"Is not Polyxena's fate agony less than mine? I have not that thingwhich is left to all mortals, hope, nor may I flatter my mind heartwith any good to come, though it is sweet to even to dream of it."
This despair is rendered more hopeless when she learns that the Greeks have decided to throw her little son Astyanax from the walls.
Menelaus comes forward, gloating at the revenge he hopes to wreak on Helen. On seeing him Hecuba first prays:—
"Thou who art earth's support and hast thy seat on earth, whoeverthou art, past finding out, Zeus, whether thou art a naturalNecessity or man's Intelligence, to thee I pray. Moving in anoiseless path thou orderest all things human in righteousness."
She continues:—
"I praise thee, Menelaus, if thou wilt indeed slay thy wife, butfly her sight, lest she snare thee with desire. She catcheth men'seyes, sacketh cities, burneth homes, so potent are her charms. Iknow her as thou dost and all who have suffered from her."
Hecuba and Helen then argue about the responsibility for the war. The latter in shameless impudence pleads that she has saved Greece from invasion and that Love who came with Paris to Sparta was the cause of her fault. Hecuba ridicules the idea that Hera and Artemis could desire any prize of beauty. It was lust of Trojan gold that tempted Helen; never once was she known to bewail her sin in Troy, rather she always tried to attract men's eyes. Such a woman's death would be a crown of glory to Greece. Menelaus says her fate will be decided in Argos. Talthybius brings in the body of Astyanax, over which Hecuba bursts into a lament of exceptional beauty and then passes out to slavery.
In this drama Euripides draws upon all his resources of pathos. It is a succession of brilliantly conceived sorrows. Cassandra's exulting prophecy of the revenge she is to bring is one of the great things in Euripides. In this play we have a most vivid picture of the destructive effects of evil, an inevitable consequence of which it is that the woman, however innocent she may be, always pays. Hecuba drank the cup of bereavement to the very last drop.
TheElectra, acted about 418, is characteristic. Electra has been compelled to marry a Mycenean labourer, a man of noble instincts who respects the princess and treats her as such. Both enter the scene; the man goes to labour for Electra, "for no lazy man by merely having God's name on his lips can make a livelihood without toil". Orestes and Pylades at first imagine Electra to be a servant; learning the truth they come forward and question her. She tells the story of her mother's shame and Aegisthus' insolence which Orestes promises to recount to her brother, "for in ignorant men there is no spark of pity anywhere, only in the learned." The labourer returns and by his speech moves Orestes to declare that birth is no test of nobility. Electra sends him to fetch an old Tutor of her father to make ready for her two guests; he departs remarking that there is just enough food in the house for one day.
The old Tutor arrives in tears; he has found a lock of hair on Agamemnon's tomb. Gazing intently on the two strangers, he recognises Orestes by a scar on the eyebrow. They then proceed to plot the death of their enemies. Orestes goes to meet Aegisthus is close by sacrificing, and presently returns with the corpse, at which Electra hurls back the taunts and jeers he had heaped on her in his lifetime. She had sent to her mother saying she had given birth to a boy and asking her to come immediately.
Orestes quails before the coming murder, but Electra bids him be loyal to his father. Clytemnestra on her arrival querulously defends her past, alleging as her pretext not the death of Iphigeneia but the presence of a rival, Cassandra. Electra after refuting her invites her inside the wretched hut to offer sacrifice for her newly born child, where she is slain by Orestes. At the end of the play the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, bid Pylades marry Electra, tell Orestes he will be purified in Athens and prophesy that Menelaus and Helen, just arrived from Egypt, will bury Agisthus real Helen never went to Troy, a wraith of her being sent there with Paris.
The startling realism of this drama is apparent. The poverty of Electra, the more certain identification of Orestes by a scar than by a lock of hair, the mention of Cassandra as the real motive for the murder of Agamemnon all indicate that Euripides was not content with the accepted legend. His Clytemnestra is a feeble creation even by the side of that of Sophocles.
Stesichorus in a famous poem tells how Helen blinded him for maligning her; she never went to Troy; it was a wraith which accompanied Paris. Such is the central idea of a very strange play, theHelen. The scene is in Egypt. Teucer, banished by his father, meets the real Helen; to her amazement he tells of her evil reputation and of the great war before Troy, adding that Menelaus is sailing home with another Helen. The latter enters, to learn that he is in Egypt, where the real Helen has lived for the last seventeen years. Warned by a prophetess Theonoe that her husband is not far off, Helen comes to be reunited to him. A messenger from the coast announces that the wraith has faded into nothingness.
Helen then warns Menelaus of her difficult position. She is wooed by Theoclymenus, king of the land, brother of Theonoe. Menelaus in despair thinks of killing himself and Helen to escape the tyrant. Theonoe holds their fate in her hands; Helen pleads with her; "It is shameful that thou shouldest know things divine, and not righteousness." Menelaus declares his intention of living and dying with his wife. The prophetess leaves them to discover some means of escape which Helen devises. Pretending that Menelaus is a messenger bringing news of her husband's death at sea, she persuades the tyrant to provide a ship and rowers that Helen may perform the last rites to the dead on the element where he died. At the right moment the Greek sailors overpowered the rowers and sailed home with the united pair.
Very commonly real drama suffers the fate which has overtaken it in this piece; it declines into melodrama. Here are to be found all the stock melodramatic features—a bold hero, a scheming beauty, a confidante, a dupe, the murder of a ship's crew. Massinger piloted Elizabethan drama to a similar end. Given an uncritical audience melodrama is the surest means of filling the house. Reality matters little in such work; the facts of life are like Helen's wraith, when they become unmanageable they vanish into thin air.
About 412 theIphigeneia in Taurisappeared. South Russia was the seat of a cult of Artemis; the goddess spirited Iphigeneia to the place when her father sacrificed her at Aulis. Orestes, bidden by Apollo to steal an image of the goddess to get his final purification, comes on the stage with Pylades; on seeing the temple they are convinced of the impossibility of burgling it. A shepherd describes to Iphigeneia their capture, for strangers were taken and offered to the goddess without exception. One of the two was seized with a vision of the avenging deities; attacked by a band of peasants both were overpowered after a stubborn resistance. Formerly Iphigeneia had pitied the Greeks who landed there; now, warned of Orestes' death by a dream, she determines to kill without mercy. One of them shall die, the other taking back to Greece a letter. Orestes insists on dying himself, reminding Pylades of his duty to Electra. When the letter is brought Pylades swears to fulfil his word, but asks what is to happen if the ship is wrecked. Iphigeneia reads the letter to him; it is addressed to Orestes and tells of his sister's weary exile. After the recognition is completed, Orestes relates the horrors of his life and begs his sister to help him to steal the all-important image.
Thoas, the King of the land, learns from her that the two Greeks are guilty of kindred murder; their presence has defiled the holy image which needs purification in the sea as well as the criminals. The priestess obtains permission to bind the captives and take the image to be cleansed with private mystic rites. The plot succeeds; Orestes' ship puts in; after a struggle the three board it, carrying the image with them. Thoas is prevented from pursuit by an intervention of Athena.
Goethe used this play for his drama of the same name; he made Thoas the lover of Iphigeneia, whom he represents as the real image whom Orestes is to remove. Her departure is not compassed by a stratagem, but is permitted by the King, a man of singular nobility and self-denial.
ThePhaenissaehas been much admired in all ages. Jocasta tells how after the discovery of his identity Oedipus blinded himself but was shut up by his two sons whom he cursed for their impiety. Eteocles then usurped the rule while Polyneices called an Argive host to attack Thebes. A Choral description of this army is succeeded by an unexpected entry into the city of Polyneices who meets his mother and tells her of his life in exile. She sends for Eteocles in the hope of reconciling her two sons. Polyneices promises to disband his forces if he is restored to his rights, but Eteocles, enamoured of power, refuses to surrender it. Jocasta vainly points out to him the burden of rule, nor can she persuade Polyneices not to attack his own land.
When the champions have taken up their position at the gates, Teiresias tells Creon that Thebes can be saved by the sacrifice of his own son Menoeceus. Creon refuses to comply and urges his son to escape. Pretending to obey Menoeceus threw himself from the city walls. The struggle at the gates is followed by a challenge to Polyneices issued by Eteocles to settle the dispute in single combat. Jocasta and Antigone rush out to intervene, too late. They find the two lying side by side at death's door. Eteocles is past speech, but Polyneices bids farewell to his mother and sister, pitying his brother "who turned friendship into enmity, yet still was dear". In agony, Jocasta slays herself over her sons' bodies.
Led in by Antigone, Oedipus is banished by Creon, who forbids the burial of Polyneices. After touching the dead Jocasta and his two sons, he passes to exile and rest at Colonus.
The harsh story favoured by Sophocles has been greatly humanised by Euripides, who could not accept all the savagery of the received legend. Apart from the unexplained presence of Polyneices in the city, the plot is excellent. The speeches are vigorous and natural, the characters thoroughly human. The criticising and refining influence of Euripides is manifest throughout, together with a simple and noble pathos.
An ancient critic says of theOrestes, written in 408, "the drama is popular but of the lowest morality; except Pylades, all are villains". Electra meets Helen, unexpectedly returned from Egypt to Argos with Menelaus, who sends her daughter Hermione with offerings to the tomb of Agamemnon. Electra's opinion of her is vividly expressed.
"See how she has tricked out her hair, preserving her beauty; sheis old Helen still. Heaven abhor thee, the bane of me and mybrother and Greece."
The Chorus accidentally awakens Orestes who is visited by a wild vision of haunting Furies. When he regains sanity he begs the assistance of Menelaus, his last refuge. His uncle, a broken reed, is saved from committing himself by the entry of Tyndareus, father of Clytemnestra and Helen. He righteously rebukes the bloodthirsty Orestes, though he is aware of the evil in his two daughters. Orestes breaks out into an insulting speech which alienates completely his grandfather. Menelaus, when appealed to again, hurries out to try to win him back.
Pylades suggests that he and Orestes should plead their case before the Argive Assembly, which was to try them for murder of Clytemnestra. A very brilliant and exciting account of the debate tells how the case was lost by Orestes himself, who presumed to lecture the audience on the majesty of the law he himself had broken. He and Electra are condemned to be stoned that very day. Determined to ruin Menelaus before they die, they agree to kill Helen, the cause of all their troubles, and to fire the fortified house in which they live. Electra adds that they should also seize Hermione and hold her as a check on Menelaus' fury for the death of Helen. The girl is easily trapped as she rushes into the house hearing her mother's cries for help. Soon after a Trojan menial drops from the first story. He tells how Helen and Hermione have so far escaped death, but the rest is unknown to him. In a ghastly scene Orestes hunts the wretch over the stage, but finally lets him go as he is not a fit victim for a free man's sword. Almost immediately the house is seen to be ablaze; Menelaus rushes up in a frenzy, but is checked by the sight of Orestes with Hermione in his arms. When Menelaus calls for help, Orestes bids Pylades and Electra light more fires to consume them all. A timely appearance of Apollo with Helen deified by his side saves the situation.
It is plain that Euripides has here completely rejected the old legend. He never makes Orestes even think of pleading Apollo's command to him to slay his mother. He is concerned with the defence which a contemporary matricide might make before a modern Athenian assembly and with the fitting doom of self-destruction which would overtake him. LikeVanity Fair, the play shows us the life of people who try to do without God.
TheBacchaeis one of Euripides' best plays. In the absence of Pentheus the King, Cadmus and Teiresias join in the worship of the new god Dionysus at Thebes. Pentheus returns to find that noble women, including Agave, his own mother, have joined the strange cult brought to the place by a mysterious Lydian stranger "whose hair is neatly arranged in curls, his face like wine, his eyes as full of grace as Aphrodite's".
Teiresias advises him to welcome the god, Cadmus to pretend that he is divine, even if he is only a mortal; this new religion is the natural outlet of the desire for innocent revelry born in both sexes. The Lydian is arrested and brought before Pentheus, whom he warns that the god will save him from insult, but Pentheus hurries him away into a dungeon.
The Chorus of Bacchae are alarmed on hearing a tumult. The stranger appears to tell how Pentheus was made mad by Dionysus in the act of imprisoning him. The King in amazement sees his prisoner standing free before him and becomes furiously angry on hearing that his mother has joined a new revel on Mount Cithaeron. The stranger suggests that he should go disguised as a Bacchante to see the new worship. When he appears transformed, the Lydian comments with exquisite and deadly irony on his appearance. His fate is vividly and terribly painted. Placing him in a pine, the stranger suddenly disappeared, while the voice of Dionysus summoned the rout to punish the spy. Rushing to the tree, the woman tore it up by the roots and then rent Pentheus piecemeal, Agave herself leading them on.
She comes in holding what she imagines to be a trophy. Cadmus slowly reveals to her the horror of her deed, the proof of which is her son's head in her grasp. Dionysus himself comes in to point out that this tragedy is the result of the indignity which Thebes put upon him and his mother Semele. Broken with grief, Agave passes out slowly to her banishment. The Bacchae was composed in Macedonia; it contains all the mystery of the supernatural. Dionysus' character is admirably drawn, while the infatuation of Pentheus is a fitting prelude to his ruin. The cult of Dionysus was essentially democratic, intended for those who could claim no share in aristocratic ritual: hence its popularity and prevalence. We may regard the Bacchae as the poet's declaration of faith in the worship which gave Europe the Drama; it is altogether fitting that he who has left us the greatest number of tragedies should have been chosen by destiny to bequeath us the one drama which tells of one of the adventures of its patron deity.
TheIphigeneia in Auliswas written in the last year of the poet's life. Agamemnon sends a private letter to his wife countermanding an official dispatch summoning her and Iphigeneia. This letter is intercepted by Menelaus, who upbraids his brother; later, seeing his distress, he advises him to send the women home again. But public opinion forces the leader to obey Artemis and sacrifice his daughter. When he meets his wife and child, he tries to temporise but fails. Achilles meets Clytemnestra and is surprised to hear that he is to marry Iphigeneia, such being the bait which brought Clytemnestra to Aulis. Learning the real truth, she faces her husband, pleading for their daughter's life. Iphigeneia at first shrinks from death; the army demands her sacrifice, while Achilles is ready to defend her. The knot is untied by Iphigeneia herself, who willingly at last consents to die to save her country.
This excellent play shows no falling in dramatic power; it was imitated by Racine and Schiller. The figures are intensely human, the conflict of duties firmly outlined, the pathos sincere and true, there is no divine appearance to straighten out a tangled plot. Thus Euripides' career ends as it began, with a story of a woman's noble self-sacrifice.
The poet's popularity is indicated by the number of his extant dramas and fragments, both of which exceed in bulk the combined work of Aeschylus and Sophocles. All classes of writers quoted him, philosophers, orators, bishops. In his own lifetime Socrates made a point of witnessing his plays; the very violence of Aristophanes' attack proves Euripides' potent influence; his lost dramaMelanippeturned the heads of the Athenians, the whole town singing its odes. Survivors of the Sicilian disaster won their freedom by singing his songs to their captors, returning to thank their liberator in person; the fragments of Menander discovered in 1906 contain many reminiscences of him, even slaves quoting passages of him to their masters. For it was the very width of his appeal that made him universally loved; women and slaves in his view were every whit as good as free-born men, sometimes they were far nobler. If drama is the voice of a democracy, the Athenians had found a more democratic mouthpiece than they had bargained for.
With the educated men it was different. They suspected a poet who was upsetting their tradition. Besides, they were asked to crown a person who told them in play after play that they were really like Jason, Menelaus, Polymestor, poor creatures if not quite odious. He made them see with painful clearness that the better sex was the one which they despised, yet which was sure one day to find the utterance to which it had a right in virtue of its greater nobility. The feminism of Euripides is evident through his whole career; it is an insult to our powers of reading to imagine that he was a woman-hater. It is then not to be wondered at that he won the prize only five times, and it can hardly be an accident that he gained it once with the Hippolytus, which on a surface view condemns the female sex.
For the officials could not see that Euripides was not a man only, he was a spirit of development. Privilege and narrowness in every form he hated; he demanded unlimited freedom for the intelligence. The narrow circle of legends, the conventional unified drama, state religion, a pseudo-democracy based on slavery he fearlessly criticised. Rationalism, humanism, free speculation were his watchwords; he was always trying new experiments in his art, introducing politics, philosophy, melodrama and trying to get rid of the chorus wherever he could. He was a living and a contemporary Proteus, pleading like an advocate in a lawsuit, discussing political theory, restating unsolved problems in modern form and seasoning his work with his own peculiar and often elevating pathos. Such a man was anathema to conservative Athens.
But to us he is one of ourselves. He exactly hits off our modern taste, with its somewhat sentimental tendency, its scepticism, love of excitement, and its great complexity. We know we have many moods and passions which strangely blend and thwart each other; these we treat in our novels, and Euripides' plays are a sort of novel, but for the divine appearances in the last scenes. He shows us the inevitable end of actions of beings exactly like ourselves, acting from merely human motives, neither higher nor lower than we, though perhaps disguised under heroic names. He is in a word the first modern poet.
A. S. Way, Loeb Series. This verse translation is the most successful; it renders the choric odes with skill.
Professor Gilbert Murray has published verse translations of various plays. He is an authority on the text. His volume on Euripides in the Home University Library is admirable.
Euripides the RationalistandFour Plays of Euripidesby A. W. Verrall are well known; the latter is particularly stimulating. The views it expounds are original but not traditional.
See Symonds'Greek Poetsas above.
At the end of theSymposiumPlato represents Socrates as convincing both Agathon, a tragedian, and Aristophanes that the writer of tragedy will be able to write comedy also. That the two forms are not wholly divorced is clear from the history of ancient drama itself: Each dramatist competed with four plays, three tragedies and a Satyric drama. What this last is can be plainly seen in theCyclopsof Euripides, which relates in comic form the adventures of Odysseus and Silenus in the monster's company. Further, the tendency of tragedy was inevitably towards comedy. The extant work of Aeschylus and Sophocles is not without comic touches; but the trend is clearer in Euripides who was an innovator in this as in many other matters. Laughter and tears are neighbours; a happy ending is not tragic; loosely connected scenes are the essence of Old Comedy, and loosely written tragic dialogue (common in Euripides' later work) closely resembles the language of comedy, which is practically prose in verse form. The debt which later comedy owed to Euripides is great; reminiscences of him abound; he is quoted directly and indirectly; his stage tricks are adopted and his realistic characters are the very population of the Comic stage.
The logically developed plot is the characteristic of serious drama. Old Comedy, its antithesis, is often a succession of scenes in which the connection is loose without being impossible. In it the unexpected is common, for it is an escape from the conventions of ordinary life, a thing of causes and effects. It might be more accurate to say that farce is a better description of the work which is associated with the name of Aristophanes.
This writer was born about 448, was a member of the best Athenian society of the day, quickly took the first place as the writer of comedy and died about 385. He saw the whole of the Peloponnesian war and has given us a most vivid account of the passions it aroused and its effect on Athenian life. He first won the prize in 425, when he produced theAcharniansunder an assumed name. Pericles had died in 429; the horrors of war were beginning to make themselves felt; the Spartans were invading Attica, cutting down the fruit-trees and compelling the country folk to stream into the city. One of these, Dicaeopolis enters the stage. It is early morning; he is surprised that there is no popular meeting on the appointed day. He loathes the town and longs for his village; he had intended to heckle the speakers if they discussed anything but peace. Ambassadors from foreign nations are announced; seeing them he conceives the daring project of making a separate peace with the Spartan for eight drachmae. His servant returns with three peaces of five, ten and thirty years; he chooses the last.
A chorus of angry Acharnians rush in to catch the traitor; they are charcoal burners ruined by the invasion. Dicaeopolis seizes a charcoal basket, threatening to destroy it if they touch him. Anxious to spare their townsman, the basket, they consent to hear his defence, which he offers to make with his neck on an executioner's block. He is afraid of the noisy patriotism appealed to by mob-orators and of the lust for condemning the accused which is the weakness of older men. Choosing from Euripides' wardrobe the rags in which Telephus was arrayed to rouse the audience to pity, he boldly ventures to plead the cause of the Spartans, though he hates them for destroying his trees. He asserts that "Olympian Pericles who thundered and lightened and confounded Greece" caused the war by putting an embargo on the food of their neighbour Megara, his pretext being a mere private quarrel.
The Chorus are divided; his opponents send for Lamachus, the swashbuckling general; the latter is discomfited and Dicaeopolis immediately opens a market with the Peloponnesians, Megarians and Boeotians, but not with Lamachus. In an important choral ode the poet justifies his existence. By his criticism he puts a stop to the foreign embassies which dupe the Athenians; he checks flattery and folly; he never bribes nor hoodwinks them, but exposes their harsh treatment of their subjects and their love of condemning on groundless charges the older generation which had fought at Marathon.
The play ends with a trading scene; a Boeotian in exchange for Copaic eels takes an Athenian informer, an article unknown in Boeotia. Lamachus returns wounded while Dicaeopolis departs in happy contrast to celebrate a feast of rustic jollity.
Aristophanes' chief butts were Cleon, Socrates and Euripides; the last is treated with good nature in this play. To modern readers the comedy is important for two reasons; first, it attacks the strange belief that a democracy must necessarily love peace; Aristophanes found it as full of the lust for battle as any other form of government; all it needed was a Lamachus to rattle a sword. Again, the unfailing source of war is plainly indicated, trade rivalry. War will continue as long as there are markets to capture and rivals to exclude from them.
In the next year, 424, Aristophanes produced theKnights, the most violent political lampoon in literature. The victim was Cleon who had succeeded Pericles as popular leader. He was at the height of his glory, having captured the Spartan contingent at Pylos, prisoners who were of great importance for diplomatic purposes. The comedy is a scathing criticism of democracy; the subject is so controversial that it will be best to give some extracts without comment.
Two servants of Demos (the People) steal the oracles of the Paphlagonian (the babbler, Cleon) while he is asleep. To their joy they find that he will govern Demos' house only until a more abominable than he shall appear, namely a sausage-seller. That person immediately presenting himself is informed of his high calling. At first he is amazed. "I know nothing of refinement except letters, and them, bad as they are, badly." The answer is:
"Your only fault is that you know them badly; mob-leadership hasnothing to do with a man refined or of good character, rather withan ignoramus and a vile fellow."
To his objection that he cannot look after a democracy the reply is,
"it is easy enough; only go on doing what you are doing now. Mixand chop up everything; always bring the mob over by sweetening itwith a few cook-shop terms. You have all the other qualifications,a nasty voice, a low origin, familiarity with the street."
The Paphlagonian Cleon runs in bawling that they are conspiring against the democracy. They call loudly for the Knights, who enter as the Chorus to assist them against Cleon, encouraging the sausage-seller to show the brazen effrontery which is the mob-orator's sole protection, and to prove that a decent upbringing is meaningless. Nothing loth, he redoubles Cleon's vulgarity on his head. Cleon rushes out intending to inform the Upper House of their treasons; the sausage-seller hurries after him, his neck being well oiled with his own lard to make Cleon's slanders slip off. A splendid ode is sung in the meantime; it contains a half-comic account of Aristophanes' training in his art and a panegyric on the old spirit which made Athens great. The sausage-seller returns to tell of Cleon's utter defeat; he is quickly followed by Cleon, who appeals to Demos himself, pointing out his own services.
"At the first, when I was a member of the Council, I got in vastsums for the Treasury, partly by torture, partly by throttling,partly by begging. I never studied any private person's interestif I could only curry favour with you, to make you master of allGreece."
The sausage-seller refutes him.
"Your object was to steal and take bribes from the cities, to blindDemos to your villainies by the dust of war, and to make him gapeafter you in need and necessity for war-pensions. If Demos can onlyget into the country in peace and taste the barley-cakes again, hewill soon find out of what blessings you have rid him by yourbriberies; he will come back as a dour farmer and will hunt up avote which will condemn you."
Cleon, the new Themistocles, is deposed from his stewardship.
He appeals to some oracles of Bacis, but the sausage-seller has better ones of Bacis' elder brother Glanis. The Chorus rebuke Demos, whom all men fear as absolute, for being easily led, for listening to the newest comer and for a perpetual banishment of his intelligence. In a second contest for Demos' favours Cleon is finally beaten when it appears that he has kept some dainties in his box while the sausage-seller has given his all. An appeal to an oracle prophesying his supplanter—one who can steal, commit perjury and face it out—so clearly applies to the sausage-seller that Cleon retires.
After a brief absence Demos appears with his new friend—but it is a different Demos, rid of his false evidence and jury system, the Demos of fifty years before. He is ashamed of his recent history, of his preferring doles to battleships. He promises a speedy reform, full pay to his sailors, strict revision of the army service rolls, an embargo on Bills of Parliament. To his joy he recovers the Thirty Years' peace which Cleon had hidden away, and realises at last his longing to escape from the city into the country.
This violent attack on Cleon was vigorously met; Aristophanes was prosecuted and seems to have made a compromise. In his next comedy, theClouds(which was presented in 423) he changes his victim. Strepsiades, an old Athenian, married a high-born wife of expensive tastes; their son Pheidippides developed a liking for horses and soon brought his father to the edge of ruin. The latter requests the son to save him by joining the academy conducted by Socrates, where he can learn the worse argument which enables its possessor to win his case. Aided by it he can rid his father of debt. As the son flatly refuses, the old man decides to learn it himself. Entering the school he sees maps and drawings of all kinds and finally descries Socrates himself, far above his head in a basket, high among the clouds, studying the sun. Strepsiades begs him to teach him the Worse Argument at his own price. After initiating him, Socrates summons his deities the Clouds, who enter as the Chorus. These are the guardian deities of modern professors, seers, doctors, lazy long-haired long-nailed fellows, musicians who cultivate trills and tremolos, transcendental quacks who sing their praises. The old gods are dethroned, a vortex governing the universe. The Chorus tells Socrates to take the old man and teach him everything.
The ode which follows contains the poet's claim to be original.
"I never seek to dupe you by hashing up the same old theme two orthree times, but show my cleverness by introducing ever-new ideas,none alike and all smart."
Socrates returns with Strepsiades, whom he can teach nothing. The Chorus suggest he should bring his son to learn from Socrates how to get rid of debts. At first Pheidippides refuses but finally agrees, though he warns his father that he will rue his act. The Just and Unjust arguments come out of the academy to plead before the Chorus. The former draws a picture of the old-fashioned times when a sturdy race of men was reared on discipline, obedience and morality—a broad-chested vigorous type. In utter contempt the latter brands such teaching as prehistoric. Pleasure, self-indulgence, a lax code of morality and easy tolerance of little weaknesses are the ideal. The power of his words is such that the Just Argument deserts to him.
Strepsiades, coached by his son, easily circumvents two money-lenders and retires to his house. He is soon chased out by his son, who when asked to sing the old songs of Simonides and Aeschylus scorned the idea, humming instead an immoral modern tune of Euripides' making. A quarrel inevitably followed; Strepsiades was beaten by his son who easily proved that he had a right to beat his mother also. Stung to the quick the old man burns the academy; when Socrates and his pupils protest, he tells them they have but a just reward for their godlessness.
The Socrates here pilloried is certainly not the Socrates of history; his teaching was not immoral. But Aristophanes is drawing attention to the evil effects produced by the Sophists, who to the ordinary man certainly included Socrates. The importance of this play to us is clear. We are a nation of half-trained intelligences. Our national schools are frankly irreligious, our teachers people of weak credentials. Parental discipline is openly flouted, pleasure is our modern cult. Jazz bands, long-haired novelists and poets, misty philosophers, anti-national instructors are the idols of many a pale-faced and stunted son of Britain. The reverence which made us great is decadent and openly scoffed at. What is the remedy? Aristophanes burnt out the pestilent teachers. We had better not copy him till we are satisfied that the demand for them has ceased. A nation gets the instruction for which it is morally fitted. There is but one hope; we must follow the genuine Socratic method, which consisted of quiet individual instruction. Only thus will we slowly and patiently seize this modern spirit of unrest; our object should be not to suppress it—it is too sturdy, but to direct its energies to a better and a more noble end.
Finding that theCloudshad been too wholesome to be popular, Aristophanes in 422 returned to attack Cleon in theWasps. Early in the morning Bdelycleon (Cleon-hater) with his two servants is preventing his father Philocleon from leaving the house to go to the jury-courts. The old man's amusing attempts to evade their vigilance are frustrated, whereupon he calls for assistance. Very slowly a body of old men dressed as wasps, led by boys carrying lanterns, finds its way to the house to act as Chorus. They make many suggestions to the father to escape; just as he is gnawing through the net over him his son rushes in. The wasps threaten him with their formidable stings. After a furious conflict truce is declared. Bdelycleon complains of the inveterate juryman's habit of accusing everybody who opposes them of aiming at establishing a tyranny. Father and son consent to state their case for the Chorus to decide between them.
Philocleon glories in the absolute power he exercises over all classes; his rule is equal to that of a king. To him the greatest men in Athens bow as suppliants, begging acquittal. Some of these appeal to pity, others tell him Aesop's fables, others try to make him laugh. Most of all, he controls foreign policy through his privilege of trying statesmen who fail. In return for his duties he receives his pay, goes home and is petted by his wife and family. Bdelycleon opens thus:
"it is a hard task, calling for a clever wit and more than comicgenius to cure an ancient disease that has been breeding in thecity."
After giving a rough estimate of the total revenue of Athens, he subtracts from it the miserable sum of three obols which the jurymen receive as pay. Where does the remainder go? It is evident that the jurymen are the mere catspaw of the big unscrupulous politicians who get all the profit and incur none of the odium. This argument convinces both the Chorus and Philocleon, old heroes of Marathon who created the Empire.
The latter asks what he is to do. His son promises to look after him, allowing him to gratify at home his itch for trying disputes. Two dogs are brought in; by a trick the son makes his father acquit instead of condemn. He then dresses him up decently and instructs him in the etiquette of a dinner-party, whither they proceed. But the old man behaves himself disgracefully, beating everyone in his cups. He appears with a flute-girl and is summoned for assault by a vegetable-woman, whose goods he has spoiled, and by a professional accuser. His insolence to his victims is checked by his son who thrusts him into the house before more accusers can appear.
It is sometimes believed that democracy is a less corrupt form of polity than any other. Aristophanes in this play exposes one of its greatest weaknesses.
Flattered by the sense of power which the possession of the vote brings with it, the enfranchised classes cannot always see that they easily become the tools of the clever rogues who get themselves elected to office by playing on the fears of the electors. The Athenian voter was as easily scared by the word "tyranny" as the modern elector is by "capital". The result is the same. Not only do the so-called lower orders sink into an ignorant slavery; they use their power so brainlessly and so mercilessly that they are a perfect bugbear to the rest.
Literary men's prophecies rarely come true. In 421 thePeace, produced in March, was followed almost immediately by a compact between Athens and Sparta for fifty years. An old farmer, Trygaeus, sails up to heaven on the back of a huge beetle, bidding his family farewell for three days. He meets Hermes, who tells him that Zeus in disgust has surrendered men to the war they love. War himself has hidden Peace in a deep pit, and has made a great mortar in which he intends to grind civilisation to powder. He looks for the Athenian pestle, Cleon, but cannot find him—the Spartan pestle Brasidas has also been mislaid; both were lost in Thrace. Before he can find another pestle Trygaeus summons all men to pull Peace out of her prison. Hermes at first objects, but is won over by offers of presents. At length the goddess is discovered with her two handmaids, Harvest and Mayfair.
A change immediately comes over the faces of men. In pure joy they laugh through their bruises. Hermes explains to the farmers who form the Chorus why Peace left the earth. It was the trade rivalry which first drove her away; at Athens the subject cities fomented strife with Sparta, then the country population flocked to the city, where they fell easy victims to the public war-mongers, who found it profitable to continue the struggle. The god then offers to Trygaeus Harvest as a bride to make his vineyards fruitful. In the ode which follows the poet claims that he first made comedy dignified
"with great thoughts and words and refined jests, not lampooningindividuals but attacking the Tanner war-god."
Returning to earth Trygaeus sends Harvest to the Council, while the marriage sacrifice is made ready. A soothsayer endeavours to impose on the rustics with prophecies that the Peace will be a failure. Trygaeus refutes him with a quotation from Homer. "Without kin or law or home is a man who loveth harsh strife between peoples." The makers of agricultural implements quickly sell all their stock, while the makers of helmets, crests and breastplates find their market gone. A glad wedding song forms the epilogue.
Aristophanes believed that the war meant an extinction of civilisation and loathed it because it was useless. What would he have thought of the barbarous and bloodthirsty Great War of our own day? The causes which produced both struggles were identical—trade rivalry and a set of jingoes who found that war paid. But he was mistaken in believing that peace was the normal condition of Greek life. He was born just before the great period began during which Pericles gave Greece a long respite from quarrels, and seems to have been quite nonplussed by what to him was an abnormal upheaval. His bright hopes soon faded and he seems to have given up thinking about peace or war during a period of eight years. In the meanwhile Athens had attacked Sicily; perhaps a change had come over comedy itself owing to legal action. At any rate, the old and virulent type of political abuse was becoming a thing of the past; the next play, theBirds, produced in 414, abandons Athens altogether for a new and charming world in which there was a rest from strife.
Two Athenians, Peithetairus (Persuasive) and Euelpides (Sanguine) reach the home of the Hoopoe bird, once a mortal, to find a happier place than their native city. Suddenly, as the bird describes the happy careless life of his kind, Peithetairus conceives the idea of founding a new bird city between earth and heaven. The Hoopoe summons his friends to hear their opinion; as they come in he names them to the wondering Athenians. At first the Birds threaten to attack the mortals, their natural enemies. They listen, however, to Peithetairus' words of wisdom.
"Nay, wise men learn much from their foes, for good counsel saveseverything. We cannot learn from a friend, but an enemy quicklyforces the truth upon us. For example, cities learn from theirenemies, not their friends, to create high walls and battleships,and such are the salvation of children, home and substance."
A truce is made. Peithetairus tells them the Birds once ruled the world but have been deposed, becoming the prey of those who once worshipped them. They should ring round the air, like Babylon, with mighty baked bricks and send an ultimatum to the gods, demanding their lost kingdom and forbidding a passage to earth; another messenger should descend to men to require from them due sacrifices. The Birds agree; the two companions retire to Hoopoe's house to eat the magic root which will turn them into winged things. After a choral panegyric on the bird species Peithetairus returns to name the new city Cloudcuckootown, whose erection is taken in hand. Impostors make their appearance, a priest to sacrifice, a poet to eulogise, an oracle-dealer to promise success, a mathematician to plan out the buildings, an overseer and a seller of decrees to enact by-laws; all are summarily ejected by Peithetairus.
News comes that the city is already completed. Suddenly Iris darts in, on her way to earth to demand the accustomed sacrifices from men which the new city has interrupted; she is sent back to heaven to warn the gods of their coming overthrow. A herald from earth brings tidings that more than a myriad human beings are on their way to settle in the city. A parent-beater first appears, then a poet, then an informer—all being firmly dealt with. Prometheus slips in under a parasol, to advise Peithetairus to demand from Zeus his sceptre and with it the lady Royalty as his bride. Poseidon, Heracles and an outlandish Triballian god after a long discussion make terms with the new monarch, who goes with them to fetch his bride. A triumphant wedding forms the conclusion.
The purpose of this comedy has been the subject of much discussion. As a piece of literature it is exquisite. It lifts us out of a world of hard unpleasant fact into a region where life is a care-free thing, bores or impostors are banished and the reign of the usurper ends. The play is not of or for any one particular period; it is really timeless, appealing to the ineradicable desire we all have for an existence of joy and light, where dreams always come true and hope ends only in fulfilment. It is therefore one of man's deathless achievements; the power of its appeal is evident from the frequency with which it has been revived—it was staged at Cambridge this very year. Staged it will be as long as men are what they are.
Having learned that men are a naturally combative race, lusting for blood, the poet saw it was hopeless to bring them to terms. Nor could he for ever live in Cloudcuckootowns; he therefore bethought him of another expedient for obtaining peace. In 411 he imagines the women of Athens, Peloponnese and Boeotia combining to force terms on the men by deserting their homes, under the leadership ofLysistrata. She calls a council of war, explaining her plot to capture the Acropolis. A Chorus of men rush in to smoke them out, armed with firebrands, but are met by a Chorus of women bearing pitchers to quench the flames. An officer of the Council comes to argue with Lysistrata, who points out that in the first part of the war (down to 421) the women had kept quiet, though aware of men's incompetence; now they have determined to control matters. They are possessed of the Treasury, their experience of household economy gives them a good claim to organise State finance; they grow old in the absence of their husbands; a man can marry a girl however old he is. A woman's prime soon comes; if she misses it, she sits at home looking for omens of a husband; women make the most valuable of all contributions to the State, namely sons. The officer retires to report to the Council.
Lysistrata, seeing a weakness in the women's resolution, encourages them with an oracle which promises victory if they will only persist. A herald speedily arrives from Sparta announcing a similar defection in that city. Ambassadors of both sides are brought to Lysistrata who makes a splendid speech.