Chapter V: The Works of Euripides (3)

Of characterization, therefore, little is to be found. Cassandra, though her pathos is less deep and wide than that of her namesake in the _Agamemnon_, is yet valuable, as aiding in that perspective which is given mainly by the prologue. Talthybius and Andromache are ably sketched, but Menelaus and Helen are introduced merely for the sake of the elaborate dispute between Hecuba and Helen. It is upon Hecuba that the whole poem hangs—not upon her action or even her character, but upon her capacity for suffering. With the progress of the play she changes from the Queen of Troy to a figure summing up in herself all the sorrows of humanity. As each woe is faced, lamented, and at last assimilated into an ennobling experience, another disaster flings her back into the primitive outcry to begin once more the task of resignation. She is a pagan _mater dolorosa_. As each billow of grief descends upon her, leaving her still sentient, nay, filled with eager sympathy for others, the Greeks who oppress her become strangely puny and unreal like the legionaries in some mediæval picture of martyrdom. Even when she confesses to complete despair she yet the next moment begins to fashion within the abyss a tiny abode for hope: Astyanax may grow to manhood, “so that—if chance is kind—sons of thy blood may dwell again in Ilium, and there might yet be a city”.[609] Next moment the child is torn away to be flung from the battlements. Even so, Hecuba recovers her balance in the end and can deliver, as she stands over the little body, the stinging reproach[610] of a “barbarian” revolted by the crimes of “civilization”.[611] It is to this endless capacity for facing sorrow and transmuting it into rich experience that we owe one of the most beautiful and definite philosophic _dicta_ to be found in Euripides:—

ὦ γῆς ὄχημα, κἀπὶ γῆς ἔχων ἕδραν
ὅστις ποτ’ εἶ σύ, δυστόπαστος εἰδέναι,
Ζεύς, εἴτ’ ἀνάγκη φύσεος, εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν,
προσηυξάμην σε· πάντα γὰρ δι’ ἀψόφου
βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ’ ἄγεις.[612]

“O Throne of earth, by earth upheld, whosoe’er Thou art, beyond conjecture of our knowledge—Zeus, or the law of Nature, or the mind of Man, to Thee do I address my prayer; for moving along Thy soundless path Thou dost guide all mortal life with justice.” As for the Olympian gods, they are scarcely attacked; there is little more than a jaded recognition that belief in them is no help or inspiration.[613] To this plaintive agnosticism there is here no alternative but fierce pessimism, as when in the frightful eloquence of Hecuba we are told that Fate is “a capering idiot”.[614]

Most mournful of all Greek tragedies, this is yet beautiful, and full of splendid spectacular effects: Cassandra bounding wildly forth with her bridal torches; the entry of Andromache seated in the waggon among the spoils of Troy; Hecuba bending over Astyanax’ body within the great buckler of his father; the little procession which carries the shield to burial, princely robes hanging therefrom; and the aged queen addressing her farewell to the blazing city.

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS[615] (Ἰφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Ταύροις) or _Iphigenia among the Taurians_, is a work of uncertain date.[616] Nothing is known of its success when produced, and the absence of scholia suggests that it was not popular in later times.

Iphigenia, before the temple of Artemis among the Taurians (in South Russia), relates that she was not slain at Aulis, but brought by Artemis to serve as her priestess here, close to the city of King Thoas, where she is compelled to sacrifice all strangers. A dream has suggested to her that her brother Orestes is dead; she goes within to prepare offerings to his shade. Orestes and Pylades enter; they have been sent by the Delphian oracle to steal the image of Artemis; in this way Orestes will be freed from the Furies. They postpone their attempt till nightfall, and retire. The chorus of Greek captive maidens enter in attendance upon Iphigenia, and a cowherd brings news that two Greeks have been captured and are being brought for sacrifice. After a choric ode, the rustics enter with their prisoners. A conversation follows, in which neither Iphigenia’s name nor that of Orestes is revealed, and she offers to spare his life if he will take a letter to Argos. He insists that Pylades shall go, and the latter asks that the message be read. It proves to be an appeal to Orestes, and, exclaiming that he will at once perform his task, Pylades hands it to his friend. Brother and sister thus become known to one another, and all three agree to escape, taking the image with them. They enter the temple, after Iphigenia has enjoined secrecy upon the chorus, who sing their yearning for home. King Thoas enters and is tricked by Iphigenia into aiding the escape. The chorus sing Apollo’s conquest of Delphi. A messenger rushes in, seeking Thoas; the chorus misdirect him, but in vain. Thoas learns how his people have been beguiled into allowing the Greeks to embark. However, a contrary wind is even now driving them back. Thoas is preparing to hunt the fugitives down when Athena appears and stops him; he is, moreover, commanded to send the Greek maidens home. He consents, and the play ends with the joy of the chorus.

This drama is one of the finest among Euripides’ works. It provides a marked contrast with the _Troades_; there is bitterness here indeed, but it is the bitterness of Voltaire rather than that of Swift. And whereas in the former play plot is almost non-existent, here it is vital. Perhaps the most brilliant piece of construction in Euripides is the celebrated Recognition-scene of this drama. Indeed the whole tragedy is the story of a plot, skilful and breathless. Iphigenia’s method—to deceive by telling the truth (about Orestes’ matricide)—was particularly dear to Greeks, connoisseurs of falsehood both in life and in literature; so beautifully does she succeed that (partly for her own amusement) she tells the king further the news she has just heard concerning her brother’s welfare. But the poet is no more the slave of his wit than of his sympathies, and we are brought to realization of the facts—namely, that the three Greeks are thieves and Iphigenia a traitress—by her own self-mockery: “Falsehood, thy name is Hellas,”[617] and by the simple generosity with which the prince accepts her suggestions.

The second feature of importance is the atmosphere of adventure. A strange grim glamour lies upon this story of breathless dangers in a region which is itself a mystery and a menace. We must forget modern notions about South Russia, lines of steamboats, and Odessa as civilized as Hull. This kingdom of Thoas is as remote from Athens as Thibet or the Upper Congo from us; indeed at many points we recall the African stories of Sir Rider Haggard. Amid these ghastly altars, the secret fire and the cleft of death,[618] deserted seas and bloodthirsty savages, there is an infinite painful sweetness in Orestes’ reminder of a dusty heirloom in his sister’s bedchamber at home.[619] The poem is filled with suggestions of remoteness, the heaving of strange billows, legendary landing-places. Flowing from this is the home-sickness which breaks out again and again, in Pylades’ recollection, during his worst agony, of the winding Phocian glens,[620] and in the lyric songs where the Greek captives long to fly homeward with the halcyon to the hallowed places of Greece.[621]

But not only does religion as a radiant emotion setting a glow around “the hill of Cynthus” and the “circling mere” mark the play. Euripides here, as so often, treats religion intellectually as well as emotionally. By the lips of Orestes he passes judgment upon Olympian religion as a guide of conduct. Taking the story of Æschylus, he acts not as a lesser unbeliever would have acted; he does not dub the reconciliation of the _Eumenides_ a delusion. With a studiously bungling air he explains that one section of the Furies was appeased, and the other not.[622] If the manner of this revision is delightfully impudent, the intention is deadly. Orestes has been sent away by the Delphian priests to _do_ something, to seek and undergo, if possible, a physiological effect simply through the excitement of a far journey. We are very near to the “long holiday and change of air”. The Furies exist nowhere but in his own brain. On the Athenian Areopagus he went through a climax of hallucination. Surrounded by stray animals,[623] he saw in imagination all the tremendous events imagined by Æschylus as objective reality. His mind only partly cleared by this paroxysm, he fled back to Delphi for complete healing. The “oracle” sent him to the remotest region known to Greeks, to a land, moreover, where the natives are wont to murder all strangers. Phœbus is ashamed of his “former responses” and seeks to be rid of his too obedient, too persistent devotee.[624] Such is the opinion of Orestes himself when at last in the “toils,”[625] and the whole work (with an exception presently to be noticed) is pervaded by this unflinching rationalism. The pious herdsmen who see marine deities in the Greek visitors are laughed to scorn by a companion who, though dubbed “a fool reckless and irreverent,”[626] is entirely justified. Iphigenia’s reflections[627] on the human sacrifices of the Tauri lead her to acquit the goddess of “such folly” and to attribute this practice to ferocious savages who make gods in their own image. At one point indeed simple faith is justified. Orestes when faced by death is comforted by his friend: “The god’s oracle hath not yet destroyed thee, close as thou dost stand to slaughter”.[628] In a moment Orestes is free from peril at the priestess’ hands. But no one, least of all Euripides, expects even the “gods” to blunder always. Finally, the ode on Apollo’s conquest of Delphi is a delicate but pungent satire: the “oracle” is a magnificent trade connexion.[629]

This cynical clearness is a guide in studying the exceptional passage above mentioned: in the last scene orthodox piety is upheld by the apparition of Athena. Does then the _Iphigenia_ in the end refute the rationalism impressed on it almost everywhere? We can take our choice, accepting Athena, Apollo’s divinity, and all the other traditional garnishments, but stultifying many passages, and the tone of nine-tenths of the play; or we can accept the latter as a thrilling and pathetic study in human superstition and intrepidity, but reject Athena as a conventional phantom. In this latter case we shall, with Dr. Verrall, consider that the play, for all artistic and intelligible purposes, ends at v. 1434, leaving Thoas to capture and destroy the Greeks. Many will find such a choice difficult. The _Iphigenia_ is certainly not as clear a case as the _Orestes_, to say nothing of the _Ion_. But it is difficult to believe that here he has composed a magnificent play to bolster up theology which elsewhere he strenuously attacks. Nevertheless, the speech of Athena is not in itself contradictory or ludicrous.

The mental pathology—it can hardly be called the character—of Orestes, deserves close study. He provides an admirable instance of that skill in portraying madness for which Euripides was famed.[630] A man of strong simple instincts, he is shaken terribly by the murderous events of his childhood. His brain is overthrown by the sway of the hierarchy and by the deeds to which he was impelled. From this overthrow he never quite recovered, as the dramatist himself carefully indicates.[631] Throughout the _Iphigenia_ we discern, drawn with extraordinary skill and tact, the struggle between the old obsession and an intellect originally clear and acute. The prologue, when he explores the ground with Pylades, shows him (in spite of a ghastly brilliance of thought fit only for frenzy or the nightmare[632]) possessed of shrewdness which, if consistently applied, would have saved him from the expedition altogether. Later he is seen hurled by the excitement of his quest into complete, though temporary, insanity[633]—a fit which throws back strange light upon his “trial” at Athens and provides a comment upon the later scene,[634] where, though at the moment sane, he yet believes in the delusive experience. Everywhere we find this superstructure of sanity on an insane foundation. Though he can see through the “oracle” as clearly as any man with regard to its past deceptions, he is pathetically enthusiastic for the latest nostrum.[635] The long account[636] of his sorrows which he gives his sister is full of such sinister meaning. He essays to describe the origin of the court which tried him: “There is a holy ... _vote_,[637] which long ago Zeus founded for Ares owing to some blood-guiltiness, whatever it was....” He has forgotten half the facts, and bungles the rest. This speech, full of obscurity, irrelevancy, and disconnected thought, is practically ignored by his sister, who realizes his condition both from the report of the herdsman and from the occasional lunacy he manifests in conversation.[638] Orestes, too, knows[639] how it is with him, and the complete absence of lament on his part when faced with death is one of the grimmest things in the drama.

The ELECTRA[640] (Ἠλέκτρα) was probably acted in 413 B.C.[641] The scene is laid before the cottage of a peasant, who explains that he is the husband of Electra, but in name only; she comes forth and they depart to their several tasks. Orestes and Pylades arrive; Orestes has come at Apollo’s bidding to avenge his father, at whose tomb he has offered sacrifice. Seeing Electra they retire. She is invited to a festival by the chorus of Argive women, but refuses, urging her sorrow and poverty. The two strangers approach, Orestes pretending that he has been sent by her brother for tidings of her; she gives him a passionate message begging Orestes to exact vengeance. The peasant returns and sends the strangers within as his guests; the chorus sing the expedition to Troy. An aged shepherd enters with the provisions for which Electra sent, and tells her that he has seen upon Agamemnon’s tomb a sacrifice and a votive lock of hair. He in vain seeks to convince Electra that her brother must be in Argos, but later recognizes Orestes by a scar. Brother and sister embrace with joy; after passionate prayers to Agamemnon’s shade he departs to seek Ægisthus. The chorus sing the crime of Thyestes which caused sun and stars to change their course. A messenger relates how Ægisthus has been cut down by Orestes in the midst of a religious service; the avengers return with the body, over which Electra gloats. Clytæmnestra is seen approaching, lured by a story that Electra has given birth to a child. Orestes feels remorse, but is hardened by his sister, who awaits her mother alone. A dispute follows about the queen’s past, but Clytæmnestra refuses to quarrel, and goes within to perform the birth-ritual. Soon her cries are heard, and Orestes and Electra re-enter, filled with grief and shame. In the sky appear Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux), brothers of Clytæmnestra, who blame the matricide, which they attribute to Apollo; then they depart to the Sicilian sea to save mariners who are righteous and unperjured.

Special interest clings to this play, because here only can we see Euripides traversing precisely the same ground as Æschylus (in the _Choephorœ_) and Sophocles (in the _Electra_), This similarity of subject long damaged Euripides’ play in the eyes of critics. It was assumed that the youngest poet was imitating his forerunners, and it needed small acumen to observe that the imitation was bad. Whereupon, instead of wondering whether perhaps Euripides was after all not copying others, critics proceeded to write cheerful nonsense about “frivolity” and “a profound falling off in art and taste”.[642] The fact simply is that each of these three tragedians discussed the story from a different viewpoint. Æschylus treated it as a religious fact, Sophocles as an emotional fact, Euripides as an ethical fact. Æschylus is on the side of Apollo, Sophocles on the side of Electra, Euripides on the side of no one. He asks himself what circumstances, what perversions of character, can result in this matricide.

Hence his careful study of Clytæmnestra, Electra, and Orestes, so careful that a reader at first supposes the poet a partisan of Clytæmnestra. Not so; he has merely tried to understand her. A placid woman of quick but shallow affections, she was abandoned by her husband for ten years to the memory of a murdered daughter. Delightfully characteristic is her argument: “Suppose Menelaus had been stolen from home; would it have been right for me to slay Orestes that Helen might regain her husband?”[643] Vigorous and damaging, this is yet tinged with comedy by its raw novelty and precision. One almost overhears the _commèrages_ of the street-corner. When Agamemnon brought back openly a concubine to his home, Clytæmnestra assisted[644] her lover in anticipating the king’s revenge by murdering him. From this act she has drifted into condoning cruelty against her unoffending children; throughout she has acted wickedly and acquiesced in worse conduct by others. Nevertheless, she is no figure of tragedy; she only suggests tragedy because she is the mother of her executioners. Her chief love is placid domesticity; if this can be obtained only by murdering those who threaten it, that is very terrible, but the world is notoriously imperfect. Clytæmnestra cannot, and will not, meet Electra on the tragic plane. Her daughter’s great outburst and threat of murderous vengeance she meets in this comfortable fashion: “My child, it was always your nature to love your father. It often happens so. Some favour the male side, while others love their mother rather than their father. I forgive you: for in truth I rejoice not greatly, child, in the acts that I have done.... But you!—unwashed and shabby in attire!” ... And so forth. Clytæmnestra is almost as ill-tuned to the atmosphere which Electra constantly and deliberately creates as Sancho Panza to the high converse of his master. The queen has been summoned to her daughter’s cottage by report of a newly-born infant. She shows her natural goodness of heart by hurrying thither at once (though of course she has not the taste to leave her gorgeous retinue behind) and doing all she can to comfort and help her daughter. By this time she has all unconsciously “taken the wind out of the sails” of the avengers. But Electra can maintain her grimness and actually utter black hints of a wedding-bed in the grave![645] We turn next to her; what manner of woman can this be?

Electra is one of Euripides’ most vivid and successful female characters. She has strong claims on our pity and sympathy, but fails to win them. Her mother is a ready victim of any emotion which breathes upon her; Electra has settled her position emotionally, intellectually, morally, years ago. Nothing can alter her; she is the victim and the apostle of an _idée fixe_. The crimes of love are no less frightful than the crimes of hate; in Electra affection for Agamemnon has become the basis of cold ferocity against Clytæmnestra. It is Orestes who shrinks when the deed is to be done, Electra who braces his resolution. She has borne no child. Instead of beginning a new life in her children, looking to the future, she has fed morbidly upon memories, stiffening natural grief and resentment into permanent inhuman morosity. Clytæmnestra has blandly outlived two murders in her own family, and remains neither unamiable nor uninteresting; but it is impossible to imagine what Electra will do, say, or think, after the events of to-day. This unnatural self-concentration, which means not only her mother’s death but her own spiritual suicide, is mainly the result of her childlessness. And it is on this that Euripides lays his finger. “Announce that I have given birth to a male child.... Then, when she has come, of course it is her death.”[646] This plot of Electra is possibly the most brilliantly skilful and most terrible stroke in all the poet’s work. It indicates the source of her heartlessness, it provides an excellent dramatic motive for the queen’s arrival, and it shows, as nothing else could show, the fiendishness of a woman who can use just this pretext to the very woman who gave her birth. She relies upon the sanctity of motherhood to aid her in trampling upon it. Her first words, as she slips forth to join her husband beneath the star-lit sky, show how the heavens themselves remind her that she has had no infant at her breast during the night-watches: “Black Night, thou _Nurse_ of golden stars”.[647] Moreover, not only does she feel her sorrows, she enjoys the sense of martyrdom. Her wrongs and present trials she is capable of exaggerating;[648] at every opportunity she exploits them for purposes of self-pity, as her husband hints more than once.[649]

Orestes, living in exile, has escaped the blight of Electra only to become a criminal with no illusions, proud of his worldly experience, witness the blundering disquisition on “the true gentleman,”[650] and his cynical comments on his humble brother-in-law.[651] His onslaught upon Ægisthus from behind proves him at the best deficient in gallantry, and on the matricide itself nothing need be said. We can pity Orestes for his fearful position, but he is a poor creature. The _Electra_, in fact, is a clear-sighted attack upon the morality of blood-feuds. The poet feels that Ægisthus and Clytæmnestra, left so long unmolested, should have been left alone still; if Apollo at Delphi, and the peasant in his Argive cottage, had estimated human nature more wisely, this horror would have been escaped, and no harm done. To punish the guilty is not always a virtue; often it is a debauch of self-glory, and sometimes the worst of villainies.

As always, the poet regards the “oracle,” which commanded matricide, as an offence to civilization. But there is novelty in the extreme candour with which this is put forward. The Dioscuri repeatedly stigmatize its murderous command as “foolishness” or worse.[652] Equally outspoken are the chorus, who devote the last stanza of their lovely song on the Golden Lamb and Thyestes’ crime to a brilliant denial of its truth.... “But legends that fill men with dread are profitable to divine worship”[653]—it is admirably put, and may rank with the epigrams of Ovid[654] and Voltaire.[655] As for the Dioscuri, it is impossible to speak without affection of such quaint and charming figures. Their converse with Electra and the chorus is an irresistible combination of dignity and a breezy contempt for official reticence. In his first long _ex cathedra_ speech Castor is on the verge of saying what he really thinks of Phœbus Apollo, remembers himself just in time, and then—gives a broad hint after all.[656] In the less formal talk which follows, these bluff naval deities show a soundness of heart and a simplicity as to the meaning of great affairs which recall delightfully the traditional nautical character of modern literature. The anguish of brother and sister who after long years meet for a few frightful hours only to part for ever awakes their instant deep sympathy.[657] On the other side these subordinate deities are assuredly in a maze as to the theological problem into which they have strayed. “How was it,” ask the Argive women, very pertinently, “that you, being gods and brothers of the woman that hath perished, did not repel destruction from the house?” Electra, too, would know why she was involved in the matricide. In answer the Brethren offer a bundle of reasons some one of which ought surely to be right: “the fate of necessity,” “the guidance of doom,” “the foolish utterances of Phœbus’ tongue,” “a partnership in act and in destiny,” “the ancestral curse”.[658] Even if traditional phrases could solve the problem of human sin, these simple souls are not qualified to use or expound them.

One incident in the _Electra_ is of particular interest to the historian of literature. The pædagogus seeks to convince Electra that the mysterious visitor to Agamemnon’s tomb is her brother. He offers certain evidences which she contemptuously rejects. There can be no doubt that this scene is a criticism of the Recognition in Æschylus’ _Choephorœ_. The severed lock of hair, the footprint, and the embroidered cloth, appear in both scenes. Electra rejects all these clues. How can the hair of an athletic man resemble the soft tresses of a woman? Is not a man’s foot larger than a woman’s? Will the full-grown Orestes wear the same garment as an infant? But Euripides’ attack is probably mistaken.[659] We may suppose that Æschylus could have seen these objections; and it is quite possible that tradition told of physical peculiarities in the Pelopid family. As for the embroidered garment, Æschylus does not call it so. It may well have been a cloth preserved by Orestes. However this may be, we have here the most distinct example of Euripides’ criticism of an earlier poet.

HELEN[660] (Ἑλένη), or _Helena_, was produced in 412 B.C. The scene represents the palace of Theoclymenus, the young Egyptian king, with the tomb of his father Proteus. Helen relates that Hera gave Paris a phantom in place of the true Helen. While Greeks and Trojans fought for a wraith, she herself has lived in Egypt, waiting for Menelaus. Theoclymenus now seeks her hand; she has taken sanctuary in Proteus’ tomb. Teucer enters to consult Theonoe, the king’s prophetess-sister. On seeing Helen he barely refrains from shooting her, but realizing his “mistake” talks with the stranger, revealing that Menelaus and “Helen” have apparently been lost at sea. Helen sends him off and breaks into lamentation for Menelaus, but is advised by the chorus of captive Greek maidens to consult the omniscient Theonoe. She agrees, and they accompany her into the palace. Menelaus enters, a pitiable shipwrecked figure. He has left “Helen” and his comrades in hiding, and is looking for help. When he knocks at the palace-door the portress repels him with the warning that the king is hostile to Greeks because Helen is within his house. Menelaus is thunderstruck, but determines to await Theoclymenus. The chorus and Helen return in joy, for Menelaus, they learn, still lives. Menelaus comes forward; after a moment his wife recognizes and would embrace him, but he repels the stranger. One of his companions arrives announcing that “Helen” has vanished. As he ends his tale he sees the true Helen, who he supposes has played a practical joke; but Menelaus falls into her arms. They plot escape, but realize that all depends upon the omniscient Theonoe; she comes forth, and, explaining that she has a casting-vote in a dispute which to-day takes place in Heaven between Hera and Aphrodite, decides to aid the suppliants. When she has withdrawn it is arranged that Menelaus shall pretend he is the sole survivor, Menelaus being drowned; Helen is to gain permission to offer funeral-rites at sea. The chorus raise a beautiful song concerning Helen’s woes and the Trojan war. Theoclymenus enters and is easily hoodwinked. After an ode on Demeter’s search for Persephone, the plotters are sent on their way by the king. The chorus sing of Helen’s voyage and pray the Dioscuri to convoy their sister. A messenger hurries in and tells of the escape; the Egyptian crew has been massacred by Menelaus’ followers. Theoclymenus would take vengeance upon his sister, but is checked by the Dioscuri, who explain that all has occurred by the will of Zeus.

Two aspects of this play are unmistakable and apparently incompatible. The plot closely resembles that of the _Iphigenia in Tauris_; the style and manner of treatment are curiously light. What can have been Euripides’ purpose in repeating, after so short an interval, a copy of that grim masterpiece, and to execute it in this light-hearted fashion? The _Helen_ is in no possible sense a tragedy. At the point where the audience should be spell-bound by suspense and dread—the cajoling of the king—we are relieved from all oppression by the facility with which the captives succeed. Theoclymenus is an imbecile who gives them all they need with his eyes shut. The earlier action is robbed of all power by the superhuman attributes of Theonoe. How can, or need, Helen have any doubts concerning her husband with an all-knowing friend at hand? The central _datum_, that only a phantom fled to Troy and returned therefrom with Menelaus, is utterly destructive of tragic atmosphere. In the Recognition-scene the possibility of pathos is drowned in absurdity: the messenger suddenly turns to find his mistress smiling at his elbow and greets her with relief: “Ah, hail, daughter of Leda, here you are after all!”[661] Teucer’s scene, besides providing a palmary instance of bad construction (for his function is merely to cause Helen anxiety about her husband’s fate, which one might have expected to arouse her curiosity earlier in the course of these seventeen years), is in itself absurd. After coming all this distance to consult Theonoe about his route, he is sent away happy (without seeing the prophetess) by Helen’s suggestion, “You will pick out your way as you go along”.[662] Equally curious is the diction. Brilliantly idiomatic as are the iambics, they are almost everywhere light, loose in texture, almost colloquial. Such things[663] as φέρ’ ἦν δὲ δὴ νῷν μὴ ἀποδέξηται λόγους;—ἣν γὰρ εἴχομεν θάλασσ’ ἔχει—εἷς γὰρ ὅ γε κατ’ οὐρανόν, and the silly jingle on λόγῳ θανεῖν, are typical of the whole atmosphere. Even the lyrics glow with prettiness rather than beauty; lovely as are the Naiad[664] and the Nightingale[665] they mitigate in no degree the flimsiness of the whole.

Theonoe herself, in an outrageous passage,[666] brings the mockery to a climax: “This very day among the gods there is to be strife and conference concerning thee before the throne of Zeus. Hera, who was thine enemy before, is kindly to thee now, and would bring thee safe to thy home-country with this thy wife, so that Greece may learn how Paris’ love, the gift of Cypris, was but a mockery. But Cypris would fain deny thee thy home-return, that it may never come to light how in Helen’s case she bought the prize of beauty with bridals that were naught. _And the decision lies with me_, whether, as Cypris wishes, I shall destroy thee by revealing thy presence to my brother, or whether I shall join Hera and save thy life.” We should be ill-advised to take this in all earnest as a ludicrous blasphemy. It is graceful trifling. But what is Theonoe—a dread goddess to whom the queen of Heaven sues for aid, or a kind-hearted woman whose strong common-sense might, perhaps, in a circle like that of the dolts and _poseurs_ who fill the stage, raise her to the repute of superhuman wisdom? She is not all playful. When the honour of her dead father is in question, she stirs the heart by her passionate solemnity:—

Aye, all that lie in death must meet their bond,
And they that live; yea, all. Beyond the grave
The mind, though life be gone, is conscious yet
Eternal, with th’ eternal Heav’n at one.[667]

This stands, together with Hecuba’s outburst[668] in the _Trojan Women_, as the most explicit statement of personal religion in the extant plays of Euripides. In the midst of this farrago of fairy-tale and false sentiment, it is doubly startling. The drama is neither tragedy, nor melodrama, nor comedy, nor farce. What are we to think of it?

Dr. Verrall[669] would regard it as a burlesque, that is, as a playful imitation of serious work, with exaggeration of weak features or tendencies. From the facts that one ode[670] has nothing whatever to do with the plot, but with the Mother and the Maid, and that Aristophanes parodies the play in his _Celebrants of the Thesmophoria_, wherein Euripides is accused of profaning that festival, it is inferred that _Helen_ was not written for public presentation, but for private performance at a house on the island of Helene belonging to an Athenian lady. The occasion was a gathering of women who had been celebrating the Thesmophoria, and forms Euripides’ playful answer to the charge that he had never depicted a good woman. To prove his zeal, he chooses Helen (the least reputable of her sex) and completely rehabilitates her character.[671] At the same time he amuses his audience with a parody of his own work. The sanctuary of Helen recalls that of Andromache, and the escape that of Iphigenia and her friends. The news of this _tour de force_ spread, and at last, owing to public curiosity, it was exhibited at the Dionysia.

There is no doubt (i) that the _Helen_ is not serious either in intention or execution; (ii) that there is good evidence for supposing a connexion between the play and the festival of the Mother and the Maid, the Thesmophoria; (iii) that Aristophanes’ jokes about Proteus-Proteas and the rest do support the view that Euripides has in his mind the history of a family who have nothing to do with Menelaus and Helen; (iv) that in the play there are points, such as “Eido” (the baby-name of Theonoe), which are irrelevant to the story. Are we, then, to accept Verrall’s account? The sound view would appear to be that Euripides offered to the Archon a work which for once was a burlesque. So sincere a thinker as Euripides was certain sooner or later to attack himself, at any rate to examine his position and methods with humorous detachment. So far we may, we must, go with Verrall; the elaborate and delightfully detailed development we can hardly accept—the evidence is not sufficiently strong.

But the poet is making fun not only of himself. The false Helen and her disappearance at a crisis in the action, are not merely miracles of a type in which he utterly disbelieves; they are features which even a believer would remove as far as possible into the background. In handling this fairy-tale with such _naïveté_, he is possibly laughing at some indiscreet fellow-dramatist;[672] certainly he is ridiculing the popular belief in such legends. Helen herself cannot credit the tale of Leda and the Swan.[673] When given the choice between two accounts of her brothers’ fate, she prefers the non-miraculous version.[674] Even the dramatist’s own dislike of soothsayers is elaborately expounded by the Greek messenger and sympathetically echoed by the chorus,[675] absurdly enough in a play which contains Theonoe, whom the chorus themselves have induced Helen to consult, and with success; although of course Theonoe knows only what could be learned by listening to the talk of Menelaus.

The PHŒNISSÆ[676] (Φοίνισσαι), or _Phœnician Women_, was produced about the year 410 B.C. The action takes place before the palace of Thebes. Jocasta explains that the blind Œdipus is kept prisoner there by his sons Eteocles and Polynices, whom he has therefore cursed with a prayer that they may divide their inheritance with the sword. They have arranged to rule for a year by turns; but Eteocles, at the end of his term, has refused to retire and Polynices has brought an army against Thebes. Jocasta has arranged that the brothers shall meet. When she has gone, a pædagogus shows the Argive host to Antigone from the roof. Next the chorus appear, a band of Phœnician maidens who sing of their voyage and of Delphi, their destination. Polynices stealthily enters and is greeted rapturously by his mother; Eteocles follows, and the brothers quarrel bitterly and finally. The chorus sing of Cadmus and the harvest of warriors. Eteocles comes forth and is advised by Creon to post a champion at each of the seven gates. He agrees, ratifies the betrothal of Antigone to Hæmon, and bids Creon consult Tiresias as to the hope of victory; if Polynices falls he is not to be buried in Theban ground. The chorus sing to Ares who has filled the land with war in place of the delightful Dionysiac worship; they celebrate the wondrous history of Thebes. Tiresias enters with Creon’s son Menœceus, and declares that victory can be won only if the youth is sacrificed. Creon arranges to send his son away, but Menœceus resolves to slay himself. The next ode celebrates the Sphinx, the tale of Œdipus, and Menœceus’ nobility. A messenger brings to Jocasta tidings that her sons are about to engage in single combat; she hurries to the spot with Antigone. After a brief ode of suspense, Creon returns mourning for his dead son, and another messenger tells at length how Polynices, Eteocles, and Jocasta have died. Thebes has won complete victory. The corpses are brought in, followed by Antigone, who summons the aged Œdipus. Together they bewail the dead till Creon breaks in and decrees that Antigone must marry Hæmon, Œdipus go into exile, and Polynices remain unburied. Antigone defies him: she will bury her brother, she will not marry Hæmon, but will share her father’s exile. Œdipus as they depart asserts his greatness as the Conqueror of the Sphinx.

This work was immensely popular in antiquity.[677] It was repeatedly “revived”; ancient authors quote from it often; together with the _Hecuba_ and the _Orestes_ it formed the final selection of Euripides’ work made in Byzantine times; and the scholia are extremely copious. Because of its popularity, the play was considerably expanded by interpolation. It is no mere question of isolated lines inserted by actors or copyists, though such appear to be numerous; considerable masses are due to a later poet or poets.

The following passages[678] are generally suspected:

(i) vv. 88-201, the scene of Antigone and her attendant upon the roof-terrace. To this it has been objected[679] that the entrance of Polynices should occur as the first event of the play after the closing words of the prologue which mention his expected arrival. This passage contains, moreover, a number of words otherwise unknown which is enormous considering the length of the scene, and several awkward or strained expressions.

(ii) vv. 1104-40, the description of the seven chieftains as they advance upon the gates. It is “full of obscurities and difficulties,”[680] particularly two elaborate yet frivolous descriptions of shields. Moreover, it practically repeats the terrace-scene; both passages can hardly be genuine.

(iii) 1223-58 (or 1282), the messenger’s account of preparations for the single combat, followed by the dialogue in which Jocasta calls Antigone to accompany her to the field. Not only are there marked faults of style;[681] it is impossible, considering the urgency[682] of the news, that the queen should stay for this tedious narrative. Jocasta’s conversation with Antigone is by no means so objectionable. It is very short, and the style is not unworthy[683] of Euripides. Nevertheless, it is strange that the queen should wait for her daughter at so urgent a time.

(iv) the end of the drama, though at what point the addition begins is not agreed. The last address of Œdipus which opens thus[684]:

ὦ πάτρας κλεινῆς πολῖται, λεύσσετ’, Οἰδίπους ὅδε,
ὃς τὰ κλείν’ αἰνίγματ’ ἔγνω καὶ μέγιστος ἦν ἀνήρ,

unmistakably recalls part of the finale in _Œdipus Tyrannus_:[685]

ὦ πάτρας Θήβης ἔνοικοι, λεύσσετ’, Οἰδίπους ὅδε,
ὃς τὰ κλείν’ αἰνίγματ’ ᾔδει καὶ κράτιστος ἦν ἀνήρ.

If we accept the customary date of Sophocles’ play (405 B.C.), it was produced after Euripides’ death. Further, the whole scene of Œdipus, Antigone, and Creon has evidently been expanded and distorted. According to one version, that followed by Sophocles in the _Antigone_, the maiden remained in Thebes after the battle and buried Polynices; according to the _Œdipus Coloneus_ she accompanied her father into exile. Here the two versions are combined. Moreover, from the entrance of Œdipus onwards the play abounds once more in unnatural or unusual turns of speech. And it may be thought a serious mistake to bring the aged sufferer forth at all,[686] thus creating a new interest at the last moment of a play crowded with incident. But though this portion contains much unauthentic work, it appears to be intermingled with the genuine.

Certain other passages are open to suspicion, especially Jocasta’s prologue and the remainder—hitherto unmentioned—of the first messenger’s speech.[687] We appear to have Euripides’ prologue, padded out by another hand. The same kind of recurrent weakness and flatness marks the messenger’s speech. Above all, when the speaker seeks to rise to the occasion, his efforts result in this:[688] “From the scaling-ladder his limbs were hurled asunder like sling-stones—his hair to Heaven, his blood to earth; his arms and legs whirled round like Ixion’s wheel”. This imbecile bombast is fortunately without parallel in Attic tragedy.

It seems likely that Euripides’ work was in quite early times (probably the fourth century) expanded by another poet, whose main contribution was a large addition to the messengers’ speeches at a date when Æschylus was little enough known to allow such things as the description of the hostile champions a good degree of novelty. The new text was in its turn enlarged by accretions due to actors.[689]

Euripides’ own work is vigorous and interesting,[690] a stirring scene of warfare, patriotism, and strong passions, which, in its present expanded form, reminds one by its spirit and its popularity of Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_, the first favourite of Elizabethan audiences.[691] The two brothers are well distinguished, Polynices by his pathetic sense that intolerable wrong is urging him against his will into crime, Eteocles by a dark fervour of ambition which has grown upon his soul like religion; and their terrible altercation in the sweeping trochaic metre is equal to anything of the kind in Euripides for terse idiomatic vigour. Jocasta’s passionate joy when she sees her exiled son,[692] joy which stirs her aged feet to trip in a dance of fond rapture,[693] provides the one light-hearted moment. And her noble speech of reconciliation[694] is the single great achievement of the drama.

The ORESTES[695] (Ὀρέστης) was produced in 408 B.C. and again in 341.[696] It was extremely popular, and formed with the _Phœnissæ_ and the _Hecuba_ the final selection of Euripides’ work made in Byzantine times; but the later interpolations are probably few. The scene is laid before the palace at Argos. Orestes and Electra, having slain Clytæmnestra and Ægisthus, are imprisoned in their own house by the Argive state, which will to-day decide whether they are to be stoned to death. Orestes has been tormented by madness and is now seen asleep, watched by Electra; she hopes that they may yet be saved by Menelaus, who has come home with Helen. The latter enters and requests Electra to go for her to Clytæmnestra’s tomb with drink-offerings; she is persuaded to send her daughter Hermione instead. The chorus of Argive ladies now enter, and their voices awaken Orestes. Then follows a wonderful scene of affectionate tendance and a sudden paroxysm of the sufferer; the chorus sing of the Furies and the agony through which the house is passing. Menelaus enters and Orestes passionately implores his aid. Tyndareus (father of Helen and Clytæmnestra) arrives and denounces the cowering Orestes: why did he not invoke the law against his mother? The youth’s long speech of exculpation further incenses Tyndareus. When he has departed, Orestes again appeals to Menelaus, who points out that the only hope lies in the Argive Assembly. Orestes watches him go with contempt, but is cheered by the arrival of Pylades, who throws in his lot with his friend, and the two walk off to the Assembly. The chorus sing the story of the house and lament the matricide. A messenger brings to Electra an account of the debate, which ended with permission to the criminals to die by their own hand. Electra pours forth a lyric of painful beauty until the two youths return. Pylades declares that he too will die, but suggests vengeance on Menelaus: let them slay Helen. Electra proposes that Hermione be held as a hostage whereby Menelaus may be induced to save them. The two men go within to despatch Helen, whose shrieks are soon heard. Meanwhile Electra receives Hermione, who is dragged within. A Phrygian slave flings himself in terror from a hole high up in the house-front; in a strange lyric narrative, he tells how amid the confusion Helen has vanished. Orestes rushes forth in pursuit, but he is now insane and the slave contrives to escape. Orestes goes back, and in a moment the house is on fire. Menelaus rushes in distraught, and sees Orestes on the battlements with his sword at Hermione’s throat. A frantic altercation arises, until Menelaus cries to the citizens for a rescue. Apollo appears and bids the quarrel cease. Helen is to become a sea-goddess; Electra shall marry Pylades, and Hermione Orestes, who is to stand his trial at Athens; Apollo will reconcile him to the Argive state.

To appreciate this masterpiece, we must realize that Euripides, who so often insists on considering tradition in the light of his own day, has here insisted on that principle even more definitely than elsewhere. Certain legendary data are, to be sure, retained. Troy has fallen but a few years ago; Iphigenia was offered by her father as a sacrifice at Aulis. Otherwise the events described might have occurred in the fifth century. Agamemnon, though a noble of great eminence, was not a king[697]; Argos is ruled by an Assembly not distinguishable from the Athenian Ecclesia. The youth who exacts vengeance with his own hand is told in language which might have been employed by Pericles, that the vendetta is an outrage upon law and society; punishment for crime rests with the State alone.[698] The behest of Apollo, all-important in the _Choephorœ_, is not even mentioned in the discussion which decides the fate of Orestes. The oracle is indeed treated with scant courtesy even by those most concerned to uphold it; Electra complains of the god’s “wickedness,”[699] and her brother “blames Loxias” for urging him to a villainous deed and then giving no aid.[700] The atmosphere is one in which the slaughter of Clytæmnestra must be regarded with horror and the traditional defence of Orestes as unthinkable. This is not a theological study, but a dramatic essay in criminal psychology.

In Orestes the playwright has given us one of his most terrible portraits. Highly sensitive, weak-minded, over-educated in a bad school, he is unbalanced by the horror of his father’s death and by the oracular command which has blasted his life. In the magnificent sick-bed scene he, like his sister, fills us with nothing but pity. But the calmer he becomes the more are we filled with loathing for this pedant of eighteen, with his syllogisms justifying murder, his parade of rhetoric, his hopeless inability to grasp a situation. Rich as is the world’s drama in villains, Orestes occupies a place conspicuous. He has little heart and no sense. Both failings are common. But that both heart and brain should be replaced by a factitious perverse cleverness, an incredibly superficial passion for scoring logical points against opponents who have in hand urgent interests of real life—this grips us irresistibly. He is an example of the wreck produced by a highly specialized mental training which has ignored character. His first address to Menelaus strikes the note:—

Freely will I divulge my woes to thee.
But _as the first-fruits of my plight_, I touch
Thy knees, a suppliant, _tying prayer_ the while
To thy _unleafèd lips_....[701]

This affected and obscure exordium is followed by verbal subtleties at every opportunity: “through my sorrows I live not, yet see the light”[702]—“my deeds, not my appearance, ravage me”[703]—“my body’s gone, my name alone remains”.[704] But all this is nothing to the detestable exhibition wherewith he answers the aged Tyndareus. To the vital point—that Clytæmnestra should have been brought before a legal tribunal—he makes no reply whatever. His only difficulties are that Tyndareus is wounded to the soul by his daughter’s death, and that he is far older than Orestes. What is to be done? Simply to “contract out of” natural feelings so that the way may be clear for pure logic:—

True, matricide doth taint me, yet again
Pure am I, for my sire I did avenge.
Therefore let thy great age be set aside
From this our conference, for it puts me out;
And let me on—’tis but thy hair I dread.[705]

There follows a frigid “statement”—“balance two against two”[706]—of his father’s claim and his mother’s offences, and of his own glorious achievement in purifying social life. The original sinner is Tyndareus himself who begot so vile a daughter! He ends by an appeal to Apollo’s behest, and a pompous comment on the importance of marriage.

The aged Spartan having given his grandson over to justice as irreclaimable, the youth turns to Menelaus, whom he insists on regarding as his real hope, in spite of Menelaus’ plain reluctance and extreme unpopularity in Argos. He is, moreover, unwilling to endure another display: “Let me be; I am reflecting....”[707] At all times he is impatient of subtleties; in the first moments of their meeting he asks his accomplished nephew: “What mean you? Wisdom is shown not by obscurity, but by plain speech.”[708] But now that Orestes has his chance, he refuses to suffer Menelaus’ “reflections,” and with a warning that “a long address is better than a short one, and easier for the auditor to follow”[709] produces a masterpiece of metallic cleverness which presses Seneca himself very hard; perhaps the finest gem is the offer of Hermione as a kind of discount.[710] Before the Assembly he succeeds in combining several insanely tactless insults to the Argives: they are “possessors,” not original citizens, of the land; they were Pelasgians at first, but later “Danaidæ,” descendants of the women who slew their husbands; and he has killed his mother as much for their sake as his father’s.[711] But Euripides’ most frightful satire on “advanced education” is reserved for the nightmare of the close, where the raving Orestes leans down over the battlement to the grief-maddened Menelaus and begins by a lunatic reminiscence of the “Socratic method”: “will you be the questioner or the respondent?”[712]

Prig as he is, Orestes has nevertheless some elements of nobility at the first. He can tell his uncle plainly that his disease is “conscience, which convicts me for a criminal”;[713] he shows real regard for Electra; the splendidly selfless friendship between him and Pylades stirs every one. As the play advances, however, we are lost in the loathing and breathless wonder wherewith we gaze upon the increasing insanity of the wretched prince.[714] Each moment he becomes more vigorous and more lost to sense of right; when Electra suggests the vilest part of the plot—the seizure of Hermione—he breaks forth into a cry like Macbeth’s: “Bring forth men-children only!”[715]

Electra has been the chief definite cause of Orestes’ fall. Amazingly vivid, she fills the whole drama with a thin acrid fume of malice. Her ruling passion is not mere hatred against Clytæmnestra. That bitterness has spread until (saving her tenderness for Orestes) there is nothing in her but a narrow viperishness. When an innocent like Hermione draws near, the fang strikes by instinct. Her intensity of feeling and her years have made her Orestes’ monitor long before he returned home, and it is she to whom Tyndareus points, in searing language, as the more guilty.[716] Another influence has soured her, that lack of husband and children on which Helen, with the brutality so frequent in shallow natures, insists at their first meeting.[717] But Electra has vastly more common-sense than her brother or Pylades, and it is to her that the delightful comment on Helen is given:[718]

Ah, Nature!...
Saw ye how tiny was that tress she cut,
Sparing her beauty? ’Tis the old Helen still!

But her sense of humour cannot sustain her heart long:

Heaven’s hatred seize thee! Thou hast wrought the fall
Of me, and this my brother, and of Greece.

These two women, so pungently contrasted in one brief scene, share, however, one attribute—that nerveless theology which Euripides detested as rotting the moral fibre. Electra muses upon “suffering and disaster sent by Heaven”.[719] Helen attributes her elopement with Paris to the “maddening doom of Heaven,”[720] which has also “destroyed this hapless pair”[721]—her nephew and niece. The latter in her lyric outcry explores[722] all the legends of her line to discover the cause of the present disaster, a method which the chorus, for all their sympathy, indeed complicity,[723] seem to parody by the ludicrous baldness of their reflection that this horror of fiends and bloodshed has fallen upon the house “because Myrtilus fell out of the chariot”![724]

All the minor characters are skilfully drawn—Pylades, the warm-hearted scatter-brained ruffian who conceives the murder of Helen as soon[725] as he learns that she is in his friend’s house; Tyndareus, the hot-tempered, affectionate old king; Menelaus, the vulgar and successful, who has no other ambition than to let bygones be bygones[726] and who has actually expected to find Orestes and Clytæmnestra sharing the same home, quite comfortable after the death of Agamemnon;[727] Helen, that faded, facile creature, who cannot abstain from conversation, even with murderesses if there is no one else. Hermione, minute as is her part, commands our affection, not only because of the vile complot which centres round her, but for the shy graciousness of the little she does say, ἥκω λαβοῦσα πρευμένειαν[728] and the rest; she seems to have strayed from some sunlit lost drama by Sophocles.