Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/75

Rh The Rhesus has come down to us in a very peculiar condition and is often considered spurious. We know, however, that Euripides wrote a Rhesus, and tradition says that he was "very young" when he wrote it. My own view—explained in the preface to my translation—would make it probably a very early pro-satyric play which was produced after the poet's death and considerably rewritten. It is a young man's play, full of war and adventure, of spies in wolf-skins and white chargers and gallant chivalry. That is not much like the Euripides whom we know elsewhere; but his mark is upon the last scene, in which the soldiers stand embarrassed and silent while a solitary mother weeps over her dead son. The poetry of the scene is exquisite; but what is most characteristic is the sudden flavour of bitterness, the cold wind that so suddenly takes the heart out of joyous war. Some touch of that bitter flavour will be found hereafter in every play, however beautiful or romantic, that comes from the pen of Euripides.

Up to the year 438, when the poet was forty-six, the records, as we have said, almost fail us. But in that year he produced a set of four plays, The Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in