Ephialtes

“ In a moment the barbarians came in sight, and, perceiving men arming themselves, were greatly amazed; for they had fallen in with an enemy when they expected no opposition. Hydarnes, alarmed at the sight, and fearing lest the Phocians might be Lacedaemonians, inquired of Ephialtes to what nation these troops belonged. Ephialtes told him the exact truth, whereupon he arrayed his Persians for battle. ”

“ Cimon, then the most prominent man in Athens, persuaded the Athenians to send assistance, on the ground that Athens could not “stand without her yoke-fellow” and leave “Hellas lame.” The expedition was a failure, and Cimon was exposed to the attacks of the democrats led by Ephialtes. The history of this party struggle is not clear. The ordinary account is that Ephialtes during Cimon’s absence in Messenia destroyed the powers of the Areopagus (q.v.) and then obtained the ostracism of Cimon, who attempted to reverse his policy. ”

“ Such was the way in which the people earned their livelihood. The supremacy of the Areopagus lasted for about seventeen years after the Persian wars, although gradually declining. But as the strength of the masses increased, Ephialtes, son of Sophonides, a man with a reputation for incorruptibility and public virtue, who had become the leader of the people, made an attack upon that Council. ”

“ By cancelling the political power of the Areopagus and multiplying the functions of the popular law-courts, Ephialtes abolished the last checks upon the sovereignty of the commons. His successor, Pericles, who commonly ranked as the “completer of the democracy,” merely developed the full democracy so as to secure its effectual as well as its theoretical supremacy. The foreign policy of Athens was now directed towards an almost reckless expansion (see Pericles) . The unparalleled success of the Athenian arms at this period extended the bounds of empire to their farthest limits. ”

“ Four times the body, having been taken by the Persians, was retaken by the Greeks: at last the latter retreated, bearing the dead body with them past their intrenchment, until they gained a small eminence in the rear of it, at a point where the pass was wider. Here the few that were still left gathered together. The detachment which Ephialtes had guided were coming up from below. The Spartans were faint and exhausted with their desperate efforts, and were bleeding from the wounds they had received ”

“ As a matter of fact, however, the strength of the Greeks was not sensibly impaired. The space of ground that had to be held was very small, and the Greeks could change their men actually engaged at frequent intervals.
The treachery of a native of Malis, a little Dorian state in the heart of the mountains, relieved Xerxes of his perplexity. He offered, for a reward, to show a mountain path by which [Pg 18] the Greek position could be turned. The name of this wretch, on whose head a price was set by the General Council of the Greek States, was Ephialtes. ”

“ There is a shadow that broods over the Iphigenia, though it is not the shadow of death. It is exile, homesickness. Iphigenia, Orestes, the Women of the Chorus, are all exiles, all away from their heart's home, among savage people and cruel gods. They wait on the shore while the sea-birds take wing for Hellas, out beyond the barrier of the Dark-Blue Rocks and the great stretches of magical and 'unfriended' sea. Nearly all the lyrics are full of sea-light and the clash of waters, and the lyrics are usually the very soul of Euripidean tragedy. ”

“ IPHIGENIA.
A seer called Calchas! Did he ever come ...?
ORESTES. Calchas is dead, as the news went at home.
IPHIGENIA. Good news, ye gods!—Odysseus, what of him?
ORESTES. Not home yet, but still living, as men deem.
IPHIGENIA. Curse him! And may he see his home no more.
ORESTES. Why curse him? All his house is stricken sore.
IPHIGENIA. How hath the Nereid's son, Achilles, sped?
ORESTES. Small help his bridal brought him! He is dead.
IPHIGENIA. A fierce bridal, so the sufferers tell!
ORESTES. Who art thou, questioning of Greece so well?
IPHIGENIA. I was Greek. Evil caught me long ago. ”

“ Hippolytus, charged by Theseus with the crime, will not break his oath and goes out to exile under his father's curse. The gods, in fulfilment of the curse, send death to him, but before he actually dies reveal his innocence. The story which might so easily be made ugly or sensual is treated by Euripides with a delicate and austere purity. In construction, too, and general beauty of workmanship, though not in greatness of idea or depth of passion, the Hippolytus is perhaps the finest of all his plays, and has still a great appeal on the stage. ”

“ Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades will thus be saved, if saving be possible, but what of the Chorus, of these Greek women, companions of the exile and loneliness of Iphigenia? They are indeed "true of heart and faithful found," for with no hope of going home themselves, ignored even by Iphigenia in this tremendous moment of her own hope, they loyally promise secrecy about all that concerns the plot. Yet they, too, crave for home and they give voice to their longings. They see in imagination the Greek land. ”

“ THESEUS Ye bounds of Pallas and of Pelops' race, What greatness have ye lost! Woe, woe is me! Thou Cyprian, long shall I remember thee! CHORUS On all this folk, both low and high, A grief hath fallen beyond men's fears. There cometh a throbbing of many tears, A sound as of waters falling. For when great men die, A mighty name and a bitter cry Rise up from a nation calling. [ They move into the Castle, carrying the body of HIPPOLYTUS.]
THE BACCHAE OF EURIPIDES DRAMATIS PERSONAE DIONYSUS, THE GOD ”

“ Pylades.
This clearance grant me—if the ship be wrecked,⁠755
And in the sea-surge with the lading sink
The letter, and my life alone I save,
That then of this mine oath shall I be clear.
Iphigeneia.
"For many a chance have many a shift" [26] — hear mine:—
All that is written in the letter's folds⁠760
My tongue shall say, that thou mayst tell my friends.
So is all safe: if thou lose not the script,
Itself shall voiceless tell its written tale:
But if this writing in the sea be lost,
Then thy life saved shall save my words for me. ⁠765
Pylades. ”

“ When the king of Persia was now advancing against Greece, and the Athenians were in consultation who should be general, and many withdrew themselves of their own accord, being terrified with the greatness of the danger, there was one Epicydes, a popular speaker, son to Euphemides, a man of an eloquent tongue, but of a faint heart, and a slave to riches, who was desirous of the command, and was looked upon to be in a fair way to carry it by the number of votes ”

“ But consider, for I wish to benefit you, and to receive you to my home, and, Thetis be my witness, I am grieved if I shall not save you, coming to conflict with the Greeks. Consider: death is a terrible ill.
IPH. I speak these words, no others, with due foresight. Enough is the daughter of Tyndarus to have caused contests and slaughter of men through her person: but do not thou, O stranger, die in my behalf, nor slay any one. But let me preserve Greece, if I am able.
ACH. O best of spirits, I have naught further to answer thee, since it seems thus to thee, for thou hast noble thoughts ”

“ Iphigenia, obedient to her goddess, and held by "the spell of the altar," had to consecrate the victims as they went in to be slain. So far only barbarian strangers had come: she waited half in horror, half in a rage of revenge, for the day when she should have to sacrifice a Greek. The first Greek that came was her own brother, Orestes, who had been sent by Apollo to take the image of Artemis and bear it to Attica, where it should no more be stained with human sacrifice. ”

“ REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD PREFACE The Iphigenia in Tauris is not in the modern sense a tragedy; it is a romantic play, beginning in a tragic atmosphere and moving through perils and escapes to a happy end. To the archaeologist the cause of this lies in the ritual on which the play is based. All Greek tragedies that we know have as their nucleus something which the Greeks called an Aition—a cause or origin. They all explain some ritual or observance or commemorate some great event. ”

“ Weeping; for word had come that ne'er again The foot of our Hippolytus should roam This land, but waste in exile by thy doom. So stood we till he came, and in his tone No music now save sorrow's, like our own, And in his train a concourse without end Of many a chase-fellow and many a friend. At last he brushed his sobs away, and spake: "Why this fond loitering? I would not break My Father's law—Ho, there! My coursers four And chariot, quick! This land is mine no more." Thereat, be sure, each man of us made speed. ”

“ O Goddess-queen, who erst by Aulis' clefts
Didst save me from my sire's dread murderous hand,
Save me now too with these; else Loxias' words
Through thee shall be no more believed of men. ⁠1085
But graciously come forth this barbarous land
To Athens. It beseems thee not to dwell
Here, when so blest a city may be thine.
Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Pylades enter the temple. ”

“ Orestes.
Whose shall be that dread deed, my sacrifice?
Iphigeneia.
Mine; for this office hold I of the Goddess.
Orestes.
A task, O maid, unenviable, unblest.
Iphigeneia.
Bowed 'neath necessity, I must submit. ⁠620
Orestes.
A woman, with the priest's knife slay'st thou men?
Iphigeneia.
Nay, on thine hair I shed but lustral spray.
Orestes.
The slayer, who?—if I may ask thee this.
Iphigeneia.
Within the fane be men whose part is this.
Orestes.
And what tomb shall receive me, being dead?⁠625
Iphigeneia. ”

“ For, from his home beneath Parnassus, Phocian Epeus, aided by the craft of Pallas, framed a horse to bear within its womb an armed host, and sent it within the battlements, fraught with death; whence in days to come men shall tell of "The wooden horse," with its hidden load of warriors. Groves forsaken stand and temples of the gods run down with blood, and at the altar's very base, before the god who watched his home, lies Priam dead. ”

“ Heracles:
The feasting day
Shall surely come; now I must needs away.
Heracles departs.
Admetus:
Farewell! All victory attend thy name
And safe home-coming!
Lo, I make proclaim
To the Four Nations and all Thessaly;
A wondrous happiness hath come to be:
Therefore pray, dance, give offerings and make full
Your altars with the life-blood of the Bull!
For me ... my heart is changed; my life shall mend
Henceforth. For surely Fortune is a friend.
He goes with Alcestis into the house.
Chorus:
There be many shapes of mystery ”

“ The Hero HERACLES.
The God APOLLO.
THANÁTOS or DEATH.
CHORUS, consisting of Elders of Pherae.
"The play was first performed when Glaukînos was Archon, in the 2nd year of the 85th Olympiad (438 B.C.) . Sophocles was first, Euripides second with the Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis, Telephus and Alcestis.... The play is somewhat Satyric in character."
ALCESTIS The scene represents the ancient Castle of ADMETUS near Pherae in Thessaly. It is the dusk before dawn; APOLLO, radiant in the darkness, looks at the Castle. ”

“ The events on which the action of the drama turns belong to the period of transition from the heroic and fabulous to the human and historic age of Greece. The doings of the hero Hercules, the ancestor of the Messenian Æpytus, belong to fable; but the invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians under chiefs claiming to be descended from Hercules, and their settlement in Argos, Lacedæmon, and Messenia, belong to history. Æpytus is descended on the father's side from Hercules, Perseus, and the kings of Argos; on the mother's side from Pelasgus, and the aboriginal kings of Arcadia. ”

“ We have enough fragments and quotations from the Aeschylean plays on this subject—especially the Lycurgus trilogy—to see that all kinds of small details which seemed like invention, and rather fantastic invention, on the part of Euripides, are taken straight from Aeschylus or the ritual or both. The timbrels, the fawnskin, the ivy, the sacred pine, the god taking the forms of Bull and Lion and Snake; 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 Iphigenîa in Aulis, in spite of its good plot, is not really one of Euripides' finest works; yet, if nothing else of his were preserved, it would be enough 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 stately conventions of fifth century tragedy very often like it better than any other Greek play. ”

“ PHRY. With a clamor having burst by means of bars the doors and cells where we were waiting, we run to her assistance, each to different parts of the house, one bringing stones, another spears, another having a long-handled sword in his hand. But Pylades came against us, impetuous, like as the Phrygian Hector or Ajax in his triple-crested helmet, whom I saw, I saw at the gates of Priam: but we clashed together the points of our swords: then indeed, then did the Phrygians give clear proof how inferior we were in the force of Mars to the spear of Greece. ”

“ On the other hand, a part of the mythology of Hercules, which appears to be of great antiquity,429 refers to this Ephyra in Epirus; and [pg 122] it was then quite natural, that with the conquest of Ephyra (a fabulous exploit of Hercules) the origin of a branch of the Heraclidæ should be connected, who then came with the Dorians into Peloponnesus, and by means of the Epidaurian colony to the island of Cos. ”