Mary Sturgeon

“ So Paris was to gain the fairest woman in the world. It seemed an honest promise, full of the happiest portent; and the young prince soon set out upon his search for a bride over the western seas. But Aphrodite was no better than a cheat, and had invoked on Paris, though he did not know it then, the curse of guilty love. For the exquisite child who was to be the world’s queen of beauty had grown up in the home of Tyndareus, king of Sparta; and even while the goddess gave her word to Paris, was happily married to Menelaus there. ”

“ For once Odysseus is at a loss. How shall he address her? He is almost naked, haggard, and sea-worn, a terrible object to girlish eyes. Shall he go up close, and in the attitude of the suppliant, clasp her knees? Or will not his touch and his close approach startle and shock her? But his wits are not long to seek. He decides that it will be better not to come too near, but to address her gently, from a little distance. “I kneel to you, Protectress. God are you, or mortal?” Thus he speaks first, gracefully complimenting her beauty and courage. ”

“ The Trojan Cycle and the Theban Cycle, with all the tragic grandeur with which Æschylus and Sophocles have invested them, are left behind. We come to a new theme, fair as a garden and clean as a morning breeze. It is the tale of a wife’s supreme love: of the friendship of a god for a mortal man: of an unique act of hospitality and its magnificent requital. The oppressive sense of destiny, of something almost malign in the heart of things, has lifted. Human error and wrongdoing and impotence, which have hitherto made such a sombre background for heroic figures, are lost in a glow of human love. ”

“ They cling to each other, Iphigenia oblivious of everything but her joy, and Orestes loth to recall her to a sense of their danger. Presently her thoughts come painfully back to it, fluttering wildly round each possibility of escape together, and seeing no way clear. But when Orestes tells her of his mission to carry off the statue of the goddess, the very magnitude of its daring clarifies her mind. She sees one way, and though it is not the way that she had hoped, she is ready for the sacrifice. She must secure the statue, and Orestes must escape with it to Attica, as the god commands. ”

“ Her passionate soul flames into indignation, and in her anger she is less than just to Ismene. Despite her heroism, she is simply human. Nor is she, as has sometimes been suggested, like a martyr of the early Christian era, whose humility and gentleness would bless the hand that smote. Antigone’s warm heart is as strong in its hatred as its love; absolute in devotion, but impetuous in anger; capable of supreme self-sacrifice, and tender to infirmity; but intolerant of moral weakness and meanness and timidity. ”

“ Oceanus tries in vain to teach prudence to the high heart of the titan, and departs angrily. Then the sea-nymphs sing a sweet song of pity; and Prometheus, touched to a softer mood, begs them not to think him hard and proud. Only, the thought of his wrongs is intolerable, received at the hand of one whom he himself had helped to place upon the throne of Olympus. And what had been his crime? None. His hands are clean: his integrity absolute. His sufferings are an amazing injustice: the price of beneficent deeds to humanity that he tells over to the wondering maids. ”

“ She whose pure spirit had always ranged beyond the things of time and sense, who was the consecrated priestess of Apollo and set apart for holy service, is condemned to be the slave-wife of the man who has destroyed their city. The poor mother wails in horror at the thought: it is too awful, too sacrilegious a deed even for these proud Greeks, and she cries out in protest. The herald silences her with a brutal comment on the good fortune which makes her daughter the bride of a king; and then orders an attendant to fetch Cassandra from the tents. But there is no need for the man to go. ”

“ Despair is settling upon her when a curious incident occurs, suddenly reviving hope and making the path clear for her revenge. It is the arrival of Ægeus, King of Athens. He is travelling back from Apollo’s shrine at Delphi, where he has been to renew an old petition that the god would give him children. Medea, thinking rapidly, questions him of his errand. She sees a possibility of succour; and putting all her wrongs before him, she begs him to give her refuge at Athens. He shall not fail of a reward, for she has magic arts which will secure to him his long desire for children. ”

“ If, however, we had time for a comparison with Sophocles, we should quickly find for ourselves the one fact which gives colour to much of the critics’ grumbling. Euripides was not, like Sophocles, a consummate artist. But we should not stop at such profitless negation; for a larger truth would spring to light a moment afterward. While the art is less, the thought is much greater: there is a wider range, and a higher ideal. Euripides is not content to make perfect drama: he must give humanity the fullest and most complete expression possible to him. ”

“ To Dido, this handsome prince whose fame has reached her, and whose melancholy history is so like her own, seems to have flashed upon her as the fulfilment of her wish. And to Æneas, who has just learned that she can be kind as well as brave, she seems peerless among women. While from each to each is passed the silent intuitive sense that here is a nature great and good. Æneas, touched by her generosity to his comrades, tries to thank her. But he feels that only the gods can reward her adequately. ”

“ Calling up all her store of doubtful experience and worldly wisdom, she opposes every cunning and plausible argument to Phædra’s virtue. Can her mistress not see that she is visibly caught in the snare of Cypris? Of what use is it to struggle against so mighty a goddess? No human heart can resist the power of love; and it is wiser to yield at once than to be broken by Aphrodite’s anger.
Phædra listens patiently, seeing that the faithful old creature is prompted by real devotion; and her reply has more of pity than of anger in it, for the crooked counsel. ”

“ He says he found the babe in a high glen of Kithairon; and as, in rapid answer to the king, he tells of its poor maimed feet and of the Theban herdsman from whom he received it, the full truth falls upon Jocasta with a shattering blow. This man, the king, her husband, is none other than that outcast child, her son. But Œdipus does not see the horror yet; and as she stands rigid at his side one thought and one prayer fill her mind—that he may never know. But some frenzy seems to possess him, driving him to destroy himself. ”

“ For the suitors serve on the one hand to show Penelope’s fidelity; and on the other hand, by their arrogance and brutality, they make a complete foil to the just and subtle Odysseus. Penelope cannot cope with them; she knows them too well to dare the effect of a downright refusal; and she sets her wits to work to keep them at bay, while she longs and prays for her husband’s return. In conflict with them, her loyalty shines; and there are developed all her many merits as queen and housewife and mother. ”

“ When the news came of the fall of Troy and the return of the army, Clytemnestra had matured her plans for vengeance. For years she had nursed her wrath, and plotted with all the subtlety of her mental powers. And for years she had hoped for and dreaded the day which would bring back the king to Mycenæ. Her love for Egisthus was common knowledge in the palace. Her sin would doubtless be proclaimed to Agamemnon immediately after his arrival, even if he did not already know of it; and she knew that the penalty of it would be death. ”

“ Alcestis could not palter with reality. In quiet times the black thing was called up from its hiding place, and faced and fought. There was many an hour of anguish before it was finally conquered, since youth and beauty and happiness are precious. But from the moment when Alcestis learned that love was greater than them all—when she pledged her soul to take upon herself the evil that was coming to her husband, life grew calm and fair again. ”

“ We shall find that Calypso is gentler and more dignified; a sweeter and more gracious creature than Circe. There is nothing sinister or malign about her; and if she loves Odysseus, and strives to keep him at her side, it is that she may make him immortal, like herself. She has no evil intent toward him; and when the messenger of Zeus bids her to release him, she sets herself the task of helping him away. Odysseus has not now to pay a gruesome penalty for willing bondage, as when he left Circe in Aeaea; but wins his way by Calypso’s aid to the friendly land of Phæacia. ”

“ In Œdipus the King we know her only by name, a child of thirteen into whose sunny life a storm has suddenly crashed. In the Œdipus at Colonus, the strong young spirit has awakened, and is giving clear promise of the heights to which it will soar before its short day is done. While the Antigone, the drama which bears her name, does but fulfil and make perfect what is fair promise in the other plays. ”

“ But one impression, filtering almost unconsciously through her terror, remained and grew. It was the look of horror, almost of loathing, on every face that surrounded the unhappy king. Antigone herself could hardly bear to see him; but she vaguely felt that in these shrinking figures there was something more than physical revulsion at the sight. Why did the crowding people, the senators, even Prince Creon himself, draw away from her father as though he were some unclean thing whose touch would pollute them? ”

“ She pours out her heart to the listeners; and it is not a mere selfish recital of her own sorrow. The brain that had been clear and quick to save her lover in the extremity of danger has not lost its power. She sees the base act of Jason in its broad aspect, as a wrong to womankind; and she rises from the contemplation of her personal suffering to the thought that this, after all, is but one of the many evils that subjection brings upon women. But the greatest evil—the helpless creature goaded to crime by injustice—is present to her at this moment only as a blind craving for revenge. ”

“ When Odysseus appears there, as he sometimes does, he is overshone by the splendour of Achilles. Although he is the brain of the enterprise, he is in quite a secondary place to the physical magnificence of the younger hero. When we come to the later poem, however, we find that intelligence has risen to the higher plane. Odysseus is now the hero—not, like Achilles, an ideal of bodily strength and beauty: not a man of wrath, flaming over the battlefield in vengeance for his friend: not merely a warrior, product of a warlike age. ”

“ Many a surmise they ponder, to account for the strange malady: perhaps some god is angry with the queen for stinted rites: or the absent king her husband is unfaithful: or she has had ill tidings from her Cretan home. Their musing brings no light to the problem; but its purpose is served, for when Phædra is presently borne out on her couch, we are prepared to see a being in whom vitality is burning low; but in whom suffering is overshone by stainless honour and an unconquerable will. She is attended by her maids, and by an old nurse whose delineation is wonderful. ”

“ Here, he knew, were friendly hands and hearts; people who had never been known to refuse safe convoy to distressed mariners. And Odysseus, feeling that now at last the end of his struggles had come, steered straight ahead. But he reckoned without Poseidon. For that angry god, speeding on his homeward journey from Æthiopia to Olympus, looked down from the mountains of the Solymi and spied the raft of Odysseus, making for the safety of a Phaeacian harbour. Amazement smote him; then indignation, and then a furious desire for instant revenge. ”

“ A bloodier bride than ever Helen was
Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high
Of Hellas!... I shall kill him, mother! I
Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire
As he laid ours. My brothers and my sire
Shall win again!...“ [18] Her frenzy gives place now to a more meditative strain. It is as though the fiery cloud that hung about her brain was pierced for an instant by the sight of her grieving mother. She tries to find words to comfort Hecuba; and as the calmer mood deepens she rises to a perception of the dignity of high failure contrasted with low success. ”