Page:Euripides (Mahaffy).djvu/53

IV.] is also prominent, are to be explained by regarding them as occasional pieces composed for a political object, in which the plot is intended to be subordinate to political discussions and to encomiums upon Athens or attacks upon her foes. To those who rightly protest that this is no proper object of tragedy, we may reply by again calling attention to the great rapidity of production, and to the fact that, when plays were produced in groups of four, it may have been unavoidable to make some of them mere plays of occasion. It is of course easy to cite their absence from the works of Sophocles, from which only seven plays have reached us. Probably if a score had survived, we should find among them patriotic pieces with no more plot or character-painting than we find in Euripides' dramas of situation.

We will now consider examples of the three classes, which are of course not absolutely severed, no plot being possible without characters, and neither without tragic situations. But according as these elements predominate we are justified in making a division, which will be far more instructive than a mere chronological enumeration, even if such were possible.

36. It is very remarkable that any classification by sameness of subject or sameness of treatment is found impracticable, owing to the marvellous variety with which the poet handles the same characters and like situations. In one or two isolated cases we find him imitating a former plot, but seldom with any direct borrowing of ideas or situations or language. This applies to the vital parts of the play, whereas the introductions and conclusions, on which he spent little trouble, Were generally formed on a fixed and seldom varied plan. I classify under the head of tragedies of plot seven of the extant plays the Ion, both Iphigenias, the Helena, the Alcestis, the Orestes, and the Electra. Of these the Ion may be considered first, as the most perfect specimen of its kind.

37. The Ion.—We must discard the prologue as spurious, but not altogether because it details the whole