Studies of the Greek Poets (Vol 2 of 2)
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Title: Studies of the Greek Poets (Vol 2 of 2)
Author: John Addington Symonds
Release date: October 30, 2014 [eBook #47236]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS (VOL 2 OF 2) ***
STUDIES
OF
THE GREEK POETS
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
AUTHOR OF "SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN SOUTHERN EUROPE" ETC.
_Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen
Resolut zu leben_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE
1880
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER XIV.
_GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES._
Two Conditions for the Development of a National Drama.--The
Attic Audience.--The Persian War.--Nemesis the Cardinal Idea of
Greek Tragedy.--Traces of the Doctrine of Nemesis in Early Greek
Poetry.--The Fixed Material of Greek Tragedy.--Athens in the Age
of Euripides.--Changes introduced by him in Dramatic Art.--The
Law of Progress in all Art.--Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.--The
Treatment of #eupsychia# by Euripides.--Menoikeus.--The Death of
Eteocles and Polynices.--Polyxena.--Medea.--Hippolytus.--Electra and
Orestes.--Injustice done to Euripides by Recent Critics. Page 9
CHAPTER XV.
_THE FRAGMENTS OF ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES._
Alexandrian and Byzantine Anthologies.--Titles of the Lost Plays
of Æschylus.--The _Lycurgeia_.--The Trilogy on the Story of
Achilles.--The Geography of the _Prometheus Unbound_.--Gnomic Character
of the Sophoclean Fragments.--Providence, Wealth, Love, Marriage,
Mourning.--What is True of the Sophoclean is still more True of the
Euripidean Fragments.--Mutilated Plays.--_Phaëthon_, _Erechtheus_,
_Antiope_, _Danaë_.--Goethe's Restitution of the _Phaëthon_.--Passage
on Greek Athletes in the _Autolycus_.--Love, Women, Marriage, Domestic
Affection, Children.--Death.--Stoical Endurance.--Justice and the
Punishment of Sin.--Wealth.--Noble Birth.--Heroism.--Miscellaneous
Gnomic Fragments.--The Popularity of Euripides. Page 74
CHAPTER XVI.
_THE FRAGMENTS OF THE LOST TRAGIC POETS._
Apparent Accident in the Preservation of Greek Poetry.--Criticism
among the Ancients.--Formation of Canons.--Libraries.--The Political
Vicissitudes of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople.--Byzantine
Scholarship in the Ninth Century.--The Lost MS. of Menander.--Tragic
Fragments preserved by the Comic Poets and their Scholiasts; by
Athenæus, by Stobæus.--Aristotle.--Tragedy before Æschylus.--Fragments
of Aristarchus.--The _Medea_ of Neophron.--Ion.--The _Games_
of Achæus.--Agathon; his Character for Luxurious Living.--The
_Flower_.--Aristotle's Partiality for Agathon.--The Family of
Æschylus.--Meletus and Plato among the Tragic Playwrights.--The
School of Sophocles.--Influence of Euripides.--Family of
Carkinus.--Tragedians Ridiculed by Aristophanes.--The _Sisyphus_
of Critias.--Cleophon.--Cynical Tragedies ascribed to
Diogenes.--Extraordinary Fertility of the Attic Drama.--The Repetition
of Old Plots.--Mamercus and Dionysius.--Professional Rhetoricians
appear as Playwrights.--The School of Isocrates.--The _Centaur_ of
Chæremon.--His Style.--The _Themistocles_ of Moschion.--The Alexandrian
Pleiad.--The _Adonis_ of Ptolemy Philopator. Page 113
CHAPTER XVII.
_ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY._
Greek Tragedy and the Rites of Dionysus.--A Sketch of its Origin and
History.--The Attic Theatre.--The Actors and their Masks.--Relation
of Sculpture to the Drama in Greece.--The Legends used by the Attic
Tragedians.--Modern Liberty in the Choice of Subjects.--Mystery
Plays.--Nemesis.--Modern Tragedy has no Religious Idea.--Tragic
Irony.--Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy.--Modern Tragedy offers
no #katharsis# of the Passions.--Destinies and Characters.--Female
Characters.--The Supernatural.--French Tragedy.--Five
Acts.--Bloodshed.--The Unities.--Radical Differences in the Spirit of
Ancient and Modern Art. Page 145
CHAPTER XVIII.
_ARISTOPHANES._
Heine's Critique on Aristophanes.--Aristophanes as a Poet of the
Fancy.--The Nature of his Comic Grossness.--Greek Comedy in its
Relation to the Worship of Dionysus.--Greek Acceptance of the Animal
Conditions of Humanity.--His Burlesque, Parody, Southern Sense of
Fun.--Aristophanes and Menander.--His Greatness as a Poet.--Glimpses
of Pathos.--His Conservatism and Serious Aim.--Socrates, Agathon,
Euripides.--German Critics of Aristophanes.--Ancient and Modern
Comedy.--The _Birds_.--The _Clouds_.--Greek Youth and Education.--The
Allegories of Aristophanes.--The _Thesmophoriazusæ_.--Aristophanes and
Plato. Page 171
CHAPTER XIX.
_THE COMIC FRAGMENTS._
Three Periods in Attic History.--The Three Kinds of Comedy: Old,
Middle, New.--Approximation of Comedy to the Type of Tragedy.--Athenæus
as the Source of Comic Fragments.--Fragments of the Old Comedy.--Satire
on Women.--Parasites.--Fragments of the Middle Comedy.--Critique of
Plato and the Academic Philosophers.--Literary Criticism.--Passages
on Sleep and Death.--Attic Slang.--The Demi-monde.--Theophrastus
and the Later Rhetoricians.--Cooks and Cookery-books.--Difficulty
of Defining the Middle from the New Comedy.--Menander.--Sophocles
and Menander.--Epicureanism.--Menander's Sober Philosophy of
Life.--Goethe on Menander.--Philemon.--The Comedy of Manners culminated
in Menander.--What we mean by Modernism.--Points of Similarity and
Difference between Ancient and Modern Comedy.--The Freedom of Modern
Art. Page 216
CHAPTER XX.
_THE IDYLLISTS._
Theocritus: his Life.--The Canon of his Poems.--The Meaning of the
Word Idyl.--Bucolic Poetry in Greece, Rome, Modern Europe.--The
Scenery of Theocritus.--Relation of Southern Nature to Greek
Mythology and Greek Art.--Rustic Life and Superstitions.--Feeling
for Pure Nature in Theocritus.--How Distinguished from the same
Feeling in Modern Poets.--Galatea.--Pharmaceutria.--Hylas.--Greek
Chivalry.--The Dioscuri.--Thalysia.--Bion.--The Lament for
Adonis.--Moschus.--Europa.--Megara.--Lament for Bion.--The Debts of
Modern Poets to the Idyllists. Page 240
CHAPTER XXI.
_THE ANTHOLOGY._
The History of its Compilation.--Collections of Meleager, Philippus,
Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes.--The Palatine MS.--The Sections
of the Anthology.--Dedicatory Epigrams.--Simonides.--Epitaphs:
Real and Literary.--Callimachus.--Epigrams on Poets.--Antipater
of Sidon.--Hortatory Epigrams.--Palladas.--Satiric
Epigrams.--Lucillius.--Amatory Epigrams.--Meleager, Straton,
Philodemus, Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentiarius, Agathias,
Plato.--Descriptive Epigrams. Page 281
CHAPTER XXII.
_HERO AND LEANDER._
Virgil's Mention of this Tale.--Ovid and Statius.--Autumnal
Poetry.--Confusion between the Mythical Musæus and the Grammarian.--The
Introduction of the Poem.--Analysis of the Story.--Hallam's Judgment
on Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_.--Comparison of Marlowe and
Musæus.--Classic and Romantic Art. Page 345
CHAPTER XXIII.
_THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART._
Separation between the Greeks and us.--Criticism.--Greek Sense of
Beauty.--Greek Morality.--Greece, Rome, Renaissance, the Modern Spirit.
Page 363
CHAPTER XXIV.
_CONCLUSION._
Sculpture, the Greek Art _par excellence_.--Plastic Character of the
Greek Genius.--Sterner Aspects of Greek Art.--Subordination of Pain
and Discord to Harmony.--Stoic-Epicurean Acceptance of Life.--Sadness
of Achilles in the _Odyssey_.--Endurance of Odysseus.--Myth of
Prometheus.--Sir H. S. Maine on Progress.--The Essential Relation of
all Spiritual Movement to Greek Culture.--Value of the Moral Attitude
of the Greeks for us.--Three Points of Greek Ethical Inferiority.--The
Conception of Nature.--The System of Marcus Aurelius.--Contrast
with the _Imitatio Christi_.--The Modern Scientific
Spirit.--Indestructible Elements in the Philosophy of Nature. Page 391
THE GREEK POETS.
CHAPTER XIV.
_GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES._
Two Conditions for the Development of a National
Drama.--The Attic Audience.--The Persian War.--Nemesis
the Cardinal Idea of Greek Tragedy.--Traces of the
Doctrine of Nemesis in Early Greek Poetry.--The
Fixed Material of Greek Tragedy.--Athens in the
Age of Euripides.--Changes introduced by him in
Dramatic Art.--Law of Progress in all Art.--Æschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides.--The Treatment of #eupsychia#
by Euripides.--Menoikeus.--Death of Polyneices and
Eteocles.--Polyxena.--Iphigenia.--Medea.--Hippolytus.--Electra
and Orestes.--Lustspiele.--The _Andromache_.--The Dramas
of Orestes.--Friendship and Pylades.--Injustice done to
Euripides by Recent Critics.
The chapters on Æschylus and Sophocles have already introduced the
reader to some of the principal questions regarding Attic tragedy in
general. Yet the opening of a new volume justifies the resumption
of this subject from the beginning, while the peculiar position of
Euripides, in relation to his two great predecessors, suggests the
systematic discussion of the religious ideas which underlay this
supreme form of national art, as well as of the æsthetical rules which
it obeyed in Greece.
Critics who are contented with referring the origin of the Greek drama
to the mimetic instinct inherent in all humanity are apt to neglect
those circumstances which render it an almost unique phenomenon in
literature. If the mimetic instinct were all that is requisite for
the origination of a national drama, then we might expect to find that
every race at a certain period of its development produced both tragedy
and comedy. This, however, is far from being the case. A certain rude
mimesis, such as the acting of descriptive dances or the jesting of
buffoons and mummers, is indeed common in all ages and nations. But
there are only two races which can be said to have produced the drama
as a fine art originally and independently of foreign influences. These
are the Greeks and the Hindoos. With reference to the latter, it is
even questionable whether they would have composed plays so perfect as
their famous _Sakountala_ without contact with Hellenic civilization.
All the products of the modern drama, whether tragic or comic, must
be regarded as the direct progeny of the Greek stage. The habit of
play-acting, continued from Athens to Alexandria, and from Rome to
Byzantium, never wholly expired. The "Christus Patiens," attributed
to Gregory of Nazianzus, was an adaptation of the art of Euripides
to Christian story; and the representation of "Mysteries" during the
Middle Ages kept alive the dramatic tradition, until the discovery of
classic literature and the revival of taste in modern Europe led to the
great works of the English, Spanish, French, and subsequently of the
German theatre.
Something more than the mere instinct of imitation, therefore, caused
the Greeks to develop their drama. Like sculpture, like the epic,
the drama was one of the artistic forms through which the genius of
the Greek race expressed itself--by which, to use the language of
philosophical mysticism, it fulfilled its destiny as a prime agent
in the manifestation of the World-Spirit. In their realization of
that perfect work of art for which they seem to have been specially
ordained, the drama was no less requisite than sculpture and
architecture, than the epic, the ode, and the idyl.
Two conditions, both of which the Greeks enjoyed in full perfection at
the moment of their first dramatic energy, seem to be requisite for the
production of a great and thoroughly national drama. These are, first,
an era of intense activity or a period succeeding immediately to one
of excitement, by which the nation has been nobly agitated; secondly,
a public worthy of the dramatist spurring him on by its enthusiasm and
intelligence to the creation of high works of art. A glance at the
history of the drama in modern times will prove how necessary these
conditions are. It was the gigantic effort which we English people made
in our struggle with Rome and Spain, it was the rousing of our keenest
thought and profoundest emotion by the Reformation, which prepared us
for the Elizabethan drama, by far the greatest, next to the Greek, in
literature. The nation lived in action, and delighted to see great
actions imitated. Races in repose or servitude, like the Hebrews under
the Roman empire, may, in their state of spiritual exaltation and by
effort of pondering on the mysteries of God and man, give birth to
new theosophies; but it requires a free and active race, in which
young and turbulent blood is flowing, to produce a drama. In England,
again, at that time, there was a great public. All classes crowded to
the theatres. London, in whose streets and squares martyrs had been
burned, on whose quays the pioneers of the Atlantic and Pacific, after
disputing the Indies with Spain, lounged and enjoyed their leisure,
supplied an eager audience, delighting in the dreams of poets which
recalled to mind the realities of their own lives, appreciating the
passion of tragedy, enjoying the mirth of comic incident. The men
who listened to _Othello_ had both done and suffered largely; their
own experience was mirrored in the scenes of blood and struggle set
before them. These two things, therefore--the awakening of the whole
English nation to activity, and the presence of a free and haughty
audience--made our drama great.
In the Spanish drama only one of the requisite conditions was
fulfilled--activity. Before they began to write plays the Spaniards had
expelled the Moors, discovered the New World, and raised themselves to
the first place among European nations. But there was not the same free
audience in Spain as in England. Papal despotism and the tyranny of the
court checked and coerced the drama, so that, with all its richness and
imaginative splendor, the Spanish theatre is inferior to the English.
The French drama suffered still more from the same kind of restriction.
Subject to the canons of scholastic pedants, tied down to an imitation
of the antique, made to reflect the manners and sentiments of a highly
artificial court, animated by the sympathies of no large national
audience, the French playwrights became courtiers, artists obedient
to the pleasures of a king--not, like the dramatists of Greece and
England, the prophets of the people, the leaders of a chorus triumphant
and rejoicing in its mighty deeds.
Italy has no real theatre. In Italy there has been no stirring of a
national, united spirit; no supreme and central audience; no sudden
consciousness of innate force and freedom in the sovereign people.
The requisite conditions have always failed. The German drama, both
by its successes and shortcomings, illustrates the same position.
Such greatness as it achieved in Goethe and Schiller it owed to the
fermentation of German nationality, to the so-called period of "storm
and stress" which electrified the intellects of Germany and made the
Germans eager to assert their manhood among nations. But listen to
Goethe complaining that there was no public to receive his works;
study the petty cabals of Weimar; estimate the imitative and laborious
spirit of German art, and it is clear why Germany produced but
scattered and imperfect results in the drama.
The examples of England, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, all tend
to prove that for the creation of a drama it is necessary that the
condition of national activity should be combined with the condition of
a national audience--not an audience of courtiers or critics or learned
persons. In Greece, both of these conditions were united in unrivalled
and absolute perfection. While in England, during the Elizabethan
period, the public which crowded our theatres were uncultivated, and
formed but a small portion of the free nation they represented, in
Athens the people, collectively and in a body, witnessed the dramatic
shows provided for them in the theatre of Bacchus. The same set of men,
when assembled in the Pnyx, constituted the national assembly; and
in that capacity made laws, voted supplies, declared wars, ratified
alliances, ruled the affairs of dependent cities. In a word, they were
Athens. Every man among them--by intercourse with the greatest spirits
of the Greek world in the agora and porches of the wrestling-grounds,
by contemplation of the sculptures of Pheidias, by familiarity with
Eleusinian processions, by participation in solemn sacrifices and
choric dances, by listening to the recitations of Homer, by attendance
on the lectures of the sophists, by debates in the ecclesia, by
pleadings in the law-courts--had been multifariously educated and
rendered capable of appreciating the subtleties of rhetoric and
argument, as well as of comprehending the æsthetical beauty with
which a Greek play was enriched. It is easy to imagine the influence
which this potent, multitudinous, and highly cultivated audience must
have exercised over the dramatists, and what an impulse it must have
communicated to their genius. In England the playwright and the actor
were both looked down upon with pity or contempt; they wrote and acted
for money in private speculations, and in rivalry with several petty
theatres. In Athens the tragedian was honored. Sophocles was elected a
general with Pericles, and a member of the provisional government after
the dissolution of the old democracy. The actor, too, was respected.
The State itself defrayed the expenses of the drama, and no ignoble
competition was possible between tragedian and tragedian, since all
exhibited their plays to the same audience, in the same sacred theatre,
and all were judged by the same judges.
The critical condition of the Greek people itself at the epoch of the
drama is worth minute consideration. During the two previous centuries,
the whole of Hellas had received a long and careful education: at the
conclusion came the terrible convulsion of the Persian war. After
the decay of the old monarchies, the Greek states seethed for years
in the process of dissolution and reconstruction. The colonies had
been founded. The aristocratic families had striven with the mob in
every city; and from one or the other power at times tyrants had risen
to control both parties and oppress the commonwealth. Out of these
political disturbances there gradually arose a sense of law, a desire
for established constitutions. There emerged at last the prospect
of political and social stability. Meanwhile, in all departments of
art and literature, the Greeks had been developing their genius.
Lyrical, satirical, and elegiac poetry had been carried to perfection.
The Gnomic poets and the Seven Sages had crystallized morality in
apothegms. Philosophy had taken root in the colonies. Sculpture had
almost reached its highest point. The Greek games, practised through
nearly three hundred years, had created a sense of national unity. It
seemed as if all the acquirements and achievements of the race had
been spread abroad to form a solid and substantial base for some most
comprehensive superstructure. Then, while Hellas was at this point of
magnificent but still incomplete development, there followed, first,
the expulsion of the Peisistratids from Athens, which aroused the
spirit of that mighty nation, and then the invasion of Xerxes, which
electrified the whole Greek world. It was this that inflamed the genius
of Greece; this transformed the race of thinkers, poets, artists,
statesmen, into a race of heroes, actors in the noblest sense of the
word. The struggle with Persia, too, gave to Athens her right place.
Assuming the hegemony of Hellas, to which she was fore-destined by her
spiritual superiority, she flashed in the supreme moment which followed
the battle of Salamis into the full consciousness of her own greatness.
It was now, when the Persian war had made the Greeks a nation of
soldiers, and had placed the crown on Athens, that the drama--that form
of art which combines all kinds of poetry in one, which subordinates
sculpture, painting, architecture, music, dancing, to its own use, and
renders all arts subservient to the one end of action--appeared in its
colossal majesty upon the Attic stage.
At this point of history the drama was a necessary product. The
forces which had given birth to all the other forms of art were still
exuberant and unexhausted, needing their completion. At the same time,
nothing but the impassioned presentation of humanity in action could
possibly have satisfied the men who had themselves enacted on the
plains and straits of Attica the greatest and most artistic drama of
real history. It was one of the chief actors of Marathon and Salamis
who composed the _Prometheus_, and personated his own hero on the stage.
If we proceed to analyze the cardinal idea of Greek tragedy, we shall
again observe the close connection which exists between the drama
and the circumstances of the people at the time of its production.
Schlegel, in his _Lectures on the Drama_, defines the prevailing
idea of Greek tragedy to be the sense of an oppressive destiny--a
fate against which the will of man blindly and vainly dashes. This
conception of hereditary destiny seems to be strongly illustrated by
many plays. Orestes, Oedipus, Antigone, are unable to escape their
doom. Beautiful human heroism and exquisite innocence are alike
sacrificed to the fatality attending an accursed house. Yet Schlegel
has not gone far enough in his analysis. He has not seen that this
inflexible fate is set in motion by a superior and anterior power, that
it operates in the service of offended justice. When Oedipus slays his
father, he does so in contempt of oracular warnings. Orestes, haunted
by the Furies, has a mother's blood upon his hands, and unexpiated
crimes of father and of grandsire to atone for. Antigone, the best of
daughters and most loving of sisters, dies miserably, not dogged by
Fate, but having of her own free will exposed her life in obedience to
the pure laws of the heart. It is impossible to suppose that a Greek
would have been satisfied with the bald fate-theory of Schlegel. Not
fate, but Nemesis, was the ruling notion in Greek tragedy. A profound
sense of the divine government of the world, of a righteous power
punishing pride and vice, pursuing the children of the guilty to the
tenth generation, but showing mercy to the contrite--in short, a
mysterious and almost Jewish ideal of offended holiness pervades the
whole work of the tragedians. This religious conception had gradually
defined itself in the consciousness of the Greek race. Homer in both
his epics presents us with the spectacle of crime punished. It is the
sin of Paris and the obstinacy of the Trojan princes which lead to the
fall of Troy. It is the insolence of the suitors in the _Odyssey_ which
brings them to their death. The Cyclical poets seem to have dwelt on
the same theme. The storm which fell on the Achaian fleet, dispersing
or drowning the heroes, was a punishment for their impiety and pride
during the sack of Troy. The madness of Ajax followed his violence upon
Cassandra. When conscious morality begins in Greece the idea is at once
made prominent. Hesiod continually insists on justice, whose law no man
may violate unpunished. The Gnomic poets show how guilt, if unavenged
at the moment, brings calamity upon the offspring of the evil-doer.
This notion of an inheritance of crime is particularly noticeable,
since it tinged the whole tragedy of the Greeks. Solon, again, in his
dialogue with Croesus, develops another aspect of the same idea. With
him the Deity is jealous of all towering greatness, of all insolent
prosperity; his Nemesis punishes the pride of wealth and the lust of
life. Some of the most prominent personages of Greek tragedy--Creon,
Oedipus, Theseus, Agamemnon--illustrate this phase of the idea. In the
sayings of the Seven Sages we trace another shade of the conception.
All of them insist on moderation, modesty, the right proportion, the
due mean. The lyrists take up a somewhat different position. The
vicissitudes of life, both independent of and connected with personal
guilt, fascinate their imagination. They have a deep and awful sense
of sudden catastrophes. Pindar rises to a loftier level: his odes are
pervaded by reverence for a holy power, before whom the insolent are
forced to bow, by whom the humble are protected and the good rewarded.
Such are the traces of a doctrine of Nemesis to be found in all the
literature of the pre-dramatic period. That very event which determined
the sudden splendor of the drama gave a sublime and terrific sanction
to the already existing morality. The Persian war exhibited the
downfall of a haughty and insolent race, cut off in all its pomp and
power. Before the eyes of the men who witnessed the calamities of
Oedipus and Agamemnon on the stage, the glory of godless Asia had
vanished like a dream. Thus the idea of Nemesis quelling the insolent
and smiting the unholy was realized in actual history; and to add to
the impression produced on Greek imagination by the destruction of the
Persian hosts, Pheidias carved his statue of Nemesis to be a monument
in enduring marble of the national morality. Æschylus erected an even
more majestic monument to the same principle in his tragedies.[1]
Nemesis is the fundamental idea of the Greek drama. It appears
strongest in Æschylus, as a prophetic and awful law, mysteriously felt
and terribly revealed. Sophocles uses it to point the deep moralities
which govern human life. In Euripides it degenerates into something
more akin to a sense of vicissitudes; it becomes more sentimental--less
a religious or moral principle than a phenomenon inspiring fear and
pity. This sequence appears to be necessary in the growth and expansion
of a primitive idea. Rugged and superstitious at first, it is next
harmonized and humanized, and ends at last in being merely artistic.
In Æschylus the fundamental moral law of Nemesis, as a part of the
divine government of the world, is set forth in three distinct
manifestations. We find it expressed mythologically, as abstract
and ideal, in the _Prometheus_. The offence of Prometheus against
Zeus, though unselfish and generous, must be expiated by suffering;
the rebellious demi-god must be brought at last to merge his will
in that of Zeus, to bind his brows with the willow of submission,
and to place upon his finger the iron ring of necessity. We find it
expressed typically, as still ideal and almost superhuman, in the
_Oresteia_. Here a whole family is vitiated by the offence of their
first ancestor. The hereditary curse is renewed and fortified from
generation to generation, by the sins of the children, until at last
a reconciliation is effected between the purifying deities and the
infernal powers of vengeance. In the _Persæ_ the same law is exhibited
as a fact of contemporary history. It is no longer a matter of
mythology, as in the _Prometheus_, or a matter of heroic legend, as in
the _Oresteia_, but a matter of actual experience, that the godless
man should suffer and involve the innocent in his disaster. Thus the
law of Nemesis is displayed as an eternal verity in the _Prometheus_;
and in the _Oresteia_ it is actualized and humanized within the region
of heroic legend; in the _Persæ_ it is used for the explanation of
every-day events. The pedigree of inherited crime and vengeance, as
explained in the choruses of the _Oresteia_, and as illustrated by the
whole history of the Tantalidæ, is this.[2] The pride of wealth in the
first instance swells the heart, and inclines its possessor to ungodly
thoughts. This leads to impiety (#to dyssebes#), and in the energetic
language of the _Agamemnon_[3] the arrogant man kicks with his heel
against the altar of Justice. A state of presumptuous insolence
(#hybris#) is the result of the original unholiness. And now the man,
who has been corrupted in his soul, is ready for the commission of
some signal crime. Ate, or a blindness of the reason, which prevents
him from foreseeing the consequences of his acts, is the child of this
presumption. Inspired by Ate, he sheds the blood of his brother, or
defiles his sister's bed; and from this moment the seed is sown which
will spring up and breed fresh mischief for each successive generation.
After the spilling of blood the affair passes into the hands of the
Erinnyes, whose business it is to beset the house of the guilty doer.
They form the bloody revel, which, though glutted with gore, refuse to
quit the palace of Atreus. They leap upon it from above, and rack it
like a tempest. Yet from their power there is escape. The curse of the
house works; but it works only through the impure. Should a man arise
capable of seeing rightly and living purely, he may work off the curse
and become free. Such a man was Orestes. The leading thought in this
system of morality is that pride begets impiety, impiety produces an
insolent habit of mind, which culminates in blindness; the fruit of
this blindness is crime, breeding crime from sire to son. It is only
when the righteous man appears, who performs an act of retributive
justice, in obedience to divine mandates, and without the indulgence of
any selfish passion, that the curse is stayed.
Such is a crude sketch of the Æschylean theory of Nemesis, as set
forth in the great trilogy. To Æschylus, the presentation of the moral
law conceived by him is of even more importance than the exhibition
of the characters of men controlled by it. This is not the case with
Sophocles. He fixes our attention upon the #hamartia#, or error of the
guilty man, interests us in the qualities by which he was betrayed into
sin, and makes us feel that suffering is the inevitable consequence of
arrogant or wilful acts. The weakness of the offender is more prominent
in Sophocles than the vengeance of the outraged deity. Thus, although
there is the sternest religious background to all the tragedies of
Sophocles, our attention is always fixed upon the humanity of his
heroes. The house of Labdacus is involved in hereditary guilt. Laius,
despising an oracle, begets a son by Jocasta, and is slain by that
son. Oedipus, in his youthful recklessness, careless of oracular
warnings, kills his father and weds his mother. Jocasta, through her
levity and impiety, is hurried into marriage with the murderer of her
husband, who is also her own son. All this #authadia#, or headstrong
wilfulness, is punished by the descent of a fearful plague on Thebes;
and Oedipus, whose heat of temper and self-reliance are his only
serious crime, is overpowered by the abyss of misery into which these
faults have plunged his people and his family. The utter prostration
of Oedipus--when his eyes have been opened to the tissue of horrors he
has woven round himself, his mother, his nation, and his children--is
the first step in his moral discipline. He abdicates in favor of the
insolent Creon, and goes forth to wander, an abhorred and helpless
blind man, on the face of the earth. When, at the conclusion of his
pariah life, the citizens of Colonus refuse him harborage, he only
cries: "My deeds were rather sufferings than crimes." His old heroic
haughtiness and headstrong will are tempered to a noble abhorrence of
all baseness, to a fiery indignation. He has been purged and lessoned
to humility before the throne of Zeus. Therefore, in return for his
self-annihilation, the gods at last receive him to their company, and
constitute him a blessed dæmon in the place of his disgrace. It was
the highest triumph of tragic art to exhibit that new phase in the
character of Oedipus which marks the conclusion of the _Tyrannus_ and
is sustained in the _Colonëus_. In both of these plays, Oedipus is
the same man; but circumstances have so wrought upon his temper as to
produce a great change. Still, the change is only commensurate with
the force of the circumstances. We comprehend it, while at the same
time we are forced to marvel at the profound skill of the poet, who,
in the first tragedy, has presented to our eyes the hot-tempered king
reduced to abject humiliation, and in the second has shown us the same
man dignified, and purified by the dealings of the heavy hand of God.
Set aside by his calamity, and severed from the common lot of men,
Oedipus has submitted to the divine will and has communed with unseen
powers. He is therefore now environed with a treble mystery--with the
mystery of his awful past, the mystery of his god-conducted present,
the mystery of his august future. It was by such masterly delineation
of character that Sophocles threw the old Æschylean dogma of Nemesis
into the background, and moralized his tragedy without sacrificing an
iota of its religious force. Aristotle, speaking of the highest tragic
art, says that its object is to represent an #êthos#, a permanent habit
of moral temper. Careless or bad art allows impossible incongruities
in the delineation of character, whereas the true poet maintains
identity throughout. If this be so, Sophocles deserves the title of
#êthikôtatos# in the very highest sense. As a further illustration of
the divergence of Sophocles from the Æschylean dogma of Nemesis, it
is worth while to mention the _Antigone_. This play takes us beyond
the region of hereditary guilt into the sphere of moral casuistry;
its tragic interest depends not upon the evolution of an ancestral
curse, although Antigone is incidentally involved in the crime of her
brothers, but upon the conflict of duties in a single heart. Antigone,
while obeying the law of her conscience, is disobeying the command of
her sovereign. She acted rightly; yet her offence was sufficient to
cause her legal death, and this death she chose with open eyes. It is
in the person of Creon that the old moral of Nemesis is drawn. Like
Oedipus, he treats the warnings of Teiresias with scorn, and persists
in his criminal persecution of the dead Polyneices. Shaken at last
by the seer's vaticinations, he rescinds his orders, but too late.
Antigone has hanged herself in prison; Hæmon curses his father, and
stabs himself upon her corpse; Eurydice, maddened with grief, puts an
end to her own life; and thus the house of the tyrant is left unto him
desolate. It is quite impossible by any phrases of mere criticism to
express the admiration which every student of Sophocles must feel for
the profundity of his design, for the unity of his art, and for the
firmness with which he has combined the essential religious doctrines
of Greek tragedy with his own ethical philosophy.
In passing to Euripides we feel how much we have lost. The religious
foundation has been broken up; the clear intuitive morality of
Sophocles has been exchanged for sophistry, debate, hypothesis, and
paradox. In the delineation of character he wavers; not because he
could not create well-sustained types, since Medea, Hippolytus, and
many other Euripidean personages display sublime and massive unity; but
because, apparently owing to the rapid development of the dramatic art
and the speculative ferment of the age in which he lived, he was more
interested in the creation of plots and situations, in the discussion
of vexed questions, and in the critical rehandling of apparently
exhausted motives, than in the exhibition of the truly tragic #êthos#.
The praise bestowed on him by Aristotle as being #tragikôtatos#, proves
that his contemporaries had recognized this source of both his weakness
and his strength.
While considering the work done by the three great tragic authors, we
must not forget that the Greek dramatists adhered to a fixed body of
legends; the tales of the House of Atreus, of Troy, of the family of
Laius at Thebes, of Herakles, of Jason, and of Theseus, formed the
staple of the plays of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. This fact
helps to account for the early decline of the Greek drama. It was
impossible for the successors of Æschylus and Sophocles to surpass
them in the heroic treatment of the same mythical motives. Yet custom
and tradition, the religious antecedents of tragedy, the cumbrous
apparatus of mask and buskin and Bacchic robe, the conventional
chorus, the very size of the theatre, the whole form, in fact, of Greek
dramatic art, rendered a transition from the heroic to the romantic
tragedy impossible. Those fixed legends which Æschylus had used as the
framework for his religious philosophy of Nemesis and Ate, from which
Sophocles had drawn deep lessons of morality, had to be employed by
Euripides as best he might. On their firmly traced, inflexible outlines
he embroidered his own work of pathos and imagination, losing sight
of the divine element, blurring morality, but producing a world of
fanciful yet living shapes of sentiment and thought and passion.
If we seek to comprehend the position of Euripides in relation to
his predecessors, we must consider the changes which had taken place
in Athens between the period of the Persian war and that in which
he flourished. All the mutations of Greek history were accomplished
with celerity; but in this space of less than half a century the rate
of progress was nothing less than marvellous, and the evolution of
the Attic drama through its three great tragedians was accomplished
with a rapidity which is quite miraculous. Æschylus gained his first
prize in 484 B.C., Sophocles his first in 468 B.C., Euripides his
first in 441 B.C. The _Medea_ of Euripides, a play which exhibits
all the innovations of its author, appeared in 431 B.C. Therefore a
period of fifty-three years sufficed for the complete development of
the greatest work of art the world has ever witnessed. The history
of our own stage offers a parallel to this extraordinary rapidity of
growth. Marlowe produced his _Tamburlaine_ in 1590, Ford his _Lover's
Melancholy_ in 1628: between these two dates--that is to say, within
the compass of thirty-eight years--were composed all the plays of
Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger,
Webster, Heywood, Decker, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, and others whom
it would be tedious to mention. Halliwell's _Dictionary of Old English
Plays_ contains two hundred and eighty closely printed pages; yet
very few of the pieces he enumerates are subsequent to what we call
Elizabethan. But, though our drama, in respect of fertility, offers a
parallel to that of Athens, we can show no three poets of paramount
genius corresponding to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, each of
whom would have been sufficient by himself to mark a century in the
growth of the genius of his nation. Between Æschylus and Sophocles
there is a wide chasm in religion, politics, and art; between Sophocles
and Euripides, again, there is a chasm in religion, politics, art, and
philosophy. Yet Sophocles, after superseding Æschylus, lived to put on
mourning for the death of Euripides. Some of the men of Marathon yet
remained when Aristophanes was writing, both to point his moral against
Euripides, and also to prove by contrast with the generation that had
grown up since how impossible it was for the poet of the present to vie
with the Æschylus of the past. In the first place, Athens had become
the centre of progressive thought. Teachers of rhetoric and reasoning
made her wrestling-grounds and gardens the scene of their disputes and
lectures. The arts of eloquence were studied by the youth who in a
previous age had been contented with Homer. At Athens, Anaxagoras had
questioned the divinity of Helios, and had asserted reason to be the
moving force of the universe. Sophists who taught the arts of life for
money, and philosophers who subjected morals to ingenious analysis,
and explained away on scientific principles the ancient myths of Greek
nature-worship, combined to disturb ethical and religious traditions.
A more solid, because more reasoned, morality was springing up perhaps.
A purer monotheism was being inculcated. But meanwhile the old Hellenic
customs and the fabric of mythic theology were undermined. It could not
be but that the poet of the day should participate in these changes.
In the second place, the Athenian populace had grown to be supreme in
two departments--the high parliament of State and the law-courts. Every
Athenian was now far more than formerly an orator or judge of orators,
an advocate or judge of advocates. Two passions possessed the popular
mind: the passion for the assembly with its stormy debate and pompous
declamation; the passion for the dikastery with its personal interests,
its problems of casuistical law, its momentous tragedies of private
life, its studied eloquence. Talking and listening were the double
function of an Athenian citizen. To speak well on every subject, so as
to gain causes in the courts, and to persuade the people in the Pnyx;
to criticise speeches with acumen, so as not to be deluded by specious
arguments: these were the prime accomplishments of an Athenian youth of
promise. It is obvious that a very peculiar audience was thus formed
for the tragedian--an audience greedy of intellectual subtleties, of
pathetic situations, of splendid oratory, of clever reasoning--an
audience more appreciative of the striking than the true, of the novel
than the natural. In the third place, the Athenians had waxed delicate
and wanton since the Persian war. When Æschylus began to write,
the peril of utter ruin hung like a stone of Tantalus over Hellas.
That removed, the Greeks breathed freely. The Athenians, growing in
wealth and power, neglected the old moderation of their ancestors.
Youths who in earlier days would have fared hardly now drove their
chariots, backed their fighting-cocks, and followed their own sweet
will. Aristotle quaintly enough observes that the flute had become
fashionable after the expulsion of the Persians. The poet of the day
could no longer be austere like Æschylus or sedate like Sophocles.
In all these changes Euripides partook. The pupil in rhetoric of
Prodicus, in philosophy of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, a book-collector,
a student of painting, the friend of Socrates, cultivated in all
innovations of morality and creed, Euripides belonged essentially to
his own day. As far as a tragic dramatist can be the mouthpiece of
his age, Euripides was the mouthpiece of Athenian decline. For this
reason, because he so exactly expressed the feelings and opinions of
his time, which feelings and opinions produced a permanent national
habit of mind, Euripides became the darling of posterity. Æschylus was
the Titanic product of a bygone period; Sophocles displayed the pure
and perfect ideal; but Euripides was the artist who, without improving
on the spirit of his age, gave it a true and adequate expression. The
only wonder is that during his lifetime Euripides was not more popular
at Athens. His comparative neglect proves him to have been somewhat in
advance of his century, and justifies Aristophanes in the reproach that
he anticipated the Athenians in the break-up of their forms of thought.
At this point we may consider the condition of the tragic art when
Euripides took it up as the business of his life. Though tragedy, as
formed by Æschylus, represented one true and important aspect of Greek
thought--the religious--yet it could never have been adequate to the
life of the whole nation in the same degree as the many-sided drama
of Shakespeare, for example, was to that of our Elizabethan ancestors.
Its regularity and solemnity tended to make it an ideal work of art. It
might arouse the religious feeling, the national pride, the enthusiasm
for a legendary past, which were so powerful among the Athenians of the
Marathonian epoch. But it could not have had much attraction for the
Athenians of the Syracusan expedition. As men subject to the divine
rule, indeed, it had a message fraught with meaning for them; but as
Athenians of to-day it did not touch them. We can well believe that
this lofty, ceremonious art fatigued a large portion of the Attic
audience. After having listened to some seventy plays of Æschylus
and fifty of Sophocles, not to mention Phrynichus and Choerilus, and
scores of minor dramatists, all teaching the same religious morality,
and all obeying the same æsthetic principles, we can conceive that
a merry Greek began to long for novelty. It must have required the
supreme genius of a Sophocles to sustain the attention of the audience
at its ancient altitude. In the hands of inferior poets, the tragic
commonplaces must have appeared insipid. Some change seemed absolutely
necessary. Euripides, a poet of very distinguished originality, saw
that he must adapt his dramatic style to the new requirements of his
audience, and give them what they liked, even though it were not good
for them. The sophistic arguments, the strained situations, the
law-court pleadings, the pathetic touches, the meretricious lyrics, the
philosophical explanations, the sententious epigrams, the theatrical
effects, which mar his tragedies, were deliberate innovations on the
old pure style. Euripides had determined to bring tragedy home to the
hearts and understandings of the spectators. All the peculiarities
of his art flow from this one aim. This is the secret of what may be
described as his romantic realism, his twofold appeal to sympathy by
the invention of startling incident and by the faithful delineation of
vulgar life and common character. Whether he did not pursue this aim on
a false method, whether he might not have aroused the sympathies of his
audience without debasing tragedy, remains a fit matter for debate.
Entirely to eliminate the idea of Nemesis, which gave its character
to Greek tragedy, was what Euripides, had he been so inclined, could
hardly have succeeded in effecting. Though he never impresses on
our minds the dogma of an avenging deity, like Æschylus, or of an
inevitable law, like Sophocles, he makes us feel the chance and change
of human life, the helplessness of man, the stormy sea of passions,
sorrows, and vicissitudes on which the soul is tossed. Conventional
phrases about moderation in all things, retributive justice, and the
like, are used to keep up the old tragic form. In this way he brought
tragedy down to the level of real life, wherein we do not trace the
visible finger of Providence, but where all seems at least confusion
to the natural eye. Euripides no more than Shakespeare sought to be a
prophet or interpreter of the divine operations. In the same spirit he
treated his materials with freedom. Adhering conventionally, and as a
form of art, to the mythical legends of Hellas--that charmed circle
beyond which the tragic muse had never strayed--he adapted them to
his own purposes. He gave new characters to the principal heroes,[4]
mixed up legendary incidents with trivial domestic scenes, lowered
the language of demigods to current Greek talk, hazarded occasional
scepticism, and introduced familiar phrases into ceremonious debates.
The sacred character of the myths disappeared; Euripides used them as
so many masses of entertaining folklore and fiction, fit for tragic
handling. In some instances, as, for example, in the _Ion_ and the
ending of the _Hippolytus_, he may even have intended an attack upon
the ethics they had sanctioned. When we hear Achilles and Orestes
talking like Athenian citizens, wrangling, perorating, subtilizing,
seeking victory in strife of words, trifling with questions of
profoundest import, and settling moral problems by verbal quibbles,
we understand the remark of Sophocles that he had painted men as
they ought to be, Euripides as they are. Medea and Alcestis are not
the mythical Medea or the legendary queen of Pheræ, but an injured
wife, and a devoted wife, just such as Shakespeare or Balzac might
have depicted. Menelaus is invariably a faint-hearted, smooth-spoken,
treasonable, uxorious, vain man. Only in the _Helena_, when fairly
driven to bay, does he show the pluck of a soldier. Nothing can be
more contemptible than the Agamemnon of _Iphigenia in Aulide_. He is a
feeble, double-minded dastard, who has aspired to the commandership in
chief from motives of vulgar ambition, and who finds himself unable to
hold his own against cabal and mutiny. This is perhaps a development of
the Homeric conception, but with all the Homeric radiance, the dignity
that shields a monarch from disgrace, omitted. But unfortunately
for this attempt to make Greek tragedy more real and living, more
representative of the actual world, the cothurnus, the mask, the
chorus, the thymelé, the gigantic stage, remained. All the cumbrous
paraphernalia of the Æschylean theatre environed the men and women of
Euripides, who cut but a poor figure in the garb of demigods. In trying
to adapt the mould of Greek tragedy to real life, Euripides overpassed
the limits of possibility. The mould broke in his hands.
The same inevitable divergence from the Æschylean system is observable
in every department of the tragedy of Euripides. While Sophocles
had diminished the direct interposition of mysterious agencies, so
frequently invoked by Æschylus, and had interested his audience in
human character controlled and tempered by an unseen will of God,
Euripides went further. With him the affairs of life are no longer
based upon a firm foundation of divine law, but gods intervene
mechanically and freakishly, like the magicians in Ariosto or Tasso.[5]
Their agency is valuable, not as determining the moral conduct of the
personages, but as an exhibition of supernatural power which brings
about a sudden revolution of events. Independently of their miraculous
activity, the human agents display all varieties of character: every
shade of virtue and vice is delicately portrayed; pathetic scenes are
multiplied; the tendernesses of domestic life are brought prominently
forward; mixed motives and conflicting passions are skilfully analyzed.
Consequently the plays of Euripides are more rich in stirring incidents
than those of his predecessors. What we lose in gravity and unity is
made up for by versatility. Euripides, to use a modern phrase, is more
sensational than either Æschylus or Sophocles. Aristotle called him
#tragikôtatos#, by which he probably meant that he was most profuse of
touching and exciting scenes.
The same tendencies strike us in the more formal department of
the tragic art. Here, as elsewhere, Euripides moves a step beyond
Sophocles, breaking the perfection of poetic harmony for the sake of
novelty and effect. Euripides condescended to stage tricks. It is
well known how Aristophanes laughed at him for the presentation of
shabby-genteel princes and monarchs out-at-elbow.[6] Having no deep
tragic destiny for the groundwork of his drama, he sought to touch
the spectators by royalty in ruins and wealth reduced to beggary.
The gorgeous scenic shows in which Æschylus had delighted, but which
he had invariably subordinated to his subject, and which Sophocles,
with the tact of a supreme master in beauty, had managed to dispense
with, were lavished by Euripides. One play of his, the _Troades_, has
absolutely no plot. Such attraction as it possesses it owes to the
rapid succession of pathetic situations and splendid scenes, the whole
closing with the burning of the towers of Troy.
By curtailing the function of the Chorus, Euripides separated from the
action of the drama that element which in Æschylus had been chiefly
useful for the inculcation of the moral of the play. On the other hand,
by expanding the function of the Messenger he was able to indulge his
faculty for brilliant description. It has been well said, that the ear
and not the eye was the chosen vehicle of pathos to the Greeks. This
remark is fully justified by the narrative passages in the plays of
Euripides--passages of poetry unsurpassed for radiance, swiftness,
strength, pictorial effect. The account of the Bacchic revels among the
mountains of Cithæron, and of the death of Pentheus in the _Bacchæ_,
that of the death of Glauke in _Medea_, and of Hippolytus in the play
that bears his name, that of the sacrifice of Polyxena in the _Hecuba_,
that of Orestes and Pylades laying hands on Helen in the _Orestes_,
and many others, prove with what consummate skill the third of the
great tragic poets seized upon a field within the legitimate province
of his art as yet but imperfectly occupied by his predecessors.
Another novelty was the use of the prologue. Here, again, Euripides
expanded the already existing elements in Greek tragedy beyond their
power of enduring the strain he put upon them. In their drama the
Greek poets did not aim at surprise; the spectators were expected to
be familiar beforehand with the subject of the play. But when the
plot became more complicated and the incidents more varied under the
hands of Euripides, a prologue was the natural expedient, in perfect
harmony with the stationary character of Greek tragedy, for placing the
audience at the point of view intended by the poets.
The solution of the tragic situation by the intervention of a god at
the conclusion of the play, familiarly known as the _deus ex machinâ_,
was too frequently adopted by Euripides. The speeches of these divine
beings are always formal and uninteresting. Their interference is felt
to be mechanical, and the settlement of human difficulties effected by
them leaves an ineffaceable impression of littleness. It reminds us of
that pinch of dust upon the warring hive which Virgil described with
exquisite irony. The _deus ex machinâ_ existed potentially in previous
Greek tragedy, and Euripides is less to be blamed for the employment of
this device than for the abuse of it. He did not take enough pains to
prepare for the appearance of the deity by dramatic motives, and he had
recourse to it too often. It is probable that the theatrical effect
gratified his audience, and prevented them from calling in question the
artistic justification of so novel and exciting a stage spectacle.
In all these changes it will be evident that Euripides, wisely or
unwisely, obtained originality by carrying his art beyond the point
which it had reached under his predecessors. Using a simile, we might
compare the drama of Æschylus to the sublime but rugged architecture
which is called Norman, that of Sophocles to the most refined and
perfect pointed style, that of Euripides to a highly decorated--florid
and flamboyant--manner. Æschylus aimed at durability of structure, at
singleness and grandeur of effect. Sophocles added the utmost elegance
and finish. Euripides neglected force of construction and unity of
design for ornament and brilliancy of effect. But he added something of
his own, something infinitely precious and enduringly attractive. The
fault of his style consisted in a too exclusive attention to the parts.
We are also often made to feel that he fails by not concentrating his
whole strength upon the artistic motives of his plays. He has too many
side-thrusts at political and ethical questions, too many speculative
and critical digressions, too much logomachy and metaphysical debate.
The object of the foregoing remarks has been to show how and to
what extent Euripides departed from the form and essence of Greek
tragedy. It may sound paradoxical now to assert that it was a merit
in him rather than a defect to have sacrificed the unity of art to
the development of subordinate beauties. Yet it seems to me that in
no other way could the successor of Æschylus and Sophocles have made
himself the true exponent of his age, have expanded to the full the
faculties still latent in Greek tragedy, or have failed to "affect
the fame of an imitator." The law of inevitable progression in art,
from the severe and animated embodiment of an idea to the conscious
elaboration of merely æsthetic motives and brilliant episodes, has
hitherto been neglected by the critics and historians of poetry. They
do not observe that the first impulse in a people towards creativeness
is some deep and serious emotion, some fixed point of religious
enthusiasm or national pride. To give adequate form to this taxes the
energies of the first generation of artists, and raises their poetic
faculty, by the admixture of prophetic inspiration, to the highest
pitch. After the original passion for the ideas to be embodied in art
has somewhat subsided, but before the glow and fire of enthusiasm have
faded out, there comes a second period, when art is studied more for
art's sake, but when the generative potency of the earlier poets is
by no means exhausted. For a moment the artist at this juncture is
priest, prophet, hierophant, and charmer, all in one. More conscious
of the laws of beauty than his predecessors, he makes some sacrifice
of the idea to meet the requirements of pure art; but he never forgets
that beauty by itself is insufficient to a great and perfect work, nor
has he lost his interest in the cardinal conceptions which vitalize
the most majestic poetry. During the first and second phases which
I have indicated, the genius of a nation throws out a number of
masterpieces--some of them rough-hewn and Cyclopean, others perfect in
their combination of the strength of thought with grace and elevated
beauty. But the mine of ideas is exhausted. The national taste has
been educated. Conceptions which were novel to the grandparents have
become the intellectual atmosphere of the grandchildren. It is now
impossible to return upon the past--to gild the refined gold, or to
paint the lily of the supreme poets. Their vigor may survive in their
successors; but their inspiration has taken form forever in their
poems. What, then, remains for the third generation of artists?
They have either to reproduce their models--and this is stifling to
true genius; or they have to seek novelty at the risk of impairing
the strength or the beauty which has become stereotyped. Less deeply
interested in the great ideas by which they have been educated, and
of which they are in no sense the creators, incapable of competing on
the old ground with their elders, they are obliged to go afield for
striking situations, to force sentiment and pathos, to subordinate the
harmony of the whole to the melody of the parts, to sink the prophet in
the poet, the hierophant in the charmer.
This law of sequence is widely applicable. It will be seen to control
the history of all uninterrupted artistic dynasties. Greek sculpture,
for example, passes from the austere, through the perfect, to the
simply elegant. The artist of the Æginetan pediment was wholly intent
upon the faithful representation of heroic incidents. The event
filled his mind: he sought to express it as energetically as he
could. Pheidias stands on the ground of accomplished art. The mythus
selected for treatment is developed with perfect fidelity, but also
with regard to æsthetical effect. Praxiteles neglects the event, the
substance of the mythus. His interest in that has languished, and has
been supplanted by enthusiasm for mere forms of beauty. He lavishes
a Pheidian wealth of genius on separate figures and situations of no
great import except for their consummate loveliness. In architecture,
the genealogy of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders points to
the same law. Take another instance from modern painting. Giotto,
Raphael, Correggio, differ less perhaps in actual calibre than in
relative historical position. Giotto, intent upon the fundamental
ideas of Christian mythology, determines to express them forcibly,
faithfully, earnestly, without regarding aught but the best method of
investing them with harmony, lucidity, and dignity. Raphael ascends a
step, and combines the strength and purity of Giotto with elaborate
beauty and classic finish of style. Correggio at his appearance finds
all the great work done. The Christian mythus has been adequately set
forth by his predecessors. He is driven to become the thaumaturgist
of chiaroscuro, the audacious violator of unity in composition,
the supreme painter of erotic paradise. Further development of the
religious idea beyond that achieved by Raphael was impossible. Already
in Raphael's work a compromise between religious austerity and pagan
grace had been observable. The simplicity of Giotto was gone beyond
recapture. Correggio could only be original by carrying onward to its
ultimate perfection the element of beauty for its own sake introduced
by Raphael. Like Euripides, Correggio was condemned to the misfortune
of separating beauty from the idea, the body from the spirit. With
them the forces inherent in the germs of their respective arts were
exhausted. But those who rightly understand them must, we imagine,
be prepared to accept with gratitude the existence of Correggio and
Euripides, both as complementing Giotto and Æschylus, and also as
accounting for the meridian splendor of Sophocles and Raphael. Without
the cadence of Euripides the majestic aria of Sophocles would hardly be
played out. By studying the Correggiosity of Correggio we comprehend
how much of mere æsthetic beauty is held in solution in the work of
Raphael. It is thus, as it were, that, like projectiles, arts describe
their parabolas and end.
To return in detail to the Greek tragedians. Æschylus determines at
all hazards to exhibit the chosen mythus in its entirety, and to give
full prominence to his religious idea. Hence we have to put up with
much that is tedious--a whole _Choëphoroe_, for example. But hence
the unrivalled majesty of the _Agamemnon_. Sophocles manipulates
his subject more artistically, so as to make it harmonious without
losing sight of its internal source of unity. But he already begins to
disintegrate the colossal work of Æschylus--notably in his separation
of the trilogy and in his moralizing of the idea of Nemesis. With
Euripides the disintegration is complete. He neglects the mythus
altogether. The theosophy of Æschylus, always implicit in Sophocles,
survives as a mere conventionality in the work of Euripides. Finally,
like Praxiteles, he carves single statues of eminent beauty; like
Correggio, he conceals his poverty of design beneath a mass of
redundant elegance. What we have really to regret in the art of
Euripides is that he should have endeavored to compete at all with
Æschylus and Sophocles upon the old ground of the tales of Thebes and
Troy. Where he breaks new ground, as in the _Medea_, the _Hippolytus_,
and the _Bacchæ_, he proves himself a consummate master. Here the
novelty of his method shocks no sense of traditional propriety. He
is not driven to flippant paradox or sarcastic scepticism in dealing
with time-honored myths, or to travesties of well-marked characters,
in order to assert his individuality. These plays exhibit a complete
unity of outward form, and a profound internal unity of passion and
character. They are not surpassed in their own kind by anything that
any other poet had produced; and if "the _chef-d'oeuvre_ be adequate
to the _chef-d'oeuvre_," Euripides may here be pronounced the rival of
Sophocles and Shakespeare.
To enter into an elaborate analysis of Euripides as a poet would be
beyond the scope of this essay, which has for its subject the relation
of the third great dramatist to his predecessors and to Greek tragedy
in general. Yet something must be added to justify the opinion just
expressed, that, though Euripides suffered by the constraint under
which he labored in competition with rivals who had nearly exhausted
the resources of the tragic art, yet he displays beauties of his own
of such transcendent merit as to place him in the first rank of the
poets of the world. It would be a delightful task to attempt to do
him justice in the teeth of a malevolent generation of critics, led
by Schlegel and Müller, who do not understand him--to summon from the
shadows of the Attic stage the "magnificent witch" Medea, pure-souled
Polyxena, wifely Alcestis, fiery-hearted Phædra, chaste and cold
Hippolytus, Andromache upon her chariot a royal slave, Orestes in his
agony soothed by a sister's ministrations, the sunny piety of Ion, the
self-devotion of Menoikeus--intermingling perchance these pictured
forms, pure, statuesque and clear as frescos from Pompeii, with choric
odes and exquisite descriptions. The lyrics of Euripides are among the
choicest treasures of Greek poetry: they flow like mountain rivulets
flashing with sunbeams, eddying in cool, shady places, rustling through
leaves of mint, forget-me-not, marsh-marigold, and dock. His landscapes
are most vivid: in ancient poetry there is nothing to compete with the
pictures of Cithæron, where the Bacchantes lie limb-length beneath
the silver-firs, their snakes asleep, and the mountain air ruffling
their loose curls; or with the cave of Polyphemus, where the satyrs
lead their flocks from pasture up the valley between stone-pine and
chestnut-tree to the lawns that overhang dark purple sea-waves. In the
department of the picturesque Euripides is unrivalled. His paintings
have the truth to nature, the delicately modulated outline, and the
facile grace of the most perfect bass-reliefs or frescos.
But to attempt this labor of criticism would be to write a book upon
Euripides. It must be enough in this place to illustrate one quality
which occupies a large space in the dramatic ethics of Euripides,
and forms the motive of the action of his leading characters. The
old religious basis of Nemesis having been virtually abandoned by
him, Euripides fell back upon the morality of passions and emotions.
For his cardinal virtue he chose what the Greeks call #eupsychia#,
stoutheartedness, pluck in the noblest sense of the word--that temper
of the soul which prepared the individual to sacrifice himself for the
State, and to triumph in pain or death or dogged endurance rather than
give way to feebler instincts. That this quality should be prominent in
Euripides is not without significance. Not only did it enable him to
construct most thrilling scenes: it also harmonized with the advancing
tendencies of Greek philosophy, which already held within itself the
germs of Stoicism--or the theory of #karteria#.[7] But in his dramatic
handling of the motive he softened its harder outlines by touches of
exquisite unselfishness, converting adamantine firmness into almost
tremulous devotion. One of the most pathetic exhibitions of this virtue
occurs in the _Phoenissæ_. The Seven Captains are beleaguering Thebes,
and affairs are going ill with the garrison. Teiresias, however,
prophesies that if Creon's son, Menoikeus, will kill himself, Thebes
must triumph. Creon accepts the prophecy, but seeks to save his son;
he sends for Menoikeus and instructs him how he may escape to Dodona.
Menoikeus pretends to agree with what his father counsels, and, after
true Euripidean fashion, sends Creon to get his journey-money. Then
the boy, left alone upon the stage, turns to the Chorus and begins his
speech:
How well have I my father's fears allayed
With fraudulent words to compass my own will!
Lo, he would filch me hence, with shame to me,
Loss to my fatherland. An old man's heart
Deserves some pity.--What pity can I claim
If I betray the land that gave me birth?
Know then that I shall go and save the state,
Giving my life and dying for this land.
For this is shameful; if beneath no ban
Of oracles, bound by no force of fate,
But standing to their shields, men dare to die
Under the ramparts of the town they love;
While I, untrue to brother and to sire,
And to my country, like a felon slink
Far hence in exile! Lo, where'er I roam,
All men would call me coward! By great Zeus,
Who dwells among the stars, by bloody Ares,
Who made the dragon-seed in days of old
Lords of the land, I swear this shall not be!
But I will go, and on the topmost towers
Standing, will dash into the murky den
Where couched the dragon, as the prophet bade.
Thus will I free my country. I have spoken.
See, then, I leave you: it is no mean gift
In death I give the city; but my land
I purge of sickness. If all men were bold
Of their good things to work the public weal,
I ween our towns had less of ills to bear,
And more of blessings for all days to be.
With the _Phoenissæ_ in our hands, one other passage may be translated
which displays the power possessed by Euripides of composing a dramatic
picture, and presenting pathos to the eye. Eteocles and Polyneices have
been wounded to the death. Jocasta, their mother, and Antigone, their
sister, go forth to the battlefield to find them:
Then rushed their wretched mother on the twain;
And seeing them thus wounded unto death,
Wailed: "O my sons! too late, too late I come
To succor you!" Then, clasping them by turns,
She wept and mourned the long toil of her breasts,
Groaning; and by her side their sister groaned:
"O ye who should have been my mother's stay
In age, O, thoughtless of my maiden years
Unwedded, dearest brothers!" From his chest
Heaving a heavy breath, King Eteocles heard
His mother, and stretched forth a cold damp hand
On hers, and nothing said, but with his eyes
Spake to her by his tears, showing kind thoughts
In symbols. Then the other, who still breathed,
Looked at his sister, and the queen, and said,
"We have perished, mother! yea, I pity thee,
And this my sister, and my brother dead;
For dear he was--my foe--and yet was dear.
Bury me, O my mother, and thou, too,
Sweet sister, in my father's land, I pray;
And close my dying eyelids with thy hand,
Mother!"--Upon his eyes he placed her hand--
"And fare you well! Now darkness clips me round."
Then both breathed out their weary life together.
But the queen, when she saw this direful end,
Maddened with anguish drew the dead man's sword,
And wrought things horrible; for through her throat
She thrust the blade; and on her dearest falling
Dies, and lies stretched, clasping both in her arms.
But to return to the virtue of #eupsychia#. The play of _Hecuba_
contains a still more touching picture of heroism in death than that
displayed by Menoikeus. Troy has been taken. Ulysses is sent by the
Greeks to inform Hecuba that her daughter Polyxena must be sacrificed.
Hecuba reminds him how in former days he had come disguised as a spy
to Troy, and how she had recognized him, and, at his strong entreaty,
spared him from discovery. In return for this, let him now spare her
daughter. Frigidly and politely Ulysses replies, "True, lady, a life
for a life. You saved mine, I would do something to save yours; but
your daughter is quite another person. I have not the pleasure of
having received benefits from her. I must trouble her to follow me."
Then Polyxena breaks silence:
I see thee, how beneath thy robe, O king,
Thy hand is hidden, thy face turned from mine,
Lest I should touch thee by the beard and pray.
Fear not: thou hast escaped the god of prayers
For my part. I will rise and follow thee,
Driven by strong need; yea, and not loath to die.
Lo! if I should not seek death, I were found
A cowardly, life-loving, selfish soul!
For why should I live? Was my sire not king
Of all broad Phrygia? Thus my life began;
Then was I nurtured on fair bloom of hope
To be the bride of kings; no small the suit,
I ween, of lovers seeking me: thus I
Was once--ah, woe is me! of Idan dames
Mistress and queen, 'mid maidens like a star
Conspicuous, peer of gods, except for death;
And now I am a slave: this name alone
Makes me in love with death--so strange it is.
Sheer contempt of life, when life has to be accepted on dishonorable
terms, is the virtue of Polyxena. But, so far, though we may admire
her fortitude, we have not been touched by her misfortune. Euripides
reserves the pathos, after his own fashion, for a picture. Talthybius,
the herald, is telling Hecuba how her daughter died:
The whole vast concourse of the Achaian host
Stood round the tomb to see your daughter die.
Achilleus' son taking her by the hand,
Placed her upon the mound, and I stayed near;
And youths, the flower of Greece, a chosen few,
With hands to check thy heifer, should she bound,
Attended. From a cup of carven gold,
Raised full of wine, Achilleus' son poured forth
Libation to his sire, and bade me sound
Silence throughout the whole Achaian host.
I, standing there, cried in the midst these words:
"Silence, Achaians! let the host be still!
Hush hold your voices!" Breathless stayed the crowd;
But he: "O son of Peleus, father mine,
Take these libations pleasant to thy soul,
Draughts that allure the dead: come, drink the black
Pure maiden's blood wherewith the host and I
Sue thee: be kindly to us; loose our prows,
And let our barks go free; give safe return
Homeward from Troy to all, and happy voyage."
Such words he spake, and the crowd prayed assent.
Then from the scabbard, by its golden hilt,
He drew the sword, and to the chosen youths
Signalled that they should bring the maid; but she,
Knowing her hour was come, spake thus, and said:
"O men of Argus who have sacked my town,
Lo, of free will I die! let no man touch
My body: boldly will I stretch my throat.
Nay, but I pray you set me free, then slay;
That free I thus may perish: 'mong the dead,
Being a queen, I blush to be called slave."
The people shouted, and King Agamemnon
Bade the youths loose the maid, and set her free:
She, when she heard the order of the chiefs,
Seizing her mantle, from the shoulder down
To the soft centre of her snowy waist
Tore it, and showed her breasts and bosom fair
As in a statue. Bending then with knee
On earth, she spake a speech most piteous:
"See you this breast, oh! youth, if breast you will,
Strike it; take heart: or if beneath my neck,
Lo! here my throat is ready for your sword!"
He willing not, yet willing, pity-stirred
In sorrow for the maiden, with his blade
Severed the channels of her breath: blood flowed;
And she, though dying, still had thought to fall
In seemly wise hiding what eyes should see not.
But when she breathed her life out from the blow,
Then was the Argive host in divers way
Of service parted; for some bringing leaves,
Strewed them upon the corpse; some piled a pyre,
Dragging pine trunks and boughs; and he who bore none,
Heard from the bearers many a bitter word:
"Standest thou, villain? Hast thou then no robe,
No funeral honors for the maid to bring?
Wilt thou not go and get for her who died
Most nobly, bravest-souled, some gift?" Thus they
Spake of thy child in death: "O thou most blessed
Of women in thy daughter, most undone!"
The quality of #eupsychia# which we have seen in Menoikeus and Polyxena
is displayed by Macaria in the _Heracleidæ_ and by Iphigenia in the
last scene of her tragedy at Aulis. Iphigenia in this play ranks justly
as the most beautiful of Euripidean characters, and as the most truly
feminine among the heroines of the Greek drama. Her first appearance
on the stage enlists our sympathy, when she seems to welcome her
father--the father whom we know to be ignobly and deceitfully planning
her death--with the tenderest words of girlish greeting. Landor, in
his celebrated dialogue between Agamemnon and his daughter, on the
shores of Lethe, was mindful of this passage. But in that masterly
study of Greek style he added a new element of pathos. Iphigenia has
already drunk the waters of oblivion, and all the anguish of the
past, her father's treachery, and the bending of his will in base
compliance with a barbarous superstition, has been forgotten. Meanwhile
Agamemnon has not only his daughter's wrongs upon his conscience, but
Clytemnestra's adultery and vengeance, the price he paid for his old
crime, are still hot in his memory. Therefore the situation is more
complex in the modern poem. At Aulis, Iphigenia is but the loved child
of a weak man, who has to return her pretty speeches and caresses with
constrained phrases hiding a hideous meaning. When the truth is at
last made known to her she pleads passionately for life. "Had I the
tongue of Orpheus," she cries in her agony, "I would melt your heart to
pity, father, with my words. But now my only eloquence is tears. I was
the first who called you father, the first you called your child; the
first who sat upon your knees and took and gave a daughter's kisses."
She reminds him of his promises, the happy life she was to lead, the
comfort she meant to bring to his old age. She asks what Helen and
Paris have to do with her, or she with them, that she should perish in
their quarrel. She makes the little Orestes kneel and clasp his hands
in speechless prayer. At last the whole energy of her grief finds vent
in words more thrilling even than Claudio's when he thinks of death:
"Of all the joys that men can have, the sweetest is to live and see
the light. The dead are nothing; only madmen pray for death; it is
better to live miserably than to die gloriously." The effect of these
passionate entreaties and of the lyrical outburst of anguish which
follows is to make us feel the price of Iphigenia's sacrifice. She is
no forlorn captive like Polyxena, but a princess in the very bloom and
promise of her prime, affianced to Achilles, just entering upon the
sweetness of new life divined "in rich foreshadowings of the world."
How can she leave it all and go forth to dust and endless darkness? Yet
her father has dropped one word which in her first passion of grief
seems to be unheeded. "Hellas requires this of us both, my daughter--of
you as far as in you lies, and of me also, in order that she should be
free." When we next behold Iphigenia, his words had borne noble fruit.
Clytemnestra and Achilles are devising how to save her. She enters,
firm and resolute, but with the rapid utterance of exalted enthusiasm.
Her determination has been taken. The duty laid upon her, the greatness
of the glory, the grandeur of the part she has to play, had reconciled
her to death. "Mother, listen to my words! The whole of mighty Hellas
looks to me for her salvation and her freedom. How, then, should I be
so life-loving as to shrink? And you, you did not bear me for yourself
alone, but for all Greece. I give this my body for our land. Slay me;
destroy the towers of Ilion. This shall be my everlasting monument,
and this my children and my marriage and my fame." What follows in her
dialogue with Clytemnestra and Achilles, Clytemnestra vainly seeking
to overthrow her resolution, and Achilles blending his admiration of
her heroism with regret that he should lose this flower of royalty,
raises the unselfish passion of the girl to still sublimer height. She
is not only firm, but exquisitely gentle. She thinks of her brother,
whom she leaves behind. She entreats her mother to forgive Agamemnon.
And even when she breaks into lamentation, her one sustaining thought
remains, that she, she only, will overwhelm Troy, and bring the light
of safety and of freedom upon Hellas. Here, then, in the #eupsychia#
of Iphigenia, the antique thirst for glory is the determining motive;
and her final resolution contradicts that first outcry of simple nature
uttered to her father. The spiritual element, aflame with hope of
everlasting honor, discards the cruder instincts that make men cling to
life for life's sake only.
Another shade of the same virtue gives a peculiar attraction to
the self-devotion of Alcestis in her death, and of Electra in her
attendance on the brain-sick Orestes. Blending with the despair of
the captive princess and the frenzy of the inspired Pythia, this
sublime unselfishness renders Cassandra's attitude in the _Troades_
heroically tragic. She goes, a bondwoman, an unwilling concubine, with
Agamemnon to Mycenæ. Insult and slavery and a horrible death, clearly
discerned by her prophetic vision, are before her. And yet she triumphs
gloriously; her voice rings like a clarion when she proclaims that
the guerdon of her suffering is the ruin of the house of Atreus. It
is noticeable that Euripides, the so-called woman-hater, has alone
of the Greek poets subsequent to Homer, with the single exception of
Sophocles, devoted his genius to the delineation of female characters.
It is impossible to weigh occasional sententious sarcasms against
such careful studies of heroic virtue in woman as the Iphigenia, the
Electra, the Polyxena, the Alcestis of our poet. Aristophanes, who
was himself the worst enemy Athenian ladies ever met with, describes
Euripides as a foe to women, apparently because he thought fit to treat
them, not as automata, but as active, passionate, and powerful agents
in the play of human life.[8]
But to return to our illustrations of #eupsychia#. In the _Medea_ and
the _Hippolytus_ Euripides again displays this virtue of stern stoicism
in two women. But here the heroines are guilty: their Spartan endurance
of anguish to the death is tempered with crime. These tragedies are
the masterpieces of the poet; in each of them the single passion of
an individual forms the subject of the drama. Separated from all
antecedents of ancestral doom, Medea and Phædra work out the dreadful
consequences of their own tempestuous will. Not _Othello_, and not
_Faust_, have a more complete internal unity of motive. No modern
play has an equal external harmony of form. Medea was one of the
most romantic figures of Greek story. Daughter of the sun-god in the
Colchian land of mystery and magic, she unfolded like some poisonous
flower, gorgeous to look upon, with flaunting petals and intoxicating
scent, but deadly. Terrible indeed in wiles, she learned to love
Jason. By a series of crimes, in which the hero participated as her
accomplice, and of which he reaped the benefits--by the betrayal of
her father's trust, by the murder of her brother, by the butchery of
Pelias--she placed her lover on the throne of Thessaly. Then Jason, at
the height of his prosperity, forgetting the love, as of some tigress,
that the sorceress bore him, forgetting, too, her fatal power of life
and death, cast his eyes on Glauke, the king's daughter of Corinth, and
bade Medea go forth with her sons, a pariah--a dishonored wife. Whither
should she turn? To Colchis, and the father whose son she slew? To
Thessaly, where the friends of Pelias still live? Jason does not care.
His passion for Medea has vanished like a mist. Their common trials
common crimes--trials which should have endeared them to each other;
crimes which were as strong as hell to bind them--have melted from his
mind like dew. He only wishes to be rid of the fell woman, and to live
a peaceful life with innocent home-keeping folk. But on one thing Jason
has not reckoned--on the awful fury of his old love; he forgets how she
wrought by magic and by poison in his need, and how in her own need she
may do things terrible and strange. In the same way we often think that
we will lightly leave some ancient, strong, habitual sin, of old time
passionately cherished, of late grown burdensome; but not so easily may
the new pure life be won. Between our souls and it there stands the
fury of the past.
Medea in her house, like a lioness in her den, has crouched sleepless,
without food, not to be touched or spoken to, since the first news
of Glauke's projected bridal was told. No one knows what she is
meditating. Only the nurse of her children mistrusts her fiery eyes
and thunderous silence, her viperish loose hair and throbbing skin.
The moment is finely prepared. Some Corinthian ladies visit her, and
she, though loath to rise, does so at their prayer, excusing her
reluctance by illness, and by a foreigner's want of familiarity with
their customs. Pale, calm, and terrible, she stands before them. From
this first appearance of Medea to the end of the play, her one figure
occupies the whole space of the theatre. Her spirit is in the air,
and the progress of the action only dilates the impression which she
has produced. The altercations with Creon and with Jason are artfully
conducted so as to arouse our sympathy and make us feel that such a
nature is being driven by the intemperance and selfishness of others
into a _cul-de-sac_ of crime. The facility with which she disposes in
thought of her chief foes, as if they were so many flies that have to
be caught and killed, is eminently impressive. "Many are the ways
of death: I will stretch three corpses in the palace--Creon's, the
bride's, my husband's. My only thought is now of means--whether to burn
them or to cut their throats--perchance the old tried way of poison
were the best. They are dead." #Kai dê tethnasi.# Medea knows _they_
cannot escape her. For the rest, she will consider her own plans. In
the scene with Jason she rises to an appalling altitude. Her words
are winged snakes and the breath of furnaces. There is no querulous
recrimination, no impotence of anger; but her spirit glows and flickers
dragon-like against him, as she stands above him on the pedestal of his
ingratitude. But when he has gone, and she sits down to reconsider her
last act of vengeance--the murder of his sons and hers--then begins the
tragic agony of her own soul. These lines reveal the contest between a
mother's love and the pride of an injured woman, the #eupsychia# of one
who must steel her heart in order to preserve her fame for fortitude
and power:
O Zeus, and justice of high Jove, and light
Of Sun, all seeing! Now victorious
Over my foes shall I pace forth, sweet friends,
To triumph!
I shudder at the deed that will be done
Hereafter: for my children I shall slay--
Mine; there is none shall snatch them from me now.
Let no one deem me timid, weak of hand,
Placidly tame; but of the other temper,
Harsh to my foes and kindly to my friends.
Then when Glauke, arrayed in the robe Medea sent her, is smouldering
to ashes with her father in slow phosphorescent flame, Medea sends for
her children and makes that last speech which is the very triumph of
Euripidean rhetoric:
O children, children! you have still a city,
A home, where, lost to me and all my woe,
You will live out your lives without a mother!
But I--lo! I am for another land,
Leaving the joy of you:--to see you happy,
To deck your marriage-bed, to greet your bride,
To light your wedding-torch shall not be mine!
O me, thrice wretched in my own self-will!
In vain, then, dear my children! did I rear you;
In vain I travailed, and with wearing sorrow
Bore bitter anguish in the hour of childbirth!
Yea, of a sooth, I had great hope of you,
That you should cherish my old age, and deck
My corpse with loving hands, and make me blessed
'Mid women in my death. But now, ah me!
Hath perished that sweet dream. For long without you
I shall drag out a dreary doleful age.
And you shall never see your mother more
With your dear eyes: for all your life is changed.
Woe, woe!
Why gaze you at me with your eyes, my children?
Why smile your last sweet smile? Ah! me; ah! me!
What shall I do? My heart dissolves within me,
Friends, when I see the glad eyes of my sons!
I cannot. No: my will that was so steady,
Farewell to it. They too shall go with me:
Why should I wound their sire with what wounds them,
Heaping tenfold his woes on my own head?
No, no, I shall not. Perish my proud will.
Yet whence this weakness? Do I wish to reap
The scorn that springs from enemies unpunished?
Dare it I must. What craven fool am I,
To let soft thoughts flow trickling from my soul!
Go, boys, into the house: and he who may not
Be present at my solemn sacrifice--
Let him see to it. My hand shall not falter.
Ah! ah!
Nay, do not, O my heart! do not this thing!
Suffer them, O poor fool; yea, spare thy children!
There in thy exile they will gladden thee.
Not so: by all the plagues of nethermost hell
It shall not be that I, that I should suffer
My foes to triumph and insult my sons!
Die must they: this must be, and since it must,
I, I myself will slay them, I who bore them.
So it is fixed, and there is no escape.
Even as I speak, the crown is on her head,
The bride is dying in her robes, I know it.
But since this path most piteous I tread,
Sending them forth on paths more piteous far,
I will embrace my children. Oh, my sons,
Give, give your mother your dear hands to kiss!
Oh, dearest hands, and mouths most dear to me,
And forms and noble faces of my sons!
Be happy even there: what here was yours,
Your father robs you of. Oh, loved embrace!
Oh, tender touch and sweet breath of my boys!
Go, go, go, leave me! Lo, I cannot bear
To look on you: my woes have overwhelmed me!
Now know I all the ill I have to do:
But rage is stronger than my better mind,
Rage, cause of greatest crimes and griefs to mortals.[9]
Phædra, the heroine of the _Hippolytus_, supplies us with a new
conception of the same thirst for #eukleia#--the same #eupsychia,
gennaiotês#, indifference to life when honor is at stake. The pride of
her good name drives Phædra to a crime more detestable than Medea's,
because her victim, Hippolytus, is eminently innocent. I do not want to
dwell upon the pining sickness of Phædra, which Euripides has wrought
with exquisitely painful details, but rather to call attention to
Hippolytus. Side by side with the fever of Phædra is the pure fresh
health of the hunter-hero. The scent of forest-glades, where he pursues
the deer with Artemis, surrounds him; the sea-breeze from the sands,
where he trains his horses, moves his curls. His piety is as untainted
as his purity; it is the maiden-service of a maiden-saint. In his
observance of the oath extorted from him by Phædra's nurse, in his
obedience to his father's will, in his kindness to his servants, in
his gentle endurance of a painful death, and in the joy with which he
greets the virgin huntress when she comes to visit him, Euripides has
firmly traced the ideal of a guileless, tranquil manhood. Hippolytus
among the ancients was the Paladin of chastity, the Percival of their
romance. Nor is any knight of mediæval legend more true and pure than
he. Hippolytus first comes upon the stage with a garland of wild
flowers for Artemis:
Lady, for thee this garland have I woven
Of wilding flowers plucked from an unshorn meadow,
Where neither shepherd dares to feed his flock,
Nor ever scythe hath swept, but through the mead
Unshorn in spring the bee pursues her labors,
And maiden modesty with running rills
Waters the garden. Sweet queen, take my crown
To deck thy golden hair: my hand is holy.
To me alone of men belongs this honor,
To be with thee and answer when thou speakest;
Yea, for I hear thy voice but do not see thee.
So may I end my life as I began.
Even in this bald translation some of the fresh morning feeling,
as of cool fields and living waters, and pure companionship and a
heart at peace, transpires. Throughout the play, in spite of the
usual Euripidean blemishes of smart logic-chopping and pragmatical
sententiousness, this impression is maintained. Hippolytus moves
through it with the athletic charm that belongs to such statues as
that of Meleager and his dog in the Vatican. At the end the young hero
is carried from the sea-beach, mangled, and panting out his life amid
intolerable pain and fever-thirst. His lamentations are loud and deep
as he calls on Death the healer. Then suddenly is he aware of the
presence of Artemis:
Oh, breath and perfume of the goddess! Lo,
I feel thee even in torment, and am eased!
Here in this place is Artemis the queen.
The scent of the forest coolness has been blown upon him. His death
will now be calm.
_A._ Poor man! she is; the goddess thou most loved.
_H._ Seest thou me, lady, in what plight I lie?
_A._ I see thee; but I may not drop a tear.
_H._ Thou hast no huntsman and no servant now.
_A._ Nay, truly, since thou diest, dear my friend.
_H._ No groom, no guardian of thy sculptured shrine.
_A._ 'Twas Kupris, the arch-fiend, who wrought this woe.
_H._ Ah, me! Now know I what god made me die.
_A._ Shorn of her honor, vexed with thy chaste life.
_H._ Three of us her one spite--behold! hath slain.
_A._ Thy father, and his wife, and thirdly thee.
_H._ Yea, and I therefore mourn my sire's ill hap.
_A._ Snared was he by a goddess's deceit.
_H._ Oh! for your sorrow in this woe, my father!
_T._ Son! I have perished: life has now no joy.
_H._ I mourn this error more for you than me.
_T._ Would, son, I were a corpse instead of you.
_A._ Stay! for though earth and gloom encircle thee,
Not even thus the anger unavenged
Of Kupris shall devour at will thy body:
For I, with my own hand, to pay for thee,
Will pierce of men him whom she mostly dotes on,
With these inevitable shafts. But thou,
As guerdon for thine anguish, shalt henceforth
Gain highest honors in Troezenian land,
My gift. Unwedded maids before their bridals
Shall shear their locks for thee, and thou forever
Shalt reap the harvest of unnumbered tears.
Yea, and for aye, with lyre and song the virgins
Shall keep thy memory; nor shall Phædra's love
For thee unnamed fall in oblivious silence.
But thou, O son of aged Ægeus, take
Thy child within thy arms and cherish him;
For without guile thou slewest him, and men,
When the gods lead, may well lapse into error.
Thee too I counsel; hate not thy own father,
Hippolytus: 'twas fate that ruined thee.
Thus Artemis reconciles father and son. Hippolytus dies slowly in the
arms of Theseus, and the play ends. The appearance of the goddess,
as a lady of transcendent power more than as a divine being--her
vindictive hatred of Aphrodite, and the moral that she draws about the
fate by which Hippolytus died and Theseus sinned, are all thoroughly
Euripidean. Not so would Æschylus the theologian, or Sophocles the
moralist, have dealt with the conclusion of the play. But neither would
have drawn a more touching picture.
The following scene from the opening of the _Orestes_ may be taken as
a complete specimen of the manner of Euripides when working pathos to
its highest pitch, and when desirous of introducing into mythic history
the realities of common life. Electra appears as the devoted sister;
Orestes as the invalid brother; the Chorus are somewhat importunate,
but, at the same time, sympathetic visitors. This extract also serves
to illustrate the Euripidean habit of mingling lyrical dialogue with
the more regular Iambic in passages which do not exactly correspond to
the Commos of the elder tragedians, but which require highly wrought
expression. Helen has just left Electra. As the wife of Menelaus walks
away, the daughter of Agamemnon follows her with her eyes, and speaks
thus:
_El._ O nature! what a curse art thou 'mid men--
Yea, and a safeguard to the nobly-tempered!
[_Points her finger at Helen._
See how she snipped the tips of her long hair,
Saving its beauty! She's the same woman still.--
May the gods hate thee for the ruin wrought
On me, on him, on Hellas! Woe is me!
[_Sees the Chorus advancing._
Here come my friends again with lamentations,
To join their wails with mine: they'll drive him far
From placid slumber, and will waste mine eyes
With weeping when I see my brother mad.
[_Speaking to the Chorus._
O dearest maidens, tread with feet of wool;
Come softly, make no rustling, raise no cry:
For though your kindness be right dear to me,
Yet to wake him will work me double mischief.
[_The Chorus enters._
_Ch._ Softly, softly! let your tread
Fall upon the ground like snow!
Every sound be dumb and dead:
Breathe and speak in murmurs low!
_El._ Further from the couch, I pray you; further yet, and yet away!
_Ch._ Even so, dear maid, you see that I obey.
_El._ Ah, my friend, speak softly, slowly,
Like the sighing of a rush.
_Ch._ See I speak and answer lowly
With a stealthy smothered hush.
_El._ That is right: come hither now; come boldly forward to my side;
Come, and say what need hath brought you: for at length
with watching tried,
Lo, he sleeps, and on the pillow spreads his limbs and
tresses wide.
_Ch._ How is he? Dear lady, say:
Let us hear your tale, and know
Whether you have joy to-day,
Whether sorrow brings you low.
_El._ He is breathing still, but slightly groaning in his sleep alway.
_Ch._ O poor man! but tell us plainer what you say.
_El._ Hush! or you will scare the pleasant
Sleep that to his eyelid brings
Brief oblivion of the present.
_Ch._ Ah, thrice wretched race that springs
Burdened with the god-sent curses of abhorrèd deeds!
_El._ Ah, me:
Guilty was the voice of Phoebus, when enthroned for prophecy,
He decreed my mother's murder--mother murdered guiltily!
_Ch._ Look you, lady, on his bed,
How he gently stirs and sighs!
_El._ Woe is me! His sleep hath fled,
Frightened by your noisy cries!
_Ch._ Nay; I thought he sleeping lay.
_El._ Hence, I bid you, hence away
From the bedside, from the house!
Cease your noise;
Subdue your voice;
Stay not here to trouble us!
_Ch._ He is sleeping, and you rightly caution us.
_El._ Holy mother, mother Night!
Thou who sheddest sleep on every wearied wight!
Arise from Erebus, arise
With plumy pinions light:
Hover o'er the house of Atreus; and upon our aching eyes,
Wearied with woe,
With grief brought low,
Solace bring 'mid miseries.
Silence! Hush! what noise was this?
Can you ne'er your tongue restrain,
And allow soft slumber's kiss
To refresh his fevered brain?
_Ch._ Tell me, lady, what the close
Of his grief is like to be?
_El._ Death. Nought else will end his woes.
Lo, he fasts continually.
_Ch._ Alas! Alas! his fate is sure.
_El._ By the promise to make pure
Hands a mother's life-blood stained,
Phoebus brought
Woe, and wrought
All the grief that we have gained.
_Ch._ Just it was to slay the slayer; yet the deed with
crime was fraught.
_El._ Thou art dead: oh, thou art dead,
Mother, who didst bear me! mother, who didst shed
A father's blood, and slay
The children of thy bed!
We are dying, we are dying, like the dead, and weak as they:
For thou art gone,
And I am wan,
Weeping, sighing night and day!
Look upon me, friends, behold
How my withered life must run,
Childless, homeless, sad and cold,
Comfortless beneath the sun.
_Ch._ Come hither, maid Electra, to the couch:
Lest haply he should breathe his life away
Unheeded: I like not this deep dead languor.
[_Orestes wakes up._
_Or._ O soothing sleep! dear friend! best nurse of sickness!
How sweetly came you in my hour of need.
Blest Lethe of all woes, how wise you are,
How worthy of the prayers of wretched men!
Whence came I to this place? How journeyed I?
I cannot think: my former mind is vanished.
_El._ O dearest, how hath your sleep gladdened me!
Say, can I help to soothe or raise your body?
_Or._ Yes, take me, take me: with your kind hands wipe
The foam of fever from my lips and eyes.
_El._ Sweet is this service to me; I am glad
To soothe my brother with a sister's hand.
_Or._ Support me with your breast, and fan my forehead;
Brush the loose hair: I scarce can see for sickness.
_El._ Poor head! How rough and tangled are the curls,
How haggard is your face with long neglect!
_Or._ Now lay me back upon the bed again:
When the fit leaves me, I am weak and helpless.
_El._ Yea; and the couch is some relief in sickness,
A sorry friend, but one that must be borne with.
_Or._ Raise me once more upright, and turn my body:
Sick men are hard to please, through wayward weakness.
_El._ How would you like to put your feet to earth?
'Tis long since you stood up; and change is pleasant.
_Or._ True: for it gives a show of seeming health;
And shows are good, although there be no substance.
[_Orestes changes his posture and sits at ease._
_El._ Now listen to me, dearest brother mine,
While the dread Furies leave you space to think.
_Or._ What have you new to say? Good news will cheer me;
But of what's bad I have enough already.
_El._ Menelaus is here, your father's brother:
His ships are safely moored in Nauplia.
_Or._ What! Has he come to end your woes and mine?
He is our kinsman and our father's debtor.
_El._ He has: and this is surety for my words--
Helen hath come with him from Troy, is here.
_Or._ If heaven had saved but him, he'd now be happier:
But with his wife, he brings a huge curse home.
_El._ Yea: Tyndareus begat a brood of daughters
Marked out for obloquy, a shame through Hellas.
_Or._ Be you, then, other than the bad; you can:
Make not fine speeches, but be rightly minded!
[_As he speaks, he becomes excited._
_El._ Ah me, my brother! your eyes roll and tremble--
One moment sane, and now swift frenzy fires you!
[_Orestes speaks to phantoms in the air._
_Or._ Mother, I sue to thee: nay, mother, hound not
Those blood-faced, snake-encircled women on me!
There! There! See there--close by they bound upon me!
_El._ Stay, wretched brother; start not from the bed!
For nought you see of what seems clear and certain.
_Or._ O Phoebus! They will slay me, those dog-faced,
Fierce-eyed, infernal ministers, dread goddesses!
_El._ I will not leave you! but with woven arms
Will stay you from the direful spasm-throes.
[_Orestes hurls Electra, from him._
_Or._ Let go! Of my damned Furies thou art one,
That with thy grip wouldst hale me down to hell!
_El._ Ah, woe is me! what succor shall I find,
Seeing the very gods conspire against us?
_Or._ Give me my bow and arrows, Phoebus' gift,
Wherewith Apollo bade me fight the fiends,
If they should scare me with wild-eyed delirium.
Some god shall feel the fury of man's hand,
Unless ye vanish forth from out my sight!
[_He threatens the phantoms._
Hear ye not! See ye not the feathery wings
Of swift, sure-striking shafts, ready to flutter?
Ha! Ha!
Why linger here? Go, sweep with outspread pinions
The windy sky! Hence, and complain of Phoebus!
Woe's me!
[_Recovering his reason again._
Why waste I breath, wearying my lungs in vain?
Where am I? From my bed how leaped I--when?
'Midmost the waves once more I see fair weather.
Sister, why weep you? Wherefore veil your head?
I blush to see you partner of my woe,
Blush that a girl should suffer in my sickness.
Nay, do not pine thus, bowed beneath my burden--
All mine;--you said but yea, 'twas I who shed
Our mother's blood: but Loxias I blame,
Who urging me to most unholy deeds
Helped me with words, in act availed me nothing.
Yea, and I think my sire, if, face to face,
I asked him--is it right to slay my mother?
Would lengthen many prayers, beseeching me
Never to draw my sword on her who bare me,
Seeing he might not see the sun again,
And I am doomed to bear this weight of horrors.--
But now unveil your face again, dear sister,
And cease from weeping--even though we be
Ringed round with sorrows. When you see me downcast,
Soothe you my terror and my frenzied soul--
Soothe and caress me; yea, and when you moan,
'Tis mine to stay and comfort as I can:
For these kind services of friends are fair,
But, dear, sad sister, go into the house,
And give your watchful eyes to sleep, and rest;
Take food, and with fair water bathe yourself.
For think, if you should fail me, if by watching
You take some sickness, then we're lost: 'tis you,
You only, are my help; all else is vanished.
_El._ Not so. With you to die I choose, with you
To live: it is all one; for if you perish,
What shall I do--a woman? How shall I,
Brotherless, friendless, fatherless, alone,
Live on? Nay, if you ask it, I will do
Your will: but, brother, rest you on your bed;
Nor take the terror and the startling fear
For more than phantoms: stay upon the couch.
For though one is not sick, and only seems,
Yet is this pain and weariness to mortals.
This scene, for variety of motive and effect, is not excelled by any
passage in ancient tragedy. The scope which it afforded for impressive
acting must have been immense, though it is difficult to understand how
the fixed masks and conventional dresses of the Greek stage could have
been adapted to the violent and frequent changes of mood exhibited
by Orestes. Adequately to render the effect of the lyrical dialogue
between Electra and the Chorus is very difficult. I have attempted to
maintain in some degree the antistrophic pauses, and by the use of
rhyme to hint how very near the tragedy of the Greeks approached, in
scenes like this, to the Italian opera. The entrance of the Chorus
singing "Silence" can only be paralleled by passages in which the spies
or conspirators of Rossini or Mozart appear upon the stage, whispering
"Zitto! Zitto!" to the sound of subdued music. In the same way
Electra's impassioned apostrophe to Night must have been the subject of
an elaborate aria.
The scene which I have translated from the _Orestes_ suggests the
remark that many Euripidean plays were in fact melodramas. This is
true, in a special sense, of the _Troades_, which must have owed its
interest as an acted drama to the music and the _mise en scène_. It is
also worthy of notice that a fair proportion of our extant tragedies
are what the Germans call _Lustspiele_. That is to say, they have no
proper tragic ending, and the element of tragedy contained in them
consists of perils escaped by the chief actors. Thus the _Helena_
and the _Iphigenia in Tauris_ have a joyful climax. The _Orestes_
closes with a reconciliation of all parties, hurriedly effected, that
reminds us of a modern comedy. The _Ion_ is brought to a satisfactory
conclusion. The apotheosis of Iphigenia in her play at Aulis eliminates
the tragic element, though, regarded as the first part of an eminently
tragic series and read by the light of the _Electra_, this play may be
regarded as the prologue to a mighty drama of crime and retribution.
The _Alcestis_ is now universally and rightly classed among the
plays of a semi-satyric character; and the _Andromache_ is not a
genuine tragedy, since the death of Neoptolemus is episodical and
has little to do with the previous action. In all these plays the
key-note is struck by the Greek phrase #metabolê#, which signified a
revolution brought about within the limits of a certain situation.
This probably attracted Euripides to the class of drama in question,
since it enabled him to deal freely with character and to concentrate
his attention upon the working out of striking incidents. From this
point of view the _Andromache_ is so important that it deserves more
than a passing notice. The peculiar faculty and the prevailing faults
of the poet are alike illustrated in its scenes--his fine and sharp
character-making in the chief personages, his powerful rhetoric and
subtle special-pleading, his acute remarks on politics and domestic
relations, no less than his wilful neglect of dramatic unity and wanton
carelessness of construction. Viewed in one light, the _Andromache_
is a bitter satire upon the Spartan type of character, exemplified
in the cruel Hermione and the treacherous Menelaus. From yet another
standpoint of criticism it may be regarded as a dramatic essay on the
choice of wives and the economy of the household. Thus the political
and social theorist overlays the artist proper in this play; and yet
the language is so brilliant, the pathos is so telling, and the
lyrical episodes are so musical that we understand its popularity among
the ancients. At the opening of the drama, Andromache, who has taken
sanctuary at Phthia in the shrine of Thetis, describes the misery
of her situation as bondwoman and concubine to Neoptolemus. Though
warmly attached to herself and the father of her son Molossus, he has
recently married Hermione, the Spartan princess. Thus the true subject
of the play is set before us; for if the _Andromache_ has any unity of
conception, we must find it in the "nuptial choice" of Neoptolemus,
who, after bringing discord into his household by the jealousy of two
women, eventually meets his death as an indirect consequence of this
domestic folly. The elegiac lamentations of the Trojan princess and
the tender remonstrances of the Chorus, which follow the prologue, are
among the most melodious passages of poetry in Euripides. Then the
action begins. Neoptolemus is away at Delphi. Hermione and her father,
Menelaus, remain at home, and use the opportunity for persecuting
Andromache. In a long and agitating scene with Hermione, the heroine
shows that she remains a noble lady, of untamed and royal soul, in
spite of slavery. She disregards all threats, and maintains her station
at the altar, whither she has fled for safety. One menace only makes
her flinch. It is that violence may be done to her child Molossus,
if she will not move. Now Menelaus enters, and the altercations are
repeated, all tending to the same point of proving the odiousness of
the Spartan character and the dignity of Andromache. Meanwhile our
interest in her misfortunes is gradually heightened; and we tremble
for her when at last Menelaus persuades her to leave the sanctuary
by assuring her that the only way of saving Molossus is to sacrifice
her own life. At this point the pathos of the situation becomes
truly Euripidean. We have the spectacle of a tender and helpless
mother in the power of a merciless tyrant, obliged to give her own
life for her son, not shrinking from the sacrifice, but dreading to
leave him unprotected to his future fate amid unkindly aliens. She
rises from the altar; and no sooner is she in the hands of Menelaus,
than he tells her that his promises were fraudulent. Molossus will
be butchered after all. Then follows a great scene of high-wrought
feeling. Andromache and Molossus are kneeling before Menelaus praying
for their lives, when Peleus, the aged grandfather of Neoptolemus,
appears and stays the execution. Euripides has drawn the character
of Peleus with something of the heat and fury of the Sophoclean
Teiresias. The old king does not spare Menelaus, but makes his tongue
a scourge to flay him with invective. The end of the struggle is that
Peleus conveys Andromache and the boy safely away; and during the
rest of the drama we hear nothing of them. Meantime Hermione, who, in
contrast to Andromache's noble firmness and womanhood, is the type of
_impotentia_, as quick to self-abandonment as she was blind in selfish
cruelty, begins to reflect upon her husband's anger. What will he
say and do if he returns and hears of her intention with regard to
Andromache? She is only just prevented from committing suicide, and
lies sunk in contemptible remorse, when a new actor appears upon the
scene. It is Orestes, to whom Hermione had been affianced at Argos.
The treacherous Menelaus preferred to give her to a more fortunate and
respectable husband; but Orestes has a mind to wed her still, and has
resolved to murder Neoptolemus at Delphi because of the insult put upon
himself. He therefore removes Hermione from the palace, and departs
for Delphi. Peleus is now left alone upon the stage, to hear of the
murder of his grandson from a messenger, and to receive instructions
from Thetis as to the future of the realm of Phthia. It will be seen
that the construction of this drama is defective, and that it has two
separate plots, the one relating to Andromache, the other to Hermione
and Orestes, which are only brought into artificial connection by the
death of Neoptolemus. The speedy disappearance of Andromache from the
scene, followed by the flight of Hermione and the escape of Menelaus to
Sparta, leaves Peleus, who is only an accessory character, to bear the
whole burden of the climax. Thus the _Andromache_ lacks both internal
and external unity, the unity of subject and form. Of material it
has plenty, whether we regard the resolutions of fortune effected for
the chief actors, or the variety of incidents, or the richness of
reflective sentences, or the introduction of new "business" to sustain
the flagging interest of the spectators. As a drama, it is second-rate.
As a machine for the exhibition of specifically Euripidean qualities,
it must rank high among the extant tragedies.
The _Iphigenia in Aulide_, the _Electra_, the _Orestes_, and the
_Iphigenia in Tauris_ might be called the Euripidean Oresteia,
since each of these plays treats that portion of the Atridan story
which Æschylus had handled in his three dramas. We miss the final
purification of the hero, and have to infer the climax from the
allusions of the _Andromache_, where, it may be said in passing, the
noble type of his character, maintained without interruption in the
_Electra_, the _Orestes_, and the _Tauric Iphigenia_, is deformed by
a savagery and guile that must have been repellent even to a Greek
audience. In the _Electra_ Euripides comes immediately and without
doubt consciously into competition with both Æschylus and Sophocles.
Like Sophocles, he has painted Electra as of harder nature than her
brother. When Orestes, before engaging in his mother's murder, shows
signs of yielding to his filial feeling and expresses a doubt about
the oracle, she, like Lady Macbeth, reanimates his wavering courage
with argument and taunt. But Euripides seems to have felt that it
was unnatural in the Sophoclean drama to represent both brother and
sister as unterrified by conscience after the successful issue of
their plot. The lyrical dialogue between Orestes and Electra, when
he returns with their mother's blood upon his hands and sword, is
both terribly true to nature and dramatically striking. It needs the
appearance of the Dioscuri to confirm them in the faith that they had
done a righteous, heaven-appointed deed of justice. By this touch
Euripides proved his determination to bring even the most mysterious of
legends within the pale of ordinary human experience. The situation in
which he places Electra at the opening of the play, outcast from her
father's palace and wedded to a farmer, ragged in attire and obliged
to do the hard work of her household, is another and perhaps a less
justifiable instance of his realism. The stirring of compassion by the
exhibition of material misery was one of the points urged against him
by Aristophanes; nor is it possible to feel that Electra's squalor adds
anything essential to her tragedy. We may, however, be thankful to
the poet for the democratic ideal of good manners and true chivalry,
irrespective of blood and accidental breeding, which he has painted
in his portrait of Electra's husband.[10] Not contented with thus
varying the earlier outlines of the legend, Euripides in more than one
passage directs a covert criticism against his predecessors. He shows
that the tests of his identity offered by Orestes to Electra in the
plays of Æschylus and Sophocles were insufficient, and that the murder
of Clytemnestra in her palace, surrounded by the guard of a royal
household, was improbable. The new motives invented by him for the
recognition of Orestes and for the withdrawing of the queen to a place
where she could be conveniently despatched are highly ingenious. Yet in
the latter circumstance, what he gained in realism he lost in dramatic
effect; for it was an incident of appalling terror that Clytemnestra
and her paramour should be smitten in those very recesses of the palace
where they had slaughtered Agamemnon, beneath the influence of those
domestic Furies who, like an infernal revel, occupied the house of
Atreus until all the guilty blood was shed. Throughout the _Electra_
we feel that we are in the presence of a critical, realistic, and at
the same time romantic, poet, who has embroidered the old material of
heroic story with modern casuistry, and has been working less with
a view to producing a masterpiece of art than with the object of
asserting his ingenuity within the narrow field of an exhausted legend.
Had we not the _Choëphoroe_ and the Sophoclean _Electra_ for standards
of comparison, it is possible that we might do simpler justice to the
creative power of "sad Electra's poet" in this drama. As it is, we can
hardly refrain from treating it as a triumph of skill and reflective
ability, rather than as a potent work of original genius.
The _Orestes_ lies open to even more stringent criticism. The whole
conclusion, consisting of the burning of the palace at Argos, the
apotheosis of Helen, the lamentations of the Phrygian slave, and the
betrothal of direst enemies above the ruins of their ancestral home, is
more comic than tragic, and almost justifies the theory that Euripides
intended it to be a parody of some contemporary drama. This portion
of the play, moreover, is a melodrama, and joins on to the first part
by a merely formal link. Such interest as the _Orestes_ possesses,
after the beautiful opening scene, centres in the heroic friendship
of Pylades, who sustains the hero in his suffering and defends him
from the angry folk of Argos. It is far otherwise with the _Tauric
Iphigenia_. Here Euripides comes into no competition with Æschylus or
Sophocles; for he has handled a legend outside the sphere of their
known plays. It is one eminently suited to his powers, involving the
description of romantic scenery, the recognition of brother by sister
in circumstances of deep pathos and extreme improbability, the contest
of the most powerful natural feelings, and in the last place, the
exhibition of dangers impending upon all the chief personages and only
avoided by a thoroughly Euripidean fraud. None of the plots invented
by Euripides are so nicely finished or so rich in incident as this;
and yet there is nothing mechanical in its construction. Few of his
plays have choral passages to match the yearnings of the captive
maidens for their home in Hellas or the praise of young Apollo throned
by Zeus for prophecy beneath Parnassus. Few again are richer or more
truthful in their presentation of emotions--the exquisite delicacy
of a sister's affection, the loyalty of friends, and the passionate
outpouring of a brother's love. Something in the savage circumstances
of the play, the sombre Tauric scenery, the dreadful rites of Artemis,
to whom Iphigenia has been bound, and the watchful jealousy of her
barbarian king, enhances the beautiful humanity of those three Greeks,
burdened with such weight of sorrow on a foreign shore, haunted by
memories of a father's cruelty, a mother's infidelity, pursued by
the Furies of a righteous but abominable deed, yet none the less
enjoying for one moment in the midst of pain and peril the pure
pleasures of companionship. The chorus of Hellenic captives maintains
an undercurrent of sad music that still further helps to heighten
and interpret the situation. It is only at the last, when the knot
of the situation has to be cut, that our sympathy begins to fail us.
Thoas, though a barbarian, had been generous and kind. Yet Iphigenia
employs a heartless device for escaping from his hands with the sacred
image of the Tauri in her possession; nor does she feel a moment's
pang of remorse for the pain she is inflicting or for the lies she
has employed to serve her purpose. It may indeed be said generally
that Euripides justified the Aristophanic reproach of meanness by
his too frequent employment of tricks and subterfuges. These are so
distasteful to modern feeling that we are glad to know that even a
Greek critic regarded them as faulty. With Iphigenia's treason against
Thoas we might compare Helen's plot for deceiving Theoclymenus, the
insidious attack of Orestes upon Neoptolemus at Delphi, the capture of
Helen and Hermione by Orestes and Pylades at Argos, and Agamemnon's
incredibly base lure to Clytemnestra and Iphigenia before Aulis. It
is scarcely a defence of Euripides to urge that the gods themselves,
as in the case of the Tauric Iphigenia, sanction these deceptions.
This only makes the matter worse, and forces us to choose between two
hypotheses--either that Euripides sought to bring the old religion into
contempt, or that he used its morality for merely theatrical purposes
to justify the romantic crimes of his heroes. The latter seems the more
probable theory; for it is clear in some most eminent examples that
he has treated a deeply immoral legend for the sake of its admirable
artistic capabilities. This is undoubtedly the case with the _Ion_,
which presents a marvellous tale of human suffering, adventure, crime,
and final felicity, dependent in all its details upon the fraud of a
deity. Without doing justice to the masterly construction of the plot,
the beautiful poetry, and the sustained interest of the _Ion_, it may
be allowed me here to dwell for one moment on its morality. Phoebus
begets the boy Ion by a rape upon Creusa, and steals the boy away from
Athens to Delphi. The mother is left to bewail not her shame only,
but the loss of her son. In course of time she marries Xuthus and is
childless. They go together to Delphi to inquire of the oracle; and
here Xuthus is lyingly informed that Ion is the son of his youthful
years. Rage and jealousy impel Creusa, on hearing this news, to poison
Ion. She fails, and Ion in revenge attempts to murder her. The danger
of Creusa at last forces Phoebus to reveal the truth through the mouth
of Athene, who tells the queen that Ion is really her lost son, the
offspring of Apollo's crime. Xuthus happens to be absent during this
disclosure, and the goddess advises Creusa to keep the real truth
to herself, since the good man already supposes Ion to be his own
child, and will consequently treat him like a son. Stripped of its
dramatic ornaments, its wonderful scene-painting, pathetic situations,
unexpected recognitions, sudden catastrophes, accidents and dangers and
adventures, this is the plain legend of the _Ion_; and a less ethical
story of the gods could scarcely be found among those which Plato
criticised in the _Republic_.
It is time to return from this digression once more to the plays
which deal with Orestes. In them Euripides painted a virtue dear
in its heroic aspect to the Greeks and celebrated in many of their
legends, but which had not frequently been made the subject of dramatic
presentation. The character of Pylades as the perfect comrade, fierce
as a tiger and cunning as a fox against his foes, but tender as a
woman to his suffering friend, willing to face all dangers in common
with Orestes, enduring for his sake the obloquy of the world and the
mysterious taint of religious impurity, refusing to live in his death
and contending with him for the right to die, must be accepted as a
masterpiece of creative power. There is nothing in common between
Pylades and the confidant of modern tragedy--that _alter ego_ or shadow
of the hero's self, who dogs his path and reflects his sentiments.
Pylades has a distinctly separate personality; in the _Orestes_, when
Electra and her brother have abandoned hope, he takes the initiative
and suggests the scheme that saves them. Yet none the less is sympathy
the main point in his character. Euripides wrote nothing more touching
than the description of his help afforded to Orestes in the council
of the Argives, nothing more sublime than the contest between the two
comrades in the _Tauric Iphigenia_, when it is a question which of
them should stay and by his own death save his friend for Hellas. Had
the Athenians thus always thought of friendship, or had they learned
the enthusiasm of its ideal from Euripides, they might indeed have
bequeathed a new chivalry to the world. The three tragedies in which
Pylades plays a prominent part, the _Electra_, _Orestes_, and _Tauric
Iphigenia_, are storehouses of the noblest sentiments and deepest
truths about heroic friendship.
It is hard, while still beneath the overshadowing presence of so great
a master as Euripides, to have patience with the critics and the
scholars who scorn him--critics who cannot comprehend him, scholars
who have not read him since they were at school. Decadence! is their
cry. Yet what would they have? Would they ask for a second Sophocles,
or a revived Æschylus? That being clearly impossible, beyond all scope
of wish, why will they not be satisfied with beauty as luminous as
that of a Greek statue or a Greek landscape, with feeling as profound
as humanity itself, and with wisdom "musical as is Apollo's lute?"
These are the qualities of a great poet, and we contend that Euripides
possesses them in an eminent degree. It is false criticism, surely,
to do as Schlegel, Müller, and Bunsen have successively done[11]--to
measure Euripides by the standard of the success of his predecessors,
or to ransack his plays for illustrations of pet dramatic theories, and
then, because he will not bear these tests, to refuse to see his own
distinguished merits. It would sometimes seem as if our nature were
exhausted by its admiration of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare. There is
no enthusiasm left for Euripides and Fletcher.
Euripides, after all is said, incontestably displays the quality of
radiancy. On this I should be willing to base a portion of his claim to
rank as a great poet. An admirer of Æschylus or Sophocles might affirm
that neither Æschylus nor Sophocles chose to use their art for the
display of thrilling splendor. However that may be, Euripides, alone
of Greeks, with the exception of Aristophanes, entered the fairyland
of dazzling fancy which Calderon and Shakespeare and Fletcher trod.
The _Bacchæ_, like the _Birds_, proves what otherwise we might have
hardly known, that there lacked not Greeks for whom the _Tempest_ and
_A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ would have been intelligible. Meanwhile,
in making any estimate of the merits of Euripides, it would be unfair
to omit mention of the enthusiasm felt for him by contemporaries
and posterity. Mr. Browning, in the beautiful monument which he has
erected to the fame of Euripides, has chosen for poetical treatment
the well-known story of Athenians rescued from captivity by recitation
of the verses of their poet.[12] There is no reason to doubt a story
which attests so strongly to the acceptation in which Euripides was
held at large among the Greeks. Socrates, again, visited the theatre
on the occasion of any representation of his favorite's plays. By the
new comedians, Menander and Philemon, Euripides was regarded as a
divine miracle. Tragedy and comedy, so dissimilar in their origins,
had approximated to a coalition; tragedy losing its religious dignity,
comedy quitting its obscene though splendid personalities; both meeting
on the common ground of daily life. In the decadence of Greece it was
not Æschylus and Aristophanes, but Euripides and Menander, who were
learned and read and quoted. The colossal theosophemes of Æschylus
called for profound reflection; the Titanic jokes of Aristophanes taxed
the imagination to its utmost stretch. But Euripides "the human, with
his droppings of warm tears," gently touched and soothed the heart.
Menander with his facile wisdom flattered the intellect of worldly
men. The sentences of both were quotable at large and fit for all
occasions. They were not too great, too lofty, too profound for the
paths of common life. We have lost Menander, alas! but we still possess
Euripides. It seems a strange neglect of good gifts to shut our ears
to his pathetic melodies and ringing eloquence--because, forsooth,
Æschylus and Sophocles had the advantage of preceding him, and were
superior artists in the bloom and heyday of the young world's prime.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The terrific lessons of the Persian war seem to have quickened in
the Greeks a spiritual sense beyond what was natural to their genius,
and from the influence of which they speedily recovered.
[2] This pedigree of the House of Tantalus--a family
Upas-tree--illustrates the descent of crime from generation to
generation:
TANTALUS [Insolence of immense riches.
| Steals the nectar and ambrosia
| of the gods and gives
| to them Pelops to eat.]
+------+-------------------------------+
| |
+----------------PELOPS = HIPPODAMEIA. NIOBE.
| Slays Myrsilus, |
| the son of |
| Hermes. |
| +----+--------------------+
| | |
CHRYSIPPUS, ATREUS = ÆROPE. THYESTES.
a bastard son, In revenge upon | Incestuous with Ærope
whom Atreus Thyestes for his | and with his own daughter
and Thyestes adultery, serves | Pelopia, by whom he
kill. up the children | has a son.
of Thyestes to | |
him at a banquet.| ÆGISTHUS.
|
+--------+---------------------+
| |
AGAMEMNON = CLYTEMNESTRA. MENELAUS.
|
+------------+------------+
| | |
ORESTES. IPHIGENIA. ELECTRA.
[3] Line 375; compare _Choëph._ 631, _Eum._ 510-514.
[4] Very notable in this respect is his consistent degradation of
Ulysses.
[5] Exception must be made in favor of the _Hippolytus_ and the
_Bacchæ_, where the whole action of the play and the conduct of the
persons are determined by the influences of Aphrodite and Dionysus.
The same exception, but for other reasons, may be made in favor of the
_Ion_.
[6] Hecuba, for example, in her play; Electra in hers; Menelaus in the
_Helena_.
[7] It may be questioned whether a Dorian type of character was not
in the mind of Euripides when he constructed his ideal of feminine
heroism. What Plutarch in the life of Cleomenes says of Cratesiclea
and the wife of Panteus reads like a commentary on the tragedies of
_Macaria_, _Polyxena_, and _Iphigenia_. Xenophon's partiality for the
Spartans indicates the same current of sympathy. Philosophical analysis
was leading up to an eclectic Hellenism, yet the Euripidean study of
Hermione seems intended as a satire on the Lacedæmonian women.
[8] The real cause of offence was the prominence given by Euripides to
the passion of unholy love in some of his heroines; to the interest and
sympathy he created for Phædra, Sthenoboea, and others.
[9] The whole of this splendid speech should be compared with the
fragment of Neophron's _Medea_, on which it is obviously modelled. See,
below, the chapter on the Tragic Fragments.
[10] Notice especially the speech of Orestes, line 367.
[11] Goethe was very severe on the critics who could not appreciate
Euripides: "To feel and respect a great personality, one must be
something one's self. All those who denied the sublime to Euripides
were either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity,
or shameless charlatans, who, by their presumption, wished to make
more of themselves, and really did make more of themselves, than they
were" (Eckermann's _Conversations of Goethe_, English ed., vol. ii. p.
377). In another place he indicates the spirit in which any adverse
criticism of Euripides should be attempted: "A poet whom Socrates
called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Menander admired, and
for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing
of his death, must certainly have been something. If a modern man like
Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought only to
do it upon his knees" (_ib._, vol. i. p. 378). Again (_ib._, vol. i. p.
260), he energetically combats the opinion that Euripides had caused
the decline of Greek tragedy.
[12] See Balaustion's _Adventure_. Since this chapter was first
published, Mr. Browning has still further enforced his advocacy of
Euripides by Aristophanes' _Apology_, and a version of the _Hercules
Furens_, while the great tragic poet has found a stanch defender from
the carping criticasters of the Schlegel school in Mr. Mahaffy. That
excellent scholar and accomplished student of antiquity has recently
published a little book on Euripides (_Classical Writers_, edited by J.
R. Green, "Euripides." Macmillan. 1879).
CHAPTER XV.
_THE FRAGMENTS OF ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, AND EURIPIDES._
Alexandrian and Byzantine Anthologies.--Titles of the
Lost Plays of Æschylus.--The _Lycurgeia_.--The
Trilogy on the Story of Achilles.--The Geography of
the _Prometheus Unbound_.--Gnomic Character of the
Sophoclean Fragments.--Providence, Wealth, Love,
Marriage, Mourning.--What is True of the Sophoclean is
still more True of the Euripidean Fragments.--Mutilated
Plays.--_Phaëthon_, _Erechtheus_, _Antiope_,
_Danaë_.--Goethe's Restitution of the _Phaëthon_.--Passage
on Greek Athletes in the _Autolycus_.--Love, Women,
Marriage, Domestic Affection, Children.--Death.--Stoical
Endurance.--Justice and the Punishment of
Sin.--Wealth.--Noble Birth.--Heroism.--Miscellaneous Gnomic
Fragments.--The Popularity of Euripides.
It is difficult to treat the fragments of Æschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides otherwise than as a golden treasury of saws and maxims
compiled by Alexandrian and Byzantine Greeks, for whom poetic beauty
was of less value than sententious wisdom. The tragic scope and the
æsthetic handling of the fables of their lost plays can scarcely be
conjectured from such slight hints as we possess. Yet some light may be
cast upon the Æschylean method by observing the titles of his dramas.
We have, for example, the names of a complete tetralogy upon the legend
of Lycurgus. The _Edonians_, the _Bassarids_, and the _Young Men_
constituted a connected series of plays--a _Lycurgeia_, with _Lycurgus_
for the satyric supplement. Remembering that Æschylus called his own
tragedies morsels picked up from the great Homeric banquet-table, we
may conclude that this tetralogy set forth the Dionysian fable told by
Diomede to Glaucus in the _Iliad_ (vi. 131):
No, for not Dryas' son, Lycurgus strong,
Who the divine ones fought, on earth lived long.
He the nurse-nymphs of Dionysus scared
Down the Nyseïan steep, and the wild throng
Their ritual things cast off, and maddening fared,
Torn with his goad, like kine; so vast a crime he dared.
Yea, Dionysus, such a sight was there,
Himself in fear sank down beneath the seas.
And Thetis in her breast him quailing bare,
At the man's cry such trembling shook his knees.
Then angered were the gods who live at ease,
And Zeus smote blind Lycurgus, and he fell
Loathed ere his day.[13]
It appears that the titles of the three dramas composing the trilogy
were taken from the Chorus. In the first play the Edonian Thracians,
subjects of Lycurgus, formed the Chorus; in the second, the Bassarids,
or nurse-nymphs of Dionysus; in the third, the youths whom the wine-god
had persuaded to adopt his worship. The subject of the first play was,
therefore, the advent of Dionysus and his following in Thrace, and
the victory of Lycurgus over the new cult. The second set forth the
captivity of the Bacchantes or Bassarids, together with the madness
sent upon Lycurgus as a punishment for his resistance, whereby he was
driven, according to post-Homeric versions of his legend, to the murder
of his own son Dryas in a fit of fury. The third play carried on the
subject by exhibiting the submission of Lycurgus to the god whom he
had disowned and dishonored, and his death, at the hands of his own
subjects, upon Mount Pangæus. Thus the first Chorus was hostile to
Dionysus; the second was sympathetic, though captive and impotent; the
third was triumphant in his cause. The artistic sequence of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis which the trilogy required, was developed
through three moments in the life-drama of Lycurgus, and was typified
in the changes of the choric sympathy, according to the law whereby
Æschylus varied the form of his triple dramas and, at the same time,
immediately connected the Chorus with the passion of each piece. The
tragic interest centred in the conflict of Lycurgus and the god, and
the final solution was afforded by the submission, though too late, of
the protagonist's will to destiny. It is probable that the satyric
play of _Lycurgus_ represented the divine honors paid, after his death,
to the old enemy, now become the satellite and subject of Dionysus,
by pastoral folk and dwellers in the woodlands. The unification of
obstinate antagonistic wills in the higher will of Zeus or Fate seems
in all cases to have supplied Æschylus with the _Versöhnung_ tragedy
required, and to have suggested the religious #katharsis# without
which the Greek drama would have failed to point its lesson. Seen in
this light, the _Lycurgeia_ must have been a masterpiece only less
sublime, and even more full, perhaps, of picturesque incidents, than
the Promethean trilogy. The emotional complexion, if that phrase may be
permitted, of each member of the trilogy was determined by the Chorus;
wherein we trace a signal instance of the Æschylean method.
More even to be regretted than the _Lycurgeia_ is a colossal lost
trilogy to which the name of _Tragic Iliad_ has been given. That
Æschylus should have frequently handled the subject-matter of the
_Iliad_ was natural; and many titles of tragedies, quoted singly, point
to his preoccupation with the mythus of Achilles. It has, therefore,
been conjectured, with fair show of reason, that the _Myrmidons_,
the _Nereids_, and the _Phrygians_ formed a triple drama. The first
described the withdrawal of Achilles from the war, the arming of
Patroclus, and the grief which the son of Peleus felt for his friend's
death. No Greek tragedy, had it been preserved, would have been more
precious than this. The second showed how Thetis comforted her child,
and procured fresh armor for him from Hephæstus, and how Achilles slew
Hector. In the third, Priam recovered the dead body of his son and
buried it. Supposing the trilogy to have been constructed upon these
outlines, it must have resembled a gigantic history-play, in which, as
in the _Iliad_ itself, the character of Achilles was sufficient to form
the groundwork of a complicated poem. The theme, in other words, would
have resembled those of the modern and romantic drama, rather than such
as the elder Greek poets were in the habit of choosing. The _Achilleis_
did not in any direct way illustrate the doctrine of Nemesis, or
afford a tragic conflict between the human will and fate. It owed its
lustre to the radiant beauty of the hero, to the pathos of his love
for Patroclus, to the sudden blazing forth of irresistible energy when
sorrow for the dead had driven him to revenge, and to the tranquillity
succeeding tempest that dignified his generous compliance with the
prayers of Priam. The trilogy composed upon it must, therefore, like a
Shakespearian play, have been a drama of character. The fragments of
the _Myrmidones_ have already been pieced together in the essay on the
Homeric Achilles.[14] From the _Nereides_ nothing has survived except
what may be gathered from the meagre remnants of the Latin version
made of it by Attius. The _Phrygians_, also called #Hektoros lytra#,
contained a speech of pleading addressed by Priam to the hero in his
tent, of which the following is a relic:
#kai tous thanontas ei theleis euergetein,
to goun kakourgein amphidexiôs echei
kai mête chairein mête lypeisthai para.
hêmôn ge mentoi Nemesis esth' hypertera
kai tou thanontos hê dikê prassei koton.#[15]
The trilogy of which the _Prometheus Bound_ formed probably the middle
play has been sufficiently discussed in the chapter on Æschylus.[16] It
remains in this place only to notice that the gigantic geography of the
poet received further illustration in the lost play of the _Prometheus
Unbound_. "Cette géographie vertigineuse," says Victor Hugo, "est
mêlée à une tragédie extraordinaire où l'on entend des dialogues plus
qu'humains;" and, inverting this observation, we may add that the
superhuman tragedy of the _Prometheis_ owed much of its grandeur to
the soul-dilating prospect of the earth's map, outstretched before the
far-seeing sufferer on the crags of Caucasus.
Two other trilogies--a _Danais_, composed of the _Egyptians_, the
_Suppliants_, and the _Danaides_; and an _Oedipodeia_, composed of
_Laius_, the _Sphinx_, and _Oedipus_--may be mentioned, though to
recover their outlines with any certainty is now hopeless. For the
rest, it must be enough to transcribe and to translate a few fragments
of singular beauty. Here is an invocation uttered in his hour of
anguish by Philoctetes to Death, the deliverer:
#ô thanate paian mê m' atimasêis molein;
monos gar ei sy tôn anêkestôn kakôn
iatros; algos d' ouden haptetai nekrou.#[17]
Another passage on Death, remarkable for the stately grandeur of its
style, may be quoted from the _Niobe_:
#monos theôn gar thanatos ou dôrôn erâi,
out' an ti thyôn out' epispendôn anois,
ou bômos estin oude paiônizetai.
monou de peithô daimonôn apostatei.#[18]
The sublime speech of Aphrodite in the _Danaides_, imitated more than
once by subsequent poets, must not be omitted:
#erâi men hagnos ouranos trôsai chthona,
erôs de gaian lambanei gamou tychein;
ombros d' ap' eunaentos ouranou pesôn
ekyse gaian; hê de tiktetai brotois
mêlôn te boskas kai bion Dêmêtrion;
dendrôtis hôra d' ek notizontos gamou
teleios esti; tôn d' egô paraitios.#[19]
Nor, lastly, the mystic couplet ascribed to both Æschylus and his son
Euphorion:
#Zeus estin aithêr, Zeus de gê, Zeus d' ouranos,
Zeus toi ta panta, chô ti tônd' hyperteron.#[20]
The fragments of Sophocles are, perhaps, in even a stricter sense than
those of Æschylus, a bare anthology, and the best way of dealing with
them is to select those which illustrate the beauty of his style or
the ripeness of his wisdom. Few, indeed, are full enough to afford
materials for reconstructing the plot of a lost play. What, for
instance, can be more tantalizing to the student of Greek manners and
sentiments than to know that Sophocles wrote a drama with the title
_Lovers of Achilles_, and yet to have no means of judging of its fable
better than is given in this pretty simile?
#nosêm' erôtos tout' ephimeron kakon;
echoim' an auto mê kakôs apeikasai,
hotan pagou phanentos aithriou cheroin
krystallon harpasôsi paides astagê.
ta prôt' echousin hêdonas potainious,
telos d' ho chymos outh' hopôs aphêi thelei
out' en cheroin to ktêma symphoron menein.
houtô ge tous erôntas hautos himeros
dran kai to mê dran pollakis proïetai.#[21]
A whole series of plays were written by Sophocles on the tale of
Helen, and all of them have passed, "like shapes of clouds we form,
to nothing." There was, again, a drama of the _Epigoni_, which might,
perhaps, have carried the tale of Thebes still further than the climax
reached in the _Antigone_. Yet Stobæus has only thought fit to treat us
to two excerpts from it, whereof the following, spoken by Alcmæon to
Eriphyle, is the fullest:
#ô pan sy tolmêsasa kai pera gynai;
kakion all' ouk estin oud' estai pote
gynaikos ei ti pêma gignetai brotois.#[22]
The sententious philosophy of life that endeared Euripides to the
compilers of commonplace-books was expressed by Sophocles also, with
sufficient independence of the context to make his speeches valuable
as quarries for quotation. To this accident of his art is probably
due the large number of fragments we possess upon general topics of
morality and conduct. In the following fine passage the poet discusses
the apparent injustice in the apportionment of good and evil fortune to
virtuous and vicious men:
#deinon ge tous men dyssebeis kakôn t' apo
blastontas, eita tousde men prassein kalôs,
tous d' ontas esthlous ek te gennaiôn hama
gegôtas eita dystycheis pephykenai.
ou chrên tad' houtô daimonas thnêtôn peri
prassein; echrên gar tous men eusebeis brotôn
echein ti kerdos emphanes theôn para,
tous d' ontas adikous toisde tên enantian
dikên kakôn timôron emphanê tinein.
koudeis an houtôs eutychei kakos gegôs.#[23]
The same play furnished Stobæus with an excellent observation on
garrulity:
#anêr gar hostis hêdetai legôn aei
lelêthen hauton tois xynousin ôn barys.#[24]
Also with a good remark upon the value of sound common-sense:
#psychê gar eunous kai phronousa toundikon
kreissôn sophistou pantos estin heuretis.#[25]
The _Aleadæ_ supplied this pungent diatribe upon the contrast between
poverty and wealth:
#ta chrêmat' anthrôpoisin heuriskei philous,
authis de timas eita tês hypertatês
tyrannidos thakousin aischistên hedran.
epeita d' oudeis echthros oute phyetai
pros chrêmath' hoi te phyntes arnountai stygein.
deinos gar herpein ploutos es te tabata
kai pros bebêla, chôpothen penês anêr
mêd' entychôn dynait' an hôn erâi tychein.
kai gar dyseides sôma kai dysônymon,
glôssêi sophon tithêsin eumorphon t' idein.
monôi de chairein kai nosein exousia
parestin autôi kapikrypsasthai kaka.#[26]
In the _Locrian Ajax_ we find two single lines worth preservation:
#sophoi tyrannoi tôn sophôn xynousiâi;#[27]
and
#anthrôpos esti pneuma kai skia monon.#[28]
This charming description comes from the _Ægeus_, recalling Athens,
where the poplars grow so large and leafy:
#hôsper gar en phylloisin aigeirou makras,
kan allo mêden, alla toukeinês kara
aura kradainei kanakouphizei pteron.#[29]
Some scattered utterances upon women and love may be collected from the
_Phædra_, in which play Sophocles broke the ground trodden by Euripides:
#erôs gar andras ou monous eperchetai
oud' au gynaikas alla kai theôn anô
psychas charassei kapi ponton erchetai.
kai tond' apeirgein oud' ho pankratês sthenei
Zeus all' hypeikei kai thelôn enklinetai.
houtô gynaikos ouden an meizon kakon
kakês anêr ktêsait' an oude sôphronos
kreisson; pathôn d' hekastos hôn tychêi legei.#[30]
The next fragment, extracted possibly from the _Colchian Women_,
deserves to be compared with similar Euripidean passages, though in
point of workmanship it is finer, and in profound suggestion more
intense, than is the usual manner of Euripides:
#ô paides hê toi Kypris ou Kypris monon
all' esti pollôn onomatôn epônymos.
estin men Haidês esti d' aphthitos bia
estin de lyssa mainas esti d' himeros
akratos est' oimôgmos. en keinêi to pan
spoudaion hêsychaion es bian agon.
entêketai gar pneumonôn hosois eni
psychê. tis ouchi têsde tês theou bora?
eiserchetai men ichthyôn plôtôi genei
enesti d' en chersou tetraskelei gonêi;
nômâi d' en oiônoisi toukeinês pteron
en thêrsin en brotoisin en theois anô.
tin' ou palaious' es tris ekballei theôn?
ei moi themis, themis de talêthê legein,
Dios tyrannei pneumonôn; aneu doros
aneu sidêrou panta toi syntemnetai
Kypris ta thnêtôn kai theôn bouleumata.#[31]
While upon this topic of love and women, I may quote a considerable
fragment of the _Tereus_, marked by more sympathy for women in the
troubles of their married lives than the Greek poets commonly express:
#nyn d' ouden eimi chôris, alla pollakis
eblepsa tautêi tên gynaikeian physin,
hôs ouden esmen; hai neai men en patros
hêdiston oimai zômen anthrôpôn bion;
terpnôs gar aei pantas hanoia trephei.
hotan d' es hêbên exikômeth' euphrones,
ôthoumeth' exô kai diempolômetha
theôn patrôiôn tôn te physantôn apo,
hai men xenous pros andras, hai de barbarous,
hai d' eis aêthê dômath', hai d' epirrhotha,
kai taut' epeidan euphronê zeuxêi mia
chreôn epainein kai dokein kalôs echein.#[32]
The same play contains a fine choric passage upon the equality of
human souls at birth, their after inequality through fortune:
#hen phylon anthrôpôn mi' edeixe patros kai matros hêmas
hamera tous pantas; oudeis exochos allos eblasten allou.
boskei de tous men moira dysamerias tous d' olbos hêmôn
tous de douleias zygon eschen anankas.#[33]
Among the fragments that deal with the commonplaces of Greek tragedy,
the following, from the _Tyndareus_, may be cited as a brilliant
expression of the Solonian proverb:
#ou chrê pot' eu prassontos olbisai tychas
andros prin autôi pantelôs êdê bios
diekperanthêi kai teleutêsêi bion.
en gar brachei katheile kôligôi chronôi
pamplouton olbon daimonos kakou dosis,
hotan metastêi kai theois dokêi tade.#[34]
A play called the _Scyrian Women_ furnishes two excellent apothegmatic
passages upon the misery of old age and the inutility of mourning:
#ouden gar algos hoion hê pollê zoê.
pant' empephyke tôi makrôi gêrâi kaka,
nous phroudos erg' achreia phrontides kenai.
all' ei men ên klaiousin iasthai kaka
kai ton thanonta dakryois anistanai,
ho chrysos hêsson ktêma tou klaiein an ên.
nyn d' ô geraie taut' anênytôs echei
ton men taphôi kryphthenta pros to phôs agein;
kamoi gar an patêr ge dakryôn charin
anêkt' an eis phôs.#[35]
Two lines from a lost play on the tale of Odysseus illustrate the
celebrated pun of Ajax on his own name:
#arthôs d' Odysseus eim' epônymos kakois;
polloi gar ôdysanto dyssebeis emoi.#[36]
In conclusion, a few single lines or couplets may be strung together
for their proverbial pithiness and verbal delicacy:
#enesti gar tis kai logoisin hêdonê
lêthên hotan poiôsi tôn ontôn kakôn.
to mê gar einai kreisson ê to zên kakôs.
ponou metallachthentos hoi ponoi glykeis.
ei sôma doulon all' ho nous eleutheros.
horkous egô gynaikos eis hydôr graphô.
ô thnêton andrôn kai talaipôron genos;
hôs ouden esmen, plên skiais eoikotes,
baros perisson gês anastrôphômenoi.
tharsei, gynai; ta polla tôn deinôn onar
pneusanta nyktos hêmeras malassetai.
ta men didakta manthanô, ta d' heureta
zêtô, ta d' eukta para theôn êitêsamên.#[37]
Whenever we compare Euripides with his predecessors, we are led to
remark that he disintegrated the drama by destroying its artistic unity
and revealing the _modus operandi_ of the scientific analyst. All the
elements of a great poem were given as it were in their totality by
Æschylus. Sophocles, while conscious of the effect to be gained by
resolving the drama into its component parts, was careful to recombine
them by his art. It is difficult with either Æschylus or Sophocles
to separate a passage from its context without injuring the whole,
or to understand the drift of a sentence without considering both
circumstance and person. With Euripides the case is somewhat different.
Though he composed dramas supremely good in the aggregate impression
left upon our mind, we feel that he employed his genius with delight
in perfecting each separate part regarded by itself alone. So much
of time and talent might be spent on the elaboration of the plot, so
much on the accentuation of the characters, so much on lyric poetry, so
much on moral maxims, so much on description, and so much on artificial
argument. There is something over-strained in this crude statement;
yet it serves to indicate the analytic method noticeable in Euripides.
It consequently happened that his plays lent themselves admirably to
the scissors and paste-box method of the compilers. He was a master of
gnomes and sentences, and his tragedies were ready-made repertories of
quotations. The good cause and the better were pleaded in his dialogues
with impartial skill, because it was the poet's aim to set forth what
might be said rhetorically--because he took a lively interest in
casuistry for its own sake. These qualities, combined with so much that
is attractive in his fables, radiant in his fancy, tender in his human
sympathy, and romantic in his conduct of a play, endeared him to the
Greeks of all succeeding ages. What they wanted in dramatic poetry he
supplied better than any other playwright, except perhaps Menander,
who, for similar reasons, shared a similar exceptionally lucky fate.
The result is that, besides possessing at least eighteen of the plays
of Euripides, as against seven of Sophocles and seven of Æschylus, our
anthology of Euripidean excerpts is voluminous in the same ratio. The
majority of these we owe to the industry of Stobæus, who always found
something to his purpose in a drama of Euripides, while collecting
wise precepts and descriptive passages to illustrate the nature of
a vice or virtue. We must be careful, amid the medley of sentiments
expressed with equal force and equal ease, to remember that they are
not the poet's own, but put into the mouth of his dramatic personages.
What is peculiar is the impartiality of rhetorical treatment they
display--a quality which, though it may not justify, accounts for,
the Aristophanic hostility to the Euripidean school of talkers on all
subjects.
In addition to fragments, there remain detached portions of the
_Phaëthon_, the _Erechtheus_, and the _Antiope_, sufficient, if
nothing else had been preserved of the Euripidean drama, to suggest a
better notion of this poet and his style than of Ion or Achæus, his
lost compeers in the Alexandrian Canon. From the catastrophe of the
_Phaëthon_, for example, it appears that Euripides contrived a truly
striking contrast between the reception of the dead youth's corpse into
the palace by his mother, and the advent, immediately following, of
his father with a Chorus chanting bridal hymns. Lycurgus the orator,
quoting the _Erechtheus_, has transmitted a characteristic speech by
Praxithea, who deserves to be added to the list of courageous women
painted with the virtues of #eupsychia# by Euripides. She maintains
that, just as she would gladly send forth sons in the face of death
to fight for their country, so, when the State requires of her the
sacrifice of a daughter, she would be ashamed to refuse this much and
far more. The outlines of the _Antiope_ are more blurred; yet enough
survives of a dialectical contention between Zethus and Amphion, the
one arguing for a life of study and culture, the other for a life of
arms and action, to illustrate this phase of the master's manner.
With regard to the _Phaëthon_, it should be mentioned that Goethe
attempted its restitution. His essay may be studied with interest by
those who seek to understand the German poet's method of approaching
the antique. The reverence with which he handles the precious relics
may possibly astonish scholars, who, through fastidiousness of taste,
have depreciated a dramatist they imperfectly comprehend.[38] English
literature, since the beginning of this year, can boast its own
_Erechtheus_, restored by Swinburne on the model of Æschylus rather
than Euripides. While referring to the mutilated dramas of Euripides,
the opening to the _Danaë_ requires a passing word of comment. It
consists of a prologue in the mouth of Hermes, a chorus, and a couple
of lines spoken by Acrisius. The whole, however, is pretty clearly the
work of some mediæval forger, and has, so far as it goes, the same
kind of interest as the #Christos paschôn#, because it illustrates the
ascendency of Euripides during the later ages of Greek culture.
Irksome as it may be to both writer and reader, I know no better method
of dealing with the fragments of Euripides than that already adopted
with regard to those of Sophocles. The fragments themselves are
precious, and deserve to be presented to the modern student with loving
and reverential care. Yet there is no way of centralizing the interest
of their miscellaneous topics; and to treat them as an anthology of
quotations, selecting the most characteristic and translating these as
far as possible into equivalent lines, is all that I can do.
A peculiarly interesting fragment in its bearing on Greek life shall
be chosen for the first quotation. It comes from the satyric drama of
_Autolycus_, and expresses the contempt felt by cultivated Athenians
for young men who devoted all their energies to gymnastics. It is not
easy to connect the idea of vulgarity with that of the Greek athletes
whose portraits in marble, no less resplendent than the immortal
Apoxyomenos of the Vatican, adorned the peristyles of Altis. Yet there
can be little doubt from the following fragment, taken in connection
with certain hints in Plato, that these muscular heroes of an hour,
for whom wreaths were woven and breaches broken in the city walls,
struck some green-eyed philosophers as the incarnation of rowdyism.
Euripides, if we may trust his biographers, had been educated by his
father as an athlete; and it is not improbable that his early distaste
for an eminently uncongenial occupation, no less than his familiarity
with the manners of its professors, embittered his style in this
sarcastic passage. Such splendid beings as the Autolycus, before whom
the distinguished guests in Xenophon's Symposium were silenced, seemed
to our poet at best but sculptor's models, walking statues, #poleôs
agalmata#, and at worst mere slaves of jaws and belly, #perissai
sarkes#. Early in Greek literature the same relentless light of moral
science, like the gaze of Apollonius undoing Lamia's charm, had been
cast upon the athletes by Xenophanes of Colophon. While listening to
Euripides, we can fancy that the Adikos Logos from the _Clouds_ of
Aristophanes is speaking through his lips to an Athenian audience,
composed of would-be orators and assiduous dikasts:
#kakôn gar ontôn myriôn kath' Hellada,
ouden kakion estin athlêtôn genous.
hoi prôta men zên oute manthanousin eu,
out' an dynainto; pôs gar hostis est' anêr
gnathou te doulos nêdyos th' hêssêmenos,
ktêsait' an olbon eis hyperbolên patros?
oud' au penesthai kai xynêretmein tychais
hoioi t'; ethê gar ouk ethisthentes kala
sklêrôs diallassousin eis tamêchana.
lamproi d' en hêbêi kai poleôs agalmata
phoitôs'; hotan de prospesêi gêras pikron
tribônes ekbalontes oichontai krokas;
emempsamên de kai ton Hellênôn nomon
hoi tônd' hekati syllogon poioumenoi
timôs' achreious hêdonas daitos charin;
tis gar palaisas eu, tis ôkypous anêr
ê diskon aras ê gnathon paisas kalôs
polei patrôiâi stephanon êrkesen labôn?
potera machountai polemioisin en cheroin
diskous echontes ê di' aspidôn cheri
theinontes ekbalousi polemious patras?
oudeis sidêrou tauta môrainei pelas
stas. andras oun echrên sophous te kagathous
phyllois stephesthai, chôstis hêgeitai polei
kallista, sôphrôn kai dikaios ôn anêr,
hostis te mythois erg' apallassei kaka
machas t' aphairôn kai staseis; toiauta gar
polei te pasêi pasi th' Hellêsin kala.#[39]
Passing from the athletes to a cognate subject, the following fragment
from the _Dictys_ nobly expresses the ideal of friendship. The first
two lines seem to need correction; I have let them stand, though
inclined to propose #kei# for #kai#, and to conjecture the loss of a
line after the second:
#philos gar ên moi; kai m' erôs heloi pote
ouk eis to môron oude m' eis Kyprin trepôn.
all' esti dê tis allos en brotois erôs,
psychês dikaias sôphronos te kagathês.
kai chrên de tois brotoisi tond' einai nomon,
tôn eusebountôn hoitines ge sôphrones
eran, Kyprin de tên Dios chairein ean.#[40]
About Eros and Aphrodite the poet has supplied us with a good store of
contradictory sentiments. In one long and very remarkable fragment
(No. 839, ed. Dindorf) from an unknown play, Euripides, if he be indeed
the author of the verses, has imitated Æschylus, taking almost word for
word the famous vaunt of Kupris, quoted above from the _Danaides_. The
three next pieces may be also cited among the praises of Love:
#erôta d' hostis mê theon krinei megan
kai tôn hapantôn daimonôn hypertaton,
ê skaios estin ê kalôn apeiros ôn
ouk oide ton megiston anthrôpois theon.
hosoi gar eis erôta piptousin brotôn
esthlôn hotan tychôsi tôn erômenôn
ouk esth' hopoias leipetai tês hêdonês.
echô de tolmês kai thrasous didaskalon,
en tois amêchanoisin euporôtaton,
erôta pantôn dysmachôtaton theôn.#[41]
Here, again, remembering how much the Greeks included in the term
music, is a pretty compliment:
#mousikên d' ara
erôs didaskei kan amousos êi to prin.#[42]
The next is a graceful expostulation on the lover's part with the god
who can make or mar his happiness in life:
#sy d' ô tyranne theôn te kanthrôpôn erôs
ê mê didaske ta kala phainesthai kala,
ê tois erôsin hôn sy dêmiourgos ei
mochthousi mochthous eutychôs synekponei.
kai tauta men drôn timios theois esei,
mê drôn d' hyp' autou tou didaskesthai philein
aphairethêsei charitas hais timôsi se.#[43]
Nor is this without its tincture of respect:
#andros d' horôntos eis kyprin neaniou
aphylaktos hê têrêsis; ên gar phaulos êi
tall' eis erôta pas anêr sophôteros.
ên d' au prosêtai Kypris hêdiston labein.#[44]
But Euripides can turn round and rate Love for his encouragement of
idleness. There is a stern perception of the facts of life in the
following excerpt from the _Danaë_:
#erôs gar argon kapi tois argois ephy;
philei katoptra kai komês xanthismata
pheugei de mochthous. hen de moi tekmêrion.
oudeis prosaitôn bioton êrasthê brotôn,
en tois d' echousin hêbêtês pephych' hode.#[45]
Concerning women he is no less impartial. However he may have chosen
to paint their possibilities of heroism, and the force of their
character in hours of passion or of need, no poet has certainly abused
them in stronger terms. The following is an almost laughable example:
#deinê men alkê kymatôn thalassiôn
deinai de potamou kai pyros thermou pnoai
deinon de penia deina d' alla myria;
all' ouden houtô deinon hôs gynê kakon
oud' an genoito gramma toiout' en graphêi
oud' an logos deixeien; ei de tou theôn
tod' esti plasma dêmiourgos ôn kakôn
megistos istô kai brotoisi dysmenês.#$1
Nor can the group which I have classed together in the following
extracts be considered as complimentary:
#plên tês tekousês thêly pan misô genos.
endon menousan tên gynaik' einai chreôn
esthlên thyrasi d' axian tou mêdenos.
estin de mêtêr philoteknos mallon patros;
hê men gar hautês oiden onth' ho d' oietai.
ouk estin oute teichos oute chrêmata.
out' allo dysphylakton ouden hôs gynê.
anti gar pyros
pyr allo meizon êde dysmachôteron
eblaston hai gynaikes.
gameite nyn gameite kâita thnêskete
ê pharmakoisin ek gynaikos ê dolois.#[47]
On marriage many pithy sayings might be cited. The one I take first is
eminent for practical brutality combined with sound sense:
#hosoi gamousi d' ê genei kreissous gamous
ê polla chrêmat' ouk epistantai gamein.
ta tês gynaikos gar kratount' en dômasin
douloi ton andra kouket' est' eleutheros.
ploutos d' epaktos ek gynaikeiôn gamôn
anonêtos; hai gar dialyseis ou rhâidiai.#[48]
To the same category belongs the following, though its worldly wisdom
conceals no bitterness:
#kakon gynaika pros nean zeuxai neon;
makra gar ischys mallon arsenôn menei,
thêleia d' hêbê thasson ekleipei demas.#[49]
It answers to our own proverb: "A young man married is a young man
marred."
For the sanctities of domestic life, and for the pathetic beauty
of maternal love, no poet had a deeper sense than Euripides. The
following lines, spoken apparently by Danaë, makes us keenly regret
the loss of the tragedy that bore her name; all the tenderness of the
Simonidean elegy upon her fable seems to inspire the maiden's longing
for a child to fill her arms and sport upon her knee:
#tach' an pros ankalaisi kai sternois emois
pêdôn athyroi kai philêmatôn ochlôi
psychên emên ktêsaito; tauta gar brotois
philtron megiston hai xynousiai pater.#[50]
And where was the charm of children ever painted with more feeling than
in these verses from the same play?
#gynai, philon men phengos hêliou tode,
kalon de pontou cheum' idein euênemon,
gê t' êrinon thallousa plousion th' hydôr,
pollôn t' epainon esti moi lexai kalôn.
all' ouden houtô lampron oud' idein kalon
hôs tois apaisi kai pothôi dedêgmenois
paidôn neognôn en domois idein phaos.#[51]
In the next quotation, beautiful by reason of its plainness, a young
man is reminded of the sweetness of a mother's love:
#ouk estin ouden mêtros hêdion teknois.
erate mêtros paides; hôs ouk est' erôs
toioutos allos hoios hêdiôn eran.#[52]
The sentiment here expressed seems to be contradicted by a fragment
from an unknown play (No. 887), where a son tells his mother that
he cannot be expected to cling to her as much as to his father. The
Greeks, as we gather from the _Oresteia_ of Æschylus, believed that the
male offspring was specially related by sympathy, duty, and hereditary
qualities to his father. The contrast between women and men in respect
to the paternal home is well conveyed in the following four lines:
#gynê gar exelthousa patrôiôn domôn
ou tôn tekontôn estin alla tou lechous;
to d' arsen hestêk' en domois aei genos
theôn patrôiôn kai taphôn timaoron.#[53]
Some of the most remarkable excerpts from Euripides turn upon the
thought of death--a doom accepted by him with magnanimous Greek
stoicism. Those which appear to me the most important I have thrown
together for convenience of comparison:
#tis d' oiden ei zên touth' ho keklêtai thanein,
to zên de thnêskein esti? plên homôs brotôn
nosousin hoi blepontes hoi d' olôlotes
ouden nosousin oude kektêntai kaka.
echrên gar hêmas syllogon poioumenous
ton phynta thrênein eis hos' erchetai kaka,
ton d' au thanonta kai ponôn pepaumenon
chairontas euphêmountas ekpempein domôn.
tous zôntas eu dran; katthanôn de pas anêr
gê kai skia; to mêden eis ouden rhepei.
thanatos gar anthrôpoisi neikeôn telos
echei; ti gar toud' esti meizon en brotois?
tis gar petraion skopelon outizôn dori
odynaisi dôsei? tis d' atimazôn nekys,
ei mêden aisthanointo tôn pathêmatôn?#[54]
To these should be added the magnificent words of consolation addressed
by Dictys, in the tragedy that bears his name, to Danaë:
#dokeis ton Haidên sôn ti phrontizein goôn
kai paid' anêsein ton son ei thelois stenein?
pausai; blepousa d' eis ta tôn pelas kaka
rhâiôn genoi' an, ei logizesthai thelois
hosoi te desmois ekmemochthêntai brotôn,
hosoi te gêraskousin orphanoi teknôn,
tous t' ek megistês olbias tyrannidos
to mêden ontas; tauta se skopein chreôn.#[55]
Close to the thought of death lies that of endurance; and here is a
fragment from the _Hypsipyle_, which might be placed for a motto on the
title-page of _Epictetus_:
#ephy men oudeis hostis ou ponei brotôn,
thaptei te tekna chater' au ktatai nea,
autos te thnêskei, kai tad' achthontai brotoi
eis gên pherontes gên; anankaiôs d' echei
bion therizein hôste karpimon stachyn,
kai ton men einai ton de mê; ti tauta dei
stenein, haper dei kata physin diekperan?
deinon gar ouden tôn anankaiôn brotois.#[56]
On Justice and the punishment of sins we may take the following
passages, expressing, with dramatic energy, the intense moral
conscience of the Greek race:
#dokeite pêdan tadikêmat' eis theous
pteroisi, kapeit' en Dios deltou ptychais
graphein tin' auta, Zêna d' eisorônta nin
thnêtois dikazein? oud' ho pas an ouranos
Dios graphontos tas brotôn hamartias
exarkeseien, oud' ekeinos an skopôn
pempein hekastôi zêmian; all' hê Dikê
entautha pou 'stin engys ei boulesth' horan.
tên toi Dikên legousi paid' einai Dios
engys te naiein tês brotôn hamartias.#[57]
They stand, however, in somewhat curious opposition to a fragment from
_Bellerophon_ about Divine Justice:
#phêsin tis einai dêt', en ouranôi theous?
ouk eisin, ouk eis'. ei tis anthrôpôn legei,
mê tôi palaiôi môros ôn chrêsthô logôi.
skepsasthe d' auta mê 'pi tois emois logois
gnômên echontes; phêm' egô tyrannida
kteinein te pleistous ktêmatôn t' aposterein,
horkous te parabainontas ekporthein, poleis,
kai tauta drôntes mallon eis' eudaimones
tôn eusebountôn hêsychê kath' hêmeran;
poleis te mikras oida timôsas theous
hai meizonôn klyousi dyssebesterôn
lonchês arithmôi pleionos kratoumenai.#[58]
In which of the fragments just quoted was the poet speaking in his own
person? In neither, perhaps, fully; partly, perhaps, in both. About
wealth he utters in like manner seemingly contradictory oracles:
#biâi nyn helket' ô kakoi timas brotoi
kai ktasthe plouton pantothen thêrômenoi
symmikta mê dikaia kai dikai' homou;
epeit' amasthe tônde dystênon theros.
ô chryse, dexiôma kalliston brotois,
hôs oute mêtêr hêdonas toiasd' echei
ou paides anthrôpoisin ou philos patêr,
hoias sy choi se dômasin kektêmenoi.
ei d' hê Kypris toiouton ophthalmois horâi
ou thaum' erôtas myrious autên trephein.#[59]
In what he says of noble birth Euripides never wavers. The true
democrat speaks through his verse, and yet no poet has spoken more
emphatically of bravery and honor. We may take the following examples
in their order:
#eis d' eugeneian olig' echô phrasai kala;
ho men gar esthlos eugenês emoig' anêr
ho d' ou dikaios kan ameinonos patros
Zênos pephykêi dysgenês einai dokei.
egô men oun ouk oid' hopôs skopein chreôn
tên eugeneian; tous gar andreious physin
kai tous dikaious tôn kenôn doxasmatôn
kan ôsi doulôn eugenesterous legô.
pheu toisi gennaioisin hôs hapantachou
prepei charaktêr chrêstos eis eupsychian.
hapas men aêr aietôi perasimos
hapasa de chthôn andri gennaiôi patris.#[60]
Further to illustrate his conception of true nobility, using for this
purpose in particular the fragments of the _Antiope_, would be easy.
It appears throughout that Euripides was bent on contrasting the
honor that is won by labor with the pleasures of a lazy life. Against
the hedonism which lay so near at hand to pagans in the license of
the flesh, the Greeks set up an ideal of glory attainable alone by
toil. This morality found expression in the famous lines of Hesiod
on #aretê#, in the action of Achilles, in the proverb #panta ta kala
chalepa#, and in the fable of the choice of Hercules. Euripides varies
the theme in his iambics by a hundred modulations:
#neanian gar andra chrê tolman aei;
oudeis gar ôn rhâithymos eukleês anêr.
all' hoi ponoi tiktousi tên eudoxian.
ouk estin hostis hêdeôs zêtôn bioun
eukleian eisektêsat' alla chrê ponein.
ho d' hêdys aiôn hê kakê t' anandria
out' oikon oute gaian orthôseien an.
syn myrioisi ta kala gignetai ponois.
eme d' ar' ou
mochthein dikaion? tis d' amochthos eukleês?
tis tôn megistôn deilos ôn ôrexato?#[61]
The political morality deduced from this view of life is stern and
noble:
#gnômêi gar andros eu men oikountai poleis,
eu d' oikos, eis t' au polemon ischyei mega;
sophon gar hen bouleuma tas pollas cheras
nikâi; syn ochlôi d' amathia pleiston kakon.
treis eisin aretai tas chreôn s' askein, teknon,
theous te timan tous te physantas goneis,
nomous te koinous Hellados; kai tauta drôn
kalliston hexeis stephanon eukleias aei.#[62]
Nor is the condemnation of mere pleasure-seeking less severe:
#anêr gar hostis eu bion kektêmenos
ta men kat' oikous ameliâi pareis eâi,
molpaisi d' hêstheis tout' aei thêreuetai,
argos men oikois kai polei genêsetai
philoisi d' oudeis; hê physis gar oichetai
hotan glykeias hêdonês hêssôn tis êi.#[63]
The indifference induced by satiety is well characterized in the
following lines:
#koros de pantôn; kai gar ek kallionôn
lektrois ep' aischrois eidon ekpeplêgmenous.
daitos de plêrôtheis tis asmenos palin
phaulêi diaitêi prosbalôn hêsthê stoma.#[64]
In the foregoing specimens no selection has been made of lines
remarkable for their æsthetic beauty. This omission is due to Stobæus,
who was more bent on extracting moral maxims than strains of poetry
comparable with the invocation of Hippolytus to Artemis. Two, however,
I have marked for translation on account of their artistic charm; the
first for its pretty touch of picturesqueness, the second for its
sympathy with sculpture:
#polys d' aneirpe kissos euphyês klados
chelidonôn mouseion.
ea; tin' ochthon tond' horô perirrhyton
aphrôi thalassês, parthenou t' eikô tina
ex automorphôn laïnôn teichismatôn
sophês agalma cheiros.#[65]
Some passages, worthy of preservation, yet not easily classified, may
wind up the series. Here is "Envy, eldest born of hell:"
#tis ara mêtêr ê patêr kakon mega
brotois ephyse ton dysônymon phthonon?
pou kai pot' oikei sômatôn lachôn meros?
en chersin ê splanchnoisin ê par' ommata
esth' hêmin? hôs ên mochthos iatrois megas
tomais aphairein ê potois ê pharmakois
pasôn megistên tôn en anthrôpois nosôn.#[66]
The next couplet is pregnant with a home-truth which most men have had
occasion to feel:
#hapantes esmen eis to nouthetein sophoi
autoi d' hotan sphalômen ou gignôskomen.#[67]
The value attached by Greek political philosophers to the #êthos#, or
temperament, of states, and their dislike of demagogy, are accounted
for in these four lines:
#tropos esti chrêstos asphalesteros nomou.
ton men gar oudeis an diastrepsai pote
rhêtôr dynaito, ton d' anô te kai katô
logois tarassôn pollakis lymainetai.#[68]
One single line, noticeable for its weighty meaning, and Euripidean by
reason of its pathos, shall end the list:
#neos ponois de g' ouk agymnastos phrenas.#[69]
The lasting title to fame of Euripides consists in his having dealt
with the deeper problems of life in a spirit which became permanent
among the Greeks, so that his poems, like those of Menander, never lost
their value as expressions of current philosophy. Nothing strikes the
student of later Greek literature more strongly than this prolongation
of the Euripidean tone of thought and feeling. In the decline of tragic
poetry the literary sceptre was transferred to comedy, and the comic
playwrights may be described as the true successors of Euripides. The
dialectic method, degenerating into sophistic quibbling, which he
affected, was indeed dropped, and a more harmonious form of art than
the Euripidean was created for comedy by Menander, when the Athenians,
after passing through their disputatious period, had settled down
into a tranquil acceptation of the facts of life. Yet this return to
harmony of form and purity of perception did not abate the influence
of Euripides. Here and there throughout his tragedies he had said once
and for all, and well said, what the Greeks were bound to think and
feel upon important matters, and his sensitive, susceptible temperament
repeated itself over and over again among his literary successors.
The exclamation of Philemon that, if he could believe in immortality,
he would hang himself to see Euripides, is characteristic not only of
Philemon, but also of the whole Macedonian period of Greek literature.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Worsley's translation, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 154.
[14] See vol. i. pp. 91-123.
[15]
Lo, if thou fain wouldst benefit the dead,
Or if thou seek to harm them, 'tis all one;
For they can feel no joy nor suffer pain,
Nathless high Nemesis is throned above us,
And Justice doth exact the dead man's due.
[16] See vol. i. pp. 372-435.
[17]
O Death, the savior, spurn me not, but come!
For thou alone of ills incurable
Art healer: no pain preyeth on the dead.
[18]
Alone of gods Death loves not gifts; with him
Nor sacrifice nor incense aught avails;
He hath no altar and no hymns of gladness;
Prayer stands aloof from him, Persuasion fails.
[19]
Love throbs in holy heaven to wound the earth;
And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals;
The rain that falls in rivers from the sky,
Impregnates earth, and she brings forth for men
The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres;
The bloom of forests by dews hymeneal
Is perfected: in all which things I rule.
[20]
Zeus is the air, Zeus earth, and Zeus wide heaven:
Yea, Zeus is all things, and the power above them.
[21]
This love-disease is a delightful trouble;
Well might I shadow forth its power as thus:
When the clear, eager frost has fallen, boys
Seize with their fingers the firm frozen ice,
And first they feel an unaccustomed pleasure,
But in the end it melts, and they to leave it
Or in their hands to hold it know not how;
Even so the same desire drives wilful lovers
To do and not to do by frequent changes.
[22]
Woman, that hast dared all, and more than all!
There is not anything, nor will be ever,
Than woman worse, let what will fall on men.
It is right to observe that Welcker and Ahrens have conjecturally
pieced together this and many other scattered fragments, and connected
them in such a way as to reconstitute a tragedy with Argos for its
scene, not Thebes.
[23]
'Tis terrible that impious men, the sons
Of sinners, even such should thrive and prosper,
While men by virtue moulded, sprung from sires
Complete in goodness, should be born to suffer.
Nay, but the gods do ill in dealing thus
With mortals! It were well that pious men
Should take some signal guerdon at their hands;
But evil-doers, on their heads should fall
Conspicuous punishment for deeds ill-done.
Then should no wicked man fare well and flourish.
From the _Aletes_.
[24]
The man who takes delight in always talking
Is irksome to his friends and does not know it.
[25]
A reasonable soul, by just perception,
Better than sophists may discover truth.
[26]
Money makes friends for men, and heaps up honors,
And sets them on the tyrant's hated throne:
Wealth finds no foes, or none but covert foes,
Climbs pathless ways, and treads where tracks are beaten;
While poor men, what luck gives them, may not use:
A misshaped body, an ill-sounding name,
Wealth turns by words to beauty, gifts with wisdom;
For wealth alone hath privilege of freedom
In joy and sickness, and can hide its sorrow.
[27] Tyrants are wise by wise society.
[28] Man is but wind and shadow, naught besides.
[29]
As in the boughs of a tall poplar-tree,
If nothing else, at least her shivering top
Moves 'neath the breeze and waves her leafy pinions.
[30]
Love falls not only on the hearts of men
Or women, but the souls of gods above
He furrows, and makes onslaught on the sea:
Against his force Zeus the all-powerful
Is impotent--he yields and bends with pleasure.
Than a bad wife a man can have no greater
Curse, and no greater blessing than a good one.
Each after trial speaks by his experience.
[31]
Girls, look you, Kupris is not Kupris only:
In her one name names manifold are blended;
For she is Death, imperishable power,
Frenetic fury, irresistible longing,
Wailing and groaning. Her one force includes
All energy, all languor, and all violence.
Into the vitals of whatever thing
Hath breath of life, she sinks. Who feeds her not?
She creeps into the fishes of the sea
And the four-footed creatures of dry land,
Shakes mid the birds her own aerial plumes,
Sways beasts and mortal men and gods above.
Which of the gods hath she not thrown in wrestling?
If right allow, and to speak truth is right,
She rules the heart of Zeus. Without or spear
Or sword, I therefore bid you know, Dame Kupris
Fells at a blow of gods and men the counsels.
[32]
Now am I naught--abandoned: oftentimes
I've noticed how to this we women fall,
How we are naught. In girlhood and at home
Our life's the sweetest life men ever know,
For careless joy is a glad nurse to all:
But when we come to youth, gleeful and gay,
Forth are we thrust, and bought and sold and bartered,
Far from our household gods, from parents far,
Some to strange husbands, to barbarians some,
To homes uncouth, to houses foul with shame.
Yea, let but one night yoke us, all these things
Must needs forthwith be praised and held for fair.
[33]
Of one race and common lineage all men at the hour of birth
From the womb are issued equal, sons alike of mother earth;
But our lots how diverse! Some are nursed by fortune harsh and rude,
Some by gentle ease, while others bare their necks to servitude.
[34]
To call that man who prospers truly happy
Were vain before his life be wholly done;
For in short time and swift great power and riches
Have fallen by the dower of fate malign,
When fortune veers and thus the gods decree.
[35]
There is no trouble worse than length of life.
Old age hath all the ills that flesh is heir to--
Vain thoughts and powerless deeds and vanished mind.
If mourners by their cries could cure our misery,
If tears could raise the dead to life again,
Gold would be valueless compared with crying.
But now, old man, these sorrows nought avail
To bring to light him whom the grave hath covered;
Else had my father, too, by grace of tears,
The day revisited.
The second of these extracts finds a close echo in some beautiful lines
on the inutility of tears by Philemon [_Sardius_ fr. i.]
[36]
Rightly do bad men call my name Odysseus,
For ill folk odious insults heap upon me.
[37]
Even in words there is a pleasure, when
They bring forgetfulness of present woes.
'Tis better not to be than to live badly.
When toil has been well finished, toils are sweet.
Enslave the body--still the soul is free.
The oaths of women I on water write.
O mortals, wretched creatures of a day,
How truly are we naught but like to shadows
Rolling superfluous weight of earth around!
Take courage, lady: many fearful things
That breathed dark dreams in night, by day are solaced.
What may be taught, I learn; what may be found,
I seek; from heaven I ask what may be prayed for.
[38] See Goethe, _Sämmtliche Werke_, 1840, vol. xxxiii, pp. 22-43.
[39]
Of all the thousand ills that prey on Hellas
Not one is greater than the tribe of athletes;
For, first, they never learn how to live well,
Nor, indeed, could they; seeing that a man,
Slave to his jaws and belly, cannot hope
To heap up wealth superior to his sire's.
How to be poor and row in fortune's boat
They know no better; for they have not learned
Manners that make men proof against ill luck.
Lustrous in youth, they lounge like living statues.
Decking the streets; but when sad old age comes,
They fall and perish like a threadbare coat.
I've often blamed the customs of us Hellenes,
Who for the sake of such men meet together
To honor idle sport and feed our fill;
For who, I pray you, by his skill in wrestling,
Swiftness of foot, good boxing, strength at quoits,
Has served his city by the crown he gains?
Will they meet men in fight with quoits in hand,
Or in the press of shields drive forth the foeman
By force of fisticuffs from hearth and home?
Such follies are forgotten face to face
With steel. We therefore ought to crown with wreaths
Men wise and good, and him who guides the State,
A man well-tempered, just, and sound in counsel,
Or one who by his words averts ill deeds,
Warding off strife and warfare; for such things
Bring honor on the city and all Hellenes.
[40]
He was my friend; and may love lead me never
Aside to folly or to sensual joy!
Surely there is another sort of love
For a soul, just, well-tempered, strong, and good.
And there should be this law for mortal men,
To love the pure and temperate, and to leave
Kupris, the daughter of high Zeus, alone.
We find a witty contradiction to the sentiment of these lines in a
fragment of Amphis [_Dithyrambus_, fr. 2]:
#ti phêis? sy tauti prosdokâis peisein em' hôs
erôs tis estin hostis hôraion philôn
tropôn erastês esti tên opsin pareis?
aphrôn g' alêthôs.#
[41]
Whoso pretends that Love is no great god,
The lord and master of all deities,
Is either dull of soul, or, dead to beauty,
Knows not the greatest god that governs men.
_Augè_, 269.
When it befalls poor mortal men to love,
Should they find worthy objects for their loving,
Then is there nothing left of joy to long for.
_Andromeda_, 147.
Mine is a master of resolve and daring,
Filled with all craft to do impossible things,
Love, among gods the most unconquerable.
_Hippolytus_, 431.
[42]
Music, at least,
Love teaches men, unmusical before.
_Stheneboea_, 664.
[43]
O Love, our lord, of gods and men the king,
Either teach not how beauteous beauty is,
Or help poor lovers, whom like clay thou mouldest,
Through toil and labor to a happy end.
Thus shalt thou gain high honor: otherwise
The loving lessons that men learn of thee,
Will rob thee of their worship and good-will.
_Andromeda_, 135.
[44]
A young man with eyes turned to follow beauty
May not be governed: yea, though he be weak,
Yet is he wise and masterful for loving;
And when Love smiles, what boon surpasseth love?
_Antigone_, 161.
[45]
Love is a sluggard, and of sloth the twin:
Mirrors and hair-dyes are his favorite toys;
Labor he shuns. I take this truth to witness:
No beggar for his bread was known to love,
But with rich men his beauty-bloom abounds.
[46]
Dire is the violence of ocean waves,
And dire the blast of rivers and hot fire,
And dire is want, and dire are countless things;
But nothing is so dire and dread as woman.
No painting could express her dreadfulness,
No words describe it. If a god made woman,
And fashioned her, he was for men the artist
Of woes unnumbered, and their deadly foe.
_Incert. Fab._, 880.
[47]
Saving my mother, I hate womankind.
_Melanippide_, 507.
Good women must abide within the house:
Those whom we meet abroad are nothing worth.
_Meleager_, 527.
Mothers are fonder of their sons than fathers:
For mothers know they're theirs, while fathers think it.
_Incert. Fab._, 883.
There is no fort, there is no money-box,
Nor aught besides, so hard to guard as woman.
_Danaë_, 323.
Instead of fire,
Another fire mightier and more invincible
Is woman.
_Hippolytus_, 430.
Marry, go to, yea, marry--and then die
By poison at a woman's hand or wiles.
_Cretan Women_, 467.
[48]
Those men who mate with women better born
Or wed great riches, know not how to wed;
For when the woman's part doth rule the house,
The man's a slave; large dowers are worse than none,
Seeing they make divorce more difficult.
_Melanippide_, 513.
[49]
To mate a youth with a young wife is ill;
Seeing a man's strength lasteth, while the bloom
Of beauty quickly leaves a woman's form.
_Æolus_, 22.
[50]
He, leaping to my arms and in my bosom,
Might haply sport, and with a crowd of kisses
Might win my soul forth; for there is no greater
Love-charm than close companionship, my father.
_Danaë_, 325.
[51]
Lady, the sun's light to our eyes is dear,
And fair the tranquil reaches of the sea,
And flowery earth in May, and bounding waters;
And so right many fair things I might praise;
Yet nothing is so radiant and so fair
As for souls childless, with desire sore-smitten,
To see the light of babes about the house.
_Ib._, 327.
[52]
Naught is more dear to children than their mother.
Sons, love your mother; for there is no love
Sweeter than this that can be loved by men.
_Erechtheus_, 370.
[53]
A woman, when she leaves her father's home,
Belongs not to her parents, but her bed;
Men stay within the house, and stand for aye
Avengeful guardians of its shrines and graves.
_Danaë_, 330.
[54]
Who knows if that be life which we call death,
And life be dying?--save alone that men
Living bear grief, but when they yield their breath
They grieve no more and have no sorrow then.
_Incert. Fab._, 821.
'Twere well for men, when first a babe draws breath,
To meet and wail the woes that he must bear;
But to salute the soul that rests from care
With songs and pæans on the path of death.
_Cresphontes_, 454.
Let those who live do right ere death descendeth;
The dead are dust; mere naught to nothing tendeth.
_Meleager_, 537.
In death there dwells the end of human strife;
For what mid men than death is mightier?
Who can inflict pain on the stony scaur
By wounding it with spear-point? Who can hurt
The dead, when dead men have no sense of suffering?
_Antigone_, 160.
[55]
Think'st thou that Death will heed thy tears at all,
Or send thy son back if thou wilt but groan?
Nay, cease; and, gazing at thy neighbor's grief,
Grow calm: if thou wilt take the pains to reckon
How many have toiled out their lives in bonds,
How many wear to old age, robbed of children,
And all who from the tyrant's height of glory
Have sunk to nothing. These things shouldst thou heed.
_Dictys_, 334.
[56]
No man was ever born who did not suffer.
He buries children, then begets new sons,
Then dies himself: and men forsooth are grieved,
Consigning dust to dust. Yet needs must be
Lives should be garnered like ripe harvest-sheaves,
And one man live, another perish. Why
Mourn over that which nature puts upon us?
Naught that must be is terrible to mortals.
_Hypsipyle_, 752.
[57]
Think you that sins leap up to heaven aloft
On wings, and then that on Jove's red-leaved tablets
Some one doth write them, and Jove looks at them
In judging mortals? Not the whole broad heaven,
If Jove should write our sins, would be enough,
Nor he suffice to punish them. But Justice
Is here, is somewhere near us; do but look.
_Melanippide_, 488.
Justice, they say, is daughter of high Jove,
And dwells hard by to human sinfulness.
_Alopé_, 149.
[58]
Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.
Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words
No undue credence: for I say that kings
Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud,
And doing thus are happier than those
Who live calm pious lives day after day.
How many little states that serve the gods
Are subject to the godless but more strong,
Made slaves by might of a superior army!
_Bellerophontes_, 293.
[59]
Go to now, O ye bad men, heap up honors
By force, get wealth, hunting it whence ye can,
By indiscriminate armfuls, right and wrong;
Then reap of all these things the wretched harvest.
_Ino_, 420.
Gold! of all welcome blessings thou'rt the best!
For never had a mother's smile for men,
Nor son, nor father dear, such perfect charm,
As thou and they who hold thee for their guest.
If Kupris darts such glamour from her gaze,
No wonder that she breeds a myriad loves!
_Bellerophontes_, 288.
[60]
For mere high birth I have small meed of praise;
The good man in my sight is nobly born;
While he who is not righteous, though his sire
Than Zeus be loftier, seems to me but base.
_Dictys_, 341.
I know not how to think of noble blood:
For men of courage and of virtuous soul,
Though born of slaves, are far above vain titles.
_Melanippide_, 496.
Lo, in all places how the nobly born
Show their good breed and spirit by brave bearing!
_Danaë_, 328.
The whole wide ether is the eagle's way:
The whole earth is a brave man's fatherland.
_Incert. Frag._ 866.
[61]
A young man should be always doing, daring;
For no slack heart or hand was ever famous.
'Tis toil and danger that beget fair fame.
_Archelaus_, 233.
Who seeks to lead a life of unstirred pleasure
Cannot win fame: fame is the meed of travail.
_Ibid._ 234.
A life of pleasure and unmanly sloth
Could never raise a house or State to honor.
_Ibid._ 235.
Fair honor is the child of countless toils.
_Ibid._ 236.
Is it not right that I
Should toil? Without toil who was ever famous?
What slothful soul ever desired the highest?
_Ibid._ 238.
[62]
'Tis judgment that administers the State,
The household, and in war of force is found;
For one wise word in season hath more strength
Than many hands. Crowds and no brains breed ruin.
_Antiope_, 205.
There are three virtues to observe, my son:
Honor the gods, the parents that begot you,
The laws that govern Hellas. Follow these,
And you will win the fairest crown of honor.
_Ibid._ 221.
[63]
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