Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/120

106 the close of his life, as a sort of recantation of these views, and as an avowal that religious mysteries are not to be subjected to the bold scrutiny of reason (see Müller, Gr. Lit. p. 379, Eumen. § 37; Keble, Prael. Acad. p. 609), it is but a sad picture of a mind which, wearied with scepticism, and having no objective system of truth to satisfy it, acquiesces in what is established as a deadening relief from fruitless speculation. But it was not merely with respect to the nature and attributes of the gods that Euripides placed himself in opposition to the ancient legends, which we find him altering in the most arbitrary manner, both as to events and characters. Thus, in the Orestes, Menelaüs comes before us as a selfish coward, and Helen as a worthless wanton; in the Helena, the notion of Stesichorus is adopted, that the heroine was never carried to Troy at all, and that it was a mere of her for which the Greeks and Trojans fought (comp, Herod. ii. 112—120); Andromache, the widow of Hector and slave of Neoptolemus, seems almost to forget the past in her quarrel with Hermione and the perils of her present situation; and Electra, married by the policy of Aegisthus to a peasant, scolds her husband for inviting guests to dine without regard to the ill-prepared state of the larder. In short, with Euripides tragedy is brought down into the sphere of every-day life, (Arist. Ran. 957); men are represented, according to the remark of Aristotle so often quoted (Poët. 46), not as they ought to be, but as they are; under the names of the ancient heroes, the characters of his own time are set before us; it is not Medea, or Iphigeneia, or Alcestis that is speaking, says Mr. Keble (Prael. Acad. p. 396), but abstractedly a mother, a daughter, or a wife. All this, indeed, gave fuller scope, perhaps, for the exhibition of passion and for those scenes of tenderness and pathos in which Euripides especially excelled; and it will serve also to account in great measure for the preference given to his plays by the practical Socrates, who is said to have never entered the theatre unless when they were acted, as well as for the admiration felt for him by the poets of the new comedy, of whom Menander professedly adopted him for his model, while Philemon declared that, if he could but believe in the consciousness of the soul after death, he would certainly hang himself to enjoy the sight of Euripides. (Schlegel, Dram. Lit. lect. vii.; Aelian, V. H. ii. 13; Quint. Inst. Or. x. 1; Thom. Mag. Vit. Eurip.; Meineke, Fragm. Com. Graec. i. p. 286, iv. p. 48.) Yet, even as a matter of art, such a process can hardly be justified: it seems to partake too much of the fault condemned in Boileau's line:

and it is a graver question whether the moral tendency of tragedy was not impaired by it,—whether, in the absence especially of a fixed external standard of morality, it was not most dangerous to tamper with what might supply the place of it, however ineffectually, through the medium of the imagination,—whether indeed it can ever be safe to lower to the common level of humanity characters hallowed by song and invested by tradition with an ideal grandeur, in cases where they do not tend by the power of inveterate association to colour or countenance evil. And there is another obvious point, which should not be omitted while we are speaking of the moral effect of the writings of Euripides, viz. the enervating tendency of his exhibitions of passion and suffering, beautiful as they are, and well as they merit for him from Aristotle the praise of being "the most tragic of poets." (Poët. 26.) The philosopher, however, qualifies this commendation by the remark, that, while he provides thus admirably for the excitement of pity by his catastrophes, "he does not arrange the rest well" ; and we may mention in conclusion the chief objections which, artistically speaking, have been brought with justice against his tragedies. We need but allude to his constant employment of the "Deus ex machina," the disconnexion of his choral odes from the subject of the play (Arist. Poët. 32; Hor. Ep. ad Pis. 191, &c.), and the extremely awkward and formal character of his prologues. On these points some good remarks will be found in Müller (Greek Lit. pp. 362—364) and in Keble. (Prael. Acad. p. 590, &c.) Another serious defect is the frequent introduction of frigid and of philosophical disquisitions, making Medea talk like a sophist, and Hecuba like a free-thinker, and aiming rather at subtilty than simplicity. The poet, moreover, is too often lost in the rhetorician, and long declamations meet us, equally tiresome with those of Alfieri. They are then but dubious compliments which are paid him in reference to these points by Cicero and by Quintilian, the latter of whom says that he is worthy to be compared with the most eloquent pleaders of the forum (Cic. ad Fam. xvi. 8; Quint. Inst. Or. x. 1); while Cicero so admired him, that he is said to have had in his hand his tragedy of Medea at the time of his murder. (Ptol. Hephaest. v. 5.)

Euripides has been called the poet of the sophists,—a charge by no means true in its full extent, as it appears that, though he may not have escaped altogether the seduction of the sophistical spirit, yet on the whole, the philosophy of Socrates, the great opponent of the sophists, exercised most influence on his mind. (Hartung, Eur. Rest. p. 128, &c.)

On the same principles on which he brought his subjects and characters to the level of common life, he adopted also in his style the every-day mode of speaking, and Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 2. § 5) commends him as having been the first to produce an effect by the skilful employment of words from the ordinary language of men (comp. Long. de Subl. 31), peculiarly fitted, it may be observed, for the expression of the gentler and more tender feelings. (See Shakspeare, Merch. of Venice, act v. sc. 1; comp. Müller, Greek Lit. p. 366.)

According to some accounts, Euripides wrote, in all, 75 plays; according to others, 92. Of these, 18 are extant, if we omit the Rhesus, the genuineness of which has been defended by Vater and Hartung, while Valckenaer, Hermann, and Müller have, on good grounds, pronounced it spurious. To what author, however, or to what period it should be assigned, is a disputed point. (Valcken. Diatr. 9, 10; Hermann, de Rheso tragoedia, Opusc. vol. iii.; Müller, Gr. Lit. p. 380, note.) A list is subjoined of the extant plays of Euripides, with their dates, ascertained or probable. For a fuller account the reader is referred to Müller (Gr. Lit. p. 367, &c.) and to Fabricius (Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 239, &c.), the latter of whom gives a catalogue also of the lost dramas.