Euripides and His Age

who sat for long hours in his seaward cave on Salamis, meditating and perhaps writing one could not tell what, except indeed that it was "so

had not only been false to her ideals; she had sinned for the sake of success and had then failed. And her failure probably made the daily life of her citizens a thing of anxiety and discomfort. You were never quite sure o

of disapproval was enough. Besides, thought the meaner among them, the man was a known blasphemer. He had been the friend of the sophists; he had denied the gods; worse, he had denounced the doings of the gods as evil. These misfortunes that hurtled round the City's head must surely be sent for some good reason. Very likely just because the City, corrupted by the "charm of words," had allowed such wicked sophists to live? He was at one time prosecuted for

m some "Liturgy" or public service at his own cost, and he claimed that Euripides was richer and should be made to do it instead. We do not know the result of the trial; w

udge against him," and that "he lost patience with the ill-will of his fellow-citizens," but one of our earliest witnesses, Philodemus, says that when he left Athens he did so "in grief, becau

not be safe to use so rotten a foundation to build any theory upon, however likely it may be in itself that a man of this kind should meet with domestic unhappiness in one

to Magnesia, with which city he had had relations in earlier days. He had been granted some civic honours there, and had acted as Proxenus-a kind of consul or general protector-for Magnesians in Athens. There was more than one town of the name. But the one meant is probably a large town in the Maeander Valley, not far from Ephesus. It lay in Persian territor

; Zeuxis, the greatest painter of the time; and perhaps also Thucydides, the historian. It would not be like living among barbarians or even uncultivated Greeks. And it is likely enough that the old man hankered for the ease and comfort, for the atmosphere of daily "spoiling," which the royal patron was likely to provide for a lion of such special rarity. For it must have been a little before this time that Greece was ringing with a tale of the value set on Euripides in distant and hosti

t until he had killed his first man. We hear that when some Macedonian at the court made a rude remark to Euripides the King straightway handed him over to the Athenian to be scourged, a well-meant but embarrassing intervention. And the story told of Euripides' own death, if mythical, is very likely faithful in its local colour. There was a village in Macedonia where some Thracians had once settled and their descendants still lived. One of the king's big Molossian hounds once strayed into this place, and the natives promptly killed and ate her. The king fined the village a talent, which was more than it could possibly pay, and some dreadful fate might

reason to believe the story given in the Life that when Sophocles in the previous year was introducing his Chorus in the "Proagon," or Preliminary Appearance, he brought them on without th

ed to be put on the stage together by his third son, the Younger Euripides. Two of them are still extant, and one, the Bacchae, remains for all t

that version in a complete form. For the archetype of our MSS. was at some time mutilated, and the present end of the play is a patent forgery. But if we allow for these defects, the Iphigen?a in Aulis is a unique and most interesting example of a

nd musical character of the old Dionysiac ritual, making full use of such conventions as the Prologue, the Epiphany, the traditional tragic diction, and above all the Chorus. The New Comedy dropped the chorus, brought

e; the other a fine and vigorous scene of lyric dialogue, which must have suited the taste of the time far better, just as it suits our own. We have early in the play a Messenger; but instead of his entrance being formally prepared and announced in the Euripidean manner, h

the spectacle of the great army and the men who are prepared to die overseas for the honour of Hellas. But we hear a scuffle outside, and the Old Slave returns pursued by Menelaus, who seizes the letter. He calls for help. Agamemnon comes out and commands Menelaus to give the letter back. A violent scene ensues between the brothers, each telling the other home truths. Menelaus's besotted love for his false wife, his reckless selfishness and cruelty; Agamemnon's consuming ambition, his falseness and weakness, his wish to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, are all laid bare in a masterly quarrel scene. At last Agamemnon flatly refuses to give his daughter: "Let the army break up, let Menelaus go without his accursed wife, and the barbarians laugh as loudly as they will! Agamemnon will not have his child slain and his own heart broken to please any on

losed door startles them. "Is the coast clear? Yes?"-then the whisperer will come. It is the Old Slave, who can bear it no more but reveals the whole horrible plot; Iphigen?a is to be slaughtered by the priests; the marriage with Achilles was a bait for deceiving Clytemnestra.-Clytemnestra is thunderstruck, Achilles furious with rage. "He is dishonoured; he is made a fool of. What sort of man do they take him for, to use his name thus without his authority? Why could not they ask his consent? They could sacrifice a dozen gi

appeal to him. A fine scene it is, in which each character comes out clear, and through the still young and obedient Clyte

r miserable life compared with his? One man who can fight for Hellas is worth ten thousand women, who can do nothing. Besides, she has been thinking it over; she has seen the great gathered army, ready to fight and die for a cause, and, like the Chorus, has fallen under the spell of it. She realizes that it lies with her, a weak girl, to help them to victory. All great Hellas is looking to her; and she is proud and glad to give her life for Hellas."-It is a beautiful and simple speech. And the pride of Achilles withers up before it. In a new tone he answers: "God would indeed have made him blessed if he had won her for his wife. As it is, Iphigen?a is right. . . ." Yet he offers still

ugh to mark him out as a tremendous power in the development of Greek literature. Readers who enjoy drama but have never quite accustomed themselves to the

in the Bacchae. The god Dionysus, accompanied by his Wild Women, comes to his own land and is rejected by his kinsman, King Pentheus, and by the women of the royal house. The god sends his divine madness on the women. The wise Elders of the tribe warn the king; but Pentheus first binds and imprisons the god; then yielding gradually to the divine power, agrees to go disguised in woman's garb to watch the secret worship of the Maenads on Mt. Kithairon. He goes, is discovered by the Maenads and torn in fragments. His mother, Agave, returns in triumph dancing with her son's head, whic

; the dances on the mountain at dawn; the Old Men who are by the power of the god made young again; the god represented as beardless and like a woman; the god imprisoned and escaping; the earthquake that wrecks Pentheus' palace; the victim Pentheus disguised as a woman; all these and more can be shown to be in the ritual and nearly all are in the extant fragments of Aeschylus. Even variants of the story which have been us

well call them-The God, the Young King, the Old King, the Prophet; and as for Agave, our MSS. do as a rule simply call her "Woman." The Iphigen?a is full of informalities, broken metres, interruptions. Its Chorus hardly matters to the plot and has little to sing. The Bacchae is the most f

ssion, it is drama. The poet cannot simply and without a veil state his own views; he can only let his own personality shine through the dim curtain in front of which his puppets act their traditional parts and utter their appropriate sentiments. Thus it is doubly elusive. And therein no doubt lay its charm to the poet. He had a vehicle into which he could pour many of those "vaguer faiths and aspirations which a man feel

l saint. The saint, let us suppose, is very meek and is cruelly persecuted by a wicked emperor, whom he threatens with hell fire; and at the end let us have the emperor in the midst of that fire and the saint in glory saying,

d for their worship (201, 331, 370: cf. Aesch. fr. 22?), nor to observe that the Chorus habitually makes loud professions of faith under the very nose of the tyrant without his ever attending to them (263 f., 328 f., 775 f.). Nor even that the traditional earthquake which destroys the palace causes a good deal of trouble in the thinking out. It had to be there; it was an integral part of the story in Aeschylus (fr. 58), and in all probability before him. O

ith and endurance would stir our souls. Then, when the tables were turned and the oppressors were seen writhing in Hell, we should feel that, at their worst, they did not quite deserve that: we shoul

revenge, and the revenge becomes more horrible than the original oppression. In these plays the poet offers no solution. He gives us only t

ind that he had poured all his soul into the Latin hymns, or into the spectacle of the saint, alone and unterrified, defying all the threats and all the temptations which the Emperor can bring to bear upon him. There might th

ast seems to be made in each Chorus between the strophe and the antistrophe. It is not consistent; though it is likely enough that, if one had taxed Euripides with the contradiction, he might have had some answer that would surprise us. His first defence, of course, would be a simple one; it is not the playwright's business to have any views at all; he is only re-telling a traditional story and trying to tell it right. But he might also venture outside his defences and answer more frankly: "This spi

e, and there is t

e Thee, Thou spir

it even thou

f his ways and was returning to orthodoxy. Such a view strikes us now as almost childish in its incompetence. Yet there is, I think, a gleam of muddled truth somewhere behind it. There was no repentance; there was no return

, of much denial; but it is also a spirit of search and wonder and surmise. He was not in any sense a "mere" rationalist. We find in his plays the rule of divine justice often

n there is a

is non

unetoi." Euripides at times "hath deep in his hope a belief in some Understanding," and is represented in the Frogs as actually praying to it by that name; but he sometimes finds the facts against him (Hippolytus, 1105; Frogs, 893; Iph. Aul., 394a; Her., 655; Tro., 884 ff., compared with the sequel of the play). The question between polytheism and monothei

of gods, whate

l. But morally, it would seem, these forces are not better, but less good, than man, who at least loves and pities and t

in his teeth by Aristophanes. That satirist, when piling up Euripides' theatrical iniquities, takes as his

the thing tha

our Life dyin

at all we be

uffering, and

touched with

me other shape of life" in the Medea and even in the Ion (Med., 1039; Ion, 1068). Nay, more, death may be the state that we unconscio

r far-off st

n Life to

the Dark hat

under and

irring thought this, and much nearer to the heart of mysticism than any mere assertion of human immortality. Thus it is not from any position like what we should cal

carefully to the popular religious prejudices-such politicians always do: but in practice they thought as little of "the gods" as the most pronounced sceptic could wish. They had quite rejected such unprofitable ideals as "pity and charm of words and the generosity of strength," to which the simple man of the old times had always had the door of his heart open. They were haunters of the market-place, mockers at all simplicity, close pursuers of gain and revenge; rejecters, the poet might feel in his bitterness, both of beauty and of God. And the Herd, as represented by Athens, followed them. Like other ideal democrats he turned away from the actual Demos, which surrounded him and howled him down, to a Demos of his imagination, pure and uncorrupted, in w

ameless herd

aith that are tr

her passage, which I translate literally, he seems to make his exact position more clear: "As for Knowledge, I bear her no grudge; I take joy in the pursuit of her. But the other things" (i.e., the other elements of existence) "a

ssing them. He who most loves the ideal Natural Man seldom agrees with the majority of his neighbours. But for the meantime the poet is wrapped

from an intolerable atmosphere, the simple Homeric life in Macedonian forests and mountains, and perhaps even the sight of real Bacchantes dancing there. But it may be that the chief factor is simply this. When a man is fairly confronted with death and is consciously doing his last work in the world, the chances are that, if his brain is clear and unterrified, the

ading, being then misinformed about the MS., but the gener