Of Euripides it cannot be said, as of his two great predecessors, that
woman plays an insignificant rôle in his dramas. Most of the nineteen
plays which have come down to us of the ninety-two he wrote are named
after women; and Bulwer-Lytton was quite right when he declared that
"he is the first of the Hellenic poets who interests us
_intellectually_ in the antagonism and affinity between the sexes."
But I cannot agree with him when he says that with Euripides commences
"the distinction between love as a passion and love as a sentiment."
There is true sentiment in Euripides, as there is in Sophocles, in the
relations between parents and children, friends, brothers and sisters;
but in the attitude of lovers, or of husband and wife, there is only
sensuality or at most sentimentality; and this sentimentality, or sham
sentiment, does not begin with Euripides, for we have found instances
of it in the fond words of Clytaemnestra regarding the husband she
intended to murder, and did murder, and even in the Homeric Achilles,
whose fine words regarding conjugal love contrast so ludicrously with
his unloving actions. These, however, are mere episodes, while
Euripides has written a whole play which from beginning to end is an
exposition of sentimentality.
The Fates had granted that when the Thessalian King Admetus approached
the ordained end of his life it should be prolonged if another person
voluntarily consented to die in his place. His aged parents had no
heart to "plunge into the darkness of the tomb" for his sake. "It is
not the custom in Greece for fathers to die for children," his father
informs him; while Adinetus indulges in coarse abuse: "By heaven, thou
art the very pattern of cowards, who at thy age, on the borderland of
life, would'st not, nay, could'st not find the heart to die for thy
own son; but ye, my parents, left to this stranger, whom henceforth I
shall justly hold e'en as mother and as father too, and none but her."
This "stranger" is his wife Alcestis, who has volunteered to die for
him, exclaiming:
"Thee I set before myself, and instead of living have
ensured thy life, and so I die, though I need not have died
for thee, but might have taken for my husband whom I would
of the Thessalians, and have had a home blest with royal
power; reft of thee, with my children orphans, I cared not
to live."
The world has naïvely accepted this speech and the sacrifice of
Alcestis as belonging to the region of sentiment; but in reality it is
nothing more than one of those stories shrewdly invented by selfish
men to teach women that the object of their existence is to sacrifice
themselves for their husbands. The king's father tells us this in so
many words: "By the generous deed she dared, hath she made her life _a
noble example for all her sex_;" adding that "such marriages I declare
are gain to man, else to wed is not worth while." If these stories,
like those manufactured by the Hindoos, were an indication of existing
conjugal sentiment, would it be possible that the self-sacrifice was
invariably on the woman's side? Adinetus would have never dreamt of
sacrificing _his_ life for his wife. He is not even ashamed to have
her die for him. It is true that he has one moment when he fancies his
foe deriding him thus:
"Behold him living in his shame, a wretch who quailed at
death himself, but of his coward heart gave up his wedded
wife instead, and escaped from Hades; doth he deem himself a
man after that?"
It is true also that his father taunts him contemptuously,
"Dost thou then speak of cowardice in me, thou craven
heart!... A clever scheme hast thou devised to stave off
death forever, if thou canst persuade each new wife to die
instead of thee."
Yet Admetus is constantly assuring everyone of his undying attachment
to his wife. He holds her in his arms, imploring her not to leave him.
"If thou die," he exclaims,
"I can no longer live; my life, my death, are in thy hands; thy
love is what I worship.... Not a year only, but all my life will
I mourn for thee.... In my bed thy figure shall be laid full
length, by cunning artists fashioned; thereon will I throw myself
and, folding my arms about thee, call upon thy name, and think I
hold my dear wife in my embrace.... Take me, O take me, I
beseech, with thee 'neath the earth;"
and so on, _ad nauseam_--a sickening display of sentimentality,
_i.e._, fond words belied by cowardly, selfish actions.
The father-in-law of Alcestis, in his indignation at his son's
impertinence and lack of filial pity, exclaims that what made Alcestis
sacrifice herself was "want of sense;" which is quite true. But in
painting such a character, Euripides's chief motive appears to have
been to please his audience by enforcing a maxim which the Greeks
shared with the Hindoos and barbarians that "a woman, though bestowed
upon a worthless husband, must be content with him." These words are
actually put by him into the mouth of Andromache in the play of that
name. Andromache, once the wife of the Trojan Hector, now the
concubine of Achilles's son, is made to declare to the Chorus that "it
is not beauty but virtuous acts that win a husband's heart;" whereupon
she proceeds to spoil this fine maxim by explaining what the Greeks
understood by "virtuous acts" in a wife--namely, subordinating herself
even to a "worthless husband." "Suppose," she continues, "thou hadst
wedded a prince of Thrace... where one lord shares his affections with
a host of wives, would'st thou have slain them? If so, thou would'st
have set a stigma of insatiate lust on all our sex." And she proceeds
to relate how she herself paid no heed in Troy to Hector's amours with
other women: "Oft in days gone by I held thy bastard babes to my own
breast, to spare thee any cause for grief. By this course I bound my
husband to me by virtue's chains." To spare _him_ annoyance, no matter
how much his conduct might grieve _her_--that was the Greek idea of
conjugal devotion--all on one side. And how like the Hindoos, and
Orientals, and barbarians in general, is the Greek seen to be in the
remarks made by Hermione, the legitimate wife, to Andromache, the
concubine--accusing the latter of having by means of witchcraft made
her barren and thus caused her husband to hate her.
With the subtle ingenuity of masculine selfishness the Greek dramatist
doubles the force of all his fine talk about the "virtuous acts" of
wives by representing the women themselves as uttering these maxims
and admitting that their function is self-denial--that woman is
altogether an inferior and contemptible being. "How strange it is,"
exclaims Andromache,
"that, though some god has devised cures for mortals against
the venom of reptiles, no man ever yet hath discovered aught
to cure a woman's venom, which is far worse than viper's
sting or scorching flame; so terrible a curse are we to
mankind."
Hermione declares:
"Oh! never, never--this truth will I repeat--should men
of sense, who have wives, allow women-folks to visit
them in their homes, for they teach them mischief; one,
to gain some private end, helps to corrupt their honor;
another having made a slip herself, wants a companion
in misfortune, while many are wantons; and hence it is
men's houses are tainted. Wherefore keep strict guard
upon the portals of your houses with bolts and bars."
Bolts and bars were what the gallant Greek men kept their wives under,
hence this custom too is here slyly justified out of a woman's mouth.
And thus it goes on throughout the pages of Euripides. Iphigenia, in
one of the two plays devoted to her, declares: "Not that I shrink from
death, if die I must,--when I have saved thee; no, indeed! for a man's
loss from his family is felt, while a woman's is of little moment." In
the other she declares that one man is worth a myriad of
Women--[Greek: heis g' anaer kreisson gunaikon murion]--wherefore, as
soon as she realizes the situation at Aulis, she expresses her
willingness to be immolated on the altar in order that the war against
Troy may no longer be delayed by adverse minds. She had, however, come
for a very different purpose, having been, with her queen mother,
inveigled from home under the pretext that Achilles was to make her
his wife. Achilles, however, knew as little of the plot as she did,
and he is much surprised when the queen refers to his impending
marriage. A modern poet would have seen here a splendid, seemingly
inevitable, opportunity for a story of romantic love. He would have
made Achilles fall in love at sight of Iphigenia and resolve to save
her life, if need be at the cost of his own. What use does Euripides
make of this opportunity? In his play Achilles does not see the girl
till toward the close of the tragedy. He promises her unhappy mother
that "never shall thy daughter, after being once called my bride, die
by her father's hand;" But his reason for this is not love for a girl
or a chivalrous attitude toward women in distress, but offended
vanity. "It is not to secure a bride that I have spoken thus," he
exclaims; "there be maids unnumbered, eager to have my love--no! but
King Agamemnon has put an insult on me; he should have asked my leave
to use my name as a means to catch the child." In that case he "would
never have refused" to further his fellow-soldiers' common interest by
allowing the maiden to be sacrificed.
It is true that after Iphigenia has made her brave speech declaring
that a woman's life was of no account anyway, and that she had
resolved to die voluntarily for the army's sake, Achilles assumes a
different attitude, declaring,
"Some god was bent on blessing me, could I but have won
thee for my wife.... But now that I have looked into
thy noble nature, I feel still more a fond desire to
win thee for my bride,"
and promising to protect her against the whole army. But what was it
in Iphigenia that thus aroused his admiration? A feminine trait, such
as would impress a modern romantic lover? Not in the least. He admired
her because, like a man, she offered to lay down her life in behalf of
the manly virtue of patriotism. Greek men admired women only in so far
as they resembled men; a truth to which I shall recur on another page.
It would be foolish to chide Euripides for not making of this tragedy
a story of romantic love; he was a Greek and could not lift himself
above his times by a miracle. To him, as to all his contemporaries,
love was not a sentiment, "an illumination of the senses by the soul,"
an impulse to noble actions, but a common appetite, apt to become a
species of madness, a disease. His _Hippolytus_ is a study of this
disease, unpleasant but striking; it has for its subject the lawless
pathologic love of Phædra for her step-son. She is "seized with wild
desire;" she "pines away in silence, moaning beneath love's cruel
scourge;" she "wastes away on a bed of sickness;" denies herself all
food, eager to reach death's cheerless bourn; a canker wastes her
fading charms; she is "stricken by some demon's curse;" from her eyes
the tear-drops stream, and for very shame she turns them away; on her
soul "there rests a stain;" she knows that to yield to her "sickly
passion" would be "infamous;" yet she cannot suppress her wanton
thoughts. Following the topsy-turvy, unchivalrous custom of the Greek
poets, Euripides makes a woman--"a thing the world detests"--the
victim of this mad passion, opposing to it the coy resistance of a
man, a devotee of the chaste Diana. And at the end he makes Phaedra,
before committing suicide, write an infamous letter which, to save her
reputation, dooms to a cruel death the innocent victim of her
infatuation.
To us, this last touch alone would demonstrate the worldwide
difference between lust and love. But Euripides knows no such
difference. To him there is only one kind of love, and it varies only
in being moderate in some cases, excessive in others. Love is "at once
the sweetest and the bitterest thing," according as it is one or the
other of the two. Phaedra's nurse deplores her passion, chiefly
because of its violence. The chorus in _Medea_ (627 _seqq_.) sings:
"When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he
brings not glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian
queen in moderate might approach, no goddess is so full
of charm as she."
And in _Iphigenia at Aulis_ the chorus declares:
"Happy they who find the goddess come in moderate might,
sharing with self-restraint in Aphrodite's gift of marriage
and enjoying calm and rest from frenzied passions.... Be
mine delight in moderate and hallowed [Greek: hosioi]
desires, and may I have a share in love, but shun excess
therein."
To Euripides, as to all the Greeks, there is no difference in the
loves of gods and goddesses or kings and queens on the one hand, and
the lowest animals on the other. As the chorus sings in _Hippolytus_:
"O'er the land and booming deep, on golden pinion
borne, flits the god of love, maddening the heart and
beguiling the senses of all whom he attacks, savage
whelps on mountains bred, ocean's monsters, creatures
of this sun-warmed earth, and man; thine, O Cypris,
thine alone, the sovereign power to rule them
all."[304]