Chapter VIII: Part 8

Under cover of the darkness, she led Jason to the forest-precinct where the Fleece was hidden; and by her charms she lulled the sleepless dragon that guarded it. She even betrayed to him her brother Absyrtus, driven by the danger of a horrible death for herself, her lover and his comrades; and then, claiming from Jason a solemn oath of marriage when they should come to Hellas, she sailed with him on the _Argo_. Aeêtes pursued them in fierce wrath; and the gods, offended for the murder of Absyrtus, vexed them with storms. But at length they came to the island of Circe; and she, for the sake of her kinship with Medea, purified them of the murder of Absyrtus and set them on their way again. At Phæacia, where they were driven for harbourage, Aeêtes overtook them, threatening war with King Alcinous if he did not yield up his fugitive daughter. It was then that the great wise queen Arete pleaded for Medea in gentle charity:

“_In madness she sinned at the first, when she gave him the charm that should tame The bulls; and with wrong to amend that wrong,—Ay, oftimes the same In our sinning we do!—she straightway essayed; and shrinking in fear From her proud sire’s tyrannous wrath, she fled. Now the man, as I hear, This Jason, is hound by mighty oaths which his own lips said, When he pledged him to make her, his halls within, his wife true-wed._“[30]

Alcinous yielded to his wife’s entreaties on one condition—that Jason and Medea should be married forthwith; for then he could return answer to Aeêtes that he would not separate husband and wife. Thus the two were hurriedly wedded; and sailed in safety from Phæacia, to encounter many a terrible adventure before they reached Iolchos at last, triumphing in the possession of the Fleece. They gained great glory from their enterprise, but little else. For Pelias would not yield the throne to Jason; and it seemed to Medea that all she had wrought had been in vain. She brooded over Jason’s wrongs, chafing at the restraint imposed on her in her new life, and eager to strike for the kingship on his behalf. At last she evolved a plan by which she thought Pelias might be removed from their path, and the throne secured for Jason. Promising the old king renewed youth by means of her enchantments, she induced him to submit to death at the hands of his daughters. Then, in the storm of indignation which arose against her, she and Jason and their two young children fled to Corinth.

So the legend runs to the point where Euripides takes it up. In crude outline it is savage and incredible; and yet it contains all the elements which in the hands of idealistic poets have made a story of enthralling romantic beauty. In the _Medea_, however, the poet has avoided so far as might be both the barbarity of the legend and its potential charm. He has treated only the final catastrophe—the abandonment of Medea by Jason and her dreadful vengeance upon him. And although he could not escape from the data: although he is compelled to handle some of the most barbarous of them, he has translated them from terms of glimmering wonder and breathless excitement into the language of reality. He has brought Medea out of the region of myth, where she dwelt in eerie and tempestuous beauty, into the stream of human existence. The marvellous and the superhuman drop away, save for a fragment or two in the framework of the Drama; and Medea becomes simply a woman, struggling against her own wild heart and the injustice of her oppressors.

The Drama opens with the monologue of Medea’s old nurse, from which we learn all that is vital to an understanding of the action. Jason has forsaken Medea and is about to marry with Glaucé, the young daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. Medea is sick with misery and is lying in the house prostrate on her bed. Two things the old woman makes quite clear, as she stands talking outside: that the chief cause of Medea’s grief is shame at her betrayal; and that already the storm of passion is tending toward madness. When an attendant comes in, bringing Jason’s children back from their play, there is a clear hint of the catastrophe. The man tells of a rumour that he has heard: Creon has ordered the banishment of their mistress and her boys. The nurse breaks into a wail of commiseration, and then clearly states her fear for the effect of this new wrong upon Medea’s mind. She sends the little ones in before she speaks the dread she has that their mother may lift her hand against their lives; and almost immediately afterward the frenzied voice of Medea is heard, calling bitter curses upon her unfathered children.

There gather gradually the ladies of Corinth who form the Chorus. They are deeply sympathetic; and they give pitying answers to the nurse’s tale; while within the house, at intervals, Medea’s voice is heard, wailing her grief and anger, and the old remorse that has reawakened for her brother’s death.

“_Virgin of Righteousness,
Virgin of hallowed Troth,
Ye marked me when with an oath
I bound him; mark no less
That oath’s end. Give me to see
Him and his bride, who sought
My grief when I wronged her not,
Broken in misery,
And all her house._“[31]

The scene is one of weird impressiveness. So far, Medea has not appeared; but her cries within the house, the appearance of her children, the indignant fidelity of the old servants, the beautiful lyrics of the Chorus, and, above all, the knowledge we possess that another blow is about to fall on her, produce a cumulative effect which makes the moment of her entrance intensely dramatic. Yet she begins her speech quietly, almost in apology for her former unrestraint. She strives for self-control while she puts her case before the Corinthian women and begs their help. For a moment or two she succeeds, pathetically acknowledging her foreign birth and the flaw it intrudes in the legality of her marriage. But at this thought, emotion sweeps over her again:

“_...I dazzle where I stand,
The cup of all life shattered in my hand,
Longing to die—O friends! He, even he,
Whom to know well was all the world to me,
The man I loved, hath proved most evil._“[31]

She pours out her heart to the listeners; and it is not a mere selfish recital of her own sorrow. The brain that had been clear and quick to save her lover in the extremity of danger has not lost its power. She sees the base act of Jason in its broad aspect, as a wrong to womankind; and she rises from the contemplation of her personal suffering to the thought that this, after all, is but one of the many evils that subjection brings upon women. But the greatest evil—the helpless creature goaded to crime by injustice—is present to her at this moment only as a blind craving for revenge. It will seize and carry her on to its culmination as the sweetest thing that life now holds; but it will finally reveal itself, since she cannot but face the truth, as the last and deepest wrong, that has cancelled her humanity. The light of that thought has not yet dawned; and will not until the storm of passion has wrought sheer havoc. All her fervent nature is possessed by the idea of vengeance; and seeing that her friends pity and sympathize, she pledges them not to betray her. Their willing promise is only just in time, for they are interrupted by the arrival of the king, guarded by armed attendants whose very presence is a menace. Creon is old, and has grown hard and tyrannous with age. He has long desired a great match for his only daughter, hoping to see his line established on the throne of Corinth before his death. To him the marriage with the Argonaut hero is not only a prudent step, likely to bring him reflected glory; but a thing perfectly right in itself, because perfectly legal. By the letter of the law, which forbade a Greek to marry a ‘barbarian,’ Medea was not Jason’s wife; and the letter of the law merely was of concern to Creon. To him Medea was an uncivilized creature from outland parts: a being without rights, who might safely be ignored; and having won over Jason, the match was arranged and the preliminary formalities concluded. Not until a rumour reached him that Medea in her wrath had solemnly cursed his child and him, did any thought of her disturb him. Then, fearing that she might indeed do his daughter some injury, or at the least might move public opinion in her favour, he determined upon instant banishment for her and her two young sons. Without a word to soften or explain his action, he stands before Medea now, and curtly orders her to prepare for departure.

The blow is so crushing that for a moment Medea seems to sink under it; she can think of nothing but to ask what crime of hers has merited this punishment. But when Creon cynically replies that there has been no crime, and that the measure is one of precaution merely, to guard himself against her reputation for magic-lore, she rallies her wit and meets him on his own ground. Half ironically, she repudiates the damning possession of brains, and bids him set his mind at rest.

“_’Tis not the first nor second time, O King,
That fame hath hurt me....
Come unto fools with knowledge of new things,
They deem it vanity, not knowledge....
Ah, I am not so wondrous wise!—And now,
To thee, I am terrible! What fearest thou?
What dire deed? Do I tread so proud a path—
Fear me not thou!—that I should brave the wrath
Of princes?_“[31]

Creon sees that she is trying to placate him, and harshly repeats his decree. He even threatens her, when she continues her entreaties, with force from his soldiery; and Medea, shrinking in horror from the thought of personal violence, instantly ceases her petition. She pretends to yield; and in feigned humility, begs on her knees for one day’s respite. Creon, partly deceived, and entirely convinced that she can do no harm in so short a time, reluctantly consents. But he has hardly gone when Medea breaks into a torrent of speech which, in its fierce exultation over Creon, its wild leap to the height of daring and its rallying cry to her own spirit, comes very near to madness. All the shapeless thoughts of vengeance on which she had brooded spring into vivid life as she rapidly cons now this plot, now that, to reach her end. Of the end itself there can be no doubt; she must kill these three—the king, and Jason and his bride—in the few hours left to her. And for this she will need every resource of strategy and courage.

“_Awake thee now, Medea! Whatso plot
Thou hast, or cunning, strive and falter not.
On to the peril-point! Now comes the strain
Of daring. Shall they trample thee again?_“[31]

No wonder that the Chorus sing, as she rushes into the house, of a strange reversal of all the order of nature; of woman made terrible because man has forgotten God. They take up the story of Medea’s broken life: of the wonder and the pity of it: of her distant home: of her surpassing love for Jason, and of her betrayal. In the beauty and grace of the songs the emotional strain is lightened: but they have a further purpose. For while they tell the old story over in tender phrases, Jason himself enters and Medea again comes out of the house. The two stand face to face at last and the crux of the drama is reached. Jason is the first to speak; and one feels all the spirit of the man in his opening words—cold, ambitious, prudent, with ideals faded and every generous emotion dead. He protests that he has acted from motives of policy and considerations of their best interest: for the welfare of Medea and their children as well as for himself. The new marriage was the only way, in a land to which they were strangers, to secure a home for them all, and princely connexions for his sons. But Medea has spoiled everything by her ungovernable anger: and he has come, since nothing else is possible now, to make provision for the children in their exile.

The speech is clear, terse, moderate in tone, and pitilessly logical from Jason’s point of view. From that point, too, it is not unkind: he wishes to do what may be done to soften their lot. But to the woman who loves him his words are a mere blur of sound, the logic meaningless, the untroubled manner a thing of contempt. In tone and look and gesture one fact is certain—that her husband has ceased to love her, and is content to cast her off. It has clamoured in her ears while he spoke, drowning every other sound; and when she replies it is that which prompts her. It inspires her great indictment—the case for the woman against injustice throughout all time—and it evokes a shuddering recoil from baseness which she feels to be literally a pollution.

“_Evil—most Evil ...
I will begin with that, ‘twixt me and thee,
That first befell. I saved thee. I saved thee—
... And hast thou then
Accepted all—O evil yet again!—
And cast me off and taken for thy bride
Another? And with children at thy side!
... Is sworn faith so low
And weak a thing? I understand it not.
Are the old gods dead? Are the old laws forgot,
And new laws made? ...
... O great God, shall gold withal
Bear thy clear mark, to sift the base and fine,
And o’er man’s living visage runs no sign
To show the lie within, ere all too late?_“[31]

Jason’s anger is stung by her denunciation, but his purpose is quite unmoved. He flings a veiled insult at her love; and as he elaborates the reasons for his action, with no little skill and plausibility, we feel that with every word the conflict becomes more deadly. In apparent good faith, but with intolerable effrontery to the injured woman, he claims to have repaid that old debt, if indeed it were a debt. He has given her a home in an ordered country and her name has been linked in the glory of his. As to the marriage with Glaucé—with a sneer at the bare idea of sentiment—the affair is a bargain, with consideration given and received on each side. Let Medea look at the matter for one instant with the eyes of reason, and she herself will acknowledge that he has acted wisely.

But the very root of the tragedy lay there. Medea could no more detach herself from the emotion that possessed her than Jason could revive the tenderness that filled him when he lifted the sweet wild fugitive on board the _Argo_. So they stand, typifying the eternal struggle between the passionate heart and the arrogant brain; and striking at each other in baffled rage across the gulf between them. Jason makes one last offer of help, but it is vehemently refused, and with a final thrust at Medea’s savagery, he leaves her. When he has gone, the inevitable reaction comes. The Chorus, interpreting her mood, sing musingly of the pains of exile, and of her lonely state. She realizes that she has flung away her only chance of help, and she sees herself in a few hours expelled from Corinth without one friend to shelter her. Despair is settling upon her when a curious incident occurs, suddenly reviving hope and making the path clear for her revenge. It is the arrival of Ægeus, King of Athens. He is travelling back from Apollo’s shrine at Delphi, where he has been to renew an old petition that the god would give him children. Medea, thinking rapidly, questions him of his errand. She sees a possibility of succour; and putting all her wrongs before him, she begs him to give her refuge at Athens. He shall not fail of a reward, for she has magic arts which will secure to him his long desire for children. Ægeus is indignant at her wrongs, and promises to succour her if she comes to him; but knowing what she is about to do, she cunningly extorts an oath from him. He gives it willingly, and as he departs Medea breaks into a cry of exultation:

“_God, and God’s Justice, and ye blinding Skies,
At last the victory dawneth!_“[31]

MEDEA & ABSYRTUS

_Herbert Draper_

_By permission of the Corporation Art Gallery of Bradford_
]

Quickly she lays her plan. She will recall Jason, feign repentance, and send the children to the bride with gifts—marvellous raiment and jewels which will hide under their beauty an agonizing death for Glaucé. But that done—she pauses in horror, the sweetness of revenge dashed by the thought of what must follow. Then, she must lift her hand to slay her children, before they can be caught and killed for their mother’s crime. There is a short altercation with the friendly women about her, who make a futile effort to restrain her. But brushing aside their remonstrance, she sends the nurse for Jason, and in a scene which vibrates with dramatic power, she pretends to make peace with him, and puts the frightful revenge in motion. Jason, completely deceived, promises that the children shall be taken to Glaucé, to present their gifts and beg for leave to stay in Corinth. But twice, as the little ones stand waiting, the motherhood in Medea rebels against the fury that is driving her. Tears that she cannot check rush into her eyes, and she almost forgets her rôle, as she clasps them to her.

“_Shall it be
A long time more, my children, that ye live
To reach to me those dear, dear arms? ... Forgive._“[31]

And again when Jason, softened by her submission, is promising to lead them up to an honoured manhood, a sudden movement of Medea arrests him. He cannot understand her grief, and the strangeness of her manner; and asks her if she doubts that he will act in good faith toward their children.

MEDEA. _I was their mother! When I heard thy prayer
Of long life for them, there swept over me
A horror, wondering how these things shall be._[31]

But the gentler mood passes, and when Jason, with characteristic canniness, counsels her not to send such precious gifts to his bride, the spirit of vengeance has regained possession of her soul. She overrules him, and Jason leads the children to the princess, carrying in their innocent hands the weapon that will slay her. Not until they are gone does Medea realize fully what the next step must be; and the realization brings agony. She waits for their return in a storm of emotion: suspense that almost stops the beating of her heart: hideous hope that her plot has succeeded and that Glaucé even now is dying from the poison; and ghastly fear that her children have been taken for the deed. But when they return at last, in unconscious gladness that the great lady has been kind to them, it is something more awful still that robs their mother of power of utterance. The children’s tutor is amazed at the grief that he sees is racking her, and asks its cause.

MEDEA. _For bitter need, Old Man! The gods have willed,
And mine own evil mind, that this should come._[31]

And as the man goes in, leaving her alone with her boys, a poignant scene follows in which every instinct of her nature struggles against her wrath. Their sweet young faces stir the tenderness that has hitherto been bound within her; and as it floods her heart it seems for a few moments to sweep away her evil purpose. But it only returns in added strength, and as her soul writhes in the conflict, reason totters, and she implores the vengeance within, as a living and implacable foe, to spare her babes. Backward and forward she sways, driven by hatred and love, until the scale is turned at last by the thought of her own irrevocable act. Glaucé, even at this moment, is dying from the poison that she has sent.

“_Too late, too late!
By all Hell’s living agonies of hate,
They shall not take my little ones alive
To make their mock with! Howso’er I strive
The thing is doomed....
Oh, darling hand! Oh, darling mouth, and eye,
And royal mien, and bright brave faces clear,
May you be blessèd, but not here! What here
Was yours, your father stole....
... I am broken by the wings
Of evil.... Yea, I know to what bad things
I go, but louder than all thought doth cry
Anger, which maketh man’s worst misery._“[31]

But even yet she cannot strike: one thing more is needed to nerve her hand, and it comes only too soon. A messenger is seen flying toward them from the palace in frantic haste. As he comes within hail, he shouts to Medea to flee—both Creon and the princess lie dead from the effects of her poisoned gift, and she has not a moment to lose. Her own life will surely be demanded for the crime. Medea remains immovable, smiling in awful joy at the news. She makes the man relate every detail of the ghastly scene in the palace; and for just so long as the story takes to tell, she clasps revenge complete and satisfying. But a moment later the thing has shrivelled in her hand; for there is now no hope to save her children.

“_Oh, up, and get thine armour on,
My heart!...
Take up thy sword, O poor right hand of mine,
Thy sword: then onward to the thin-drawn line
Where life turns agony._”[31]

She goes into the house; and a moment later the shrieks of the children are heard. They have hardly ceased when Jason rushes in, bent on carrying off his sons before the king’s avengers can capture them. A woman warns him of what is passing within; and as the agonized father bursts open the door of the house, Medea appears on the roof, in the dragon-chariot of the Sun, with the poor dead bodies lying at her feet. There is something weird in this touch of the supernatural; but there is something symbolic too. For Medea is a woman no longer: with her own hand, driven by foul wrong and an untamed heart, she has cast humanity away.

We need not follow to the end the last clash of the two bitter spirits. Jason pleads piteously for one poor boon: “Give me the dead to weep and make their grave.” But the fury that has smitten him is inexorable.

“_Never! Myself will lay them in a still
Green sepulchre....
... For thee, behold, death draweth on,
Evil and lonely, like thine heart: the hands
Of thine own Argo, rotting where she stands,
Shall smite thine head in twain, and bitter be
To the last end thy memories of me._“[31]

-----

Footnote 30:

From Dr. A. S. Way’s translation of the _Argonautica_ (Dent and Sons
Ltd.).

Footnote 31:

From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of the _Medea_ (George
Allen & Co. Ltd.).

_Euripides: Phædra_

The _Hippolytus_ of Euripides, to which we turn for the story of Phædra, is frequently called the earliest love-tragedy in European literature. That is to say, it is the first to deal fully and frankly with the power of love toward tragic issues. This can hardly be said about the _Medea_, for that drama is only the last incident of a story wherein love has been changed to hatred; and the motive is revenge. But in the _Hippolytus_ the story is unfolded from its inception; and Phædra’s passion is found to be the force that moves the whole action of the tragedy. This fact has a peculiar attraction for the modern mind; but the drama has other claims upon us too. First, for its sheer beauty, as poetry and as dramatic art of a special type; then, for its accurate study of character, three people at least gripping our interest as complete and convincing human creatures; and again, for its lofty tone and a reflective element which, though characteristically original, is calm and clear. But the most wonderful fact of all is the surprising contrast between the nature of the theme and the austere beauty of the drama which has been built upon it.

The crude facts of the story are almost repulsive on the face of them. Phædra, the young wife of Theseus, King of Athens and Trozen, had fallen in love with her husband’s illegitimate son Hippolytus. That is the initial situation; and the further data of the old Attic legend do not soften it. For we know that Phædra’s love was unrequited, a fact which, with curious unreason, seems to accuse her; and we know too that when her love was betrayed to Hippolytus, she took her own life in shame and fear, first making a false charge against him which she knew would bring upon him the punishment of death.

Such, in harsh outline, is the story of unhappy love and wild impulse which has been made by this poet who was before all things a seeker of truth, into a work of supreme spiritual beauty. More wonderful still, Phædra, who by conventional canons would seem to have forfeited all claim to respect or sympathy, is found to be a woman of sweet and gentle purity, cruelly betrayed by forces without and within, and driven by desperation to a frantic attempt to save her honour.

The means to such an end are interesting, although behind them all lies the explanation of them all—the poet’s higher and broader perception of truth. He has seen the passion which ruled Phædra as a great world-force, an elemental power which could neither be escaped nor overcome. This power is personified as Aphrodite or Cypris, goddess of love; and she is conceived as the mortal enemy of Hippolytus, because he has scorned her in his spiritual pride and refused her her need of worship.

The key to the tragedy lies in this conception of Cypris, and in the mystical, ascetic spirit of Hippolytus against which she has set her offended godhead. They represent eternally opposing forces, and warfare between them is inevitable and deadly. For that reason, the opening monologue of the Drama is of great importance. The scene is placed before the castle of Theseus at Trozen. A statue of a goddess stands on either side—that of Artemis, chaste Moon-goddess, on the one hand, decked with flowers and carefully tended; and on the other hand, bare and unhonoured, is the statue of Aphrodite. While beside the latter, musing in evident anger, is the gleaming form of the goddess herself. We learn the cause of her anger as she speaks. She is grieved on account of Hippolytus, who in his excessive devotion to Artemis, despises Aphrodite and looks upon love as a thing unclean. His arrogance and neglect are an unbearable insult, and she has determined to punish him, swiftly and without mercy. She has already prepared the pitfall, long ago in Athens, when Hippolytus came to be solemnly initiated into the Mysteries.

“_And Phædra there, his father’s Queen high-born,
Saw him, and, as she saw, her heart was torn
With great love, by the working of my will.
And for his sake, long since, on Pallas’ hill,
Deep in the rock, that love no more might roam,
She built a shrine, and named it Love-at-home:
And the rock held it, but its face alway
Seeks Trozên o’er the seas._“[32]

Thus Phædra tried to exorcise her passion; but there came a time when Theseus, to expiate some sin, retired to Trozen with his queen. There, meeting the young prince daily, love reawakened; and at the opening of the tragedy it is secretly consuming her very life.

_And here that grievous and amazéd queen,
Wounded and wondering, with ne’er a word,
Wastes slowly; and her secret none hath heard
Nor dreamed._[32]

Now Aphrodite’s hour has come, and Phædra is the weapon with which she will strike. The young queen’s vigilant honour, proud and enduring, shall be overthrown, by a broken word uttered in weakness; and she shall die, dragging down Hippolytus with her. Even while the goddess is invoking the prince’s doom, there are cheery distant sounds of the returning hunt; and the voice of Hippolytus raised above the rest in a hymn to Artemis. Aphrodite lingers an instant longer, and the menace of her final words shatters the blithe harmony that is approaching:

“_Little he knows that Hell’s gates opened are,
And this his last look on the great Day-star!_“[32]

The next moment the goddess has vanished, and Hippolytus leads in his troop of huntsmen, laden with spoil and bearing fresh-culled field flowers for the honour of the goddess of all wild things. Straight to the statue of Artemis goes the prince, and standing in an attitude of supplication, he proffers a wreath from the uncropped meadows that she loves. There is in his prayer a curious note of exaltation. Young, brave and fair, there is something at once beautiful and sinister in his claim to perfect purity: his naïve assumption that he alone of all men is worthy to worship the goddess: in the ascetic vow he takes; and the mystical touches, hinting of personal converse with the deity. We vaguely feel that there is a shade of excess in it; that the limit of holy confidence has been passed; and that, with all its intensity, there is something narrow and hard in his devotion. A pious old huntsman has to remind him that he has not paid service at the second shrine; when, with a perfunctory salute to the statue of Aphrodite, Hippolytus and his train go into the castle.

There follows a lovely ode by the Chorus, which prepares for the entrance of Phædra. They tell of a mysterious sickness that has fallen on the queen, and of their fears for her life.

“_For three long days she hath lain forlorn,
Her lips untainted of flesh or corn,
For that secret sorrow beyond allayment,
That steers to the far sad shore of the dead._“[32]

Many a surmise they ponder, to account for the strange malady: perhaps some god is angry with the queen for stinted rites: or the absent king her husband is unfaithful: or she has had ill tidings from her Cretan home. Their musing brings no light to the problem; but its purpose is served, for when Phædra is presently borne out on her couch, we are prepared to see a being in whom vitality is burning low; but in whom suffering is overshone by stainless honour and an unconquerable will. She is attended by her maids, and by an old nurse whose delineation is wonderful. She is one of the humble characters whom Euripides drew so often: whose sterling qualities he seems to delight in, but whose limitation and error he puts in too, with absolute fidelity. Like Medea’s nurse, she probably came with her mistress from her maiden home; and she has grown old in faithful service. She has the tenderness of a mother for the young queen; but age has made her fretful, and slavery has hardened the fibre of her mind. With pathetic solicitude, she is yet inclined to be querulous at the feverish caprices of her charge. Moreover, she divines that there is something weighing upon her mistress which Phædra will not reveal, even to her; and she is hurt at the lack of confidence.

As the queen’s languid voice follows the wandering thought that has almost escaped control, the old woman grows impatient. She cannot comprehend the yearning flight of fancy which, in phrases of wild beauty, betrays its longing for escape: to flee to the mountain spaces and the woods and fields, and thread the mazes of the pines with arrow and spear, like Artemis herself.

“_Oh for a deep and dewy spring,
With runlets cold to draw and drink!
And a great meadow blossoming,
Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
To rest me by the brink!_“[32]

There is a significance in the half-conscious utterances which lies very near the surface of the words: the fair soul unwittingly hinting its secret in delirium as lovely as itself. Presently her mind grows clear again, and she starts in fear of what she may have betrayed.

“_What have I said? Woe’s me! And where
Gone straying from my wholesome mind?
What? Did I fall in some god’s snare?
Nurse, veil my head again, and blind
Mine eyes! There is a tear behind
That lash. Oh, I am sick with shame!_“[32]

The sight of her anguish and humiliation stings the nurse to another protest. She had not possessed the clue to Phædra’s raving, and the sudden access of shame is inexplicable. She longs to soothe and help, out of her deep and genuine affection; and she has also some touch of quite human curiosity which she cannot restrain. But every way she is baffled by the silence of the queen. She feels that she is slighted, but much more she feels the cruelty of unsuccoured pain to one whom she dearly loves.

The thought that Phædra is surely dying from this mysterious malady flings her down in supplication; and she pours out a torrent of entreaties until we feel that the queen is growing exhausted by them. But there is no sign given until the nurse, reminding her mistress of the children whom she will leave unprotected by her death, speaks of Theseus’ bastard son who may disinherit them, and lets fall his name, Hippolytus. The word brings a cry from Phædra at last; and then, reluctantly, in slow and broken phrases, all the secret is wrung from her.

The old woman now is horrified and remorseful at her own persistence. Terror seizes her, and an unreasoning sense that her mistress must perforce yield to dishonour. Phædra’s chastity rises indignantly at so base a thought, giving her strength to face the women about her with a magnificent defence of her honour. She begins almost hesitatingly, on a note of sadness for all the sum of human misery; but she gathers courage as the story is unfolded and rises to sublimity at last:

“_Come, I will show thee how my spirit hath moved.
When the first stab came, and I knew I loved,
I cast about how best to face mine ill.
And the first thought that came, was to be still
And hide my sickness....
After that
I would my madness bravely bear, and try
To conquer by mine own heart’s purity.
My third mind, when these two availed me naught
To quell love, was to die—the best, best thought—
Gainsay me not—of all that men can say!
I would not have mine honour hidden away....
Nay,
Friends, ‘tis for this I die....
‘Tis written, one way is there, one, to win
This life’s race, could man keep it from his birth,
A true clean spirit._“[32]

But while the queen is speaking, winning a painful way upward to her spirit’s height, the nurse is lagging after her on a much lower path. She has rallied from the first shock, when Phædra’s confession had driven her to mere panic; and is now revolving the matter in a mind where perception has been dimmed by age and the moral fibre coarsened by long servility. Calling up all her store of doubtful experience and worldly wisdom, she opposes every cunning and plausible argument to Phædra’s virtue. Can her mistress not see that she is visibly caught in the snare of Cypris? Of what use is it to struggle against so mighty a goddess? No human heart can resist the power of love; and it is wiser to yield at once than to be broken by Aphrodite’s anger.

Phædra listens patiently, seeing that the faithful old creature is prompted by real devotion; and her reply has more of pity than of anger in it, for the crooked counsel.

“_Oh this it is hath flung to dogs and birds
Men’s lives and homes and cities—fair false words!
O why speak things to please our ears? We crave
Not that. ‘Tis honour, honour, we must save!_“[32]

But when the nurse, irritated, flings a rank word at this love that she cannot comprehend, Phædra’s anger blazes in a vehement rebuke.

“_Shame on thee! Lock those lips, and ne’er again
Let word nor thought so foul have harbour there!_“[32]

The old woman is not silenced, however: she merely changes her tactics. Will not the queen trust to her? She knows of love-philtres and salves that will cure her passion without fear of shame. Phædra is growing weary of the contest; and at last, when endurance is strained to breaking, she yields on a point which seems quite innocent and harmless. The nurse may fetch the potion of which she speaks; only—and on this she lays pathetic stress—no word of her secret must be breathed to the prince. There is a soothing, half evasive reply from the nurse: a muttered prayer aside to Cypris which has something ominous in it; and the old servant goes out to wreck the honour of her mistress in a foolish attempt to serve her. Hardly has she gone when, above the song which the women of the Chorus have taken up, Phædra catches the deep tones of an angry voice within the palace. She springs to her feet, every nerve tingling with apprehension; and calling to the singers for silence she bends her ear to the great door. A cry escapes her:

“_Oh, misery!
O God, that such a thing should fall on me!_“[32]

It is the voice of Hippolytus which she can hear, raging at her nurse in immeasurable scorn, for something that has been asked of him. As each brutal epithet falls, Phædra, in a trance of horror and shame repeats it to the listening women. Then she shrinks aside, as Hippolytus bursts out of the castle, the nurse at his heels, frantically entreating him to hold his peace. By no direct word does he acknowledge Phædra’s presence; and she, with every shred of self-respect gone, cowers apart as though she were indeed guilty of the foulness he imputes to her. But in noisy indignation, with every word barbed for the trembling queen, he raves against the nurse, against the whole of womankind, and love and marriage, ending by a threat to reveal the story to Theseus upon his return. His anger is just; but in the hardness of youth and the bitterness of a narrow spirit it is savage, merciless and all too prompt. Blind to everything but his own wounded pride, he cannot see that Phædra has been cruelly betrayed by the meddling zeal of her servant; and he heaps insult upon her until her sensitive soul lies prostrate—a thing that seems even to herself as black as he believes it. All through the tirade she, who is the central figure in this extraordinary scene, takes no part in it: she remains mute, as though literally smitten dumb with shame, until Hippolytus rushes out. Then she sinks to the ground, sobbing:

“_And, this thing, O my God,
And thou, sweet Sunlight, is but my desert!
I cannot fly before the avenging rod
Falls, cannot hide my hurt._“[32]

Some of the women try to comfort her, and raising her eyes as they speak, she catches sight of the figure of the nurse. She springs from the ground, a wave of anger sweeping away her weakness:

“_O vilest of the vile, O murderess heart
To them that loved thee, hast thou played thy part?
Am I enough trod down?_“[32]

The old woman is deeply contrite for the wrong that she has done; but garrulous and plausible to the last, she pleads her love as an excuse, and claims that had her plan succeeded she would have been praised for what she now is blamed. Phædra’s wrath abates a little after its first uncontrolled outburst: she cannot long be angry with one so old and lowly; and besides, there are other, darker things to be thought about and done. But when the nurse, deceived by her calmness, tries to broach some other scheme, the queen dismisses her peremptorily. She will henceforth guide her own affairs, she says; and we know she means that there remains only one thing for her to do. The old woman goes sorrowfully away, and Phædra is left to face the thought of her intolerable humiliation, of the threatened exposure to her husband, and of the stain upon her children. As reflection brings back the assurance that she is innocent, despite all, it does but increase her anguish at the thought of dishonour, and stir her to frenzy against Hippolytus. She is resolved to die: that she sees to be inevitable now. But how save her fair name, and the honour of her young children, and the fame of her dear old Cretan home? How secure to herself, in spite of false appearances, the innocence that is hers by virtue of every act and thought of her life? Beating backward and forward in the narrow circle of shame and fear, the poor baffled mind can only see one path, crooked and dark, to the thing she craves for. It is the way of a lie—a false charge against Hippolytus. It will mean the death of a good man: that she knows—and rejoices in—so completely are truth and justice shrivelled in the monstrous injustice that she is suffering.

“_... But now, yea, even while I reel
And falter, one poor hope, as hope now is,
I clutch at in this coil of miseries;
To save some honour for my children’s sake:
Yea, for myself some fragment, though things break
In ruin around me. Nay, I will not shame
The old proud Cretan castle whence I came.
I will not cower before King Theseus’ eyes,
Abased, for want of one life’s sacrifice....
Yet, dying, shall I die another’s bane!
He shall not stand so proud where I have lain
Bent in the dust! Oh, he shall stoop to share
The life I live in, and learn mercy there!_”[32]

She goes in, and the Chorus break into a song of foreboding. A few minutes later there are cries of alarm within the castle, the sound of hurrying feet and voices calling to come and help the queen. Then there are ejaculations of pity: a sudden, ominous silence, and again another voice—“Let it lie straight.” Phædra is dead by her own hand.

* * * * *

We must pass quickly over the fate of Hippolytus, though that is really the crisis of the tragedy. Hardly had the poor body of Phædra been composed upon a bier than Theseus himself was announced, returning garlanded and joyful from a visit to the oracle of some god. Met by the news of his wife’s death, he tore off all the signs of joy that he was wearing and threw himself beside her in bitter lamentation. A little tablet hanging from her wrist caught his eye, and believing it to be some dying wish, he gently disengaged it. It was the false charge against Hippolytus; and as the king read, his brow darkened with terrible anger. The pitiful figure before him seemed to claim swift and terrible vengeance; and Theseus uttered an awful curse against his son. Calling upon the god Poseidon to ratify an ancient promise, he demanded instant death for Hippolytus. The petition was uttered rashly, in anger and grief; and Theseus himself hardly dreamed that it would be fulfilled; but the answer came with dreadful promptitude. There was one stormy scene between father and son; and Hippolytus, pleading in vain for mercy, went out to banishment. But Poseidon in his far sea-caves had heard Theseus’ invocation; and as the young prince urged his chariot along the shore, a mighty wave, crested by a fierce sea-monster, rolled destruction on him. Hurled from his chariot, and dragged at the heels of the maddened horses, Hippolytus was barely saved alive by his attendants. They carried him back to the castle, and brought him into the presence of the king, wounded and dying. But before life closed for him he was gloriously vindicated, and the tragedy ends, as it began, with the appearance of a goddess. It is not Aphrodite now, however. She has done her worst with the two young lives she has chosen to despoil; and now Artemis will justify their innocence and leave their memory clean and sweet.

ARTEMIS. _For this I came, to show how high
And clean was thy son’s heart, that he may die
Honoured of men; aye, and to tell no less
The frenzy, or in some sort the nobleness
Of thy dead wife._[32]

-----

Footnote 32:

From Professor Gilbert Murray’s translation of the _Hippolytus_
(George Allen & Co. Ltd.).

_Euripides: Iphigenia_

We turn back to the Trojan legend now, and to two Euripidean plays which in some sense round off the Orestean story. We had to leave that story at a ragged edge—the murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes in revenge for the death of Agamemnon. We could not go on to the third drama of the Æschylean trilogy, to follow the unhappy youth as he fled in remorse to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and thence to Athens, seeking to appease his mother’s Furies. But if we had done so we should have found the whole theme brought to a calm and beautiful conclusion: Orestes cleansed by suffering and set free from guilt by Athena; and the avenging Furies changed into Spirits of Mercy.

Euripides, however, who took so many subjects for his drama from the Trojan cycle and always gave them new significance, in this case chose variants of the legend and wove them into a story which was entirely fresh. So that the _Iphigenia in Tauris_, with which we are chiefly concerned now, shows Orestes still fleeing before the Erinnyes; and carries the tale to another and much more exciting conclusion. Indeed, the peculiar charm of this tragedy is that it is not really tragedy at all, but a thrilling adventure-play. It reminds us of the _Odyssey_, with its flavour of the sea, the wistful note that haunts it and its spice of physical peril; only, this is the work of a poet who adds high dramatic values to the delight of the story, with a lyric note of enchanting beauty, and penetrating thought.

Characteristically, when Euripides took up this part of the Orestean legend, it was not so much the man Orestes in whom he was interested, as the woman Iphigenia; with the result that we have two dramas called by her name and in which she is the protagonist. Both were produced late in the poet’s life, the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ being probably his last work. It contains the earlier part of the heroine’s story—the sacrifice of the virgin-martyr at Aulis; and the great new feature of it, her rescue by Artemis just as the knife was falling to her throat, was perhaps the poet’s own invention. There is no hint of it in Æschylus. To Clytemnestra, the murder of her first-born child Iphigenia was the crime which turned her life to bitterness and armed her against Agamemnon. He had beguiled her to send the child—for she was but a mere girl—to Aulis, for marriage with the splendid young hero Achilles. And then, at the bidding of a soothsayer, he had ruthlessly slain his daughter on the altar of Artemis; and sailed away to Troy.

Those are the facts at the heart of the mystery which is Clytemnestra; but when we come to the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ we find some different data and a far different interpretation. Agamemnon there is almost pitiably human, driven by complex motives first to consent to Iphigenia’s death, then to recant in horror, and finally to yield to forces which he could not control. Iphigenia, too, is made at once nobler and more tragic in the idea of a willing sacrifice—giving herself up, after the first shock of terror, to die freely for her country’s good. And in her rescue by the goddess there is added an element of marvel and mystery, which is at the same time a protest against a form of religion so inhuman.

The _Iphigenia in Tauris_ opens at a period many years later.

Troy had fallen. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra were both dead in the manner we know of; and Orestes was a fugitive, seeking through many lands to expiate the crime of mother-murder. There had been laid upon him at last, as the only means to peace, the command of Apollo to make his way to the savage land of the Tauri. He was to seize and bring from the temple of Artemis there a certain statue of the goddess which had fallen from heaven long before, and which the people of the land were dishonouring by human sacrifice. Every stranger cast upon their shores was slain at the shrine of the goddess; and Orestes ran the risk of almost certain death in making the venture. But he had a solemn promise from Apollo; and the reward would be sweet indeed. He would be cleansed of the crime, and set free from these haunting shapes of remorse which sometimes drove him to madness. Moreover, he would rid the name of Hellas from the stain which lay on its religion through the barbarous practices of the Tauri. So he and his devoted comrade Pylades sailed for those inhospitable waters.

_Through the Clashing Rocks they burst:
They passed by the Cape unsleeping
Of Phineus’ sons accurst;
They ran by the starlit bay
Upon magic surges sweeping,
Where folk on the waves astray
Have seen, through the gleaming grey,
Ring behind ring, men say,
The dance of the old Sea’s daughters._[33]

But Destiny was guiding them to something stranger than they had either hoped or dreaded. For this wild land, fiercely guarded from approach by the Rocky Gateway of the Symplêgades, was the country to which Artemis had carried Iphigenia from the altar in Aulis. And in the temple where they must seek the sacred statue, the daughter of Agamemnon was even now a priestess.

The years had passed wearily since Iphigenia first found herself a captive in Tauris. Completely shut off from the world by the sea which foamed round that desolate coast, no word ever came to her from her home in Argos; and she could make no sign to the friends who believed her dead long since. She hated this savage people, and Thoas their king, and the hideous sacrifices at which she had to perform the cleansing rite. Sometimes she would grow sick at their brutality, and wild with loneliness and longing to escape. Then sceptical thoughts would come about the deity who could accept such worship; and it would seem to her better to have died at Aulis than to have been saved for such slow misery. At other times she would brood over her short sweet girlhood and its bitter ending, gone irrevocably from the moment of her father’s fraud; and bitterness would overwhelm her against Agamemnon, and the Seer who counselled him, and the chieftains who persuaded him; but above all against Helen, for whose sake the war was made.

So youth stole away, taking with it, as Iphigenia sadly thought, all the high things that inspire a fair young soul—the shining ideal, the simple and ardent faith, the generous emotion that leaps to sympathy and service. And at the moment of the opening of the play, when the ship that bears Orestes is being run ashore at Tauris, Iphigenia stands before her temple feeling hard and hopeless, dispossessed of all that is dear in life, and with every illusion long since fled.

It is early morning, and Iphigenia has just emerged from the temple. There are a few lines of formal exposition: an involuntary cry of disgust at the blood-stained altar that is insulting the eye of day; and then a flow of troubled speech.

“_Ah me!
But what dark dreams, thou clear and morning sky
I have to tell thee, can that bring them ease!_“[33]

In the night that has just passed, she had dreamed of her home in Argos. She seemed to lie asleep there, with her maids around her, when suddenly an earthquake shook the palace; and running out of doors, she saw the great building reel and fall. Only one pillar remained; and as she watched it, she saw that brown hair waved about its head, and she heard it speak with a human voice. Then, in the strange confusion of dreams, she found herself fulfilling the office that she bears here in Tauris; and she washed the pillar clean for death, as it was her duty to wash the victims for the sacrifice.