Authors of Greece

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The startling realism of this drama is apparent. The poverty of
Electra, the more certain identification of Orestes by a scar than by
a lock of hair, the mention of Cassandra as the real motive for the
murder of Agamemnon all indicate that Euripides was not content with
the accepted legend. His Clytemnestra is a feeble creation even by the
side of that of Sophocles.

Stesichorus in a famous poem tells how Helen blinded him for maligning
her; she never went to Troy; it was a wraith which accompanied Paris.
Such is the central idea of a very strange play, the _Helen_. The
scene is in Egypt. Teucer, banished by his father, meets the real
Helen; to her amazement he tells of her evil reputation and of the
great war before Troy, adding that Menelaus is sailing home with
another Helen. The latter enters, to learn that he is in Egypt, where
the real Helen has lived for the last seventeen years. Warned by a
prophetess Theonoe that her husband is not far off, Helen comes to be
reunited to him. A messenger from the coast announces that the wraith
has faded into nothingness.

Helen then warns Menelaus of her difficult position. She is wooed by
Theoclymenus, king of the land, brother of Theonoe. Menelaus in
despair thinks of killing himself and Helen to escape the tyrant.
Theonoe holds their fate in her hands; Helen pleads with her; "It is
shameful that thou shouldest know things divine, and not
righteousness." Menelaus declares his intention of living and dying
with his wife. The prophetess leaves them to discover some means of
escape which Helen devises. Pretending that Menelaus is a messenger
bringing news of her husband's death at sea, she persuades the tyrant
to provide a ship and rowers that Helen may perform the last rites to
the dead on the element where he died. At the right moment the Greek
sailors overpowered the rowers and sailed home with the united pair.

Very commonly real drama suffers the fate which has overtaken it in
this piece; it declines into melodrama. Here are to be found all the
stock melodramatic features--a bold hero, a scheming beauty, a
confidante, a dupe, the murder of a ship's crew. Massinger piloted
Elizabethan drama to a similar end. Given an uncritical audience
melodrama is the surest means of filling the house. Reality matters
little in such work; the facts of life are like Helen's wraith, when
they become unmanageable they vanish into thin air.

About 412 the _Iphigeneia in Tauris_ appeared. South Russia was the
seat of a cult of Artemis; the goddess spirited Iphigeneia to the
place when her father sacrificed her at Aulis. Orestes, bidden by
Apollo to steal an image of the goddess to get his final purification,
comes on the stage with Pylades; on seeing the temple they are
convinced of the impossibility of burgling it. A shepherd describes to
Iphigeneia their capture, for strangers were taken and offered to the
goddess without exception. One of the two was seized with a vision of
the avenging deities; attacked by a band of peasants both were
overpowered after a stubborn resistance. Formerly Iphigeneia had
pitied the Greeks who landed there; now, warned of Orestes' death by a
dream, she determines to kill without mercy. One of them shall die,
the other taking back to Greece a letter. Orestes insists on dying
himself, reminding Pylades of his duty to Electra. When the letter is
brought Pylades swears to fulfil his word, but asks what is to happen
if the ship is wrecked. Iphigeneia reads the letter to him; it is
addressed to Orestes and tells of his sister's weary exile. After the
recognition is completed, Orestes relates the horrors of his life and
begs his sister to help him to steal the all-important image.

Thoas, the King of the land, learns from her that the two Greeks are
guilty of kindred murder; their presence has defiled the holy image
which needs purification in the sea as well as the criminals. The
priestess obtains permission to bind the captives and take the image
to be cleansed with private mystic rites. The plot succeeds; Orestes'
ship puts in; after a struggle the three board it, carrying the image
with them. Thoas is prevented from pursuit by an intervention of
Athena.

Goethe used this play for his drama of the same name; he made Thoas
the lover of Iphigeneia, whom he represents as the real image whom
Orestes is to remove. Her departure is not compassed by a stratagem,
but is permitted by the King, a man of singular nobility and
self-denial.

The _Phaenissae_ has been much admired in all ages. Jocasta tells how
after the discovery of his identity Oedipus blinded himself but was
shut up by his two sons whom he cursed for their impiety. Eteocles
then usurped the rule while Polyneices called an Argive host to attack
Thebes. A Choral description of this army is succeeded by an
unexpected entry into the city of Polyneices who meets his mother and
tells her of his life in exile. She sends for Eteocles in the hope of
reconciling her two sons. Polyneices promises to disband his forces if
he is restored to his rights, but Eteocles, enamoured of power,
refuses to surrender it. Jocasta vainly points out to him the burden
of rule, nor can she persuade Polyneices not to attack his own land.

When the champions have taken up their position at the gates,
Teiresias tells Creon that Thebes can be saved by the sacrifice of his
own son Menoeceus. Creon refuses to comply and urges his son to
escape. Pretending to obey Menoeceus threw himself from the city
walls. The struggle at the gates is followed by a challenge to
Polyneices issued by Eteocles to settle the dispute in single combat.
Jocasta and Antigone rush out to intervene, too late. They find the
two lying side by side at death's door. Eteocles is past speech, but
Polyneices bids farewell to his mother and sister, pitying his brother
"who turned friendship into enmity, yet still was dear". In agony,
Jocasta slays herself over her sons' bodies.

Led in by Antigone, Oedipus is banished by Creon, who forbids the
burial of Polyneices. After touching the dead Jocasta and his two
sons, he passes to exile and rest at Colonus.

The harsh story favoured by Sophocles has been greatly humanised by
Euripides, who could not accept all the savagery of the received
legend. Apart from the unexplained presence of Polyneices in the city,
the plot is excellent. The speeches are vigorous and natural, the
characters thoroughly human. The criticising and refining influence of
Euripides is manifest throughout, together with a simple and noble
pathos.

An ancient critic says of the _Orestes_, written in 408, "the drama is
popular but of the lowest morality; except Pylades, all are villains".
Electra meets Helen, unexpectedly returned from Egypt to Argos with
Menelaus, who sends her daughter Hermione with offerings to the tomb
of Agamemnon. Electra's opinion of her is vividly expressed.

"See how she has tricked out her hair, preserving her beauty; she
is old Helen still. Heaven abhor thee, the bane of me and my
brother and Greece."

The Chorus accidentally awakens Orestes who is visited by a wild
vision of haunting Furies. When he regains sanity he begs the
assistance of Menelaus, his last refuge. His uncle, a broken reed, is
saved from committing himself by the entry of Tyndareus, father of
Clytemnestra and Helen. He righteously rebukes the bloodthirsty
Orestes, though he is aware of the evil in his two daughters. Orestes
breaks out into an insulting speech which alienates completely his
grandfather. Menelaus, when appealed to again, hurries out to try to
win him back.

Pylades suggests that he and Orestes should plead their case before
the Argive Assembly, which was to try them for murder of Clytemnestra.
A very brilliant and exciting account of the debate tells how the case
was lost by Orestes himself, who presumed to lecture the audience on
the majesty of the law he himself had broken. He and Electra are
condemned to be stoned that very day. Determined to ruin Menelaus
before they die, they agree to kill Helen, the cause of all their
troubles, and to fire the fortified house in which they live. Electra
adds that they should also seize Hermione and hold her as a check on
Menelaus' fury for the death of Helen. The girl is easily trapped as
she rushes into the house hearing her mother's cries for help. Soon
after a Trojan menial drops from the first story. He tells how Helen
and Hermione have so far escaped death, but the rest is unknown to
him. In a ghastly scene Orestes hunts the wretch over the stage, but
finally lets him go as he is not a fit victim for a free man's sword.
Almost immediately the house is seen to be ablaze; Menelaus rushes up
in a frenzy, but is checked by the sight of Orestes with Hermione in
his arms. When Menelaus calls for help, Orestes bids Pylades and
Electra light more fires to consume them all. A timely appearance of
Apollo with Helen deified by his side saves the situation.

It is plain that Euripides has here completely rejected the old
legend. He never makes Orestes even think of pleading Apollo's command
to him to slay his mother. He is concerned with the defence which a
contemporary matricide might make before a modern Athenian assembly
and with the fitting doom of self-destruction which would overtake
him. Like _Vanity Fair_, the play shows us the life of people who try
to do without God.

The _Bacchae_ is one of Euripides' best plays. In the absence of
Pentheus the King, Cadmus and Teiresias join in the worship of the new
god Dionysus at Thebes. Pentheus returns to find that noble women,
including Agave, his own mother, have joined the strange cult brought
to the place by a mysterious Lydian stranger "whose hair is neatly
arranged in curls, his face like wine, his eyes as full of grace as
Aphrodite's".

Teiresias advises him to welcome the god, Cadmus to pretend that he is
divine, even if he is only a mortal; this new religion is the natural
outlet of the desire for innocent revelry born in both sexes. The
Lydian is arrested and brought before Pentheus, whom he warns that the
god will save him from insult, but Pentheus hurries him away into a
dungeon.

The Chorus of Bacchae are alarmed on hearing a tumult. The stranger
appears to tell how Pentheus was made mad by Dionysus in the act of
imprisoning him. The King in amazement sees his prisoner standing free
before him and becomes furiously angry on hearing that his mother has
joined a new revel on Mount Cithaeron. The stranger suggests that he
should go disguised as a Bacchante to see the new worship. When he
appears transformed, the Lydian comments with exquisite and deadly
irony on his appearance. His fate is vividly and terribly painted.
Placing him in a pine, the stranger suddenly disappeared, while the
voice of Dionysus summoned the rout to punish the spy. Rushing to the
tree, the woman tore it up by the roots and then rent Pentheus
piecemeal, Agave herself leading them on.

She comes in holding what she imagines to be a trophy. Cadmus slowly
reveals to her the horror of her deed, the proof of which is her son's
head in her grasp. Dionysus himself comes in to point out that this
tragedy is the result of the indignity which Thebes put upon him and
his mother Semele. Broken with grief, Agave passes out slowly to her
banishment. The Bacchae was composed in Macedonia; it contains all the
mystery of the supernatural. Dionysus' character is admirably drawn,
while the infatuation of Pentheus is a fitting prelude to his ruin.
The cult of Dionysus was essentially democratic, intended for those
who could claim no share in aristocratic ritual: hence its popularity
and prevalence. We may regard the Bacchae as the poet's declaration of
faith in the worship which gave Europe the Drama; it is altogether
fitting that he who has left us the greatest number of tragedies
should have been chosen by destiny to bequeath us the one drama which
tells of one of the adventures of its patron deity.

The _Iphigeneia in Aulis_ was written in the last year of the poet's
life. Agamemnon sends a private letter to his wife countermanding an
official dispatch summoning her and Iphigeneia. This letter is
intercepted by Menelaus, who upbraids his brother; later, seeing his
distress, he advises him to send the women home again. But public
opinion forces the leader to obey Artemis and sacrifice his daughter.
When he meets his wife and child, he tries to temporise but fails.
Achilles meets Clytemnestra and is surprised to hear that he is to
marry Iphigeneia, such being the bait which brought Clytemnestra to
Aulis. Learning the real truth, she faces her husband, pleading for
their daughter's life. Iphigeneia at first shrinks from death; the
army demands her sacrifice, while Achilles is ready to defend her. The
knot is untied by Iphigeneia herself, who willingly at last consents
to die to save her country.

This excellent play shows no falling in dramatic power; it was
imitated by Racine and Schiller. The figures are intensely human, the
conflict of duties firmly outlined, the pathos sincere and true, there
is no divine appearance to straighten out a tangled plot. Thus
Euripides' career ends as it began, with a story of a woman's noble
self-sacrifice.

The poet's popularity is indicated by the number of his extant dramas
and fragments, both of which exceed in bulk the combined work of
Aeschylus and Sophocles. All classes of writers quoted him,
philosophers, orators, bishops. In his own lifetime Socrates made a
point of witnessing his plays; the very violence of Aristophanes'
attack proves Euripides' potent influence; his lost drama _Melanippe_
turned the heads of the Athenians, the whole town singing its odes.
Survivors of the Sicilian disaster won their freedom by singing his
songs to their captors, returning to thank their liberator in person;
the fragments of Menander discovered in 1906 contain many
reminiscences of him, even slaves quoting passages of him to their
masters. For it was the very width of his appeal that made him
universally loved; women and slaves in his view were every whit as
good as free-born men, sometimes they were far nobler. If drama is the
voice of a democracy, the Athenians had found a more democratic
mouthpiece than they had bargained for.

With the educated men it was different. They suspected a poet who was
upsetting their tradition. Besides, they were asked to crown a person
who told them in play after play that they were really like Jason,
Menelaus, Polymestor, poor creatures if not quite odious. He made them
see with painful clearness that the better sex was the one which they
despised, yet which was sure one day to find the utterance to which it
had a right in virtue of its greater nobility. The feminism of
Euripides is evident through his whole career; it is an insult to our
powers of reading to imagine that he was a woman-hater. It is then not
to be wondered at that he won the prize only five times, and it can
hardly be an accident that he gained it once with the Hippolytus,
which on a surface view condemns the female sex.

For the officials could not see that Euripides was not a man only, he
was a spirit of development. Privilege and narrowness in every form he
hated; he demanded unlimited freedom for the intelligence. The narrow
circle of legends, the conventional unified drama, state religion, a
pseudo-democracy based on slavery he fearlessly criticised.
Rationalism, humanism, free speculation were his watchwords; he was
always trying new experiments in his art, introducing politics,
philosophy, melodrama and trying to get rid of the chorus wherever he
could. He was a living and a contemporary Proteus, pleading like an
advocate in a lawsuit, discussing political theory, restating unsolved
problems in modern form and seasoning his work with his own peculiar
and often elevating pathos. Such a man was anathema to conservative
Athens.

But to us he is one of ourselves. He exactly hits off our modern
taste, with its somewhat sentimental tendency, its scepticism, love of
excitement, and its great complexity. We know we have many moods and
passions which strangely blend and thwart each other; these we treat
in our novels, and Euripides' plays are a sort of novel, but for the
divine appearances in the last scenes. He shows us the inevitable end
of actions of beings exactly like ourselves, acting from merely human
motives, neither higher nor lower than we, though perhaps disguised
under heroic names. He is in a word the first modern poet.

TRANSLATIONS:

A. S. Way, Loeb Series. This verse translation is the most successful;
it renders the choric odes with skill.

Professor Gilbert Murray has published verse translations of various
plays. He is an authority on the text. His volume on Euripides in the
Home University Library is admirable.

_Euripides the Rationalist_ and _Four Plays of Euripides_ by A. W.
Verrall are well known; the latter is particularly stimulating. The
views it expounds are original but not traditional.

See Symonds' _Greek Poets_ as above.

ARISTOPHANES

At the end of the _Symposium_ Plato represents Socrates as convincing
both Agathon, a tragedian, and Aristophanes that the writer of tragedy
will be able to write comedy also. That the two forms are not wholly
divorced is clear from the history of ancient drama itself: Each
dramatist competed with four plays, three tragedies and a Satyric
drama. What this last is can be plainly seen in the _Cyclops_ of
Euripides, which relates in comic form the adventures of Odysseus and
Silenus in the monster's company. Further, the tendency of tragedy was
inevitably towards comedy. The extant work of Aeschylus and Sophocles
is not without comic touches; but the trend is clearer in Euripides
who was an innovator in this as in many other matters. Laughter and
tears are neighbours; a happy ending is not tragic; loosely connected
scenes are the essence of Old Comedy, and loosely written tragic
dialogue (common in Euripides' later work) closely resembles the
language of comedy, which is practically prose in verse form. The debt
which later comedy owed to Euripides is great; reminiscences of him
abound; he is quoted directly and indirectly; his stage tricks are
adopted and his realistic characters are the very population of the
Comic stage.

The logically developed plot is the characteristic of serious drama.
Old Comedy, its antithesis, is often a succession of scenes in which
the connection is loose without being impossible. In it the unexpected
is common, for it is an escape from the conventions of ordinary life,
a thing of causes and effects. It might be more accurate to say that
farce is a better description of the work which is associated with the
name of Aristophanes.

This writer was born about 448, was a member of the best Athenian
society of the day, quickly took the first place as the writer of
comedy and died about 385. He saw the whole of the Peloponnesian war
and has given us a most vivid account of the passions it aroused and
its effect on Athenian life. He first won the prize in 425, when he
produced the _Acharnians_ under an assumed name. Pericles had died in
429; the horrors of war were beginning to make themselves felt; the
Spartans were invading Attica, cutting down the fruit-trees and
compelling the country folk to stream into the city. One of these,
Dicaeopolis enters the stage. It is early morning; he is surprised
that there is no popular meeting on the appointed day. He loathes the
town and longs for his village; he had intended to heckle the speakers
if they discussed anything but peace. Ambassadors from foreign nations
are announced; seeing them he conceives the daring project of making a
separate peace with the Spartan for eight drachmae. His servant
returns with three peaces of five, ten and thirty years; he chooses
the last.

A chorus of angry Acharnians rush in to catch the traitor; they are
charcoal burners ruined by the invasion. Dicaeopolis seizes a charcoal
basket, threatening to destroy it if they touch him. Anxious to spare
their townsman, the basket, they consent to hear his defence, which he
offers to make with his neck on an executioner's block. He is afraid
of the noisy patriotism appealed to by mob-orators and of the lust for
condemning the accused which is the weakness of older men. Choosing
from Euripides' wardrobe the rags in which Telephus was arrayed to
rouse the audience to pity, he boldly ventures to plead the cause of
the Spartans, though he hates them for destroying his trees. He
asserts that "Olympian Pericles who thundered and lightened and
confounded Greece" caused the war by putting an embargo on the food of
their neighbour Megara, his pretext being a mere private quarrel.

The Chorus are divided; his opponents send for Lamachus, the
swashbuckling general; the latter is discomfited and Dicaeopolis
immediately opens a market with the Peloponnesians, Megarians and
Boeotians, but not with Lamachus. In an important choral ode the poet
justifies his existence. By his criticism he puts a stop to the
foreign embassies which dupe the Athenians; he checks flattery and
folly; he never bribes nor hoodwinks them, but exposes their harsh
treatment of their subjects and their love of condemning on groundless
charges the older generation which had fought at Marathon.

The play ends with a trading scene; a Boeotian in exchange for Copaic
eels takes an Athenian informer, an article unknown in Boeotia.
Lamachus returns wounded while Dicaeopolis departs in happy contrast
to celebrate a feast of rustic jollity.

Aristophanes' chief butts were Cleon, Socrates and Euripides; the last
is treated with good nature in this play. To modern readers the comedy
is important for two reasons; first, it attacks the strange belief
that a democracy must necessarily love peace; Aristophanes found it as
full of the lust for battle as any other form of government; all it
needed was a Lamachus to rattle a sword. Again, the unfailing source
of war is plainly indicated, trade rivalry. War will continue as long
as there are markets to capture and rivals to exclude from them.

In the next year, 424, Aristophanes produced the _Knights_, the most
violent political lampoon in literature. The victim was Cleon who had
succeeded Pericles as popular leader. He was at the height of his
glory, having captured the Spartan contingent at Pylos, prisoners who
were of great importance for diplomatic purposes. The comedy is a
scathing criticism of democracy; the subject is so controversial that
it will be best to give some extracts without comment.

Two servants of Demos (the People) steal the oracles of the
Paphlagonian (the babbler, Cleon) while he is asleep. To their joy
they find that he will govern Demos' house only until a more
abominable than he shall appear, namely a sausage-seller. That person
immediately presenting himself is informed of his high calling. At
first he is amazed. "I know nothing of refinement except letters, and
them, bad as they are, badly." The answer is:

"Your only fault is that you know them badly; mob-leadership has
nothing to do with a man refined or of good character, rather with
an ignoramus and a vile fellow."

To his objection that he cannot look after a democracy the reply is,

"it is easy enough; only go on doing what you are doing now. Mix
and chop up everything; always bring the mob over by sweetening it
with a few cook-shop terms. You have all the other qualifications,
a nasty voice, a low origin, familiarity with the street."

The Paphlagonian Cleon runs in bawling that they are conspiring
against the democracy. They call loudly for the Knights, who enter as
the Chorus to assist them against Cleon, encouraging the
sausage-seller to show the brazen effrontery which is the mob-orator's
sole protection, and to prove that a decent upbringing is meaningless.
Nothing loth, he redoubles Cleon's vulgarity on his head. Cleon rushes
out intending to inform the Upper House of their treasons; the
sausage-seller hurries after him, his neck being well oiled with his
own lard to make Cleon's slanders slip off. A splendid ode is sung in
the meantime; it contains a half-comic account of Aristophanes'
training in his art and a panegyric on the old spirit which made
Athens great. The sausage-seller returns to tell of Cleon's utter
defeat; he is quickly followed by Cleon, who appeals to Demos himself,
pointing out his own services.

"At the first, when I was a member of the Council, I got in vast
sums for the Treasury, partly by torture, partly by throttling,
partly by begging. I never studied any private person's interest
if I could only curry favour with you, to make you master of all
Greece."

The sausage-seller refutes him.

"Your object was to steal and take bribes from the cities, to blind
Demos to your villainies by the dust of war, and to make him gape
after you in need and necessity for war-pensions. If Demos can only
get into the country in peace and taste the barley-cakes again, he
will soon find out of what blessings you have rid him by your
briberies; he will come back as a dour farmer and will hunt up a
vote which will condemn you."

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