i
EURIPIDES
THE RATIONALIST.




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EURIPIDES
THE RATIONALIST:
A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF
ART AND RELIGION
BY
A: W.' VERRALL LITT.D.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.


CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
I895


[All Rights reserzed.]




Cambribgr:
PRINTED BY 3. & C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIYERSI'FY PRESS.




TO
HENRY JACKSON LITT.D.
THIS BOOK
WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO IIIS SUGGESTION
IS OFFERED
AS A SMALL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF MANY DEBTS.




Ir




INTRODUCTION.
THE purpose of this book is to explain and account for,
perhaps also to diminish or to abolish, but at any rate to
account for and explain, the great and surprising difference of
opinion between ancient readers and modern respecting the
position and merits of Euripides. That this difference exists is
not, so far as I know, disputed, and certainly cannot be disputed
with reason; in many modern works of authority it has been
justly marked and emphasized. From Euripides' death to the
decline and fall of pagan learning there never was, so far as
we. have evidence, any noteworthy dissent from the view that
Euripides, however he, like any other artist, might be variously
estimated by personal taste, stood at all events in the very first
rank of artists, superior to all but the elect, and not demonstrably or confessedly inferior to any. Such is the opinion
depicted, variously but harmoniously, by the highest representatives of literary culture in succession down to the very end,
by Plato, by Cicero, by Lucian, and by all the voices who fill
up that tract of time. There is not a sign that by any one
commanding attention the question was ever raised whether
Euripides had really deserved the honour of standing with
Sophocles and with Aeschylus. The opinion which groups
them:is 'different but equal' is given by Cicero, for example,
not as his own judgment, but as a commonplace. The polemic
of Aristophanes, if and in so far as it tends to impeach Euripides
as an artist (for almost all of it, that can be taken as serious, is




Vill


ZINTR OD UC TI N.


aimed not at his art but at his opinions) failed with the ancient
world completely. By the side of Aeschylus and Sophoclesand if distinctions must be made, not lowest assuredly of the
three-Euripides stood securely. It is on the other hand notorious that in modern times this position of his has been
incessantly contested, and by the weight as well as the majority
of voices has been with increasing emphasis denied. The contradictior is no matter of detail; it goes to the whole tone and
substance of judgment. No one in modern times, since Greek
has been well understood, has said that his dearest desire
beyond the grave would be to meet Euripides; not this nor
anything like it. No one in the ancient world, so far as we
know, ever said that much of Euripides' work might seem to
have been composed in a fever; not this nor anything like it.
Agreeing generally, with remarkable but not surprising exactness, in their estimate of the great writers Greek and Roman,
about this one man the ancient readers and the modern are out
of accord. The most cultivated men of the ancient world (I do
not except or forget Aristotle, who shall be specially considered
in due course) speak of Euripides regularly and habitually as
modest men would now speak of Shakespeare or Goethe, and
sometimes as reverent men would now speak of Dante or
St Paul. The modern remarks, whether of censure or defence,
are pitched in another key and confined to a different range.
The ancients do not defend Euripides. In our time a defence,
cordial sometimes or fervent, but still a defence, is the utmost
that he obtains. By Menander, or Ennius, or Ovid, to judge
from their own practice, such a defence would have been heard
with amazement. There are some names which must not be so
praised, and in the ancient world among such names, high among
such, stood the name of Euripides.
The explanation of this discrepancy, which will here be
offered, has at least one advantage. The reader will not be
asked to dissent, as a matter of taste and aesthetic judgment,
either from the ancient opinion or from the modern. Scarcely
even the scorn of Schlegel is too much for many of the works of




INTR OD UCTION.


ix


Euripides, read as they were by Schlegel and are by the modern
world in general. Scarcely even the adoration of the admirer
pourtrayed by Philemon is too much for Euripides, read as he
was read certainly by Lucian and presumably by the ancient
world in general. The works of Euripides, almost all of them,
depend for their interpretation on a certain broad conventional
principle, probably not ever applicable to many writings except
his, and applicable to no others now extant. This principle is
stated (as we shall see before we conclude) by an excellent
authority in the clearest terms; but nevertheless it has never in
modern times been steadily applied, and for the most part has
been simply ignored. The effect of this one error can be compared only to that of changing, in a mathematical expression,
the positive sign for the negative; and the result is a body of
criticism, of which a large part is really not more pertinent or
more reasonable than it would be to put a statue upon its head,
and then to complain of the statuary for representing a man
with his feet in the air.




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ALCESTIS.
'Cela vous apprendra', dit d'Artagnan, 'i traiter d'une fagon plus
courtoise les hotes que Dieu vous envoie'.
DUMAS.
APOLOGY, if I am not mistaken, is no longer due from an
enquirer, who in approaching the study of Euripides, will start,
as he has done before, from the assumption that in this region no
high road of authority has yet been laid out. It is still a case
of exploration; we are not bound, and shall scarcely be wise, to
follow religiously in tracks of which one thing only can be said
with certainty, that they do not lead to the goal. " Nothing is
more certain", as I read with satisfaction in the Preface to the
welcome Euripides in English Verse, of which the first volume
has just now', opportunely for me, been issued by Mr Way, -
"nothing is more certain than that the old fashion of disparaging
his genius (in which Schlegel led the way, giving all the weight
of his authority to a sentence which others were too uncritical or
too timorous to revise) is now utterly discredited, and that we
have ceased to regard the generations of Greeks and Romans,
who loved and reverenced him, as degenerate fools and blind.
and are at last making some humble efforts to understand them and
to recover theirpoint of viez ". Whether Mr Way is justified or
not in his expectation of general sympathy, he has at least himself the credit of setting a good example. The right view of
Euripides, the capacity of understanding him, is a thing which
we moderns have yet to recover; and our only way is to begin
with recognizing that somewhere in our notions about the poet
1 Aug. 1894. Most of this first essay had been written; but I have remodelled
some parts.
V. E.                                             I




2


E URIPIDES.


there must be something fundamentally wrong. It should not
be possible, as it was not long ago (and notwithstanding the
assurance of Mr Way the thing is conceivable still), for an English
poet, bound to the poets of Greece by mutual obligations, to
pronounce Euripides no peer of his peers, a dramatist not to be
ranked as the equal of those with whom he was actually ranked
by the judgment of Athens and all the ancient world, without
perceiving that he condemns, not the object of his criticism, but
simply his own comprehension. Even to apologize for Euripides, or to patronize him, is to show that we mistake our
position. Until we can admire him heartily and wholly, the
"humble effort" recommended by Mr Way is our only rational
course.
It is indeed not a bad attitude to be taken by the student in
all cases; and for myself at any rate I am ready to adopt it in
dealing with the criticism of Mr Swinburne. Making a humble
effort, and with no affected humility, to understand the grounds
of his judgment, I have found instruction in a term of contempt,
which, after his trenchant manner, he has thrown out by way of
summary. Euripides, he has told us, was a 'botcher'. Deserved
or not by the poet, the phrase is apt enough to indicate the
nature of modern objections. It appropriately describes the
sort of dissatisfaction, which we feel after reading, with the
modern expositions, some of Euripides' best known and best
appreciated works. There is plenty of excellent material; single
scenes, or it may be all the scenes, are wrought with undeniable
and astonishing power. The murmurs begin when we contemplate the work as a whole: and then the 'botcher' can no longer
be kept out of our minds. After all, it would seem, the thing
is a patch-work. The excellences of the parts do not seem to
subserve any common design, nay, even are mutually repugnant.
The author is doubtless a master of his tools, but still, to speak
familiarly, he 'does not know what he is driving at'. Or at all
events we do not know, and are left with a sense of puzzle, which
is of all things the most fatal to the pleasures of art. If, as
I have heard said with too much vigour but also too much truth,
'Euripides has ceased to count', here, where Mr Swinburne places
it, is the cause or a frequent cause of the common disappointment. And we may illustrate it by the case of the Alcestis.




AL CESTIS.


3


Excepting perhaps the Andromache, the Alcestis of all the
plays has provoked most frequently and thoroughly this contradictory judgment of parts and whole, which in modern times has
been the dominant note of criticism. These two belong neither to
that very small list of which we are able to say that, with no
reservations or insignificant reservations, we comprehend and
admire the whole work, nor to that very large list, where comprehension is so much at fault that, to say the plain truth, they have
ceased to have any general importance, being relegated to the
school-room and lecture-room. In the Medea we have scarcely
any fault to find; the faults, whatever they may be, of the Ion
and the Madness of Heracles, can be left to be disputed by
scholars. But the Alcestis cannot so be dismissed. We love
Alcestis well enough to be jealous for her. The play of Euripides,
so far as it is concerned with her wifely devotion, has told enough
on our hearts to make us warmly sensible of what we find in it
to offend us; and the complaints, which otherwise might simmer
in obscurity, are stirred by this interest to vigour and fulness of
expression. The more closely and impartially these complaints
are examined, the more clearly it will appear that either the
author of the play is, or we ourselves are, singularly unfortunate
in the view we take of the subject. If modern criticism has
not mistaken the matter, Euripides in the Alcestis shows himself
at once master and tiro, master in the execution of details, tiro,
or something less, in the lack of taste and judgment, by which
the elements are so incongruously and inharmoniously combined.
The history of Alcestis, like many other legends whose
origin is doubtful or lost, had been drawn before recorded times
into the great circle of religious belief whose centre was the
oracle of Delphi. It is possible that Heracles, who as a semidivine agent retains in the version known to us an important
though subordinate part, once figured as an independent deity,
and that with his worship, not that of Apollo, the story was associated at some earlier stage. But in its existing shape it
belongs to the deity of Pytho. In its general outline it is almost
too familiar for repetition. Apollo, being condemned by Zeus
to serve for a time among the herdsmen of a mortal man, and
having found in Admetus, prince of Pherae in Thessaly, a kind
and gentle master, not only rewarded the house with vast in1-2




4


E URIPIDES.


crease of riches, but when Admetus, yet young, was doomed by
the Fates to die, obtained their consent to accept a substitute.
Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, undertook to redeem his life by
the sacrifice of her own, and died accordingly on the day predicted. But the favour of heaven was not to be thus frustrated
of its completeness; for Heracles, as Apollo willed and foresaw,
rescued the heroic wife from the grave and the arms of death,
and restored her alive again to her husband. If the roots of the
legend are obscure, and descend into a stratum of thought and
feeling which can hardly now be penetrated, the religious
instincts to which it appeals as a whole are plain and universal.
Accepted in the simplicity of faith, it offers, in the first place, a
comforting answer to that question of questions, with which the
mind of mortality is for ever occupied, an assurance that the
spirits of the just are in the hand,of God. The form is foreign
to us, but the substance familiar and intelligible, so much so
that to believe, even for one imaginative initant, in the truth of
the history is to feel, for that instant, its profound religious
importance. The virtues by which this manifestation of diwine
goodness is earned,-in the husband humanity towards the
unhappy and helpless, in the wife the utmost unselfishness of'
love,-are virtues to some extent of all ages and pre-eminently
of the Christian ages. If the modern attempts to deal with the
subject in dramatic and other forms have not been highly
successful, this is explained sufficiently by the absence of one
indispensable condition, a genuine or at least, if I may so put it,
a practically efficient faith on the part of the spectator and
reader. The theme is too solemn for play; but if (to make a
bold hypothesis) it were possible for a modern audience to
retain for the space of two hours a belief in the miracle, there
would be no remaining difficulty in the way of an impressive
representation. At Athens in the fifth century before Christ
this one impediment did not exist. The belief was a part of public
religion1; and even those who had ceased to share it by personal
conviction could have no difficulty in re-assuming it temporarily
for the purpose of artistic enjoyment.  In one respect the
subject was peculiarly fitted for the newly-founded stage of
tragedy. Aeschylus, from whose mind the new art had taken
1 Alc. 452.




AL CESTIS.


5


its stamp, is nowhere more profound or more attractive than
when he touches such problems of life and death, such mysterious
links of union between the seen and the unseen, as are involved
in the history of A cestis. If a poet of that day mis-handled the
theme, it was not for want of a model. Even now with the help
of Aeschylus it would not, I conceive, be impossible for Mr
Swinburne to compose in English, or for Professor Jebb to compose in Greek, a drama in which the spirit of the legend should
be fairly preserved and reflected. What is not easy to conceive
is that now or then any man should suppose himself to have
tolerably executed the design by a piece so cast and constructed
as the Alcestis of Euripides.  A brief sketch will suffice to
remind the reader what the construction is, and to account for
the general dissatisfaction. In order to clear the framework of
the piece, we will disregard for the moment the prologue or
introduction, which has its own personages and separate action;
and in the play proper we will attend only to the strictly
dramatic portion, the scenes in dialogue. Of these the topics
and proportions are as follows:
Sc. i. It being the day on which Alcestis is to die, some
friends of Admetus come to make enquiries of her condition.
A servant describes to them her preparations for death; she is
now sinking, and desires to be brought into the open air, which
is accordingly done (vv. 77-242: number of verses, I66).
Sc. ii. Alcestis bids farewell to her husband and children,
and receives from her husband assurances of fidelity to her
memory. She dies. The corpse is carried into the house, and
Admetus retires to complete the preparations for burying it
(vv. 243-434: I92).
Sc. iii. While he is within, his friend Heracles, travelling
through Pherae, arrives at the house in the expectation of rest
and refreshment. Admetus, who appears now in mourning,
contrives by a false account to conceal from him the identity of
the person whose funeral is about to be performed. He is thus
persuaded to enter, and some of the servants are ordered to
entertain him (vv. 475-567: 93).
Sc. iv. The funeral is about to proceed, when Pheres, the
father of Admetus, presents himself as if to take part in it.
Admetus repels him, with a fierce invective against both him




6


E URIPIDES.


and his wife, Admetus' mother, for their cowardice in having
refused, though advanced in years, to redeem the life of their
only son, and having left the sacrifice to be made by a woman
in her prime. Pheres retorts the charge; it is Admetus who,
by shirking his proper destiny, has been in fact the murderer of
his too devoted victim. The theme, notwithstanding the interference of the friends, is pursued on both sides in a duel of
taunts, after which Pheres retires, and the funeral procession sets
forth (vv. 606-740: I35).
Sc. v. A man-servant, coming from the house, describes
with indignation the behaviour of Heracles at his meal, his
indifference to the decencies of a house in mourning, unseasonable exactions, noise, and drunkenness. Heracles follows; he
lectures the servant on the certainty of death, and presses him
to drink; the servant is provoked into disclosing the deception
practised by Admetus; Heracles, shocked and horrified, declares
his intention of rescuing the deceased from death, and is
directed by the servant to the grave (747-860: II4).
Sc. vi. Admetus returns accompanied by his friends. His
despair, repentance, and self-reproach (871-96I: 9).
Sc. vii. Heracles returns, leading Alcestis veiled. He pretends that she is a slave, won by him as a prize in an athletic
contest, which fell in his way as he was setting out. He proposes that Admetus shall keep her for him till he returns from
his journey. Admetus reluctantly consents, and Alcestis is
unveiled. Tableau and conclusion (I006-II58: I53).
Such is the play which was offered (we are to understand)
by Euripides as the best he could do by way of presenting in
the forms of the stage the death and resurrection of Alcestis.
It would be strange indeed if, while praising him for the
dramatic skill displayed in the separate scenes, his critics could
have refrained from murmuring at the discord between theme
and treatment, which characterizes the whole conception. If
my object were to make out a case, it would be easy to quote
respectable authorities, who have expressed this objection with
acrimony; but it will be safer to cite the gentle and apologetic
complaint of Paley, whose merits and even defects as a
commentator made him an excellent reflector of average
opinion:




ALCESTIS.


7


As for the characters in the play, that of Alcestis must be acknowledged
to be pre-eminently beautiful....But, if we except the heroine of the piece,
the rest are hardly well-drawn, or, at least, pleasingly portrayed. The selfish
Pheres, the unfilial Admetus, the boisterous Hercules, are not in themselves
proper characters for tragedy; but then they serve to set off and bring out
in relief the beauties which the poet has laboured to concentrate upon one
person....The dispute between Admetus and Pheres is calculated, as Hermann observes, and as was very probably designed, to please a contentious
and law-loving audience. The poet might perhaps, had he pleased, have
represented Admetus in a more amiable point of view. But he preferred to
take the legend as he found it; and we must in fairness admit that the faults
are those inherent in the subject itself rather than in the poet's manner of
treating it.
It should be noted that when Paley describes Admetus,
Pheres, and Heracles as 'not well-drawn', he means, as appears
by the correction 'not pleasingly portrayed', that they are not
drawn well for the general effect of the picture. Regarded
merely as studies from life they are drawn only too well. And
when he says that they are 'not proper characters for
tragedy', he must be taken to mean that they are not proper
for this tragedy, for a play on this particular subject, since no
one could dispute that characters equally unpleasing in themselves, equally 'selfish', 'unfilial', and 'boisterous', are to be
found in dramas and even in tragedies, of which the total effect
is nevertheless both pleasing and consistent. And if we ask,
why then these traits are objectionable here, the answer is first,
that they are useless to the conduct of the story, and secondly that,
according to an instinct which not without reason we assume to
be universal, they are repugnant to the solemnity of the topic.
You cannot make a good play, nor anything fit to be called a
play, out of incidents which have no moral or necessary connexion, no other connexion in short than that they might
succeed one another in the way represented:/nd you ought
not to make a trifle out of a theme so full of te derness and awe
as the death and resurrection of Alcestis.  We will consider the
scheme for a moment in these two points of view, and will
confine our attention for convenience to the scenes numbered
fourth and fifth, upon which the objections may be concentrated. It should be noted that these two scenes form between
them a full fourth part of the action, and that a survey of the
whole work would only confirm our impressions.




8


E URIPIDES.


Of these two scenes then in particular we have to say, in
obedience to the general verdict, that they are mechanically
useless and aesthetically repulsive. It will be seen that these
charges, though separable, are in reality two sides of the same.
An incident not agreeable in itself becomes pardonable and
even acceptable, if it contributes essentially to the progress of
the story. But in the two examples before us, the altercation
with Pheres, and the intoxication of Heracles, it is not the least
curious part of the author's offence, though it is commonly the
less insisted on, that they contribute nothing to the movement
of the drama. The progress of events towards the proposed
conclusion is not forwarded, arrested, or in any way explained
by the fact that Admetus and his father regard one another
with a contempt which they succeed in making not altogether
incomprehensible, and that neither of them has decency enough
to refrain from waging a battle of taunts over the corpse of the
wife and daughter, and in the presence of vainly expostulating
friends. The altercation leaves us, so far as the story is concerned, exactly where we were. Of the next scene indeed this
cannot be said, for here the story does take a step; Heracles
discovers the deception practised upon him with regard to the
identity of the corpse. But to make this discovery it was not|
requisite that he should get very drunk, in circumstances which
make such behaviour not merely contemptible but grossly
offensive, and thus expose himself to the scorn and indignation, the merited scorn and merited indignation, as most
people have thought and will continue to think, of the servant
who waits at his table. To produce the disclosure was not a
difficulty needing to be cut in this heroic fashion. On the
contrary the difficulty, if any, was to keep Heracles so long in
ignorance of the truth; but neither on this side nor on the other
is there anything in the dramatic requirements of the situation
to account for the manners which he is made to exhibit.
Mechanically therefore these scenes are useless; and, considered aesthetically, as exhibitions of character, they are
worse. The finale of the play consists entirely of a dialogue
between Heracles and Admetus, and must depend therefore
largely for its effect upon the impression of these two personages which in the course of the piece has been stamped on




ALCESTIS.


9


the mind of the spectator or reader. Admetus is there to figure
as a man who for his virtue receives from heaven a miraculous
boon, perhaps the most astonishing and affecting which human
imagination can conceive. Heracles is to figure as the chosen
agent, himself something more than man, by whom the divine
purpose is carried into effect. As the examination of the finale
itself will fall more fitly in another place, we will for the moment
assume, what the reader who may have the scene in mind will
not be inclined to dispute, that the interlocutors in it do little to
clear themselves of any untoward association which they may
have previously contracted. What then, we have to ask, is
contributed to the final effect by the reflected light of the
episodes which we are now considering? That Admetus is
not more but less likely to obtain sympathy after his encounter
with Pheres, Heracles not more but less likely to appear a
worthy deputy of divine power after his interview with the
manservant, are propositions which may be defended when they
have been denied: and I do not think that the apologists for
either, to whom we will come in due course, have gone so far.
In the case of Heracles the point is particularly important,
because it is only in the fifth scene that we are permitted to
make acquaintance with him, before he appears finally as the
conqueror of Death. In the third scene, which exhibits his first
arrival, his part is secondary and reveals little of him. The
benefit of the fifth scene is entirely his own.
How strong and inevitable is the persuasion that to compromise the moral dignity of Admetus and Heracles is to strike
at the heart of the story, and that by these powerful scenes, as
well as by much else in the play, their dignity is compromised
to a degree which, as the author should have seen, is incompatible with the purpose that he professes, appears in nothing
more plainly than in the efforts which have been frequently
made to defend the character of one or the other, laudable efforts,
as proceeding on the assumption that what is patent to us is not
likely to have been invisible to Euripides, but, as appears to me
with the standing majority, desperate nevertheless. In saying
that these defences are unsupported by the majority, I must
make an exception of one plea put forward for Admetus, which
among modern critics has had nearly if not quite universal




10


E URIPIDES.


support. Admetus (it is said), though we may give up as
insufficiently 'amiable' his attitude as a husband and as a
son, is redeemed by his generosity as a host. The hospitality,
which in the midst of his grief he extends to Heracles, must be
set off against his demerits, and leaves an adequate balance in
his favour. We will postpone for the present this plea of
'confession and avoidance' and consider those answers which
directly traverse the indictment.
I mention only to put aside as here irrelevant all excuses
offered not for the dramatis personae but for the author, as for instance that since the play, it appears, stood last among the four
exhibited together in the same year, it was designed to replace the
ordinary 'satyric drama', which accounts for the prevalence of
elements unsuitable to tragedy.     Manifestly this is only the
accusation itself in another form. If the author wanted something in a light style, it was his business to select a theme
suitable for it'. Or again (this appears in Paley as above cited),
that the unamiable characters are foils for Alcestis. In that
case, since Alcestis takes part in only one scene, the work is
composed mainly of 'foil'; and indeed we are forbidden by the
author himself, as we shall see hereafter, to suppose that the
character of 'the heroine' is meant to be the dominant interest.
Nor again would it affect our present question, if we were to
admit, what according to Paley we must in fairness admit, " that
the faults are those inherent in the subject itself rather than in
the poet's manner of treating it ". Admit it however we neither
must nor can; for it is refuted by Paley himself when he says
(after Hermann) that "the dispute between Admetus and Pheres
was very probably designed to please a contentious and lawloving audience". Whatever be the value of this excuse (if it
is meant for an excuse and not an aggravation, for this is not
very clear), it assumes, what is surely certain, that the dramatist
1 Such as the legend of Death and Sisyphus, on which a 'satyric drama' was
composed by Aeschylus, and which seems to have been exactly suited for treatment
as a grotesque. Whether the legend of Alcestis could be so treated satisfactorily
appears to me more than doubtful, nor does it matter, since Euripides at all events
has made no attempt to treat it so. His picture is purely realistic (to the utmost
extent which the Greek stage permitted) and must be defensible as realism or not
at all.




AL CESTIS.


I 1


himself invented the scene in question. Neither this, nor the
intoxication of Heracles, is "inherent in the subject". Both
incidents must have been chosen, if not engrafted, by the poet,
and he is directly responsible for the effect. At any rate all
these are defences for the author, not for the personae, and
therefore are not now in view.
Coming then directly to the point, and taking first the case
of Admetus-is it the fact that the son of Pheres and husband
of Alcestis, as presented by Euripides, appears as a selfish,
unattractive, and rather contemptible person; and may we
assume-for this of course is material-that such would be the
view of the Athenians in the time of the author? The first
part of the question, about which there has been little dispute,
has perhaps been set at rest by Browning in Balaustion's Adventure. Browning, for reasons which will present themselves later,
was or conceived himself more free than most readers have felt
to express, without abating his respect for the play or the
author, the sentiments excited in modern minds by the behaviour of Admetus, not only in the encounter with Pheres but
also at the death-bed of Alcestis. To us at least it appears
'childish' (the word is Browning's) in a man, who has deliberately accepted the sacrifice of another life for his own, to spend
the moments of parting in beseeching his substitute 'not to
abandon him' and 'asking for impossibilities'. And it is worth
notice, as bearing on the probable opinion of the Greeks, that
this shrewd comment, 'asking for impossibilities', is furnished by
Euripides himself'. To us it appears that one who in such a.position blusters about the inconceivable things that he 'would
have done, had they been possible', to rescue his substitute
from  death, must be stupefied by 'passionate egoism' (the
phrase is George Eliot's), if he cannot perceive that he is
making the worst of his delicate case, like the coward who
pretends to dignify retreat by muttering about 'another time'.
And as between him and his father we hold that, whatever
might be said in decent privacy for the view that the elder man
'has had his time' and ought, for the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, to have accepted death in the place of his son,
the son must be wanting in sense, stupefied as before by pas1 v. 202: cf. 250, 388 etc.




12


E URIPIDES.


sionate egoism, not to apprehend without the humiliation of
experiment that to argue in this sense with his father is to make
himself ridiculous, and to attack his father upon this ground is
logical suicide. Moreover we think that, apart from such particular breaches of taste and sense, the act of Admetus, in
accepting, much more in soliciting, the sacrifice of his wife,
could be dignified and justified only if it were his duty to live,
if his life were important to others, and much more important
than hers, which nevertheless Euripides does not show us, or
indeed give us reason to suppose. To all this, as representing
the modern view, the reader will probably assent or, if he should
doubt, may fix his sentiments by the perusal of Balaustion's
Adventure.  But it may still be maintained that such were not
X     the sentiments with which Euripides had to count; and such is
i the contention recently developed, much more fully and positively than by previous critics, by Mr Way', who is on every
ground entitled to respectful consideration.
According to Mr Way " it is certain that the modern view is
diametrically opposed to that of the Athenian audience. In
their eyes (I) Admetus was a noble character: (2) he was in
the right in respect to the motif and incidents of the play: (3)
he reaped the just reward of the good man". Now if it is
certain that such would be the view of the Athenian audience,
the opinion of Athens, that is to say, in the time of Euripides,
upon what society, we must ask, did the poet model the public
opinion of his imaginary Pherae and his imaginary Iolcus?
For, strangely enough, it is certain that in these places the
prevalent view was again diametrically opposite, differing not
perceptibly from the modern. As to what would be thought
in Iolcus, the original home of Alcestis, we have the undisputed
assertion of Pheres 2:
I go: her murderer will bury her.
Thou shalt yet answer for it to her kin.
Surely Akastos is no more a man,
If he of thee claim not his sister's blood.
Pheres is not an admirable old man; he has, as Browning puts
it, a truly paternal resemblance to Admetus, he is Admetus
I Translation of Euripides, Vol. I. App. A.
' v. 730. The translations here are Mr Way's.




AL CE STIS.


I3


aged into cynicism; but he is not a fool. If it be true that in
those days, " failing the substitute who shirked his duty ", that is
to say, Pheres, " Alcestis would be regarded as simply fulfilling
hers in yielding her life", how is it that this very Pheres can
threaten Admetus with the vengeance of her friends, whose
anger must on that hypothesis have been directed altogether
against himself? How does Admetus miss this obvious retort,
and answer only with irrelevant reiteration of his own implacable
hatred? And if it be said that Pheres is blinded by selfishness,
and the family of Alcestis not impartial-though as between
father and son they may, it would seem, judge as fairly as any
one else-we may turn from Iolcus to Pherae and hear, in a
cooler moment, the testimony and confession of Admetus.
All this within: but from the world without
Shall bridals of Thessalians chase me: throngs
Where women gossip; and I shall not bear
On those companions of my wife to look.
And, if a foe I have,We pause to note that this tone of emphatic hypothesis is introduced, unconsciously and instinctively, by the translator: " whoever happens to be hostile to me" says the Greek:thus shall he scoff:
" Lo, there who basely liveth-dared not die,
" But whom he wedded gave, a coward's ransom,
"And 'scaped from Hades. Count ye him a man?
"He hates his parents, though himself was loth
"To die!" Such ill report, besides my griefs,
Shall mine be. Ah, what profit is to live,
O friends, in evil fame, in evil plight?
Such is the reception which Admetus expects from his world;
and his own particular friends, who are present for the very
purpose of consoling him, dare not, or at least do not, say a word
to relieve his fears. But his fears are idle, if to the average
Pheraean Admetus would still be "a noble character". The
tongue of malice is impotent against public opinion. Pherae
therefore held the modern view, not a view diametrically opposite; and if Pherae, why not Athens?


v. 950.




I4


E URIPIDES.


Very clear indeed should be the testimony which is to overbalance such passages as these. The evidence adduced is the
old evidence in favour of Admetus' hospitality, "the highest
social virtue recognized by a Greek".
The hospitable man embodied for them the virtues, not only of the
modern philanthropist, but also of the enlightened diplomatist: he established
and maintained friendly relations with other states, gaining for his city allies,
and for her people friends and protectors in foreign lands, and that in days
when without such, not only was travel perilous, but, even commerce was
difficult and precarious...Conjugal affection shrank into insignificance beside
such a trait....It was his duty to his country to neglect no means of prolonging his usefulness.
The nature and merit of Admetus' hospitality, as actually
exercised towards Heracles in the play, will be considered
hereafter. Here we will only remark that the public benefit
of his function as host would have been more clearly perceived,
and the sympathy of the audience on this ground better secured,
if it had obtained some notice upon the stage, if for example
the gratitude of Pherae had been alleged by his friends as likely
to protect him from the obloquy which he anticipates. The
statements of Mr Way's paragraph have much truth as generalities about Greek life, but when we ask whether the action and
character of Admetus were such as to bring him within the
benefit of the doctrine, nothing explicit can be produced, nothing
but " considerations which presuppose " the paramount value of
his life. Surely this is unsatisfactory.
But although Mr Way, so far as I can judge, has by no
means proved that an Athenian jury would have acquitted his
client, he does not leave the matter where it was. In the first
place he has pointed out with desirable precision what the
Admetus of Euripides lacks. The paragraph above cited indicates excellently the sort of beneficence by which an Admetus
might have been justified in the eyes of a Greek audience, and
which Aeschylus or Sophocles would, we may presume, have
made prominent. That Euripides omits to notice or provide
such a trait is among the things which show either that he has
ill-executed his design, or that we misconceive it. And further,
as against Browning, who is cited as representing the enemies
of Admetus, Mr Way assuredly has a case, though not perhaps




AL CESTIJS.


I5


exactly on the issue which he puts foremost. Balaustion's Adventure involves two propositions about theEuripidean Admetus; first,
that he is not exhibited for our admiration, and secondly, that
Euripides deserves no censure for not making him admirable.
Mr Way contends formally against the first, not, as I think,
with success; but his statement implies a hypothetical decision,
that if Euripides has not made Admetus admirable, Euripides
must be excused, if at all, by some other method than that of
Browning. And here I am entirely with Mr Way. If in reading
Balaustion's Adventure we are able to forget that, according to the
1 egend and according to Euripides, as Mr Way properly reminds
us, Admetus was a favourite of the gods, specially chosen to receive
the reward of virtue, if his want of what is commonly thought
virtue comes at last to seem no drawback but rather an advantage to the total effect, that is because in the joint production
of Euripides and Balaustion Admetus becomes a mere foil, and
his whole story scarcely more than an opportunity, for displaying the grandeur of the fair collaborator's hero, Heracles.
Here therefore we will abandon the husband as apparently
indefensible, and consider the case offered by Browning on
behalf of the other incriminated personage, the semi-divine
deliverer.
It is, if I may say so without impertinence, very much to the
credit of Browning's poetical'and dramatic instinct, that he
should have fixed so decisively upon Heracles as the true nodus
of the literary problem presented by the Alcestis: and Balaustion's Adventure is a striking proof how instructive may be the
criticism of artist by artist, even when it results, as it is not
unlikely to do, in a thorough-going recomposition of the subject.
Browning, it is needless to say, was no more likely than Goethe
to repose complacently in such a theory of Euripides as satisfied
the vigorous but narrow and unimaginative mind of Schlegel,
and has infected too many who were capable of knowing better.
The conclusion at which Balaustion arrives' is the assumption
from which Browning started, that the Alcestis is the work of a
true artist and a man of sense, justifiable as a whole upon
ordinary principles, like the work of Sophocles or another. It
must have then some general ruling purpose. From the tradi1p. iro, ed. T889.




16


E URIPIDES.


tion of commentaries he borrowed the further assumption that
this general purpose is to illustrate the religious legend. And
he saw, or rather felt-for I do not of course mean that he said
such a thing to himself or put it consciously as a step in an
argument-he acted, let us say rather, on the truth which he
perceived instinctively, that, given these premisses, a noble,
beautiful, and thoroughly admirable Heracles is an indispensable
necessity. With a selfish, unmanly, unwise, and half-contemptible
Admetus it would just be possible-Browning has shown this —
to present the legend of Alcestis so as still to preserve the
religious hypothesis. The gods, it might be said, though the
theology is not very Hellenic, are merciful to the repentant:
and the Euripidean Admetus repents, if it be repentance to
perceive your folly, as heartily as could be desired. On the
whole he might do. But that Heracles should be exposed to
any just contempt, Heracles the son of the highest god, the
minister of life, privileged to wrestle victoriously with the power
of darkness and corruption, to bring quick out of the grave a
body upon which the mortal change had actually been accomplished, that Heracles should be semi-comic, or comic at all
in the least degree-this seemed, as it is, intolerable, a thing as
repugnant to the organic laws of art as a centaur or a chimaera
to those of nature. Accordingly since the Heracles of Euripides,
as the expositors agree, is in fact semi-comic and liable to much
just contempt, Browning simply made another, enveloping and
dressing, literally as well as figuratively, the original man
in robes, trappings, and appurtenances, material and moral, of
which in the Greek play there is not the least suggestion, until
once at least, so complete is the transformation, he has to be
unwrapped again as it were, before the words of Euripides can
find their way to his mouth.
The thing is done (with what perfect unconsciousness and
good faith is proved by the audacity of it) by means of copious
stage-directions and interpolated remarks. The form of Browning's poem, as will be remembered, is a recitation of the play,
with occasional comments by the reciter. The comments are
largely pictorial, explaining how the personages looked and
moved, replacing in short the action. It is noticeable that at
one time Browning seems to have felt, or come near to feeling,




VI


ALCESTIS.                       17
the peril of such a form, and the temptation of the poetcommentator to abound in his own sense, instead of following
his author. There is an unpleasant, suspicious tartness in the
reply of Balaustion to a certain "critic and whippersnapper",
who at a previous recitation seems to have objected to her use
of such phrases as "Then a fear flitted o'er the wife's white
face" on the ground that no fear could be seen to flit over
a mask1. So silly a pedant was really not worth quoting, and
had better have been answered, if at all, without needless
quibbling upon the true import of the word poetry, as signifying
"a power that makes". If the whippersnapper had rejoined to
this that Euripides and Balaustion are not one "maker" but
two, two of a trade, and liable to disagree, he would have said
something much to the purpose: and possibly it was a hint of
this kind, lurking in his ill-stated objection, which caused
Balaustion to note and resent it.
However it must be confessed that Balaustion not only
makes very well, but also in general remembers her office and
fairly makes to order. Now and then she paraphrases in narrative instead of reproducing, and when she does, it may be taken
for a note that the original here contains something worth
particular attention: but such changes are rare. Her chief
activity is in additions, and here she mainly goes by her text.
Not only the visible accessories, such as the bow of Apollo, the
black robe of Admetus in mourning, and the wreath of Heracles
after his feast, are warranted by the dramatist, but in things less
directly perceptible by a reader Balaustion is found right upon
reference. For instance
that hard dry pressure to the point,
Word slow pursuing word in monotone,
does really appear in the language of the dying Alcestis, and
merits, if it does not demand, Balaustion's sympathetic explanation. Or again, the leap of Pheres out of decorum into
nature under the unexpected attack of Admetus is lawfully
prefaced by this admirable simile:
He came content, the ignoble word, for him
Should lurk still in the blackness of each breast,
1 p1 7.
V. E.                                            2




18


E URIPIDES.


As sleeps the water-serpent half surmised:
Not brought up to the surface at a bound,
By one touch of the idly-probing spear.
The vivid, coloured, Miltonic image, though not found in the
scene as spoken, fits the words like a glove, and properly
compensates for the loss of appropriate action. But when the
reciter comes to Heracles, and wherever she has him in view,
her invention soars regardless. Without a hint from Euripides,
and even against his command, masses of mythology and
theology, scenery and portraiture, are rolled in; motives are
imputed, facts bluffed, and the whole business of exposition
carried on with the fascinating iniquity of a feminine partizan.
Immediately upon his entrance', and before he has said
anything but "Pheraean friends", Balaustion stops the action
to assure us that in his tone, bearing, and appearance you
perceived 'the friend of man', 'the Helper', 'the God', as her
style is:
Himself, o' the threshold, sent his voice on first
To herald all that human and divine
I' the weary happy face of him,-half God
Half man, which made the god-part God the more.
And as soon as he has asked whether Admetus is within, she
stops again to point out
all the mightiness
At labour in the limbs that for man's sake
Laboured and meant to labour their life long.
In both places her worship flows over the page, and many
other eloquent pages are given to repeating and re-enforcing this
first impression; so that as long as we keep to the Adventure, it
scarcely matters what exactly is said or done in the brief scenes
by a personage so stupendous. Like Pindar's Hiero, 'whatsoever he lets drop, falls great because from him'. But if the
enchanted reader seeks Euripides, for the pleasure of seeing
how his making has made all this, he finds with dismay that it
is pure Balaustion, every word of it; the 'God' and 'the halfGod', the 'great voice', 'weary happy face', 'happy weary laugh',
'love of men', 'many grandnesses', 'arm which had slain the


1 P- 49 -



AL CESTIS.


19


snake', 'lion's hide', 'interval 'twixt fight and fight again',
' snatched repose', 'dust o' the last encounter', 'breathing space
for man's sake',' unimaginable shaft', 'plate-mail of a monster',
' pest o' the marish', 'world-weary God', 'solemn draught of true
religious wine', 'grand benevolence', 'the God surmounting the
man','tree-like growth through pain to joy', and all the rest of
it; every thing put in which Euripides might have attached to
the conception of Heracles, but has in fact resolutely and
consistently left out.
The labours, for example, the unflinching incessant labours
on behalf of humanity! Balaustion recalls them to us incessantly; they are Heracles; he personifies the great love, 'careless
of self where others may be helped', which reproves by its mere
presence the littleness of Admetus, his counsellors, servants, and
the rest of the crew. In Heracles everything must be praised,
anything forgiven. If he says, 'Is Admetus at home?', you
must revere him: think of his labours! If he drinks till he
'howls discordance', you must not call him a sot, nor let any
one do so unrebuked. Poor man, he wanted it; think of his
labours! Well then, if we are to think so much of them, why
do we get no help from Euripides? Certainly the myths of
Heracles offer abundant material for presenting him as the
friend of humanity and reliever of the distressed. Many of
them, such as the slaying of the lion in Nemea or the serpent
in Lerna, were adapted if not designed for the very purpose:
and Euripides, like Balaustion here, can find and use them,
when hle wants them. Why did he pass them    over in the
Alcestis? The 'labours of Heracles', in the sense put upon
the phrase by Balaustion here and by Euripides elsewhere, his
services to humanity, are in this play ignored completely; and
nothing is said by any one to show that for his previous career
he enjoys or deserves gratitude any more than an ordinary man.
The enterprise upon which he is bound at the time of the action
is to seize, on behalf of Eurystheus king of Tiryns, a famous
team of four horses belonging to Diomede the Thracian. He
expects a fight, and is ready to kill Diomede, if necessary. No
benefit is intended or can accrue from the achievement to anyone except Eurystheus; nor is it pretended that Eurystheus is
prosecuting a right. The matter lies altogether between two
2 —2




20


E URIPIDES.


fierce chieftains, one of whom covets the property of the other;
and the aggressor has the advantage of commanding the services
of Heracles. Courage and gallantry he certainly shows, but as
'a friend of humanity' he must be ranked with Hawkins or
Sforza. The visitors of Admetus, who know his name and
presumably his history, treat him without distinguishing particularity; and from Admetus we learn only that Heracles upon
various occasions has received him hospitably at Argos, which
is satisfactory but scarcely sublime. What impression of his
character an unflattering and uninterested observer might derive
from his present employment, as he describes it, and from
previous performances (of the same kind so far as appears) to
which he alludes, we hear from the servant commissioned by
Admetus to make him comfortable:
And so here am I, helping make at home
A guest, some fellow ripe for wickedness,
Robber or pirate!
It is curious that Balaustion, so prompt in observing the superhuman way in which Heracles says 'Yes', 'No', and 'How do
you do?', should have heard this pointed remark without any
reflexion more precise than broadly to label the speaker a
'creature' and condescendingly dismiss him as one who 'had
been right if not so wrong'.
As it is with the 'labours', so it is with all the divine attributes accumulated upon the hero in Browning's enlarged and
amended version. They are not to be found in the Alcestis
of Euripides. And to prove this absence not accidental we
have only to compare the author's Madness of Heracles, where
the moral nobility of the hero as the friend of man really is a
part of the hypothesis, and all the flowers of Balaustion's ornamentation, labours and trophies, generous toil and grateful
world, can be illustrated ad libitum. In fact what Browning has
done is just to take the Heracles of the one play and put him,
to make a figure of suitable height, on the top of his namesake
in the other, 'the God surmounting the man' (as Balaustion
says), with what stifling compression of the unlucky 'man' we
will see in a moment. To set out the whole detail would be
tedious; but the reader with the three poems before him can
easily satisfy himself.




AL CESTIS.


2


Down to his very dress the Heracles of Balaustion is not the
personage of the Alcestis but of the Madness. It is she, not
Euripides, who tells us that, when he goes forth to encounter
Death, he picks up his lion-skin and leaves behind his club; she
who by other allusions takes care to keep before our eyes these
consecrated symbols of beneficent power. The arrows too, the
'unimaginable shaft', she manages to get in by a side-glance;
and it seems a mere accident that these also are not brought
upon the stage. Now of course from the nature of the case it
cannot be proved directly that Heracles in the Alcestis does
not wear the spoil of Nemea, does not carry the club which
smote the giants, or the bow which put an end to the outrages of
Nessus. No one notes their absence; it were impossible, except
in a burlesque, that any one should. But neither is there any
trace of their presence; which of itself proves that the author on
this occasion attached no importance to them, and when taken
in connexion with the corresponding omission of all the mythical
and doctrinal matter associated with them, goes far to prove
that he did not allow them to be used. In the Madness all are
mentioned, and not only mentioned but brought tragically into
play. In the Alcestis the skin of the lion would be as irrelevant
as the lion itself. If worn on the stage (which I do not believe)
it must have been merely as a conventional mark of the person;
and the author, who wrote, we must remember, for a public of
readers as well as of spectators, has done his best to protect a
reader at all events from the intrusion.
How hopeless is the well-meant effort to deify a swashbuckler appears when Balaustion ceases to describe and begins
to quote. She indeed, like a good girl, having given her heart
sticks at nothing: and since Browning-with a poet poetizing it
could not be otherwise-has given his heart to her, we, so long
as we keep in their company, can perhaps believe what they tell
us. But go to Euripides, and the charm is lost. Here is the
behaviour of the hero at table, as described by Euripides-Mr
Way, not Balaustion, shall recite, as it will save the trouble of
noting a few little coquetries of hers:
He first, albeit he saw my master mourning
Entered and passed the threshold unashamed;
Then nowise courteously received the fare




22


E URIPIDES.


Found with us, though our woeful plight he knew,
But what we brought not, hectoring bade us bring.
The ivy-cup uplifts he in his hands,
And swills the darkling mother's fiery blood,
Till the wine's flame enwrapped him, heating him.
Then did he wreathe his head with myrtle-spray,
Dissonant-howling,
and so on. It seems scarcely credible, when we are not under
Browning's control, that what Balaustion infers from this description is the peevishness of the servant (whom without
warrant she talks of as 'old') and the magnanimity of the guest.
She is indeed a little hard-pushed by the tone which his 'grand
benevolence' adopts when he presently appears; and she feels
the need of a fresh make-up:
Then smiled the mighty presence, all one smile,
An1d no touch more of th/e world-weary god,
Through the brief respite.
No touch indeed! 'The Helper' has recovered so thoroughly
that he 'helps' the poor servitor (whom he knows and sees to
be deeply afflicted by the recent bereavement) with a sort of
maudlin sermon, asking him 'whether he is aware' that all men
are mortal, and leading to the moral that one should drink and
kiss the girls. This, thinks Balaustion, is the way to 'soften
surliness' and 'bridle bad hum3urs'. Such idolatrous devotion
is beyond the reach of argument.
The truth is that the Heracles of the Alcestis, though he has
his good qualities, is as far from moral sublimity as he well
could be. Nor is he by any means strong in religion, presenting
in this respect an instructive contrast to his friend Admetus,
whose piety is his forte. Their diversity produces an awkward
clash of opinion, and puts the politeness of Admetus to a trial,
when Heracles will not see that a person doomed to death by
prophetic fiat is as good as dead already1. The tone he takes
would be simply cruel, unless intended to imply doubts about
the weight of the prediction; and it is clear that if he had
known (which he does not) that an actual day had been named
for Alcestis to die on, he would still not have shared the abso

1. 523.




AI CESTIS.


23


lute assurance of Admetus and his household, that on that day
she would inevitably die.    Much in the same way the old
Pheraean, the leader of the Chorus, makes no impression on
Heracles whatever by telling him (what he has never heard)
that the horses of Diomede, the horses which he proposes to
steal, eat human flesh.  Heracles derides the story, and when
the other persists, parries him with the sneering question, 'And
whose son does the breeder brag himiself?'      'Son of Ares'.
'Still my hard fate! I have fought two sons of Ares already!'
The attitude is intelligible and intelligent; but it certainly
suggests a suspicion that, however he might feel in moments of
peculiar mental and physical stimulus 2, this cool-headed fighter
must often have known misgivings about the superhuman
parentage attributed to himself.
But perhaps the most striking revelation of Heracles is given
us in the story told by and about himself to account for his
possession of the disguised Alcestis and his return with her to
the house of Admetus.    Here it is-Mr Way is more exact, for
Balaustion as usual drags in the 'labours', but somehow a little
too weighty-in the version of Browning:
Take and keep for me
This woman, till I come thy way again,
Driving before me, having killed the king
0' the Bistones, that drove of Thrakian steeds:
In such case, give the woman back to me!
But should I fall-as fall I fain would not,
Seeing I hope to prosper and returnThen I bequeath her as thy household slave.
She came into my hands with good hard toil!
For what find I, when started on my course,
But certain people, a whole country-side,
Holding a wrestling-bout? as good to me
As a new labour:
-for which read simply 'worth exertion'whence I took, and here
Come keeping with me this, the victor's prize.
For such as conquered in the easy work3
Gained horses which they drove away: and such
1 v. 494.           2 v. 839.
3 More exactly 'nimble work', i.e. running.




24


E URIPIDE)S.


As conquered in the harder,-those who boxed
And wrestled,-cattle; and to crown the prize
A woman followed. Chancing as I did,
Base were it to forego this fame and gain!
Well, as I said, I trust her to thy care:
No woman I have kidnafiped, understand!
But good hard toil has done it: here I come!
Some day, who knows? even thou wilt praise the feat.
Such is Heracles as he paints himself, delineating the part from
his knowledge of himself and of other people's opinion about
him. It should be remembered that Admetus, as Heracles now
knows, is in the first agony of a widower, and that Heracles has
many other friends in Pherae. Further comment seems superfluous: and if, dismissing the question how Euripides came to
make him such, we ask simply what he is, we need not after
this passage hesitate about the answer. He is drawn from a
type well known in the age of the poet, the athlete-adventurer,
the class of which a specially brilliant specimen was his supposed
descendant the Heracleid Dorieus of Rhodes, the high-born illstarred enemy whom the Athenians, having taken him prisoner,
spared and liberated for his personal beauty and Olympian
renown. The story of Dorieus presents the romance of such a
career; the portrait of Heracles in the Alcestis, omitting for the
moment his encounter with Death, offers the prose of it. Such
persons, the less well-endowed or less fortunate members of the
aristocracies formerly hymned by Pindar, were driven, by an
education which fitted them for nothing else, to pick up what
they could in a life of shifty wandering service, sometimes rising
as in the case of Dorieus to the level of the condottiere, more often
probably sinking, like our Heracles, to something nearer the
bravo. The Athenians, notwithstanding their generosity to the
Rhodian, whose singularly splendid misfortunes marked him as a
proper object for a theatrical act of generosity, were by no means
in the latter part of the fifth century indiscriminating cultivators of the athlete in general, and Euripides in particular had
no great love for them. What he has given us in his Heracles is
a portrait drawn, as it would seem, without flattery and without
caricature-a high-born athlete-soldier of Argos, engaged in the
service of the 'despot' Eurystheus. All that he does, still




AL CESTIS.


25


excepting his miraculous achievement in the case of Alcestis,
fits perfectly together and exhibits the man. The virtues of his
breeding, or at least some of them, he has and retains; he is
brave, warm-hearted, sensitive in that sort of honour or pride
which dislikes to have made a blunder, to lie under an obligation, or in any way to cut a poor figure. When master of
himself, and so long as he is under the eye of those whom he
respects, he can behave like the 'gentilhomme' that he is. He
is shrewd, but not quick-witted. In the pursuit of his calling he
is as free from scruple as from fear, perfectly ready to rob and
to murder without any other reason than the interest of his
master for the time being; and if occasion offered, he would
rob for his own appetite (we have his own word for it) with as
little remorse. Living irregularly and by shifts, he is greedy of
gain, though not poor, and ready to stoop for it. In his personal tastes he is jovial, sensual, and coarse; and when he feels
himself at liberty, he is liable to degrade himself by rudeness
and even gross indecency. He will be sorry for it afterwards.
Such in brief is the semi-divine deliverer.
To palliate the ruin which this bull-headed apostle makes
among the Delphian porcelain of the legend, by clapping on
him the mask of an angel, and then crying to us, whenever he
plunges into the pots, 'But look at his face!', is an expedient
practicable only for an expositor like Browning, who incorporates the work of his author in original poetry of his own.
What Browning really shows us, with regard to Heracles, is
not that the Euripidean personage is fit for the story, but that
we ought to be more moved, than some would seem to be, by
his extreme and incredible unfitness. 'He cannot', says Browning
virtually, 'be such as you suppose!' He is nevertheless just
that; but to say so is to give Browning only half an answer. 'I
meant of course', he might rejoin, 'that if he is such, you, before
you pretend to understand Euripides, are bound to say why'.
And to that no answer is at present offered. It does not help
to call him a 'comic element'; let him be comic or tragic; that
does not matter; the question is, 'Is he relevant?'
So far as I am aware, no one has yet essayed in this case the
suggestion of a difference between ancient and modern sentiment. It has not been contended that though, from the modern




26


E URIPIDES.


English point of view, to get very drunk in the house of a
gentleman who has treated you with marked courtesy seems an
odd preparation for wrestling victoriously with the Angel of
Death, an ancient Athenian would not have been displeased.
For the satisfaction however of possible doubts, it may be said
that beyond all question the ancient Athenians must have been
far more displeased. Even to us, among whom (to our shame be
it said) it is still widely held that drunkenness is in itself highly
amusing, and always excusable (considering the temptation)
unless very gross, even to us the behaviour of Heracles seems
not easily pardonable. But the abuse of wine was not a popular
vice among the Greeks; and they were not disposed to make
light of it. They reserved the main benefit of their indulgence,
as we ours, for the excesses to which they were addicted. A
comic tale like Pickwick, in which the male characters, good and
bad alike, are sopping and swilling daily and hourly throughout,
would probably have been read by Aristophanes with the same
sense of' allowance for the ethics of the age', which we make in
the case of the Lysistrata. An Athenian could of course, under
suitable circumstances, enjoy the grotesqueness of a drunkard as
well as of a glutton. For example, the figure of Heracles
himself, in his character of 'strong man' and huge feeder, was
familiarly so exhibited on the comic stage; but then he was
exhibited as a grotesque, intentionally contemptible. But that
will not help the Alcestis, where the question that arises is
this, 'Can a man make himself tipsy, and this at a time and
place specially unfit, without deserving contempt?' It is certain
that an Athenian would have been not more but less likely
than an Englishman to answer this question in the affirmative.
Before we part finally with Balaustion's encomiums upon
Heracles, we should perhaps give a separate word to one of
her ex parte judgments, which proceeds on an assumption not
peculiar to Browning, but mistaken nevertheless and injurious to
the play. We are invited by Balaustion more than once to
contrast the bravery of Heracles, who 'held his life out in his
hand for any man to take', with the cowardice of other persons,
the Chorus and the servants, who did not save the much-praised
Alcestis by taking her place as victim of the Fates, and thus




AL CESTIS.


27


redeeming the king at less expense. The old men of Pherae,
says she, are ashamed to tell Heracles on his arrival that the
queen is dead, for fear of his scornful 'Why did you let her die?'
Now as between Heracles and the others this distinction (saving
her respect) is plainly untenable, acceptable only to the blindness
of her partiality. If the Pheraean friends of Admetus were
really admissible as substitutes, then so was Heracles. He
knew the stipulation of the Fates, and knew that Alcestis had
undertaken to fulfil it; he did not know before his visit that a
date had been fixed for the fulfilment; but why did he wait for
this?  Here was just the occasion, if ever, for 'holding his life
out in his hand', and bestowing on his friend Admetus both life
and wife at once. So far Balaustion's error is personal and
easily disposed  of. But her charge against the friends of
Admetus generally is a separable point, and deserves attention.
If, for instance, any one of the Chorus could have redeemed
Admetus, there is, as Browning felt, something tasteless in their
laudation of Alcestis for consenting, and downright fatuity in
their denunciation of his parents for refusing. And the case of
the household is worse; for if Admetus had a claim upon anyone, it was surely on the serfs whom, as Apollo experienced, he
treated with such remarkable kindness. But in truth the whole
charge rests on a misconception. According to Euripides, who
presumably follows tradition, the bargain of the Fates was not,
as is often stated or assumed, to take instead of Admetus an)yone w/o consented to die. Upon such terms a Greek gentleman
of wealth and rank would have got off easily. It would have
been strange if not one could have been found, among the many
families of human beings absolutely dependent on him, to purchase his good-will for those they left behind them by giving
the life which he could take. But Euripides expressly says that
Admetus, "having tried all his loved ones, that is to say his
father and aged mother, found none willing to die, except his
wife".' The Greek will not bear the sense, which we should
expect if every substitute was admissible, " having tried all his
1 VV. 15-I 7  7rtvraas 6' eXVyas  Kac 8&eEXO&wv (fi  LS,
wraTrpa yepatliv  '  y o'p' E'CtK7e /L7TrepL,
oVX  q'pe 7rX)7v  yvvatKOSc K.r.X.
Nauck proposed Kat 7arpa ypaypcdv O' in v. i6. Others omit the verse.




28


E URIPIDES.


loved ones, including even his father and aged mother"; and
this is so clear, that corrections have been proposed to get rid
of the difficulty. But the truth is that according to the bargain
none was admissible except the family of Admetus. What the
Fates promised was, in the words of Euripides, that Admetus
should escape "if he gave another corpse instead of his own to
those below".1 This does not mean " if another person would die
instead", but something much more precise. The language
used refers to that simple conception of 'the other life' according to which the dead were not ghosts at large in another world
but persons 'living' together in the burial-place where they
were put. Antigone in Sophocles uses similar language, and
assumes the same conception, when she says, as a reason for
giving funeral rites to her dead brother even at the cost of
offence against the living, "I shall rest a loved one with him
whom I have loved, sinless in my crime; for it will be longer
needful for me to please those below than those here: there I
shall lie for ever".2 The persons described as those below, to
whom Admetus is to give another corpse instead of his own, are
those who, his hour being come, are entitled to his company,
that is to say, the dead of his family. The death of a person of
another family, who would be buried with his 'loved ones', in a
different burying-place, and worshipped with other and alien
rites, would be no compensation at all. Now it happened that
at the time Admetus' whole family (excluding his young
children, who of course could not consent, nor be sacrificed)
consisted of his father, mother, and wife. He applied to all of
them, " all his loved ones" as Euripides says, and only his wife
would consent. Thus, and thus only, can we understand the
freedom with which the Chorus, as well as Admetus, assail the
selfishness of the father and mother. No one else had refused,
because no one else was admissible. The modern misconception
has arisen from the brevity with which the story, being familiar,
is told in the prologue, and from our want of acquaintance with
the religious beliefs and formularies presupposed. However this
is a small matter and a side-matter. Let us return to the main
issue.


1 v. 14   AXXov &taXXc\ avTa TO1S KAcTW vEKp'v.


2 v. 73.




AL CESTIS.


29


The moment is convenient for looking round us and considering where we are arrived. We set out from the observation
that, with individual varieties of tone, the expositors of the
Alcestis all agree in expressing surprise and dissatisfaction at
the incongruity between the nature of the supposed story and
the characters of Admetus and Heracles. The depth of this
dissatisfaction, we said, might be measured, even better than by
the outspoken scoffs of malevolent critics, by the efforts of
benevolent critics to explain the incongruity away. We have
now considered the allegations of two benevolent critics, Mr
Way and Browning. They, if they do not stand alone in their
respective classes, may be taken as typical of those who, seeing
that for the purpose designed the defence of the impeached
characters, or of one at least, must be complete and thoroughgoing, have tried to make it so. Mr Way says that the Admetus
of the play is altogether noble from a Greek point of view.
Browning says that the Heracles of the play is altogether noble,
because he is Heracles, and Euripides has shown how sublime
Heracles is. But when we go back to the text we find in the
case of Admetus an express statement that Greeks would not
take the favourable view attributed to them, and in the case of
Heracles none of those traits, actions, and symbols which
Euripides (as we see in another play) thought proper to show
his sublimity, but instead of them other lineaments which are
manifestly ignoble and noted as such by the author. In such
circumstances the thorough-going style of defence is impracticable for the average composer of continuous commentary,
bound or safeguarded by the necessity of weighing all that the
author has said, and the impossibility of putting anything in.
But the instinct, which Browning and Mr Way by their
several methods attempt to satisfy, is imperious and universal.
If the play, and especially the conclusion of it, is to harmonize
at all with the supposed design, then something of heroic
dignity, something above the commonplace, must be attached,
if not both to Heracles and to Admetus, at least to one of them,
and to Admetus rather, since, though the part of Heracles is
more important to the religious legend, that of Admetus bulks
larger in Euripides. An expedient, which avoids the impracticable extreme of a thorough-going admiration, has been found




30


E URIPIDES.


for making a tolerable hero out of the Euripidean Admetus, and
has been adopted, I think, universally. Having said this, I
naturally feel some reluctance and embarrassment in saying,
what nevertheless after long consideration I must say, deliberately and respectfully, that this expedient exhibits the most
extraordinary proof conceivable of our human capacity for
ignoring what we do not wish to see, and believing not what
we know but what we like.
It has been said in book after book, that the character of
Admetus as presented by Euripides, however unattractive and
undignified in other respects, is redeemed by one trait of true
nobility, the ideal of friendship and hospitality which he exhibits,
at the expense of his tenderest feelings, in the reception and
entertainment of his guest. As a husband he is perhaps not up
to the standard, but then what a host! How worthy of the
prince, whose prosperity was founded upon his kind treatment
of Apollo as a servant in his house, is the suppression of self,
which enables him, by concealing the truth, to open his door to
the traveller in the very instant of his bereavement! Here lies
the unity of the whole play, the moral of which "undoubtedly is,
that disinterested hospitality never fails of its reward ". So, and
with such emphasis of type, says Paley1; and so say the rest in
a chorus. Let us then contemplate for a little the act of virtue,
to which our reverence is thus powerfully invited.
The case, it will be remembered, is this. Heracles, on his
way from Argos to the north, is passing through Pherae, in
which town he has many friends, Admetus being one of the
number. He is on an errand imposed by authority, and so
pressing as not to admit of more than a few hours' delay'.
With the purpose of requesting this temporary entertainment
he selects the house of Admetus, who tells us that he has been
very well entertained himself by Heracles on the occasion of
visits to Argos. It happens that he arrives at the palace just
when the master of it is on the point of carrying his wife to the
tomb. Admetus, to account for his emotion and mourning garb,
declares that he is about to perform the funeral of a girl who
had been entrusted to him by her deceased parents and has
died in his house. Heracles expresses his regret at having
' On v. 1147.      2 v. I IS2.




AL CESTIS.


31


arrived so inopportunely, and is about to go elsewhere; but
Admetus protests that there is no reason for this; 'the dead are...dead; his guest will be put in a part of the house quite
separate from that in which the funeral preparations are proceeding'; and finally cuts short his objections by handing him
over to a servant, who receives orders to take care that the
provision is ample, and to keep the doors shut between the
respective apartments, while Admetus himself retires to continue the obsequies of the supposed orphan.
And this is hospitality! This is the ideal of friendship!
This is the act, which not only redeems a man from the
imputation of selfishness, but by its high nobility explains and
recommends a story designed to show us how heaven rewarded it
with a benevolent miracle! I venture to say on the contrary
that the behaviour of Admetus to Heracles is just of a piece
with the rest of his proceedings, inconsiderate, indelicate, and
unkind; that no one in his own case, and no one in any case,
unless compelled by some supposed necessity, would esteem it
otherwise; and that this view, if it were not provable by the
common sense and sentiments of mankind, would still have to
be accepted as the view of Euripides, inasmuch as the act is
condemned by every one of his mouth-pieces, the personages of
the drama, not excepting Admetus himself.
Be it observed in the first place that, if the entertainment
thus bestowed upon Heracles is to be reckoned a proof of kindness, this must be on some other ground than the mere material
benefit of shelter and food, for these he did not lack. We are
told repeatedly', whenever in fact Admetus refers to the subject,
that Heracles had other friends at hand, from whom, if allowed
to depart, he could and would have obtained refreshment. And
it is evident that, unless it were in the quality of the viands,
almost any entertainment must have been more comfortable than
that which is forced upon him by Admetus, a solitary meal
consumed under the eyes of unwilling servants, while the
so-called host is engaged in conducting a funeral. Indeed, to
do Admetus justice, he never does pretend that his motive in
the matter is solicitude for his friend. The ground on which he
1 e.g. vv. 538, 1044.
I,


d




32


E URIPIDES.


defends himself against objections is that, if Heracles had gone
elsewhere, his own character for hospitality would have suffered;
So adding to my ills this other ill
That mine were styled a house inhospitable.
From whom under the circumstances this reproach was to be
apprehended, and why any one should take a view of the case
so different from that of Heracles himself and of the protesting
Chorus, Admetus does not explain; but we will assume for the
moment that the apprehension is real and not groundless. In
that case the conduct of Admetus, though not in the least noble
or even disinterested, is prudent and so far justifiable; he
protects himself against possible censure, which any man has
a right to do, provided that he can do it without wronging
another.
But how can Admetus be brought within the limits of this
proviso? And does then Heracles sustain no wrong? What
of the deceit which is practised upon his confidence in Admetus'
loyalty? What of the false position in which he is thus led to
place himself, what of the mortification and self-reproach which
he thereby incurs? The deceit in itself would have been sufficiently offensive, even if it had led to no worse consequence
than the unpleasantness of recollection, when sooner or later he
made the inevitable discovery. When one friend demands and
another renders a trivial service of little intrinsic value, the
pledge of friendship is not in the thing bestowed, as in this
case the victuals and drink, but in the mutual confidence and
goodwill, which makes it seem natural to each that he should
thus ask or be asked. Common free consent is the essence of
the matter, and the only estimable part of it. But if there is on
one side no consent, or if, which is the same thing, the consent
of one party is only secured by the fraud of the other, so that he
asks and accepts on a misrepresentation what, not needing it,
he would not ask or accept if he knew the truth, the substance
of friendship is sacrificed to the mere appearance and form of it.
The friendship of Admetus and Heracles is so strong that
Admetus cannot possibly allow Heracles to take a meal in
another house instead of in his own; and yet this same friendship is so slight, that Heracles has no claim to share the sorrow




AL CESTIS.


33


of Admetus when his wife is lying dead in the house! Admetus
insists that Heracles, if he had been told the truth, would have
gone elsewhere. Whether this would in fact have been so, we
have no means of judging. It would depend on the real relations
between the two men, or rather on Heracles' opinion of those
relations: he might have been moved to go, and he might
have been moved to remain. But one thing surely is manifest,
that if Admetus conjectures truly, he thereby condemns his
trick. So much for the deceit in itself, for the mere offence
against loyalty. But the offence goes deeper than this. Being
thus admitted or rather entrapped into the house, Heracles
behaves there in such a way, that on learning the truth from a
servant he is overwhelmed with horror and self-disgust. For
the full extent of this misadventure Admetus is not solely
responsible. He could not perhaps be expected to guess that
his excellent friend would console himself for the want of
society by getting drunk, especially as the circumstances, even
as pretended, would have sufficed to restrain most men from
this extremity. But neither is Admetus excusable. The actual
sequel does but emphasize the predictable risk to which he
exposes his unsuspecting guest, who, without going as far as he
does, might have done many things unsuitable to the awful
situation in which the household is found. What right or
approvable reason has Admetus for thrusting another upon
this danger, merely because it consists with his opinion of his
own interests that his bread should be eaten and not the bread
of his neighbours; and where is the nobility of this economical
purchase? I say nothing about the quality, in regard to the
dead wife, of the particular lies by which the noble result is
achieved.
Such, as it seems to me, would be the judgment on the case,
if argued from the sentiments of mankind in general. But what
we are concerned with after all is the sentiment of the Greeks
as conceived by Euripides. Let us see how he represents it.
The first to pronounce an opinion are the Chorus, from whom, as
the especial friends of Admetus, accustomed by long respect
and affection to regard him with uncommon indulgence, we
1 v. 212, and passim.


V. E.


3




34


E URIPIDES.


may expect the best that can be said for his conduct. But they
expostulate vehemently:
Admetus! what, with such a sorrow here
Hast heart for entertainment? Why so mad?
And when Admetus pleads the importance of sustaining his
reputation, and the high claims of Heracles as a friend, they
reply:
If he be e'en so dear, how was it then
That thou didsl not impfart thy present case?
It will be seen that they put simply and sharply the precise
dilemma which we have already expounded in the foregoing
remarks. Either Heracles is very near and dear to Admetus,
or he is not. If he is not, it is needless and improper to admit
him at such a moment; if he is, it is needless and improper to
deceive him. That Euripides thought this dilemma, as I think
it, unanswerable, I infer from his making Admetus not solve it
but silence the discussion:
He never would have willed to cross my door
Had he known aught of my calamities.
And probably to some of you I seem
Unwise enough in doing what I do;
Such will scarce praise me: but these halls of mine
Know not to drive away or slight a guest.
And thereupon he retires. Since he has added nothing to his
case as he put it before, except the assumption, both gratuitous
and damaging, that Heracles, if treated frankly, would not have
come in, he naturally supposes the others to maintain their
unanswered objections; and if they were nevertheless represented by Euripides as convinced, that would affect not the
truth but our estimate of their intelligence. But in fact they
retract nothing. Since their admired prince will not hear them,
they set themselves, like loyal courtiers, to make the best of
what he chooses to do. They remind themselves that the house
always was, as Admetus has said, a most liberal and hospitable
house. Had not Apollo consented to live in it, graced it with
miracles, and rewarded it with immense increase of substance
and land? Upon this encouraging theme they are made to
dilate with a fulness, which has been noted as exceeding the




AL CESTIS.


35


occasionS, and justly so noted, were it not that irrelevance is
the only way of escape for those who desire to applaud what
they have rationally condemned. Between the treatment of
Apollo and the treatment of Heracles there is neither analogy
nor connexion: but the speakers assume that, strange though it
seems to them, from the glory and blessing thus earned must be
traced the sensitiveness of Admetus towards possible injury to
the reputation of his house as a place of reception. " It is a
part of high breeding" they say "to tend exceedingly to the
point of honour"; and they add with generous breadth of
allowance that " upon the noble all the virtues rest ", or in other
words, the actions of princes are presumably right because
theirs. " It is amazing: but we have a settled confidence that
the god-worshipping man will fare well and do well", a double
inference which Greek enables them to express in a single term
of convenient ambiguity 2. With this pious petitio principii they
conclude and the king re-enters. How they might have reviewed
their doctrine in the light of subsequent events we do not learn;
for, as we shall see, at the close of the play it is not found convenient by the author that they should explain their sentiments;
but it will be consistent with their attitude throughout, if we
suppose them to acquiesce, as before, in the final pronouncement
of Admetus.
It is curious and instructive to note that Browning, who,
having discovered (as he supposed) a satisfactory hero for the
play in Heracles, was little concerned for the honour of Admetus,
and could judge without prejudice what Euripides really says of
him, has a comment here on the inadequacy of the language put
in the mouth of the Chorus to express what (ex hypothesi) the
situation requires. It is, I think, the only occasion on which
Balaustion goes so far as to suggest a correction.
And on each soul this boldness settled now,
1 Prof. Paul Decharme, Euripide et l'es5rit de son thieare, p. 436. I shall have
occasion to refer again to this excellent book.
2 wc. 600-605.
rO yap evyeves eKpepeTat 7rpbs aiew,
ev roS aoyaOotat e 7rcaLvr' gveCortv ao/ias.
ayay/at    ' 7rpos  '  e xju~  vx  Ofdpaoos  torat
Oeoare[3r  p&ra  Keva' 7rpaoetv.
3 —2




36


E URIPIDES.


she says, citing in indirect form the terms of the original,
That one, who reverenced the Gods so much,
Would prosper yet: (or-I could wish it ranWho venerates the Gods, i' the main will still
Practise things honest though obscure to judge).
Exactly so: if Euripides expects us to admire the behaviour of
Admetus as a host, and has founded his play upon this expectation, the Chorus, whose first judgment is unfavourable,
should have been made to disprove and retract their opinion, or
at least to acknowledge in unequivocal terms that, however the
thing may look, they must be mistaken. It is strange (ex hypothesi) and unsatisfactory, that all their inspiriting reminiscences
should bring them no nearer to the point than this, that with a
man so pious all will assuredly...be right.
It appears then that at this point the sentence upon Admetus'
action remains in suspense: and there it is left, till we come to
the concluding dialogue between the prince and the traveller.
For as to the ejaculations and speeches of Heracles in the
moment when he discovers the fact concealed from him, and
resolves to recover Alcestis from the grasp of Death, they are
from the circumstances inadmissible as matter of judgment.
He is then speaking under the double excitement of wine and
remorse. He is filled, as any man would be, when his eyes are
thus suddenly opened, with the sense of his own misbehaviour
and loss of respect. His one impulse is to put himself right
forthwith and recover his dignity, "to approve himself" as he
says, " for a son of Zeus " by a signal service rendered to those
whose hospitality he had claimed and certainly, as he perceives,
has abused. He is thus in no condition to estimate or to
consider the behaviour of his friend to himself: and in fact his
exclamations, so far as they touch this side of the matter, betray
by their inconsistency that he has not yet reflected on it. At
the first moment of suspecting a deceit he cries out against it as
an incredible injury:
Have I been outraged by my friend and host?'
And in the same spirit he reproaches the slave, in language
broken with indignation, for having complied with Admetus'
' v. 816.




ALCESTIS.


37


order that he should be kept in the dark. On the other hand
in the course of the wild and startling tirade which precedes his
exit, he works himself up to the opposite point of view, and
expresses it with an energy and assurance far exceeding that
of Admetus. As the speech is for many reasons important, as
it contains the only unequivocal commendation bestowed in the
drama upon the act which we have to consider, and as Browning,
cheered, we may well suppose, by finding here, for the first and
last time, something like the tone of religious confidence which
the Heracles of Balaustion's Adventure might be expected to
use, has discarded for the moment the somewhat stumbling
style of his average dialogue, and has produced a version of
excellent spirit, I should like to quote the whole of it.
O much-enduring heart and hand of mine
Now show what sort of son she bore to Zeus,
That daughter of Electruon, Tiruns' child,
Alkmene! for that son must needs save now
The just-dead lady: ay, establish here
I' the house again Alkestis, bring about
Comfort and succour to Admetos so!
I will go lie in wait for Death, black-stoled
King of the corpses! I shall find him, sure,
Drinking, beside the tomb, o' the sacrifice:
And if I lie in ambuscade, and leap
Out of my lair, and seize-encircle him
Till one hand join the other round aboutThere lives not who shall pull him out from me,
Rib-mauled, before he let the woman go!
But even say I miss the booty,-say,
Death comes not to the holtered blood,-why then,
Down go I, to the unsunned dwelling-place
Of Kor6 and the king there,-make demand
Confident I shall bring Alkestis back,
So as to put her in the hands of him
My host, that housed me, never drove me off:
Though stricken with sore sorrow, hid the stroke,
Being a noble heart and honouring me!
Who of Thessalians, more than this man, loves
The stranger? Who, that now inhabits Greece?
Wherefore he shall not say the man was vile
Whom he befriended-native noble heart!


A fine declamation, amazingly fine-and not the less so, or




38


E URIPIDES.


less suited to the state of the speaker, that it cannot possibly be
reconciled with his indignant condemnation of the same 'noble
host', pronounced but a few minutes before.    But if we want his
fixed and deliberate opinion, we shall plainly do well to consult
him at some hour when he is...more himself. And this Euripides
permits us to do. For when Heracles comes back from the
tomb with the disguised Alcestis, and faces Admetus for the
first time since the discovery of the deception, he goes to that
subject forthwith, and treats it in a manner as sober as we could
possibly desire.
The tone indeed of his opening so little satisfies Balaustion,
that before she begins to quote she puts in, as her fashion is at
such places, a more than commonly eloquent description of her
own. This, though excellent as original poetry, suffers as an
exposition of Euripides from the unlucky fact that it does not
accord with the speech which it introduces, as Balaustion herself
ingenuously confesses by directing us to put the description out
of sight again before we come to the speech itself. The whole
passage is so interesting an example of Browning's method, that,
though his version is here not so good as in the last citation
and wants altogether the polish of the original, we will cite it
nevertheless together with his preamble. The version is substantially faithful, and free at any rate from the suspicion of
serving unduly any purpose of mine.
Ay, he it was advancing! In he strode
And took his stand before Admetos-turned
Now by despair to such a quietude,
He neither raised his voice nor spoke, this time,
The while his friend surveyed him steadily.
That friend looked rough with fighting: had he strained
Worst brute to breast was ever strangled yet?
Some how, a victory-for there stood the strength
Happy, as always; somlething grave perhasys;
The great vein-cordage on the fret-worked front
Black-swollen, beaded yet with battle-dew
The yellow hair of the hero!-his big frame
A-quiver with each muscle sinking back
Into the sleety smooth it leaped from late.
Under the great guard of one arm, there leant
A shrouded something, live and woman-like,
Proipped by the heart-beats 'neath the lion-coat.




AL CESTIS.


39


When he had finished his survey, it seemed,
The heavings of the heart began subside,
The helpful breath returned, and last the smile
Shone out, all Herakles was back again,
As the words followed the saluting hand.
"To friendly man behoves we freely speak,
Admetos!-nor keep buried, deep in breast
Blame we leave silent. I assuredly
Judged myself proper, if I should approach
By accident calamities of thine,
To be demonstrably thy friend: but thou
Told'st me not of the corpse then claiming care,
That was1 thy wife's, but didst instal me guest
I' the house here, as though busied with a grief
Indeed, but then, were grief beyond thy gate:
And so, I crowned my head, and to the Gods
Poured my libations in thy dwelling-place,
With such misfortune round me. And I blameCertainly blame thee, having suffered thus!
But still I would not pain thee, pained enough:
So let it pass "
Here by way of parenthesis I would ask the reader to compare carefully this speech with the foregoing picture; to remark
the device by which the one is linked to the other; to note that
Euripides has nothing anywhere to warrant one stroke of the
picture, and nothing in this place but a remark from the Chorus
that the person approaching the house appears to be Heracles;
to consider how easy it could have been to suggest such a
picture by common dramatic means-and then to believe, if he
can, that Browning and Euripides have here the same conception and purpose. To proceed however with our immediate
subject. The reply of Admetus, so far as it relates to the
present matter, runs in Browning's version as follows:
Nowise dishonouring, nor amid my foes
Ranking thee, did I hide my wife's ill fate;
But it were grief superimposed on grief,
Shouldst thou have hastened to another home.
My own woe was enough for me to weep!
Now it is evident that these two speeches, allowing for the
difference of speaker, decide the main question, whether the
1 That 'twas would better express the meaning. Is was perhaps a misprint or
slip of the pen?




40


E URIPIDES.


behaviour of Admetus to Heracles was right or wrong, kind or
unkind, in the same sense, and that is, against Admetus. The
language of Heracles is frankly that of reproach, tempered but
not substantially modified by compassion. He had a claim, he
says-and surely this is the pith and sense of the whole affairhaving come as a friend, to be treated and allowed as a friend,
by receiving confidence and returning sympathy; instead of
this, he was betrayed by deceit into behaviour which it is
painful to remember. And Admetus frankly apologises, defending not his act, but his intentions; he did not mean a
slight, he had no ill-will to Heracles. In explaining what then
his motives were, he is lamer and weaker than ever; but one
thing at least is clear, that he no longer pretends to have done
right. And as this is the last word which we hear on the
subject, we may and must conclude that it is the verdict not
only of Heracles, and Admetus, and his friends, and his servants,
but of the poet himself, and that whatever the object of his play
may have been, it was certainly not to recommend, as an example of supreme and divinely rewarded kindness, an act for
which he finds nothing more to be said than that it was not
designed as an injury.
In saying that we hear no more on the subject, I should not
and do not forget a passing allusion, which occurs a little later,
almost at the end of the play, and upon which the reader, if he
depended on the interpretation of Browning and some others,
might certainly found some remarkable inferences. It is the
farewell of Heracles to Admetus, and is rendered by Browning
thus:
Lead her in meanwhile; good and true thou art,
Good, true remain thou! Practise piety
To stranger-guests the old way!1
1 v. 1t47.      CdXX' ei'ay' el'oo 7 rve' KCal &KaCos 3wv,
rT XOLtr6o, '"AxT-ir', E7evSe'e repti 4vovs.
Mr Way writes:
But lead her in, and, just man as thou art,
Henceforth, Admetus, reverence still the guest.
This is not so loose as Browning's, but betrays the same misconception by inserting
still, which is not in the Greek and makes all the difference. Nor does it, though
this is of less importance, rightly represent L&KaCos c', which, to be connected with
the rest of the sentence, must have the meaning assigned by others 5Kicao cxv (7rateiv
7TVTO), i.e. ELvSe3efiv 7repi tevOVS.




A L CESTIS.


41


If Heracles did indeed say this, we should be driven to suppose
that, in spite of all the contrary evidence, Euripides meant us
somehow to conclude in favour of the hospitality which Admetus
has just exhibited. But in fact he says nothing of the sort. In
Browning's version the words good and true thou art are a mistranslation, while the words good, true remain thou, and the still
more important words the old way, are additions for which the
original has nothing at all. The error is not originally Browning's, but has crept into commentaries because of the very
prejudice which it serves to sustain. The true English is:
"Now lead her in; and as thou art bound, henceforth, Admetus,
behave duly to guests". That Admetus, after his present experience and the generosity of Heracles, is under a particular
obligation to observe the duties of friendship and hospitality in
future, is true; and so he is plainly told: but so far from commending his recent conduct for an example, Heracles would
seem rather, by this very injunction, to regard it as a warning,
and in the light of his previous reproof, he cannot be otherwise
understood. And so Admetus does understand him; for his
final declaration is not that he will persevere in his virtue, but
that "from this time forward his life is transformed for the
better", a transformation which among other things would
include, it is to be hoped, a better theory and practice in the
way of dealing with persons who accept his friendship.
Before quitting the subject of Admetus' 'hospitality', we
may observe that this unanimity of condemnation among the
dramatis personae must determine our opinion, so far at least as
concerns the play, not only with regard to the act in itself, but
also as to the pretext for it which is pleaded by Admetus.
When he says-and it is all that he has to say-that if Heracles
had gone away from his door it would have affected injuriously
the reputation of his house, we must understand that this excuse
is not only (as it is) irrelevant, for reasons which, if not apparent
before, become so at any rate after the rebuke of Heracles, but
is also untrue. We must view this "excess of susceptibility"
with the wonder, and something more than the wonder, which it
excites at the moment in the indulgent minds of the Chorus. If
Euripides had thought it possible that any one in Pherae or in
Athens should seriously maintain the opinion of social obligation




42


E URIPIDES.


which Admetus pretends to fear, he would have shown us at
least some one person actually so maintaining it. But in fact
he assumes and implies that every one then would think what
in a case unprejudiced every one now would think. The obvious,
natural, and only permissible course for the master of the house
was to acquaint his friend and visitor with the facts as they
really were; and whether after that the visitor stayed or went,
whether he took his meal in that house or the next, was a thing
indifferent, to be settled between the parties according to their
mutual feelings, but not touching the duty or affecting the
character of either in the slightest degree. And indeed we see
that even Admetus, when he has to face not his obsequious
inferiors but Heracles, does not venture to make this plea a
part of his apology, but says merely that to let the visitor go
elsewhere would have been painful to ihimself, a needless
addition to the grief of his bereavement. I will not waste
the time of the reader, by explaining what he doubtless perceives, that in this altered form the excuse is still as vain as
ever, or worse, involving the same false assumption about the
facts, the same evasion of the issue, and adding fresh absurdity
at which we have full liberty to laugh. Only fancy the widower
'weeping' as he pictures himself 'not only' because his wife
was dead 'but also' because the cup and plate of his friend
were being filled by the slaves of some other Pheraean!
The common attempt therefore, to educe a unity and moral
for the play from the nobleness of Admetus as a host, can as
little be approved or allowed as the attempt of Browning to
introduce a unity and moral by ennobling the conception of
Heracles. The 'hospitality' of Admetus is an offence, which
he is compelled to confess, and for which his real motives, since
those which he chooses to allege are neither credible nor intelligible, must be supposed such as he does not care to avow.
But although he does not avow them, they may nevertheless be
discoverable or even obvious: and so we shall find that they
are, if, putting aside all presumptions about what Euripides must
have meant and therefore should or should not have said, we
will but attend to what he does say, and allow ourselves to learn
what he did mean. But for this purpose we must quit for the
I v. t039.




AL CESTIS.


43


present this particular topic of 'hospitality': we must widen the
scope of our consideration to take in the action of the play as a
whole, and must observe a certain element in the facts presented,
of which if we take no heed, we ourselves are responsible for
the oversight, and not the author, who has omitted no available
means of keeping it steadily before us.
The modern reader, having arrived at ancient Greek drama,
as he commonly must, through a course of modern commentary
and criticism, approaches it as a rule under a general prepossession, that among the things which he must not expect
from the dramatist is a regard for the relation of events to one
another in the article of time. Time (it is understood and
occasionally asserted) is an element of reality which the Greek
dramatist, in his imitation, did not pretend to account for. It
was covered, obliterated, ignored by a general agreement between artist and audience. Time in a Greek tragedy is 'ideal',
or to speak more plainly, insignificant. Whether the scenes of
the story are supposed to pass slowly or rapidly, or by how long
an interval one incident is separated from another, are questions
which the Greek dramatist never entertained, nor the Greek
audience either. By a convention (it is said) the incidents of a
Greek tragedy were supposed, whether this were in fact possible
or not, to occupy a day or thereabouts, and within this 'ideal '
day they may be distributed as you please. If, ignoring this
conventional treatment, you try to translate the story into terms
of real time, you will become aware of your error by finding
yourself involved in contradictions, compelled (for example) to
suppose that one and the same interlude represents for one
purpose an interval of a few hours but for another purpose an
interval of as many weeks. This 'systole and diastole', with
many other remarkable things, is a natural effect of the convention. Now I do not propose here to investigate this theory, as
it does not directly concern us. Its development is a curious
chapter in the history of opinion, and I have tried to relate it
elsewhere. Under the name of 'the unity of time', a term now
happily, if slowly, going out of use, it has had in its day an
immense influence both on dramatic composition and on the
archaeology of the drama. So that although it is utterly untrue,
1 In the Introduction (Essay iII.) to the edition and translation of Euripides' on.i.




44


E URIPIDES.


the traceable product of mere blunders committed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and although these errors,
or part of them, are now widely recognized and the theory
decadent, some of the parasitic errors, to which in the nature
of things it gave rise, are still flourishing or alive: and the study
of Greek tragedy is still influenced by vague but efficient presumptions which have no higher or better credited origin.
To some such cause I should attribute the fact that, so far
as I am aware, in none of our commentaries or studies on the
Alcestis is any note taken of an element in the story presented,
which, if the play were treated as liable to the ordinary judgment of our senses, would certainly strike a reader at the first
view as one of the most startling in the whole remarkable
narrative. I refer to the haste and precipitancy, irregular and
indecent in any case, and in this particular case nothing less
than outrageous, with which the corpse of the noble heroine is
conveyed to the grave.
Strange enough in itself, even if this were all, and sufficiently
offensive to the customs imposed by nature and necessity upon
mankind, would be the performance of the funeral on the day of
the death. It is perhaps needless to say that this was no more
the practice in Athens, and therefore no more likely there to
seem probable to the inventor of a fiction or to pass with an
audience for satisfactory, than it is or would be among ourselves
at the present time. Indeed it is inconceivable, for obvious and
imperative reasons, that such a custom should prevail anywhere
or at any time. In ancient Athens, as a matter of fact, the
general sentiment, so far as it differed from ours, differed rather
in the other direction. The primitive doctrine, which associated
the personality of a dead man as much or more with the visible
body than with an unseen spirit, had by no means, in the time
of Euripides or even later, yielded the field to the more refined
and spiritual doctrine which places personality altogether in a
soul; and there was still therefore a disposition to extend the
observance bestowed upon the corpse, in respect of time, magnificence, and otherwise, much beyond the limit which enlightened
and practical regulators would have liked to establish. Plato
in a curious passage of the Laws' lays down that the funeral
1 p1 959.




ALCESTIS.


45


may safely take place, and therefore should take place, on the
next day but one after that of the decease, and that a statute to
this effect should be accompanied by public instruction in the
true doctrine of personality, calculated to appease the sentimental opposition which he evidently anticipates. There were
indeed, or perhaps rather had been, some who, by a more crude
application of what we may call the corporeal doctrine of the
dead, arrived at the conclusion that a corpse should be buried as
soon as conveniently might be, so that the dead might pass
entire into the other world. The doctrine appears in Homer1.
The actual practice in historical times seems to have been much
the same as our own, except that the performances in the house
and about the dead body were much more elaborate and indispensable, as indeed in most countries they still are. As to the
mere question of time there is little range for choice, so far as
the mass of mankind are concerned: within narrow limits it is
settled, without regard to sentiments or doctrines, by the laws of
physical fact.
It is to be presumed then that an Athenian, if told that a
certain corpse was buried on the day of the death, would have
felt exactly the same shock of surprise, suspicion, and displeasure
as an Englishman in the like circumstances; and that the same
effect would be produced by the representation of such a proceeding on the stage. Why should the dramatist make his
personages do an outrageous thing, except in order that its
impropriety might be observed? There was no compulsion on
him. It is true that there were practical reasons, arising from
the arrangements of the Greek theatre and company, why the
action of a play should not, if it could be avoided, be such as
to occupy more than a day or thereabouts. And it could be
avoided in most cases by a little ingenuity. For example, it
would have been perfectly easy to present a story like that of
Alcestis, a story of death and revival, without introducing any
funeral at all, and so that a day or a few hours should naturally
cover events from first to last. But the dramatist, if he chose,
might sacrifice theatrical convenience to some other consideration, and make his action as long as he pleased. Euripides
1 I. 23. 7I. See Smith's Diet. Ant. " Funus".
2 See the essay on ' The Unity of Time', cited above.




46


E URIPIDES.


himself, for instance, in his Suppliants presents an action which
would occupy from first to last something like a month, and he
does so without any disguise, leaving the imagination of the
audience to leap the necessary interval at the proper time.
And similarly if he or any playwright had presented within one
action a death and burial, and had meant the proceedings to
appear natural and regular, he could and must have allowed a
time sufficient for them; he would have shown us where we
should suppose the lapse of that interval which could not be
denied without affronting the reason and feelings of humanity.
There are of course exceptional cases, in which prompt and
hasty burial is a sign not of negligence but of love, inasmuch
as the rite, if delayed, is likely to be prevented. We have an
instance in the Ajax of Sophocles1: but such is not our present
affair. The Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus is something
nearer, though even there the circumstances are highly peculiar,
the dead having been slain in the assault and defence of a
beleaguered fortress, from whose walls the enemy have just fallen
back. It is not improbable that in such a situation no time
would be lost. However the dramatist does not demand the
supposition, but leaves us to settle the procedure for ourselves,
providing us by the regular means of a choric ode with an
opportunity for interpolating as much time as we think necessary. Such a fortiori would have been the natural representation of an ordinary case.
And what of the actual case, the case of Alcestis? If the
omission of these universal dues would be noticeable in itself,
what is it, when the dead is an Alcestis? That we should
forget her surpassing claim to every possible sign of love and
respect is certainly not the intention of the poet. From first to
last the subject of the honours, which ought to be and must be
paid to her, is prominent in the minds of the speakers. Twice
in beautiful songs2 the Chorus dilate on the worship which she
will receive; how as the noblest of womankind she will be
celebrated in the religious feasts of Hellas, and her heroism will
be annually sung at Sparta or at Athens; how when travellers
pass her tomb, they will pray to her spirit (which doubtless they
did) as to a guardian angel. All Pherae is filled with admiration
1 See 7. ro40, and the finale from  this point.  2 v. 435, 'z  991.




AL CESTIS.


47


of her; and as to the household, the men-servants and maidservants, their reverence and affection is altogether inexpressible.
The slaves who wait upon Heracles are almost ready to rebel
because they thus miss the chance of saying a ceremonious
farewell to the corpse1. But none is more eloquent upon this
theme, as indeed none has more cause, than the husband for
whom she dies, Admetus himself. In the promise of mourning
observances he is inexhaustible; the utmost efforts of imagination seem, as we note with sympathy, insufficient to answer
his intentions. No common widower's year of black, he says
while still the ears of his wife are open to his assurances, will
content his grief. His whole life will be spent not merely in
cherishing but in acting his regret. Never an entertainment
any more in the house, which has been so hospitable. No
garlands, no music ever again; where would be the pleasure of
them? The very bed of the wife will be occupied only by a
graven imitation of her, upon which the husband will bestow his
embraces, as if it were indeed herself. Nor when she has ceased
to hear him does he cease to promise; rather his anticipations
take a wider range3. It is his command that the public celebration, like the private, shall be on a scale almost incredible.
All his subjects are to put into mourning their persons, their
households, and (if they have them) their carriages; nor is this
injunction limited to any period of time. Even the severe
ordinance that 'neither flute nor lyre shall be heard,' an ordinance which in a Greek town would have had an effect something
like that of a papal interdict in the middle ages, curtailing or
suspending every office of social and religious life and practically
closing the schools, even this refinement of severity is expressly
extended to 'twelve full months'. No burial, as he justly adds,
could better deserve such recognition than that of his queen
deserves it from the king of Thessaly.
But all this predicted, prospective, and promissory magnificence, this more than liberal estimate of what shall be, must
be done by himself and his people in the future to show forth
by outward signs their eternal memory and worship of the
heroic dead, does not in the least affect, except so far as to
illuminate by the light of contrast, the visible fact that Alcestis


a v. 767 -

2 v. 336.


3 v. 425.




48


E URIPIDES.


is actually buried not like a heroine, not like a queen, not even
with the commonest offices of love, nor the barest observances
of humane precaution, but with just such perfunctory haste as
might be thought permissible in the case of a corpse infected
with the plague: and that this arrangement of her obsequies
is due to the express prevision and persistence of the king her
husband. What he ought to have done, what he feels and
knows that he ought to have done, we are perpetually reminded by the eloquent outpourings of his uneasy conscience.
But what he does, we see; and strange is the comparison.
For if it would be surprising and unsatisfactory that without
grave cause a body should be entombed on the day of the
death, what shall be said of a funeral, which is commenced not
merely within the same hour, but at the very minute of the
death itself, while the corpse is yet as warm as in life, and
almost before the departed voice has ceased to vibrate upon the
ear; a funeral, which from that moment to its completion is
pushed forward in spite of hindrance with all the speed that
forethought and ingenuity can secure? Such is the funeral
of Alcestis. The extraordinary scene which ensues upon her
death would prove of itself, even if we had not had previous
intimations to the same effect, that nothing is or has been more
near to her husband's thoughts than the importance of performing her obsequies without the smallest delay. Scarce a
minute has passed since her last 'Farewell!' was spoken, the
wail of her frightened child has scarcely sunk into sobbing, and
the friend who stands by has barely proffered his first word
of condolence, when Admetus, dismissing these commonplaces
with the remark, on this occasion uniquely appropriate, that the
subject has been long the burden of his thoughts, runs on, as it
were in one sentence, to invite the immediate assistance of
his visitors in conveying 'this corpse' to the cemetery'. That
this amazing suggestion is not a birth of the moment, but prearranged with their complicity, is evident not only from the way
in which it is launched, but from their own behaviour in acting
upon it without so much as the form of an acceptance; and in
fact the audience also has already been made privy to their
expectations.
1. 422.




AL CES TIS.


49


The first scene of the action proper1 (first after the prologue)
consists of a curious conversation which passes between these
visitors upon their arrival at the door. Although they come in
the fore-part of the day (as appears shortly afterwards from the
account of what has passed in the house, and would in any case
have been assumed by Greek spectators from the habitual and
almost inevitable practice of the choric dramatists2) they are so
possessed by the unwonted sensation of fore-knowledge and by
the prophetic announcement of the date8, that their first feeling
is surprise at not perceiving about the house the signs which
according to custom would have marked that the decease
had actually taken place; they are surprised at not seeing
before the entrance the holy water and stationary servant, nor
hearing from within the shrieks and beaten hands of women
performing the ceremonial lamentation over the corpse. (We
may observe in passing that, although the whole action proceeds before this same gate, we find no indication in dialogue or
ode that any of these regular things are afterwards done; the
servant, if she takes her station, does so in silence and unheeded, the cries, if any are heard, excite no remark or echo;
nay more, at the time when such demonstrations would naturally
appear, we have, in the conversation of Heracles who happens
just then to arrive, a positive proof that nothing of the sort was
exhibited. It is from the entrance of Admetus, and the marks
on his person, that he receives the first intimation of anything
amiss4.) However in the midst of their conjectures the Chorus
agree, though not without a significant doubt, that at least 'the
corpse cannot have left the house', and the reason is startling.
'Why so?' says some one, 'I dare not say. What makes you
sure?' 'Oh, because surely Admetus could not have performed the funeral of such a wife rwithout attendance ' Manifestly this remark is intelligible only on the supposition that, to
the knowledge of the speakers, the funeral, if performed before
their arrival, could have had no attendance, or in other words,
that they are themselves the invited mourners, and are alone
apprised of the intention, which certainly no uninformed person
1 v. 77 foll.
2 v. r58 foll.  See 'The Unity of Time', already cited.:  7'. 105.      4    7','.  47 -^12.


'.       F,


4




5~


E URIPIJDES.


was likely to anticipate, that the ceremony shall proceed as soon
as ever there is a body to bury. Noticeable moreover is their
conviction of the king's determined haste. It does not seem
inconceivable to some of them, that, if the death has occurred
before their arrival, Admetus may have dispensed wTith a convoy
altogether; for instead of accepting the contrary suggestion as
conclusive, they continue their inferences from the state of the
house-'no holy water, no lock of hair' and so on-inferences
which, as appears from the sequel, do less than justice to the
king's unity of purpose and indifference to needless detail.
They suppose him therefore ready to commit, if necessary,
what to Greek minds was more repugnant than a crime. Even
among ourselves and with the 'psychical' doctrines now prevailing, a prince, who conveyed the corpse of his wife to the
grave with no other attendant than himself, would be censured
severely. What Greeks with their'corporeal' doctrines would
think of him, we may see in Aeschylus. Even the guilt of a
Clytaemnestra, murderess of her lord, can take a blacker shade
from the fact that she buried him 'without the lament of a
husband or the train of a king"': and this it is which, more
than anything else in the story, arouses the frenzy of the
avenger.
But Admetus is not driven to this extremity. The queen's
procession, such as it is, happily arrives at the palace before she
is actually dead. From the report of a maid-servant, who presently comes out of doors to weep, we learn among other things
both why these few persons have been selected for invitation and
why others would not have been welcome. 'I will go', she says,
'and say that you are here. It is not by any means all, who feel
for my lord2 so kindly as to bring to his griefs a sympathetic
presence. But you have been from of old the master's friend'.
That Admetus just at this time is not popular, in his realm
any more than in his household, we hear without surprise. By
requesting and accepting the sacrifice of his more amiable lady,
he would have somewhat dimmed in the general eye the glory of
1 Cho. 4?29.
' v. 21o. The Greek has the plural, but only, according to frequent usage, as a
term of respect. Admetus plainly, and Admetus only, is meant. Towards Alcestis
there could be no feeling but admiration and respect.




A4 CERSTIS.


5


his liberal housekeeping, religious habits, and other unquestioned
virtues. Indeed he is himself obliged to acknowledge, when all
is over and his choice apparently irrevocable, that this disadvantageous impression is only too likely to be permanent'.
We can therefore well understand his wish that the persons
before whom he was to exhibit himself in the position of chief
mourner for the victim (as the less 'kindly' might put it) of his
own cowardice, should be those whose loyal attachment had
been proved by long experience.
The mourning-train then is provided, and so also, as far as
circumstances permit, is the rest of the funeral. It was the
Greek custom that a corpse should be adorned not only with
elaborate wreaths and other such decorations, but also, when the
condition of the family permitted, with jewellery and the like,
which was buried or burnt with it and thus appropriated to the
use of the dead. In reply to a question from the friends-or
should we not rather say, the accomplices?-of Admetus, the
maid-servant informs them and us that this matter has not
escaped his prevision; the articles are selected and prepared;
'Yes, the tiring, which her lord intends to bury with her, is in
readiness'.~ Something, much indeed, Alcestis herself contributes to preparation; for knowing that 'the appointed day' has
dawned for her, she performs upon herself, with pathetic patience
and forethought, the needful washing and robing, and happens
even to conceive the desire of looking once more upon the open
sky, for which purpose she is carried out, apparently on a litter,
to the front of the palace. Nor does she, living or dead, ever
re-enter her own chamber until after she has lain in the grave.
After her death the body is carried into the house; at least it
seems so, though in the absence of stage-directions we cannot be sure of this; but it remains, in the brief interval
before the departure, at the entrance, ready for bearing out,
as appears in the indignant and sneering allusion of the
servant who waits on Heracles.    'But the corpse', says
Heracles, 'was only that of a stranger to the family!' '0
yes', replies the man, playing upon an ambiguous word, 'O
yes, it was out of the family and out of the door, too much


7' 954-                    2 7'- 149




52


EURIPIDES,


so!' This man has no love for the pious Admetus, and does
not conceal his sentimentsl.
That Alcestis is apprised of the plan to precipitate her
burial, or acts under suggestion from those who are, is neither
indicated nor likely; it is conceivable that, had she known it,
she would have seen her self-sacrifice in a new light.  Rather it
is an enhancement of our pity, that without any suspicion she is
furthering by all that she does the plan of a husband who, in the
midst of professing eternal gratitude, is preparing so promptly
to insult her memory. However that may be, it is the joint
result of his proceedings and hers that, when she lies inanimate
at the portal, there is literally nothing left to be done before the
funeral starts, except to shave her husband and slip on his black;
and this is the whole programme of the pomp, as it is actually
carried out. In no way perhaps can the monstrosity of the
performance be more clearly realized, than by asking ourselves
what is the proper costume for the Chorus.   It is certain that
they follow the corpse in the same which they wear when first
they come as visitors. They have no chance of changing.
Admetus does change and, as was the custom of the Greek
dramatists for practical reasons, matters are so arranged that
verbal as well as visible intimation should be given of the
significant alteration'.  But what of his friends?    When
they come to the house ostensibly to enquire of the queen's
condition, do they come with close-cut hair and sable vest?
We are informed of the contrary-' Must we change to black?
Is the time already come?'3 exclaims one of them       oddly,
as an expression of despair; and we should presume it without
information. What could be more repugnant to humanity and
decency, than to surround with anticipatory emblems the couch
of the dying heroine? Or what more offensive to the public,
than to parade the street clad in mourning for a benefactress,
for whom it was still possible to hope and to pray, and whose
1 v. 8II (refer to v. 532 and v. 828, and also to v. 771).
HP. ov Xpj1V  ' oL veiov  y' oiveK'  v  raoiaXerv veKpov;
OE. 7 Kaipra IVr70T Kai XMav OvpaZoS }v.
The reading Mlav OvpaZos is clearly right: Maav oiKcZoS, the facile but pointless
variant, is merely an unintelligent guess.
2.. 12.                   t. 21.




AL Ct STIS.


53


death, however it might appear to Admetus and other such
devotees, would be thought by at least five persons in ten, as it
is by Heracles, not at all necessarily imminent, because it had
been predicted by a prophet? But on the other hand, since the
Chorus are nlot in mourning, what sort of figure must they make
in the character of a funeral procession?
It has been already said that the action of Admetus, in thus
abridging the honours of the deceased, is emphasized and made
conspicuous by the largeness of his promises; and this we see
by the manner in which these promises are introduced. Browning
notes, and we all note with him, the 'childishness', to use the
most charitable expression, of the redeemed husband, when he
assures the redeeming wife how courageously, if he had been an
Orpheus, he would have fronted Cerberus, Charon, and all the
terrors of the underworld, in order to bring back her soul. How
much more simple, as Balaustion observes, to say
what would seem so pertinent,
'To keep this pact, I find surpass my power.
Rescind it, Moirai! Give me back her life,
And take the life I kept by base exchange!'
And just the same futility, by comparison with what we know to
be planned and doing, appears in those other assurances which
make the rest of his speech:
And I shall bear for thee no year-long grief,1
But grief that lasts while my own days last, love!......
For I will end the feastings-social flow
O' the wine friends flock for, garlands and the Muse
That graced my dwelling. Never now for me
To touch the lyre, to lift my soul in song
At summons of the Lydian flute; since thou
From out my life hast emptied all the joy,
and so on, with invented observances even more extravagant.
How much more simple to begin observance with the present
day, to let the corpse lie its fair time in the hall, bewailed with
a fair lament, and go forth, when it must, with a fair and
proportionate train! And when later he reverts to the same
'Mourning' would be a more exact rendering. The word refers to outward
manifestations, not mere feeling; 'grief' somewhat changes the colour, and impairs
the point of the sequel. See z7. 336 foll.




54


E URIPIDES.


subject, the self-contradiction is stronger still, rises almost to the
grotesque, and like much else in the play is distinguished from
sheer comedy only by painfulness. His wife (be it remembered)
has been dead something less than five minutes.
You have to stay, you friends,
Because the next need is to carry forth
The corpse here: you must stay and do your part,
Chant proper paean to the God below;
Drink-sacrifice he likes not. I decree
That all Thessalians over whom I rule
Hold grief in common with me; let them shear
Their locks, and be the peplos black they show.'...
And through my city, nor offlute nor lyre
Be there a sound till ttwelve full moons succeed.
For I shall never bury any corpse
Dearer than this to me, nor better friend.
One worthy of all honour from me, since
Me she has died for, she and she alone.
With what feelings would this proclamation have been received
by the people of Pherae and the neighbourhood, when it reached
them together with the intelligence that the beloved queen was
not only dead but already entombed, buried within an hour of
her death, and with a ceremony which, excepting a few private
friends who 'happened' to present themselves, no single person,
far or near, had been asked or allowed to attend? It seems to
me that in the resurrection of Alcestis Admetus was not so
much 'supremely blest'-that way of putting it is Balaustion's
-but rather, in all the simplicity of Euripides, 'fortunate'.l It
seems to me that, if she had not come back, he would have run
some risk of being pelted out of his palace.
But if in the earlier scenes of the play, up to and including
the death of the victim, the considerate speed of the plans for
her burying is a feature not to be overlooked, it is made more
prominent still by the scene which next follows, and brings us
now back again to our previous topic, the arrival and reception
of Heracles. What, we have asked, was the king's real motive
for an act, which he himself, whether he boasts of it as he does
at first, or excuses it as he does at last, is alike and always
unwilling or unable to    explain? Why, instead of frankly
I.;. I  ri,,  oiLCp Ci'TVX X   dpvrjOoJC.at.




A4 L C.ES TIS.


55


communicating his sorrow to his sympathetic visitor, does he
force upon him a graceless entertainment by means of a
deception, which sooner or later must needs be discovered
and resented? Why does he do it? The situation itself
presents the wretched reason. It is because by his own devices
he has put himself in such a position that he dares not, cannot
tell the truth. The arrival of Heracles at this instant is an
embarrassment for him at once ludicrous and horrible. The
Chorus, waiting before the door, at once perceive the difficulty
and stand on reserve. 'Is Admetus within?' 'Yes', they reply,
'he is within; but....' But what? Why do they not say
plainly and naturally 'But you cannot have heard, and we have
to tell you, that he is in mourning for his wife, who died a
few minutes ago?' Instead of this they engage him in conversation about himself and his journey, which continues till
Admetus comes out and they resign the lead to him'. Now
what is Admetus to do? In the dialogue which ensues, his
wriggling, quibbling, and lying are those of a criminal on the
point of detection; for such and no better he feels himself to
be. It would have been humiliating enough, had there been
nothing more in the circumstances, to say to this gallant friend,
who is so far from believing that Alcestis is really to be sacrificed by and for her husband, that he prefers rather to make
light of the anxiety which the prediction of her fate has raised
in more impressionable minds,-to meet him with the words 'But
it is certainly true. It has come to pass. I have accepted her
self-immolation, and with my consent she has actually died in my
stead'. This, for a man 'excessive', as we are told,' on the point
of honour', would have been bad enough. But that would not
have been the end nor the worst, for the next word must have
touched on the funeral, and whatever it was, must have abased
him further. Should he confess to the noble Argive, 'descendant
of Perseus and son of Zeus', that the company before him, a few
old friends of the house, are engaged as a minimum to make a
following for the queen of Thessaly, who is dead indeed, just
dead, and for certain reasons (what reasons?) is to be buried
J That the Chorus are unwilling to tell Heracles the truth is well brought out by
Browning. But he does not see why, and has to find a reason by mis-stating the facts.
See above, p. 27.




56


EURIPIDES,


forthwith? Or on the other hand should he turn to the
Pheraeans and confess to them, in the presence of the newcomer, that since the intended celebration must now be deferred,
or else disclosed to this respectable personage so inaptly arrived,
-it had best be deferred? The position of Admetus is such
that he is driven to lie, not for hospitality, but for shame. Nor
does he dare to let Heracles go, as he proposes, elsewhere.
Partly he is afraid lest after all it should be suspected by
Heracles that the bereavement is something graver than he
has represented, and this should somehow lead to an exposure
aggravated by the deceit. Partly he has, it may be supposed, a
vague hope that Heracles, if he can be kept at the house, may
be got out of Pherae without yet knowing what has occurred,
and weakness loves postponement. But above all it is clear
that, if the visitor repairs to another host, there will be no more
privacy for what is done and doing at the palace. Now Admetus
is resolved as ever-it is the only point on which he is consistent
-that the clandestine funeral shall proceed, and proceed immediately. This is the cause of his crowning blunder, in remitting
his guest to the uncontrolled charge of the servants, thus making
it practically certain that he will be undeceived in some such
scandalous and distressing fashion as he presently is. The brief
visit of Heracles might perhaps have been got through tolerably,
if the funeral had been put off even till the evening. But no;
Heracles must stay and Admetus must go; an upshot reasonless
and senseless, except so far as it explains and is explained by the
pre-occupation, which this scene and those which precede it are
contrived to exhibit.
Meanwhile we have naturally been asking ourselves, and not
without receiving from the dramatist the means of anticipating
the answer, what is the motive which induces a man like
Admetus, hitherto known as generous, kindly, honourable, and
particularly pious, to persist in this union of meanness with
falsehood for the purpose of impoverishing, obscuring, degrading
the solemnities of religion and love. To complete the answer is
the object of the next ensuing scene, which shows us as it were
by a specimen, in case we could not for ourselves imagine it,
what sort of torture it is that Admetus, by these premature and
surreptitious obsequies, is scheming to avoid, and what it would




AL C'ES TIS.


57


have been for him to go through the only alternative. No man
of sensibility, who had acted as he has done, could fail to be
aware that, however he might gloze or bluster, to all impartial
eyes he must make a sorry figure. Admetus is perfectly aware
of it. After the burial, in the cold forlornness of his return to
the house, he vividly depicts the advantage which malice would
take of him, and the effect that it would produce. I have cited
the passage before, but I will cite it again (it is worth while),
this time in the version of Browning:
And then, whoever is a foe of mine;
And lights on me-why, this will be his word'See there! alive ignobly, there he skulks
That played the dastard when it came to die,
And giving her he wedded, in exchange,
Kept himself out of Hades safe and sound,
The coward! Do you call that creature-man?
He hates his parents for declining death,
Just as if he himself would gladly die!'
This sort of reputation shall I have.
'That', subjoins Balaustion aptly, 'was the truth'. Perhaps in
supposing that such hostility would be quite and for ever
invincible, he is carried by remorse somewhat beyond the truth.
It is, I fear, conceivable that a year or so later his banquets
might, by the favour of the gods, have been as well attended as
ever. But while the affair was fresh, the opinion of the world
would undoubtedly have been such as he describes. And this
truth, though Balaustion may not be wrong in saying that it is
fully realised only when it is confessed, is felt, palpably felt as a
determining motive, by his instincts all along. It is impossible
that Admetus should not shrink, as one would shrink from
flaying, even although one had never been flayed before, from
the thought of walking after the bier of Alcestis, first of a noble
train, before the assembled townsfolk of Pherae, in the presence
of the parents whom he so preposterously maligns, of the kin of
his wife (Euripides does not forget them), and of all the curious
who could manage to reach the place, knowing that all were
saying, to themselves if not audibly,
See there! alive ignobly, there he skulks!
His plan is, and all his actions up to the burial have no other




58


E URIPZIDES.


object, to escape this horror in the only possible way, by interring his wife, with such ceremony or lack of ceremony as the
case might admit, but anyhow instantly, before any one except
his household and his chosen associates could know that she
was dead. Whether even in the circumstances this was a wise
thing to do, Euripides does not ask us to decide. We may
think if we like, as I do, that it was rather a leap into the fire,
and that, if things had not taken an unexpected turn, Admetus
would soon have realised a little more 'truth'. Euripides only
says and shows, that for a man such as the husband of Alcestis
must have been, quicker to grasp relief than to imagine consequences, this was a natural thing to do. In showing this he has
done all, as we shall find, that is required for his ultimate
purpose.
The execution of the plan is for the moment almost perfectly
successful, but not quite. If the procession had started, as it
might have done but for the arrival of Heracles, at the time
when Admetus, coming out ready dressed from the house, finds
that innocent intervener at the door, it would have got comfortably away, and the king's sensibility would have escaped
irritation. When Heracles is installed, he comes out again,
and gives the word for setting forth. It is still impossible that
his proceedings should be generally known. But unhappily
there is one of his neighbours who can readily divine his feelings, inasmuch as in his own breast there is a faint reflexion
of them, who has reason to anticipate his design, and even to
approve it strongly, on the condition that he himself be not
excluded from participation. At the first news that Alcestis is
dead and her burial fixed for the present hour, Pheres the father
hurries to the palace with his offering. Except Adnietus, he is
the only person who, having been in a position to save Alcestis
if he had chosen, and being also liable to follow her corpse, has
cause to think that on the whole the ceremony may as well be
private, that is to say, speedy. His conscience is indeed much
quieter than his son's, not only, as Browning says truly but
with perhaps too exclusive an emphasis, from the more hardened
selfishness of old age, but also because his share of reproach
would be so much the lighter. It is Admetus, not Pheres, who
has devolved upon another his own proper fate; and whatever




L CE STIS.


59


may be said by the satellites of the son, for the general eye his
disgrace would completely outshade his father's. Pheres arrives
then calm and decorous, resolved, as we see, to show that he at
least has no reason to avoid the ceremony, and well-pleased, as
we may imagine, that he can do this with so little discomfort.
That his son will make a scene he naturally cannot suppose.
But Admetus is too sore and too undisciplined to reason. The
unreason of his self-refuting invective measures for us how
intensely his conscience hates and fears an unfriendly eye; or,
as Browning excellently puts it,
So in old Pheres young Admetus showed
Pushed to completion: and a shudder ran,
And his repugnance soon had vent in speech:
Glad to escape outside, nor, pent within,
Find itself there fit food for exercise.
"Neither to this interment called by me
Comest thou, nor thy presence I account
Among the covetable proofs of love...."
You see what all this poor pretentious talk
Tried at-how weakness strove to hide itself
In bluster against weakness-the loud word
To hide the little whisper, not so low
Already in that heart beneath those lips!
Ha, could it be, who hated cowardice
Stood confessed craven, and who lauded so
Self-immolating love, himself had pushed
The loved one to the altar in his place?
The exposition of this scene is indeed the best part of
Balaustion's Adventure regarded as a commentary, and so far
as the scene itself is concerned leaves nothing to add. But
beyond the mere situation, and not less essential for a complete
understanding, is the bearing of it on the action of the play as a
whole: and this is, that when we have heard the retorts of
Pheres, turning as they do insistently upon the disgrace and
contempt attaching to the appearance of Admetus in the
character of mourner, we understand, if we did not before,
why he has schemed to elude, even at the cost of an offence
against humanity, a performance in which he must have borne,
without even the consolation of reply, to read such things on
the eyes and the lips of a thousand malign spectators.




6o


E URIPIDES.


So good words, henceforth  If thou speak us ill,
Many and true an ill thing shalt thou hear!...
And dost not thou too, all for love of life
Carry out now, in place of thine, this corpse?...
Meanwhile woo many wives-the more will die!...
Die when thou wilt, thou wilt die infamous!
Thou buriest her whom thou didst murder first.
Such would have been the missiles which, worded or not, must
have gone to the heart of Admetus with every flower flung by
assembled Thessaly upon the bier of Alcestis. And that is
why, at the very instant when she is declared to be dead, "the
next need is to carry forth this corpse ".
Here, at the pause in the action which follows the retirement
of Pheres and departure of the convoy, it will be convenient to
review our road. We set out to investigate certain detractions,
on the face of them serious, which are commonly made from the
praise of Euripides, and notably from that of the Alcestis.
These detractions, we find, are not ill summed up in the
epigrammatic phrase, pronouncing the poet a 'botcher', and
meaning that in his works the single pieces, however smart or
well-wrought, are merely tagged together; the scenes do not
grow out of one another in the way of progress towards a
common end, and do not contribute to any one sentiment which
may be regarded as the outcome of the whole; sometimes on
the contrary, as is the case of the Alcestis, there is between parts
and whole a marked repugnance; a vital defect, as it is rightly
thought, and killing to the merits which might be allowed in the
details, if only they had belonged to another scheme. Now as
regards the scenes which we have been considering, we have got
some way, though at present only part of the way, towards
disproving this charge. The first half of our play is at all
events coherent within itself. The altercation between Admetus
and Pheres is not dragged in 'to please a contentious and lawloving audience'; it was not written because the dramatist saw
his way to play the pair smartly against one another, and was
blind or indifferent to the effect which his damaged puppets




AL CESSTIS.


might make when it came to the finale. The reception of
Heracles does not stand upon the hollow and artificial plea that
it is an occasion for redeeming the character of Admetus, otherwise so unsuitably ignoble, by exhibiting his sublime hospitality. These scenes, taken in their place and with what we
can see at present, are proper exponents of the main action, the
theme of which up to this point is the death and burial of the
heroine, and the purport of it to show how, for reasons deducible
from the data of the legend, the latter event succeeds the former
with a strange and unexampled rapidity. We have next to
consider how, if at all, this bears upon the sequel and particularly upon the conclusion, where we expect to find reflected
the general aspect of the whole.
Of the two next scenes, that in which Heracles, under the
effects of his too copious feast, discovers the real bereavement and
declares his resolve to wrestle for Alcestis with Death, and that
in which Admetus, returning with his friends, bewails the situation to which he has brought himself and confesses the error of
his choice, we have already had occasion to speak, and may
now pass over them. Each is separated from what precedes by
a supposed interval of time, expressed probably, since the Chorus
are absent, simply by the emptiness of the stage. These two intervals are, we may say, the only breaks in the action; for in
this play the choric odes stand, as appears from the adjoining
scenes, for spaces of time scarcely longer than they might well
represent without assistance from the imagination of the spectators. During the first interruption, Heracles is occupied with
his eating and drinking, for which we are to allow whatever
time is indicated by the fact that he does not overtake the
procession, the corpse having been left in the tomb, and the
mourners having gone away, before he arrives there. Considering his habits, and that the tomb is near', and that the performers
of the ceremony have strong reasons for expedition, all this fits
together naturally enough. The second interval, which must be
something longer, is loosely defined by the story of Heracles,
who arrives before the palace soon after Admetus and his
friends. He is able to pretend without detection that the disguised Alcestis is a slave, won by him as a prize in a gymnastic
I v7. 835-836.




62


E Ut RIPIDE S.


competition which he found going on in the neighbourhood.
As to this imaginary incident, which to our notions comes in
rather oddly, it was to the Greeks an obvious sequence, particularly in a story supposed to imitate, however vaguely and
inexactly, poetic antiquity. As the news spread that the queen
was gone, the first thing that the Pheraeans would be expected
to do was to 'keep holiday' and to improvise 'games', by way
of showing honour to the occasion. We moderns, regarding the
play as an antiquarian document, would have been glad to hear
how the interval has been spent by Admetus and his party; but
for the original audience, who knew the customs presumed, this
was unnecessary. It is manifest that the mourners, on this
occasion at least, do not come straight back from the tomb to
the house; this is excluded not only by the lapse of time, but
also by other facts implied, such as that they and Heracles have
not met, that the Chorus have now changed their dress for black1,
and that the approach of the company to the palace painfully
reminds Admetus of that escorting 'home to bed', which ended
the antique wedding-day2, a picture not likely to be associated
with the fore-noon. It should be noticed however, if we were
now concerned with the antiquarian view of the matter, that the
husband is in a condition of mind which, even for a widower on
the day of his loss, and even among the demonstrative Greeks,
can scarcely be figured as normal. The sight of his house
inspires him with such horror that he cannot advance, and his
companions struggle in vain against his reluctance to enter3.
It is possible therefore that the delay of his return is to
be explained not by customary occupation elsewhere, but as
part of the natural extravagance which belongs to his singular
and singularly distressing situation.
Be that as it may, in this way Heracles, returning with the
wife disguised, is brought again face to face with Admetus before
the door, and we enter upon the finale, commonly regarded as
one of the most unsatisfactory parts of the play. Speaking
broadly, its most noticeable quality is negative. It is the absence of solemnity; the absence, not only of those particular
phrases adapted to the creed of the age, which from the piety
attributed to some of the personages we should have expected


1 v/. 9,2,; see -.bove, p.;,2,


7'7'. gr1 -925.:; 7vz. 86 r-8, 2.




A L CES STIS.


63


to hear in the circumstances, but also of all attempt to pourtray
or suggest that kind of instinctive emotion which any mortal
creatures, as such, might be expected to feel at the return of
a fellow-mortal from the dead. Nothing is done, nothing conceded, by way of satisfaction to the feeling of awe, or even to
the vulgar love of the ghostly and 'eerie' as a means of imaginative pleasure. Excepting a few lines of bald ex officio statement, just sufficient to make the slight perceptible, nothing
passes in the long dialogue which would not have been equally
appropriate if Alcestis, instead of dying and being buried, had
been lost in a mist or had drifted out to sea, and Heracles had
been the shepherd who found her or the boatman who picked
her up, and had now brought her back to friends who had
ceased to hope. It is true, and it is not the least remarkable
feature of the case, that scarcely anything at all is allowed to
pass, when the queen's identity has been revealed; but even in
the earlier and longer part of the scene, while she is yet
unrecognized, the incongruity of treatment is sufficiently apparent. What it would be like to encounter a living man fresh
from a wrestle with Death, and bringing with him as prize of
the contest a human being restored to earthly state after body
and soul had passed through the mortal crisis, none of us, I
suppose, are qualified by experience to judge. But this is certain,
that not one man in ten thousand would shape such a scene
in imagination after the fashion chosen by Euripides. Certainly
we should not suppose, and for reasons presently to be noticed
the audience at an Athenian drama would be even less likely to
suppose, that the victor and the rescued could walk in like any
two people from the street, and without suggesting by appearance, tone, or otherwise the suspicion of anything transcending
the habits of everyday life. We have already remarked1 the
striking contrast between this entrance as it appears in the
original, and as it appears when modified by the fine but unwarranted interpolations of Browning, and the almost laughable
difficulty, which he has betrayed as it were involuntarily, of
adjusting the demand of his feelings to the obstinate refusal of
the poet. That 'shrouded something, live and womanlike', which
Balaustion saw leaning 'under the great guard' of Heracles'
See p. 39.




64


E URIPIDES.


arm, is so far from  receiving such notice from  those who
are compelled to speak only the language of Euripides, that
until she is actually put forward by Heracles (and he is in no
hurry to do it) they do not seem to see her. She stands to all
appearance unremarked, like the slave she is said to be, among
the unnamed attendants by whom Heracles, as a traveller, was
presumably accompanied. If in his aspect the hero showed, as
Balaustion informs us, the signs of his appalling contest, Euripides has been curiously negligent of impressing any such
marks upon his speech. Here we find, to quote once more
Balaustion's true conclusion, 'all Heracles back again', that is
to say, if we keep to the veritable lines of the dramatist, a
hearty fellow, generous in his way but coarse, the high-born
athlete-bravo, who combines the pride of a prince with the
grossness of a man-at-arms.
We may question whether in itself, however it had been
treated in detail, the common theatrical trick, by which the
recognition of Alcestis is deferred, could have been made acceptable to such feelings as the supposed situation would naturally
excite in a serious mind. A certain value it has, as Browning
points out. It enables Heracles to extract from Admetus, for
the benefit of his wife before she is restored to him, assurance
of the genuine impression which has been made upon him, at
least for the time, by the lesson which he has received. Nevertheless I cannot believe that Aeschylus, for example, or Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or Browning himself, would have thought
it tolerable in the ostensible circumstances; and certainly one
of these four, the only man perhaps who could have dramatized a resurrection with success, would have done his utmost,
if he had allowed the prank to be played at all, to lift it by
every art of solemnity in the treatment above the nature
of such a thing and into something near the level of the
stupendous theme. It is worth while just to imagine for a
moment the finale of an Alcestis as it might have been presented by the author of the Choephori, if only to remind
ourselves that the Athenian audience were not without the
means of estimating by comparison what it was that Euripides
had done. For if the trick was perilous in itself, what is it when
Euripides. availing himself of the traits with which he has




ALCESTIS.


65


chosen to invest the 'Helper' and 'Saviour', has lowered it
instead of elevating, until one of the feelings, and not the
weakest, which it would inspire in a sensitive spectator, is a
feeling of thankfulness that the heroine is veiled?
In the opening sentences of Heracles, and before the subject
of the woman is touched, all chance of solemnity is deliberately
thrown away. I have quoted already the rebuke which he
addresses to Admetus, exactly as if nothing of importance had
occurred since they parted, upon the subject of his treachery as
a host. It is a very proper rebuke, and deserves more attention than it commonly gets. 'But O good gods!'-such
must have been the thought of sundry honest auditors, who
shared the prejudices but not the acuteness of Aristophanes'what, in the name of Persephone, is this to the purpose?
Here at the man's back is a woman risen from the dead, pulled
by his own hands out of the hands of Death. And he reads
a lecture on manners!' When in this way the strings of our
thoughts, tuned perhaps by the previous meditations of the
Chorus to the pitch not indeed of piety but at least of pensiveness, have been slacked again and flattened to the common
tone, Heracles introduces the matter which has caused his
return. Will his friend take charge of this woman, till he
comes back from his adventure in the north? He has picked
up some cattle as a prize, and the woman into the bargain.
Admetus makes objections, objections which come practically
to this, that by obliging Heracles he may possibly incur some
annoyance. After all he is not so much altered but that he
still thinks first of 'number one'. He even reproduces in this
new connexion, by one of those exquisite turns in which Euripides is unsurpassed, his important point that Heracles 'has many
other friends in Pherae'. The grand difficulty is how and where
to give the woman a suitable room in the palace. If he places her
within his own protection, may it not be said that the widower
consoles himself? If elsewhere, may not the consequences be
injurious to the rights of her owner? A charming argument for
a man to expound, with antique plainness of speech, in the
presence of the noble lady who furnishes the matter of it, and
she an Alcestis! The truth is that in this scene, admirable as
comedy but comedy pure, Heracles is Heracles still, Admetus


V. E.


5




66


E URIPIDES.


still Admetus, the one indelicate and the other selfish; and
between them they make it impossible to contemplate the situation, whatever elements of pathos it may contain, as anything
out of the common, and impossible to believe that the author, if
he knew what he was doing, is preparing us to accept it as an
answer to the deepest of human questionings.
After a final altercation, ingenious and striking as a stagedevice, but not otherwise affecting the posture and colour of the
facts, Admetus consents to give his hand to his future inmate,
and is persuaded to look her in the face. At last then the truth
is out, the awful, thrilling, soul-penetrating truth. The king and
his friends know now, that they have before them a mortal who
has passed from death into life, and the heaven-born saviour
who has brought her through. Here then, if faith or hope in
the author's sympathy with his subject has survived in us under
the shocks which he has given, we wait for our satisfaction; we
wait to hear from Heracles the account of his tremendous experience, and from the others the outpouring of their belief and
thankfulness. I will give in words of my own, as exactly as I
can, the whole of what is said from this point to the end.
Admetus. Gods, what is this? Oh marvel passing hope!
Is it my wife that I behold indeed,
Or mocks me heaven with a madding joy?
Heracles. Nay, not so. What thou seest is thy queen.
Adm.      Perchance an apparition from below.
Her.      Hold'st thou thy friend for conjurer of ghosts?
Admi.     She whom I buried...visible...here...my queen?
Her.      Aye; 'tis no marvel that belief is hard.
Adm.      May I touch her...speak to her as alive...my queen?
Her.      Aye, speak to her; for all thy will thou hast'.
Adm.      Ah, dearest, face and form of thee, that ne'er
I thought to see! Oh wonder! Art thou mine?
Her.      Aye. Jealous heaven, forgive this happiness!
Adm.      O son of Zeus Supreme, his noble son,
Blest be thou: may the father that begat
1 rpoaetr'' XEts -ap travy o'ovrep J0EXES. The point of this line is lost in English,
because the phrase speak lo, ad'dress (rrpoaetrredv) has not with us the secondary
limited sense of saying farewell, especially to the dead, the 7rp6apatLs or farewell
being a regular part of the burial-office (Alc. 609-610). The Greek hints that
Admetus is to have just what he chose to have (by consenting to her death) and no
more, that he may speak but Alcestis will refuse to answer. It thus anticipates
the sequel and the sarcasms of 1,z. 1T44-1146, on which see below.




AL CESTIS.


67


Protect: for thou hast raised me, thou alone...
How didst thou bring her from beneath to day?
Her.      By wrestling with the power that rules herein.
Admn.     A bout with Death!   Where didst thou close with him?
Her.      At the tomb. I lay in wait, rushed out, and gripped....
A dm.      Why stands, oh why, the woman speechless thus?
Her.      To hear her salutation is not yet
Permitted thee. First to the nether gods
She must acquit her, and the third day dawn.
Now lead her in; and deal, as thou art bound,
Henceforth, Admetus, piiously with thy guests.
Farewell! For me, I go to execute
For King Eurystheus the appiointed task.
A dmi.    Remain with us, a partner of the feast'.
Her.      Another time; the present bids me speed.
A din.     Goodfortune then be thine, and safe return. [Exit Heracles.
In Pherae and in all the Marches Four
For this good hap be dances set afoot
And worshipped altars steam with sacrifice.
This hour transformss to a better life,
Being fortunate, as I shall not deny.'     [Exeunt.
Chorus.         Many a guise hath deity,
Doth surprises oft decree,
Cunning for the expected end
Unexpected close to send,
By such way as this doth wend.       [Exeunt.
'Quite unexpected! And         is that all?', must have been the
comment of those in the Athenian audience (and there were
probably not a few) who had followed the play so far with the
desire to see in it a bona fide version of the sacred legend.     'If
it is unexpected, why then it is all!' might have been the reply
of those (and even as early as the date of the Alcestis they must
have been a large majority) who understood the attitude of
Euripides, and sympathized with him sufficiently to desire that
he should be allowed, so far as might be, the means of public
expression. The conclusion of the piece, from the moment when
Heracles is asked for a narrative of his enterprise, is on the face
of it a mere ironical mystification, representing no conceivable
reality, felt to be incredible even by readers who have not been
1 oUvvwros: see Eur. El. 784. As this example shows, partner of the hearth,
though literally right, implies in English far too much, and the remarks of Browning
are unfounded. What Admetus gives is simply an invitation to the feast (see z. i 156)
which would naturally follow.
5 — 2




68


E URIPIDES.


tempted to enquire further, and signifying nothing, except that
the dramatist and his dramatis personae have agreed to drop the
subject. Strange and inexplicable, to begin with, is the behaviour of Heracles in evading without cause alleged the natural
and blameless desire of Admetus to learn the manner of this
astounding achievement.    Why-to put the point in a practical
way-should so admirable a narrator as Euripides defraud himself
and the audience of this fine opportunity? What is his motive,
and what is that of his hero? 'Heracles', thinks Balaustion,
'said little but enough'.  Little it is; but enough it apparently
is not, when it leaves so many readers to exclaim, with Dr Munk,
"That the poet should expect us to accept things so obscure
and improbable to the imagination is too much!" Surely it is,
if he does expect us to accept them; surely it was his especial
business, in that case, to make them probable to the imagination
by his skill in the telling, which, we may add, none, if he had
chosen, could have done better. But Heracles, instead of relating what has happened, or explaining why he should not
relate it, gives a reply which is not so much mysterious as
unintelligible.  'How didst thou bring her from beneath to this
light?'  'By fighting the power with whom       the matter lay'.
But who is this power or deity?     Admetus guesses Deat/i, and
the interpretation is coldly accepted. But what has become of
Heracles' tongue, which before the enterprise was so eloquent
and assured?
I will go lie in wait for Death, black-stoled
King of the corpses! I shall find him, sure,
Drinking beside the tomb o' the sacrifice;....
and so on. Why cannot he speak so now, and what does he
mean?
Strange in itself is the reticence of Heracles, and stranger the
acquiescence of the rest.
1   /iaX-rv uvcvdas 8CatuIovv TrW KVpiL', the certain reading. The variant Kopdavy is
a mere guess made (like oiKeios in v. 81I) to get rid of a difficulty. The guesser
probably meant his 6atuOvovwv 7-r Kolpdvav to signify the lord of spirits, which measures
his competence to emend Euripides. Modern scholars, while hazarding this version,
do not omit (see Paley) to point out that it will not pass: 6aas6vwv KOipavO would
mean, if any one, Zeus; and 6atu6Yovwv rT hoppavy is not good Euripidean Greek for
anything here admissible.




ALCESTIS.


69


'A bout with Death! Where didst thou close with him?'
'At the tomb. I lay in wait, rushed forth, and gripped.'
And no one has anything more to ask! Admetus indeed, by
noticing at this moment the silence of Alcestis, suggests the
thought that she perhaps may explain. But no; she is not to
speak till the day after to-morrow; and this for a mystic reason
which, stated baldly and in such a connexion, produces an effect
like that of burlesque. In expounding the play it is now regular
at this point to bid the reader observe (with Elmsley) that, if
there was a religious reason why Alcestis should not speak,
there was also a practical reason; inasmuch as, if she had, the
play, which by means of changing masks could now be performed
with two main actors capable of elocution, would in this scene
have required three. And up to a certain point we must go
with this observation. Undoubtedly the way in which her
silence and the cause of it are treated by Euripides, the abruptness with which the subject is raised and dropped, and especially
the coolness with which the mysterious precept is given and
received, just as if it were some trivial apothecary's prescription
about diet or exercise, are exactly calculated to prompt, in
minds acquainted with the history of Athenian drama, the
reflexion of Elmsley. But the inference is that the author
intended to prompt it, or in other words, to give to the situation
a touch of awkwardness and absurdity; for that his embarrassment was involuntary we really cannot believe. Long before
the production of the Alcestis, and all through the career of
Euripides, three-part scenes had been in regular use. Even if
we suppose, what is sufficiently improbable, that all the three
other plays which the author, as we know, exhibited with this,
consisted wholly of two-part scenes, the Alcestis itself would
show that he had no difficulty in obtaining such 'extras' as he
wanted. He does not hesitate, because two actors are already
on the stage, to introduce the effective but needless part of the
orphan child1, a part surely much harder to fill than it would
have been to procure some one capable of delivering a verse or
two, all that would here be needed or admissible, in the character
of Alcestis. In the conditions of Greek performance it would


1 v. 393.




70


E URIPID)ES.


have been possible, if necessary, to 'double' the parts of the son
and the mother. But really it is not conceivable that there
should be any difficulty about the matter. Besides, if difficulty
there were, why exhibit it? Alcestis, after the disclosure, has
scarcely time to speak before the play is over. Twenty ways,
better theatrically than that selected, could have been taken to
explain her silence, the best and obvious way being to let those
who might notice it explain it for themselves. But Euripides
chose here to do what he has done elsewhere, notably, as will be
remembered, in his Electra; he satirises, in a manner all the
more telling from its decorous gravity, the practice of his elders.
In the religious tragedy of Aeschylus, silent personages played
a great part. We know that their silence, though sometimes
effective, was not always voluntary, but imposed by the narrow
limitations of the cast'; and we also know, through Aristophanes,
that the topic was, as it naturally would be, a favourite butt for
the witticisms of the 'modern' and opposite school2. Such a
sly shaft Euripides here discharges; and that he thinks the
occasion suitable is proof by itself that he neither feels nor
invites respect for the momentous doctrine which nevertheless
this finale pretends to set forth. It is even something more
than likely that he aims at a particular scene or passage, which
we should recognize, if, as in the case of the Choephori and
Euripidean Electra, it had been spared to us by time. But
however this be, the spirit and tone of his reference are (to my
mind) manifest; and they are incompatible with the belief that
he 'means seriously with' the supposed resurrection.
And for further confirmation be it observed that the sarcasm
has yet another edge. Alcestis, says Heracles, must not yet
speak because 'she will not have discharged her ceremonial
obligations to the nether gods until the day after to-morrow.'
Now obligations of this sort, contracted by the passage from
death to life, are so seldom incurred within the limits of our
human experience, that they are not much known or thought
of. But the contrary passage from life to death is the commonest thing in the world, and no rules more familiar than
those which relate to it. It is interesting therefore to learn, on
the respectable authority of a demi-god, that there is between


I e.g. in the Prometheus.


- '      OgS, 9 I I.




AL CE STIS.


7i


the two cases so close a resemblance. When a man comes from
the nether world to the upper, there is, it seems, a certain interval
of transition, during which the claim of the nether powers is not
entirely extinguished, but requires to be satisfied by proper
observances. Just so, as we all know, when he goes the other
way: the transition, in point of form, is not completed in a
moment or in an hour. There is a time when he is, as it were,
between the worlds, with us and yet with us no more, the time
between our first perception of his death and the moment when
we part with his body. By universal custom this interval should
have a certain extension, and should be observed with careful
ceremonies; nor could it be cut short without our feeling, for
grave, manifest, and imperative reasons, that the rights of the
upper gods were being infringed. And the analogy extends
even to the length of prescription. On the third day from that
of his resurrection inclusive, but not before, a man may be.
surrendered altogether to this life. Exactly the same minimum,
verbally the same, is fixed by Plato in the contrary case', and
commends itself by our common experience. Most remarkable
of all, both in the nether world and in the upper, the reciprocal
obligation was denoted by the same Greek word, hagnismos,
which was applied, it appears, as it was familiarly among the
living to the formalities of a funeral, so among the ghosts to
those of a resurrection. In short the precept of Heracles is
plainly so shaped as to rebuke (and to punish) the wrong lately
committed by Admetus against ordinances less shadowy, if not
more important, than those of Pluto and Persephone: and that
he means it so, he shows by following it up with a final caution
about 'hospitality', another piety which the king has also
neglected through the entangling consequences of his trespass
against the dead. But in the midst of these witticisms, what are
we to think of the miracle?
And so the heroes part, with adieux the briefest possible.
Admetus in dismissing himself and the rest is equally brief, and
exhibits in his proclamation of festivities the same disinclination to particularity about the cause of them, which we have
already observed in Heracles. It is a 'good hap', and he himself is 'fortunate, as he will not deny'. A handsome concession,
See the Laws, as above cited.




72


E URIPIDES.


but who wants it, and why should it be supposed that he has
anything to 'deny'? Lastly we are left with the Chorus, whose
behaviour is an appropriate climax. Which now will they give us,
we naturally ask, of the many reflexions that must be suggested
to them, in the light of their previous utterances, by the resurrection of Alcestis? They had expressed a hope that in some
way or other Admetus would be further rewarded for his piety
towards the gods, and particularly towards Apollo. Here is
a miracle which more than fulfils their anticipation; and
though they do not know, as we do having heard the prologue, that the Pythian deity had himself foreseen and foretold
the precise event, Apollo, whom neither Heracles nor Admetus
has found time to mention, will now perhaps come in for the
tribute of a stanza. Whoever may be 'compelled to haste', the
Chorus have leisure enough, for the play is still short. Or again
there is the casuistry of hospitality, on which in the first instance
they show so loyal a disposition to give up their own opinion for
that of their master. Now that every one, as it would seem,
agrees in their original view, it would not be unbecoming if they
were to re-adopt it. But among the many topics on which we
should like to hear them, there is one on which surely they are
bound to be full and explicit. Within the last five minutes, if
in the general hurry we rightly apprehend what has happened,
the Chorus must have chanced their belief on the most vital of
problems, on nothing less than the whole nature and condition of
humanity. At the very moment before Heracles enters with
his prize, the poet has put in their mouths a creed, which by
its solemnity (it is perhaps the only passage in the play to
which this word can well be applied) and by its strong personal
emphasis arrests the attention of every reader'. "For my part,
after searching deep and long, I find that inotinzg, no charm, no
spell, no prayer, can prevail against that Necessity, that fixed
Order of things, by which our world from lowest to highest
is bound. Of this invincible order I see one fresh example in
him who here helplessly mourns for his wife, helplessly, for no
weeping zwill raise up them that have perished. Even the noblest
perish in death. Even of an Alcestis there remains only the
love of her and the praise of her virtues." To such effect
1 v. 962.




ALCESI7ZS.


73


Euripides-with every mark of sincerity and earnestness-has
just before addressed the audience by the voice of the Chorus.
And now therefore, if this very Alcestis, who could not possibly
rise, has actually risen before the eyes of the Chorus and ours,
if the irreversible order of things has in its most impressive
manifestation been signally reversed, if in short it has been
proved, as all, if they saw such a thing happen, would understand and confess, that the bond of 'Necessity' does not bind,
but itself is breakable by superior and, as we say, miraculous
power,-what has become of that creed?      Was it put forward
only that the contrasted sequel might the more conspicuously
exhibit its falsity? Has the poet refuted himself, and are his
spokesmen convinced? This is the question, to which, when
the chief actors are gone, we are still awaiting an answer.
Heracles is curt and evasive; Alcestis must not yet speak;
Admetus says nothing to the purpose. No one-if the reader
doubts this, I will ask him to glance again over the dialoguehas yet said the one thing, so simple and so essential to be said,
'This woman was dead and is alive again.' The Chorus only
are left, and what have they to say? 'How often' say the Chorus
'things end otherwise than was expected! So does this story.'
And away they go.
Now what is the meaning of all this? What is the purpose
of this lame, impotent, and abrupt conclusion? How does it
serve to harmonize the discordant elements of the drama and
fix for us the impression which we are intended to carry away?
How does it explain the author's motives in treating a story,
which, except in the single point of the heroine's character, he
handles, as it would seem, only to injure it? By common
consent the true answer to this question is that the finale does
not satisfy any such demand, but is on the contrary altogether
unsatisfactory. Even the Byzantine critics, who were not easily
surprised, were surprised and displeased at the conclusion of the
Alcestis: "the conclusion of the play" says the second and most
substantial of the three Greek introductory notes 'is too comic"'.
1 This remark or some other to the like effect has been apparently understood by
the writer of the third note (9 O'Kr17v... X6fLuva) to mean that a tragedy ought not to
end happily, on which ground, he says, "both the Orestes and the Alcestis are
ejected from the list of tragedies ". The words of the second writer do not imply this




74


E URtIPID E S.


If a modern poet, a Browning let us say, should take the Alcestis
in hand to remodel it freely and bring it more into accord with
the author's assumed intentions, one thing which he would
certainly do, besides such transformations of the dramatis personae as Balaustion makes in the case of Heracles, would be to
re-write the finale completely, making Heracles say not 'little'
but truly 'enough', as Balaustion would fain have done had she
dared, and generally elevating and expanding the treatment to
the measure of the ostensible occasion. Why did not Euripides?
This-if we shrink from the answer 'because he was a botcher,
and did not know what he was about'-is the question, which we
are left to consider. Let us assume that Euripides was a man of
sense, and that his purpose was as serious, as he would seem to
imply by the choice of his subject and by the sober, persuasive
realism of his portraiture; and let us gravely ask ourselves
what that purpose can have been.
It is sometimes a helpful and, with proper caution, a legitimate way of judging the transactions of other times, to put a
parallel case, real or fictitious, arising in our own times and
among those circumstances to which we are accustomed. Remembering carefully that Euripides addressed an audience, of
whom a considerable portion regarded the resurrection of Alcestis
as sacred truth, and all of whom, except open rebels against the
religion of the state, were in the habit of assisting at rites
implying this belief or other beliefs warranted by the same
authority-carefully remembering this, let us ask what we ourselves should think, if we read a newly-published historical
fiction, in which a general outline, resembling nzutatis mutandis
that which Euripides gives to the death, burial, and resurrection
of Alcestis, were given to the death, burial, and resurrection of
Lazarus.  Read first-I am anxious to convince the reader that
in my opinion this is no matter for levity-read first the second
chapter of the Gospel of St Jozhn; and then suppose a story, in
which it should be represented that, for reasons special to the
case and traceable, according to the novelist, in the Bible itself,
proposition; and it would not be fair to put it upon him. In 'ending happily' the
two plays mentioned do not differ from many 'tragedies' both of Euripides and his
brother dramatists. Reasonable grounds might be given for associating the two, but
what they are, this writer did not know.




A L CESTIS.


75


Lazarus was really conveyed to the tomb within an hour of his
death, and was restored in the course of the day. Or read the
fourth chapter of the Second Book of Kings; and then suppose
a version of the story, in which Gehazi, on reaching the home of
the Shunnamite, found that the child had revived immediately
after the mother's departure, and Elisha, instead of actually
restoring him in the way described, merely announced his intention to do so, an intention forestalled by the recovery. Then
go back to the Alcestis, and consider whether, if the characters
are ill-matched with the miraculous hypothesis ostensibly propounded in the conclusion, the facts of the story are not equally
ill-devised to sustain this hypothesis; and whether it is not fair,
reasonable, and necessary to suppose the author aware of this;
and then whether-seeing that everything in the drama from the
77th verse to the II35th, characters and facts alike, is repugnant
to the theological interpretation given ostensibly in the prologue
and conclusion, so that, to save the author's reputation for sense,
we must suppose him not serious either with the mass of his
work or with the fringes-whether we ought not to set I059
verses above I04, and look for serious meaning in the o059,
and for signs of a presumable mockery in the I04.
'The resurrection of Alcestis' is represented by Euripides as
it could be only by a man zwho did not believe that it was a
resurrection, and wished to convey this to others. Suppose that,
when Admetus asks 'How did you bring her from below to this
light?', Heracles instead of meeting the question, as Euripides
makes him do, with a reply which is no reply, evasive and
unintelligible, had answered frankly 'How did I do it? I went
to the monument, and after waiting a fair while till my head
was cool, I went in. As soon as I saw your wife I was sure she
was alive, and I had not been there long before she came to.
When she felt fit to move, I cloaked her (for I thought you
deserved a trick) and we walked back. There is no mystery
about it. What I cannot understand is why she was carried
there with such haste as it seems she was, and how you could
fancy that she was dead.' If Heracles had so replied, who,
unless it were Admetus, could have felt any astonishment, and
how could Admetus himself have disputed the simplicity of the
explanation? The facts, as given by Euripides, are these. The




76


E URIPIDES.


death of a certain woman has been predicted for a certain day.
She and her family are convinced that. on that day she will
certainly die. This expectation (be it observed) is grounded
solely. on the prophecy'. Up to the morning of the day itself,
and even on that morning, she is so far from showing signs of
danger, that those who see her can even speak of her 'unchanged complexion'. Nevertheless, acting upon the absolute
certainty of her approaching end, she rises at dawn, bathes,
robes herself elaborately as for burial, and goes the round of
the palace in which she is queen, paying her devotion 'at every
altar which it contains'. She then takes a long and passionate
farewell of her chamber, then of her children, and then of all
the household (a royal household) 'down to the very meanest'.
From this time in fact till her 'death' she is occupied incessantly
in adieux. She lies in her husband's arms, expecting the end,
surrounded by the whole weeping assembly, servants and
children, and still, so long as she can, repeating her farewells.
Her case is treated from the first and throughout as hopeless.
No attempt is made to sustain her, either by herself or the rest,
except 'beseeching her not to depart'. In such scenes the hours
go by until she has become very weak; with more adieux she
becomes weaker; and at last it is plain that she is sinking.
Carried into the air, she rallies sufficiently for yet one prolonged
farewell, after which she sinks again, sinks rapidly, and becomes
unconscious. Being already prepared for burial, except for the
addition of certain ornaments, which are also ready, the body,
just as it lies, is carried to a neighbouring monument, laid there
and left. Later in the day the woman is brought back from the
tomb to her house.
Where is the miracle? There is no one now, and assuredly
there was no one at Athens in the days of Protagoras, who
assuming these facts would dream of a miraculous explanation,
instead of the obvious explanation, that the woman and her
friends were mistaken, that she was not in such danger as she
and they too credulously supposed, that she wanted nothing but
a little rest from their killing importunities, and would have
revived, not in a tomb but in her house, if the 'survivors' had
given her time to do so. And in fact this is the conviction of
1 See the narrative beginning at v. I57.




AL CES TIS.


77


all the dranatis personae in Euripides, of Heracles, Admetus, and
the Chorus alike; only (as in the theatre of Dionysus one cannot
exactly say so) instead of the natural and proper conclusion, the
conclusion which might be expected from the course of the
story, we have the miraculous explanation appended in a form
transparently unreal. From the moment when it is understood
that Alcestis has certainly come back, from the moment of the
question 'How was the thing accomplished?', the actors cease to
act in character; they cease to be conceivable as persons in the
situation supposed, and show neither opinion nor emotion,
except a general agreement to wind up the business as quickly
as possible, joined in the case of Heracles with a strong disposition to sneer. 'The gods' as the author says with typical
irony 'have found the way to an ending unexpected, instead of
that for which zwe looked'.'  Such is the resurrection as related
by Euripides, and such is the aspect in which alone the scheme,
tone, and cast of the play are intelligible as a whole. But to
make the matter fully comprehensible, I must ask the reader's
patience for a larger historical survey.
The Alcestis in its general character, and in the relation
between outward pretence and inward suggestion, is by no
means exceptional among the works of the poet. Most of them
show something of the same character, and one example at
least, the Ion, corresponds to the type almost as perfectly as the
Alcestis.  It could not now possibly exist, at least in Western
Europe, for many reasons and some highly satisfactory, nor
perhaps could ever have been fully developed in any society
except just at Athens in the fifth century before Christ. But
there and then the conditions were such as to produce this type
inevitably, a type of dramatic work, whose meaning lies entirely
in innuendo. The purpose of the Alcestis as a whole, and that
which alone connects into a whole its otherwise inharmonious
and repugnant elements, is neither to solemnize the legend, as
1 I was mistaken when (in my first edition of the Medea, I88i) I said that this
famous conclusion was 'quite inappropriate' to that play. It is quite appropriate; it
calls attention to the contrast between the realism of the drama as a whole and the
purely conventional 'supernaturalism ' of the denouement. The ' dragon-chariot' of
Medea is entirely out of keeping with the tone and spirit of the work, a mere theatrical
concession, and the 'tag' signifies this. The other examples are all interesting and
similar, but cannot be discussed here.,.




78


E URIPIDES.


would have been the purpose of Aeschylus, nor to embellish it,
as might have been the purpose of Sophocles, but to criticize it,
to expose it as fundamentally untrue and immoral, before an
audience who were well acquainted with the general opinions of
the author, well aware that from the circumstances of the case
innuendo was the only way in which those opinions could be
dramatically expressed, well accustomed to apprehend them in
this form, and predisposed by mental and moral temper not
merely to be content with such a mode of expression, but to
regard it as the best possible condition for intellectual art and
intellectual pleasure.
At Athens in the age of Euripides the relations of the
drama, and of tragedy in particular, to other functions of society
were so different from those in our experience, indeed so contrary
to our experience, that although the facts are familiar, it is not
easy to bear them always effectively in mind. In our own
country particularly the theatre is not, rarely has been, and
never has been since many generations, of general importance as
an organ of public opinion or public instruction. Such are our
habits and traditions that even now, when liberty of expression
in almost all forms is established as a panacea and has perhaps
produced some disease, a drama, which was designed to set forth
and recommend a particular opinion on some topic agitating the
public mind at the moment, would probably not be popular;
and whether it were likely to be popular or not, it would not
obtain a license. And in particular with regard to one class of
subject, the most widely and deeply interesting of all, there is
and long has been in England a rule, sanctioned by sentiment as
much as by law, that it may be discussed everywhere and almost
without limit, except on the stage, from which it is rigidly
excluded: and this is the subject of religion. Nor do these
restrictions excite impatience even in the most determined
agitators. When methods of publication, more efficient in the
present conditions of life than a play could be though it were
performed by order of Parliament at the public expense in every
theatre of London, are open to any man whose opinions and
style are intrinsically capable of attracting attention; and when
religion, orthodox and unorthodox, is propagated without restraint in ways devised by itself for its own ends; it is not very




A L CERSTIS.


79


likely that any one would offer to the Lyceum a Marriage in
Cana or fairus' Daughter, even if there were a chance that it
would be accepted. But it is notorious, although easily forgotten
in practice, that in Athens at the time of which we are speaking
the conditions, positive and negative, were exactly the reverse of
these. Drama was essentially the vehicle, not of pleasure,
though this was part of its purpose and one of its necessary
instruments, but of instruction and controversy on the most
exciting themes of the day. Comedy dealt mainly with politics,
tragedy always directly or indirectly with religion, and with
morals as related to religion. When Aristophanes in the Frogs
presents the personages of Aeschylus and Euripides, each defending himself as an artist and assailing the other, he assumes
as a matter of course that the rivals must be judged as public
preachers, as aiming deliberately at the spread of certain
opinions and the production of a certain character in their
auditors. Upon this comparison he throws all the weight of
the discussion, and gives to other matters, such matters as we
should call literary, a treatment altogether subordinate and
scarcely serious. In the fore-front of the argument he places a
pair of contrasted prayers, both tragedians coming forward as
representatives of religion, of two opposed religions. Aeschylus,
representing the class of which he had in fact been the greatest
prophet, the class who desired to deepen and spiritualize the
legendary traditions without breaking with them, prays in
sacramental form to Demeter of Eleusis 'who feedest my
soul', and asks to be found worthy of her mysteries. Euripides,
rejecting the gods of tradition for 'a mintage of his own', asks
of 'Air and the turn of the Tongue, Intelligence and the nostril of
Perception' to make him 'a true critic of every subject presented
to his sense'; nor does this petition deviate beyond the reasonable limits of professed parody from some which the tragedian
himself finds occasion to put in the mouth of his characters.
The creed of Euripides was that of nascent philosophy, science,
and rationalism; between which and the worship of the popular
gods there was a war to which modern religious controversies
offer no parallel. It was not merely that the current legends
assumed as possible and true things which science rejected as
incredible; but the whole character of pagan tradition, loose,




8o


E URIPIDES.


fluctuating, unsystematic, varying between city and city, shrine
and shrine, and ready even to accommodate itself by arbitrary
modifications to different moods of the same mind, was fundamentally incompatible with regular and consistent theory of any
kind. The religious creeds of modern Europe are themselves to
a large extent made up of science and philosophy. If they
come into collision with 'science' in a more limited sense, this
is not because their supporters do not hold as strongly as their
opponents the necessity of system and regularity in thought.
But the religion or rather the religious atmosphere of paganism
was not a creed at all, nor able to take any such form without
self-destruction. The duty preached by the philosophers, and
by Euripides as a public teacher known to be in sympathy with
philosophers, was the duty of thinking on system, of not
adopting, without evidence or investigation, contradictory hypotheses on different days of the month or at different stages of
a journey; a duty which, as was seen with ever increasing
clearness, would if pursued make it impossible to use at all such
conceptions as 'Apollo', or 'Artemis', or 'Demeter', and reduce
even 'Zeus' to the position of an inconvenient and misleading
name.
That these were the views of Euripides, and that he desired
to impress them upon others, would have been manifest to his
fellow-citizens, if they had had no evidence but what he himself
put forth. And in such a community as that of Athens, where
the doings even of people inconspicuous and unimportant were
better known than London knows her 'celebrities', where it
was worth the while of a comedian to bring up before the
assembled state such little personal jests as now would scarcely
catch in a parish-meeting, much that was not meant for publication mtrst nevertheless have been widely known about any man
who had won his way to the privilege, confined by necessity to
few, of being an exhibitor in the great dramatic festival. As to
Euripides, that it was the purpose and effect of his plays to
destroy the old religious beliefs, is repeatedly taken by Aristophanes for notorious. To dwell upon the evidence is unnecessary, as if not quite undisputed it is not really open
to reasonable dispute; and the whole subject has recently been
re-stated, with knowledge and skill upon which I at least cannot




A  ( CERSTIS.


8r


improve, in the second chapter of Euripide et l'esprit de son
fthdtrel by Professor Paul Decharme, the best treatise on the
poet with which I am acquainted. There is scarcely one of the
extant plays which would not prove him a determined enemy of
the popular theology: and even in the unintelligent and uncritical summaries, which are all that remain to us of ancient
biography respecting him, one of the few traits which has an air
of genuine history is, that he was drawn to the stage only or
mainly because it provided him with armour as well as weapons I
for this contest2.
It might be matter for surprise, if without making allowance
for differences of condition we estimated the proceedings of
distant ages upon the principles of our own, that such an author
should have taken or have been permitted to take such a way of
publication; that the plays of Euripides, abounding in sarcasms
upon the traditional gods, should have been selected against
powerful competitors for performance in a place dedicated to
traditional religion. If we wanted to find any sort of parallel in
our own life, it must be by supposing that some eminent Positivist or Agnostic were appointed for one Sunday in every month,
upon certain terms of reticence and discretion, to preach the
sermon in Westminster Abbey. But this or something like it
could actually be enforced by public opinion, if the pulpit at
Westminster were as uniquely important among the means of
intellectual influence as was the stage of Dionysus at Athens,
and if religious parties in their shades of distinction were so
related as they were then. The Athenians under Pericles,
though passionately intelligent and curious, were not in general
collectors of books. It is not till the last quarter of the fifth
century, not that is to say till the career of Euripides was
drawing to a close, that we find in the rapid growth of prose
literature the sign of a public accustomed to the amusement of
solitary reading3.  As for the echoing repetition by which in
1 Paris, Garnier Freres.
2 STri rpay3Liav U Trpdarr Trbv 'Avatay6pav i;3v vTrorawvTra KlVwVOVuS t' aTrep eliaOe
66'y/ara. Suidas, Euripides. The remark is meaningless except on the assumption
that in tragedy he could express the opinions of Anaxagoras with more security.
3 The earliest Greek author who, so far as I know, can be proved to have been
familiarly read in private by ordinary persons is Euripides himself (Frogs 57), where
v. F.                                                 ()




82


EURIPIDES.


these days a new thought upon any subject of pressing interest
is rapidly bandied about in volume, article and paragraph,
nothing of the sort, it is needless to say, had been dreamed of.
Nor was the stage available as a daily expedient; for theatrical
exhibitions were commonly confined to the rare and solemn
performance of the regular festivals. Under these circumstances
the colossal advertisement obtained by exhibiting at these
festivals before the assembled folk was an overpowering advantage in circulation. Everything goes to show that next
to that ancient epic literature which the city of Athens had
in the preceding century taken under her particular patronage,
that 'Homer' which was recited on holidays and taught in the
schools, no literature was half so well or so widely known as the
favourite bits from the dramatists. It was not therefore likely
to be tolerated, that out of respect for a local and temporal
association between tragedy and the traditional theology, which
was only a historic accident, due in great part to the personal
inclinations of one creative genius, this unique advantage should
be appropriated entirely by a section of the community, the
sincere supporters of traditional theology, who throughout the
century, in spite of their legal superiority, were continually losing
ground. Although tragedy had been founded or re-founded by
Aeschylus, yet a generation, of whom (we have it from the
Aeschylean Aristophanes) only a small minority were Aeschyleans, would scarcely condemn themselves for this reason to hear
nothing but Aeschylism from the orchestra which he had magnified; and this especially when, by another historic accident,
it happened that the man who of all living Athenians was
perhaps the most richly endowed with the talents required
for dramatic composition had espoused the contrary opinions
with the zeal of a missionary.
For more reasons than one it was not in comedy, as comedy
was practised at Athens in that age, that the new spirit, the
spirit of philosophical criticism, could effectively make itself
heard. To our habitual feelings it is somewhat odd to see
Aristophanes, while in the very act of exhibiting in postures of
farce or harlequinade the patron-god of the sacred theatre,
reading to oneself (ava'yacyvwaKeLv rrp6s eavUTv) marks the exceptional practice, as we
now speak of 'reading aloud'.




AL CESTIS.


83


idol and leader of the deepest and tenderest mysteries, turn
round to vilify the innovators who dared to depreciate the
accepted deities in comparison with their own inventions. But
it is constantly assumed by the comedian, that no confusion was
possible between his attitude in this relation and that of such
a man as Euripides; it is assumed that his own ridicule was in
the popular sense religious, and that of Euripides in the like
sense irreligious, the two forms not merely different but antagonistic. Nor is it difficult to appreciate the distinction. In
the first place the whole cast of comedy, its extravagance of
imagination, was a sufficient safeguard against a severe interpretation of anything which the author might advance by way
of helping a jest. The spectator would no more t e embarrassed
in his religious exercises by having seen a Dionysus take a
flogging in competition with a slave upon the toughness of their
respective skins, than he would be embarrassed in his politics
by having seen the birds conspire to build a city in the air.
But this license of imagination would in itself have rendered
the comic stage an unsuitable instrument for serious attack
upon beliefs transcending common experience. No form of art
could be further removed from Aristophanic comedy than the
realistic cast of Euripides' tragedy. As he is made to say in
the Frogsl, doubtless because he did habitually say so in conversation, his whole aim is to put his audience'among the things
which we handle and live with', in the world as it visibly is,
and this, as he goes on to note, for the purpose of enabling
them to criticize what is said and done there. The departing
spectator took with him the pictures presented by the poet as
things which could no more be supposed away than the streets
through which he went home, and among these realities were
the reflexions, grave or gay in form but alike serious in meaning,
which were made in the drama, as on convenient occasions they
were made in actual society, upon the current theology. But,the difference goes even deeper than this. Taken with the
proviso, which Aristophanes is careful to repeat, that in practice
you will do well to worship according to the wont of your city,
parish, and family, it was positively good for Zeus and Apollo
to be supposed indulgent as to the way in which they were
v. 959.
6- 2




84


E URIPIDES.


depicted, and lax in general as to intellectual belief. The lo-al
varieties of cult and legend could stand together on no othir
supposition. To make a jest for the moment of the almighty
father and his offspring was an excellent means to keep men fin
that flaccid, wavering habit of mind by which Zeus this, Apol J
that, and Artemis the other, could be accepted according to tl.e
ritual of the place or shrine where the worshipper happened
to be. It was another thing to indict these personages in the
name of intelligence, and with constant incitements to clarify
your thoughts and arrange your propositions.
Thus the conditions of the time and his own talents
combined to obtain for Euripides the permission to speak
from the stage of tragedy, and to speak there in his own
sense. But it did not therefore follow that he could speak
there without disguise, nor that he would choose to do so, if he
could. As things stood in Athens, a certain disguise or semblance of disguise was desirable alike for safety and for effect.
It was necessary that the veil should be transparent for all who
cared to look through it; and this it was sure to be from the
nature of the case. Take the Alcestis as an example. The
legend commemorates a miracle wrought on behalf of a man
specially beloved and favoured by the Pythian Apollo. Now
there cannot have been a man in Athens interested in literature,
not any one to whom the tragic festival was more than an
amusement for the eye, who was unaware that Euripides laughed
at the miracles of legend and regarded the pretensions of Delphi
with scorn. It is possible indeed, or probable, that when the
Alcestis was exhibited1, he had not yet delivered himself on
the stage so frankly as he does in some of the extant plays.
He had perhaps not yet denounced the Pythian deity as the
accomplice and instigator of murders, which he does in the
Electra, the Orestes, and the Andromache, or as a lying, shuffling,
cheating ravisher, which he does in the Ion. Probably he became
bolder as the new speculations spread wider and were more
widely avowed. But we have remains enough of his work at all
periods to see that its tendency had been the same throughout;
nor to his fellow-citizens, as we have already said, was the stage
the only or the most authentic source of information about him.
R.C. 438.




A LCEIS TIS.


85


Now when it was announced that this man intended to present
in the theatre the story of Alcestis, what did the Athenians
expect? Suppose a parallel case among ourselves. It must
needs be inexactly parallel, but we can make the resemblance
sufficient. Suppose that once a year that part of the inhabitants of London, which frequents the clubs and reads the
magazines, were accustomed to assemble for the purpose of
witnessing plays in which the stories of the Bible were presented after the manner of Samson Agonistes, with variations
according to the taste of the composer, but in the same general
spirit of acceptation and reverence. And suppose it then given
out that the management had decided to exhibit a play entitled
(let us say) The Herdsmen of Gadara or The Shunamnite,
and written by Professor T..... H..... What sort of a piece
would the audience anticipate, and what motive could they
attribute to the author? It was a thing incredible in itself that
Euripides intended to send his Athenian hearers, with devotion
warmed and faith exalted, to the next celebration of those
Apolline rites in which, as he tells us', this miraculous legend
was a familiar theme. It was certain beforehand that his object
must be precisely the contrary; and the only question open
would be, what means he would find of conveying his known
sentiments, and how far he would venture to go. His methods
of attack are many. It would not for example have been
easy to deal with the legend of Alcestis after the fashion of the
Heraclidae, in which, though the chief personages are all of them
'gods', that is to say objects of existing cults, the story, which is in
effect a satire on the barbarity of ancient religion and ancient
manners, is rigorously stripped of every supernatural incident
except one. This incident is reported by a speaker, who
pointedly distinguishes it from the rest of his narrative as
'hearsay' and not guaranteed by his own observation!2 There
is this way, and there are many others. What way the poet
would take in his Alcestis could not be known; but the point
from which he started was known and given, unless it were to
be imagined that he had suddenly changed his mind, an imagination which, as we shall see hereafter, a few lines of the actual
commencement would be enough to correct.
The use of disguise was therefore artistically safe, safe, that is,.I'  4. 445- -42.l '-    teraclidae, 817.




86


E URIPIDES.


to be penetrated by any one who chose to give himself that
satisfaction. But it was also, in a very different sense, safe and
essential to safety for the person of the author. It is a common
incident in the development of society that between effectual prohibition and formal permission there intervenes a stage, in which
an act legally forbidden and punishable is nevertheless protected
by the predominance of favourable opinion, and practicable
therefore, so long as adverse opinion is propitiated by a show
of deference; when (in simpler terms) you may do the thing,
provided only that you make a decent pretence of not doing it.
Every one must have observed and be observing examples of
this phenomenon; and it is wonderful to see how long the
pretence may be used and even imposed, when it has become
so thin that only a historical explanation will account for its
existence. The whole character of Euripidean drama fits in
with the history of the time to show that to this point had
come, in the times of Pericles, Cleon, and Alcibiades, the public
expression of dissent from that moribund theology upon which
the established cults reposed. 'Impiety' was at Athens a legal
crime, and there was more than one way of visiting it with
penalties practically unlimited except by the discretion of the
adjudicating body. As to definition of the offence, Athenian law
was throughout, as would be thought by the heirs of Roman
jurisprudence, in this respect objectionably lax; and indeed
this particular offence does in fact belong to that most important class which, whatever the law may say, will in any
society, where 'the masses' have weight, refuse to be limited
otherwise than by the circumstances of the case. Libel and
slander for instance, among ourselves, notwithstanding disquisition and decision, might still be defined without much practical
error to be such offensive speech or writing as a jury will in the
circumstances find to be criminal or (as the case may be) will
visit with damages. 'Impiety' at Athens stood in the same
position, or to speak more properly, hung in the same suspension. There is abundant evidence that the law could be
set in motion, and that fine, banishment, even death might be
incurred for offences against religion-if a jury could be found
so disposed. Once at least as we know1 Euripides was the object
of such proceedings; and it is a fair supposition, in the meagre1 Aristotle, Rzet. iii. iS.




AL CE ST/S.


87


ness and fragmentary state of our information, that the instance
was not unique. It is certain that his life must have been
passed in much anxiety, and probable, that neither the privacy
and almost concealment in which, contrary to the habits of the
place and people, his proceedings other than theatrical were
carried on, nor his retirement at an advanced age from the land
where he must have hoped to repose, was altogether voluntary.
There is scarcely one of his plays in which an adversary might
not find passages sufficient, without any forcing, to support
a sentence of irreligion,-if only the court would consent to say
so. But on the other hand we can easily account for his long
career of impunity and success. For what would have been the
use of taking the Alcestis (let us say) into court?  That the
publication of the play was an act of 'impiety' is as certain as
that many sheep-stealers and clippers of the coin, who were
acquitted in England when the law on these subjects was out
of adjustment with public opinion, were nevertheless guilty of
the charges, and that the juries knew it. But how could an
accuser expect a conviction? An Athenian jury was a body of
five hundred men, brought together by proceedings carefully
designed to make it reflect, so far as might be without any
modification, the feelings of that general assembly, which it was
supposed for the nonce to represent. In such a jury there
would have been doubtless a certain number of persons, earnestly
devoted to the traditional worships, who thought it scandalous
that such a writer as Euripides should 'obtain a chorus' and be
allowed to exhibit; and some also who, without going as far
as this, thought him impertinent, mischievous, and deserving a
snub. Aristophanes for example would have been in this latter
class; but he would have been influenced by mixed motives,
and his vote, I should imagine, could not have been counted on
when it came to the point. But if these classes had formed a
majority among the citizens, or anything near a majority, the
plays of Euripides would never have been selected for the
national festival. Who made the majority? A few no doubt,
who thought it scandalous that Euripides, speaking 'reason'
and 'common sense', should be obliged to any measures of
caution; not a few worthy people who took no interest either
in literature or speculation and knew nothing about the matter;




88


8E U/IPIDES.


and a large mass, larger probably than all the rest put together,
who knew all about the matter, who took their religion, so far as
practical observance went, in the acquiescent way to which the
majority is everywhere inclined, and had no desire to break with
it, but who, being Athenians and having Athenian wits, found in
the works of Euripides, just as they were, the greatest intellectual enjoyment which they had known, and would have been
alike unwilling either to prohibit him altogether or to dispense
with his delightful artifices. In such a jury the willing votes
were impotent, and how were the unwilling to be forced? The
Alcestis impious! Why so? The reluctant had only to take
the plausible objection-and they would be saved the trouble
of raising it by the worthy people who knew nothing about the
matter-that it lay with the accuser to make out his case.
(A man is not to be punished upon an ambiguous construction!
The defence could put up plenty of witnesses, not only dishonest witnesses, quieting their consciences with such reasonings
about the necessity of the case and the iniquity of the inquisition itself as have always been found available in similar
circumstances, but simple and honest witnesses, ready to swear
that they saw no harm in the piece, but found it fairly edifying. I shall be surprised if such witnesses do not come forward
on the present occasion, gravely assuring me that Euripides
meant no such malice as I say, and lamenting, as they have
done before, that I should insist on understanding him, instead
of dismissing him as a dullard.
It is a highly significant fact, that one of the chief accusations, indeed almost the only accusation grounded on solid
considerations of morality, which is alleged by Aristophanes
against Euripides in such a way that we can suppose it seriously
meant, is that his influence tended to impair the obligation of
veracity, even in the most solemn and binding form. It is
advanced with singular emphasis in the Frogs, where Dionysus,
having to choose between Aeschylus and Euripides, and choosing
at last Aeschylus in spite of a promise, as Euripides asserts, to
the contrary, flings in the face of the disappointed claimant his
own famous saying from the Hippolytus, The tongue hath sworn
but the mind remains unbound'. It has often been remarked,
I Hifp. 6 2, see  Paley's note.  This verse  played  a conspicuous  part in  the




A LCESTIS.


89


and could not escape an Athenian of average intelligence, to
say nothing of Aristophanes, that this saying, taken with the
facts to which Euripides has applied it, cannot with fairness or
sense be cited in favour of perjury. This being so, Aristophanes
may claim from us the equity of supposing that he had other
reasons, not grounded upon the Hippolytus, for converting the
verse into a general reproach against its author; and for my
own part I find no difficulty in believing it. The constant
practice of dexterous ambiguity, and the habit of witnessing
such dexterity with enjoyment, would not lose their tendency
to weaken the springs of truth merely because the temptations,
the justifications even, were strong, and the pleasure not only
innocent in itself, but deserving to be classed for its intellectual
quality among the highest of which humanity is capable. An
Athenian notorious as an admirer of Euripides must frequently
have had occasion to consider, not only in the law-courts but
in various social relations, just how far he might go safely, or
with a safe conscience, in pretending a convenient ignorance.
It is likely enough that the enemies of such men would call
them habitual liars, and not unlikely that they did something
to deserve the appellation. Where in such cases the blame
should rest, or how it should be distributed between those who
practise deception and those who do their utmost to make it
attractive or inevitable, is a problem which may be left to the
student of politics and ethics, who will be frequently forced to
consider it.
But to say the truth, in the particular case of Euripides,
though the forms of concealment must have had their use and
at times their necessity, we are not bound to suppose that
practical security was the sole or the chief reason for maintaining them. From the Athenian point of view (and no man of
candour, whatever his personal tastes, ought to have any difficulty in comprehending that point of view) Euripides as an
artist had motive enough without the pressure of danger for
'keeping up the game', so to speak, when once it was fairly
accusation of 'impiety' above mentioned, though Aristotle does not say, as is sometimes said, that the accusation was founded on it. Probably the indictment took a
much wider range; the verse itself would come in most naturally in the impeachment
of evidence.




9o


E0 URIPIDIES


started. It enabled him to gratify, as he was by nature endowed almost beyond human limits with the talents required
for gratifying, what if not the strongest passion was at all
events the most characteristic passion of his race and age.
The love of the Athenians for esprit, for wit in the old and
proper sense of the word, that is to say, the delicate and subtle
manipulation of words and meanings, was their most remarkable
gift for good and for evil, the national glory and the national
vice. Irony, innuendo, insinuation, the whole class of mental
and linguistic faculties which lie on the side of lying, were
ingrained in them and in all that they produced. Their very
language, their favourite tropes, are of this colour; 'Attic understatement' figures even in the grammars. No people would have
perceived more clearly, as no people perhaps is less adapted
to perceive than we English are, the element of necessary truth
contained in the Frenchman's epigram that 'language is given
us to conceal our thoughts', or could more clearly distinguish
between the duty of saying what you mean and the equally
important but not always compatible duty of saying what you
mean to say. In season and out of season they practised their
favourite art. They carried it to the bench of justice and to the
seats of political debate. The philosophical observer of their
assemblies has recorded in vivid and well-known terms the
intense apprehension and preternatural quickness of the audience, their eagerness 'to applaud a subtlety before it was out,
to catch the sense before it was spoken'.' It may easily be
imagined with what enthusiastic delight a people, who could
not be kept from indulging this temper even where, as many
were wise enough to see, it was fraught, at least in its excess,
with danger to their interests, would have turned in their hours
of relaxation to such art as that of Euripides, to literary works
of which it is the very basis and well-understood condition, that
there is to be no blurting; that the author, happily for the
pleasure of intelligent and cultivated persons, must not be plail
if he would, and would not if he might; that the simpler and
clearer he seems, the closer you have to watch him, sure that at
last his truest and gravest meaning will be found in a corner, or
round a corner, so that (thank the gods!) it is worth a man's
The imaginary Cleon in Thucydides 3. 38.




AL CESY 7S.


91


while to look for it. Every man, who can read the language of
Swift and of Mr George Meredith, may qualify himself to understand this point of view, if he thinks it worth study. It is true
that, comparatively speaking, there is not very much in our literature which will help him, whereas among French authors of the
first rank there are few indeed who will not.
There is perhaps no one among the great writers of Athens
who does not prove himself on occasion a master in the art of
hinting. Aeschylus, a man sincere if ever man was, was so
exercised in ambiguity that scarcely a modern comes near him,
and wields it, as in the person of Clytemnestra, literally like a
fiend. The irony of Sophocles, of Plato, of Demosthenes and
many others is famous. The simplicity of Lysias, Athenian by
breeding though not by birth, is not simple by any means. The
reticences of Thucydides are often not less suggestive than his
remarks. In every mind of Athenian texture some threads of
the national quality are woven in. But in Euripides it was the
base of the fabric. He had a mind in which a set of secondary
faculties, extraordinary in number and singly not contemptible
in quality, eloquence and pathos, the gift of fancy and the
gift of song, were subject, as perhaps they never were in any
other, to an unsurpassed and, it may be, unsurpassable wit.
It so happened that the circumstances of the time supplied to
him in perfection the conditions essential for the exercise of
this colossal wit, grand and grave solemnities, where it was his
accepted part to find language for truths or, to speak more
modestly and humanly, for a part of truth, which there and
then was admissible only under reserve. To overcome difficulties of expression, to put a thought better and more effectively
than your hearers could expect in the given conditions, is the
essence of wit. Euripides was so placed that he must speak
wittily, if he was to speak his mind at all. As it happened that
he had wit enough for anything, and that his countrymen had wit
enough for him, nothing could have suited him better. It is the
boast of the Aristophanic Euripides, as it doubtless was of the
real man, that the effect of his writings was to apply an incessant
stimulus to the intelligence, to keep perception alert, 'habitually
suspecting malice and everywhere seeing beyond'.' The Aristo1 Frogs 958, KXiX v7roTrorei Ooat, 7repLvoep a7ravTar.




92


E URIPIDES.


phanic Aeschylus subscribes to the boast as a reproach; 'That is
just what I say'. Whether we approve with the one or condemn
with the other, or more wisely decline to be partizans in a needless quarrel, it is in the spirit, which Aristophanes by both voices
declares to be Euripidean, that we must approach the works of
Euripides, if even in such limited measure as is now possible
we expect to interpret them truly.
And it is worth the trouble. To any one with a taste for
esprit the Alcestis alone offers reward enough for the effort
of realizing and fixing in his mind the presupposed relations
between author and audience. It is not merely in single
passages or expressions, in particular hits, that we are delighted, although the play bristles with them, and the student
at each successive reading may go on finding them as long as
he has the inclination. More admirable than any such stroke,
more astonishing as an exhibition of intellectual skill, is the
adaptation of the whole structure to its purpose, its exquisite
poise and delicate preponderation. Without the use of a single
plain blasphemy, without giving one single proof of 'impiety'
at which an indulgent conformist could not comfortably wink or
which a confessed unbeliever could not speciously disallow, the
author contrives in scene after scene, each in itself a brilliant
piece of portraiture, to impress with accumulating emphasis his
own conception of the story, until we arrive at a catastrophe
'too deep' for any emotion except the pure intellectual thrill of
thought uniting with thought,just only the joy of understanding.
As to the touches of detail, it would require a complete commentary to bring out even those which with our manifestly
inadequate means can now be detected; nor am I sure that
it would be a service to the reader, who ought not to lose the
pleasure of observation. One or two only of the most obvious
shall here be noticed. None is perhaps more simply neat than
the doubly double-edged reply of Admetus to Heracles, when
questioned as to the identity of the woman for whom he is in
mourning'. The parodies of Aristophanes apprise us that it
became famous, as well it might. 'It cannot sure' says Heracles
'be your wife who is gone'. 'Of her' replies the husband, who
placed as he is dares not confess his belief, and like a well-bred




A L C ES TIS.


93


man prefers evasion to lying so long as he sees his way,'of her I
may speak in a double sense'. 'Do you mean', says the other
with pardonable bluntness, 'that she is dead or that she is alive?'
She is...alive, and yet she is not: I feel it keenly' is the equivocator's answer, explained, under further pressure, to mean
that even a living person is as good as dead, when she lies under
an inevitable sentence of death. The dramatic merit of these
quibbles, as an exhibition of character and as points in the scene,
makes but a small part of the pleasure derived by the accustomed auditor, who has long before this been assured, as
he might indeed have guessed before the play began, that
Alcestis is no more dead than she is likely to die, and now
perceives that Admetus in his embarrassment has been forced to
say so in so many words.
But Euripides can do much better than a turn like this, of
which, as Aristophanes not unjustly implies, the type is too
formal for frequency. Such are for ears that need pricking,
and are employed sparingly. Far above these, and touching
surely the high-water mark of ingenuity, is the passage already
signalized, in which a maid-servant relates to the Chorus the
proceedings of Alcestis upon the 'fatal' morning1. Here we
have first to notice the skill with which this important narrative
is introduced. In the mechanism of the piece, as conceived
by the author, the cardinal fact is the precipitation of the
funeral. As soon as we know that Alcestis will be buried
without delay, whenever her husband believes her dead, we have
the key to the situation, and are ready to appreciate the treatment. Now it is just before the narrative of the maid-servant
begins that this intention on the part of Admetus, hinted in the
opening dialogue of the Chorus, is fully disclosed; 'There is,
I suppose, no hope of saving her life.-No; it is the day of fate,
irresistible.-Then...with regard to her person...they are doing,
are they not...what is required?-The adornment, yes, it is ready,
to be buried by her husband along with her'. Here, when the reader
has received his cue and fixed his attention, at a word of
admiration from the Chorus the maid-servant breaks out into a
full description of what has passed. Now the facts which she
relates have two distinct bearings, both in the conception of
1 v. 152 foil.




94


E URIPIDES.


Euripides equally important, though only one side is applicable
to the primitive and miraculous legend. First they exhibit the
patience and resolution of the victim, whose self-sacrifice remains of course as complete and heroic upon the Euripidean
hypothesis as upon the other. But secondly this narrative
makes equally plain, to minds not wholly prepossessed with the
conviction that 'Apollo' cannot err, nor his devotees conceivably
be deluded, the fact that, except the prophecy, there is not the
smallest reason to fear for Alcestis on this day rather than
another; that humanly speaking her life cannot possibly be in
danger; and that if, as is clear enough, she is already suffering
cruelly, if her strength is failing and threatens a grave collapse,
this is simply because from the night onwards she herself with
her family and household, in the simplicity of their faith, have
been doing their utmost, as they are doing still and will persist in
doing so long as she remains conscious, to torture beyond human
endurance a delicate frame already shaken by expectation.
Who but a fanatic could imagine a woman to be approaching
inevitable death, to be already beyond the reach of aid, when
not only, as we are told, is her appearance unaltered, but she
is able without assistance to perambulate a palace, and to go
through a prolonged series of fatiguing devotions and harrowing farewells? Who but a fanatic could see the work of a
special providence, could see anything but the regularity of
self-revenging nature, when these exercises, continued without
remission till the effect is produced, lead from weakness to exhaustion, and finally to hallucination, fainting, coma, and all the
appearance of death? Astonishzment the rational auditor will
undoubtedly feel, when he is told of the preparations for this
predicted and foreseen decease, a double astonishment, both of
admiration for the courage with which such horrors are borne,
and of anger, like that of Lucretius, against the superstition
which prompts them:What kind of creature should the woman prove
That has surpassed Alkestis?-surelier shown
Preference for her husband to herself
Than by determining to die for him?
But so much all our city knows indeed:
Hear what she did indoors-and wonder then.
1,v1. 152-157, Browning's version.




AL CESTIS.


95


There are some minds, and the literature of Athens in the
classical age unites in proving that then and there such
minds were a prevalent type, to which no art of language, no
art of any sort, could give pleasure more intense in its kind than
they will derive from the triumphant duplicity of this single
word. There is no better point in The Egoist.
One more touch only of this fashion I will ask leave to point
out, because I find it myself so signally delightful. If the
visitors to whom the maid-servant addresses her story had been
capable of reasoning, of calculation, of reflecting (like honest
Heracles') that to weep for a bare prediction, as things go in
this world, is somewhat premature, if they had not in short been
the slaves of oracular dictum, their simple course would have
been to rescue the lady at once from the bigots who are abetting her suicide, to scatter the servants, amuse the children,
silence the 'imploring' husband, and tell the queen herself, that
if she will only think it possible to live, if she will only take
food and keep quiet, 'the fatal day' will bring no further harm
whatever, and to-morrow she will find herself, as she was this
morning, perfectly well. Instead of this these 'particular friends'
of Admetus, being on this side blind as himself, begin desperately to pray, '0 Zeus, deliver us! 0 Paean, help us! No
hope but in heaven!' and so on. Great indeed must be the
relief and thankfulness of the judicious spectator, when after
a few minutes of this folly they innocently exclaim, Is not this
enough to make a man cut his throat, yes, more than enough to
make a man hang jimself? His dear, his dearest wife will
perish within this day, and he will see her die!
It is not however in any such gems of cleverness, thick-set
and brilliant as they are, that the power of the piece is mainly
placed. It is in the design of the whole, by which the fabulous
legend is so skilfully translated into facts of 'this common life in
which we live', that minds prepared could not escape the reflexion 'Thus indeed, or in some such way, the thing may have
taken place, and the story may have arisen!' As for the preparation of mind, it was given by the notoriety of the author's
aims and sentiments, re-inforced for the occasion by the subtle
and characteristic travesty which serves as a prologue. Of this
7'. 526.          2 vv. 213 —232.




96


EURIPIDES.


we have hitherto not spoken, or had occasion to speak, since the
play proper stands independent of it in plot, persons, and otherwise, pursuing its course exactly as if no such conversation as
the prologue presents had taken place, nor any such personages
as the two 'deities', between whom that conversation is held,
had ever existed. The speakers are Apollo and Death. Apollo
in the opening speech informs us that he has been revisiting the
house of Admetus; Death in his closing speech, informs us that
he is about to cut from the head of Alcestis, with the sword
which he holds, the 'hair of consecration', and thus devote her
to the underworld. But when in the sequel we are reintroduced
to the familiar world, when the departed 'gods' are replaced by
men and women such as we know, these human beings are found
not to be aware either that Apollo has just been among them,
or that Death, in the shape at least of a gentleman with a sword,
is among them now, nor are the deities any longer visible to us.
The supernatural personages are neither mixed with the others
on the same plane of action, nor indicated as moving on a line of
their own which intersects, as it were, the line of humanity at
certain points, so that perception is then mutual between the
two classes of being. The divine action of the prologue and
the human action of the play take place in spheres mutually
exclusive; so that, if instead of the existing preface, we were
supplied with a paper stating that such and such is 'the legend
of Alcestis, as taught at Delphi and in places of religion generally',
we should be placed, so far as the sequel is concerned, precisely
where the dramatic introduction does actually leave us. To the
purpose of Euripides as an 'atheist' this separation is of course
not universally necessary. It was open to him, and he has taken
this line elsewhere, as in the HippolOtuss and the Madness of
Heracles, to exhibit scenes in which, for the sake of argument, he
supposes and presents interaction between man and the creatures
of anthropomorphic fancy, saying the while to his audience, by
all sorts of signs and whispers, 'Such are the creatures which
they would have us believe in, which they would have us adore.. What kind of a figure do you think they make?' But when the
object of the dramatist is to present a 'sacred' story in a version
from which the gods are left out, it is desirable to draw the line
more sharply between what is proposed for belief and what is




AL CESTIS.


97


proposed for disbelief. Such is the method pursued by Euripides
practically in the Ion, the Orestes, and elsewhere, but nowhere
perhaps so perfectly and with so firm a demarcation as in the
A Icestis.
It is in reading the prologue to this play, more than in any
other part of it, that we may be moved to feel surprise at the
prevalent misunderstanding of the poet's intention. In general
neither the existence nor the duration of this misunderstanding
is matter for wonder; for the explanation is ready. The modern
expositors (and the same applies to those Christian scholars of
the 'Lower Empire' who composed the chief part and transmitted the whole of the Greek scholia and hypotheses) approach
the Alcestis and other works of Euripides with a fixed prepossession, one of those habitual assumptions which rule the
mind all the more absolutely because never stated in words,
that the story which the poet handles is by every one known
for a fable. It is always hard to suppose effectively, in such
a way, I mean, that our thoughts are controlled by the
supposition as they would be controlled by the reality, the
contrary of constant experience. Nothing is easier than to
make such a supposition in words, nothing more difficult than
to make it effectively. Now it is a constant experience, fortified
by the European literature of twenty centuries at least, that
those who speak of Zeus, Apollo, and the like recognize these
personages for imaginary types, accepted material of art, in
relation to which the question of literal truth or falsehood is
idle and irrelevant. Less than two hundred years after the
death of Euripides the use of the Greek legends after this fashion
was brought into general vogue by the accomplished Hellenists
of Alexandria; from that time to this it has never entirely
ceased; and on the whole we may say with substantial correctness that it has flourished vigorously in proportion to the general
vigour of literature. It results that every lover and student of
literature imbibes this habit of mind inevitably as the air which
he breathes. Of contrary experience the amount is infinitesimal,
too small to affect appreciably the habitual tone of our feelings.
Of writers who now have readers or, speaking broadly with
reference to the world as a whole, have ever had readers enough
to affect the balance, how many are there in whose productions


V. F.


7




98


E URIPIDES.


it is an active and indispensable factor that they believed, really,
heartily, passionately believed, in the theology of Delphi? I
can think of only two, Pindar and Aeschylus. The epic poets,
it is true, were no Alexandrians, neither was Sophocles. But it
is possible without serious loss, or at least without loss perceived,
to read both Homer and Sophocles in a purely Alexandrian
spirit; it is not only possible but habitually done. At any rate,
let the list of believers be enlarged to the utmost, what is it,
when set against the host of persuasive tongues, from Theocritus
down to the poets of yesterday, who have helped to engrain in
our minds, as a presumption of thought like the laws of arithmetic, that 'Apollo' is a beautiful and convenient fiction,
universally accepted and universally disbelieved? Now it is
plain that wherever and whenever this view, this 'Alexandrian'
view, prevailed, it would be absurd and inconceivable that a
story should be composed with the purpose of leading the reader
to desist from regarding a given Apolline legend as literally and
historically true; it would be to butt the air. In the Augustan
age of Roman literature, for instance, in the circle of Maecenas,
such an attitude would have been ridiculous and incomprehensible, inasmuch as, notwithstanding the symbolic splendours
of the Palatine temple, the educated classes of the Empire were
scarcely more in danger of mental injury from this quarter than
Pope or Keats. But in the fifth century before Christ-and let
it be understood that this is a proposition not one whit the less
hard to believe effectively, because it is formally a truism-in the
fifth century before Christ the Alexandrian type of mind did
not yet exist. No one, or only a negligeable quantity of persons,
in the days of Euripides, regarded a legend about Heracles from
the point of view which has ruled, with various subordinate
modifications, in almost every European society where literature
of high value and influence has been created. In the society
addressed by Euripides when he started on his career, to have
realized the difference between a legend and a historical fact
was the latest and highest effort of intelligence, and to increase
the number of persons capable of this effort was a noble enterprise, an invaluable service. And to make 'tragedy' serve this
purpose was a feat especially useful and especially attractive,
because the art of Aeschylus was the most powerful intellectual




ALCESTIS.


99


weapon which had been employed on the other side. The very
purpose of Aeschylean drama is, as Aristophanes puts it', to
make gods and heroes think, speak, and look 'as they naturally
would', in other words, to aid people, just conscious of a difficulty
about the matter, in continuing to feel that the Heracles who
raised Alcestis was a person as real and well certified as
Darius, and the ghost of Darius a thing which, in suitable
circumstances, you might as naturally expect to see as the living
Darius himself. When things were so, it was neither useless nor
tasteless to compose a drama with the contrary purpose, with the
purpose of diffusing the conviction, or at least the suspicion, that
the exploits of Heracles, whatever they were, did not include the
raising of the dead, and that the appearance of Darius after
death ought not to be as readily supposed as the construction
of the bridge over the Hellespont. But that things were so in the
time of Euripides is one of those facts which, according to the
true distinction of the philosopher, 'we know but do not believe'.
It is not hard to ignore a proposition, however manifest, which
we cannot really take into our minds without first hypothetically
annihilating and 'thinking away' the intellectual atmosphere
which has been inhaled by ourselves and our predecessors for
a hundred generations.
Accordingly it is not in general surprising that modern
readers should have failed to find, or even to seek, the clue to
such a piece as the Alcestis. It is true that without the clue
we have been unable, as we loudly proclaim, to make sense
of it. Nevertheless the author's point of departure lies so remote
from our habits, and he on the other hand was necessarily so far
from anticipating such readers as us, that there is little wonder
if we remain blind to signals, which he must have thought
almost too grossly legible for the intended effect. But the
prologue is really too much. Almost every one stumbles over it
(as witness the annotations); and we can scarcely believe that
even Balaustion, though Browning does not betray her, sat
through it without a smile. Among the devices of Euripides for
discrediting the inhabitants of Olympus, none were more effective
or better understood, than that of painting them in his own
colours; 'by representing the gods he persuades men that they
1 Frogs, Io60.
7-2
eee.  e.




TOO


FT URIPIDES.


do not exist"; and of this the best example extant is the prologue
to the A cestis.  His Death and Apollo, considered as superhuman creatures, as deities, are self-refuting.   The question
whether Alcestis shall die, or whether Death shall take instead
of her one of the old people, is discussed between them exactly
as two well-bred landlords, neighbours in the country and living
on bad terms, might discuss a question of encroachment or
ancient lights. Both are men of cultivated intelligence, quick of
apprehension and tenacious of their point. Both in short are
pure Athenians, and neither of them has about him a scrap of
such divinity as could seem divine to other men as well educated
as themselves. What was the tone, the bearing, the style which
could pass for Olympian in the city of Pericles, we may see in
the Athena of Aeschylus, or in the Athena of Sophocles, or even
(for Euripides himself could echo this tone when it suited his
purpose) in the Artemis who takes part in the closing scene of
his Hippolytzis, or in the Dionysus of his Bacchae. In the Apollo
of the Aeschylean Eumenides, and in the Furies themselves, there
is majesty and terror; nor even when they dispute do they cease
to be terrible and majestic. But look at this2:
Apollo. Go take her! For I doubt persuading thee...
Death.  To kill the doomed one? What my function else?
Apollo. No, rather to despatch the true mature.
Death.  Truly I take thy meaning, see thy drift.
Apollo. Is there a way then she may reach old age?
Death.  No way! I glad me in my honours too!
Apollo. But young or old, thou tak'st one life, no more.
Death.  Younger they die, greater my praise redounds!
Apollo. If she die old-the sumptuous funeral!
Death.  Thou layest down a law the rich would like.
A very legitimate translation, though wanting a little, as it
needs must want, of the facility which is the signet of Euripides.
But who is awed? Who feels any thrill of fear, any movement
of respect? Who can fancy that he is listening to the King
of Terrors, or that there is any affinity between this punctilious
usurer and the demon described by Balaustion?
Like some dread heapy blackness, ruffled wing,
Convulsed and cowering head that is all eye,
Aristoph. Thesm. 40o.
Browning's version: Mr Way's will equally serve the purpose.




AL CESTIS.


I01


Which proves a ruined eagle, who, too blind
Swooping in quest o' the quarry, fawn or kid,
Descried deep down the chasm 'twixt rock and rock,
Has wedged and mortised, into either wall
0' the mountain, the pent earthquake of his power.
Thus to the eye of Browning appeared the god of death
confronted by the superior god of life; so, or in some such figure,
Aeschylus would have seen him; and if Euripides suggested
any such picture, then indeed we should have known that we
were bidden to be grave and humble, as men should be in the
presence of that which is greater than they. As it is we are
commanded and compelled by Euripides to smile as he smiles
himself. But no man could smile, or encourage his audience to
smile, over a debate on such a theme and between such interlocutors, if he proposed in real earnest or in earnest imagination
to relate how a human being was raised from the dead.
Doubtless there were many in the theatre, yokels, boys,
visitors from Acarnania, and the like, who listened to the quips
of Apollo without a suspicion that the faith of the poet was not
as naive as their own; doubtless there were many, as there are
in all theatres, who did not hear, with the true literary sense, at
all, and could have given no closer account of the scene than
that it was 'the usual sort of thing'. But the class to whom
Euripides wanted to speak, the growing class whom study made
quick of thought, must have been assured by the prologue, if
they were not already assured by the title, that the poet proposed
to treat the legend of Alcestis in the only way which could be
expected of him, as a groundless fiction; that he thought of
Apollo and Apolline miracles as he always had, and would
express himself to the attentive in the fashion permitted and
approved. Nor were they kept long waiting for a sufficient
signal. The god has not spoken a score of verses before he is
provided with words, which never could have been put in his
mouth by an intelligent writer, unless with the purpose of
provoking an infidel sneer. The touch is so characteristic that
though not important it deserves particular notice. Having
related how leave was obtained for Admetus to redeem himself
from fate, if he could find a substitute within the limits prescribed, Apollo continues thus:




102


E UR /PIDE'S.


But trying all in tirnt, the fJiendly list,
Why he found no one, none who loved so much,
Nor father, nor the aged mother's self
That bore him, no, not any save his wife
Willing to die instead of him.
In the words which are emphasized Browning has reproduced
closely the colour of the original, which he sees to be laughable
and has even derided himself1.     Browning (it must be remembered) frankly gives up Admetus, fortifying himself with the
'half-deity' which he has discovered or rather created in Heracles.
But I appeal to the reader's impartial consideration. Is not this
notion of Admetus seeking a substitute, and going the round to
find one, just the very thing which you, as an intelligent man, if
you had accepted the legend, either as an inspired truth or as an
inspiring fiction, and desired to present it sympathetically, would
not on any account allow yourself to entertain or suggest? Of
course it is possible, it is even almost inevitable, if we come to
think of it, that, given the supposed circumstances, something of
the kind should occur. This it is which gives 'the atheist' his
opportunity, the kind of opportunity which none would be
quicker to see and use than the sharp-witted Euripides. But a
believer in the legend, or one who desired to evoke an imaginary
belief, would not see it, would resolutely refuse to see it, if his
glance fell that way. An Admetus ridiculous kills the legend;
and to see him begging is to see him, if only for that moment,
ridiculous. If Euripides perceived this, then he began his play
wit/h the intention of killing the legend. If he did not perceive it,
then he was a man inconceivably dull. Such are the alternatives
presented to us at the outset of the piece, and repeated in every
scene.
Altogether, with what the Athenian audience knew beforehand about the author, what they or many of them probably
knew beforehand about the play itself, with the suggestions conveyed by the spoken parts, and other suggestions, corroborating
the spoken, in which the dramatist, being also stage-manager,
would naturally instruct the persons (friends of his, such as
1 p. 78,   When King Admetos went his rounds, poor soul,
A-begging somebody to be so brave
As die for one afraid to die himself.




A LCESS TIS.


0o3


Cephisophon) by whom the play was perforlned,-altogether it
may be assumed that even at the festival most people, if
intellectually qualified to understand or care for his meaning,
were not left in doubt of it. But for those who were, there was
still abundant opportunity. The effect produced by a play at
the state-performance (and in the case of Euripides more especially) was neither the whole nor the chief part of what the
author might hope to achieve. As was said before, we know
that Euripides at least was widely read, and this at a time when
habitual reading was a new force. And what was even more
important in a society so constituted as Athens, we know by
direct testimony, and it is manifest from the nature of Athenians,
that plays which received what we have ventured to call the
'advertisement' of the Dionysia, were copiously talked about.
Here again we are perhaps liable not perfectly to realize a
condition of things so different from our own. For a play of )
these days, the stage-effect is not only the first thing but almost /
the last. Our reading body is so scattered, so disparate, so
distracted, and it has so many ways of obtaining imaginative
amusement without the intervention of the theatre, that even
with the help of printed criticism a dramatist would not be
well-advised in counting upon any sustained and harmonious
impression from the interchange of ideas among the members of
his fluctuating audiences. But the audience of Euripides was
always assembled. All the year round the few thousand men and
few score women-'one among many, not alien from the muse'"
-who made Euripides' world, were going in and out of the same
narrow streets and markets, gardens and colonnades, courts and
quays, sitting-rooms and supper-rooms, crossing and conversing
incessantly. And whenever the group in contact for the instant
had a mind to talk literature, which, it is plain, they often did,
no topic was so obvious, so surely dominant as the plays of the
Dionysia, positively the only writings, except the school Homer,
with which this people of talkers were generally familiar. It is
this state of things, this unique opportunity of mutual comment
and elucidation, which alone, to my mind, makes intelligible the
existence of such works as those of the Attic tragedians.
Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine a man, much less a
JleIAda, 1084.




ro4


E URIPIDES.


people, who without such help could appreciate their subtle,
compressed, and elaborate art; and it is certain that in those
times such help, if obtained at all, was obtained not by way of
reading but by way of talk.
With regard to Euripides in particular we have express
evidence to show how strong was the stimulus applied by his
writings to literary and critical conversation as a means of
mutual teaching, with what eager zest, all the stronger doubtless
for the flavour of 'impiety' and rebellion, the younger men
especially scrutinized and analysed his 'lessons in chatter', and
spent in measuring his phrases 'with rule and square' the
hours when, as people past learning would remark with a snarl,
'they ought to have been in the gymnasium'. Nor should we
omit to notice, what even our unfriendly witness has the fairness
to add, that these circles then proved themselves-as where
such exist they do still-the most efficient of intellectual
schools, shaping sometimes, out of the rudest material which that
extraordinary sea-port could furnish, debaters so sure and so
ready that, to the horror of men bred in a different discipline,
they were not unwilling to 'answer an official speaker'!' While
thinkers of graver complexion and more catholic taste, men
upon whose minds had dawned the notion of what is now called
'liberal scholarship', were forming parties, such as those ascribed
to Socrates by the writer of his memoirs-, for the study of 'the
old wits', it was over the productions of the day, and of that
author above all who most exactly answered to the taste of the
day, that the mass of ambitious youths enchanted themselves in
the exchange of notions.  Aided by the lively picture of
Aristophanes we may even now ourselves be present for a
moment in such a circle, while copies (as we may suppose) of
the master's latest deliverance, imperfect probably and pieced
out with recollections, are passing from hand to hand, and the
excited disputants are displaying their ingenuity in extracting
the moral lesson from the intricacies of the dialogue. We may
hear their queries and challenges, 'What is the meaning of
this?...And pray where is that?... Now who took this?' and so
on. We may hear also the growl of the impatient seniorAristophanes himself had probably played the part on occasion
1 Aristoph. Frogs, 954foll., o179 foil.  ' Xen. 1Meri. I. 6. 14




ALCEST1S.


Io5


-mocking the enquirers with such a parody as the comedian
puts into the mouth of Dionysus: " Where is that? VWhto took
that? Where's that kettle? Who took that fish? It is like a
housekeeper scolding in the pantry! " And we may also witness
the self-complacency of the young person who felt able to declare
that he 'saw through the whole thing in an instant', so well had
he profited by the schooling of the great improver, who 'had
brought into his art the practice of reasoning and reflexion'.l
It is impossible to overestimate the significance of these
facile and perpetual discussions, if we would understand the I
method of Euripidean art. As truly as a song is written to be
sung, the plays of Euripides were written to be talked about,
and only in this stage of their working were expected to
produce their final and complete effect. Of course this is not to
say that the broad theatrical impression of them conveyed by
the public (and only important) performance was not highly
valued by the poet and carefully studied. This it must have
been, not merely for its own sake, but for its influence in
increasing or diminishing the vogue of the piece as matter of
criticism. But not any one, however acute and practised, could
carry away from one performance, much less from a performance
under the conditions of the Athenian theatre, an exhaustive
comprehension of such a play as the Alcestis; nor, I am
convinced, did any one hope to do so. On the contrary it
would have been to Euripidean circles a disappointment, if
when they came to compare notes on a new piece, it had
seemed that there was nothing in particular to find out. They
would have said simply that the master was getting dull. It
was by conversation that the sympathetic auditors, who each
in his measure and fashion had understood, combined their
items into a whole; and it was by conversation that fresh
sympathisers were gained, fresh understandings prepared,
and the 'latest opinions' preached with far more effect and
attraction, Athenians being what they were, than if it had been
permissible to proclaim them openly in the orchestra.
To hear even the author himself, though he was not very
accessible or affable, cannot have been, in the conditions
Aristoph. Irogs, 971-99: Xoytcroiv eiv0es rTf TriXv, Kai OK-/Lv WOT'  L 7T   voelv
a7ravraT Kai K &o tey.




Io6. RL R IP LIDES.


of Athenian life, an ambition beyond the reach of determined
seekers. How he talked (not gracefully, but to the purpose)
of his own works and aims, we know well enough, at least in
outline and general tone, from the caricatures of the great
satirist, produced in circumstances which, apart from the
intrinsic proofs of serious meaning, guarantee them not wholly
unfounded.' " And pray ", we may fancy him saying to a visitor
who had reproached him with the evil tendency of his works
and had pressed him to make atonement to religion by
dramatizing the legend of Alcestis and treating it with that
solemnity, mystery, and grandeur 'natural to gods and heroes'
which would have been bestowed on the subject by Aeschylus:" And pray, sir, what is the use of such tragedy as you invite me
to imitate? The function of the dramatist, commissioned and
subsidized by his fellow-citizens, is to improve his fellow-citizens,
to be of use in his generation?    What good would Athens get,
what good did she ever get, from an Aeschylean Alcestis?        The
duty, as I understand you, of a poet in dealing with that sacred
(theme would be to wrap it up in a cloud of vague, impalpable,
inapprehensible verbiage, to set it in an atmosphere as remote
as possible from familiar experience,-in short by all available
means to prevent the mind from getting at it.      I have said and
shall always say that if this be true tragedy, tragedy is the art
of 'gulling', the art of 'keeping men stupid.2    The resurrection
of Alcestis is one of those tempting, fascinating, enervating
falsehoods, by help of which the impostors of our oraclemongering sanctuaries are still enabled, notwithstanding the
struggles of intelligence, to cross the counsels of statesmen and
embarrass the enquiries of philosophers. So long as men are
banished, fined, imprisoned, and even murdered in the name
of doctrines which have no other foundation than this fable
1 Especially the Frogs. It should be noted that there is a broad difference, in
point of utility as biographical evidence, between such a portrait as the Euripides of
the Frogs, and such a portrait as the Socrates of the Clouds. It is possible that
twenty years before Socrates' death not many persons were as yet seriously interested in
him. The Frogs was produced immediately after Euripides had closed a long career
of theatrical fame in pathetic circumstances and amid public mourning. Under
these conditions a baseless misrepresentation would have been suicidal.
2 Frogs, 909. Aristophanes proceeds, as his business was, to disarm the epigram
by an illustration which obviously does not support it.




.ILCES TIS.


to7


and other such, so long as the leaders of thought among us,
the men in whom lies the sole chance of making human life
a little more tolerable than it is, are silenced and persecuted,
because Apollo must not be impeached, the only purpose which
a man of feeling could have in touching this fiction at all-is to
expose it.
"And indeed, if Delphi were powerless, if such men as
Pericles and Anaxagoras were no longer in danger, I should
still think it unworthy of rational beings to assemble, with
pomp and circumstance proper to the realities of political life,
for the purpose of doing honour to an event, which no one can
realize without absurdity. How can we expect, while the city
continues to put such lessons before her youth, to build in them
that critical intelligence which is the instrument of sound
learning? What wonder if they are so careless of truth and
falsehood that, as you may have heard said by a distinguished
person, here in Athens itself gross errors are universally current
with regard to the capital facts of our history not a hundred
years since?'  Is this childishness to continue for ever?
"Why should I believe the resurrection of Alcestis? Why
do you? You would not believe it, if it were said to have
happened yesterday in the next deme. In such a case you
could act upon the sane conviction that the necessity and law
of  the  world   forbid  us to   expect   such   a  thing.   This
conviction is even expressed, rudely but justly, in some of your
sacred  stories.  Those who first related    that Asclepius, for
raising men from the dead, was slain by the thunderbolt of
Zeus, did actually mean to say in their fashion, that the laws
of this world are inviolable. That is a fairy-tale indeed, but a
fairy-tale of wise men; and if I should deal with the subject (as
you suggest), I shall take care to set it in contrast with the
legend of Alcestis, which is a fairy-tale of fools2. Why do you
believe it? If you want to try it, take it out of that Aeschylean
haze where 'nothing is clear', and put it, as they twit me for
1 Thuc. 6. 54.
2 z. 3-4, r22-129. From the first passage in particular it is clear that the two
legends were in origin hostile, the product of what in later stages of civilisation would
be called a religious controversy, or at least that Euripides thought so. The prologues
of Euripides are full of such lights, for us unhappily obscured.




108


Ei UAIPIDES.


repeating so often, 'among the things we handle and can test'.
/ What would you say if it were a story of yesterday? That the
facts were not properly ascertained. That the buried person, if
buried she was, had been entombed before she was dead. Why
not say so in this case? The legend, as you know, does not
even allege that the death of Alcestiswas carefully ascertained;
for it grew up in minds not capable of entertaining the question
of evidence. The Pythians, if you asked them, would doubtless
now reply that the death was ascertained, would say very likely
that the body was"actually burnt. But I have just as much
right to say that it was buried, and this prematurely. Nay,
I have much more right; for I will show you-I have had
thoughts on the subject, and you shall see an Alcestis before
long-that from the very circumstances of the situation, as you
yourselves present it, we should conclude that the funeral of
Alcestis would be performed by Admetus with the utmost
possible haste. But how was it, you may ask me, that her
'apparent' death came to occur so conveniently on the very day
which Apollo (that is to say, the Pythians) had fixed beforehand
for her actual death? That also is no great mystery. Wait
and see. Suppose for the moment that it did so occur; the rise
and spread of the miraculous version requires no further
explanation. Delphi, not to be convicted of error, would take
care of that, and would find, as still she does, an easy credence
from the cowardice of mortality, even if by the persons actually
engaged in the transaction no hint for a miracle had been given.
" But again, what right have you to assume that, supposing
the facts were really and manifestly normal, nothing can have
passed, which might serve in minds predisposed as a hint
for the supernatural explanation? I could show you the contrary,
and that out of the mouth of your own prophets. Who was
it that achieved the resurrection, that ' brought Alcestis back and
wrested her out of the hands of death'? It was Heracles. Well,
what sort of a person, according to you who believe in him, was
Heracles? Does a single festival pass in which some pious
comedian does not show us a legend depicting this same
Heracles drunk? I know very well that, when the pious
spectators are next invited to worship Heracles as a divine
redeemer, the drunken Heracles of those other legends is quietly




A L CES TIS.


To09


put out of sight and forgotten. But with what right? The
man, if he existed, was the same man. Both accounts of him
have the same, if any, sort of evidence. Proceed then, if you
want us to act upon this history in the dearest concerns of life,
to behave as if history it were; compare and combine your
information; put your drinking Heracles into your story of
Alcestis-since he was drunk so often, perhaps it was then
a wet day with him-and see how he looks. If I refuse, as
I do, to believe that Heracles did actually wrestle with Death,
that is partly because I am perfectly ready to suppose, from
your own account of him, that he may have said he would.
From the one statement to the other is a small step for the
activity of rumour: but it is a step nevertheless.
"I have myself heard the admirable Cratinus, in a certain
mood, announce his intention of swallowing the moon. I can
even imagine (for the mood, you know, recurs) that he might
say so at the very moment before the moon disappeared in
a cloud. I should not myself believe that he had done it, not
even if it had been predicted at Delphi that the moon would be
swallowed on that particular night. It seems as if there must
be some people who would.
"As for the other marvellous elements in your legend, such
as the residence of Apollo with Admetus in the character of a
herdsman and his wonderful feats there, you must excuse me
from cons idering them, till we have ascertained the resurrection.
It is implied even by the Delphian story, that of what was
done in Pherae 'by Apollo' there never was, properly speaking,
any evidence at all. We are told that Admetus was vastly
enriched as a reward for his kind treatment of this serf. The
moral is excellent; I have no wish to detract one jot from the
service rendered by Pytho, in days when she was before the
world and not behind it, in preaching such humanities; it is our
duty still to preach them, as I hope I do, by other and better
ways. But the moral implies, and every one of course understands, that when the lord showed this kindness the serf was not
known for a god. It would be absurd to praise a man's 'virtue',
because he treated with consideration a personage, who, however
depressed for the moment, was known to be immortal and only
a little less than almighty. Limited therefore to the facts, and




TIO


EURIPIDES


stripped of imaginative inferences, the assertion is (and I can
believe the whole of it), that the wonderful prosperity of King
Admetus was attributed to the gratitude of the deity. He was
in the habit of treating his servants generously; and he was
assured, by the usual intermediary agency, that one of his
servants had been in truth Apollo. And therefore if it is said,
for example, that this herdsman by playing the pipe would
bring the wild beasts out of the forest, this means (we must
suppose) that, being Apollo, he doubtless did so-when no one
was looking. Doubtless he did, if he was Apollo; and a very
pretty song it would make. I can hear the melody of it, and
echo it too, not worse perhaps than another:
And the spotted lynxes for joy of thy singing
Mixed with thy flocks; and from Othrys' dell
Trooped tawny lions: the witchery-winging
Notes brought dancing around thy shell,
Phoebus, the dappled fawn from the shadow
Of the tall-tressed pines tripping forth to the meadow,
Beating time to the chime of the rapture-ringing
Music, with light feet tranced by its spell1.
Your Apollo is beautiful enough; and when you cease to
command men, on pain of forfeiting friends, fortune, country, to
believe in his existence, to believe him lord of life and of death,
none will be happier than I to grace him with the best colours
that I can lay on. For the present, if I exhibit his person at all,
it will not be as piping to fawns, nor to Admetus either. I
shall show him-well, you will see how, but so at any rate 'as he
ought to be shown', so long as there are defenders of his
existence. Prove me first some act of his deity, which can
at least be supposed, on the face of the allegations, to have been
submitted successfully to the test of human sense. Prove me
the resuscitation of Alcestis; and then I will give you a chorus
of as many lions and lynxes as you please.
" So much for the truth of the tale, which you would have
me, responsible as I am for the public opportunities bestowed on
me, recommend by art to the acceptance of my fellow-citizens.
And then for its morality-But mind you. so long as the question
of truth is open, I do not allow that there is any separate question


Ale. 579-587; Mr Way's translation,




A L CES TIAS


I I T


of the morality.    A-s things are now, the first and paramount
interest of morality is to be rid of such an incubus as Apollo.
But waiving this, as to the morality of your legend. I deny
that it is a good morality. These ancient stories, to which by
the conditions of our theatre we tragedians are at present
practically restricted, are some of them     graceful growths, but
all of them   rooted  in bad times, and rank of the soil.       The
devotion   of Alcestis! Assuredly the heroic unselfishness of
woman is a beautiful thing; and I warrant you that, the gods
helping me, Alcestis shall take no injury from my hands. But
what of Admetus as a husband? That is an aspect of the
matter upon which our hymnists and our congregations are
little disposed to dwell; and they find no difficulty in ignoring
it. It belongs to the skimble-skamble thinking, which aids and
is aided by faith in these monstrosities, never to see anything
steadily, never to see anything zwhole, but only such parts as
please. And your heroic tragedy is beloved for flattering this
habit. But there are flatterers enough; and for my part, I intend
to give you much more of Admetus than of Alcestis. He is
much better for you. You are accustomed to rest with complacency on the picture of the self-sacrificing woman as the ideal
of wives. For herself she deserves such admiration, but for men
and for society, no! I should like to make you feel, and I
mean to try, what a blind, barbarous, self-defeating selfishness is
at the bottom of all this rapture about the devotion of woman.
You will say that the women join in it. But what sort of women?
What are the women bred by our system of semi-humanity, but
the most dangerous of our slaves?1 Prohibited by your generosity
from acquiring intelligence except at the cost of respect, the
poor creatures are so dull, that they cannot even distinguish a
friend from an enemy. Your magnanimous satirists have no
1 Compare Aristotle, Poetics, I5. i ' Even a woman may be good, and also a slave;
though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave is absolutely
bad'. It is pleasant to fancy the smile with which Euripides would have read this
sentence.  Of all the ancient moralists he is alone, or alone with Plato, in
showing an adequate notion of that radical disease, an imperfect ideal of woman, of
which, more than of anything else, ancient civilisation perished. The gross and
undoubtedly deliberate misrepresentation of this matter by Aristophanes is the part of
his polemic which is least easily forgiven. Indeed it is the only part which in the
ancient world seems to have done any mischief.




T 12


E URIPIDES.


difficulty in directing the almost unanimous resentment of the
sex against whoever dares to see and show what mischief
to themselves and to us results from their ill-governed virtue not
less than from their ungoverned vice. I pity Alcestis, and I
pity her husband. What would she make of him? What does
she make of him? Wait and see.
"But this after all, grave though it be, is in our present
position a minor point. So long as the spring of right action
is clogged and corroded by the habit of believing without cause,
so long as the art, which in spite of murmur and menace I am
still permitted to practise, is persistently employed by others so
as to foment this habit, so long will the contrary purpose be
still the main purpose with me. You know that for the majority
of our nation the main interest, and the only real interest, of
the story in question lies in the alleged resurrection, accepted
as a fact, and associated with certain dependent beliefs and
hopes, which I need not now particularize. We are forbidden,
you know, to reveal the mysteries.  What would be the effect
upon mankind, in what way good and how far, of receiving (if
we suppose it possible, as it may be for all I know) real proof of
such an event, it is not for me to consider. I cannot see so much.
What I see very well is the wide-spread, infinite harm of
putting fancy for knowledge (to speak like Socrates), or rather
of living by choice in a twilight of the mind where fancy and
knowledge are indiscernible. That necessity can never be overruled, uniformity never contradicted, the dead (for example)
never raised to life, I do not say, and you will not hear me say
from the stage. What you will hear-if you do me the honour
of attention-is that in tradition, enquire as I may, I find
no reason for supposing or expecting such a contradiction'.
That I shall say, as solemnly as I am able, and I shall not
retract it. If divinity is seen in achieving the unexpected, then
wait and see it! Divinity-I have said it before, and may say it
again-has more shapes than one '; and to this kind of miracle, to
achieving the unexpected, the gods I worship may not be found
unequal ".
Such are the prolegomena, and similar muhttis nimtandis the
1 Air. 962-972.
4 A. T r19-1r 16, the ' E:ripidean tag'.




AL CESTIS.


II3


epilegomena, which Euripides in a safe privacy may be supposed
to have given to the Alcestis: such at any rate is the purpose
revealed in the play itself. If this purpose is ignored, the play,
as a connected work, is destroyed.  It has no longer any
organic principle or informing spirit to live by. I do not mean
by this that there is any mistake about the beauties commonly
found in the piece. They are all there, and deserve admiration
for the reasons commonly given. That part or element in the
play, which alone is held up to admiration by the collective
judgment of modern expositors, is precisely the element which
remains unaffected by the prevailing misapprehension, the part
in which the true purpose of the poet coincides with the purpose
attributed to him. It is the heroism of Alcestis. The scenes
and songs in which this is exhibited are, as appears in current
allusions even more plainly than in formal comment, the only
portions of the work upon which the generality of modern
readers dwell with satisfaction; these in short for them are the
play. That in the wifely devotion of Alcestis we are to see at
all events the main and proper theme of the play is an assumption so fixed, that a recent critic1 has felt himself bound to
apologize for proposing even to modify this view in the interest
of Admetus: " We might go so far" (so far, be it noted) " as to
say that for the Greek audience the real theme of the play was
not so much the devotion of Alcestis as the reward of virtue."
What was the view of the audience, of the first audience that is
to say, or whether they agreed in any one view, may be matter
of doubt. But on the prior question, and more important, what
is the true subject of the play in the view of the author, there is
no reason or room for dispute: he has described it, as fully and
precisely as it could be described, in the opening scene; and it is
neither the devotion of the wife nor the virtue of the husband. It
is the defeat of Death; Apollo, by the destined agency of Heracles,
victorious over Death. It is to this contest between the governors
of the world, and to the issue of it, that the poet invites our
attention by the choice of personages for his prologue and by the
tenor of their conversation. Death, assuming the attitude of an
independent and uncontrollable power, declares his intention to
take and keep the mortal who is his lawful property. Apollo,
1 Mr Way, Appendix to the translation of Euripides, Vol. I.


V. E.


8




TI4


E URIPIDES.


though he condescends to parley, and to recognize a customary
claim on the part of his opponent, concludes nevertheless with a
forecast which is in truth a fiat, by declaring that, if Death
persists, Alcestis shall be taken out of his hands. This miracle
is the thing which we are to see performed. The return of
Alcestis from death to life is the central point of the legend and
the central theme of the play as propounded by Euripides
himself; the rest is circumstance and detail. That the persons,
in whose interest the saving power is to be put forth, are
virtuous and deserving persons, is a part and a natural part of
the religious conception. By the Apollo of the prologue their
story is exhibited just so far as is needed to explain how he and
Death come to be opposed, and why this particular mortal is to
be rescued. But the opposition itself, the rescue itself, the
divine and not the human element in the action, is the gist of the
matter, as appears both by the character of the persons who are
selected to propound the subject, and by the proportion of topics
in the preliminary scene of exposition.
Nor could any other view of the story be taken, so long as
the religious legend was the object of a vital belief.  The
question whether and where there exists in the universe a power
which can do what Apollo promises in the opening of this play,
whether such a thing has, to the knowledge of mankind, been
actually done, is one by the side of which every other has been,
is, and always must be insignificant. To every human being,
that power, which he thinks capable of dealing in the last resort
with human life, is God. On his conception of that power
depends, directly or indirectly, all that he can think. In the
days of Euripides the defenders of old religion maintained with
regard to this question exactly what is assumed in the prologue,
that this power resided in certain beings, who had many
organs of communication with man, but one organ of incomparable importance, the oracle of the Pythian Apollo: and upon
this foundation reposed a vast structure of social, civil, and
national usage just then beginning perceptibly to totter. The
modern reader is able to forget the resurrection of Alcestis, and
to occupy himself with her heroism, or her husband's 'hospitality', or what not, only because he neither believes, nor thinks
it believable, that she was really raised. But while this was




A LCESTIS.


115


believable, what else in her story could be comparatively significant, or how could the interest be centred anywhere but in
this stupendous fact? There could in those days be but two
tolerable ways of treating the story. One would have been that1
of Aeschylus, faithfully and earnestly to support the resurrection
as true. The other is that of Euripides, with equal zeal and
earnestness to exhibit the resurrection as false. But on the
resurrection, on the divine deliverance, as a piece of history)
asserted or denied, attention must be fixed; and the actual form
of Euripides' prologue should merely confirm us in attributing to
him the only conception of his subject which he could entertain
without insulting his audience.
And if it is morally possible for us to ignore or overlook the
true theme of the piece as propounded by the author, and to
substitute for it some choice of our own, it is not possible for us
to miss the discovery, that the author and we are for some
reason strangely at war. All readers make this discovery and
proclaim it in their various ways. The construction and the cast
become 'careless', 'mistaken', 'intolerable', in short inexplicable. The false resurrection, or in other words the premature
burial, is the centre upon which the scenes converge. Their
common point and purpose is to shew how it came to pass
that Alcestis was entombed before she was dead, and how
out of this fact might arise the belief in her resuscitation.
When we have put this out of sight and taken something
else for the essence of the matter, we find ourselves with the
greater part of the drama left, so to speak, upon our hands,
irrelevant, even noxious. The commentaries written from such
a point of view amount in the sum to a demonstration, that not
one scene is shaped and handled as it ought to have been for
the end supposed. I say 'not one', because even the deathscene itself, the only one in which the fault is not ex hypoth/esi
obvious, a common-place of criticism, even this has not escaped
objections ex hypothesi perfectly just. It has often been said,
and on the current assumption truly, that it was a technical
error in the dramatist to make Alcestis actually die upon the
stage. Undoubtedly it was an error, an error extraordinary in a
practised composer, if he meant the audience to suppose her
dead. Playwrights and play-goers know that an acted death,
8 — 2




T 6


FURIPTDES.


even when the supposed cause of it is clear and present to the
imagination, as a wound, or poison, or extreme old age, is a
difficult business, apt to fall flat and to miss persuasion.
How much more must this be the case with a death such as
that of Alcestis in the circumstances presented by Euripides,
a sort of miraculous death, which has not, so far as we are
informed, any cause whatever known to common experience.
In narrative, as distinct from drama, such an event, by the
aid of transcendental causes skilfully suggested, might be made
to carry persuasion; the passing of Oedipus in Sophocles may
serve for an instance, and others will easily be recollected. But
to put it in action, the whole process down to the last expiring
breath, and 'expose it to the incorruptible witness of the eye',
was to court a failure, to offend gratuitously against rules
enforced by experience long before they were formulated by
the Roman critic and his authorities. And observe that Euripides, while making (as is supposed) this inordinate demand on
our fancy, refuses to help us. When Sophocles presents, in
narrative not in action, the mysterious departure of Oedipus,
he provides incidents appropriately suggesting the intervention
of supernatural power, which are perceived by the witnesses
present and transmitted to us. The impatient voice, which
reminds the old man that his hour has come, is heard, as the
story affirms, not only by him but by all'. But the death of
Alcestis in Euripides, though at least as wonderful as that of
Oedipus, though caused by nothing more tangible than 'destiny',
is nevertheless accompanied by no such supernatural manifestation, by nothing adapted to overcome the revolt of sense and
reason against the impossible thing performed. Except in being
causeless her death is an ordinary death. No one present
betrays any unusual sensation, nor indeed does the patient
herself; for if at one time she hears 'Charon call' and sees
'winged Hades beckon', such fancies are not wonderful in a
woman who, if she were not by this time light-headed, must
be made of iron, and no confirmation whatever is obtained
from the other personages on the stage. Indeed these visions,
such as they are, are so placed by the poet in the scene2, as if of
malice prepense, that they are useless for the purpose of aiding


1 Oed. Col. i624.


2 Ale. 252-262.




AL CESTIS.


1I 7


belief; for Alcestis, when she sees them, is certainly not at the
point of death. It is after this that, without any remonstrance
on the part of Charon and Hades, she makes a farewell speech,
long, lucid, and sustained, and again after this that still without
further summons she 'dies'. Her situation and language are
exceedingly pathetic; but so far as stage-effect is concerned,
no tiro could do worse than the master here has done, if he
meant the audience to suppose Alcestis dead. But since, according to the intention of Euripides, Alcestis does not die,
there was naturally no harm, but advantage on the contrary,
in so presenting her 'death' that, according to all theatrical
experience, the audience were likely to disbelieve it.
In fact the real danger in this scene, from the Euripidean
point of view, lay on the opposite side. Euripides has seen it,
and has met it by a device of admirable simplicity and cleverness. The question for him was not 'How shall Alcestis appear
to be dying?' but rather this: 'Since Alcestis is not dying, and
in the circumstances could not be dying, how shall it seem
natural that Admetus and his friends should suppose her dead?
His friends may without improbability be made to act upon his
belief. But how account for the belief of Admetus? Certainly
he must not essay any restoration, nor even apply such simple tests
as are used in every death-chamber as a matter of course. He
must be convinced abruptly, instantly, without reason or rational
delay. How shall I justify this?' To a certain extent, a very considerable extent, the behaviour of Admetus at the moment of his
wife's supposed death, his neglect of every natural effort and
precaution, preposterous as it is, is accounted for by his fanatical
trust in prophecy and his absorbing pre-occupation with the
funeral. He is so certain that his wife will die, and die to-day,
he is so anxious to have her buried as soon as ever she is dead,
that it is not very surprising if he has neither inclination nor
leisure to ascertain the fact of her death. Still there might have
been some difficulty, some technical difficulty at least, in turning
the corner, in giving the premature conviction a lodgement, so
to speak, in his mind. All such difficulty is cleared away, the
passage made perfectly natural, and at the same time an element
added to the pathos, by the happy thought, hazardous perhaps
ill the Greek theatre but absolutely justified to a reader, of intro



118


E URIP1LDES.


ducing the little boy Eumelus.   When Alcestis with a last
'Farewell!' sinks into the final swoon, and before there is time
for the husband and friends to say or do anything beyond one
horrified exclamation, this child, the elder of the two and old
enough to comprehend the notion of death, breaks into a piteous
outcry:
Look-look on her eyelids, her hands drooping nerveless! O hear me,
O hear me!
It is I —I beseech thee, my mother! thine own little own little bird!
It is I-0, I cast me upon thee-thy lips are so near me, so
near me,
Unto mine am I pressing them, mother! I plead for a word-but a
word!" I
During the minute or two for which this childish lamentation is
prolonged Admetus scarcely speaks; and when he does again
speak in a collected manner...it is to urge the performance of
the funeral. Thus the child and his terrors are the true source
from which the rest, prepared as they are by their prejudices,
receive the conviction that all is really over. It is of course
impossible that the child should know anything of the matter
one way or the other; what he notes for marks of death (they
appear in the foregoing quotation) are manifestly not marks of
death, and could not have on any but a childish imagination the
effect which they have upon his. But the spoken word is never
without a certain weight. Admetus and the visitors being predisposed as they are, the child's belief and his loud expression
of it just give to their belief the opportunity of settling into
assurance, just bridge the interval in which they might otherwise
have entertained a question, and transport them, the husband
especially, with a natural precipitation from the 'death' to the
sequel.
To return however from this digression upon a detail-the
death-scene as a whole, like the other scenes, plays up to the
general purpose of the work; and it does so, as speaking broadly
they all do, by virtue of those very qualities which current criticism, starting from wrong premisses, notes for defects. Indeed it
would not be bad counsel to the reader who would arrive at
1 vv. 390-423. See Mr Way. Browning paraphrases here and makes the scene
unrecognizable.




AL CES TIS.


I 1 9


Euripides that, whatever notes of censure he finds in his commentary, he should take them upside down. It is at any rate
valid for some plays, the Alcestis conspicuously being one. For
example, the drunkenness of Heracles is treated by common
consent as the most unsuitable, incongruous, and insignificant
element in the composition. It is precisely the master-stroke,
and occupies for that reason its cardinal place in the work.
There is cleverness, much cleverness, in the device which, through
the presumable character of Admetus, deduces from the legendary
data the precipitation of the funeral. But this invention, the
basis of the play, is comparatively easy. Beyond this lay the
greater difficulty, which yet had to be solved before the design
could be completely executed, how, given that the resurrection
was to be false, and Heracles to do no more than bring back
from the tomb a person who had never been dead, the story
should yet be presented so as to give a natural starting-point
for a miraculous translation in process of rumour and fable,
The solution of this problem by the honest rodomontade of
the too convivial hero, in its felicitous adaptation to every
requirement of the case, and in the skill with which the necessary
delineation has been carried out, is in my judgment a feat of
pure wit, which is in its kind, like the devotion of Alcestis, not
even conceivably surpassable. 'He that would better it, what
should he do?' we may ask in the language of the handmaiden.
So also with the remainder of the work. The altercation
between Admetus and Pheres with its scorn-provoking egoisms,
the concluding scene with its low pitch of sentiment and final
abruptness, are not to be forced out of their nature, or explained
as divergences from a theme which requires a different treatment,
as the author would have felt, if he had had full command of
his faculties. Once for all, let us not flatter ourselves that we
can take the lead of Euripides, and show him how he might
have improved this and that, if he had only known what he was
doing. His clever countrymen thought him their cleverest; the
works we possess are a selection of his best; and if anywhere we
suspect him of dulness, we should quietly mark that place for
something which probably we do not understand. In this way,
though it is beyond hope that we should ever follow him with




120


E URIPIDES.


the perfect appreciation which he expected from his contemporaries, we may at least arrive at the power of enjoying not
merely bits of the Alcestis, nor the Alcestis in bits, but the whole
as a whole, for the flawless masterpiece of wit which in truth
it is1.
Not that Euripides, any more than another, must needs be
pleasing to every mind which comprehends him. On the contrary, of his art, as of all kinds of art, it may be said that there
are minds, many minds, which would the less find pleasure
in him, the better they understood. Their natural food lies
elsewhere, and it were waste of time to detain them from it
by argument. If for instance any one should say-in our age
of hurry and preoccupation with practical needs, it is a possible
objection, although the countrymen and contemporaries of Mr
George Meredith should know better-that the deliberate use of
the clear-obscure, the habit of indirectness and hinting, is an
artistic defect, because it embarrasses the percipient; it can be of
no use to answer that this is the very essence of 'the spiritual',
A nglice wit. The mental product for which, unless we will
invent another name, this name ought to be kept, cannot be
had except on this condition: and this is so strictly true, that
unless the necessary bar to facility and openness is found readymade in some external circumstance of prohibition-Euripides
luckily found it ready-made-the would-be wit must first put up
such a bar, for the purpose of leaping it. The leap is the art.
But you could not explain this, except to those who might
fairly resent the explanation. You could only refer the objector, if he would pursue the subject, to the works of 'spiritual'
men.
One point however in this connexion it may be well to note.
It touches the other Attic dramatists to some extent, but none
so nearly as Euripides. In the case of drama the practice of
indirect, slight expression, and the correlative habits of patience
and alertness bred in those who as audience or readers are
' It is by no means to be assumed as an axiom that even Aristotle could not be
mistaken in details. Is it not notorious that Voltaire sometimes misunderstood and
misrepresented Corneille, and Aristotle Plato? The history of criticism is full of
proved errors much less likely than an occasional error on the part of an encyclopaedic
philosopher about a poet of a widely different age.




AL CES TIS.


121


accustomed to find pleasure in such work, have a certain value
in relation to the art in general, quite apart from their particular
and necessary connexion with the faculty of wit. In drama,
hampered as it always must be by intrinsic limitations, full
expression often means unnatural expression. It means that
in order to make things a little easier for the spectator or reader,
the dramatis personae have been made to say right out what in
real life they would at most have hinted, and to hint in words
what in real life they would suggest, if at all, in some other way.
By convention, that is to say by the common agreement of
artist and audience to save trouble, such things are tolerated;
but they are not admired. In such situations, the more trouble
the audience is ready to take, the more natural, and so far the
better, can be made the imitation. In this respect the Athenian
stage, and that of Euripides especially, is greatly superior even
to the best modern work; nor is it likely that the superiority
will be reversed. An illustration is supplied by the Alcestis. In
arranging to bury the heroine hastily and by stealth, Admetus
and his friends are doing a thing which natural sentiment detests.
They are in fact for the time in the position of conspirators.
They have a secret. Now every one knows and has laughed at
the conventional 'secret' and 'conspirator' of the ordinary stage,
and the shifts to which the unlucky dramatist is reduced by the
necessity of reminding the audience perpetually, through the
mouths of the dramatis personae, of something which must on
no account be mentioned. The 'dissembling' and 'disguising',
the absurd ostentation of mystery, has been ridiculed till parody
is tired. But the practice persists nevertheless, and will persist;
for the simple reason that if on the stage people with an unpleasant thought between them were made to talk as they really
would, the slower half of the audience would miss the point,
would not see that something 'was up'. Now Euripides in
such a case as this had the advantage that, so far from being
expected to make himself everywhere and instantly intelligible
to the whole of a theatrical crowd upon the first hearing, he
neither might be nor wished to be. He is therefore able to deal
with such a situation in a natural way. He is not bound, as a
modern dramatist would be, to keep Admetus, his slaves, and his
friends, for ever talking about what is to be done. Things of




122


E URIPIDE S.


this sort are not talked about in the doing, but simply done, with
as little talking as possibly may be. So it is with the burial of
Alcestis. When the Chorus are first told that she is actually
sinking, they say, in language obscured by a certain shame,
'Then doubtless you are doing about her...wiat is required'.
They are understood, as people in such circumstances do understand one another in reality, but on the stage do not. 'Yes, the
vesture to be buried with her is ready'.' And with that the
subject is dropped. So again after the supposed death Admetus
bids the visitors 'wait a while for the burial', which, having come
for the purpose, they naturally do without a word. This, and a
few hints exchanged by the Chorus in their opening conversation,
is all the talking that passes on the subject, being about as much
as in reality might pass. The artistic gain is double; first, the
imitation of life is felt to be truly like it, and not merely passed
as a likeness by reluctant convention; secondly, in catching the
points, there is exercise for fixed attention and a quick mind,
which exercise is part of the intended pleasure.
Hence to understand Euripides fully was even for his contemporaries and for the most sympathetic among them, as
Aristophanes gives us to know, a task for patience and some
mutual help. He wrote for a people of slave-masters, a people
with leisure, newly-awakened to the literary chase and eager for
hunting-ground. As for us, we cannot expect to be always 'in
at the death', or always even to find. But if we do not find, or
do not care to beat the wood, we should abstain from crying that
there is no game. Among the complaints which criticism, in
the vein of Schlegel, has alleged against the conduct of this
play, none is more startling (though the point in question is not
of great magnitude) than that of 'inconsistency' as to the disposition of the corpse. According to Euripides (as all are
agreed and without possibility of doubt) the body of Alcestis
is buried or rather entombed. She is not burnt, but laid just as
she died in the place where she is left. The expostulation of
Admetus2 'Why was I not permitted to fling myself down into
her grave, there to rest with her at last?' accords with other
indications on all hands to settle the point completely. ' How


1 vv. 148-149.              2 z' 897.




AL CES TIS.


t23


careless thon ", cry detractors', "how careless is the author to say,
not once only but twice, that it is the intention of Admetus to
consume vhe body by fire?"
This corpse even now, with all things meet, my servants
Bear on their shoulders to the tomb and pyre2.
And again,
Let us, for we must bear the present ill,
Pass on, to lay our dead iupon the pyre2.
'In the pyre' not 'upon the pyre' are the exact words, and in
the idiom of Euripidean dialogue-with an older poet it might
be otherwise —the prepositions are not indifferent. But any way
there is the pyre. How very careless! Yes indeed, how grossly,
incredibly careless, if careless at all. A man sits down to write
the story of a miraculous resurrection; and he leaves it a point
unfixed, a matter so little considered that he contradicts himself
about it unawares, what was done with the body between death
and revival, even whether or no it was completely destroyed.
They were going to burn it. But did they? Well, it seems not;
no, certainly not. But you may make and take it just as you
like. He had Snot thought of it. Then what was he thinking of,
where was his mind, what attention can he have bestowed on his
subject? The point is critical, central, vital, the heart of the story
which he has undertaken to tell. And observe that if these references to the pyrh are oversights, they have not the excuse of being
inconspicuous. One of them is thrust into prominence, placed
in the composition so that a dramatist could scarcely help
pausing upon it. The verse Let us be going, that in the pyre we
may place the daead is an exit-verse; after saying this, Admetus
heading the prlocession quits the scene. Cues of exit have
always a catch for the ear; all dramatists study them, using and
turning them w!ith more or less happy device. But Euripides
had not thought of it.
But indeed he had. If instead of supposing him careless we
will suppose odirselves ill-informed, we may learn something,
something not w'ithout interest in itself, and illuminating for the
play. The referPences to the entombment of Alcestis are quite


J Munk, andi many others.


2 71V~. 6o8(, 740-  Way.Y




124


1E URIPIDE S


simple, consistent, and adapted to the author's intention; only
they presume us acquainted with practices which in fact are
foreign to us. The intention of Admetus is indeed. as he says,
to lay his dead in a pyre; she is actually laid in a pyre; and if
she had not risen, she would have been burnt in it. But nevertheless the first thing done with her body, and as things turn out
the only thing actually done, is to bury or entomb it. The place
to which she is carried, as it is described to Heracles', is a
'stone-built' monument, of sufficient size and dignity to catch
the eye of a person going out of the town in that direction. It
is there called simply a tomb; but when Admetus refers to it in
the first of the passages above quoted, it is described more
exactly as 'both grave and pyre'; 'my servants', he says, 'are
ready to bear the corpse to grave-and-pyre'2-if we may venture
clumsily to figure by hyphens a connexion for which, as it
happens, we have not in use any neat verbal equivalent. We
should note that grave comes first, a proof that what Admetus
has in his mind is not the burning first and then the interment
of the ashes; for the grammarians' exploded figure of hysteron
proteron or 'cart-before-horse' must be left, at least so far as
Euripides is concerned, in the grammars. If he had meant 'to
pyre and to grave', he would have said so. Th.e sort of pyra'
which he has in view is a grave-pyre, in which, as he says, not on
which, the corpse would be placed. It is a rrortuary kiln, a
chamber in the royal tomb, opening from the flior of it. Here
the body would be laid; here that of Alcestis was laid and left
by the performers of the funeral. Afterwards-at night we
should probably suppose, since one object of the whole arrangement was to achieve a sanitary purpose withoiAt insulting the
majesty of the dead or affronting the eyes of the living-fire
would be put to the fuel with which the cha.mber had been
provided, and the chamber closed. This methrod of sepulture,
combining burial and burning in one, is known elsewhere; and
though it was not the common practice of the Greeks in historical
times or probably at any time, it certainly ha d been used by
them, and for all we know may have long conti nued in use, for
persons or families of great dignity. The for,m of the royal
v. 836.             2 es Tar ov re Kac  rvppav.:  APyra it should be remembered, does not properly mean p/'e, butJ iie-/lacc.




AI CE STIS.


125


sepulchre at Pherae, as conceived by Euripides, and the custom
of it, precisely resemble in essentials those of the so-called 'Tomb
of Agamemnon' discovered by Schliemann at Mycenae, where
the splendidly attired and jewelled corpses " were sunk in graves
under the earth, which were large enough to receive them, had
they not been filled up round the bottom with rudely built walls
or pieces of stone, so as to reduce the area, but to create perhaps
some ventilation for the fire which hadpartly consumed the bodies
when they were found".'  Just in this condition, jewellery, charred
relics, and all, would be found the corpse of one interred after
the fashion implied in the Alcestis. It is not impossible that
among the magnates of Thessaly, who had customs of their own,
such a use may have come down even into the fifth century.
This however we need not suppose. It would be enough that it
was a method practised in that unknown time when the legend
first took shape. Once fixed in the story, the circumstances of
the interment would be preserved with the rest in tradition.
For they are material to the religious purpose. It was not
without reason that the scene of this resurrection was laid among
a family whose custom it was to make a fire in the grave. It
prevented an obvious suspicion. For assuming, as believers of
course did assume, that between the death and the rising again
a satisfactory time had elapsed, the custom would put beyond
question the miraculous character of the revival; while nevertheless, to the unschooled instinctive imagination, the reconstitution of the person would seem more comprehensible, more
believable therefore, under these circumstances, than if the body
had been visibly, totally destroyed by burning in the open air.
But when the 'atheist' had rationalized the story by putting the
resurrection within an hour or two of the death, the peculiar
method of interment became to him equally serviceable. If
according to the consecrated version Alcestis had been inhumed
in a coffin, or burnt after the common Greek fashion in the presence
1 Mahaffy (after Schliemann), Rambles and Studies in Greece, p. 411. Compare
the tomb-pyre of Capaneus (Eur. Suppi. Io62), which however appears to be in an
open place under a rock, and the 'fiery rock-chamber' of the lphigenia in Tauris
(626). The last example is peculiarly interesting in connexion with Mycenae, because
the express purpose, with which the sepulture is described, is to console a certain
'Argive', who is in fact the son of Agamemnon, for the loss of the rites which he
would have received at home (,v. 627-63i).




126


E URIPIDES.


of the mourners, then either way the hypothesis must have been
altered, before she could be made presently to wake up and walk
home. "But you know", we may hear Euripides whisper, "you
know it was not so. We all know that Admetus merely laid his
wife in an open tomb-chamber, where she would be burnt or
partially burnt...afterwards no doubt, if she stayed there (let us
say) till next morning. But if, as after all seems more likely, she
rose again in the course of the day on which she died, why, then
you see how providentially the Pheraean method of sepulture
was adapted to the requirements of a resurrection!"
It may be worth notice that, in addressing Alcestis herself on
her death-bed, Admetus declares that he will join her hereafter,
and will have himself laid, when he comes to die, 'side by side
with her in the same cedar'.1 If this means, as is generally
supposed and seems most probable, that she is to be buried in a
cedar coffin, then the promise is not justified by the facts. As
appears from what comes after,and indeed from what comes before,
such a burial is neither executed nor planned, and is practically
incompatible with the prompt and surreptitious obsequies, which
Admetus has really projected. That he should belie his intentions at this moment is nevertheless quite natural, nor need
he be accused of deliberate falsehood. He is in no state for
deliberation. If it is not strictly true that Alcestis is to be buried
in a coffin, neither is it strictly true that Admetus, if he could,
would have 'descended to Hades' in search of her, 'passing
Charon and Cerberus undismayed'. The whole of this speech,
excellently interpreted by Browning, is mere extravagance,
prompted partly by the husband's genuine grief, partly by his
uneasy conscience; and the 'cedar coffin' comes well in with the
rest.
But we must go back to those verses which Euripides so
carelessly wrote without thinking, for we have not yet done with
them. We have not yet done half of what, as Aristophanes
assures us, Euripides expected and got from contemporary
students. We have not applied to the lines any subtleties of the
'foot-rule', we have not 'measured them as it were with a square'.2
But let us do it for once, since we were meant to do it; it may
perhaps repay us. Let us first recall the situation. Pheres has
1. 365.              ' Frogs, 9,6.




AL CESTIS.


T27


flung his last taunt and retired. Admetus, having hurled after
him a final curse, returns, with our peccant couplet, to the business
of the moment. His words, if we may discard elegance for the
sake of as near an approach as may be to exactness, will run
thus: "For our part-since what is before the feet must be
borne though evil-let us be going, that in the burning-place we
may put the corpse".1 Now if these sentences are to be taken as
hasty scribbling, and searched for blunders, we may find one
surely worse, or at least more conspicuous, than the pyre. I
mean the strangely unhappy expression 'the evil that is before
the feet must be borne'. The phrase is proverbial in cast, and
equivalent nearly in our idiom to 'we must take things as they
come'.  But a phrase, because proverbial, is not to be used in
all circumstances indiscriminately, not in literature at least.
Applied as it is here to the business of carrying a corpse, which
the bearers2 have put down and are now to take up again, the
expression 'what is before the feet must be borne' is no
better than a pun. It is of course impossible to suppose Admetus
conscious of such a bearing. He has a right, if we may say so,
to blunder unawares. But the author has not; and the charitable
presumption is (especially at the close of a scene in which the
prince has been made to expose himself so freely) that the
author, who does not love him, is playing him false. Reasonably
therefore we may look for the like, when he continues with 'let
us go, that in the burning-place we may put the corpse'. Now
the reader will remember that this sentence, running in this
order, is the finale of a scene, an exit-cue. Turning over the
play, or any other play of Euripides, we may satisfy ourselves
that he was artist enough to know the importance of climax at
such a point8. But the sentence before us, 'let us be going that
in the burning-place we may put the corpse', is so shaped that it
cannot be made climactic or saved from a weak, trailing effect,
unless you put, as the pathos of the situation naturally suggests,
a stress on the close of it; otherwise it ought to have stopped
1 v. 739-740 i'eT's -TOoiv 7roalv yap olarTov KaK6v —
aTTEiXwl/eV,  bS wv  v eV rvpt OWfjIv v~Kp6v.
The Iv in 4v irooav, literally at or among, is an archaism surviving as such do in a byword.
2 OclpovreS, v. 608.
3 See e.g. A/c. 434 6, 6, 733, 86o. It is the same with the conclusion of a tirade.




128


E URIPIDES.


at 'let us be going'. To lay the dead in her resting-place is all
that can be done for her being dead: a like point has already
been made in the indignant protest 'Go; leave me free to bury
this my dead'.'  Moreover the poet has taken other precautions
to secure this emphasis. The last word (nekron, 'the corpse')
stands twice at the end of verse and sentence within a few lines
before2, so that it has got upon the ear, as it were; and that this
is no accident may be seen by comparing the conclusion of a
previous scene3, where another key-word or key-note is treated in
the same way. But if, obeying these directions of the author, you
do accent the close, you may get a shock; for the Greek word,
ambiguous in a way which I am unable to reproduce, signifies
equally' the corpse' and 'a corpse'. Take it in the second way,
'let us be going, that in the burning-place we may put..a
corpse'; and note that by a delicate variation in the form of the
final clause4 it is hinted that the object in view may possibly
not be attained. What then does it suggest? Plainly that if
they do not go, if after the time already wasted by the
interruptions of Heracles and Pheres they allow any further
delays, the 'corpse', before they lay it in its resting-place, may
be no corpse. Which is precisely the state of the case.
This couplet written carelessly! The man who got it made
after an hour of experiments might feel that he had done a full
hour's work. We may say, if we like, that it is a waste of time,
and that for our part we have neither taste nor leisure for the
'squaring' and 'measuring' of phrases which he expected.
Only let us remember that Euripides wrote expressly for those
who had such leisure, and faculties also and facilities ten times
as great as ours for this particular study.  It is for us to follow
him as far as we choose, and when we will not or cannot, to go
away.
1 v. 729.     2 vv. 724, 729.   3 tvos in vv. 550, 558, 559, 567.
4 By the insertion of av,-ws dv...O i0ev instead of Ws O(We/v. The possibility which
Admetus himself has in view is that of further interruption.




ION.
" Hermes thus, Cyllenian, Argeiphontes
Spake with a wink in his eye."
Homeric Hymn.
IF modern criticism has not been occupied as much with the
inconsistencies, confusions, and errors chargeable (according to
current assumptions) upon the author of the lon, as with the like
faults when exhibited (ex /ypothesi) in the Alcestis, this is not
the fault of Euripides. The case of the Ion is neither better nor
worse. Both plays exhibit (always ex hypothesi) the same crying
incongruity between promise and execution, the same inexplicable carelessness of development, the same futility in the
termination, in short the same marks of 'the botcher'. If the
Ion has encountered comparatively little censure, that is because
it has been comparatively neglected, and in fact, like the majority
of Euripides' extant works, has been studied mostly, by those
who have studied it at all, as a piece of instructive Greek, a
collection of references. From this fate, from being relegated
to the school-room and the lecture-room, the Alcestis has been
saved, as we said, by the character of the heroine, which appealing directly to universal feelings has kept alive interest enough
in the whole work, not erudite interest but naive emotional
interest, to provoke denunciation of its supposed offences. The
attractiveness of the youthful devotee who gives his name to the
Ion, though none would dispute it, depends more than that of
the unselfish wife upon historical imagination; and he is marred,
as a mere object for affection, by traits of opposite tendency.
To the ordinary world of readers, outside of Hellenistic
circles, he and his legend seem to be altogether unknown; and


V. E.


9




130


E URIPIDES.


as for the play of Euripides, notwithstanding the fact that a few
years ago it was (for certain practical reasons) selected againlst
others of Euripides for performance in Cambridge, my belief is
(and I do not speak without enquiry) that except for purposes
of erudition it is seldom opened. Like the mass of Euripides,
'it does not count'.
And if the commentaries current, or current till recently',
upon its plot and purpose were really the last word on the
subject, I could only say that in my opinion the general neglect
is justified. It is in vain that attention is directed to the
undoubted beauties of many several parts, to the charm of an
isolated picture, the passion in a particular monologue, the
smartness of a certain conversation or sweetness of a separate
ode. It is not such bribes as these which will buy approval for
a play from the world which 'judges undisturbed ', and least of all
for an Attic play. It is the grasp of an organic conception
which makes the work of art, and especially it is this quality
which more than anything else constitutes the power of the
Attic theatre, of the Orestea, the Oedipus Tyrannzs, or the
Hippolytus, and which therefore is expected from a play claiming admission to such company. The plain reader will insist on
the plain question " What is the dramatist driving at, and what
is it all about? What general notion had he of his subject, and
what is the view of it to which he would lead us?"  But i!n the
case of the Ion, as in the case of the Alcestis, these questions, if
we are to answer them on the p'evailipg hypothesis, bring us
inevitably tcd the conclusion, apprehended even before we justify
it by minute analysis, that the dramatist did not know what he
was about; and we go away, not to return; or if we return, it is
only to dip in remembered places and pick out a pleasing bit.
We see that, given the hypothesis, Euripides must have lacked
precisely that power which the art of his country has taught us
to consider supreme; and we speak of him, with Jowett, as 'no
true Greek'.
I have already, when making in I890 the translation noticed
below, discussed the plot of the Ion, and have offered an
1 It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the countenance given by
Mr M. A. Bayfield, when reprinting his edition of the play, to the general view
of its purpose which I propounded in I89o, when I translated the play in verse.




ION.


I31


explanation of its peculiarities. It will not however be unprofitable to resume the subject in this connexion; for the Ion
is no isolated phenomenon, and cannot properly be seen in total
separation from other works of the poet. With the Alcestis in
particular, notwithstanding a broad difference of colour, it has
in scheme a close resemblance, a resemblance so close as to
show, what is amply confirmed by other works, that Euripides
came to use almost conventionally and as an established form
certain methods of dealing with the peculiar relation between
him and his theatre of exhibition, between the sentiments which
he desired to express and the form imposed by accident.
Both plays, the Ion and the Alcestis, offer at first sight
exactly the same problem. Not that in the Ion we are disturbed by 'comic elements'; but, to repeat the distinction of
the previous essay, it is not really because they are 'comedy' that
the characters and scenes of the Alcestis have provoked so
much objection. They would have been accepted with content
under any name, if they had appeared consistent and relevant.
Irrelevancy and self-contradiction are the supposed faults
which offend in the Alcestis; irrelevancy and self-contradiction
appear equally prima facie to mark the arrangement of the Ion.
Part for part the plays may be paralleled and the like repugnancy revealed in their corresponding elements.
The Ion, like the Alcestis, purports to set forth a certain story
proving the power of the Pythian Apollo. As in the Alcestis, so
here, the facts are stated and the divine intentions announced in
a preface, which, though taking the more usual form of a mono- l
logue (not a dialogue, as in the Alcestis), resembles it in the
essential point that it is spoken by a deity, who thereupon
disappears entirely from the action.. The deity is in this case
Hermes, who appears before the oracular temple of Apollo at
Delphi. He informs us that 'in Athens many years before,
Creusa, a daughter of the noble house of Erechtheus, became by
Apollo's violence the mother of a boy, whom she brought forth
secretly and left in a cradle, with certain tokens upon him, at a
certain cave on the Athenian Acropolis. Thence by Apollo's
command Hermes conveyed the cradle and child to the temple
at Delphi and left them on the steps. The prophetess of Apollo,
the Pythia, found him and brought him up. He is now adult
9 —2




132


E URIPIDES.


and is still in the service of the temple. Creusa the mother has
since married a well-born soldier of fortune, the Aeolid Xuthus.
They have no children, and are coming to-day to consult Apollo
on this matter'. What follows I will give in the original form,
i preferring Mr Way's translation to my own, as I shall throughout
where I find it substantially faithful, by way of a guard against
prepossession.
Now Loxias 1 guides their fate
To this, nor hath forgotten, as might seem.
He shall give Xuthus, when he entereth,
His own child, saying to him, "Lo, thy son",
That the lad, coming home, made known may be
Unto Kreusa, Loxias' deed abide
Unknown, and so the child may have his right.
And Ion shall he cause him to be called
Through Greece, the founder of an Asian realm.
Now to yon hollow bay-embowered I go
To watch how destiny dealeth with the lad.
Nothing, as the reader sees, can be plainer than this declaration.
Apollo, having foreknowledge of the future and guiding for
his own purposes the fates of men, has arranged a destiny for his
child, unacknowledged hitherto, in which all the parties concerned, and Apollo himself among them, will find their account.
Xuthus is to become father of the boy Ion in his own opinion
and that of the world. At Athens his true parentage is to be
revealed to Creusa, and to Creusa only, 'Apollo's deed' thus
remaining a secret between himself and her, while her son, as
the putative offspring of her human husband, succeeds by her
consent to her vacant heritage, and every one lives happy ever
after. Hermes, as a good brother to Apollo, has been useful
in the matter before, and has come to see and enjoy the
realisation of this forethought. Precisely as in the Alcestis, the
thing that we are to witness is a triumph of Apollo, in this
case the sure dexterity, so different from the blundering of
mortals who cannot see before them, with which he will achieve
a foregone conclusion.
One small point of difference we notice, which may or may
not prove significant. The Apollo of the Alcestis, though his
1 Prophet-name of Apollo.




I.zV


T33


tone is far from Olympian, is as a man not open to censure.
He has, so far as appears, a fair record and a clear conscience.
We can hardly say as much for the Apollo of the lon, who, even
in the sympathetic representation of his brother, appears as
intending for good reasons to keep a veil over an incident in his
past. However since his skill in doing this is to be a point in
his success and every one in the end is to be left secure of
happiness, the blemish is not distressing; if he has done what
humanly speaking must be called an injury, he has both the
will and the power to repair it.
Now let us turn from the opening of the play to the end,
and see where Apollo is left.    Neither of him, nor of Hermes,
nor of any divine personage have we seen anything          in the
interval, nor have they been reported as taking part personally
in the proceedings that have occurred. Through a series of
complications the question of Ion's parentage has arrived at
what seems to Ion himself a hopeless entanglement, when the
goddess Athena presents herself to pronounce a decision. Her
speech, so much of it as is relevant, shall be taken again from
the version of Mr Way, though here I shall have to note a small
divergence. She speaks, it should be said, in the presence of
Ion, Creusa, a train of maid-servants (the Chorus) who accompany
Creusa, and a crowd of Delphians, armed men and others, who
have been drawn to the spot by the events of the drama.'
Fly not; no foe am I that ye should flee,
But as in Athens, so here, gracious-willed.
I come from thy land-land that bears my name:
I Pallas from Apollo speed in haste,
Who deigned not to reveal him to your sight,
Else must he chide you for things overpast,
But sendeth me to tell to you his words:Thee this queen bare, begotten of Apollo:
He gives to whom he gave, not that they gat thee,
But for thy bringing home to a princely house;
But when the matter was laid bare and told,
Fearing lest thou should of her plot be slain,
1 For the guards and crowd see vv. 1260-I280 (with the notes and stage-directions
e.g. Mr Way's). They are indispensable to the action and must be supposed to
remain till the end, as there is no opportunity (not to say warrant in the text) for
their departure. The Chorus of slaves has actually the final voice.




I34


EURIPIDES.


And she of thee, saved thee by that device.
Now the God would have kept the secret hid
Until in Athens he revealed her thine,
And thee the son of her and Phoebus born.
Here she diverts to other matters, interesting to the
Athenian populace but throwing no light on the conduct of
Apollo's plan, of which this is the last that we hear. Where
then is Apollo left, and what has become of the far-sighted
project, the skilful 'guidance of fate', which was promised to us
in the prologue? In the first place it is astonishing that the
personal intervention of a deity should be thus required. A
knot to be cut! But this is a case in which, if Apollo's credit
as a prophet was to be preserved, there ought not to have been
any knot. Did Hermes expect any? Look at his words and
see whether it is conceivable. If Apollo in a delicate matter
intimately concerning himself, to which he had long given
particular attention, could not see to the end of the passing day,
where is his superiority over the ordinary man? In the next
place it is the common feeling of readers, and surely the natural
feeling, that if a deity must appear, the non-appearance of
Apollo himself has, for Apollo, a miserable effect. The place
is his own temple; the affair is his own; he himself (we were
told) took the management of it. If by the fault (of course) of
others there is something to put right, if faith is to be restored
and discontent rebuked, Apollo surely is the intervener for
whom we look. That in the last resort he should send excuses
would be compromising for his dignity, even if the reason alleged
for his absence were satisfactory.  But is it? It is so far from
satisfactory, as worded by Euripides, that Mr Way for example,
who would spare Apollo, has to put a gloss upon it:
He deig'ned not to reveal him to your sight,
Else must he chide you for things overpast.
This (with deference) is, as a mere translation, not legitimate.
He d(id not think fit to come into your sigit, lest blame for former
things should come between-such are the words'. According to
Mr Way, the blame meant is that which Apollo, if he came,


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/L77 7WPY 7wapoLOCE jLE/L'&S CO MsE Goov   IUO'X



ION.


I35


would unwillingly have to bestow on Ion and Creusa for their
conduct in the course of the day, not that which he might
himself incur for his conduct towards them in the past. As an
interpretation let this pass; but it is an interpretation, not a
verbal equivalent. The words distinctly extend to blame on
either side; nor is it strange that most readers should have
thought rather of Apollo's offences, since the subject of
complaint is defined as former t/ilngs or things of the past.
Now the errors of Creusa and of Ion (so far as he can be
accused of any) have been committed within the last hour; the
offences of Apollo, for which he has been denounced in the play
repeatedly both by Ion and by Creusa in terms still applicable,
began about fifteen years ago and have continued since.
Moreover it is not pri'ma facie easy to see why the desire not
to express blame on his own part need prevent him from
appearinlg; it lay with himself to say or not say what he thought
fit for the moment. On the whole then it is difficult not to
believe, as readers do in general believe, that Apollo's offences
were in the view of the poet. And if they were not, the reason
alleged should have been worded otherwise, not thus left open to
misunderstanding on so important a point. In any case therefore Apollo's excuse for absence is in substance unsatisfactory,
as well as unsatisfactory per se, because the occasion does not
permit him to absent himself with dignity.
But we have not yet touched the heart of the matter. Take
it as granted that Apollo may properly appear by deputy, and
let us hear what his deputy has to say.
Now the God would have kept the secret hid
Until in Athens he revealed her thine,
And thee the son of her and Phoebus born.
Precisely so; we have not forgotten it; we learnt all this about
the intentions of Loxias from Hermes in the prologue, all this and
in fact a little more; for before the event the prophet-god, as
represented by his brother, was just a shade more outspoken:
He shall give Xuthus, when he entereth,
His own child, saying to him, "Lo, thy son",
That the lad, coming home, made known may be
Unto Kreusa, Loxias' deed abide
Unknown, and so the child may have his right.




I36


E URIPIDES.


But if Euripides really meant, as he pretends, to base his play
/on the assumption that Apollo was the supreme unerring
prophet, what good is it, or rather how is it tolerable, that this
plan of his should be recalled to us now? It is just because we
know it that the present situation of Apollo appears, from a
religious point of view, so hopeless. For what has become of
the plan? It is visibly ruined, ruined already as far as he
himself is concerned, and ruined prospectively in its other
parts. His secret, which he proposed to communicate afterwvards
to Creusa, he has perforce to proclaim now to a crowd; it is
shouted literally upon the house-top; and although the development of the fiasco is arrested by the abrupt and arbitrary
termination of the play at this point, it is impossible not to see
that all the pleasing arrangements, proposed for the happy
family of Creusa, Xuthus, and Ion, have shared in the wreck.
They all depend, as Hermes correctly assumes, on the
preservation of Apollo's secret, which has not been preserved.
Apollo by his deputy repeats them nowl, but what is the use of
that, when we have just been taught that Apollo can neither
foresee his own concerns nor protect his own interest?
I will not here discuss how far, in the few lines of dialogue
which wind up the play, Euripides has represented the dramatis
personae as accepting with content the declarations of Athena.
The traditional cast of the parts has been altered (this is fact2)
by modern critics, in order to strengthen this impression; and I
would rather not enter on technical controversy. Let it be
taken that the declarations pass without criticism from the stage,
and that the form of religious submission is fully kept up. The
essential point remains unaffected.
And that point is this. If Euripides did not see that, whatever his personages are made to say, his finale is in fact for
Apollo a complete failure, and that the declarations of Athena,
instead of supporting the ostensible and orthodox conclusion,
are exactly calculated to forbid such a conclusion, his character
as a serious writer, as an artist to be spoken of with Aeschylus
and Sophocles, is absolutely indefensible. The ancient world was
mistaken about him; Mr Swinburne and others are right when
they depose him from his pretensions; he was a 'botcher'; and


1 v. i6oi.


" See my edition, I111troEucdtbnz P. Xiviii.




ION.


I37


the Ion, let apologists plead as they will, together with the mass
of his works, will be flung aside as they are now; 'they do
not count'. This is no question of a small slip, such as may
befall any man. It goes to the root of his power as a playwright. In the Ion he offers a plot where, as in the Alcestis but
even more plainly, there is no real denouement. When we are
told by Athena that the foresight of Apollo has been justified,
we are told what is palpably untrue; and since the pretended
unity of the piece turns wholly upon this justification, either the
author was a bungler, who has mis-spent by trying too high a
flight his little talent for songs and smart writing,-or else he
meant something other than he pretends. It makes no difference,
except to increase our suspicion, that Athena exhibits an illuminated scroll of Ion's future descendants, the Ionian race. To
distract and amuse the theatre this might do very well, but it
does not touch the case and conduct of Apollo, to which from
first to last the author invites our attention. Once again let us
repeat: Euripides either saw this, or he did not, with inferences
as before.
It would be easy to show that these difficulties have been
fully appreciated by the generality of readers; and if it be asked
why expositors have clung to the view that in some way or
other Euripides meant Apollo to be justified, the answer is that
the alternative has been thought to lie between this conclusion
and supposing that the play has no serious meaning at all. In
fact the whole problem of the Alcestis recurs again in a slightly
different shape. The story of the Ion is intensely, powerfully
realistic, just as that of the Alcestis is realistic; that the Alcestis
is largely comic in tone, the Ion almost wholly grave and tragic,
makes in this respect no difference. Both are realistic; they
have no touch of grotesque; it is impossible to believe that the
poet is intentionally playing with his theme, and offering to
our imagination things which are not realisable and are not
even to be supposed real. As in the Alcestis therefore, so here,
the religious solution-in the one case that Apollo could raise
the dead, in the other case that Apollo could foresee the future
-has been taken for Euripidean in spite of all embarrassments,
as being the only doctrine on the subject which could be of
practical moment. Here, in this last assumption, is the fallacy




I38


E URIPIDES.


in both cases. In the age of Euripides, and in relation to his
audience, there were in each case two doctrines, and not only one,
of practical moment, two doctrines worthy to be recommended
by serious art, one that Apollo could raise the dead and could
foresee the future, the other, at that time equally and more than
equally requiring serious argument, that Apollo could not, because
Apollo did not exist but was a fiction, originated in times of
igfnorance and perpetuated by fraud. Exactly as in the Alcestis,
so in the Ion, Euripides has had before him the problem, how to
say this in a theatre devoted to the religion of which Apollo was
the corner-stone; and in both cases the problem is dealt with
essentially in the same way. A religious hypothesis is propounded by a god, and we are given to understand that the
coming story will illustrate this hypothesis. The story which
follows does not in the least illustrate the hypothesis, but on the
contrary clashes with it more and more unmistakably. And
finally, when we have been sufficiently mystified or instructed
(according to our knowledge of the author and his ways) the
original religious explanation, now seen as completely incredible
and inapplicable to the facts, is repeated with transparent irony,
-and we are sent off to consider and enquire. In the Ion, which
is a much bolder piece of work than the Alcestis, as it is probably
much later, the false conclusion has the advantage of being
uttered, like the false prologue, by a divine personage. It is not
too much to say that on the Euripidean stage whatever is said
by a divinity is to be regarded, in general, as ipso facto discredited.  It is in all cases objectionable from the author's
point of view, and almost always a lie. 'By representing the
deities he persuaded men that they did not exist'. The real
meaning of the Ion is contained wholly in that elaborate realistic
story in action, which lies between the exit of Hermes with his
falsehoods and the entrance of Athena to repeat the same falsehoods. Their theory is that the Delphian oracle is in communication with an unerring deity who foresees the future. The
facts of the story in action are irreconcilable with this theory.
The alternative theory, which was rapidly gaining ground in the
age of Euripides, and which he in particular was universally
known to maintain, was that the Delphians were not in communication with any deity, but that their oracle was a fraud. Just




ION.


I39


as in the case of the Alcestis the action and colour of the story,
otherwise inconsequent and inharmonious, become natural the
moment you regard them under the rationalistic assumption
that Alcestis was not really dead, so in the Ion the action
and tone of the story, monstrously repugnant to the conception
that the oracular business is carried on by a being fit for
worship and endowed with divine intelligence, become simple
at every stage, so soon as you apply to them the obvious
rationalistic assumption that the oracle is carried on by cheats.
That Hermes and Athena do not say so, but offer an explanation
of the facts which finds room for such personages as themselves,
is a matter of course, and makes no difference. It is not to
'Hermes' that you would apply to be told whether 'Apollo'
exists. In the 'atheistic' language of Euripides, language whichk/
in the latter part of his career must have been understood by
everyone except the wilfully deaf, a preliminary exposition 'by
Hermes' means simply a view of the coming story which in
sentiment, or morality, or fact, or all together, is false, contemptible, and not to be accepted. As in the Alcestis, so in the
Ion, the truth begins to be told, or rather shown, when the 'god'/
is dismissed and the men come on. What this truth exactly
is we could not expect to be told in plain words from the
orchestra. The tragic theatre belonged to 'Hermes', 'Apollo',
'Athena', and their like, who will merely repeat their manifest
falsehoods. But we can find the truth for ourselves if we please;
or at Athens, if we did not see our way or care for the trouble,
we should have met people who knew all about it, and had
known ever since the play was begun, the first tim3 we fell into
a literary chat in the Ceramicus. I shall show in a subsequent
essay that centuries after the death of Euripides, and when all
such knowledge was crumbling into the gulf, the principles of
Euripidean exposition were still perfectly comprehended by
instructed and sympathetic persons such as Lucian.
To lighten a statement in which, as it is not new except in
form, I wish to be brief, I shall say little here on the moral
character of Apollo as exhibited in the lon, and the absurdity of'
Euripides' delineation, if he means to recommend him  as an  [
object of worship. That the supposed behaviour of Apollo to
Creusa is that of a cowardly, selfish ruffian, and that nothing




140


E URIPIDES.


which he now can do, no future happiness which he can give her
(even if there were the least reason to expect that she will get
it) will affect the brutality of his original outrage and the
cruelty of his fifteen years' silence about the fate of her child,
-all this is pointed out again and again in the plainest and
most biting terms which the author can find.1 And if we suppose
him to presume reverence for Apollo as the ground of his play,
this raises over again all the regular, hopeless difficulties, and
leads to the regular conclusion that the author is a 'botcher'.
But to our immediate purpose the moral character of Apollo is
not directly relevant; for what we propose to show is that
' according to the story the oracle is a fraud and its god nonexistent. Now the question of his existence is not, strictly
speaking, affected by his moral character. It is theoretically
possible to take Euripides as holding, and meaning to recommend by his play, the view that there really was a person of
superhuman intelligence, who knowing both past and future did
veritably make revelations through the Delphian prophetess,
and also further that this superhuman person had a moral
character deserving hatred and contempt, that he was in short a
'devil'. There is no logical inconsistency or impossibility in
such a view. It has been actually maintained by many Christians.
I do not think indeed that those who are acquainted with the
condition of Greek thought and controversy in the fifth century
before Christ will hold it probable that Euripides meant this.
Such a view was not then in the field; whereas the belief that
the oracles were fraudulent human tricks was not only in the
field but gaining. Nor, as could easily be shown, does such a
view suit with the rationalistic and vaguely monotheistic
tendency of Euripides' speculations in general. However it is a
conceivable view; and therefore we will here pass over the
attacks on Apollo's moral character, and examine the story
strictly upon the question, whether there spoke by the Pythia at
Delphi a person of superhuman intelligence.
The facts exhibited are as follows:At the temple of Delphi lives a youth just come to manhood,
who has been ever since his birth a slave in the service of the
oracle and has become a minister of importance. It is a day of
1 vv. 357-8, 436 foll., 859 foll. and passim.




ION.


I41


public consultation, and the young servant is seen before the
temple, engaged with others in preparing the place. Presently,
preceded by female attendants, there arrives a lady from Athens,
Creusa of the house of Erechtheus. From her conversation
with the ministrant we learn on the one hand that he is a
foundling, brought up by the Pythian prophetess and ignorant
of his parentage, on the other hand that Creusa desires to consult
Apollo 'for a friend of hers', who many years ago, having been
forcibly outraged by the god, concealed the truth and exposed
her offspring, which disappeared and has never since been heard
of. The lad replies that if the story be true (which he neither
admits nor denies) to consult Apollo on the subject is impossible;
he must wish to keep his secret. Hereupon arrives Xuthus, the
husband of Creusa, who was travelling in her company but had
stayed for an incidental purpose on the way. The pair have no
children after many years of marriage, and the professed
purpose of their visit is to consult the prophetess respecting a
remedy. The enquiry is to be made by the husband, who
proceeds into the temple, while the rest excepting the attendants of Creusa withdraw. (Sc. i.)
Presently the young ministrant, who has been occupied with
duties elsewhere, returns to ask whether the consultation of
Xuthus is at an end. At this moment he is heard coming out.
As soon as he appears he falls upon the astonished lad and
attempts to embrace him as his son. He explains his conduct
by repeating the declaration of the prophetess.
Ion. What was this, the word of Phoebus?
Xuthus.                    That the man who met my faceIon. Met thee-met thee?
Xuthus.              As I came out of Apollo's holy placeIon. Ay, and what should be his fate?
Xuthus.                        My true-begotten son is this.
Ion. Born thy son or given of others?
Xuthus.                     Given-and born from me he is.1
After some resistance the lad, convinced that the oracle, in
which he has implicit confidence, has made this declaration,
consents to investigate; and it soon appears that so far as
the fact is concerned there is no cause for suspicion. Xuthus,


1 vv. 534-537, Way.




142


E URIPIDES.


at the time which the lad's age would presuppose, had visited
Delphi to take part in the feast of Bacchus performed at night
by the women of Delphi upon Parnassus. It was accompanied
upon that occasion by the usual disorders, and accounts completely for the present discovery that he is the father of a
Delphian foundling. The question thus set at rest, Xuthus
resolves to pay his thanks, as seems proper, by a birth-sacrifice
upon the mountain-top, and directs his son (on whom, because
he camn;e to meet him coming, he bestows the name of Ion, that is
to say Comer) to give a farewell banquet to the Delphians. He
must remove to Athens, for the present as a pretended visitor.
Later on Creusa may be informed and pacified; for the present
she must be kept in the dark; and her attendants are severely
cautioned to that effect. (Sc. ii.)
But their sympathies are entirely with their mistress. They
are transported with indignation at the injustice which is to be
done and at the proposed invasion of Athenian rights. As
for the alleged oracle, it appears to them tainted with
fraud, treacherous, and altogether suspicious. And when Creusa
returns, with an old man-slave to whom she is much attached,
they disclose to her all that has happened. Amid general
indignation the old 'tutor' urges his mistress, for revenge and
safety, to murder her husband and his son. But Creusa for the
moment is absorbed in her own feelings, and in uncontrollable
passion breaks out against Apollo.  Pouring her invectives
into the temple, she relates now as of herself the horrible
story which she had formerly attributed to a pretended 'friend',
the violence of the god, the birth, and all the sequel, and
repeats the same account more calmly under the questions of
her guardian. He renews the suggestion of murder, and it is
agreed that he shall poison Ion at the approaching banquet.
Creusa now produces a gold chain or bracelet which she wears
upon her arm. It had been (she says) the necklace given by the
goddess Athena to Erichthonius the first ancestor of her house,
when an infant, and in two little pyxes attached to it are
contained two drops of blood from the Gorgon whom Athena
slew. One drop is an elixir, the other a deadly poison. She
gives him the jewel, and directs him to put the poison in Ion's
cup. She herself returns to her lodging. (Sc. iii.)




ION.


I43


Bet ween this and the next scene the banquet has taken
place.  A servant of Creusa, searching for her, narrates to the
handmaidens the failure and detection of the plot. One of the
sacred doves, by tasting of Ion's libation, revealed the poison
before he drank. The old slave has been arrested and tortured
into confession. The Delphian judges have condemned Creusa
to be flung from the cliffs. Ion and the populace are seeking
her. Creusa enters in flight, and takes refuge at the great altar
before the temple, closely followed by her pursuers. After a
fierce altercation, Ion seems to be on the point of dragging her
from sanctuary, when the Pythian prophetess enters bearing
a cradle, and commands him to forbear. The cradle, she says,
is that in which the lad, when a new-born babe, had been found
by her on the temple-steps: within it are tokens then found
upon him, which may enable him to discover his mother. She
retires; and Ion unwraps the cradle. Instantly Creusa pronounces it to be the cradle in which she herself exposed her
baby at Athens, and claims Ion as her child. On his demand,
she undertakes to prove her statement by describing the contents, which she does and is pronounced to be right. She and
Ion embrace with rapture.
But presently Ion refers to Xuthus as his father, which forces
from Creusa a confession that this is not the fact. He was born
before her marriage. Ion is horrified, and even more (upon
reflexion) by the addition that his true father was Apollo.
He urges Creusa to retract this charge against the God, and
points out that it cannot be true; because the oracle, which
cannot without 'confusion of soul' be supposed capable of
falsehood, has declared him the son of Xuthus.
Ion.    How gave he then his own son to another
And called me Xuthus' son-begotten son?
Crezusa.  Nay, not begotten; but his gift art thou
Sprung from himself-as friend to friend should give
His own son that his house might have an heir.
Ion.    Is the God true? or naught his prophecies?
Mother, my soul it troubleth: well it may.
Creusa.  Hear now what cometh to my mind, my son.
Of kindness Loxias giveth thee a place
In a proud house: hadst thou been called his son,
Thou hadst had none inheritance thereof,


"\




144


E URIPIDES.


Nor a sire's name:-how couldst thou, when myself
Still hid his rape, yes, by thy secret death?
Thee for thy good to another sire he gives.
Ion.    Nay, not thus lightly on the quest I press.
I will ask Phoebus, entering his fane,
"Am I of Loxias or a mortal sire?"'
Here Athena appears; she pronounces, in the words before
quoted, in favour of Creusa, whose story she confirms as deputy
of Apollo; and the play ends with the appearance (more or
less perfect is no matter) of religious submission to her divine
authority. The question then is this: was this story really
composed in the spirit of religious submission, that is, to
illustrate the proposition that the Pythian oracle reveals truth
dictated by Apollo? This was the belief of orthodox Greeks in
the time of Euripides, and must be assumed as the basis of
submission to such an authority as 'Athena'. But is it the
lesson of the facts?
Now I earnestly beg the reader-I have to contend with
much respectable prejudice, and may be excused for insistence
-to ask himself seriously, what sort of a man Euripides can
have been, if he composed this story to illustrate that proposition.  Would the reader himself, would any writer whom
he happens to respect, dream of so framing a story with that
object? Does it not palpably contradict the proposition, and is
not this pointed out, as plainly as words can do it, in the
dilemma propounded by Ion? In the story one statement, and
only one, is made by the oracle, namely that Ion is the natural
son of Xuthus. Either that statement is true or it is false. If
it is false, the oracle does not reveal truth.  If it is true,
the oracles are not dictated by Apollo, for Apollo, by
his deputy Athena, confirms the incompatible story of Creusa.
Is any doubt admissible whether the statement was made by the
prophetess? It is reported by Xuthus immediately after he has
heard it, he rejects emphatically the possibility of mistake, nor
(which is conclusive) is mis-report suggested by Athena. Were
the words ambiguous? This, according to the notions of
believers in oracles, might be a defence. But were they
ambiguous? Not in the least according to Xuthus, who
vv. I532-i548, Way.




ION.


T45


purports to quote them and holds to his report under questioning; nor (which again is conclusive) is any ambiguity in the
wording suggested by Athena.' Neither from Athena nor from
any of the dramatis personae do we receive a hint that the
oracle did not speak as Xuthus reports, or that it could be
understood in any sense but the plain sense which he puts upon
it. It must be taken therefore as a datum that words and sense
were such as he says: consequently the dilemma of Ion is
unsolved, and the story directly contradicts the proposition
that the oracle reveals truth at the dictation of Apollo. Whatever


l I have given above (p. 141) MWr Way's translation of Xuthus' report, which is
substantially faithful, but perhaps does not fully bring out its emphasis and precision.
Here is the original, and another version.
0O.             7ratr7p o6s eCi4t KitL c6 7racs eimos.
TI.   -'s Xy~etL rTa';
tO.               os 0f ie'Opefev ovra iAo'ias ie6'v.
JO.  aprvpeis Cavry.
0O.                 Ta roV 0eoO 7' eKJ/ihaOwv XprOT7'rPpta.
10.   ea'c\r/s atl'vy/' dKOv'CaS.
SO.                         oU0K ap' op0' &Kiofo.iev;
T1.   O6 6 X6oyos 71 eCTs (I0t3o01P;
O.                            TOri (tIvaL'aVr7iavTa c   /ot —
10.   riva alvrucVT7rTv;
go.                 6obiwv r7Wv' eiOVTrt rto Oeo —
10.   oviuropaS TiVPOS Kvp77aaI;
SO.                        7rcau' e/AOv 7re(fVKevCt.
10.  TOv 'yeycWr'  P 6Spov c\XXW\;
0.                            85(pov, OtvTa 5' et eyob.
Xuth. I am thy sire;
Thou art my son.   Ion. Who saith it?  Xuth. Loxias,
Who reared thee, being mine. Ion. Thine own report
Attests it! Xztzh. But I have his speech by heart!
Ion. His rede was dark and thou hast missed the sense.
X.th. Not if mine ears hear truly. Ion. Give me then
The wording. Xuth. 'He that should encounter me...'
Ion. Encounter! How encounter?     Xusth. 'As I came
Forth from the temple...' Ion. What should come to him
Of this encounter?  Xiuth. 'He should be my son'.
Ion. Son of thy loins or given thee?  Xusth. 'Given indeed
Yet of my flesh'.
Creusa (v. 1534) and Athena (v. 1,6I) assure us that what 'Apollo' meant to do was
merely to foist his own offspring upon the consultant. Be it so; but no attempt is
made to show that the truth or alleged truth of the matter can by any ingenuity be
reconciled with what the prophetess said. Nor can it, and without this the 'intentions
of Apollo' are irrelevant to Ion's dilemma.


V. F,


1O




146


E URIPIDES.


is true 'Athena' and Athena's explanation are false, and as we
have from the author no explanation but hers, we have in fact
none at all.
Now in what way, short of an express statement in words,
could the author more plainly intimate that his story is a
problem, of which the solution is not given, than by arresting
it at such a moment as this? So arrested, it simply is such
a problem. Put the matter this way. If a play were discovered
claiming the name, let us say, of Sophocles or Racine, and
it were found to break off in such confusion; what would critics
say? Assuredly that if any part of the work correctly represented
the author, the finale did not; he must have left it incomplete;
for the end was no end, and could not pass for such with a
dramatist supposed intelligent. Why should not Euripides,
whom the ancient world supposed intelligent, have the benefit
of a like presumption? Here again the treatment is that of
the Alcestis, only much bolder. The ostensible finale does not
fit the story either in the article already here indicated or
in many others, which I have pointed out elsewhere'; but this
one is enough. Either the drama is nonsense or the comments
of Athena are nonsense: between these alternatives Euripides
forces us to choose. When the goddess appears we are apparently on the verge of some discovery, of which the one thing
certain is, that it must be most unpleasant for the Pythian
oracle. Athena...praises Apollo and magnifies Athens. From
her we could expect nothing else; but...what are the facts?
If then readers are left to discover what hypothesis about the
Pythian oracle the author did intend to illustrate, the circumstances of Euripides' time suggest, and suggested then, the
hypothesis which we ought to try. There existed in that age
two opinions, and only two, about the oracle, one, here inadmissible, that it spoke truth dictated by Apollo, and the other,
iproved in some cases and suspected in many more, that it was
a fraud worked by ordinary human means. This hypothesis
accords perfectly with the general opinions which Euripides was
known to entertain and constantly betrays, and the obvious
course of the reader, now as then, is to enquire whether it
clears up the confusion in which we are left.
I See my edition.




TON.


I47


Referring the reader for details to my edition of the play, I
will give here the result of this enquiry in brief.
A woman of Delphi (the Pythian prophetess) having 'found',
according to her own account, an infant in the temple, adopts
and rears it. When the infant is grown up, there comes to the
temple a visitor from Athens (Xuthus), who is told by the
prophetess that he is the father of the foundling. He accepts
the statement without demur, and confirms it as probable by his
account of a former visit paid to Delphi at the time indicated.
Putting 'divine authority' aside, what is the natural interpretation of this incident? That the statement is true, and that the
woman, if not herself the mother (to which in the Ion many
suggestions point, and against which there is nothing) must at
any rate have known the mother and learnt the facts at the time.
If instead of saying 'this young man is your son' she says, 'the
young man, whom you will meet on leaving this temple, is your
son', the said young man being at that moment engaged in
audible conversation with some women at the door, shall we
change our inference? Or only add to it, that she chooses, or is
compelled, to express herself indirectly, and that the enquirer, if
he takes the communication for miraculous because of its form,
is blinded by superstition and by his pleasure in the discovery?
So far then there is no occasion for 'Apollo'. He is a
superfluous hypothesis.   The revelation to Xuthus, like the
resurrection of Alcestis, is a 'miracle' described by a rationalist,
manifestly no miracle. The alleged accident is presumptively
fraudulent, and (which is conclusive) Euripides suggests the
presumption'.
Next as to the story of Creusa, the villainous outrage, the
secret birth, the exposure and disappearance of the babe.  It is
needless to prove that 'Apollo' is here a superfluous hypothesis.
To intelligent piety he is even an impossible hypothesis. Even
Pindar would have shuddered at such a story, and told it otherwise, or not at all2. What was Sophocles likely to think, or
1 v-. 691-692.
2 See Pyth. 9. 30 (49) foll. The gentle homily, in which Chiron (as preceptor of
Apollo) enforces the duty of 7reOre, 'courting', as opposed to the voie defait suggested
by the youth himself, is in fact a corrective, after Pindar's manner, upon the older and
ruder stories imitated and satirised by Euripides.
10-2




T48


E URIPIDES.


Socrates? Piety, to be intelligent, must prefer here the obvious
explanation which omits 'Apollo' and presumes the criminal to
have been some unknown man; and again (which is conclusive) Euripides points this out.]
Thirdly, there is the production by the prophetess of the
cradle and tokens. Here again (and Euripides elaborately points
it ozt2) the Apolline hypothesis is manifestly incredible. The
circumstances under which the evidence, 'concealed' for so many
years, is now produced, are prima facie proof to common sense
that the account given of it is 'a new story' devised at the
moment to achieve the purpose which it does achieve3, that is,
to prevent the sacrilegious murder of Creusa by Ion and the
populace. The 'Apollo' who, knowing all the alleged facts from
the first and intending to make them known to Creusa, must have
postponed this revelation by choice until just after she has
attempted the murder of 'her son' and thereby come within an
ace of perishing by his hand, is a personage prima facie
absurd; and nothing is said by the author to diminish the
weight of the objections which at the moment and elsewhere4 he
ostentatiously indicates. On the other hand, if the proceedings
of the oracle are managed by ordinary human agents, all these
objections vanish. The reasons why the managers did not
attempt before this to prove Ion the son of Creusa arefirst, that
they knew he was not her son but was, as declared by themselves, a Delphian foundling, son of Xuthus and a woman of
Delphi, and secondly, that before the confession 'shrieked' by
Creusa 'into the ear of Apollo ' they did not know the fact in her
past history which is the necessary basis of such an allegation.
And the reason why they do attempt the proof now is the
manifest reason, that they have in the circumstances no other
way of preventing the sacrilegious murder. So far then 'Apollo'
is still, upon the facts of the story, a superfluous and inapplicable
hypothesis.
Lastly we come to the alleged 'proof' of the relation between
1 dvpb6s d&sKav alc-XveTart, v. 341.  See also v. r122 foil.
2 Vi.  339-I345.              v. I565.
4 Contrast with this scene the anticipations of Hermes in the prologue and the
perplexities of Ion in the conclusion.
5 vZ. 9II.




ION.


149


Ion and Creusa, the only part of the story in which the rationalist
hypothesis about the facts is not instantaneously preferable
to the miraculous and orthodox. The proof is that Creusa,
from her recollections of her own exposed infant, describes,
without seeing them, the patterns of the objects, especially the
customary baby-necklace and shawl, worn, as alleged, by Ion
when found at Delphi, and describes them right.
Creulsa. See there the web I wove in girlhood's days.
Iont.   Its fashion? girls be ever weaving webs.
Creusa. No perfect work, 'twas but a prentice hand.
loun.   The pattern tell; thou shalt not trick me so.
Creusa. A Gorgon in the mid-threads of a shawl.
lout (aside). 0 Zeus, what weird is this that dogs our steps!
Creusa. 'Tis fringed with serpents, with the Aegis fringe.
Ion.    Behold!
This is the web: lb, here the oracle.1
Creuzsa. 0 work of girlhood's loom, so long unseen!
Iotz.   Is there aught else?-or this thy one true shot?
Creusa. Serpents, an old device, with golden jawsIont.   Athena's gift, who biddeth deck babes so?
Creusa. Moulded from Erichthonius' snakes of old.
loln.    What use, what purpose tell me hath the jewel?
Creusa. A necklace for the new-born babe, my child.
Ionu.   Even these be here. The third I long to know.
Creusa. A wreath of olive set I on thee then:
Athena brought it first unto our rock.
If this be here, it hath not lost its green
But blooms yet, from the sacred olive sprung.2
Now it is plain that as between the two hypotheses which
we are balancing, that this evidence is genuine and that it is
forged by the managers of the oracle, the decision must turn
on the necklace. The pattern of the baby's shawl might, as Ion
points out, be on Creusa's part a lucky guess. Equally then it
may be a lucky guess on the part of the forgers, and it will be
shown hereafter that the alleged resemblance is not satisfactory
to Ion. It therefore proves nothing. The' miraculous wreath' is
on the wrong side for 'Apollo', and proves, if anything, forgery.
1 This line is not correctly rendered. In reality it proves, as I will presently
show, that Ion imnagi/ecs a resemblance lbetween pattern and description, and is
himself dissatisfied.
2 v1,. T147-T436, Way.




t50


E URPIPDES.


The real wreath of Creusa's babe ought to have been dust long
ago, as Euripides points out. Creusa does not mention it till she
is prompted by Ion; and from the eagerness to which he is
wrought by her previous success it is no illegitimate inference
that he lets her see it. The extravagant superstition by which
she then accounts for its presence is such as, propounded by a
known rationalist, could only prompt suspicion.  Prima facie a
fresh wreath is the hasty new-made production of a forger and
fits in with other like circumstances about the cradle, to which
the author has previously directed our notice'. The decision
therefore turns on the necklace, which (in one sense) could not
be forged. For though the managers of the Delphian oracle not
only might know, but could not be ignorant, that the babynecklace of Creusa's infant would be of the famous pattern used
for the purpose by her family (the topic of illustrious traditions
with which Ion, for instance, shows himself well acquainted both
here and in his first conversation with Creusa2), this knowledge
would avail them nothing, unless such a necklace were in their
hands. They could not on the spur of the moment make it.
This is the proof and the only proof which is furnished for the
theory of 'Apollo'. 'But it happens that according to the story
told by Euripides the required necklace, the exact thing, has just
been brought to the oracle; ant the aulthor hcre points s to the
fact. The reader will observe that this dialogue of discovery is
written, after the Attic fashion, with severe terseness and finish
of form. Every speech on both sides takes us on a step and
goes straight to the business of ascertaining the correspondence
between the contents of the cradle and the recollections of
Creusa: all the dialogue follows this purpose strictly-except
one couplet:
ion.    Is there aught else?-or this thy one true shot?
Creusa. Serpents, an old device, with golden jawsIon.    Athena's zift, wzho biddeth deck babes so?
Creusa. Aloulded3a from Erichthoniiis' snakes of old.
Ion.    What use, what purpose tell me hath the jewel?
C'reusl. A necklace for the new-born babe, my child.
1 by!. I39-I I394.
COv2'. 1391-1394it.  2t             s. 26   foil.
Copied, imitated, is the exact word.




ION.


l 5I


Now what is the purpose in this connexion of the two lines
marked? The fact, that the necklaces used for infants of the
house of Erichthonius were all copies of one original, is wholly
irrelevant to the ostensible question in hand, whether Creusa
can describe correctly the necklace which is in the cradle. So
manifest is it that these two lines break the natural course of the
enquiry, that some critics have proposed to recast the parts, and
others have observed, with the accustomed sneer, that Euripides
must have inserted the couplet 'to please the vanity of the
Athenians'.l Such is the candour with which he is commonly
read! If Euripides in a most critical passage of his drama, a
passage visibly constructed with scrupulous care, inserts one
staring irrelevancy, the inference for those who would understand him is that the fact so scored is vitally important to his
meaning. And so it is. Once observed, it instantly destroys
the validity of the alleged evidence, by removing the one
difficulty in the way of supposing it forged. For we have
ourselves seen the original necklace of Erichthioniizs, and we know
that it has just been in the hands of the Delphian authorities; it
was worn by Creusa as a bracelet, given by her to the slave who
was to poison Ion, and found upon him when the attempt failed.2
All this is related in the play; and as soon as we bring it into
connexion with the evidence of the cradle, as the author by his
reference directs us to do, that evidence is instantly seen as the
forgery which, in every part except the necklace, it would
appear to be prima facie. Throughout the play in fact the
legends connected with this bracelet are treated with an emphasis
which receives no explanation in the ostensible deizoiemevitt, and
would alone prove, if the author is to be credited with ordinary
judgment, that they have some importance other than at first
appears. In particular the history of the pattern and the fact
that the 'bracelet'is really a baby's necklace, is so dragged in
by way of a conventional dialogue between Creusa and the
old slave' (a theatrical 'you also know' in the immemorial
stage-fashion ridiculed by Sheridan) that we are bound to find
some outcome of it in the sequel, or else to suppose Euripides
unacquainted with the rudiments of story-telling.


S ee Paley's note.
3 Z'V. 999-10o9.  See also vz,. 20-26.


v2 vv. 985-1038, 1213 ---216.




152


E URIPIDES.


The real story then of the lont, the story which becomes
perfectly clear when the prologue 'by Hermes' and the epilogue
'by Athena' are dismissed as the absurdities that they are,
is simply this.-A certain lad, the bastard of an Achaean adventurer by a woman of Delphi, was brought up in the sanctuary
there by the Pythian prophetess as a slave and minister of the
temple. When he is adult his father, who has in the meantime
married a lady of Athens but has no legitimate children, comes
with his wife to consult the prophetess on this misfortune. The
prophetess, to gratify the father and to make the fortune of the
son, reveals to the father the connexion between the two. This
discovery is accidentally betrayed to the wife, who besides the
feelings natural to her position has, or believes herself to have,
an especial cause for indignation against Apollo in the fact that
before her marriage she had been the victim of an outrage,
which, as shame suggested and superstition allowed, she attributed to the god. Her child, the fruit of this outrage, was
exposed and in fact perished; but it was her secret hope that at
Delphi she might learn something of its fate. Wrought to
frenzy by her disappointment she proclaims her story, for the
disgrace of the god, to all within hearing, among others especially to the prophetess and her coadjutors in the temple. To
revenge her injuries she is tempted and persuaded to poison her
husband's child. For this purpose she entrusts to her emissary
a jewel zcwJich she wears s a bracelet, tholngi it is in fact a babynecklace and1 the model of those /which are always worn by infants
of Yher ancient house. The emissary is detected and the jewel
seized. The youth, supported by the Delphian populace, furious
at the 'sacrilege', wrests from the authorities a sentence of
death against her for the attempt, and finding her at the altar is
about to violate the sanctuary by delivering her to the fanatical
mob. As a desperate expedient for preventing this murder, the
managers and particularly the prophetess hastily determine to
make a pretended discovery that the lad is the lost child born
at Athens and mentioned in the woman's confession. In the
face of the previous affirmation by the oracle of the true fact,
that he is the natural son of the husband and was born at
Delphi, it is impossible for them to pass off this 'new story' by
their mere authority. But the possession of the baby-necklace




ION.


153


opens a possibility of offering an apparent proof. It is put,
together with two other objects which they think suitable to
support the fraud, into a cradle which, wrapped up in bandages
'miraculously fresh in appearance', the prophetess carries out
and delivers to the youth, directing him to 'find his mother' by
the tokens within. The woman at the altar, the perishing
fugitive, leaps, as might naturally be anticipated, at the obvious
suggestion, and claims her son. Put to the test of describing
the tokens, she succeeds of course triumphantly in the crucial
point of the necklace, and in the mutual rapture of the recognition the fact that this is her sole success (we will return to this
point hereafter) is disregarded, and the various contingent impossibilities of her story are swallowed without criticism. For
the moment therefore the purpose of the fraud is achieved.
But as soon as the lad learns that if he is, as he now supposes,
the son of the lady, he cannot be, as the oracle declared, the son
of the man who is now her husband, and that, according to her
belief, he must have been begotten by the crime of his patrongod, he revolts in horror against the new allegations, and in the
utmost distress of mind decides to unravel the imbroglio by a
fresh enquiry at the oracle.-Had this enquiry been made and
followed up (and in real life that could not have been prevented)
it must have resulted in one of those exposures, too ghastly
even for ridicule, which occur from time to time in the history of
Delphi and all places of like pretension. And such is the real
termination of the tragic story, which, as in other cases, we can
easily complete, although the 'sanctity' of the Athenian theatre
did not allow of the exhibition, and therefore the action is
abruptly arrested at the last moment by one of those Euripidean
gods whom all the world knew to be nothing but theatrical
shams. Of the power with which the story is handled this bald
statement can of course give no idea. Not even in Euripides
is there anything more terrible or more pathetic than are some
of the scenes in this play, if we do not make them unintelligible v'
by taking for part of the true narrative the lies of Hermes and
Athena.
Thus the problem propounded at the close by Ion's unsolved
dilemma offers no difficulty whatever, if we choose to take it up.
I have stated the solution here summarily, and will ask leave to




$54


E URIPIDES.


refer for details to my former work on the play. My object in
restating the explanation in a somewhat different form is to
/ exhibit the parallel in method between this case and the Alcestis.
Both plays begin and end with a miraculous 'divine' interpretation of the facts exhibited in the story proper. In both it is
manifest that, if we judge by the ordinary laws of reason and
taste, there is between the story and the divine interpretation
a startling repugnance. This is accounted for, or at least has
been accounted for, together with masses of similar facts scattered over the poet's works, by the compendious assumption
that he did not know his business, was in short a 'botcher', and
therefore we must be prepared to overlook in him inconsistencies
and contradictions which would astonish us in a tiro; we must
console ourselves as best we can for the perversity of his plays
as plays by admiring the eloquence, passion, or grace of single
scenes, single speeches, or single odes. And the natural consequence is that Euripides 'does not count'.
He will recover his rights, and we our due enjoyment, only
when it is seen (as it was by Lucian) that his works, some of
them wholly, almost all in some part, are in the nature of theatrical problems, a type produced by the unique circumstances
of the time and place, which made the stage necessary to him
as an organ of expression, and at the same time made it impossible that, speaking from the stage, he should express his
known opinions otherwise than under formal reserve. The Ion,
if accepted as an exposition of the religious hypothesis with
which it formally concludes, is a tissue of contradictions and, blunders. The 'god' whom it pretends to celebrate appears in
it morally as a monster, intellectually as a fool. The incidents,
if supposed to be guided or influenced by him, are left at the
critical points without any intelligible explanation, and must be
regarded, like the intoxication of Heracles in the Alcestis, as
/  both fortuituous and offensive. The work as a whole, whatever
/ /  the author may pretend in the finale, is possible (if he was a man
of sense) only on the assumption that he meant to exhibit the
'i    Delphian Apollo as an impudent myth, and the oracle therefore
j   as a fraud; just as the Alcestis is possible as a whole, only if the
author did not believe in the alleged resurrection, and wished to
exhibit it as not really miraculous. If on these suppositions the




ION.


155


stories respectively are found intelligible, harmonious, and coherent, then, and only then, we can allow to the author the
preliminary qualification for pretending to a seat beside Aeschylus
and Sophocles. If he meant anything else, the Athenians were
wrong, and the moderns right: Euripides, as an artist, ought
not to count.
What is the logical result of attempting to unite the belief
that Euripides composed the Ion, as the finale pretends, upon
orthodox assumptions about the oracle and its deity, with the
belief that he was a competent artist and a man of average
intelligence, is well seen in the observations of the translator
from whom I have been citing. It is one of the many aspects
in which the posture of affairs just before the pretended deinouezmeit is seen as hopeless of any issue agreeable to 'Apollo' or
compatible with faith in his deity or existence, that Ion, educated
as a votary of that faith, has been forced by the course of events
to take the very step which he has himself, with crushing force,
shown to be irreconcilable with his religion.
I will ask Phoebus, entering his fane,
"Am I of Loxias or a mortal sire?"
This is the same youth who, on the same morning, when it was
proposed by Creusa that Phoebus should be consulted as to the
fate of the child alleged to have been borne to the god by
Creusa's 'friend', received the proposal thus:
There's none will ask the God of this for thee.
For, in his own halls were he villain proved,
Vengeance on him who brought thee that response
Would Phoebus justly wreak. Ah lady, go:
We must not seek his shrine to flout the God.
For lo, what height of folly should we reach
If in the Gods' despite we wrest their will,
By sacrifice of sheep on altars, or
By flight of birds, to tell what they would veil.
Could we of force wring aught from Gods full loth
Profitless blessings, lady, should we grasp;
But what they give free-willed are boons indeed.
This is the same youth who, forced by Creusa's story of her
'friend' to meditate uncomfortably for a moment on the savage
traits of traditional theology, traits which in the days of




156


E URIPIDES.


Euripides believers and quasi-believers were trying hard to put
out of sight and to refine away without destroying the foundation, launches at the inconsequence of inmmoral religion this
pointed weapon:
For wickedness in man the gods chastise?
What justice then that ye, who set the law
To mortal man, should sin against the law?
If, if (to feign a thing impossible)
For such like thefts upon humanity
Thou, or Poseidon, or the King of Heaven
Should be amerced, to quit the fines would leave
Your temples empty. Ye, to have your will,
Do thoughtless wrong: then just it is to blame
Not imitative man, but them whose taste
Instructs our admiration what to ape.1
Such is the frankness with which repeatedly throughout the
work, and without any set-off on the other side, the author
exposes the undivine divinity of that god whom nevertheless (it
appears) we are expected in the finale to accept as an ideal of
goodness and wisdom.     It is needless to say that 'Athena',
who tells us that 'Apollo has done all things well', nevertheless
neither proves nor attempts to prove that these reproaches are
not applicable, that 'Apollo' has not been guilty of the act
imputed, or that this act is not a crime, a detestable and
contemptible crime. Now there are three ways open to criticism
in dealing with this situation. One is that of modern tradition,
to say that the passages in question and the lesson of the finale
are in fact irreconcilable, and that the poet knew this, but
nevertheless meant us to accept them both hypothetically for
the purpose of his play. He really means us to draw an
orthodox conclusion from infidel premisses. As to the unity of
his piece as a work of art, he did not care about it; he was not a
serious artist, and provided he could say, somewhere and somehow, something that would please every one, including himself,
how it all jumbled together and what was the upshot did not
signify.  Aeschylus   composed    plays, Sophocles plays, but
Euripides strings of dialogues and songs stitched and botched
1 v. 440. My own translation; Air WVay accepts KaKac for KaXac in v. 450, which I
think injurious.




ION.


T57


together without pretence of principle. The second way is
to suppose that the premisses and the conclusion being
irreconcilable, and the author being a serious artist, he must
intend us to reject the conclusion as ironical, and deduce his
real meaning for ourselves from the facts and comments which
he has submitted. The third and only other way is to say that
the whole is reconcilable, and the story really supports the
conclusion. As for example, when Ion 'pleads with Phoebus'
upon the incongruity of such a crime as has been attributed to
him with his character as a deity, this, we must think, 'well
displays that perfect love which casteti out fear', as when Moses
pleads with God not to diminish His glory by slaying His
people as one man.: We must hold, that is to say, that in the
end Phoebus is cleared, as Ion knew he would be, and that,
since (as it seems) he preserved the life of his alleged child,
he did nothing to complain of in the rape, nor in hiding the
child for years, while the mother ate her heart in the misery of
ignorance; or at any rate these blemishes, if not already pardonable, will be so when (as he says and we must blindly believe in
spite of our senses and the warnings of the author') the child
will be comfortably established at the expense of nothing more
wicked than a perpetual fraud. Or again when Apollo, as we
saw, declines to present himself in person before Ion, Creusa,
and the Delphian assembly, 'lest reproach for past matters
should intervene', we must hold it impossible that this refers to
reproaches against the god; although we have been expressly
told that to ask the god, about the matter which he would be
asked about if he now appeared, would be to 'flout' him and to
'prove him villain in his own halls'. We must argue on the
contrary that since Ion shrank from 'flouting' Apollo by such a
question, Apollo, now that Ion has asked the question, cannot
be deterred from appearing to answer it by his dread of the
reproaches of Ion. "The interpretation which assumes that
Apollo was afraid lest he should be chidden by those whose
lives he was crowning with blessing, by two Greeks whose
reverential awe made them fear even to gaze on divinity, is
little in harmony with Ion's own words:

1 Mr Way on v. 436.


2 vv. 585 foll.




I58


E URIPIDES.


"For in his own halls were he villain proved,
Vengeance on him who brought thee that response
Would Phoebus justly wreak."'
Now this is courageous and logical. This is to pursue to its
true conclusion the theory that the finale of the play is given by
Euripides for his reiLinterpretation of the story, that it is serious
and not ironical. This is the way, and the only way, to treat
the passage in question and all the play, if the current exposition
of it is to be reconciled with supposing that Euripides was an
artist.  He must have thought that the reproaches of Ion
were refutable, and that he has refuted them. To those who
can believe this, I have no more to say. But the Euripides of
Schlegel and Hermann, who knew that he had not refuted but
proved these reproaches, and yet expected his readers, at the
command forsooth of 'Athena', to put down the play comfortably
and dismiss all the questions which he has raised,-this Euripides
was no artist, no man of intelligence, no man, to me at least,
intelligible or conceivable at all. To say that 'Apollo' was a
lying, blundering ruffian, was to say that Apollo, as imagined by
Athenian orthodoxy in the time of Euripides, did not exist;
and what then becomes of Athena?
But the truth is that the wild assumptions of Athena are not
wanted to explain the facts of the story and do not explain t/hem.
The story of the play is no more consistent with the existence
of Apollo than Candide is consistent with the existence of the
saints, or the recent novel of M. Zola with the existence of
'Notre Dame de Lourdes'. Indeed in the spirit and even the
matter of Lourdes there is much that is closely akin to the Ion.
Like M. Zola, Euripides is exceedingly anxious to show that he
has 'sympathy' with the objects of his attack, having sense and
heart enough to see what many able satirists have to their own
confusion neglected, that without 'sympathy' the blow will lose
half its force. The charming picture of pious simplicity in the
person of the lad Ion, a picture which (to judge by other evidence)
the poet has rather over-painted, putting into it at least as
much moral beauty as a cold justice to Delphi would have
required, plays in the work a parallel part to M. Zola's pathetic


M1  r Way on v. 1558.




ION.


T59


biography of Bernadette; and as in Lourdes so in Ion, the
idyll is used in the end as a weapon against the institution
assailed. All the objects of the French realist's attack, the
prodigious luxury, the fraud, the incessant systematic profit,
even the demoralized populace, devotees in a fashion of the
religion which brings wealth to their feet, all have their counterparts in the work of the Greek realist, although it is needless to
say that there are deep and broad differences both in treatment
and facts. If you have read Lourdes, or think fit to read it on
my recommendation, and will consider what it might have been
like, if the author's only efficient way of publication had been to
shape it as a play, to be performed between Athalie and Esther
in the nave of Notre Dame, you will have as near an analogy
to the Ion as could be composed of modern elements. And on
one point particularly the supposition, extravagant as it is, may
even throw direct light. In France at this moment' an attack
on the miracles of the grotto will excite some sympathy, even
among Frenchmen who regard the pilgrimages and the cures
with indifference or even approval so far as religion only is
concerned, because of the connexion or supposed connexion
between Lourdes and reactionary politics. Much in the same
way there were two sides, from an Athenian point of view, to
Delphi, the religious and the political or diplomatic; and the
political offences of Delphi against Athens have probably something to do not indeed with the hatred of Euripides, which
seems to have been purely intellectual, that is to say religious,
but with the licence which, in the latter part of his career, he was
able to take.
In the case of the Ion it is improbable that the orthodox
pretence of the prologue and finale really imposed at the time
upon any one, or was meant to do it. Apart from the fact that
after a time the whole public must have taken the measure of a
Euripidean 'god', and the sort of 'truth' which might be expected from him, the bad character of Hermes in this article,
even among the orthodox, would aid suspicion; and when it is
added that the story, which he tells in the prologue, contradicts
theprimitive belief of the Athenians (who held Ion, the eponym of
the Ionians, to be the son, as Euripides makes him, of Xuthus,
July, 1894.




i6o


E URIPIDES.


and not, as 'Hermes' makes him, of Apollo'), there was enough
to put on the track any one who had interest in following it.
Actual danger there cannot have been, when the Ionz was acted,
in attacking the god of Delphi; if there had been, the play could
not possibly have 'got a chorus'. The pretence of concealment
is here a mere conventional trick, kept up more for the humour
of it and for a sort of politeness, than for real necessity.
At present the Ion is commonly read, when read for pleasure
at all, in the same fashion as many other works of the poet,
that is to say, the reader will go through with it once,
and having discovered, as he inevitably does, that it ends in
a quagmire out of which (according to the current theory)
Euripides did not see his way and in fact there is no way, he
bestows a pshawz or two on the bungler, and thenceforth, if he
goes back to the work, only glances at a bit here and there,
Ion's morning-hymn, or Creusa's confession, or the banquet.
And so it always will be, so Euripides will always be read, or
rather not read, until the truth is recognized, that the story
is contained solely in the action proper, without the prologue
and finale, which are not the story but comments on the story
by 'gods', that is to say 'liars'.   If we reject their gratuitous
and inefficient epicycle of miracles, the phenomena explain
themselves.   I must not take space here even to work them
out fully, much less to do justice to the directory points with
which, like the Alcestis, the play     abounds.    For these the
reader will naturally go to the text itself; some of them I have
ventured to mark in my edition. But really no particular
directions are wanted; nothing is wanted but attention. When
the dramatist insists on informing us without apparent relevance that Creusa's bracelet, the instrument of the murder, is
the chain of the infant Erichthonius, we must assume that we
are to remember this and shall find it significant. When we
are afterwards told, again with apparent irrelevance, that the
1 As to the development of the legend see Miss Harrison, Mlythology and llon. of
Athens, p. lxxxi. To gratify Athenian pride Ion was converted from 'son of Xuthus'
into ' son of Apollo ', which could of course be easily done without importing into the
story any of the horrors engrafted on it by Euripides. This version, though probably
not at all ancient, attained so much vogue as to be cited by Plato (Euthydemus 302 C, D)
as the received explanation of the title Apollo Patroos. Plato, as I understand him,
sneers at it, implying that if Apollo was ancestor of the Athenians, he was not a god.




ION.


I6 I


necklace found in the cradle is 'copied from that of Erichthonius', we must put two and two together. That is all
the mystery. For clearness' sake, as this is the crucial question,
we will run through the scene once more. That the evidence of
the cradle is a forgery we should presume from the circumstances
in which it is produced, and when we are shown that the woollen
wrappings of the cradle are not rotten (which as Ion naively
remarks they should be in course of nature) but perfectly fresh,
doubt is no longer possible. It is also evident that both Ion
and Creusa, burning to discover she her child and he his mother,
will be deceived with ease, and the only remaining interest is to
see how the fraud is worked. The objects wanted are the
spargana or baby-things of an exposed infant belonging to the
house of Erechtheus, that is to say its garment, shawl, or
wrap, and above all its chain or necklace, the regular appurtenance and mark of a Greek baby. The shawl is nothing. Such
likeness as its pattern has to Creusa's description is fairly
accounted for by Ion as 'one stroke of luck'; and what is more
important, a thing in itself decisive as to the intended bearing of
the scene, it is pointed out to us by him that the resemblance is slight
and, if considered strictly, not satisfactory. I dwell particularly
on this because I had not remarked it when I annotated the
play.
When Creusa has described her shawl, Ion produces one
with these words: "Behold it!...Here is your weaving-after
the fashion in which we trace prophecy ".  Now this expression
has caused the greatest perplexity among expositors, and is in
fact unintelligible, so long as we suppose that the alleged proof
is sound, and the shawl really the shawl worked by Creusa.
Accordingly various devices have been tried, by punctuating,
correcting, and twisting the words, to get out of them something
consistent with the general sense assumed. But upon the true
assumption, that the shawl is not really what is pretended, the
words are perfectly clear. What Ion means and says is that
Creusa's description may be found in the shawl as nearly
1 V. 1424   i60  '
T65 '  `eaf' ao/a, —OacaOB' ws eVpiLKo[eIv.
See Paley's note. In my edition I assumed, like my predecessors, that there is
an error in the text.


V. E.


T I




I62


E URIPIDES.


as is commonly expected in divine, mysterious, and providential
matters; there is the same sort of resemblance as we habitually
trace between prophecy and fufihlent. It is to be remembered
that Ion, though a devout believer, is by no means an unintelligent, abject, or slavish believer. He shows throughout
the play, together with a desire to worship, an equally creditable
desire to obtain satisfaction for the reasonable scruples both of
his heart and of his head. And he speaks here like himself.
He is not, upon careful inspection, by any means satisfied, as a
matter of judgment, that the work does answer the description.
But resemblances certainly not stronger are accepted in matters
divine, for example, when an oracle is in question. He is afraid
of requiring too much. And so he goes on, somewhat disheartened as he shows by his captious tone, to the next
question: "Is there anything more? Or is this your one stroke
of luck?"  This leads to the necklace, and apparently settles
the matter. The touch is exquisite, as an exhibition of character,
as a step in the process of conviction, and from every point
of view. But it is altogether meaningless, unless the evidence
is in reality unsatisfactory; and it was put in on purpose to
emphasize the true intention of the scene. The pattern described
by Creusa is 'a Gorgon in a border of snakes represented
imperfectly as they would be by a girl just learning to weave'.
We may presume that the 'samplers' of Greek girls, like modern
samplers, obeyed the rigidly conservative laws of feminine
education and varied very little: so that probably it would have
been difficult to find any two in which you might not, with a
good will, imagine as much resemblance as Ion admits, to
wit, 'that sort of correspondence which we trace in matters
divine'.
The shawl then is nothing. But the necklace (if only it
were not 'copied from' that of Erichthonius) would be everything. It convinces Ion completely, as well it may. The
prospect of finding a mother in so noble a house, and in a
woman who at the first meeting had made so much impression
on his feelings, entrances him with delight. He throws off all
suspicion, becomes as eager for success as Creusa herself, and
actually prompts her, contrary of course to the very principle of
the test, with the fact that there is another object in the cradle




ION.


i63


and only one more. There ought not to have been anything
more; but the concoctors of the evidence, being superstitious as
well as fraudulent (the common combination), supposed, according to a popular fancy, that the wreath which the mother would
or might put on her exposed infant as a preparation for its
death, being in this case made necessarily of 'sacred' olive
from the Athenian acropolis, would never wither; so they put
in a wreath of fresh olive; and Creusa, w/hen she sees it (for the
pair are by this time almost in each other's arms, and she has
no need to guess), is at no loss for an explanation. This third
piece of 'evidence' is only important as showing, what is clearly
agreeable to nature, that, given the necklace, it was practically
impossible for the fraud to fail. Covered by that, any inconsistency, however gross, would have been explained away by
the willing dupes as easily as the 'miraculously fresh wrappings'
and the 'imperishable wreath'.
Thus the trick succeeds in its immediate purpose, and Creusa
is saved. Nay, it might even have accomplished more than
this, and might have led Ion, as well as Creusa, to acquiesce in
the belief that he is not only her son but also Apollo's, if it were
not that Ion takes his religion seriously, and has upon his
shoulders the head of a man.   This being so, his further
enquiries and final desperation are inevitable. The course of
the play from this point to Ion's determination that the oracle
shall be consulted again is marvellously impressive in its combination of humour with the profoundest tragedy, tragedy
infinitely deeper than the satisfaction or disappointment of the
boy or the woman, the never-ending tragedy of faith. When
Athena appears, all is over; to put up Athena is to confess that
'Apollo' is, as manifestly he is, hopelessly beaten.  What
exactly would have happened in real life it is not easy to
guess, nor does it matter. Very speedily the truth must have
come out, and then, if any of 'the Gorgon's blood' was left, the
best thing for the parties concerned would have been to share it
between them. But their fates, pathetic as they are-the outbreak of Creusa's secret, her accusation of the god and confession
to her slave, is in my judgment unrivalled in its kind-these
individual fates are not the main affair, but something immeasurably more significant, the honour or dishonour of Delphi.
II —2




I64


EURIPIDES.


Before an audience whose fathers had lived and died, an
audience of whom many hoped to meet death, by belief in
the Pythian Apollo, the question Is the god true, or naught his
oracles? was not one with which it was permissible to play for
an hour without meaning something, one way or the other. Nor
can the Ion appeal with success to any one, who does not see
that this is the problem of it, and will not follow the problem
out to the end foreshown, as if it were the dearest concern of his
life. The experiment of presenting the Ion as a mere drama of
incident, supposed to be cleared up by the pretended denouement, and disengaged from its religious problem, to persons
of ordinary judgment not interested in Greek as Greek, was
tried, as I have mentioned, here at Cambridge in I890. I need
not though I was myself one of the experimenters hesitate to say
(for I could call unimpeachable witnesses) that the experiment
was instructive. As spectacles the various groups, thanks to the
able archaeologists and managers by whom they were set for us,
were beautiful enough. One or two scenes went well. But the
audience was visibly disappointed. It was impossible to convince those who had seen the Oedipus Tyrannus and the
Eumenides that the work, taken as a play completed, was on
the same level, or worthy at all to be compared, with those of
Aeschylus and Sophocles. The revolting nature of the subject,
unredeemed (so far as was understood) by any serious purpose,
provoked a merited disgust; nor was there need of an exact
analysis to make people feel that somehow 'Athena' did not
satisfy. The piece is not rounded off but chopped off, and
there (if you leave it there) is the end of the matter. And in
general, since it is impossible that the mass of a modern
audience should appreciate or even understand Euripides' real
situation and point of view, his works are unfit for our theatres.
But that has nothing to do with their meaning, value, and
interest.
There are some plays of Euripides (a very few) in which
such a difficulty would not be materially felt. The Medea is
one such. Unluckily there would be other difficulties almost
insuperable in acting the Medea under academical conditions.
Whether there is any play of Euripides which satisfies all the
conditions is a doubtful question, and not perhaps, as the reader




ION.                          165
may think, very grave. An experiment is to be made,' and
probably will have been made before this essay appears, with the
Iphigenia in Taurica. This, I think, gives as favourable a chance
as could be found; and I am led by the circumstances, as
well as by the intrinsic interest of that drama, in its points of
resemblance and not less in its points of contrast to those which
we have been considering, to offer next some remarks not so
much on the whole of it, as on some of its most characteristic
features.
1 Written in August, i894. A note on the representation is added to the next
essay.




IPHIGENIA.


"Rome, unique objet de mon ressentiment."
WE have seen in the foregoing essays that with certain
subordinate differences both the plays in question exhibit a
common principle of construction, which fits and corresponds
to the peculiar position of the author, as a notorious rationalist
compelled by the circumstances of the time to use for his organ
of expression a stage appropriated by origin and custom to the
exhibition of miraculous legend. In each case the body of
work, the story acted by the real dramatis personae, is strictly
realistic in tone and fact, and in purport contradictory to
'religion' (that is to say, to certain decadent superstitions); while
the prologue and epilogue, in sharp opposition to the drama
proper and therefore with manifest irony, assert pro forma the
miraculous explanation which the facts tend visibly to invalidate
and deny. The use of this method, not always in exactly the
same way, but with modifications for different cases of the same
general principle, is characteristic of Euripides, and is the true
cause of a phenomenon, which candid and reasonable judges
have always admitted to be perplexing, the singular stiffness,
formality, frigidity, and general artlessness which often appear
in his opening and his conclusion. The final scenes in particular,
the coups de t/zeMtre with which the action is wound up or cut
short, have almost always a conventionality of manner, a perfunctory style, a looseness of adaptation, a feebleness in thought
and feeling, which contrast strangely with the originality, terseness, energy, and passion displayed in other parts of the work,




IPHIGENIA.


i67


and constantly prompt the critic to wonder, sarcastically or
sorrowfully, at such a suicide of genius. It seems as if in the
catastrophe the author, if we take him at his word, does his
utmost to ruin the whole, and to prevent us from attaching any
serious importance to his representations. The case of the Ion,
though the logical contradiction there is signally precise, is by
no means the most startling in opposition of colour. The
'divine' performances which terminate the Orestes and the
Electra seem to be nothing better than burlesque, and have
long been favourite exercises for the derision of the poet's
detractors. The epilogue of the Andromache, if taken as conveying what the author really took for the main point of his
story, must lead us to the conclusion that this story is a
hopeless tangle of accidents and impossibilities, as Schlegel and
his successors with much complacency point out. Lucian knew
more of the matter. The true explanation of these phenomena,
both in the epilogues and to a less extent in the prologues, is
the obvious explanation, that Euripides, when he seems not to
be serious, is not serious; and that when he propounds for his
meaning something which seems no meaning at all, nor recondilable with what he has himself with apparent gravity put
before us, this can only be because he was compelled and
expected to use irony, and to present his real opinions and
sentiments under the veil of a penetrable disguise.
It is natural and necessary to suppose, as I have said, that
a method of this kind, practised for forty years of increasing
fame, among a small society who regarded themselves, and not
without some reason, as the sole arbiters of literary criticism,
the only people who understood their own poets (not to say poets
in general),' came before long to be a well-understood convention. Experienced readers at Athens must have known that
in Euripides what had been spoken from the machinze was not
to be taken seriously, was no true part of the realistic drama,
but a mere concession to the requirements of a theological stage,
and to established superstition which must not be too openly
defied. How completely this convention was in fact understood,
and how frankly the author counted upon it, is well seen in
what we read at the conclusion of the Ip/tzgeia in Taurica.
1 Aristoph. Frogs, 809.




i68


E URIPIDES


This excellent piece, which for its symmetry, vigour, and
artistic construction has drawn praise from the most unfavourable judges, has for its termination a theopianzy to which, as we
shall see, the poet himself has directed special attention. By a
successful stratagem Orestes and Pylades have carried off from
the temple of the Crimean 'Artemis' its chief treasure, an image
which 'fell from heaven', and rescued Iphigenia, Orestes' sister,
who for many years had been compelled to carry on, as
priestess, the barbarous rites of the place, while her friends
supposed her to have perished as a victim at Aulis. The
Chorus of Greek women, captives devoted to the same service
as Iphigenia herself, have taken part in the plot and are at the
mercy of the king Thoas, who threatens to punish them when
the arrest and execution of the fugitives shall have left him at
leisure. At this point Athena appears and forbids his projects.
As for the fugitives, he will not overtake them, for destiny 'to
which the gods and he are alike subject' has decreed that the
image shall reach Attica. And for the women, who are in his
power, they are to be released and sent home by her order, with
which Thoas, observing that 'to hear the gods and disobey them
is folly', promises to comply. All is so far simple; but for the
latter part of her injunction, that which relates to the Chorus,
the goddess gives a reason, which to readers who want to take
her seriously appears to be, and in fact is, unintelligible. " As
for these Greek women, that they be dismissed from Taurica
I command for the sake of just principle-as having saved
Orestes at the Areopagus by my judgment on an equality of
votes-and with a view to consistency at least in the ruling,
that he who obtains half the votes is victorious. Carry, son of
Agamemnon, your rescued sister away, and you, Thoas, be not
angry"'    This passage, judged upon the received assumption
1 Iph. T. I467        rCiC6E o   eKr' r l7reLv XOovbs
'EXX\yvlas9 yvvaiKas keoele/at,?vW/LaS &KalaL ei'veK'-eKowo-aoa 'ye
Kal rrpiv ~' 'Apeiots ev irdyots 71q/ovs i'oas
Kpivaa', 'Ope'ra-Kal v6KctoZW' etg rairo'd yE,
vIKmv lpelE5s O'TtS av /r1)p0ovs X\cd3r.
aXX' EKKOjlovU V7Tv KaCtLyvr)T7v XOovs,
'A'yauCAaovos Vral, Kai on AIL Owvjov, Ooas.
There is a small question about the words, but not material, in v. 1470: see Dr
England's edition. All the readings give the same sense.




IPHIGENIA.


169


that Athena in a Euripidean machine is the same sort of person
as Athena anywhere else, and may be expected to speak the
language (if we may say so) of a bona fide goddess, has been
given up as desperate; and no wonder. It was a rule in the
Areopagus that upon an equality of votes the defendant 'won'
and was acquitted; and the rule was derived, according to a
tradition, from the decision to that effect given by Athena as
president of the court in the case of Orestes, who tells the story
to Iphigenia in an earlier part of the play. But the principle
has no possible bearing on the relations of Thoas and the Greek
slaves, who have not been tried, and whom no one proposes to
try. And not only so: the topic is irrelevant not merely to the
particular point with which it seems to be connected, but
altogether. The dramatic situation affords no reason why the
trial of Orestes should be mentioned. And this would forbid us
to accept, even if the appearance of the text gave room for it,
the common expedient of supposing that something, which explained the allusion, has been lost. Such a loss would naturally
betray itself by grammatical discontinuity, but there is none:
and besides no insertion could serve the turn. The decision in question had been given, according to the story, and
accepted by the Athenians long before. It has nothing to do
with the disposal of the persons or things concerned in the
present action, which is the present business of the goddess and
has all been appropriately dealt with, except the case of the
women, before this astonishing reference is introduced. To their
case it must refer, and yet apparently it does not touch their
case in the least. What is the explanation?
The explanation is that the author, who, as his readers knew,
cared nothing for his 'Athena' in her dramatic character as a
goddess, has here coolly made her his spokesman to convey, in
the poem as circulated for the purpose of reading, a jesting
allusion to the satisfactory result of a representation, either the
first or some other. This play is one of three, with the Orestes
and the l'Poenissae, which conclude with a few lines purporting
to be spoken by the Chorus not in their assumed character as
persons in the drama, but in their true character as Athenians
contending in a dramatic competition. The tag takes the form
of a prayer to Victory, "0 mighty lady, Victory, pervade my life,




170


EURIPIDES.


and cease not to give me crowns". We do not happen to know
(so far as I am aware) what measure of theatrical success
attended the Orestes and the Iphigenia; the Phioenissae obtained
the second of the three prizes. But it seems to be implied by
the very form of the prayer, that it is not exactly, as is sometimes said, an appeal made in the theatre to the judges, but
a recognition, inserted afterwards, of the fact that on some
sufficiently notable occasion the play had actually obtained one
of these formal decorations. To ask that Victory 'may not
cease' to bestow crowns is language appropriate only to one
who has been crowned; it is gratitude expressing itself,
according to the proverb, in a sense of favours to come, and if
taken generally, without reference to the particular occasion,would
have come rather absurdly from Euripides, who gained in fact
(and it is not difficult to imagine why) a very small number of
such public awards, far less than corresponded to his influence
and consideration. In the case of the Orestes and the Ipzigenia
at least, it would be probable, apart from the tag, that they took
prizes on some occasion, for both were famous as stage-pieces
and are in fact excellent in this aspect. And the tag itself, as I
have said, seems to admit no other meaning. It signifies a hope
that the play may please readers as well as it pleased the
judges, and that other successes may follow.
Now the 'victory' of a play, in this special sense, was
technically the victory of the Chorius, as is signified by putting
the prayer in their mouths. Theoretically the dramatic contest
continued to be, what it had once been literally, a contest
between chorus and chorus, for which reason the person charged
with the material provision for the performance, and credited
with the theatrical success, continued to be called a choragos
and to set his prize, if he got one, on a choragic monument, even
when the weight of the contest had long been transferred to
the actors or, in Greek phrase, contenders. And when Euripides
makes 'Athena' say that Thoas must release the women, that
is to say the Chorus, in deference to her well-known principle
that 'if you halve the votes, you are victorious', he must be
referring not to anything in the dramatic situation, to which
that principle is inapplicable, but to the circumstances of the
'victory' signified by the final tag. On the occasion to which




1PHIGENIA.


I7


he alludes the votes of the awarders, in regard to one of the
prizes, must have been equally divided between himself and
another competitor, "which" says Athena humorously "I at
any rate am consistent in calling a victory for our Chorus, and I
command you, Thoas, to treat them with the favour that they
have deserved ". The four verses in which she gives her reason
must have been added, with the tag, after the so-called 'victory'.
-In the theatre she probably contented herself with the sic volo
sic iubeo, by which Thoas is in fact determined.
To clinch the matter, if there be any doubt, we may observe
that the same thing mutatis mutandis has been done in the
Orestes, where the 'victory' commemorated by the tag is duly
prophecied, as we now read the finale, by the 'Apollo' who on
that occasion occupies the machine. Orestes, he says, as a
murderer, must clear himself by the customary year of exile, to
be spent in Arcadia, "and thence you must go to the city of
Athens, and offer satisfaction for the blood of your mother to
the three Eumenides. The divine umpires of the cause shall most
righteously give you the advantage of the vote among the hills of
Ares, and there you are destined to be victorious".' That the
victorious Orestes of this prophecy is not the person only or
chiefly, but the play, the modern reader would hardly suspect, if
we had not the Iphigenia to direct us; a similar prophecy
occurs in the finale of the Electra, where a theatrical reference is
not to be thought of. But an Athenian reader would see it, for
his ear would be arrested at once by the strange expression
among the hills of Ares, in which this passage and that of the
Iphigenia agree. The seat of the court, as all the world knows,
was not the hills, but the Hill of Ares. Euripides himself calls
it so in reference to this very matter in the Electra.2  So does
Sophocles, so does Aeschylus, so did every one every day; and
though I will not say that no instances of the plural, except
only these two, can be found, it was certainly irregular enough
to be noticed, and my belief is that it would have sounded to an
Athenian very much as 'Tower hills' would have sounded, when
1 Or. 1650          0eoi 8e 0o't 8lKS ppajst
7rayo&atv ev 'Apeiowwv euo-ejeo-erTrT
4i<fov &oLaova''  gvOa vtKijcaal a  Xpr'.
2 El. 127I 7rdtyov rrap' ardov: see also Iph.. T. 96 "Apetov ob'Xov, and passimt.




I72


E URIPIDES.


London had citizens, to a citizen of London. But for the plural
in these two places there is reason, since the 'victories', with
which the forensic victory of Orestes in the legend is compared,
were not gained in 'the Hill of Ares', the spur of the Acropolis
which properly bore that name. They were gained in the
theatre, on the side of the Acropolis itself; and by 'the hills of
Ares' the poet signifies the whole block, of which Ares with
others was a protector,' using this form purposely in order to
bring the scenes of the victories under a common appellation.
In fact the prophecy of the Orestes, shaped as we read it, is just
an allusion to the smarter point of the Iphigenia.' Whether the
finale of the P/oenissae, where 'Orestes' and his legend could
not be used, having nothing to do with the matter, has been in
any way adapted to the tag, is a question which would take us
too far from our present subject. The Phoenissae is no theme
for a paragraph. The use of the tag does not of course require
such adaptation; nor can anything be inferred from the
absence of the tag where it is not found. The Medea has not
got it, and the Medea was one of a group which obtained not
only a prize, but the first: but this means only that in the year
431 Euripides had not yet made the tag; and indeed the witty
employment of it in the Iphigenia almost justifies the inference
that it was first made for that play. However this is all
digression, and we must return to the matter before us.
In the Iphigenia then at least it is certain, as I think, that
the poet, in preparing his play for circulation, has deliberately
used the 'goddess' of the finale as the vehicle of a jocular
allusion from himself to the external fortunes of some recent
performance. But what does this imply? Surely nothing less
than that in his view the goddess was simply and solely a
stage-pretence; that her personality as an object of worship
believed to exist was wholly immaterial to the purpose of his
work; and that when she had performed her function of pleasing
the gapers, citing a local legend or so for patriotism, and paying
by her mere appearance the expected compliment to the 'sacred'
character of the orchestra, he and his understanding readers
1 Aesch. Eum. 917.
2 The date of the Iptigenia is not known, but it is almost impossible that it should
be later than 408, the date of the Orestes.




IPHIGENIA.


73


might do what they liked with her, and the less respectfully she
was treated, the better they were likely to understand. It is
not the fact of the allusion being made which proves this, but
the tone and the manner of it. The Electra of Euripides' play
so called carries on with her slave a conversation which is
pointed critically at the Choephori; but she does not thus cease
to be a real character in the play, because the conversation is in
itself appropriate to the supposed situation, and would have a
meaning if the Choephori had never existed. It would be permissible to think (I do not think so but merely suppose it as an
illustration) that when the Athena of the Eumenides commands
the reconciled Furies to bless Athens 'with due regard to a
victory where none hath lost',1 the hope of a victory for the
Chorus as performers of the trilogy was included in the poet's
view. We might think this without abating from the faith of
the poet in the divine personages whom he presents, because he
might well hold, and doubtless did, that the favourable acceptance of the Orestea was a good omen for the religion in which he
believed. But when the goddess of the Iphigenia orders the
barbarian king to release the slave-women in consideration of
their choric success, and this with a jest on a maxim of the
Areopagus, which was held to depend on her sanction as the
immortal daughter of Zeus, she ceases to be 'Athena' or to speak
to 'Thoas'. 'She' talks as a man in a mask to another man in a
mask; and the only way of accounting for such treatment of
her is to suppose that the author does not want us even to fancy
her.  She, and with her necessarily the whole finale from
her appearance, stands confessed as a mere piece of theatrical
machinery, a device introduced only with a view to the conditions
of performance: and the reader is assumed to know this. It
cannot be believed that Aeschylus or Sophocles would have so
treated a divine personage figuring in one of their plays, or that
Euripides would have done so, if he had not meant and been
known to mean that her deity was irrelevant to the significance
of his play as a work of serious imagination.2
1 v. 903.
2 These statements were framed at a time when I had certainly not seen for years
the passage, almost verbally coincident, and absolutely coincident in sense, which is
cited hereafter from the Zeus Tragoedus of Lucian. I got them, so far as I was




I74


E URIPIDES.


We have then the poet's authority, conveyed perhaps with
unusual clearness (but not to my mind much more clearly than,
for example, in the Ion), that 'Athena', and if 'Athena', if the
national goddess, then a fortiori the anthropomorphic and
legendary theology in general, is to be discarded from the mind
when we read the Iphigenia; that no such beings as the gods of
tradition enter into the hypothesis about life and the world
upon which his story proceeds. Nor are there wanting other
indications to the same effect in the body of the play. The
most remarkable perhaps is the well-known passage, brilliant
with poetry and wit, where the fair Greek youths, Orestes and
Pylades, sitting by the shore, are taken by some of the natives
for gods.l  " In a cavernous breach, cleft by the strong rush of
the waves, which gatherers of sea-purple use for shelter, one of
our herdsmen saw two youths, and coming back on tip-toe, as
one steps a ford, said 'Beware! There are gods here: yonder
they sit'. And at the sight one of us, a man of piety, lifted up
his hands and prayed: '0 son of the sea's Leucothea, protector
of ships, our lord Palaemon, be gracious unto us, if these that
sit on the beach be perchance the Twins of Zeus, or darlings of
Nereus, sire of that fair band of fifty nymphs'. Whereupon
another, an insolent fellow, disorderly and rash, laughed at the
prayer, and said they were wrecked seamen, who had got into
the cave for fear of our custom, when they were told that here the
stranger is used for a sacrifice. The more part of us thought
him right, and we resolved to capture for the goddess the
victims that our wont awards her". Now few or none would
suppose that the author here did not see, what the imaginary
narrator is supposed too dull and self-conceited to see, that the
incident is a little triumph for 'the insolent fellow, disorderly
and rash', to whom the notion of gods appearing in human
form seemed laughable, who held in short the opinions of the
author. That this is the aim of the episode in itself is plain
enough and commonly recognized. But surely, in bare justice
aware, simply from the text of Euripides' plays, read under the presumption that
after all the author must have meant something. This coincidence is of no importance except to me personally, but perhaps I may be pardoned for thinking that
there are some of my readers to whom it will not he without interest.
1 v. 262 foll.




IPHIGENIA.


I75


to the author, we must go beyond this, at least until we see a
necessity to stop, and must hold that prima facie the whole
work in which such a passage is found is meant to agree with it
in colour and tendency. An offence in art is no more to be
imputed without proof than any other offence: and it would be
a gross offence in art to insert such a narrative as this in a
fiction which rested as a whole upon the hypothesis of anthropomorphic religion. Be it noted that this proposition has nothing
to do with the creed of the author or the creed of anyone.
It relates solely to the belief that we are to assume for the
purpose of the story. Does this assumcd belief cover anthropomorphism and a world where Athena, Palaemon, and the like
exist and may sometimes be seen? If it does, the author is
unpardonable as an artist, whatever his opinions may have been,
for shaking the foundation of his structure. It is a mere insult
to your audience, in one scene of your story to direct ridicule
against the notion that the Dioscuri might appear, and in the
next scene to present, with all the air of gravity, facts intelligible
only on the assumption that on a most solemn and important
occasion Apollo did actually appear. Of course I am aware
that Euripides is now accused of committing such offences
perpetually. But upon what enquiry? I doubt if there exists
any critical work in which the question, whether for instance the
story of the Iphigcenia in Taurica does indeed assume anthropomorphism, is so much as raised. And if anywhere it has been
raised, it has left no trace on the received exposition, which
takes an affirmative answer for granted.'  But since that answer
is an accusation, is this fair?
The truth is that the story of the play does not presume
the fancies of anthropomorphism. It neither requires nor leads
to the supposition that any such persons as Apollo of Delphi
or Artemis of Brauron exist in reruni natrau.    The dramatis
personae are believers in such deities, as Ion is and Admetus, but
their experience, so far as it is shown to us by Euripides, goes
to refute, not to support, their traditional faith.
1 Dr England, for instance, relies upon it so implicitly, that in annotating the
passage about the supposed apparition of the Dioscuri he treats the 'irony' of it as
possibly 'not intentional'. If it be not, Euripides little deserves such labour and
learning as Dr England has spent on him.




176


E URIPIDES.


We will take first the case of Apollo, whose Delphian
oracle is, as usual, a prime mover in the mechanism. It is
by the command of Delphi that Orestes undertakes the task
of bringing a Crimean image to Attica, as a final means to
rid him of the Furies of his mother. In this fact itself there
is nothing miraculous or even uncommon. That the oracle was
consulted frequently on cases of conscience, and was or had been
able to impose dangerous and distant enterprises, is as indisputable as that there was a town of Delphi. Those who repaired
to Apollo there did not in general see him; in Aeschylus Orestes
does, but in Euripides the communication is made in the usual
way through 'the voice from the tripod',' that is to say the
prophetess. The question then is, how or whether it appears,
from the story of the enterprise as related by Euripides, that this
command was inspired by superhuman wisdom.
Now it is, to begin with, a strange and suspicious circumstance that the necessity for the enterprise has arisen through a
failure, not to say a series of failures, on the part of Apollo,
which has placed the oracle, almost as much as Orestes himself,
in a distressing position. The oracle had advised the murder of
Clytaemnestra, the beginning of sorrows, and was therefore an
interested party. Apollo had engaged, as might be supposed,
to hold Orestes harmless. Primitive legend was content to
represent him as fulfilling this promise by furnishing Orestes
with a weapon, a bow or sword, to 'keep the Furies off'. But
long before Euripides this symbolism had ceased to please;
and a deeper feeling of the moral issues implied in the punishment of a criminal mother by a son was satisfied by the
expedient of an expiatory period of suffering, followed by a trial
before a court of divine justice, in which Apollo appeared for
the defence and procured an acquittal. Notably this was the
Athenian view and had been fixed imperishably by Aeschylus.
But according to the story of Euripides (who invented, as there
is every reason to believe, this expedition to Taurica), not only
had the original counsel of the god excited the disapprobation
of the world in general as well as of the Furies2 (a view
which the poet maintains not only here but also in the Electra and
more violently in the Orestes); but the grand remedy of seeking
1. 976.          2.  713.




IP/HIGENIA.


T77


divine justice at Athens, suggested to the tormented fugitive by
the oracle itself and tested by him in a fashion which we will
presently consider, had failed. According to Aeschylus, as we
need hardly say, it succeeds in the object. The Furies are
brought to submit to the verdict, and Orestes goes away
triumphant. According to Euripides some of the Furies complied, but some, enough to make him as miserable as ever,
continued the pursuit as before'. That is to say, the whole
solemn proceeding of the Euzmenides, Areopagus, Apollo, Pallas,
and all, ended, so far as the true purpose of it was concerned,
in-it is hard to find a term at once decent and appropriate.
To be simple, nothing came of it.
Hereupon (proceeds this amazing continuation of Aeschylus)
Orestes went to Delphi again, flung himself starving on the
temple-floor, and swore that unless 'the god who had ruined
him would rescue', he would die where he lay. It was under
this pressure that 'the voice from the tripod' commanded, as a
final quietus, the present expedition to the further side of the
Euxine sea. Now considering all the circumstances, it is not
surprising that, when Orestes arrived at his destination and
found that (to aggravate the obvious dangers of such a voyage
to the end of the world) the possessors of the image which he
was to fetch had the habit of offering visitors as victims to their
goddess, he should have suspected 'Apollo'of 'setting a trap' for
him, of having meant simply to remove his reproaching figure
and memory 'as far from Hellas as possible '. It seems in fact
that nothing but success, obtained by the manifest will and aid
of the god himself, could justify any other construction of the
oracular motives. Let us see then what cause he has to revise
this judgment, what aid Apollo gives to the execution of his
command. The sort of aid that he would be expected to give,
the kind of signs by which, according to Greek belief, his
presence would be felt, we see, for instance, in the Choephzori
of Aeschylus. There, as here, Orestes is sent by Apollo on a
dangerous enterprise, and accordingly the first and essential step
to his success is procured for him by means of a dream, which is
sent to his enemy. The dream is not only in itself encouraging as a prophecy, but leads to action on the part of the enemy
v1. 968.           2 "v. 67-103, 711-7 5.


V. E.


2




178


E URIPIDES.


which (under Providence) plays straight into the plots of the
divine emissary. Euripides has not forgotten that such was
the form in which, according to orthodox Apolline religion,
the divine approval and assistance should present itself.
Nay, he has well remembered, and taken care to recall to
his readers, that such is the form which it takes in the
parallel case of the Choephori.     Not only does Iphigenia receive
a dream on the morning of Orestes' arrival, but that dream has
a sequel resembling the Aeschylean sequel down to minute
details.  The   result of the    dream    in  the  Choephori is that
Electra with a chorus of female slaves performs funeral libations.
The result of the dream here is that Iphigenia with a chorus of
female slaves performs funeral libations. The one ceremony
takes place at the tomb of Agamemnon and is connected with
a certain offering of hair, in the other ceremony we are
reminded that it should take place, but cannot, at the tomb of
Agamemnon's son, and should be accompanied by an offering
of hair'. In short Euripides echoes Aeschylus precisely, and
means to do so. The only difference is this, that whereas
the dream of Clytaemnestra truly presages Orestes' victory,
the   dream    of  Iphigenia   presages   his death 2;   and  whereas
the Aeschylean dream makes his enterprise practicable, the
Euripidean dream, by steeling Iphigenia's heart against the
unknown strangers', goes near to nip his enterprise in the bud,
and would have done so, if she had not, in spite of the dream
and the rite performed in consequence, ascertained by enquiry
1 Cf. Iph. Taur. 143-I91 with the opening of the Choephzri passim.
2 It has been said, indeed, to reconcile with sense the current interpretation of the
play, that the dream does not portend ill to Orestes, but is misinterpreted by
Iphigenia. Even if this were so, it would be no defence, since Iphigenia is in fact
misled and we are never told where she went wrong or how the dream can be read
favourably. In the Choephori both interpretations are given, the misleading interpretation of Clytaemnestra and the true interpretation of Orestes. But in fact an
interpretation consistent with the success of Orestes is not possible. Iphigenia dreams
that she prepares for sacrifice, weeping, 'the sole pillar of her father's house', seen
in the form of a man. That she does not read this judiciously is true. She takes
it to mean that Orestes is dead. What it does plainly suggest is that Orestes is to die,
after certain rites performed on him by Iphigenia. And this is what really follows, so
that the dream, as it happens is true enough, only it cannot come from 'Apollo'. It
is part of the author's irony.
3 v. 348.




IPHIGENIA.


I79


that Orestes is alive, and the warning, as she reads it, false.
Now the dream of Iphigenia is, so far as I can see, the sole thing
in the action of the piece in which, according to the notions
of Greek popular religion, miraculous interference might be
suspected; and here it certainly would be presumed, as it is by
Iphigenia herself. If' the gods' are not the senders of this dream
so critically timed, the inference is that 'the gods' have no hand
in the business. But to derive it from 'the gods' would be
to suppose them adverse to Orestes, a reductio ad absurdum
which throws us on the alternative that 'the gods', that is
the gods of the populace, have not any hand in the business.
Nor does the author fail to dictate this inference expressly; for
when Iphigenia remarks that after all there was no truth in the
dream, Orestes gloomily adds that 'the deities famed for
wisdom', such as Apollo, 'are no less deceptive: divinity is
altogether as confused as humanity, and if a man is fool enough
to trust prophets, sensible men know what to think of his fate'.
From the nature of the case this is the nearest approach that
a dramatist can make to furnishing direct and positive evidence on
such a point. You cannot actually exhibit a person's non-action.
Negative evidence can be given, and is given by Euripides, profusely. As I have already said, save the sending of the dream,
which cannot be the work of Apollo, nothing happens in the
story which even looks like his work. But the things which he
might have done, which it is strange that he should not have
done, which we are directed to think it strange that he should
not have done, are plenty. Not a suggestion comes, so far as
indicated, from him as to the way in which his envoys are to
cope with their fearful difficulties, neither at the time nor (which
is perhaps odder in this case) beforehand. No doubt the gods
are masters; they reveal what they like, and conceal what they
like. But Euripides thought (and surely with reason) that there
is a point at which defective information, though not a ground for
accusing Providence if we assume that a given message is
providential, does become a ground for thinking that the message
is not providential; and he indicates (rightly again, in my judgment) that this point is reached in the case before us. If
Apollo dictated the command which sent Orestes and Pylades
v. 569.
12 —2




I80


E URIPIDES.


to Taurica, what did Apollo know about the conditions of the
enterprise? He communicated nothing. The ignorance, in
which his emissaries arrive, as to material facts is strikingly
exhibited, together with Orestes' not unnatural sense of injury,
in the opening scene. The oracle said nothing about the place
(as we are expressly toldl) except that Arteimis possessed there
altars and    an  image zwhich fell from      heaven.   What more
than the fact that there was such an image, no wonderful
knowledge, did Apollo know? Above all did he know-because
here was a fit occasion for him to enlighten an unhappy
worshipper-that Orestes would find there his sister Iphigenia,
supposed to have died a score of years before but in reality
a captive in the service of 'Artemis'?      If he knew, why did he
not say so, foretell her assistance, and make the release of her a
part of his commission? We have no right to ask? We have
not only the right but, as readers of Euripides, the duty to ask;
for Euripides has indicated that an uncomfortable feeling about
this lacuna in the oracle must necessarily arise from the facts,
even in a mind prepossessed by faith. After the recognition,
Iphigenia offers to put the image in her brother's hands and
remain herself to encounter certain death. Orestes, rejecting this,
and resolving to carry away both, encourages her as follows:
" Let me tell you my thought. If our plan had been repugnant
to Artemis, how could the oracular god have commanded my
conveying   of the goddess' image to        Pallas' town...and    my
meeting with you....Yes, putting all these things together I have
hope to win our way back".2      "But the meeting of the brother
1 vv. 85, 977. Orestes lays stress on the fact that the precept of the god contained no more than he cites (v. 91), and finds it, on arriving, strangely insufficient.
2 v. 101 2    'yPWvjltS O' dKOVOOP el 7rpocavTes v' rdSe
'ApTrjuLot&, T7rW av Aotias eOi7rtae
Ko.Liact Jt' ayaX/ua c  eas 7roXtr/xa   IaXXc  os...
Kat aoipv rpoaoEtLv elat&iL.v;... ar-rvra yap
avvesi rdai' els ev vdorov iXWrti1c Xa/J3ev.
The ambiguity of Oec7rtiw between command and reveal is a difficulty to the translator but a convenience to Orestes. In the last line I assume, in order not to lay
weight on a disputable point, that editors are right in choosing the variant Xajie3v.
But I do not myself think it grammatical: \Xri-w Xapelv is not the Greek of
Euripides for 'I hope I shall obtain'; it would mean 'I suppose I obtained'. The
true reading is the alternative Xa0eiv, altered to Xaf3ev because not understood. The
meaning is then, ' All these matters', i.e. all the events in Taurica, ' I put together as




IPHIGENIA.


i8i


and sister", exclaim readers very naturally1, "was not comprised
in the oracle!"  "But it must have been!" say others not less
naturally. "Orestes mistook; Apollo directed him, we may
suppose, to Taurica where is an altar possessed by a sister, meaning
a sister of yours, whereas Orestes took him to mean a sister of
mine". But of course this will not do, and others see that it will
not do. We can know nothing about the oracle except what
Orestes tells us, which is that Apollo said altar possessed by
Artemis2. If we were to suppose misapprehension or ambiguity,
we should be told so; but no one hints it, not even (though that
would not signify) Athena. Accordingly3 it is once more time
for that great defence of the faith that 'something is lost',
something which came before the words and my meeting with
you, and to which Orestes refers when he speaks of 'putting
all this together'. No, nothing is lost. The 'lacuna' is not in
the text of the poet but in the wisdom of the oracle. When
Orestes links to his sentence, with a weakness in the linking
which betrays his hesitation, the words and my meeting with
you, he does so because he naturally feels that, as things turn
out, the oracle oucght to have said-then must have said-then
did say doubtless-or at any rate mean, that he was to meet
his sister. And when he speaks of'putting all this together' he
includes his unspoken and indistinct thoughts, which bring him
to the conclusion that all, it is to be hoped, may go right.
It is a pious conclusion: but is it logical and (what after all
is the main question) is it justified by the event? Does Apollo
bring the affair to the good issue which he is held to have
promised? Not in the least.   So far as 'Apollo' is concerned,
so far as Euripides is concerned, and so far as we, his readers, are
concerned, the expedition ends, as it was sure to end, in the
destruction of the emissaries. They get on board with their
booty, and they put off; but the barbarian king, knowing the
voyage before them, regards their escape from his vessels as a
mere impossibility, so much so that he is in no hurry about
pursuit4. Nor, as it proves, is there need for pursuit. At the
one, and suppose that it was our return (only) which remained hidden' i.e. of which
nothing was revealed. This is exactly what Orestes, still hoping in Apollo, is now
painfully anxious to believe.
i See Paley's note.  '2 v. 86.: See Dr England.  4 V'. 1325.




I82


E URIPIDES.


harbour's mouth the fugitives encounter 'a wind springing up
with strange suddenness' which forces them back-an occurrence
which should perhaps be added to the dream as an incident in
the story conceivably miraculous, for the Taurians treat it so,
referring it, as the ordinary superstitious Greek would have done
moutatis miutandis, to their own offended Artemis and to Poseidon,
enemy of Orestes' house'; so that here again the unseen powers,
the forces of nature, by whomsoever controlled are not controlled
by Apollo. By him or for him nothing is done. The vessel
grounds, and the natives make it fast. Nothing remains for
King Thoas but to hunt down with boats and horsemen the
miserable crew, and to enjoy a barbarous revenge.
Here, when all is over, appears not Apollo even now, but
Athena; and the farce of the Ion, the farce of the Alcestis, the
accustomed farce in short, is presented to orthodoxy as a peaceoffering. The proceedings of Thoas are arrested by command;
we are assured that the whole design, including (of course now)
the escape of Iphigenia to Argos2, is destined to success by the
fiat of Apollo, and-but really it is not worth while to go on.
Of'Athena' the poet has told us what to think; and we can
only remark with Thoas that 'when we hear a speaking god', we
naturally obey. Yes, when we hearl him speak.    With that
proviso, anthropomorphic religion may be accepted...safely.
Of Apollo then in the narrative there is not a trace. The
oracle of Delphi is there, and plays such a part as Euripides
regularly chooses to give it, that is to say, a part of craft and
pretension, cruelty and treachery. The inference from the whole
facts, the only possible inference, is the one twice drawn by
Orestes himself at earlier stages: 'Apollo', or in other words the
Delphians,finding that their counsel in the matter of Clytaemnestra
was generally disapproved, and that their importunate victim
was sinking under incurable remorse, made of his desperate faith
a 'trap' to get rid of him, and sent him 'as far away as possible'
upon an errand of which they knew no more than the one thing
needful, to wit, that there was scarcely a chance of his coming
1 v. I4I4. Modern editors, with their view of the play, are so much puzzled by
these remarks that they strike them out,-a remedy which alternates with the
'lacuna'.
2 v. 1440.




IPHIGENIA.


I83


back. They sent him to Athens, and it did him no good, so then
they sent him...to Taurica. And so much for Apollo.
As for the Furies, their personality is literally transparent.
In their case Euripides had an opportunity, of which he has
promptly availed himself, actually to show on the stage 'the
gods' so to speak 'not existing'. Both in this play and in the
Orestes the Furies are hallucinations of a mind disordered by
misery. Orestes, the murderer and outcast, sees them when he
has fits, and no one else sees them at all. Such an access seizes
him on the shores of Taurica, and he takes for his fancied
pursuers some barking dogs and bellowing cows, upon which
accordingly he falls sword in hand'. The meaning of this
description is plain, and no one misses it. But it should have
been seen also, and would have been seen long ago, if it were
the fashion to credit Euripides with a consistent purpose, that
the liability of Orestes to such temporary madness (as proved in
this case) implies the worthlessness of his testimony as to
anything which happened according to him at a time when the
Furies were visible; and that therefore we should dismiss to limbo
the whole preposterous account which he gives to his sister of his
visit to Athens, or at least everything in it which is at all
improbable or which connects itself specially with the presence
of the imaginary fiends. That narrative is connected by the
poet closely with a reference to the hallucination of the morning,
which Orestes, according to the nature of his malady, still takes
for a reality2. We know it was not. Why then should we pay
him any regard, except in the way of pity, when he proceeds to
relate how he and the Furies met at the Areopagus, how he
took one platform and a Fury the other, how Apollo gave
evidence, and Pallas sentence, and so forth? With a few stray
dogs, with a rock and a statue, or with nothing at all except the
silent hill and his own wild brain, he could make (and we know
it) the whole proceeding. The solemnity celebrated in the
Ezumenides appears by this account as the invention of a madman, to be received with tears or frowns, with bitten lips or
shrugging of shoulders, according to our interest in the patient,
but true not one little bit. The Pythia sent him to argue his
cause against 'the nameless goddesses' at the Areopagus; and
1 vv. 281 foil.  ' v. 931 foil.




184


E URIPIDES.


in the natural course of things he went through the experiencebut without obtaining relief. All the same this was no bad
suggestion, and the best thing, or rather the only good thing,
which the Delphians, as Euripides tells the story, did in the
course of it. Their mental pathology (in modern phrase) does
indeed seem to have been the most solid part of their lore, which
no one, not even Euripides, can have supposed to have had no
points of superiority. It was-I should judge from what I read,
knowing no medicine myself-quite possible and not unlikely
that a hallucine such as Orestes would have left his 'Furies'
behind him at the Areopagus; and indeed he was better; 'some
of themz stayed', but unhappily not all, and so the mad chase
went on.
In his treatment of 'the Furies' Euripides is waging (with
perfect consistency and propriety) literary as well as religious
war against his opponents; for the Furies, or rather the visible
shapes of them, were created by Aeschylus.       Shadowy before,
much more shadowy than most forms of Greek fancy, they
seem to have become clearly personified and fully equipped for
the first time in the Eunmenides. Their costume, their attributes,
their noises, beast-like and human, were (or at least the ancients
believed so, and this comes practically to the same thing) of
Aeschylus' making'. Euripides falls upon the whole frippery
with as much vigour, though with a difference in the method, as
Aristophanes did upon his.      In the Enzmenides their dog-like
characteristics, their running on the scent of blood, their whining
in slumber, their howls, are employed with a power inconceivable,
if one had not seen it done. In the Iphigenia they are dogs
still, the dogs of peaceable herdsmen, transformed by a lunatic.
Nor does their dress escape. Critics misapprehend the poet's
aim when they propose to soften into something more intelligible
and more poetical the crudeness of the Fury who is painted
'blowing fire and blood from her skirts'.2 The art-work of a
I Pausanias, I. 28. 6. Pausanias is speaking of the images of the Semnai at the
Areopagus, which evidently surprised him by lacking (for excellent reasons) the
familiar attributes of the Furies. He derives from Aeschylus 'the snakes in the hair'
selecting this as the typical mark. So far as appears there scarcely existed before
Aeschylus, at least in literature, any such type as his fiends. The Erinyes of older
allusions are tremendous but curiously formless.
" v. 288 eK XLTrW'V 7rrp rrvPovoa Kmal o6vov.




IPHIGENIIA.


185


madman is apt to want mellowness and lucidity; and the
like danger, Euripides could have added, waits on the poet or
the dramaturgist who insists on putting the intangible into
shape. The famous Aeschylean costume, with the snakes, robes
red and black, and so on, though impressive, seems to have been
reckoned somewhat too frightful.1 The more sublime it was, the
slighter the touch which would precipitate it into caricature; and
this touch the realist takes care to bestow. The sword again,
which the Euripidean Orestes 'plunges into the flanks of the
oxen', is from  the tiring-booth of the Eumenides, where Orestes
at his first appearance, fresh from a bout with the gory monsters
who harass him, sits at the sacred stone of Delphi, clear of them
for the moment, with 'a sword fresh-blooded and dripping'.2
It would take more space than the proportions of our present
subject will allow, to exhaust the relation of the Euripidean
Furies to the Aeschylean, even as it appears in the Iphigenia
alone; and it is the same elsewhere. Some pages for instance
would be necessary, if we began at the beginning, to show fully
why Orestes speaks with a shade of impatience (the modern
editors will not let him) when he says that Phoebus 'sent him
on his own feet to Athens (aye, surely) to offer remedy of law
unto the goddesses tzhat have no name'.3   Partly it is that, in spite
of the surely, even Athens could not give him relief. But
partly it is because in the light of the failure there seemed to be
something a little wild in the experiment; and what this was
comes out, when he speaks of the legal satisfaction as offered to
'the goddesses that have no name'. The beings whom he thus
describes (not very respectfully, as they did nothing for him),
1 The stories told of its untoward effect on sensitive spectators, though probably
apocryphal, imply this criticism, which is moreover genuinely Attic.
2 The current theory, that this is the sword of the murder, is impossible upon the
facts. How could it be 'dripping' after a journey from Argos to Delphi? The sword
here replaces the old 'bow and arrows', which Apollo gave Orestes to guard himself.
The story implies necessarily that he could by some means fight them off for a time,
though, but for the Areopagus, they would doubtless have 'devoured' him at last.
Needless to say, Aeschylus is careful to keep such fights well in the background. He
hints them and no more, with sincerity, and also with discretion.
3 v. 942                              eibv ro66a
e   's r&s 'AOrvas or y' fgre/te Aoitas
6K3rv Trapao-XeZt TraS a'vwv61tots Oeas.
In all recent texts the particles are altered.




i86


E URIPIDES.


though they had not exactly a name, had a title, and a noble
title; they were styled, for especial awe, The Revered Ones
(Semrnai), and the title was applied to them  in all ages as
regularly as any name could be. They had a sanctuary-cavern
near the Areopagus. Now the whole scheme of the Eumenides
aims at conveying the suggestion, so bold and so little warranted
by custom that Aeschylus never dares to assert it in words, that
these beings and the Furies were identical, or that at any rate
after the great trial the Furies or Erinyes somehow became the
Revered Ones. It could be shown, if this were the proper place,
that in truth, so far as there was a truth in the matter, this
identification was built on almost nothing. The religious and
mythical origin of the Erinyes and of the Seminai was widely
different, and they had scarcely a point of contact. To help
the union, Aeschylus brought in from yet a third source a name
which, by hint again not assertion, he bestows on the combined
'Erinyes-Semnai', the name of 'Eumenides'. At all this syncretism, which in Aeschylus is of profound religious importance
and is managed with consummate art, yet an art not quite
imperceptible, Orestes is made to point when he stamps the
deities of the Areopagus so brusquely as 'the goddesses that
have no name'. Of the new divinities compounded by the
mystic chemistry of the Eumeneides, it is literally true that 'they
have no name', and this for a reason at which Euripides, who
held a different opinion as to the proper way of improving
religious conceptions, had a right to direct a stroke, provided
that it were done, as he does it, with appropriateness to the
dramatic character used as the instrument.
To the report, which we are to take as wholly imaginary, of
what passed in the sacred court, Orestes adds an account of the
way in which the Athenians treated him elsewhere. Here we
have unfortunately no longer the advantage of knowing exactly
how the matter was represented by Aeschylus and other like
authorities. But upon the words of Euripides alone it is plain
that here also his method is his own. Tradition derived from
the visit of Orestes the custom that at certain religious feasts
(CChoes) mixing-bowls were not used but only separate cups,
with other arrangements of the same kind. The original purpose
of them had been, it was said, to avoid communication with the




IPHIGENIA.


i87


murderer. The account given by the Euripidean Orestes is that
such arrangements were made (he, though hurt, not daring to
question his hosts, but knowing only too well) because he was a
matricide': 'and I hear that from my misfortunes has grown an
Athenian rite and that still it is their custom to respect the
quartern cup'. But by this account, coming from such a witness,
it is plain that the origin of the custom, as a piece of sacred
history, is exploded. Why should we suppose that the custom
of the cups was really then new, and introduced for the reason
that Orestes gives? He does not say that any one told him so
at the time. He says that he knew it and dared not ask. Afterwards he learnt that it was a ritual, and concluded, after the
fashion of minds so ruled by persistent fancies, that it had
'become' one. Presumably it always was, and its use on the
occasion of his presence merely a coincidence. The 'aetiological
legend', as it would now be called, is treated by Euripides like
other legends.   "About the originz of old customs" he says in
effect "we do not at present know anything, and our tales are
idle.  The Chois began with Orestes! Tradition says so; but
who was the first authority for the statement? Perhaps Orestes
himself; and if so since, according to the story, which you must
take whole or not at all, Orestes was a species of madman, what
is the weight of the evidence?" Readers who take these recollections of the Euripidean Orestes for a sane account of
things as they really happened complain of them as rambling
and bald, and even try to improve them by cutting or shuffling
the text. But they are right and excellent if taken for what
they are meant to be, the outpourings of a maniac who has
got for the moment upon the dangerous topic. As for the
imaginary meeting of the Areopagus, Orestes' account of it is so
vv. 953 foil.  ets 5' dyyos i2oS, Nomop arraot 3aKXLlov
ud7rp-p7Ta 7r\7puoavres eXov '  }ovYyvKa'y '4eXyacu Feva /'P  ovs OVK oipiovv.
rjXyovv 6e aCyp KcIO6KOV OVK eloeatL
yca rrTevciwPa-OyVVK' fv /r7Tpbs pove6s.
KX6w S' 'AOvYaiLto  T rc/A& 8VOarvxj
TeXer'T7Y 'yevOcal K.T.X.
I think this punctuation, with parenthesis, preferable, but the sense is not affected by
changing it. In the last sentence there is an ambiguity impossible to render, between
'my sufferings have become a rite' and 'were done as a rite', a vital difference
turning solely on whether de is and (with the first meaning) or bitt (with the second).




188


E URIPIDES.


arranged as to convey by the very wording that he himself in
his frenzy played the whole scene, which stamped itself nevertheless on his remembrance as an outward reality which he had
witnessed. The effect can hardly be transferred to a language
so different from the original as ours, but what he says, in
Euripides relieved of 'improvements', is something like this:
" When I got to Ares' Hill"-Hill by the way not Hills-" and
stood to trial, taking I one platform and the other the principal
of the Furies, having spoken and received reply respecting my
mother's blood, Phoebus saved me by bearing witness; and my
equal votes were differenced in my favour by Pallas with the
arm.1    This monstrous sentence, skipping wildly from person
to person, is itself a picture of the speaker's thoughts on the
subject, and reveals the ground of his belief. The odd last
words, though they may contain an allusion to some legend not
known to us, I believe to mean in themselves simply that
Orestes counted five fingers for one side and five for the other,
and ani arm for the vote of the goddess. I could allege illustrations for this, but it would be long and the point is not worth it.
With an actor's gestures such a meaning could be made instantly
apparent.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that the natural import of
this painful and striking scene is to shake or destroy imaginative faith not merely in the Furies but in all figures of the sort,
Athena, Apollo, Artemis and all the pantheon. It is in the
abstract possible to suppose that the same man at the same time
saw one 'god' and merely dreamed of another; or that strange
things which A dreamed of were elsewhere or at another time
really seen by B. But practically these are not lines which any
one would draw    in such a case.   From   the belief that one
theophany was the fiction of insanity it is indeed a long step to
the generalization that all the evidence for theophanies would be
1 v. 961 foll.  Os 6' eis "Apetov  oXOov  'Kcov es 68iK)v r'
9GTT?7V, eyw3 Jtv Oadrepov Xaj3Wv PdOpov
rO 8' aXXo wrpeo'aetp "Trep 'v 'EpwV'cv,
erirwv cLKO6coas 0' alt'LaTroes t irTpboS 7pt
4oi36%os I' gTawe iacprvpcwv' 'i'cas  Auot
/r'povus 6trpIOttI-e IIaXX&s wXevY.
Or &tqpigqoc^e, either, I think, possible. By omitting r' and reading eirwrv 5', or in
some such way, modern recensions make 'better sense'.




IPHIGENXIA.


I89


found similar if it could be investigated. But where the one
theophany was supposed a case of the gravest public and historic
importance, all who got as far as the first step would hasten to
stride the rest. And since without some theophanies an anthropomorphic creed is baseless and not entertainable, the treatment
by Euripides of the Areopagitic legend imports a general exclusion from his story of all such beings as the gods of popular
tradition.
Except Apollo and the Furies, the only other such being
whose action or supposed action affects the story is Artemis, to
whom is attributed the escape of Iphigenia from the sacrifice at
Aulis, and the transference of her to Taurica. The prologue,
which is spoken by Iphigenia, consists of two parts, first a
prologue proper, or relation of antecedents to the audience,
and then the first step in the action, the 'telling to the sky' (a
popular but, as is hinted, not very well ascertained remedy') of
Iphigenia's evil dream. In the first part she informs us how,
brought on false pretext to Aulis, she " was lifted high over the
piled wood, and the sword was about to slay me, when Artemis
stole me away, giving the Achaeans a deer instead of me, and
through clear sky brought me to dwell in this land of Taurica,
where the strange folk have a strange king Thoas, who,
setting a foot swift as wings2, came to this name because of
foot-swiftness".
Now with regard to this story it is to be noted firstly that
merely by placing it in his conventional 'prologue' Euripides
implies, according to his practice in the matter, that it is to
be taken cum  grano.  These miraculous prologues like the
miraculous conclusions are given for mere stage-machinery; and,
provided they bring us to the situation from which the real action
starts, how precisely we get there is of no importance. And to
the action of the Iphigenia it is not of the least importance how
the heroine was conveyed to Taurica; all that the action presumes is that she was carried there, and believed herself indebted
for rescue to Artemis. How she travelled or what part 'Artemis'
had really taken are questions immaterial. We may suppose as
we like. And if this prologue had been put in the mouth of a
'divine' person, of Artemis herself for instance, there would be


1 T. 43.


'el.        0   TIy rrta IB"O -OV  7~yav.




I9o


E URIPIDES.


no reason to look further: that would mean in Euripidean
symbols, and we should merely have to say, that this account at
any rate is false, and the thing came to pass otherwise, it matters
not how, since we are concerned for the present with nothing but
the result.
But the fact that the miraculous story is put without necessity
in the mouth of a real person (I mean of course real for the
purpose of the action), and of a real person who took part in it,
persuades me that the poet meant us to take her belief as
explicable, and therefore presumably alludes in his statement to
a known explanation, one of that sort which, under the influence
of nascent rationalism and positive enquiry, were springing up
in all directions. Whether we now can guess what this explanation was, or whether it is worth while to guess what to the play
as a work of art is irrelevant, is another thing: but I feel some
curiosity about it, so perhaps the reader may also. Now in the
story as above cited there is one point which can scarcely fail to
rouse a passing wonder, that is to say, the stress laid upon the
apparently irrelevant remark on the derivation of the name
Tzoas.   What can this be mentioned for, once and yet again,
unless it throws some light on the matter with which it is joined?
Here then we have to look. And first, what does the derivation
mean?    To 'set a foot swift as wings' is in Greek though not
in English ambiguous, because foot happened to be the Greek
term for the sheet of a ship'. Which swiftness was it then from
which Thoas took his name, his own or that of his ships? The
play leaves no doubt which was meant; it was that of his ships.
About Thoas as a runner we hear nothing; but the swiftness of
the Tauric ships is not only extolled by Thoas2, but implied in
the fact that the Tauric temple is served by women kidnapped
from the Greek islands3. The peninsula is presented for what it
historically was, a nest of rovers. The extraordinary swiftness
then of these roving ships is for some reason highly important in
1 e.g. lpk. Taur. 1135, TroSes vaods Kvr6JLTrov. The two meanings of the word
are even played upon, as it were, by way of reminder, when Iphigenia says (v. 884)
7roTepov KaTa Xpfaov, ovXi vaviciv aXX&a ro0&v pitra; ' Shall we flee by land, not with
ships but with fer that ply?' It is only the fact that in Greek a ship had r66as but
not 7roSMv ptrdva which gives this expression point.
2 v. r325.              3 See the choric odespassim.




IPHIGENIA.


I9I


connexion with Iphigenia's statement that she was transported
from Aulis to Taurica by Artemis. Undoubtedly, for it is the
whole solution. Euripides is alluding (lightly and without any
expression of personal belief) to an explanation of the story, as
of other such, after the fashion of infantine rationalism now
represented by the book of Palaephatus, which tells us for
instance that Actaeon was a spendthrift 'eaten up' by his pack
of hounds, that Phryxus and Helle were taken over sea not by
a ram but by a man called Ram, and that Pelops was a bridestealer having a ship called The Winged Horses in which he
carried off Hippodamia, whence the legend that he won her
with winged horses in a chariot-race. It is worth notice that
the prologue to the Iphizgenia opens with the chariot of Pelops,
to which however are given horses not winged but swift (thoai),
so that the train is laid for rationalizing upon T/oas. Legend
said "When Iphigenia was on the point of being sacrificed at
Aulis, Artemis substituted a deer, which the sacrificers slew
instead, still supposing (by miracle) that they were slaying
Iphigenia1. Meanwhile the goddess carried her through the sky
to Taurica and made her priestess". Rationalism, through some
early Palaephatus playful or serious, said " Nothing of the sort!
When the girl reached Aulis and learned what was to be done
with her, anguish and terror drove her out of her mind (she was
the sister, remember, of Orestes).  Odysseus and Calchas2,
ashamed of the trick they had practised on her, and not knowing
what to do, smuggled her away and produced a deer, into which
they said she had been miraculously changed, and which the
ignorant multitude accepted accordingly. Iphigenia was handed
over, as troublesome people constantly are, to a wandering
slaver, who happened to be from Taurica and to have a ship
called (very naturally) by the name of the Tauric goddess
Artemis. The ship made a quick passage in splendid weather
(the clear sky of the legend); and when the girl came to her
senses again she found herself in the service of the foreign
temple. Out of what was told her and her own confused
recollection she put the story together, and so with help of
priestcraft it got into circulation". That there is nothing improbable in the existence of this rationalizing theory or jest, will
1 Cf. Ip. T. r76, 563.       2 Iph. T. 24, 531 foil.




192


E URIPIDES.


be admitted by any one who has seen Palaephatus. But what,
more than anything, convinces me that Euripides knew, refers to,
and assumes some such version of the facts, is that in the play
itself Iphigenia, after alluding to the supposed sacrifice, goes on
to recall in full detail'the miseries of that time which she has not
forgotten', and these recollections, as will be seen, contain nothing
after her vain attempt, on discovering Odysseus' fraud of the
pretended marriage, to move the mercy of her father'. The
sacrifice itself, the substitution of another victim, her astonishing
journey with the goddess, she never pretends to remember, and
in the prologue she implicitly compares the whole story, as it
stands now in her mind, to a dream2. She believes that a
certain episode in her past was miraculous, but her recollection
is limited precisely to that part of it which was not. The
inference is obvious.
The reader is now in a position to judge, whether the story
of the Iphizenia in Taurica really requires the presumptions of
anthropomorphic religion, and with how much justice the poet is
accused of inconsistency, negligence, want of taste, and so on,
for those parts of it which manifestly impeach those presumptions. In reality the play, so far from depending on any such
hypothesis, cannot be fully understood and appreciated until
every such hypothesis is put away. Not that in this respect the
case is on a par with those we have previously considered. It is
not so by any means.      By ignoring the true realistic and
rationalistic hypothesis, and taking as serious the poet's theatrical
pretence of anthropomorphism, the Alcestis is dislocated, broken
up, and partly effaced, while the Ion is ruined almost completely,
becoming a heap of unpleasant and incomprehensible incidents,
in which are imbedded fragments of a strange nobility. The
Iphigenia suffers to a far less degree, its motives being to some
extent independent of the question how the enterprise of Orestes
and Pylades began and terminated. The admirable dramatic
turns of the mutual recognition, the loyalty and gallantry of the
two emissaries, the sisterly devotion of Iphigenia, are in themselves the same either way; the sequence of incidents is the
1. 361 foil. o'LOL'e KaKWV yap rWv TOT' OVK adVJLvtovW, K.T.X. See also vv. 850-867.
2 v. 42: after finishing the miraculous story of the past, she proceeds to ' the new
phantoms which night hath brought with her', i.e. the dream which she has just had.




JPH/GE NIA.


T93


same either way and equally intelligible. The result is that the
I/ihgeania, being one of the few plays of Euripides which are
explicable on the current hypothesis, is one of the few, the same
few, which are loved and studied, known and admired for their
own sake, and apart from the collateral interests of Hellenistic
philology and archaeology. But nevertheless it loses much.
The deepest part, the real substantial tragic foundation, is cut
away. Properly understood it is not a melodrama, it is a
tragedy. Part of the pathos, and the profoundest part, in the
resolute faith and invincible love of the two friends, is that it is
wasted, materially speaking, as such qualities in the tangle of
the world often are and will be. Orestes and Pylades are
sacrificed (as Iphigenia has been sacrificed truly and not falsely
before, and now is sacrificed again) to the relentless cruelty of a
religion in danger. Orestes, drawing after him the far purer and
more noble Pylades (such is the picture of Euripides) is sent to
perish among savages, simply because Delphi has lost credit by
what her believing sons have done at her bidding, and because
one of them, tortured by a remorse which she has vainly striven
to quiet, has become at last an intolerable reminder and advertisement of her reproach. In their fate is entangled the innocent
and pious sister, whose life has already been wrecked by a like
engine of politic superstition, together with a number of her
humbler fellow-captives, who have no concern in the matter, but
face death for Hellas' sake in order to give their lady a chance
of escape. That is the 'moral' of the play, and it is a moral fit
for tragedy. As for the 'tales of the sacristy' tacked on by
the puppet Athena, they have no more to do with the tragedy
than her green-room jests.
There is one point in the play which has excited particular
interest among modern readers, partly because of comparisons
suggested by the great modern writers who have borrowed
the general theme and handled it in their own way. I refer,
as will be guessed, to the morality of the unflinching deceit
practised by the captives upon Thoas. Upon this, I venture
to think, the light will fall with a certain difference, when we
contemplate it under a right conception of the work as a whole.
To own my mind, I confess that even under the current hypothesis, which leads us to expect in Orestes and his coadjutors


V. E.


I3




I94


E URIPIDES.


objects fit for unqualified sympathy, I still should not see much
to cavil at, as things go, in their behaviour towards the king.
It is no doubt wrong to steal, wrong even for the captives
of a slave-owning prince, who is also a man-slayer and punishes
by impalement, to run away with his property; and doubly
wrong to achieve the robbery by shameless falsehoods which
work upon him through his respect for religion. Still it is a
thing which might be done, as things go, by human creatures
deserving on the whole not less than an indulgent acquittal.
Good Catholics, and good Protestants too, might have behaved very much so in the sixteenth or seventeenth century
to a chieftain of Barbary. Nevertheless I do not disagree
with the many critics who have felt that, if we suppose the
play really designed to lead us up in sympathy to the
success of Orestes, Pylades, and Iphigenia in their religious
theft, the author has shown some want of moral delicacy in
making it necessary for Iphigenia to do so much dull hardened
lying and enact without a qualm what upon her own principles
is an impious mockery. It cannot be said that the Greeks
would see no harm, and that Euripides agreed with them;
because Iphigenia herself, when her conscience is awakened
by signs that the scheme is not favoured by the powers and
is about to end in the ruin of the contrivers, confesses that
the theft is a bad business by praying Artemis to forgive itl.
These qualms, since she could feel them then, she should
have felt sooner, in order to keep our perfect sympathy. And
still worse, on the same assumption, would be the way in which
the project of assassinating Thoas, in which there really is
not the least sense, is propounded by Orestes, and rejected
by Iphigenia, without a sign that either perceives clearly any
objection other than the extreme difficulty and danger of it2.
Strangest of all would it seem that Euripides should not have
felt the edge of the self-rebuke to which Iphigenia is led when,  6
in the midst of her fraud she answers Thoas (who has asked
whether there is any need to chain the prisoners, since they
cannot possibly escape) with the words "Trust is unknown to
Hellas"!3 She is certainly doing her best to illustrate and justify
the bitterness of the motto.


1 v. I400.


2 Z'. 1020-1023.:' V. 120.~ 7NCTOP 'EXXahs ol6E otl'tUp.




IPH/GENIA.


T95


But we have in reality no need or right to suppose that
Euripides thought the proceedings of the three conspirators
altogether admirable, or desired to give that impression. The
fact that Thoas, though for a savage he has merits, is a savage
still, does not alter the fact that the proposed theft of the
Tauric image is a bad business in itself and bad in the device
employed. But the shame of it falls not so much on the
agents as on the authority by which it is commanded, and
to which the consciences of Orestes and his coadjutors are
unhappily subject. Here, as usual, what comes from the great
oracle is stamped (of course only according to Euripides) with
the marks of baseness.  To 'convey' the Tauric image to
Greece, though this was not the real purpose of Delphi, was
still a suggestion such as would naturally be attributed to
Delphi by such an enemy as Euripides. It is a superstitious,
immoral act, disgracing the 'religion' which recommends it.
As for any notion of a moral difference between anthropomorphism in the Crimea and anthropomorphism in Hellas,
Euripides is careful to exclude that notion. If 'Artemis' received human sacrifices on the shores of the Euxine, so she was
in danger of doing, at the time when the story is laid, on the
shores of the Euripus, as witness Aulis and the offering designed
there by the highly respectable Calchas. The moral sense
of poor Iphigenia revolts against such a goddess'; but this
is only to say that she is better than her creed. The root of
all the mischief (according to the poet) among Greeks and
barbarians alike is the prevalence of low, false notions about
the nature of the power which governs the world; it is the enthronement of idols, draped with the emblems and animated by
the notions of ancient savagery, in the place of enlightening
reason: and the most diligent cultivators of such mischief are
the possessors and managers of the shrines which profit by
it. Orestes, Pylades, and their abettors are entitled to pity as
well as admiration for their courage and mutual loyalty, and to
infinite pity, but by no means to admiration, for the useless,
criminal, hopeless attempt to which they are condemned by the
directors whom they have served too well.
As to the pretended conclusion, by which everything is
1 vv. 380 foil.
13-2




I96


E URIPIDES.


abruptly turned upside down, not even those who take it
seriously can avoid the perception of its flatness and futility1.
It is impossible to think that the goddess plays a convincing
or an impressive part. Euripides, we see, was especially well
pleased with this particular finale; he has pointed forward to
it by language which could not miss its meaning for accustomed
auditors or readers, when Iphigenia, surveying the prospect
as it appears after the recognition of her brother, and the
apparently insuperable difficulties of escape by land or by sea,
exclaims in despair, "Who, god or man, will disclose to an
unhappy pair a means of release, or by what unexpected way
will he make the impossible possible o?"  Here not merely the
substance but the wording reminds everyone of the famous
envoi.  But this, as seen in the Alcestis, marks the contrast
of the 'divine' solution with the solid realistic knot: " that
which was expected came not to pass, but for that which was
not expected deity found a way". We are assured in short
that this play is conceived on the accustomed model, and will
have the usual double ending, the true and the theatrical. It
seems also that the poet conceived himself to have expressed
this relation of things with even exceptional happiness and
simplicity. And so in fact he has. Nothing could be better
for the purpose, if you know what it is, than the grotesque
opposition between rebellious nature and the interference of
Athena in person. In vain do the emissaries of Apollo implore
that favour of circumstances without which their success and
even their escape is manifestly impossible. Blind nature (or
inscrutable Providence, if we so prefer) is not even impartial
between them and their overwhelming foe. Deity, acting by
1 See, for example, Dr England's endeavours to satisfy himself; Introd. to
his edition pp. xxiii-xxvi.
v. 895         rTs adv oyv ra' av i 0re6s X porOb, r
rl 7T rV JCOK7TWV
7ropov &7ropov f'avv5oas,
OSHvo? v 'yoPotv 'ArpetSawv fcavet
KaLKWV KXU\-v;
Compare the close of the nMedea, Alcestis, etc.
Kal TA -OKOre'VT OK T~eX\cO7
TWV 8' a&OKxTWVv Trpov Vtpe Oe6s.
For questions (not material) as to the exact reading see Dr England's note.




/;11tGENLAI'JI.


197


those means which alone He is known to use, condemns and
hands them over to a cruel death. Then, and only then, when
we have been assured that the wind and the sea act we know
not why, but at any rate not at the bidding of the god of
Delphi, then an Olympian deity, appearing in person, requires
and receives obedience. But that is to expose the goddess, not
to exhibit her. Those who in the time of the poet still accepted
her divinity did so because they saw or thought themselves to see
in the working of fortune proof that she and her kindred powers,
though unseen, did nevertheless control the forces of the world.
Something might be done for such a religion by a story like
the Enmzenides, in which the Olympians come boldly on earth
and act among men through a prolonged course of events.
Imagination might thus be stimulated to believe that such
things had been and might be again. Much more was done
for such a religion by a story like that of the Oedipus Tyrannus,
where common familiar forces, the forces of nature and circumstance, are seen to work out the command of Olympian deities
who, as their wont unquestionably is, do not offer their persons
to view, but speak by an accredited agency. But a story like
that of the Iplugernia, in which all those superhuman forces, about
whose existence there is no dispute, are seen to be at war
with the Olympian command as alleged by the accredited
agency, at war with it and victorious over it, a story in which
the 'divine' purpose is saved only by the 'appearance' of a
deity, who (as usual) does not appear until all is over,-such
a story as this is deadly for the Olympian religion.  Such
a design, if the miraculous conclusion be really a part of it,
is dull, frivolous, and without serious interest; it acquires a
serious meaning only on the supposition that the miraculous
conclusion is mere irony and pretence. It must be the work
either of an 'atheist' or of a fool.
The nature and use of the Euripidean stage-gods, and the
relation between their prologizing or epilogizing-for to these
functions they are with scarcely an exception confined-and
the purport of the author as conveyed in the drama proper,
a relation of such importance that without comprehension of
it the works of the poet cannot be understood, is happily one
of those too rare points of literary interpretation upon which




I98


E URIPIDES.


we possess a clear, complete, and definite statement from a
competent Greek authority. The formal work of ancient Greek
scholarship, the result of Greek erudition in its classic age
of the third and second centuries before Christ, is almost totally
lost to us; it seems indeed to have perished in great part during
the shocks by which the world was recast into its Roman form;
and even the erudition of later and less trustworthy times has
for the most part gone into the same pit. Of the general
estimation in which the various Greek authors were held by
those who had adequate means to interpret them, we obtain
considerable evidence in the frequency and tone of ordinary
allusions. But of exposition we have little or nothing. It
happens however that upon the matter now in hand we have
the instruction of one who, notwithstanding his unpromising
date, is universally and justly recognized as having conquered
the centuries, as it were, and placed himself in spirit and thought
more near to Atticism than any but the great Athenian artists
themselves. I mean of course Lucian. Persons more competent than Lucian to understand and explain Euripides may
no doubt and must have existed; but there are few indeed, if
any, more competent among those whose light can now be
obtained.  Now in the dialogue entitled Zeus as tragedian
Lucian has set forth the nature and function of the Euripidean
stage-god in terms which so exactly tally with the views expressed in this book that I think I must (though unable to
trace the fact) have learnt them from Lucian in the first instance. A 'Stoic' and an 'Epicurean', neither of them  (it
should be said) a quite worthy representative of his school, are
debating as to the reality of the Greek popular gods, the Stoic
(Timocles by name) being of course for it, the Epicurean
(Damis) against, and the sympathies of their creator Lucian
being altogether on the 'atheistic' side. The champion of the
gods cites among other witnesses the poets, beginning with
Homer, upon which ground he is as usual defeated, and proceeding to 'tragedy', which for Lucian means mainly and generally Euripides.
Timocles. And Euripides again! He also, it seems, in )our opinion
speaks without sense, when he puts the gods in person upon the stage, and




1PHIGENIA.19


199


exhibits them as rescuing the good people of the sacred story and damning
the bad and irreligious like yourself!
Da;,is. Friend Timiocles, you are a most respectable philosopher; but
if your conviction about the gods is based upon such tragedy as that, you
must choose between believing either that at the time when it was written
[the actors] Polus, Aristodemus, and Satyrus were gods, or that there was
divinity in the actual masks, shoes, surplices, mantles, sleeves, false bellies,
false chests, and other apparatus employed by them for the scenic pomp,the second opinion being perhaps the most ridiculous. For where Euripides
is expressing his own thoughts, unconstrained by the exigence of the
performances, you may hear him say frankly this:
"See'st thou aloft yon infinite (fI air,
Which keeps the earth in liquid arms embraced,
That, that is 'Zeus', believe me, that is God
or again this:
"Zeus,...whatsoe'er he be; I know of him
But tales.
and so on elsewhere ~
To this passage, if I were forging it for my own purpose,
I could not desire to add a word. Clearly and precisely, as
well as with excellent humour, Lucian has stated the truth,
that the 'gods' wvhom Euripides brings on the stage, usually
at the close of the piece and to bring about a 'divine justice'
adapted to the prejudices of the vulgar, must, on pain of stultifying the poet and destroying his sense, be taken as not being
personages in the drama at all, but simply actors in a certain
1Zeus Tragoeduis, ~41.
TLMOKAHIM. ov'' E~pt~rlt6s dipct 01) &OKIE XE'-yEtv rt wytEyi, 06irorap av'rots ab'cv/3/aLpx' EOS T0UIS Ocou's E7rl TflVP 0-K?7v?7 6ELKEU2Jq 0- pOPMcS /P TO 3 XP CrT0"g TW?P WWY,
ToIJs rTov77/pol R Ka~i Ka-rTxL a' TrT,V aiou~ ta~1p ElrLTp~fovras;
AAMtI2. a'xx' ' -YevvatO'7caTE Oocr-/xoz TtaL6EXetL, e TOWAJTGL 7roLoWJTE 01  a-p
aorIL 7r61EIKaoOiC 0E, 0V1q1 800W OULTCPOL', ITL HCOXOP Kall 'Apto~evK~  ITpZ
*)y~io-Oati LTC OCOU' elVCU ToTe, 17TaL 71p60C07(c TIWV OeWp a&lTc' Kat TOU'S E/q4cLTcI Kal ToVE
7106 PELS XLTI ILL KCl xXIa/AL6Ia KILL XEIpLaaS, KCl 71po-YaLorpIL~a Kal O-Iac.ITEc, Kal -ra5XX' ots
&KELMOL 0ECLY160L)LTL T~V7Thpa-yyJ5ila', 057rEp -yeXoL6TaTov o1SLLu E7EEcl KC6 ECLUVT6PY 07ro6c 0a
EV'pLtrI)517s, AL?7)v ereryoUo-71 T7JS Xpeiag TWEv )5,Ia[ TW'r ra' )5KOOV7aL 01 XV17 aKolIvoo  VO
TOTE wIapp?7-a~oeo/EvV
6/iaSL T6V w1boO TO0LLS CL7(ELP0V ai~e~pa
Kat -Yl7V 1e'PLi 9XVO VYpILLE eV I'yKLLXIXat;
TOUToL L6'/S~e Z~'Ia, TOLWS 77yoV (Oen.
Ka!L 7raXLY
ZsOlITLE 0 ZeL5L oeu ya'p doirSI Xv X'oYq
KXV6WL
KILL TIL To~OLILT.




200


E 2URIPIDES.


costume introduced for 'the exigence of the performances';
and that to take them seriously, to suppose them or their
speeches to be part of what the author wishes us to imagine
as real, is absolutely impossible if the poet is to have a meaning,
as we may see by the nature of the opinions, the express
contradiction of anthropomorphism, which he is constantly recommending to us in the body of his works. When an actor
comes on as Ion or Orestes, we must of course, to follow Euripides'
sense, ignore the fact that he is Polus dressed up, and suppose
that he is the personage presented, a part of the play. But when
at the close of the piece he comes on in the machine as Athena,
then, to follow Euripides' sense, we must on no account allow
ourselves to make any such supposition. The very appearance
of such a figure, in such works as those of Euripides, can only
mean that we are mocked, that the author is no longer speaking
to us seriously and no longer appealing to our imagination.
The so-called 'goddess' is not, cannot be Athena; it is just
Polus the actor, or, if you like that better, the dress which he
has on; he talks certain nonsense to satisfy bigots; but once
away from the performance and its 'exigences', you have not
the slightest concern with him. And not only does Lucian
point this out, but he also shows, what is perhaps even more
interesting, that already in the early Christian centuries this
fundamental truth about Euripides had come, in the general
decay of pagan learning, to be so little known, that the opposite
error could plausibly be attributed to a reputable member of
a learned profession, although it would be received with scorn
in the dwindling circle of Atticists to which Lucian himself
belonged. In fact it was just because the truth was being
forgotten that for once and at the last possible moment we
find it stated. In the days of Aristotle, or Aristarchus, or
Cicero, or even Quintilian, it is probable that no one, who was
not writing a professed study or disquisition on Euripides
(and we have scarcely a fragment of any such work), would
have mentioned such an elementary principle.  In literary
history as in other departments of life, the least likely things
to be stated are those which, being fundamental, every one is
supposed to know. The time may yet come, if literature and
learning should suffer another Oriental invasion, when it will




1PHIGE1A.70.


201


have to be painfully learnt and proved that Pope was not an
Anglican, nor Defoe a Churchman, nor Swift orthodox, nor
Voltaire a Christian, and that to make sense of their works
these negatives must not be forgotten.  Happy if the gibe of
some Taine or Macaulay born out of due time shall survive to
confirm the observation.
This character of mere theatrical and conventional pretence,
contradictory to the sense of the poet and transparent to the
instructed reader, which Lucian rightly attributes to the machinegods of Euripides, is nowhere better illustrated than by the
Athena of our present play. We have noticed already the
suicidal jest with which her harangue concludes, a jest which
proves, in the very terms of Lucian's remark, that if there be any
deity here at all, then that deity is not Pallas the daughter of
Zeus, but the actor in propria prsona.  But the whole harangue,
however pleasantly its tags of Attic legend, or plausible imitations of such', might sound in the ears of Athenian groundlings,
is futile as a commentary upon the preceding action. Like the
similar harangue in the Ion, it is on the face of it incredible. So
far as words will go, the goddess no doubt sends every one off to
be happy ever after.  But as in the Ion, so here, her prophecies
hang upon the calm assumption that things are not as we know
from the play that they are. All that she foreshows depends
upon the condition that this time the Delphian oracle, which had
so often deceived Orestes with the promise of cure, will be
justified by success, and that his ' Furies' will have departed for
ever. Yet this essential thing Athena does not even assert, nor
could we believe her, if she did.  Had it been the intention of
the poet that we should accept such a solution as possible, he
would have prepared us for it. He would have shown us in
Orestes such feelings towards the enterprise on which he is
engaged as would lead us naturally to the conclusion, that the
success of that enterprise in his hands might restore him to
moral and intellectual sanity. But what Euripides does show: It is not certain, nor I think likely, that the legends are ungarbled, though the
cults mentioned are doubtless genuine, and grossly savage they are. That offerings
such as Euripides describes were made at Brauron, we may take for granted, but we
need not suppose that the deity to whom they were made was commonly identified
with Iphigenia.




202


E URIFPIDENS.


us is everywhere the contrary. Nowhere does Orestes pretend
the slightest enthusiasm for the work on which he is sent, nor
the slightest faith, except the 'faith' of despair, in the adviser
who sends him. The modern expositors who accept Athena's
promises, and therefore must needs assume, though without her
guarantee, that Orestes is cured by stealing the Tauric image,
are so shocked and astonished at the remarks upon that divine
employment which are put in the mouth of the agent (or rather
the patient), that they expel them wholesale from the text.
Three times in the course of the brief dialogue of forty verses,
in which the brother and sister settle their plan, this curative
process has to be applied. Three times the speeches of Orestes
must be excised or altered, in order that he may not betray the
loathing which, when it comes to the point of action, the
larcenous business naturally excites in one who, miserable as he
is, has not lost altogether the instincts of a man.   ' How would
it be', says he to Iphigenia, when she has rejected the proposal
to fall upon the king and slay him, 'how would it be, if you
were to hide me in the temple?'-' Do you mean that we might
then get safe away by the aid of darkness?' —'Yes', says he
bitterly, 'the nzigt belongs to thieves, as i'irit to truth '.'  But if
Orestes is to be morally cured by his faith in Apollo and
Apollo's command, such a blasphemy seems monstrous, so we
draw a pen through it.     Yet a few lines lower the same spirit
breaks out again. The parts to be taken by the brother and
sister in carrying off the statue have been now settled. 'And
what part' asks Orestes 'is Pylades to have in our...massacre?'2
The turn is startling, but perfectly natural.  It is manifest that
1 vv. 1024-1026.
OP. ri   e' Ete v va -T 7Yoe Kpvwe/aELC X\cpa;
14P. WCs 871 KO'ros Xca36vTes eKWOeClev Cv;
OP. K\E7Trrv Tyap 7 v  7 r7s 8' 6c\XOeoLas TO fCs.
For expelling the last two verses with Markland and others there is no reason
whatever, except that undoubtedly the last 'makes against Orestes' plan instead of for
it' (Dr England), which is (ecx /ypotzesi) absurd. The oljection that in a final
sentence the optative with dv is a solecism errs in the assumption that W's here is final;
it is causal (sitce, because), and av is indispensable. As to the neuter OKOTOS, if it be
wrong (sed qaer-e) we must replace KOrTo0,. If the lines were not from Euripides, who
should have inserted them, and why?
2 V. 1046 H11tciAT8s ' 0o' 7fi,'v ro TeT 7 TCeat L 6vov; 'MSS.: rovov, 86OXoU, X\yOV, Xopo0,
etc the conmmentators.




iPfIGENLAIJ.


203


the scheme of Iphigenia must lead to bloodshed, as in fact it
does; that Orestes and Iylades must again be united in the
infliction of wounds or death, and this, wvhen all is said, on
behalf of a cause not otherwise definable than as that of robber
against owner. The mere deliverance of Iphigenia would of
course have been just, though neither the king nor the people of
Taurica are on any supposition responsible for her 'disappearance'. But the deliverance of Iphigenia might have been
accomplished in the circumstances with ease and almost with
certainty. It is 'by the taking of the image', as Iphigenia says',
by the attempt to comply with that base command, which the
oracle gave without either expectation or desire that it should
ever be accomplished, that 'the escape is embarrassed', and it is
by this that the fugitives are put in the wrong. It is natural
then that when the crisis approaches Orestes should feel, it
would be strange in the circumstances represented if he did not
in his dark, perplexed, and unhappy manner betray the feeling,
that after all this act of robbery and 'massacre' is a strange sort
of expiation for blood. But this feeling nevertheless, if we are
to save the credit of' Apollo' and 'Athena', we dare not let him
reveal or entertain; and therefore instead of 'the massacre' he
must say 'the task', or 'the plan', or 'the performance'. But
yet a few lines later we have to be mending again, and this time
with a bolder hand. The dialogue ends thus2: Or. 'Well, at all
events my ship has rowers who pull a brave stroke'.-Ip/i. 'Your
care it must be then that all the rest be well-save one needful
thing, that these maids should keep our secret'.-Or. 'Beseech
them then and find words to win their pity. There is a faculty
for doing it in woman. And the rest...perhaps...-Let us hope
that all will end well!' The last sentence3, which wants nothing
but punctuation to be as plain Greek as can be, has been
expelled.  Why?    Because the tone of it reveals beyond
misunderstanding that Orestes goes to his task without any
moral faith, and because to suppose this is to condemn as
absurd the sequel promised by Athena. But he reveals it
everywhere. In the very sentence preceding, with its scarce
1 v. ioI8.            2   10. IO50-1055.;: 7Ta  ' \XX'...'1c0tW...-I7ravTa Ow1,u,3v1Sal7 KCXso.  Taken as one sentence this is unconstruable.  But the verse has really been rejected, as Dr England says, for its ' sense '.




204


E UR IPID ES.


suppressed sarcasm, he reveals the unbearable distress of his
nerves. The first scene reveals it, when at the sight of the
temple which he has come to plunder he breaks down, and is
barely prevented by Pylades from re-embarking for Greece.
And so by every kind of suggestion, positive and negative, do
all the scenes of the play. After all this it is mockery to put
up a goddess of pasteboard, whose predictions require us to
imagine that this broken man, brainsick with remorse and
obloquy, having tried in vain prescriptions really salutary, will
be made sane by the success of an enterprise in which he has
not and never pretends to have the slightest moral interest
whatsoever. A disease like that of Orestes must be cured, if at
all, through the heart. The remedy or remedies found for him
by Aeschylus content our imagination not merely because they
are sanctioned by heaven, but because they are remedies for the
heart. But what signifies it to the heart of this Argive matricide
whether a certain idol is in Taurica or in Attica?
There is no future possible for this Orestes; and when
Athena pretends that there is, she does but expose the hollowness of her buckram deity. Nor is there any for Iphigenia.
She is appointed to become a priestess and eventually a local
deity in Attica. Whether this is unadulterated legend, or whether
(as seems more probable) the identification of the local deity
with the sacrificer of Greeks was invented by Euripides himself,
he lets us know what we are to think of it. Priestess or not,
Iphigenia must always be the woman who had lived by offering
up her countrymen on behalf of barbarians, pitiable but horrible,
as Orestes views her before she is found to be his sister'. In the
raptures of the recognition this is forgotten, but it would be
remembered afterwards and remembered always. Nor does the
sister, any more than the brother, approve in her conscience
the oracular command. She thinks it a sin2; but it is, as she
believes, the appointed means of saving her brother, and that for
her is enough.
Of the three principal actors in the play the only one who has
a desirable future, the only one for whom the miraculous escape
secured by Athena could be a boon, is Pylades; who also stands
alone in accepting, with a faith so implicit that it cannot be


1 vv. 617-621.


-2 Z. 1400.




IPHIGENIA.


205


called assent, the injunctions and assurances of the Pythian
oracle. Orestes may quail at impossibilities and groan at a
crime; Iphigenia may confess herself a sinner; Pylades never
hesitates, never doubts, never reflects1, and herein lies the interest
of his character. We are moved to ask what is the weight of
this remarkable exception from fears and scruples prima facie
so legitimate. And Euripides gives us the measure. When
Pylades, entrusted with Iphigenia's letter to her brother, has
given her his oath that it shall be duly delivered, he insists upon
one reservation, that if the ship be wrecked and the letter with
Pylades' own property be thus lost, then he Pylades, should
he escape with his life, shall not for non-delivery of the
letter be guilty of perjury nor liable for it to divine punishment2. Mechanically this precaution of his is useful in the
scene, by leading Iphigenia to give a verbal repetition of her
message; but by the technical skill which Euripides, as Aristotle
implies, has nowhere more admirably shown than in this play, it
serves another and a much more important purpose. It is a
revelation of the man. For here at least in common fairness
Euripides must have the benefit of his reproach. Whatever
else may be said of the casuistry of his Hippolytus, 'the tongue
hath sworn but the mind remains unbound', it proves at any
rate that Euripides was not likely to propound the casuistry
of Pylades for anything but what it is, the reflexion of a man
honest indeed and brave to the last breath, but stupid and
bigoted to the same extreme degree. To ask whether such a
man believes or approves the dictates of the religious authority
under which he has been reared is a needless question. Of
course he does, and can do no other till he is laid in his grave.
Pylades is the sworn servant of Delphi in the same fashion and
for the same reason that he is once and for ever the adherent of
Orestes. He has a big heart, but no mind: and of such is the
realm of Apollo. Apart from this he has no importance, and
his fate (his real fate, not that preposterously sketched by
Athena), pitiable though it be, is but a small addition to the
disaster of the others. Many a man, though healthy, wealthy,
and happily married, has died not unhappy with less consolation
than Pylades would find in falling by the side of Orestes. The
1   v 1z., 04o i  foil., 6 fol.,nd passim.  ' vv. 73  foll.




206


E URIPIDES.


only end morally tolerable or physically possible for the story as
pictured by Euripides is that to which it is already conducted
when 'the machine' appears and excuses us from further attention.  Nothing remains to imagine but the manner of the
fugitives' deaths, and over this it was better, as well as necessary,
to draw a veil.
If the tear of mere sentiment is to be shed over their fate at
all-though the poet is thinking and we ought to be thinking
of other and more terrible things-then most of all the hapless
handmaidens, whose unpaid and unpurchasable devotion is a
moral trait more beautiful than any exhibited by the chief
personagesl,-they should have the best of the weeping. Nor is
it without significance that even 'Athena' is not allowed to save
these most pitiable of the oracle's victims except by a fiat so
crudely arbitrary that she can scarcely speak it for laughing.
In reference to the precise point of the character belonging
to the Euripidean 'god', it is possible and likely, for reasons
above given, that the existing remains of ancient literature
contain no other statement than that of Lucian; though this
cannot be presumed until the whole has been read (as I must
confess that by me it has not) with the fact in mind and with
attention awake to it. But with regard to the general aim of
Euripides we have the contemporary evidence of Aristophanes,
and with regard to his general method of pursuing his aim we
have that of the highest-sounding authority in the whole of
ancient criticism, the authority of Aristotle himself. It happens
that the play on which we are engaged is one, unhappily it is
almost the only one, upon the construction and purpose of which,
as a whole, the opinion of Aristotle can now be ascertained. The
occasion is therefore suitable to do what in a book of this kind
we may be expected to do; to say something of what is or what
should be inferred respecting Euripides from the notices of him
which appear in the Poetics.
The references made in the Poetics of Aristotle to the
dramatists of the fifth century must be read and interpreted
strictly in connexion with the plan and purpose of the work,
and cannot be separated from it without injustice not only to
the poets but still more to the critic. To give an estimate of
1 V. 1075.




IPHIGENIA.


207


these or any writers is not his object, nor does he attempt it.
The scope of his treatise (or rather sketch for a treatise), so far
as it relates to tragedy, is to define the end of play-writing and
to deduce from this end suggestions for the better practice of
the art. And the general drift of his argument, together with
the incidental illustrations, is to answer in the negative his
question 'whether tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types
or not'. It appeared to Aristotle (and so far as we have the
means of reviewing his materials it would seem that he was
right) that there was no tragedian, including in the negative
those revered poets of the previous century from whom his
illustrations are drawn, whose general practice could be
recommended as a safe example of method upon the principles
maintained in the Poetics. This opinion, though not anywhere
stated in so many words, is conveyed as clearly as it decently
could be by a man of any modesty who was not himself a
tragedian. An indication sufficient in itself is the fact that,
while he expressly and repeatedly designates the author of the
Iliad and the Odyssey as a sufficient model for composers of
narrative poetry, he does not name or suggest anyone as filling
the same office in relation to dramatic poetry: and the negative is confirmed by the general bearing of his references to
particular dramatists or dramas.
In regard to Aeschylus, if this negative cannot be proved
explicitly, that is only because the critic exhibits it in a more
efficient manner, by scarcely citing him at all. That a scene in
the Choephori stood high, though not in the first rank, among
scenes of recognition or discovery; that Aeschylus showed
better judgment than some other writers (not named nor
deserving to be named) in not attempting to frame his Niobe so
as to include in the plot the entire legendary history of that
personage; and that a certain verse of Aeschylus had been
admirably corrected by Euripides;-this, apart from merely
historical notices, is about all that is said of him: the truth
being that in the latter part of the fourth century Aeschylus was
far on his way to that limbo of a magni nominis umbra in which
(strange as it seems to us and strange as it is, though explicable)
he remained for the most part throughout antiquity. In the
Poetics, as in Aristotle generally, the notice bestowed on




208


EF URIPIDEJS.


Aeschylus is very little compared with that given to Sophocles,
and a fortiori nothing compared with that given to Euripides.
Of that opinion respecting the comparative merits and importance
of the three, which has prevailed or tended to prevail in modern
times, there is no trace to be found in Aristotle or, speaking
broadly, in any ancient literature except the temporary and
ineffectual polemic of Aristophanes. As to Aeschylus, it may
be said with confidence, that if he had received any further
notice (we may almost say any) in the Poetics, he would have
supplied, as from the strict Aristotelian point of view he is fitted
to supply, illustrations of defect.
Passing to Sophocles we arrive at something more definite.
It is the key-note of Aristotle's theory and precepts to insist
on the supreme importance of the plot, of subordinating the
structure and every element in it to the essential purpose of
setting in the strongest light a single tragic event or situation,
the motif of the piece, as it would now be called. This being
his doctrine, we should naturally suppose from such remains of
older tragedy as we have, that if it supplied him with any one
satisfactory illustration, that illustration would be the Oedipus
TyrannuSs.  Exactly to this extent and no further we are
actually carried in the Poetics. That even the Oedipzs Tyrannts
is a perfect illustration of his principles, or as good as might be
desired, Aristotle does not say, nor must we make him say, for
it would appear not to be true.  Better illustrations of the
method (which is not at all to say better plays or plays which
Aristotle would have more esteemed) have been produced, one
at least far better, by those who had the advantage, immense for
this purpose, of reading Aristotle before they wrote.  However
he cites the Oedipus Tjraunus five or six times, twice as often,
that is to say, as any other play, and always with strong
commendation; and had he been bound to name an extant
model, though in fact he is careful not to do so, he would
evidently have much preferred this play to any other. But this
approval or comparative approval is awarded to the Oedipus
Tyrannus itself and solely, not at all to the general practice of
Sophocles.  Such an extension is forbidden, not merely by the
constant recurrence of this one example (which would be worse
than misleading if others equally or nearly as good were at




IPHIGENIA.


209


hand) but expressly. Other plays of Sophocles are cited, the
Electra among those which we have, the Tyro and the iysians
among those which are lost; but they are cited for defects, for
points which, strictly in reference to his theory, Aristotle notes as
either comparatively or absolutely disadvantageous. The mass
of the poet's work, including very many plays which Aristotle
could be shown to have read with admiration and interest, is
passed over, for the immediate purpose of the treatise, with an
intelligible silence. Apparently it did not supply, and this is
certainly true as far as we can now see, a second Oedipus
Tyrannuizs.
Nor did the works of Euripides: and to say this is to sum
in one sentence the score or so of references to him which the
treatise contains. That Aristotle, like his contemporaries in
general, was deeply interested by Euripides, and found his
works, on the average, more attractive than those of any other
dramatist, is shown by the frequency of allusion, in which everywhere Euripides has a decided pre-eminence. In the Poetics
itself he has all the honour which, from the nature of the case
and relatively to the purpose of the work, it was possible that
he should have. A play of his, the Iphigenia which we are now
considering, is three times cited with approbation, and this in a
book where very few other plays receive such notice at all, and
hardly one (with the exception of the Oedipus Tyrannus) more
than once; and this same play is selected for the still higher
distinction of being compared with that imaginary example,
perfect in the mere article of method, which then, as the author
implies, had still to be produced, but now may be actually seen,
as nearly as one man's idea is likely to be seen realized by the
hand of another, in the Athalie of Racine. Indeed so far as can
be judged from the indications of a treatise which is but a
skeleton, and that broken, the Iphigenia in Taurica would have
been the play which, next at a long distance after the Oedipus
Tyrannus, Aristotle would, under careful reservations, have
recommended as a lesson to the attention of the playwright.
Further it may be said of Euripides (and I think of no one else)
that not one only but two at least of his dramas are mentioned
in the Poetics for points of method emphatically praised; the
Iphigenia in Taurica as exhibiting, with the Oedipius Tyrannus,


V. E,


I4




210


E URIPIDES.


the 'absolutely best' way of managing a discovery, and this
same /phizgenia, with the Cresphontes also his, and the Hecle, for
the 'absolutely best' species in another classification.       But with
these five or six exceptions, few but proportionally very
many, the references to Euripides imply the same judgment on
him, relatively to the question of method and solely in this
relation, which is passed by the like implication on his compeers.
About six of his plays are cited for points of structure not good
or not best, and the mass, as in the case of Sophocles, are not
cited at all. And if in one place-we must say 'if', for the
passage is obscure and disputable-it were said of Euripides
generally that 'his management is faulty', this would be but to
sum up what upon the strict principles of the Poetics is true and
is alleged by Aristotle respecting the whole dramatic art of the
fifth century. It would not import any particular condemnation
of Euripides; and indeed such a meaning would be excluded by
the unparalleled compliment, declaring that Euripides 'appears
to be the most tragic of the poets', which is attached to the
censure and must be extended or limited together with it.
There is however reason and authority for maintaining that
both the blame and the praise of this passage have a much
narrower import, and that the large interpretation of them must
be added to the misunderstandings, of which perhaps, as recent
expositors have shown us, no merely secular book has been so
fertile as this unlucky treatise'. And at all events that Aristotle
1 Aristotle is maintaining (Poet. xiii. 4 foll.) that in the best tragedy 'the change
of fortune should not be from blad to good but reversely from good to bad'. &16 Kai
ol Evpt. ri eVyKaiXoivres 'ror' aVTOr ajlapTrvovo'tv, 6o TOVTO 6Spa ev Tacs rpa'yqiats Kai
7roX\\a aruTwv els avuTrvXtaV TeXeVTG&(tv. TOVTO yaLp eaTrv Jarep edprTrat dp6ov. (rnAselov e
tJL.eyT70ov erlT 'yap TWcv aKlJVWV Kat TCY adyCv'wv pa'ytKwTrara al rotaOrat fbaivovrat, av
raropwcowacv, Ka l E6pL s, Epl ', eal 7a TOXXa /L\\aL ev  KOvo/Je, cXX\ T 7paucyLKWTaTOs y/e rWv
7rOOtrjv fativerat.  ' Hence they are in error who censure Euripides just because he
follows this principle in his plays, many of which end unhappily. It is, we have said,
the right ending. The best proof is that on the stage and in dramatic competition,
such plays, if they are well represented, are most tragic in their effect; and Euripides,
faulty as he is in the general management of his subject, yet is felt to be the most
tragic of poets'. (Prof. Butcher's translation in Aristotle's Theory of Poety and Fine
Art.) The words 'general management of his subject', though justifiable, indicate
perhaps a larger scope than is necessarily contained in the original: ' though otherwise
managing not rightly' is a verbally sufficient rendering, and the question is, what does
that mean. Prof. Butcher (p. 283), discussing the description ' the most tragic of
poets', properly insists upon the importance of reading it in connexion with the




IPHIGENIA.


211


had no such charges to make against Euripides as those with
which modern criticism abounds, can be proved by the clearest
evidence which the case admits. Aristotle is emphatic, and
properly so, in condemnation of such plots as he calls cpeisodic,
'in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without
probable or necessary sequence'. Now if he had read his
Euripides as Euripides has been read in modern times, instead
of giving that poet almost if not absolutely the most prominent
place in the treatise, he might very briefly have excused himself
from paying any attention in such a work to a composer who
repeatedly, habitually, and almost always, would appear to
ignore this rudimentary precept of the art. It would have been
enough to say of him that he was the author of the A cestis,
A ndronmazce, Troades, Orestes, Phoenissae, Heraclidae, incadness
of Heracles, Ion, Electra, Suippliants, etc., etc., etc.   It is certain
that, when the Poetics was written, the Alcestis for instance and
the Andromache were two         of the most admired pieces in the
Greek repertory. Why is it that Aristotle nowhere conveys or
hints a caution that these works, and most others of the same
author, are essentially 'epeisodic', or in other words scarcely
deserve in point of art to be called plays? Surely because he
did not think so.
What he thought and said is that Euripides did not, any
more than the other dramatists of the great age, furnish by his
context and " with the preference of the poet for the true tragic ending ". I cannot
but think that this just limitation is the key not only to the complimentary part of the
passage, but to the whole of it. It is improbable that Aristotle, who offers in the
Poetics no general estimate of any other tragedian, nor even hints for such an estimate,
would there offer a general and comparative estimate of Euripides; and it is surely
incredible that, if he had wished to enter upon a subject so important (as the treatise
itself would prove it), he would have raised and dismissed it in the tail of a paragraph.
His intention here is limited, as usual, to the particular point, the matter of endings
happy and unhappy; and he means no more than that "an ending thoroughly and
without qualification unhappy, such as those of the Medea, Hizpoiytls, Hecuba,
Troadts, and other plays of Euripides, produces on the stage, if properly represented,
a powerful effect, and inclines us to regard the poet as the greatest master of his art,
even though, it may be, the play or the closing scene itself is open to criticism", as
upon the principles of the Poetics all these plays actually are, and most if not all of
their 'endings'. The possibility of a much larger construction should be set down
either to a slight carelessness in the composition, or to some injury of time; and
since half the paragraphs in the work require similar allowance, it must be available
here.
14-2




212


E URIPIDES.


general practice or in a single case a perfectly satisfactory
example of the Aristotelian method.  He saw not only this fact
but the cause of it. The truth is that the tragedy of the fifth
century, all of it, is based in part upon principles practically,
though not perhaps theoretically, inconsistent with those of the
Poetics. We cannot have all good things at once: elevate one
object and you depress another. Which is most important in a
drama, the aesthetic effect, which may be approximately the
same for men of different times, or the moral and intellectual
effect, which must be calculated mainly for the particular age of
the production? Aristotle would declare for the aesthetic effect,
and he may be right; but it is hard to say by which of the four
men who represent to us the drama of the fifth century,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, this position
would have been    most strenuously denied'.    According to
Aristotle, provided that the imagination of the expected
audience is prepared to acceptpro tempore the story adopted by
the dramatist, the question of its truth is immaterial; if an
objection should be raised on this head, it will be a sufficient
reply that such is the story, 'this is what is said'. And this,
adds the author consistently, "applies to tales about the gods.
It may well be that these stories are not higher than fact nor
yet true to fact: they are very possibly what Xenophanes says
of them. But anyhow 'this is what is said "'.2 Sound doctrine
perhaps, or sound as far as it goes. But whoever insists on
reading the poets of the fifth century as if they had held this
doctrine, for him  the Oedipus will lose half its depth, the
Choephori all its strength, and the Alcestis, with Euripides
generally, will be once and for ever unintelligible.
And of this opposition Aristotle was perfectly well aware.
It is brought out precisely in the brief comparison, unhappily too
brief like the rest of the book, which he makes between an
Iphigenia framed on his principles and our actual Iphligenia
of Euripides.   "The general plan" he says, "of the Iphigeria"-of his ideal Iphzigenia, that is to say-"may be thus
seen ":
1 See Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poety, and Fine Art, pp. 205 foil.
2 Poetics, xxv. 7. Xenophanes is cited as the first and typical enemy of popular
Greek theology.




IPHIGEA7NA.


213


A young girl is sacrificed; she disappears mysteriously from the eyes of
those who sacrificed her; she is transported to another country, where the
custom is to offer up all strangers to the goddess. To this ministry she is
appointed. Some time later her brother chances to arrive. (The fact that
the oracle for some reason ordered him to go there is outside the general
plan of the play. The purpose again of his coming is outside the action
proper1). However, he comes, he is seized, and when on the point of being
sacrificed reveals who he is. The mode of recognition may be either that of
Euripides or of Polyidus 2.
It will be noticed that, in the words here printed as parenthetical,
Aristotle, with our Iphzigenia in Taurica before him, marks out
as elements in it, not belonging to what he considers the essence
of an Iphigenia, precisely those matters which, as we have
shown, are included and emphasized by Euripides in pursuit of
his antitheistic purpose. The motive of the oracle in sending
Orestes to Taurica, and the nature of his errand there, are matters
which, as Aristotle saw, are raised by Euripides to the rank of
essentials; and upon this he remarks, that if you aim at his
aesthetically ideal Iphigenia, in which everything shall be
strictly subordinated to the motif (as we should say now) of the
brother's escape from a tragic fate, these Euripidean elements
must not be made prominent, nor indeed allowed at all within
your limits. The motive of those who send the brother is
irrelevant to the typical or 'general' conception of the subject,
that is to say, to the brother's narrow escape; and the errand
which brings him is a trivial circumstance, such as you will put
not in your 'action proper' but in your prologue, so as to have
done with it. All which is perfectly just and unobjectionable
upon the assumptions of the treatise; and whoever desires to
produce the 'typical' or 'general' Iphigenia should certainly
comply with the directions. But what is not just, what is
deplorable, what is not supported by Aristotle, but is nevertheless now universally done, is to read the Iphigenia of Euripides
as if Euripides had aimed at producing some such Iphigenia, as
if the brother's escape had been the true interest for him and
his readers, and to neglect tRose non-typical developments of the
story, in which for Euripides lies the very kernel of his thought
and lesson.  In modern expositions of the Iphigenia in Taurica
the vice of Orestes' errand is firmly ignored, and the motive


1 Or ' outside the plot'.


2 Poetics, xvii. 3, trails. Butcher.




214


E URIPIDES.


of thie oracle, the ultimate and vital question, is necessarily allowed
to drop out of sight. It was not thus, we see, that the works of
Euripides were read by Aristotle; and so long as they are read
thus, half the power of them will remain sealed up, and the
admiration of the ancient world will remain a mystery.
It is no part of our purpose now to estimate the value
of Aristotle's theory in itself, and to do so in a by-way would
be impertinent. A mere personal feeling may perhaps be
expressed without impropriety.
While acknowledging of course the good sense of Aristotle's
remarks on play-writing, and reverencing the deep thought
which lies behind and about them, I own that (Racine having
died with his Iphigenia in Taurica, alas, projected only) I am not
very impatient to see the 'general', typical, ideal IpJigenia
produced; and I doubt it would not be (to me) so interesting or
so valuable as the local, temporal, by no means typical Iphigenia
which Euripides wrote for the improvement of believers in
Apolline inspiration. I even think that there is some admixture
of error and danger, as in all human thoughts, so in this notion
of a universalizing quality residing in adherence to the 'type' or
motif of the story; or at least that to insist on it involves some
correlative neglect of other universalities not less important to
the power of literature. In one sense Euripides' play is not
'universal', nor a work for all time; we should like to be sure
that there are any such works; it is a work for Athens in the
fifth century before Christ. But in another way it is no less
universal than superstition, and this seems universal enough.
It is curious that the play in which, as is generally agreed,
Aristotle's precepts have been in the main most nearly realized,
the noble and glorious Athalie, is yet in another way the
most strictly local and temporal of great literary products, since
it cannot be understood completely without restoring in imagination the convent of St Cyr and the court of Louis XIV. After
all, a human mind is not universal. Let a man generalize
himself and his thoughts as he will, his time and his place will
not let him go, and with their help, not in disregard of them,
will be done the best that he can do.
But neither with the virtues nor with the defects (if such
there be) of Aristotle's speculation are we now concerned. Our




IPHIGENIA.


215


present business is not to appraise the Ip/igenia in Taurica, but
simply to explain it. Be it assumed that there would be higher
merit, or merit of a better kind, in an Iphigenia framed with the
object of setting in a strong light the narrow escape of a brother
from dying by the hand of his sister; and that it is an abuse of
this motif when Euripides (who after all invented it and had the
patria potestas) subordinates it as a detail to the general purpose
of an assault on the pretensions of the Pythian oracle. That
does not touch the fact, to which, as well as to his particular
judgment upon it, we are pointed by Aristotle, that this, and
nothing else, is the thing which Euripides has done, and that,
if we are to read him with understanding, in this sense and
no other he must be read.
A word may here be added in conclusion' upon the recent
performance of this play in Cambridge, or rather upon the light
obtainable from it on the question, whether the interest of the
play can be maintained in separation from its true religious
'atheistic' purpose. This of course was what we attempted,
what must be attempted in presenting a play of Euripides to
any large audience which could be collected at the present time.
It was played, according to the current hypothesis, as a melodrama, a story of incident, leading up to the theop/azny accepted
as the deznouement really intended by the author. I am the
last person competent to pronounce an impartial judgment on
such an experiment. I can only say for myself that both the
spectacle and the criticisms of the public seemed to me, like the
performance of the Ion, to confirm the opinion in which, as I
conceive, I follow the authority of Aristotle and of Lucian. So
taken, the play has indeed much merit; that is to say the real
purpose and the supposed purpose coincide to an unusual extent.
But so taken it is not worthy, and to an average assembly it
cannot appear worthy, of an author who claims to stand with Aeschylus and with Sophocles. There is thus no depth in it, nothing
solemn, nothing to show that here was a man to whose voice all
humanity ought to listen. Nor is it even altogether intelligible.
The condition and character of Orestes, for example, his panic
terror, his increasing gloom, his bitterness, all this, with many


1 February, 1895.




216                       E URIPIDES.
another trait and turn in the piece, provoked the astonishment
of able men, who knowing nature and the stage, but being
without prejudices about Athens or about Euripides, were
compelled to say, as they did, that the author, whatever his
merits, might have executed his purpose better if he had been
a little instructed in his art. And to this there is, as I believe,
no other possible reply than that the fault is with us, the expositors. We shall cease from the injury of presenting him as a
tiro in his art only when we confess that hitherto we have in the
main misapprehended his purpose.1
1 In this essay I have intentionally abstained from noticing the play of Goethe on
the subject, which does not, I think, throw much light on the particular questions
which I discuss. I would not leave the impression that I have the bad taste not to
admire it.




EURIPIDES IN A HYMN.
"Yes, dear Van! that is how you should behave. Imply things."
GEORGE MEREDITH.
IT has been the object of the foregoing essay to show that
the Iphigenia in Tazirica rests, like the works of the poet in
general, upon a hypothesis, in relation to the Olympian anthropomorphic religion, purely 'atheistic', that no such person as
Apollo is required or admissible as an agent in the story which
the dramatist presents. The dramatis personae are believers
in Apollo, to their sorrow and confusion; the dramatist does not
pretend, or barely pretends, to believe in him at all. We are
not however bound to infer from this that the poet must hold
himself altogether unconcerned in the variations (if we may say
so) of orthodoxy, in the disputes which had arisen or were liable
to rise between different worshippers of Apollo. On the contrary,
nothing could suit his purpose better than to bring such divisions
into light. It was one of the chief difficulties, by which polytheistic paganism was embarrassed, so soon as the spread of
intellectual training created a demand for system and regularity
in belief (for a ' creed' in short, to use the familiar term) that the
existing traditions, having been designed in separate pieces to
suit the interests of separate religious centres unconnected one
with the other, insubordinate, and even sharply antagonistic,
could scarcely be fitted into a harmonious whole without sleight
or violence not easy to be practised under the eyes of the enemy.
What paganism wanted, but naturally never could get, was an
oecumenical council, or a supreme court of theological appeal.
Aeschylus no doubt would gladly have given such a function to
the Areopagus, nor is it inconceivable that half Hellas might




2 8


E URIPIDES.


have been brought to consent. But since the dearest pleasure
of the other half would have been to flout their decisions, and
that other half would have been supported, not steadily but with
practical efficiency, by an authority of no less pretension than the
oracle of Delphi, catholicity would have made a bad beginning,
or rather no beginning at all. The Iphigetia exhibits proof,
among other things, that Euripides was alive to the disadvantage
which his opponents were under, in having to mould a creed out
of elements mutually repugnant, and was ready to avail himself
of an opportunity to accent their divisions. The recognition of
this may throw some light on the purpose of a poem introduced
with manifest abruptness and lack of juncture, facts which ought,
on ordinary principles of art, to signify a design on the part
of the author to arrest attention and encourage us to look
beneath the surface. I refer to the ode in honour of the
Pythian Apollo, which forms the third entr'acte.
The Chorus of the Ipzigenia consists, as we have before seen,
of Greek female slaves attached to the service of the Tauric
temple. They have been procured according to the normal
custom, Greek as well as barbarian, from kidnappers or manstealers, by whom they were torn from their homes and sold1.
From the circumstances of the case, from the fact that their
enemies could strike only from the sea, it is natural to suppose
that those homes were in the coasts and islands of the Aegean,
and in fact this clearly appears when we see that their recollections and sentiments centre upon Delos, its hill of Cynthus,
its legend of Leto, Apollo, and Artemis, its sacred trees, memorial
of the holy travail, its 'round water' and musical mystical swans2.
Now it is nothing extraordinary that such women, when for
a brief moment, by the success of the imposture practised upon
Thoas and the carrying of the Tauric image by Iphigenia to the
coast, the supposed design of the Delphian Apollo appears to
have some chance of success, should give vent to their sympathy,
as soon as they find themselves alone, by a song in honour of
the deity in his Pythian aspect. It is however by no means to
be assumed without consideration that this song must needs be
altogether such as a Pythian authority would have approved.
Not even the dramatic character of the singers demanded this;


1 vv. t o6 foll.


2 vv. o096 foill.




EURIPIDES IN A HYAMN.


219


for it was not to Delos, nor to worshippers trained in the
tradition of Delos, that a well-informed Greek would have been
likely to apply, if he wished to hear the genuine voice of Pytho.
Whatever the prehistoric relations of the two shrines may have
been-and probably the time was not so very remote when those
relations were but slight-their interests in the fifth century
were far from identical or even harmonious. Delos was in a
certain sense the religious centre of the Athenian empire. The
conduct of Delphi towards the makers of that empire had been,
and was during the chief part of Euripides' career, such as made
it hard to reconcile Athenian patriotism with the claims of the
Delphian Apollo on the respect of the pious. Moreover a choric
ode was not, could not be, so strictly bound by the requirements
of dramatic character as a scene in dialogue. It was by its
nature, according to the fully developed scheme of choric drama,
a pause in the action, something not detached exactly from the
action, but ready to be detached1. In this particular case it is
manifest that the author was not anxious to lay stress on the
dramatic function of the ode, but rather wished to present it in
isolation as a thing to be considered apart. Nothing would have
been easier than to turn the praises of the Pythian Apollo so as
to bear directly on the success which, as is too cheerfully
believed, he has forwarded and is about to secure. But on the
contrary Euripides prefers generality, and has inserted a hymn
which would have the same appropriateness (whatever that may
be) in any circumstances favourable, or so supposed, to the
credit of the Pythian deity. The presumption is then, that the
purpose of the ode is to be found in itself, the dramatic situation
serving for little more than a pretext to place it.
At all events it is the fact, that in the legend here related
concerning the foundation of the Pythian oracle, stress is laid on
every aspect of Pythian tradition and Pythian history which, as
1 The well-known judgment of Aristotle that 'the Chorus too should be regarded
as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in
the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles', the only judgment
between the two which is pronounced in the Poetics, is correct on the assumption; but we should not forget to add that choric drama is a form of art much
too narrow in its limits, and that nothing but the necessities of the ancient theatre
would have justified the retention of a chorus at all. Modern art has produced one
thoroughly satisfactory choric drama, Athalie, and probably will not produce another.




220


E URIPIDES.


we know from the counter-example of Aeschylus, judicious
defenders of the oracle in the fifth century would most gladly
have thrown into the shade. We have already seen that when
Euripides was composing the Iphigenia his attention was
naturally directed to the Choephori and Eumenides, which dealt
in part with the same incidents as his own play, but with aim
and spirit precisely opposite.  Now  the prologue to the
Eumenides consists of a sacred history of Delphi, propounded
by Aeschylus, perhaps with authority, perhaps as a tentative
suggestion of his own, through the mouth of the Pythian
prophetess figuring as a character in the play. Every single
important trait in that sacred history is historically false, and
contrary, as Aeschylus must have known, to tradition. Indeed
it is propounded for the very purpose of overlaying and replacing tradition, all being done of course in perfect sincerity
and on the principle, which has had its weight with historians of
greater scientific pretension, that in such matters as these
edification is the measure of truth. And if, after carefully
studying the prologue to the Eumenides, we go to the Pythian
ode in the Ip/higenia, we shall perceive that the later composition
asserts, with a perceptible under-current of mockery, precisely
those features of antique legend, which Aeschylus is bent on
denying and dissolving away.
Those who, like Aeschylus, would have fain made Delphi,
and Apollo as prophet of Zeus, the centre of a sort of catholic
paganism, in which every thing repugnant to a high morality
should be explained away, and the anarchy of the savage
pantheon replaced by an edifying subordination, did not find in
old Pythian tradition a material by any means tractable. The
cult of Delphi was the product, not merely of different religious
elements, but of elements which had been in violent conflict, and
this fact was stamped, with the ingenuous simplicity of preachers
who saw no harm in it, on sacred history. It was said, and no
doubt with perfect truth, that Apollo, not the original possessor
of the oracle, but an invader, had taken possession of the
country as his worshippers did, by simple force. No feat of his
was more famous than the slaying of the dragon-guardian, which
represented and protected the interest of the old earth-deities.
Nor was this old 'Chthonian' or subterranean cult the only




EURIPIDES IN A HYMN.


221


foreign religion which Phoebus had encountered on the site of
Pytho. The Bacchic religion, a worship wholly distinct from the
Apolline and in its general character even inconsistent with it,
had a hold on Parnassus, nor is it certain whether Apollo or
Bacchus was in this particular case the first-comer. As between
these two deities matters were settled, neither by force confessed, such as was used towards Earth and her children, nor by
force disguised in civil form, as when Poseidon, the old elemental
deity of the underground waters, was said to have been bought
out; but by a sort of partition per mny etper tout, both Apollo and
Bacchus remaining 'seized' of the whole. The Delphian temple
bore on one side Apolline emblems, on the other side Bacchic,
and the ritual year was divided between them. In the central
and characteristic element of the local doctrine, the communication of truth from the deity through a person 'possessed', the
trace of bacchic origin is strong; and in fact it would seem, if we
compare Apollo as he was at Pytho with Apollo as he appears
in general elsewhere, that he became master of Pytho only by
admitting to his patronage, or rather to his alliance, a partner of
such character and power that he transformed Apollo himself.
Now it could hardly escape any thoughtful man, when
systematic and scientific reflexion had so much as begun to
have any influence, at any rate it certainly did not escape
Aeschylus, that for such a savage theology as this there was
only the choice between transformation and annihilation.
Aeschylus was as anxious as Euripides himself to moralize
theology, and scarcely less anxious for regularity, fixity, and
system in thought: he only differed-but the difference was as
a wall reaching from heaven to earth-in thinking that these
results might be attained without cutting religion loose from the
old sanctuaries, that not only Zeus might be proved (this did
not require so much effort) a tolerable representative of supreme
order and supreme morality, but that with proper explanations,
symbolic interpretations, and so on, the pantheon might come in
as subordinate powers. Only of course it was a first necessity
to change the mythology; in 'gods' who robbed one another,
fought one another, maimed, imprisoned, nay, slew one another
for no better motives than the passions which produce similar events among mankind, in these gods assuredly Athens




222


EURIPIDES.


was not going to believe much longer.  The mythology of
Pytho was full of such gods, having been shaped by savage
imaginations which saw no harm. Aeschylus, seeing the fatal
harm, proceeds with as much assurance as Pindar, and with a
far profounder sense of what the situation required, to get rid of
the mischief by just asserting for true tradition that which in
his judgment ought to be taught.
The religious scheme of Aeschylus, carried out thoroughly,
would have ended in what a modern would call monotheism.
Zeus, as we see in the famous passage of the Agamemnon on the
solution of mysteries by trust', Zeus, when-this course of thinking
had been worked to its completion, would have been 'God' in a
wholly different sense from that in which the same term applied
to beings like Athena and Apollo. They though superior to man
are still, like him, children of the Supreme, creatures and subjects
of his will. Both of them without any pretension refer their
authority, wisdom, and power to Him by whom they are commissioned. If Apollo is true, that is because Zeus puts the word
in his mouth; if Athena is mighty, that is because to none but
her has Zeus committed his thunder. It is upon such principles
that Aeschylus has re-faced or rather re-built the unsatisfactory
mythology of Delphi. The wisdom of the oracle is to be the
wisdom of Zeus and of no other; no other is to advance or to
have advanced in the past any claim inconsistent with his supreme
disposition. First at one stroke2 the poet sweeps away the whole
chain of stories, which implied the historic truth that Apollo and
his religion had appropriated Pytho, as a material possession, by
force. On the contrary, the oracle, that is to say the cave and
its appurtenances, had descended to him (according to Aeschylus)
by regular and peaceful succession of inheritance or gift, any tale
to the contrary being by a side-glance expressly denied. And
as for the oracular power, this he held direct from the Supreme,
by no intermediary derivation even of the legal and friendly sort.
The notion that the wisdom of Pytho depended at all on the
place, or that Apollo became a seer by acquiring the property of
his predecessors, is emphatically excluded; 'fourth in succession
of time, he speaks for his father, for Zeus who inspired his mind
with knowledge and set him in his seat'. So far all is fairly
1. 170 foil.      2 See the prologue to the Etuminides.




EURIPIDES IV A HYMN.


223


simple. But the question remained, what was to be done with
those other deities, representing strata or phases of religious
belief other than the Apolline, whose share in constructing the
religion of Delphi as it actually stood was visibly confessed in
its art and ritual? Above all, what was to be done with Bacchus
and the Bacchic element? To admit this as an actual constituent
would have necessarily destroyed the unity of conception at which
Aeschylus aims. For as to asserting that Bacchus, where he came,
came by peaceable means, that was a hopeless idea. That the
religion of Bacchus was a militant, invading religion, provoking
everywhere strife and resistance, was a truth known not merely
by legend but by direct experience. The religion of Bacchus
was still recognized in the fifth century for a comparatively
modern thing. It had by no means yet been completely accepted
-indeed it never was-by the older cults into whose domain it
had thrust itself. And if Apollo shared Delphi (as in fact he
did) with Bacchus, Bromius, or Dionysus, the only presentable
conclusion was that he had done so because he could not help
himself. Accordingly Aeschylus, with great audacity but true
religious logic, denies Bacchus altogether for a partner in the
cult. In order to do this, with the preservation of respect or at
least a formal compliment to the facts, he has used a device of
which it would be most interesting to know whether it is altogether
his own or whether he had any Delphian authority for it. The
Pythian prophetess draws a sharp distinction between two classes
of deities, to whom she owes different observances. To some she
gives prayers, to others only mention. The recipients of the
prayers are the possessors former and present of the shrine,
whose claims, as we have seen, all merge eventually in that of
Apollo as representative of Zeus. The recipients of mention
are deities adjunct to the shrine or connected with it by some
reminiscence; these, who for more security are again made
explicitly subordinate to Zeus, are Athena, patroness of a famous
chapel outside the second precinct, Poseidon, giver of waters,and Bromius or Bacchus. By this arrangement Athena receives
full justice; indeed it may be doubted whether a Delphian
prophetess, speaking not in the Athenian theatre but at Delphi,
would have given her quite so much. Poseidon has something
less than justice. He was really recognized, as we know from other




224


E URIPIDES.


sources, for a former possessor, and had his altar in the inmost
sanctuary accordingly. And Bacchus, with a view to whom,
as Aeschylus uneasily betrays, the whole of this classification
is designed, is treated with extreme injustice. Of him, whose
story was figured, parallel to that of Apollo, in the sculpture
of the temple, who had like Apollo his part in the Delphian
calendar, the prophetess has nothing to tell but that 'he holds
the region' (Parnassus that is to say and its upper cavern, not
that of the oracle) 'he holds the region, as I do not forget, ever
since his deity led the army of bacchants, and devised against
Pentheus the death, as it were, of a hare'-an event of which
the date in relation to the other history is left by the narrator
unfixed, though no one could fail to suppose, as is no doubt
the intention, that it was comparatively recent, and in no way
affected the establishment of Apollo as previously set forth.
The observance thus rendered to Bacchus, as a deity of Delphi,
is accurately defined by the prophetess herself, who is plainly
not without some reasonable apprehension that others may think
it insufficient: she has not forgotten him. No, certainly not.
The religious Athenian poet, confronted by the demands of
scientific system, but anxious to reconcile them with antique
traditional devotion, has not forgotten, and is not able to forget,
that in a Delphian mythology some place must be found
by the harmoniser and unifier for the recalcitrant divinity of
Bacchus. He has not forgotten him; and we may believe, if
we can, that he would not have done so, had he dared.
Now such was the aspect of Delphian tradition, and such
the manner of dealing with it which had been recommended
to pious Athenians, hovering anxiously between 'religion' and
'science', by their favourite instructor, when Euripides, in a
work of which the general hypothesis denies, as his wont is,
the divine authority, wisdom, and goodness of Delphian inspiration, finds opportunity to celebrate the acquisition of Pytho
by Apollo in a hymn to the following effect 1:
"Glorious is the son of Leto, whom once on a time she
bare in Delos' fruitful dell, golden of hair, skilled in the lyre
and in the well-aimed bow, his pride. From the sea-girt crags,
1 Ip T.. I234 foll. I take no notice here of textual questions. There are none
of material importance.




EURIPIDES IN A HYMi.


225


leaving proud memory of her travail, she carried her youngling
to the unstinted springs of Parnassus, summit possessed by
Dionysus' inspiring power1, where a snake of spotted skin and
ruby eye, coiled in the shade of a leafy bay, a prodigious
monster of Earth, kept watch over Earth's oracular cave. But
thou, Phoebus, thou yet a babe, dancing yet upon thy mother's
arm, didst slay the monster, didst invade         the   oracle  divine,
and hast thy seat on a golden tripod, l.hir':O' uinfailing truth,
deal'ig to men oracular speech from       the sanlctuary, where hard
by Catatiiy'5s 5trlearn thy' palace is placed at the. centre of earth.
"Now    'hnemis, da- 'l:rer of Earth, had been dislodl(rri by
_,t-."a 8boy from   the:-: '.e of divine res-p()nse: so thcrle  upln
F:rth  gave birth to    I, turnal apparitions, wchich     in  dreams
would commonly tell to men all things that should              happen,
according to their order first and last, while they lay asleep
in the black darkness upon the ground; and thus, in jealousy
for her daughter, she took from Phoebus the oracle's reward.
So the lord god sped him on swift foot to Olympus, and
curling his infant arms about the chair of Zeus, besought him
to rid his Pythian house of Earth's vengeance and the nocturnal dreams.     Zeus smiled    to see the child come with such
quick eagerness to recover the golden riches of his service,
and shaking his locks made promise that he would put an
end to the voices of the night. So taking away from human
kind their nightly vision of truth, he gave to Apollo his rewards
again; and many a gallant welcomed to the chair finds encouragement...for mortality in the prophetic chant".2
1 Tv fpaKxErLovaavo AtovV'qcI) Hapvdcxov Kopvpav ' the actual hill is treated as if it
were, like a bacchant, a being 'possessed' by the god.
~~2           TroXvdvopt 6' v ~ev'evvrL Opovy
0ap orj... 3porosi Oeaspd6Twv dO1Ltas.
Compare Aesch. Ag. 62 7roXvdvopos a/uiP yvvaKos6 (Helen). The insinuation is a
commonplace and the plot of the Ion is partly founded upon it: indeed, though
probably undeserved in the main and in spite of one or two historic examples to the
contrary, it was invited by the grotesque Pythian theory of inspiration. To call the
chair of a woman Op6vos roXvdvcop is primza facie a gross insult. The peril of the
adjective (which a writer with a sensitive ear could then hardly have used except
in one sense) is illustrated also by Aristophanes (Birds 1313). 'Before long some
human being will be calling our city polyanor', says a bird gaily. The remark,
otherwise flat, seems to be aimed at some poet who had actually raised a laugh by
forgetting that for a feminine subject (7roXvdvopa 7rv 7r6oXw) the epithet is not happy.
Here the possibility of an innocent interpretation is barely saved by the last words.


V. E.


5




226


E URIPIDES.


I am sorry to rob this graceful and witty story of half its
charm by giving it in the nakedness of prose, but I fear to
misrepresent something, if I essayed verse; nor could I pretend
to convey the exquisite lightness and ripple of tune-I can find
no other word, and must take the risk of seeming affected in
the use of this-which gives to the original a kind of elfish
effect. But without these aids the mere substance is sufficiently
plain in its purpose. It is trrn first to last a stroke of malice,
struck as with a cat's pawx, velvet and clawed. It brings into
prominence, under the guisc of a mock legend (there is no reason
to upl'^pft that the nlailn ri'"t is a real rnmth, thoICgh it may b1
just so nearly resemlling the renuine l)roducts of religious faIle
as not to be on this ground open to objection, precisely thse
aspects of Delphi and Delphian history which a friend, such as
Aeschylus, would have suppressed and disguised. In the first
place the principal theme of the story is a matter on which
Aeschylus would not have dwelt for worlds, the immense
profits which Delphi brought to the proprietary, that is to say
of course, to Apollo. According to this truly Voltairian chapter
of sacred history, the dispute between Phoebus and his predecessor was entirely a question of fees. The credit of the
oracular cave was the foundation of a fine business, an oldestablished house with a magnificent connexion. When Apollo
turned out the family of Earth, the head of that family tried
to make the concern worthless by cheapening the commodity
sold: so long as knowledge of the future could be generally
acquired by simple dreaming, the sacrifices and offerings at
Delphi naturally ran short. Hereupon Apollo invoked the
interference of his almighty father, who, much amused at his precocious avarice, gave an injunction against the expropriated rival
and restored the threatened monopoly. The whole conception
and treatment is exquisitely diverting; but it would be absurd
as part of a work really devoted, as the false finale pretends,
to the celebration of a success achieved under the command and
sanction of the oracle. Of course the vast wealth of Delphi, and
the fact that all the town, from the chief priests to the beggars,
lived upon the pilgrims, the upper orders in splendid state and
the masses in indolence,-all this admitted of explanation or
justification for religious minds. But it was not an aspect of the




EURIPIDES IN A HYMiN


227


oracular function on which a wise believer could dwell with
pleasure, or without misgiving. It will be seen that in the
Eumenides Aeschylus, though he does not say that consultation
was free, is most careful in wording the invitation of the
prophetess to say nothing to the contrary; the sacrifices and all
the apparatus of approach are simply ignored'; while for
opposite reasons the Ion is throughout explicit on the material
aspects of the cult, the graduated offerings for admission at
different stages,2 the thank-offerings and banquets, the gorgeous
buildings, vessels, tapestries, statues, paintings and all the
treasures of the sacristy.  It is enough to reveal the true
character of this Euripidean hymn that it represents Delphi
as essentially an institution for profit.
Consonant with this design is the historical account which
the poet is pleased to favour. In this part he had traditional
authority; the story of the Pythian snake, which implies in
itself that Phoebus came in as a conqueror, is as old as the
'Homeric' hymns, and doubtless far older. Here, as we see,
Euripides emphasizes, and enriches with suggestions of his
own more or less in the primitive manner, all that story of
conflict, which Aeschylus so peremptorily dismisses in the
interest of a more elevated theology. As a matter of historical
fact, if that were the question, there is every reason to think
that the traditional (and Euripidean) version corresponds to the
truth, and that the cult of Apollo, a late arrival as compared
with the cave-worship, stone-worship, and water-worship upon
which Pytho was based, did really impose itself only after
a struggle and under some compromise. But Euripides liked to
tell the story in this shape not because it contained truth, but
because it was a rock of offence to cultivated consciences
unwilling to break with an old and venerable superstition.
Still more significant is the comparison between the Aeschylean and the Euripidean story in respect of the Dionysiac or
Bacchic element in the Pythian religion. Aeschylus, as we saw,
practically thrusts it out altogether.  In the interests of theological unity he will have only one source of the oracular
inspiration, Zeus, and only one recipient or channel, Apollo. As
1 Euz. 30 foil.
2 AoT, 224 foll. For the rest see that play passin: the subject is never dropped.
5 — 2




228


E URIPIDES.


for any connexion which may exist or have existed between
Pytho and any other subordinate power, it is mere matter of
history, matter of mention or record, interesting may-be in itself,
but in no way touching the vital theory of the sacred function.
Contrary on every point is the story of Euripides. As he puts
the matter, Apollo is not, properly speaking, a prophet at all.
The inspiration belongs to the place, to the oracular cave, and,
if we are to trace it deeper, it would seem to come either from
Earth or (much rather) from Dionysus, by whom the whole
sacred mountain is 'possessed' or 'inspired', like one of his
bacchants into whom the god has entered. The seat of wisdom
thus already created and established, Phoebus, being strong
himself and backed by omnipotent strength, appropriates it, for
the sake of the profit, and defends it against competition. As to
Dionysus it is not certain, nor does it matter for art, where
exactly the historical truth lay as between the two representations.
It is certain indeed, as already said, that whatever may have
been the truth, it was not the account of Aeschylus. That Bacchus
was much more important to Delphi than he chooses to admit
is known for a fact; nor is there, so far as I know, any proof
that Euripides may not be following tradition, and tradition
substantially true, when he implies that the Pythian inspiration,
the communication of divine truth by personal possession of the
prophetess-recipient, was in origin Bacchic and not Apolline at all.
The cult of Dionysus as a whole was of later growth in Hellas
than the cult of Apollo. But it does not follow that this was
the order of their importance, or even of their appearance, in a
sanctuary more ancient than either. However with historic
truth we are not at present concerned; in any case, with or
without historical warrant, Euripides chooses to give priority,
and much more than priority, to the Dionysiac element.
And his purpose in this, as in the whole scheme of his hymn, a
purpose perfectly legitimate in itself and pursued in the most
appropriate way, is to emphasize the embarrassments of the
traditional polytheism, to insist on the radical impossibility of
reconciling the claims of high thought and high morality
with the preservation in any form of theology saturated with the
notions of savagery. The age of Aeschylus and Pindar, and the
earlier age-we might probably add, if our information were not




EURIPIDES IN A HYMNIiV.


229


so small-of Solon and Stesichorus, had held that the proper
method was to recast the legends in shapes acceptable to feelings
more refined than those of the primary inventors, in a word, to
bring Apollo up to date. By the time of Euripides historical
enquiry and speculation in general had advanced sufficiently
far to make evident for many minds the hopelessness and fundamental illegitimacy of this proceeding. Apollo could no longer
be brought up to date without being improved clean away. For
the philosophers and their followers legend and religion were
once for all divorced: and it is entirely in accordance with the
philosophic or rationalistic aim of Euripides' play that, in what
he offers for a Pythian hymn, he should present and develope in
his own sense precisely those aspects of legend which religion
could no longer digest.
What excuse there may have been for putting such an
ode into the mouth of a Chorus, who in their dramatic capacity
are supposed believers in the god, is not so easily determined
as we might suppose. The women have been trained, we are
given to understand, in the tradition not of Delphi but of Delos.
Now it is very probable that if you had enquired at Delos in
the fifth century for an account of Delphi, the picture would
have differed notably, and not favourably, from a representation
by the hand of a Pythian. The two sanctuaries were so far
from sisterly concord that during much of the century they
were nearly or actually at war. The Euripidean ode, as a satire
on Pythian greed, would no doubt have been hooted at Delphi,
or rather could not have been sung there without exposing
the singers to the imminent risk of being 'flung from the cliff';
but we could easily suppose that the same circumstances which
procured it a welcome in Athens procured it connivence in
Delos. However, to say the truth, I cannot think this question
of dramatic character very important. The choric odes of a
Greek drama cannot in any case be regarded purely and strictly
as speeches by the Chorus as acting personages; if they were
so regarded, they would be absurd. Where exactly the limit
of detachment should be drawn, and whether in any case it
has been exceeded, does not seem a vital question. What is
truly a vital question, absolutely vital, is whether the effect
of the ode, however produced, is in itself concordant with the




230                  E URIPIDES.
general spirit of the drama. This question we may answer
in the affirmative for the case before us, provided that the
play be supposed hostile, not friendly, to the traditional anthropomorphic theology, with which the interest of Delphi was
bound up. For such is the spirit of the ode; and this is
the reason why it seemed worth while to devote a few pages
to the separate examination of it.




'LAST SCENE OF ALL'.
(PHOENISSAE.)
THE purpose of the investigations, which we have pursued
in this volume, has been to throw some light on the strange and
unparalleled perplexity of Euripidean art, as proceeding apparently, without harmony and without discrimination, upon
contradictory hypotheses. On the one hand we have the fact
that primla facie his plays, like those of his two great rivals, seem
to be illustrations of sacred legends, in which the gods and
miracles of anthropomorphic religion are assumed, at least for
artistic purposes, as truth, forming the machinery of the story,
giving the conclusion to which it points, and controlling the
sentiment which it raises. On the other hand we have the
equally visible fact that the plays are full of incidents and
language pointing directly to the opposite conclusion, stimulating
an adverse sentiment, consistent only with disbelief in the traditional religion and rejection of the anthropomorphic gods. The
result is a confusion, a want of unity, which, if accepted as the
final base for a judgment of the author, degrades him at once to
a level of thought and feeling altogether below that of his alleged
compeers, and indeed below that of the ordinary practitioner in
literary fiction, thus causing us, if we consider the matter clearly,
to wonder how his contemporaries, and still more the generations
which immediately followed his death, can have entered, as they
certainly did, into the delusion that this was an artist worthy of
the very highest rank. The answer which we have offered is
briefly, that of the two conflicting elements one is real and one
pretence. The rationalism is genuine fiction, if we may use
this term for convenience; the orthodoxy is pretended fiction, a




232


E URIPIDES.


mere theatrical trick, required in the first instance, and to some
extent throughout, by the peculiar conditions of the tragic stage
at Athens, but maintained in part out of a natural love for
duplicity, ambiguity, irony, and play of meaning, which was
characteristic of the people and the time. For contemporary
readers, and especially for those incredulous philosophic circles
upon which the poet rested for support, the two elements were
always easily separable, and in the latter stages at least of the
poet's career the method of union was developed into a typical
fixed convention; so that an accustomed reader of Euripides not
only knew that something must be subtracted from the published
work in order to arrive at the author's true meaning, but also
knew precisely where that something would be found. The facts
of the story were treated as a sort of problem, of which for
theatrical purposes the author offered, in regular form, a miraculous and orthodox solution. This solution was known for a
pretence, and marked as such with increasing boldness by the
manner in which it was handled by the poet himself. To reach
the genuine thought, which the theatre did not admit except on
condition of reserve, the reader had simply to reject the
pretended solution, the superfluous 'divine' machinery, and
interpret the significance of the facts in themselves either by his
own wit or by such help as, in the relations of Athenian society,
he could obtain without any difficulty.
I now propose to consider whether from this side any light
can be thrown on one of the most curious historical enquiries
presented by Euripidean criticism. Will it enable us to explain
the questionable shape in which we find the Phoenissae? It
will be well to say at the outset, lest the reader should be misled
and disappointed, that with the main part of that play, with the
story itself and the manner in which it is told, this essay will
have no concern. I shall not here even discuss the relation
between Euripides' way of presenting the episode of the Theban
brothers, and that of Aeschylus, for instance, or any other.
With Eteocles and Polynices we shall have little or nothing to
do. And this perhaps is fortunate; for my own feeling is that
of all the poet's extant works the Phoenissae is that in which we
should be most sensible of the defects in our material for a
judgment. I do not see how it is possible to be sure, or even to




' LAST SCEANE OF ALL'.


233


believe, that we have materials for rightly estimating the Phoenissae. What we do know for certain is that the play is a
professed piece of criticism. In more than one place we find
situations and expressions, of which the significance would be
lost to us, but for the accident that we are fully acquainted
with the Seven against Thebes. Here therefore we have actual
proof of what, as I think, a reader accustomed to the methods of
art in general must frequently suspect without proof when he
peruses Euripides; that the author assumes our acquaintance
with something in literature extraneous to his own text, something of which too often we can only say that it is beyond our
reach. Clearly we have no right (in the fragmentary state of
our information) to assume that only the Seven against Thebes is
necessary for a complete understanding of the Phoenissae because that is all or nearly all the literary equipment which we
happen to possess. I note this in passing for a reflexion which
may and ought to carry us far, far enough to suspend decision
in many a case where it has been pronounced; having done so,
we will go on to our proper and immediate subject.
It is notorious that the Phzoenissae in its present shape
exhibits, for a Greek play, a remarkable looseness of connexion,
and this effect is found on consideration to lie mainly if not
entirely in two points, the beginning and the end. The objection
here, we may say to avoid confusion, has no resemblance to
those which we have been considering in other cases. There is
no conflict of realism and fancy, of rationalism and miracle.
From first to last, prologue, drama, and finale, all is fact of the
common visible world, independent of any theory, orthodox
or unorthodox, as to the unseen powers. The point of objection
is simply that some of the scenes, or more exactly two of the
scenes, are not connected with the next parts of the play in
that close and careful manner which the severity of Greek art
would lead us to demand. The point is taken correctly, or
nearly so, by the author of a remark in a Greek prefatory
note or /ypot/iesis': " The action is very rich in stage-exhibition,
1 TOr6 opaca eTt eL Tcas OK'YVKCLKacS o5l/ECL Kca\XXaro, ErTeL Kal TrapaTrX11puaTcrLK6 o',' TE
a7ro rT)  T~re/cv  'AvrTlyovr Oewpopvoa  gpos OVK  'aTL Bpiactro3, Kac Vbr6orrovogs HoXvvetiKrs
ov3evs e'vectK 7rapaytivreTa, eTL 7e  i rrtl a '  spE s  CiJo\k oxov  /uCyaLSevo/xevos Oiirrovs
7rpoaoppa7rTtat  tcaKEevs.




234


E URIPIDES.


indeed it is superabundant; the scene in which Antigone looks
forth from the terrace is no part of the plot; there is no purpose
for the admission of Polynices (into Thebes) under a safeconduct; and the departure of Oedipus into exile, with its tag
of irrelevant lyrics, is a useless adjunct". I cite this dictum
not as an authority-there is nothing in these prefaces to
indicate that the compilers of them were entitled to particular
respect on a literary question-but as a prima facie judgment by
a reader guiltless of theory. On one point indeed his judgment
is disputable and, as a fact, not generally supported. Whatever
else may be said of the scene in which Polynices and Eteocles
meet, it cannot fairly be said that there is no motive for the
invitation to Polynices, by which alone their mother brings
the meeting about. Her natural and obvious motive, as alleged
by herselfl, is to make a last attempt at reconciliation before
the encounter of arms; the truce is in place, and properly
related to the central interest of the play. Nor is it true-if
that is what the critic means-that the conference of the
brothers is without result. It is a sufficient dramatic result
in itself, that the effort to reconcile them does not succeed, and
that by means of it their unappeasable antagonism is exhibited
in a natural and appropriate manner. Here therefore the critic
has over-stepped the mark under the seduction of fault-finding;
but his other two points are fairly made and supported by
common consent. The scenes in question, judged by the Attic
standard, are tacked in or tacked on with a strange looseness of
fit. The scene 'in which Antigone looks forth from the terrace '
is the first of the play, following immediately on the prologue.
The girl comes out under the care of a slave-guardian to indulge
her curiosity with the spectacle of the beleaguering army, in
which the divisions and principal personages are pointed out by
her attendant. As a method of exposition, and a device for
introducing these personages to the audience, the scene is
passable; or rather it would be, if they played, as in fact they do
not, important parts as individuals in the drama which follows,
and if it were not certain that all which Antigone learns in this
dialogue was already familiar to the Athenian play-goer. But
whatever its merits or demerits as an exposition, the critic


1 Pzoen. 8i foll.


2 vv. 88 foill.




' LAST SCENE OP ALL'.


235


above-cited speaks truly when he says that it is 'no part of the
plot' or 'action'; and he is also right (so far as extant evidence
shows) in his tacit assumption that this is a notable infringement
of the rules imposed by Attic taste. The excursion of Antigone
has neither preparation nor sequel; in the body of the play she
scarcely appears, and her intrusion upon the scene, when it
occurs, involves the story in a singular embarrassment. Not
until the finale, when after lamenting her brothers she accompanies her father into exile, does she do anything which
seems to be wanted; and the part which she then plays, so far
as it is relevant to the drama, would be as intelligible (to say the
least) without the expository scene as it is with it. Moreoverand this brings us to the critic's other point-this her final
appearance is associated with yet another notable breach of the
expected unity. It is accurately true, as he says, that 'the
departure of Oedipus into exile, with its tag of irrelevant
lyrics, is a useless adjunct' to the play as a whole. According to
the story of Euripides, the blind and dethroned Oedipus had
been kept by his sons in a sort of imprisonment. When they
have fallen each by the other's hand, and their mother by her
own, the captive creeps forth from his darkness to encounter the
corpses; and to crown his misery the new king Creon, to
be rid of his accursed presence, expels him from the city to
wander as he may. The situation is undeniably pathetic, and
the pathos of it is increased, rather than diminished, by the
faithful adherence of his daughter, who rejects a princely
husband in order to accompany him. But for an Attic dramatist,
or indeed for any dramatist, it is an astonishing blunder that
having reached this climax he should fritter away the whole
effect of it by a dropping fire of mutual lamentations between the
father and daughter, not merely prolix as a whole, but in detail
so curiously irrelevant to the situation as to be scarcely even
intelligible.
Such are the facts of the case, as noted by the Greek
commentator, who is content to note them without further
remark. His abstinence, if designed, is perhaps prudent; but
when we consider all the circumstances, we must think it strange
if he felt no inferential suspicion, and shall pardon or praise the
modern readers, who have not only felt but expressed it. That




236


E URIPIDES.


the play has suffered interpolatioz, that the form in which we
have it does not exactly correspond to the original design, but
contains something, ascertainable or not, which was intruded
after the scheme had been fixed and completed, is an opinion
which, with whatever divergences of detail, has been supported,
I believe, by every critic of recent times. The form which
I shall give to this opinion may not answer exactly (I am not
aware that it does) to the statement of any previous supporter;
but I believe there is nothing in the next three paragraphs
which will be found surprising by those who are acquainted
with the general current of commentary.
When we consider that these two scenes, each of them
liable for a separate reason to the charge of offending against
unity, of being an irrelevant excrescence upon the true stem
of the play, are found one at the beginning and the other at
the end (that is to say, precisely at the places where extraneous
addition is easiest), and further that the two scenes have a
certain correlation, the first serving to bring the person of
Antigone into a prominence for which the rest of the play
does not furnish sufficient reason, while the second erects the
destiny of Antigone into a prominence for which the rest
of the play does not furnish sufficient reason, we do not take
a long or a rash step in connecting the phaenomena and referring them to a common origin. It is simplest and most
natural to suppose, without prejudging the distinct question
of authorship, that the two scenes are in fact what they appear
to be, additions to a work which was first designed and completed without them. Moreover it happens that in the case
of the initial scene, against which the internal evidence of
alienage is perhaps the less strong, there is external evidence
amounting to proof, that it has been thrust between parts
which were once in juxtaposition. The prologue, spoken by
Jocasta, contains no reference to Antigone except the mention
of her birth and name. It concludes with a statement that
Polynices has accepted the invitation to a conference, and a
prayer that the result may be peace. Common sense and
common practice would lead us to suppose from this that the
conference itself is to be the commencement of the action.
And accordingly, as soon as the Chorus have been introduced




'LAST SCENE OF ALL'.


237


and have completed their ode of entrance (which again ignores
Antigone and by its conclusion fixes our attention once more
on the contest of the brothers), as soon, that is, as the stage
is ready for action, the scene, which would be the first, if it
were not for the excursion of Antigone, presents to us
the arrival of Polynices and proceeds in due course to the
conference.' We cannot easily believe that the prologue was
designed to introduce not the scene that it does properly introduce, but another scene beginning with the statement that
Antigone has received her mother's permission to quit the
accustomed seclusion of a Greek maiden and take an excursion
upon the terrace, an indulgence of which her mother, who
has barely quitted the scene before Antigone enters, has not
thought it necessary to speak. Nor can we omit to notice,
as an anticipation upon the matter of authorship, that if the
excursion of Antigone be the work of the original designer,
he has committed an odd oversight in not making a corresponding change in his prologue. Between this scene and its
immediate sequel, the entrance of the Chorus, a connexion of
a sort has been made: by the approach of the Chorus Antigone,
says her attendant, is compelled in modesty to retire again.
With what precedes the scene no connexion is attempted. We
are left to suppose, what is in rigour supposable, that Antigone
has met her mother and obtained the alleged permission just
inside the door. In short the adjustment of the scene is exactly
what it would be, had it been inserted by some one who had
not full authority over the text. Be that however as it may,
and whether the insertion is the work of Euripides or some
other, the fact of insertion seems as clear as evidence can make
it. Nor are there wanting indications in the body of the play,
as well as in the opening and finale, that it has been retouched
after completion by some one who had a careful eye for Antigone. Framed as the piece now is, with Antigone figuring
sole at the head of it and Antigone figuring again with her
father as the main interest of the close, it would be intolerable
that between these points the heroine should do nothing and
never be seen. Accordingly she is seen and she does do
something, but the closer we look, the more we shall doubt
1 v. 270.




238


EURIPIDES.


whether her appearance and action were reckoned upon, when
the plot was originally drawn out. When Jocasta is informed
that her sons are on the point of settling their quarrel by a
duel to the death, she resolves, as a last effort, to go forth
and throw herself between them. As we now read the play,
although she is exhorted to do this by the messenger who
reports the situation, yet thereupon, instead of flying instantly to
the field, as the situation seems to demand, she spends some
precious minutes in summoning, to accompany her, her daughter
Antigone, who receives the command in a brief dialogue of
nineteen lines,' the sole occasion on which she presents herself
between the first scene and the last. Now this sole appearance
bristles with circumstances of suspicion. In the first place
Jocasta has two daughters, as she tells us in the prologue. But
she does not think of taking Ismene. It is not natural that she
should wait for any one; but she waits for Antigone, and
Antigone only. And further, as the scene now runs, the Chorus
are fully informed of Jocasta's intention. It is discussed in
their presence between her and her daughter. But curiously
enough, the same phenomenon occurs here which we have
noticed already on the first appearance of Antigone. The
context ignores it. When the mother and daughter are gone on
their errand, the Chorus bewail the crisis, the fratricidal duel, and
the agony of the mother, at considerable length,2 not only
without reference to the daughter, but without betraying the
least suspicion that the mother proposes to interfere between
the combatants. They speak exactly as they might if Jocasta, on
hearing of the project, had rushed away without a word, which
is just what she naturally would have done, when the thought of
interfering occurred to her. What follows is stranger still.
Creon, brother of Jocasta, enters in search of his sister. The
Chorus tell him that, having received news of the proposed
combat, she left the house, and Antigone with her; and this is
the end of their information. Even now they say not a word
which shows knowledge of her intention to go onto the field of
battle, and this although Creon is asking where to find her.
The facts, as they report them, may suggest it as an inference;


1 vv. I264-1282.


2 vv. I283-I306.




'LAST SCENE OF ALL'.


239


but why, if they know it for certain, they should not plainly say
it, I at least am unable to imagine.
However in this manner Antigone is got on and off again
as companion to her mother; and accordingly in the report
afterwards given of what occurred in the field we find Antigone
present there. But so little is she expected (if we may put it so)
by the disposer of the facts, that her presence, nowhere serviceable, becomes at a certain point the cause of embarrassment
almost ludicrous. The mother arrives at the place only to find
her sons dying, and slays herself upon their bodies. Now then,
if ever, is the time for the daughter to perform. Unfortunately
just at this moment according to the story the battle, suspended
by the single combat, is suddenly resumed, and the maiden in
one verse must be hurried off; 'meanwhile Antigone slipped away
from the host'.1 Every one is struck by the feebleness of the
effect, and it is hard to disagree, as a matter of taste, either with
Valckenaer and others who wish to omit the verse and let
Antigone shift for herself unnoticed, or with Hermann and others
who maintain that the poet, having taken her there, was bound
to get her away again. Nor is this the only example of the
kind: in two other places the fact that Jocasta is accompanied
by Antigone is indicated in a single unnecessary verse,2 and one
of them is turned so ill that all wonder how the poet, supposed
to be writing at large, could be guilty of such clumsiness.
Everything in short combines to indicate that here, as at the first
appearance of Antigone, her part has been enlarged against the
intention of the first designer. A glance through the narrative
will show that by a few modifications it might be relieved of her
inconvenient presence; and though 'to restore the original'
would in such a case be a chimerical attempt, it is not, as I
think, too much to assert that the scene has been retouched,
with the purpose, as before, of preparing us better for the independent interest now invited to the heroine in the finale.
1 I465 KOv ' T~' 57re0X0' 'AvrTy6LYOV apaToo 8Xa.
2 1323 KOp?1 Tre rlTpOs 'A7rtY6ybV KOtV'L 7rOSi, 1430 ihv 7rapOeVC re KatL rpoOvuii 7ro5od.
This last for elegance of expression can be compared only to the famous description
of Mr Pickwick's partner at whist, going home 'in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair'.
Almost every edition, after Valckenaer, omits it: but this, as an isolated remedy, is
illegitimate; we must answer first the question why it was put in.




240


E URIPIDES.


As to the finale itself, the prima facie impression which it
makes on the reader is precisely that indicated by the observation
of the Greek commentator, that 'the departure of Oedipus into
exile, with its tag of irrelevant lyrics, is a useless adjunct'. It
is clear that by the sudden transference of the interest from the
fall of the brothers to the future of Oedipus and his daughter,
and by the extension which is given to this new theme, the
finale ceases to serve as a finale. In the prospect thus opened
the retrospect is lost, and the end comes not as a close, but
simply as an interruption. Moreover in order to bring about
this conclusion, the course of the story has to take a sudden and
(for more than one reason) strangely improbable twist. Since
the blind old king is now dismissed to long wanderings, which
are to end at Athens, it is inevitable that he should be provided
with a companion, and this companion is Antigone.      But
Antigone had another destiny. According to the play written
by Euripides on her story and bearing her name, she was
afterwards married to Haemon the son of Creon, who figures as
her lover in the Antigone of Sophocles.1 Now in the P/hoenissae2
Creon announces his intention to make this match, according to
the disposition of Eteocles, who thus before his death had confirmed, as king of Thebes, the right of Creon and his family
to the contingent succession. Were it not for the actual sequel,
we should certainly suppose that Euripides, here as elsewhere,
was preluding or referring to a story of his own, the story of his
Antigone. But in ten verses all this elaborate design is abruptly
dropped.3  Antigone declares her resolve to accompany her
father, and threatens, if forced to wed, that her husband shall
find in her 'a Danaid' or Bride of Lammermoor.     With a
prudence or timidity unexampled, I should think, in the history
of ambitious fathers, Creon takes this threat as decisive: "Go,
thou shalt not murder my son; depart from the land"; and so
Oedipus and his daughter 'with their irrelevant lyrics' set
forth together for Athens. Nor is the marriage of Antigone the
only important project which is thus cut short. The most famous
function of Antigone in story, as all know, was the burial of her
1 See the 'argument' to that play, and remarks on it in Jebb, Introduction,
p. xxxviii.
2 v. r586, v. i637.                z'v. 1673-I682.




' LAST SCENE OF ALL'.


241


brother Polynices, contrary to the sentence which deprived him
of funeral rights as a traitor.  It seems impossible to doubt that
in the Phoenissae as originally designed this function was anticipated as a sequel. Creon, announcing the decree against
Polynices, is confronted by her in this play just as he is in the
Antzone of Sophocles, and as the herald is in the Seven against
Thebes.   And   accordingly in the Antzigone of Euripides her
burial of Polynices was combined in the plot with her marriage
to Haemon. But how it is to be reconciled with the present
conclusion of the Phoenissac, we ask in vain. It is true that
Antigone in 'the lyrics' reiterates her resolve to perform the
interdicted rite, even if it costs her life; but what chance or
possibility there is of her accomplishing such an act of rebellion
in Thebes and also accompanying her banished father, as we see
her at the exodns in the act to do, the dramatist does not enable
us to conjecture. The play in fact ends, without closing, in a
plaiting of incompatible motives,2 and the cause of the whole
mischief is visibly 'the departure of Oedipus into exile with its
irrelevant lyrics.'
It has been already said that, while there is a general agreement among modern critics in thinking that the play has been
retouched, there is much difference of opinion when it comes to
the pointing out of single 'interpolations'. The fact is that,
unless the change be of a very simple kind (such as the insertion
of a whole complete and       separate scene), exact analysis is
impossible, neither is it necessary to the validity of a general
conclusion. For my own part I take it as certain (and I should
expect to this extent the agreement of every reader who will
view the question broadly and will not require unattainable
and improper exactness of detail) that the truth of the matter is
I Phoen. 1644 foll.
2 In vv. 1642-1646 the complication of strands becomes almost perceptible to
analysis.
AN. arap a' Ipwrw rbv vewO-r Koipavov
[Ti TOv' v/3pi'pes 7rarTp' adrooTIeXXwv xOovos;]
Tr Oe/LoTroieirs eirl raXatlTropy veKpY;
KP. 'EreoOKXeoU/ fOUXXevUCT' OUK EJLOu Tbde. K.T.X.
In the reply of Creon and what follows, the question in brackets is ignored, and
Valckenaer accordingly omits it. The debate turns upon the king's order respecting
the corpse, not at all on the banishment of Oedipus. This is but one example of what
the reader will find on attentive perusal in the whole finale.
V, E.                                                   16




242


E URIPIDES.


innocently touched by the Greek critic already quoted, when he
speaks of 'Oedipus' banishment' as an 'adjunct', or more precisely 'a piece tacked on'.1 No one, I will venture to say, who
is accustomed to literary compositions, can reasonably doubt
that the Phoenissae as originally designed did not conclude, as it
now does, with the joint departure of Oedipus and Antigone on
a wandering exile which is to end at Athens. Possibly (though
this is a distinct question) it did not assume removal of Oedipus
at all; according to the best accredited tradition, the 'Homeric'
tradition, Oedipus died and was buried at Thebes itself. Or
possibly again Euripides may have adopted here the version of
which there are traces in the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles,2
that the curse-laden man, for certain intricate religious reasons,
was compelled to end his days, and was eventually buried, not in
but just outside of the territory covered by the name of Thebes.
My own opinion, if one may have an opinion on what is not
susceptible of proof, is that this latter account, or something like
it, was adopted for the original Phoenissae. There are reasons
for thinking so. But I prefer not to enter here upon any such
speculative question. Our present concern is with the conclusion
of the play not as it was or may have been, but as it is now and
once was not. The existing finale (to emphasize the point once
more) fixes our attention on the joint future of Oedipus and
Antigone, going forth to wander together. For this finale the
play was not designed; ethically and mechanically it is an
inapplicable termination; and almost all those signs of disturbance, which by common consent the play now exhibits, are
accounted for by supposing, what we are forced to suppose, that
some one, having determined to append such a finale, set himself
to make in the body of the work just the minimum of alteration
which seemed indispensable. To enlarge the part of Oedipus
was impossible. The appearance of the blind prisoner in the
conclusion depends for its effect upon being his first appearance.
But it was not impossible to command attention from the first
for Antigone, and to enlarge her action so as to diminish at
least the inconsistency of her singular importance at the close:
and this is what the reviser has done. His purpose is visible in
1 lrpoaopparrrat, Paley's certain correction of 7rpooleppit rcai.
O2 O'd. Co/. 396 foil.




LAST SCENE OF ALL'.


243


the very first line that he writes, Thoul tenldcr Tdauglter of OcdiLus
and glory of /s house:' nothing in the main action of the play
explains why Antigone should be thus addressed, but the address
is exactly adapted to prepare us for the daughter's heroic
devotion to her father, as exhibited in the existing conclusion.
More might be said to the same purpose on points of detail; but
it will be better to leave the matter upon the broad basis of
general impression. This, I think, will be enough to satisfy us
as to the truth of a proposition, in which, as was said before,
there is nothing which the course of modern commentary, taken
as a whole, does not harmoniously tend to support.
We turn now to the proper question of this essay, whether
from our point of view any light can be thrown on the purpose
of this remarkable transformation. Here we may say at once
that the manner, in which the transformation is executed, proves
an executant who would not have treated the play as he has,
without some very strong and defensible motive. We are perhaps -
too apt, in speculations of this kind, to help a theory by the
convenient hypothesis of a wondrous simpleton, who did the
mangling, blundering, or whatever it is that we require. In this
case at any rate no such hypothesis is entertainable. Even in
those parts of the play which are most open to suspicion, the
handiwork, as Paley justly remarks in one or two places, is not
only good in the main but thoroughly Euripidean. The performance, to give a negative illustration, does not in the least
resemble those rifacimenti of Shakespeare, which were produced
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  It does not
seem necessary to enter upon details, which will best be appreciated by reading the whole work. I will only say that in my
judgment there is no sign in the text of any operator to whom
we can reasonably or consistently attribute such literary incompetence, as would be implied by blindness to the result of what
has been done. The author of the finale must have seen, as well
as we can see, that he had done some mischief. That he was
deeply versed in Euripides, and genuinely interested in his fame,
is a position which may be defended when any one will attack
it: the scene on the terrace or the final lyrics might be the
poet's own, if only they were found somewhere else. We are
1 7'. 88 c h K\EVO'( I'K OiL '  AVTLyovr7  K\os rwarpt.
16-2




244


E URIPIDES.


driven then to the conclusion, as alone accounting for the facts,
that the existing finale was in the view of the transformer worth
the cost of it. He must have had, as already said, some very
strong and defensible motive for exhibiting in a Euripidean play
the banishment of Oedipus and Antigone. I hold that this
motive is discoverable and even patent.  I take the close of the
Phoenissae, understood as it was meant, to be one of the most
pathetic passages in the history of literature; with all its inaptness, or rather by virtue of its inaptness, it would make the play
eternally interesting even if, which is not the case, the play had
no other claim on our notice.
To reach a position from which we can judge what intention
the reviser is likely to have had, we must now settle a point
reserved, that is to say, whether we can suppose that the transformation and the original design are by one and the same hand,
-that Euripides altered his own play. This is not to be rejected
without consideration, not even upon the ground that the changes
are to some extent injurious. It is not an unknown thing for
an artist to spoil his own work. But we have already noticed
some signs which in this case would make the supposition
difficult. The imperfect junctures, by which the insertions are
betrayed, could be accounted for, if the original poet did all,
only by extreme and scarcely credible carelessness.  If we
suppose a second hand, they are accounted for naturally by the
fact that a second hand cannot be perfectly free. The appearance of the product on examination suggests of itself, that there
was a desire on the part of the interpolator to limit his alterations to the minimum required by his purpose, a feeling not
easily attributable to a poet revising himself. This however I
should not consider conclusive; but it is confirmed by other
evidence.  One thing we may say positively from    internal
evidence respecting the composer of the finale. He knew the
very last works of Sophocles; and one of his motives, not the
least efficient, was to pay, as he has done, a compliment to
Sophocles or to his memory. The last speaker' is Oedipus, who
turning, as it were, to his countrymen appeals to their recollection of his services in the following terms: 'O famous citizens of
1 The  tag  indicating  the  'victory' of the  play is scarcely to  le reckoned a
part of it.




'LAST SCENE OFi ALL'.


245


my native land, behold, this is Oedipus, who read the famous
riddle, and was a man very great. I, who alone subdued the
power of the murderous Sphinx, now, a citizen no more, myself
am pitiably banished from the soil. But why do I lament it, and
in vain bewail? For what is imposed by gods a mortal needs
must bear'. These verses, as every one knows, by their long
emphatic metre, here abruptly introduced, recall the close of the
Oedipus Tyranznus, and the two first repeat almost word for word
the two first of the corresponding passage spoken in that play
by the Chorus.' To strike out the passage from the P/zoenissae,
to omit the two first lines, or the second line, or otherwise to
trim away the allusion, is surely to overlook the fact, that the
person who framed it as it is could have no possible motive for
doing so except the express desire of recalling the Oedipzus
Tyrannus, and recalling it with honour.    To suppose that the
composer of this finale could not have done without the verses,
all six or any two, is impossible. So far from helping him, the
two verses borrowed from Sophocles are mechanically rather an
embarrassment, for they involve in the sequel a change from the
third person to the first. Nor would any one else but the
composer have a motive for putting them in, if he had not done
so. They are, they must be, a deliberate quotation from Sophocles,
which, made as it is gravely and appropriately, is a signification
of respect. Similarly, or at least with the same apparent purpose
of directing attention to Sophocles, the composer has managed,
not without difficulty, to find a place in the speech of Creon on
the refusal of burial to Polynices, where it is just possible to put
in almost unaltered a line of Sophocles' Antigone.- It does not
help the sentence, on the contrary it makes a rather difficult
construction; it does not illustrate the rest of the speech, having
not one word in common with it; it serves in short no purpose,
1Ocd. Tyr.? 7raTppas O0) 3'7s evoLKot, XeUvera', OitrTTOS 68e
os T&  KX\ev' alvClyjuaT e'  K6 e   KpaiTto-Tos r7v av7jp.  K.T.X.
Phoenissae. w rdraTpas KXELtvo 7roXtcat, Xe6cerT', OLiTrroUS o6e
6s Ta  KXLV' atlviLyi.caT  e'yVW  Kal /.e'yto'roS   'v cavrjp.
6S.'YOVoS Z0ty'yos KaLT7eCXO TxS cL.at.6vov  KpcLTar,
vPv rdTwtos arTOs OIKTpWS ep eXavofJac. XOovOs. K.T.X.
2 Phoen. 1634 dav 6' aKX\aUcrov, raaov, r 0wo, o s 8opacv. Of course the verse has
been struck out, but this is not to explain it. Klotz retains it, but does not account
for it.




246


E URIPIDES.


and cannot have been brought there with any other motive,
except to bring Sophocles himself before the recollection of the
audience. All which becomes significant, and leads us to the
matter of our immediate enquiry, the date of the present finale,
when we consider, what of course is obvious, that the story of
the finale is the story of the Oedipus at Colonus. It was
Sophocles in that play who gave, for the first time as it seems,
general fame and recognition to the local tradition of Colonus,
his own birth-place, that it was the final refuge of Oedipus, the
place of his death and burial; it was Sophocles who had shown
Antigone, as she appears in this finale, as the devoted guide of
the wanderer. And it is to the play of Sophocles, not to the
legend which it celebrates-even if that was sufficiently known
before the play to be the subject of an allusion-that the
composer of the finale refers.
Oed. Now, daughter, comes the fulfilment of a prophecy by Apollo.
Ant. What prophecy? Canst thou mean other woe to be added yet?
Oed. That wandering I must come to my death in Athens.
Ant. Where? What tower in Attica shall give thee reception?
Oed. Sacred Colonus, home of the rider-god.1
The reference here is not to the legend, but to the Oedipus at
Colonuis direct, as appears in the form of the question, 'What
tower in Attica will give thee reception?', or, as it might be
rendered, ' What wall? ' So far as I know-I speak under correction-'sacred Colonus' had neither wall nor tower nor anything about it which would naturally suggest the word pyrgos as
a description of it. It lay out in the country; and its hill,
enclosures, groves, shrines, and statues had no fortification of
any kind. But what the writer has in his mind is the opening
scene of the Sophoclean play, where the place at which Oedipus
pauses to rest is first fixed by Antigone's remark to her father
that 'the towers that guard the city, to judge by sight, are far off,
and this place is sacred to all seeming'. The 'wall' that the
author has in view is the wall of Athens itself, seen from
Colonus at some distance; but he could not have put this for
a description of Colonus, if it were not that what he really has
before his mental eye is the verse and the scene of Sophocles.


1 Phocn1. 703-1707.


'2 rIs we rTupyos 'ArOiTos rpoaoiSeerat;




'LAST SCEIVNE OF ALL'.


247


From   all this taken together-and more might be added-it
is plain that in composing the finale he had Sophocles, and
the Oedipus at Colonus in particular, specially in view.   But in
that case we need not go further to show that he was not
Euripides.   The   form   of the literary   compliment paid to
Sophocles is not such as is commonly used, or perhaps could
properly be used, towards a living writer.        It is not like
Euripides, or perhaps like any writer, to pay such a compliment at the expense of an inconvenient alteration in his own
original design. And lastly it is much more probable than
not that he never read the Oedipus at Colonus,l to say nothing
of the likelihood that, if it reached him in Macedonia, he would
have employed his dwindling days in altering the Phoenissae
to suit it, instead of finishing (let us say) the Ip/higenia at Aulis.
The Phoenissae in its present shape contains the work of
another hand, added after the death of Sophocles and the
circulation of the Oedipus at Colonus, and later therefore a fortiori than the death of Euripides himself; and this, or something like it, with whatever modifications of detail, I take to
be in general the received opinion.
Nor is there any difficulty in receiving this hypothesis as
accounting sufficiently for the mere production of the play in
its present shape. During the last years of the fifth century
and the early years of the fourth, at the time when the popularity of Euripides' works was at the height, they must have
been brought out repeatedly (indeed we know that they were)
by his family and, in a modern phrase not here inapplicable,
his literary representatives; and it would have been surprising
rather if they had never seen occasion or thought themselves
required to make temporary changes for the immediate purpose.
But there remains, untouched by this presumption, the question
why, in the case of the Phocnissae, this make-shift work should
have been preserved, why it should have become classical, and
why we have an interpolated play instead of the original play,
1 As to the date of the OEdipus at Colonus see the full discussion in Jebb's introduction. If it was not known until the posthumous exhibition of it on the stage in.C. 402, the revision of the Phioenissae was after that. But it may have been made
public earlier. However an exact date is not required: we can scarcely suppose
that the Oedipus at Colonus, not performed till 402, was sufficiently known to be the
subject of public allusion before Euripides retired, about 407.




248


E URIPIDES.


as it was originally exhibited by the poet some years before
his death. The case, as far as appears, is unique; for the
patching of the Iphigenia at Aulis, unhappily not finished and
(still more unhappily) brought to its present form by persons of
whom some could not even observe the rules of verse, is not
a parallel case. In saying that there is no parallel, I do not
of course mean to assert that there is no interpolation in other
works of Euripides. As a fact I believe that there is very little
in them of interpolation properly so called. But at any rate
nowhere else except in the Phaoeissae do we find evidence worth
notice of remodelling comparable in extent and boldness to
that which is visible here. On such a point the general impression of fairly competent and attentive students is the only
decisive test; and by this test the Phoenissae is sharply distinguished. There are other plays in which, with some ingenuity, a case for supposing more or less extensive interpolations may be made out: it may be thought that there never was
or will be a literary work in which, with some ingenuity, such
a case might not be made out. But in the Phwenissae it needs
no making out. The facts are so patent, and the interpretation
of them, broadly taken, so inevitable, that even a reader
innocent of any theory on the subject, a critic like the author
of the Greek argument, who seems scarcely to perceive the
bearing of his observations, is led as it were in his own despite
to speak of a certain part as 'tacked on'. That it should have
been 'tacked on' is not very surprising, but by what interest did
the supposititious work, in spite of palpable inconvenience, usurp
and hold the place of the original and genuine?
The answer to this question I myself consider to be scarcely
less patent than the question itself. Whether it has been
previously given, I am not prepared to say; I may have overlooked it. The dialogue of Oedipus and Antigone, meaningless
as drama, is intelligible only as allegory. The final scene of the
Phoenissae was preserved, with its concomitants, for its profound
and pathetic interest as a piece of literary history; because
it was composed in the Euripidean circle, and understood by
contemporaries, as a sort of last 'Epistle to the Athenians' from
the poet himself. The 'Oedipus' of the finale is not the king of
Thebes, and the 'Antigone' of the finale is not the Theban




'LAST SCENEJ OF' ALL'.


249


heroine, to whose dramatic fortunes the ' wholly irrelevant lyrics'
of the father and child cannot even be applied consistently.
The 'Oedipus' is Euripides himself, and his 'daughter' is his
spiritual offspring, his poetry. His 'exile' is no imaginary
banishment from Thebes, but the actual retirement of the
aged poet from the beloved city, where, overcome by weariness
and the near approach of death, he had no longer spirit to
carry on his life-long war on behalf of intelligence and sense.
The scene is in a certain way more tragic than any pure fiction
could be, but it appeals not really to the interest which might
be excited in the future of Oedipus by the foregoing drama,
but to that generous and not transitory emotion of gratitude
and regret which, as we know by testimony, broke out in
Athens, when it was known that the Athenian, who more than
any other had formed the minds and inspired the ambitions of
the Athenians    then   in  their meridian, had been laid, like
Aeschylus before him, not in Attica but in a foreign soil.
Oed. Now, daughter, comes the fulfilment of a certain prophecy by
Apollo
Ant. What prophecy? Canst thou mean other woe to be added yet?
Oed. That wandering I must come to nmy death in Athens.
Ant. Where?    What tower in Attica shall give thee reception?
Oed. Sacred Colonus, home of the rider-god. Come then, come lend
thy blind father help, since thy will it is to share my banishment.
1A nt. To banlislhment, alas  l Reach me thy loved hand, mine aged sire.
T/Iou art the ship, I the speeding wind.
Oed. Behold, my child, 1 go. Be thou, unhappy, the guide of mny feet.
Ant.  Unhatppy am I now, yes, unhappy, beyond any maid of Thebes.
Oed. Where shall I set my failing steps? My staff child, here./
A nt. So, so, step so, and so, ho/w weak, even as a dream!
Oed. Fie, fie on /him that sends me forth thus old promt my native land!
Sorrow, sorrow, hardly borne!
A itt.  Why borne  Why borne? Doth not Justice regard the evil, doth
she not punishi in mzen the want of understanding?
Oed. Thi is s I  I who climbed to trizumih of poesy heavenhi/grh,
by readintg the Maiden's riddle not understood!
Ant. The reproach of the Sphiknx! Recallest thou that? Nay, speak
Ino more of those successes past. This was the fatc, alas, that awaited
t/ee, to quit the land of thy birth and die, 0 father, zwhere?  Tears of
regret shall I leave to the maids that love me, when I go forth far from
my native grround to wander a maid forlorl!
1 Here begin the 'lyrics' of which the Greek argument complains.




250


E URi'PIDES.


Oed. Alas, for a helpful soul!.'
Ant. Aye, for the sake of my sire's distress1 it will win me a< fair
renlowln.
[Woe for the foul wrong done to thee, and to my brother, whose outcast
corpse hath no burial. 0 father, e'en if I must die for it, I will, when
'tis dark, put earth on the uncovered wretch.]
Oed. Let thy maideni conmpanions see thy face.
Ant. No, I have weept enough.
Oed. Tzhen to the altars with prayer!
An t. Nay, I am sick of m/y sorrows.
Oed. Go then at least to Bacchus, to the holy grounlt    on the hills
reserved for his maenads' feet.
Ant. Bacchus! Ah, he it was for whom in time past I braped myself
with the Cadinean fawn-skin, and trod on the hills the sacred paces of
Seimele's choir, doing for gods a service not requited!
Oed. 0 famous citizens of my native land, behold this is Oedipus,
who read the famlous riddle and was a mtan veiy great. 1, who alone
subdued the power of the mturderous Sphinx, now, a citizen nzo more, myself
am pitiably banished from the soil. But why do I lament it, or in vain
bewail? For what is imposed by gods a mtortal needs mtust bear.
If this scene be read as applying really to the hero and
heroine of the play, there is scarcely a single point in it which
is properly or intelligibly put, scarcely one significant expression
which is not either forced or irrelevant. Referred on the other
hand to the misfortunes of the poet and his art, all is correct
and clear. Why for example should the legendary Antigone
be moved by the exile of the legendary Oedipus to invoke the
wrath of heaven against 'the want of understanding'?               The
supposed offence of Creon is simple cruelty, not the want of
intelligence: and if in general it is possible to regard moral
offences theoretically as errors of judgment, that is no reason for
confusing the ideas in a special case which is not an error of
judgment. We are told therefore to read 'want of understanding' in the sense of 'outrage': yet Oedipus takes it in the strict
sense.3  Or what again can 'Oedipus' mean, when he says that
1 es 7rarpos vlU/opas, literally 'looking to', 'considering'.
2 PporY dav veaiLas.
3 doeXkyetas schol., and see Paley's note. It does not appear that dvauveria is ever
used by Euripides in the sense supposed, or would be likely to suggest itself to so
good an imitator. And here the context is decisive against it: ANT. o0x 6p Ai'Ka
KaKo6S, ou' da/lei43eTat ppoTw3v oa've'las; OIA. 6 C'eLti ioUvOav 6s erT KaCXXLV\Kov opa'vLov
i3a.v, rattpOvou K6paS ait'y/l.' ad6Tverov eVpWv. Surely it is impossible to take dauveoaia
and darvveTov in alien senses, when the one is suggested by the other,




'LAS' SCENE O0 ALL'.


251


'by reading the riddle of the Maiden' (that is, of the Sphinx) he
'climbed to triumph of poesy heaven-high'?1 It is true that
the Sphinx was said to have chanted her riddles in metre, as
oracles and other profound sayings were commonly chanted, and
is therefore spoken of frequently as a 'singer', 'minstrel' or the
like, while the riddles themselves are called her 'unmusical
songs', her 'poesy unmeet for the lyre', and so on.' It is also
true that Oedipus was commonly supposed, as in such a fairy-tale
he naturally would be, to have replied in metre.3  But did ever
any one regard Oedipus on this ground as essentially an artist,
like Orpheus, or describe his success as a 'triumph of song',
'a triumph of the muse'? It does not appear that Sophocles
applies to Oedipus any such language, or Euripides anywhere
else; and wherever such language might be found, we should
take it for a sign that the writer, if he really had the legendary
Oedipus in view, intended to speak lightly and by way of a jest.
But of such an intention our present writer cannot be suspected:
he is serious beyond question, and passionately serious. Yet the
language that he uses, taken naturally and according to the
usage of the time, signifies (as Paley for instance says truly and
by instinct) 'to aspire to literature', and not (as Paley adds by
afterthought, in order to satisfy the sense) 'to ascend to lofty
victorious wisdom'. The triumph of ' Oedipus ', according to our
author, was a poetic and literary triumph: ergo his 'Oedipus' is
not the legendary hero, but some one utterly different. And in
the next sentence this becomes, if possible, plainer still. 'The
reproach of the Sphinx!' says Antigone ' Recallest thou that?
Nay, speak no more of those successes past'.4 Reproach, that is
to say glory. Such was the simple theory of some Hellenist in
the bolder ages, when interpreters were not embarrassed by words.
But reproach, for all that, is not glory; what the writer means, as
the more scrupulous moderns say, is plainly that the Sphinx,
because none could answer her, was a reproach to Thcbes; and
the implication is, that the public service, pleaded by Oedipus
1 MovLaav C Er Ka\XX\vKov oupdviov iav.
2 e.g. PwzonL. 807, 1028.
3 See the alleged riddle and reply in the Arguments to the O6'dipus fyrannuits.
4 Zpyy77Os vapppets ovetLos; atraye -r Trapos esvTvxL7iar' avu63v.-Schol. ad loc. rT
oveLos, adYT  TOo rO KXioS.  See Paley's note.




252


E URIPIDES.


against an ungrateful country, lay in taking this reproach away.
But yet what an ineptitude is this, if the reference be really to
the legend! What was this 'reproach' to Thebes, or the
ridding of it, that the boon to Thebes should be laid on this,
and not simply on the ending of the Sphinx herself and her
murderous depredations? The language is not adapted to the
legend; and it is plain, as before, that the reference is to
something else. Next we have Antigone saying, with pathetic
emphasis, that her father is quitting his country to die-they
know not where.' Then what of Apollo's prophecy, just before
mentioned, that he is to die at Athens, or more exactly at
Colonus? If 'Oedipus' be the Oedipus of legend, then we
must take it from the author that this was a true prophecy. Why
then should Antigone be made to speak as if she had never
heard of it?
We now turn to the fortunes of 'Antigone', and still the
confusion grows. The pathos of her situation, it seems, lies in
parting from her maiden companions. They will weep for her
when she is gone. Her father begs her to see them once again
before she goes, and to visit the places (among them as it seems
the 'hills' of Thebes, though what hills at this moment she can
visit, he does not say, nor what he proposes to do meanwhile),
where with other girls like herself she had celebrated the worship
of the Theban gods, especially Bacchus. All this, to cite the
Greek critic yet once again, if applied to the preceding drama,
must be dismissed as wholly 'irrelevant lyrics'. A finale, as a
finale, should be occupied with the persons and themes of the
drama, not with other persons and themes of which nothing has
before been made. There is in the drama mention of persons,
whom 'Antigone', if she were really Antigone, could not at this
moment forget, of whom she must have spoken, if she was to speak
within the limits of nature and credibility. What of Eteocles?
What of Jocasta? They are dead it is true, but even their
bleeding corpses, which a few minutes before she had hoped to
bury, might call for a word of farewell. And what, above all, of
heryozunger sister,2 her only sister, sole remnant now with herself
1 pvwya a 7rarpioTs aTro -yevdofevov,  7rdCep, Oaveiv... roO; (or Oavelv  7rou).  The
interrogative seems better, but the sense is the same either way.
2 Phoen. 57. She is mentioned here no doubt for the sake of her part in the




'LAST SCENE OF ALL'.


253


of her father's house? Ismene is not dead. Ismene is to be
left (at least so we must understand) in Thebes,.for Creon to
deal with as he thinks fit. Yet neither Antigone nor Oedipus
himself so much as mentions her name; only 'maiden companions'
and 'dances in honour of Bacchus', matters in which the spectator of the drama, as such, has not the smallest interest. The
whole scene, taken as relative to the play and to the dramatic
situation of the legendary personages, is a string of irrelevance.
It seems impossible that anyone with wits enough to write verses
should have offered this dialogue as really representing what
passed between Oedipus and Antigone when about to quit
Thebes under the circumstances described in the Phoenissae:
inconceivable too, that by way of a climax he should put on a
purposeless quotation from Sophocles, and then should not quote
him right.
But the true reason why this poet (for a poet he was, and no
mean one) has pointed by the whole topic of his scene, and
especially by the stately and melancholy cadence of the close,
to the recollection of Sophocles, is because Sophocles, like the
gentle man that he was, though he had never, so far as we know,
been intimate with Euripides, and certainly was no partizan of
the cause for which Euripides fought, had chivalry enough and
courage (for at the moment it must have wanted some courage)
to speak peace to the grave of genius and to rebuke the malice
of bigotry, when he heard that Euripides was dead. According
to the familiar anecdote, he not only put on mourning himself,
but directed his actors and chorus to appear without the accustomed emblems of festivity; and it is added that at the sight
the sensitive people burst into tears.' Without assuming that
these details are exactly correct, we may safely suppose that
Sophocles showed respect, and that his doing so was felt to be a
thing of importance, since the memory of it survives in the poor
scraps of biography which are left to us. Probably nothing was
more efficient in generating and stimulating the kindness to
sequel, that is to say in Euripides' An/iglone. The corpses are addressed in the
foregoing verses (I693-I702) but not WCl it words of fazrcwell; that passage, like all
the rest up to the departure (z'. 1703 foll.), except a few lines here and there, belmogs
to the original work, and takes no account of the departure.
ILife of Euripides.




254


E URIPIDES.


Euripides' memory, which in the next year after his death, the
implacable Aristophanes confesses to be the sentiment of an
overwhelming majority. That Aristophanes himself, or at least
the zealots whose views it sometimes suited him to express,
did not much approve nor even very well comprehend the
moderation of Sophocles, may be inferred not only from common
experience, but from the faint and dubious compliment (as it
seems) which he pays to the tragedian's temper, so easy, he
says, that Sophocles, if he had a chance to escape from Hades,
would probably let it pass.' He thought of him, as Steele
thought of Addison or Somers, as a person of excellent intentions
but unhappily wanting in spirit. But in the Euripidean circle
his calm generosity excited, as well it might, something more
than a passing gratitude. By choosing a familiar passage of
Sophocles, the close of his most famous work, as the model for
that in which 'Oedipus', that is to say Euripides himself, should
appeal from the stage to the remembrance of his renown, and
plead his painful removal from Athens as a propitiation of those
to whom in the combat of life he had given offence, the author
of this finale, speaking evidently as with authority,2 repays
the debt by an acknowledgment respectful, public, and solemn
as the manifestation on the part of Sophocles had been, and
joins as it were the hands of the dead rivals in a pledge of
perpetual amity. And if this be not a fine and becoming thought,
a just and noble payment of a noble and just obligation, then
where may these qualities be found? Nor is it without reason that
the composer, while borrowing the words of Sophocles so far as
to ensure recognition, adopts them nevertheless with some modification. The Chorus of the Oedipus Tyrannzs addresses itself to
the 'dwellers in our native Thebes': but the 'Oedipus' of this
finale, as long before this has become plain, is not speaking to
imaginary Thebans, but to his own true countrymen, the
Athenians assembled in the theatre of Athens, and to them
therefore his address is directed by the adapter in the anonymous
formula: 'O famous citizens of my native land'. Still more to
the purpose are the subtle changes made in the following verse.
'Who kneew (b'Set) the famed riddle and was a man most m;nizty
Frovs'8o.
2 lIe waas prolbably the poet's own son (or nephew) and 'literary executor'.




' LAST SCENE OF ALL '.


255


(KpaLrta-ro)' says Sophocles. 'Who read (yvwo) the famed riddle
and was a man very great (iyZetaros)', says the adapter, in
each case just letting the phrase fall to the natural tone of
common speech, from which Sophocles, rightly for his purpose,
has raised it.' It becomes more 'real' and therefore more
Euripidean; it is not Sophocles who speaks, but Euripides
with Sophocles in his thoughts.
All that is said in the finale by and of 'Antigone', idle
and tiresome if referred to the daughter of Jocasta and sister
of Ismene, becomes full of sense and pathos when referred
to the spiritual daughter of Euripides. If ' Oedipus' is Euripides, the poet in his public capacity, his child and inseparable
companion is naturally his 'work' or poetic art. The figure
is a commonplace and used by Euripides himself.2 The 'virgin
companions' who love her are the other 'muses', the other
poetic and poetry-loving spirits of Athens: and they will weep
for her, when she is gone, as the muse of Sophocles did. The
rite of Bacchus, which it was her practice to celebrate, is the
service of that Athenian theatre and theatric festival, of which
Bacchus was in fact the patron and symbol. And when she
complains that this worship of hers, as a service to religion,
was ill-requited, she makes the claim, which Euripides would
have made and constantly does make, that, in extricating the
conception of deity from the follies and atrocities of legend,
he was defending 'the gods' against human perversity, not
assailing them, as was perversely supposed. When she predicts
that her 'helpful soul' or 'serviceable wit' 3 will be praised hereafter 'for the sake of her sire's misfortunes', she anticipates
that rebound of feeling in favour of Euripides and his work,
of which her creator intends to avail himself. If she ignores
'the prophecy of Apollo', that is because she is her father's
true daughter, and therefore regards such a prophecy as
vain and presumably false, which in fact, applied to the veritable 'Oedipus' of the finale, it manifestly is,-not the truth
but the reverse of the truth. He is to die 'in Athens'; but
this is just the very destiny which he should have had, yet will
not. To the author of the finale Delphi is still, as it should


I See Jebb ad lo-.: TO Xp71fbJLov C)peuwv.


2 (j iYP1Vr7 t 13 ' 7Ti Kr 7 1%Xq7, Su/P. i o.




256


E URIPIDES.


be, what it was to Euripides; it was not the business of
Euripides' representatives to retract on his behalf the opinions
to which he had given his life. Everywhere the recognition
of the true 'Antigone' makes light out of darkness. To one
thing only she refers in this finale, which concerns her fictitious
interest, and does not concern the real, and that is the burial
of Polynices. At least we do not see (though with our scanty
knowledge of the facts it would be rash to found much upon
that) how  the muse or poetry of Euripides should have
an unburied brother. For this reason in the foregoing translation that passage is distinguished from the context. The
reader will perceive that it interrupts the connexion; for the
topic in hand, both before and after, is the farewell of Antigone
to her maiden friends. We may suspect that originally it was
not there, but is due to the well-meaning mistake of some one
who thought that these lyrics should contain at least something
relevant to the play. On the other hand the author himself
may possibly have been tempted to try an impracticable combination. If so, this must be cited as his only mistake, and
it is of little importance.
But 'Antigone', or the muse of Euripides, is after all but a
secondary figure. The main interest of the scene lies in
'Oedipus', and in the light which this allegory throws on the
notion of Euripides and his work entertained by those who best
knew and best understood   him. Both the choice of this
comparison and the treatment of it agree exactly, as will, I
think, be admitted, with the view which these essays are written
to recommend. The fault alleged against his enemies, the cause
of the ill-will before which he at last retired, is laid in 'want of
intelligence'. His poetic fame is based, his claim to gratitude
grounded, on his triumphs over 'the Sphinx', whose 'unintelligible riddles' he read, whose reproach he took away from
his country, and whose destroying power he checked. Upon the
principles propounded in this book all this is natural, obvious,
and transparent.
The Sphinx or 'Virgin Maid', who like Antigone and the
other virgins of the scene is a 'muse' or literary type, stands
for the only such power which she could properly represent,
tie spirit of mrysitel  and darkness, regarded not with the




'LAST SCENE OF ALL'.


257


reverent eye of a friend, but by a champion of the opposite
powers, of reason, daylight, and simplicity.
For the Athenians of the fifth century, the spirit of mystery
was represented by art such as that of Aeschylus, art in which
the miraculous stories of orthodox tradition were accepted as
realities, not the less true, but rather the more deeply true,
because inexplicable to reason. Neither Aeschylus of course
nor those who agreed with him would have described this spirit
as that of a sphinx, because this is to mark it as inhuman
and pernicious. But this is precisely the aspect in which to
Euripides, as a rationalist and combatant for rationalism, the
spirit of mystery or, as he would have said, of superstition, did
actually appear. According to him this spirit was a monster of
darkness 'preying' upon the intellect of the nation; according
to him it was 'a reproach' to the intellect of the nation, that
those discreditable ancient falsehoods, in which the power of
that spirit was bound up, should be taken for articles of faith,
and set forth with splendour and pomp of imagination, instead
of being resolutely explained away and reduced to the true
elements of the veritable world, out of which in times of darkness
they had been first compounded. To Euripides a miraculous
legend was even as a riddle of the Sphinx, an insult to human
understanding and an engine of deadly mischief. To 'solve the
riddle', to vanquish the art of superstitious mystery by an art
of reason and common sense, which translated the mysterious
fable into terms of real life, and thus took away from it the
power to befool men any more,-this (he thought and his friends
thought after him) was to fight the battle of intelligence and
illumination, and to relieve at least one city in Hellas from the
disgrace of submitting in passive stupidity to be devoured
for want of an answer.
From the manner in which this allegory is engrafted
upon the revived Phoenissae we should naturally suppose that
it was not then put forward for the first time, but that, amid
the various gossip occasioned by the death of Euripides, a
complimentary comparison to Oedipus, in the character of an
intelligent patriot repaid with exile, had become more or less
notorious. And of this we have some confirmation elsewhere.
It will explain, for one thing, the strange statement of bioV. F.                                         17




258


E URIPIDES.


graphies, that his parents had been resident in Boeotia, and
even that his father was a native Boeotian.1 The silence of
Aristophanes proves that there is no truth in this, and indeed
it is denied by the ancient biographies themselves. It must
have sprung, like many other fables in the same documents,
from misapprehension, and it shows that Euripides was at
some time called a Boeotian in jest. If shortly after his death,
and at the time when rumour was most busy with him, his
friends were in the habit of describing him as an Oedipus, the
occasion for such a jest is apparent. And further this comparison also accounts for a certain strange excursion in the Frogs.
It explains why Aristophanes falls with such a fury of ridicule
upon the innocent and unimportant couplet which stood at the
beginning of Euripides' A2tzigoone: 'There was a man Oedipus
who prosperous at the first became afterwards the most miserable
of mankind'. What there is here to attract attention, or why
these words should be picked out from all the openings of Euripidean plays to receive notice unique in form, extent, and
emphasis, we ask at present in vain. Aristophanes has nothing
real to allege against the verses, and there is nothing real to
allege. The burlesque version of the legend of Oedipus, which
he there puts into the mouths of Aeschylus and Dionysus, does
not really justify censure either of the expression or of the
thought. It might have been directed just as well against the
Oedipus Tyrannus itself. The comedian, as indeed he allows
his Euripides to say, is talking nonsense, and must be aware
of it. And unless there was at the time a motive for degrading
the figure of Oedipus in association with that of Euripides, it
is nonsense without purpose; but it is legitimate and sensible
nonsense, if the couplet had become charged by quotation in
Euripidean circles with a meaning beyond its own, and had
come to imply a compliment to the author which was at the
same time a reflexion upon Aristophanes himself.
The union of Sophocles with Euripides, presented in the
finale of the Phoenissae, would be ennobled and completed,
from a catholic point of view, if we were able to trace in it a
sign of reconciliation possible, at any rate beyond the grave,
1 See Suidas, Euripides, with Dindorf's notes in the preface to the Poefae Scenici.
2 Frogs  180 foll.




'LASST SCENE OF ALL'.


259


between Euripides and Aeschylus himself. But this perhaps
would be to ask too much of allegory, if not of charity. It
is still beyond our common capacity to make peace between
Oedipus and the Sphinx. And yet there was between the
representative men, between Aeschylus and Euripides, a pathetic resemblance, at least in their fortunes, which the author
could not here forget and has not forgotten. 'I, who alone
subdued the power of the murderous Sphinx, now, a citizen
no more, myself am pitiably banished from the land'. It is
plain that the effect here of the word myself is to suggest
a parallel between the speaker and his opponent. But as
between Oedipus and the Sphinx, as figures of legend, where
is the parallel? 'Having conquered the Sphinx I am now
conquered myself' is the paraphrase of Paley, and this is sense.
But the text says 'Having subdued the Sphinx I am now
exiled myself'; which is not sense, unless in some fashion
'the Sphinx' can be thought of as exiled. And 'exiled' the
Sphinx of this passage actually was, in the same sense and
under the same circumstances as the Oedipus of this passage;
that is to say, Aeschylus like Euripides withdrew in his last
years from the city which he adorned and loved, and never
came back. In each case there is every reason to suppose
that the exile was not altogether voluntary; and that, as Aeschylus was tired out at last by the struggle against innovation,
and driven to abandon a people whose aspirations, under the
guidance of the teachers who formed Euripides, were daily
becoming less compatible with the doctrines of the Eumzenides,
so Euripides was tired out at last, and perhaps scared, by
the resistance and threats of an orthodoxy which, a few years
after his flight, exacted a not more cruel expiation from a
yet more illustrious servant of truth.
Such were the aims, the doctrine, and t/e method of
Euripides as conceived by himself and his contemporaries; nor
without this conception is it possible to read him truly or do
justice to his powers. Naturally we are not in the least required
to subscribe to the Euripidean view of the universe, to the
Euripidean estimate of mystery, either as an element in art or an
element in life. It will perhaps have appeared in the course of
these essays, that I should by no means subscribe to it myself;




60o


URIPIDE S.


at any rate this will be known to those who may have done
me the honour to read what I have elsewhere written about
Aeschylus. We are not called upon as critics, or as lovers of
art, to take for our own the creed of any given artist, or to
enlist under any of the banners which continue to war for the
empire of men's minds. I see not why, for the purpose of
enjoying art, we should take a side in the quarrel; and there are
many reasons why we should not. To understand and enjoy
the art of Euripides we need not accept his views; but we must
know, feel, and remember what they were. His stories asstume
that 'the gods' do not exist; and unless we are alive to this,
unless we keep it always before us, the best of Euripides, the
essence of Euripides, must be sealed up from us. I have not
any wish, I should think it an affectation, to disguise the
importance which in my judgment attaches to the propositions
for which I here contend, so far at least as it matters whether
Euripides is understood or not, justly praised or unjustly decried. It concerns only ourselves. 'Doth not Justice requite
us for want of understanding?' Of existing criticism on Euripides a considerable part is mere irrelevance and misapprehension. Learning and even genius are copiously spent in proving
that he did not rightly pursue what was in fact the very opposite
of his aim, that he does not assist his readers to imagine things
which he was determined, if it were possible, to prevent them
from imagining. Of his extant works some of the finest are so
completely perverted by false explanation that practically they
have ceased to command attention except from students of
language.  His rightful place among the creators of noble
pleasure, the champions and benefactors of mankind, is either
logically refused to him by those who see what the current
expositions really imply, or illogically and doubtfully conceded
by those who do not.   All is confusion, vexation, waste of
spirits and time. Euripides was a soldier of rationalism after
the fashion of his time, a resolute consistent enemy of anthropomorphic theology, a hater of embodied mystery, a man who,
after his measure and the measure of his time, stood up to
answer the Sphinx.




ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS.


ALCESTIS.
The legend, pp. 3-5. Analysis of the play, 5-6.  Paley's criticism, 7. Altercation with Pheres and intoxication of Heracles, their
aesthetic effect, 8-9. Defence of Admetus, not maintainable, II-I4.
Defence of Heracles; Balaustion's Adventure; Browning changes the
character, substituting that of the Madness of Heieacles, 15-22, 39.
The true Heracles, professional athlete and soldier, 22-25. Greek
view of drunkenness, 26. The bargain of the Fates, how limited, 26-28.
The 'hospitality' of Admetus to Heracles, properly condemned by
Euripides, 30-42.  The.-un:t y  f - -_ ', ai  min    fio'n, 43.
Funeral custom  in Athens, 44-45. Funerals on the stage, 45-46.
The funeral of Alcestis, 47-54.  True bearing of the scene with
Pheres, 54-60.  Breaks in the action, absence of Chorus, 61-62.
Final scene; disguise of Alcestis, its aesthetic effect, 64. Dialogue of
Heracles and Admetus, 65-66. The final.e.   -6    rrpoo-ELTrErv, 66.
o-vv&crto0, 67. The finale not conceivable as representing reality, 67-73.
Explanation of this; the purpose of Euripides is to expose the legend
as untrue; the hnale Is lronical, 7 _3-7_This form of construction
typical an  regular in Euripides; the Euripidean 'tag', 77, II2, I96.
Contrast of ancient and modern theatre, 78-79. Religion of Euripides,
and his relation to the theatre, 79-84. Disguise practically necessary
to him, 84-88. Its moral danger; censure of Aristophanes, 88. Its
special attraction for the Athenians, a consequence of their national
character, 89-92. Its usefulness to wit; examples from the Alcestis,
92-95. Consequent method of exhibiting the popular gods; generally
detached from the action proper, as in the Alcestis, 95-96. Difficulty
of realizing Euripides' point of view from our habituation to another
manner (the Alexandrian) of treating the Greek legends, 97-99. The
prologue to the Alcestis, Apollo and Death, 99-102.   Effect of
Euripides on readers, and specially under discussion; great importance




262


ABSTRA CT OF CONT/LENS.


of this, shown by Aristophanes, 102-105. General view of the play as
it might be expounded by the 'Euripides' of the Frogs, 105-112.
Interest not centred on Alcestis, but on the resurrection, 113-114.
Disorganization in all the scenes produced by misplacing it, shown in
commentaries, I15. The death-scene, 115-118. The intoxication of
Heracles, 119.  Dramatic advantage, to imitation of nature, of obscurity permissible to a certain degree, 120-122. Manner of Alcestis'
burial; supposed oversight of author, really part of design, 122-128.
ION.
Parallel in construction between Ion and Alcestis, 130-131. Prologue of the Ion compared with the finale; the failure of Apollo's
design, 131-137. The prologue and finale, as in the Alcestis, ironical,
137-139. The action of the Ion; abstract, 140-144. The finale no
dnTouemoent, 144-146. The action of the play really proceeds on the
assumption that there is no Apollo, the oracle being a fraud, 146-149.
The fraud of the cradle and tokens, 148-151. Summary of the story,
disengaged from the miraculous prologue and finale, 152-153. Result
of the attempt to carry out logically the current hypothesis, 155-158.
Ion and Lourdes, 158. The fraud of the cradle resumed, 160-163.
The tragedy of faith, 163. Difficulty of performing Euripides at the
present day, 163-164
IPHI(ENIA      IN  TAURICA.
Finale of the Ip/igenza; proof of the true character of a Euripidean
god from stage-jest put in the mouth of Athena, 168-171. Parallel
case of the Orestes, 171-173. "Apetot ra-/yoL, T71. Ridicule of anthropomorphic religion in reference to the Dioscuri; inference from it to
general intention of the play, 174-175. The story does not assume the
existence of Apollo, 176-183. 'Lacuna' in the oracle, as to the meeting
of Iphigenia and Orestes, I8o. Trial before the Areopagus, contrast
with the Eumleneides, 176. Iphigenia's dream; contrast with the Choephori, 177. The miraculous wind, 182. The motive of the oracle,
182-I83. The Furies; hallucination of Orestes; inference from this
as to his account of the scene at the Areopagus, 183-189. The Furies
in Aeschylus and in Euripides; their costume, etc., 184. The Semnai
Ocal dvZvvwLot: point of this designation in reference to the Eumenides,
185-186. Legendary origin of the Chocs; Euripides explodes it, 187 -



ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS.


263


I88. Artemis, her supposed part in the transference of Iphigenia to
Taurica; rationalistic explanation, after the manner of Palaephatus; the
name T/ioas, 189-192. Summary. True purpose of the play; necessary
to its effect as a tragedy, 192-193. Moral quality of Orestes' enterprise,
and of Iphigenia's plot, 193-195. The pretended finale, its flatness and
futility; allusion to 'the Euripidean tag', 195-197. The stage-gods of
Euripides, not to be regarded as personages in the drama; statement
of Lucian, I97-201. Inconsistency between the finale and the play;
character and condition of Orestes, 201-204. And of Iphigenia, 204.
Character and fate of Pylades, 205. And of the Chorus, 206. Euripides and the Poetics of Aristotle, 206-215. General purpose of
Aristotle in the Poetics; his criticism of the dramatists negative, 206 -207. Aeschylus, 207-208. Sophocles, 208-209. Euripides, 209-211.
'The most tragic of the poets', 210. General opposition between
Aristotle's principles and the tragedy of the fifth century, 211-212.
Illustrated by Aristotle from the Ijzhigenia, 213. Question as to the
limits of Aristotle's theory, 214.
EURIPIDES IN A HYMN.
The variations of orthodoxy useful to the dissenter, 217-218.
The Pythian ode in the Iphigenia; importance of its isolation as an
entr'acte, 218-219, 229. Religious character of the Chorus as connected with Delos, 219. The ode contrasted with the prologue to
the Eumenides, 219-229. Aeschylean history of Pytho, its general
character, 220.  Tradition of contest between rival deities, how
dealt with, 221. Aeschylean Zeus, 222. Bacchus at Delphi, 223. The
ode, 224-225. Satire of Pythian avarice, 226.  Euripidean history
of Pytho, 227-229.
'LAST SCENE OF ALL'.
PHOENISSAE.
General result of the preceding Essays, 231-232. The critical
problem  of the Phoenissae; prima facie appearance of interpolation, 232-235. The personage of Antigone and the banishment of
Oedipus, not appropriate, 236-243. Date of the change; not made
by Euripides, but suggested by the Oedipus at Coonus, 244-247.
Motive and interest of the change; the existing finale allegorical,
247-259. Euripides as 'Oedipus'; allusions elsewhere, 257-259.
The Sphinx and Aeschylus, 259. Conclusion, 260.




(Tamb-ciby:
PRINTED BY J. & C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.