Chapter V: The Works of Euripides (4)

The religious sanction which for Sophocles had been the background of Orestes’ story and which for Æschylus provided the most vital part of the action, has in Euripides’ hands become, as it were, a small, rather shabby stage-property hung upon the back-scene. Those Avenging Spirits who hunt the matricide are now called “frenzies”[729] by his sister, and in the anxiously precise account[730] which Menelaus elicits from his nephew, it becomes plain that the three “maidens like night” are an hallucination; any unfettered intercourse between them and ordinary men is out of the question. Traditional belief itself tells rather against their divinity than for it.[731] Another stage property is the incidental miracle. Menelaus at Malea was addressed by the “prophet of Nereus, Glaucus, truthful god,” who told him of his brother’s death.[732] When we learn that at Nauplia he heard of Clytæmnestra’s death but from “some mariner,”[733] we surmise that “Glaucus” too was human.[734] The second miracle is that related[735] by the Phrygian slave; Helen vanished, “either by spells or the tricks of wizards or stolen by Heaven”. Helen has only hidden herself; the Phrygian is crazed by excitement and terror. But the miracle of Helen is vouched for by a more august witness, Apollo, who asserts that he has saved her from Orestes’ sword. Thus we arrive at the final triumph of orthodox religion, the epilogue in which the Delphian god stays at a word the vengeance of Argos and the quarrel between Menelaus and Orestes. In the reality of this epilogue we shall believe according as we find it credible that Euripides could destroy all the effect of his own play. All the action, all the atmosphere, which the dramatist has created, are rent by an utter breach. The objection is not so much that Apollo and his speeches are in themselves absurd, though the consolation offered to Menelaus, that Helen throughout their married life has given him endless trouble,[736] is (however true) distasteful. What jars hopelessly is the monstrous discontinuity of event and emotion. As elsewhere, this orthodox Olympian and his epilogue are a sham, devised to suit the demands of an audience which “knew” how Orestes went forth from Argos to Athens. The real drama ends with the wild breakdown of Menelaus, and for the three criminals and their victim the doom falls which sin and bitter madness have made inevitable.[737]

But the Orestes is not remarkable as a study in scepticism, like the _Ion_. Even the psychology, superb as it is, cannot be regarded as the cause of the immense popularity which the play won in antiquity.[738] It is pre-eminent for magnificent situations. The sick-bed scene is unforgettable, especially that marvellous hushed song[739] of Electra beside her sleeping brother:—

Holy night, outpouring ever
Slumber’s boon on souls that mourn,
From thy midmost deep dominion
Hither bend thy sweeping pinion,
Where, ’neath woes that leave it never
Lies a princely house forlorn.

The whole progress of the later scenes is splendidly exciting, and in the midst Euripides has set the audacious scene of the Phrygian slave who replaces the conventional messenger’s speech with his wild lyrical narrative, incoherent and baffling. Equally brilliant is the finale in which actual lunacy confronts the delirium of despair and grief, with the frail victim flung upon the parapet, the knife brandished in the madman’s grasp, and the flames which are to end the horror already rising behind.

The BACCHÆ[740] (Βάκχαι), or _Bacchantes_ (female votaries of the god Bacchus or Dionysus), was produced in 405 B.C., soon after the poet’s death in Macedonia, and with its companion-plays obtained the first prize.

Dionysus, standing before the palace of Thebes, tells how, disguised as a prophet, he has brought his religion into Greece. His purpose in Thebes is to punish the sisters of his mother Semele for declaring that their sister had united herself not with Zeus but with some mortal, and to crush the young king Pentheus, who opposes his worship. Already the Theban women are revelling upon Mount Cithæron, filled with the Bacchic ecstasy. He departs to join them, and the chorus of Phrygian votaresses throng in uttering a rapturous eulogy of their religion. Tiresias and Cadmus are next seen preparing to join the revels, when Pentheus enters and reproaches them. Their answers enrage him further and he orders the arrest of the stranger-prophet. The chorus appeal to Holiness against the oppressor, reciting the blessings of Dionysus and the doom of pride; they yearn to revel unchecked. The Stranger is brought in; Pentheus questions and insults him, finally haling him away to the stables. The chorus sing their indignation and desire for the aid of Dionysus in person when the prophet is heard summoning fire and earthquake; the women in frenzy greet the overthrow of the palace. Their leader comes forth and relates how Pentheus in vain sought to bind him and how the god has thrown the house into utter ruin. Pentheus rushes out in fury, but is met by a rustic who relates the revels and miracles performed by the Theban votaresses. This excites the king still further, but the Stranger dissuades him from the use of armed force; let him go disguised as a woman to witness the revels. Pentheus retires into the palace with the prophet, who reveals the king’s coming doom to the chorus; they rejoice in their future freedom and the fate of the ungodly. Pentheus re-appears, dressed as a female reveller and utterly under the Stranger’s influence. The two depart for the mountains, the king being now practically imbecile. The chorus fiercely call for bloody vengeance, then praise the humble endeavour after all that is beautiful in life. A messenger returns with the story of Pentheus’ death: he has been torn to pieces by his mother Agave and her companions. Agave enters in mad triumph with her son’s head, followed by Cadmus, who bears the mangled remains of his grandson and gradually brings Agave back to her senses. He laments[741] the prince who was the comfort of his old age.[742] Dionysus appears in the sky, foretells the future of Cadmus and his wife, and explains that the present sorrows are due to the will of Zeus. Agave turns away, repudiating the new religion.

Intoxicatingly beautiful, coldly sordid, at one moment baffling the brain, at the next thrilling us with the mystic charm of wood and hillside, this drama stands unique among Euripides’ works. Its wonderful effect flows from three sources: primitive dramaturgy, lyrical beauty, the enigma of its theological import. As for the first of these, there is a marked simplicity both of plot and characters. A god brings a strange worship into the land of his birth; the king rejects and scorns him; whereupon the god turns his people to madness so that they avenge him upon the king. It is the simplest possible dramatic concept. If we consider the personages, comparing Agave with Phædra or Medea, Pentheus with Ion or Hippolytus, we find an equal simplicity. The characters of the _Bacchæ_ impress us less by their subtle truth to nature than by the situation in which they stand. In this sense the _Bacchæ_ is the most Æschylean work of Euripides. Like his predecessor when he composed the _Choephorœ_, he is studying directly a great religious fact, which submerges the refinements of individual psychology, leaving somewhat stark figures, the God, the Old Man, the King, the Prophet, and the Woman.[743] In technique we are not far from that primitive stage of modern drama which exhibits the interplay of Avarice, Lovingkindness, and the rest. This imparts an even greater attractiveness to the amazing literary excellence of the whole. This excellence is of two distinct kinds. The episodes are not filled with romantic beauty—only a few splendid passages in the long narratives of messengers exhibit this; they show the same mastery of a brilliant half-prosaic idiom which is familiar elsewhere. But the lyrics are the poet’s finest achievement in this field. Nothing that he had created hitherto can be compared with them, save the praises of Attica in the _Medea_[744] and the song of escape in the _Hippolytus_.[745] The profound beauty of their musings on the life of serene piety, the startling vividness wherewith they express the secluded loveliness which haunts bare peaks or remote woodlands, the superb torrent of glowing song[746] which celebrates the religious ecstasy of Dionysiac votaries, where the glorious diction is swept along by a tempest of ever more tumultuous rhythm—all these contribute to make the _Bacchæ_ something precious and alone.

It is with regard to the third feature, the theological purport, that disagreement begins among critics. Is the playwright commending the Bacchic religion to his fellow-countrymen or is he not? If not, why this magnificent and intense proclamation of the glory conferred by belief? But if he supports it, why this dreary aching scene at the end, when Dionysus hears no voice raised in loyalty, only the despairing accents of the woman who repudiates his worship? It may be objected that perhaps we should not hope for definite interpretation, that since “like a live thing it seems to move and show new faces every time that, with imagination fully working, one reads the play,”[747] perhaps there is no core of central fact to find. Here lurks a dangerous confusion of thought. Every work of art springs from a definite concept held by the artist, some piece of reality clearly understood and sincerely felt, insisting on expression at his hands precisely because it affects him emotionally. The elusiveness of the final expression is not in the least degree any proof that no definite doctrine, or experience, or passionate wish, was its origin; a fern has a physical centre of gravity as truly as an apple, though more difficult to locate. Rather, the luxuriant freedom is the proof that there is deep down something definite, else the freedom would be anarchy. We conclude that however enigmatic is the _Bacchæ_, yet Euripides had a definite opinion about the two questions: Does the god Dionysus exist? Is his religion a blessing to humanity? His opinion could have been written down in a few lucid sentences. Had this not been so, he would have postponed beginning his play until it was. This clear concept may itself indicate “doubt” (if we insist on the word) or rather a bifurcation of truth, as may be observed in the dramaturgy of Sophocles.

There is, then, a secret to be discovered. Is it lost for ever, or not? It appears to some[748] that the drama contains evidence, unmistakable but long overlooked, which conveys Euripides’ opinion concerning Dionysus. The chief, the only certain, clue is contained in the “Palace-Miracle”. The facts are, that the chorus cry aloud at the tottering of the building; that Dionysus a moment later when relating what has happened within, adds, “And this further evil hath Bacchus wrought upon him: he hath flung his dwelling to the ground, where it lies all in ruin”;[749] that, finally, the palace is as a fact uninjured. This latter point is proved by the complete silence of all the personages, except Dionysus and the chorus. Neither Cadmus nor Agave, nor the two messengers, at their several entrances make the least remark about it. Above all, Pentheus, who was within the house when the overthrow is alleged to have occurred, says nothing about it. Later the prince and his enemy enter the palace before proceeding to Cithæron, again with no hint that the building has been destroyed. It follows that the statements made by the chorus and by Dionysus are untrue.[750] The women believe what their leader cries out from within and what he tells them later. That is, they accept what their own eyes tell them is false. Only one power can work this marvel of belief—hypnotism, or, as earlier ages would call it, magic. The Dionysus of this play is precisely what Pentheus calls him, a “foreign wizard,”[751] no god at all, but a human hierophant of the new religion. Brought up in Western Asia, he combines a profound feeling for natural religion with an un-Greek leaning to orgiastic ecstasy and an instinct for fiendish cruelty; so that in spreading the gospel of joy and simple surrender to the mystic loveliness of Nature he crushes those who reject him, not destroying them in passion, but working their misery with a horrible cold relish: he is Shakespeare’s Richard the Third with religious instead of political ambitions. As for the Dionysiac religion itself, the poet feels its vast emotional appeal—feels it so strongly that he has drawn the most wonderful picture of ecstatic religion to be found in literature; but if it is proposed to him as “a way of life” for civilized men he condemns it as firmly as unwillingly. To give free rein to passions and instincts hitherto unconscious or starved, this is a path, perhaps the only path, towards strangely beautiful experience, the thrill of communion with non-human life; but it is not the path for man. Here Euripides stands at one with the great European tradition. If man is to attain the height of his destiny he will seek not the gold of joy but the silver of happiness, not the blazing rapture of absorption in strange beauty, but the calm glow of self-understanding and self-expression. He will not seek to destroy the instinct for ecstasy, but will harness it, and work it into the fabric of a sound coherent life. He may be a spectator, it is true, if not of all time, yet of all existence; his eyes will shrink from nothing, but his heart is not to be reft from him. He must prove all things, but hold fast only that which is good—a moral being, not the slave of sound and colour. In this drama, where Euripides seems to voice like some pagan archangel the glory of a non-moral absorption in the torrent of raw life, he is fundamentally as moral as at any moment in life. As Tannhäuser after his sojourn in the Venusberg is at length won back by the urgency of his own soul into the Roman Church, so does Euripides unflinchingly present, to an audience still breathing hard after the glories of Cithæron, Agave and Cadmus bowed over Pentheus’ mangled body, and the rejection of a god whose unmitigated demands imply the wreckage of sound human life.

What, then, are we to believe of Dionysus? If we refuse him we are liable like Pentheus to be destroyed; if we surrender ourselves, what of Agave? Here is a dilemma which Euripides himself did not foresee. By θεός (“god”) he often means something widely different from the concept of an ordinary Athenian, but he never intends all the associations of our word “God”. For us belief in “God” implies that the universe holds a personal Governor, all-powerful and all-wise, who stands to us in a relation emotional as well as metaphysical. To accept Him is to believe that His purpose embraces the existence and history of the universe and of the humblest creature therein, and because of that belief to merit His love by loving service of our own. These thoughts are to us tremendous commonplaces; they would have bewildered any fifth-century Greek save Æschylus.[752] θεός means a power, usually but not necessarily personal, which is outside ourselves and affects our life in a manner which cannot be affected by any wish or act of ours, save possibly to a small degree by ritual submission. Dionysus, like the other “gods,” is a permanent fact of life personified. We must give him respect, take account of him in our conduct and judgment of others. To ignore him is not so much sin as utter blindness. If we insist on the personality of Dionysus we find him attractive but deadly, a deity who employs his might to entangle the threads of life, crushing hearts better than his own. In so far as he is a person he is unthinkable. But as a fact of life, with no more purpose or will than the force of gravitation, he is neither good nor bad, simply a profound reality, one of the elements we must consider in building our lives. Cadmus expresses this lesson: “If anyone despises the supernatural powers, let him look on the death of this man and believe in the gods”.[753]

Then why does the poet dwell on the personal existence of Dionysus? Even if we refuse to believe the theory outlined already, that this person is a human hierophant, we can still answer the question. Euripides is concerned not merely to tell us the truth about ethics, but to discuss the current theology of his day. The majority of his fellows believed in a personal Zeus, a personal Athena and Dionysus. He wishes to convince them of the falsity, the pernicious falsity, of such a creed. Take this play in its superficial meaning and you find a person who is detestable—a god who does wrong, and who is, therefore, no god at all.[754] Away with him; purify your theology. And when this is done, we find, not that the drama has fallen to pieces, but that now it is coherent and forcible. There is in the human soul an instinct for ecstasy, for a relinquishment of self in order to feel and bathe in the non-human glory of Nature. Trample this instinct ruthlessly down as did Pentheus, and your life is maimed and shrivelled.

IPHIGENIA AT AULIS[755] (Ἰφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Αὐλίδι) was produced soon after the poet’s death in 406 B.C. by his son, together with _Alcmæon at Corinth_ and the _Bacchæ_.

The scene shows Agamemnon’s tent at Aulis, where the Greeks are encamped ready to sail for Troy, but delayed by contrary winds. Before they can set out Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia must be sacrificed to Artemis. The king has written to his wife bidding her send the maiden—to marry Achilles. We now see him in agony beneath the night-sky and entrusting to an aged slave a letter revoking the first. The chorus (women of Colchis) enter and describe the pastimes of various heroes. Menelaus intercepts the letter and reproaches his brother with treachery. After a vigorous dispute they learn that Clytæmnestra and Iphigenia are approaching. Menelaus relents, but they realize that the sacrifice must proceed. The chorus sing Aphrodite’s power and the judgment of Paris. Agamemnon greets his family with half-concealed distress, and in vain attempts to send his wife back forthwith. A choric ode describes the impending doom of Troy. Achilles, seeking Agamemnon, meets Clytæmnestra, who to his amazement greets him as a son-in-law. In the midst of their embarrassment the old slave comes forward and reveals Agamemnon’s purpose. The queen in agony appeals to Achilles, who promises to defend Iphigenia. The chorus sing the bridals of Peleus and Thetis, Achilles’ parents. Then mother and daughter piteously beg Agamemnon to relent; he is heart-broken but determined. Iphigenia utters a lyric lament, after which Achilles tells how the army maltreated him for championing Iphigenia. He and the queen are excitedly debating, when Iphigenia proclaims her readiness to die for the cause of Greece, and departs, singing her farewell to life. A messenger brings a description of the sacrifice: at the last moment the princess miraculously disappeared, and a hind was substituted for her by the goddess. Agamemnon returns and takes leave of Clytæmnestra.

The text of this drama presents curious features.[756] There are two prologues, and the last fifty or sixty lines of the whole are corrupt. It seems that Euripides died before the work was finished; the gaps were filled by his son Euripides who produced the trilogy (_Iphigenia_, _Alcmæon_, _Bacchæ_) soon after 406 B.C. The original prologue, of the ordinary narrative kind, delivered by Agamemnon in iambic metre, is embedded in the later prologue, which takes the form of a dialogue in anapæsts between the king and his aged retainer. This later work is extremely charming, filled with the quiet beauty of night overhanging the feverish ambition and misery of men. But though the younger Euripides probably wrote an ending also, this has been displaced by extremely bad[757] work of a much later time. It is not easy to understand why such inferior matter was allowed to eject the composition of the younger Euripides. Perhaps the explanation is that the concluding lines were known from the first not to be by the master, that the play was often produced, and that for these two reasons rival endings were very early before the public. They would destroy one another’s prestige, so that in later centuries none survived, and some scribe filled up the gap as best he could.

A noteworthy contrast exists between the _Iphigenia_ and the _Bacchæ_, though they were no doubt composed at almost the same time. In this play the chorus has practically no concern with the action, whereas the Asiatic women form the soul of the _Bacchæ_. Instead of the wild loveliness or serene spirituality which thrill us in the lyrics of that drama, we find here nothing more profound than graceful complications of phrase and facile emotion. In compensation, while the _Bacchæ_ is primitive in psychology, its companion is superior to many Greek tragedies in the masterly freedom and subtlety of its character-drawing.

The play is a study of five ordinary characters under the stress of an extraordinary crisis. This common-place quality of the personages conveys the whole purport, giving it a momentous position even among such works as we have been discussing. In this latest tragedy no sincere reader can fail to detect himself under the thin disguise of names. Many men were pointed at as the original of Meredith’s Sir Willoughby Patterne, and for the same good reason most Athenian husbands must have stirred a little on their benches in the presence of this unheroic Agamemnon. There is nothing heroic in any of the persons. Menelaus is an ordinary man—artlessly selfish at one moment, artlessly and uselessly kind-hearted at another, and a master of fluent invective which reveals his own failings. Clytæmnestra is an ordinary woman, showing indeed a queenly dignity in the normal relations of life, but when puzzled or alarmed revealing herself a thorough _bourgeoise_, and when confronted by the doom which threatens her daughter forgetting all her pride, clutching at even the most pitiful means[758] of gaining a respite, and utterly broken when her hope dies away. Agamemnon is an ordinary man, thrown by circumstances into a position where both generalship and statesmanship are needed, attempting to rule his army by diplomacy and his family by military discipline, with ruin as the result. Fatally open to suggestion, he makes and remakes subterfuges, seeking to spare every one’s feelings until at last he drifts into the necessity of slaying his own child. Even Iphigenia is an ordinary girl. It is precisely because she is a common type that we grieve for her anguish and triumph in her exaltation. Macaria in the _Heracleidæ_ is almost unknown save to professed students of Euripides. She knows no fear or hesitation and lives on the heights; we recognize in ourselves no kinship with her. But Iphigenia we meet every day. She is no heroine, but a child. Her delight at seeing her father again shows all a child’s amiable abandon; her pitiful cries and shrinking at the prospect of death are those of the ordinary happiness-loving girl. When finally the agony of her father, the empty clamour of Achilles, her mother’s undignified tremors, nerve her to trample her own dread under foot, we rejoice precisely because what we witness is the triumph of common human nature. Even Achilles, son of a goddess as story reported him, is a common-place person too. This is not the hero who flames through the _Iliad_, but a young noble led into the extreme of folly by this very legend that his origin is divine. Perhaps nothing even in the deadly Euripides is quite so fatal to the traditional halo than the incredible speech[759] wherewith Achilles comforts Clytæmnestra. Of vast length, full of spurious, jerky rhetoric and contradictory comments on the situation—which, however frightful, appeals to him mostly as an atmosphere in which he can pose—this oration reveals him as a sham. Fortunately for him, he is never undeceived. This man is not the Achilles of tradition; he is spiritual brother of the mad prince in the _Orestes_ and the ancestor of Mr. Shaw’s Sergius Saranoff.

In his last work, then, Euripides, so far from showing any exhaustion of power, appears on the verge of new developments.[760] He has drawn still nearer to the new comedy of Menander. The suddenness with which, after the quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaus, the crisis is precipitated by the entrance of the messenger announcing Iphigenia’s arrival—the man breaks into the middle of a line[761]—is a remarkable novelty. The altercation itself shows a brilliant freedom of idiom which even this poet has hardly reached hitherto. There is at least one unprecedented license of metre.[762] And the complete change of spirit which comes upon Iphigenia was novel enough to offend Aristotle.[763]

The CYCLOPS[764] (Κύκλωψ) is the only complete[765] satyric play now extant. No indications of date[766] seem available.

The background is a cave on Mount Etna, wherein dwells the Cyclops, or one-eyed giant, Polyphemus. Silenus tells how he and the satyrs have become the ogre’s slaves. He is sweeping out the cavern when the chorus of satyrs drive in their flocks. Odysseus and his men arrive, seeking provisions, which Silenus eagerly sells for a skin of wine. The conversation is interrupted by Polyphemus who decides to devour the intruders. Odysseus eloquently appeals to him, but receives a brutal and blasphemous reply. The giant drives the Greeks within, and the chorus express their disgust at his cannibalism. Odysseus tells how two of his men have been eaten; he himself has gained favour by the gift of wine, and proposes that they all escape, after blinding Polyphemus with a red-hot stake. The chorus joyfully assent. Polyphemus comes forth drunk and intending to visit his brethren, but Odysseus dissuades him. The Cyclops asks Odysseus his name and is told “Noman”; he promises to eat his benefactor last. The revel proceeds until Polyphemus retires, whereupon Odysseus calls for action, but the chorus all offer ridiculous excuses. The hero goes within to perform the task with his comrades. Soon the giant reappears, blind and bellowing with pain, while the satyrs joke about “Noman,” and give him false directions so that the Greeks escape from the cave. Odysseus reveals himself, and Polyphemus recognizes the fulfilment of an oracle. He threatens to wreck the ship, but the others depart unconcernedly to the beach.

This brief play—it has hardly more than seven hundred lines—is invaluable as being the only complete work of the satyric type which we now possess. Considered in itself, it is of small value,[767] though it must have formed an agreeable light entertainment. The lyrics are short and trifling. Of characterization there is little, and that little traditional and obvious—Odysseus is pious, valiant, resourceful; Polyphemus brutally sensual, the satyrs cowardly and frivolous. Though there are passages of tension, the audience can never have felt any marked excitement, as the whole story, except that the satyrs are imported by the dramatist, is taken from a well-known episode in Homer[768]; even such things as the joke on the name Outis[769] (“Noman”) and the comparison[770] between the spit which blinds Polyphemus and the auger of a shipwright, are borrowed from the epic. The nature of satyric drama in general is discussed elsewhere.[771] Here it will be enough to note that there are “tragic” features in this play; Odysseus throughout speaks and acts in a manner as dignified, perhaps more dignified, than in certain tragedies of our poet. The farcical scenes provided by the rascally Silenus, the obscene jests and cowardice of the chorus, and a certain approximation[772] to comedy in the iambic metre used by them or by Polyphemus, are marks of a satyric play. It should be noted, however, that even without them, the _Cyclops_ would be no tragedy. Polyphemus is no tragic antagonist of the hero. His exposition of his philosophy of life,[773] such as it is, must not persuade us that there is here any valid moral antagonism as foundation of the drama. Odysseus contends with him and eludes him as one might escape the violence of a ravening animal.

The RHESUS[774] (Ῥῆσος) is a drama of uncertain date and authorship. The action is founded on the Tenth Book of the _Iliad_, and takes place at night in the Trojan camp. Hector has defeated the Greeks and hopes to destroy them at dawn. The drama opens with a song by the chorus of sentinels, come to warn Hector that the Greeks are astir. He is ordering instant attack when Æneas urges that a spy be first sent. Dolon volunteers, and sets forth disguised as a wolf, followed by the admiration and prayers of the chorus. A herdsman announces the approach of the Thracian prince, Rhesus, with an army to aid Troy, but Hector is displeased with his tardiness, and, despite the joyful ode of the chorus, greets his ally with reproaches. Rhesus offers excuses, promising to destroy the Greeks without Trojan help, and to invade Greece; Hector takes him away to bivouac. The chorus depart to rouse the Lycians, whose watch comes next. Odysseus and Diomedes steal in, intending to slay Hector. They have met Dolon and learned from him the position of Hector’s tent and the watchword, “Phœbus”. Athena appears, bidding them slay Rhesus and take his wondrous steeds. They depart, and, seeing Paris draw near, she calms his suspicions under the guise of his protectress Aphrodite. Next she recalls the Greeks, who have slain Rhesus. An exciting scene follows, in which the chorus seize Odysseus, who escapes by using the pass-word. The chorus sing the daring of Odysseus. A wounded charioteer of Rhesus staggers in, proclaiming his master’s death, of which he accuses Hector, who sends him away for tendance. As the chorus lament, a Muse appears in the sky, bearing the body of her son Rhesus. She sings a dirge and curses Odysseus and Diomedes. Next she tells of her union with the river-god, father of Rhesus, and upbraids Athena. Hector promises glorious obsequies, but she declares that her son shall live on in the Thracian mountains as a spirit half-divine.[775] Hector orders an assault upon the Greeks, and the chorus sing a few courageous words.

This admirable drama stands quite by itself. There is a minimum of psychology; the lyrics are mostly of slight value. But the writer has not aimed at a tragedy of the usual type. Its excellence lies in the vigour and excitement of the action. Almost all the scenes, especially the debate at the opening, and the escape of the Greeks, are written by a master of vivid realism, who is less concerned with character-drawing. The unwearied Hector, the cautious Æneas, the vaunting, splendid, barbarian prince, the fiercely loyal charioteer—these are all obvious types. The only really fine stroke of psychological insight occurs where Hector, himself reckless at first, is by the absurd presumptuousness of Rhesus forced into discretion.[776] What really stirs one is the thrilling atmosphere of danger and the magical little lyric[777] which falls half-carelessly from the wearied sentries when the night begins to wane:—

Hark! Hark!
That voice, as of a thousand strings!
The nightingale, where Simois moves along
’Mid corpses stark!
Upon the listening air she flings
Her grief transfusèd into song.
E’en now on Ida graze the sheep.
One distant pipe through darkness cries
Over the upland lawn.
Now layeth velvet-footed sleep
Enchantment on my drooping eyes,
Sweetest at hush of dawn.

Some ancient critics denied that Euripides wrote the _Rhesus_, and the great majority of modern scholars have accepted this view.[778] The evidence for Euripidean authorship is as follows: (i) The play comes down to us in the manuscripts of that poet. (ii) That Euripides wrote a _Rhesus_ is known from the _Didascaliæ_ or Dramatic Records. (iii) Early Alexandrian writers quote passages from our text as from “the _Rhesus_ of Euripides”. On the other side are (i) a statement in the _Argument_:[779] “Some have suspected this drama to be spurious, and not the work of Euripides, for it reveals rather the Sophoclean manner”; (ii) various features of the work which modern critics have regarded as suggesting an inferior playwright: (_a_) the plot is superficial; (_b_) there is no prologue;[780] (_c_) four actors are needed; (_d_) Æneas and Paris have practically nothing to do; (_e_) the chorus is employed in a manner foreign to Euripidean plays; (_f_) there is a lack of force and pathos; (_g_) there is no rhetoric; (_h_) there is no sententiousness; (_i_) we have here the beginning of historical drama, which is later than the fifth century; (_j_) the style is eclectic: imitations of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are to be observed.[781]

Several of these objections are plainly unfounded. Four actors are not clearly necessary, as was shown above. Pathos, of a kind quite Euripidean, is to be found in the scene where the Muse laments her glorious son. And how deny rhetorical force to a poet who can write such brilliantly vigorous things as:—

Aye, friends in plenty shall I find, now Heaven
Stands firm for us, and Fortune guides my sword.
I need them not! Where hid they those long years
When Troy, a galleon with her canvas rent,
Reeled onward through war’s shrieking hurricane?[782]

The high-hearted defence[783] of Rhesus is full of the same tingling rhetoric. Yet many critics[784] of the highest rank have denied Euripidean authorship to the _Rhesus_. On the other side stands[785] the testimony of the almost contemporary record. One consideration, obvious yet too often ignored, may help us. The earliest work of Euripides to which we can assign a date—the _Alcestis_—belongs to the year 438. The poet was then at least forty-two years old. Is it beyond belief that twenty years before the _Alcestis_ the youthful dramatist composed a stirring tale of war and hair-breadth escape, which owed much to the manner of Æschylus, especially in his handling of the chorus? During the period for which we have evidence, he was constantly testing the possibilities of his art. Need we assume that until the _Alcestis_ he had not advanced?

The soundest view appears to be that we have here a very early work of Euripides. This is confirmed by the critic Crates, an Academic philosopher of the second century before Christ, who asserted that Euripides was still young when he wrote the _Rhesus_.[786] To this should be added whatever help may be drawn from contemporary history. It is natural to suppose that when this drama was composed Athenian politics were closely concerned with Thrace. An Athenian colony at Nine Ways, afterwards called Amphipolis, was destroyed by the Thracians in 465 B.C. In 436 the place was resettled under the new name by Hagnon, who brought the bones of Rhesus from the Troad back to Thrace. The later year, as connected with the hero, would seem the more suitable, were it not for the words[787] of his mother who refuses burial for her son and proclaims his strange life after death: “hidden in caverns of the silver-yielding soil he shall lie as a human spirit, still living”. Such language would rather be avoided after the bones themselves had been visibly committed to Thracian earth. On the whole, one thinks the situation more suitable to some period, anterior to Hagnon’s expedition, when Thracian politics were in the air, perhaps quite soon after the disaster of 465 B.C.[788]

* * * * *

Of the lost plays we have about eleven hundred fragments. Few of these comprise more than three or four lines, but a fair conception of several dramas can be formed from reports of the plot, parodies by Aristophanes, and the remains themselves.

The TELEPHUS was acted in 438 B.C., together with _The Cretan Women_, _Alcmæon at Psophis_, and _Alcestis_. Sophocles won the first prize, Euripides the second. Telephus, King of Mysia, was wounded by Achilles when the Greeks invaded Mysia in mistake for Troy. His wound would not heal, and he entered his enemies’ country disguised as a beggar, to consult the Delphic oracle, which declared that “the wounder would heal him”. Meanwhile the Greek heroes were deliberating at Argos about a second expedition. Agamemnon refused to set forth again, and uttered to Menelaus the celebrated words: Σπάρτην ἔλαχες· ταύτην κόσμει—“Sparta is thy place: make thereof the best”. While the council was in progress Telephus begged audience. His disguise was penetrated by Odysseus, and he was about to be slain when he snatched up the infant Orestes, threatening to kill the child if the Greeks molested him. He was given a hearing and justified his action in fighting the Greeks when they invaded his country. His hearers were won over, but it was found that Achilles had no knowledge of medicine. Odysseus suggested that the real “wounder” was Achilles’ spear. Telephus was thus healed, and in his gratitude consented to guide the Greeks to Troy.

We possess in the _Acharnians_ of Aristophanes an elaborate and brilliant parody of the interview granted to Telephus. Dicæopolis, an Athenian farmer who has made peace on his own account with Sparta, is attacked by his fellow-citizens, the charcoal-burners of Acharnæ, and only obtains leave to plead his cause by threatening to slay their darling—a coal-basket. Then he begs from Euripides the beggar’s outfit of Telephus, and, returning, delivers a clever harangue denouncing the war. The baby-hostage idea Aristophanes used again in the _Thesmophoriazusæ_, where Mnesilochus, in great danger from the infuriated women, seizes the infant which one of them is carrying, only to find it a concealed wine-skin.

PHILOCTETES was produced in 431 B.C. with the _Medea_, _Dictys_, and _Harvesters_ (Θερισταί), when both Euripides and Sophocles were defeated by Euphorion, the son of Æschylus. Our knowledge is derived almost wholly from Dio Chrysostom[789] who compares the three plays called _Philoctetes_ by Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. He offers interesting comments on the differences in plot. In Euripides, as in Æschylus, the chorus consists of Lemnian men, but the later poet anticipates criticism by making his chorus apologize for not visiting the sufferer earlier. One Lemnian, by name Actor, takes part as a friend of Philoctetes. The “prologue” is spoken by Odysseus (here working with Diomedes, not Neoptolemus, as in Sophocles) who explains that he would not have undertaken this present task for fear of being recognized by Philoctetes, had not Athena changed his appearance. (Here, as in the apology offered by the chorus, we have implied criticism[790] on Æschylus.) The Trojans are sending an embassy in the hope of gaining Philoctetes. Later in the drama, no doubt, occurred a set dispute between the Greek and the Trojan envoys.

In the BELLEROPHON Euripides seems to have gone to the extreme in depicting the passionate atheism inspired by the sight of prosperous wickedness. “If the gods do aught base,” he exclaims in a famous line, “they are not gods.” Another vigorous fragment begins:—

Then dare men say that there are gods in Heaven?
Nay, nay! There are not. Fling the tale away,
The ancient lie by human folly bred!
Base not your judgment on these words of mine—
Use but your eyes.

Bellerophon ascended to Heaven on his winged steed Pegasus in order to remonstrate with Zeus. This idea is used farcically in Aristophanes’ _Peace_, where Trygæus ascends on a monstrous beetle.

ERECHTHEUS was a beautiful picture of patriotism. Athens being attacked by the Eleusinians and Thracians, King Erechtheus was told by the Delphic oracle that he could secure victory for Athens by sacrificing his daughter. His wife Praxithea, in a speech of passionate patriotism, consented to give up her child; Swinburne has used this fragment in his own _Erechtheus_. Another long fragment contains the advice which Erechtheus gives to his son, and which in its dry precision curiously resembles the farewell of Polonius to Laertes. While the issue of battle remains uncertain, the chorus of old Athenians sing a lyric which charmingly renders their yearning for peace:

Along my spear, at last laid by,
May spiders weave their shining thread;
May peace and music, ere I die,
With garlands crown my whitening head.

I’d deck Athene’s cloistered fane
With shields of Thracian mountaineers,
And ope the well-loved page again
Where poets sing across the years.

Another popular play was the ANTIOPE. It dealt with the persecution of Antiope by Lycus, King of Thebes, and his wife Dirce. She was rescued from death by her two sons, Amphion and Zethus, whom she had been compelled to abandon at birth, and who discovered the relationship in the critical hour. The chief interest of the play was the contrast between the brothers—Zethus a man of muscle, devoted to farming; Amphion, a musician and lover of the arts. Euripides developed this contrast in a long debate wherein culture was upheld against the “Philistine”. We still read one criticism of myth which recalls a blunt passage of the _Ion_.[791] Story said that Antiope’s sons were the offspring of Zeus, but Amphion has the hardihood to express doubt to his mother herself.

With the _Helen_ (B.C. 412) was produced a work of the first importance—the ANDROMEDA, a charming love-story full of romance and poetical loveliness. It was immensely popular; Aristophanes gives in his _Thesmophoriazusæ_ a parody as elaborate as that of _Telephus_ in the _Acharnians_, and it was a perusal of this drama which excited Dionysus in the _Frogs_ to descend to Hades for the purpose of fetching back the dead playwright. Lucian[792] tells how Archelaus, the tragic actor, came to Abdera and performed the _Andromeda_. The whole town grew crazy over it. “They used to sing the solo from the _Andromeda_ and recite Perseus’ speech from beginning to end. The town swarmed with these actors of a week’s standing, pale and lean, shouting with all the strength of their lungs

O Love, of gods and men tyrannic Lord,

and all the rest of it. This went on for a long time, in fact till winter, when a severe frost cured them of their nonsense.” The _Andromeda_ points forward to the novel, and it is interesting to note that in the best Greek novel—the _Æthiopica_ of Heliodorus, who wrote about eight hundred years after Euripides’ death—the heroine’s father, like Andromeda’s, was an Æthiopian king.

Scanty as are the remnants of this drama, we can still form some idea of its structure.[793] “It is the crowning virtue of all great art that, however little is left of it by the injuries of time, that little will be lovely.”[794] The country of Cepheus, the Ethiope king, was ravaged by a sea-monster, and the only help lay in sacrificing to the creature Andromeda, the king’s daughter, who was bound to a rock and left as his prey. At this point the action begins. It is still night and from the cliff rises the lament of the captive:—

O solemn night,
How slow thy coursers trace,
Amid the holy Heaven star-bedight,
Their pathway through the deeps of space!

At each pause in her song comes the voice of Echo repeating the sad syllables, till Andromeda is joined by the maidens who form the chorus. The lyric dialogue concluded, it seems[795] that the father and mother, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, enter and that there is some talk of attacking the monster; Phineus, brother of the king and the affianced of Andromeda, shrinks from the risk. But now comes unlooked-for aid. Perseus, fresh from his slaughter of the Gorgon, arrives, borne through the air on his winged sandals. Though Zeus is his father, in this play he figures as the lowly hero familiar in our own fairy-tales. Certainly he appears to be contrasted with the rich but cowardly Phineus, and the helpless despairing king. His first words have been preserved:—

Gods! To what alien kingdom am I come
On sandals swift, between the earth and Heaven
Journeying homewards on these wingèd feet?...
But soft! what crag is that by tossing foam
Surrounded? Lo, the statue of a maid
Hewn from the living rock by patient art,
Its craftsman’s master-work!

Drawing near, he perceives that this thing of beauty is a living maiden, and at once longs to make her his bride. When she asks his name, instead of proudly claiming Zeus as his father, he mentions his own name, his journey’s end, and his achievement:—

Περσεύς, πρὸς Ἄργος ναυστολῶν, τὸ Γοργόνος
κάρα κομίζων.

But he is no mediæval knight; he does not forbear to state his claim before addressing himself to the task: “And if I save thee, maid, wilt give me thanks?” Andromeda, on her side, feels and speaks without subtlety:—

Stranger, have pity on my sore distress:
Free me from bonds,

and again

Take me, O stranger, for thy handmaiden,
Or wife, or slave.

Before encountering the monster Perseus comes to an understanding with Cepheus and goes forth to the conflict, calling upon Eros to aid his chosen:—

O Love, of gods and men tyrannic Lord,
Either teach Beauty to unlearn her power,
Or speed true lovers, through th’ adventurous maze
That in thy name they enter, to success.
So shall all men to thee pay reverence.
Refuse, and lo! thy glories fade to naught
E’en through thy very boon of wakened hearts.

Two or three lines picture the grateful crowd of rustics who surrounded the victor: “all the shepherd-folk flowed around him, one bringing an ivy-bowl of milk for his refreshing, another the joyous grape-juice”. Phineus sought to assert his claim upon Andromeda, but was repulsed by her father. Later the maiden’s parents themselves begged her not to leave them desolate. In a thrilling[796] reply she declared that she would cleave to her husband. Then follows mention of a wedding-feast, and at the close it seems probable that Athena foretold the future.

Of the PHAETHON we are fortunate in possessing two unusually long fragments of seventy and seventy-five lines respectively. It is an exciting and romantic story—the legend of Phaethon, child of the Sun-god, who called upon his father to prove their relationship by permitting him for one day to drive the chariot of the Sun. This conception, gorgeous with the spirit of adventure and an un-Greek yearning for what transcends mortal power, seems to have filled the whole play with glow and rushing movement. A fragment of the prologue marks this at once: it tells how Clymene is wedded

To Merops, lord of this our land
Which first of all the earth the Sun-God smites
With golden radiance of his risen car,
Nam’d by black-visaged folk that dwell around
The gleaming stable of the Sun and Dawn.

From Strabo,[797] to whom we owe this extract, we learn that the palace of Merops is close to the abode of the Sun-god. This notion that the youth’s home is only an hour’s walk from the palace of the Sun, gives a sense of delightful verisimilitude.[798] It appears that Phaethon in this prologue tells how his father Merops plans to marry him to a goddess, but that he himself is unwilling.[799] Clymene, his mother, to persuade her son that he will not be distastefully united to one vastly his superior, reveals that he is the son not of Merops but of the Sun-god, Helios, who promised her long ago that he would grant her child one wish. Let Phaethon approach Helios with some request, and prove her story. The prince resolves to do so. The chorus of female attendants enter with a lovely song in honour of Phaethon’s wedding; they picture the whole earth awakening to daily activities. Next appears the king, who describes the brilliant future which awaits his son.[800] Phaethon views with distaste this life of easeful splendour; to him at this moment may well be attributed the vigorous words[801]

Each nook of earth that feeds me is my home.

Goethe has indicated, with splendid insight, the dramatic power which must have filled this scene: the aged king offering the easy joys of riches and a royal home to this youth already burning in secret for the high enterprise of seeking his real and divine father.

Later the interview was described between Phaethon and Helios, who after seeking to dissuade him, granted his request and added anxious instructions:—

“Let not thy steeds invade the Afric sky:
Its temper hath no moistness, and thy wheels
Downward must sink....
Direct thy path toward the Pleiads Seven.”
Impatient of the rest, he snatched the reins
And smote the wingèd coursers till they flew
Unchecked thro’ opening vistas of the heaven.
His father, mounted on a blazing star,
Rode after, warning him: “Drive thither, boy!”
“Wheel yonder!”

The messenger seems to have continued with a picture of Phaethon’s fall. The body, still giving off the smoke of destruction, is next brought in, and we possess part of Clymene’s frantic speech. Her grief is mingled with terror: the strange manner of her son’s death may provoke her husband Merops to inquiry and reflexion and so her long-past union with the Sun-god may come to light. She bids them hide the body in the treasure-chamber, of which she alone holds the keys. Soon the king enters amid lyric strains celebrating the marriage-day of Phaethon. He is giving orders for merry-making when a servant hurries out to inform him that the treasure-chamber is giving forth clouds of smoke. Merops hastens within, and the chorus bewail the disclosure which is imminent. In a moment the stricken father is heard returning with lamentation. The course of the last scene is not certain, but probably a god reconciled the king and his wife, giving directions for the disposal of Phaethon’s body; a beautiful but obscure fragment,[802] redolent with the charm of breezes and murmuring boughs after all this blaze and splendour, seems to point to the story of Phaethon’s sisters, who mourned him beside the western waters and were transformed into poplars. This god was probably Oceanus,[803] the father of Clymene. He alone (deity of the world-encircling water) could give unity to these two pictures, the radiant eastern land of Phaethon’s youthful enterprise, and the distant western river where his sorrows and his end are bathed in dim beauty.

This sketch allows us to realize how much we have lost in the _Phaethon_. The romantic events and setting recall the _Andromeda_. Clymene’s sorrow and shame mingle strangely with the gallant enterprise and bright charm of the whole, somewhat as Creusa’s story is contrasted with the fresh cheerfulness of Ion. Above all, the noble simplicity and high-hearted adventurousness of Phaethon, inspired by his new-found kinship with a god and chafing at the placid programme of domestic honour and luxury which his supposed father sets before him—this is a concept of boundless promise.

The HYPSIPYLE,[804] which was produced late[805] in Euripides’ life, is specially interesting through the discovery in 1906 of extensive fragments at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Previously it was known by scanty quotations of no great interest, though apparently much prized in ancient times.[806] The plot is now in the main clear. Hypsipyle, grand-daughter of the god Dionysus and daughter of Thoas, King of Lemnos, was exiled because she refused to join in the massacre of the Lemnian men by their women. Previously she had borne twin sons to Jason. These she lost when expelled from her home. She is now slave to Eurydice, Queen of Nemea in the north of the Peloponnese, and nurse to her infant son Opheltes. Her own sons come in quest of her, and without recognizing their mother are entertained in the palace. Hypsipyle is quieting the child with a song and a rattle when the chorus of Nemean women enter. Next certain soldiers arrive from the host which the seven chieftains are leading against Thebes. Their commander, the prince Amphiaraus, explains that the army is in need of water, and Hypsipyle consents to show them a spring. Later she returns in anguish: during her absence the child has been killed by a great serpent. Eurydice is about to slay her, when she appeals to Amphiaraus, who pleads her cause and promises Eurydice that the Greeks shall found a festival in honour of the child. (This festival is that of the famous Nemean Games.) He sees that this fatal accident is a bad omen for the enterprise of the Seven, and names the child Archemorus[807] instead of Opheltes. Eurydice is appeased. Later we find Hypsipyle and her sons made known to one another, and the god Dionysus appears, apparently to arrange future events.

Though there is one difficulty as to the plot, namely, that we do not know what function was assigned to Hypsipyle’s sons—they cannot have been introduced merely for the recognition-scene—the whole conception strikes one as simple and masterly. It has been well remarked[808] that while a modern dramatist would have omitted the Theban expedition, “nothing seemed to the Greeks worthy of contemplation in the theatre by a great people, unless it had some connexion with the exploits and the history of nations.... On the same canvas the death of one little child and the doom of the seven chieftains with their crowding battalions are depicted in a perspective which sets the former fatality in the foreground.”

The captive princess, even through the ruins of the text, shines forth with great charm. Her whole life centres round her lost children and the brief magical time of her union with Jason. The chorus reproach her with her indifference to the exciting presence of Adrastus’ great army—she will think of nothing save Argo and the Fleece. When at point to die her spirit flashes back to those old days in a few words of amazing poignancy:—

ὦ πρῷρα καὶ λευκαῖνον ἐξ ἅλμης ὕδωρ
Ἀργοῦς, ἰὼ παῖδ’....