Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/105

Rh antiquity; and the Heracles also contains one remarkable denial of the current myths, the more remarkable because, as Dr. Verrall has pointed out, it seems almost to upset the plot of the play. Heracles' madness is sent upon him by the malignity of Hera; we see her supernatural emissary entering the room where Heracles lies. And the hero himself speaks of his supernatural adventures. Yet he also utters the lines:

Say not there be adulterers in Heaven Nor prisoner gods and gaoler. Long ago My heart has known it false and will not alter. God, if he be God, lacketh naught. All these Are dead unhappy tales of minstrelsy. (Her. 1341; cf. Iph. Taur. 380–392; Bellerophon fr. 292.)

But in another way, too, the Heracles marks an epoch in the poet's life. It seems to have been written in or about the year 423, and it was in 424 that Euripides had reached the age of sixty and was set free from military service. He had had forty years of it, steady work for the most part; fighting against Boeotians, Spartans, Corinthians, against Thracian barbarians, in all probability also against other people further overseas. We have no record of the campaigns in which Euripides served; but we have by chance an inscription