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’....

“Ah, prow of Argo and the brine that flashed into whiteness! ah, my

two sons!” Her talk with them towards the end is a pathetic and lovely

passage equal to anything Euripides ever wrote in this kind.

MELANIPPE THE WISE[809] appears to have been a drama of unusual personal

interest. Æolus espoused Hippe, whose daughter Melanippe became by

Poseidon mother of twin sons. The god bade her hide them from Æolus,

and they were discovered by grooms in the care of a bull and a cow.

They, supposing the children miraculous offspring of these animals,

reported their discovery to Æolus, who decided to expiate the portent by

burning the infants alive. Melanippe was instructed to shroud them for

death. In order to save her children without revealing her own secret

she denied the possibility of such portentous births, but seems to have

found herself forced at length to confess in order to prove the natural

origin of the infants. Æolus condemned her to be blinded and imprisoned,

her offspring to be exposed. Her mother Hippe appeared as _dea ex

machina_[810] and saved her kin.

The great feature of this play was the heroine’s speech in which she

sought to convince her father that such a portent was impossible.

Lines from the opening of this argument are preserved: “The story is

not mine—from my mother have I learned how Heaven and earth were once

mingled in substance; when they separated into twain they engendered and

brought into the light of day all creatures, the trees, birds, beasts,

nurslings of the sea, and the race of men”. The speech was an elaborate

scientific sermon to disprove the possibility of miracles. Similarly,

according to a famous story, the drama opened originally with the line:

“Zeus, whoever Zeus may be, for only by stories do I know of him ...”;

but this open agnosticism gave such offence that Euripides produced the

play again with the words: “Zeus, as Truth relates....” A different but

closely-connected source of interest is the fact that here Euripides

veiled his own personality less thinly than usual. That Melanippe was

only his mouthpiece appears to have been a recognized fact. Dionysius of

Halicarnassus[811] observes that it presents a double character, that

of the poet, and that of Melanippe; and Lucian[812] selects the remark

on Zeus in the prologue as a case where the poet is speaking his own

views. The “mother” from whom “Melanippe” learned her philosophy has been

identified with the great metaphysician and scientist Anaxagoras, who was

banished from Athens in 430 B.C.; and it is natural to suppose that this

_Melanippe_ is not much later than that year, perhaps much earlier[813]

in view of the strongly didactic manner.[814] Hartung refers to this play

the splendid fragment:—

ὄλβιος ὅστις τῆς ἱστορίας

ἔσχε μάθησιν, μήτε πολιτῶν

ἐπὶ πημοσύνῃ μήτ’ εἰς ἀδίκους

πράξεις ὁρμῶν,

ἀλλ’ ἀθανάτου καθορῶν φύσεως

κόσμον ἀγήρω, πῇ τε συνέστη

καὶ ὅπῃ καὶ ὅπως.

τοῖς δὲ τοιούτοις οὐδέποτ’ αἰσχρῶν

ἔργων μελέτημα προσίζει.

“Happy is he who hath won deep learning. He setteth himself neither to

hurt his fellow-citizens nor towards works of iniquity, but fixeth his

gaze upon the ageless order of immortal Nature, the laws and methods of

its creation. Unto such a man never doth there cling the plotting of

base deeds.” If these lines point at Anaxagoras and belong to our play,

the two significant clauses which defend the moral character of the

philosopher in question indicate the year 430 itself.

The CRESPHONTES had immense success as a powerful melodrama. Polyphontes,

having slain his brother Cresphontes, King of Messenia, seized his

throne and married his widow Merope, who sent her infant son Cresphontes

away to safe keeping in Ætolia. When he grew up he returned to avenge

his father. At this point the action begins. Cresphontes seems to have

delivered the prologue; since Polyphontes fearing his return has offered

a reward to whoever shall slay him, he has determined to win the usurper’s

confidence by claiming to have destroyed his enemy. Meanwhile, Merope,

alarmed by the proclamation of the king, has sent an aged slave to find

whether Cresphontes is well; he returns with tidings that the prince

has disappeared from Ætolia. Merope gives her son over for lost, and

observing the youthful stranger who is received with joy by the king,

she becomes convinced that he is the murderer of her son. While he lies

asleep she steals upon him with an axe, when the old slave recognizes the

stranger and stops her arm. Mother and son are united, and at once plot

to slay Polyphontes. Merope pretends to be reconciled to the king, who in

his joy goes to sacrifice, accompanied by the youth, who takes advantage

of a suitable moment to slay his enemy.

Plutarch, nearly six centuries later, testifies[815] to the sensation

which the Recognition caused in the audience. Merope herself seems to

have been a figure ranking with Hecuba in the _Troades_. The tidings of

her son’s death draw from her words which in their quiet dignity of grief

have something of Wordsworth:—

Children have died ere now, not mine alone,

And wives been widow’d. Yea, this cup of life

Unnumber’d women have drain’d it, as do I....

... Insistent Fate,

Taking in fee the lives of all I lov’d,

Hath made me wise.

Probably it was Merope again who uttered the famous lines which advise

lament over the newly-born and a glad procession to accompany the

dead. The recognition-scene is singled out for especial praise by

Aristotle.[816]

The fragments of this tragedy include a perfect jewel of lyric poetry, a

prayer to Peace:—

Εἰρήνα βαθύπλουτε καὶ

καλλίστα μακάρων θεῶν,

ζῆλός μοι σέθεν, ὡς χρονίζεις.

δέδοικα δὲ μὴ πρὶν πόνοις

ὑπερβάλῃ με γῆρας,

πρὶν σὰν χαρίεσσαν ὥραν προσιδεῖν

καὶ καλλιχόρους ἀοιδὰς

φιλοστεφάνους τε κώμους.

ἴθι μοι, πότνα, πόλιν.

τὰν δ’ ἐχθρὰν στάσιν εἶργ’ ἀπ’ οἴ-

κων τὰν μαινομέναν τ’ ἔριν

θηκτῷ τερπομέναν σιδάρῳ.

A paraphrase might run thus:—

O Peace, thou givest plenty as from a deep spring: there is no

beauty like unto thine, no, not even among the blessed gods.

My heart yearneth within me, for thou tarriest; I grow old and

thou returnest not.

Shall weariness overcome mine eyes before they see thy bloom

and thy comeliness? When the lovely songs of the dancers are

heard again, and the thronging feet of them that wear garlands,

shall grey hairs and sorrow have destroyed me utterly?

Return, thou Holy One, to our city: abide not far from us, thou

that quenchest wrath.

Strife and bitterness shall depart, if thou art with us:

madness and the edge of the sword shall flee away from our

doors.

Matthew Arnold’s _Merope_ has the same plot and includes a

recognition-scene which probably resembles the lost original closely. His

conception of Polyphontes is thoroughly Euripidean.

Of the other lost plays little can be said here. Still amid this faint

glow of star-dust many marvellous things are to be discerned—words of

tremulous tenderness from the _Danae_ describing the charm of infancy; a

line from _Ino_ which in its powerful grimness recalls Æschylus, “like

a lone beast, he lurks in caves unlit”;[817] out of the _Polyidus_ the

celebrated query,

Who knows of life that it is aught but death,

And death aught else than life beyond the grave?[818]

From an unknown drama comes a line which owes its preservation to St.

Paul[819]:

φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί,

“evil communications corrupt good manners”. Euripides’ cosmopolitan

sympathy nowhere finds finer expression than in the distich

Where’er spreads Heaven the eagle cleaves his path;

Where’er lies earth the righteous are at home.[820]

But the student must at his leisure explore the marvels of these

rock-pools left by the retiring ocean. One majestic passage[821] from the

_Cretans_ shall suffice to close this survey. The lines are from a march

sung by the Curetes or priests of the Cretan Zeus, and show that even in

the Hellenic world the monastic spirit was not unknown:—

Thou whom the Tyrian princess bare

To mighty Jove, thou Lord of Crete,

To whom her hundred cities bow,

Lo, I draw near thy judgment-seat,

Quitting my home, yon hallowed place

Where beams of cypress roof the shrine,

By far-brought axes lopped and hewn,

Close knit by oxen’s blood divine.

Pure is my life’s unbroken calm

Since Zeus to bliss these eyes unsealed;

The feast of quivering flesh I shared

While through the dark strange thunder pealed.

The Mountain-Mother heard my vows,

And saw my torch the darkness ride;

The Hunter named me for his priest,

A mail-clad Bacchant sanctified.

Now robed in white I keep me pure

From food that e’er has throbbed with breath;

I shun the new-born infant’s cry,

And gaze not on the couch of death.

It now remains for us to attempt a synthesis—to set before ourselves as

clearly as may be the whole personality of Euripides. We are studying

not the programme of a politician, but the spirit and method of a great

artist, the inspiration of a great teacher. An artist has other things

to heed than a superficial consistency of presentation; and a teacher

of permanent value shows his followers not what to think, but how to

think—not opinions, but the reasoned basis of opinion. Euripides is a man

not of dogmas, nor indeed of negations; he is the apostle of a spirit

which blows whither it lists, setting up a healthful circulation of

tingling life throughout regions which have languished in the heavy air

of convention. His work forces us to think and feel for ourselves, not

necessarily to think and feel with him.

The briefest description of his special quality is that he is in the same

moment a great artist and a great rationalist—a man profoundly conscious

of the beauty and value of all life, all existence, all energy, and yet

an uncompromising critic of the vesture which man throws around those

parts of the Universe which are subjected to him. No man has ever loved

and expressed beauty with a mind less swayed by illusion. These two

instincts, the instinct to study life in all its unforced manifestations,

and the instinct to question all conventions, lie at the root of his

work. It is in virtue of these that he has been called enigmatic. Like

Renan he was ἀνὴρ δίψυχος, a man of two souls[822]; but he is no more

an enigma than others. His peculiarity lies herein, that the duality of

nature often found in ordinary men was by him exhibited at the heights

of genius. That is why he so often seems labouring to destroy the effect

he has created; he is “inconsistent” because he is equally at home in

the two worlds of feeling and of thought. Precisely for this reason he

created a new type of drama. Horace Walpole wrote that “Life is a comedy

to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel”; thus, when a genius of

Euripides’ type addressed itself to the theatre, the result was drama

which could not but shock people who, bred in the school of Æschylus,

had no conception of “tragedy” which could be witty, light, modern,

destructive. Menander is the successor of Euripides, not of Aristophanes.

Anyone who follows out these two strands of instinct will understand

much that might seem strange, much that gave offence, in his work. It

will be well therefore to bring together the faults which have been

found with him in ancient and in later times. Leaving on one side, since

it is by no means certainly a reproach, the celebrated remark[823] of

Sophocles, “I represent people as they should be, Euripides as they

are,” we find our chief material in Aristophanes and Aristotle. The

_Frogs_ contains an elaborate attack upon the tragedian which, whether

fair or not, has a _prima facie_ reasonableness. Euripides is twitted

with moral and literary offences. In the first place, his predilection

for depicting the power of love, especially the adulterous or incestuous

passions of women[824] and the sophistical restlessness of mind which

he inculcates,[825] mark him as a corrupter of Athens. On the technical

side, his music[826] is affected and decadent, the libretto[827] of his

choruses is both elaborate and jejune, the style of his iambics[828]

lacks weight and dignity, his prologues[829] are tiresome and written in

a mechanical fashion. Aristotle in his turn objects to certain weaknesses

of characterization: Menelaus in the _Orestes_ is particularly bad, the

speech of Melanippe—no doubt that celebrated oration on miracles—is

indecorous and out of character; in the Aulid _Iphigenia_ the heroine

is inconsistent.[830] He gives two examples[831] of the irrational,

Ægeus in the _Medea_ and Menelaus once more in the _Orestes_. Euripides’

use of the _deus ex machina_ is also often bad; he instances Medea’s

miraculous chariot. Lastly there is the famous mixture[832] of praise

and blame: “Euripides, faulty as he is in the general management of his

subject, is yet felt to be the most tragic of the poets.” If we pass now

to modern detractors, we find one fault overshadowing all the rest—bad

construction, what Aristotle calls “episodic” plots, namely, plays the

several scenes of which are more or less accidentally combined and form

no organic whole.

There is truth in some of this fault-finding; whether we are to regard

such features as actually blemishes is another matter. Two certainly are

defects of the gravest possible description—“episodic” plots and the

_deus ex machina_. If a man produces plays which have no organic unity,

or which at the close of the action are in such a tangle that a being of

superhuman information and power is necessary to “cut the knot,” he is no

“unskilful dramatist” but merely a blockhead, for he can always fling his

rubbish into the fire. So hopelessly damaging are these two accusations

that one really cannot believe Euripides obnoxious to them. One might as

well allege that Alexander did not understand tactics, or that Pericles

believed Byzantium was in Sicily. The charge of faulty construction has

been considered earlier in connexion with the plays which are supposed

examples thereof. But the _deus ex machina_ needs a few words. “The god

out of the machine” is a phrase of two applications. It may mean a deity

brought in to round off the play by giving information about the future

history of the personages. Or the god may be introduced when the plot,

owing to the human limitations of the characters, has become knotted

and progress is impossible; then a being who miraculously knows all the

facts appears and “cuts” the knot. In the first case the epiphany is

practically outside the drama; in the second it is only too vital to it.

Of the first case there are five[833] instances in the extant plays:

to these, of course, our grave objection cannot apply. Of the second

type there are seven[834] examples if we regard the miraculous car of

Medea as a “deus”. _Granted the story which is known to the audience_,

such interventions are necessary. Medea cannot escape the vengeance of

Corinth, Orestes the verdict of the Argive State, without supernatural

aid; Theseus would, it might seem, never have been persuaded by mortal

witness that Hippolytus is innocent; in the Tauric _Iphigenia_ and the

_Helena_[835] nothing but a miracle can save from death the fugitives

who as a matter of “history” reached home in safety: the _Supplices_

would end without the formal compact between rescuers and rescued if the

goddess did not intervene; as for the _Ion_, Euripides’ contemporaries

knew that Delphi still flourished, so that the annihilating investigation

of Ion must, it appeared, have been somehow arrested. For these seven

plays, then, we can choose between two theories of the _deus ex machina_

(in that second sense of a pseudo-dramatic expedient). The first theory

is that the poet wishes to end with “historical” truth, but in the

course of his action has so blundered that he cannot naturally do so;

therefore he puts forward a god who asserts that the action _shall_

continue as “history” asserts that it did; so might a competitor in a

match of archery employ a confederate who, whenever his arrow missed the

target, should pick it up and plant it in the white. The other theory is

that Euripides intended to work out an interesting situation of legend

as a study in natural psychology and social development. The situation

according to story came to a certain end; according to Euripides that

was not the natural end. And he emphasizes this legendary distortion by

pointing out clearly that to square nature and the story nothing less

than a miracle is required. To assert that he needed the supernatural

intervention to save his play is absolutely to reverse the facts. Can we

doubt which of these theories is sound?

Two further questions at once arise. Why did he select situations

from misleading legends? And, is there then no pseudo-dramatic _deus

ex machina_ at all? The first question is of vital importance. It is

incorrect to say that he was bound by convention to the traditional

stories; Phrynichus, Agathon, and Moschion all defied this “convention”.

Euripides was a student of human thought, of the development of belief,

as well as a dramatist. Convinced that his contemporaries held false

beliefs about the gods and that the myths were largely responsible for

this, hypnotizing thought by their beauty and paralyzing logic by their

authority, he sets himself to show, not only that they are untrue, but

also how, though untrue, they ever won credence. As for the _deus ex

machina_ the truth is that he does not exist (save, of course, in the

rôle of a non-dramatic narrator). He is, like the three unities, a

figment based on uncritical and hasty reading. Outside this poet the

only possible case is that of the _Philoctetes_, which has been shown no

genuine instance.

We may now return to the objections raised by Aristophanes and Aristotle.

They are all due to the two instincts we have described—his interest

in every manifestation of life, and his stern rationalism. Most of the

technical flaws, for instance, alleged against him are proofs that he was

attracted by the possibilities of his own art; he is constantly testing

the limits to which development can go. The iambics of the _Orestes_, for

example, are extraordinarily full of resolved feet; after that play he

restrains himself more. In music too he appears to have been an explorer;

at any rate the fault found with the words of his choruses points to a

development like the modern, in which libretto was becoming subservient

to music. The comic poet, again, fastens eagerly upon the prologues, and

puts into the mouth of Æschylus a famous jest:—[836]

_Æsch._: And now, by Jove, I’ll not smash each phrase word

by word, but with heaven’s aid I’ll ruin your prologues with—a

little oil-flask.

_Eur._: An oil-flask? You ... my prologues?

_Æsch._: Just one little flask. You write so that anything will

fit into your iambics—a little fleece, a little flask, a little

bag. I’ll show you on the spot.

_Eur._: Oh! you will?

_Æsch._: Yes.

_Dion._: Now you must recite something.

_Eur._:

“Ægyptus, as the far-spread story tells,

With fifty sons in voyage o’er the deep

Landing at Argos....”

_Æsch._: (interrupting) ... “lost his flask of oil”.

Several other absurd instances follow.

This celebrated jest means (i) that Euripides constructs the early

sentences of his prologue in such a way that a subordinate clause

(usually containing a participle) leads up to a short main clause at the

end of the sentence; (ii) that his prologues descend to trivial details;

(iii) that the _cæsura_ occurs always in the third foot; (iv) that he

is viciously addicted to resolved feet. The tragedian can be defended

from these charges, such as they are, but the idea at the back of

Aristophanes’ mind is true, namely, that these prologues are often dull

performances. Probably the poet did not intend much more. He wishes to

put his hearers _au fait_ with the precise legend and the precise point

with which he is concerned;[837] as is often said, these passages take

the place of a modern play-bill.

Later in the _Frogs_ Dionysus produces a huge pair of scales; each is to

utter a line into his scale-pan, and the heavier line wins. Euripides

declaims into his pan the opening line of the _Medea_, εἴθ’ ὤφελ’

Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος, and his rival Σπερχειὲ ποταμὲ βουνομοί τ’

ἐπιστροφαί. Dionysus absurdly explains that the latter wins because he

has put in water like a fraudulent woollen-merchant, while Euripides has

offered a “word with wings”. Underlying this nonsense is the truth that

the Æschylean line is ponderous and slow, that of Euripides light and

rapid; it is like contrasting Marlowe and Fletcher. The difference is not

between good and bad, but between old and new. Æschylus’ iambic style is

fitted most admirably for his purpose. But Euripides has not the same

purpose—that is all. It is one of his most remarkable innovations that he

practically invented the prose-drama. A very great deal of his “verse” is

simply prose which can be scanned. To compare such a passage[838] as:

ἥξει γὰρ αὐτὸς σὴν δάμαρτα καὶ τέκνα,

ἕλξων φονεύσων κἄμ’ ἐπισφάξων ἄναξ·

μένοντι δ’ αὐτοῦ πάντα σοὶ γενήσεται,

τῇ τ’ ἀσφαλείᾳ κερδανεῖς· πόλιν δὲ σὴν

μὴ πρὶν ταράξῃς πρὶν τόδ’ εὖ θέσθαι, τέκνον,

or a hundred others, with the beacon-speech in _Agamemnon_ or Athena’s

charge to the Areopagite court, is to ignore the whole point of a

literary revolution. Who would set a page of Hedda Gabler’s conversation

against an extract from _Macbeth_, and affirm that Ibsen could not write

dialogue?

Ibsen, indeed, it is particularly instructive to bear in mind here.

According to him “the golden rule is that there is no golden rule”.[839]

Dr. Stockman’s nobility consists in telling the truth at all costs.

Gregers Werle insists on that course, and is seen to be a meddlesome

prig who ruins his friend’s home. Here the Greek and the Norwegian agree

heartily; for the “sophistry” with which many at Athens were disgusted

is only Euripides’ way of putting his conviction that there is no fixed

rule of conduct, still less any fixed rule for our self-satisfied

attempts to praise or blame the abnormal. An impulse of pity ruins Creon

in the _Medea_; Lycus in the _Heracles_ turns his back on mercy, and is

destroyed also. The pride of glorious birth nerves Macaria to heroism;

of Achilles it makes merely a pathetic sham. Consciousness of sin wrecks

and tortures Phædra, while to Helen in _Orestes_ it means little more

than a picturesque melancholy. Hermione in _Andromache_ and Creusa both

go to all lengths in their passionate yearning for domestic happiness;

one destroys her husband and her own future, the other reaps deeper

bliss than she dared to hope. Iphigenia and Hippolytus serve the same

goddess, but amid what different atmospheres and diverse destinies! This

consciousness that effort brings about results different from its aims,

that chance, whatever chance may be, is too potent to allow any faith

in orthodox deities, only in moods of despair wrings from the poet such

outcry as Hecuba’s, that Fate is “a capering idiot”.[840] But it has

planted surely in his mind the conviction that there is no golden rule of

conduct. And hence that “love of forensic rhetoric” of which we hear so

much—each case must be considered on its own merits.

To this agnosticism we owe not only that treatment of religious legend

which we have already studied but the poet’s greatest achievement.

Socrates, because, as he said, he could not understand metaphysics or

astronomy, gave his attention to man. His friend because he despaired

of a satisfying theology threw his genius into psychological drama. The

centre of his interest is the human heart. Only one fact about destiny

can be stated as consistently held by him, namely, that the spring of

action and the chief factor in happiness or misery is, not the will of

Heaven or dogmatic belief, but the nature (φύσις) of the individual.[841]

Because he studies sin, not to condemn but to understand, he has earned

that reproach of Aristophanes who rages at his predilection for Phædras

and Sthenebœas. What attracted him was not a desire to gloat or even to

pardon; it was the fact that the sinners he depicts are so intensely

alive. A being dead in virtue engaged his interest less than one who,

however evilly, existed with vigour. To this passionate interest in

human life can be referred as basis all the other themes on which he

spent study. Religion, as we have found, only attracts him because it

guides or misleads conduct. His political studies have little concern

with ethnology or economics; they are only an expansion to a wider field

of this same interest in sheer humanity. Philosophy and natural science

are of value for him, as for Lucretius, in that they provide an escape

from paralyzing superstition. If they are presented as a refuge from the

facts of life, he will have none of them. When Electra[842] seeks in

her knowledge of astronomy a far-fetched consolation for self-fostered

misery, she strikes us not as heroic but as own kin to the febrile

“intellectuals” of Tchekov’s _Cherry Orchard_ or the novels of Dostoevsky.

His dislike of convention in morals is answered by his originality in

portraiture as well as in dramatic situations. Nothing is more thrilling

than to observe how in the hands of a great realist whole masses of human

beings come to life. What was the background of one novelist suddenly

begins in the pages of another to stir, to articulate itself, to move

forward and discover a language. “The men” commanded by Captain Osborne

in _Vanity Fair_ become Private Ortheris or Corporal Mulvaney in the

pages of Kipling. So in Euripides the dim and familiar background of

“barbarians” who existed merely to give colour and outline to Achilles

and Odysseus, the women who bore the necessary children and ground the

needed flour, the henchmen without whom horses would not be groomed or

trees felled, suddenly awake and reveal passions of love and hatred,

pathetic histories, opinions about marriage and the grave. In every age

the man who points to the disregarded, the dormant, hitherto supposed

securely neutral and plastic, who cries “it is alive, watching you and

reflecting, waiting its time”—such a man is met in his degree with the

reception given to Euripides by the elder generation of Athenians. The

clamour of “crank!” “faddist!” “this is the thin end of the wedge,” and

kindred watchwords, may be found translated into brilliant Attic by

Aristophanes. But in virtue of these same interests Euripides became the

Bible of later Greek civilization. He would have passed into a fetish had

it not been that the destructively critical side of his genius prevented

the most narrow-minded from reducing him to a system. To the last he

remains inconclusive, provocative, refreshing.

On the other side his sensitiveness to all aspects of life—his “feeling

for Beauty” to use the familiar phrase—held him back from mere cynicism.

The _Hippolytus_ remains as perhaps the most glorious support in

literature for unflinching facing of facts—it shows triumphantly how a

man may feel all the sorrow and waste which wreck happiness, yet declare

the endless value and loveliness of life. We may detect two aspects in

which this joy in life shows itself most markedly—his romance and his wit.

Romance is not improperly contrasted with “classicism,” but as few Greek

or Roman writers are classical in the rigid sense it is not surprising to

find romantic features outcropping at every period of their literature.

Euripides himself is the most romantic author between Homer and

Appuleius, whatever our definition of romance may be. R. L. Stevenson’s

remark that “romance is consciousness of background,” Hegel’s doctrine

that “romantic art is the straining of art to go beyond itself,”[843] and

a more recent _dictum_ that “romance is only the passion which is in the

face of all realism,”[844] each of them definitely recalls some feature

of Euripides’ work already discussed. A modern writer with whom he can

be fruitfully compared, at this point especially, is Mr Bernard Shaw.

In many characteristics these two dramatists are notably alike: their

ruthless insistence upon questioning all established reputations, whether

of individuals, nations, or institutions; their conviction that there is

no absolute standard of conduct; their blazing zeal for justice; their

mastery of brilliant lithe idiom. But in their feeling about romance

they diverge violently. Perhaps the largest ingredient in Mr. Shaw’s

strength is his hatred and distrust of emotion and of that spirit, called

romance, which organizes emotion and sees in it a basic part of life.

But Euripides appreciates it all the more highly that he is not enslaved

by it. Even in such ruthless dramas as the _Medea_ and the _Iphigenia in

Tauris_ one remarks how the thrill and beauty of life gleams out, if only

as a bitter memory or a present pain of contrast—the magic fire-breathing

bulls and the heapy coils of the glaring dragon in the remote land where

Jason won his quest, the strange seas, deserted beaches, and grim savages

among whom Iphigenia cherishes her thoughts of childhood in Argos. The

same sense of glamour which inspires early in his life such a marvellous

flash as the description of Rhesus’ steeds:

στίλβουσι δ’ ὥστε ποταμίου κύκνου πτερόν,[845]

and indeed the whole dashing buoyant drama—this passion survives the

shames and disillusionment wrought by twenty-five years of tyranny and

war; it persists even in those black but glorious hours when he wrote the

_Troades_ and at the close of his life culminates in the splendours of

the _Bacchæ_. No attentive student of his work can ignore this effect,

but if we possessed all his plays we should be in no danger of accepting

the idea that Euripides is beyond all other things a bitter realist. The

_Andromeda_ and the _Phaethon_ would have redressed the balance.

The wit of Euripides cannot easily be discussed; it often depends upon

idiomatic subtlety, and must almost disappear in translation. But

frequently, again, it consists in the method of handling a situation.

Just as the playwright often makes of his drama, among other things, an

elaborate _reductio ad absurdum_ of myth, so is he capable of writing

a whole scene with a twinkle in his eye. The clearest example is the

_Helena_; Menelaus’ stupefaction at learning that Egypt contains an

Helen, daughter of Zeus, is indeed definite comedy:

Διὸς δ’ ἔλεξε παῖδά νιν πεφυκέναι.

ἀλλ’ ἦ τις ἔστι Ζηνὸς ὄνομ’ ἔχων ἀνήρ

Νείλου παρ’ ὄχθας; εἷς γὰρ ὅ γε κατ’ οὐρανόν.[846]

“And she told me that the lady was a daughter of Zeus! What! is there

some person called Zeus living beside the Nile? There’s one in Heaven,

to be sure, but that’s another story.” Such a translation gives

perhaps the intention of the words and colloquial rhythm of the last

sentence. Here is comedy, but that of Congreve, not of Aristophanes.

The distinction is important. Euripides is less comic than witty. As

we turn his pages we rarely laugh, but a thousand times we break into

the slight smile of intellectual enjoyment; one delight in reading an

Euripidean play—tragedy though it be—is the same as that aroused by the

work of Meredith. Euripides’ sense of the ludicrous is a part of his

restlessness in conception. Again and again he startles us by placing

at some tragic moment a little episode which passes the pathetic and

becomes absurd. When Clytæmnestra and Achilles bring each other into

awkward perplexity over the espousal of Iphigenia the effect is amusing,

and the intervention of the old slave who puts his head out of the

tent-door must provoke a smile, even though we realize that he has misery

and death on his lips.[847] After Creusa has given her instructions for

the assassination of Ion, it is, though natural, yet quaint for the

prospective murderer to reply: “Now do you retire to your hotel”.[848] In

the _Medea_ the whole episode of Ægeus, to which Aristotle objected as

“irrational,” is tinged with the grotesque. That the horrible story of

Medea’s revenge must hang upon a slow-witted amiable person like Ægeus

is natural to the topsy-turviness of life as the dramatist saw it. In

fact, just as Euripides on the linguistic side practically invents the

prose-drama, so in the strictly dramatic sphere he invents tragicomedy.

Nothing can induce him to keep tears and laughter altogether apart. The

world is not made like that, and he studies facts, depicting the phases

of great happenings not as they “ought to be” but “as they are”. He would

have read with amused delight that quaint sentence of Dostoevsky: “All

these choruses sing about something very indefinite, for the most part

about somebody’s curse, but with a tinge of the higher humour”.[849]

It is indeed significant that sparkles of incidental mirth are (so far

as a modern student can tell) commonest in that most heartbreaking

play _Orestes_. One dialogue between Orestes and Menelaus, to take a

single passage, is a blaze of wit—it exemplifies every possible grade

of witticism, from the downright pun[850] to subtle varieties of iambic

rhythm. Perhaps the most light-hearted and entertaining example[851] is

provided by Helen who (of all casuists!) evolves a theory of sin as a

method of putting her tigerish niece into good humour and so inducing her

to perform for Helen an awkward task. Even more skilful, but ghastly in

its half-farcical horror, is the dialogue between Orestes and the escaped

Phrygian slave.

Later ages of Greek civilization looked upon Euripides as a mighty leader

of thought, a great voice expressing all the wisdom of their fathers, all

the pains and perplexities familiar to themselves. After generations had

passed it was easy to dwell upon one side only of his genius, and for

Plutarch or Stobæus to regard him as the poet of sad wisdom:—

Amongst us one,

Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly

His seat upon the intellectual throne;

And all his store of sad experience he

Lays bare of wretched days![852]

But his own contemporaries, living in the days before Ægospotami and

knowing the many facets of his spirit, could not so well accept a man of

such contradictions, who was in strange earnest about things they felt to

be indifferent, and who smiled at such odd moments. Euripides must often

have felt himself very lonely in Athens. “My soul,” he cries, “lay not

hold upon words of subtlety. Why admit these strange high thoughts, if

thou hast no peers for audience to thy serious musings?”[853] And again;—

Though far beyond my ken a wise man dwell,

Across the earth I greet him for a friend.[854]

It may be that Europeans of our own day are better fitted to estimate him

aright than enthusiasts under the Empire or his companions who saw him

too close at hand. During the last half-century we have witnessed great

changes which have their counterpart in the Athens for which he wrote.

Hopes have been realized only to prove disappointments and the source

of fresh perplexities. In England the spread of knowledge has resulted

not in a cultivated, but in a mentally restless people. Universal

ability to read has for its most obvious fruit not wider knowledge of

literature, but more newspapers and a rank jungle of “popular” writing.

Similarly at Athens the sophists had produced mental avidity where

there was no quickening of spiritual vigour to correspond. Another fact

of vital import has been the rise of our working-class to solidarity

and political power: it probably resembles that “demos” which Cleon led

more closely than “the masses” with which Peel or Russell had to deal.

Again, experience of war has shown how small is the effect which settled

government, social reform, and education have exercised upon the raw,

primitive, human instincts, both base and noble. In Greece, the empire

of Athens, with its tyranny and selfishness, and the Peloponnesian war

which had produced a frightful corruption of conduct and ideals,[855]

tainted society with that cynicism (ἀναίδεια) of which Euripides so often

speaks. Just as we are severed by a wide gulf from the crude but not

ignoble certainty, the superficial worship of progress which marked the

Victorian era, so was Euripides severed from the “men of Marathon” for

whom Æschylus wrote.

So it is that we can judge the poet of “the Greek enlightenment”[856]—or

rather of the Athenian disillusionment—better than most generations of

his readers. To aid us, there have naturally arisen writers to voice, in

a manner often like his, our own disappointment and our renewed interest

in parts of life and the world which we had ignored as unmeaning or

barren. The disinherited are coming into their own. Mr. Thomas Hardy has

written of the English peasant with a richness and profundity unknown

since Shakespeare. He offers indeed another interesting analogy with

Euripides: while the critics are concerned with his “pessimism” he

remains for an unsophisticated reader a splendid witness to the majesty

and charm of the immense slow curves of life, the deep preciousness which

glows from the gradual processes of nature and that dignity of mere

existence which survives all sin and effort. _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_

is the best modern parallel to _Hippolytus_. Meanwhile M. Anatole France

has given us many an example of that ironical wit of which the Greek

poet is so consummate a master. Another Frenchman, Flaubert, has set

as the climax to his dazzling phantasy, _La Tentation de St. Antoine_,

an expression in un-attic vehemence and elaboration of that passionate

sympathy with all existence which blazes in the lyrics of the _Bacchæ_—a

yearning which Arnold in the _Scholar-Gipsy_ has uttered in milder and

still more haunting language.

There is no final synthesis of Euripides. Throughout his life he held

true to those two principles, the worship of beauty, and loyalty to the

dry light of intelligence. Glamour never blinded him to sin and folly;

misery and coarse tyranny never taught his lips to forswear the glory of

existence. One of his own noblest songs sets this triumphantly before

us[857]:—

οὐ παύσομαι τὰς Χάριτας

Μούσαις συγκαταμειγνύς,

ἁδίσταν συζυγίαν.

μὴ ζῴην μετ’ ἀμουσίας,

αἰεὶ δ’ ἐν στεφάνοισιν εἴην.

“I will not cease to mingle the Graces with the Muses—the sweetest

of fellowships. When the Muses desert me, let me die; may the

flower-garlands never fail me.” The Graces and the Muses—such is his

better way of invoking Beauty and Truth, the two fixed stars of his

life-long allegiance.