to be a mere blot on the play, not, I think, justly. It is argued that
the obvious purpose which the scene serves, the provision of an asylum
for Medea, has no keen dramatic interest. The spectator would just as
soon, or sooner, have her die. And, besides, her actual mode of escape
is largely independent of Aegeus. Further, the arrival of Aegeus at this
moment seems to be a mere coincidence (_Ar. Poetics_, 61 b, 23), and one
cannot help suspecting that the Athenian poet was influenced by mere
local interests in dragging in the Athenian king and the praises of
Athens where they were not specially appropriate.
To these criticisms one may make some answer. (1) As to the coincidence,
it is important to remember always that Greek tragedies are primarily
historical plays, not works of fiction. They are based on definite
_Logoi_ or traditions (_Frogs_, l. 1052. p. 254) and therefore can, and
should, represent accidental coincidences when it was a datum of the
tradition that these coincidences actually happened. By Aristotle's time
the practice had changed. The tragedies of his age were essentially
fiction; and he tends to criticise the ancient tragedies by fictional
standards.
Now it was certainly a datum in the Medea legend that she took refuge
with Aegeus, King of Athens, and was afterwards an enemy to his son
Theseus; but I think we may go further. This play pretty certainly has
for its foundation the rites performed by the Corinthians at the Grave
of the Children of Medea in the precinct of Hera Acraia near Corinth.
See on l. 1379. p. 77. The legend in such cases is usually invented to
explain the ritual; and I suspect that in the ritual, and,
consequently, in the legend, there were two other data: first, a pursuit
of Medea and her flight on a dragon-chariot, and, secondly, a meeting
between Medea and Aegeus. (Both subjects are frequent on vase paintings,
and may well be derived from historical pictures in some temple at
Corinth.)
Thus, the meeting with Aegeus is probably not the free invention of
Euripides, but one of the data supplied to him by his subject. But he
has made it serve, as von Arnim was the first to perceive, a remarkable
dramatic purpose. Aegeus was under a curse of childlessness, and his
desolate condition suggests to Medea the ultimate form of her vengeance.
She will make Jason childless. Cf. l. 670, "Children! Ah God, art
childless?" (A childless king in antiquity was a miserable object:
likely to be deposed and dishonoured, and to miss his due worship after
death. See the fragments of Euripides' _Oineus_.)
There is also a further purpose in the scene, of a curious and
characteristic kind. In several plays of Euripides, when a heroine
hesitates on the verge of a crime, the thing that drives her over the
brink is some sudden and violent lowering of her self-respect. Thus
Phaedra writes her false letter immediately after her public shame.
Creusa in the _Ion_ turns murderous only after crying in the god's ears
the story of her seduction. Medea, a princess and, as we have seen, a
woman of rather proud chastity, feels, after the offer which she makes
to Aegeus in this scene (l. 716 ff., p. 42). that she need shrink from
nothing.
P. 38, l. 681, The hearth-stone of my sires of yore.]--This sounds
as if it meant Aegeus' own house: in reality, by an oracular riddle, it
meant the house of Pittheus, by whose daughter, Aethra, Aegeus became
the father of Theseus.
P. 43, l. 731, An oath wherein to trust.]--Observe that Medea is
deceiving Aegeus. She intends to commit a murder before going to him,
and therefore wishes to bind him down so firmly that, however much he
wish to repudiate her, he shall be unable. Hence this insistence on the
oath and the exact form of the oath. (At this time, apparently, she
scarcely thinks of the children, only of her revenge.)
P. 46, l. 808, No eastern dreamer, &c.]--See on l. 304.
P. 47. l. 820, _The_ NURSE _comes out_.]--There is no indication in the
original to show who comes out. But it is certainly a woman; as
certainly it is not one of the Chorus; and Medea's words suit the Nurse
well. It is an almost devilish act to send the Nurse, who would have
died rather than take such a message had she understood it.
P. 48, ll. 824--846, The sons of Erechtheus, &c.]--This poem is
interesting as showing the ideal conception of Athens entertained by a
fifth century Athenian. One might compare with it Pericles' famous
speech in Thucydides, ii., where the emphasis is laid on Athenian "plain
living and high thinking" and the freedom of daily life. Or, again, the
speeches of Aethra in Euripides' _Suppliant Women_, where more stress is
laid on mercy and championship of the oppressed.
The allegory of "Harmony," as a sort of Kore, or Earth-maiden, planted
by all the Muses in the soil of Attica, seems to be an invention of the
poet. Not any given Art or Muse, but a spirit which unites and
harmonises all, is the special spirit of Athens. The Attic connection
with Eros, on the other hand, is old and traditional. But Euripides has
transformed the primitive nature-god into a mystic and passionate
longing for "all manner of high deed," a Love which, different from that
described in the preceding chorus, really ennobles human life.
This first part of the Chorus is, of course, suggested by Aegeus; the
second is more closely connected with the action of the play. "How can
Medea dream of asking that stainless land to shelter her crimes? But the
whole plan of her revenge is not only wicked but impossible. She simply
could not do such a thing, if she tried."
Pp. 50 ff., l. 869, The second scene with Jason.]--Dicaearchus, and
perhaps his master Aristotle also, seems to have complained of Medea's
bursting into tears in this scene, instead of acting her part
consistently--a very prejudiced criticism. What strikes one about
Medea's assumed role is that in it she remains so like herself and so
unlike another woman. Had she really determined to yield to Jason, she
would have done so in just this way, keen-sighted and yet passionate.
One is reminded of the deceits of half-insane persons, which are due not
so much to conscious art as to the emergence of another side of the
personality.
P. 54, l. 949, Fine robings, &c.]--Repeated from l. 786, p. 46, where it
came full in the midst of Medea's avowal of her murderous purpose. It
startles one here, almost as though she had spoken out the word "murder"
in some way which Jason could not understand.
P. 56, l. 976, CHORUS.]--The inaction of the Chorus women during the
last scene will not bear thinking about, if we regard them as real human
beings, like, for instance, the Bacchae and the Trojan Women in the plays
that bear their name. Still there is not only beauty, but, I think,
great dramatic value in the conventional and almost mystical quality of
this Chorus, and also in the low and quiet tone of that which follows,
l. 1081 ff.
P. 59, ll. 1021 ff., Why does Medea kill her children?]--She acts not
for one clearly stated reason, like a heroine in Sardou, but for many
reasons, both conscious and subconscious, as people do in real life. Any
analysis professing to be exact would be misleading, but one may note
some elements in her feeling: (1) She had played dangerously long with
the notion of making Jason childless. (2) When she repented of this (l.
1046, p. 60) the children had already been made the unconscious
murderers of the princess. They were certain to be slain, perhaps with
tortures, by the royal kindred. (3) Medea might take them with her to
Athens and trust to the hope of Aegeus' being able and willing to
protect them. But it was a doubtful chance, and she would certainly be
in a position of weakness and inferiority if she had the children to
protect. (4) In the midst of her passionate half-animal love for the
children, there was also an element of hatred, because they were
Jason's: cf. l. 112, p. 8. (5) She also seems to feel, in a sort of
wild-beast way, that by killing them she makes them more her own: cf. l.
793, p. 46, "Mine, whom no hand shall steal from me away;" l. 1241, p,
68, "touched of none beside." (6) Euripides had apparently observed how
common it is, when a woman's mind is deranged by suffering, that her
madness takes the form of child-murder. The terrible lines in which
Medea speaks to the "Wrath" within her, as if it were a separate being
(l. 1056, p. 60), seem to bear out this view.
P. 59. l. 1038, Other shapes of life.]--A mystical conception of death.
Cf. _Ion_, 1067, where almost exactly the same phrase is used.
P. 61, l. 1078, I know to what bad deeds, &c.]--This expression of
double consciousness was immensely famous in antiquity. It is quoted by
Lucian, Plutarch, Clement, Galen, Synesius, Hierocles, Arrian,
Simpicius, besides being imitated, _e.g._ by Ovid: "video meliora
proboque, Deteriora sequor."
P. 63, l. 1123 ff., MESSENGER.]--A pendant to the Attendant's entrance
above, l. 1002. The Attendant, bringing apparently good news, is
received with a moan of despair, the Messenger of calamity with serene
satisfaction. Cf. the Messenger who announces the death of Pentheus in
the _Bacchae_.
P. 65, l. 1162, Dead self.]--The reflection in the glass, often regarded
as ominous or uncanny in some way.
P. 66, l. 1176, The cry turned strangely to its opposite.]--The
notion was that an evil spirit could be scared away by loud cheerful
shouts--_ololugae_. But while this old woman is making an _ololuge_, she
sees that the trouble is graver than she thought, and the cheerful cry
turns into a wail.
P. 68, l. 1236, Women, my mind is clear.]--With the silence in which
Medea passes over the success of her vengeance compare Theseus' words,
_Hip._, l. 1260, "I laugh not, neither weep, at this fell doom."
P. 69, l. 1249, Thou shalt weep hereafter.]--Cf. _Othello_, v. ii., "Be
thus when thou art dead, and I will kiss thee, And love thee after."
P. 69, ll. 1251 ff.--This curious prayer to the Sun to "save"
Medea--both from the crime of killing her children and the misfortune of
being caught by her enemies--is apparently meant to prepare us for the
scene of the Dragon Chariot. Notice the emphasis laid on the divine
origin of Medea's race and her transformation to "a voice of Hell."
P. 71, ll. 1278 ff., Death of the children.]--The door is evidently
barred, since Jason has to use crowbars to open it in l. 1317. Cf. the
end of Maeterlinck's _Mort de Tintagiles_.
P. 71, l. 1281, A mother slew her babes in days of yore, &c.]--Ino, wife
of Athamas, King of Thebes, nursed the infant Dionysus. For this Hera
punished her with madness. She killed her two children, Learchus and
Melicertes, and leaped into the sea. (There are various versions of the
story.)--Observe the technique: just as the strain is becoming
intolerable, we are turned away from tragedy to pure poetry. See on
_Hip._ 731.
P. 74, l. 1320, This, that shall save me from mine enemies'
rage.]--There is nothing in the words of the play to show what "this"
is, but the Scholiast explains it as a chariot drawn by winged serpents,
and the stage tradition seems to be clear on the subject. See note to
the Aegeus scene (p. 88).
This first appearance of Medea "above, on the tower" (Scholiast) seems
to me highly effective. The result is to make Medea into something like
a _dea ex machina_, who prophesies and pronounces judgment. See
Introduction.
P. 76, l. 1370, They are dead, they are dead!]--This wrangle, though
rather like some scenes in Norse sagas, is strangely discordant for a
Greek play. It seems as if Euripides had deliberately departed from his
usual soft and reflective style of ending in order to express the
peculiar note of discord which is produced by the so-called
"satisfaction" of revenge. Medea's curious cry: "Oh, thy voice! It hurts
me sore!" shows that the effect is intentional.
P. 77, l. 1379, A still green sepulchre.]--There was a yearly festival
in the precinct of Hera Acraia, near Corinth, celebrating the deaths of
Medea's children. This festival, together with its ritual and "sacred
legend," evidently forms the germ of the whole tragedy. Cf. the
Trozenian rites over the tomb of Hippolytus, _Hip._ 1424 ff.
P. 77, l. 1386, The hands of thine old Argo.]--Jason, left friendless
and avoided by his kind, went back to live with his old ship, now
rotting on the shore. While he was sleeping under it, a beam of wood
fell upon him and broke his head. It is a most grave mistake to treat
the line as spurious.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE.
ANDROMACHE: A Play.
CARLYON SAHIB: A Play.
THE EXPLOITATION OF INFERIOR RACES, IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES:
An Essay in "Liberalism and the Empire."
EURIPIDIS FABULAE: Brevi Adnotatione Critica Instructae,
Vols. I. and II.
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus; Bacchae; Aristophanes' 'Frogs.'
Translated into English verse.
EURIPIDES: The Trojan Women. Translated into English verse.
EURIPIDES: Electra. Translated into English verse.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
The following changes were made to the original text:
Page 40: mav --> may
Page 42: eves --> eyes
Page 81: P[)e]lias --> Pelias
Other than the addition of missing periods, minor variations in
spelling and punctuation have been preserved.