Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/703

Rh (577 remarkable among Greek tragedies for its near approach to j the character of melodrama. It must be observed that there is no ground for the inference sometimes made an accusation against the poet that the choral passage, v. 794 f., was intended to encourage the Sicilian expedition, sent forth in the same year (415 B.C.). The mention of the &quot; land of yEtna over against Carthage &quot; (v. 220) speaks of it as &quot; renowned for the trophies of prowess,&quot; a topic, surely, not of encouragement but of warning. (12.) The Helena produced, as we learn from the Aristophanic scholia, in 412 B.C., the year of the lost Andromeda, is not one of its author s happier efforts. It is founded on a strange variation of the Trojan myth, first adopted by Stesichorus in his Palinode that only a wraith of Helen passed to Troy, while the real Helen was detained in Egypt. In this play, she is rescued from the Egyptian king, Theoclymenus, by a ruse of her husband Menelaus, who brings her safely back to Greece. The romantic element thus engrafted on the Greek myth is more than fantastic : it is well-nigh grotesque. We are, in fact, dangerously close to the verge of parody. The comic; poets notably Aristophanes in the ThesmopJioriazusce felt this ; nor can we blame them if they ridiculed a piece in which the mode of treatment was so discordant with the spirit of Greek tradition, and so irreconcilable with all that con stituted the higher meaning of Greek Tragedy. (13.) Phamiss&amp;gt;;e was brought out, with the CEnomaus and the Chrysippus, in 411 B.C., the year in which the recall of Alcibiades was decreed by the army at Samos, and, after the fall of the Four Hundred, ratified by the Assembly at Athens (Thuc. viii. 81, 97). The dialogue between locaste and Polyneices on the griefs of banishment (TITO o-Tepea-Oui TrarpiSos, v. 388 f.) has a certain emphasis which certainly looks like an allusion to the pardon of the famous exile. The subject of the play is the same as that of the ^Eschylean Seven against Thebes the war of succession in which Argos supported Polyneices against his brother Efceocles. The Phoenician maidens who form the chorus are imagined to have been on their way from Tyre to Delphi, where they vere destined for service in the temple, when they were detained at Thebes by the outbreak of the war a device which affords a contrast to the /Kschyle;m chorus of Theban elders, and which has also a certain iitness in view of the legends connecting Thebes with Phoenicia. But Euripides h is hardly been successful in the rivalry which he has even pointed by direct allusions with /Eschylus. The Pkoenissce is full of brilliant passages, but it is rather a series of effective scenes than an impressive drama. (14.) Plutarch (Lys. 15) says that, when Athens had surrendered to Lysander (404 B.C.) and when the fate of the city was doubtful, a Phocian officer happened to sing at a banquet of the leaders the first song of the chorus in the Electra of Euripides- Ayauf/jLVovus Si Kupa, tfvdoi&amp;gt;, HAf tfTpa, irorl ffav ayporfpav ai A.ap, airl that &quot; when they heard it, all were touched, so that it seemed a cruel deed to destroy for ever the city so famous once, the mother of such men.&quot; The character of the Eitctra, in metre and in diction, seems to show that it be longs to the poet s latest years. If Mu ller were right in referring to the Sicilian expedition the closing passage in which the Dioscuri declare that they haste &quot; to the Sicilian sea, to save ships upon the deep&quot; (v. 1347), then the play could not be later than 413 B.C. But it may with more probability be placed shortly before the Orestes, which in some respects it much resembles : perhaps in or about the i year 410 B.C. No play of Euripides has been more severely j criticised. The reason is evident. The Choephari of ^Eschylus and the Electra of Sophocles appear to invite a direct comparison with this drama. But, as the present i writer has ventured to suggest elsewhere, 1 such criticism as that of Schlegel should remember that works of art are proper subjects of direct comparison only when the theories of art which they represent have a common basis. It is Hirely unmeaning to contrast the elaborate homeliness of the Euripidean Electra with the severe grandeur of its rivals. yEschylus and Sophocles, as different exponents of an artistic conception which is fundamentally the same, may be profitably compared; Euripides interprets another con ception, and must be tried by other principles. His Elecira is, in truth, a daring experiment daring, because the theme is one which the elder school had made peculiarly its own. We are unable to share Hartung s enthusiasm for the success of the experiment. But we protest against the injustice of trying it by a standard foreign to the poet s aim. (15.) The Orestes, acted in 408, bears the mark of the Orestes. age in the prominence which Euripides gives to the assembly of Argos, which has to decide the fate of Orestes and Electra, and to rhetorical pleading. The plot proceeds with sufficient clearness to the point at which Orestes and Electra have been condemned to death. But the later portion of the play, containing the intrigues for their rescue and the final achievement of their deliverance, is both too involved and too inconsequent for a really tragic effect. Just as in the Electra, the heroic persons of the drama are reduced to the level of commonplace. There is not a little which borders on the ludicrous, and it can be seen how easy would have been the passage from such tragedy as this to the restrained parodyin which the Middle Comedydelighted. It is, however, inconceivable that, as some have supposed, the Orestes can have been a deliberate compromise between tragedy and farce. It cannot have been meant to be played, as a fourth piece, instead of a regular satyric drama, llather it indicates the level to which the heroic tragedy itself had descended under the treatment of a school which was at least logical. The celebrity of the play in the ancient world, and, as Mr Paley observes, there are more ancient quotations from the Orestes than from all the extant plays of ^Eschylus and Sophocles together is perhaps partly explained by the unusually frequent combination in this piece of striking sentiment with effective situation. (16.) The Iphigenia at Aidis, like the Baccha. 1, as brought out only after the death of Euripides. It is a very brilliant and beautiful play, probably left by the author in an unfinished state, and has suffered from interpolation more largely, perhaps, than any other of his works. As regard its subject, it forms a prelude to the Iphitjcnia in Tauris. Iphigenia has been doomed by her father Agamemnon to die at Aulis, as Calchas declares that Artemis claims such a sacrifice before the adverse winds can fall. The genuine play, as we have it, breaks off at v. 1508, when Iphigenia has been led to the sacrificial altar. A spurious epilogue, of wretched workmanship (v. 1509- 1G28), relates, in the speech of a messenger, how Artemis saved the maiden. We may, however, congratulate our selves on possessing, even in its present form, so large a part of this fine work, probably the latest upon which Euripides was engaged. (17.) The JJacckce, unlike the preceding play, appears to have been finished by its author, although it is said not to have been acted, on the Athenian stage at least, till after his death. It was composed, or completed, during the residence of Euripides with Archelaus, and in all pro bability was originally designed for representation in Macedonia, a region with whose traditions of orgiastic 1 Introduction to the Electro, of Sophocles, p. xiii., in Catena, ( Iti.isicorinn, 2nd P it. lphigenia at