Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/119

Rh awaited him, would have much temptation for one situated as Euripides was at Athens. The attacks of Aristophanes and others had probably not been without their effect; there was a strong, violent, and unscrupulous party against him, whose intrigues and influence were apparent in the results of the dramatic contests; if we may believe the testimony of Varro (ap. Gell. xvii. 4), he wrote 75 tragedies and gained the prize only five times; according to Thomas Magister, 15 of his plays out of 92 were successful. After his death, indeed, his high poetical merits seem to have been fully and generally recognized; but so have been those of Wordsworth among ourselves even in his lifetime; and yet to the poems of both, the of Pindar is perhaps especially applicable. Euripides, again, must have been aware that his philosophical tenets were regarded, whether justly or not, with considerable suspicion, and he had already been assailed with a charge of impiety in a court of justice, on the ground of the well-known line in the Hippolytus (607), supposed to be expressive of mental reservation. (Arist. Rhet. iii. 15. § 8.) He did not live long to enjoy the honours and pleasures of the Macedonian court, as his death took place in B. C. 406. Most testimonies agree in stating that he was torn in pieces by the king's dogs, which, according to some, were set upon him through envy by Arrhidaeus and Crateuas, two rival poets. But even with the account of his end scandal has been busy, reporting that he met it at the hands of women while he was going one night to keep a criminal assignation,—and this at the age of 75! The story seems to be a mixture of the two calumnies with respect to the profligacy of his character and his hatred of the female sex. The Athenians sent to ask for his remains, but Archelaüs refused to give them up, and buried them in Macedonia with great honour. The regret of Sophocles for his death is said to have been so great, that at the representation of his next play he made his actors appear uncrowned. (Ael. V. H. xiii. 4; Diod. xiii. 103; Gell. xv. 20; Paus. i. 20; Thom. Mag. Vit. Eur.; Suid. s. v. ; Steph. Byz. s. v. ; Eur. Arch. ed. Wagner, p. 111; see Barnes, Vit. Eur. § 31; Bayle, Dict. Histor. s. v. Euripides, and the authorities there referred to.) The statue of Euripides in the theatre at Athens is mentioned by Pausanias (i. 21). The admiration felt for him by foreigners, even in his lifetime, may be illustrated not only by the patronage of Archelaüs, but also by what Plutarch records (Nic. 29), that many of the Athenian prisoners in Sicily regained their liberty by reciting his verses to their masters, and that the Caunians on one occasion having at first refused to admit into their harbour an Athenian ship pursued by pirates, allowed it to put in when they found that some of the crew could repeat fragments of his poems.

We have already intimated that the accounts which we find in Athenaeus and others of the profligacy of Euripides are mere idle scandal, and scarcely worthy of serious refutation. (Athen. xiii. pp. 557, e., 603, e.; comp. Suid. l. c.; Arist. Ran. 1045; Schol. ad loc,) On the authority of Alexander Aetolus (ap. Gell. xv. 20; comp. Ael. V. H. viii. 13) we learn that he was, like his master Anaxagoras, of a serious temper and averse to mirth ; and though such a character is indeed by no means incompatible with vicious habits, yet it is also one on which men are very apt to avenge themselves by reports and insinuations of the kind we are alluding to. Certainly the calumny in question seems to be contradicted in a great measure by the spirit of the Hippolytus, in which the hero is clearly a great favourite with the author, and from which it has been inferred that his own tendency was even to asceticism. (Keble, Prael. Acad. p. 606, &c.) It may be added, that a speculative character, like that of Euripides, is one over which such lower temptations have usually less power, and which is liable rather to those of a spiritual and intellectual kind. (See Butler's Anal. part ii. c. 6.) Nor does there appear to be any better foundation for that other charge which has been brought against him, of hatred to the female sex. The alleged infidelity of his wife, which is commonly adduced to account for it, has been discussed above; and we may perhaps safely pass over the other statement, found in Gellius (xv. 20), where it is attributed to his having had two wives at once,—a double dose of matrimony! The charge no doubt originated in the austerity of his temper and demeanour above mentioned (Suid. s. v.); but certainly he who drew such characters as Antigone, Iphigeneia, and, above all, Alcestis, was not blind to the gentleness, the strong affection, the self-abandoning devotedness of women. And if his plays contain specimens of the sex far different from these, we must not forget, what has indeed almost passed into a proverb, that women are both better and worse than men, and that one especial characteristic of Euripides was to represent human nature as it is. (Arist. Poët. 46.)

With respect to the world and the Deity, he seems to have adopted the doctrines of his master, not unmixed apparently with pantheistic views. [.] (Valck. Diatr. 4—6; Hartung, Eur. Rest. p. 95, &c.) To class him with atheists, and to speak in the same breath, as Sir T. Browne does (Rel. Med. § 47), of "the impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian," is undoubtedly unjust. At the same time, it must be confessed that we look in vain in his plays for the high faith of Aeschylus, which ever recognizes the hand of Providence guiding the troubled course of events and over-ruling them for good; nor can we fail to admit that the pupil of Anaxagoras could not sympathise with the popular religious system around him, nor throw himself cordially into it. Aeschylus indeed rose above while he adopted it, and formally retaining its legends, imparted to them a higher and deeper moral significance. Such, however, was not the case with Euripides; and there is much truth in what Müller says (Greek Literature, p. 358), that "with respect to the mythical traditions which the tragic muse had selected as her subjects, he stood on an entirely different footing from Aeschylus and from Sophocles. He could not bring his philosophical convictions with regard to the nature of God and His relation to mankind into harmony with the contents of these legends, nor could he pass over in silence their incongruities. Hence it is that he is driven to the strange necessity of carrying on a sort of polemical discussion with the very materials and subjects of which he had to treat." (Herc. Fur. 1316, 1317, Androm. 1138, Orest. 406, Ion, 445, &c., Fragm. Beller. ed. Wagner, p. 147; Clem. Alex. Protrept. 7.) And if we may regard the Bacchae, written