Euripides

“ Born, according to the legend, in exile and fated to die in exile, Euripides, in whatever light one regards him, is a man of curious and ironic history. As a poet he has lived [Pg 8] through the ages in an atmosphere of controversy, generally—though by no means always—loved by poets and despised by critics. As a thinker he is even to this day treated almost as a personal enemy by scholars of orthodox and conformist minds; defended, idealized and sometimes transformed beyond recognition by various champions of rebellion and the free intellect. ”

“ In devoting the present volume to the study of a single writer, remote from us in time and civilization and scarcely known by more than name to many readers of the Library, I am moved by the belief that, quite apart from his disputed greatness as a poet and thinker, apart from his amazing and perhaps unparalleled success as a practical playwright, Euripides is a figure of high significance in the history of humanity and of special interest to our own generation. ”

“ It is conquest seen when the thrill of battle is over, and nothing remains but to wait and think. We feel in the background the presence of the conquerors, sinister and disappointed phantoms; of the conquered men, after long torment, now resting in death. But the living drama for Euripides lay in the conquered women. It is from them that he has named his play and built up his scheme of parts: four figures clearly lit and heroic, the others in varying grades of characterisation, nameless and barely articulate, mere half-heard voices of an eternal sorrow. ”

“ I think the best way to understand the Ion is to suppose that Euripides, in his usual manner, is just taking an old canonical legend, seeing the human drama and romance in it, and working it together in his own clear ironic mind till at last he throws out his play, saying: "There are your gods and your holy legends; see how you like them!" The irony is lurking at every corner, though of course the drama and romance come first. ”

“ If one tries to imagine what Athena, the War-Goddess worshipped by the Athenian mob, was like—what a mixture of bad national passions, of superstition and statecraft, of slip-shod unimaginative idealisation—one may partly understand why Euripides made her so evil. Allegorists and high-minded philosophers might make Athena entirely noble by concentrating their minds on the beautiful elements in the tradition, and forgetting or explaining away all that was savage ”

“ It is therefore but fair to observe, in conclusion, that quite apart from the injustice of comparing anyone else with so unique a genius as Shakspere, there are distinct reasons why the characters of Euripides, even were they equally well drawn, should not appear to us so various or life-like. For we do not always remember when reading Greek tragedies, that they are interpreted to us either by Greek scholiasts, the most hopelessly undramatic of men, or by modern professors, who are hardly better judges of the stage. ”

“ All the year round the few thousand men and few score women—'one among many, not alien from the muse' [88] —who made Euripides' world, were going in and out of the same narrow streets and markets, gardens and colonnades, courts and quays, sitting-rooms and supper-rooms, crossing and conversing incessantly. ”

“ To us, indeed, there is one feature of peculiar interest in this tragedy. With an originality which perhaps shocked old Attic playgoers as much as it shocked the French and German critics of the last century, Euripides introduces us to idyllic scenes of peasant life, which he paints with a peculiar simplicity, vividness, and homeliness of detail. ”

“ Leaving Euripides as a man and a thinker, we may pass for a moment to his art, which we perceive to be but the flower of his philosophy. His discursive and contemplative spirit, enamored of reality, did not even attempt to soar to the Titanic world of Æschylus. ”

“ The youth of Euripides fell in an age which saw perhaps the most extraordinary intellectual awakening known to human history. It had been preparing for about a century in certain cities of Ionian Greece, on the coast of Asia Minor, rich and cultivated states, subject for the most part to Lydian or Persian governors. The revolt of these cities and its suppression by Persia had sent numbers of Ionian "wise men," philosophers, poets, artists, historians, men of science, to seek for refuge in Greece, and especially in Athens. ”

“ A good Greek play moves almost always in a curve of steadily increasing tension—increasing up to the last scene but one and then, as a rule, sinking into a note of solemn calm. It often admits a quiet scene about the middle to let the play take breath; but it is very chary indeed of lifting and then dropping again, and never does so without definite reason. In pursuance of this plan, Euripides likes to have his opening as low-toned, as still, as slow in movement, as he can make it: its only tension is a feeling of foreboding or of mystery. ”

“ Thus, in the first place, Euripides has stripped the old bloody deed of the heroic glamour that surrounded it. His actors are not clear-minded heroes moving straight to their purpose. They are human creatures, erring, broken by passion, mastered by their own inhibitions and doubts and regrets. ”

“ Adventure, brilliance, invention, romance and scenic effect; these together with delightful lyrics, a wonderful command over the Greek language, and a somewhat daring admixture of sophistic wisdom which sometimes took away a spectator's breath, were probably the qualities which the ordinary public had felt in Euripides' work up to the year 438. ”

“ This is the light in which Athens conceived herself; the ideal up to which, amid much confused, hot-headed and self-deceiving patriotism, she strove to live. She was to be the Saviour of Hellas.
Euripides was about eight when the ruined walls of Athens were rebuilt and the city, no longer defenceless against her neighbours, could begin to rebuild the "House of Athena" on the Acropolis and restore the Temples and the Festivals throughout Attica. ”

“ Euripides is a most unequal author. We may commence a play with pleasure (but O for the prologues!) , we may proceed with satisfaction, but the feeling rarely lasts to the end. If I may venture an opinion upon so uncertain a subject, I should name the Hippolytus, Ion, Troades, Bacchæ, and Iphigenia in Aulis as his best plays, placing the Phœnissæ, Alcestis, Medea, Hecuba, and Orestes in a lower rank. The Helena is an amusing heap of absurdities, and reads much better in the burlesque of Aristophanes; the Electra is utterly beneath criticism ”

“ LECTURE VIII. Euripides—His Merits and Defects—Decline of Tragic Poetry through him.
When we consider Euripides by himself, without any comparison with his predecessors, when we single out some of his better pieces, and particular passages in others, we cannot refuse to him an extraordinary meed of praise. But on the other hand, when we take him in his connexion with the history of art, when we look at each of his pieces as a whole, and again at the general scope of his labours, as revealed to us in the works which have come down to us, we are forced to censure him severely on many accounts. ”

“ Amid frequent disappointments, and smarting under the lash of the comic poets—for we may be sure that where an Aristophanes led the way, others, however inferior to him, would follow eagerly—Euripides at a moment of universal dismay perhaps enjoyed some personal consolation. The mighty host which Athens had sent to Syracuse had been nearly annihilated. Of forty thousand citizens or allies that had gone forth, ten thousand only survived. ”

“ Profess not thou that any Greek was there To fall on us. What Greek could pass the screen Of Trojan posts in front of us, unseen? Thyself was stationed there, and all thy men. What man of yours was slain or wounded when Your Greek spies came? Not one; 'tis we, behind, Are wounded, and some worse than wounded, blind Forever to the sunlight. When we seek Our vengeance, we shall go not to the Greek. What stranger in that darkness could have trod Straight to where Rhesus lay—unless some God Pointed his path? ”

“ For sheer beauty of writing, for a kind of gorgeous dignity that at times reminds one of Aeschylus and yet is compatible with the subtlest clashes of mood and character, the Trojan Women stands perhaps first among all the works of Euripides. But that is not its most remarkable quality. The action works up first to a great empty scene where the child's body is brought back to his grandmother, Hecuba, for the funeral rites. A solitary old woman with a dead child in her arms; that, on the human side, is the result of these deeds of glory. ”

“ In the Electra and in Iphigenia in Tauris, [32] Euripides deals with the familiar tragedy of Orestes, pursued by the Furies after the murder of his mother, and in the Alcestis he tells the old tale of how a noble woman was willing to sacrifice her life for that of a selfish husband, and of how she was brought back from the gates of Hades by Heracles.
The strength of Euripides lies in his wonderful portrayal of character. He judges his characters by the standards of the men and women of his own day and not by those of the gods and heroes, and he is a merciless critic. ”

“ No wonder that one of Euripides' earliest plays, when he took to writing, was the story of Rhesus, the Thracian, and his rushing hordes of wild tribesmen.
But meantime Euripides had not found his work in life. We hear that he was a good athlete; there were records of his prize-winning in Athens and in Eleusis. Probably every ambitious boy in Greece did a good deal of running and boxing. More serious was his attempt at painting. Polygnôtus was at work in Athens, and the whole art advancing by leaps and bounds. ”

“ No Greek shall tell 'Tis not a wolf that walks, half visible, On four feet by the trenches and around The ship-screen. When it comes to empty ground It stands on two.—That is the plan, my friend! Leader.
Now Maian Hermes guide thee to thy end And home safe! Well he loves all counterfeit . . . Good work is there; may good luck go with it! Dolon (to himself gazing out toward the Greek camp) .
There, and then back! . . . And on this belt shall bleed Odysseus' head—or why not Diomede?— To prove my truth. Ere dawn can touch the land I shall be here, and blood upon my hand. ”

“ Birth and Childhood.The traditional day of Euripides' birth was of all days that which should have most appropriately given light to a Greek patriot-poet's eyes, the day whereon, in 480 B.C., the great sea-fight of Salamis rolled away for ever the nightmare-dread of enslavement to Asian despotism, and assured to Greece the right to live thenceforth her own life, and to achieve her high intelledtual destiny. ”

“ For wise men take occasion by the hand,
And let not fortune slip for pleasure's lure.
Orestes.
Well say'st thou: yet will fortune work, I trow,
Herein with us. But toil of strenuous hands ⁠910
Still doubles the Gods' power to render aid.
Iphigeneia.
Thou shalt not stay me, neither turn aside
From asking of Electra first—her lot
In life: all touching her is dear to me.
Orestes.
Wedded to this man (pointing to Pyl.) happy life she hath. ⁠915
Iphigeneia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The heroes of Euripides are by no means so prominent or so interesting as his heroines. While he has succeeded, among the latter, in creating immortal types, there is hardly a single hero in his extant plays of whom so much could be asserted. In Ion and in Hippolytus we have indeed charming pictures of youthful freshness and innocence, not without a certain preoccupation which seems like callousness, and shows a want of sympathy with the passions of manhood. ”

“ Thus much to thee, Theseus, I address; next to the sons of Argos I speak; when ye are grown to men's estate, the town beside Ismenus shall ye sack, avenging the slaughter of your dead sires; thou too, Ægialeus, shalt take thy father's place and in thy youth command the host, and with thee Tydeus' son marching from Ætolia,—him whom his father named Diomedes. Soon as the beards your cheeks o'ershadow must ye lead an armed Danaid host against the battlements of Thebes with sevenfold gates. For to their sorrow shall ye come like lion's whelps in full-grown might to sack their city. ”

“ In the Thesmophoriazusæ, Euripides is first ridiculed as a woman-hater, whom the women in council are determined to punish. The poet is represented as dressing up a friend in woman's attire to attend their deliberations. In the sequel the various stage devices in his plays are parodied, not without suggestion of his immorality. From the scholia explaining this piece, we have many valuable quotations of lost plays of Euripides, such as the Antiope. ”

“ PREFACE.
"It is," remarks the author of The Ancient Classical Drama, referring to Euripides, "to the disgrace of English scholarship that we have no verse translation of this all-important poet produced in our own day." Though some might peradventure challenge the inference, on the plea that our scholars have been more profitably employed, the fact is indisputable. The comparative neglect of Euripides by translators for more than a century past is, indeed, one of the enigmas of English scholarship. ”