'Tis not for thee to know. This day thou diest for thy knavery!
Captain.
Stop! Give the watchword quick, before I have thy body on my pike.
Odysseus(in a tone of authority).
Halt every man and have no fear!
Captain.
Come, gather round. Be quick to strike.
Odysseus(toCaptain).
'Twas thou that killed King Rhesus!
Captain.
No: 'tis I that kill the man that killed . . .
[Flies atOdysseus,but other men hold him back.
Odysseus.
Hold back all!
Voices.
No more holding back!
Odysseus(as they attack him).
What, strike an ally in the field?
Captain.
Then give the watchword!
Odysseus.
Phoebus.
Captain.
Right. Ho, every man hold back his spear!—Then know'st thou where the men are gone?
Odysseus.
We saw them running, somewhere here.
[He makes off into the darkness.Diomedefollows, and some Thracians.
Captain.
Off every one upon their track!
A Man.
Or should we rouse the army?
Captain.
No;To stir the allies in the night and make more panic!Let us go.
[The Thracians go off in pursuit. Meantime the original Guards who form the Chorus have hastened back. The two Greeks are presently seen crossing at the back in a different direction.
Chorus.
Who was the man that passed?Who, that, so madly bold.Even as I held him fast,Laughed, and I loosed my hold?Where shall I find him now?What shall I deem of him,To steal thro' the guards a-row,Quaking not, eye nor limb,On thro' the starlight dim?Is he of Thessaly,Born by the Locrian sea,Or harvester of some starved island's corn?What man hath seen his face?What was his name or race,What the high God by whom his sires have sworn?
Divers Guards(talking).
This night must be Odysseus' work, or whose?—Odysseus? Aye, to judge by ancient use.—Odysseus surely!—That is thy belief?—What else? It seems he hath no fearOf such as we!—Whom praise ye there?Whose prowess? Say!—Odysseus.—Nay,Praise not the secret stabbing of a thief!
Chorus.
He came once, of old,Up thro' the city throng,Foam on his lips, a-cold,Huddled in rags that hungCovering just the swordHid in his mantle's pleat;His face grimed and scored,A priest of wandering feet,Who begged his bread in the street.Many and evil thingsHe cast on the brother kingsLike one long hurt, who nurseth anger sore;Would that a curse, yea, wouldThe uttermost wrath of GodHad held those feet from walking Ilion's shore!
Divers Guards(talking).
Odysseus or another, 'tis the guardWill weep for this. Aye, Hector will be hard.—What will he say?—He will suspect.—Suspect?What evil? What should make you fear?—'Twas we that left a passage clear.—A passage?—Yea, for these men's way,Who came by night into the lines unchecked.
[A sound of moaning outside in the darkness, which has been heard during the last few lines, now grows into articulate words.
Voice.
Woe, woe!The burden of the wrath of fate!
Guards.
Ha, listen! Wait.Crouch on the ground; it may be yetOur man is drawing to the net.
Voice.
Woe, woe!The burden of the hills of Thrace!
Leader.
An ally? None of Hellene race.
Voice.
Woe, woe!Yea, woe to me and woe to thee,My master! Once to set thine eyeOn Ilion the accurst, and die!
Leader(calling aloud).
Ho there! What ally passes? The dim nightBlurreth mine eyes; I cannot see thee right.
Voice.
Ho, some one of the Trojan name!Where sleeps your king beneath his shield,Hector? What marshal of the fieldWill hear our tale . . . the men who cameAnd struck us and were gone; and we,We woke and there was nought to see,But our own misery.
Leader.
I cannot hear him right; it sounds as ifThe Thracians were surprised or in some grief.
[There enters a wounded man, walking with difficulty; he is the Thracian Charioteer who came withRhesus.
Thracian.
The army lost and the king slain,Stabbed in the dark! Ah, pain! pain!This deep raw wound . . . Oh, let me dieBy thy side, Master, by thy side!In shame together let us lieWho came to save, and failed and died.
Leader.
This needs no surmise: 'tis disaster plainThat comes. He speaketh of some ally slain.
Thracian.
Disaster, yea: and with disaster shame,Which lights Disaster to a twofold flameOf evil. For to die in soldier's wise,Since die we needs must . . . though the man who diesHath pain . . . to all his house 'tis praise and pride;But we, like laggards and like fools we died!When Hector's hand had showed us where to restAnd told the watchword, down we lay, oppressedWith weariness of that long march, and sleptJust as we fell. No further watch was kept,Our arms not laid beside us; by the horseNo yoke nor harness ordered. Hector's forceHad victory, so my master heard, and laySecure, just waiting for the dawn of dayTo attack. So thought we all, and our lines brokeAnd slept. After a little time I woke,Thinking about my horses, that the mornMust see them yoked for war. I found the cornAnd gave them plenteously. Then in the deepShadow I saw two men who seemed to creepClose by our line, but swiftly, as I stirred,Crouched and were seeking to make off unheard.I shouted then, and bade them keep away:Two thieves, I thought, from the great host that layRound us. They never answered, and, for me,I said no more but turned and presentlyWas sleeping. In my sleep there came a dream.I seemed to see the horses—mine own teamI had trained long since and drove at Rhesus' side—But wolves were on their backs, wolves, couched astride,Who drove and scourged; I saw the horses rearAnd stagger with wide nostrils, stiff with fear,And, starting up to drive the beasts away,I woke.—A terror of great darkness layAbout me, but I lifted up my headAnd listened. There was moaning, like the deadThat moan at night, and over me there flowed,So soft, so warm—it was my master's blood,Who writhed beside me, dying! With a boundI sprang up, empty-handed, groping roundFor spear or sword, when, lo, a young strong manWas close to me and slashed, and the sword ranDeep through my flank. I felt its passage well,So deep, so wide, so spreading . . . then I fell.And they, they got the bridles in their handAnd fled. . . . Ah! Ah! This pain. I cannot stand.[The Guards catch him as he reels, and lay him onthe ground.I know, I saw, thus much. But why or howThose dead men went to death I cannot know,Nor by whose work. But this I say; God send'Tis not foul wrong wrought on us by a friend.
Leader.
Good charioteer of that ill-fortuned king,Suspect us not. 'Tis Greeks have done this thing.But yonder Hector comes. He hath been shownThe foul deed, and thy sorrows are his own.
EnterHectorin wrath, with a band of Guards.
Hector.
Ye workers of amazement! Have your eyesNo sight? Ye watch and let these Argive spiesPass—and our friends are butchered in their sleep—And then pass back unwounded, laughing deepAmid the galleys at the news they bringOf Trojan sluggards and the fool their king?Great God, ye never baulked them as they came,Nor smote them as they went![His eye falls on theCaptain.Who bears the blameOf this but thou? Thou wast the watcher setTo guard this host till morn. I tell thee yetFor this deed—I have sworn by Zeus our Lord!—The scourge of torment or the headsman's swordAwaits thee. Else, be Hector in your thoughtWrit down a babbler and a man of nought.
Leader(grovelling beforeHector).
Woe, woe! It was for thee, only for thee,I must have gone, O Help and Majesty,That time with message that the fires were burning.Mine eye was keen; I swear by Simoïs river,It never drooped nor slumbered, never, never,From eve till morning!My master, verily, I am innocent utterly,Build not such wrath against me, Lord, nor hardenThy heart; let Time be judge; and if in deedOr word I have offended, let me bleed!Bury me here alive! I ask no pardon.
[Hectoris standing over him ready to strike when theCharioteerspeaks.
Thracian.
Why threaten them? Art thou a Greek to blindMy barbarous wit so nimbly, in a windOf words? This work was thine. And no man's headIs asked by us, the wounded and the dead,Save thine. It needs more play, and better feigned,To hide from me that thou hast slain thy friendBy craft, to steal his horses.—That is whyHe stabs his friends. He prays them earnestly,Prays them to come; they came and they are dead.A cleaner man was Paris, when he fledWith his host's wife. He was no murderer.Profess not thou that any Greek was thereTo fall on us. What Greek could pass the screenOf Trojan posts in front of us, unseen?Thyself was stationed there, and all thy men.What man of yours was slain or wounded whenYour Greek spies came? Not one; 'tis we, behind,Are wounded, and some worse than wounded, blindForever to the sunlight. When we seekOur vengeance, we shall go not to the Greek.What stranger in that darkness could have trodStraight to where Rhesus lay—unless some GodPointed his path? They knew not, whispered not,Rhesus had ever come. . . . 'Tis all a plot.
Hector(steadied and courteous again).
Good allies I have had since first the GreekSet foot in Troy, and never heard them speakComplaint of Hector. Thou wilt be the first.I have not, by God's mercy, such a thirstFor horses as to murder for their sake.[He turns to his own men.Odysseus! Yet again Odysseus! TakeAll the Greek armies, is there one but heCould have devised, or dared, this devilry?I fear him; yea, fear in mine own despite,Lest Dolon may have crossed him in the nightAnd perished; 'tis so long he cometh not.
Thracian.
I know not who Odysseus is, nor what.I know it was no Greek that wounded us.
Hector.
To think thus pleasures thee? Well, have it thus.
Thracian.
Home, home! To die at home and rest my head!
Hector.
Nay, die not, friend. We have enough of dead.
Thracian.
How can I live? Lost, and my master slain.
Hector.
My house will shelter thee and heal thy pain.
Thracian.
Thy house? Will murderers' nursing give me peace?
Hector.
Still the same tale! This man will never cease.
Thracian.
My curse rest—not on Hector, but on thoseWho stabbed us, as thou say'st.—Ah, Justice knows!
Hector.
There, lift him.—Bear him to my house. Take pains,If care can do it, that the man complainsNo more of Troy.—Ye others, bear withalTo Priam and the Elders of the WallMy charge, that, where the cart-road from the plainBranches, they make due burial for our slain.
[One party of Guards lifts carefully the woundedThracianand goes off bearing him: another departs with the message to Troy.
Chorus.
Back from the heights of happiness,Back, back, to labour and distressSome god that is not ours doth leadTroy and her sons; He sows the seed,Who knows the reaping?
[In the air at the back there appears a Vision of theMuseholding the body of her dead sonRhesus.
Ah! Ah!My king, what cometh? There appearsSome Spirit, like a mist of tears;And in her arms a man lieth,So young, so wearied unto death;To see such vision presagethWrath and great weeping.
[The Guards hide their heads in their mantles.
Muse.
Nay, look your fill, ye Trojans. It is I,The many-sistered Muse, of worship highIn wise men's hearts, who come to mourn mine ownMost pitifully loved, most injured, son,For whose shed blood Odysseus yet shall payVengeance, who crawled and stabbed him where he lay.With a dirge of the Thracian mountains,I mourn for thee, O my son.For a mother's weeping, for a galley's launching, forthe way to Troy;A sad going, and watched by spirits of evil.His mother chid him to stay, but he rose and went.His father besought him to stay, but he went inanger.Ah, woe is me for thee, thou dear face,My belovèd and my son!
Leader.
Goddess, if tears for such as thee may runIn our low eyes, I weep for thy dead son.
Muse.
I say to thee: Curse Odysseus,And cursèd be Diomede!For they made me childless, and forlorn for ever, ofthe flower of sons.Yea, curse Helen, who left the houses of Hellas.She knew her lover, she feared not the ships and sea.She called thee, called thee, to die for the sake of Paris,Belovèd, and a thousand citiesShe made empty of good men.O conquered Thamyris, is this thy baneReturned from death to pierce my heart again?Thy pride it was, and bitter challenge cast'Gainst all the Muses, did my flesh abaseTo bearing of this Child, what time I passedThrough the deep stream and looked on Strymon's face,And felt his great arms clasp me, when to oldPangaion and the earth of hoarded goldWe Sisters came with lutes and psalteries,Provoked to meet in bitter strife of songThat mountain wizard, and made dark the eyesOf Thamyris, who wrought sweet music wrong.I bore thee, Child; and then, in shame beforeMy sisterhood, my dear virginity,I stood again upon thy Father's shoreAnd cast thee to the deeps of him; and heReceived and to no mortal nursing gaveHis child, but to the Maidens of the Wave.And well they nursed thee, and a king thou wastAnd first of Thrace in war; yea, far and nearThrough thine own hills thy bloody chariot passed,Thy battered helm flashed, and I had no fear;Only to Troy I charged thee not to go:I knew the fated end: but Hector's cry,Borne overseas by embassies of woe,Called thee to battle for thy friends and die.And thou, Athena—nothing was the deedOdysseus wrought this night nor Diomede—'Tis thine, all thine; dream not thy cruel handIs hid from me! Yet ever on thy landThe Muse hath smiled; we gave it praise aboveAll cities, yea, fulfilled it with our love.The light of thy great Mysteries was shedBy Orpheus, very cousin of this deadWhom thou hast slain; and thine high citizenMusaeus, wisest of the tribes of men,We and Apollo guided all his way:For which long love behold the gift ye pay!I wreathe him in my arms; I wail his wrongAlone, and ask no other mourner's song.[She weeps overRhesus.
Leader.
Hector, thou hearest. We were guiltless here,And falsely spake that Thracian charioteer.
Hector.
Always I knew it. Had we any needOf seers to tell this was Odysseus' deed?For me, what could I else, when I beheldThe hosts of Argos camped upon this field,What but with prayers and heralds bid my friendCome forth and fight for Ilion ere the end?He owed me that.—Yet, now my friend is slain,His sorrow is my sorrow. On this plainI will uplift a wondrous sepulchre,And burn about it gifts beyond compareOf robes and frankincense. To Troy's reliefHe came in love and parteth in great grief.
Muse.
My son shall not be laid in any graveOf darkness; thus much guerdon will I craveOf Death's eternal bride, the heavenly-bornMaid of Demeter, Life of fruits and corn,To set this one soul free. She owes me yet,For Orpheus widowed, an abiding debt.To me he still must be—that know I well—As one in death, who sees not. Where I dwellHe must not come, nor see his mother's face.Alone for ever, in a caverned placeOf silver-veinèd earth, hid from men's sight,A Man yet Spirit, he shall live in light:As under far Pangaion Orpheus lies,Priest of great light and worshipped of the wise.Howbeit an easier anguish even to meFalls than to Thetis in her azure sea;For her son too shall die; and sorrowing,First on the hills our band for thee shall sing,Then for Achilles by the weeping wave.Pallas could murder thee, but shall not saveThy foe; too swift Apollo's bolt shall fly.O fleshly loves of sad mortality,O bitter motherhood of these that die,She that hath wisdom will endure her doom,The days of emptiness, the fruitless womb;Not love, not bear love's children to the tomb.
[TheVisionrises through the air and vanishes.
Leader.
The dead man sleepeth in his mother's care;But we who battle still—behold, the glareOf dawn that rises. Doth thy purpose hold,Hector, our arms are ready as of old.
Hector.
March on; and bid the allies with all speedBe armed, bind fast the yoke upon the steed,Then wait with torches burning, till we soundThe Tuscan trump.—This day we shall confound,God tells me, their Greek phalanx, break their highRampart and fire the galleys where they lie.[Pointing to the dawn.Yon first red arrow of the Sun, that bringsThe dawn to Troy, hath freedom on his wings.
During the following linesHectorgoes to his tent to get his shield, and as he enters seesDolon'sbloody wolf-skin hanging. He takes it, looks at it, and throws it down without a word. Then he puts on his helmet, takes his shield and spear, and follows the Guards as they march off.
Chorus.
The Chief hath spoken: let his willBe law, ye Trojans.—Raise the cryTo Arms! To Arms! and down the lineOf allies pass the battle-sign.The God of Ilion liveth still;And men may conquer ere they die.[Exeunt.
Theplay presupposes a knowledge of the Iliad in some form, if not exactly in the form which it now wears. We are not only supposed to know that Hector, son of Priam, leads the Trojans and their allies ("Trojans, and Lycians, and Dardans bold": in tragedy they are also called Phrygians) in defence against the Greeks—Argives, Achaeans, Hellênes—under Agamemnon, king of men, and his brother Menelaüs, husband of Helen. This sort of supposition is usual in all Greek tragedy. It merely means that the poet takes for granted the main outlines of the heroic saga. But in this play we are also supposed to take up the story as it stands at the opening of the Doloneia or Tenth Book of the Iliad. Indeed one might almost say that theRhesusis simply the Doloneia turned into drama and set in the Trojan camp. The only other play that is taken straight from Homer is the Satyr-play,Cyclops, which tells the story of Odyssey IX., but it is likely enough that if we possessed more of the earlier epic literature we should find many other plays closely hugging their traditional sources.—The Trojans are camping out on the field of battle, close to the Greek lines. Hector, always ready for danger, seems to have his tent or log-hut set up quite in the van, just behind the outposts. In Il. X. 415 ff. he is holding counselwith the other chieftains "away from the throng"; the allies are taking their sleep and trusting to the Trojans, who keep awake in groups round the camp fires; no watchword is mentioned.
P. 5, l. 30, The priest.]—He would be needed to make the sacrifice before battle.
P. 5, l. 36, The lash of trembling Pan.]—i.e., a panic.
P. 5, l. 41, Great beacons in the Argive line.]—In the Iliad it is the Trojan watch-fires that are specially mentioned, especially VIII. 553-end. There is no great disturbance in the Greek camp in the Doloneia; there is a gathering of the principal chiefs, a visit to the Guards, and the despatch of the two spies, but no general tumult such as there is in Book II. One cannot help wondering whether our playwright found in his version of the Doloneia a description of fires in the Greek camp, such as our Eighth Book has of those in the Trojan camp. The object might be merely protection against a night attack, or it might be a wish to fly, as Hector thinks. If so, presumably the Assembly changed its mind—much as it does in our Book II.—and determined to send spies.
P. 5, l. 43 ff., The shipyard timbers.]—The Greeks had their ships drawn up on the beach and protected by some sort of wooden "shipyard"; then came the camp; then, outside the whole, a trench and a wall. The fires were in the camp.
P. 8, l. 105, Brother! I would thy wit were like thy spear!]—In Homer Hector is impulsive and over-daring, but still good in counsel. On the stage every quality that is characteristic is apt to be overemphasized, all that is not characteristic neglected. Hence on the Attic stage Odysseus is more crafty, Ajax and Diomedes more blunt, Menelaus more unwarlike and more uxorious than in Homer.
This speech of Aeneas, though not inapposite, is rather didactic—a fault which always remained a danger to Euripides.
P. 10, l. 150 ff., Dolon.]—The name is derived fromdolos, "craft." In our version of Homer Dolon merely wears, over his tunic, the skin of a grey wolf. He has a leather cap and a bow. In the play he goes, as Red Indian spies used to go, actually disguised as a wolf, on all fours in a complete wolf-skin. The same version is found on the Munich cylix of the early vase-painter Euphronius (about 500B.C.), in which Dolon wears a tight-fitting hairy skin with a long tail. The plan can of course only succeed in a country where wild animals are common enough to be thought unimportant. The playwright has evidently chosen a more primitive and romantic version of the story; the Homeric reviser has, as usual, cut out what might seem ridiculous. (See J. A. K. Thomson inClassical Review, xxv. pp. 238 f.)
P. 12, l. 175, Ajax, Îleus' son.]—"Ajax" is mentioned here and at ll. 463, 497, 601, as apparently next in importance to the two Atreidae or to Achilles. That is natural, but it is a shock to have him here described as son of Ileus. In the Iliad we should have had "Ajax son of Telamon." The son of Ileus is "Ajax the less," a hero of the second rank. Scholars have conjectured on other grounds that in some older form of the Iliad-saga Ajax son of Ileus was of much greater importance. The father "Telamon" and theconnection with Aegina are neither of them original in the myth.
P. 12, l. 182, Achilles' horses.]—They are as glorious in the Iliad as they are here. Cf. especially the passages where they bear Automedon out of the battle (end of XVI.), and where Xanthos is given a human voice to warn his master of the coming of death (end of XIX.). The heroic age of Greece delighted in horses. Cf. those of Aeneas, Diomedes, Eumêlus, and Rhesus himself.
P. 15, ll. 225-263, Chorus.]—Apollo is appealed to as a God of Thymbra in the Troad, of Delos the Ionian island, and of Lycia in the South of Asia Minor; the god of Asiatics andbarbaroi, the enemy of the Achaeans. This is also to a great extent the conception of Apollo in the Iliad, where he fights for Troy and is Hector's special patron. The sudden ferocity towards Helen in the last strophe is quite in the manner of Euripides; cf.Trojan Women, 1107 ff. (p. 65), 766 ff. (p. 49), and often; alsoIph. Taur.438 ff. (p. 21), where her name comes somewhat as a surprise.
The stage directions here are of course conjectural: it does not seem likely that the playwright, having made Dolon describe his wolf's disguise in detail, would waste the opportunity of making him crawl off in it. Cf. on l. 594, p. 63, and at the end of the play.
P. 16, l. 267. Hector is as bluff and hasty here as he is impulsively obstinate in l. 319 ff., p. 19, impulsively frank to Rhesus in l. 393 ff., p. 23, and splendidly courteous under the gibes of the wounded charioteer, l. 856 ff., p. 47. A fine stage character, if not a very subtle study.
P. 17, l. 284 ff. The description of the march of the mountaineers, the vast crowd, the noise, the mixture of all arms, suggests personal observation. A great many fifth-century Athenians had probably served some time or other in Thrace.
P. 20, l. 342, Adrasteia.]—She-from-whom-there-is-no-Running, is a goddess identified with Nemesis, a requiter of sin, especially the sin of pride or overconfidence. In spite of the opening apology this whole chorus, with its boundless exultation, is an offence against her.—It is interesting to notice that a town and a whole district in the north of the Troad was called by her name; the poet is using local colour in making his Trojans here, and Rhesus in l. 468, speak of her. There seems also to be something characteristically Thracian in the story of the Muse and the River, in the title "Zeus of the Dawn" given to Rhesus, in the revelry to be held when Ilion is free, and in the conception of the king in his dazzling chariot, Sun-god-like.
P. 23, ll. 394-453, Speeches of Hector and Rhesus.]—The scene reads to me like a rather crude and early form of the celebrated psychological controversies of Euripides. It is simple, but spirited and in character. The description of Thracian fighting again suggests personal knowledge, and so does the boasting. The Thracians apparently bound themselves with heroic boasts before battle much as Irish and Highland chieftains sometimes did, or as the Franks did with theirgabs. (See,e.g., Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, as described in Gaston Paris,Litt. du Moyen Age, I. p. 122 ff.) It was a disgrace if you did not fulfil yourgabafterwards.
Rhesus's defence is apparently true, though in a modern play one would have expected some explanation of the rather different story that his mother tells, l. 933 ff., p. 51. Perhaps he did not realise how she was holding him back. In any case ancient technique prefers to leave such details unsettled: cf., for instance, Helen's speech in theTrojan Women, in which the false is evidently mixed up with the true, and they are never separated afterwards.
P. 25, ll. 454 ff. This little Chorus seems to represent—in due tragic convention—an irrepressible outburst of applause from the Trojans, interrupting Rhesus's speech. In spite of the words about possible "wrath" that may follow the Thracian's boasting, the applause excites him at once to a yet boldergab.
P. 26, l. 480. It may be remarked that the play here uses a fairly common Homeric phrase in a sense which the scholars of our tradition knew but rejected.
P. 27, l. 501 ff. These three achievements of Odysseus are all in the traditional saga. The Rapt of the Palladium, or figure of Pallas, by Odysseus and Diomedes, was in an old lost epic, called The Little Iliad; the Begging in Troy in the Little Iliad and also in Odyssey IV. 242 ff.; the great ambuscades in Odyssey IV. 290 ff., VIII. 493 ff., and in Odysseus's own feigned story, XIV. 468 ff. According to our tradition they belong to a later period of the war than the death of Rhesus, but perhaps the sequence was different, or not so definite, at the time of this play.
P. 28, l. 528. Rhesus shows the simple courage of a barbarian in his contempt for the ruses of Odysseus, the brutality of a barbarian in the methods of punishment he proposes. Such proposals would disgust a Greek; it looks as if they displeased Hector. In any case his abruptness here, and his careful indication of the place where the Thracians are to sleep, far from the rest of the camp, have some dramatic value for the sequel.
Pp. 28-30, ll. 527-564, Stars and Nightingale chorus.]—The beauty of these lines in the Greek is quite magical, but the stage management of the scene is difficult. Apparently Hector (l. 523) bids the Guards come forward from where they are and wait nearer the front for Dolon; obeying this they come up from the orchestra, we may suppose, to the stage. Then watching somewhere near Hector's tent they partly express, in the usual song, the lyrical emotion of the night, partly they chat about Dolon and the order of the watches. The scene is technically very interesting with its rather abrupt introduction of realism into the high convention of tragedy. Meantime the Trojans' time of watch is over and the Lycians, who ought to watch next, have not come. In a modern army it would of course be the duty of the new watch to come and relieve the old; in an ancient barbaric army—characteristically—the old watch had to go and wake the new. You could not, one must suppose, trust them to take their turn otherwise. At the end of the first strophe a Guard suggests that they should rouse the Lycians; at the end of the second the Leader definitely gives the word to do so. The Guards go, and so the stage (and orchestra) is left empty.
This is plain enough; but why were the Guards brought away from their original position—from theorchestra to the stage? Probably to allow the Greek spies to pass on towards the Thracian camp by a different and unoccupied way, not by the way which the Guards had just taken.
The story of the Nightingale is well known: she was Philomêla, or in the older story Procnê, an Athenian princess, wedded to the faithless Thracian king, Têreus. In a fury of vengeance on her husband she slew their only son, Itys or Itylus, and now laments him broken-hearted for ever.
P. 31, l. 567 ff., Odysseus and Diomedes.]—Observe how we are left gradually to discover that they have met and killed Dolon. They enter carrying, as far as we can make out, a wolf-skin that looks like his: they had evidently spoken to him, ll. 572, 575: itishis and they have killed him—l. 592 f.
All the Odysseus-Diomedes scenes have something unusual about them, something daring, turbulent, and perhaps lacking in dramatic tact. The silent rush on Hector's empty tent is hard to parallel. The cruel Athena is Euripidean; but her appearance in the midst of the action is startling, though it may be paralleled from Sophocles' Ajax. In Euripides Gods are generally kept for the prologue or epilogue, away from the ordinary action. (The vision of Iris and Lyssa in the middle of the Heracles has at least the stage clear of mortals and the Chorus apparently in a kind of dream.) Again the conception of Athena pretending to be Cypris is curious. The disguised Athena is common in the Odyssey, but she does not disguise herself as another goddess. (It is sometimes held that this scene requires four actors, which would be a decisive mark of lateness; but this is not really so.The actor who took Odysseus could easily get round in time to take Paris also—especially if he made his exit at l. 626, before Athena sees Paris. And the Greek stage had no objection to such doubling.) Lastly, the scene of turmoil between the spies and the Guards is extraordinary in a tragedy, though it would suit well in a pro-satyric play. See Introduction.
P. 33, l. 594, Stage direction.]—They bear Dolon's "spoils" or "tokens": probably his wolf-skin. If they bring it with them they must probably do something with it, and to hang it where it may give Hector a violent start seems the natural proceeding. Also, they can hardly be carrying it in the scene with the Guards, l. 675 ff., p. 38 f. That would be madness. They must have got rid of it before then, and this seems the obvious place for doing so.
P. 36, ll. 637 ff., Athena as Cypris.]—It is not clear how this would be represented on the Greek stage, though there is no reason to think there would be any special difficulty. On a modern stage it could be worked as follows:—The Goddess will be behind a gauze, so that she is invisible when only the lights in front of the gauze are lit, but visible when a light goes up behind it. She will first appear with helmet and spear in some hard light; then disappear and be rediscovered in the same place in a softer light, the helmet and spear gone and some emblems of Cypris—say a flower and a dove—in their place. Of course the voice will change too.
The next scene, where the two spies are caught and let go, is clear enough in its general structure; the details must remain conjectural.
P. 40, l. 703, What the High God.]—It would beunparalleled in classical Greek to describe a man by his religion; but this phrase seems only to mean: "What is his tribal God?"i.e.what is his tribe? Thus it could be said of Isagoras in Herodotus (v. 66) that his kinsmen sacrificed to Carian Zeus, suggesting, presumably, that he had Carian blood.
P. 42, l. 728, Voice of the wounded man outside.]—The puzzled and discouraged talk of the Guards round the fire, the groaning in the darkness without, the quick alarm among the men who had been careless before, and the slow realisation of disaster that follows—all these seem to me to be wonderfully indicated, though the severe poetic convention excludes any approach to what we, by modern prose standards, would call effective realism.
P. 44, ll. 756-803. This fine vivid speech has something of the famous Euripidean Messenger-Speeches in it; though they are apt to be much longer and also are practically never spoken by a principal in the action, always by a subordinate or an onlooker. Cf. the speech of the Messenger-Shepherd above, p. 17 f. An extreme sharpness of articulation is characteristic of Euripides' later work: each speech, each scene, each effect is isolated and made complete in itself. The Messenger prepares his message, relates his message and goes, not mixing himself up in the further fortunes of the drama. But this extreme pursuit of lucidity and clear outlines is not nearly so marked in the early plays: in theCyclopsthe Messenger's speech is actually spoken by Odysseus, ll. 382-436, and the Serving Man and Serving Maid in theAlcestisare not mere abstract Messengers.
P. 46, ll. 810-830, Hector and the Guard.]—Thereis intentional colour here—the impulsive half-barbaric rage of Hector, the oriental grovelling of the Guard, and of course the quick return to courteous self-mastery with which Hector receives the taunts of the wounded man.
P. 46, l. 819. The Guard seems to think that the spies got past him when he came to Hector's tent at the beginning of the play. It was really later, when he made his men leave their post to wake the Lycians. Perhaps he is lying.
P. 48, l. 876, Justice knows.]—It is a clever touch to leave the Thracian still only half-convinced and grumbling.
P. 49, l. 882, Appearance of the Muse.]—A beautiful scene. It has been thought to come abruptly and, as it were, unskilfully on top of the familiar dialogue between Hector and the Thracian. But the movements, first of soldiers lifting and carrying the wounded man, and then of messengers taking word to Priam for burial of the men slain, make the transition much easier.
P. 50, l. 895 ff. and l. 906 ff., A dirge of the Thracian mountains.]—Such dirges must have struck the Greeks as the fragments of Ossian struck the Lowlanders among us. I have found that the dirge here goes naturally into a sort of Ossianic rhythm.
P. 51, l. 915. The speech of the Muse seems like the writing of a poet who is, for the moment, tired of mere drama, and wishes to get back into his own element. Such passages are characteristic of Euripides.—The death of Rhesus seems to the Muse like an act of vengeance from the dead Thamyris, the Thracian bard who had blasphemed the Muses andchallenged them to a contest of song. They conquered him and left him blind, but still a poet. The story in Homer is more terrible, though more civilised: "They in wrath made him a maimed man, they took away his heavenly song and made him forget his harping."
Thamyris, the bard who defied Heaven; Orpheus, the bard, saint, lover, whose severed head still cried for his lost Eurydice; Musaeus, the bard of mystic wisdom and initiations—are the three great legendary figures of this Northern mountain minstrelsy.
P. 52, l. 950. These short speeches between Hector and the Leader of the Guard make a jarring note in the midst of the Muse's lament. Perhaps it would not be so if we knew how the play was produced, but at present this seems like one of several marks of comparative crudity in technique which mark the play, amid all its daring and inventiveness.
P. 52, l. 962 ff., My son shall not be laid in any grave.]—Like other Northern barbaric princes, such as Orpheus (l. 972 below) and Zalmoxis (Herodotus, iv. 95) and Holgar the Dane, Rhesus lies in a hidden chamber beneath the earth, watching, apparently, for the day of uttermost need when he must rise to help his people. There is no other passage in Greek tragedy where such a fate is attributed to a hero, though the position of Darius in thePersaeand Agamemnon in theChoephorior theElectrais in some ways analogous.
The last lines of the Muse have a very Euripidean ring: cf.Medea, l. 1090 (p. 61, "My thoughts have roamed a cloudy land"),Alcestis, l. 882.
P. 54, ll. 983-end. This curious and moving end—not in death or peace but in a girding of tired men to greater toil—reminds one of the last words ofThe Trojan Women: "Forth to the long Greek ships And the sea's foaming," and the last words of theChanson de Rolandthere quoted.
The Trojans evidently go forth under the shadow of disaster, though with firmness and courage. The stage direction is of course purely conjectural. If Diomedes left some sign of Dolon's death for Hector to see, as he probably must have done, then Hector must at some time or other see it. If so, this seems to be the place.
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[1]Perdrizet,Cultes et Mythes de Pangée, p. 17.