between Euripides and modern writers, with the Alexandrians at their
head, is so striking. The lovers in Euripides, as far as they are lovers
at all, are carried along by a forcible external impulse, the direction
of which is entirely sensual and entirely selfish. If, or as soon as,
they fail in achieving the gratification of their sensual desires, their
“love” immediately turns to hate. The idea of devotion or self-sacrifice
for the good of the loved person, as distinct from one’s own, is
absolutely unknown. “Love is irresistible,” they say, and, in obedience
to its commands, they sit down to reckon how they can satisfy themselves,
at no matter what cost to the objects of their passion.
Love is irresistible still, one knows, as irresistible now as ever it was
in Greece, but the impulse it gives has a different direction. To put it
perfectly crudely, the Euripidean woman who “falls in love” (it is of
women we are speaking now) thinks first of all, “How can I seduce the man
I love?” The modern woman thinks, “How can I die for him?” This is the
difference between ancient and modern love, and in Euripides the old is
still untouched by the new.[96]
It is this sensual, this well-nigh mechanical view of love which makes
possible that conception of the ideal wife, of which we have already
spoken in the case of Sophocles’ Deianira, and which is so strongly
insisted upon in the Andromache of Euripides.
Andromache regularly appears as the model wife, not only in the play
which bears her name, but also in the _Troades_. Her views on married
life have, therefore, a peculiar weight of their own.
οὐ τὸ κάλλος, ὦ γύναι,
ἀλλ’ ἁρεταὶ τέρπουσι τοὺς ξυνευνέτας,
she explains to the youthful Hermione.[97] “Now the greatest of these
virtues is, to be content with your husband and not to be jealous. You
are jealous of me. What would you do, supposing you were married to a
Thracian king with twenty wives instead of only two? You would murder
them all, I suppose, in your jealousy, _showing thereby how utterly
unbridled was your lust_. I was never jealous; _I used to act as
foster-mother to Hector’s illegitimate children_.
καὶ ταῦτα δρῶσα τἀρετῇ προσηγόμην
πόσιν.
“But you, you are afraid to let a drop of rain fall on your husband’s
head.
μὴ τὴν τεκοῦσαν τῇ φιλανδρίᾳ, γύναι,
ζήτει παρελθεῖν.”
φιλανδρία![98]
This is not irony; it is just sober earnest, the sober earnest morality
of respectable Athens. The view is by no means confined to Andromache.
It is deliberately propounded by Electra to her mother,[99] and Jason
twice taunts Medea with her failure to live up to its level.[100] Indeed,
it may be said to colour, to a certain extent, the whole conception of
married life. For a woman to wish to keep her husband to herself was a
sign that she was at once unreasonable and lascivious.
This doctrine of the absolute subjection of the wife[101] is emphasised
in various ways. That a really respectable wife not only always stays at
home, but also never sees visitors, is more or less of an axiom.[102] To
give a woman her head is dangerous in the last degree, and if you do, you
will probably get murdered for your pains.[103] Suicide for a husband’s
sake is only respectable on the part of a woman,[104] for her husband is
her life.[105]
But where is one to find such a model wife? for marriage is such a
lottery that one ought really to be allowed, if one can afford it, to
have several tickets, in case the first doesn’t turn out well.[106] The
only chance is to marry a woman of good family; in other words, the only
thing worth marrying for is rank.[107] To prefer to marry for love is not
only foolish, but unfair on one’s children.[108]
It is this view of married life, this devotion to an ideal of drudgery
on the part of the woman, and the calm acceptance of such devotion as
a matter of course on the part of the man, which explains such a play
as the _Alcestis_.[109] The woman is devoted to the man, not because
he is himself, but because he is her husband. For the man she does not
care in the least, but for the husband—for the ideal of the family—she
is perfectly ready to die. It is this which at once makes the story
of Alcestis possible, and robs it of half its pathos. Had Alcestis
loved Admetus as a man, she could not but have felt the bitterest
disappointment at his accepting her offer. As it is, she seems to regard
his conduct almost as much as a matter of course as he does.[110]
The brief examination of one further point in the Euripidean view of
women may serve as introduction to the more detailed discussion of the
romantic element in his plays, or, rather, of its absence. Euripides
speaks frequently as if there were a sort of freemasonry existing among
women, which makes one woman always ready to side with another as against
a man. Instances of this are common, especially in the relations between
the heroine and the Chorus, when the latter, as mostly in Euripides,
consists of women.
Thus Medea, when asking the Chorus not to reveal her plans, says—
λέξῃς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν ἐμοὶ δεδογμένων,
εἴπερ φρονεῖς εὖ δεσπόταις γυνή τ’ ἔφυς. (_Med._ 822.)
Similar in spirit is a line from the _Alope_ (_Fr._ 108):
γυνὴ γυναικὶ σύμμαχος πέφυκέ πως,
or l. 329 of the _Helen_:
γυναῖκα γὰρ δὴ συμπονεῖν γυναικὶ χρή.
In this same play, too, Menelaus decides that _his wife_ is the proper
person to go and ask help of Theonoe:
σὸν ἔργον, ὡς γυναικὶ πρόσφορον γυνή. (_Hel._ 830.)
A “romantic” writer might have thought that the prayers of Menelaus
himself would have been more effectual with a lady.[111]
The most important of the extant plays of Euripides is, for the
student of the development of the romantic tendency, undoubtedly the
_Hippolytus_. But, in thinking of this play, the reader must first of
all guard against a very common and, for a modern, very natural mistake.
He must remember that the interest of the piece is intended to centre,
not on Phaedra, but on Hippolytus. The main interest of the plot is the
struggle between asceticism and self-gratification, as personified in the
maiden Artemis and the sensual Aphrodite.[112] Phaedra is only made to
fall in love with Hippolytus in order that he may reject her advances,
and thereby irritate her into working his ruin. As has already been
pointed out, she is dragged into a quarrel which does not concern her,
for a purpose which does not interest her personally in the least.[113]
Bearing this in mind, the reader will be able to understand that
combination of passionate desire and cold-blooded reasoning which marks
the utterances of Phaedra. She has come to the conclusion, she says at
last (l. 391 _seqq._), that love is an irresistible disease; and since
her position as a married woman makes impossible the only means of cure
with which she is acquainted, she decides that, _for the sake of her
husband and children_, she had better die. She will never dishonour her
children, for, next to money, there is nothing so valuable as a good name.
To this the Nurse replies (l. 433 _seqq._) that of course love is
irresistible, and there is only one way to cure it; but she points out
that this way may perfectly well be adopted. The fact that Phaedra is
married need not be any obstacle, for husbands are used to seeing more
than they say.
“ἀλλ’, ὦ φίλη παῖ, λῆγε μὲν κακῶν φρενῶν,
λῆξον δ’ _ὑβρίζουσ’_: οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο πλὴν ὕβρις
τάδ’ ἐστὶ, κρείσσω δαιμόνων εἶναι θέλειν,
τόλμα δ’ ἐρῶσα· θεὸς ἐβονλήθη τάδε.”
“Leave the matter to me, and if women can’t effect a cure, perhaps men
can.”
Phaedra protests. The Nurse answers with a little very natural impatience
(l. 490)
“τί σεμνομυθεῖς; οὐ λόγων εὐσχημόνων
δεῖ σ’, ἀλλὰ τἀνδρός.”
Phaedra admits this, but insists that it would be more respectable to
die. The Nurse, however, persuades her to try a love-potion first, and
with this excuse leaves her to look for Hippolytus. Hippolytus, as
one knows, rejects the Nurse’s proposals, and Phaedra takes refuge in
suicide, making, as she dies, one last desperate attempt to save her own
good name at the expense of the man she is supposed to love (l. 715).
This, then, is the story of Phaedra. Where in all this is there a trace
of what we now call love? Where is there a single expression of affection
for Hippolytus, a single expression to show that she thinks of him
otherwise than of one who has done her a great and irretrievable injury?
She seems to think of him as one would think of a man from whom one had
caught the cholera. “Love is all bitterness,” she says (l. 349); “and he
is the cause.” The catastrophe comes, and she walks off quietly to murder
him,
“ὥστ’ εὐκλεᾶ μὲν παισὶ προσθεῖναι βίον,
αὐτή τ’ ὄνασθαι πρὸς τὰ νῦν πεπτωκότα.”
If this is love, the world must be a poorer place than I gave it credit
for.
Then follows the great argument between Hippolytus and his father, which
to the Athenians was doubtless the chief point of the play. On the speech
of Theseus we need not dwell, though it is perhaps just worth noticing
the way in which he enunciates, as a sort of great discovery which his
own experience and observation have enabled him to make, the theory that
it is possible for the initiative in a criminal liaison to come from the
side of the man (l. 966 _seqq._).
The answer of Hippolytus, however, is well worth study. For the first
24 of his 52 lines he describes in general terms his own blameless
character, and it is only at the 25th that he condescends to discuss
the particular incident. “But you do not perhaps believe all this
about my chastity,” he says (l. 1007); “but do tell me, then, what was
the temptation in this particular instance? Was this woman’s body so
especially beautiful? (1½ lines.) Or did I wish by my conduct to become
your heir? (2½ lines.) Or to become king? (3 lines.) Surely you know my
only interest is in athletics.” (5 lines.) Then, having finished the
arguments which he is able to bring forward, he proceeds to swear, and so
concludes. In other words, in a speech of 52 lines, the suggestion that
he might have been in love with Phaedra, even in the most rudimentary
sense of the words, is contemptuously dismissed in a line and a half, and
no one seems to think that this part of the subject ought to have been
treated at greater length. Now this one fact seems to me in itself almost
a sufficient proof that “romantic” ideas, even as they were understood at
the end of the fourth century, were utterly foreign to Euripides.[114]
To come to another play. There are probably few things in all literature
so strange, not to say comic, to modern ideas, as the relations between
Achilles and Iphigeneia in the _Iphigeneia in Aulis_.
Clytemnestra has been trapped into bringing her daughter to Aulis, on
promise of marriage with Achilles, and when, in the scene which begins
at l. 801, she discovers the truth, she appeals to him for protection.
Achilles, “the nearest approach to a modern gentleman of all the Greek
tragic characters,”[115] replies as follows (l. 919 _seqq._):
“I am a person of the highest breeding, and therefore you may trust me
to give you the correct answer under the circumstances. Your daughter,
having been betrothed to me, shall not be killed; it would reflect
discredit on me if she were, and that I cannot permit. No one shall so
much as touch the hem of her garment. _It is not, of course, for her
sake that I undertake to do this_, but because I consider that Agamemnon
has treated me shamefully. He used my name to trap you into coming here
without asking my consent; _of course I should have allowed him to use it
if he had asked me_, for I always put patriotism before everything; but
he did not ask me. I feel grossly insulted, and he will touch Iphigeneia
at his peril.”
“Your sentiments, Achilles,” remarks the Chorus, “are worthy alike of you
and of your divine descent.”
“How can I thank you enough,” replies Clytemnestra, “for all the trouble
you have promised to take in this matter, which cannot interest you
personally in the least?”
There is a moment’s pause; then she suggests timidly, “But would you like
the girl to come to you herself?”
“God forbid!” exclaims Achilles with horror. “How can you suggest
anything so improper?” Then after a little he adds, “You must first of
all go and argue the case with Agamemnon.”
“Why that?” asks Clytemnestra. “There is no chance there.”
“Perhaps not,” he answers, “but still I wish you to try; _for I should
very much prefer, if possible, that my name should be kept out of the
business altogether_.”
“What you say does you credit,” she answers. “I will do my best to obey
you.”
For the modern reader who studies this scene, and then leans back and
thinks a little what he would have done or thought in Achilles’ place,
comment is, I imagine, superfluous.[116]
Or look at Andromache’s speech in the _Andromache_. (l. 184 _seqq._) She
is accused of occupying too high a place in the favour of Neoptolemus.
“Tell me,” she answers to Hermione, “what reason could I possibly
have for wishing to stand well with your husband? Do I wish to reign
in your place, or to have more children, or to make my children kings?
Or what reason could he possibly have for preferring me? Is my native
city so powerful? Have I such influential friends?” &c. &c. As in the
_Hippolytus_, the idea that there may be love on either side is dismissed
without discussion.
Or look at the character of the Autourgos in the _Electra_. He has
married Electra, but refuses to touch her, and why?
αἰσχύνομαι γὰρ ὀλβίων ἀνδρῶν τέκνα
λαβὼν ὑβρίζειν, οὐ κατάξιος γεγώς. (l. 45.)
He is distressed that the daughter of such wealthy parents should have
made so poor a match. It is pity for the house of Agamemnon that affects
him, not pity for Electra.[117]
Hecuba again, in the play that bears her name, does not think that it is
much use to appeal to the “romantic” feelings of Agamemnon.
καὶ μὴν ἴσως μὲν τοῦ λόγου κενὸν τόδε,
Κύπριν προβάλλείν κ.τ.λ. (l. 824.)
In the _Phoenissae_ there is not much love lost between Antigone and
Haemon (cp. l. 1672 _seqq._). In the _Orestes_ the only incident
which causes Pylades to take the slightest interest in Electra is her
suggestion that they should murder Hermione. (l. 1191 _seqq._) In the
_Helena_ the first exclamation of Menelaus, when his wife assures him
that she has really been faithful to him all the time, is, “How can you
prove it?”[118] In the _Medea_ again the absence of the love-element is
a distinct loss. No one can doubt that the character of Medea would have
gained at once in probability and in pathos, if she had been allowed to
recur, if only for a moment, to the memory of her early love for Jason.
If more plays had been preserved, it would, doubtless, have been easy
still further to multiply instances; but what has been said already is
perhaps enough to show that the romantic element in Euripides is really
most conspicuous by its absence. And this cannot be a surprise to anyone
who cares to go to the root of the matter. That relation between men and
women which we call the “romantic” is founded upon sentiments and ideas
which are entirely distinct from the sexual emotions. Euripides, as we
have had occasion to notice again and again, though he had carefully
studied the sexual instinct in all its workings, had never been able
to conceive of a relation between man and woman which had not this
for its basis.[119] Without pure—I had almost said Platonic—love for
its fundamental principle, romance is an impossibility. The romantic
Alexandrian writers may not have themselves loved purely, but they knew
what pure love was, and such love was their ideal. With Euripides it was
not so, and this one fact is enough to show that he belongs to the old
literature and not to the new. That Euripides, by the emphasis which he
laid on the female character, contributed largely towards preparing men’s
minds for the growth of romance and what we now call love, cannot be
denied; but that he himself had more than the very faintest glimmerings
of what such love really was, cannot be maintained by anyone who has ever
read his works.
* * * * *
And here we may close this first part of our enquiry. The foregoing
examination of the Greek writers, though it has made no mention of
various well-known names, has yet been for our present purpose a
practically complete one. Pindar was prevented by the nature of his
works from dealing to any large extent with the position of women or
their relations with men;[120] and even where he has an opportunity of
so doing (as, _e.g._, _Fr._ 122), the result is very disappointing,
especially in view of his Boeotian origin. The fragments of the early
tragedians, other than the three discussed, are strangely deficient in
references to women. Nor need the old Attic Comedy detain us. The general
spirit of this thoroughly Athenian product is sufficiently summed up
in what profess to be the earliest words of it extant, the fragment of
Susario,
ἀκούετε λεῴ· Σουσαρίων λέγει τάδε,
υἱὸς Φιλίνον Μεγαρόθεν Τριποδίσκιος·
κακὸν γυναίκες,
while it may be doubted whether in the whole course of this literature a
female character was ever introduced on the stage, except with the view
of leading up to some form of indecency.[121]
The net results of this examination, though chiefly negative, are yet
fairly clear. It has, I hope, been shown that—
(1) That relation between men and women which is now called “love” was,
as far as can be gathered from literature, non-existent among the Greeks
down to the end of the fifth century.
(2) The position occupied by women in the consideration of men was
so unimportant, that even the sensual relation of the sexes was but
little treated of in literature till a comparatively late period, and
was always, down to the end of the fifth century, looked upon by a
considerable section of society as unfitted for public discussion and
representation. In other words, love-poetry in the modern sense is
non-existent in classical Greek literature; while love-poetry in any
sense, addressed to women, is a far more insignificant element in that
literature than is commonly supposed.
That what has just been said does not hold good of the “Alexandrian”
poets is so obvious that it hardly needs to be stated. Equally true,
however, and not equally obvious, is the fact that, from the very first,
these writers talk of women and women’s love in an entirely different
tone to that adopted by those of whom we have hitherto been speaking.
The line of cleavage between, say, Asclepiades and Euripides, is in
reality quite as marked as that between Euripides and Apollonius. On
this subject, therefore, it is perhaps worth while to say a few words,
though the terribly mutilated condition in which the works of the earlier
Alexandrians especially have come down to us, makes it very difficult to
point to striking examples of what has been said.
The first representatives of the “Alexandrian” school of poets—that is,
of the school of women-lovers—are Asclepiades and Philetas;[122] and in
both cases the mere nature of their works (quite apart from their tone)
is sufficiently striking when compared with the literature that had gone
before.
Whether Philetas actually gave the title of Battis to a collection of his
poems is difficult to say—it is, perhaps, on the whole, not improbable
that he did—but in any case there can be no doubt that a considerable
number of his elegies were either actually addressed to Battis, or
else treated of her. The erudite and elaborate style of these poems is
equally indisputable. Now, whatever may have been the actual tone of
address in these elegies—the fragments unfortunately tell us nothing,
and such other evidence as there is on the subject is of the scantiest
description[123]—the two facts above-mentioned form of themselves a
combination quite without parallel in the Greek literature of which we
have hitherto been speaking. That anyone should have taken the trouble
to devote erudition and elaboration to the praise of a woman, would have
been an unheard-of thing in early Greece.
Asclepiades is an equally striking figure in the early Alexandrian
literature; for it was he who was the first to introduce woman-love
into the epigram—the first, in fact, to give it that social recognition
which we have seen already accorded to boy-love, well-nigh two centuries
before.[124]
But what renders Asclepiades particularly important for us just now—far
more so than Philetas—is the fact that some forty of his epigrams have
been preserved, and that it will therefore be possible, by examining
these, to study at close quarters the points in which the tone of this
new love-poetry differs from that of the old.
In the epigrams of Asclepiades we find, for the first time, love for a
woman spoken of as a matter of life and death:—
οἴχομ’, ἔρωτες, ὄλωλα, διοίχομαι· είς γὰρ ἑταίραν
νυστάζων ἐπέβην, ἠδ’ ἔθιγόν τ’ Ἀΐδα.[125]
_Anth. Pal._ v. 162, 3-4.
Here, for the first time, such love appears as an end in life—as an
object for which a man may well brave death:—
νῖφε, χαλαζοβόλει, ποίει σκότος, αἶθε, κεραύνου,
πάντα τὰ πορφύροντ’ ἐν χθονὶ σεῖε νέφη.
ἢν γάρ με κτείνῃς, τότε παύσομαι· ἢν δὲ μ’ ἀφῇς ζῆν,
καὶ διαθεὶς τούτων χείρονα, κωμάσομαι.
_Anth. Pal._ v. 64, 1-4.
Similar in spirit to this is the epigram in _Anth. Pal._ xii. 166:—
τοῦθ’ ὅ τι μοι λοιπὸν ψυχῆς, ὅ τι δή ποτ’, Ἔρωτες,
τοῦτό γ’ ἔχειν, πρὸς θεῶν, ἡσυχίην ἄφετε.
εἰ μή, ναὶ τόξοις μὴ βάλλετέ μ’, ἀλλὰ κεραυνοῖς·
ναὶ πάντως τέφρην θέσθε με κἀνθρακίην.
ναί, ναί, βάλλετ’ Ἔρωτες· ἐνεσκληκὼς γὰρ ἀνίαις,
ὀξύτερον τούτων εἴ γ’ ἔτι, βούλομ’ ἔχειν.
or another—perhaps the most beautiful of all his poems that we know—so
like, and yet so utterly unlike, the elegies of Mimnermus:—
πῖν’, Ἀσκληπιάδη· τί τὰ δάκρυα ταῦτα; τί πάσχεις;
οὐ σὲ μόνον χαλεπὴ Κύπρις ἐληΐσατο,
οὐδ’ ἐπὶ σοὶ μούνῳ κατεθήξατο τόξα καὶ ἰοὺς
πικρὸς Ἔρως· τί ζῶν ἐν σποδιῇ τίθεσαι;
πίνωμεν Βάκχου ζωρὸν πόμα· δάκτυλος ἀώς·
ἢ πάλι κοιμιστὰν λύχνον ἰδεῖν μένομεν;
πίνωμεν γαλερῶς· μετά τοι χρόνον οὐκέτι πουλὺν,
σχέτλιε, τὴν μακρὰν νύκτ’ ἀναπαυσόμεθα.
_Anth. Pal._ xii. 50.[126]
The love of Mimnermus was hardly of a kind to bring tears to the eyes!
Yet, though this love has reached to such a passionate height, it does
not forget to be gallant and courteous;[127] and there is a striking
absence of that jealousy and that savage spirit of revenge which may
almost be said to be the one motive of the “lovers” in Euripides. A
remarkable instance of this most un-Greek willingness to forgive, is the
epigram in _Anth. Pal._ v. 150:—
ὡμολόγησ’ ἥξειν εἰς νύκτα μοι ἡ ’πιβόητος
Νικώ, καὶ σεμνὴν ὤμοσε Θεσμοφόρον·
κοὐχ ἥκει, φυλακὴ δὲ παροίχεται· ἆρ’ ἐπιορκεῖν
ἤθελε; τὸν λύχνον, παῖδες, ἀποσβέσατε.
while the sudden bathos of _Anth. Pal._ v. 7, is quite in the same
spirit. Even where a more real punishment is suggested, its execution is
put off into a very vague and distant future:—
ταὐτὰ παθοῦσα
σοὶ μέμψαιτ’ ἐπ’ ἐμοῖς στᾶσά ποτε προθύροις.[128]
_Anth. Pal._ v. 164, 3-4.
Striking, too, is the note of resignation that marks poems like _Anth.
Pal._ v. 189, xii. 153.[129] Still more striking, to those who remember
the brutality of Epicrates’ attack upon Lais,[130] is the tone in which
the aged courtesan is spoken of in _Anth. Pal._ vii. 217. The two little
pictures of happy lovers, so suggestive of the Acme and Septimius of
Catullus, in _Anth. Pal._ v. 153, xii. 105, are also very far indeed away
from anything of the kind that had ever gone before.[131]
We are thus confronted by a very remarkable fact. That way of regarding
women which we may call the romantic feeling—a feeling which we have
noticed to be conspicuous by its absence in Euripides—appears suddenly
developed to a high degree, in what is practically the first poetry
extant after him. The full meaning of this fact we shall come to consider
later; but before it is possible to do this, it will be necessary to
institute some further preliminary enquiries.
* * * * *