant life, followed by a splendidly vigorous catalogue of legendary deeds, Typhos, the giants, and the rest, culminating with despairing comments on his hopeless guilt and on the complete victory of Hera; then he suddenly rends the goddess with his scorn: “to such a deity who would pray?—for a jealous quarrel she has destroyed the guiltless benefactor of Greece”.

Two important details should be noted in connexion with this theory. First the apparition[564] of Iris and Frenzy seems to overthrow it utterly by a demonstration in presence of the audience that Heracles’ afflictions are caused by Hera. But the past scene, before ever Frenzy arrives, has shown the hero, if not mad, yet not in full possession of his senses.[565] Moreover, she is not seen by him at the moment when he goes mad, yet, if the chorus see her, _a fortiori_ she should be visible when attacking her victim himself; again the scene in which the fiend herself shows kind-hearted scruples, is ludicrous. These personages (Verrall suggests) are a dream beheld by a member of the chorus who has been impressed by what he has already seen of Heracles’ malady. This is proved by an absence of allusion to the event afterwards when the fatal incident is discussed, and when silence is incredible. The aged man (or men) will gradually remember the dream afterwards; this is another way in which stories like that of Hera’s vengeance obtain currency.

The second point arises from the conversation between Theseus and his friend when clearly sane. Does he confirm the story of the visit to Hades? Now, Heracles and he several times refer to his rescue “from below,” but never do they use language which necessarily refers to Hades. “Thou didst bring me back safe to the light from the dead (or corpses)”[566]—such is the style of allusion. Undoubtedly the language can be applied to Hades; undoubtedly also it could fit some natural event like a disaster in a cave or mine which may actually have been suggested[567] by rationalists of the day as an explanation of the myth—a suggestion which the poet is inclined to adopt and for which therefore he leaves room in his phraseology.

Theseus, amiable as he is, yet presents little of interest; it is his function to voice the opinions of the normal unimaginative man. Megara, however, of whom little has been said, deserves sympathetic study. She does not share Amphitryon’s extraordinary beliefs about his son,[568] but loves and admires him with an affection beautifully expressed throughout the too brief portion of the drama in which she appears; it is she who long before the other realizes his mental state.[569] In her, too, poetical imagination shines forth with a radiance which surpasses the charm of the lyrics and Heracles’ impetuous eloquence. It is she who utters the Sophoclean description[570] of sovereignty:—

ἔχων τυραννίδ’, ἧς μακραὶ λόγχαι πέρι
πηδώσ’ ἔρωτι σώματ’ εἰς εὐδαίμονα,

and that expression[571] of her yearning grief which in its strange felicity of pathos suggests Shakespeare’s Constance:—

πῶς ἂν ὡς ξουθόπτερος
μέλισσα συνενέγκαιμ’ ἂν ἐκ πάντων γόους,
εἰς ἓν δ’ ἐνεγκοῦσ’ ἀθρόον ἀποδοίην δάκρυ;

The SUPPLICES[572] (Ἱκετίδες), or _Suppliant Women_, is generally supposed on internal evidence[573] to have been produced about 420 B.C.

The Suppliants, who form the chorus, are the mothers of the Seven who attacked Thebes and their attendants. They surround Æthra, mother of Theseus, the Athenian king, and beg her to win his aid for them, since the Thebans have refused burial to the slain. Theseus at first refuses, but Æthra persuades him. A Theban herald enters to forbid Theseus, in the name of the Theban king Creon, to aid the Suppliants. Theseus rejects this behest and prepares for war. After an ode, news comes of the Athenian victory. The remains of five heroes are brought in (of the other two, Amphiaraus was swallowed up by the earth and Polynices is supposed still at Thebes). Adrastus delivers funeral speeches over them. The obsequies now take place. The body of Capaneus is burned separately, and Evadne his wife throws herself upon his pyre despite the entreaties of her father Iphis. The young sons of the chieftains bear in the funeral urns, and Adrastus promises that Argos will cherish undying gratitude towards Athens. The goddess Athena appears and bids Theseus exact an oath to this effect; she comforts the fatherless boys with a promise of vengeance.

This drama is perhaps the least popular and the least studied of all Greek plays, which is not surprising when one considers that, in spite of the praise merited by certain parts, the whole work considered by really dramatic standards is astonishingly bad. There is no character-drawing worth the name, and though it may be said that the real heroine of the drama is Athens,[574] it is still strange to find Euripides contented with such colourless persons as Theseus, Æthra, and indeed all the characters. Still more striking are the irrelevancies. Theseus’ address[575] to Adrastus and the assembly at large concerning the blessings conferred by Heaven upon man, have hardly a semblance of connexion with the urgent and painful subject of debate. Even more otiose, and far longer, is the dispute[576] between Theseus and the herald on the claims of monarchy and democracy. The scene of Evadne’s _suttee_, however striking, is dramatically unjustifiable; it is an episode in the bad sense meant by Aristotle—no integral part of the action. The last scene is spoiled by the intervention of Athena, who merely causes the Argives to give an oath instead of a simple promise that they will ever be loyal friends of Athens. That this intervention corresponds to very definite historical fact (the league between the two states in 420 B.C. brought about by Alcibiades) makes no difference to the æsthetic fact. None the less one notes in the _Supplices_ certain excellent features. The appeal[577] of Æthra to her son, and the lyric dirge of Evadne over her husband’s pyre, are admirably composed. Several parts of the work are magnificent as spectacle—the opening in which the sorrowing mothers, Adrastus, and the fatherless boys are grouped about the aged queen, the return of Theseus and his troops with the dead bodies, the episode of Evadne as it struck the eye,[578] and the procession of boys carrying the funeral urns.

The ION[579] (Ἴων) is a play of uncertain date, but was probably produced late in Euripides’ life; some would place it as low as 413 B.C.

The scene is laid before the temple at Delphi. Hermes tells how the Athenian princess Creusa, owing to the violence of Apollo, bore a child, which Hermes brought to Delphi, where the boy grew up as a temple-attendant. Later Creusa married Xuthus, and to-day they will come to ask the oracle some remedy for their childlessness. Apollo will give Ion to Xuthus as the latter’s son; later he is to be made known to Creusa as her own. Ion enters, and in a beautiful song expresses his joy in the service of Apollo. The chorus (attendants of Creusa) draw near; they converse with Ion and admire the temple façade. Creusa arrives; she and Ion are mutually attracted, and she tells how “a friend,” having borne a child to Apollo and exposed it, wishes to know whether it still lives. Ion rejects the story, and urges her not to put such a question to the oracle. Xuthus now appears, and goes within to consult the god; Creusa retires, while Ion muses on the immorality of gods. After a choric ode Xuthus returns and greets Ion as his son: the oracle has declared that the first man to meet him will be his offspring. Ion asks who is his mother; they agree that she must be some Delphian Bacchante. The youth is dismayed at the prospect of quitting Delphi for Athens, but Xuthus genially bids him prepare a farewell banquet for his friends, and departs to offer sacrifice upon Parnassus. The Athenian women express their consternation: Athens is to have an alien ruler and Creusa must remain childless. When she returns they tell her the news, and in bitter disappointment she breaks into an agonized recital of her old sorrow. An aged male attendant undertakes to murder Ion by poison at the banquet. Creusa consents. After an ode praying for vengeance, a messenger brings news that the plot has failed and Creusa has been condemned to death. The queen hurries in, pursued by Ion and a mob; she takes refuge on the altar. Bitter reproaches pass between the two till the Pythian prophetess appears; giving Ion the basket in which he was discovered as a babe, and which still contains the articles then found with him, she bids him seek his mother. Creusa greets him as her son and names the three objects. They embrace with joy, but Ion, learning that not Xuthus but Apollo is his father, determines to ask the oracle which account is true. Athena, however, appears and explains that Apollo has been compelled to change his plans; Xuthus must continue to believe Ion his own son.

This drama suggests a rich tasselled robe of gorgeous embroidery; were it not that the basis of the story is so painfully sexual, the _Ion_ would be perhaps the most popular of Greek plays. The sudden changes of situation, the emotional crises, the sheer thrill of many passages, the lovely study of the Greek Samuel at his holy tasks—all these things make a glorious play. But our delight is blurred by a recurrent perplexity. Theology is obtruded throughout, and such a theology as never was.

Apollo ravishes Creusa and by help of Hermes brings her child to Delphi, where he lives happily up to manhood, but Creusa is allowed to suppose her child destroyed by wild beasts. The god, however, intends to secure Ion his rights as prince of Athens. Xuthus is to accept the lad as his son, while Creusa and Ion are to be made secretly known to each other. But this plan is disturbed by the Athenian women, and the god, revising his intention, sends the doves to save Ion, and the prophetess to save Creusa. All would now be well, since both Xuthus and the queen accept Ion as a son. But Ion wishes to know whether the oracle speaks truth or lies.[580] Apollo therefore sends Athena to prevent him from taxing the oracle with inconsistency. She explains the various activities of Apollo, prophesies concerning the Athenian race, and bids Creusa keep Xuthus in ignorance.

Apollo is as much fool[581] as knave.[582] Athena may say that “Apollo hath done all things well,”[583] but mortals will not endorse her sisterly admiration. Even the revised plan cannot succeed. How long will Xuthus remain ignorant of facts which are being proclaimed, not only to Creusa and her son, but also to the crowd of Delphians and the Athenian women? Even if this could be secured, things are no better: Apollo has said both that he himself, and that Xuthus, is the father of Ion. Which of these statements is true matters comparatively little. One of them must be a lie. The god who gives oracles to Greece is a trickster, and no celestial consolations or Athenian throne can compensate the youth for the loss of what filled his heart only this morning.

The _Ion_ is the one play in which Euripides attacks the Olympian theology beyond all conceivable doubt. It is certain (i) that he does not believe in the existence of Apollo and Hermes; (ii) that the Delphic oracle is a human institution making impossible pretensions; and (iii) that his method of attack is by innuendo and implication. Verrall’s theory of the poet’s method is here on absolutely unassailable ground. The story is purely human, and the theological story is a mere addendum designed to suit the religious occasion and many of the spectators. What, then, is this human story? Verrall explains that Creusa was wronged by some man unknown, and that her child perished. The Pythian priestess bore[584] a child which she reared with a natural tenderness.[585] This child was Ion, whom the managers of the shrine determined to place in a station which could assist their influence. Then occurs the deadly scene in which the youth is about to kill Creusa. To save the Delphians from the responsibility of murdering a foreign queen in the open street, and the boy from conduct which would make his admission to Athens impossible, a plot is hastily concocted. It will prevent war with Athens, it will destroy Creusa’s hatred for Ion, and secure his future throne. The priests have already heard, even if Apollo has not, the story shrieked[586] out at him by Creusa. By an impudent master-stroke they determine that Ion shall be the queen’s long-lost child. To this end the history of the two persons supplies most of the means; all that is needed is something tangible to tie the knot. Hurriedly the clues are provided. The necklace exposed long ago upon the babe is an easy matter; its fellow was found upon the person of the Pædagogus.[587] The ever-blooming olive of the Acropolis can be equalled in freshness by sprays plucked to-day in Delphi; and for the embroidery, it is fairly certain that some such covering must have been wrapped round the child, and its pattern is sufficiently vague.[588] The queen in her heart-hunger and peril snatches at these clues, and in a moment the two fall into one another’s arms. Finally, the clear-headed persistence of Ion is met by what may in truth be called a _dea ex machina_.[589] Over the temple façade is protruded the gigantic head[590] of a figure, through which some one offers such fumbling “explanations” as are possible. All this is enough for Creusa—she has a son. As for Ion, whose life has been in his faith, he commits himself to nothing; in one day he has grown to the full stature of a man, but one hardly supposes that he visited Delphi again. Thus may Verrall’s theory be summarized. It has never been answered, nor does it seem possible to make any answer, except that the alleged real story is “far-fetched”—of course; for any rationalistic explanation of a supposed miracle must be strange, otherwise no one would have hitherto believed the miracle in order to account for the facts.

The “theological background” then being merely theatrical gauze and canvas, what of the human action? Though it forms an extraordinarily brilliant, powerful, fascinating spectacle, is it a tragedy?—the story ends with the appearance at any rate of joy and contentment. Yet tragedy is found not only in the death of the body but in the death of ideals; and the destruction of Ion’s faith in his all-knowing unerring father is a fate from which, when we remember his happy carolling upon the dawn-lit temple-steps, we could wish to see him saved even by the Gorgon’s venom. Any out-cry wherewith he might have challenged Creusa’s is checked by the cold disgust which fills him at the sound of Athena’s bland periods; but one knows the kind of man Athens will receive to-morrow—one who will agree with Xuthus that “these things don’t happen,”[591] who will be an admirable connoisseur of party politics,[592] but who has lost his vision. This, then, is spiritually, though not technically, a tragedy. Further, it is technically a melodrama. That is, the external form and texture is calculated to produce not as in tragedy simple, profound, and enduring exaltation, but more superficial, violent, and transitory emotion. The Pædagogus is pure melodrama, witness his change from senile helplessness[593] to ruthless vigour,[594] the wildness of his suggestions—“burn down the temple” ... “murder your husband”; the utter absence of remorse and secondary interests, characteristic of villainous subordinates in melodrama; his complete breakdown when it is demanded by the plot.[595] Such also is the confrontation of Ion and Creusa with the terrified women and scowling Delphians as a background. But the finest thrill, and the touch least justified by any standards save those of melodrama, occurs in the speech of Ion as he stands with the fateful basket in his arms and determines not to open it but to dedicate it to Apollo. The next moment he reflects that he must carry out the god’s will and discover his origin. The genuine plot halts so as to cause theatrical sensation.

It is natural in such a play that the characterization should be simple. Xuthus, the Pædagogus, and the Prophetess, are scarcely more than foils to the two chief persons. Creusa attracts us rather because the poet has so well portrayed woman than because he has created a particular woman. More than this can be said of Ion. He is marked out from all the other persons of this play by sheer intelligence, by the power of facing facts, and of constantly readjusting his perspective.[596] He is a figure of somewhat quaint pathos. The happy child who sings to the birds on the temple-steps and thinks of nothing but his tranquil existence of pious routine, turns in a moment to the discreet adviser who can imagine incredible things: “There is no man who will transmit to thee response to such a question. For were he in his own house proved a villain, Phœbus would justly wreak mishap upon him that gave thee such reply.”[597] As he moves to and fro, filling the holy-water stoups, we can hear him murmuring to himself serene blasphemies. “But I must blame Phœbus. Such conduct! Use violence upon maidens, and betray them? Beget children in secret and leave them to die? Come, come! Since you have the power, remember its responsibility. You punish mankind for wrong-doing” ...[598] and so forth, including the suggestion that if Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo were compelled to pay damages for their lustful offences, their temples would become bankrupt. In politics, as in religion, Ion observes and deduces for himself. Athenian public life he well understands before entering it;[599] he has views about the influence of perverted religious feelings upon public opinion and the execution of the law.[600] All this prepares us for the splendid moment[601] when forgetting his own rule[602] he insists on bearding the oracle, and for the reception he gives to the patching-up of Apollo’s infallibility.

For the rest, the work is a study of emotions deeply conceived and wonderfully expressed. Creusa is induced to tell her story, though disguised, to Ion largely by her sudden feeling for the youth himself.[603] The revelation which she makes to the Pædagogus and the chorus is wrung from her after all these years by the sudden loneliness which the gift of a son to her husband brings upon her heart. And the gloriously successful climax[604] where she suddenly addresses her executioner as her son is purely emotional also. Even the intellectual revolt of Ion is introduced by a sudden turn of the feelings in the recognition-scene: “Mother, let my father, too, share in our joy”.[605]

The TROADES[606] (Τρῳάδες), or _Trojan Women_, was produced in 415 B.C. together with _Alexander_, _Palamedes_, and _Sisyphus_ as satyric play. This group obtained the second prize, being defeated by the work of Xenocles “whoever he is”.[607]

The action takes place outside Troy after its capture; in the background is a tent wherein are captive Trojan women. Before the tent lies Hecuba in a stupor of grief. The deities Poseidon and Athena explain in a dialogue that they are quitting Troy with reluctance; Poseidon will destroy the Greek fleet on its way home. When they have departed, Hecuba stirs and laments; soon she is joined by the chorus of Trojan women. Talthybius tells her that Cassandra is to become the concubine of Agamemnon; concerning Polyxena he speaks evasively; Andromache is given to Neoptolemus, Hecuba herself to Odysseus, whom she detests above all Greeks. Cassandra rushes forward uttering in frenzy a horrible parody of a marriage-song in her own honour; she prophesies the woes of Agamemnon and Odysseus. Hecuba ponders her former greatness and present misery; the chorus sing the fatal day when Troy welcomed the Wooden Horse. Andromache and her infant Astyanax are brought in, and from her Hecuba hears Polyxena’s death. Though prostrated by grief she urges Andromache to please her new lord, that perchance his son may revive something of Troy’s greatness. Talthybius returns with tidings that Astyanax is to be hurled from the battlements. After an ode on the first siege of Troy, Menelaus enters rejoicing in his long-deferred opportunity of slaying Helen. Hecuba bursts into rapturous thanks to the Power which rules mankind, and when Helen pleads innocence refutes her bitterly. Talthybius brings in the mangled body of Astyanax over which Hecuba utters a speech of reproachful lament. The play ends with the burning of Troy.

In structure archaic, this play is in spirit something quite new to the Attic stage. On the one hand there is little unfolding of a plot; we are reminded strongly of the _Prometheus_ by the portrayal of a situation which changes with extreme slowness. It is the manner of this portrayal which is new and terrible. The _Troades_ was performed after the sack of Melos and before the departure of the Sicilian expedition; it is a statement, by a member of the nation which annihilated Melos, of the horrors wherewith the vanquished are overwhelmed. The glory won by the Greeks who overthrew Troy was the best-known and most cherished gift of tradition. Now a Greek writer reveals the other side of conquest. After the crime of Melos, Euripides never felt as he had felt towards Athens or Greece. His intellect and his heart were appalled by the cold ferocity of which his fellows showed themselves every year more capable. Hitherto he has attacked the evils of human nature; now he impeaches one definite nation, and that his own. No spectator could doubt that “Troy” is Melos, “the Greeks” Athens. Such uncompromising hostility must have produced deep effects on so impressionable an assembly. For it is not merely a denunciation; it is a threat. The poet takes the whole picture of misery and stupid tyranny, and puts it into sinister perspective in his prologue. All the cruelties of the play are committed by the Greeks under shadow of the calamity denounced against them by the deities of the prologue, whereof we are again and again reminded by the sentences casually dropped by Talthybius and others, that the host is eager to embark. And this when the great Athenian armament was itself thronging the Peiræus in preparation for the voyage to Sicily.[608]