{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_35472/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_35472","id":"gutenberg_35472","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35472","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: History - Ancient","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas","Euripides -- Criticism and interpretation","Mythology, Greek, in literature","Tragedy"],"text":"</pre>\n\nE-text prepared by Barbara Watson, James Wright, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Canada Team (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from page\nimages generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries\n(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)\n\n\n\nNote: Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See\n      http://www.archive.org/details/euripideshisage00murruoft\n\n\n\nHome University Library of Modern Knowledge\n\nEURIPIDES AND HIS AGE\n\nby\n\nGILBERT MURRAY\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon\nWilliams & Norgate\n\nHenry Holt & Co., New York\nCanada: Wm. Briggs, Toronto\nIndia: R. & T. Washbourne, Ltd.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nHome University Library of Modern Knowledge\n\n_Editors_:\n\nHERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.\nPROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT., LL.D., F.B.A.\nPROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.\nPROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.\n(Columbia University, U.S.A.)\n\nNew York\nHenry Holt and Company\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nEURIPIDES AND HIS AGE\n\nBY\n\nGILBERT MURRAY\nLL.D., D.Litt., F.B.A.\n\nRegius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon\nWilliams and Norgate\n\nPrinted by\nThe London and Norwich Press Limited\nLondon and Norwich\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER                                                                PAGE\n\n    I Introductory                                                        7\n\n   II Sources for a Life of Euripides: Memories remaining\n      in the Fourth Century: Youth: Athens after the Persian War: the\n      great Sophists                                                     20\n\n  III What is a Greek Tragedy? Euripides' early Plays up to 438 B.C.,\n      \"Alcestis\" and \"Telephus\"                                          60\n\n   IV Beginning of the War: the Plays of Maturity from \"Medea\"\n      to \"Heracles\"                                                      81\n\n    V Full Expression: the Embittering of the War:\n      Alcibiades and the Demagogues: the \"Ion\": the \"Trojan Women\"      107\n\n   VI After 415: Euripides' last years in Athens: from\n      \"Andromeda\" and \"Iphigenia\" to \"Electra\" and \"Orestes\"            142\n\n  VII After 408: Macedonia: \"Iphigenia in Aulis\": \"Bacchae\"             165\n\n VIII The Art of Euripides: Traditional Form and Living Spirit:\n      the Prologue, the Messenger, the \"God from the Machine\"           198\n\n   IX The Art of Euripides, continued: The Chorus: Conclusion           228\n\n      Bibliography                                                      247\n\n      Note on the Pronunciation of Names                                251\n\n      Index                                                             253\n\n\n\n\nEURIPIDES AND HIS AGE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nINTRODUCTORY\n\n\nMost of the volumes of this series are occupied with large subjects and\nsubjects commonly recognized as important to great masses of people at\nthe present day. In devoting the present volume to the study of a single\nwriter, remote from us in time and civilization and scarcely known by\nmore than name to many readers of the Library, I am moved by the belief\nthat, quite apart from his disputed greatness as a poet and thinker,\napart from his amazing and perhaps unparalleled success as a practical\nplaywright, Euripides is a figure of high significance in the history of\nhumanity and of special interest to our own generation.\n\nBorn, according to the legend, in exile and fated to die in exile,\nEuripides, in whatever light one regards him, is a man of curious and\nironic history. As a poet he has lived through the ages in an\natmosphere of controversy, generally--though by no means always--loved\nby poets and despised by critics. As a thinker he is even to this day\ntreated almost as a personal enemy by scholars of orthodox and\nconformist minds; defended, idealized and sometimes transformed beyond\nrecognition by various champions of rebellion and the free intellect.\nThe greatest difficulty that I feel in writing about him is to keep in\nmind without loss of proportion anything like the whole activity of the\nmany-sided man. Recent writers have tended to emphasize chiefly his work\nas a destructive thinker. Dr. Verrall, the most brilliant of all modern\ncritics of Euripides, to whose pioneer work my own debt is greater than\nI can well express, entitled one of his books \"Euripides the\nRationalist\" and followed to its extreme limit the path indicated by\nthis particular clue. His vivid and interesting disciple Professor\nNorwood has followed him. In Germany Dr. Nestle, in a sober and learned\nbook, treating of Euripides as a thinker, says that \"all mysticism was\nfundamentally repugnant to him\"; a view which is certainly wrong, since\nsome of the finest expressions of Greek mysticism known to us are taken\nfrom the works of Euripides. Another good writer, Steiger, draws an\nelaborate parallel between Euripides and Ibsen and finds the one key to\nEuripides in his realism and his absolute devotion to truth. Yet an\nolder generation of Euripides-lovers felt these things quite\ndifferently. When Macaulay proclaimed that there was absolutely nothing\nin literature to equal _The Bacchae_, he was certainly not thinking\nabout rationalism or realism. He felt the romance, the magic, the sheer\npoetry. So did Milton and Shelley and Browning. And so did the older\nEnglish scholars like Porson and Elmsley. Porson, while admitting that\nthe critics have many things to say against Euripides as compared, for\ninstance, with Sophocles, answers in his inarticulate way \"_illum\nadmiramur, hunc legimus_\"--\"we admire the one, but we read the other.\"\nElmsley, so far from regarding Euripides as mainly a thinker, remarks in\npassing that he was a poet singularly addicted to contradicting himself.\nTo Porson and Elmsley the poetry of Euripides might or might not be good\non the highest plane, it was at any rate delightful. Quite different\nagain are the momentous judgments pronounced upon him as a writer of\ntragedy by two of the greatest judges. Aristotle, writing at a period\nwhen Euripides was rather out of fashion, and subjecting him to much\nserious and sometimes unintelligent criticism, considers him still \"the\nmost tragic of the poets.\" And Goethe, after expressing his surprise at\nthe general belittling of Euripides by \"the aristocracy of philologists,\nled by the buffoon Aristophanes,\" asks emphatically: \"Have all the\nnations of the world since his time produced one dramatist who was\nworthy to hand him his slippers?\" (Tagebuechern, November 22, 1831.) We\nmust try, if we can, to bear duly in mind all these different lines of\napproach.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs a playwright the fate of Euripides has been strange. All through a\nlong life he was almost invariably beaten in the State competitions. He\nwas steadily admired by some few philosophers, like Socrates; he enjoyed\nimmense fame throughout Greece; but the official judges of poetry were\nagainst him, and his own people of Athens admired him reluctantly and\nwith a grudge.\n\nAfter death, indeed, he seemed to come into his kingdom. He held the\nstage as no other tragedian has ever held it, and we hear of his plays\nbeing performed with popular success six hundred years after they were\nwritten, and in countries far removed from Greece. He influenced all the\nhigher forms of Greek writing, both in prose and poetry. He is more\nquoted by subsequent writers than any other Greek tragedian; nay, if we\nleave out of count mere dictionary references to rare words, he is more\nquoted than all the other tragedians together. And nineteen of his plays\nhave survived to our own day as against seven each of Aeschylus and\nSophocles. This seems enough glory for any man. Yet the fate that\ngrudged him prizes in his lifetime contrived afterwards to spread a\nveneer of commonplaceness over the success which it could not prevent.\nTo a great extent Euripides was read because he was, or seemed, easy;\nthe older poets were neglected because they were difficult. Attic Greek\nin his hands had begun to assume the form in which it remained for a\nthousand years as the recognized literary language of the east of Europe\nand the great instrument and symbol of civilization. He was a\ntreasure-house of Attic style and ancient maxims, and eminently useful\nto orators who liked quotations. Meantime the melody and meaning of his\nlyrics were lost, because men had forgotten the pronunciation of\nfifth-century Greek and could no longer read lyrics intelligently. The\nobviously exciting quality of his plays kept its effect; but there was\nno one to understand the subtlety of his craftsmanship, the intimate\nstudy of character, the skilful forging of links and clashes between\nscenes, the mastery of that most wonderful of Greek dramatic\ninstruments, the Chorus. Plays had practically ceased to be written.\nThey were thought of either as rhetorical exercises or as spectacles for\nthe amphitheatre. Something similar happened to the whole inward spirit\nin which he worked, call it philosophy or call it religion. Its meaning\nbecame obscured. It had indeed a powerful influence on the philosophers\nof the great fourth century schools: they probably understood at least\none side of him. But the sayings of his that are quoted broadcast and\nrepeated through author after author of the decadence are mostly\nthoughts of quite the second rank, which have lost half their value by\nbeing torn from their context, often commonplace, often--as is natural\nin fragments of dramas--mutually contradictory, though almost always\nsimply and clearly expressed.\n\nIt was this clear expression which the late Greeks valued so highly.\n\"Clarity\"--_sapheneia_--was the watchword of style in Euripides' own day\nand remained always the foremost aim of Greek rhetoric. Indeed what a\nGreek called \"rhetorike\" often implied the very opposite of what we call\n\"rhetoric.\" To think clearly, to arrange your matter under formal heads,\nto have each paragraph definitely articulated and each sentence simply\nand exactly expressed: that was the main lesson of the Greek rhetor. The\ntendency was already beginning in classical times and no classical\nwriter carried it further than Euripides. But here again Fate has been\nironical with him. The ages that were incapable of understanding him\nloved him for his clearness: our own age, which might at last understand\nhim, is instinctively repelled by it. We do not much like a poet to be\nvery clear, and we hate him to be formal. We are clever readers, quick\nin the up-take, apt to feel flattered and stimulated by a little\nobscurity; mystical philosophy is all very well in a poet, but clear-cut\nintellect--no. At any rate we are sharply offended by \"firstlys,\nsecondlys and thirdlys,\" by divisions on the one hand and on the other\nhand. And all this and more Euripides insists on giving us.\n\nIt is the great obstacle between him and us. Apart from it we have only\nto exercise a little historical imagination and we shall find in him a\nman, not indeed modern--half his charm is that he is so remote and\naustere--but a man who has in his mind the same problems as ourselves,\nthe same doubts and largely the same ideals; who has felt the same\ndesires and indignations as a great number of people at the present day,\nespecially young people. Not because young people are cleverer than old,\nnor yet because they are less wise; but because the poet or philosopher\nor martyr who lives, half-articulate, inside most human beings is apt to\nbe smothered or starved to death in the course of middle life. As long\nas he is still alive we have, most of us, the key to understanding\nEuripides.\n\nWhat, then, shall be our method in approaching him? It is fatal to fly\nstraight at him with modern ready-made analogies. We must see him in his\nown atmosphere. Every man who possesses real vitality can be seen as the\nresultant of two forces. He is first the child of a particular age,\nsociety, convention; of what we may call in one word a tradition. He is\nsecondly, in one degree or another, a rebel against that tradition. And\nthe best traditions make the best rebels. Euripides is the child of a\nstrong and splendid tradition and is, together with Plato, the fiercest\nof all rebels against it.\n\nThere is nothing paradoxical in this. No tradition is perfect. The best\nbrings only a passing period of peace or triumph or stable equilibrium;\nhumanity rests for a moment, but knows that it must travel further; to\nrest for ever would be to die. The most thorough conformists are\nprobably at their best when forced to fight for their ideal against\nforces that would destroy it. And a tradition itself is generally at its\nbest, not when it is universally accepted, but when it is being attacked\nand broken. It is then that it learns to search its own heart and live\nup to its full meaning. And in a sense the greatest triumph that any\ntradition can accomplish is to rear noble and worthy rebels. The Greek\ntradition of the fifth century B.C., the great age of Athens, not only\nachieved extraordinary advances in most departments of human life, but\nit trained an extraordinary band of critical or rebellious children.\nMany a reader of Plato's most splendid satires against democratic\nAthens will feel within him the conclusive answer: \"No place but Athens\ncould ever have reared such a man as this, and taught him to see these\nfaults or conceive these ideals.\"\n\nWe are in reaction now against another great age, an age whose\nachievements in art are memorable, in literature massive and splendid,\nin science and invention absolutely unparalleled, but greatest of all\nperhaps in the raising of all standards of public duty, the humanizing\nof law and society, and the awakening of high ideals in social and\ninternational politics. The Victorian Age had, amid enormous\ndifferences, a certain similarity with the Periclean in its lack of\nself-examination, its rush and chivalry and optimism, its unconscious\nhypocrisy, its failure to think out its problems to the bitter end. And\nin most of the current criticism on things Victorian, so far as it is\nnot mere fashion or folly, one seems to feel the Victorian spirit itself\nspeaking. It arraigns Victorian things by a Victorian standard; blames\nthem not because they have moved in a particular direction, but because\nthey have not moved far enough; because so many of the things they\nattempted are still left undone, because the ideals they preached and\nthe standards by which they claimed to be acting were so much harder of\nsatisfaction than they knew. Euripides, like ourselves, comes in an age\nof criticism following upon an age of movement and action. And for the\nmost part, like ourselves, he accepts the general standards on which the\nmovement and action were based. He accepts the Athenian ideals of free\nthought, free speech, democracy, \"virtue\" and patriotism. He arraigns\nhis country because she is false to them.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have spoken of the tradition as a homogeneous thing, but for any poet\nor artist there are two quite different webs in it. There are the\naccepted conventions of his art and the accepted beliefs of his\nintellect, the one set aiming at the production of beauty, the others at\nthe attainment of truth.\n\nNow for every artist who is also a critic or rebel there is a difference\nof kind between these two sets of conventions. For the purposes of truth\nthe tradition is absolutely indifferent. If, as a matter of fact, the\nearth goes round the sun, it does so not a whit the less because most\nages have believed the opposite. The seeker for truth can, as far as\ntruth is concerned, reject tradition without a qualm. But with art the\ncase is different. Art has to give a message from one man to another. As\nyou can only speak to a man in a language which you both know, so you\ncan only appeal to his artistic side by means of some common tradition.\nHis natural expectation, whether we try to satisfy or to surprise it, to\nsurpass or to disappoint it, is always an essential element in the\nartistic effect. Consequently the tradition cannot be disregarded.\n\nThis distinction is often strongly marked in the practice of different\nartists. One poet may be both a pioneer of new roads in thought and a\nbreaker of the laws of technique, like Walt Whitman--an enemy of the\ntradition in both kinds. Another may be slack and anarchical in his\ntechnique though quite conventional in his thought. I refrain from\nsuggesting instances. Still more clearly there are poets, such as\nShelley or Swinburne, whose works are full of intellectual rebellion\nwhile their technique is exquisite and elaborate. The thoughts are bold\nand strange. The form is the traditional form developed and made more\nexquisite.\n\nNow Euripides, except for some so-called licences in metre, belongs in\nmy judgment markedly to the last class. In speculation he is a critic\nand a free lance; in artistic form he is intensely traditional. He seems\nto have loved the very stiffnesses of the form in which he worked. He\ndeveloped its inherent powers in ways undreamed of, but he never broke\nthe mould or strayed away into shapelessness or mere realism. His last,\nand in many respects his greatest, play, the _Bacchae_, is, as far as\nour evidence goes, the most formal that he ever wrote.\n\nThese, then, are the lights in which we propose to look at Euripides. In\nattempting to reconstruct his life we must be conscious of two\nbackgrounds against which he will be found standing, according as we\nregard him as Thinker or as pure Artist. We must first try to understand\nsomething of the tradition of thought in which he was reared, that is\nthe general atmosphere of fifth century Athens, and watch how he\nexpressed it and how he reacted against it. Next, we must understand\nwhat Greek tragedy was, what rituals and conventions held it firm, and\nwhat inner fire kept it living, and so study the method in which\nEuripides used it for his chosen mode of expression, obeying its laws\nand at the same time liberating its spirit.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE SOURCES FOR A LIFE OF EURIPIDES: THE MEMORIES REMAINING IN THE FOURTH\n     CENTURY: HIS YOUTH AND ITS SURROUNDINGS: ATHENS AFTER THE PERSIAN WAR:\n     THE GREAT SOPHISTS\n\n\nIt is in one sense impossible to write a life of Euripides, for the\nsimple reason that he lived too long ago. In his time people were only\njust beginning to write history at all; Herodotus, the \"father of\nhistory,\" was his close contemporary. They had begun to record really\ngreat events; but it had not occurred to them that the life of any\nindividual was worth all the trouble of tracing out and writing down.\nBiography of a sort began about two generations afterwards, when the\ndisciples of Aristotle and Epicurus exerted themselves to find out and\nrecord the lives of their masters. But biography in our sense--the\ncomplete writing of a life year by year with dates and documents--was\nnever practised at all in antiquity. Think of the Gospels, of the Acts,\neven of Tacitus's _Life of Agricola_. They are different one from\nanother, but they are all unlike any modern biography in their resolute\nindifference to anything like completeness. Ancient \"Lives\" as a rule\nselect a few great deeds, a few great sayings or discourses; they\nconcentrate upon the last years of their subject and often especially\nupon his death.\n\nThe dates at which various eminent men of antiquity died are well known.\nThe man was then famous and his death was a memorable event. But--except\nin a few aristocratic states, like Cos, which records the actual\nbirthday of the great physician Hippocrates--no baby was eminent and not\nmany young men. Very few dates of birth are known; and in the case of\nalmost all the famous men of antiquity their early histories are\nforgotten and their early works lost. So it is with Euripides.\n\nHistory in later antiquity was chiefly a branch of _belles lettres_ and\nmade no great effort after exactness. As a rule it contented itself with\nthe date at which a man \"flourished,\" a very rough conception,\nconventionally fixed either by the time when he did his most memorable\nwork or the year when he reached the age of forty. The year commonly\nassigned to Euripides' birth is a good instance of ancient method in\nthese things. The system of chronology was badly confused. In the first\nplace there was no generally accepted era from which to date; and even\nif there had been, the numerical system, before the invention of Arabic\nciphers, was as confused as English spelling is at the present day, and\nmade it hard to do the simplest sums. So the ordinary educational plan\nwas to group events together in some scheme that might not be quite\nexact but was calculated to have some symbolic interest and to stay in\nthe memory. For instance, the three great tragedians were grouped\ntogether round the Battle of Salamis, the great triumph of the Persian\nWars in 480 B.C. Aeschylus fought among the heavy-armed infantry,\nSophocles danced in a choir of boys to celebrate the victory, and\nEuripides was born in Salamis on the day of the battle. We do not know\nthe origin of this pleasant fable; but we have another date given in a\nvery ancient chronicle called the _Parian Marble_, which was found in\nthe island of Paros in the seventeenth century and was composed in the\nyear 264 B.C. It puts the birth of Euripides in 484 B.C., and since we\ncannot find any reason why this year should be invented, and since the\n_Marble_ is the oldest witness now extant, we shall probably do well\nprovisionally to accept its statement.\n\nIn some of the MSS. which preserve Euripides' plays there are \"scholia\"\nor ancient traditional commentaries written round the margin. A few of\nthe oldest notes in them come from Alexandrian scholars who lived in the\nsecond century B.C. Others date from Roman times, in the first few\ncenturies of the Christian era; others from the eleventh century and\neven later. And among them there is a quite ancient document called\n_Life and Race of Euripides_.\n\nIt is anonymous and shapeless. Sentences may have been added or omitted\nby the various people who at different times have owned or copied the\nMSS. But we can see that it is derived from early sources, and notably\nfrom a \"Life\" which was written by one Satyrus, a writer of the\nPeripatetic or Aristotelian school, towards the end of the third century\nB.C. Fragments from the same source have been detected in the Latin\nauthors Varro and Gellius; and it has influenced the biographical notice\nin the ancient Greek lexicon of Suidas (tenth century A.D.). Suidas used\nalso another earlier and better source, the _Attic Chronicle_ of\nPhilochorus.\n\nPhilochorus was a careful and systematic annalist of the early third\ncentury B.C., who used official documents and verified his statements.\nHis main work was to record all that affected Athens--history, myths,\nfestivals, and customs, but he also wrote various special treatises, one\nof which was _On Euripides_. Satyrus wrote a series of _Lives of Famous\nMen_, which was very popular, and we are now--since 1911--in a position\nto judge how undeserved its popularity was. For fragments of his _Life\nof Euripides_ have been unearthed in Egypt by Drs. Grenfell and Hunt and\npublished in their _Oxyrrhyncus Papyri_, vol. ix. The life takes the\nform of a dialogue--apparently a dialogue with a lady. It is a mass of\nquotations, anecdotes, bits of literary criticism, all run together with\nan air of culture and pleasantness, a spice of gallantry and a\nsurprising indifference to historical fact. Evidently anecdotes amused\nSatyrus and facts, as such, did not. He cared about literary style, but\nhe neither cared nor knew about history. The following considerations\nwill make this clear.\n\nEuripides was, more than any other figure in ancient history, a\nconstant butt for the attacks of comedy. And we find, oddly enough, that\nmost of the anecdotes about Euripides in Satyrus are simply the jokes of\ncomedy treated as historical fact. For instance, in Aristophanes' play,\n_The Women at the Thesmophoria_, the women, while alone at this private\nfestival, agree to murder Euripides because, by his penetrating study of\nfemale character on the stage, he has made life too difficult for them.\nEuripides, hearing of the plot, persuades his elderly father-in-law to\ngo in disguise to the forbidden celebration and defend him--which he\ndoes in a ruinously tactless way. Some scenes of brilliant farce are\nsucceeded by a solemn truce between Euripides and the women of Athens.\nIt shows what our tradition is worth when we find that both the \"_Life\nand Race_,\" and Gellius and Satyrus himself, give as sober fact this\nstory which we know--and if we did not know could surely see--to be\ncomic invention. There is another class of fabulous anecdote which plays\nan even larger part in the Satyrus tradition. In Aristophanes' _Frogs_\n(1.1048), in a scene where Euripides is defending his plays against the\nattacks of Aeschylus, there occurs the chance suggestion that Euripides\nhad learnt from his own experience all the varied villanies of his\nwicked heroines. The idea took root, and he is represented in the\nanecdotes as a deceived husband, like his own Theseus or Proetus, and\nuttering lines suitable to the occasion out of his own tragedies; as\nhaving two wives at once, like his own Neoptolemus--one of them named\nChoirile, or \"Piggy,\" and each of course worse than the other; as torn\nto pieces by hounds, like his own Actaeon, or by wild women, like his\nown Pentheus.\n\nSomething of this sort is possibly the origin of a famous joke about\nEuripides' mother, which runs through Aristophanes and is repeated as a\nfact in all the Lives. We know from Philochorus that it was not true.\nThe joke is to connect her with chervil--a grassy vegetable which grew\nwild and was only eaten in time of famine--or with wild green-stuff in\ngeneral, or simply to call her a greengrocer. It was also a joke to say\nanything about beet-root. (_Acharn._ 894, _Frogs_ 942), A man begs\nEuripides to bring\n\n  \"A new-born chervil from thy mother's breast.\"\n                                    (_Acharn._ 478.)\n\nOr we hear that\n\n                      \"Wild wrongs he works on women,\n  Wild as the greens that waved about his cradle.\"\n                                     (_Thesm._ 455.)\n\nWhen some one is about to quote Euripides his friend cries:\n\n  \"Don't, don't, for God's sake! Don't be-chervil me!\"\n                                     (_Knights_ 19.)\n\nNow a much-quoted line from Euripides' tragedy _Melanippe the Wise_\nruns: \"It is not my word but my mother's word\"; and we know that\nMelanippe, and still more her mother, was an authority on potent herbs\nand simples. Turn his heroine's mother into his own mother and the\npotent herbs into some absurd vegetable, and the fable is made.\n\nSetting aside this fog of misunderstanding and reckless anecdote, let us\ntry to make out the method on which our best authority, Philochorus, may\nhave put together his account of Euripides. He had almost no written\nmaterials; he had no collection of letters and papers such as go to the\nmaking of a modern biography. He could, however, consult the public\nrecords of tragic performances as collected and edited by Aristotle and\nhis pupils and thus fix the dates of Euripides' plays, especially his\nfirst and last performance, his first victory, and the like. He would\nalso find a few public inscriptions in which the poet's name was\nmentioned, for the archives of that time were mostly engraved on stone\nand put up in public places. There was also a portrait bust, authentic\nthough slightly idealized, taken in the poet's old age, and showing the\nworn and beautiful face, the thin hair, and the lips somewhat fallen in.\nThese sources would give him a few skeleton facts; for anything more he\nwould have to depend on the accidental memories that survived. If he\nwrote about 300-290 B.C. there was no one living who could remember a\nman who died in 406. But there might be men of seventy whose fathers had\nspoken to Euripides and whose grandfathers had known him well. Thus he\nmight with luck have struck some vein of intimate and intelligent\nmemory, which would have helped us to understand the great man. But he\ndid not. The memories are all about the poet's old age, and they are all\nvery external. We hear that he wore a long beard and had moles on his\nface. He lived very much alone, and hated visitors and parties. He had a\nquantity of books and could not bear women. He lived on the island of\nSalamis in a cave which had two openings and a beautiful view--a good\ncave was probably more comfortable than many a Greek house, so this may\nnot have been a great eccentricity--and there you could see him \"all day\nlong, thinking to himself and writing, for he simply despised anything\nthat was not great and high.\" It is like the memories of a child, rather\na puzzled child, watching the great man from a distance.\n\nSome few things come out clearly. He lived in his last years with a\nsmall knot of intimates. Mnesilochus, his wife's father--or, perhaps,\nanother Mnesilochus of the same family--was a close friend. So was his\nservant or secretary, Cephisophon. We do not hear of Socrates as an\nintimate: the two owed a great debt to one another, and we hear that\nSocrates never went to the theatre except when Euripides had a play\nperforming: to see a Euripides play he would even stir himself so far as\nto walk all the way to the Piraeus. But it is likely enough that both\nmen were too vivid and original, perhaps too much accustomed to dominate\ntheir respective circles, to be quite comfortable in the same room. And\nwe never find Euripides conversing with Socrates in Plato's dialogues.\n\nSome of Euripides' older friends were by this time driven out from\nAthens. The great \"Sophist,\" Protagoras, had read his famous book, _On\nthe Gods_, in Euripides' own house. But he was now dead, drowned at sea,\nand the poet's master, Anaxagoras, had died long before. Some of the\nyounger artists seem to have found a friend in Euripides. There was\nTimotheus, the young Ionian composer, who--like most musicians of any\noriginality--was supposed to have corrupted the music of the day by his\nflorid style and bold inventions. His first performance in Athens was a\nmortifying failure, and we are told that the passionate Ionian was on\nthe point of killing himself when the old poet came and encouraged him.\nHe had only to hold fast, and the people who now hissed would turn and\napplaud.\n\nOne fact is especially clear, the restless enmity of the comic writers.\nOf the eleven comedies of Aristophanes which have come down to us three\nare largely devoted to Euripides, and not one has managed altogether to\navoid touching him. I know of no parallel to it in all the history of\nliterature. Has there ever again been a tragic poet, or any poet, who so\ncentred upon himself year after year till he was nearly eighty the\nmocking attention of all the popular wits? And how was it that the\nAthenian public never tired of this incessant poet-baiting, these\nincessant appeals to literary criticism in the midst of farce? The\nattacks are sometimes rough and vicious, sometimes acute and searching,\noften enough they hide a secret admiration. And the chief enemy,\nAristophanes, must, to judge from his parodies, have known a large\nnumber of Euripides' ninety-two plays by heart, and been at least half\nfascinated by the object of his satire. However that may be, the\nhostility of the comic writers had evidently a general hostility behind\nit. Our tradition states this definitely and the persistency of the\nattacks proves it. You cannot go on constantly deriding on the stage a\nperson whom your audience does not wish derided. And the unpopularity of\nEuripides, as we shall see later, is not hard to understand. The Satyrus\ntradition puts it down to his personal aloofness and austerity. He\navoided society, and he \"made no effort to please his audience.\" So that\nat least he did not soften by personal pleasantness the opposition they\nfelt to his whole view of life. It was not only that he was utterly\nalienated from the War Party and the mob leaders: here he only agreed\nwith Aristophanes. It was that he had pierced through to a deeper\nstratum of thought, in which most of the pursuits and ideals of the men\nabout him stood condemned. Socrates reached the same plane, and they\nkilled Socrates.\n\nIt is somewhat harder to understand the universal assumption of our\nauthorities that Euripides was a notorious castigator of the female sex\nand that the women of Athens naturally hated him. To us he seems an\naggressive champion of women; more aggressive, and certainly far more\nappreciative, than Plato. Songs and speeches from the _Medea_ are\nrecited to-day at suffragist meetings. His tragic heroines are famous\nand are almost always treated with greater interest and insight than his\nheroes. Yet not only the ancients, but all critics up to the last\ngeneration or so, have described him as a woman-hater. What does it\nmean? Is Aristophanes ironical, and are the scholiasts and grammarians\nmerely stupid? Or is there some explanation for this extraordinary\njudgment?\n\nI think the explanation is that the present age is the first, or almost\nthe first, that has learned to treat its heroines in fiction as real\nhuman beings, with what are called \"mixed characters.\" As lately as the\ntime of Sir Walter Scott, perhaps as lately as Dickens, common\nconvention demanded that a heroine, if sympathetic, should be so free\nfrom faults as to be almost without character. Ibsen's heroines, who\nwere real human beings studied with sympathy but with profound\nsincerity, seemed to their generation shocking and even horrible. All\nthrough the ages the ideal of womanhood in conventional fiction has\nmostly been of the type praised by one great Athenian thinker: \"the\ngreatest glory for a woman is to be as little mentioned as possible\namong men.\" If that ideal was really predominant among the women of\nAthens, it is no wonder that they felt outraged by Euripides. They had\nnot reached, and most of their husbands had not reached, the point of\nbeing interested in good study of character, much less the point of\ndemanding a freer and more strenuous life. To the average stupid\nAthenian it was probably rather wicked for a woman to have any\ncharacter, wicked for her to wish to take part in public life, wicked\nfor her to acquire learning, or to doubt any part of the conventional\nreligion, just as it was wicked for her to deceive her husband. Such\nwomen should not be spoken about; above all they should not be treated\nwith understanding and sympathy. The understanding made it all\ninfinitely worse. To people of this type the women of Euripides must\nhave been simply shocking and the poet himself a cruel enemy of the sex.\nOne only wonders that they could stand Sophocles' heroines, such as\nAntigone and Jocasta. To cleverer men, like Aristophanes, the case\nwould, no doubt, seem rather more complicated. But Aristophanes, amid\nthe many flashes of sympathy he shows for \"advanced\" women, was not the\nman to go against his solid conservative audience or to forgo such rich\nmaterial for jokes.\n\nIn any case this is the kind of picture we have of Euripides in his last\nyears; a figure solitary, austere, with a few close intimates, wrapped\nup in living for what he would call \"the service of the Muses,\" in\nmusic, poetry and speculation; capable still of thrilling his audiences\nwith an intensity of tragic emotion such as no other poet had ever\nreached; but bowed with age, somewhat friendless, and like other\nsolitaries a little strange in his habits; uncomprehendingly admired and\nhated, and moving always through a mist of half-envious, half-derisive\nlaughter. _Calvus et calvinista_--one is reminded, amid many\ndifferences, of the quaint words in which William the Silent describes\nhis own passage from youth to age, till the brilliant Catholic prince,\nleader of courts and tourneys, sate at last in his lonely council\nchamber \"bald and a Calvinist.\" Let us try to trace the path of life\nwhich led him to this end.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nHe was the son of Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides--such names often have\nalternative forms--who is said to have been a merchant. His mother,\nCleito, the supposed greengrocer, was, according to Philochorus, \"of\nvery high birth.\" He was born at Phlya, a village in the centre of\nAttica. The neighbourhood is celebrated still for its pleasant trees and\nstreams in the midst of a sunburnt land. In Euripides' time it was more\nfamous for its temples. It was the seat of Demeter Anesidora (Earth,\nUpsender of Gifts), of Dionysus of the Blossom, and the Dread Virgins,\nold-world and mysterious names, not like the prevailing gods of the\nHomeric mythology. Most famous of all, it possessed the mystery temple\nof Eros, or Love. Owing to the researches of recent years, these\nmysteries can now be in their general nature understood. They are\nsurvivals of an old tribal society, in which all the boys as they\nreached maturity were made to pass through certain ordeals and\ninitiations. They were connected both with vegetation and with re-birth\nafter death, because they dated from a remote age in which the\nfruitfulness of the tribal fields was not differentiated from the\nfruitfulness of the flocks and the human families, and the new members\nborn into the community were normally supposed to be the old ancestors\nreturning to their homes. By Euripides' day such beliefs had faded into\nmystical doctrines, to be handled with speechless reverence, not to be\nquestioned or understood, but they had their influence upon his mind.\nThere were other temples too, belonging to the more aristocratic gods of\nheroic mythology, as embodied in Homer. Euripides was in his youth\ncup-bearer to a certain guild of Dancers--dancing in ancient times had\nalways religious associations about it--who were chosen from the \"first\nfamilies in Athens\" and danced round the altar of the Delian Apollo. He\nwas also Fire-bearer to the Apollo of Cape Zoster; that is, it was his\noffice to carry a torch in the procession which on a certain night of\neach year met the Delian Apollo at Cape Zoster, and escorted him on his\nmystic path from Delos to Athens.\n\nWhen the child was four years old he had to be hurried away from his\nhome and then from his country. The Persians were coming. The awful\nwords lost none of their terror from the fact that in Greek the word\n\"Persai,\" Persians, meant \"to destroy.\" So later it added something to\nthe dread inspired by Rome that her name, \"Roma,\" meant \"strength.\" The\nfamily must have crossed the narrow seas to Salamis or further, and seen\nthe smoke of the Persian conflagrations rising daily from new towns and\nvillages of Attica and at last from the Acropolis, or Citadel, itself.\nThen came the enormous desperate sea-battle; the incredible victory; the\nsight of the broken oriental fleet beating sullenly away for Asia and\nsafety, and the solemn exclamation of the Athenian general,\nThemistocles, \"It is not we who have done this!\" The next year the\nAthenians could return to Attica and begin to build up their ruined\nfarms. Then came the final defeat of the Persian land army at Plataea,\nand the whole atmosphere lifted. Athens felt that she had acted like a\nhero and was reaping a hero's reward. She had borne the full brunt of\nthe war; she had voluntarily put herself under the orders of Sparta\nrather than risk a split in the Greek forces; and now she had come out\nas the undisputed mistress of the sea, the obvious champion round whom\nthe eastern Greeks must rally. Sparta, not interested in matters outside\nher own borders, and not capable of any constructive policy, dropped\nsulkily out, and left her to carry on the offensive war for the\nliberation of the Greeks in Asia. The current of things was with her.\n\nBut this great result was not merely the triumph of a particular city;\nit was the triumph of an ideal and a way of life. Freedom had defeated\ndespotism, democracy had defeated kings, hardy poverty had defeated all\nthe gold of the East. The men who fought of their free will for home and\ncountry had proved more lasting fighters than the conscripts who were\nkept in the lines by fear of tortures and beheadings and impalements.\nAbove all \"virtue,\" as the Greeks called it, or \"virtue\" and \"wisdom\"\ntogether, had shown their power. The words raise a smile in us; indeed,\nour words do not properly correspond with the Greek, because we can not\nget our ideas simple enough. \"Virtue\" is what makes a man, or anything\nelse, good; it is the quality of a good soldier, a good general, a good\ncitizen, a good bootmaker, a good horse or almost a good sword. And\n\"wisdom\" is that by which a man knows how to do things--to use a spear,\nor a tool, to think and speak and write, to do figures and history and\ngeometry, to advise and convince his fellow-citizens. All these great\nforces moved, or so it seemed at the time, in the same direction; and\nprobably it was hardly felt as a dangerous difference when many people\npreferred to say that it was \"piety\" that had won in the war against\n\"impiety,\" and that the Persians had been destroyed because, being\nmonotheists, they had denied the Gods. No doubt \"piety,\" properly\nunderstood, was a kind of \"wisdom.\" Let us take a few passages from the\nold Ionian historian, Herodotus, to illustrate what the feeling for\nAthens was in Euripides' youth.\n\nAthens represented Hellenism. (_Hdt._ I. 60.) \"The Greek race was\ndistinguished of old from the barbarian as more intelligent and more\nemancipated from silly nonsense (or 'savagery') . . . And of all the\nGreeks the Athenians were counted first in Wisdom.\" Athens, as the old\nepigram put it, was \"The Hellas of Hellas.\"\n\nAnd this superior wisdom went with freedom and democracy. \"So Athens\ngrew. It is clear wherever you test it, what a good thing is equality\namong men. Athens under the tyrants was no better than her neighbours,\neven in war; when freed from the tyrants she was far the first of all.\"\n(V. 78.)\n\nAnd what did this freedom and democracy mean? A speaker in Herodotus\ntells us (III. 80): \"A tyrant disturbs ancient laws, violates women,\nkills men without trial. But a people ruling--first the very name of it\nis beautiful, and secondly a people does none of these things.\"\n\nAnd the freedom is not mere licence. When Xerxes heard the small numbers\nof the Greeks who were opposed to him he asked why they did not all run\naway, \"especially as you say they are free and there is no one to stop\nthem?\" And the Spartan answered: \"They are free, O King, but not free to\ndo everything. For there is a master over them named Law, whom they fear\nmore than thy servants fear thee.\" (VII. 104. This refers specially to\nthe Spartans, but the same tale is told by Aeschylus of the Athenians.\nIt applies to any free Greeks as against the enslaved barbarian.)\n\nThe free Athenian must also have _arete_, \"virtue.\" He must be a better\nman in all senses than the common herd. As Themistocles put it; at every\nturn of life there is a choice between a higher and a lower, and they\nmust choose the higher always. Especially there is one sense in which\nAthens must profess _arete_; the sense of generosity or chivalry. When\nthe various Greek states were contending for the leadership before the\nbattle of Artemisium, the Athenians, though contributing much the\nlargest fleet, \"thought that the great thing was that Greece should be\nsaved, and gave up their claims.\" (_Hdt._ VIII. 3.) In the similar\ndispute for the post of honour and danger, before the battle of Plataea,\nthe Athenians did plead their cause and won it. But they pleaded\npromising to abide loyally by Sparta's decision if their claims were\nrejected, and their arguments show what ideal they had formed of\nthemselves. They claim that in recent years they alone have met the\nPersians single-handed on behalf of all Greece; that in old times it was\nthey who gave refuge to the children of Heracles when hunted through\nGreece by the tyrant Eurystheus; it was they who, at the cost of war,\nprevented the conquering Thebans from leaving their dead enemies to rot\nunburied and thus offending against the laws of Greece and humanity.\n\nThis is the light in which Athens conceived herself; the ideal up to\nwhich, amid much confused, hot-headed and self-deceiving patriotism, she\nstrove to live. She was to be the Saviour of Hellas.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nEuripides was about eight when the ruined walls of Athens were rebuilt\nand the city, no longer defenceless against her neighbours, could begin\nto rebuild the \"House of Athena\" on the Acropolis and restore the\nTemples and the Festivals throughout Attica. He can hardly have been\npresent when the general Themistocles, then at the height of his fame,\nprovided the Chorus for the earliest of the great tragedians,\nPhrynichus, in 476 B.C. But he must have watched the new paintings being\nput up by the same Themistocles in the temples at Phlya, with scenes\nfrom the Persian War. And through his early teens he must have watched\nthe far more famous series of pictures with which Polygnotus, the first\nof the great Greek painters, was adorning the Acropolis; pictures that\ncanonized scenes from the Siege of Troy and other legendary history.\nWhen he was ten he may probably have seen a curious procession which\nbrought back from the island of Skyros the bones of Theseus, the\nmythical king of Athens and the accepted symbol, king though he was, of\nAthenian enlightenment and democracy. Athens was now too great and too\nself-conscious to allow Theseus to lie on foreign soil. When he was\ntwelve he may have seen Aeschylus' _Persae_, \"the one great play dealing\nwith an historical event that exists in literature.\" When he was\nseventeen he pretty certainly saw the _Seven against Thebes_ and was\nmuch influenced by it; but the Choregus this time was a new statesman,\nPericles. Themistocles was in banishment; and the other great heroes of\nthe Persian time, Aristides and Miltiades, dead.\n\nNext year, 466 B.C. Euripides became officially an \"Ephebus,\" or\n\"Youth.\" He was provided with a shield and spear, and set to garrison\nand police duty in the frontier forts of Attica. Full military service\nwas to follow in two years. Meantime the current of his thoughts must\nhave received a shock. For, while his shield and spear were still fresh,\nnews came of one of the most stunning military disasters in Athenian\nhistory. A large colony which had been established on the river Strymon\nin Thrace had been lured into dangerous country by the Thracian tribes,\nthen set upon by overwhelming numbers and massacred to the number of ten\nthousand. No wonder that one of Euripides' earliest plays, when he took\nto writing, was the story of _Rhesus_, the Thracian, and his rushing\nhordes of wild tribesmen.\n\nBut meantime Euripides had not found his work in life. We hear that he\nwas a good athlete; there were records of his prize-winning in Athens\nand in Eleusis. Probably every ambitious boy in Greece did a good deal\nof running and boxing. More serious was his attempt at painting.\nPolygnotus was at work in Athens, and the whole art advancing by leaps\nand bounds. He tried to find his true work there, and paintings by his\nhand were discovered by antiquarians of later times--or so they\nbelieved--in the town of Megara. His writings show a certain interest in\npainting here and there, and it is perhaps the painter in him that\nworked out in the construction of his dramas such fine and varied\neffects of grouping.\n\nBut there was more in the air than painting and sculpture. The youth of\nEuripides fell in an age which saw perhaps the most extraordinary\nintellectual awakening known to human history. It had been preparing for\nabout a century in certain cities of Ionian Greece, on the coast of Asia\nMinor, rich and cultivated states, subject for the most part to Lydian\nor Persian governors. The revolt of these cities and its suppression by\nPersia had sent numbers of Ionian \"wise men,\" philosophers, poets,\nartists, historians, men of science, to seek for refuge in Greece, and\nespecially in Athens. Athens was held to be the mother-city of all the\nIonian colonies, and had been their only champion in the revolt. She\nbecame now, as one of these Ionian exiles put it, \"the hearth on which\nthe fire of Hellas burned.\" It is difficult to describe this great\nmovement in a few pages, but one can, perhaps, get some idea of it by an\nimaginary comparison. Imagine first the sort of life that was led in\nremote parts of Yorkshire or Somerset towards the end of the eighteenth\ncentury, a stagnant rustic life with no moving ideas, and unquestioning\nin its obedience to authority, in which hardly any one could read except\nthe parson, and the parson's reading was not of a kind to stir a man's\npulse. And next imagine the intellectual ferment which was then in\nprogress in London or Paris; the philosophers, painters, historians and\nmen of science, the voices proclaiming that all men were equal, that the\nlaws of England were unjust to the poor, that slavery was a crime, and\nthat monarchy was a false form of government, or that no action was\nmorally wrong except what tended to produce human misery. Imagine then\nwhat would occur in the mind of a clever and high-thinking boy who was\nbrought suddenly from the one society into the heart of the second, and\nmade to realise that the battles and duties and prizes of life were\ntenfold more thrilling and important than he had ever dreamed. That is\nthe kind of awakening that must have occurred in the minds of a large\npart of the Greek people in the early fifth century.\n\nA thoroughly backward peasant in a Greek village--even an Attic village\nlike Phlya--had probably as few ideas as other uneducated peasants. In\nAthens some fifty years later we hear that it was impossible, with the\nbest will in the world, to find any one who could not read or write.\n(_Ar. Knights_ 188 ff.) But the difference in time and place is\ncardinal. The countryman who voted for the banishment of Aristides the\nJust had to ask some one else to write the name for him. Such a man did\nnot read nor yet think. He more or less hated the next village and\nregarded its misfortunes as his own advantage. He was sunk in\nsuperstition. His customs were rigid and not understood. He might\nworship a goddess with a horse's head or a hero with a snake's tail. He\nwould perform for the welfare of his fields traditional sacrifices that\nwere often filthy and sometimes cruel. On certain holy days he would\ntear small beasts to pieces or drive them into a fire; in very great\nextremities he would probably think no medicine so good as human blood.\nHis rules of agriculture would be a mixture of rough common sense and\nstupid taboos: he would not reap till the Pleiades were rising, and he\nwould carefully avoid sitting on a fixed stone. When he sought for\nlearning, he would get it in old traditional books like _Hesiod_, which\ntaught him how Ouranos had been mutilated by his son Cronos, and Cronos\nbound with chains by his son Zeus; how Zeus was king of gods and men,\nbut had been cheated by Prometheus into accepting bones instead of meat\nin a sacrifice. He would believe that Tantalus had given the gods his\nson Pelops to eat, to see if they would know the difference, and some\nof them had eaten bits of him. He would perhaps be ready, with great\nhesitation, to tolerate certain timid attempts to expurgate the story,\nlike Pindar's, for instance, which results, according to our judgment,\nin making it rather worse. And this man, rooted in his customs, his\nsuperstitions, his narrow-minded cruelties, will of course regard every\ndeparture from his own way of life as so much pure wickedness. In every\ncontest that goes on between Intelligence and Stupidity, between\nEnlightenment and Obscurantism, the powers of the dark have this immense\nadvantage: they never understand their opponents, and consequently\nrepresent them as always wrong, always wicked, whereas the intelligent\nparty generally makes an effort to understand the stupid and to\nsympathize with anything that is good or fine in their attitude. Many of\nour Greek Histories still speak as if the great spiritual effort which\ncreated fifth century Hellenism was a mass of foolish chatter and\nintellectual trickery and personal self-indulgence.\n\nIt was not that, nor anything like that. Across the mind of our stupid\npeasant the great national struggle against Persia brought first the\nidea that perhaps really it was better to die than to be a slave; that\nit was well to face death not merely for his own home but\nactually--incredible as it seemed--for other people's homes, for the\nhomes of those wretched people in the next village. Our own special\ncustoms and taboos, he would reflect with a shiver, do not really matter\nwhen they are brought into conflict with a common Hellenism or a common\nhumanity. There are greater things about us than we knew. There are also\ngreater men. These men who are in everybody's mouth: Themistocles above\nall, who has defeated the Persian and saved Greece: but crowds of others\nbesides, Aristides the Just and Miltiades, the hero of Marathon;\nDemokedes, the learned physician, who was sought out by people in need\nof help from Italy to Susa; Hecataeus, who had made a picture of the\nwhole earth, showing all the countries and cities and rivers and how far\neach is from the next, and who could have saved the Ionians if they had\nonly listened to him; Pythagoras, who had discovered all about numbers\nand knew the wickedness of the world and had founded a society, bound by\nstrict rules, to combat it. What is it about these men that has made\nthem so different from you and me and the other farmers who meet in the\nagora on market-day? It is _sophia_, wisdom; it is _arete_, virtue. They\nare not a bit stronger in the arm, not bigger, not richer, or more\nhigh-born: they are just wiser, and thus better men. Cannot we be made\nwise? We know we are stupid, we are very ignorant, but we can learn.\n\nThe word Sophistes means either \"one who makes wise,\" or, possibly, as\nsome scholars think, \"one who deals in wisdom.\" The difference is\nslight. In any case it was in answer to this call for _sophia_ that the\nSophists arose. Doubtless they were of all kinds; great men and small,\nhonest and dishonest; teachers of real wisdom and of pretence. Our\ntradition is rather bitter against them, because it dates from the\nbitter time of reaction and disappointment, when the hopes of the fifth\ncentury and the men who guided it seemed to have led Athens only to her\nfall. Plato in particular is against them as he is against Athens\nherself. In the main the judgment of the afterworld upon them will\ndepend on the side we take in a never-ending battle: they fought for\nlight and knowledge and freedom and the development of all man's powers.\nIf we prefer blinkers and custom, subordination and the rod, we shall\nthink them dangerous and shallow creatures. But, to see what the\nsophists were like, let us consider two of them who are recorded as\nhaving specially been the teachers of Euripides.\n\nAnaxagoras of Clazomenae, in Ionia, was about fifteen years older than\nEuripides, and spent some thirty years of his life in Athens. He\ndiscovered for the first time that the moon shines by the reflection of\nthe sun's light; and he explained, in the main correctly, the cause of\neclipses. The sun was not a god: it was a white-hot mass of stone or\nearth, in size perfectly enormous. In describing its probable size,\nlanguage failed him; he only got as far as saying--what must have seemed\nalmost a mad exaggeration--that it was many times larger than the\nPeloponnese. He held, if he did not invent, a particular form of the\natomic theory which has played such a great role in the history of\nmodern science. He was emphatic on the indestructibility of matter.\nThings could be broken up into their elements and could grow together\nagain, but nothing could be created or destroyed. There was order in the\nworld and purpose, and this was the work of a conscious power which he\ncalled \"Nous,\" or Mind. \"All things were together in a mass, till Mind\ncame and put order into them.\" Mind is outside things, not mixed with\nthem, and some authorities say that Anaxagoras called it \"God.\"\nMeantime, he showed by experiment the reality and substance of air, and\ndisproved the common notion of \"empty space.\" It will be seen that these\nideas, if often crudely expressed, are essentially the same ideas which\ngave new life to modern science after the sleep of the Middle Ages.\nAlmost every one of them is the subject of active dispute at the present\nday.\n\nApart from physical science, we learn that Anaxagoras was a close friend\nand adviser of the great Athenian statesman, Pericles; and we have by\nchance an account of a long discussion between the two men about the\ntheory of punishment--whether the object of it is to do \"justice\" upon a\nwrong-doer apart from any result that may accrue, or simply to deter\nothers from doing the same and thus make society better. The question is\nthe subject of a vigorous correspondence in the _Times_ while these\nwords are writing. We can understand what an effect such a teacher as\nthis would have on the eager young man from Phlya. One great word of\nliberation was already in the air and belongs to no one sophist or\nphilosopher. This was the distinction between Nature on the one hand and\nCustom or Convention on the other. The historian Herodotus, who was no\nsophist but loved a good story, tells how the Persian king, Darius,\ncalled some Greeks and some Indian tribesmen together into his presence.\nHe then asked the Greeks what payment would induce them to eat the dead\nbodies of their fathers. \"Nothing in the world,\" they cried in\nindignation. \"They would reverently burn them.\" He proceeded to ask the\nIndians what they would take to burn their fathers' bodies, and they\nrepelled the bare thought with horror; they would do nothing but eat\nthem with every mark of love and respect. \"Fire burns in the same way\nboth here and in Persia,\" the saying was, \"but men's notions of right\nand wrong are not at all the same.\" The one is Nature; the other is\nman's Custom or Convention. This antithesis between \"Phusis\" and \"Nomos\"\nran vividly through the whole of Greek philosophy, and awoke with\nrenewed vigour in Rousseau and the radical writers of the eighteenth\ncentury. It is an antithesis against which conformist dialecticians\nhave always turned their sharpest weapons. It has again and again been\ndissected and refuted and shown to be philosophically untenable: but it\nstill lives and has still something of the old power to shatter and to\nset free. All the thinkers of Greece at the time we are treating were\ntesting the laws and maxims of their day, and trying to find out what\nreally rested on Nature and what was the mere embroidery of man. It is\nalways a dangerous and exciting inquiry; especially because the most\nirrational conventions are apt also to be the most sacrosanct.\n\nThis whole spirit was specially incarnate in another of Euripides'\nteachers. We hear of Protagoras in his old age from that enemy of the\nsophists, Plato. But for this sophist even Plato's satire is kindly and\nalmost reverent. Protagoras worked not at physical science, but at\nlanguage and philosophy. He taught men to think and speak; he began the\nstudy of grammar by dividing sentences into four kinds, Optative,\nInterrogative, Indicative, Imperative. He taught rhetoric; he formulated\nthe first theory of democracy. But it was as a sceptic that he struck\nmen's imaginations most. \"About the Gods, I have no means of knowing\neither that they are or are not. For the hindrances to knowledge are\nmany, the darkness of the subject and the shortness of man's life.\"\nNumbers of people, no doubt, went as far as this, and without suffering\nfor it as Protagoras did; but his scepticism cut deeper and raised\nquestions still debated in modern thought. \"Man is the measure of\nthings\"; there is no truth to be had beyond the impression made on a\nman's mind. When this given object seems one thing to A and another\nthing to B, it _is_ to each one exactly what it seems; just as honey not\nonly seems sweet but _is_ sweet to a healthy man, and not only seems\nbitter but _is_ bitter to a man with jaundice. Then you can not say, we\nmay ask, that one or other impression is false, and will prove false on\nfurther inquiry? No: he answers; each impression is equally true. The\nonly difference is that each state of mind is not equally good. You\ncannot prove to the jaundiced man that his honey is sweet, for it is\nnot: or to the drunkard that he does not desire his drink, for he does:\nwhat you can do is to alter the men's state of mind, to cure the\njaundice or the drunkenness. Our cognition flows and changes. It is the\nresult of an active impact upon a passive percipient. And, resulting\nfrom this change, there are in practice always two things to be said, a\npro and a con. about every possible proposition. There is no general\nstatement that cannot be contradicted.\n\nOther teachers also are represented as having influenced Euripides;\nArchelaus, who tried to conceive Anaxagoras's \"Mind\" in some material\nform, as air or spirit--for _spiritus_, of course, means \"breath\";\nProdicus, who, besides his discoveries in grammar, is the author of a\npopular and edifying fable which has served in many schoolrooms for many\ncenturies. It tells how Heracles once came to some cross roads, one road\nopen, broad, and smooth and leading a little downhill, the other narrow\nand uphill and rough: and on the first you gradually became a worse and\nworse man, on the second a better one. There was Diogenes of Apollonia,\nwhose theories about air seem to have had some effect on Euripides'\nwritings; and of course there was, among the younger men, Socrates.\nSocrates is too great and too enigmatic a teacher to be summed up in a\nfew sentences, and though a verse of ancient comedy has come down to us,\nsaying, \"Socrates piles the faggots for Euripides' fire,\" his influence\non his older friend is not very conspicuous. Euripides must have caught\nsomething from his scepticism, his indifference to worldly standards,\nhis strong purpose, and something also from his resolute rejection of\nall philosophy except that which was concerned with the doings and\nfeelings of men. \"The fields and trees will not talk to me; it is only\nthe human beings in the city that will.\" That saying of Socrates might\nbe the motto of many a dramatist.\n\nThe greatness of these philosophers or sophists of the fifth century\ndoes not, of course, lie in the correctness of their scientific results.\nThe dullest and most unilluminated text-book produced at the present day\nis far more correct than Anaxagoras. Their greatness lies partly in the\npioneer quality of their work. They first struck out the roads by which\nlater workers could advance further. Partly in the daring and felicity\nwith which they hit upon great and fruitful ideas, ideas which have\nbrought light and freedom with them whenever they have recurred to men's\nminds, and which, as we have seen, are to a great extent still, after\nmore than two thousand years, living issues in philosophic thought.\nPartly it lies in the mere freedom of spirit with which they set to\nwork, unhampered by fears and taboos, to seek the truth, to create\nbeauty, and to improve human life. The difference of atmosphere between\nthe sophists of the Periclean circle and the ordinary backward Attic\nfarmer must have been visible to every observer. If more evidence of the\ngreat gulf was needed, it was supplied emphatically enough in the\nexperience of Euripides. He was himself prosecuted by Cleon, the\ndemagogue, for \"impiety.\" The same charge had been levelled even against\nhis far less destructive predecessor, Aeschylus. Of these three special\nfriends whom we have mentioned, Euripides did not live to see Socrates\ncondemned to death and executed. But he saw Anaxagoras, in spite of the\nprotection of Pericles, accused of \"impiety\" and compelled to fly for\nhis life. He saw Protagoras, for the book which he had read aloud in\nEuripides' own house, prosecuted and condemned. The book was publicly\nburned; the author escaped, it is said, only to be drowned at sea, a\nsignal mark in the eyes of the orthodox of how the gods regarded such\nphilosophy.\n\nThought was no doubt freer in ancient Athens than in any other city\nwithin two thousand years of it. Those who suffered for religious\nadvance are exceedingly few. But it was not in human nature, especially\nin such early times, for individuals to do such great service to their\nfellow men and not occasionally be punished for it. They induced men for\na time to set reason and high ideals above the instincts of the herd:\nand sooner or later the herd must turn and trample them.\n\nOne of the ancient lives says that it was this sense of the antagonism\nbetween Anaxagoras and the conservative masses that turned Euripides\naway from philosophy. One need scarcely believe that. The way he took\nwas not the way to escape from danger or unpopularity. And when a man\nshows extraordinary genius for poetry one need not search for the\nreasons which induced him not to write prose. He followed in the wake\nnot of Anaxagoras but of Aeschylus.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nLIFE CONTINUED: WHAT IS A GREEK TRAGEDY? EURIPIDES' EARLY PLAYS: \"ALCESTIS\"\n    AND \"TELEPHUS\"\n\n\nTo the public of the present day a play is merely an entertainment, and\nit was the same to the Elizabethans. Shakespeare can say to his audience\n\"Our true intent is all for your delight,\" and we feel no particular\nshock in reading the words. The companies were just noblemen's servants;\nand it was natural enough that if Lord Leicester's players did not amuse\nLord Leicester's guests, they should be sent away and others hired. If\nthey too proved dull, the patron could drop the play altogether and call\nfor tumblers and dancing dogs.\n\nTo a playwright of the twelfth century, who worked out in the church or\nin front of it his presentation of the great drama of the Gospel, such\nan attitude would have seemed debased and cynical. However poor the\nmonkish players or playwright might be, surely that which they were\npresenting was in itself enough to fill the mind of a spectator. To\nthem, as the great mediaevalist, Gaston Paris, puts it, \"the universe was\na vast stage, on which was played an eternal drama, full of tears and\njoy, its actors divided between heaven, earth and hell; a drama whose\nend is foreseen, whose changes of fortune are directed by the hand of\nGod, yet whose every scene is rich and thrilling.\" The spectator was\nadmitted to the councils of the Trinity; he saw the legions of darkness\nmingling themselves with the lives of humanity, tempting and troubling,\nand the saints and angels at their work of protection or intercession;\nhe saw with his own eyes the kiss of Judas, the scourging and\ncrucifixion, the descent into Hell, the resurrection and ascension; and,\nlastly, the dragging down to red and bloody torment of the infinite\nmultitudes of the unorthodox or the wicked. Imagine what passed in the\nminds of those who witnessed in full faith such a spectacle! [_Poesie du\nMoyen Age I_, Essay I.]\n\nNow, in spite of a thousand differences of social organization and\nreligious dogma, the atmosphere of primitive Greek tragedy must have\nbeen most strangely similar to this. It is not only that, like the\nmediaeval plays, Greek tragedy was religious; that it was developed out\nof a definite ritual; not even that the most marked links of historical\ncontinuity can be traced between the death-and-resurrection ritual of\ncertain Pagan \"saviours\" and those of the mediaeval drama. It is that the\nritual on which tragedy was based embodied the most fundamental Greek\nconceptions of life and fate, of law and sin and punishment.\n\nWhen we say that tragedy originated in a dance, ritual or magical,\nintended to represent the death of the vegetation this year and its\ncoming return in triumph next year, the above remarks may seem hard to\njustify. But we must remember several things. First, a dance was in\nancient times essentially religious, not a mere capering with the feet\nbut an attempt to express with every limb and sinew of the body\nthose emotions for which words, especially the words of simple and\nunlettered men, are inadequate (see p. 229). Again, vegetation is to us\nan abstract common noun; to the ancient it was a personal being, not\n\"it\" but \"He.\" His death was as our own deaths, and his re-birth a thing\nto be anxiously sought with prayers and dances. For if He were not\nre-born, what would happen? Famine, and wholesale death by famine, was a\nfamiliar thought, a regularly returning terror, in these primitive\nagricultural villages. Nay, more, why must the cycle of summer and\nwinter roll as it does? Why must \"He\" die and men die? Some of the\noldest Greek philosophers have no doubt about the answer: there has been\n\"Hubris\" or \"Adikia,\" Pride or Injustice, and the result thereof must\nneeds be death. Every year He waxes too strong and commits \"Hubris,\" and\nsuch sin has its proper punishment. \"The sun shall not transgress his\nmeasures,\" says Heraclitus; \"if he does he shall be pursued by Erinyes,\ntill justice be re-fulfilled.\" It is the law of all existing things.\n\"They all pay retribution for injustice, one to another, according to\nthe Ordinance of Time\" (_Heraclitus_, fr. 94, _Anaximander_, fr. 9). And\nthe history of each year's bloom was an example of this refluent\nbalance. The Year Daemon--Vegetation Spirit or Corn God or whatever we\ncall him--waxes proud and is slain by his enemy, who becomes thereby a\nmurderer and must in turn perish at the hands of the expected avenger,\nwho is at the same time the Wronged One re-risen. The ritual of this\nVegetation Spirit is extraordinarily wide-spread in all quarters of the\nglobe, and may best be studied in Dr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_,\nespecially in the part entitled, \"_The Dying God_.\" Dionysus, the daemon\nof tragedy, is one of these Dying Gods, like Attis, Adonis, Osiris.\n\nThe Dionysiac ritual which lay at the back of tragedy, may be\nconjectured in its full form to have had six regular stages: (1) an Agon\nor Contest, in which the Daemon fights against his enemy, who--since it\nis really this year fighting last year--is apt to be almost identical\nwith himself; (2) a Pathos, or disaster, which very commonly takes the\nshape of a \"Sparagmos,\" or Tearing in pieces; the body of the Corn God\nbeing scattered in innumerable seeds over the earth; sometimes of some\nother sacrificial death; (3) a Messenger, who brings the news; (4) a\nLamentation, very often mixed with a Song of Rejoicing, since the death\nof the Old King is also the accession of the new; (5) the Discovery or\nRecognition of the hidden or dismembered god; and (6) his Epiphany or\nResurrection in glory.[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: The above is the present writer's re-statement, published\nin Miss Harrison's _Themis_, pp. 341 ff., of the orthodox view of the\norigin of tragedy. _See_ also Cornford _From Religion to Philosophy_,\nfirst few chapters. The chief non-Dionysiac theory is Professor\nRidgeway's, who derives tragedy directly from the funeral cult of\nindividual heroes: _Origin of Tragedy_, Cambridge, 1910.]\n\nThis ritual of Dionysus, being made into a drama and falling into the\nhands of a remarkable set of creative artists, developed into what we\nknow as Greek tragedy. The creative passion of the artist gradually\nconquered the emotion of the mere worshipper.\n\nExactly the same development took place in mediaeval drama, or rather it\nwas taking place when new secular influences broke in and destroyed it.\nThe liturgical plays first enacted the main story of the New Testament;\nthen they emphasized particular parts--there is a beautiful play, for\ninstance, on the Massacre of the Innocents; then they developed\nimaginatively scenes that are implied but not mentioned in the Gospel,\nsuch as the experiences of the Magdalen when she lived \"in joy,\" her\ndealings with cosmetic-sellers and the like; then, ranging right outside\nthe Gospel histories, they dealt with the lives of St. Nicholas, St.\nAntony or any person who provided a good legend and had some claim to an\natmosphere of sanctity.\n\nIn the same way Greek tragedy extended its range first to embrace the\nhistories of other Heroes or Daemons--the difference is slight--who were\nessentially like Dionysus: Pentheus, Lycurgus, Hippolytus, Actaeon and\nespecially, I should be inclined to add, Orestes. Then it took in any\nheroes to whose memory some ritual was attached. For the play is, with\nthe rarest and most doubtful exceptions, essentially the enactment of a\nritual, or rather of what the Greeks called an \"aition\"--that is, a\nsupposed historical event which is the origin or \"cause\" of the ritual.\nThus the death of Hippolytus is the \"aition\" of the lamentation-rite\nperformed at the grave of Hippolytus; the death of Aias is the \"aition\"\nof the festival called Aianteia; the death of Medea's children, the\n\"aition\" of a certain ritual at Corinth; the story of Prometheus the\n\"aition\" of a certain Fire-festival in Athens. The tragedy, as ritual,\nenacts its own legendary origin.\n\nThere is then a further extension of the theme, to include a very few\nevents in recent history. But we must observe that only those events\nwere chosen which were felt to have about them some heroic grandeur or\nmystery; I think we may even say, only those events which, like the\nBattle of Salamis or the Fall of Miletus, had been made the subject of\nsome religious celebration.\n\nHowever that may be, the general temper of tragedy moved strongly away\nfrom the monotony of fixed ritual. The subjects thus grew richer and\nmore varied; the mode of representation loftier and more artistic. What\nhad begun as almost pure ritual ended by being almost pure drama. By the\ntime Euripides began to write the master-tragedian Aeschylus had already\nlifted Greek drama to its highest level: whole generations have read his\nplays without even suspecting the ritual form that lies behind them.\nAeschylus had also made the whole performance much longer and more\nimpressive: he composed three continuous tragedies forming a single\nwhole and followed by the strange performance called a Satyr-play. The\nwild element of revelry which was proper to Dionysus worship, with its\nbearded dancing half-animal satyrs, had been kept severely away from the\nstage during the three tragedies and must burst in to have its fling\nwhen they were finished. The other tragedians do not seem to have\nwritten in trilogies, and Euripides at any rate moved gradually away\nfrom satyr-plays. In their stead he put a curious sort of pro-satyric\ntragedy, a play in the tragic convention and free from the satyric\ncoarseness, but containing at least one half-comic figure and preserving\nsome fantastic quality of atmosphere.\n\nOn the Great Festival of Dionysus each year--and sometimes on other\nfestivals--this ritual of tragedy was solemnly performed in the theatre\nof the god. Like most Greek festivals the performance took the form of a\ncompetition. The ground of this custom was, I suspect, religious. It was\ndesired to get a spirit of \"Nike,\" or victory, into the celebration, and\nyou could only get this by means of a contest. The Archon, or\nmagistrate, in charge of the festival selected three poets to compete,\nand three rich men to be their \"Choregoi,\" that is, to provide all the\nexpenses of the performance. The poet was then said to have \"obtained a\nchorus,\" and his work now was to \"teach the chorus.\" At the end of the\nfestival a body of five judges, somewhat elaborately and curiously\nchosen, awarded a first, second and third prize. Even the last\ncompetitor must have a kind of \"victory\"; any mention of \"failure\" at\nsuch a time would be ill-omened.\n\nThis, in rough outline, was the official mould in which our poet's\ncreative activity had to run. The record of his early work is, as we\nhad reason to expect, terribly defective. But we do happen to know the\nname and subject of the first play for which he \"was granted a chorus.\"\nIt was called the _Daughters of Pelias_. Its story was based on the old\nritual of the Year-god, who is cut to pieces or scattered like the seed,\nand then restored to life and youth. Medea, the enchantress maiden from\nthe further shores of the Friendless Sea, had fled from her home with\nthe Greek adventurer Jason, the winner of the Golden Fleece. She came\nwith him to Thessaly, where his uncle Pelias was king. Pelias had\nusurped Jason's ancestral crown and therefore hated him. The daughters\nof Pelias doubtless sneered at Medea and encouraged Jason's growing\ndistaste for his barbarian prize. The savage woman determined at one\nblow to be rid of Pelias, to punish his daughters, and reconquer Jason's\nlove. She had the power of renovating the life of the old. She persuaded\nthe daughters of Pelias to try her method on their father, with the\nresult that he died in agony, and they stood guilty of a hideous murder.\nMedea, we may conjecture, was triumphant, till she found she had made\nJason a ruined man and taught him really to hate her. The play is\ncharacteristic in two ways. It was clearly based on the old ritual, and\nit treated one of Euripides' great subjects, the passions of a suffering\nand savage woman.\n\nThe _Daughters of Pelias_ was produced in 455, when the poet was\ntwenty-nine, just a year after the death of Aeschylus and thirteen years\nafter the first victory of Sophocles. Euripides' own first victory--we\ndo not know the name of the successful play--did not come till 442, a\nyear before Sophocles' masterpiece, the _Antigone_.\n\nWe have only two examples, and those not certain, of Euripides' work\nbefore that time. The _Cyclops_ is a satyr-play pure and simple, and the\nonly complete specimen of its class. It is probably earlier than the\n_Alcestis_, and is interesting because it shows Euripides writing for\nonce without any _arriere pensee_, or secondary intention. It is a gay\nand grotesque piece, based on Homer's story of Odysseus in the Cyclops'\ncave. The farcical and fantastic note is firmly held, so that the climax\nof the story, in which the monster's eye is burnt out with a log of\nburning wood, is kept unreal and not disgusting. The later Euripides\nwould probably have made it horrible and swung our sympathies violently\nround to the side of the victim.\n\nThe _Rhesus_ has come down to us in a very peculiar condition and is\noften considered spurious. We know, however, that Euripides wrote a\n_Rhesus_, and tradition says that he was \"very young\" when he wrote it.\nMy own view--explained in the preface to my translation--would make it\nprobably a very early pro-satyric play which was produced after the\npoet's death and considerably rewritten. It is a young man's play, full\nof war and adventure, of spies in wolf-skins and white chargers and\ngallant chivalry. That is not much like the Euripides whom we know\nelsewhere; but his mark is upon the last scene, in which the soldiers\nstand embarrassed and silent while a solitary mother weeps over her dead\nson. The poetry of the scene is exquisite; but what is most\ncharacteristic is the sudden flavour of bitterness, the cold wind that\nso suddenly takes the heart out of joyous war. Some touch of that bitter\nflavour will be found hereafter in every play, however beautiful or\nromantic, that comes from the pen of Euripides.\n\nUp to the year 438, when the poet was forty-six, the records, as we have\nsaid, almost fail us. But in that year he produced a set of four plays,\n_The Cretan Women_, _Alcmaeon in Psophis_, _Telephus_, and, in place of\na satyr-play, the _Alcestis_. The last is still extant and is very\ncharacteristic of the master's mind. The saga told how Admetus, a king\nin Thessaly, was fated to die on a certain day, but, in return for his\npiety of old, was allowed to find a substitute to die for him. His old\nfather and mother refused; his young wife, Alcestis, gladly consented to\ndie. Amid exquisite songs of mourning she is carried to her grave, when\nthe wild hero, Heracles, comes to the house seeking hospitality.\nAdmetus, with primitive courtesy, conceals what has happened and orders\nhim to be given entertainment. The burial is finished when Heracles,\nalready revelling and drunken and crowned with flowers, learns the\ntruth. Sobered at the touch he goes out into the night to wrestle with\nDeath amid the tombs and crush his ribs for him till he yields up his\nprey. One sees the fantastic satyr note. The play is not truly tragic;\nit touches its theme tenderly and with romance. But amid all the romance\nEuripides cannot keep his hand from unveiling the weak spot in the\nsacred legend. Alcestis, no doubt, is beautiful, and it was beautiful of\nher to die. But what was it of Admetus to let her die? An ordinary\nplaywright would elude the awkward question. Admetus would refuse his\nwife's sacrifice and she would perform it against his will or without\nhis knowledge. We should somehow save our hero's character. Not so\nEuripides. His Admetus weeps tenderly over his wife, but he thinks it\nentirely suitable that she should die for him. The veil is not removed\nfrom his eyes till his old father, Pheres, who has bluntly refused to\ndie for anybody, comes to bring offerings to Alcestis' funeral. A\nquarrel breaks out between the two selfish men, brilliantly written,\nsubtle and merciless, in which Admetus's weakness is laid bare. The\nscene is a great grief to the purely romantic reader, but it just makes\nthe play profound instead of superficial.\n\nAll the plays of 438 are, in different ways, typical of their author.\nAnd we will spend a little time on each. The _Alcmaeon in Psophis_ was\nwhat we should call a romance. Alcmaeon was the son of that Eriphyle who\nbetrayed her husband to death for the sake of a charmed necklace which\nhad once belonged to Harmonia, the daughter of Ares. Alcmaeon slew his\nmother and became in consequence mad and accursed. Seeking purification\nhe fled to the land of Psophis, where the King cleansed him and gave him\nthe hand of his daughter Arsinoe, who duly received the necklace.\nHowever, Alcmaeon's sin was too great for any such cleansing. He\nwandered away, all the earth being accursed to him, till he should find\nsome land that had not been in existence at the time of his sin and was\nconsequently unpolluted. He discovered it in some alluvial islands, just\nthen making their appearance at the mouth of the River Achelous. Here he\nat last found peace and married the daughter of Achelous, Callirrhoe.\nShe asks for the necklace and Alcmaeon goes back to get it from Arsinoe.\nHe professes to need it for his own purification and she willingly gives\nit him; then she finds that he really wants it for his new bride, and in\nfury has him murdered on his road home. A romantic and varied story with\none fine touch of tragic passion.\n\nThe _Telephus_ also deserves special mention. It had apparently the\nmisfortune to be seen by Aristophanes, then a boy about sixteen. At any\nrate the comedian was never able to forget it, and we know it chiefly\nfrom his parodies. It struck out a new style in Attic drama, the style\nof adventure and plot-interest, which threw to the winds the traditional\ntragic dignities and pomps. The usual convention in tragedy was to\nclothe the characters in elaborate priestly dress with ritual masks\ncarefully graduated according to the rank of the character. Such\ntrappings came to Tragedy as an inheritance from its old\nmagico-religious days, and it never quite succeeded in throwing them\noff, even in its most vital period. It is very difficult for us to form\na clear notion what the ordinary Greek tragedy looked like in 438, and\nhow much we should have noticed any great change of dressing in the\n_Telephus_. But there was a change which raised a storm of comment.\nTelephus was a King of Mysia, not very far from the Troad. The Greeks in\nsailing for Troy had missed their way and invaded Telephus' country by\nmistake. He had fought them with great effect but had been wounded by\nAchilles with his magic spear. The wound would not close, and an oracle\ntold Telephus \"the wounder shall heal.\" The Greeks were back in Greece\nby this time, planning a new invasion of Troy. The king goes, lame and\ndisguised as a beggar, into the heart of the Greek army and into\nAgamemnon's palace. Euripides, since the king had to be a beggar,\ndressed him as a beggar, with rags and a wallet. It is hard to see how\nhe could possibly have done otherwise, but we may surmise that his\nbeggar's dress was a little more realistic and less merely symbolical\nthan his audience expected. In any case, though critics were shocked,\nthe practice established itself. Telephus and Philoctetes were\nafterwards regularly allowed to dress in \"rags,\" even in the work of\nSophocles.\n\nThere were great scenes owing to the boldness of the ragged and\nintrusive stranger. The Greek chieftains proposed to kill him, but\ngranted him at last the right of making one speech to save his life. He\nseems to have spoken beside, or over, the headsman's block. And the case\nhe had to plead was characteristic of Euripides. The Greeks considered\nquite simply that Telephus was their enemy and must be destroyed on\ntheir next expedition. The beggar explained that Telephus had found his\ncountry ravaged and was bound to defend it. Every man among the Greeks\nwould have done the same; there is nothing to blame Telephus for. At the\nend of this scene, apparently, the beggar was discovered. It is Telephus\nhimself speaking! They fly to their spears. But Telephus has snatched up\nthe baby prince, Orestes, from his cradle and stands at bay; if one of\nhis enemies moves the child shall die. Eventually they accept his terms\nand make peace with him. A fine melodrama, one would guess, and a move\nin the direction of realism--a direction which Euripides only followed\nwithin certain strict limits. But we find two marks of Euripides the\nphilosopher. The beggar who pleads for reasonable justice towards the\nnational enemy strikes a note which Euripides himself often had to sound\nafterwards. It was not for nothing that Aristophanes in his\n_Acharnians_, thirteen years later, used a parody of this scene in order\nto plead the dangerous cause of reasonableness towards Sparta. The other\nmark is a curious tang of sadness at the close. The Greeks demand that\nTelephus, so brave and resourceful, shall be their ally against Troy.\nBut his wife is a Trojan princess and he refuses. He consents\nreluctantly to show the army the road to his wife's fatherland and then\nturns away.\n\nThe remaining play of the trilogy performed in 438 strikes a chord that\nproved more dangerous to Euripides. The _Cretan Women_ told the story of\nAerope, a Cretan princess who secretly loved a squire or young soldier.\nHer intrigue is discovered, and her father gives her to a Greek sailor\nto throw into the sea. The sailor spares her life and takes her to\nGreece. The story as it stands is a common ballad motive and not\ncalculated to disturb any one. But the disciple of the sophists did not\nleave these romances where he found them. He liked to think them out in\nterms of real life. The songs in which Aerope poured out her love were\nremembered against Euripides after his death. It was all very well to\nsympathize in a remote artistic way with these erring damsels; but\nEuripides seemed to come too near raising an actual doubt whether the\ndamsel had done anything so very wrong at all, that respectable people\nshould want to murder her. Euripides is, as a matter of fact, not loose\nbut highly austere in his moral tone. But next to religion itself, the\nsphere of sexual conduct has always been the great field for irrational\ntaboos and savage punishments, and the sophists naturally marked it as a\nbattle-field. The kings of Egypt commonly married their sisters, and did\nso on religious grounds: to a Greek such marriage was an unspeakable\nsin. There is a problem here, and Euripides raised it sharply in a play,\n_Aeolus_, based on the old fairy-tale of the King of the winds who\ndwells as a patriarch on his floating island with his twelve sons\nmarried to his twelve daughters. \"Canst face mine eyes, fresh from thy\ndeed of shame?\" says the angry father in this play; and his son answers,\n\"What _is_ shame, when the doer feels no shame?\" Euripides also treated\nseveral times legends where a god became the lover of a mortal maiden,\nand, as we shall see in the _Ion_, he loved to rouse sympathy for the\nmaiden and contempt for the god (p. 121). In one case he even treats,\nthrough a mist of strange religious mysticism, the impossible amour of\nPasiphae of Crete with the Cretan Bull-god. It is interesting, however,\nto observe that there is in Euripides no trace of sympathy for the one\nform of perverted indulgence on which the ancient tone was markedly\ndifferent from ours. It is reserved for the bestial Cyclops and Laius\nthe accursed.\n\nAdventure, brilliance, invention, romance and scenic effect; these\ntogether with delightful lyrics, a wonderful command over the Greek\nlanguage, and a somewhat daring admixture of sophistic wisdom which\nsometimes took away a spectator's breath, were probably the qualities\nwhich the ordinary public had felt in Euripides' work up to the year\n438. They perhaps felt also that these pleasant gifts were apt to be\nneedlessly marred by a certain unintelligible note of discord. It was a\npity; and, as the man was now forty-six, he ought surely to have learnt\nhow to smooth it out!\n\nIt was not smoothness that was coming.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nBEGINNING OF THE WAR: THE PLAYS OF MATURITY, \"MEDEA\" TO \"HERACLES\"\n\n\nThe next play of which we have full knowledge must have staggered its\naudience. The _Medea_ was promptly put by the official judges at the\nbottom of the list of competing plays, and thereafter took its place, we\ndo not know how soon, as one of the consummate achievements of the Greek\ntragic genius. Its stamp is fixed on all the imagination of antiquity.\n\nThe plot of the Medea begins where that of the _Daughters of Pelias_ (p.\n69) ended. Jason had fled with Medea and her two children to Corinth,\nwhich is ruled by Creon, an old king with a daughter but no son to\nsucceed him. The famous warrior-prince will just suit Creon as a\nson-in-law, if only he will dismiss his discreditable barbarian\nmistress. Jason has never been able to tell the truth to Medea yet; who\ncould? He secretly accepts Creon's terms; he marries the princess; and\nCreon descends on Medea with soldiers to remove her instantly from the\nterritory of Corinth. Medea begs for one day in which to make ready for\nexile, for the children's sake. One day will be enough. By desperate\nflattery and pleading she gets it. There follows a first scene with\nJason, in which man and woman empty their hearts on one another--at\nleast they try to; but even yet some fragments of old habit and\nconventional courtesy prevent Jason from telling the full truth. Still\nit is a wonderful scene, Jason reasonable and cold, ready to recognize\nall her claims and provide her with everything she needs except his own\nheart's blood; Medea desolate and half mad, asking for nothing but the\none thing he will not give. Love to her is the whole world, to him it is\na stale memory. This scene ends in defiance, but there is another in\nwhich Medea feigns repentance and submission, and sends Jason with the\ntwo children to bear a costly gift to the new bride. It may, she\nsuggests, induce Creon to spare the children and let her go to exile\nalone. The gift is really a robe of burning poison, which has come to\nMedea from her divine ancestor, the Sun. The bride dies in agony\ntogether with her father who tries to save her. Jason rushes to save his\ntwo children from the vengeance which is sure to come upon them from the\nkinsmen of the murdered bride; but Medea has already slain them with her\nown hand and stands laughing at him over their bodies. She too suffers,\nbut she loves the pain, since it means that he shall have happiness no\nmore. The Daughter of the Sun sails away on her dragon-chariot and an\necstasy of hate seems to blind the sky.\n\nThe _Medea_ shows a new mastery of tragic technique, especially in the\nextraordinary value it gets out of the chorus (p. 240). But as\nillustrating the life of Euripides there are one or two special points\nin it that claim notice. In the first place it states the cause of a\nbarbarian woman against a Greek man who has wronged her. Civilized men\nhave loved and deserted savage women since the world began, and I doubt\nif ever the deserted one has found such words of fire as Medea speaks.\nThe marvel is that in such white-hot passion there is room for satire.\nBut there is; and even a reader can scarcely withhold a bitter laugh\nwhen Jason explains the advantage he has conferred on Medea by bringing\nher to a civilized country. But Medea is not only a barbarian; she is\nalso a woman, and fights the horrible war that lies, an eternally latent\npossibility, between woman and man. Some of the most profound and\nwounding things said both by Medea and by Jason might almost be labelled\nin a book of extracts \"Any wife to any husband,\" or \"Any husband to any\nwife.\" And Medea is also a witch; she is also at heart a maniac. It is\nthe madness produced by love rejected and justice denied, by the sense\nof helpless, intolerable wrong. A lesser poet might easily have made\nMedea a sympathetic character, and have pretended that long oppression\nmakes angels of the oppressed. In the great chorus which hymns the rise\nof Woman to be a power in the world it would have been easy to make the\nWoman's day a day of peace and blessing. But Euripides, tragic to the\nheart and no dealer in pleasant make-believe, saw things otherwise; when\nthese oppressed women strike back, he seems to say, when these despised\nand enslaved barbarians can endure no longer, it will not be justice\nthat comes but the revenge of madmen.\n\nThis kind of theme was not in itself likely to please an audience; but\nwhat always galls the average theatre-goer most in a new work of genius\nis not the subject but the treatment. Euripides' treatment of his\nsubject was calculated to irritate the plain man in two ways. First it\nwas enigmatic. He did not label half his characters bad and half good;\nhe let both sides state their case and seemed to enjoy leaving the\nhearer bewildered. And further, he made a point of studying closely and\nsympathetically many regions of thought and character which the plain\nman preferred not to think of at all. When Jason had to defend an\nobviously shabby case, no gentleman cared to hear him; but Euripides\ninsisted on his speaking. He enjoyed tracking out the lines of thought\nand feeling which really actuate men, even fine men like Jason, in\nJason's position. When Medea was revealed as obviously a wicked woman\nthe plain man thought that such women should simply be thrashed, not\nlistened to. But Euripides loved to trace all her complicated sense of\ninjustice to its origins, and was determined to understand and to\nexplain rather than to condemn. The plain man had a kind of\njustification for saying that Euripides actually seemed to like these\ntraitors and wicked women; for such thorough understanding as this\ninvolves always a good deal of sympathy.\n\nThis charge could with even more reason be brought against another\nmasterpiece of drama, which followed three years after the Medea. The\n_Hippolytus_ (428 B.C.) did indeed win the first prize from the official\njudges, besides establishing itself in the admiration of after ages and\ninspiring Seneca and Racine to their finest work. But it profoundly\nshocked public opinion at the same time. The plot is a variant of a very\nold theme found in ancient Egypt and in the Pentateuch. Theseus, not\nhere the ideal democrat on the Athenian throne, but the stormy and\nadventurous hero of the poets, had early in life conquered the Amazons\nand ravished their virgin Queen. She died, leaving a son like herself,\nHippolytus. Theseus some twenty years after married Phaedra, the young\ndaughter of Minos, king of Crete, and she by the evil will of Aphrodite\nfell in love with Hippolytus. She told no one her love, and was trying\nto starve herself to death, when her old Nurse contrived to worm the\nsecret from her and treacherously, under an oath of secrecy, told it to\nHippolytus. Phaedra, furious with the Nurse and with Hippolytus, in a\nblind rage of self-defence, writes a false accusation against Hippolytus\nand hangs herself. Hippolytus, charged by Theseus with the crime, will\nnot break his oath and goes out to exile under his father's curse. The\ngods, in fulfilment of the curse, send death to him, but before he\nactually dies reveal his innocence. The story which might so easily be\nmade ugly or sensual is treated by Euripides with a delicate and austere\npurity. In construction, too, and general beauty of workmanship, though\nnot in greatness of idea or depth of passion, the _Hippolytus_ is\nperhaps the finest of all his plays, and has still a great appeal on the\nstage. But the philistine was vaguely hurt and angered by the treatment,\nso tender and yet so inexorable, accorded to a guilty love, and\ndoubtless the more conventional Athenian ladies shocked themselves over\nthe bare idea of such a heroine being mentioned. It gives us some\nmeasure of the stupidity of public criticism at the time, that we find\nspecial attacks made upon one phrase of Hippolytus. In his first rage\nwith the Nurse he vows he will tell Theseus of her proposal. She reminds\nhim of his oath, and he cries:\n\n\"'Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my heart that swore.\"\n\nIt is a passing flash of indignation at the trap in which he has been\ncaught. When the time comes he keeps his oath at the cost of his life.\nYet the line is repeatedly cited as showing the dreadful doctrines of\nEuripides and the sophists; doctrines that would justify any perjury!\n\nThe _Hippolytus_, as we have it, is a rewritten play. In his first\nversion Euripides had a scene in which Phaedra actually declared her\nlove. This more obvious treatment was preferred by Seneca and Racine;\nbut Euripides in his second thoughts reached a far more austere and\nbeautiful effect. His Phaedra goes to her death without having spoken\none word to Hippolytus: she has heard him but has not answered. The\n_Hippolytus_ has more serene beauty than any of Euripides' plays since\nthe _Alcestis_, and is specially remarkable as the first great drama on\nthe subject of tragic or unhappy love, a theme which has been so\nextraordinarily fruitful on the modern stage. To contemporaries it was\nalso interesting as one of the earliest treatments of a purely local\nAttic story, which had not quite found its way into the great sagas of\nepic tradition.\n\nThe note of the _Medea_ was struck again some two years later (426?) in\na play almost equally powerful and more horrible, the _Hecuba_. The\nheroine is the famous Queen of Troy, a barbarian woman like Medea,\nmajestic and beautiful at the beginning of the action and afterwards\ntransformed by intolerable wrongs into a kind of devil. Her \"evils\" are\npartly the ordinary evils that come to the conquered in war, but they\nare made worse by the callousness of her Greek conquerors. The play\nstrikes many notes of special bitterness. For instance, the one champion\nwhom Hecuba finds among her conquerors is the general, Agamemnon. He\npleads her cause in the camp, because, God help him! he has taken her\ndaughter Cassandra, the mad prophetess vowed to eternal virginity, to be\nhis concubine, and consequently feels good-natured. There is another\nnote, remarkable in an Athenian. The mob of the Greek army, in a frenzy\nof superstition, clamour to have a Trojan princess sacrificed at\nAchilles' tomb. In the debate on this subject we are told that several\nprinces spoke; among them the two sons of Theseus, the legendary kings\nof Athens. They would surely, as enlightened Athenians, prevent such\natrocities? On the contrary, all we hear is that they spoke against one\nanother, but both were for the murder! At the end of the _Hecuba_, as at\nthe end of the _Medea_, we are wrought to a pitch of excitement at which\nincredible legends begin to seem possible. History related that the\nQueen of Troy, maddened by her wrongs, had been transformed into a kind\nof Hell-hound with fiery eyes, whom sailors saw at night prowling round\nthe hill where she was stoned. In her bloody revenge on the only enemy\nshe can trap into her power, she seems already to have become this sort\nof being in her heart, and when her blind and dying victim prophesies\nthe coming transformation, it seems natural. One only feels that perhaps\nthe old miraculous stories are true after all. The one light that shines\nthrough the dark fury of the _Hecuba_ is the lovely and gentle courage,\nalmost the joy, with which the virgin martyr, Polyxena, goes to her\ndeath.\n\nI have taken the _Hecuba_ slightly before its due date, because of its\nreturn with increased bitterness to the tone and subject of the _Medea_.\nWe will now go back. There had been in the interim a change in the\npoet's mind, or, at the least, a strong clash of conflicting emotions.\nThe _Medea_ was produced in 431, the first year of the Peloponnesian\nWar. This war, between the Athenian empire, representing the democratic\nand progressive forces of Greece, and the Peloponnesian confederacy with\nSparta at its head, lasted with one interruption for twenty-seven years\nand ended in the capture of Athens and the destruction of her power.\nWhen war was first declared it represented the policy of Pericles, the\ngreat statesman of the Enlightenment, the friend of Anaxagoras, and of\nthose whom Euripides honoured most. It seemed at first like a final\nstruggle between the forces of progress and those of resolute darkness.\nPericles in a famous speech, which is recorded for us by Thucydides, had\nexplained to his adherents the great causes for which Athens stood; had\nproclaimed her as the Princess of Cities for whom it was a privilege to\ndie; and urged them, using a word more vivid in Greek than it is in\nEnglish, to stand about her like a band of Lovers round an Immortal\nMistress. Euripides was as a matter of fact still going through his\nmilitary service and must have seen much hard fighting in these first\nyears of the war.\n\nHe responded to Pericles' call by a burst of patriotic plays. Even in\nthe _Medea_ there is one chorus, a little out of place perhaps, but\nfamous in after days, describing the glories of Athens. They are not at\nall the conventional glories attributed by all patriots to their\nrespective countries. \"It is an old and happy land which no conqueror\nhas ever subdued; its children walk delicately through air that shines\nwith sunlight; and Wisdom is the very bread that they eat.\" (The word is\n\"sophia,\" embracing Wisdom, Knowledge, Art, Culture; there is no one\nword for it in English, and the names for the various parts of it have\nlost their poetry.) \"A river,\" he continues, \"flows through the land;\nand legend tells that Cypris, the Goddess of Love, has sailed upon it\nand dipped her hand in the water; and now when the river-wind at evening\nblows it comes laden with a spirit of longing; but it is not ordinary\nlove, it is a Passion and a great Desire for all kinds of godlike\nendeavour, a Love that sits with Wisdom upon her throne.\" . . . \"A pity\nthe man should be so priggish.\" We may imagine the comment of the\naverage Athenian paterfamilias.\n\nTowards the beginning of the war we may safely date the _Children of\nHeracles_, a mutilated but beautiful piece, which rings with this\nparticular spirit of patriotism (cf. p. 41 above). Heracles is dead; his\nchildren and mother are persecuted and threatened with death by his\nenemy, Eurystheus, king of Argos. Under the guidance of their father's\nold comrade, Iolaus, they have fled from Argos, and tried in vain to\nfind protectors in every part of Greece. No city dares protect them\nagainst the power of Argos. At the opening of the play we find the\nchildren and Iolaus clinging as suppliants to an altar in Athens. The\nherald of Argos breaks in upon them, flings down the old man and\nprepares to drag the children off. \"What hope can Iolaus possibly\ncherish?\" Iolaus trusts in two things, in Zeus who will protect the\ninnocent, and in Athens which is a free city and not afraid. The king of\nAthens, a son of Theseus, appears and rebukes the herald. The herald's\nargument is clear: \"These children are Argive subjects and are no\nbusiness of yours; further, they are utterly helpless and will be no\npossible good to you as allies. And if you do not give them up\npeacefully, Argos declares instant war.\" The king \"wishes for peace with\nall men; but he will not offend God, nor betray the innocent; also he\nrules a free city and will take no orders from any outside power. As to\nthe fate of these children not being his business, it is always the\nbusiness of Athens to save the oppressed.\" One remembers the old claim,\nemphatically approved by the historian of the Persian Wars, that Athens\nwas the saviour of Hellas. One remembers also the ultimatum of the\nPeloponnesian confederacy which Pericles rejected on the eve of the\npresent war; and the repeated complaints of the Corinthians that Athens\n\"will neither rest herself nor let others rest.\" These supply the clue\nto a large part of the patriotism of the _Children of Heracles_. There\nis another element also, and perhaps one that will better stand the test\nof impartial criticism, in Euripides' ideal of Athens. She will be true\nto Hellas and all that Hellas stands for: for law, for the gods of\nmercy, for the belief in right rather than force. Also, as the king of\nAthens is careful to observe, for democracy and constitutional\ngovernment. He is no despot ruling barbarians.\n\nThe same motives recur with greater fulness and thoughtfulness in\nanother play of the early war time--the exact year is not certain--the\n_Suppliant Women_. Scholars reading the play now, in cool blood, with\nthe issues at stake forgotten, are inclined to smile at a sort of\npedantry in the poet's enthusiasm. It reminds one of the punctiliousness\nwith which Shelley sometimes gives one the sincere milk of the word\naccording to Godwin. This play opens, like the last, with a scene of\nsupplication. A band of women--Argive mothers they are this time, whose\nsons have been slain in war against Thebes--have come to Athens as\nsuppliants. They are led by Adrastus, the great and conquered lord of\nArgos, and finding Aethra, the king's mother, at her prayers beside the\naltar, have surrounded her with a chain of suppliant branches which she\ndares not break. They only ask that Theseus, her son, shall get back for\nthem the bodies of their dead sons, whom the Thebans, contrary to all\nHellenic law, have flung out unburied for dogs to tear. Theseus at first\nrefuses, on grounds of policy, and the broken-hearted women take up\ntheir branches and begin to go, when Aethra, who has been weeping\nsilently, breaks out: \"Is this kind of wrong to be allowed to exist?\"\n\n  \"Thou shalt not suffer it, thou being my child!\n  Thou hast seen men scorn thy City, call her wild\n  Of counsel, mad; thou hast seen the fire of morn\n  Flash from her eyes in answer to their scorn.\n  Come toil on toil; 'tis this that makes her grand;\n  Peril on peril! And common states, that stand\n  In caution, twilight cities, dimly wise--\n  Ye know them, for no light is in their eyes.\n  Go forth, my son, and help. My fears are fled.\n  Women in sorrow call thee, and men dead.\"\n                                  (_Suppl._ 320 ff.)\n\nTheseus accepts his mother's charge. It has been his old habit to strike\nwherever he saw oppression without counting the risk; and it shall never\nbe said of him that an ancient Law of God was set at naught when he and\nAthens had power to enforce it. It is Athens as the \"saviour of Hellas\"\nthat we have here. It is Athens the champion of Hellenism and true\npiety, but it is also the Athens of free thought and the Enlightenment.\nFor later on, when the dead bodies are recovered from the battle-field,\nthey are a ghastly sight. The old unreflecting Greece would in the first\nplace have thought them a pollution, a thing which only slaves must be\nsent to handle. In the second place, since the mothers were making\nlamentation, the bodies must be brought to their eyes, so as to improve\nthe lamentation. But Theseus feels differently on both points. Why\nshould the mothers' grief be made more bitter? Let the bodies be burned\nin peace and the decent ashes given to the mothers. And as to the\ndefilement, the king himself, we hear, has taken up the disfigured\nbodies in his arms and washed their wounds and \"shown them love.\" No\nslave touched them. \"How dreadful! Was he not ashamed?\" asks a\nbystander--the Greek word means something between \"ashamed\" and\n\"disgusted.\" \"No,\" is the answer: \"Why should men be repelled by one\nanother's sufferings?\" (768) It is a far-reaching answer, with great\nconsequences. It is the antique counterpart of St. Francis kissing the\nleper's sores. The man of the herd is revolted by the sight of great\nmisery and inclines to despise and even hate the sufferer; the man of\nthe enlightenment sees deeper, and the feeling of revulsion passes away\nin the wish to help.\n\nWe spoke of a slight pedantry in the enthusiasms of the _Suppliant\nWomen_. It is illustrated even by points like this, and by a tendency in\nTheseus to lecture on good manners and the Athenian constitution. The\nrude Theban herald enters asking, \"Who is monarch of this land?\" using\nthe word \"tyrannos\" for \"monarch.\" Theseus corrects him at once. \"There\nis no 'tyrannos' here. This is a free city; and when I say a free city,\nI mean one in which the whole people by turns takes part in the\nsovereignty, and the rich have no privilege as against the poor\"\n(399-408). These dissertations on democratic government could stir men's\npassions and force their way into scenes of high poetry legitimately\nenough at a time when men were fighting and dying for their democracy.\nTo those who are not \"Lovers\" of the beautiful city they will seem cold\nand irrelevant.\n\nOther plays of this period show marks of the same great wave of love for\nAthens. The lost plays _Aigeus_, _Theseus_, _Erechtheus_, all on Attic\nsubjects, can be dated in the first years of the war; the _Hippolytus_\nis built on an old legend of the Acropolis and a poetic love of Athens\nshines through the story. The _Andromache_ especially is a curious\ndocument, the meaning of which is discussed later on (p. 112). But the\ntwo plays we have described at length, _The Children of Heracles_ and\nthe _Suppliant Women_, give the best idea of what patriotism meant to\nour poet. With most men patriotism is a matter of association and\ncustom. They stick to their country because it is theirs; to their own\nhabits and prejudices and even neighbours for the same reason. But with\nEuripides his ideals came before his actual surroundings. He loved\nAthens because Athens meant certain things, and if the real Athens\nshould cease to mean those things he would cast her out of his heart. At\nleast he would try to do so; in point of fact that is always a very\ndifficult thing to do. But if ever Athens should be false, it was pretty\ncertain that Euripides would find hatred mingling with his betrayed\nlove. There were signs of this even in the _Medea_ and the _Hecuba_.\n\nBut before dealing with that subject we must dwell for a few moments\nupon another fine play, which marks in more than one sense the end of a\nperiod. The _Heracles_, written about the year 423, shows Theseus in the\nsame role of Athenian hero. In the _Suppliant Women_ he had helped\nAdrastus and the Argive mothers and shown them the path of true\nHellenism; in the _Heracles_ he comes to the rescue of Heracles in his\nfall. That hero has been mad and slain his own children; he has\nrecovered and awakes to find himself bound to a pillar, with dead bodies\nthat he cannot recognize round about him. He rages to be set free. He\ncompels those who know to tell him the whole truth. Frantic with shame\nand horror, he wishes to curse God and die, when he sees Theseus\napproaching. Theseus has been his friend in many hard days and Heracles\ndares not face him nor speak to him. The touch of one so blood-guilty,\nthe sound of his voice, the sight of his face, would bring pollution. He\nshrouds himself in his mantle and silently waves Theseus away. In a\nmoment his friend's arms are round him, and the shrouding mantle is\ndrawn off. There is no such thing as pollution; no deed of man can stain\nthe immortal sunlight, and a friend's love does not fear the infection\nof blood. Heracles is touched: he thanks Theseus and is now ready to\ndie. God has tempted him too far, and he will defy God. Theseus reminds\nhim of what he is: the helper of man, the powerful friend of the\noppressed; the Heracles who dared all and endured all; and now, like a\ncommon, weak-hearted man, he speaks of suicide! \"Hellas will not suffer\nyou to die in your blindness!\" (1254). The great adventurer is softened\nand won over by the \"wisdom\" of Theseus, and goes to Athens to fulfil,\nin spite of suffering, whatever further tasks life may have in store for\nhim.\n\nThis condemnation of suicide was unusual in antiquity; and the\n_Heracles_ also contains one remarkable denial of the current myths, the\nmore remarkable because, as Dr. Verrall has pointed out, it seems almost\nto upset the plot of the play. Heracles' madness is sent upon him by the\nmalignity of Hera; we see her supernatural emissary entering the room\nwhere Heracles lies. And the hero himself speaks of his supernatural\nadventures. Yet he also utters the lines:\n\n    Say not there be adulterers in Heaven\n    Nor prisoner gods and gaoler. Long ago\n    My heart has known it false and will not alter.\n    God, if he be God, lacketh naught. All these\n   Are dead unhappy tales of minstrelsy.\n(_Her._ 1341; cf. _Iph. Taur._ 380-392; _Bellerophon_ fr. 292.)\n\nBut in another way, too, the _Heracles_ marks an epoch in the poet's\nlife. It seems to have been written in or about the year 423, and it was\nin 424 that Euripides had reached the age of sixty and was set free from\nmilitary service. He had had forty years of it, steady work for the most\npart; fighting against Boeotians, Spartans, Corinthians, against\nThracian barbarians, in all probability also against other people\nfurther overseas. We have no record of the campaigns in which Euripides\nserved; but we have by chance an inscription of the year 458, when he\nwas twenty-six, giving the names of the members of one particular tribe,\nthe Sons of Erechtheus, who fell in war in that one year. They had\nfallen \"in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at Halieis, in Aegina and at\nMegara.\" There were ten such tribes in Athens. And this record gives\nsome notion of the extraordinary energy and ubiquity of the Athenian\narmies.\n\nIt is strange to reflect on the gulf that lies between the life of an\nancient poet and his modern descendants. Our poets and men of letters\nmostly live either by writing or by investments eked out by writing.\nThey are professional writers and readers and, as a rule, nothing else.\nIt is comparatively rare for any one of them to face daily dangers, to\nstand against men who mean to kill him and beside men for whom he is\nready to die, to be kept a couple of days fasting, or even to work in\nthe sweat of his body for the food he eats. If such things happen by\naccident to one of us we cherish them as priceless \"copy,\" or we even go\nout of our way to compass the experience artificially.\n\nBut an ancient poet was living hard, working, thinking, fighting,\nsuffering, through most of the years that we are writing about life. He\ntook part in the political assembly, in the Council, in the jury-courts;\nhe worked at his own farm or business; and every year he was liable to\nbe sent on long military expeditions abroad or to be summoned at a day's\nnotice to defend the frontier at home. It is out of a life like this, a\nlife of crowded reality and work, that Aeschylus and Sophocles and\nEuripides found leisure to write their tragedies; one writing 90, one\n127, and the third 92! Euripides was considered in antiquity a bookish\npoet. He had a library--in numbers probably not one book for every\nhundred that Tennyson or George Meredith had: he was a philosopher, he\nread to himself. But on what a background of personal experience his\nphilosophy was builded! It is probably this immersion in the hard\nrealities of life that gives ancient Greek literature some of its\nspecial characteristics. Its firm hold on sanity and common sense, for\ninstance; its avoidance of sentimentality and paradox and various\nseductive kinds of folly; perhaps also its steady devotion to ideal\nforms and high conventions, and its aversion from anything that we\nshould call \"realism.\" A man everlastingly wrapped round in good books\nand safe living cries out for something harsh and real--for blood and\nswear-words and crude jagged sentences. A man who escapes with eagerness\nfrom a life of war and dirt and brutality and hardship to dwell just a\nshort time among the Muses, naturally likes the Muses to be their very\nselves and not remind him of the mud he has just washed off. Euripides\nhas two long descriptions of a battle, one in the _Children of Heracles_\nand one in the _Suppliant Women_; both are rhetorical Messenger's\nSpeeches, conventionally well-written and without one touch that\nsuggests personal experience. It is curious to compare these, the\nwritings of the poet who had fought in scores of hand-to-hand battles,\nwith the far more vivid rhapsodies of modern writers who have never so\nmuch as seen a man pointing a gun at them. Aeschylus indeed has written\none splendid battle piece in the _Persians_. But even there there is no\nrealism; it is the spirit of the war of liberation that thrills in us as\nwe read, it is not the particular incidents of the battle.\n\nForty years of military service finished: as the men of sixty stepped\nout of the ranks they must have had a feeling of mixed relief and\nmisgiving. They are now officially \"Gerontes,\" Old Men: they are off\nhard work, and to be at the end of hard work is perilously near being\nat the end of life. There is in the _Heracles_ a wistful chorus, put in\nthe mouths of certain Theban elders (637 ff.), \"Youth is what I love for\never; Old Age is a burden upon the head, a dimness of light in the eyes,\nheavier than the crags of Etna. Fame and the crown of the East and\nchambers piled with gold, what are they all compared with Youth?\" A\nsecond life is what one longs for. To have it all again and live it\nfully; if a man has any _arete_ in him, any real life left in his heart,\nthat is what ought to be possible. . . . For Euripides himself it seems\nthere is still a life to be lived. The words are important and almost\nuntranslatable. \"I will never cease mingling together the Graces and the\nMuses\"--such words are nearly nonsense, like most literal translations.\nThe \"Graces\" or Charities are the spirits of fulfilled desire, the Muses\nare all the spirits of \"Music\" or of \"Wisdom\"--of History and\nMathematics, by the way, just as much as Singing and Poetry. \"I will not\nrest. I will make the spirits of Fulfilled Desire one with the spirits\nof Music, a marriage of blessedness. I care not to live if the Muses\nleave me; their garlands shall be about me for ever. Even yet the\nage-worn minstrel can turn Memory into song.\"\n\nMemory, according to Greek legend, was the mother of the Muses; and the\n\"memory\" of which Euripides is thinking is that of the race, the saga of\nhistory and tradition, more than his own. The Muses taught him long ago\ntheir mystic dance, and he will be theirs for ever; he will never from\nweariness or faint heart ask them to rest. He was thinking doubtless of\nthe lines of the old poet Alcman to his dancing maidens, lines almost\nthe most beautiful ever sung by Greek lips: \"No more, ye maidens\nhoney-throated, voices of longing; my limbs will bear me no more. Would\nGod I were a ceryl-bird, over the flower of the wave with the halcyons\nflying, and never a care in his heart, the sea-blue bird of the spring!\"\nEuripides asks for no rest: cares and all, he accepts the service of the\nMuses and prays that he may bear their harness to the end. It was a bold\nprayer, and the Muses in granting it granted it at a heavy price.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nLIFE CONTINUED: THE EMBITTERING OF THE WAR: ALCIBIADES AND THE DEMAGOGUES:\n    THE \"ION\": THE \"TROJAN WOMEN\"\n\n\nOur Greek historians, with Thucydides at their head, are practically\nunanimous in associating with the Peloponnesian War a progressive\ndegradation and embitterment in Greek public life, and a reaction\nagainst the old dreams and ideals. We can measure the change by many\nslight but significant utterances.\n\nWhen Herodotus records his opinion that in the Persian Wars the\nAthenians had been \"the Saviours of Hellas\" he has to preface the remark\nby a curious apology (VII. 139): \"Here I am compelled by necessity to\nexpress an opinion which will be offensive to most of mankind, but I\ncannot refrain from putting it in the way which I believe to be true.\"\nHe was writing at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and by that\ntime Athens was not the Saviour but \"the Tyrant City.\" Her \"allies\" had\nfrom time to time refused to serve or tried to secede from the alliance;\nand one by one she had reduced them to compulsory subjection. The\n\"League\" had become confessedly an \"Empire.\"\n\nEven Pericles, the great statesman of the good time, who had sought and\nachieved so many fine ends, had failed to build up a free League based\non a representative elected body. The possibility of such a plan had\nhardly yet been conceived in the world, though a rudimentary system of\ninternational councils did in some places exist between neighbouring\nvillages; and Pericles must not be personally blamed for an error,\nhowever fatal, which no one living knew how to avoid. But he realized at\nlast in 430 B.C. what Athens had come to (_Thuc._ II. 63): \"Do not\nimagine you are fighting about a simple issue, the subjection or\nindependence of certain cities. You have an Empire to lose, and a danger\nto face from those who hate you for your empire. To resign it now would\nbe impossible--if at this crisis some timid and inactive spirits are\nhankering after Righteousness even at that price! For by this time your\nempire has become a Despotism (Tyrannis), a thing which it is\nconsidered unjust to acquire, but which can never be safely\nsurrendered.\"\n\nThe same thought is emphasized more brutally by Cleon (_Thuc._ III. 37):\n\n\"I have remarked again and again that a democracy cannot govern an\nempire, and never more clearly than now. . . . You do not realize that\nwhen you make a concession to the allies out of pity, or are led away by\ntheir specious pleading, you commit a weakness dangerous to yourselves\nwithout receiving any gratitude from them. Remember that your empire is\na Despotism exercised over unwilling men who are always in conspiracy\nagainst you.\" \"Do not be misled,\" he adds a little later, \"by the three\nmost deadly enemies of empire, pity and charm of words and the\ngenerosity of strength\" (_Thuc._ III. 40).\n\nSo much for the ideals of chivalry and freedom and \"Sophia\": for I think\nthe second of Cleon's \"enemies\" refers especially to the eloquent wisdom\nof the philosophers. And as for democracy we do not hear now that \"the\nvery name of it is beautiful\": we hear that it is no principle on which\nto govern an empire. And later on we shall hear Alcibiades, an Athenian\nof democratic antecedents, saying at Sparta: \"Of course all sensible men\nknow what democracy is, and I better than most, from personal\nexperience; but there is nothing new to be said about acknowledged\ninsanity\" (_Thuc._ VI. 89).\n\nThe ideals failed, and, if we are to believe our contemporary authors,\nthe men failed too. Pericles, with all his errors, was a man of noble\nmind; he was pure in motive, lofty, a born ruler; he led his people\ntowards \"beauty and wisdom,\" and he wished it to be written on his grave\nthat no Athenian had put on mourning through his act. Cleon, they all\ntell us, was a bellowing demagogue; violent, not over honest,\nunscrupulous, blundering; only resolute to fight for the demos of Athens\ntill he dropped and to keep the poor from starving at whatever cost of\nblackmailing the rich and flaying the allied cities. And when he--by\ngood luck, as Thucydides considers--was killed in battle, he was\nsucceeded by Hyperbolus, a caricature of himself--as a pun of the comic\npoets' puts it, a \"Cleon in hyperbole.\" This picture has been subjected\nto just criticism in many details, but it represents on the whole the\nunited voice of our ancient witnesses.\n\nOne character only shines out in this period with a lurid light.\nAlcibiades, so far as one can understand him at all from our fragmentary\nand anecdotal records, must have been something like a Lord Byron on a\ngrand scale, turned soldier and statesman instead of poet. His\ndisastrous end and his betrayal of all political parties have probably\naffected his reputation unfairly. Violent and unprincipled as he\ncertainly was, the peculiar dissolute caddishness implied in the\nanecdotes is probably a misrepresentation of the kind that arises so\neasily against a man who has no friends. It needs an effort to imagine\nwhat he looked like before he was found out. Of noble birth and a nephew\nof Pericles; famous for his good looks and his distinguished, if\ninsolent, manners; a brilliant soldier, an ambitious and far-scheming\npolitician; a pupil of the philosophers and an especially intimate\nfriend of Socrates, capable both of rising to great ideas and of\nexpounding them to the multitude; he was hailed by a large party as the\ndestined saviour of Athens, and seems for a time at least to have made\nthe same impression upon Euripides. Even in the _Suppliant Women_,\npeace-play as it is, Euripides congratulates Athens on possessing in\nTheseus \"a general good and young,\" and critics have connected the\nphrase with the election of Alcibiades, at a very early age, to be\nGeneral in the year 420. More significant perhaps is the curious case of\nthe _Andromache_. The ancient argument tells us definitely that it was\nnot produced in Athens. And we find from another source that it was\nproduced by one Democrates or Timocrates. Now Euripides had a friend\ncalled Timocrates, who was an Argive; so it looks as if the play had\nbeen produced in Argos. This would be astonishing but by no means\ninexplicable. It was an old Athenian policy to check Sparta by\norganizing a philo-Athenian league in the Peloponnese itself (_Ar.\nKnights_, 465 ff.). The nucleus was to consist in three states, Argos,\nElis and Mantinea, which had been visited by Themistocles just after the\nPersian wars and had set up democracies on the Athenian model. It was\nAlcibiades who eventually succeeded in organizing this league in 420,\nand it seems likely that the _Andromache_ was sent to Argos for\nproduction in much the same spirit in which Pindar used to send his\nChorus of Dancers with a new song to compliment some foreign king. The\nplay seems to contain a reference to the Peloponnesian War (734), it\nindulges in curiously direct denunciations of the Spartans (445 ff., 595\nff.), and the Spartan Menelaus is the villain of the piece--a more\nstagey villain than Euripides in his better moments would have\npermitted. We have also one doubtful external record of our poet's\ntemporary faith in Alcibiades. In the year 420 there fell an observance\nof the Olympian Festival, the greatest of all the Pan-Hellenic Games,\nwhich carried with it a religious truce. Alcibiades succeeded in getting\nSparta convicted of a violation of this truce, and consequently excluded\nfrom the Festival, which was a marked blow at her prestige. Then,\nentering himself as a competitor, he won with his own horses a whole\nseries of prizes, including the first, in the four-horse chariot\ncompetition. And Plutarch, in his _Life of Alcibiades_, refers to a\nVictory Ode which was written for him on this occasion, \"as report goes,\nby the poet Euripides\" (ch. 11). This revival of the Pindaric\n_Epinikion_ for a personal victory would fit in with the known character\nof Alcibiades; and it would be a sharp example of the irony of history\nif Euripides consented to write the Ode.\n\nEuripides' delusion was natural and it was short-lived. The _Suppliant\nWomen_ points towards peace, and the true policy of Alcibiades was to\nmake peace impossible. And even apart from that the ideals of the two\nmen were antipathetic. The matter is summed up in the _Frogs_ of\nAristophanes, produced in 405, when the only question remaining about\nAlcibiades was whether he was more dangerous to the city as an honoured\nleader or as an enemy and exile. The two great poets of the Dead are\nasked for their advice on this particular subject and their answers are\nclear. Aeschylus says: \"Submit to the lion's whelp;\" Euripides rejects\nhim with three scathing lines (_Frogs_, 1427 ff., cf. 1446 ff.). Long\nbefore the date of the _Frogs_ Alcibiades had probably grown to be in\nthe mind of Euripides the very type and symbol of the evil times.\n\nAll Greece--we have the emphatic and disinterested testimony of\nThucydides for the statement--was gradually corrupted and embittered by\nthe long war. Probably all war, as it accustoms people more and more to\ndesperate needs and desperate expedients for meeting them, and sets more\nand more aside the common generosities and humanities of life, tends to\nsome degradation of character. But this particular war was specially\nharmful. For one thing it was a struggle not simply between two foreign\npowers, but between two principles, oligarchy and democracy. In almost\nall the cities of the Athenian alliance there were large numbers of\nmalcontent rich, who were only too ready, if chance offered, to\noverthrow the constitution, massacre the mob, and revolt to Sparta. In a\ngood many of the cities on the other side there were masses of\ndiscontented poor who had been touched by the breath of democratic\ndoctrines, and were anxious for a chance to cut the throats of the\nruling Few. It was like the state of things produced in many cities of\nEurope by the French Revolution. A secret civil strife lay in the\nbackground behind the open war; and the open war itself was a long\nprotracted struggle for life or death. Probably the most high-minded man\nwhen engaged in a death-grapple fights in much the same way as the most\nlow-minded. And there can be no doubt that as the toils of war closed\ntighter round Athens, and she began to feel herself fighting, gasp by\ngasp, for both her empire and her life, the ideals of the Saviour of\nHellas fell away from her. She fought with every weapon that came.\n\nSuch times called forth naturally the men that suited them. The assembly\ncared less to listen to decent and thoughtful people, not to speak of\nphilosophers. It was feeling bitter and fierce and frightened and it\nliked speakers who were feeling the same. The same fear that made it\ncruel made it also superstitious. On one occasion the whole city went\nmad with alarm because of a prank played on some ancient figures of\nHermes. On another a great army was lost because it and its general were\nafraid to move during an eclipse of the moon. So soon had Anaxagoras\nbeen forgotten.\n\nIs this the result, one is inclined to ask, of the great ideals of\ndemocracy and enlightenment? Of course the old Tory type of Greek\nhistorian, like Mitford, revelled in an affirmative answer. But a more\nreflective view of history suggests a different explanation. We must\ndistinguish carefully between the two notions, Enlightenment and\nDemocracy. They happen to have gone together in two or three of the\ngreatest periods of human progress and we are apt to regard them as\nsomehow necessarily allied. But they are not. Doubtless Democracy is\nitself an exalted conception and belongs naturally to the ideas of the\nEnlightenment, just as does the belief in Reason, in the free pursuit of\nknowledge, in justice to the weak, the wish to be right rather than to\nbe victorious, or the hatred of violence and superstition as such. But\nthe trouble is that, in a backward and untrained people, the victory of\ndemocracy may result in the defeat of the other exalted ideas. The\nAthenian democracy as conceived by Pericles, Euripides or Protagoras was\na free people, highly civilized and pursuing \"wisdom,\" free from\nsuperstition and oppression themselves and helping always to emancipate\nothers. But the actual rustics and workmen who voted for Pericles had\nbeen only touched on the surface by the \"wisdom\" of the sophists. They\nliked him because he made them great and admired and proud of being\nAthenians. But one must suspect that, when they were back at their farms\nand the spell of Pericles' \"wisdom\" was removed, they practised again\nthe silliest and cruellest old agricultural magic, were terrified by the\nold superstitions, beat their slaves and wives and hated the \"strangers\"\na few miles off, just as their grandfathers had done in the old times.\nWhat seems to have happened at the end of the war-time is that, owing\nlargely to the democratic enthusiasm of the sophistic movement in\nAthens, the common people is strongly in power; owing to the same\nmovement its old taboos and rules of conduct are a little shaken and\nless able to stand against strong temptation; but meantime the true\nmoral lessons of the enlightenment, the hardest of all lessons for man\nto learn, have never worked into their bones. Just as the French\nRevolution called into power the brutal and superstitious peasant who\nwas the product of the Old Regime and could never rise to the ideas of\nthe Revolution, so the Athenian enlightenment had put into power the old\nunregenerate mass of sentiment that had not been permeated by the\nenlightenment. Cleon was no friend of sophists, but their avowed enemy.\nAnd when he told the Assembly in its difficulties simply to double the\ntribute of the allies and sack their towns if they did not pay; when he\nurged the killing in cold blood of all the Mitylenean prisoners, he was\npreaching doctrines that would probably have seemed natural enough in\nthe old days, before any sophists had troubled men's minds with talk\nabout duties towards dirty foreigners. And the people who followed his\nlead were the same sort of people who would naturally be terrified about\nthe mutilation of a taboo image or an eclipse of the divine moon. What\nthey had, perhaps, acquired from the sophistic movement was a touch of\neffrontery. Boeotians or Acarnanians might commit crimes, when they\nneeded to, by instinct, without stating their reasons: in Athens you had\nat least to discuss the principle of the proposed crime and accept it\nfor what it was worth. A cynic or a hypocrite trained in a sophistic\nschool might offer occasional help with the theory.\n\nPerhaps the earliest touch of Euripides' bitterness against his country\ncomes, as we have seen, in the _Hecuba_ (p. 89). But the period we have\njust reached, soon after the _Heracles_, is marked by one of the most\nironic and enigmatical plays he ever wrote. The _Ion_ is interesting in\nevery line and contains one scene which is sometimes considered the most\npoignant in all Greek tragedy, yet it leaves every reader unsatisfied.\nIs it a pious offering to Apollo, the ancestor of the Ionian race? If\nso, why is Apollo the villain of the piece? Is it a glorification of\nancient Athens, her legends and her shrines? If so, why are the shrines\npolluted by lustful gods, the legends made specially barbaric, and the\nbeautiful earth-born Princess shown as a seduced woman and a would-be\nmurderess? Nay, further, why does the hero of the play explain in a\ncareful speech that he would sooner live a friendless slave in the\ntemple at Delphi than a free man and a prince in such a place as\nAthens--a city \"full of terror,\" where men \"who are good and might show\nwisdom are silent and never come forward,\" while the men in power watch\nenviously round to destroy any possible rival? (598 ff. _Cf._ Euripides'\nwords in _Frogs_, 1446 ff.) In Delphi he has peace, and is not jostled\noff the pavement by the scum of the earth (635)--a complaint which is\noften made in Greek literature about democratic Athens.\n\nI think the best way to understand the _Ion_ is to suppose that\nEuripides, in his usual manner, is just taking an old canonical legend,\nseeing the human drama and romance in it, and working it together in his\nown clear ironic mind till at last he throws out his play, saying:\n\"There are your gods and your holy legends; see how you like them!\" The\nirony is lurking at every corner, though of course the drama and romance\ncome first.\n\nThe _Ion_ is, of all the extant plays, the most definitely blasphemous\nagainst the traditional gods. Greek legend was full of stories of heroes\nborn of the love of a god and a mortal woman. Such stories could be\nturned into high religious mysteries, as by Aeschylus in his _Suppliant\nWomen_; into tender and reverent legends, as by Pindar in one or two\nodes. Euripides uses no such idealization. In play after play, _Auge_,\n_Melanippe_, _Danae_, _Alope_, he seems to have scarified such gods, as\nhe does now in the _Ion_. Legend told that Ion, the hero-ancestor of the\nIonians, was the son of the Athenian princess Creusa. Creusa was married\nto one Xuthus, an Aeolian soldier, but the real father of Ion was the\ngod Apollo. Euripides treats the story as if Apollo were just a lawless\nravisher, utterly selfish and ready to lie when pressed, though\ngood-natured in his way when he lost nothing by it--a sort of\nAlcibiades, in fact. Xuthus is a butt; a foreigner with abrupt and\nviolent manners, lied to by Apollo, befooled by his wife, disobeyed by\nher maids, and eventually made happy by the belief that her illegitimate\nson is really his own. Creusa herself, though drawn with extraordinary\nsympathy and beauty, is at heart a savage.\n\nCreusa, when she bore her child, laid him, in her terror, in the same\ncavern where Apollo had ravished her: surely the god would save his own\nson. She came again and the child was gone. As a matter of fact the god\nhad carried him in his cradle to Delphi, where he was discovered by the\npriestess and reared as a foundling in the temple courts. Creusa was\nthen married to Xuthus, who knew nothing of her adventure. Some\nseventeen years or so afterwards, since the pair had no children, they\ncame to Delphi to consult the god. Creusa there meets the foundling,\nIon, and the two are strangely attracted to one another. She almost\nconfides to him her story, and he tells her what he knows of his own.\nMeantime Xuthus goes in to ask the god for a child; the god tells him\nthat the first person he meets on leaving the shrine will be his son.\n(This, of course, is a lie.) He meets Ion, salutes him as his son and\nembraces him wildly. The boy protests: \"Do not,\" cries Xuthus, \"fly from\nwhat you should love best on earth!\" \"I do not love teaching manners to\ndemented foreigners,\" retorts the youth. Sobered by this, Xuthus tries,\nwith Ion's help, to think out what the god can mean by saying that this\nyouth is his son. His married life has always been correct; but once\nwhen he was a young man, there was a time . . . It was a great\nreligious feast at Delphi and he was drunk. Ion accepts the explanation,\nthough he evidently does not much like his new father. He makes\ndifficulties about going to Athens. He is sorry for Creusa. He wishes to\nstay as he is. Xuthus decides that Creusa must be deceived; he will say\nhe has taken a fancy to Ion and wishes to adopt him. Meantime let them\nhave a great birth-feast . . . and if any of the Chorus say a word to\nCreusa they shall be hanged! Creusa enters, accompanied by one of\nEuripides' characteristic Old Slaves. The man has tended Creusa from\nchildhood, lives for her and thinks of nothing else; he is utterly\nwithout scruple apart from her. The Chorus immediately tell Creusa what\nthey know of the story. Ion is Xuthus's illegitimate son; he must have\nknown it all the time; he has now, with the god's connivance, arranged\nto take the son back to Athens; as for Creusa, the god says she shall\nhave no child. Stung to fury to think that her child is dead, that the\nboy whom she so loved is deliberately deceiving her, and that Apollo is\nadding this deliberate insult to his old brutal wrong, Creusa casts away\nshame and standing up in front of the great Temple cries out her\nreproach against the god. She is disgraced publicly and for ever, but\nat least she will drag down this devil who sits crowned and singing to\nthe lyre while the women he has ravished go mad with grief and his babes\nare torn by wild beasts. In the horror-stricken silence that follows\nthere is none to advise Creusa except the old Slave. Blindly devoted and\nfostering all her passions, he wrings from her line by line the detailed\nstory of her seduction, and then calls for revenge. \"Burn down the god's\ntemple!\" She dare not. \"Poison Xuthus!\" No; he was good to her when she\nwas miserable. \"Kill the bastard!\" . . . Yes: she will do that. . . .\nThe Slave takes poison with him and goes to poison Ion at the\nbirth-feast. The plot fails; the Slave is taken and Creusa, pursued by\nthe angry youth, flies to the altar. It is fury against fury, each\nbewildered to find such evil in the other, after their curious mutual\nattraction. Here the Delphian Prophetess enters, bringing with her the\ntokens that were with the foundling when she first came upon him in the\ntemple courts. Creusa, amazed, recognizes the old basket-cradle in which\nshe had exposed her own child.\n\nShe leaves the altar and gives herself up to Ion. For a moment it seems\nas if he would kill her; but he tests her story. What else is there in\nthe basket? She names the things, her own shawl with gorgons on it, her\nown snake-twined necklace and wreath of undying olive. The mother\nconfesses to the son and the son forgives her. But Apollo? What of him?\nHe has lied. . . . Ion, temple-child as he is, is roused to rebellion:\nhe will break through the screen of the sanctuary and demand of the god\none plain answer--when he is stopped by a vision of Athena. She comes\ninstead of Apollo, who fears to face the mortals he has wronged; she\nbids them be content and seek no further. Creusa forgives the god; Ion\nremains moodily silent.\n\nThe _Ion_ is so rich in romantic invention that it sometimes seems to a\nmodern reader curiously old-fashioned; it is full of motives--lost\nchildren, and strawberry-marks, and the cry of the mother's heart, and\nobvious double meanings--which have been repeated by so many plays since\nthat we instinctively regard them as \"out of date.\" It is redeemed by\nits passion and its sincere psychology. On the other hand, it is more\nironical than any other extant Greek play. The irony touches every part\nof the story, excepting the actual tragedy of the wronged woman and the\ncharming carelessness of the foundling's life. We should remember that\nan attack on the god of Delphi was not particularly objectionable in\nAthens. For that god, by the mouth of his official prophets, at the\nbeginning of the war, had assured the Spartans that if they fought well\nthey would conquer and that He, the God, would be fighting for them. The\nbest that a pious Athenian could do for such a god as that was to\nsuppose that the official prophets were liars. Still Euripides attacks\nmuch more than Delphi. If his thoughts ever strike home, it is not\nmerely Delphi that will fall, it is the whole structure of Greek ritual\nand mythology. It is against the gods and against Athens that his irony\ncuts sharpest.\n\nIrony is the mood of one who has some strong emotion within but will not\nquite trust himself on the flood of it. And romance is largely the mood\nof one turning away from realities that disgust him. In the year 416\nB.C. Euripides, in his relation to Athens, was shaken for the first time\nout of any thought of either romance or irony. During the summer and\nwinter of that year there occurred an event of very small military\nimportance and no direct political consequences, to which nevertheless\nThucydides devotes twenty-six continuous chapters in a very significant\npart of his work, the part just before the final catastrophe. The event\nis the siege and capture by the Athenians of a little island called\nMelos, the massacre of all its adult men and the enslavement of the\nwomen and children. The island had no military power. It had little\ncommerce and lived on its own poor agriculture. Its population was not\nlarge: when it was depopulated five hundred colonists were enough to\npeople it again. Why then this large place in Thucydides' brief and\nsevere narrative? Only, I think, because of the moral issue involved and\nthe naked clarity of the crime. Thucydides tells us of a long debate\nbetween the Athenian envoys and the Melian Council and professes to\nreport the arguments used on each side. No doubt there is conscious\nartistic composition in the reports. We cannot conclude that any\nAthenian envoy used exactly these horrible words. But we can be sure\nthat Thucydides took the war on Melos as the great typical example of\nthe principles on which the Athenian war party were led to act in the\nlater part of the war; we can go further and be almost sure that he\nselected it as a type of sin leading to punishment--that sin of\n\"Hubris\" or Pride which according to Greek ideas was associated with\nsome heaven-sent blindness and pointed straight to a fall.\n\nIn cool and measured language the Athenian envoys explain to the Melian\nSenate--for the populace is carefully excluded--that it suits their\npurpose that Melos should become subject to their empire. They will not\npretend--being sensible men and talking to sensible men--that the\nMelians have done them any wrong or that they have any lawful claim to\nMelos, but they do not wish any islands to remain independent: it is a\nbad example to the others. The power of Athens is practically\nirresistible: Melos is free to submit or to be destroyed. The Melians,\nin language carefully controlled but vibrating with suppressed\nbitterness, answer as best they can. Is it quite safe for Athens to\nbreak all laws of right? Empires are mortal; and the vengeance of\nmankind upon such a tyranny as this . . . ? \"We take the risk of that,\"\nanswer the Athenians; \"the immediate question is whether you prefer to\nlive or die.\" The Melians plead to remain neutral; the plea is, of\ncourse, refused. At any rate they will not submit. They know Athens is\nvastly stronger in men and ships and military skill; still the gods may\nhelp the innocent (\"That risk causes us no uneasiness,\" say the envoys:\n\"we are quite as pious as you\"); the Lacedaemonians are bound by every\ntie of honour and kinship to intervene (\"We shall of course see that\nthey do not\"); in any case we choose to fight and hope rather than to\naccept slavery. \"A very regrettable misjudgement,\" say the Athenians;\nand the war proceeds to its hideous end.\n\nAs I read this Melian Dialogue, as it is called, again and again, I feel\nmore clearly the note of deep and angry satire. Probably the Athenian\nwar-party would indignantly have repudiated the reasoning put into the\nmouths of their leaders. After all they were a democracy; and, as\nThucydides fully recognizes, a great mass of men, if it does commit\ninfamies, likes first to be drugged and stimulated with lies: it seldom,\nlike the wicked man in Aristotle's Ethics, \"calmly sins.\" But in any\ncase the massacre of Melos produced on the minds of men like Thucydides\nand Euripides--and we might probably add almost all the great writers\nwho were anywise touched by the philosophic spirit--this peculiar\nimpression. It seemed like a revelation of naked and triumphant sin.\nAnd we can not but feel the intention with which Thucydides continues\nhis story. \"They put to death all the Melians whom they found of man's\nestate, and made slaves of the women and children. And they sent later\nfive hundred colonists and took the land for their own.\n\n\"And the same winter the Athenians sought to sail with a greater fleet\nthan ever before and conquer Sicily. . . .\" This was the great Sicilian\nexpedition that brought Athens to her doom.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nEuripides must have been brooding on the crime of Melos during the\nautumn and winter. In the spring, when the great fleet was still getting\nready to sail, he produced a strange play, the work rather of a prophet\nthan a mere artist, which was reckoned in antiquity as one of his\nmasterpieces but which set a flame of discord for ever between himself\nand his people. One would like to know what Archon accepted that play\nand what rich man gave the chorus. It was called _The Trojan Women_, and\nit tells of the proudest conquest wrought by Greek arms in legend, the\ntaking of Troy by the armies of Agamemnon. But it tells the old legend\nin a peculiar way. Slowly, reflectively, with little stir of the blood,\nwe are made to look at the great glory, until we see not glory at all\nbut shame and blindness and a world swallowed up in night. At the very\nbeginning we see gods brooding over the wreck of Troy; as they might be\nbrooding over that wrecked island in the Aegean, whose walls were almost\nas ancient as Troy's own. It is from the Aegean that Poseidon has risen\nto look upon the city that is now a smoking ruin, sacked by the Greeks.\n\"The shrines are empty and the sanctuaries run red with blood.\" The\nunburied corpses lie polluting the air; and the conquering soldiers,\nhome-sick and uneasy, they know not why, roam to and fro waiting for a\nwind that will take them away from the country they have made horrible.\nSuch is the handiwork of Athena, daughter of Zeus! (47).\n\nThe name gives one a moment of shock. Athena is so confessedly the\ntutelary goddess of Athens. But Euripides was only following the regular\nHomeric story, in which Athena had been the great enemy of Troy, and the\nunscrupulous friend of the Greeks. Her name is no sooner mentioned than\nshe appears. But she is changed. Her favourites have gone too far; they\nhave committed \"Hubris,\" insulted the altars of the gods and defiled\nvirgins in holy places. Athena herself is now turned against her people.\nTheir great fleet, flushed with conquest and stained with sin, is just\nabout to set sail: Athena has asked Zeus the Father for vengeance\nagainst it, and Zeus has given it into her hand. She and Poseidon swear\nalliance; the storm shall break as soon as the fleet sets sail, and the\nhungry rocks of the Aegean be glutted with wrecked ships and dying men\n(95 ff.).\n\n                  How are ye blind\n    Ye treaders down of Cities; ye that cast\n    Temples to desolation and lay waste\n    Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie\n    The ancient dead, yourselves so soon to die!\n\nAnd the angry presences vanish into the night. Were the consciences of\nthe sackers of Melos quite easy during that prologue?\n\nThen the day dawns and the play begins, and we see what, in plain words,\nthe great glory has amounted to. We see the shattered walls and some\npoor temporary huts where once was a city; and presently we see a human\nfigure rising wearily from sleep. It is an old woman, very tired, her\nhead and her back aching from the night on the hard ground. The old\nwoman is Hecuba, lately the queen of Troy, and in the huts hard by are\nother captives, \"High women chosen from the waste of war\" to be slaves\nto the Greek chieftains. They are to be allotted this morning. She calls\nthem and they come startled out of sleep, some terrified, some quiet,\nsome still dreaming, one suddenly frantic. Through the rest of the play\nwe hear bit by bit the decisions of the Greek army-council. Cassandra,\nthe virgin priestess, is to be Agamemnon's concubine. The stupid and\ngood-natured Herald who brings the news thinks it good news. How lucky\nfor the poor helpless girl! And the King, too! There is no accounting\nfor tastes; but he thinks it was that air of unearthly holiness in\nCassandra which made Agamemnon fancy her. The other women are\nhorror-stricken, but Cassandra is happy. God is leading her; her flesh\nseems no longer to be part of her; she has seen something of the mind of\nGod and knows that the fate of Troy and of dead Hector is better than\nthat of their conquerors. She sees in the end that she must discrown\nherself, take off the bands of the priestess and accept her desecration;\nshe sees to what end she is fated to lead Agamemnon, sees the vision of\nhis murdered body--murdered by his wife--cast out in precipitous places\non a night of storm; and beside him on the wet rocks there is some one\nelse, dead, outcast, naked . . . who is it? She sees it is herself, and\ngoes forth to what is appointed (445 ff.).\n\nThe central portion of the play deals with the decision of the Greeks\nabout Hector's little boy, Astyanax. He is only a child now; but of\ncourse he will grow, and he will form the natural rallying point for all\nthe fugitive Trojans and the remnants of the great Trojan Alliance. On\nthe principles of the Melian dialogue he is best out of the way. The\nHerald is sent to take the child from his mother, Andromache, and throw\nhim over the battlements. He comes when the two women, Andromache and\nHecuba, are talking together and the child playing somewhere near.\nAndromache has been allotted as slave to Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles,\nand is consulting with Hecuba about the horror she has to face. Shall\nshe simply resist to the end, in the hope that Pyrrhus may hate and kill\nher, or shall she try, as she always has tried, to make the best of\nthings? Hecuba advises: \"Think of the boy and think of your own gentle\nnature. You are made to love and not to hate; when things were happy you\nmade them happier; when they are miserable you will tend to heal them\nand make them less sore. You may even win Pyrrhus to be kind to your\nchild, Hector's child; and he may grow to be a help to all who have once\nloved us. . . .\" As they speak the shadow of the entering Herald falls\nacross them; he cannot speak at first, but he has come to take the child\nto its death, and his message has to be given. This scene, with the\nparting between Andromache and the child which follows, seems to me\nperhaps the most absolutely heart-rending in all the tragic literature\nof the world. After rising from it one understands Aristotle's judgment\nof Euripides as \"the most tragic of the poets.\"\n\nFor sheer beauty of writing, for a kind of gorgeous dignity that at\ntimes reminds one of Aeschylus and yet is compatible with the subtlest\nclashes of mood and character, the _Trojan Women_ stands perhaps first\namong all the works of Euripides. But that is not its most remarkable\nquality. The action works up first to a great empty scene where the\nchild's body is brought back to his grandmother, Hecuba, for the funeral\nrites. A solitary old woman with a dead child in her arms; that, on the\nhuman side, is the result of these deeds of glory. Then, in the finale,\ncome scenes of almost mystical tone, in which Hecuba appeals first to\nthe gods, who care nothing; then to the human dead who did at least care\nand love; but the dead, too, are deaf like the gods and cannot help or\nheed. Out of the noise and shame of battle there has come Death the most\nHoly and taken them to his peace. No friend among the dead, no help in\nGod, no illusion anywhere, Hecuba faces That Which Is and finds\nsomewhere, in the very intensity of Troy's affliction, a splendour which\ncannot die. She has reached in some sense not the bottom, but the\ncrowning peak of her fortunes. Troy has already been set on fire by the\nGreeks in preparation for their departure, and the Queen rushes to throw\nherself into the flames. She is hurled back by the guards, and the women\nwatch the flaming city till with a crash the great tower falls. The\nGreek trumpet sounds through the darkness. It is the sign for the women\nto start for their ships; and forth they go, cheated of every\npalliative, cheated even of death, to the new life of slavery. But they\nhave seen in their very nakedness that there is something in life which\nneither slavery nor death can touch.\n\nThe play is a picture of the inner side of a great conquest, a thing\nwhich then, even more than now, formed probably the very heart of the\ndreams of the average unregenerate man. It is a thing that seemed\nbeforehand to be a great joy, and is in reality a great misery. It is\nconquest seen when the heat of battle is over, and nothing remains but\nto wait and think; conquest not embodied in those who achieved it--we\nhave but one glimpse of the Greek conquerors, and that shows a man\ncontemptible and unhappy--but in those who have experienced it most\nfully, the conquered women.\n\nWe have so far treated the _Trojan Women_ as though it stood alone. In\nreality of course it belonged to a group, and one cannot but ask what\nthe other plays were, and whether their themes were such as could stand\nbeside this and not be shrivelled into commonplace or triviality.\nFortunately, though the plays are both lost, we know something about\nthem. They were _Palamedes_ and _Alexander_; and both are on great\nsubjects. The _Palamedes_ tells of the righteous man condemned by an\nevil world; the _Alexander_ has for its hero a slave.\n\nSlavery had always been one of the subjects that haunted Euripides. We\ndo not happen to find in our remains of his work any definite\npronouncement that slavery is \"contrary to nature,\" as was held by most\nGreek philosophers of the succeeding century. Probably no practical man\nof the time could imagine a large industrial city living without the\ninstitution of slavery. But it is clear that Euripides hates it. It\ncorrupts a man; it makes the slave cowardly and untrustworthy. Yet \"many\nslaves are better men than their masters\"; \"many so-called free men are\nslaves at heart.\" And again, in the style of a Stoic, \"A man without\nfear cannot be a slave\" (fr. 958: cf. fr. 86, 511, etc.). Much more\nimportant than such statements as these, which are, according to his\nmanner, generally put in the mouth of a slave, are the many instances of\n\"sympathetic\" and courageous slaves, and the panegyrics on men who have\nno slaves but work with their own hands. These show the bent of the\npoet's mind. It is not, however, till the year of the _Trojan Women_\nthat he takes the bold step of actually making a slave his hero and\nfilling his play with discussions of slavery, including a definite\ncontest in _arete_ between the slaves and the masters. True, the slave\nturns out in the end to be a prince. The herdsman whose favourite bull\nthe young nobles have seized for a sacrifice, and who pursues and\nchallenges and eventually conquers them in strength and skill as well as\nmagnanimity, turns out to be Alexander, son of Priam, who has been\nreared by the slave herdsmen of Mt. Ida. By our standards that is a\npity. We should have preferred him a real slave. But probably on the\nGreek stage thus much of romance was inevitable, and after all it had\nits connection with real life. Many a Scythian and Thracian and even\nPhrygian chief, like this Alexander, must have stood for sale in Greek\nslave markets.\n\nThe root idea of the _Palamedes_, the righteous man falsely slain, has a\nmomentous place in the history of Greek thought. It starts, of course,\nas a bitterness or a paradox. Righteousness to the fifth century\nAthenian was almost identical with social service, and, in a healthy\nsociety with normal conditions, the man who serves his city well will\nnaturally be honoured by his city. But then comes the thought, itself\nfraught with the wisdom of the sophists: \"What if the multitude is bent\non evil, or is blind? There are many men who are evil but seem\nrighteous; what if the man who is righteous seems to be evil?\" Hence\ncome the story of Aias in Pindar, and Palamedes in this play, and the\nideal Righteous Man of Plato's Republic who \"shall be scourged,\ntortured, bound . . . and at last impaled or crucified\" (_Rep._ p.\n362a). The idea runs through the various developments of later Greek\nmysticism and attains its culminating point in Christianity. It is in\nfull concord with the tone of the _Trojan Women_.\n\nWe know little of the _Palamedes_. That hero was the true wise man, and\nhis enemy was Odysseus, the evil man who \"seemed wise\" and had the ear\nof the multitude. Palamedes is falsely accused of treason, condemned by\nthe unanimous voice of his judges and sent to death. Fragments tell us\nof some friend, perhaps a prisoner, carving message after message upon\noar-blades and throwing them into the sea that the truth might be known;\nand we have two beautiful untranslatable lines uttered by the Chorus:\n\"Ye have slain, ye Greeks, ye have slain the nightingale; the winged-one\nof the Muses who sought no man's pain.\" Tradition saw in the words a\nreference to the wise Protagoras, lately slandered to his death.\n\nThe consideration of these other plays of the same trilogy strengthens\nthe impression that I receive already from the _Trojan Women_, an\nimpression of some deepening of experience, some profound change that\nhas worked into the writer's soul. Other critics, and notably Wilamowitz\nand Mr. Glover, have similarly felt that this play marks a turning\npoint. It was not a change of front; it was not sudden; it was not\ndependent on visions or supernatural messages. It was the completion of\na long process of strong feeling and intense thought, not the less sane\nbecause of its decided element of mysticism. It probably differed in\nmany ways from the sudden and conscious conversions which began the\nministry of certain Greek philosophers, both Cynic and Stoic, in the\nfourth and third centuries before Christ. It differed still more from\nthe experience of Paul on the road to Damascus or Augustine beneath the\nfig-tree. But it does seem to me that in this tragedy the author shows a\ngreatly increased sense of some reality that is behind appearances, some\nloyalty higher than the claims of friends or country, which supersedes\nas both false and inadequate the current moral code and the current\ntheologies.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nAFTER THE \"TROJAN WOMEN\": EURIPIDES' LAST YEARS IN ATHENS: FROM THE\n     \"IPHIGENIA\" TO THE \"ORESTES\"\n\n\nCritics have used various words to describe the change of mood which\nfollowed the _Trojan Women_. They speak of a period of despair,\npessimism, progressive bitterness, _Verzweiflung und Weltschmertz_. But\nsuch phrases seem to me misleading. In the first place I do not think\nthey describe quite truly even the particular plays they are meant to\ndescribe; in the second, they do not allow for the great variety which\nsubsists in the plays of this period. The mood of the _Trojan Women_ is\nnot exactly pessimism or despair; and whatever it is, it does not colour\nall the subsequent plays.\n\nThe plays after 415 fall into two main divisions. First the works of\npure fancy or romance, in which the poet seems to turn intentionally\naway from reality. Such are the _Iphigenia in Tauris_, the _Helena_ and\nthe _Andromeda_; they move among far seas and strange adventures and\nthey have happy endings. Next there are the true tragedies, close to\nlife, ruthlessly probing the depths of human nature; not more acutely\nbitter than such earlier works as the _Medea_ and _Hecuba_, but with a\nbitterness more profound because it is comparatively free from\nindignation. The glory has fallen away and the burning anger with it.\nThe poor miserable heroes and heroines . . . what else can you expect of\nthem? Rage is no good; punishment worse than useless. The road to\nhealing lies elsewhere.\n\nA good key to the first of these types of play is to be seen in\nAristophanes' comedy, _The Birds_. The gayest, sweetest and most\nirresponsible of all his plays, it was written just after the news of\nthe final disaster in Sicily, when ruin stared Athens in the face. And\nthe two heroes of it, disgusted with the ways of man, depart to live\namong the birds and build, with their help, a splendid Cloud City. In\nmuch the same spirit Euripides must have written his _Andromeda_. He\nproduced it in 412, the same year in which he was invited by the\nanti-war government which came into power after the news of the great\ndisaster to write the national epitaph on the soldiers slain in Sicily.\nHe wrote the epitaph in the old severe untranslatable style of\nSimonides: \"These men won eight victories over the Syracusans when the\nhand of God lay even between both.\" In English it seems cold; it seems\nhardly poetry. But in Greek it is like carved marble. Then, one must\nimagine, he turned right away from the present and spent his days with\nAndromeda. Only a few fragments of the _Andromeda_ remain, but they are\ncuriously beautiful; and the play as a whole seems to have been the one\nunclouded love-romance that Euripides ever wrote. It was fantastic,\nremote from life, with its heroine chained to a cliff over the blue sea\nawaiting the approach of the sea-monster, and its hero, Perseus, on\nwinged sandals, appearing through the air to save her. Yet the fragments\nhave a wistful ring: \"O holy Night, how long is the path of thy\nchariot!\" \"By the Mercy that dwelleth in the sea caves, cease, O Echo;\nlet me weep my fill in peace.\" Or the strange lines (fr. 135):\n\n    Methinks it is the morrow, day by day,\n    That cows us, and the coming thing alway\n    Greater than things to-day or yesterday.\n\nThere was a story told, in later times, of a tragedy-fever that fell on\nthe folk of Abdera, in Thrace, through this play, till in every street\nyou could see young men walking as though in a dream, and murmuring to\nthemselves the speech beginning, \"O Love, high monarch over gods and\nmen. . . .\" The _Andromeda_ was five hundred years old when people told\nthat story.\n\nThe _Iphigenia in Tauris_ came one year earlier. It is one of the most\nbeautiful of the extant plays, not really a tragedy in our sense nor yet\nmerely a romance. It begins in gloom and rises to a sense of peril, to\nswift and dangerous adventure, to joyful escape. So far it is like\nromance. But it is tragic in the sincerity of the character-drawing.\nIphigenia, especially, with her mixed longings for revenge and for\naffection, her hatred of the Greece that wronged her and her love of the\nGreece that is her only home, her possibilities of stony cruelty and her\nrealities of swift self-sacrifice, is a true child of her great and\naccursed house. The plot is as follows:--Iphigenia, daughter of\nAgamemnon, who was supposed to have been sacrificed by her father at\nAulis, was really saved by Artemis and is now priestess to that goddess\nin the land of the Taurians at the extremity of the Friendless Sea. The\nTaurians are savages who kill all strangers, and if ever a Greek shall\nland in the wild place it will be her task to prepare him for sacrifice.\nShe lives with this terror hanging over her, and the first Greek that\ncomes is her unknown brother, Orestes. Their recognition of one another\nis, perhaps, the finest recognition-scene in all Tragedy; and with its\nsequels of stratagem and escape forms a thrilling play, haunted not,\nlike a tragedy, by the shadow of death but rather by the shadow of\nhomesickness. The characters are Greeks in a far barbarian land, longing\nfor home or even for the Greek sea. The lyrics are particularly fine,\nand most of them full of sea-light and the clash of waters.\n\nIn the same year as the _Andromeda_ came another romantic play, the\n_Helena_. It is a good deal like the _Iphigenia_ in structure, but it is\nlighter, harder, and more artificial. The romance of Euripides is never\nquite the easy dreaming of lighter-hearted writers. And the _Helena_, in\nwhich he seems to have attempted a work of mere fancy, is, if we\nunderstand it rightly, a rather brilliant failure. Some critics--quite\nmistakenly in my judgment--have even argued that it is a parody. The\nplot is based on a variant of the canonical legend about Helen, a\nvariant generally associated with the ancient lyric poet, Stesichorus.\nStory tells that Stesichorus at one time lost his eyesight and took it\ninto his head that this was a punishment laid on him by the goddess\nHelen, because he had told the story of her flight with Paris from her\nhusband's house. He wrote a recantation, based on another form of the\nHelen-legend, in which Helen was borne away by the God Hermes to Egypt\nand there lived like a true wife till Menelaus came and found her. The\nbeing that went with Paris to Troy was only a phantom image of Helen,\ncontrived by the gods in order to bring about the war, and so reduce the\nwickedness and multitude of mankind. In Euripides' play there is a\nwicked king of Egypt, who seeks to marry Helen against her will and\nkills all Greeks who land in his country. The war at Troy is over, and\nMenelaus, beaten by storms out of his way, is shipwrecked on the coast\nof Egypt. He and Helen meet, recognize one another, and by the help of\nthe king's sister, who has second sight, contrive to escape. It is hard\nto say what exactly is wrong with the _Helena_; and it may only be that\nwe moderns do not know in what spirit to take it. But the illusion is\ndifficult to keep up and the work seems cold. Reality has gone out of\nit. For one thing, Helen, in her thorough process of rehabilitation, has\nemerged that most insipid of fancies, a perfectly beautiful and\nblameless heroine with no character except love of her husband, whom, by\nthe way, she has not seen for seventeen years.\n\nAnother large experiment of this time is the _Phoenissae_, or _Tyrian\nWomen_ (410?). It is the longest Greek tragedy in existence, and covers\nthe greatest stretch of story. Aeschylus, we remember, had the habit of\nwriting true \"trilogies\"--three continuous dramas, carrying on the same\nhistory. The _Phoenissae_ seems like an attempt to run the matter of a\nwhole trilogy into one play. It does not fall into either of the\ndivisions which I have sketched above: it is neither a play of fancy nor\nyet a realistic tragedy. But even if we had no external tradition of its\ndate we could tell to what part of the author's life it belongs. It is\nwritten, as it is conceived, in the large and heroic style; but it shows\nin the regular manner of this period a general clash of hatreds and\nfrantic ambitions and revenges and cruel statesmanship standing out\nagainst the light of a young man's heroism and a mother's and a sister's\nlove. It is like Euripides, too, that this beautiful mother should be\nJocasta, whose unknowing incest had made her an abomination in the eyes\nof orthodox Greece.\n\nThe play tells the story of Thebes. The sin of Oedipus and Jocasta is a\nthing of the past; Oedipus has blinded himself and cursed his children,\nand they have in course of time imprisoned him in the vaults of the\npalace. Jocasta still lives. The sons Polyneices and Eteocles have\nagreed to reign by turns; Polyneices, the elder, has reigned his year\nand gone abroad to Argos; Eteocles having once got the crown has refused\nto yield it up. Polyneices comes with an Argive army to lay siege to\nThebes and win his rights by war. The drama is developed in a series of\ngreat pictures. We have first the Princess Antigone with an old slave\nlooking from the wall out towards the enemy's camp, seeking for a\nglimpse of her brother. Next comes a man with face hidden and sword\ndrawn stealing through the gates, seeking for Jocasta. It is Polyneices.\nThe mother has induced her sons to have one meeting before they fight.\nThe meeting reveals nothing but ambition and mutual hatred. They agree\nto look for one another on the field, and Polyneices goes. There are\nconsultations in the beleaguered city. Creon, who is Jocasta's brother\nand a sort of Prime Minister, advises the rash Eteocles; but the\nprophets must be consulted too, that the gods may be favourable. The\nprophet Tiresias--blind and old and jealous, as so often in Greek\ntragedy--proclaims that the only medicine to save the state is for\nCreon's son, Menoikeus, to be slain as a sin-offering in the lair of the\nancient Dragon whom Cadmus slew. Creon quickly refuses; he dismisses the\nprophet and arranges for his son to escape from Thebes and fly to the\nends of Greece. The boy feigns consent to the plan of escape, but, as\nsoon as his father has left him, rushes enthusiastically up to a tower\nof the city and flings himself over into the Dragon's den. A messenger\ncomes to Jocasta with news of the battle. \"Are her sons slain?\" No; both\nare alive and unhurt. He tells his story of the Argive attack and its\nrepulse from every gate.--\"But what of the two brothers?\"--He must go\nnow and will bring more news later.--Jocasta sees he is concealing\nsomething and compels him to speak. The truth comes out; the brothers\nare preparing a single combat. With a shriek the mother calls Antigone;\nand the two women, young and old, make their way through the army to\ntry to separate the blood-mad men. We learn from a second messenger how\nthe brothers have slain each other \"in a meadow of wild lotus,\" and\nJocasta has killed herself with one of their swords. Antigone returns\nand to bring the news to her only friend, the blind Oedipus. Creon by\nEteocles' charge takes over the government, he, too, a broken-hearted\nman, but none the less ruthless; he proclaims that Polyneices' body\nshall lie unburied and that Oedipus, the source of pollution, shall be\ncast out of the land; Antigone meantime shall marry Creon's son, Haemon.\nAntigone defies him. She will not wed Haemon nor any of Creon's kin: her\nfather shall not be cast out to die, for she will go with him and\nprotect him. Polyneices shall not lie unburied, for she herself will\nreturn by stealth and bury him. There is still one human love that\nOedipus yearns for most; that of the sin-stained wife and mother who is\nlying dead in the meadow of wild lotus. But meantime he takes the hand\nof his daughter. Old man and young maiden they go forth together, away\nfrom the brutalities of human kind, to the high mountains, to the holy\ninviolate places on Kithairon where only the wild White Women of\nDionysus dance their mystic dances.\n\nThe _Phoenissae_ stands half way between the pure Romances and the\ntragedies of the last period. Of these latter the clearest type is the\n_Electra_ (probably 413), a play which before it was understood used to\nreceive the unstinted abuse of Critics, as \"the meanest of Greek\ntragedies,\" \"the very worst of all Euripides' plays.\" It deals with the\nmoral problem of the Blood-Feud, stated in its sharpest terms.\n\nNow the blood-feud, we must realize, in any society where there is no\npublic law and no police, is a high moral duty. A man commits an\nabominable crime and revels in comfort on the proceeds; his victim is\ndead, and there is no law which will act automatically. It becomes the\nduty of some one--normally the heir or representative of the dead\nman--to devote himself to the work of justice, to forsake all business\nand pleasure in life till the wrong has been righted and the dead man\navenged. A man who would let his kinsman be murdered and then live on at\nhis ease rather than pursue the murderer, would obviously be a poor\nfalse creature. Now comes the problem. The strongest possible claim is\nthat of a father murdered; the most horrible act a Greek could conceive\nwas for a man to slay his mother. Suppose a wife murdered her husband,\nought her son to slay her? The law of the blood-feud, as traditionally\npreached from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, answered, in spite of all\nrepugnances, Yes.\n\nThe story had been treated before Euripides by many poets, including\nHomer, Stesichorus, Pindar, Aeschylus and possibly--though the dates are\nnot certain--Sophocles. Clytemnestra had with the help of her lover\nAegisthus murdered her husband Agamemnon; her son Orestes slays her in\nobedience to Apollo's command, and his sister Electra aids him.\nAeschylus in his _Libation-Bearers_ had dealt with this theme on broad\nlines and with gorgeous intensity of imagination. His Orestes is carried\nto the deed on a great wave of religious passion and goes mad as soon as\nit is done. The deed as commanded by God is right, but it is too much\nfor human nature to endure. In an ensuing play Orestes, after long\nsufferings, is tried for the matricide and, when the human judges are\nevenly divided, acquitted by the divine voice of Athena. Sophocles\ntreats the subject very differently. He makes a most brilliant play with\nextraordinary clashes of emotion and moments of tragic beauty. But,\nevidently of set purpose, he makes the whole treatment hard and archaic.\nThere is no shrinking back, no question of conscience at all.\nClytemnestra is a furious tyrant; she beats Electra with her fists, and\nAegisthus does worse (1196, 517). The climax of the play is not the\nmother-murder but the killing of Aegisthus, which was presumably the\nharder and more exciting job. When Orestes and his friend Pylades come\nout of the palace streaming with Clytemnestra's blood their nerves are\nunshaken and the Chorus is careful to say that they are not to be in any\nway blamed (1423).\n\nThe spirit of Euripides is exactly the opposite; so much so indeed that\nmost critics feel clear that the two _Electra_ plays are closely\nrelated, and related in opposition. The one is a deliberate protest\nagainst the other; unfortunately the play of Sophocles cannot be dated\nand it is not clear from internal evidence which play was written first.\n\nIn the _Electra_ of Euripides we find two main qualities. First, there\nis psychological realism of the subtlest kind. Secondly, there is a new\nmoral atmosphere. With a power of sympathy and analysis unrivalled in\nancient drama he has imagined just what kind of people these children\nmust have been, who would thus through long years nurse the seeds of\nhatred and at the end kill their mother. He studies them all; Electra, a\nmixture of heroism and broken nerves; a poisoned and haunted woman,\neating her heart in ceaseless broodings of hate and love, both alike\nunsatisfied; for he suggests, somewhat cruelly, that she might have\nlived contentedly enough, had she only had a normal married life. The\nname in its original Doric form suggested the meaning, \"_Unmated_.\"\nOrestes is a youth bred in the unwholesome dreams of exile, and now\nswept away by his sister's stronger will; subject also, as Orestes\nalways is in Greek tragedy, to delusions and melancholy madness. The\nmother herself is not forgotten, and a most piteous figure she shows,\n\"this sad, middle-aged woman, whose first words are an apology;\ncontrolling quickly her old fires, anxious to be as little hated as\npossible; ready even to atone for her crime, if only there were some\nsafe way of atonement.\" Thus, in the first place, Euripides has stripped\nthe old bloody deed of the heroic glamour that surrounded it. His actors\nare not clear-minded heroes moving straight to their purpose. They are\nhuman creatures, erring, broken by passion, mastered by their own\ninhibitions and doubts and regrets. In the second place he has no doubt\nat all about the ethics of the mother-murder. It was an abomination, and\nthe god who ordained it--if any did--was a power of darkness.\n\nAfter the deed the two murderers come forth as in Sophocles. But this\ntime they are not triumphant and the Chorus does not hail them as having\ndone right. They reel from the door, \"red-garmented and ghastly\" and\nbreak into a long agony of remorse. The Chorus share their horror.\nElectra's guilt is the greater since she drove her brother to the deed\nagainst his will; even while they love her, they can not quite forget\nthat, though they feel that now at last, by this anguish, her heart may\nbe \"made clean within.\" The play ends with an appearance of the gods.\nThe Heavenly Horsemen, Castor and Polydeuces, who were kinsmen of the\ndead, appear on a cloud, and speak in judgement and comfort. With a\ndefiniteness rare in Euripides they pronounce the deed of vengeance to\nbe evil:\n\n            \"And Phoebus, Phoebus . . . Nay:\n  He is my lord, therefore I hold my peace.\n  But though in light he dwell, not light was this\n  He showed to thee, but darkness.\"\n\nAnother note is also struck, that of pity for the suffering of humanity.\nOrestes and Electra, condemned to part, break, as they bid one another\nfarewell, into a great cry, and the gods, hearing it, are shaken:\n\n      Alas! what would ye? For that cry\n        Ourselves and all the sons of heaven\n        Have pity; yea, our peace is riven\n      By the strange pain of these that die.\n\n            *     *     *     *     *\n\n      But hark! The far Sicilian sea\n        Calls, and a noise of men and ships\n        That labour sunken to the lips\n      In bitter billows; forth go we\n      With saving.\n\nThey speak such words of comfort and groping wisdom as they can find--no\none has ever claimed that they are omniscient--and depart upon their own\neternal task, which is not to punish but to save.\n\nThe appearance of the gods in the _Electra_ is so beautiful that no\ncritics have yet tried to explain it away as nonsense; and the lesson of\nit so clear that its meaning is seldom denied. But I find just the same\nlesson in the final scene of the _Orestes_, which is commonly taken as\nthe very worst instance of Euripides' habit of closing with a \"God from\nthe machine.\"\n\nThe _Orestes_ (408 B.C.) deals with the fate of Orestes some days after\nhis mother's murder. He is mad and sick; his sister is nursing him with\ndevotion. The people have risen against them and they are held prisoners\nin the palace till an assembly shall try them for murder and pronounce\ntheir fate. Meantime Menelaus--Orestes' uncle and king of Sparta--has\narrived at the harbour with his wife Helen and their daughter Hermione.\nHe has sent on his wife and daughter to the palace and is expected\nhourly himself. He is Agamemnon's brother; he has with him an army of\nTrojan veterans; he can surely be counted on to cow the Argive populace\nand save his dead brother's son. All our hopes hang on Menelaus, and\nwhen at last he comes he proves false. He would like to help; but it\nwould be wrong for him, a foreigner, to dictate to the Argives; and he\nhas only a very small force with him. However, he will reason with\nOrestes' enemies. One does not forget that, if Argos is left without a\nking, Menelaus will normally inherit. The sick man blazes into rage\nagainst him and Menelaus becomes an open enemy. Exasperation follows on\nexasperation: Orestes' friend Pylades breaks through the guards and\nenters the palace to share the prisoners' fate. The assembly hears and\nat length condemns them. They are given a day in which to die as they\nbest please. Like scorpions surrounded by fire, the three, Orestes,\nElectra and Pylades, begin to strike blindly. A brilliant idea! They can\nkill Helen: that will punish Menelaus, and Helen deserves many deaths.\nBetter still, kill Helen and then capture Hermione! Hold a dagger at her\nthroat and then bargain with Menelaus for help even at the last hour!\nMurder his wife and then force him to help! Splendid! The madness of\nOrestes infects the whole play. Helen escapes, being half-divine; but\nthey catch Hermione, who, as a matter of fact, has always been kind to\nthem. Menelaus, who has heard news from an escaping slave, rushes up to\nsave Helen, but he finds no sign of her; he finds only the palace barred\nand the madman on the roof, shrieking derision and holding the knife at\nhis daughter's throat. There is a brief wild attempt at bargaining; then\nhate in Menelaus overcomes fear. He rejects all terms. Orestes' party\nsets fire to the palace; and Menelaus at the head of his soldiers beats\nblindly at the barred gate. \"The fire of Hell,\" to use Dr. Verrall's\nphrase, has been let loose; rage, hatred, revenge, all blazing to the\npoint of madness; what more can befall?\n\nWhat does befall is strange and daring. An entry of a god not in\ngentleness, not with any preparation or introduction, but sudden and\nterrific, striking all beholders into a trance from which they awaken\nchanged men. The point has not been generally observed, though it is, I\nthink, clear.\n\nAt Apollo's first sudden cry \"Menelaus, be still!\" (line 1625) we know\nthat Orestes is supporting Hermione in one arm while with the other hand\nhe is holding the knife at her throat. He is in exactly the same\nposition at line 1653; he only moves from it at 1671. That is the\nconduct of a man in a trance, suddenly, as it were, struck rigid. And we\nshall find that the words spoken by both Menelaus and Orestes when\nApollo has finished his charge, are like nothing but the words of men\nemerging from a trance; a trance, too, of some supernatural kind, like\nthat for instance which falls on the raging world in Mr. Wells's book,\n_In the Days of the Comet_. Here, too, a raging world wakes to find\nitself at peace and its past hatreds unintelligible. And the first\nthought that comes to the surface is, in each case, the great guiding\npreoccupation of each man's life; with Menelaus it is Helen; with\nOrestes the oracle that made him sin. Nay more; when Orestes wakens,\nhalf-conscious, to find Hermione lying in his arms, his natural\nmovement, as experiments on hypnotized persons have shown, is to accept\nthe suggestion and draw her to him in love. Greek legend knew well that,\nas a matter of history, Hermione became Orestes' bride. There is daring,\nperhaps excessive daring, in making it occur this way; but the\npsychology of something like hypnotism had a fascination for both\nAeschylus and Euripides. For the rest, Apollo has spoken the word of\nforgiveness and reconciliation. He concludes:\n\n        Depart now, each upon his destined way,\n        Your hates dead and forgotten.\n\nMEN.                                   I obey.\n\nOR.     I too; mine heart is as a wine of peace\n        Poured with the past and thy dark mysteries.\n\nAPOLLO  Go now your ways: and without cease\n          Give honour in your hearts to one,\n          Of spirits all beneath the sun\n        Most beautiful; her name is Peace.\n\n        I rise with Helen Zeus-ward, past\n          The orb of many a shining star;\n          Where Heracles and Hebe are\n        And Hera, she shall reign at last,\n\n        A goddess in men's prayers to be\n          For ever, with her Brethren twain\n          Enthroned, a great help in pain\n        And queen of the eternal sea.\n\n\"Helen a goddess!\" say some critics; \"the notion is impossible. We have\nseen her in this same play, a heartless ordinary woman.\" Yet I think\nEuripides was serious enough. I do not say he believed either this or\nany other particular bit of the mythology. But he was writing seriously\nand aiming at beauty, not at satire. All legend said that Helen was made\na goddess; and Euripides was always curiously haunted by the thought of\nHelen and by the mysterious and deadly power of mere superlative beauty.\nAs Apollo had said to Menelaus (1638):\n\n    Thy bride shall be another: none may know\n    _Her_. For the Gods, to work much death and woe,\n    Devised this loveliness all dreams above,\n    That men in Greece and Troy for thirst thereof\n    Should strive and die, and so the old Earth win\n    Peace from mankind's great multitude and sin.\n\nThe superlative beauty may probably enough be found in company with\nheartlessness and treachery; but cannot these things be purged away,\nlike the hates of Menelaus and Orestes, and the pure beauty remain a\nthing to pray to and be helped by, much as the old sagas pretend? There\nis here again the touch of mysticism.\n\nBut however it be about Helen, or even about the above explanation in\ndetail of the last scene of the _Orestes_, it is clear that both the\nmost characteristic plays of the so-called period of gloom end with a\nstrong, almost a mystically strong, note of peace and reconciliation.\nThis note occurs, though with less intensity, at the end of other late\nplays, such as the _Iphigenia in Tauris_ and the _Helena_; and, though\nwithout a god, in the _Phoenissae_. It does not occur at all in the\nearly plays. The _Medea_ and _Hecuba_ end in pure hate; the _Hippolytus_\nends in wonderful beauty and a reconciliation between the hero and his\nfather, who are natural friends, but it keeps up the feud of Aphrodite\nand Artemis and contains a strange threat of vengeance (v. 1420 ff.) The\nlovely Thetis of the _Andromache_ brings comfort and rest but preaches\nno forgiveness; on the contrary the body of Pyrrhus is to be buried at\nDelphi as an eternal reproach. Euripides all through his life was\noccupied with the study of revenge. It was a time, as Thucydides tells\nus, when \"men tried to surpass all the record of previous times in the\ningenuity of their enterprises and the enormity of their revenges.\"\nEuripides seems first to have been almost fascinated by the enormous\nrevenges, at least when they were the work of people who had suffered\nenormous wrong. He seems, in plays like the _Medea_, to be saying: \"If\nyou goad people beyond endurance, this is the sort of thing you must\nexpect them to do . . . and serve you right!\" In the plays after 415 the\nemphasis has rather changed: \"You must expect to be wronged, and revenge\nwill do good to nobody. Seek peace and forgive one another.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nMACEDONIA: THE \"IPHIGENIA IN AULIS\": THE \"BACCHAE\"\n\n\nThus we come round to the figure from which we started, the old sad man\nwith the long beard, who seldom laughed and was not easy to speak to;\nwho sat for long hours in his seaward cave on Salamis, meditating and\nperhaps writing one could not tell what, except indeed that it was\n\"something great and high.\" It was natural that he should be sad. His\ndreams were overthrown; his City, his Beloved, had turned worse than\nfalse. Public life was in every way tenfold more intimate and important\nto an ancient Greek than it is to us moderns who seldom eat a\nmutton-chop the less when our worst political enemies pass their most\ndetested bills. And Athens had not only been false to her ideals; she\nhad sinned for the sake of success and had then failed. And her failure\nprobably made the daily life of her citizens a thing of anxiety and\ndiscomfort. You were never quite sure of your daily food. You were never\nquite safe from a triumphant raid of the enemy. And the habitual bodily\ndiscomfort which is the central fact of old age must have had for\nEuripides much to aggravate and little to soften it.\n\nIt was natural, too, that his people should hate him. Nations at war do\nnot easily forgive those who denounce their wars as unjust; when the\nwar, in spite of all heroism, goes against them, their resentment is all\nthe bitterer. There is, of course, not the ghost of a suggestion in\nEuripides that he thought the Spartans right or that he wished Athens to\nbe defeated; far from it. But the Athenian public was not in a mood for\nsubtle distinctions, and his air of disapproval was enough. Besides,\nthought the meaner among them, the man was a known blasphemer. He had\nbeen the friend of the sophists; he had denied the gods; worse, he had\ndenounced the doings of the gods as evil. These misfortunes that hurtled\nround the City's head must surely be sent for some good reason. Very\nlikely just because the City, corrupted by the \"charm of words,\" had\nallowed such wicked sophists to live? He was at one time prosecuted for\nimpiety; we do not know the date or the details, but he seems to have\nbeen acquitted. The day of Socrates had not yet come. But other charges\nremained. He was a wicked old man: he had preached dreadful things about\nwomen; he had defended in his plays adulteresses and perjurers and\nworkers of incest. What must his personal life be, if these were his\nprinciples? No wonder that he lived so secretly, he and his wife and\nthat dark-skinned secretary, Cephisophon!\n\nPerhaps he was a miser and had secret stores of wealth? We hear of an\naction brought against him on these lines. A certain Hygiainon was\nselected, as a rich man, to perform some \"Liturgy\" or public service at\nhis own cost, and he claimed that Euripides was richer and should be\nmade to do it instead. We do not know the result of the trial; we only\nknow that the plaintiff attempted to create prejudice against Euripides\nby quoting the line of the _Hippolytus_ (see above p. 88) which was\nsupposed to defend perjury.\n\nThese things were annoyances enough. But there must have been some\ndarker cloud that fell over Euripides' life at this time. For we are\nnot only told in the Lives that \"The Athenians bore a grudge against\nhim,\" and that \"he lost patience with the ill-will of his\nfellow-citizens,\" but one of our earliest witnesses, Philodemus, says\nthat when he left Athens he did so \"in grief, because almost all in\nAthens were rejoicing over him.\" The word used means, like the German\n\"Schadenfreude,\" rejoicing at another's injury. So there must have been\nsome injury for them to rejoice at.\n\nThe old Satyrus tradition, with its tone of scandal and\nmisunderstanding, says that his wife was false to him, but the story\nwill not bear historical criticism. And it would not be safe to use so\nrotten a foundation to build any theory upon, however likely it may be\nin itself that a man of this kind should meet with domestic unhappiness\nin one or other of its many forms. In thinking of Euripides one is\nconstantly reminded of Tolstoy. And there are many ways of making\nhusbands miserable besides merely betraying them.\n\nWhatever the cause, shortly after the production of the _Orestes_ in 408\nthe old poet's endurance snapped, and, at the age apparently of\nseventy-six, he struck off into voluntary exile. It is only one\ninstance among many of his extraordinary vital force. The language of\nthe ancient Life is unfortunately confused just here, but it seems to\nsay that he went first to Magnesia, with which city he had had relations\nin earlier days. He had been granted some civic honours there, and had\nacted as Proxenus--a kind of consul or general protector--for Magnesians\nin Athens. There was more than one town of the name. But the one meant\nis probably a large town in the Maeander Valley, not far from Ephesus.\nIt lay in Persian territory, but had been granted by Artaxerxes to the\ngreat Themistocles as a gift, and was still ruled, subject to the\nPersian king, by Themistocles' descendants. Doubtless it was to them\nthat the poet went. We know nothing more, except that he did not stay\nlong in Magnesia, but went on to another place where barbarians or\nsemi-barbarians were ruled by a Greek dynasty.\n\nThe king of Macedon, Archelaus, an able despot who was now laying the\nseeds of the great kingdom which, before the lapse of a century, was to\nproduce Philip and Alexander the Great, had always an eye for men of\ngenius who might be attracted to his court. He had invited Euripides\nbefore and now renewed his invitation. Other men of \"wisdom\" were\nalready with Archelaus. Agathon, the tragic poet; Timotheus, the now\nfamous musician whom Euripides had once saved, so the story ran, from\nsuicide; Zeuxis, the greatest painter of the time; and perhaps also\nThucydides, the historian. It would not be like living among barbarians\nor even uncultivated Greeks. And it is likely enough that the old man\nhankered for the ease and comfort, for the atmosphere of daily\n\"spoiling,\" which the royal patron was likely to provide for a lion of\nsuch special rarity. For it must have been a little before this time\nthat Greece was ringing with a tale of the value set on Euripides in\ndistant and hostile Sicily. Seven thousand Athenians had been made\nslaves in Syracuse after the failure of the expedition; and the story\nnow came that some of them had been actually granted their freedom\nbecause they were able to recite speeches and choruses of Euripides.\nApparently there was no book trade between the warring cities; and the\nSyracusans could only learn the great poems by word of mouth. Sicily and\nMacedonia were proud to show that they appreciated the highest poetry\nbetter than Athens did.\n\nIt was a curious haven that Euripides found. In many ways Macedonia must\nhave been like a great fragment of that Homeric or heroic age from which\nhe had drawn most of his stories. The scenery was all on the grand\nscale. There were greater plains and forests and rivers, wilder and\nhigher mountain ranges than in the rest of Greece. And the people,\nthough ruled by a dynasty of Greek descent and struggling up towards\nHellenism, was still tribal, military and barbaric. A century later we\nhear of the \"old\" Macedonian customs. A young man might not dine at the\nmen's tables till he had killed his first wild boar. He had to wear a\nleathern halter round his waist until he had killed his first man. We\nhear that when some Macedonian at the court made a rude remark to\nEuripides the King straightway handed him over to the Athenian to be\nscourged, a well-meant but embarrassing intervention. And the story told\nof Euripides' own death, if mythical, is very likely faithful in its\nlocal colour. There was a village in Macedonia where some Thracians had\nonce settled and their descendants still lived. One of the king's big\nMolossian hounds once strayed into this place, and the natives promptly\nkilled and ate her. The king fined the village a talent, which was more\nthan it could possibly pay, and some dreadful fate might have overtaken\nthe dog-eaters had not Euripides interceded and begged them off. And not\nlong afterwards, the story continues, Archelaus was preparing a hunt,\nand the hungry hounds were set loose. And it so happened that Euripides\nwas sitting alone in a wood outside the city, and the hounds fell on him\nand tore him to pieces. And behold, these hounds proved to be the\nchildren of that Molossian who, through the poet's interference, had\ndied unavenged! The story can hardly be true, or we should hear some\necho of it in Aristophanes' _Frogs_; but no doubt it was the kind of\nfate that a lonely man might well meet in Macedonia when the king's\nhounds were astir.\n\nHow the poet really died we do not know. We know that he left Athens\nafter the spring of 408, and that he was dead some time before the\nproduction of the _Frogs_ in January, 405. And there is reason to\nbelieve the story given in the Life that when Sophocles in the previous\nyear was introducing his Chorus in the \"Proagon,\" or Preliminary\nAppearance, he brought them on without the customary garlands in\nmourning for his great rival's death. The news, therefore, must have\nreached Athens by the end of March, 406. Euripides had lived only some\neighteen months in Macedon.\n\nThe time was not long but it was momentous. After his death three plays\nwere found, _Iphigenia in Aulis_, _Alcmaeon_ and _Bacchae_, sufficiently\nfinished to be put on the stage together by his third son, the Younger\nEuripides. Two of them are still extant, and one, the _Bacchae_, remains\nfor all time to testify to the extraordinary return of youth which came\nto the old poet in his last year. A \"lightning before death\" if ever\nthere was one!\n\nBut let us take first the _Iphigenia in Aulis_. It is a play full of\nproblems. We can make out that it was seriously incomplete at the poet's\ndeath and was finished by another hand, presumably that of its producer.\nUnfortunately we do not possess even that version in a complete form.\nFor the archetype of our MSS. was at some time mutilated, and the\npresent end of the play is a patent forgery. But if we allow for these\ndefects, the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ is a unique and most interesting\nexample of a particular moment in the history of Greek drama. It shows\nthe turning-point between the old fifth century tragedy and the\nso-called New Comedy which, in the hands of Menander, Philemon and\nothers, dominated the stage of the fourth and third centuries.\n\nEuripides had united two tendencies: on the one hand he had moved\ntowards freedom in metre, realism in character-drawing, variety and\nadventure in the realm of plot; on the other he had strongly maintained\nthe formal and musical character of the old Dionysiac ritual, making\nfull use of such conventions as the Prologue, the Epiphany, the\ntraditional tragic diction, and above all the Chorus. The New Comedy\ndropped the chorus, brought the diction close to real life, broke up the\nstiff forms and revelled in romance, variety, and adventure. Its\ncharacters ceased to be legendary Kings and Queens; they became\nfictional characters from ordinary city life.\n\nThe _Iphigenia in Aulis_ shows an unfinished Euripidean tragedy, much in\nthe manner of the _Orestes_, completed by a man of some genius whose\ntrue ideals were those of modernity and the New Comedy. Two openings of\nthe play are preserved. One is the old stiff Euripidean prologue; the\nother a fine and vigorous scene of lyric dialogue, which must have\nsuited the taste of the time far better, just as it suits our own. We\nhave early in the play a Messenger; but instead of his entrance being\nformally prepared and announced in the Euripidean manner, he bursts on\nto the stage interrupting a speaker in the middle of a verse and the\nmiddle of a sentence. There are also peculiarities of metre, such as the\nelision of -ai, which are unheard of in tragic dialogue but regular in\nthe more conversational style of the New Comedy.\n\nThe plot runs thus.--It is night in the Greek camp at Aulis; Agamemnon\ncalls an Old Slave outside his tent and gives him secretly a letter to\ncarry to Clytemnestra. She is at home, and has been directed in previous\nletters to send her daughter, Iphigenia, to Aulis to be wedded to\nAchilles. This letter simply bids her not send the girl.--The Old Slave\nis bewildered; \"What does it mean?\" It means that the marriage with\nAchilles was a blind. Achilles knew nothing of it. It was a plot to get\nIphigenia to the camp and there slaughter her as a sacrifice for the\nsafe passage of the fleet. So Calchas, the priest, had commanded and he\nwas backed by Odysseus and Menelaus. Agamemnon had been forced into\ncompliance, and is now resolved to go back upon his word. The Old Slave\ngoes. Presently comes the entrance of the Chorus, women of Aulis who\nare dazzled and thrilled by the spectacle of the great army and the men\nwho are prepared to die overseas for the honour of Hellas. But we hear a\nscuffle outside, and the Old Slave returns pursued by Menelaus, who\nseizes the letter. He calls for help. Agamemnon comes out and commands\nMenelaus to give the letter back. A violent scene ensues between the\nbrothers, each telling the other home truths. Menelaus's besotted love\nfor his false wife, his reckless selfishness and cruelty; Agamemnon's\nconsuming ambition, his falseness and weakness, his wish to run with the\nhare and hunt with the hounds, are all laid bare in a masterly quarrel\nscene. At last Agamemnon flatly refuses to give his daughter: \"Let the\narmy break up, let Menelaus go without his accursed wife, and the\nbarbarians laugh as loudly as they will! Agamemnon will not have his\nchild slain and his own heart broken to please any one.\" \"Is that so?\"\nsays Menelaus: \"Then I go straight to. . . .\" He is interrupted by a\nMessenger who announces that Iphigenia has come and her mother,\nClytemnestra, is with her. Agamemnon sends them a formal message of\nwelcome; dismisses the Messenger, and then bursts into tears. This\nshakes Menelaus; he hesitates; then abruptly says, \"I cannot force you.\nSave the girl as best you can.\" But now it is too late. The army knows\nthat the Queen has come; Calchas and Odysseus know. Agamemnon has lost\nthe power of action. The next scene is between the mother, father and\ndaughter; Clytemnestra, full of questions about the marriage, Iphigenia\nfull of excitement and shy tenderness, which expresses itself in special\naffectionateness towards her father. He tries to persuade Clytemnestra\nto go home and leave the child with him; she is perplexed and flatly\nrefuses to go.\n\nThe next scene is close to comedy, though comedy of a poignant kind.\nAchilles, knowing naught of all these plots and counter-plots, comes to\ntell the General that his men--the Myrmidons--are impatient and want to\nsail for Troy at once. At the door of the tent he meets Clytemnestra,\nwho greets him with effusive pleasure and speaks of \"the marriage that\nis about to unite them.\" The young soldier is shy, horrified, anxious to\nrun away from this strange lady who is so more than friendly, when\nsuddenly a whisper through the half-closed door startles them. \"Is the\ncoast clear? Yes?\"--then the whisperer will come. It is the Old Slave,\nwho can bear it no more but reveals the whole horrible plot; Iphigenia\nis to be slaughtered by the priests; the marriage with Achilles was a\nbait for deceiving Clytemnestra.--Clytemnestra is thunderstruck,\nAchilles furious with rage. \"He is dishonoured; he is made a fool of.\nWhat sort of man do they take him for, to use his name thus without his\nauthority? Why could not they ask his consent? They could sacrifice a\ndozen girls for all he cares, and he would not have stood in the way.\nBut now they have dishonoured him, and he will forbid the sacrifice. . . .\"\nClytemnestra, who has watched like a drowning woman to see which way\nthe youth's fierce vanity would leap, throws herself at his feet in\ngratitude; \"Shall her daughter, also, come and embrace his knees?\" No;\nAchilles does not want any woman to kneel to him. Let the women try to\nchange Agamemnon's mind; if they can do it, all is well. If not,\nAchilles will fight to the last to save the girl.\n\nThere follows the inevitable scene in which mother and daughter--the\nlatter inarticulate with tears--convict the father and appeal to him. A\nfine scene it is, in which each character comes out clear, and through\nthe still young and obedient Clytemnestra one descries the shadow of\nthe great murderess to be. Agamemnon is broken but helpless. It is too\nlate to go back.\n\nThe two women are left weeping at the door of the tent, when they hear a\nsound of tumult. It is Achilles, and men behind stoning him. Iphigenia's\nfirst thought is to fly; she dare not look Achilles in the face. Yet she\nstays. Achilles enters. The whole truth has come out; the army clamours\nfor the sacrifice and is furious against him. . . . \"Will not his own\nsplendid Myrmidons protect him?\"--\"It is they who were the first to\nstone him! Nevertheless he will fight. He has his arms. Clytemnestra\nmust fight too; cling to her daughter by main force when they come, as\nthey presently will, to drag her to the altar. . . .\" \"Stay!\" says\nIphigenia: \"Achilles must not die for her sake. What is her miserable\nlife compared with his? One man who can fight for Hellas is worth ten\nthousand women, who can do nothing. Besides, she has been thinking it\nover; she has seen the great gathered army, ready to fight and die for a\ncause, and, like the Chorus, has fallen under the spell of it. She\nrealizes that it lies with her, a weak girl, to help them to victory.\nAll great Hellas is looking to her; and she is proud and glad to give\nher life for Hellas.\"--It is a beautiful and simple speech. And the\npride of Achilles withers up before it. In a new tone he answers: \"God\nwould indeed have made him blessed if he had won her for his wife. As it\nis, Iphigenia is right. . . .\" Yet he offers still to fight for her and\nsave her. She does not know what death is; and he loves her.--She\nanswers that her mind is made up. \"Do not die for me, but leave me to\nsave Hellas, if I can.\" Achilles yields. Still he will go and stand\nbeside the altar, armed; if at the last moment she calls to him, he is\nready. So he goes. The mother and daughter bid one another a last\nfarewell, and with a song of triumph Iphigenia, escorted by her maidens,\ngoes forth to meet the slaughterers. . . . Here the authentic part of\nour play begins to give out. There are fragments of a messenger's speech\nafterwards, and it is likely on the whole that Artemis saved the victim,\nas is assumed in the other _Iphigenia_ play.\n\nThe _Iphigenia in Aulis_, in spite of its good plot, is not really one\nof Euripides' finest works; yet, if nothing else of his were preserved,\nit would be enough to mark him out as a tremendous power in the\ndevelopment of Greek literature. Readers who enjoy drama but have never\nquite accustomed themselves to the stately conventions of fifth century\ntragedy very often like it better than any other Greek play. It is\ncuriously different from its twin sister the _Bacchae_.\n\nA reader of the _Bacchae_ who looks back at the ritual sequence\ndescribed above (p. 64) will be startled to find how close this drama,\napparently so wild and imaginative, has kept to the ancient rite. The\nregular year-sequence is just clothed in sufficient myth to make it a\nstory. The daemon must have his enemy who is like himself; then we must\nhave the Contest, the Tearing Asunder, the Messenger, the Lamentation\nmixed with Joy-cries, the Discovery of the scattered members--and by a\nsort of doubling the Discovery of the true God--and the Epiphany of the\nDaemon in glory. All are there in the _Bacchae_. The god Dionysus,\naccompanied by his Wild Women, comes to his own land and is rejected by\nhis kinsman, King Pentheus, and by the women of the royal house. The god\nsends his divine madness on the women. The wise Elders of the tribe warn\nthe king; but Pentheus first binds and imprisons the god; then yielding\ngradually to the divine power, agrees to go disguised in woman's garb to\nwatch the secret worship of the Maenads on Mt. Kithairon. He goes, is\ndiscovered by the Maenads and torn in fragments. His mother, Agave,\nreturns in triumph dancing with her son's head, which, in her madness,\nshe takes for a lion's. There is Lamentation mixed with mad Rejoicing.\nThe scattered body is recovered; Agave is restored to her right mind and\nto misery; the god appears in majesty and pronounces doom on all who\nhave rejected him. The mortals go forth to their dooms, still faithful,\nstill loving one another. The ghastly and triumphant god ascends into\nheaven. The whole scheme of the play is given by the ancient ritual. It\nis the original subject of Attic tragedy treated once more, as doubtless\nit had already been treated by all or almost all the other tragedians.\n\nBut we can go further. We have enough fragments and quotations from the\nAeschylean plays on this subject--especially the Lycurgus trilogy--to\nsee that all kinds of small details which seemed like invention, and\nrather fantastic invention, on the part of Euripides, are taken straight\nfrom Aeschylus or the ritual or both. The timbrels, the fawnskin, the\nivy, the sacred pine, the god taking the forms of Bull and Lion and\nSnake; the dances on the mountain at dawn; the Old Men who are by the\npower of the god made young again; the god represented as beardless and\nlike a woman; the god imprisoned and escaping; the earthquake that\nwrecks Pentheus' palace; the victim Pentheus disguised as a woman; all\nthese and more can be shown to be in the ritual and nearly all are in\nthe extant fragments of Aeschylus. Even variants of the story which have\nbeen used by previous poets have somehow a place found for them. There\nwas, for instance, a variant which made Pentheus lead an army against\nthe Wild Women; in the _Bacchae_ this plan is not used, but Pentheus is\nmade to think of it and say he will perhaps follow it, and Dionysus is\nmade to say what will happen if he does. (_Aesch. Eum._ 25 f.; _Bac._ 50\nff. 809, 845.) There never was a great play so steeped in tradition as\nthe _Bacchae_.\n\nThe _Iphigenia_ was all invention, construction, brilliant psychology;\nit was a play of new plot and new characters. The _Bacchae_ takes an old\nfixed plot, and fixed formal characters: Dionysus, Pentheus, Cadmus,\nTeiresias, they are characters that hardly need proper names. One might\njust as well call them--The God, the Young King, the Old King, the\nProphet; and as for Agave, our MSS. do as a rule simply call her\n\"Woman.\" The _Iphigenia_ is full of informalities, broken metres,\ninterruptions. Its Chorus hardly matters to the plot and has little to\nsing. The _Bacchae_ is the most formal Greek play known to us; its\nChorus is its very soul and its lyric songs are as long as they are\nmagnificent. For the curious thing is that in this extreme of formality\nand faithfulness to archaic tradition Euripides has found both his\ngreatest originality and his most perfect freedom.\n\nHe is re-telling an old story; but he is not merely doing that. In the\n_Bacchae_ almost every reader feels that there is something more than a\nstory. There is a meaning, or there is at least a riddle. And we must\ntry in some degree to understand it. Now, in order to keep our heads\ncool, it is first necessary to remember clearly two things. The\n_Bacchae_ is not free invention; it is tradition. And it is not free\npersonal expression, it is drama. The poet cannot simply and without a\nveil state his own views; he can only let his own personality shine\nthrough the dim curtain in front of which his puppets act their\ntraditional parts and utter their appropriate sentiments. Thus it is\ndoubly elusive. And therein no doubt lay its charm to the poet. He had a\nvehicle into which he could pour many of those \"vaguer faiths and\naspirations which a man feels haunting him and calling to him, but which\nhe cannot state in plain language or uphold with a full acceptance of\nresponsibility.\" But our difficulties are even greater than this. The\npersonal meaning of a drama of this sort is not only elusive; it is\nalmost certain to be inconsistent with itself or at least incomplete.\nFor one only feels its presence strongly when in some way it clashes\nwith the smooth flow of the story.\n\nLet us imagine a great free-minded modern poet--say Swinburne or Morris\nor Victor Hugo, all of whom did such things--making for some local\nanniversary a rhymed play in the style of the old Mysteries on some\nlegend of a mediaeval saint. The saint, let us suppose, is very meek and\nis cruelly persecuted by a wicked emperor, whom he threatens with hell\nfire; and at the end let us have the emperor in the midst of that fire\nand the saint in glory saying, \"What did I tell you?\" And let us suppose\nthat the play in its course gives splendid opportunities for solemn\nLatin hymns, such as Swinburne and Hugo delighted in. We should\nprobably have a result something like the _Bacchae_.\n\nFor one thing, in such a play one would not be troubled by little flaws\nand anachronisms and inconsistencies. One would not be shocked to hear\nSt. Thomas speaking about Charlemagne, or to find the Mouth of Hell\nsituated in the same street as the emperor's lodging. Just so we need\nnot be shocked in the _Bacchae_ to find that, though the god is supposed\nto be appearing for the first time in Thebes, his followers appeal to\n\"immemorial custom\" as the chief ground for their worship (201, 331,\n370: cf. _Aesch._ fr. 22?), nor to observe that the Chorus habitually\nmakes loud professions of faith under the very nose of the tyrant\nwithout his ever attending to them (263 f., 328 f., 775 f.). Nor even\nthat the traditional earthquake which destroys the palace causes a good\ndeal of trouble in the thinking out. It had to be there; it was an\nintegral part of the story in Aeschylus (fr. 58), and in all probability\nbefore him. One may suppose that the Greek stage carpenter was capable\nof some symbolic crash which served its purpose. The language used is\ncarefully indefinite. It suggests that the whole palace is destroyed,\nbut leaves a spectator free, if he so chooses, to suppose that it is\nonly the actual prison of Dionysus, which is \"off-stage\" and unseen. In\nany case the ruins are not allowed to litter the stage and, once over,\nthe earthquake is never noticed or mentioned again.\n\nAgain, such a play would involve a bewildering shift of sympathy, just\nas the _Bacchae_ does. At first we should be all for the saint and\nagainst the tyrant; the persecuted monks with their hymns of faith and\nendurance would stir our souls. Then, when the tables were turned and\nthe oppressors were seen writhing in Hell, we should feel that, at their\nworst, they did not quite deserve that: we should even begin to surmise\nthat perhaps, with all their faults, they were not really as horrible as\nthe saint himself, and reflect inwardly what a barbarous thing, after\nall, this mediaeval religion was.\n\nThis bewildering shift of sympathy is common in Euripides. We have had\nit before in such plays as the _Medea_ and _Hecuba_: oppression\ngenerates revenge, and the revenge becomes more horrible than the\noriginal oppression. In these plays the poet offers no solution. He\ngives us only the bitterness of life and the unspoken \"tears that are\nin things.\" The first serious attempt at a solution comes in the\n_Electra_ and _Orestes_.\n\nIn a Mystery-play such as we have imagined, re-told by a great modern\npoet, the interest and meaning would hardly lie in the main plot. They\nwould lie in something which the poet himself contributed. We might, for\ninstance, find that he had poured all his soul into the Latin hymns, or\ninto the spectacle of the saint, alone and unterrified, defying all the\nthreats and all the temptations which the Emperor can bring to bear upon\nhim. There might thus be a glorification of that mystic rejection of the\nworld which lies at the heart of mediaeval monasticism, without the poet\nfor a moment committing himself to a belief in monasticism or an\nacceptance of the Catholic Church.\n\nWe have in the _Bacchae_--it seems to me impossible to deny it--a\nheartfelt glorification of \"Dionysus.\" No doubt it is Dionysus in some\nprivate sense of the poet's own; something opposed to \"the world\"; some\nspirit of the wild woods and the sunrise, of inspiration and\nuntrammelled life. The presentation is not consistent, however magical\nthe poetry. At one moment we have the Bacchantes raving for revenge, at\nthe next they are uttering the dreams of some gentle and musing\nphilosopher. A deliberate contrast seems to be made in each Chorus\nbetween the strophe and the antistrophe. It is not consistent; though it\nis likely enough that, if one had taxed Euripides with the\ncontradiction, he might have had some answer that would surprise us. His\nfirst defence, of course, would be a simple one; it is not the\nplaywright's business to have any views at all; he is only re-telling a\ntraditional story and trying to tell it right. But he might also venture\noutside his defences and answer more frankly: \"This spirit that I call\nDionysus, this magic of inspiration and joy, is it not as a matter of\nfact the great wrecker of men's lives? While life seems a decent grey to\nyou all over, you are safe and likely to be prosperous; when you feel\nthe heavens opening, you may begin to tremble. For the vision you see\nthere, as it is the most beautiful of things, is likely also to be the\nmost destructive.\" For the poet himself, indeed, the only course is to\npursue it across the world to the cold mountain tops (410 ff.):\n\n  For there is Grace, and there is the Heart's Desire,\n  And peace to adore Thee, Thou spirit of guiding fire!\n\nHe will clasp it even though it slay him.\n\nThe old critics used to assume that the _Bacchae_ marked a sort of\nrepentance. The veteran free-lance of thought, the man who had\nconsistently denounced and ridiculed all the foul old stories of\nmythology, now saw the error of his ways and was returning to orthodoxy.\nSuch a view strikes us now as almost childish in its incompetence. Yet\nthere is, I think, a gleam of muddled truth somewhere behind it. There\nwas no repentance; there was no return to orthodoxy; nor indeed was\nthere, in the strict sense, any such thing as \"orthodoxy\" to return to.\nFor Greek religion had no creeds. But there is, I think, a rather\ndifferent attitude towards the pieties of the common man.\n\nIt is well to remember that, for all his lucidity of language, Euripides\nis not lucid about religion. His general spirit is clear: it is a spirit\nof liberation, of moral revolt, of much denial; but it is also a spirit\nof search and wonder and surmise. He was not in any sense a \"mere\"\nrationalist. We find in his plays the rule of divine justice often\nasserted, sometimes passionately denied; and one tragedy, the\n_Bellerophontes_, is based on the denial. It is in a fragment of this\nplay that we have the outcry of some sufferer:\n\n    Doth any feign there is a God in heaven?\n    There is none, none!\n\nAnd afterwards the hero, staggered by the injustice of things, questions\nZeus himself and is, for answer, blasted by the thunderbolt. A clearer\nform of this same question, and one which vexed the age a good deal, was\nto ask whether or no the world is governed by some great Intelligence or\nUnderstanding (\"_Sunesis_\"), or, more crudely, whether the gods are\n\"_sunetoi_.\" Euripides at times \"hath deep in his hope a belief in some\nUnderstanding,\" and is represented in the _Frogs_ as actually praying to\nit by that name; but he sometimes finds the facts against him\n(_Hippolytus_, 1105; _Frogs_, 893; _Iph. Aul._, 394_a_; _Her._, 655;\n_Tro._, 884 ff., compared with the sequel of the play). The question\nbetween polytheism and monotheism, which has loomed so large to some\nminds, never troubled him. He uses the singular and plural quite\nindifferently, and probably his \"gods,\" when used as identical with\n\"God\" or \"the Divine,\" would hardly even suggest to him the gods of\nmythology. If one is to venture a conjecture, his own feeling may,\nperhaps, be expressed by a line in the _Orestes_ (418):\n\n    We are slaves of gods, whatever gods may be.\n\nThat is, there are unknown forces which shape or destroy man's life, and\nwhich may be conceived as in some sense personal. But morally, it would\nseem, these forces are not better, but less good, than man, who at least\nloves and pities and tries to understand. Such is the impression, I\nthink, left on readers of the _Bacchae_, the _Hippolytus_ or the _Trojan\nWomen_.\n\nBut there is one thought which often recurs in Euripides in plays of all\nperiods, and is specially thrown in his teeth by Aristophanes. That\nsatirist, when piling up Euripides' theatrical iniquities, takes as his\ncomic climax \"women who say Life is not Life.\" The reference is to\npassages like fr. 833, from the _Phrixus_:\n\n      Who knoweth if the thing that we call death\n      Be Life, and our Life dying--who knoweth?\n      Save only that all we beneath the sun\n      Are sick and suffering, and those foregone\n      Not sick, nor touched with evil any more.\n\n(_Cf._ fr. 638, 816; also _Helena_, 1013; _Frogs_, 1082, 1477). The idea\nrecurs again and again, as also does the thought that death is \"some\nother shape of life\" in the _Medea_ and even in the _Ion_ (_Med._, 1039;\n_Ion_, 1068). Nay, more, death may be the state that we unconsciously\nlong for, and that really fulfils our inmost desires: \"There is no rest\non this earth,\" says a speaker in the _Hippolytus_ (191 f.),\n\n        \"And whatever far-off state there be,\n        Dearer than Life to mortality,\n        The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof\n        And mist is under and mist above:\n\nand thus,\" she continues, \"we cling to this strange thing that shines in\nthe sunlight, and are sick with love for it, because we have not seen\nbeyond the veil.\" A stirring thought this, and much nearer to the heart\nof mysticism than any mere assertion of human immortality. Thus it is\nnot from any position like what we should call \"dogmatic atheism\" or\n\"scientific materialism\" that the child of the Sophists started his\nattacks on the current mythology. The Sophists themselves had no\northodoxy.\n\nEuripides was always a rejecter of the Laws of the Herd. He was in\nprotest against its moral standards, its superstitions and follies, its\nsocial injustices; in protest also against its worldliness and its\nindifference to those things which, both as a poet and a philosopher, he\nfelt to be highest. And such he remained throughout his life. But in his\nlater years the direction of his protest did, I think, somewhat change.\nIn the Athens of Melos and the Sicilian expedition there was something\nthat roused his aversion far more than did the mere ignorance of a\nstupid Greek farmer. It was a deeper \"_amathia_,\" a more unteachable\nbrutality. The men who spoke in the Melian Dialogue were full of what\nthey considered \"Sophia.\" It is likely enough that they conformed\ncarefully to the popular religious prejudices--such politicians always\ndo: but in practice they thought as little of \"the gods\" as the most\npronounced sceptic could wish. They had quite rejected such unprofitable\nideals as \"pity and charm of words and the generosity of strength,\" to\nwhich the simple man of the old times had always had the door of his\nheart open. They were haunters of the market-place, mockers at all\nsimplicity, close pursuers of gain and revenge; rejecters, the poet\nmight feel in his bitterness, both of beauty and of God. And the Herd,\nas represented by Athens, followed them. Like other ideal democrats he\nturned away from the actual Demos, which surrounded him and howled him\ndown, to a Demos of his imagination, pure and uncorrupted, in which the\nheart of the natural man should speak. His later plays break out more\nthan once into praises of the unspoiled countryman, neither rich nor\npoor, who works with his own arm and whose home is \"the solemn mountain\"\nnot the city streets (_cf._ especially _Orestes_, 917-922, as contrasted\nwith 903 ff.; also the Peasant in the _Electra_; also _Bac._, 717). In\nthe _Bacchae_ we have not only several denunciations--not at all\nrelevant to the main plot--of those whom the world calls \"wise\"; we have\nthe wonderful chorus about the fawn escaped from the hunters, rejoicing\nin the green and lonely places where no pursuing voice is heard and the\n\"little things of the woodland\" live unseen. (866 ff.) That is the\npoetry of this emotion. The prose of it comes in a sudden cry:\n\n    The simple nameless herd of humanity\n    Have deeds and faith that are truth enough for me;\n\nthough even that prose has followed immediately on the more mystical\ndoctrine that man must love the Day and the Night, and that Dionysus has\npoured the mystic Wine that is Himself for all things that live\n(421-431, 284). In another passage, which I translate literally, he\nseems to make his exact position more clear: \"As for Knowledge, I bear\nher no grudge; I take joy in the pursuit of her. But the other things\"\n(_i.e._, the other elements of existence) \"are great and shining. Oh,\nfor Life to flow towards that which is beautiful, till man through both\nlight and darkness should be at peace and reverent, and, casting from\nhim Laws that are outside Justice, give glory to the gods!\"[2]\n\nThose \"Laws which are outside Justice\" would make trouble enough between\nEuripides and the \"simple herd\" if ever they reached the point of\ndiscussing them. He who most loves the ideal Natural Man seldom agrees\nwith the majority of his neighbours. But for the meantime the poet is\nwrapped up in another war, in which he and religion and nature and the\nlife of the simple man seem to be standing on one side against a\nuniversal enemy.\n\nI am not attempting to expound the whole meaning of the _Bacchae_. I am\nonly suggesting a clue by which to follow it. Like a live thing it seems\nto move and show new faces every time that, with imagination fully\nworking, one reads the play. There were many factors at work,\ndoubtless, to produce the _Bacchae_: the peculiar state of Athens, the\npoet's ecstasy of escape from an intolerable atmosphere, the simple\nHomeric life in Macedonian forests and mountains, and perhaps even the\nsight of real Bacchantes dancing there. But it may be that the chief\nfactor is simply this. When a man is fairly confronted with death and is\nconsciously doing his last work in the world, the chances are that, if\nhis brain is clear and unterrified, the deepest part of his nature will\nassert itself. Euripides was both a reasoner and a poet. The two sides\nof his nature sometimes clashed and sometimes blended. But ever since\nthe _Heracles_ he had known which service he really lived for; and in\nhis last work it is the poet who speaks, and reveals, so far as such a\nthing can be revealed, the secret religion of poetry.\n\n[Footnote 2: In my verse translation I took a slightly different\nreading, being then misinformed about the MS., but the general sense is\nthe same. (\"Knowledge, we are not foes,\" etc.)]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE ART OF EURIPIDES: IDEAL FORM AND SINCERE SPIRIT: PROLOGUE: MESSENGER:\n    \"DEUS EX MACHINA\"\n\n\nEuripides was so much besides a poet that we sometimes tend to regard\nhim exclusively as a great thinker or a great personality and forget\nthat it is in his poetry that he lives. A biography like that which we\nhave attempted to sketch is of little value except as a kind of clue to\nguide a reader through the paths of the poet's own work. It is only by\nreading his plays that we can know him; and unfortunately, owing to the\ntwo thousand odd years that have passed since his death, we must needs\napproach them through some distorting medium. We read them either in a\nforeign language, as a rule most imperfectly understood, or else in a\ntranslation. It is hard to say by which method a reader who is not a\nquite good Greek scholar will miss most. A further difficulty occurs\nabout the translations. I need not perhaps apologize for assuming\nnormally in the present volume the use of my own. There has been lately,\nsince the work of Verrall in England and Wilamowitz in Germany, a far\nmore successful effort made to understand the mind of Euripides, while\nthe recent performances of his plays in London and elsewhere have\nconsiderably increased our insight into his stagecraft. Consequently we\ncan now see that the older translations, even when verbally defensible\nand even skilful, are often seriously inadequate or misleading. A\ncomparison of Dr. Verrall's English version of the _Ion_ with\npractically any of its predecessors will illustrate this point.\n\nThe greatest change that has come over our study of Greek civilization\nand literature in the last two generations is this: that we now try to\napproach it historically, as a thing that moves and grows and has its\nplace in the whole life-history of man. The old view, sometimes called\nclassicist, was to regard the great classical books as eternal models;\ntheir style was simply the right style, and all the variations\nobservable in modern literature were, in one degree or another, so many\nconcessions to the weakness of human nature. There is in this view an\nelement of truth. The fundamental ideals which have produced results so\nsingularly and so permanently successful cannot be lightly disregarded.\nBooks that are still read with delight after two thousand years are\ncertainly, in some sense, models to imitate. But the great flaw in the\nclassicist view, as regards the ancient literature itself, was that it\nconcentrated attention on the external and accidental; on the mannerism,\nnot the meaning; on the temporary fashion of a great age, not on the\nspirit which made that age great. A historical mind will always try, by\nactive and critical use of the imagination, to see the Greek poet or\nphilosopher in his real surroundings and against his proper background.\nSeen thus he will appear, not as a stationary \"ancient\" contrasted with\na \"modern,\" but as a moving and striving figure, a daring pioneer in the\nadvance of the human spirit, fore-doomed to failure because his aims\nwere so far greater than his material resources, his habit of mind so\nfar in advance of the world that surrounded him. We seem in ancient\nGreece to be moving in a region that is next door to savagery, and in\nthe midst of it to have speech with men whom we might gladly accept as\nour leaders or advisers if they lived now.\n\nMeantime there are screens between us and these men; the screens of a\nforeign language, a strange form of life, different conventions in art.\nIt is these last that we must now deal with, for we shall find it hard\never to understand Greek tragedy if we expect from it exactly what we\nexpect from a modern or Elizabethan play.\n\nOne would have to make no such preface if we were dealing with the form\nof Greek Drama that immediately succeeded the great age of Tragedy.\nThere arose in the fourth century, B.C., a kind of play that we could\nunderstand at once, the so-called New Comedy of Menander and Philemon.\nNew Comedy is neither tragic nor comic, but, like our own plays, a\ndiscreet mixture of both. It has no austere religious atmosphere. Its\ninterest--like ours--is in love and adventure and intrigue. It has\nturned aside from legend and legendary Kings and Queens, and operates,\nas we do, with a boldly invented plot and fictitious characters, drawn\nmostly from everyday life. The New Comedy dominated the later Attic\nstage and called into life the Roman. It was highly praised and\nimmensely popular. It was so easy in its flow and it demanded so little\neffort. Yet, significantly enough, it has passed away without leaving a\nsingle complete specimen of its work in existence. When after ages were\nexerting themselves to save from antiquity just that minimum of most\nprecious things that must not be allowed to die, it was the greater and\nmore difficult form of drama that they preserved.\n\nLet us try to see and to surmount the difficulties. Every form of art\nhas its conventions. Think, for instance, of the conventions of modern\nOpera. Looked at in cold blood, from outside the illusion, few forms of\nart could be more absurd, yet, I suppose, the emotional and artistic\neffect of a great opera is extraordinarily high. The analogy may help us\nin the understanding of Greek tragedy.\n\nLet us remember that it is at heart a religious ritual. We shall then\nunderstand--so far as it is necessary for a modern reader to think of\nsuch things--the ceremonial dress, the religious masks, the constant\npresence or nearness of the supernatural. We shall understand, perhaps,\nalso the formal dignity of language and action. It is verse and, like\nall Greek verse, unrhymed; but it is not at all like the loose\ngo-as-you-please Elizabethan verse, which fluctuates from scene to scene\nand makes up for its lack of strict form by extreme verbal\nornamentation. In Greek tragic dialogue the metrical form is stiff and\nclear; hardly ever could a tragic line by any mistake be taken for\nprose; the only normal variation is not towards prose but towards a\nstill more highly wrought musical lyric. Yet inside the stiff metrical\nform the language is clear, simple and direct. A similar effect can, in\nmy opinion, only be attained in English by the use of rhyme. You must\nsomehow feel always that you are in the realm of verse, yet your\nlanguage must always be simple. In blank verse the language has to be\ntortured a little, or it will read like prose.\n\nNow all this sounds highly conventional; that it is. And artificial and\nunreal? That it is not. We are apt at the present moment of taste to\nassociate together two things that have no real connexion with one\nanother--sincerity of thought and sloppiness of form. Take on the one\nhand dramatic poems like Swinburne's _Locrine_, written all in rhymed\nverse and partly in sonnets, or George Meredith's _Modern Love_, which\nis all in a form of sonnet. These are works of the most highly-wrought\nartistic convention; their form is both severe and elaborate; in that\nlies half their beauty. But the other half lies in their sincerity and\ndelicacy of thought and their intensity of feeling. They are sincere but\nnot formless. Of the other extreme, which is formless without being\nsincere, I need give no examples. The reader can think of the\nworst-written novel he knows and it will probably satisfy the\nconditions. In Greek tragedy we have the element of formal convention\nextremely strong; we have also great subtlety and sincerity.\n\nThis quality of sincerity is, perhaps, the very first thing that should\nbe pointed out to a reader who is beginning Greek tragedy. Coming in the\nmidst of so much poetical convention it takes a modern reader by\nsurprise; he expected romantic idealism and he finds clear\ncharacter-drawing. I once read a critic who argued that Euripides had\nlow ideals of womanhood because, in the critic's carefully pondered\njudgment, Medea was not a perfect wife. Even Coleridge complained that\nthe Greek tragedians could not make a heroine interesting without\n\"un-sexing her.\" Such criticisms imply a conception of drama in which\nthe women are conventionally seen through a roseate mist of amatory\nemotion. We mean to be in love with the heroine, and in order that she\nmay be worthy of that honour the author must endow her with all the\nadorable attributes. The men in such plays suffer much less from\nbeautification, but even they suffer. This spurious kind of romanticism\nimplies chiefly an indifference to truth in the realm of character; it\nis generally accompanied by an indifference to truth in other respects.\nIt leads stage-writers to look out for the effect, not the truth; to\nwrite with a view to exciting the audience instead of expressing\nsomething which they have to express. It leads in fact to all the forms\nof staginess. Now from Greek tragedy this kind of falseness is almost\nentirely absent. \"It has no utter villains, no insipidly angelic\nheroines. Even its tyrants generally have some touch of human nature\nabout them; they have at least a case to state. Even its virgin martyrs\nare not waxen images.\" The stories are no doubt often miraculous; the\ncharacters themselves are often in their origin supernatural. But their\npsychology is severely true. It is not the psychology of melodrama,\nspecially contrived to lead up to \"situations.\" It is that of observed\nhuman nature, and human nature not merely observed but approached with a\nserious almost reverent sympathy and an unlimited desire to understand.\nMr. Bernard Shaw, in his _Quintessence of Ibsenism_ (1913), writes of a\nnew element brought into modern drama by the Norwegian school. \"Ibsen\nwas grim enough in all conscience; no man has said more terrible things;\nand yet there is not one of Ibsen's characters who is not, in the old\nphrase, the temple of the Holy Ghost, and who does not move you at\nmoments by the sense of that mystery.\" Allowing for the great difference\nof treatment and the comparative absence of detail in the ancient drama,\nthis phrase would, I think, be true of all the great Greek tragedians.\nIn Euripides it is clear enough. Jason, as well as Medea, Clytemnestra\nas well as Electra, even satirized characters like Menelaus in the\n_Trojan Women_ or Agamemnon in the _Iphigenia in Aulis_, are creatures\nof one blood with ourselves; they are beings who must be understood, who\ncannot be thrust beyond the pale; and they all \"move us at moments by\nthe sense of that mystery.\" But it holds in general for the other\ntragedians too, for the creators of Creon and Antigone, of Prometheus\nand Zeus. \"What poet until quite modern times would have dared to make\nan audience sympathize with Clytemnestra, the blood-stained adulteress,\nas Aeschylus does? Who would have dared, like Sophocles, to make\nAntigone speak cruelly to her devoted sister, or Electra, with all our\nsympathies concentrated upon her, behave like a wild beast and be\ndisgusted with herself for so doing? (_Soph. Elec._ 616 ff.).\"\n\nBut what we have now to realize is that this sincerity of treatment\ntakes place inside a shell of stiff and elaborate convention.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt the very beginning of a play by Euripides we shall find something\nthat seems deliberately calculated to offend us and destroy our\ninterest: a Prologue. It is a long speech with no action to speak of;\nand it tells us not only the present situation of the characters--which\nis rather dull--but also what is going to happen to them--which seems to\nus to spoil the rest of the play. And the modern scholastic critic says\nin his heart, \"Euripides had no sense of the stage.\"\n\nNow, since we know that he had a very great sense of the stage and\nenormous experience also, let us try to see what value he found in this\nstrange prologue. First, no doubt it was a convenience. There were no\nplaybills to hand round, with lists of the _dramatis personae_. Also, a\nGreek tragedy is always highly concentrated; it consists generally of\nwhat would be the fifth act of a modern tragedy, and does not spend its\ntime on explanatory and introductory acts. The Prologue saved time here.\nBut why does it let out the secret of what is coming? Why does it spoil\nthe excitement beforehand? Because, we must answer, there is no secret,\nand the poet does not aim at that sort of excitement. A certain amount\nof plot-interest there certainly is: we are never told exactly what\nthing will happen but only what sort of thing; or we are told what will\nhappen but not how it will happen. But the enjoyment which the poet aims\nat is not the enjoyment of reading a detective story for the first time;\nit is that of reading _Hamlet_ or _Paradise Lost_ for the second or\nfifth or tenth. When Hippolytus or Oedipus first appears on the stage\nyou know that he is doomed; that knowledge gives an increased\nsignificance to everything that he says or does; you see the shadow of\ndisaster closing in behind him, and when the catastrophe comes it comes\nwith the greater force because you were watching for it.\n\n\"At any rate,\" the modern reader may persist: \"the prologue is rather\ndull. It does not arrest the attention, like, for instance, the opening\nscenes of _Macbeth_ or _Julius Caesar_ or _Romeo and Juliet_.\" No; it\ndoes not. Shakespeare, one may suppose, had a somewhat noisy audience,\nall talking among themselves and not disposed to listen till their\nattention was captured by force. The Greek audience was, as far as we\ncan make out, sitting in a religious silence. A prayer had been offered\nand incense burnt on the altar of Dionysus, and during such a ritual the\nrule enjoined silence. It was not necessary for the Greek poet to\ncapture his audience by a scene of bustle or excitement. And this left\nhim free to do two things, both eminently characteristic of Greek art.\nHe could make his atmosphere and he could build up his drama from the\nground.\n\nLet us take the question of building first. If you study a number of\nmodern plays, you will probably find that their main \"effects\" are\nproduced in very different places, though especially of course at the\nfall of each curtain. A good Greek play moves almost always in a curve\nof steadily increasing tension--increasing up to the last scene but one\nand then, as a rule, sinking into a note of solemn calm. It often admits\na quiet scene about the middle to let the play take breath; but it is\nvery chary indeed of lifting and then dropping again, and never does so\nwithout definite reason. In pursuance of this plan, Euripides likes to\nhave his opening as low-toned, as still, as slow in movement, as he can\nmake it: its only tension is a feeling of foreboding or of mystery. It\nis meant as a foundation to build upon, and every scene that follows\nwill be higher, swifter, more intense. A rush of excitement at the\nopening would jar, so to speak, the whole musical scheme.\n\nAnd this quiet opening is especially used to produce the right state of\nmind in the audience--or, as our modern phrase puts it, to give the play\nits atmosphere. Take almost any opening: the _Suppliant Women_, with its\nband of desolate mothers kneeling at an altar and holding the Queen\nprisoner while she speaks: the _Andromache_, the _Heracles_, the\n_Children of Heracles_ almost the same--an altar and helpless people\nkneeling at it--kneeling and waiting: the _Trojan Women_ with its\ndim-seen angry gods; the _Hecuba_ with its ruined city walls and\ndesolate plain and the ghost of the murdered Polydorus brooding over\nthem; the _Hippolytus_ with its sinister goddess, potent and inexorable,\nwho vanishes at the note of the hunting horn but is felt in the\nbackground throughout the whole play; the _Iphigenia_, with its solitary\nand exiled priestess waiting at the doors of her strange temple of\ndeath. Most of the prologues have about them something supernatural; all\nof them something mysterious; and all of them are scenes of waiting, not\nacting--waiting till the atmosphere can slowly gain its full hold.\nRegarded from this point of view I think that every opening scene in\nGreek tragedy will be seen to have its significance and its value in the\nwhole scheme of the play. Certainly the prologue generally justifies\nitself in the acting.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd when the prologue is over and the action begins, we need not expect\neven then any rapid stir or bustle. Dr. Johnson has told us that a man\nwho should read Richardson for the story might as well hang himself; the\nsame fate might overtake one who sate at Greek tragedies expecting them\nto hurry at his bidding. The swift rush will come, sure enough, swift\nand wild with almost intolerable passion; but it will not come anywhere\nnear the first scenes. We shall have a dialogue in longish speeches,\neach more or less balanced against its fellow, beautiful no doubt and\nperhaps moving, but slow as music is slow. Or we shall have a lyrical\nscene, strophe exactly balanced against antistrophe, more beautiful but\nslower still in its movement, and often at first hearing a little\ndifficult to follow. Poetry is there and drama is there, and character\nand plot interest; but often they are unrolled before you not as things\nimmediately happening, but as things to feel and reflect upon. It is a\nbigger world than ours and every movement in it is slower and larger.\n\nAnd when the poet wants to show us the heroine's state of mind his\nmethod will be quite different from ours. We should rack our brains to\ncompose a \"natural\" dialogue in which her state of mind would appear, or\nwe should make her best friend explain what she is like, or we should\ninvent small incidents to throw light upon her. And our language would\nall the time be carefully naturalistic; not a bit--or, if the poet\nwithin us rebels, hardly a bit--more dignified than the average diction\nof afternoon tea. The ancient poet has no artifice at all. His heroine\nsimply walks forward and explains her own feelings. But she will come at\nsome moment that seems just the right one; she will come to us through\na cloud, as it were, of musical emotion from the Chorus, and her words\nwhen she speaks will be frankly the language of poetry. They will be\nnone the less sincere or exact for that.\n\nWhen Phaedra in the _Hippolytus_ has resolved to die rather than show\nher love, much less attempt to satisfy it, and yet has been so weakened\nby her long struggle that she will not be able to resist much longer,\nshe explains herself to the Chorus in a long speech:\n\n      O Women, dwellers in this portal seat\n      Of Pelops' land, looking towards my Crete,\n      How oft, in other days than these, have I\n      Through night's long hours thought of man's misery\n      And how this life is wrecked! And, to mine eyes,\n      Not in man's knowledge, not in wisdom, lies\n      The lack that makes for sorrow. Nay, we scan\n      And know the right--for wit hath many a man--\n      But will not to the last end strive and serve.\n      For some grow too soon weary, and some swerve\n      To other paths, setting before the right\n      The diverse far-off image of Delight,\n      And many are delights beneath the sun. . . .\n\nIt is not the language that any real woman ever spoke, and it is not\nmeant to be. But it is exactly the thought which this woman may have\nthought and felt, transmuted into a special kind of high poetry. And the\nwomen of the Chorus who are listening to it are like no kind of concrete\nearthly listeners; they are the sort of listeners that are suited to\nthoughts rather than words, and their own answer at the end comes not\nlike a real comment but like a note of music. When she finishes,\ndefending her resolve to die rather than sin:\n\n              O'er all this earth\n      To every false man that hour comes apace\n      When Time holds up a mirror to his face,\n      And marvelling, girl-like, there he stares to see\n      How foul his heart.--Be it not so with me!\n\nThey answer:\n\n      Ah, God, how sweet is virtue and how wise,\n      And honour its due meed in all men's eyes!\n\n\"A commonplace?\" \"A not very original remark?\" There is no need for any\noriginal remark; what is needed is a note of harmony in words and\nthought, and that is what we are given.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt a later stage in the play we shall come on another fixed element in\nthe tragedy, the Messenger's Speech. It was probably in the ritual. It\nwas expected in the play. And it was--and is still on the\nstage--immensely dramatic and effective. Modern writers like Mr.\nMasefield and Mr. Wilfred Blunt have seen what use can be made of a\nMessenger's speech. Now for the understanding of the speech itself,\nwhat is needed is to read it several times, to mark out exactly the\nstages of story told, and the gradual rising of emotion and excitement\nup to the highest point, which is, as usual, near the end but not at the\nend. The end sinks back to something like calm. It would take too long\nto analyse a particular Messenger's speech paragraph by paragraph, and\nthe printed page cannot, of course, illustrate the constant varieties of\ntension, of pace and of emphasis that are needed. But I find the\nfollowing notes for the guidance of an actor opposite the Messenger's\nSpeech in an old copy of my _Hippolytus_. Opposite the first lines\ncomes, \"Quiet, slow, simple.\" Then \"quicker.\" \"Big\" (at \"O Zeus . . .\nhated me.\") Then \"Drop tension: story.\" \"Pause: more interest.\"\n\"Mystery.\" \"Awe; rising excitement.\" \"Excitement well controlled.\"\n\"Steady excitement; steady; swifter.\" \"Up; excitement rising.\" \"Up; but\nstill controlled.\" \"Up; full steam; let it go.\" \"Highest point.\" \"Down\nto quiet.\" \"Mystery.\" \"Pause.\" \"End steady: with emotion.\" These notes\nhave, of course, no authority: as they stand they are due partly to my\nown conjecture, partly to observation of a remarkable performance. But\nthey have this interest about them. They grow out of the essential\nnature of the speech and probably would, in their general tenour, be\naccepted by most students; and further, some very similar scheme would\nsuit not only almost every Messenger's Speech, but also, with the\nnecessary modifications, almost every Greek tragedy as a whole. The\nquiet beginning, the constant rise of tension through various moods and\nvarious changes of tone up to a climax; the carefully arranged drop from\nthe climax to the steady close, without bathos and without any wrecking\nof the continuity.\n\nBut there is another point about Messengers that can be more easily\nillustrated. Their entrance in Euripides is nearly always carefully\nprepared. The point is of cardinal importance and needs some\nexplanation. In mere literature it is the words that matter; in dramatic\nliterature it is partly the words, and partly the situation in which\nthey are uttered. A Messenger's Speech ought not only to be a good story\nin itself, but it ought to be so prepared and led up to that before the\nspeaker begins we are longing to hear what he has to say. An instance of\na Messenger's speech with no preparation is in Sophocles' _Oedipus, The\nKing_ (I do not at all suggest that preparation is needed; very likely\nthe situation itself is enough.) Oedipus has rushed into the house in a\nfury of despair, and the Messenger simply walks out of the house crying\n\n    O ye above this land in honour old\n    Exalted, what a tale shall ye be told,\n    What sights shall see and tears of horror shed. . . .\n\nContrast with this the preparation in the _Hippolytus_ (1153 ff.).\nHippolytus, cursed, and of course wrongfully cursed, by his father,\nTheseus, has gone forth to exile. His friends and the women of the\nChorus have been grieving for him: Theseus has refused to listen to any\nplea. Then\n\n              LEADER OF THE CHORUS\n\n  Look yonder! . . . Surely from the Prince 'tis one\n  That cometh, full of haste and woe-begone.\n\nWe are all watching; a man in great haste enters. Observe what he says.\n\n                    HENCHMAN\n\n      Ye women, whither shall I go to seek\n      King Theseus? Is he in this dwelling? Speak!\n\nOur suspense deepens. The Leader evidently has hesitated in her answer;\nshe wants to ask a question. . . . But at this moment the door opens and\nshe falls back:\n\n                     LEADER\n\n      Lo, where he cometh through the Castle Gate.\n\nThrough the gate comes Theseus, wrapped in gloom, evidently trying still\nto forget Hippolytus. The Henchman crosses his path.\n\n                    HENCHMAN\n\n     O King, I bear thee tidings of dire weight\n     To thee, yea, and to every man, I ween,\n     From Athens to the marches of Trozen.\n\nWill Theseus guess? Will he see that this is one of his son's servants?\nAt any rate he shows no sign of so doing.\n\n                     THESEUS\n\n    What? Some new stroke hath touched, unknown to me\n    The sister cities of my sovranty?\n\n                    HENCHMAN\n\n  Hippolytus is. . . .  Nay, not dead; but stark\n  Outstretched, a hairsbreadth this side of the dark.\n\nThe forbidden name is spoken; there is evidently a moment of shock, but\nhow will Theseus take the news? Will he soften?\n\n               THESEUS (_as though unmoved_)\n\n    How slain? Was there some other man, whose wife\n    He had like mine defiled, who sought his life?\n\nStung by the taunt the Henchman answers boldly.\n\n                    HENCHMAN\n\n  His own wild team destroyed him, and the dire\n  Curse of thy lips. . . . The boon of the great Sire\n  Is granted thee, O King, and thy son slain.\n\nWill Theseus turn in fury on the speaker? Or will he even now soften?\nNeither.\n\n                     THESEUS\n\n    Ye Gods! . . . And thou, Poseidon, not in vain\n    I called thee Father. Thou hast heard my prayer.\n\nThe shock is heavy but he recovers his calm, and with it comes the\nhorrible conviction that his curse was just and the gods have struck\ndead a guilty man.\n\n  How did he die? Speak on. How closed the snare\n  Of Heaven to slay the shamer of my blood?\n\nThen the Messenger begins his story.\n\nSuch preparations are regular in Euripides. In the _Electra_, Orestes\nhas gone forth to find King Aegisthus, and if possible slay him. Electra\nis waiting in her hut, a drawn sword across her knees, sworn to die if\nOrestes fails. How is the Messenger brought on? First the Leader of the\nChorus thinks she hears a noise in the distance; she is not sure. . . .\nYes; a noise of fighting! She calls Electra, who comes, the sword in her\nhand. The noise increases; a cry; cheering. Something has happened, but\nwhat? The cheers sound like Argive voices; \"Aegisthus's men!\" cries\nElectra; \"then let me die!\" The Chorus restrain her. \"There is no\nMessenger; Orestes would have sent a Messenger.\" \"Wait, wait!\" cries the\nLeader, holding her arm: and a man rushes in, shouting, \"Victory!\nOrestes has slain Aegisthus, and we are free\" (747-773).\n\nThat seems enough, but even now Euripides has not extracted his full\neffect from the situation. Electra, steeped to the lips in fears and\nsuspicions, recoils from the man. \"Who are you? . . . It is a plot!\" She\nmust get the sword. . . . The Man bids her look at him again; he is her\nbrother's servant; she saw him with Orestes an hour ago. She looks,\nremembers, and throws her arms round the man's neck. \"Tell me again.\nTell me all that happened.\" And so the Messenger begins.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis art of preparation belongs, of course, to the modern stage as much\nas to the ancient, or more. So do the similar arts of making the right\njuncture between scenes, of arranging the contrasts and clashes, and\nespecially of so ending each scene as to make the spectator look eagerly\nfor the next move. He must be given just enough notion of the future to\nwhet his appetite; not enough to satisfy it. These are general rules\nthat apply to all good drama. They can all be studied in Mr. Archer's\nbook, _Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship_. In ancient times they\nwere more developed by Euripides than by his predecessors, but that is\nall we need say.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nPrologue; Set Speech; Messenger; there still remain two stumbling-blocks\nto a modern reader of Greek tragedies, the _Deus ex Machina_, (or \"God\nfrom the Machine\") and the Chorus.\n\nAbout the appearance of the god we need say little. We have seen above\nthat an epiphany of some Divine Being or a Resurrection of some dead\nHero seems to have been an integral part of the old ritual and thus has\nits natural place in tragedy. His special duty is to bring the action to\na quiet close and to ordain the ritual on which the tragedy is\nbased--thus making the performance itself a fulfilment of the god's\ncommand (see above p. 66). The actual history of this epiphany is\ncurious. As far as our defective evidence allows us to draw conclusions\nwe can make out that Aeschylus habitually used a divine epiphany, but\nthat he generally kept it for the last play of a trilogy; that he often\nhad a whole galaxy of gods, and that, with some exceptions, his gods\nwalked the floor of earth with the other actors. (The evidence for this\nis given in Miss Harrison's _Themis_, pp. 347 ff.) Sophocles, moving\ntowards a more \"natural\" and less ritual tragedy, used the divine\nepiphany comparatively little. Euripides, somewhat curiously for one so\nhostile to the current mythology, intensified this ritual element in\ndrama as he did all the others. And he used it more and more as he grew\nolder. He evidently liked it for its own sake.\n\nThere is one view about the _Deus ex Machina_ which needs a word of\ncorrection. It is widely entertained and comes chiefly from Horace's\n_Ars Poetica_. It takes the _Deus_ as a device--and a very unskilful\none--for somehow finishing a story that has got into a hopeless tangle.\nThe poet is supposed to have piled up ingenious complications and\ntroubles until he cannot see any way out and has to cut the knot by the\nintervention of something miraculous--in this case, of a machine-made\ngod. Now devices of this sort--the sudden appearance of rich uncles, the\ndiscovery of new wills, or of infants changed at birth and the like--are\nmore or less common weaknesses in romantic literature. Hence it was\nnatural that Horace's view about Euripides's god should be uncritically\naccepted. But as a matter of fact it is a mere mistake. It never in any\nsingle case holds good--not even in the _Orestes_. And there are some\nplays, like the _Iphigenia in Tauris_, in which, so far from the god\ncoming to clear up a tangled plot, the plot has to be diverted at the\nlast moment so as to provide an excuse for the god's arrival. Euripides\nevidently liked a supernatural ending, and when he had to do without a\nreal god--as in the _Medea_ and the _Hecuba_--he was apt to end with\nwinged chariots and prophecies. Can we in the least understand what he\ngained by it?\n\nWe must remember one or two things. The epiphany was in the ritual. It\nwas no new invention in itself; the only new thing, apparently, was an\nimproved piece of stage machinery enabling the god to appear more\neffectively. Further, if we try to put ourselves into the minds of fifth\ncentury Greeks, there was probably nothing absurd, nothing even\nunlikely, in supposing the visible appearance of a god in such an\natmosphere as that of tragedy. The heroes and heroines of tragedy were\nthemselves almost divine; they were all figures in the great heroic saga\nand almost all of them--the evidence is clear--received actual worship.\nIf Orestes or Agamemnon is present on the stage, it is not surprising\nthat Apollo should appear to them. It is, I think, chiefly due to the\nmistake of over-emphasizing the realism of Euripides that recent\nwriters--myself at one time included--have been so much troubled over\nthese divine epiphanies.\n\nI suspect, also, that we are troubled by a difference of convention\nabout the way in which supernatural beings ought to speak. We moderns\nlike them to be abrupt, thunderous, wrapped in mystery. We expect the\nstyle of ancient Hebrew or Norse poetry. Probably a Greek would think\nboth barbaric. At any rate the Greek gods, both in Euripides and\nelsewhere, affect a specially smooth and fluent and lucid utterance.\n\nAnd apart from the artistic convention there is a historical\nconsideration which we must never forget, though we are constantly\ntempted to do so. A well-educated Athenian of the fifth century before\nChrist was, after all, not as securely lifted above what he called\n\"primaeval simplicity\" as a similar man in Western Europe in the\neighteenth or nineteenth century after. He was just beginning, with\ngreat daring and brilliance, to grasp at something like a philosophic\nor scientific view of the world; but his hold was very precarious and\npartial, and when it slipped he fell unsuspectingly into strange\nabysses. A visible god in the theatre laid probably no more strain on\nhis credulity than, say, a prophetic dream on ours.\n\nHowever, the above considerations are only pleas in mitigation of\nsentence. They tend to show that the _Deus ex Machina_ was not in itself\nridiculous to the contemporaries of Euripides; we must go further and\ntry to see why he liked it. The best way is simply, with our antecedent\nprejudices removed, to read and re-read some of the best epiphany\nscenes; those, for instance, which close the _Electra_, the\n_Hippolytus_, the _Rhesus_ or the _Andromache_. We have already seen in\nthe _Electra_ how the poet can use his gods for delivering his essential\nmoral judgment on the story; the condemnation of revenge, the pity for\nmankind, the opening up of a larger atmosphere in which the horror\nthrough which we have just passed falls into its due resting-place. In\nthe _Hippolytus_ the sheer beauty of the Artemis scene speaks for itself\nand makes a marvellous ending. Notably it attains an effect which could\nscarcely be reached in any other way, a strange poignant note amid the\nbeauty, where mortal emotion breaks against the cliffs of immortal calm.\nAfter many words of tenderness Artemis finishes (1437 ff.):\n\n  Farewell! I may not watch man's fleeting breath,\n  Nor stain mine eyes with the effluence of death.\n  And sure that terror now is very near. . . .\n      (_The Goddess slowly rises and floats away._)\n\n                   HIPPOLYTUS\n\n  Farewell! Farewell, most blessed! Lift thee clear\n  Of soiling men. Thou wilt not grieve in heaven\n  For our long love. . . . Father, thou art forgiven;\n  It was Her will; I am not wroth with thee. . . .\n  I have obeyed her all my days!\n\nOf course the epiphany does not give what our jaded senses secretly\ndemand, a strong \"curtain.\" It gives the antique peaceful close. The\nconcrete men and women whom we have seen before us, striving and\nsuffering, dissolve into the beautiful mist of legend; strife and\npassion and sharp cries sink away into the telling of old fables; then\nthe fables themselves have their lines of consequence reaching out to\ntouch the present world and the thing that we are doing now; to make it\nthe fulfilment of an ancient command or prophecy, to give it a meaning\nthat we had never realized; and thus we are awakened to the concrete\ntheatre and the audience and the life about us not with a shock but\ngradually, like one lying with his eyes half shut and thinking about a\ndream that has just gone.\n\nI do not for a moment say that the divine epiphany is the right, or even\nthe best, way of ending any tragedy; I only plead that if we use our\nimaginations we can find in it a very rare beauty and can understand why\none of the greatest of the world's dramatists held to it so firmly.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE ART OF EURIPIDES CONTINUED: THE CHORUS: CONCLUSION\n\n\nAnd lastly there is the Chorus, at once the strangest and the most\nbeautiful of all these ancient and remote conventions. If we can\nunderstand the Chorus we have got to the very heart of Greek tragedy.\n\nThe objections to the Chorus are plain to any infant. These dozen\nhomogeneous persons, old men or young women, eternally present and\nalmost never doing anything, intruded on action that often demands the\nutmost privacy: their absurdity, on any plane of realism, is manifest.\nWe need waste no more words upon it. Verisimilitude is simply thrown to\nthe winds. That is, no doubt, a great sacrifice, and fine artists do not\nas a rule incur a sacrifice without making sure of some compensating\ngain. Let us try to find out what that gain was, or at least what the\ngreat Greek artists were aiming at. And let us begin by forgetting the\nmodern stage altogether and thinking ourselves back to the very origins\nof drama.\n\nThe word \"chorus\" means \"dance\" or \"dancing-ground.\" There were such\ndancing floors on Greek soil before ever the Greeks came there. They\nhave been found in prehistoric Crete and in the islands. We hear in\nHomer of the \"houses and dancing-grounds\" of the Morning Star. The dance\nwas as old as mankind; only it was a kind of dance that we have almost\nforgotten. The ancient dance was not, like our ballets, rooted in sexual\nemotion. It was religious: it was a form of prayer. It consisted in the\nuse of the whole body, every limb and every muscle, to express somehow\nthat overflow of emotion for which a man has no words. And primitive man\nhad less command of words than we have. When the men were away on the\nwar-path, the women prayed for them with all their bodies. They danced\nfor the men's safe return. When the tribe's land was parching for lack\nof rain the tribesmen danced for the rain to come. The dance did not\nnecessarily imply movement. It might consist in simply maintaining the\nsame rigid attitude, as when Moses held out his arms during the battle\nwith the Amalekites or Ahure in the Egyptian story waited kneeling and\nfasting for Nefrekepta's return.\n\nNow if we consider what kind of emotion will specially call for this\nform of expression it is easy to see that it will be the sort that tends\nquickly to get beyond words: religious emotions of all kinds, helpless\ndesire, ineffectual regret and all feelings about the past. When we\nthink of the kind of ritual from which tragedy emerged, the lament for a\ndead god, we can see how well a dance was fitted, in primitive times, to\nexpress the emotions that we call tragic.\n\nThis dance gradually grew into drama; how it did so is an old story.\nInto the inarticulate mass of emotion and dumb show which is the Dance\nthere comes some more articulate element. There comes some one who\nrelates, or definitely enacts, the actual death or \"pathos\" of the hero,\nwhile the Chorus goes on as before expressing emotion about it. This\nemotion, it is easy to see, may be quite different from that felt by the\nHero. There is implied in the contemplation of any great deed this\nultimate emotion, which is not as a rule felt by the actual doers of it,\nand is not, at its highest power, to be expressed by the ordinary\nlanguage of dialogue. The dramatist may make his characters express all\nthat they can properly feel; he may put into articulate dialogue all\nthat it will bear. But there still remains some residue which no one on\nthe stage can personally feel and which can only express itself as music\nor yearning of the body. This residue finds its one instrument in the\nChorus.\n\nImagine the death of some modern hero, of Lincoln or of Nelson, treated\nin the Greek form. We should have first a Messenger bringing news of the\nbattle of Trafalgar or the pistol-shot in the Washington Theatre. The\nhero would be borne in dying; his friends would weep over him; we should\nhear his last words. But there would always remain some essential\nemotion or reflection--sadness, triumph, pathos, thoughts of the future\nfrom which this man will be lacking or of the meaning of this death in\nhuman history: neither Lincoln nor Nelson can express this, nor without\nfalsity any of their human companions. In a novel the author can express\nit; in a modern play or a severely realistic novel it is generally not\nexpressed except by a significant silence or some symbol. For realistic\nwork demands extreme quickness in its audience, and can only make its\neffect on imaginations already trained by romance and idealism. On the\nGreek stage the Chorus will be there just for this purpose, to express\nin music and movement this ultimate emotion and, as Mr. Haigh puts it,\nto \"shed a lyrical splendour over the whole.\" It will translate the\nparticular act into something universal. It will make a change in all\nthat it touches, increasing the elements of beauty and significance and\nleaving out or reducing the element of crude pain. This is nothing\nextraordinary: it is the normal business of poetry, at least of great\ntragic poetry. An actual bereavement is an experience consisting of\nalmost nothing but crude pain; when it is translated into religion or\npoetry, into \"Rachel weeping for her children,\" or into \"Break, break,\nbreak,\" it has somehow become a thing of beauty and even of comfort.\n\nThe important thing to observe is what Mr. F. M. Cornford has explained\nin his _Thucydides Mythistoricus_ (pp. 144 ff.), that a Greek tragedy\nnormally proceeds in two planes or two worlds. When the actors are on\nthe stage we are following the deeds and fates of so many particular\nindividuals, lovers, plotters, enemies, or whatever they are, at a\nparticular point of time and space. When the stage is empty and the\nChoral Odes begin, we have no longer the particular acts and places and\npersons but something universal and eternal. The body, as it were, is\ngone and the essence remains. We have the greatness of love, the vanity\nof revenge, the law of eternal retribution, or perhaps the eternal doubt\nwhether in any sense the world is governed by righteousness.\n\nThus the talk about improbability with which we started falls into its\nproper insignificance. The Chorus in Euripides is frequently blamed by\nmodern scholars on the ground that \"it does not further the action,\"\nthat its presence is \"improbable,\" or its odes \"irrelevant.\" The answer\nis that none of these things constitute the business of the Chorus; its\nbusiness is something considerably higher and more important.\n\nOf action and relevancy we will speak later. They are both closely\nconnected with the question of verisimilitude. And as for\nverisimilitude, we simply do not think of it. We are not imitating the\noutside of life. We are expressing its soul, not depicting its body. And\nif we did attempt verisimilitude we should find that in a Chorus it is\nsimply unattainable. In Nelson's case a Chorus of Sailors would be\nevery bit as improbable as a Chorus of Mermaids or Angels, and on the\nwhole rather more strikingly so. If we try to think of the most\neffective Choruses in modern tragedies, I do not think we shall hit on\nany bands of Strolling Players or Flower Girls or Church Choirs or other\nChoruses that aim at \"naturalness\"; we shall probably go straight to the\nChoruses of Spirits in _Prometheus Unbound_ or those of The Ages and The\nPities in Mr. Hardy's _Dynasts_. The Chorus belongs not to the plane of\nordinary experience, where people are real and act and make apposite\nremarks, but to that higher world where in Mr. Cornford's words\n\"metaphor, as we call it, is the very stuff of life.\"\n\nWith very few exceptions, Greek Choruses are composed of beings who are\nnaturally the denizens or near neighbours of such a world. Sometimes\nthey are frankly supernatural, as in the _Eumenides_, or half\nsupernatural, as in the _Bacchae_; sometimes they are human beings seen\nthrough the mist of a great emotion, like the weeping Rachels of the\n_Suppliant Women_; the captives of the _Trojan Women_ or the\n_Iphigenia_; the old men who dream dreams in the _Heracles_. Even if\nthey start as common men or women, sooner or later they become\ntransformed.\n\nThe problem of the Chorus to Euripides was not how to make it as little\nobjectionable as possible; it was how to get the greatest and highest\nvalue out of it. And that resolves itself largely into the problem of\nhandling these two planes of action, using now the lower and now the\nupper, now keeping them separate, now mingling them, and at times\nletting one forcibly invade the other. I cannot here go into details of\nthe various effects obtained from the Chorus by Euripides; but I will\ntake a few typical ones, selecting in each case scenes that have been\nloudly condemned by critics.\n\nThe first and most normal effect is to use the Chorus for \"relief\"; to\nbring in, as it were, the ideal world to heal the wounds of the real. It\nis not, of course, \"comic relief,\" as indulged in so freely by the\nElizabethans. It is a transition from horror or pain to mere beauty or\nmusic, with hardly any change of tension. I mean, that if the pain has\nbrought tears to your eyes, the beauty will be such as to keep them\nthere, while of course changing their character. It is this use of\nlyrics that enables the Greek playwright to treat freely scenes of\nhorror and yet never lose the prevailing atmosphere of high beauty. Look\nat the Salamis Chorus in the _Trojan Women_ immediately following the\nchild's death; the lyrics between Oedipus and the Chorus when he has\njust entered with his bleeding eyes; or, in particular, the song sung by\nthe Chorus in _Hippolytus_ just after Phaedra has rushed off to kill\nherself. We have had a scene of high tension and almost intolerable\npain, and the Chorus, left alone, make certainly no relevant remarks. I\ncan think of no relevant remark that would not be an absurd bathos. They\nsimply break out (732 ff.):\n\n  Could I take me to some cavern for mine hiding,\n    In the hill-tops, where the sun scarce hath trod,\n  Or a cloud make the home of mine abiding,\n    As a bird among the bird-droves of God. . . .\n\nIt is just the emotion that was in our own hearts; the cry for escape to\nsome place, however sad, that is still beautiful: to the poplar grove by\nthe Adriatic where his sisters weep for Phaethon; or, at last, as the\nsong continues and grows bolder, to some place that has happiness as\nwell as beauty; to that \"strand of the Daughters of the Sunset,\"\n\n  Where a sound of living waters never ceaseth\n    In God's quiet garden by the sea,\n  And Earth, the ancient Life-giver, increaseth\n    Joy among the meadows, like a tree.\n\nAnd the wish for escape brings an actual escape, on some wind of beauty,\nas it were, from the Chorus's own world. This is, on the whole, the most\nnormal use of the Choric odes, though occasionally they may also be used\nfor helping on the action. For instance, in the ode immediately\nfollowing that just quoted the Chorus gives a sort of prophetic or\nclairvoyant description of Phaedra's suicide.\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut the Greek Chorus does not only sing its great odes on an empty\nstage; it also carries on, by the mouth of its Leader, a certain amount\nof ordinary dialogue with the actors. Its work here is generally kept\nunobtrusive, neutral and low-toned. When a traveller wants to ask his\nway; when the hero or heroine announces some resolve, or gives some\ndirection, the Leader is there to make the necessary response. But only\nwithin certain carefully guarded limits. The Leader must never become a\ndefinite full-blooded character with strongly personal views. He must\nnever take really effective or violent action. He never, I think, gives\ninformation which we do not already possess or expresses views which\ncould seem paradoxical or original. He is an echo, a sort of music in\nthe air. This comes out clearly in another fine scene of the\n_Hippolytus_, where Phaedra is listening at the door and the Leader of\nthe Chorus listens with her, echoing and making more vibrant Phaedra's\nown emotion (565-600).\n\nAt times, in these dialogue scenes, an effect is obtained by allowing\nthe Chorus to turn for a moment into ordinary flesh and blood. In the\n_Iphigenia in Tauris_ (1055 ff.) the safe escape of Iphigenia and\nOrestes depends on the secrecy of the Chorus of Greek captives.\nIphigenia implores them to be silent, and, after a moment of hesitation,\nbecause of the danger, they consent. Iphigenia, with one word of radiant\ngratitude, forgets all about them and leaves the stage to arrange things\nwith her brother. And the captives left alone watch a sea-bird winging\nits way towards Argos, whither Iphigenia is now going and they shall\nnever go, and break into a beautiful home-sick song. Similarly in the\nsplendid finale of Aeschylus' _Prometheus_ the Daughters of Ocean, who\nhave been mostly on the unearthly plane throughout the play, are\nsuddenly warned to stand aside and leave Prometheus before his doom\nfalls: in a rush of human passion they refuse to desert him and are\nhurled with him into Hell.\n\nAt other times the effect is reached by emphasizing just the other side,\nthe unearthliness of the Chorus. In the _Heracles_, for instance, when\nthe tyrant Lycus is about to make some suppliants leave the protection\nof an altar by burning them--a kind of atrocity which just avoided the\ntechnical religious offence of violating sanctuary--the Chorus of old\nmen tries for a moment to raise its hand against the tyrant's soldiers.\nIt is like the figures of a dream trying to fight--\"words and a\nhidden-featured thing seen in a dream of the night,\" as the poet himself\nsays, trying to battle against flesh and blood; a helpless visionary\ntransient struggle which is beautiful for a moment but would be\ngrotesque if it lasted. Again, in the lost _Antiope_ there is a scene\nwhere the tyrant is inveigled into a hut by murderers; he manages to\ndash out and appeals to the Chorus of old men for help. But they are not\nreally old men; they are only ancient echoes or voices of Justice, who\nspeak his doom upon him, standing moveless while the slayers come.\n\nThese examples enable us to understand a still stronger effect of the\nsame kind which occurs in the _Medea_ and has, until very lately, been\nutterly condemned and misunderstood. It is an effect rather reminding\none of the Greek fable of a human wrong so terrible that it shook the\nvery Sun out of his course. It is like the human cry in the _Electra_\n(p. 157), which shook the eternal peace of the gods in heaven. There is\nsomething delirious about it, an impossible invasion of the higher world\nby the lower, a shattering of unapproachable bars.\n\nMedea has gone to murder her children inside the house. The Chorus is\nleft chanting its own, and our, anguish outside. \"Why do they not rush\nin and save the children?\" asked the critics. In the first place,\nbecause that is not the kind of action that a Chorus can ever perform.\nThat needs flesh and blood. \"Well,\" the critic continues, \"if they\ncannot act effectively, why does Euripides put them in a position in\nwhich we instinctively clamour for effective action and they are absurd\nif they do not act?\" The answer to that is given in the play itself.\nThey do not rush in; there is no question of their rushing in: because\nthe door is barred. When Jason in the next scene tries to enter the\nhouse he has to use soldiers with crowbars. The only action they can\npossibly perform is the sort that specially belongs to the Chorus, the\naction of baffled desire.\n\nMedea is in the house; the Chorus is chanting its sublimated impersonal\nemotion about the Love that has turned to Hate in Medea, and its dread\nof things to come (1267 ff.):\n\n  For fierce are the smitings back of blood once shed\n    Where Love hath been: God's wrath upon them that kill,\n  And an anguished Earth, and the wonder of the dead\n              Haunting as music still. . . .\n\nwhen a sudden cry is heard within. The song breaks short, and one woman\nspeaks:\n\n    Hark! Did ye hear? Heard ye the children's cry?\n\n          _Another._\n\n    O miserable woman! O abhorred!\n\n          _Voice of a Child within._\n\n      What shall I do? What is it? Keep me fast\n    From Mother!\n\n          _The Other Child._\n\n          I know nothing. Brother! Oh,\n    I think she means to kill us.\n\n          _One of the Chorus._\n\n                            Let me go!\n      I will!--Help, help! And save them at the last!\n\n          _Child._\n\n    Yes, in God's name. Help quickly or we die!\n\n          _The Other Child._\n\n    She has almost caught me now: she has a sword.\n\nOne sees the Women of the Chorus listening for the Children's words;\nthen they break, as it were, from the spell of their own super-mortal\natmosphere, and fling themselves on the barred door. They beat in vain\nagainst the bars and the Children's voices cry for help from the other\nside.\n\nBut the inrush of violent horror is only tolerated for a moment. Even in\nthe next words we are moving back to the realm of formal poetry:\n\n          _Women Beating at the Door._\n\n    Thou stone, thou thing of iron! Wilt verily\n    Spill with thine hand that life, the vintage stored\n      Of thine own agony?\n\n                   _Others_\n\n      A woman slew her babes in days of yore,\n      One, only one, from dawn to eventide. . . .\n\nand in a moment we are away in a beautiful remote song about far-off\nchildren who have been slain in legend. That death-cry is no longer a\nshriek heard in the next room. It is the echo of many cries of children\nfrom the beginning of the world, children who are now at peace and whose\nancient pain has become part mystery and part music. Memory--that Memory\nwho was mother of the Muses--has done her work upon it.\n\nWe see here the justification of the high formalism and convention of\nGreek tragedy. It can touch without flinching any horror of tragic life,\nwithout failing in sincerity and without marring its normal atmosphere\nof beauty. It brings things under the great magic of something which is\nhard to name, but which I have tried in these pages to indicate;\nsomething that we can think of as eternity or the universal or perhaps\neven as Memory. For Memory, used in this way, has a magical power. As\nMr. Bertrand Russell has finely put it in one of his _Essays_, \"The Past\ndoes not change or strive. Like Duncan in _Macbeth_ 'After life's fitful\nfever it sleeps well.' What was eager and grasping, what was petty and\ntransitory, has faded away. The things that were beautiful and eternal\nshine out like stars in the night.\"\n\nThis power of transfiguration belongs in varying degrees to all poetry,\nbut it belongs in special force to Greek Tragedy; and Greek Tragedy\nattains it in part by all its high religious traditions and severities\nof form, but most fully by means of its strangest convention, the\nChorus; the band of half-embodied emotions and memories, the lyric song\nand the dance expressing things beyond speech. It is through this power\nthat tragedy attain its peculiar quality of encouragement and triumph.\nWe must not forget that Aristotle, a judge whose dicta should seldom be\ndismissed without careful reflection, distinguishes tragedy from other\nforms of drama not as the form that represents human misery but as that\nwhich represents human goodness or nobleness. If his MSS. are to be\ntrusted he even goes so far as to say that tragedy is \"the\nrepresentation of Eudaimonia,\" or the higher kind of happiness. Of\ncourse he fully recognizes the place of death and disaster in it, and he\nprefers the so-called \"unhappy ending.\" The powers of evil and horror\nmust be granted their full scope; it is only thus that we can triumph\nover them. Only when they have worked their uttermost will do we realize\nthat there remains something in man's soul which is forever beyond their\ngrasp and has power in its own right to make life beautiful. That is the\ngreat revelation, or the great illusion, of tragedy.\n\nIt is achieved, apparently, by a combination of two extremes; in matter\na full facing of tragic facts, and in form a resolute transfiguration of\nthem by poetry. The weak artist shirks the truth by a feeble idealism;\nthe prosaic artist fails to transfigure it. Euripides seems to me to\nhave gone further than any other writer in the attempt to combine in one\nunity these separate poles. In this lies, for good or evil, his unique\nquality as a poet. To many readers it seems that his powers failed him;\nhis mixture of real life and supernatural atmosphere, of wakeful thought\nand dreaming legend, remains a discord, a mere jar of overwrought\nconventions and violent realism. To others it is because of this very\nquality that he has earned the tremendous rank accorded him by Goethe,\nand in a more limited sense by Aristotle, and still stands out, as he\nstood over two thousand years ago, \"even if faulty in various ways, at\nany rate clearly the most tragic of the poets.\"\n\n\n\n\n                          BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\nTEXTS.--Murray, 3 vols., 3s. 6d. each (Oxford, 1901-1913), with\n    brief critical notes. This edition received much help from\n    Wilamowitz and Verrall. _Wecklein-Prinz_ (Leipzig, about 1895 to\n    1905), edited by Dr. Wecklein from Prinz's collations of MSS.;\n    large critical apparatus and lists of emendations. Text much\n    altered.\n\nFRAGMENTS.--_Fragmenta Tragicorum Graecorum_ by Nauck (Leipzig,\n    second edition, 1889): this fine book still holds the field (26s.).\n    _Supplementum Euripideum_ by H. von Arnim (Bonn, 1912). (Price 2s.)\n    Contains the recent papyrus discoveries; a convenient and learned\n    little book, defaced by metrical errors.\n\nTEXTS WITH COMMENTARY.--Paley, 3 vols., 8s. each (Cambridge, second\n    edition, 1880). Though old-fashioned and often based on wrong\n    information about the MSS. and other matters this is a most sound\n    and thoughtful work. Of the numerous modern editions (especially\n    school editions) of particular plays we may mention _Euripides'\n    Herakles_ erklaert von Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (first\n    edition, Berlin, 1889); since re-edited in two volumes. This is an\n    epoch-making book, and together with the same author's _Analecta\n    Euripidea_ (1875) has laid the foundation for modern criticism:\n    also Verrall's Medea, Sandys' Bacchae, Keene's Electra, Powell's\n    Phoenissae. In French, Weil's _Sept Tragedies d'Euripide_; in\n    German Bruhn's editions of the Iphigenia in Tauris and the Bacchae\n    deserve special note.\n\nTRANSLATIONS.--There are complete translations of the extant plays\n    in prose by Coleridge (Bohn) and in verse by A. Way (Macmillan). A\n    good prose translation, which should really bring out the full\n    meaning of the Greek, is greatly needed. By Murray there are at\n    present translations of the following plays: Hippolytus, Bacchae,\n    Trojan Women, Electra, Medea, Iphigenia in Tauris, Rhesus. In paper\n    1s. each, in cloth 2s. (George Allen).\n\nESSAYS, ETC.--The best starting point is Haigh's _Tragic Drama of\n    the Greeks_ (Oxford, 1896), pp. 204-321; Introduction to vol. i. of\n    Paley's Commentary (see above); Articles in the Histories of Greek\n    Literature by Mahaffy, Jebb (both Primer and article in\n    Encyclopaedia Britannica), Jevons, Murray. In French, the article in\n    Croiset's _History of Literature_; P. Decharme, _Euripide et\n    l'esprit de son Theatre_ (Paris, 1893); P. Masqueray, _Euripide et\n    ses Idees_ (Paris, 1908). In German, the \"Einleitung\" to\n    Wilamowitz's _Herakles_, vol. i. (Berlin, 1889); Dieterich's\n    article on Euripides in Pauly-Wissowa's _Real Encyclopaedie_ is\n    excellent, though severely compressed and ignorant of English work;\n    articles in the Histories of Literature by Bergk (still valuable),\n    Christ (in Ivan Mueller's Handbuch), Bethe (in Gercke und Norden's\n    Handbuch), Wilamowitz (in _Kultur der Gegenwart_); the account in\n    Eduard Meyer's _Geschichte des Alterthums_, vol. iv., is good. Also\n    Ed. Schwartz, _Charakterkoepfe aus der Antiken Literatur_ (Leipzig,\n    1906), second study, very good: H. Steiger, _Euripides, seine\n    Dichtung und seine Persoenlichkeit_ (Leipzig, 1912). Useful, though\n    often uncritical, is W. Nestle _Euripides, der Dichter der\n    Griechischen Aufklaerung_ (Stuttgart, 1901); also _Die\n    Philosophische Quellen des Euripides_ (Leipzig, 1902). The ideas of\n    \"the Enlightenment,\" to which reference is often made, can be well\n    studied in Mr. Brailsford's book in this Library, _Shelley, Godwin,\n    and Their Circle_.\n\nDr. A. W. Verrall's theory of Euripides is developed in _Euripides the\nRationalist_ (Cambridge, 1905); _Euripides' Ion_ (1890); _Four Plays of\nEuripides_ (1905); _The Bacchantes of Euripides_ (1910). See also G.\nNorwood, _The Riddle of the Bacchae_ (London, 1908).\n\nMurray's previous writings include the chapter in his _Ancient Greek\nLiterature_ (1898); introduction to vol. ii. of _The Athenian Drama_\n(George Allen, 1902). (This volume is called \"Euripides\" and contains,\nbesides the translations of the Hippolytus, Bacchae and Frogs, since\nrepublished separately, an Introduction and an Appendix on the lost\nplays of Euripides). Introductions to his translations of separate\nplays: see above; _Greek and English Tragedy_, an essay in English\nLiterature and the Classics, edited by G. S. Gordon (Oxford, 1912); and\nthe article on Euripides in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Ethics and\nReligion_. (These writings have been sometimes quoted in the present\nvolume.)\n\nThe Lives can best be read in the edition of the _Scholia_ by Ed.\nSchwartz (Berlin, 1887). To this must now be added the fragments of\nSatyrus in _Oxyrhyncus Papyri_, vol. ix. (also contained, though without\nDr. Hunt's introduction, in Arnim's _Supplementum Euripideum_; see\nabove). The ancient references to the facts of Euripides' life are\nadmirably collected in vol. i. of Nauck's small text of _Euripides_. See\nalso Wilamowitz's _Herakles_, pp. 1-40.\n\nCHRONOLOGY OF THE PLAYS.--Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Analecta\n    Euripidea_ (Berlin, 1875). Grace Macurdy, _The Chronology of the\n    extant Plays of Euripides_ (Columbia University, 1905).\n\nLOST PLAYS.--Fragments in Nauck; see above. No complete\n    translation. A good many of the lost plays are treated and\n    fragments translated in the Appendix to Murray's _Euripides,\n    Athenian Drama_, vol. ii.; see above. The classical work on this\n    subject is still Welcker's _Griechische Tragoedie_, a great book: 3\n    vols. (Leipzig, 1839-41.) Hartung's _Euripides Restitutus_, 2 vols.\n    (Hamburg, 1844), is uncritical and somewhat prejudiced against\n    Welcker, but has much charm.\n\nANTIQUITIES, ETC.--The standard book is Haigh's _Attic Theatre_,\n    3rd edition, by A. W. Pickard-Cambridge (Oxford, 1907). See also\n    _Greek Tragedy_ by J. T. Sheppard (Cambridge Manuals) and _Greek\n    Drama_ by Barnet in Dent's Series.\n\n\n\n\n                    PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK NAMES\n\n\nGreek names have mostly come to the modern world through Latin and\nconsequently are generally given in their Latin form. Thus in Latin the\nK-sound was denoted by C; KH by CH, AI- by AE; OU- by U; U by Y, which\nis really a Greek letter taken over into Latin for this express purpose.\nAlso one or two common terminations are given in their Latin form,\nHomeros becoming Homerus, Apollon Apollo, and Alexandros Alexander. This\ndifference in writing did not mean a difference in pronunciation; the\nLatin _Aeschylus_ was pronounced (except perhaps in the termination)\nexactly like the Greek \"_Aiskhulos_,\" _Thucydides_ like \"_Thoukudides_.\"\n\nThe conventional English pronunciation follows the Latin form and\npronounces all vowels and diphthongs as in English, except that E is\nalways pronounced, and never used merely to lengthen a previous vowel:\ne.g., \"Euripides\" rhymes with \"insipid ease,\" not with \"glides,\"\n\"Hermione\" roughly with \"bryony,\" not with \"tone.\" OE and AE are\npronounced as one syllable, like \"ee\" in \"free,\" except when marked as\ntwo syllables, as \"Arsinoe.\" EU as in \"feud.\" Of the consonants C is\npronounced as in English, CH as K. The only difficulty then is to know\nwhere the stress comes and what vowels are long or short.\n\nBy Latin custom, if the last syllable but one is long, it will have the\nstress (as _surprising_, _everlasting_, _Achilles_, _Agamemnon_); if the\nlast syllable but one is short, the stress will be on the syllable\nbefore (as _adamant_, _dangerous_, _Aeschylus_, _Thucydides_).\n\nIn the following index ' denotes a stressed short vowel sound, as in\n_cattle_, _imbedded_, _pitiful_, _biology_: ^ denotes a stressed long\nvowel as in _cake_, _creeper_, _spiteful_, _October_, _endurable_,\n_g[^y]roscope_. In the case of the letter \"y\", this length has been\nindicated by [^y].\n\n\n\n\n                        INDEX\n\n         [_Not including the Bibliography._]\n\n\nAbdera, 144\n\nAchilles, 177 _ff._\n\nActs, book of, 21\n\nActaeon, 66\n\nAeschylus, 11, 25, 58, 59, 67, 70, 121, 135, 182 _ff._, 186, 206, 234\n  _Agamemnon_, 153, 207\n  _Choephori_, 153\n  _Eumenides_, 183, 234\n  _Lycurgeia_, 66, 182 _f._, 186\n  _Persae_, 43, 104\n  _Prometheus_, 66, 206, 238\n  _Seven_, 43\n  _Suppliants_, 121\n\nAgamemnon, 133, 175-179, 206\n\nAgathon, 170\n\n_Agon_ (Contest), 64\n\n_Aition_ (mythical cause), 66\n\nAlcibiades (iota with vrachy in Greek), 110-114\n\nAlcman, 106\n\nAltar, in tragedy, 210 _f._\n\nAnaxagoras, 30, 51 _f._, 58, 116\n\nAnaximander, 63\n\nApollo, 36, 121-126\n\nArchelaus (like \"slay us\"):\n  (1) philosopher, 56;\n  (2) King of Macedon, 169\n\nArcher, W., 221\n\nArchitecture of plays, 209 _ff._, 215\n\n_Arete_ (virtue), 38, 41, 50\n\nArgos, 112\n\nAristides, 43, 47, 49\n\nAristophanes, 25, 30 _f._, 74\n  _Acharnians_, 26, 77\n  _Birds_, 143\n  _Frogs_, 25, 26, 114, 120, 172, 191, 192\n  _Knights_, 27, 46, 112\n  _Women at the Thesmophoria_, 25, 27\n\nAristotle, 10, 20, 129, 244, 245\n\nAthena, 42, 131\n\nAthens, after Persian War, 37 _ff._, 39-42, 45, 110;\n  ideals of, 39-42, 109, 115;\n  changes in, 107-115;\n  and Euripides, 30-34, 89, 99, 119, 166 _ff._;\n  constitution of, 97 _f._\n\nAtmosphere of play, 210 _f._\n\nAugustine, 141\n\n\nBiography, 21;\n  of Euripides, 23\n\nBlood-feud, 152, 153\n\nBrowning, R., 9\n\n\nCephisophon, 29, 167\n\nCharites (Graces), 105\n\nChervil, 26\n\nChorus, 83, 228-242;\n  in dialogue, 237 _f._\n\nClarity in style, 13\n\nClassicism, 199\n\nCleon, 58, 109 _f._, 118\n\nClytemnestra, 152-157, 175-180, 206\n\nColeridge, 204\n\nComedy. _See_ Aristophanes, New Comedy\n\nConvention in art, 201 _ff._;\n  as opposed to nature, 53 _f._\n\nConversion, 141\n\nCornford, F. M., 64, 232, 234\n\n\nDance, 62, 229 _f._\n\nDemokedes, 49, 194 _f._\n\nDemocracy, 38 _ff._, 116\n\n_Deus ex machina_ (appearance of a God from a stage machine), 64, 156 _f._,\n  160-164, 221-227.\n  _See_ Epiphany\n\nDickens, 33\n\nDiogenes of Apollonia, 56\n\nDion[^y]sus, 64 _f._;\n  his ritual, 64 _f._;\n  festival, 68;\n  in Bacchae, 188\n\nDrama, Greek. _See_ Tragedy\n  mediaeval liturgical, 62, 65;\n  Elizabethan, 60, 235\n\n\nElizabethans, 60, 235\n\nElmsley, 9\n\nEmpire, Athenian, 108-110\n\n\"Enlightenment,\" 48, 96, 116.\n  _See_ Ideas\n\nEphebi, 43\n\nEpicurus, 20\n\nEpiphany, 64, 156 _f._, 160-164.\n  _See Deus ex Machina_\n\nEuripides: birth, 22, 35;\n  death, 171 _f._;\n  biography, 23 _ff._;\n  portrait, 28;\n  father, 35;\n  mother, 26 _f._, 35;\n  books, 28, 103;\n  cave at Salamis, 29, 165;\n  ideas, 7, 99;\n  teachers, 50-59;\n  as playwright, 7, 10, 85;\n  mysticism, 8, 163;\n  attitude to Religion, 190-194;\n  influence after death, 10 _ff._;\n  relation to Athens, 30 _f._, 89, 99, 119 _ff._, 126,\n   166 _ff._;\n  and Comedy, 30;\n  attitude to women, 28, 32 _ff._, 84 _ff._, 121-126;\n  style, 13 _f._;\n  technique, 125, 198 _ff._;\n  battle pieces, 104\n\nEuripides' Ode on Alcibiades, 113\n  Epitaph on those slain in Sicily, 144\n  _Aegeus_, 98\n  _Aeolus_, 78\n  _Alcestis_, 70, 72 _f._, 88\n  _Alcmaeon_ in Corinth, 173\n  _Alcmaeon_ in Psophis, 71, 73 _f._\n  _Alexander_, 137-139\n  _Alope_, 121\n  _Andromache_ (like \"from a key\"), 98, 112, 163, 210, 224\n  _Andromeda_, 143-145\n  _Antiope_ (iota with vrachy in Greek), 239\n  _Auge_, 121\n  _Bacchae_, 9, 19, 173, 181-190, 195 _ff._\n  _Bellerophontes_, 101, 190\n  _Children of Heracles_, 93 _f._, 98, 210\n  _Cretans_, 79\n  _Cretan Women_, 71, 77\n  _C[^y]clops_, 70\n  _Danae_, 121\n  _Daughters of Pelias_, 69 _f._, 81\n  _Electra_, 138, 152-157, 195, 219 _f._, 224, 240\n  _Erechtheus_, 98\n  _Hecuba_, 89-90, 143, 163, 187, 229\n  _Helena_, 142, 146-148, 163, 192\n  _Heracles_, 99-105, 191, 197, 210, 234, 239\n  _Hippolytus_, 85-88, 163, 191 _ff._, 210, 213 _f._,\n     217-219, 224, 236, 238\n  _Ion_, 79, 119-126, 192, 199\n  _Iphigenia in Aulis_, 173-181, 191\n  _Iphigenia in Tauris_, 101, 142, 145-146, 163, 210, 229, 234, 238\n  _Medea_, 32, 81-86, 90, 143, 163, 187, 192, 206, 229, 240-242\n  _Melanippe_, 27, 121\n  _Orestes_, 158-163, 168, 191, 195, 229\n  _Palamedes_, 137, 139 _f._\n  _Phoenissae_, 148-152, 163\n  _Rhesus_, 44, 71, 224\n  _Suppliant Women_, 94-98, 111, 210, 234\n  _Telephus_, 72, 74 _ff._\n  _Theseus_, 92\n  _Trojan Women_, 130-137, 140 _ff._, 191, 210, 234, 236.\n\n\nForgiveness, doctrine of, 162-164\n\nFrazer, J. G., 64\n\nFreedom of Thought, 58, 96\n\nFrench Revolution, 118\n\n\nGellius, 25\n\nGlover, 141\n\nGods, 191-192;\n  on stage, 156 _f._\n  _See Deus ex Machina_\n\nGoethe, 10, 245\n\nGraces, The, 105\n\nGrenfell, 24\n\n\nHaigh, 232\n\nHardy, T., 234\n\nHarrison, J. E., 64, 222\n\nHecataeus, 49\n\nHelen, 162\n\nHellenism, 39\n\nHeracles, Children of, 41.\n  _See under_ Euripides\n\nHeraclitus, 63\n\nHerd, The, 193 _f._, 196\n\nHeroes, 65 _f._\n\nHerodotus, 20, 39-42, 53 _f._, 107\n\nHesiod, 47\n\nHippocrates, 21\n\nHistorical Spirit, 199 _f._\n\nHomer, 36, 131, 229\n\nHorace, 222\n\n_Hubris_, 63, 128\n\nHunt, 24\n\nHygiainon, 167\n\nHyperbolus, 110 _f._\n\n\nIbsen, 9, 33, 206\n\nIdeas, 45 _f._, 116\n\nImmortality, 36\n\nInitiations, 36\n\nInnocents, Massacre of, 65\n\nIonia, 45 _ff._, 49, 51\n\n\nJason, 82-85, 206\n\nJohnson, S., 211\n\n\nLaw, 39 _ff._\n\nLeicester, Earl of, 60\n\nLincoln, Abraham, 231\n\n\nMacaulay, 9\n\nMacedonia, 169-173\n\nMagnesia, 169\n\nMary Magdalen, 65\n\nMasks, 75\n\nMediaeval Drama, 62, 65\n\nMegara, 44\n\nMelian Dialogue, 127-130\n\nMelos, 127-132, 194\n\nMemory, 106 _f._, 242\n\nMenander. _See_ New Comedy\n\nMenelaus (\"slay us\"), 113, 158 _ff._, 176 _f._, 206\n\nMeredith, G., 103, 203\n\nMessenger, 214-220\n\nMiletus, Fall of, 66\n\nMilitary Service, 43, 101 _f._, 105\n\nMiltiades (iota with vrachy in Greek), 43, 49\n\nMilton, 9, 208\n\nMnesilochus, 29\n\nMuses, 34, 105\n\nMysteries, 36\n\nMystery Plays, 62, 65, 185\n\nMysticism, 8, 163\n\n\nNature, opposed to Convention, 53 _f._\n\nNelson, Horatio, 231\n\nNeirekepta, 230\n\nNestle, 8\n\nNew Comedy, 173 _f._, 201 _f._\n\n\"_Nomos._\" _See_ Convention\n\nNorwood, G., 8\n\n\nOld Age, 166\n\nOld Year, 63 _f._\n\nOlympic Games, 113\n\nOrestes, 66, 153 _ff._\n  _See under_ Euripides\n\n\nParian Marble, 22\n\nParis, Gaston, 61\n\nPasiphae, 79\n\nPatriotism, 98.\n  _See_ Plays, patriotic\n\nPaul, 141\n\nPeasants, Greek, 46 _f._, 117\n\nPeloponnesian War, 91, 94, 107-110\n\nPentheus, 66, 181 _ff._\n\nPericles, 43, 52, 58, 91, 108 _f._\n\nPersians, 37\n\nPersian War, 37, 48\n\nPhaedra, 86-88, 213 _f._\n\nPhilochorus, 24 _ff._, 27\n\nPhilodemus, 168\n\nPhl[^y]a, 35 _f._, 46\n\nPhr[^y]nichus, 42\n\n_Phusis_ (upsilon with vrachy in Greek).\n  _See_ Nature\n\nPindar, 48, 121, 140\n\nPlato, 15, 29, 32, 50, 140\n\nPlays. _See under_ Authors:\n  Euripides', patriotic, 91 _f._, 98;\n  early, 70-73;\n  after 415, 142 _ff._\n\nPlutarch, 113\n\nPoets, ancient and modern, 102 _f._\n\nPolygnotus, 42, 44\n\nPorson, 9\n\nPreparation, 216-221\n\nProdicus, 56\n\nPrologues, 207-212\n\nPrometheus, 206.\n  _See_ Aeschylus\n\nProtagoras, 30, 54-56\n\nPythagoras, 49\n\n\nRealism, 19, 76, 174, 224;\n  aversion from, 103 _f._\n\nReligion, 190-194\n\nResurrection, 35, 64, 181, 190 _f._\n\nRhyme, 203\n\nRidgeway, 65\n\nRitual in tragedy, 62-67, 174, 202;\n  forms, 64, 181\n\nRomance, 73 _f._, 142-146, 205\n\nRussell, B., 243\n\n\nSalamis, 29, 37, 165;\n  battle of, 22, 66\n\nSatyrus, 23 _ff._, 31\n\nSatyr-plays, 67 _f._\n\nScott, W., 33\n\nSex questions, 78 _f._, 121\n\nShakespeare, 60, 208 _f._, 243\n\nShaw, G. B., 206\n\nShelley, 9, 18, 95, 234\n\nSicilian Expedition, 130, 170, 194\n\nSicily, 130, 170\n\nSimonides, 144\n\nSincerity of Greek Tragedy, 204\n\nSlavery, 137-139, 175-178, 123-125\n\nSocrates, 29, 56\n\nSophists, 45 _f._, 50-59, 116\n\n_Sophia_ (Wisdom), 38, 50, 92, 109, 194\n\nSophocles, 9, 11, 34, 172, 206\n  Ajax, 66\n  Antigone, 34, 70, 206\n  Electra, 153, 156, 207\n  Oedipus Tyrannus, 34, 216, 236\n  Philoctetes, 76\n\nSparta, 38\n\nSpeeches in tragedy, 212\n\nSteiger, 9\n\nStesichorus, 147\n\n\"_Sunesis_,\" 191\n\nSuperstition, 43 _f._, 116-119, 224 _f._\n\nSwinburne, 18, 185, 203\n\nSympathy, shift of, 187 _f._\n\n\nTacitus, 21\n\nTennyson, 103\n\nThebes, 42, 149\n\nThemistocles, 37, 41 _ff._, 49, 169\n\nTheophany. _See Deus ex Machina_\n\nTheseus, 43, 95;\n  sons of, 89;\n  in Hippolytus, 87\n\nThesmophoria. _See_ Aristophanes\n\nThracians, 44\n\nThucydides, 107-110, 127-130, 170\n\nTimotheus, 30, 170\n\nTolstoy, 168\n\nTradition, 14;\n  of fifth century, 15;\n  in tragedy, 62-67, 174, 183;\n  in art, 17\n\nTragedy, origin, 64 _f._;\n  ritual in, _see_ Ritual;\n  essence, 244 _f._;\n  dress, etc., 75 _f._;\n  performances, 68;\n  \"most tragic,\" 10, 135, 245\n\nTranslations, 198 _ff._\n\nTrilogy, 67\n\n\nVegetation-spirit, 35, 62 _ff._\n\nVerisimilitude in art, 229, 233\n\nVerrall, A. W., 8, 101, 159, 199\n\nVictorian age, 16\n\n\"Virtue,\" 38, 41, 50\n\n\nWar Party, 31, 114, 143, 166\n\nWars, Persian and Peloponnesian. _See s.v._\n\nWells, H. G., 160\n\nWhitman, W., 18\n\nWilamowitz, 141, 199\n\nWilliam the Silent, 35\n\n\"Wisdom,\" 38, 50, 92, 109, 194\n\nWomen in Athens, 32 _f._, 84 _ff._;\n  in Euripides, 84 _ff._, 121-126, 137\n\n\nXuthus, 121-126\n\n\nYear, Old and New, 62 _ff._\n\n\nZeus, 206\n\nZeuxis, 170\n\n\n\n\n_The London and Norwich Press, Ltd., London and Norwich_\n\n\n\n\nThe\nHome University\nLibrary\nof Modern\nKnowledge\n\n_A Comprehensive Series of New and Specially Written Books_\n\n\nEDITORS:\n\nProf. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.\nHERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.\nProf. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.\nProf. WM. T. 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GOOCH, M.A. \"Mr Gooch contrives to breathe vitality into his\nstory, and to give us the flesh as well as the bones of recent\nhappenings.\"--_server._\n\n25. _THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA_\n\nBy H. A. GILES, LL.D., Professor of Chinese at Cambridge. \"In all the\nmass of facts, Professor Giles never becomes dull. He is always ready\nwith a ghost story or a street adventure for the reader's\nrecreation.\"--_Spectator._\n\n29. _THE DAWN OF HISTORY_\n\nBy J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A., Wykeham Professor of Ancient History,\nOxford. \"There is not a page in it that is not suggestive.\"--_Manchester\nGuardian._\n\n33. _THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND_\n_A Study in Political Evolution_\n\nBy Prof. A. F. POLLARD, M.A. With a Chronological Table. \"It takes its\nplace at once among the authoritative works on English\nhistory.\"--_Observer._\n\n34. _CANADA_\n\nBy A. G. BRADLEY. \"The volume makes an immediate appeal to the man who\nwants to know something vivid and true about Canada.\"--_Canadian\nGazette._\n\n37. _PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA_\n\nBy Sir T. W. HOLDERNESS, K.C.S.I., Permanent Under-Secretary of State of\nthe India Office. \"Just the book which newspaper readers require to-day,\nand a marvel of comprehensiveness.\"--_Pall Mall Gazette._\n\n42. _ROME_\n\nBy W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A. \"A masterly sketch of Roman character and of\nwhat it did for the world.\"--_The Spectator._\n\n48. _THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR_\n\nBy F. L. PAXSON, Professor of American History, Wisconsin\nUniversity. (With Maps.) \"A stirring study.\"--_The Guardian._\n\n51. _WARFARE IN BRITAIN_\n\nBy HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. \"Rich in suggestion for the historical\nstudent.\"--_Edinburgh Evening News._\n\n55. _MASTER MARINERS_\n\nBy J. R. SPEARS. \"A continuous story of shipping progress and\nadventure. . . It reads like a romance.\"--_Glasgow Herald._\n\n61. _NAPOLEON_\n\nBy HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. (With Maps.) The story of the great\nBonaparte's youth, his career, and his downfall, with some sayings\nof Napoleon, a genealogy of his family, and a bibliography.\n\n66. _THE NAVY AND SEA POWER_\n\nBy DAVID HANNAY. The author traces the growth of naval power from\nearly times, and discusses its principles and effects upon the\nhistory of the Western world.\n\n\nIn Preparation\n\n_ANCIENT GREECE._ By Prof. Gilbert Murray, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.\n_ANCIENT EGYPT._ By F. Ll. Griffith, M.A.\n_THE ANCIENT EAST._ By D. G. Hogarth, M.A., F.B.A.\n_A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE._ By Herbert Fisher, M.A., F.B.A.\n_PREHISTORIC BRITAIN._ By Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., LL.D.\n_THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE._ By Norman H. Baynes.\n_THE REFORMATION._ By Principal Lindsay, LL.D.\n_A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA._ By Prof. Milyoukov.\n_MODERN TURKEY._ By D. G. Hogarth, M.A.\n_FRANCE OF TO-DAY._ By Albert Thomas.\n_GERMANY OF TO-DAY._ By Charles Tower.\n_HISTORY OF SCOTLAND._ By R. S. Rait, M.A.\n_SOUTH AMERICA._ By Prof. W. R. Shepherd.\n_LONDON._ By Sir Laurence Gomme, F.S.A.\n_HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SPAIN._ By J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, F.B.A., Litt.D.\n\n\n_Literature and Art_\n\n2. _SHAKESPEARE_\n\nBy JOHN MASEFIELD. \"The book is a joy. We have had half-a-dozen\nmore learned books on Shakespeare in the last few years, but not\none so wise.\"--_Manchester Guardian._\n\n27. _ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN_\n\nBy G. H. MAIR, M.A. \"Altogether a fresh and individual book.\"--_Observer._\n\n35. _LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE_\n\nBy G. L. STRACHEY. \"It is difficult to imagine how a better account\nof French Literature could be given in 250 small pages.\"--_The Times._\n\n39. _ARCHITECTURE_\n\nBy Prof. W. R. LETHABY. (Over forty Illustrations.) \"Popular\nguide-books to architecture are, as a rule, not worth much. This\nvolume is a welcome exception.\"--_Building News._ \"Delightfully\nbright reading.\"--_Christian World._\n\n43. _ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIAEVAL_\n\nBy Prof. W. P. KER, M.A. \"Prof. Ker, one of the soundest scholars in\nEnglish we have, is the very man to put an outline of English Mediaeval\nLiterature before the uninstructed public. His knowledge and taste are\nunimpeachable, and his style is effective, simple, yet never dry.\"--_The\nAthenaeum._\n\n45. _THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_\n\nBy L. PEARSALL SMITH, M.A. \"A wholly fascinating study of the different\nstreams that went to the making of the great river of the English\nspeech.\"--_Daily News._\n\n52. _GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA_\n\nBy Prof. J. ERSKINE and Prof. W. P. TRENT. \"An admirable summary from\nFranklin to Mark Twain, enlivened by a dry humour.\"--_Athenaeum._\n\n63. _PAINTERS AND PAINTING_\n\nBy Sir FREDERICK WEDMORE. (With 16 half-tone illustrations.) From the\nPrimitives to the Impressionists.\n\n64. _DR JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE_\n\nBy JOHN BAILEY, M.A.\n\n65. _THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY_\n\nBy Professor J. G. ROBERTSON, M.A., Ph.D. A review of one of the\ngreatest literatures of the world by a high authority.\n\n70. _THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE_\n\nBy G. K. CHESTERTON. \"The Victorian Compromise and its Enemies\"--\"The\nGreat Victorian Novelists\"--\"The Great Victorian Poets\"--\"The Break-up\nof the Compromise.\"\n\n\nIn Preparation\n\n_ANCIENT ART & RITUAL._ By Miss Jane Harrison, LL.D., D.Litt.\n_GREEK LITERATURE._ By Prof. Gilbert Murray, D.Litt.\n_LATIN LITERATURE._ By Prof. J. S. Phillimore.\n_CHAUCER AND HIS TIME._ By Miss G. E. Hadow.\n_THE RENAISSANCE._ By Miss Edith Sichel.\n_ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE._ By Roger E. Fry, M.A.\n_ENGLISH COMPOSITION._ By Prof. Wm. T. Brewster.\n_LITERARY TASTE._ By Thomas Seccombe.\n_WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS CIRCLE._ By A. Clutton Brock.\n_GREAT WRITERS OF RUSSIA._ By C. T. Hagberg Wright, LL.D.\n_SCANDINAVIAN HISTORY & LITERATURE._ By T. C. Snow, M.A.\n\n\n_Science_\n\n7. _MODERN GEOGRAPHY_\n\nBy Dr MARION NEWBIGIN. (Illustrated.) \"Geography, again: what a dull,\ntedious study that was wont to be! . . . But Miss Marion Newbigin\ninvests its dry bones with the flesh and blood of romantic\ninterest.\"--_Daily Telegraph._\n\n9. _THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS_\n\nBy Dr D. H. SCOTT, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell\nLaboratory, Kew. (Fully illustrated.) \"The information is as trustworthy\nas first-hand knowledge can make it. . . . Dr Scott's candid and\nfamiliar style makes the difficult subject both fascinating and\neasy.\"--_Gardeners' Chronicle._\n\n17. _HEALTH AND DISEASE_\n\nBy W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.D., Local Government Board, Edinburgh. \"Dr\nMackenzie adds to a thorough grasp of the problems an illuminating\nstyle, and an arresting manner of treating a subject often dull and\nsometimes unsavoury.\"--_Economist._\n\n18. _INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS_\n\nBy A. N. WHITEHEAD, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.) \"Mr Whitehead has\ndischarged with conspicuous success the task he is so exceptionally\nqualified to undertake. For he is one of our great authorities upon the\nfoundations of the science.\"--_Westminster Gazette._\n\n19. _THE ANIMAL WORLD_\n\nBy Professor F. W. GAMBLE, D.Sc., F.R.S. With Introduction by Sir Oliver\nLodge. (Many Illustrations.) \"A delightful and instructive epitome of\nanimal (and vegetable) life. . . . A fascinating and suggestive\nsurvey.\"--_Morning Post._\n\n20. _EVOLUTION_\n\nBy Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON and Professor PATRICK GEDDES. \"A\nmany-coloured and romantic panorama, opening up, like no other book we\nknow, a rational vision of world-development.\"--_Belfast News-Letter._\n\n22. _IME AND INSANITY_\n\nBy Dr C. A. MERCIER. \"Furnishes much valuable information from one\noccupying the highest position among medico-legal\npsychologists.\"--_Asylum News._\n\n28. _PSYCHICAL RESEARCH_\n\nBy Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College of\nScience, Dublin, 1873-1910. \"What he has to say on thought-reading,\nhypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spiritualism, divinings, and so\non, will be read with avidity.\"--_Dundee Courier._\n\n31. _ASTRONOMY_\n\nBy A. R. HINKS, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory. \"Original\nin thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in treatment. . . . No\nbetter little book is available.\"--_School World._\n\n32. _INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE_\n\nBy J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History,\nAberdeen University. \"Professor Thomson's delightful literary style is\nwell known; and here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods of\nscience and its relations with philosophy, art, religion, and practical\nlife.\"--_Aberdeen Journal._\n\n36. _CLIMATE AND WEATHER_\n\nBy Prof. H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc. Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the\nRoyal Meteorological Society. (With Diagrams.) \"The author has succeeded\nin presenting in a very lucid and agreeable manner the causes of the\nmovements of the atmosphere and of the more stable winds.\"--_Manchester\nGuardian._\n\n41. _ANTHROPOLOGY_\n\nBy R. R. MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford\nUniversity. \"An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child could\nunderstand it, so fascinating and human that it beats fiction 'to a\nfrazzle.'\"--_Morning Leader._\n\n44. _THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY_\n\nBy Prof. J. G. McKENDRICK, M.D. \"It is a delightful and wonderfully\ncomprehensive handling of a subject which, while of importance to all,\ndoes not readily lend itself to untechnical explanation. . . . Upon\nevery page of it is stamped the impress of a creative\nimagination.\"--_Glasgow Herald._\n\n46. _MATTER AND ENERGY_\n\nBy F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S. \"Prof. Soddy has successfully accomplished the\nvery difficult task of making physics of absorbing interest on popular\nlines.\"--_Nature._\n\n49. _PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR_\n\nBy Prof. W. McDOUGALL, F.R.S., M.B. \"A happy example of the\nnon-technical handling of an unwieldy science, suggesting rather than\ndogmatising. It should whet appetites for deeper study.\"--_Christian\nWorld._\n\n53. _THE MAKING OF THE EARTH_\n\nBy Prof. J. W. GREGORY, F.R.S. (With 38 Maps and Figures.) \"A\nfascinating little volume. . . . Among the many good things contained in\nthe series this takes a high place.\"--_The Athenaeum._\n\n57. _THE HUMAN BODY_\n\nBy A. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., Conservator of Museum and Hunterian Professor,\nRoyal College of Surgeons. (Illustrated.) \"It literally makes the 'dry\nbones' to live. It will certainly take a high place among the classics\nof popular science.\"--_Manchester Guardian._\n\n58. _ELECTRICITY_\n\nBy GISBERT KAPP, D.Eng., Professor of Electrical Engineering in the\nUniversity of Birmingham. (Illustrated.) \"It will be appreciated greatly\nby learners and by the great number of amateurs who are interested in\nwhat is one of the most fascinating of scientific studies.\"--_Glasgow\nHerald._\n\n62. _THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE_\n\nBy Dr BENJAMIN MOORE, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College,\nLiverpool.\n\n67. _CHEMISTRY_\n\nBy RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Finsbury Technical\nCollege, London. Presents clearly, without the detail demanded by the\nexpert, the way in which chemical science has developed, and the stage\nit has reached.\n\n\nIn Preparation\n\n_THE MINERAL WORLD._ By Sir T. H. Holland, K.C.I.E., D.Sc.\n_PLANT LIFE._ By Prof. J. B. Farmer, F.R.S.\n_NERVES._ By Prof. D. Fraser Harris, M.D., D.Sc.\n_A STUDY OF SEX._ By Prof. J. A. Thomson and Prof. Patrick Geddes.\n_THE GROWTH OF EUROPE._ By Prof. Grenville Cole.\n_OCEANOGRAPHY._ By Sir John Murray, K.C.B., F.R.S.\n\n\n_Philosophy and Religion_\n\n15. _MOHAMMEDANISM_\n\nBy Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., D.Litt. \"This generous shilling's\nworth of wisdom. . . . A delicate, humorous, and most responsible\ntractate by an illuminative professor.\"--_Daily Mail._\n\n40. _THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY_\n\nBy the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. \"A book that the 'man in the\nstreet' will recognise at once to be a boon. . . . Consistently lucid\nand non-technical throughout.\"--_Christian World._\n\n47. _BUDDHISM_\n\nBy Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. \"The author presents very attractively as well\nas very learnedly the philosophy of Buddhism as the greatest scholars of\nthe day interpret it.\"--_Daily News._\n\n50. _NONCONFORMITY: Its ORIGIN and PROGRESS_\n\nBy Principal W. B. SELBIE, M.A. \"The historical part is brilliant in its\ninsight, clarity, and proportion; and in the later chapters Dr Selbie\nproves himself to be an ideal exponent of sound and moderate\nviews.\"--_Christian World._\n\n54. _ETHICS_\n\nBy G. E. MOORE, M.A., Lecturer in Moral Science in Cambridge University.\n\"A very lucid though closely reasoned outline of the logic of good\nconduct. . . . This non-technical little book should make for clear\nthinking and wider tolerance.\"--_Christian World._\n\n56. _THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT_\n\nBy Prof. B. W. BACON, LL.D., D.D. \"Professor Bacon has boldly, and\nwisely, taken his own line, mentioning opposing views only occasionally,\nand has produced, as a result, an extraordinarily vivid, stimulating,\nand lucid book.\"--_Manchester Guardian._\n\n60. _MISSIONS: THEIR RISE and DEVELOPMENT_\n\nBy Mrs CREIGHTON. \"Very interestingly done. . . . Its style is simple,\ndirect, unhackneyed, and should find appreciation where a more fervently\npious style of writing repels.\"--_Methodist Recorder._\n\n68. _COMPARATIVE RELIGION_\n\nBy Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt., Principal of Manchester College,\nOxford.\n\n\nIn Preparation\n\n_THE OLD TESTAMENT._ By Prof. George Moore, D.D., LL.D.\n_BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS._ By R. H. Charles, D.D.\n_A HISTORY of FREEDOM of THOUGHT._ By Prof. J. B. Bury, LL.D.\n_A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY._ By Clement Webb, M.A.\n\n\n_Social Science_\n\n1. _PARLIAMENT_\n\nIts History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir COURTENAY P. ILBERT,\nG.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. \"The best book on the\nhistory and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot's\n'Constitution.'\"--_Yorkshire Post_.\n\n5. _THE STOCK EXCHANGE_\n\nBy F. W. HIRST, Editor of \"The Economist.\" \"To an unfinancial mind must\nbe a revelation. . . . The book is as clear, vigorous, and sane as\nBagehot's 'Lombard Street,' than which there is no higher\ncompliment.\"--_Morning Leader._\n\n6. _IRISH NATIONALITY_\n\nBy Mrs J. R. GREEN. \"As glowing as it is learned. No book could be more\ntimely.\"--_Daily News._\n\n10. _THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT_\n\nBy J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. \"Admirably adapted for the purpose of\nexposition.\"--_The Times._\n\n11. _CONSERVATISM_\n\nBy LORD HUGH CECIL, M.A., M.P. \"One of those great little books which\nseldom appear more than once in a generation.\"--_Morning Post._\n\n16. _THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH_\n\nBy J. A HOBSON, M.A. \"Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among\nliving economists. . . . Original, reasonable, and illuminating.\"--_The\nNation._\n\n21. _LIBERALISM_\n\nBy L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University of\nLondon. \"A book of rare quality. . . . We have nothing but praise for\nthe rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles\nwhich form a large part of this book.\"--_Westminster Gazette._\n\n24. _THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY_\n\nBy D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the\nUniversity of Leeds. \"A volume so dispassionate in terms may be read\nwith profit by all interested in the present state of\nunrest.\"--_Aberdeen Journal._\n\n26. _AGRICULTURE_\n\nBy Prof. W. SOMERVILLE, F.L.S. \"It makes the results of laboratory work\nat the University accessible to the practical farmer.\"--_Athenaeum._\n\n30. _ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW_\n\nBy W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at\nOxford. \"Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles\nunderlying the rules of English Law.\"--_Scots Law Times._\n\n38. _THE SCHOOL: An Introduction to the Study of Education._\n\nBy J. J. FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester\nUniversity. \"An amazingly comprehensive volume. . . . It is a remarkable\nperformance, distinguished in its crisp, striking phraseology as well as\nits inclusiveness of subject-matter.\"--_Morning Post._\n\n59. _ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY_\n\nBy S. J. CHAPMAN, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in Manchester\nUniversity. \"Its importance is not to be measured by its price. Probably\nthe best recent critical exposition of the analytical method in economic\nscience.\"--_Glasgow Herald._\n\n69. _THE NEWSPAPER_\n\nBy G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A. (Illustrated.) The best account extant of the\norganisation of the newspaper press, including Continental, American,\nand Colonial journals.\n\n\nIn Preparation\n\n_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bacon to Locke._ By G. P.\n  Gooch, M.A.\n_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bentham to J. S. Mill._ By Prof.\n  W. L. Davidson\n_POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Herbert Spencer to To-day._ By\n  Ernest Barker, M.A.\n_SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE._ By H. N. Brailsford.\n_THE CRIMINAL AND THE COMMUNITY._ By Viscount St. Cyres, M.A.\n_COMMONSENSE IN LAW._ By Prof. P. Vinogradoff, D.C.L.\n_THE CIVIL SERVICE._ By Graham Wallas, M.A.\n_ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE._ By E. N. Bennett. M.A.\n_CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING._ By Aneurin Williams, J.P.\n_THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT._ By Jane Addams and R. A. Woods.\n_GREAT INVENTIONS._ By Prof. J. L. Myres, M.A., F.S.A.\n_TOWN PLANNING._ By Raymond Unwin.\n\n\nLondon: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE\n_And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls._\n\n\n\n\n                     *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThe following changes were made to the original text:\n\nPage 162: Gesperrt emphasis changed to italics. \"_Her_.\" for \"H e r.\"\nPage 190: \"is\" inserted. \"but it is also a spirit of search\"\nPage 248: Nestle changed to Nestle.\n\nMinor punctuation errors were corrected.\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"pg-footer\">","title":"Euripides and His Age","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":55231}