Chapter I: The Literary History of Greek Tragedy (2)

The only technical peculiarity attributed to him is the play _Centaur_, if play it was. Athenæus calls it a “drama in many metres,”[91] while Aristotle[92] uses the word “rhapsody,” implying epic quality. It may be that the epic or narrative manner was used side by side with the dramatic in the manner of Bunyan. Here is another proof that by the time of Euripides tragedy had really attained its full development. Attempts at new departures in technique are all abortive after his day.

A delightful point which emerges again and again is Chæremon’s passion for flowers. From _Thyestes_ come two phrases—“the sheen of roses mingled with silver lilies,” and “strewing around the children of flowering spring”—which indicate, as do many others, Chæremon’s love of colour and sensuous loveliness. It was his desire to express all the details of what pleased his eye that led him into preciosity—a laboured embroidery which recalls Keats’ less happy efforts. But he can go beyond mere mannerism. A splendid fragment of his _Œneus_ shows Chæremon at his best: it describes the half-nude beauty of girls sleeping in the moonlight. One can hardly believe that Chæremon belonged to the fourth century and was studied by Aristotle. In this passage, despite its voluptuous dilettantism, there is a sense of physical beauty, above all of colour and sensuous detail, which was unknown since Pindar, and is not to be found again, even in Theocritus, till we come to the Greek novelists. In one marvellous sentence, too, he passes beyond mere prettiness to poetry, expressing with perfect mastery the truth that the sight of beauty is the surest incentive to chastity: κἀξεπεσφραγίζετο ὥρας γελώσης χωρὶς ἐλπίδων ἔρως:—

Love, his passion quelled by awe,
Printed his smiling soul on all he saw.

It is the idea which Meredith has voiced so magically in _Love in the Valley_:—

Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless,
Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.

That Greek literature has progressed far towards the self-conscious Alexandrian search for charm can nevertheless be observed if we compare this passage from Chæremon with the analogous description in Euripides’ _Bacchæ_[93] (which no doubt suggested it). There the same general impression, and far more “atmosphere,” is given with no voluptuous details: θαῦμ’ ἰδεῖν εὐκοσμίας—“a marvel of grace for the eye to behold”—is his nearest approach to Chæremon’s elaboration. If, as has been well said,[94] one may compare the three Masters to Giotto, Raffaelle, and Correggio respectively, then Chæremon finds his parallel among the French painters; he reminds one not so much of the handsome sensuality of Boucher as of that more seductive _simplesse_ in which Greuze excelled.

A curious figure in this history is DIONYSIUS the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse from 405-367 B.C. Like Frederick the Great of Prussia, not satisfied with political and military glory, he aspired to literary triumphs. With a pathetic hero-worship he purchased and treasured the desk of Æschylus, and similar objects which had belonged to Euripides, hoping (says Lucian[95]) to gain inspiration from them. The prince frequently tried his fortune at the dramatic contests in Athens, but for long without success, and naturally became a butt of the Attic wits, who particularly relished his moral aphorisms (such as “tyranny is the mother of injustice”!); Eubulus devoted a whole comedy to his tragic _confrère_. In 367 B.C. he heard with joy that at last the first prize had fallen to him at the Lenæa for _Hector’s Ransom_; gossip said that his death in the same year was due to the paroxysms of gratified vanity. Little is known about the contents of his dramas, but we hear that one play was an attack upon the philosopher Plato. In other works, too, he appears to have discussed his personal interests. Lucian preserves the bald verse:—

Doris, Dionysius’ spouse, has passed away,

and the astonishing remark:—

Alas! alas! a useful wife I’ve lost.

But one may be misjudging him. Perhaps by “useful” (χρησίμην) he meant “good” (χρηστήν); Dionysius had a curious fad for using words, not in their accepted sense, but according to real or fancied etymology.[96]

Ancient critics set great store by CARCINUS, the most distinguished of a family long connected with the theatre. One hundred and sixty plays are attributed to him, and eleven victories. He spent some time at the court of the younger Dionysius, the Syracusan tyrant, and his longest fragment deals with the Sicilian worship of Demeter and Persephone. We possess certain interesting facts about his plots. Aristotle[97] as an instance of the first type of Recognition—that by signs—mentions among those which are congenital “the stars introduced by Carcinus in his _Thyestes_” (evidently birthmarks). More striking is a later paragraph:[98] “In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes.... The need of such a rule is shown by the fault found in Carcinus. Amphiaraus was on his way from the temple. This fact escaped the observation of one who did not see the situation. On the stage, however, the piece failed, the audience being offended at the oversight.” This shows incidentally how little assistance an ancient dramatist obtained from that now vital collaborator, the rehearsal. In the _Medea_[99] of Carcinus the heroine, unlike the Euripidean, did not slay her children but sent them away. Their disappearance caused the Corinthians to accuse her of their murder, and she defended herself by an ingenious piece of rhetorical logic: “Suppose that I _had_ killed them. Then it would have been a blunder not to slay their father Jason also. This you know I have not done. Hence I have not murdered my children either.” Just as Carcinus there smoothed away what was felt to be too dreadful in Euripides, so in _Œdipus_ he appears[100] to have dealt with the improbabilities which cling to _Œdipus Tyrannus_. He excelled, moreover, in the portrayal of passion: Cercyon, struggling with horrified grief in Carcinus’ _Alope_, is cited by Aristotle.[101] The _Ærope_ too had sensational success. That bloodthirsty savage Alexander, tyrant of Pheræ, was so moved by the emotion wherewith the actor Theodorus performed his part, that he burst into tears.[102]

Two points in his actual fragments strike a modern reader. The first is a curious flatness of style noticeable in the one fairly long passage; every word seems to be a second-best. The opening lines will be sufficient:—

λέγουσι Δήμητρός ποτ’ ἄρρητον κόρην
Πλούτωνα κρυφίοις ἁρπάσαι βουλεύμασι,
δῦναί τε γαίας εἰς μελαμφαεῖς μυχούς.
πόθῳ δὲ μητέρ’ ἠφανισμένης κόρης
μαστῆρ’ ἐπελθεῖν πᾶσαν ἐν κύκλῳ χθόνα.

To turn from this dingy verbiage to his amazing brilliance in epigram is like passing from an auctioneer’s showroom into a lighthouse. (The difference, we note, is between narrative and “rhetoric”.) Such a sentence as οὐδεὶς ἔπαινον ἡδοναῖς ἐκτήσατο (“no man ever won praise by his pleasures”) positively bewilders by its glitter. It is perhaps not absolutely perfect: its miraculous ease might allow a careless reader to pass it by; but that is a defect which Carcinus shares with most masters of epigram, notably with Terence and Congreve. More substantial is the wit of this fragment:—

χαίρω σ’ ὁρῶν φθονοῦντα, τοῦτ’ εἰδώς, ὅτι
ἓν δρᾷ μόνον δίκαιον ὧν ποιεῖ φθόνος·
λυπεῖ γὰρ αὐτόχρημα τοὺς κεκτημένους.

“I rejoice to see that you harbour spite, for I know that of all its effects there is one that is just—it straightway stings those who cherish it.” One notices the exquisite skill which has inserted the second line, serving admirably to prepare for and throw into relief the vigorous third verse.

THEODECTES of Phaselis enjoyed a brilliant career. During his forty-one years he was a pupil of Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, obtained great distinction as an orator (Cicero[103] praises him), produced fifty plays, and obtained the first prize at eight of the thirteen contests in which he competed. Alexander the Great decked his statue with garlands in memory of the days when they had studied together under Aristotle. That philosopher quotes him several times, and in particular pays Theodectes the high honour of coupling him with Sophocles; the examples which he gives[104] of _peripeteia_ are the _Œdipus Tyrannus_ and the _Lynceus_ of Theodectes. The same drama is used[105] to exemplify another vital point, the difference between Complication and _Dénouement_.

He was doubtless a brilliantly able man and a popular dramatist with a notable talent for concocting plots. But all that we can now see in his remains is a feeble copy of Euripides, though he was, to be sure, audacious enough to place Philoctetes’ wound in the hand instead of the foot—for the sake of gracefulness, one may imagine. For the rest, we possess a curious speech made by some one ignorant of letters, who describes[106] as a picture the name “Theseus”—this idea is taken bodily from Euripides—and sundry sententious remarks, one of which surely deserves immortality as reaching the limit of pompous common-place:—

Widely through Greece hath this tradition spread
O aged man, and ancient is the saw:
The hap of mortals is uncertain ever.

Mention should be made of DIOGENES and CRATES the philosophers, who wrote plays not for production, but for the study, as propagandist pamphlets. They may none the less have been excellent plays, like the _Justice_ of Mr. Galsworthy. Very little remains on which an opinion can be founded. One vigorous line of Diogenes catches the attention: “I would rather have a drop of luck than a barrel of brains”.[107]

A more remarkable dramatist was MOSCHION, whose precise importance it is hard to estimate, though he is deeply interesting to the historian of tragedy. For on the one hand, he was probably not popular—nothing is known of his life,[108] and Stobæus is practically the only writer who quotes him. On the other hand, he is the one Greek poet known to have practised definitely the historical type of drama. Moschion is of course not alone in selecting actual events for his theme. Long before his day Phrynichus had produced his _Phœnissæ_ and _The Capture of Miletus_, Æschylus his _Persæ_; and his contemporary Theodectes composed a tragedy _Mausolus_ in glorification of the deceased king of Caria. But all four were _pièces d’occasion_. Moschion alone practised genuine historical drama: he went according to custom into the past for his material, but chose great events of real history, not legend.[109] His _Themistocles_ dealt with the battle of Salamis; we possess one brief remnant thereof, in which (as it seems) a messenger compares the victory of the small Greek force to the devastation wrought by a small axe in a great pine-forest. _The Men of Pheræ_ appears[110] to have depicted the brutality of Alexander, prince of Pheræ, who refused burial to Polyphron.

These “burial-passages” include Moschion’s most remarkable fragment, a fine description in thirty-three lines describing the rise of civilization. The versification is undesirably smooth—throughout there is not a single resolved foot. Like a circumspect rationalist, Moschion offers three alternative reasons, favouring none, for the progress made by man: some great teacher such as Prometheus, the Law of Nature (ἀνάγκη), the long slow experience (τριβή) of the whole race. His style here is vigorous but uneven; after dignified lines which somewhat recall Æschylus we find a sudden drop to bald prose: ὁ δ’ ἀσθενὴς ἦν τῶν ἀμεινόνων βορά:[111] “the weak were the food of the strong”.

It is convenient to mention here a remarkable satyric drama, produced about 324 B.C., the _Agen_,[112] of which seventeen consecutive lines survive. This play was produced during the Dionysiac festival in the camp of Alexander on the banks of the Hydaspes or Jhelum, in the Punjaub. Its subject was the escapades of Harpalus, who had revolted from Alexander and fled to Athens. The author is said[113] to have been either Python of Catana or Byzantium, or the Great Alexander himself. No doubt it was an elaborate “squib” full of racy topical allusions. Were it not that Athenæus calls it a “satyric playlet”[114] we might take the fragment as part of a comedy. But about this time satyric drama tended to become a form of personal attack—a dramatic “satire”. Thus one Mimnermus, whose date is unknown, wrote a play against doctors[115]; Lycophron and Sositheus, both members of the Alexandrian “Pleiad,” attacked individual philosophers, the former writing a _Menedemus_ which satirized the gluttony and drunkenness of the amiable founder of the Eretrian school, the latter ridiculing the disciples whom the “folly of Cleanthes” drove like cattle—an insult which the audience resented and damned the play.[116]

The third century saw a great efflorescence of theatrical activity in Alexandria. Under Ptolemy II (285-247 B.C.), that city became the centre of world-culture as it already was of commerce. All artistic forms were protected and rewarded with imperial liberality. The great library became one of the wonders of the world, and the Dionysiac festivals were performed with sedulous magnificence. Among the many writers of tragedy seven were looked on as forming a class by themselves—the famous Pleiad (“The Constellation of Seven”). Only five names of these are certain—Philiscus, Homerus, Alexander, Lycophron, and Sositheus; for the other two “chairs” various names are found in our authorities: Sosiphanes, Dionysiades, Æantides, Euphronius. Nor can we be sure that all these men worked at Alexandria.[117] That the splendour of the city and Ptolemy’s magnificent patronage should have drawn the leading men of art, letters, and science to the world’s centre, is a natural assumption and indeed the fact: Theocritus the idyllist, Euclid the geometer, Callimachus the poet and scholar, certainly lived there. Of the Pleiad, only three are known to have worked in Alexandria: Lycophron, to whom Ptolemy entrusted that section of the royal library which embraced Comedy, Alexander, who superintended Tragedy, and Philiscus the priest of Dionysus. Homerus may have passed all his career in Byzantium, which later possessed a statue of him, and Sositheus was apparently active at Athens.

LYCOPHRON’S _Menedemus_ has already been mentioned. His fame now rests upon the extant poem _Alexandra_, in high repute both in ancient and in modern times for its obscurity. But SOSITHEUS is the most interesting of the galaxy. We may still read twenty-one lines from his satyric drama _Daphnis_ or _Lityerses_, describing with grim vigour the ghoulish harvester Lityerses who made his visitors reap with him, finally beheading them and binding up the corpses in sheaves. Sositheus made his mark, indeed, less in tragedy than in satyric writing: he turned from the tendency of his day which made this genre a form of satire, and went back to the antique manner. SOSIPHANES, finally, deserves mention for a remarkable fragment:—

ὦ δυστυχεῖς μὲν πολλά, παῦρα δ’ ὄλβιοι
βροτοί, τί σεμνύνεσθε ταῖς ἐξουσίαις,
ἃς ἕν τ’ ἔδωκε φέγγος ἕν τ’ ἀφείλετο;
ἢν δ’ εὐτυχῆτε, μηδὲν ὄντες εὐθέως
ἴσ’ οὐρανῷ φρονεῖτε, τὸν δὲ κύριον
Αἵδην παρεστῶτ’ οὐχ ὁρᾶτε πλησίον.

“O mortal men, whose misery is so manifold, whose joys so few, why plume yourselves on power which one day gives and one day destroys? If ye find prosperity, straightway, though ye are naught, your pride rises high as heaven, and ye see not your master death at your elbow”—a curiously close parallel with the celebrated outburst in _Measure for Measure_. We observe the Euripidean versification, though Sosiphanes “flourished” two centuries[118] after the master’s birth, and though between the two, in men like Moschion, Carcinus, and Chæremon, we find distinct flatness of versification. The fourth-century poets, however second-rate, were still working with originality of style: Sosiphanes belongs to an age which has begun not so much to respect as to worship the great models. He sets himself to copy Euripides, and his iambics are naturally “better” than Moschion’s, as are those written by numerous able scholars of our own day.

After the era of the Pleiad, Greek tragedy for us to all intents and purposes comes to an end. New dramas seem to have been produced down to the time of Hadrian, who died in A.D. 138, and theatrical entertainments were immensely popular throughout later antiquity, as vase-paintings show, besides countless allusions in literature. But our fragments are exceedingly meagre. One tragedy has been preserved by its subject—the famous _Christus Patiens_ (Χριστὸς Πάσχων), which portrayed the Passion. It is the longest and the worst of all Greek plays, and consists largely of a repellent _cento_—snippets from Euripides pieced together and eked out by bad iambics of the author’s own. The result is traditionally, but wrongly, attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus (born probably in A.D. 330). Its only value is that it is often useful in determining the text of Euripides. It would be useless to enumerate all the poetasters of these later centuries whose names are recorded.

* * * * *

In this chapter we have constantly referred to the _Poetic_ of Aristotle, and it will be well at this point to summarize his view of the nature, parts, and aim of tragedy. Before doing so, however, we must be clear upon two points: the standpoint of his criticism and the value of his evidence. It was long the habit to take this work as a kind of Bible of poetical criticism, to accept with blind devotion any statements made therein, or even alleged[119] to be made therein, as constituting rules for all playwrights for ever. Now, as to the former point, the nature of his criticism, it is simply to explain how good tragedies were as a fact written. He takes the work of contemporary and earlier playwrights, and in the light of this, together with his own strong common sense, æsthetic sensibility, and private temperament, tells how he himself (for example) would write a tragedy. On the one hand, could he have read _Macbeth_ then, he would have condemned it; on the other, could he read it now as a modern man, he would approve it. As to the second point, the value of his evidence, we must distinguish carefully between the facts which he reports and his comment thereon. The latter we should study with the respect due to his vast merits; but he is not infallible. When, for instance, he writes that “even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless,”[120] and blames Euripides because “Iphigenia the suppliant in no way resembles her later self,”[121] we shall regard him less as helping us than as dating himself. But as to the objective facts which he records he must be looked on as for us infallible.[122] He lived in or close to the periods of which he writes; he commanded a vast array of documents now lost to us; he was strongly desirous of ascertaining the facts; his temperament and method were keenly scientific, his industry prodigious. We may, and should, discuss his opinions; his facts we cannot dispute. The reader will be able to appreciate for himself the statement which follows.

Aristotle’s definition of tragedy runs thus: “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions”.[123] Adequate discussion of this celebrated passage is here impossible; only two points can be made. Firstly, the definition plainly applies to Greek Tragedy alone and as understood by Aristotle: we observe the omission of what seems to us vital—the fact that tragedy depicts the collision of opposing principles as conveyed by the collision of personalities—and the insertion of Greek peculiarities since, as he goes on to explain, by “language embellished” he means language which includes song. Secondly, the famous dictum concerning “purgation” (_catharsis_) is now generally understood as meaning, not “purification” or “edification” of our pity and fear, but as a medical metaphor signifying that these emotions are purged out of our spirit.

Further light on the nature of tragedy he gives by comparing it with three other classes of literature. “Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.”[124] In another place he contrasts tragedy with history: “It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen—what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose.... The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.”[125] Our imperfect text of the treatise ends with a more elaborate comparison between Tragedy and Epic, wherein Aristotle combats the contemporary view[126] that “epic poetry is addressed to a cultivated audience, who do not need gesture; Tragedy to an inferior public. Being then unrefined, it is evidently the lower of the two.” His own verdict is that, since tragedy has all the epic elements, adds to these music and scenic effects, shows vividness in reading as well as in representation, attains its end within narrower limits, and shows greater unity of effect, it is the higher art.[127]

In various portions of the _Poetic_ he gives us the features of Tragedy, following three independent lines of analysis:—

§ I. On the æsthetic line he discusses the _elements_ of a tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, scenery, and song. Of the last three he has little to say. But on one of them he makes an interesting remark. “Third in order is Thought—that is, the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances.... The older poets made their characters speak the language of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians.”[128] This prophesies from afar of Seneca and his like. As for character, it must be good, appropriate, true to life, and consistent.

Concerning Plot, which he rightly calls “the soul of a tragedy,”[129] Aristotle is of course far more copious. The salient points alone can be set down here:—

(_a_) “The proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.”[130]

(_b_) “The plot ... must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that if anyone of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.”[131] A tragedy must be an organism. It therefore follows that “of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst ... in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence”.[132] He is recommending the “Unity of Action”.

(_c_) “Plots are either Simple or Complex.... An action ... I call Simple, when the change of fortune takes place without Reversal (or Recoil) of the Action and without Recognition. A Complex Action is one in which the change is accompanied by such Reversal, or by Recognition, or by both.”[133] Reversal we shall meet again. By Recognition Aristotle means not merely such Recognition-scenes as we find in the crisis of the _Iphigenia in Tauris_ (though such are the best) but “a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune”.[134]

(_d_) “Two parts, then, of the plot—Reversal and Recognition—turn upon surprises. A third part is the Tragic Incident. The Tragic Incident is a distinctive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like.”[135] In the words “death on the stage”—or “before the audience” (the phrase[136] has no bearing on the stage-controversy), Aristotle casually but completely overthrows another critical convention, that in ancient Tragedy deaths take place only “behind the scenes”. In the extant plays, not only do Alcestis and Hippolytus “die on the stage” in their litters, but Ajax falls upon his sword.

(_e_) The best subject of Tragedy is the change from good fortune to bad in the life of some eminent man not conspicuously good and just, whose misfortune, however, is due not to wickedness but to some error or weakness.[137]

(_f_) The poet “may not indeed destroy the framework of the received legends—the fact, for instance, that Clytæmnestra was slain by Orestes and Eriphyle by Alcmæon—but he ought to show invention of his own, and skilfully handle the traditional material”.[138] This injunction was obeyed beforehand by all the three Athenian masters; it is especially important to remember it when studying Euripides.

(_g_) “The unravelling of the plot ... must arise out of the plot itself; it must not be brought about by the _Deus ex Machina_, as in the Medea.... The _Deus ex Machina_ should be employed only for events external to the drama—for antecedent or subsequent events, which lie beyond the range of human knowledge.”[139] This vital criticism will be considered later, when we discuss the _Philoctetes_[140] of Sophocles and the Euripidean drama.[141]

(_h_) “Within the action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy. Such is the irrational element in the Œdipus of Sophocles.”[142] Aristotle means certain strange _data_ in the _Œdipus Tyrannus_—the fact that neither Œdipus nor Jocasta has learnt earlier about the past, and so forth.

§ II. On the purely literary line he tells us the parts:—[143]

(_a_) “The Prologos is that entire part of a tragedy which precedes the Parodos of the chorus” (see below for the Parodos). Thus a drama may have no “prologos” at all, for example the _Persæ_. The implications of our word “prologue” are derived from the practice of Euripides, who is fond of giving in his “prologos” an account of events which have led up to the action about to be displayed.

(_b_) “The Episode is that entire part of a tragedy which is between complete choric songs.” “Episodes” then are what we call “acts”: the name has already been explained.[144]

(_c_) “The Exodos is that entire part of a tragedy which has no choric song after it.” The few anapæsts which close most tragedies are not “choric songs”—they were performed in recitative. Thus the Exodos is simply the last act.

(_d_) “Of the choric part the Parodos is the first undivided utterance of the chorus: the Stasimon is a choric ode without anapæsts or trochees: the Commos is a joint lamentation of chorus and actors.” It will be seen later[145] that by excluding trochees he probably means the trochaic tetrameter as seen in dialogue; lyric trochees are very common.

§ III. On the strictly dramatic line he tells us the _stages of structural development_.

(_a_) “Every tragedy falls into two parts—Complication and Unravelling (or _Dénouement_).... By the Complication I mean all that comes between the beginning of the action and the part which marks the turning-point to good or bad fortune. The Unravelling is that which comes between the beginning of the change and the end.”[146]

(_b_) “Reversal (or Recoil, Peripeteia) is a change by which a train of action produces the opposite of the effect intended, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in the Œdipus, the messenger comes to cheer Œdipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but, by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect.”[147]

Much might be written on this analysis of dramatic structure. One remark at least must be made. It is not plain how much importance Aristotle allots to the Recoil or Peripeteia. We have seen that he did not regard it as indispensable. At the most he seems to think it a striking way of starting the _dénouement_. It is better to look upon it, and the action which leads up to it, as a separate part of the drama—and it may be argued that every tragedy, if not every comedy, has a Peripeteia—to form, in fact, that middle stage which elsewhere[148] in the _Poetic_ he mentions as necessary.