Chapter 11

Bibliography.—Gen. F.R. Chesney,Euphrates Expedition(1850); W.F. Ainsworth,Researches in Assyria and Babylonia(1838), andPersonal Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition(1888); A.H. Layard,Nineveh and Babylon(1853); W.K. Loftus,Chaldaea and Susiana(1857); Geo. Rawlinson,Herodotus, bk. 1, essay ix. (1862); A. Blunt,Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates(1873); Josef Černik,Studien-Expedition(1873); H. Kiepert,Ruinenfelder Babyloniens(1883); Ed. Sachau,Reise in Syrien u. Mesopotamien(1883), andAm Euphrat u. Tigris(1900); Guy Le Strange, “Description of Mesopotamia,” inJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society(1895), andBaghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate(1901); J.P. Peters,Nippur(1897); M. v. Oppenheim,Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf(1900); H.V. Geere,By Nile and Euphrates(1904); Baedeker,Palestine and Syria(1906); Murray,Handbook to Asia Minor, &c., section iii.

(H. C. R.; C. W. W.; J. P. Pe.)

1The confluence for about 500 years was at Korna, over 30 m. higher up. Sir W. Willcocks discovered (1909) that from Suk-esh-Sheiukh the Euphrates had formed a new channel through the marshes. (SeeGeog. Journal, Jan. 1910).

EUPHRONIUS,the most noted of the group of great vase-painters, who lived in Athens in the time of the Persian wars, and worked upon red-figured vases (seeGreek ArtandCeramics). There is a monograph by W. Klein dealing with the artist. As all the great paintings of Greece have disappeared, we are obliged to trust to the designs on vases for our knowledge of Greek drawing and composition. Euphronius is stiff and archaic in style, but his subjects are varied, his groupings original and striking, and his mastery of the line decided. In their way, the vases which he painted will hold their own in comparison with those of any nation; for simplicity, truthfulness and charm they can scarcely be matched.

EUPHROSYNE,the name of two Byzantine empresses.

1.Euphrosyne, a daughter of Constantine VI. Although she had taken a monastic vow she became the second wife of Michael II. (q.v.), a marriage which was practically forced upon her by Michael, who was anxious to strengthen his claims to the throne by an alliance with the last representative of the Isaurian dynasty, and secured the compliance of senate and patriarch with his desire. No issue was born of this union, and after the death of her husband and accession of her stepson Theophilus Euphrosyne again retired into a convent.

2.Euphrosyne, the wife of Alexius III. (q.v.). After securing the election of her husband to the throne by wholesale bribery she virtually took the government into her hands and restored the waning influence of the monarchy over the nobles. In spite of her talent for government she went far to hasten the empire’s downfall by her unbounded extravagance, and made the dynasty unpopular by her open profligacy, which went unpunished but for one short term of banishment. She followed her husband into exile in 1203 and died seven years later in Epirus.

EUPHUISM,the peculiar mode of speaking and writing brought into fashion in England towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth by the vogue of the fashionable romance ofEuphues, published in 1578 by John Lyly. As early as 1570 Ascham in hisSchoolmasterhad said that “Euphues” (that is, a man well-endowed by nature, from the Gr.εὖ, φυή, well, growth) is “he that is apt by goodness of wit, and appliable by readiness of will, to learning, having all other qualities of the mind and parts of the body that must another day serve learning.” Lyly adopted this word as the name of the hero of his romance, and it is with him that the vogue of Euphuism began. John Lyly, “always averse to the crabbed studies of logic and philosophy, and his genie being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry,” devoted himself exclusively to the service of the ladies, a thing absolutely unprecedented in English literature. He addressed himself to “the gentlewomen of England,” and he had the audacity, in that grave age, to say that he would rather see his books “lie shut in a lady’s casket than open in a scholar’s study.” In order to attain this object, he set himself to create asuperfine style in writing, and to illustrate this in his compositions. He undertook to produce a pleasurable literature for the boudoir and the bower. Lyly was twenty-six when he published in 1579 the first part ofEuphues: the Anatomy of Wit; a second part, entitledEuphues and his England, appeared in 1580. His object was diametrically opposed to that of writers who had striven to instruct, reprove or edify their contemporaries. Lyly, assuming that women only will read his book, says:—“After dinner, you may overlook it to keep you from sleep, or if you be heavy to bring you asleep, for to work upon a full stomach is against physic, and therefore better were it to holdEuphuesin your hands, though you let him fall when you be willing to wink, than to sew in a closet and prick your fingers when you begin to read.”

For a comprehension of the nature of Euphuism it is necessary to remember that the object of its invention was to attract and to disarm the ladies by means of an ingenious and playful style, of high artificiality, which should give them the idea that they were being entertained by an enthusiastic adorer, not instructed by a solemn pedagogue, For fifty years the romance ofEuphuesretained its astonishing popularity. As late as 1632 the publisher Edward Blount (1560?-1632), recalling the earliest enthusiasm of the public, wrote of John Lyly, “Oblivion shall not so trample on a son of the Muses, and such a son as they called their darling. Our nation are in his debt for a new English which he taught them.Euphues and his Englandbegan first that language. All our ladies were then his scholars, and that beauty in Court, which could not parley Euphuism, was as little regarded, as she which, now there, speaks not French.” Among those who applied themselves to this “new English,” one of the most ardent was Queen Elizabeth herself, who has been styled by J.R. Green “the most affected and destestable of euphuists.” At the height of the popularity of this strange dialect, it was said by William Webbe, in hisDiscourse of English Poetry(1586), to consist in a combination of “singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and sentences, in fit phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speech,” while a French poet of the same age calls Lyly a “raffineur” of the English speech; another panegyrist describes him as “alter Tullius,” meaning that, in inventing Euphuism, he had introduced into English the refinements of a Ciceronian style.

When we put aside these excessive compliments, and no less the attacks from which the style suffered as soon as it began to go out of fashion, we are able to observe merits as well as faults in this very curious experiment. Euphuism did not attempt to render the simplicity of nature. On the contrary, in order to secure refinement, it sought to be as affected, as artificial, as high-pitched as possible. Its most prominent feature was an incessant balancing of phrases in chains of antitheses, thus:—“Though the tears of the hart be salt, yet the tears of the boar be sweet, and though the tears of some women be counterfeit to deceive, yet the tears of many be current to try their love”; or this:—“Reject it not because it proceedeth from one which hath been lewd, no more than ye would neglect the gold because it lieth in the dirty earth, or the pure wine for that it cometh out of a homely presse, or the precious stoneaetiteswhich is found in the filthy nests of the eagle, or the precious gemdraconites, that is ever taken out of the poisoned dragon.” This second excerpt, moreover, suggests another of the main characteristics of Euphuism, the incessant use, for purposes of ornament, of similes taken from fabulous records of zoology, or relating to mythical birds, fishes or minerals. This was a feature of the “new English” which was excessively admired, and copied with a senseless extravagance. Instances of it are found on every page of Lyly’s books, thus:—“Although the worm entereth almost into every wood, yet he eateth not the cedar-tree; though the stonecylindrusat every thunder-clap roll from the hill, yet the pure sleek stone mounteth at the noise; though the rust fret the hardest steel, yet doth it not eat into the emerald; though polypus change his hue, yet the salamander keepeth his colour”; and so on,ad infinitum. That lady was considered most proficient in euphuism who could keep up longest these chains of similes taken out of fabulous natural history. Alliteration was also a particular ornament of the euphuistic style, as: “The bavin, though it burn bright, is but a blaze,” but the use of this artifice by Lyly himself was rarely exaggerated; for instances of its excess we have rather to turn to his imitators. In the following passage the typical forms of Euphuism, in its pure and original conditions, are so combined and illustrated as to require no further commentary: “Do we not commonly see that in painted pots is hidden the deadliest poison? that in the greenest grass is the greatest serpent? in the clearest water the ugliest toad? Doth not experience teach us that in the most curious sepulchre are enclosed rotten bones? that the cypress tree beareth a fair leaf, but no fruit? that the ostrich carrieth fair feathers, but rank flesh?”—and so forth. It will be noticed that these characteristics differ in many respects from the specimens of euphuism which are most familiar to a modern reader, namely the extravagant speech placed in the mouth of Sir Piercie Shafton in Sir Walter Scott’s romance ofThe Monastery. Scott modelled this character on what he called that “forgotten and obsolete model of folly, once fashionable,” Lyly’s novel ofEuphues, but he had not studied the original to sufficient purpose, and the bombastic ravings of Sir Piercie, who simply talks like a lunatic, have deceived many readers as to the real characteristics of Euphuism. Scott betrays his own error when he says that “the extravagance of Euphuism ... predominates in the romances of Calprenède and Scuderi,” in which it is true that a tone of preposterous gallantry finds a language of its own, but that is not the language of Euphues. What Sir Piercie Shafton talks is a mixture of the style of these French romances, with the ostentation of Sir Fopling Flutter and the extravagances of the Scotch translator of Rabelais. But these various sorts of pretentious eloquence have little or nothing in common with the balanced and conceited style of Euphues.

We find that the genuine sort of this kind of superfine conversation was originally called “Euphues,” simply, as Overbury speaks of a man “who speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as heartily.” The earliest instance of the word “Euphuism” which has been traced occurs in a letter, written by Gabriel Harvey in 1592, when he speaks of a man, who would be smart, as talking “a little Euphuism.” Dekker, in theGull’s Hornbookof 1609, uses the word as an adjective, and denounces “Euphuised gentlewomen.” When the practice was going out of fashion we find it thus severely stigmatized by Michael Drayton, a poet who had little sympathy with the artificial refinement of Lyly. In an elegy, printed in 1627, Drayton refers to the merit of Sir Philip Sidney, who recalled English prose to sanity, and

“did first reduceOur tongue from Lyly’s writings then in use,Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,Playing with words and idle similes,As th’ English apes and very zanies beOf everything that they do hear and see,So imitating his ridiculous tricksThey spake and writ, all like mere lunatics.”

“did first reduce

Our tongue from Lyly’s writings then in use,

Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,

Playing with words and idle similes,

As th’ English apes and very zanies be

Of everything that they do hear and see,

So imitating his ridiculous tricks

They spake and writ, all like mere lunatics.”

This severe censure of Euphuism may serve to remind us that hasty critics have committed an error in supposing theArcadia.of Sidney to be composed in the fashionable jargon. That was certainly not the intention of the author, and in fact the publication of theArcadia, eleven years after that ofEuphues, marks the beginning of the downfall of the popularity of the latter. Sidney’s prose, it is true, was extremely ornamented, but it was instinct with romantic fancy, and it affected a chivalrous and florid fulness which was artificial enough, but wholly distinct from the more homely elegance of Euphuism as we have defined it. The publication of theArcadiawas a severe blow to the Euphuists. Immediately the ladies began to desert their former favourite, and the object at court became, as Ben Jonson noted, to “observe as pure a phrase and use as choice figures in ordinary conference as any be in the Arcadia.” But, in the meantime, Lyly had found in Greene, Lodge, Dickenson, Nicholas Breton and others enthusiastic disciples who had learned all the formulas of Euphuism, and could bring them forth asfluently and elegantly as he could himself. Nevertheless the trick wore out, with the taste that it had created, and by the close of the reign of James I. Euphuism had become a dead language.

Critics have not failed to insist, on the other hand, that a species of Euphuism existed before Euphues was thought of. It has been supposed that a translation of the familiar epistles, or, as they were called, the “Golden Letters,” of a Spanish monk, Antonio de Guevara, led Lyly to conceive the extraordinary style which bears the name of his hero. Between 1574 and 1578 Edward Hellowes (fl. 1550-1600) translated into a very extravagant English prose three of the works of Guevara. Earlier than this, in 1557, Sir Thomas North had published a version of the same Spanish writer’sReloj de Principes(The Dial of Princes), a moral and philosophical romance which is not without a certain likeness in plan and language toEuphues. It is extremely difficult to know to what extent these translations, which were not strikingly unlike many other specimens of the ornamented English prose of their period, can be said to be responsible for the production of Euphuism. At all events no one can doubt that it was Lyly who concentrated the peculiarities of mannerism, and who gave to it the stamp of his own remarkable talent.

See Landmann,Der Euphuismus(1881); Arber’s edition ofEuphues(1869); R.W. Bond’sComplete Works of Lyly(1902); Hallam, Jusserand, S. Lee,passim.

(E. G.)

EUPION(Gr.εὖ, well,πίων, fat), a hydrocarbon of the paraffin series, probably a pentane, C5H12, discovered by K. Reichenbach in wood-tar. It is also formed in the destructive distillation of many substances, as wood, coal, caoutchouc, bones, resin and the fixed oils. It is a colourless highly volatile and inflammable liquid, having at 20° C. a specific gravity of 0.65.

EUPOLIS(c.446-411B.C.), Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, flourished in the time of the Peloponnesian War. Nothing whatever is known of his personal history. With regard to his death, he is said to have been thrown into the sea by Alcibiades, whom he had attacked in one of his plays, but it is more likely that he died fighting for his country. He is ranked by Horace (Sat. i. 4, 1), along with Cratinus and Aristophanes, as the greatest writer of his school. With a lively and fertile fancy Eupolis combined a sound practical judgment; he was reputed to equal Aristophanes in the elegance and purity of his diction, and Cratinus in his command of irony and sarcasm. Although he was at first on good terms with Aristophanes, their relations subsequently became strained, and they accused each other, in most virulent terms, of imitation and plagiarism. Of the 17 plays attributed to Eupolis, with which he obtained the first prize seven times, only fragments remain. Of these the best known were: theKolakes, in which he pilloried the spendthrift Callias, who wasted his substance on sophists and parasites;Maricas, an attack on Hyperbolus, the successor of Cleon, under a fictitious name; theBaptae, against Alcibiades and his clubs, at which profligate foreign rites were practised. Other objects of his attack were Socrates and Cimon. TheDemoiandPoleiswere political, dealing with the desperate condition of the state and with the allied (or tributary) cities.

Fragments in T. Kock,Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, i. (1880).

EUPOMPUS,the founder of the great school of painting which flourished in the 4th century at Sicyon in Greece. He was eclipsed by his successors, and is chiefly remembered for the advice which he is said to have given to Lysippus to follow nature rather than any master.

EURASIAN,a term originally confined to India, where for upwards of half a century it was used to denote children born of Hindu mothers and European (especially Portuguese) fathers. Following the geographical employment of the wordEurasiato describe the whole of the great land mass which is divided into the continents of Europe and Asia, Eurasian has come to be descriptive of any half-castes born of parents representing the races of the two continents. It has further an ethnological sense, A.H. Keane (Ethnology, 1896) proposing to find in the Eurasian Steppe the true home of the primitive Aryan groups. Joseph Deniker (Anthropology, 1900) makes a Eurasian group to include such peoples (Ugrians, Turko-Tatars, &c.) as are represented in both continents. Giuseppe Sergi, in hisMediterranean Race(London, 1901), uses Eurasiatic to denote that variety of man which “brought with it into Europe (from Asia in the later Neolithic period) flexional languages of Aryan or Indo-European type.”

EURE,a department of north-western France, formed in 1790 from a portion of the old province of Normandy, together with the countship of Évreux and part of Perche. Pop. (1906) 330,140. Area, 2330 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department of Seine Inférieure, W. by Calvados, S.W. by Orne, S. by Eure-et-Loir, and E. by Seine-et-Oise and Oise. The territory of Eure, which nowhere exceeds 800 ft. in altitude, is broken up by its rivers into well-wooded plateaus with a general inclination from south to north. Forests cover about one-fifth of the department. The Seine flows from S.E. to N.W. through the E. of the department, and after touching the frontier at two or three points forms near its mouth part of the northern boundary. All the rivers of the department flow into the Seine,—on the right bank the Andelle and the Epte, and on the left the Eure with its tributaries the Avre and the Iton, and the Risle with its tributary the Charentonne. The Eure, from which the department takes its name, rises in Orne, and flowing through Eure-et-Loir, falls into the Seine above Pont de l’Arche, after a course of 44 m. in the department. The Risle likewise rises in Orne, and flows generally northward to its mouth in the estuary of the Seine. The climate is mild, but moist and variable. The soil is for the most part clayey, resting on a bed of chalk, and is, in general, fertile and well tilled. The chief cereal cultivated is wheat; oats, colza, flax and beetroot are also grown. There is a wide extent of pasturage, on which are reared a considerable number of cattle and sheep, and especially those horses of pure Norman breed for which the department has long been celebrated. Fruit is very abundant, especially apples and pears, from which much cider and perry are made. The mineral products of Eure include freestone, marl, lime and brick-clay. The chief industries are the spinning of cotton and wool, and the weaving, dyeing and printing of fabrics of different kinds. Brewing, flour-milling, distilling, turnery, cotton-bleaching, cider-making, metal-founding, tanning, and the manufacture of glass, paper, iron ware, nails, pins, wind-instruments, bricks and sugar are also carried on. Coal and raw materials for its industries are the chief imports of Eure; its exports include cattle, poultry, eggs, butter, grain and manufactured goods. The department is served chiefly by the Western railway; the Seine, Eure and Risle provide 87 m. of navigable waterway. Eure is divided into the following arrondissements (containing 36 cantons, 700 communes):—Évreux, Louviers, Les Andelys, Bernay, and Pont-Audemer. Its capital is Évreux, which is the seat of a bishopric of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. The department belongs to the III. Army Corps and to the académie (educational division) of Caen. Its court of appeal is at Rouen.

Évreux, Les Andelys, Bernay, Louviers, Pont-Audemer, Verneuil, Vernon and Gisors are the principal towns of the department. At Gaillon there are remains of a celebrated château of the archbishops of Rouen (seeLouviers). Pont de l’Arche has a fine Gothic church, with stained-glass windows of the 16th and 17th centuries; the church of Tillières-sur-Arvre is a graceful specimen of the Renaissance style. The churches of Conches (15th or 16th century) and of Rugles (13th, 15th and 16th centuries), and the château of Beaumesnil (16th century) are also of architectural interest.

EURE-ET-LOIR,an inland department of north-western France, formed in 1790 of portions of Orléanais and Normandy. Pop. (1906) 273,823. Area, 2293 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department of Eure, W. by Orne and Sarthe, S. by Loir-et-Cher, S.E. by Loiret, and E. by Seine-et-Oise. The Perche in the south-west and the Thimerais in the north-west are districts of hills and valleys, woods, lakes and streams. The region of the east and south is a level and uniform expanse, consisting for the most part of the riverless but fertile plain of Beauce, sometimes calledthe “granary of France.” The northern part of Eure-et-Loir is watered by the Eure, with its tributaries the Vègre, Blaise and Avre, a small western portion by the Huisne, and the south by the Loir with its tributaries the Conie and the Ozanne. The air is pure, the climate mild, dry and not subject to sudden changes. The soil consists, for the most part, either of clay intermixed with sand or of calcareous earth, and is on the whole fruitful. Agriculture is better conducted than in most of the departments of France, and the average yield per acre is greater. Cereals occupy half the surface, wheat and oats being chiefly cultivated. Among the other agricultural products are barley, hemp, flax and various vegetables, including good asparagus. Wine is not extensively produced, nor is it of the best quality; but in some parts, especially in the Perche, there is an abundant supply of apples, from which cider is made as the common drink of the inhabitants. The extensive meadows supply pasturage for a large number of cattle and sheep, and the horses raised in the Perche have a wide reputation as draught animals. Bee-farming is commonly prosecuted. The department produces lime, grindstones and brick-clay. The manufactures are not extensive; but there are flour- and saw-mills, tanneries and leather-works, copper and iron foundries, starch-works, dyeworks, distilleries, breweries and potteries; and agricultural implements, cotton and woollen goods, and yarn, hosiery, boots and shoes, sugar, felt hats and paper are made. Eure-et-Loir exports the products of its soil and live-stock; its imports include coal, wine and wearing apparel. It is served by the railways of the Western and the Orléans Companies and by those of the state, but it has no navigable waterways. The department has Chartres for its capital, and is divided into the arrondissements of Chartres, Châteaudun, Dreux and Nogent-le-Rotrou (24 cantons and 426 communes). It forms the diocese of Chartres (province of Paris), and belongs to the académie (educational division) of Paris and the region of the IV. Army Corps. Its court of appeal is at Paris.

Chartres, Dreux, Châteaudun, Nogent-le-Rotrou and Anet are the more noteworthy places in the department (q.v.). At Bonneval the lunatic asylum occupies the 18th-century buildings of a former Benedictine abbey. The abbey church belonged to the 13th century, but only a gateway flanked by two massive towers is left. The chateau of Maintenon dating from the 16th and 17th centuries was presented by Louis XIV. to Madame de Maintenon, by whom additions were made; the aqueduct (17th century) in the park was designed to carry the water of the Eure to Versailles, but was not completed. There is a fine château of the late 15th century, restored in modern tunes, at Montigny-le-Gannelon, and another of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, at one time the property of Sully, at Villebon. St Lubin-des-Joncherets has a handsome church of the 11th century, in which there are stained-glass windows dating from the 16th century.

EUREKA,a city, port of entry, and the county seat of Humboldt county, California, U.S.A., on the E. shore of Humboldt Bay. Pop. (1880) 2639; (1890) 4858; (1900) 7327 (2035 foreign-born); (1910) 11,845. It has a good harbour, greatly improved by the National government, and is connected with San Francisco, Portland and other coast ports by steamship lines. In 1909 a railway (the Northwestern Pacific), to connect Eureka with San Francisco, was under construction. The district owes its reputation as a health resort to its equable climate and to the protection afforded by the wide coast timber belt. Eureka is the principal point for the shipment of redwood lumber, and saw-milling is carried on here on an enormous scale. Several short railways run from Eureka and Arcata (pop. in 1900, 952) across the bay, into the forests, and bring lumber to the mills, most of which are in or near Eureka. Humboldt county was organized in 1853. Eureka was then already the centre of an important lumber trade, principally in spars. It was incorporated in 1856, displacing Union (now Arcata) as the county-seat in the same year.

EUREKA SPRINGS,a city and health resort, one of the county-seats—Berryville being the other—of Carroll county, in the extreme north-western part of Arkansas, U.S.A., in the Ozark uplift, 1800 ft. above the sea-level. Pop. (1890) 3706; (1900) 3572 (142 of negro descent); (1910) 3228. There is a transient population of thousands of visitors during the year. The city is built picturesquely on the sides of a gulch, down which runs the Missouri & North Arkansas railway. A creek running through the city empties into the White river, only a few miles distant. The surrounding country varies in character from mountains to rolling prairie. The encircling hills are laden with a covering of pine. The normal mean temperature for the year is about 59° F. (42° F. in winter, 61° F. in spring, 75° F. in summer, and 58° F. in autumn); the average rainfall, about 33 in. The atmosphere is dry and clear. Apart from its share in the agricultural interests of the surrounding region,—devoted mainly to Indian corn, small grains and fruits,—the entire economy of Eureka Springs centres in its medicinal springs, more than forty of which, lying within the corporate limits, are held in trust by the city for the free use of the public. The temperature of the springs varies from about 57° F. to 64° F. Each gallon of their waters contains about 28.5 cub. in. of gaseous matter and from 6 to 9 grains of solids held in solution. The city waterworks are owned by the municipality. The springs have been exploited since 1879, when the first settlement was made. The city was chartered in 1880.

EURIPIDES(480-406B.C.), the great Greek dramatic poet, was born in 480B.C., on the very day, according to the legend, of the Greek victory at Salamis, where his Athenian parents had taken refuge; and a whimsical fancy has even suggested that his name—son of Euripus—was meant to commemorate the first check of the Persian fleet at Artemisium. His father Mnesarchus was at least able to give him a liberal education; it was a favourite taunt with the comic poets that his mother Clito had been a herb-seller—a quaint instance of the tone which public satire could then adopt with plausible effect. At first he was intended, we are told, for the profession of an athlete,—a calling of which he has recorded his opinion with something like the courage of Xenophanes. He seems also to have essayed painting; but at five-and-twenty he brought out his first play, thePeliades, and thenceforth he was a tragic poet. At thirty-nine he gained the first prize, and in his career of about fifty years he gained it only five times in all. This fact is perfectly consistent with his unquestionably great and growing popularity in his own day. Throughout life he had to compete with Sophocles, and with other poets who represented tragedy of the type consecrated by tradition. The hostile criticism of Aristophanes was witty; and, moreover, it was true, granting the premise from which Aristophanes starts, that the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles is the only right model. Its unfairness, often extreme, consists in ignoring the changing conditions of public feeling and taste, and the possibilities, changed accordingly, of an art which could exist only by continuing to please large audiences. It has usually been supposed that the unsparing derision of the comic poets contributed not a little to make the life of Euripides at Athens uncomfortable; and there is certainly one passage in a fragment of theMelanippe(Nauck, Frag., 495), which would apply well enough to his persecutors:—

ἀνδρῶν δὲ πολλοὶ τοῦ γέλωτος οὕνεκαἀσκοῦσι χάριτας κερτόμους ἐγὼ δέ πωςμισῶ γελοίους, οἵτινες σοφῶν πέριἀχάλιν᾽ ἔχουσι στόματα.(To raise vain laughter, many exerciseThe arts of satire; but my spirit loathesThese mockers whose unbridled mockeryInvades grave themes.)

ἀνδρῶν δὲ πολλοὶ τοῦ γέλωτος οὕνεκα

ἀσκοῦσι χάριτας κερτόμους ἐγὼ δέ πως

μισῶ γελοίους, οἵτινες σοφῶν πέρι

ἀχάλιν᾽ ἔχουσι στόματα.

(To raise vain laughter, many exercise

The arts of satire; but my spirit loathes

These mockers whose unbridled mockery

Invades grave themes.)

The infidelity of two wives in succession is alleged to explain the poet’s tone in reference to the majority of their sex, and to complete the picture of an uneasy private life. He appears to have been repelled by the Athenian democracy, as it tended to become less the rule of the people than of the mob. Thoroughly the son of his day in intellectual matters, he shrank from the coarser aspects of its political and social life. His best word is for the small farmer (αὐτουργός), who does not often come to town, or soil his rustic honesty by contact with the crowd of the market-place.

About 409B.C.Euripides left Athens, and after a residence in the Thessalian Magnesia repaired, on the invitation of King Archelaus, to the Macedonian court, where Greeks of distinction were always welcome. In hisArchelausEuripides celebrated that legendary son of Temenus, and head of the Temenid dynasty, who bad founded Aegae; and in one of the meagre fragments he evidently alludes to the beneficent energy of his royal host in opening up the wild land of the North. It was at Pella, too, that Euripides composed or completed, and perhaps produced, theBacchae. Jealous courtiers, we are told, contrived to have him attacked and killed by savage dogs. It is odd that the fate of Actaeon should be ascribed, by legend, to two distinguished Greek writers, Euripides and Lucian; though in the former case at least the fate has not such appropriateness as the Byzantine biographer discovers in the latter, on the ground that its victim “had waxed rabid against the truth.” The death of Euripides, whatever its manner, occurred in 406B.C., when he was seventy-four. Sophocles followed him in a few months, but not before he had been able to honour the memory of his younger rival by causing his actors to appear with less than the full costume of the Dionysiac festival. Soon afterwards, in theFrogs, Aristophanes pronounced the epitaph of Attic comedy on Attic tragedy.

The historical interest of such a life as that of Euripides consists in the very fact that its external record is so scanty—that, unlike Aeschylus or Sophocles, he had no place in the public action of his time, but dwelt apart as a student and a thinker. He has made his Medea speak of those who, through following quiet paths, have incurred the reproach of apathy (ῥᾳθυμίαν). Undoubtedly enough of the old feeling for civic life remained to create a prejudice against one who held aloof from the affairs of the city. Quietness (ἀπραγμοσύνη), in this sense, was still regarded as akin to indolence (ἀργία). Yet here we see how truly Euripides was the precursor of that near future which, at Athens, saw the more complete divergence of society from the state.

In an age which is not yet ripe for reflection or for the subtle analysis of character, people are content to express in general types those primary facts of human nature which strike every one. Achilles will stand well enough for the young chivalrous warrior, Odysseus for the man of resource and endurance. In the case of the Greeks, these types had not merely an artistic and a moral interest; they had, further, a religious interest, because the Greeks believed that the epic heroes, sprung from the gods, were their own ancestors. Greek tragedy arose when the choral worship of Dionysus, the god of physical rapture, had engrafted upon it a dialogue between actors who represented some persons of the legends consecrated by this faith. The dramatist was accordingly obliged to refrain from multiplying those minute touches which, by individualizing the characters too highly, would detract from their general value as types in which all Hellenic humanity could recognize its own image glorified and raised a step nearer to the immortal gods. This necessity was further enforced by the existence of the chorus, the original element of the drama, and the very essence of its nature as an act of Dionysiac worship. Those utterances of the chorus, which to the modern sense are so often platitudes, were not so to the Greeks, just because the moral issues of tragedy were felt to have the same typical generality as these comments themselves.

An unerring instinct keeps both Aeschylus and Sophocles within the limits imposed by this law. Euripides was only fifteen years younger than Sophocles. But, when Euripides began to write, it must have been clear to any man of his genius and culture that, though an established prestige might be maintained, a new poet who sought to construct tragedy on the old basis would be building on sand. For, first, the popular religion itself—the very foundation of tragedy—had been undermined. Secondly, scepticism had begun to be busy with the legends which that religion consecrated. Neither gods nor heroes commanded all the old unquestioning faith. Lastly, an increasing number of the audience in the theatre began to be destitute of the training, musical and poetical, which had prepared an earlier generation to enjoy the chaste and placid grandeur of ideal tragedy.

Euripides made a splendid effort to maintain the place of tragedy in the spiritual life of Athens by modifying its interests in the sense which his own generation required. Could not the heroic persons still excite interest if they were made more real,—if, in them, the passions and sorrows of every-day life were portrayed with greater vividness and directness? And might not the less cultivated part of the audience at least enjoy a thrilling plot, especially if taken from the home-legends of Attica? Euripides became the virtual founder of the romantic drama. In so far as his work fails, the failure is one which probably no artistic tact could then have wholly avoided. The frame within which he had to work was one which could not be stretched to his plan. The chorus, the masks, the narrow stage, the conventional costumes, the slender opportunities for change of scenery, were so many fixed obstacles to the free development of tragedy in the new direction. But no man of his time could have broken free from these traditions; in attempting to do so he must have wrecked either his fame or his art. It is not the fault of Euripides if in so much of his work we feel the want of harmony between matter and form. Art abhors compromise; and it was the misfortune of Attic tragedy in his generation that nothing but a compromise could save it. Two devices have become common phrases of reproach against him—the prologue and thedeus ex machina. Doubtless the prologue is a slipshod and sometimes ludicrous expedient. But the audiences of his days were far from being so well versed as their fathers in the mythic lore, and, on the other hand, a dramatist who wished to avoid trite themes had now to go into the byways of mythology. A prologue was often perhaps desirable or necessary for the instruction of the audience. As regards thedeus ex machina, a distinction should be observed between those cases in which the solution is really mechanical, as in theAndromacheand perhaps theOrestes, and those in which it is warranted or required by the plot, as in theHippolytusand theBacchae. The choral songs in Euripides, it may be granted, have often nothing to do with the action. But the chorus was the greatest of difficulties for a poet who was seeking to present drama of romantic tendency in the plastic form consecrated by tradition. So far from censuring Euripides on this score, we should be disposed to regard his management of the chorus as a signal proof of his genius, originality and skill.

Euripides is said to have written 92 dramas, including 8 satyr-plays. The best critics of antiquity allowed 75 as genuine. Nauck has collected 1117 Euripidean fragments. Among these, numbers 1092-1117 are doubtful or spurious; numbersWorks.842-1091 are from plays of uncertain title; numbers 1-841 represent fifty-five lost pieces, among which some of the best known are theAndromeda, Antiope,1Bellerophon, Cresphontes, Erechtheus, Oedipus, Phaëthon, andTelephus.1. TheAlcestis, as the didascaliae tell us, was brought out in Ol. 85. 2,i.e.at the Dionysia in the spring of 438B.C., as the fourth play of a tetralogy comprising theCretan Women, theAlcmaeon at Psophis, and theTelephus. TheAlcestisis altogether removed from the character, essentially grotesque, of a mere satyric drama. On the other hand, it has features which distinctly separate it from a Greek tragedy of the normal type. First, the subject belongs to none of the great cycles, but to a byway of mythology, and involves such strange elements as the servitude of Apollo in a mortal household, the decree of the fates that Admetus must die on a fixed day, and the restoration of the dead Alcestis to life. Secondly, the treatment of the subject is romantic and even fantastic,—strikingly so in the passage where Apollo is directly confronted with the daemonic figure of Thanatos. Lastly, the boisterous, remorseful, and generous Heracles makes, not, indeed, a satyric drama, but a distinctly satyric scene—a scene which, in the frank original, hardly bears the subtle interpretation which inBalaustionis hinted by the genius of Browning, that Heracles got drunk in order to keep up other people’s spirits. When the happy ending is taken into account, it is not surprising that some should have called theAlcestisa tragi-comedy. But we cannot so regard it. The slight and purely incidental strain of comedy is but a moment of relief between the tragic sorrow andterror of the opening and the joy, no less solemn, of the conclusion. In this respect theAlcestismight more truly be compared to such a drama as theWinter’s Tale; the loss and recovery of Hermione by Leontes do not form a tragi-comedy because we are amused between-whiles by Autolycus and the clown. It does not seem improbable that theAlcestis—the earliest of the extant plays—may represent an attempt to substitute for the old satyric drama an after-piece of a kind which, while preserving a satyric element, should stand nearer to tragedy. The taste and manners of the day were perhaps tiring of the merely grotesque entertainment that old usage appended to the tragedies; just as, in the sphere of comedy, we know from Aristophanes that they were tiring of broad buffoonery. An original dramatist may have seen an opportunity here. However that may be, theAlcestishas a peculiar interest for the history of the drama. It marks in the most signal manner, and perhaps at the earliest moment, that great movement which began with Euripides,—the movement of transition from the purely Hellenic drama to the romantic.2. TheMedeawas brought out in 431B.C.with thePhiloctetes, theDictys, and a lost satyr-play called theReapers(Theristae). Euripides gained the third prize, the first falling to Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, and the second to Sophocles. If it is true that Euripides modelled hisMedeaon the work of an obscure predecessor, Neophron, at least he made the subject thoroughly his own. Hardly any play was more popular in antiquity with readers and spectators, with actors, or with sculptors. Ennius is said to have translated and adopted it. We do not know how far it may have been used by Ovid in his lost tragedy of the same name; but it certainly inspired the rhetorical performance of Seneca, which may be regarded as bridging the interval between Euripides and modern adaptations. We may grant at once that theMedeaof Euripides is not a faultless play; that the dialogue between the heroine and Aegeus is not happily conceived; that the murder of the children lacks an adequate dramatic motive; that there is something of a moral anti-climax in the arrangements of Medea, before the deed, for her personal safety. But theMedearemains a tragedy of first-rate power. It is admirable for the splendid force with which the character of the strange and strong-hearted woman, a barbarian friendless among Hellenes, is thrown out against the background of Hellenic life in Corinth.3. The extantHippolytus(429B.C.)—sometimes calledStephanephoros, the “wreath-bearer,” from the garland of flowers which, in the opening scene, the hero offers to Artemis—was not the first drama of Euripides on this theme. In an earlier play of the same name, we are told, he had shocked both the moral and the aesthetic sense of Athens. In this earlierHippolytus, Phaedra herself had confessed her love to her step-son, and, when repulsed, had falsely accused him to Theseus, who doomed him to death; at the sight of the corpse, she had been moved to confess her crime, and had atoned for it by a voluntary death. This firstHippolytusis cited asHippolytus the Veiled(καλυπτόμενος), either, as Toup and Welcker thought, from Hippolytus covering his face in horror, or, as Bentley with more likelihood suggested, because the youth’s shrouded corpse was brought upon the scene. It can scarcely be doubted that the chief dramatic defect of ourHippolytusis connected with the unfavourable reception of its predecessor. Euripides had been warned that limits must be observed in the dramatic portrayal of a morally repulsive theme. In the later play, accordingly, the whole action is made to turn on the jealous feud between Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Artemis, the goddess of chastity. Phaedra not only shrinks from breathing her secret to Hippolytus, but destroys herself when she learns that she is rejected. But the natural agency of human passion is now replaced by a supernatural machinery; the slain son and the bereaved father are no longer the martyrs of sin, the tragic witnesses of an inexorable law; rather they and Phaedra are alike the puppets of a divine caprice, the scapegoats of an Olympian quarrel in which they have no concern. But if the dramatic effect of the whole is thus weakened, the character of Phaedra is a fine psychological study; and, as regards form, the play is one of the most brilliant. Boeckh (De tragoediae Graecae principiis, p. 180 f.) is perhaps too ingenious in finding an allusion to the plague at Athens (430B.C.) in theὦ κακὰ θνητῶν στυγεραί τε νόσοιof v. 177, and in v. 209 f.; but it can scarcely be doubted that he is right in suggesting that the closing words of Theseus (v. 1460)ὦ κλείν᾽ Ἀθηνῶν Παλλάδος θ᾽ ὁρίσματα, οἵου στερήσεσθ᾽ ἀνδρός,and the reply of the chorus,κοινὁν τόδ᾽ ἄχος, &c., contain a reference to the recent death of Pericles (429B.C.).4. TheHecubamay be placed about 425B.C.Thucydides (iii. 104) notices the purification of Delos by the Athenians, and the restoration of the Panionic festival there, in 426B.C.—an event to which the choral passage, v. 462 f., probably refers. It appears more hazardous to take v. 650 f. as an allusion to the Spartan mishap at Pylos. The subject of the play is the revenge of Hecuba, the widowed queen of Priam, on Polymestor, king of Thrace, who had murdered her youngest son Polydorus, after her daughter Polyzena had already been sacrificed by the Greeks to the shade of Achilles. The two calamities which befall Hecuba have no direct connexion with each other. In this sense the play lacks unity of design. On the other hand, both events serve the same end—viz. to heighten the tragic pathos with which the poet seeks to surround the central figure of Hecuba. The drama illustrates the skill with which Euripides, while failing to satisfy the requirements of artistic drama, could sustain interest by an ingeniously woven plot. It is a representativeIntriguenstück, and well exemplifies the peculiar power which recommended Euripides to the poets of the New Comedy.5. TheAndromache, according to a notice in thescholia Veneta(446), was not acted at Athens, at least in the author’s life-time; though some take the words in the Greek argument (τὸ δρᾶμα τῶν δευτέρων) to mean that it was among those which gained a second prize. The invective on the Spartan character which is put into the mouth of Andromache contains the words,ἀδίκως εὐτυχεῖτ᾽ ἀν᾽ Ἑλλάδα, and this, with other indications, points to the Peloponnesian successes of the years 424-422B.C.Andromache, the widow of Hector, has become the captive and concubine of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. During his absence, her son Molossus is taken from her, with the aid of Menelaus, by her jealous rival Hermione. Mother and son are rescued from death by Peleus; but meanwhile Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi through the intrigues of Orestes. The goddess Thetis now appears, ordains that Andromache shall marry Helenus, and declares that Molossus shall found a line of Epirote kings, while Peleus shall become immortal among the gods of the sea. TheAndromacheis a poor play. The contrasts, though striking, are harsh and coarse, and the compensations dealt out by thedeus ex machinaleave the moral sense wholly unsatisfied. Technically the piece is noteworthy as bringing on the scene four characters at once—Andromache, Molossus, Peleus and Menelaus (v. 545 f.).6. TheIonis an admirable drama, the finest of those plays which deal with legends specially illustrating the traditional glories of Attica. It is also the most perfect example of the poet’s skill in the structure of dramatic intrigue. For its place in the chronological order there are no data except those of style and metre. Judging by these, Hermann would place it “neither after Ol. 89, nor much before”—i.e.somewhere between 424 and 421B.C.; and this may be taken as approximately correct. The scene is laid throughout at the temple of Delphi. The young Ion is a priest in the temple of Delphi when Xuthus and his wife Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, come to inquire of the god concerning their childlessness; and it is discovered that Ion is the son of Creusa by the god Apollo. Athena herself appears, and commands that Ion shall be placed on the throne of Athens, foretelling that from him shall spring the four Attic tribes, the Teleontes (priests), Hopletes (fighting-men), Argadeis (husbandmen) and Aigikoreis (herdsmen). The play must have been peculiarly effective on the Athenian stage, not only by its situations, but through its appeal to Attic sympathies.7. TheSuppliantswho give their name to the play are Argive women, the mothers of Argive warriors slain before the walls of Thebes, who, led by Adrastus, king of Argos, come as suppliants to the altar of Demeter at Eleusis. Creon, king of Thebes, has refused burial to their dead sons. The Athenian king Theseus demands of Creon that he shall grant the funeral rites; the refusal is followed by a battle in which the Thebans are vanquished, and the bodies of the Argive dead are then brought to Eleusis. At the close the goddess Athena appears, and ordains that a close alliance shall be formed between Athens and Argos. Some refer the play to 417B.C., when the democratic party at Athens rose against the oligarchs. But a more probable date is 420B.C., when, through the agency of Alcibiades, Athens and Argos concluded a defensive alliance. The play has a strongly marked rhetorical character, and is, in fact, a panegyric, with an immediate political aim, on Athens as the champion of humanity against Thebes.8. TheHeracleidae—a companion piece to theSuppliants, and of the same period—is decidedly inferior in merit. Here, too, there are direct references to contemporary history. The defeat of Argos by the Spartans in 418B.C.strengthened the Argive party who were in favour of discarding the Athenian for the Spartan alliance (Thuc. v. 76). In theHeracleidae, the sons of the dead Heracles, persecuted by the Argive Eurystheus, are received and sheltered at Athens. Thus, while Athens is glorified, Sparta, whose kings are descendants of the Heracleidae, is reminded how unnatural would be an alliance between herself and Argos.9. TheHeracles Mainomenos2(Hercules Furens), which, on grounds of style, can scarcely be put later than 420-417B.C., shares with the two last plays the purpose of exalting Athens in the person of Theseus. Heracles returns from Hades—whither, at the command of Eurystheus, he went to bring back Cerberus—just in time to save his wife Megara and his children from being put to death by Lycus of Thebes, whom he slays. As he is offering lustral sacrifice after the deed, he is suddenly stricken with madness by Lyssa (Fury), the daemonic agent of his enemy the goddess Hera, and in his frenzy he slays his wife and children. Theseus finds him, in his agony of despair, about to kill himself, and persuades him to come to Athens, there to seek grace and pardon from the gods. The unity of the plot may be partly vindicated by observing that the slaughter of Lycus entitled Heracles to the gratitude of Thebes, whereas the slaughter of his own kinsfolk made it unlawful that he should remain there; thus, having found a refuge only to lose it, Heracles has no hope left but in Athens, whose praise is the true theme of the entire drama.10.Iphigenia among the Tauri, which metre and diction mark as one of the later plays, is also one of the best—excellent both in the management of a romantic plot and in the delineation of character. The scene is laid at the temple of Artemis in the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea)—on the site of the modern Balaklava. Iphigenia, who had been doomed to die at Aulis for the Greeks, had been snatched from that death by Artemis, and had become priestess of the goddess at the Tauric shrine, where human victims were immolated. Two strangers, who had landed among the Tauri, have been sentenced to die at the altar. She discovers in them her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades. They plan an escape, are recaptured, and are finally delivered by the goddess Athena, who commands Thoas, king of the land, to permit their departure. Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades return to Greece, and establish the worship of the Tauric Artemis at Brauron and Halae in Attica. The drama of Euripides necessarily suggests a comparison with that of Goethe; and many readers will probably also feel that, while Goethe is certainly not inferior in fineness of ethical portraiture, he has the advantage in his management of the catastrophe. But it is only just to Euripides to remember that, while his competitor had free scope of treatment, he, a Greek dramatist, was bound to the motive of the Greek legend, and was obliged to conclude with the foundation of the Attic worship.11. TheTroadesappeared in 415B.C.along with theAlexander, thePalamedes, and a satyr-play, theSisyphus. It is a picture of the miseries endured by noble Trojan dames—Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra—immediately after the capture of Troy. There is hardly a plot in the proper sense—only an accumulation of sorrows on the heads of the passive sufferers. The piece is less a drama than a pathetic spectacle, closing with the crash of the Trojan towers in flame and ruin. TheTroadesis indeed remarkable among Greek tragedies for its near approach to the character of melodrama. It must be observed that there is no ground for the inference—sometimes made an accusation against the poet—that the choral passage, v. 794 f., was intended to encourage the Sicilian expedition, sent forth in the same year (415B.C.). The mention of the “land of Aetna over against Carthage” (v. 220) speaks of it as “renowned for the trophies of prowess”—a topic, surely, not of encouragement but of warning.12. TheHelena—produced, as we learn from the Aristophanic scholia, in 412B.C., the year of the lostAndromeda—is not one of its author’s happier efforts. It is founded on a strange variation of the Trojan myth, first adopted by Stesichorus in his Palinode—that only a wraith of Helen passed to Troy, while the real Helen was detained in Egypt. In this play she is rescued from the Egyptian king, Theoclymenus, by a ruse of her husband Menelaus, who brings her safely back to Greece. The romantic element thus engrafted on the Greek myth is more than fantastic: it is well-nigh grotesque. The comic poets—notably Aristophanes in theThesmophoriazusae—felt this; nor can we blame them if they ridiculed a piece in which the mode of treatment was so discordant with the spirit of Greek tradition, and so irreconcilable with all that constituted the higher meaning of Greek tragedy.13. ThePhoenissaewas brought out, with theOenomausand theChrysippus, in 411B.C., the year in which the recall of Alcibiades was decreed by the army at Samos, and, after the fall of the Four Hundred, ratified by the Assembly at Athens (Thuc. viii. 81, 97). The dialogue between Iocaste and Polynices on the griefs of banishment (τἰ τὸ στέρεσθαι πατρίδος, v. 388 f.) has a certain emphasis which certainly looks like an allusion to the pardon of the famous exile. The subject of the play is the same as that of the AeschyleanSeven against Thebes—the war of succession in which Argos supported Polynices against his brother Eteocles. The Phoenician maidens who form the chorus are imagined to have been on their way from Tyre to Delphi, where they were destined for service in the temple, when they were detained at Thebes by the outbreak of the war—a device which affords a contrast to the Aeschylean chorus of Theban elders, and which has also a certain fitness in view of the legends connecting Thebes with Phoenicia. But Euripides has hardly been successful in the rivalry—which he has even pointed by direct allusions—with Aeschylus. ThePhoenissaeis full of brilliant passages, but it is rather a series of effective scenes than an impressive drama.14. Plutarch (Lys.15) says that, when Athens had surrendered to Lysander (404B.C.) and when the fate of the city was doubtful, a Phocian officer happened to sing at a banquet of the leaders the first song of the chorus in the Electra of Euripides—Ἀγαμέμνονος ὦ κόρα,ἤλυθου, Ἠλέκτρα, ποπὶ σὰν ἀγροτέραν αὐλάν,and that “when they heard it, all were touched, so that it seemed a cruel deed to destroy for ever the city so famous once, the mother of such men.” The character of theElectra, in metre and in diction, seems to show that it belongs to the poet’s latest years. If Müller were right in referring to the Sicilian expedition the closing passage in which the Dioscuri declare that they haste “to the Sicilian sea, to save ships upon the deep” (v. 1347), then the play could not be later than 413B.C.But it may with more probability be placed shortly before theOrestes, which in some respects it much resembles: perhaps in or about the year 410B.C.No play of Euripides has been more severely criticized. The reason is evident. TheChoephoriof Aeschylus and theElectraof Sophocles appear to invite a direct comparison with this drama. But, as R.C. Jebb suggested,3such criticism as that of Schlegel should remember that works of art are proper subjects of direct comparison only when the theories of art which they represent have a common basis. It is surely unmeaning to contrast the elaborate homeliness of the EuripideanElectrawith the severe grandeur of its rivals. Aeschylus and Sophocles, as different exponents of an artistic conception which is fundamentally the same, may be profitably compared; Euripides interprets another conception, and must be tried by other principles. HisElectrais, in truth, a daring experiment—daring, because the theme is one which the elder school had made peculiarly its own.15. TheOrestes, acted in 408, bears the mark of the age in the prominence which Euripides gives to the assembly of Argos—which has to decide the fate of Orestes and Electra—and to rhetorical pleading. The plot proceeds with sufficient clearness to the point at which Orestes and Electra have been condemned to death. But the later portion of the play, containing the intrigues for their rescue and the final achievement of their deliverance, is both too involved and too inconsequent for a really tragic effect. Just as in theElectra, the heroic persons of the drama are reduced to the level of commonplace. There is not a little which borders on the ludicrous, and it can be seen how easy would have been the passage from such tragedy as this to the restrained parody in which the Middle Comedy delighted. It is, however, inconceivable that, as some have supposed, theOrestescan have been a deliberate compromise between tragedy and farce. It cannot have been meant to be played, as a fourth piece, instead of a regular satyric drama. Rather it indicates the level to which the heroic tragedy itself had descended under the treatment of a school which was at least logical. The celebrity of the play in the ancient world—as Paley observes, there are more ancient quotations from theOrestesthan from all the extant plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles together—is perhaps partly explained by the unusually frequent combination in this piece of striking sentiment with effective situation.16. TheIphigenia at Aulis, like theBacchae, was brought out only after the death of Euripides. It is a very brilliant and beautiful play,—probably left by the author in an unfinished state,—and has suffered from interpolation more largely, perhaps, than any other of his works. As regards its subject, it forms a prelude to theIphigenia in Tauris. Iphigenia has been doomed by her father Agamemnon to die at Aulis, as Calchas declares that Artemis claims such a sacrifice before the adverse winds can fall.The genuine play, as we have it, breaks off at v. 1508, when Iphigenia has been led to the sacrificial altar. A spurious epilogue, of wretched workmanship (v. 1509-1628), relates, in the speech of a messenger, how Artemis saved the maiden.17. TheBacchae, unlike the preceding play, appears to have been finished by its author, although it is said not to have been acted, on the Athenian stage at least, till after his death. It was composed, or completed, during the residence of Euripides with Archelaus, and in all probability was originally designed for representation in Macedonia—a region with whose traditions of orgiastic worship the Dionysus myth was so congenial. The play is sometimes quoted as thePentheus. It has been justly observed that Euripides seldom named a piece from the chorus, unless the chorus bore an important part in the action or the leading action was divided between several persons. Possibly, however, in this instance he may designedly have chosen a title which would at once interest the Macedonian public.Pentheuswould suggest a Greek legend about which they might know or care little. TheBacchaewould at once announce a theme connected with rites familiar to the northern land.It is a magnificent play, alone among extant Greek tragedies in picturesque splendour, and in that sustained glow of Dionysiac enthusiasm to which the keen irony lends the strength of contrast. If Euripides had left nothing else, theBacchaewould place him in the first rank of poets, and would prove his possession of a sense rarely manifested by Greek poets,—perhaps by no one of his own contemporaries in equal measure except Aristophanes,—a feeling for natural beauty lit up by the play of fancy. R.Y. Tyrrell, in his edition of theBacchae, has given the true answer to the theory that theBacchaeis a recantation. Euripides had never rejected the facts which formed the basis of the popular religion. He had rather sought to interpret them in a manner consistent with belief in a benevolent Providence. The really striking thing in theBacchaeis the spirit of contentment and of composure which it breathes,—as if the poet had ceased to be vexed by the seeming contradictions which had troubled him before. Nor should it be forgotten that, for the Greek mind of his age, the victory of Dionysus in theBacchaecarried a moral even more direct than the victory of Aphrodite in theHippolytus. The great nature-powers who give refreshment to mortals cannot be robbed of their due tribute without provoking a nemesis. The refusal of such a homage is not, so the Greeks deemed, a virtue in itself: in the sight of the gods it may be only a cold form ofὕβρις, overweening self-reliance—the quality personified in Pentheus.TheBacchaewas always an exceptionally popular play—partly because its opportunities as a spectacle fitted it for gorgeous representation, and so recommended it for performance at courts and on great public occasions. “Demetrius the Cynic” (says Lucian,Adv. Indoctum, 19) “saw an illiterate person at Corinth reading a very beautiful poem—theBacchaeof Euripides, I think it was; he was at the place where the messenger narrates the doom of Pentheus and the deed of Agave. Demetrius snatched the book from him and tore it up, saying, ‘It is better for Pentheus to be torn up at once by me than to be mangled over and over again by you.’”18. TheCyclops, of uncertain date, is the only extant example of a satyric drama. The plot is taken mainly from the story of Odysseus and Polyphemus in the 9th book of theOdyssey. In order to be really successful in farce of this kind, a poet should have a fresh feeling for the nature of the art parodied. It is because Euripides was not in accord with the spirit of the heroic myths that he is not strong in mythic travesty. His own tragedies—such as theHelen, theElectra, and theOrestes—had, in their several ways, contributed to destroy the meaning of satyric drama. They had done gravely very much what satyric drama aimed at doing grotesquely. They had made the heroic persons act and talk like ordinary men and women. The finer side of such parody had lost its edge; only broad comedy remained.19. TheRhesusis still held by some to be what the didascaliae and the grammarians call it—a work of Euripides; and Paley has ably supported this view. But the scepticism first declared by Valcknaer has gained ground, and theRhesusis now almost universally recognized as spurious. The art and the style, still more evidently the feeling and the mind, of Euripides are absent. If it cannot be ascribed to a disciple of his matured school, it is still less like the work of an Alexandrian. The most probable view seems to be that which assigns it to a versifier of small dramatic power in the latest days of Attic tragedy. It has this literary interest, that it is the only extant play of which the subject is directly taken from ourIliad, of which the tenth book—theΔολώνεια—has been followed by the playwright with a closeness which is sometimes mechanical.

1. TheAlcestis, as the didascaliae tell us, was brought out in Ol. 85. 2,i.e.at the Dionysia in the spring of 438B.C., as the fourth play of a tetralogy comprising theCretan Women, theAlcmaeon at Psophis, and theTelephus. TheAlcestisis altogether removed from the character, essentially grotesque, of a mere satyric drama. On the other hand, it has features which distinctly separate it from a Greek tragedy of the normal type. First, the subject belongs to none of the great cycles, but to a byway of mythology, and involves such strange elements as the servitude of Apollo in a mortal household, the decree of the fates that Admetus must die on a fixed day, and the restoration of the dead Alcestis to life. Secondly, the treatment of the subject is romantic and even fantastic,—strikingly so in the passage where Apollo is directly confronted with the daemonic figure of Thanatos. Lastly, the boisterous, remorseful, and generous Heracles makes, not, indeed, a satyric drama, but a distinctly satyric scene—a scene which, in the frank original, hardly bears the subtle interpretation which inBalaustionis hinted by the genius of Browning, that Heracles got drunk in order to keep up other people’s spirits. When the happy ending is taken into account, it is not surprising that some should have called theAlcestisa tragi-comedy. But we cannot so regard it. The slight and purely incidental strain of comedy is but a moment of relief between the tragic sorrow andterror of the opening and the joy, no less solemn, of the conclusion. In this respect theAlcestismight more truly be compared to such a drama as theWinter’s Tale; the loss and recovery of Hermione by Leontes do not form a tragi-comedy because we are amused between-whiles by Autolycus and the clown. It does not seem improbable that theAlcestis—the earliest of the extant plays—may represent an attempt to substitute for the old satyric drama an after-piece of a kind which, while preserving a satyric element, should stand nearer to tragedy. The taste and manners of the day were perhaps tiring of the merely grotesque entertainment that old usage appended to the tragedies; just as, in the sphere of comedy, we know from Aristophanes that they were tiring of broad buffoonery. An original dramatist may have seen an opportunity here. However that may be, theAlcestishas a peculiar interest for the history of the drama. It marks in the most signal manner, and perhaps at the earliest moment, that great movement which began with Euripides,—the movement of transition from the purely Hellenic drama to the romantic.

2. TheMedeawas brought out in 431B.C.with thePhiloctetes, theDictys, and a lost satyr-play called theReapers(Theristae). Euripides gained the third prize, the first falling to Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, and the second to Sophocles. If it is true that Euripides modelled hisMedeaon the work of an obscure predecessor, Neophron, at least he made the subject thoroughly his own. Hardly any play was more popular in antiquity with readers and spectators, with actors, or with sculptors. Ennius is said to have translated and adopted it. We do not know how far it may have been used by Ovid in his lost tragedy of the same name; but it certainly inspired the rhetorical performance of Seneca, which may be regarded as bridging the interval between Euripides and modern adaptations. We may grant at once that theMedeaof Euripides is not a faultless play; that the dialogue between the heroine and Aegeus is not happily conceived; that the murder of the children lacks an adequate dramatic motive; that there is something of a moral anti-climax in the arrangements of Medea, before the deed, for her personal safety. But theMedearemains a tragedy of first-rate power. It is admirable for the splendid force with which the character of the strange and strong-hearted woman, a barbarian friendless among Hellenes, is thrown out against the background of Hellenic life in Corinth.

3. The extantHippolytus(429B.C.)—sometimes calledStephanephoros, the “wreath-bearer,” from the garland of flowers which, in the opening scene, the hero offers to Artemis—was not the first drama of Euripides on this theme. In an earlier play of the same name, we are told, he had shocked both the moral and the aesthetic sense of Athens. In this earlierHippolytus, Phaedra herself had confessed her love to her step-son, and, when repulsed, had falsely accused him to Theseus, who doomed him to death; at the sight of the corpse, she had been moved to confess her crime, and had atoned for it by a voluntary death. This firstHippolytusis cited asHippolytus the Veiled(καλυπτόμενος), either, as Toup and Welcker thought, from Hippolytus covering his face in horror, or, as Bentley with more likelihood suggested, because the youth’s shrouded corpse was brought upon the scene. It can scarcely be doubted that the chief dramatic defect of ourHippolytusis connected with the unfavourable reception of its predecessor. Euripides had been warned that limits must be observed in the dramatic portrayal of a morally repulsive theme. In the later play, accordingly, the whole action is made to turn on the jealous feud between Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Artemis, the goddess of chastity. Phaedra not only shrinks from breathing her secret to Hippolytus, but destroys herself when she learns that she is rejected. But the natural agency of human passion is now replaced by a supernatural machinery; the slain son and the bereaved father are no longer the martyrs of sin, the tragic witnesses of an inexorable law; rather they and Phaedra are alike the puppets of a divine caprice, the scapegoats of an Olympian quarrel in which they have no concern. But if the dramatic effect of the whole is thus weakened, the character of Phaedra is a fine psychological study; and, as regards form, the play is one of the most brilliant. Boeckh (De tragoediae Graecae principiis, p. 180 f.) is perhaps too ingenious in finding an allusion to the plague at Athens (430B.C.) in theὦ κακὰ θνητῶν στυγεραί τε νόσοιof v. 177, and in v. 209 f.; but it can scarcely be doubted that he is right in suggesting that the closing words of Theseus (v. 1460)

ὦ κλείν᾽ Ἀθηνῶν Παλλάδος θ᾽ ὁρίσματα, οἵου στερήσεσθ᾽ ἀνδρός,

and the reply of the chorus,κοινὁν τόδ᾽ ἄχος, &c., contain a reference to the recent death of Pericles (429B.C.).

4. TheHecubamay be placed about 425B.C.Thucydides (iii. 104) notices the purification of Delos by the Athenians, and the restoration of the Panionic festival there, in 426B.C.—an event to which the choral passage, v. 462 f., probably refers. It appears more hazardous to take v. 650 f. as an allusion to the Spartan mishap at Pylos. The subject of the play is the revenge of Hecuba, the widowed queen of Priam, on Polymestor, king of Thrace, who had murdered her youngest son Polydorus, after her daughter Polyzena had already been sacrificed by the Greeks to the shade of Achilles. The two calamities which befall Hecuba have no direct connexion with each other. In this sense the play lacks unity of design. On the other hand, both events serve the same end—viz. to heighten the tragic pathos with which the poet seeks to surround the central figure of Hecuba. The drama illustrates the skill with which Euripides, while failing to satisfy the requirements of artistic drama, could sustain interest by an ingeniously woven plot. It is a representativeIntriguenstück, and well exemplifies the peculiar power which recommended Euripides to the poets of the New Comedy.

5. TheAndromache, according to a notice in thescholia Veneta(446), was not acted at Athens, at least in the author’s life-time; though some take the words in the Greek argument (τὸ δρᾶμα τῶν δευτέρων) to mean that it was among those which gained a second prize. The invective on the Spartan character which is put into the mouth of Andromache contains the words,ἀδίκως εὐτυχεῖτ᾽ ἀν᾽ Ἑλλάδα, and this, with other indications, points to the Peloponnesian successes of the years 424-422B.C.Andromache, the widow of Hector, has become the captive and concubine of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. During his absence, her son Molossus is taken from her, with the aid of Menelaus, by her jealous rival Hermione. Mother and son are rescued from death by Peleus; but meanwhile Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi through the intrigues of Orestes. The goddess Thetis now appears, ordains that Andromache shall marry Helenus, and declares that Molossus shall found a line of Epirote kings, while Peleus shall become immortal among the gods of the sea. TheAndromacheis a poor play. The contrasts, though striking, are harsh and coarse, and the compensations dealt out by thedeus ex machinaleave the moral sense wholly unsatisfied. Technically the piece is noteworthy as bringing on the scene four characters at once—Andromache, Molossus, Peleus and Menelaus (v. 545 f.).

6. TheIonis an admirable drama, the finest of those plays which deal with legends specially illustrating the traditional glories of Attica. It is also the most perfect example of the poet’s skill in the structure of dramatic intrigue. For its place in the chronological order there are no data except those of style and metre. Judging by these, Hermann would place it “neither after Ol. 89, nor much before”—i.e.somewhere between 424 and 421B.C.; and this may be taken as approximately correct. The scene is laid throughout at the temple of Delphi. The young Ion is a priest in the temple of Delphi when Xuthus and his wife Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, come to inquire of the god concerning their childlessness; and it is discovered that Ion is the son of Creusa by the god Apollo. Athena herself appears, and commands that Ion shall be placed on the throne of Athens, foretelling that from him shall spring the four Attic tribes, the Teleontes (priests), Hopletes (fighting-men), Argadeis (husbandmen) and Aigikoreis (herdsmen). The play must have been peculiarly effective on the Athenian stage, not only by its situations, but through its appeal to Attic sympathies.

7. TheSuppliantswho give their name to the play are Argive women, the mothers of Argive warriors slain before the walls of Thebes, who, led by Adrastus, king of Argos, come as suppliants to the altar of Demeter at Eleusis. Creon, king of Thebes, has refused burial to their dead sons. The Athenian king Theseus demands of Creon that he shall grant the funeral rites; the refusal is followed by a battle in which the Thebans are vanquished, and the bodies of the Argive dead are then brought to Eleusis. At the close the goddess Athena appears, and ordains that a close alliance shall be formed between Athens and Argos. Some refer the play to 417B.C., when the democratic party at Athens rose against the oligarchs. But a more probable date is 420B.C., when, through the agency of Alcibiades, Athens and Argos concluded a defensive alliance. The play has a strongly marked rhetorical character, and is, in fact, a panegyric, with an immediate political aim, on Athens as the champion of humanity against Thebes.

8. TheHeracleidae—a companion piece to theSuppliants, and of the same period—is decidedly inferior in merit. Here, too, there are direct references to contemporary history. The defeat of Argos by the Spartans in 418B.C.strengthened the Argive party who were in favour of discarding the Athenian for the Spartan alliance (Thuc. v. 76). In theHeracleidae, the sons of the dead Heracles, persecuted by the Argive Eurystheus, are received and sheltered at Athens. Thus, while Athens is glorified, Sparta, whose kings are descendants of the Heracleidae, is reminded how unnatural would be an alliance between herself and Argos.

9. TheHeracles Mainomenos2(Hercules Furens), which, on grounds of style, can scarcely be put later than 420-417B.C., shares with the two last plays the purpose of exalting Athens in the person of Theseus. Heracles returns from Hades—whither, at the command of Eurystheus, he went to bring back Cerberus—just in time to save his wife Megara and his children from being put to death by Lycus of Thebes, whom he slays. As he is offering lustral sacrifice after the deed, he is suddenly stricken with madness by Lyssa (Fury), the daemonic agent of his enemy the goddess Hera, and in his frenzy he slays his wife and children. Theseus finds him, in his agony of despair, about to kill himself, and persuades him to come to Athens, there to seek grace and pardon from the gods. The unity of the plot may be partly vindicated by observing that the slaughter of Lycus entitled Heracles to the gratitude of Thebes, whereas the slaughter of his own kinsfolk made it unlawful that he should remain there; thus, having found a refuge only to lose it, Heracles has no hope left but in Athens, whose praise is the true theme of the entire drama.

10.Iphigenia among the Tauri, which metre and diction mark as one of the later plays, is also one of the best—excellent both in the management of a romantic plot and in the delineation of character. The scene is laid at the temple of Artemis in the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea)—on the site of the modern Balaklava. Iphigenia, who had been doomed to die at Aulis for the Greeks, had been snatched from that death by Artemis, and had become priestess of the goddess at the Tauric shrine, where human victims were immolated. Two strangers, who had landed among the Tauri, have been sentenced to die at the altar. She discovers in them her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades. They plan an escape, are recaptured, and are finally delivered by the goddess Athena, who commands Thoas, king of the land, to permit their departure. Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades return to Greece, and establish the worship of the Tauric Artemis at Brauron and Halae in Attica. The drama of Euripides necessarily suggests a comparison with that of Goethe; and many readers will probably also feel that, while Goethe is certainly not inferior in fineness of ethical portraiture, he has the advantage in his management of the catastrophe. But it is only just to Euripides to remember that, while his competitor had free scope of treatment, he, a Greek dramatist, was bound to the motive of the Greek legend, and was obliged to conclude with the foundation of the Attic worship.

11. TheTroadesappeared in 415B.C.along with theAlexander, thePalamedes, and a satyr-play, theSisyphus. It is a picture of the miseries endured by noble Trojan dames—Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra—immediately after the capture of Troy. There is hardly a plot in the proper sense—only an accumulation of sorrows on the heads of the passive sufferers. The piece is less a drama than a pathetic spectacle, closing with the crash of the Trojan towers in flame and ruin. TheTroadesis indeed remarkable among Greek tragedies for its near approach to the character of melodrama. It must be observed that there is no ground for the inference—sometimes made an accusation against the poet—that the choral passage, v. 794 f., was intended to encourage the Sicilian expedition, sent forth in the same year (415B.C.). The mention of the “land of Aetna over against Carthage” (v. 220) speaks of it as “renowned for the trophies of prowess”—a topic, surely, not of encouragement but of warning.

12. TheHelena—produced, as we learn from the Aristophanic scholia, in 412B.C., the year of the lostAndromeda—is not one of its author’s happier efforts. It is founded on a strange variation of the Trojan myth, first adopted by Stesichorus in his Palinode—that only a wraith of Helen passed to Troy, while the real Helen was detained in Egypt. In this play she is rescued from the Egyptian king, Theoclymenus, by a ruse of her husband Menelaus, who brings her safely back to Greece. The romantic element thus engrafted on the Greek myth is more than fantastic: it is well-nigh grotesque. The comic poets—notably Aristophanes in theThesmophoriazusae—felt this; nor can we blame them if they ridiculed a piece in which the mode of treatment was so discordant with the spirit of Greek tradition, and so irreconcilable with all that constituted the higher meaning of Greek tragedy.

13. ThePhoenissaewas brought out, with theOenomausand theChrysippus, in 411B.C., the year in which the recall of Alcibiades was decreed by the army at Samos, and, after the fall of the Four Hundred, ratified by the Assembly at Athens (Thuc. viii. 81, 97). The dialogue between Iocaste and Polynices on the griefs of banishment (τἰ τὸ στέρεσθαι πατρίδος, v. 388 f.) has a certain emphasis which certainly looks like an allusion to the pardon of the famous exile. The subject of the play is the same as that of the AeschyleanSeven against Thebes—the war of succession in which Argos supported Polynices against his brother Eteocles. The Phoenician maidens who form the chorus are imagined to have been on their way from Tyre to Delphi, where they were destined for service in the temple, when they were detained at Thebes by the outbreak of the war—a device which affords a contrast to the Aeschylean chorus of Theban elders, and which has also a certain fitness in view of the legends connecting Thebes with Phoenicia. But Euripides has hardly been successful in the rivalry—which he has even pointed by direct allusions—with Aeschylus. ThePhoenissaeis full of brilliant passages, but it is rather a series of effective scenes than an impressive drama.

14. Plutarch (Lys.15) says that, when Athens had surrendered to Lysander (404B.C.) and when the fate of the city was doubtful, a Phocian officer happened to sing at a banquet of the leaders the first song of the chorus in the Electra of Euripides—

Ἀγαμέμνονος ὦ κόρα,ἤλυθου, Ἠλέκτρα, ποπὶ σὰν ἀγροτέραν αὐλάν,

Ἀγαμέμνονος ὦ κόρα,

ἤλυθου, Ἠλέκτρα, ποπὶ σὰν ἀγροτέραν αὐλάν,

and that “when they heard it, all were touched, so that it seemed a cruel deed to destroy for ever the city so famous once, the mother of such men.” The character of theElectra, in metre and in diction, seems to show that it belongs to the poet’s latest years. If Müller were right in referring to the Sicilian expedition the closing passage in which the Dioscuri declare that they haste “to the Sicilian sea, to save ships upon the deep” (v. 1347), then the play could not be later than 413B.C.But it may with more probability be placed shortly before theOrestes, which in some respects it much resembles: perhaps in or about the year 410B.C.No play of Euripides has been more severely criticized. The reason is evident. TheChoephoriof Aeschylus and theElectraof Sophocles appear to invite a direct comparison with this drama. But, as R.C. Jebb suggested,3such criticism as that of Schlegel should remember that works of art are proper subjects of direct comparison only when the theories of art which they represent have a common basis. It is surely unmeaning to contrast the elaborate homeliness of the EuripideanElectrawith the severe grandeur of its rivals. Aeschylus and Sophocles, as different exponents of an artistic conception which is fundamentally the same, may be profitably compared; Euripides interprets another conception, and must be tried by other principles. HisElectrais, in truth, a daring experiment—daring, because the theme is one which the elder school had made peculiarly its own.

15. TheOrestes, acted in 408, bears the mark of the age in the prominence which Euripides gives to the assembly of Argos—which has to decide the fate of Orestes and Electra—and to rhetorical pleading. The plot proceeds with sufficient clearness to the point at which Orestes and Electra have been condemned to death. But the later portion of the play, containing the intrigues for their rescue and the final achievement of their deliverance, is both too involved and too inconsequent for a really tragic effect. Just as in theElectra, the heroic persons of the drama are reduced to the level of commonplace. There is not a little which borders on the ludicrous, and it can be seen how easy would have been the passage from such tragedy as this to the restrained parody in which the Middle Comedy delighted. It is, however, inconceivable that, as some have supposed, theOrestescan have been a deliberate compromise between tragedy and farce. It cannot have been meant to be played, as a fourth piece, instead of a regular satyric drama. Rather it indicates the level to which the heroic tragedy itself had descended under the treatment of a school which was at least logical. The celebrity of the play in the ancient world—as Paley observes, there are more ancient quotations from theOrestesthan from all the extant plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles together—is perhaps partly explained by the unusually frequent combination in this piece of striking sentiment with effective situation.

16. TheIphigenia at Aulis, like theBacchae, was brought out only after the death of Euripides. It is a very brilliant and beautiful play,—probably left by the author in an unfinished state,—and has suffered from interpolation more largely, perhaps, than any other of his works. As regards its subject, it forms a prelude to theIphigenia in Tauris. Iphigenia has been doomed by her father Agamemnon to die at Aulis, as Calchas declares that Artemis claims such a sacrifice before the adverse winds can fall.

The genuine play, as we have it, breaks off at v. 1508, when Iphigenia has been led to the sacrificial altar. A spurious epilogue, of wretched workmanship (v. 1509-1628), relates, in the speech of a messenger, how Artemis saved the maiden.

17. TheBacchae, unlike the preceding play, appears to have been finished by its author, although it is said not to have been acted, on the Athenian stage at least, till after his death. It was composed, or completed, during the residence of Euripides with Archelaus, and in all probability was originally designed for representation in Macedonia—a region with whose traditions of orgiastic worship the Dionysus myth was so congenial. The play is sometimes quoted as thePentheus. It has been justly observed that Euripides seldom named a piece from the chorus, unless the chorus bore an important part in the action or the leading action was divided between several persons. Possibly, however, in this instance he may designedly have chosen a title which would at once interest the Macedonian public.Pentheuswould suggest a Greek legend about which they might know or care little. TheBacchaewould at once announce a theme connected with rites familiar to the northern land.

It is a magnificent play, alone among extant Greek tragedies in picturesque splendour, and in that sustained glow of Dionysiac enthusiasm to which the keen irony lends the strength of contrast. If Euripides had left nothing else, theBacchaewould place him in the first rank of poets, and would prove his possession of a sense rarely manifested by Greek poets,—perhaps by no one of his own contemporaries in equal measure except Aristophanes,—a feeling for natural beauty lit up by the play of fancy. R.Y. Tyrrell, in his edition of theBacchae, has given the true answer to the theory that theBacchaeis a recantation. Euripides had never rejected the facts which formed the basis of the popular religion. He had rather sought to interpret them in a manner consistent with belief in a benevolent Providence. The really striking thing in theBacchaeis the spirit of contentment and of composure which it breathes,—as if the poet had ceased to be vexed by the seeming contradictions which had troubled him before. Nor should it be forgotten that, for the Greek mind of his age, the victory of Dionysus in theBacchaecarried a moral even more direct than the victory of Aphrodite in theHippolytus. The great nature-powers who give refreshment to mortals cannot be robbed of their due tribute without provoking a nemesis. The refusal of such a homage is not, so the Greeks deemed, a virtue in itself: in the sight of the gods it may be only a cold form ofὕβρις, overweening self-reliance—the quality personified in Pentheus.

TheBacchaewas always an exceptionally popular play—partly because its opportunities as a spectacle fitted it for gorgeous representation, and so recommended it for performance at courts and on great public occasions. “Demetrius the Cynic” (says Lucian,Adv. Indoctum, 19) “saw an illiterate person at Corinth reading a very beautiful poem—theBacchaeof Euripides, I think it was; he was at the place where the messenger narrates the doom of Pentheus and the deed of Agave. Demetrius snatched the book from him and tore it up, saying, ‘It is better for Pentheus to be torn up at once by me than to be mangled over and over again by you.’”

18. TheCyclops, of uncertain date, is the only extant example of a satyric drama. The plot is taken mainly from the story of Odysseus and Polyphemus in the 9th book of theOdyssey. In order to be really successful in farce of this kind, a poet should have a fresh feeling for the nature of the art parodied. It is because Euripides was not in accord with the spirit of the heroic myths that he is not strong in mythic travesty. His own tragedies—such as theHelen, theElectra, and theOrestes—had, in their several ways, contributed to destroy the meaning of satyric drama. They had done gravely very much what satyric drama aimed at doing grotesquely. They had made the heroic persons act and talk like ordinary men and women. The finer side of such parody had lost its edge; only broad comedy remained.

19. TheRhesusis still held by some to be what the didascaliae and the grammarians call it—a work of Euripides; and Paley has ably supported this view. But the scepticism first declared by Valcknaer has gained ground, and theRhesusis now almost universally recognized as spurious. The art and the style, still more evidently the feeling and the mind, of Euripides are absent. If it cannot be ascribed to a disciple of his matured school, it is still less like the work of an Alexandrian. The most probable view seems to be that which assigns it to a versifier of small dramatic power in the latest days of Attic tragedy. It has this literary interest, that it is the only extant play of which the subject is directly taken from ourIliad, of which the tenth book—theΔολώνεια—has been followed by the playwright with a closeness which is sometimes mechanical.

When the first protests of the comic poets were over, Euripides was secure of a wide and lasting renown. As the old life of Athens passed away, as the old faiths lost their meaning and the peculiarly Greek instincts in art lost theirLiterary history of Euripides.truth and freshness, Aeschylus and Sophocles might cease to be fully enjoyed save by a few; but Euripides could still charm by qualities more readily and more universally recognized. The comparative nearness of his diction to the idiom of ordinary life rendered him less attractive to the grammarians of Alexandria than authors whose erudite form, afforded a better scope for the display of learning or the exercise of ingenuity. But there were two aspects in which he engaged their attention. They loved to trace the variations which he had introduced into the standard legends. And they sought to free his text from the numerous interpolations which even then had resulted from his popularity on the stage. Philochorus (about 306-260B.C.), best known for hisAtthis, dealt, in his treatise on Euripides, especially with the mythology of the plays. From 300B.C.to the age of Augustus a long series of critics busied themselves with this poet. The first systematic arrangement of his reputed works is ascribed to Dicaearchus and Callimachus in the early part of the 3rd centuryB.C.Among those who furthered the exact study of his text, and of whose work some traces remain in the extant scholia, were Aristophanes of Byzantium, Callistratus, Apollodorus of Tarsus, Timachidas, and pre-eminently Didymus; probably also Crates of Pergamum and Aristarchus. At Rome Euripides was early made known through the translations of Ennius and the freer adaptations of Pacuvius. When Hellenic civilization was spread through the East, the mixed populations of the new settlements welcomed a dramatic poet whose taste and whose sentiment were not too severely or exclusively Attic. The Parthian Orodes and his court were witnessing theBacchaeof Euripides when the Agave of the hour was suddenly enabled to lend a ghastly reality to the terrible scene of frenzied triumph by displaying the gory head of the Roman Crassus. Mommsen has noted the moment as one in which the power of Rome and the genius of Greece were simultaneously abased in the presence of sultanism. So far as Euripides is concerned, the incident may suggest another and a more pleasing reflection; it may remind us how the charm of his humane genius had penetrated the recesses of the barbarian East, and had brought to rude and fierce peoples at least some dim and distant apprehension of that gracious world in which the great spirits of ancient Hellas had moved. A quaintly significant testimony to the popularity of Euripides is afforded by the ByzantineΧριστὸς πάσχων. This drama, narrating the events which preceded and attended the Passion, is a cento of no less than 2610 verses, taken from the plays of Euripides, principally from theBacchae, theTroadesand theRhesus. The traditional ascription of the authorship to Gregory of Nazianzus is now generally rejected; another conjecture assigns it to Apollinaris of Laodicea, and places the date of composition at aboutA.D.330.4Although the text used by the author of the cento may not have been a good one, the value of the piece for the diplomatic criticism of Euripides is necessarily very considerable; and it was diligently used both by Valcknaer and by Porson.

Dante, who does not mention Aeschylus or Sophocles, places Euripides, with the tragic poets Antiphon and Agathon, and the lyrist Simonides, in the first circle of Purgatory (xxii. 106), among those

“piùeGreci, che già di lauro ornar la fronte.”

“piùe

Greci, che già di lauro ornar la fronte.”

Casaubon, in a letter to Scaliger, salutes that scholar as worthy to have lived at Athens with Aristophanes and Euripides—a compliment which certainly implies respect for his correspondent’s powers as a peacemaker. In popular literature, too, where Aeschylus and Sophocles were as yet little known, the 16th and 17th centuries testify to the favour bestowed upon Euripides. G. Gascoigne’s and Francis Kinwelmersh’sJocasta, played at Gray’s Inn in 1566, is a literal translation of Lodovico Dolce’sGiocasta, which derives from thePhoenissae, probably through the Latin translation of R. Winter (Basel, 1541). Among early French translations from Euripides may be mentioned the version of theIphigenia in Taurisby Thomas Sibilet in 1549, and that of theHecubaby Bouchetel in 1550. About a century later Racine gave the world hisAndromaque, hisIphigénieand hisPhèdre; and many have held that, at least in the last-named of these, “the disciple of Euripides” has excelled his master. Bernhardy notices that the performance of theHippolytusat Berlin in 1851 seemed to show that, for the modern stage, thePhèdrehas the advantage of its Greek original. Racine’s great English contemporary seems to have known and to have liked Euripides better than the other Greek tragedians. In theReason of Church GovernmentMilton certainly speaks of “those dramatic constitutions in which Sophocles and Euripides reign”; in the preface to his own drama, again, he joins the names of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides,—“the three tragic poets unequalled yet by any.” But theSamson Agonistesitself clearly shows that Milton’s chief model in this kind was the dramatist whom he himself has called—as if to suggest the skill of Euripides in the delineation of pathetic women—“sad Electra’s poet”; and the work bears a special mark of this preference in the use of Euripidean monodies. In the second half of the 18th century such men as J.J. Winckelmann (1717-1768) and G.E. Lessing (1729-1781) gave a new life to the study of the antique. Hitherto the art of the old world had been better known through Roman than through Greek interpreters. The basis of the revived classical taste had been Latin. But now men gained a finer perception of those characteristics which belong to the Greek work of the great time, a fuller sense of the difference between the Greek and the Roman genius where each is at its best, and generally a clearer recognition of the qualities which distinguish ancient art in its highest purity from modern romantic types. Euripides now became the object of criticism from a new point of view. He was compared with Aeschylus and Sophocles as representatives of that ideal Greek tragedy which ranges with the purest type of sculpture. Thus tried, he was found wanting; and he was condemned with all the rigour of a newly illuminated zeal. B.G. Niebuhr (1776-1831) judged him harshly; but no critic approached A.W. Schlegel (1767-1845) in severity of one-sided censure. Schlegel, in fact, will scarcely allow that Euripides is tolerable except by comparison with Racine. L. Tieck (1773-1853) showed truer appreciation for a brother artist when hedescribed the work of Euripides as the dawn of a romantic poetry haunted by dim yearnings and forebodings. Goethe—who, according to Bernhardy, knew Euripides only “at a great distance”—certainly admired him highly, and left an interesting memorial of Euripidean study in his attempted reconstruction of the lostPhaëthon. There are some passages in Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann which form effective quotations against the Greek poet’s real or supposed detractors. “To feel and respect a great personality, one must be something oneself. All those who denied the sublime to Euripides were either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity or shameless charlatans who, in their presumption, wished to make more of themselves than they were.” “A poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Alexander admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death, must certainly have been some one. If a modern man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his knees” (J.A. Symonds,Greek Poets, i. 230). We yield to no one in admiration of Goethe; but we cannot think that these rather bullying utterances are favourable examples of his method in aesthetic discussion; nor have they any logical force except as against those—if there be any such—who deny that Euripides is a great poet. One of the most striking of modern criticisms on Euripides is the sketch by Mommsen in his history of Rome (bk. iii. ch. 14). It is, in our opinion, less than just to Euripides as an artist. But it indicates, with true historical insight, his place in the development of his art, the operation of those external conditions which made him what he was, and the nature of his influence on succeeding ages.

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