FOOTNOTES:

El.Ah me, my brother! your eyes roll and tremble—One moment sane, and now swift frenzy fires you!

[Orestes speaks to phantoms in the air.

Or.Mother, I sue to thee: nay, mother, hound notThose blood-faced, snake-encircled women on me!There! There! See there—close by they bound upon me!El.Stay, wretched brother; start not from the bed!For nought you see of what seems clear and certain.Or.O Phœbus! They will slay me, those dog-faced,Fierce-eyed, infernal ministers, dread goddesses!El.I will not leave you! but with woven armsWill stay you from the direful spasm-throes.

Or.Mother, I sue to thee: nay, mother, hound notThose blood-faced, snake-encircled women on me!There! There! See there—close by they bound upon me!

El.Stay, wretched brother; start not from the bed!For nought you see of what seems clear and certain.

Or.O Phœbus! They will slay me, those dog-faced,Fierce-eyed, infernal ministers, dread goddesses!

El.I will not leave you! but with woven armsWill stay you from the direful spasm-throes.

[Orestes hurls Electra, from him.

Or.Let go! Of my damned Furies thou art one,That with thy grip wouldst hale me down to hell!El.Ah, woe is me! what succor shall I find,Seeing the very gods conspire against us?Or.Give me my bow and arrows, Phœbus' gift,Wherewith Apollo bade me fight the fiends,If they should scare me with wild-eyed delirium.Some god shall feel the fury of man's hand,Unless ye vanish forth from out my sight!

Or.Let go! Of my damned Furies thou art one,That with thy grip wouldst hale me down to hell!

El.Ah, woe is me! what succor shall I find,Seeing the very gods conspire against us?

Or.Give me my bow and arrows, Phœbus' gift,Wherewith Apollo bade me fight the fiends,If they should scare me with wild-eyed delirium.Some god shall feel the fury of man's hand,Unless ye vanish forth from out my sight!

[He threatens the phantoms.

Hear ye not! See ye not the feathery wingsOf swift, sure-striking shafts, ready to flutter?Ha! Ha!Why linger here? Go, sweep with outspread pinionsThe windy sky! Hence, and complain of Phœbus!Woe's me!

[Recovering his reason again.

Why waste I breath, wearying my lungs in vain?Where am I? From my bed how leaped I—when?'Midmost the waves once more I see fair weather.Sister, why weep you? Wherefore veil your head?I blush to see you partner of my woe,Blush that a girl should suffer in my sickness.Nay, do not pine thus, bowed beneath my burden—All mine;—you said but yea, 'twas I who shedOur mother's blood: but Loxias I blame,Who urging me to most unholy deedsHelped me with words, in act availed me nothing.Yea, and I think my sire, if, face to face,I asked him—is it right to slay my mother?Would lengthen many prayers, beseeching meNever to draw my sword on her who bare me,Seeing he might not see the sun again,And I am doomed to bear this weight of horrors.—But now unveil your face again, dear sister,And cease from weeping—even though we beRinged round with sorrows. When you see me downcast,Soothe you my terror and my frenzied soul—Soothe and caress me; yea, and when you moan,'Tis mine to stay and comfort as I can:For these kind services of friends are fair,But, dear, sad sister, go into the house,And give your watchful eyes to sleep, and rest;Take food, and with fair water bathe yourself.For think, if you should fail me, if by watchingYou take some sickness, then we're lost: 'tis you,You only, are my help; all else is vanished.El.Not so. With you to die I choose, with youTo live: it is all one; for if you perish,What shall I do—a woman? How shall I,Brotherless, friendless, fatherless, alone,Live on? Nay, if you ask it, I will doYour will: but, brother, rest you on your bed;Nor take the terror and the startling fearFor more than phantoms: stay upon the couch.For though one is not sick, and only seems,Yet is this pain and weariness to mortals.

El.Not so. With you to die I choose, with youTo live: it is all one; for if you perish,What shall I do—a woman? How shall I,Brotherless, friendless, fatherless, alone,Live on? Nay, if you ask it, I will doYour will: but, brother, rest you on your bed;Nor take the terror and the startling fearFor more than phantoms: stay upon the couch.For though one is not sick, and only seems,Yet is this pain and weariness to mortals.

This scene, for variety of motive and effect, is not excelled by any passage in ancient tragedy. The scope which it afforded for impressive acting must have been immense, though it is difficult to understand how the fixed masks and conventional dresses of the Greek stage could have been adapted to the violent and frequent changes of mood exhibited by Orestes. Adequately to render the effect of the lyrical dialogue between Electra and the Chorus is very difficult. I have attempted to maintain in some degree the antistrophic pauses, and by the use of rhyme to hint how very near the tragedy of the Greeks approached, in scenes like this, to the Italian opera. The entrance of the Chorus singing "Silence" can only be paralleled by passages in which the spies or conspirators of Rossini or Mozart appear upon the stage, whispering "Zitto! Zitto!" to the sound of subdued music. In the same way Electra's impassioned apostrophe to Night must have been the subject of an elaborate aria.

The scene which I have translated from theOrestessuggests the remark that many Euripidean plays were in fact melodramas. This is true, in a special sense, of theTroades, which must have owed its interest as an acted drama to the music and themise en scène. It is also worthy of notice that a fair proportion of our extant tragedies are what the Germans callLustspiele. That is to say, they have no proper tragic ending, and the element of tragedy contained in them consists of perils escaped by the chief actors. Thus theHelenaand theIphigenia in Taurishave a joyful climax. TheOrestescloses with a reconciliation of all parties, hurriedly effected, that reminds us of a modern comedy. TheIonis brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The apotheosis of Iphigenia in her play at Aulis eliminates the tragic element, though, regarded as the first part of an eminently tragic series and read by the light of theElectra, this play may be regarded as the prologue to a mighty drama of crime and retribution. TheAlcestisis now universally and rightly classed among the plays of a semi-satyric character; and theAndromacheis not a genuine tragedy, since the death of Neoptolemus is episodical and has little to do with the previous action. In all these plays the key-note is struck by the Greek phrase μεταβόλη, which signified a revolution brought about within the limits of a certain situation. This probably attracted Euripides to the class of drama in question, since it enabled him to deal freely with character and to concentrate his attention upon the working out of striking incidents. From this point of view theAndromacheis so important that it deserves more than a passing notice. The peculiar faculty and the prevailing faults of the poet are alike illustrated in its scenes—his fine and sharp character-making in the chief personages, his powerful rhetoric and subtle special-pleading, his acute remarks on politics and domestic relations, no less than his wilful neglect of dramatic unity and wanton carelessness of construction. Viewed in one light, theAndromacheis a bitter satire upon the Spartan type of character, exemplified in the cruel Hermione and the treacherous Menelaus. From yet another standpoint of criticism it may be regarded as a dramatic essay on the choice of wives and the economy of the household. Thus the political and social theorist overlays the artist proper in this play; and yet the language is so brilliant, the pathos is so telling, and the lyrical episodes are so musical that we understand its popularity among the ancients. At the opening of the drama, Andromache, who has taken sanctuary at Phthia in the shrine of Thetis, describes the misery of her situation as bondwoman and concubine to Neoptolemus. Though warmly attached to herself and the father of her son Molossus, he has recently married Hermione, the Spartan princess. Thus the true subjectof the play is set before us; for if theAndromachehas any unity of conception, we must find it in the "nuptial choice" of Neoptolemus, who, after bringing discord into his household by the jealousy of two women, eventually meets his death as an indirect consequence of this domestic folly. The elegiac lamentations of the Trojan princess and the tender remonstrances of the Chorus, which follow the prologue, are among the most melodious passages of poetry in Euripides. Then the action begins. Neoptolemus is away at Delphi. Hermione and her father, Menelaus, remain at home, and use the opportunity for persecuting Andromache. In a long and agitating scene with Hermione, the heroine shows that she remains a noble lady, of untamed and royal soul, in spite of slavery. She disregards all threats, and maintains her station at the altar, whither she has fled for safety. One menace only makes her flinch. It is that violence may be done to her child Molossus, if she will not move. Now Menelaus enters, and the altercations are repeated, all tending to the same point of proving the odiousness of the Spartan character and the dignity of Andromache. Meanwhile our interest in her misfortunes is gradually heightened; and we tremble for her when at last Menelaus persuades her to leave the sanctuary by assuring her that the only way of saving Molossus is to sacrifice her own life. At this point the pathos of the situation becomes truly Euripidean. We have the spectacle of a tender and helpless mother in the power of a merciless tyrant, obliged to give her own life for her son, not shrinking from the sacrifice, but dreading to leave him unprotected to his future fate amid unkindly aliens. She rises from the altar; and no sooner is she in the hands of Menelaus, than he tells her that his promises were fraudulent. Molossus will be butchered after all. Then follows a great scene of high-wrought feeling. Andromache and Molossus are kneeling before Menelaus praying for their lives, when Peleus, the aged grandfather of Neoptolemus, appears and stays the execution. Euripides has drawn the character of Peleus with something of the heat and fury of the Sophoclean Teiresias. The old king does not spare Menelaus, but makes his tongue a scourge to flay him with invective. The end of the struggle is that Peleus conveys Andromache and the boy safely away; and during the rest of the drama we hear nothing of them. Meantime Hermione, who, in contrast to Andromache's noble firmness and womanhood, is the type ofimpotentia, as quick to self-abandonment as she was blind in selfish cruelty, begins to reflect upon her husband's anger. What will he say and do if he returns and hears of her intention with regard to Andromache? She is only just prevented from committing suicide, and lies sunk in contemptible remorse, when a new actor appears upon the scene. It is Orestes, to whom Hermione had been affianced at Argos. The treacherous Menelaus preferred to give her to a more fortunate and respectable husband; but Orestes has a mind to wed her still, and has resolved to murder Neoptolemus at Delphi because of the insult put upon himself. He therefore removes Hermione from the palace, and departs for Delphi. Peleus is now left alone upon the stage, to hear of the murder of his grandson from a messenger, and to receive instructions from Thetis as to the future of the realm of Phthia. It will be seen that the construction of this drama is defective, and that it has two separate plots, the one relating to Andromache, the other to Hermione and Orestes, which are only brought into artificial connection by the death of Neoptolemus. The speedy disappearance of Andromache from the scene, followed by the flight of Hermione and the escape of Menelaus to Sparta, leaves Peleus, who is only an accessory character, to bear the whole burden of the climax. Thus theAndromachelacks both internal and external unity, the unity of subject and form. Of material it has plenty, whether we regard the resolutions of fortune effected for the chief actors, or the variety of incidents, or the richness of reflective sentences, or the introduction of new "business" to sustain the flagging interest of the spectators. As a drama, it is second-rate. As a machine for the exhibition of specifically Euripidean qualities, it must rank high among the extant tragedies.

TheIphigenia in Aulide, theElectra, theOrestes, and theIphigenia in Taurismight be called the Euripidean Oresteia, since each of these plays treats that portion of the Atridan story which Æschylus had handled in his three dramas. We miss the final purification of the hero, and have to infer the climax from the allusions of theAndromache, where, it may be said in passing, the noble type of his character, maintained without interruption in theElectra, theOrestes, and theTauric Iphigenia, is deformed by a savagery and guile that must have been repellent even to a Greek audience. In theElectraEuripides comes immediately and without doubt consciously into competition with both Æschylus and Sophocles. Like Sophocles, he has painted Electra as of harder nature than her brother. When Orestes, before engaging in his mother's murder, shows signs of yielding to his filial feeling and expresses a doubt about the oracle, she, like Lady Macbeth, reanimates his wavering courage with argument and taunt. But Euripides seems to have felt that it was unnatural in the Sophoclean drama to represent both brother and sister as unterrified by conscience after the successful issue of their plot. The lyrical dialogue between Orestes and Electra, when he returns with their mother's blood upon his hands and sword, is both terribly true to nature and dramatically striking. It needs the appearance of the Dioscuri to confirm them in the faith that they had done a righteous, heaven-appointed deed of justice. By this touch Euripides proved his determination to bring even the most mysterious of legends within the pale of ordinary human experience. The situation in which he places Electra at the opening of the play, outcast from her father's palace and wedded to a farmer, ragged in attire and obliged to do the hard work of her household, is another and perhaps a less justifiable instance of his realism. The stirring of compassion by the exhibition of material misery was one of the points urged against him by Aristophanes; nor is it possible to feel that Electra's squalor adds anything essential to her tragedy. We may, however, be thankful to the poet for the democratic ideal of good manners and true chivalry, irrespective of blood and accidental breeding, which he has painted in his portrait of Electra's husband.[10]Not contented with thus varying the earlier outlines of the legend, Euripides in more than one passage directs a covert criticism against his predecessors. He shows that the tests of his identity offered by Orestes to Electra in the plays of Æschylus and Sophocles were insufficient, and that the murder of Clytemnestra in her palace, surrounded by the guard of a royal household, was improbable. The new motives invented by him for the recognition of Orestes and for the withdrawing of the queen to a place where she could be conveniently despatched are highly ingenious. Yet in the latter circumstance, what he gained in realism he lost in dramatic effect; for it was an incident of appalling terror that Clytemnestra and her paramour should be smitten in those very recesses of the palace where they had slaughtered Agamemnon, beneath the influence of those domestic Furies who, like an infernal revel, occupied the house of Atreus until all the guilty blood was shed. Throughout theElectrawe feel that we are in the presence of a critical, realistic, and at the same time romantic, poet, who has embroidered the old material of heroic story with modern casuistry, and has been working less with a view to producing a masterpiece of art than with the object of asserting his ingenuity within the narrow field of an exhausted legend. Had we not theChoëphorœand the SophocleanElectrafor standards of comparison, it is possible that we might do simpler justice to the creative power of "sad Electra's poet" in this drama. As it is, we can hardly refrain from treating it as a triumph of skill and reflective ability, rather than as a potent work of original genius.

TheOresteslies open to even more stringent criticism. The whole conclusion, consisting of the burning of the palace at Argos, the apotheosis of Helen, the lamentations of the Phrygian slave, and the betrothal of direst enemies above the ruins of theirancestral home, is more comic than tragic, and almost justifies the theory that Euripides intended it to be a parody of some contemporary drama. This portion of the play, moreover, is a melodrama, and joins on to the first part by a merely formal link. Such interest as theOrestespossesses, after the beautiful opening scene, centres in the heroic friendship of Pylades, who sustains the hero in his suffering and defends him from the angry folk of Argos. It is far otherwise with theTauric Iphigenia. Here Euripides comes into no competition with Æschylus or Sophocles; for he has handled a legend outside the sphere of their known plays. It is one eminently suited to his powers, involving the description of romantic scenery, the recognition of brother by sister in circumstances of deep pathos and extreme improbability, the contest of the most powerful natural feelings, and in the last place, the exhibition of dangers impending upon all the chief personages and only avoided by a thoroughly Euripidean fraud. None of the plots invented by Euripides are so nicely finished or so rich in incident as this; and yet there is nothing mechanical in its construction. Few of his plays have choral passages to match the yearnings of the captive maidens for their home in Hellas or the praise of young Apollo throned by Zeus for prophecy beneath Parnassus. Few again are richer or more truthful in their presentation of emotions—the exquisite delicacy of a sister's affection, the loyalty of friends, and the passionate outpouring of a brother's love. Something in the savage circumstances of the play, the sombre Tauric scenery, the dreadful rites of Artemis, to whom Iphigenia has been bound, and the watchful jealousy of her barbarian king, enhances the beautiful humanity of those three Greeks, burdened with such weight of sorrow on a foreign shore, haunted by memories of a father's cruelty, a mother's infidelity, pursued by the Furies of a righteous but abominable deed, yet none the less enjoying for one moment in the midst of pain and peril the pure pleasures of companionship. The chorus of Hellenic captives maintains an undercurrent of sad music that still further helps to heighten and interpret the situation. It is only at the last, when the knot of the situation has to be cut, that our sympathy begins to fail us. Thoas, though a barbarian, had been generous and kind. Yet Iphigenia employs a heartless device for escaping from his hands with the sacred image of the Tauri in her possession; nor does she feel a moment's pang of remorse for the pain she is inflicting or for the lies she has employed to serve her purpose. It may indeed be said generally that Euripides justified the Aristophanic reproach of meanness by his too frequent employment of tricks and subterfuges. These are so distasteful to modern feeling that we are glad to know that even a Greek critic regarded them as faulty. With Iphigenia's treason against Thoas we might compare Helen's plot for deceiving Theoclymenus, the insidious attack of Orestes upon Neoptolemus at Delphi, the capture of Helen and Hermione by Orestes and Pylades at Argos, and Agamemnon's incredibly base lure to Clytemnestra and Iphigenia before Aulis. It is scarcely a defence of Euripides to urge that the gods themselves, as in the case of the Tauric Iphigenia, sanction these deceptions. This only makes the matter worse, and forces us to choose between two hypotheses—either that Euripides sought to bring the old religion into contempt, or that he used its morality for merely theatrical purposes to justify the romantic crimes of his heroes. The latter seems the more probable theory; for it is clear in some most eminent examples that he has treated a deeply immoral legend for the sake of its admirable artistic capabilities. This is undoubtedly the case with theIon, which presents a marvellous tale of human suffering, adventure, crime, and final felicity, dependent in all its details upon the fraud of a deity. Without doing justice to the masterly construction of the plot, the beautiful poetry, and the sustained interest of theIon, it may be allowed me here to dwell for one moment on its morality. Phœbus begets the boy Ion by a rape upon Creusa, and steals the boy away from Athens to Delphi. The mother is left to bewail not her shame only, but the loss of her son. In course of time she marries Xuthus and is childless. They go together to Delphi to inquire of the oracle; and here Xuthus is lyingly informed that Ion is the son of his youthful years. Rage and jealousy impel Creusa, on hearing this news, to poison Ion. She fails, and Ion in revenge attempts to murder her. The danger of Creusa at last forces Phœbus to reveal the truth through the mouth of Athene, who tells the queen that Ion is really her lost son, the offspring of Apollo's crime. Xuthus happens to be absent during this disclosure, and the goddess advises Creusa to keep the real truth to herself, since the good man already supposes Ion to be his own child, and will consequently treat him like a son. Stripped of its dramatic ornaments, its wonderful scene-painting, pathetic situations, unexpected recognitions, sudden catastrophes, accidents and dangers and adventures, this is the plain legend of theIon; and a less ethical story of the gods could scarcely be found among those which Plato criticised in theRepublic.

It is time to return from this digression once more to the plays which deal with Orestes. In them Euripides painted a virtue dear in its heroic aspect to the Greeks and celebrated in many of their legends, but which had not frequently been made the subject of dramatic presentation. The character of Pylades as the perfect comrade, fierce as a tiger and cunning as a fox against his foes, but tender as a woman to his suffering friend, willing to face all dangers in common with Orestes, enduring for his sake the obloquy of the world and the mysterious taint of religious impurity, refusing to live in his death and contending with him for the right to die, must be accepted as a masterpiece of creative power. There is nothing in common between Pylades and the confidant of modern tragedy—thatalter egoor shadow of the hero's self, who dogs his path and reflects his sentiments. Pylades has a distinctly separate personality; in theOrestes, when Electra and her brother have abandoned hope, he takes the initiative and suggests the scheme that saves them. Yet none the less is sympathy the main point in his character. Euripides wrote nothing more touching than the description of his help afforded to Orestes in the council of the Argives, nothing more sublime than the contest between the two comrades in theTauric Iphigenia, when it is a question which of them should stay and by his own death save his friend for Hellas. Had the Athenians thus always thought of friendship, or had they learned the enthusiasm of its ideal from Euripides, they might indeed have bequeathed a new chivalry to the world. The three tragedies in which Pylades plays a prominent part, theElectra,Orestes, andTauric Iphigenia, are storehouses of the noblest sentiments and deepest truths about heroic friendship.

It is hard, while still beneath the overshadowing presence of so great a master as Euripides, to have patience with the critics and the scholars who scorn him—critics who cannot comprehend him, scholars who have not read him since they were at school. Decadence! is their cry. Yet what would they have? Would they ask for a second Sophocles, or a revived Æschylus? That being clearly impossible, beyond all scope of wish, why will they not be satisfied with beauty as luminous as that of a Greek statue or a Greek landscape, with feeling as profound as humanity itself, and with wisdom "musical as is Apollo's lute?" These are the qualities of a great poet, and we contend that Euripides possesses them in an eminent degree. It is false criticism, surely, to do as Schlegel, Müller, and Bunsen have successively done[11]—to measure Euripides by the standard of the success of his predecessors, or to ransack his plays for illustrations of pet dramatic theories, and then, because he will not bear these tests, to refuse to see his own distinguished merits. It would sometimes seem as if our nature were exhausted by its admiration of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare. There is no enthusiasm left for Euripides and Fletcher.

Euripides, after all is said, incontestably displays the quality of radiancy. On this I should be willing to base a portion of his claim to rank as a great poet. An admirer of Æschylus or Sophocles might affirm that neither Æschylus nor Sophocles chose to use their art for the display of thrilling splendor. However that may be, Euripides, alone of Greeks, with the exception of Aristophanes, entered the fairyland of dazzling fancy which Calderon and Shakespeare and Fletcher trod. TheBacchæ, like theBirds, proves what otherwise we might have hardly known, that there lacked not Greeks for whom theTempestandA Midsummer-Night's Dreamwould have been intelligible. Meanwhile, in making any estimate of the merits of Euripides, it would be unfair to omit mention of the enthusiasm felt for him by contemporaries and posterity. Mr. Browning, in the beautiful monument which he has erected to the fame of Euripides, has chosen for poetical treatment the well-known story of Athenians rescued from captivity by recitation of the verses of their poet.[12]There is no reason to doubt a story which attests so strongly to the acceptation in which Euripides was held at large among the Greeks. Socrates, again, visited the theatre on the occasion of any representation of his favorite's plays. By the new comedians, Menander and Philemon, Euripides was regarded as a divine miracle. Tragedy and comedy, so dissimilar in their origins, had approximated to a coalition; tragedy losing its religious dignity, comedy quitting its obscene though splendid personalities; both meeting on the common ground of daily life. In the decadence of Greece it was not Æschylus and Aristophanes, but Euripides and Menander, who were learned and read and quoted. The colossal theosophemes of Æschylus called for profound reflection; the Titanic jokes of Aristophanes taxed the imagination to its utmost stretch. But Euripides "the human, with his droppings of warm tears," gently touched and soothed the heart. Menander with his facile wisdom flattered the intellect of worldly men. The sentences of both were quotable at large and fit for all occasions. They were not too great, too lofty, too profound for the paths of common life. We have lost Menander, alas! but we still possess Euripides. It seems a strange neglect of good gifts to shut our ears to his pathetic melodies and ringing eloquence—because, forsooth, Æschylus and Sophocles had the advantage of preceding him, and were superior artists in the bloom and heyday of the young world's prime.

FOOTNOTES:[1]The terrific lessons of the Persian war seem to have quickened in the Greeks a spiritual sense beyond what was natural to their genius, and from the influence of which they speedily recovered.[2]This pedigree of the House of Tantalus—a family Upas-tree—illustrates the descent of crime from generation to generation:Tantalus[Insolence of immense riches.| Steals the nectar and ambrosia| of the gods and gives| to them Pelops to eat.]+------+-------------------------------+| |+----------------Pelops=Hippodameia.Niobe.| Slays Myrsilus, || the son of || Hermes. || +----+--------------------+| | |Chrysippus,Atreus=Ærope.Thyestes.a bastard son, In revenge upon | Incestuous with Æropewhom Atreus Thyestes for his | and with his own daughterand Thyestes adultery, serves | Pelopia, by whom hekill. up the children | has a son.of Thyestes to | |him at a banquet.|Ægisthus.|+--------+---------------------+| |Agamemnon=Clytemnestra.Menelaus.|+------------+------------+| | |Orestes.Iphigenia.Electra.[3]Line 375; compareChoëph.631,Eum.510-514.[4]Very notable in this respect is his consistent degradation of Ulysses.[5]Exception must be made in favor of theHippolytusand theBacchæ, where the whole action of the play and the conduct of the persons are determined by the influences of Aphrodite and Dionysus. The same exception, but for other reasons, may be made in favor of theIon.[6]Hecuba, for example, in her play; Electra in hers; Menelaus in theHelena.[7]It may be questioned whether a Dorian type of character was not in the mind of Euripides when he constructed his ideal of feminine heroism. What Plutarch in the life of Cleomenes says of Cratesiclea and the wife of Panteus reads like a commentary on the tragedies ofMacaria,Polyxena, andIphigenia. Xenophon's partiality for the Spartans indicates the same current of sympathy. Philosophical analysis was leading up to an eclectic Hellenism, yet the Euripidean study of Hermione seems intended as a satire on the Lacedæmonian women.[8]The real cause of offence was the prominence given by Euripides to the passion of unholy love in some of his heroines; to the interest and sympathy he created for Phædra, Sthenobœa, and others.[9]The whole of this splendid speech should be compared with the fragment of Neophron'sMedea, on which it is obviously modelled. See, below, the chapter on the Tragic Fragments.[10]Notice especially the speech of Orestes, line 367.[11]Goethe was very severe on the critics who could not appreciate Euripides: "To feel and respect a great personality, one must be something one's self. All those who denied the sublime to Euripides were either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity, or shameless charlatans, who, by their presumption, wished to make more of themselves, and really did make more of themselves, than they were" (Eckermann'sConversations of Goethe, English ed., vol. ii. p. 377). In another place he indicates the spirit in which any adverse criticism of Euripides should be attempted: "A poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Menander admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death, must certainly have been something. If a modern man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his knees" (ib., vol. i. p. 378). Again (ib., vol. i. p. 260), he energetically combats the opinion that Euripides had caused the decline of Greek tragedy.[12]See Balaustion'sAdventure. Since this chapter was first published, Mr. Browning has still further enforced his advocacy of Euripides by Aristophanes'Apology, and a version of theHercules Furens, while the great tragic poet has found a stanch defender from the carping criticasters of the Schlegel school in Mr. Mahaffy. That excellent scholar and accomplished student of antiquity has recently published a little book on Euripides (Classical Writers, edited by J. R. Green, "Euripides." Macmillan. 1879).

[1]The terrific lessons of the Persian war seem to have quickened in the Greeks a spiritual sense beyond what was natural to their genius, and from the influence of which they speedily recovered.

[2]This pedigree of the House of Tantalus—a family Upas-tree—illustrates the descent of crime from generation to generation:Tantalus[Insolence of immense riches.| Steals the nectar and ambrosia| of the gods and gives| to them Pelops to eat.]+------+-------------------------------+| |+----------------Pelops=Hippodameia.Niobe.| Slays Myrsilus, || the son of || Hermes. || +----+--------------------+| | |Chrysippus,Atreus=Ærope.Thyestes.a bastard son, In revenge upon | Incestuous with Æropewhom Atreus Thyestes for his | and with his own daughterand Thyestes adultery, serves | Pelopia, by whom hekill. up the children | has a son.of Thyestes to | |him at a banquet.|Ægisthus.|+--------+---------------------+| |Agamemnon=Clytemnestra.Menelaus.|+------------+------------+| | |Orestes.Iphigenia.Electra.

[2]This pedigree of the House of Tantalus—a family Upas-tree—illustrates the descent of crime from generation to generation:

Tantalus[Insolence of immense riches.| Steals the nectar and ambrosia| of the gods and gives| to them Pelops to eat.]+------+-------------------------------+| |+----------------Pelops=Hippodameia.Niobe.| Slays Myrsilus, || the son of || Hermes. || +----+--------------------+| | |Chrysippus,Atreus=Ærope.Thyestes.a bastard son, In revenge upon | Incestuous with Æropewhom Atreus Thyestes for his | and with his own daughterand Thyestes adultery, serves | Pelopia, by whom hekill. up the children | has a son.of Thyestes to | |him at a banquet.|Ægisthus.|+--------+---------------------+| |Agamemnon=Clytemnestra.Menelaus.|+------------+------------+| | |Orestes.Iphigenia.Electra.

[3]Line 375; compareChoëph.631,Eum.510-514.

[4]Very notable in this respect is his consistent degradation of Ulysses.

[5]Exception must be made in favor of theHippolytusand theBacchæ, where the whole action of the play and the conduct of the persons are determined by the influences of Aphrodite and Dionysus. The same exception, but for other reasons, may be made in favor of theIon.

[6]Hecuba, for example, in her play; Electra in hers; Menelaus in theHelena.

[7]It may be questioned whether a Dorian type of character was not in the mind of Euripides when he constructed his ideal of feminine heroism. What Plutarch in the life of Cleomenes says of Cratesiclea and the wife of Panteus reads like a commentary on the tragedies ofMacaria,Polyxena, andIphigenia. Xenophon's partiality for the Spartans indicates the same current of sympathy. Philosophical analysis was leading up to an eclectic Hellenism, yet the Euripidean study of Hermione seems intended as a satire on the Lacedæmonian women.

[8]The real cause of offence was the prominence given by Euripides to the passion of unholy love in some of his heroines; to the interest and sympathy he created for Phædra, Sthenobœa, and others.

[9]The whole of this splendid speech should be compared with the fragment of Neophron'sMedea, on which it is obviously modelled. See, below, the chapter on the Tragic Fragments.

[10]Notice especially the speech of Orestes, line 367.

[11]Goethe was very severe on the critics who could not appreciate Euripides: "To feel and respect a great personality, one must be something one's self. All those who denied the sublime to Euripides were either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity, or shameless charlatans, who, by their presumption, wished to make more of themselves, and really did make more of themselves, than they were" (Eckermann'sConversations of Goethe, English ed., vol. ii. p. 377). In another place he indicates the spirit in which any adverse criticism of Euripides should be attempted: "A poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Menander admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death, must certainly have been something. If a modern man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his knees" (ib., vol. i. p. 378). Again (ib., vol. i. p. 260), he energetically combats the opinion that Euripides had caused the decline of Greek tragedy.

[12]See Balaustion'sAdventure. Since this chapter was first published, Mr. Browning has still further enforced his advocacy of Euripides by Aristophanes'Apology, and a version of theHercules Furens, while the great tragic poet has found a stanch defender from the carping criticasters of the Schlegel school in Mr. Mahaffy. That excellent scholar and accomplished student of antiquity has recently published a little book on Euripides (Classical Writers, edited by J. R. Green, "Euripides." Macmillan. 1879).

Alexandrian and Byzantine Anthologies.—Titles of the Lost Plays of Æschylus.—TheLycurgeia.—The Trilogy on the Story of Achilles.—The Geography of thePrometheus Unbound.—Gnomic Character of the Sophoclean Fragments.—Providence, Wealth, Love, Marriage, Mourning.—What is True of the Sophoclean is still more True of the Euripidean Fragments.—Mutilated Plays.—Phaëthon,Erechtheus,Antiope,Danaë.—Goethe's Restitution of thePhaëthon.—Passage on Greek Athletes in theAutolycus.—Love, Women, Marriage, Domestic Affection, Children.—Death.—Stoical Endurance.—Justice and the Punishment of Sin.—Wealth.—Noble Birth.—Heroism.—Miscellaneous Gnomic Fragments.—The Popularity of Euripides.

It is difficult to treat the fragments of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides otherwise than as a golden treasury of saws and maxims compiled by Alexandrian and Byzantine Greeks, for whom poetic beauty was of less value than sententious wisdom. The tragic scope and the æsthetic handling of the fables of their lost plays can scarcely be conjectured from such slight hints as we possess. Yet some light may be cast upon the Æschylean method by observing the titles of his dramas. We have, for example, the names of a complete tetralogy upon the legend of Lycurgus. TheEdonians, theBassarids, and theYoung Menconstituted a connected series of plays—aLycurgeia, withLycurgusfor the satyric supplement. Remembering that Æschylus called his own tragedies morsels picked up from the great Homeric banquet-table, we may conclude that this tetralogy set forth the Dionysian fable told by Diomede to Glaucus in theIliad(vi. 131):

No, for not Dryas' son, Lycurgus strong,Who the divine ones fought, on earth lived long.He the nurse-nymphs of Dionysus scaredDown the Nyseïan steep, and the wild throngTheir ritual things cast off, and maddening fared,Torn with his goad, like kine; so vast a crime he dared.Yea, Dionysus, such a sight was there,Himself in fear sank down beneath the seas.And Thetis in her breast him quailing bare,At the man's cry such trembling shook his knees.Then angered were the gods who live at ease,And Zeus smote blind Lycurgus, and he fellLoathed ere his day.[13]

It appears that the titles of the three dramas composing the trilogy were taken from the Chorus. In the first play the Edonian Thracians, subjects of Lycurgus, formed the Chorus; in the second, the Bassarids, or nurse-nymphs of Dionysus; in the third, the youths whom the wine-god had persuaded to adopt his worship. The subject of the first play was, therefore, the advent of Dionysus and his following in Thrace, and the victory of Lycurgus over the new cult. The second set forth the captivity of the Bacchantes or Bassarids, together with the madness sent upon Lycurgus as a punishment for his resistance, whereby he was driven, according to post-Homeric versions of his legend, to the murder of his own son Dryas in a fit of fury. The third play carried on the subject by exhibiting the submission of Lycurgus to the god whom he had disowned and dishonored, and his death, at the hands of his own subjects, upon Mount Pangæus. Thus the first Chorus was hostile to Dionysus; the second was sympathetic, though captive and impotent; the third was triumphant in his cause. The artistic sequence of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis which the trilogy required, was developed through three moments in the life-drama of Lycurgus, and was typified in the changes of the choric sympathy, according to the law whereby Æschylus varied the form of his triple dramas and, at the same time, immediately connected the Chorus with the passion of each piece. The tragic interest centred in the conflict of Lycurgus and the god, and the final solution was afforded by the submission, though too late, of the protagonist's will to destiny. It is probable that the satyric play ofLycurgusrepresented the divine honors paid, after his death, to the old enemy, now become the satellite and subject of Dionysus, by pastoral folk and dwellers in the woodlands. The unification of obstinate antagonistic wills in the higher will of Zeus or Fate seems in all cases to have supplied Æschylus with theVersöhnungtragedy required, and to have suggested the religious κάθαρσις without which the Greek drama would have failed to point its lesson. Seen in this light, theLycurgeiamust have been a masterpiece only less sublime, and even more full, perhaps, of picturesque incidents, than the Promethean trilogy. The emotional complexion, if that phrase may be permitted, of each member of the trilogy was determined by the Chorus; wherein we trace a signal instance of the Æschylean method.

More even to be regretted than theLycurgeiais a colossal lost trilogy to which the name ofTragic Iliadhas been given. That Æschylus should have frequently handled the subject-matter of theIliadwas natural; and many titles of tragedies, quoted singly, point to his preoccupation with the mythus of Achilles. It has, therefore, been conjectured, with fair show of reason, that theMyrmidons, theNereids, and thePhrygiansformed a triple drama. The first described the withdrawal of Achilles from the war, the arming of Patroclus, and the grief which the son of Peleus felt for his friend's death. No Greek tragedy, had it been preserved, would have been more precious than this. The second showed how Thetis comforted her child, and procured fresh armor for him from Hephæstus, and how Achilles slew Hector. In the third, Priam recovered the dead body of his son and buried it. Supposing the trilogy to have been constructed upon these outlines, it must have resembled a gigantic history-play, in which, as in theIliaditself, the character of Achilles was sufficient to form the groundwork of a complicated poem. The theme, inother words, would have resembled those of the modern and romantic drama, rather than such as the elder Greek poets were in the habit of choosing. TheAchilleisdid not in any direct way illustrate the doctrine of Nemesis, or afford a tragic conflict between the human will and fate. It owed its lustre to the radiant beauty of the hero, to the pathos of his love for Patroclus, to the sudden blazing forth of irresistible energy when sorrow for the dead had driven him to revenge, and to the tranquillity succeeding tempest that dignified his generous compliance with the prayers of Priam. The trilogy composed upon it must, therefore, like a Shakespearian play, have been a drama of character. The fragments of theMyrmidoneshave already been pieced together in the essay on the Homeric Achilles.[14]From theNereidesnothing has survived except what may be gathered from the meagre remnants of the Latin version made of it by Attius. ThePhrygians, also called Ἕκτορος λύτρα, contained a speech of pleading addressed by Priam to the hero in his tent, of which the following is a relic:

καὶ τοὺς θανόντας εἰ θέλεις εὐεργετεῖν,τὸ γοῦν κακουργεῖν ἀμφιδεξίως ἔχεικαὶ μήτε χαίρειν μήτε λυπεῖσθαι πάρα.ἡμῶν γε μέντοι Νέμεσίς ἐσθ' ὑπερτέρακαὶ τοῦ θανόντος ἡ δίκη πράσσει κότον.[15]

The trilogy of which thePrometheus Boundformed probably the middle play has been sufficiently discussed in the chapter on Æschylus.[16]It remains in this place only to notice that the gigantic geography of the poet received further illustration in the lost play of thePrometheus Unbound. "Cette géographie vertigineuse," says Victor Hugo, "est mêlée à une tragédie extraordinaire où l'on entend des dialogues plus qu'humains;" and, inverting this observation, we may add that the superhuman tragedy of thePrometheisowed much of its grandeur to the soul-dilating prospect of the earth's map, outstretched before the far-seeing sufferer on the crags of Caucasus.

Two other trilogies—aDanais, composed of theEgyptians, theSuppliants, and theDanaides; and anŒdipodeia, composed ofLaius, theSphinx, andŒdipus—may be mentioned, though to recover their outlines with any certainty is now hopeless. For the rest, it must be enough to transcribe and to translate a few fragments of singular beauty. Here is an invocation uttered in his hour of anguish by Philoctetes to Death, the deliverer:

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