Page:Euripides the Rationalist.djvu/116

100 do not exist' ; and of this the best example extant is the prologue to the Alcestis. His Death and Apollo, considered as super-human creatures, as deities, are self-refuting. The question whether Alcestis shall die, or whether Death shall take instead of her one of the old people, is discussed between them exactly as two well-bred landlords, neighbours in the country and living on bad terms, might discuss a question of encroachment or ancient lights. Both are men of cultivated intelligence, quick of apprehension and tenacious of their point. Both in short are pure Athenians, and neither of them has about him a scrap of such divinity as could seem divine to other men as well educated as themselves. What was the tone, the bearing, the style which could pass for Olympian in the city of Pericles, we may see in the Athena of Aeschylus, or in the Athena of Sophocles, or even (for Euripides himself could echo this tone when it suited his purpose) in the Artemis who takes part in the closing scene of his Hippolytus, or in the Dionysus of his Bacchae. In the Apollo of the Aeschylean Eumenides, and in the Furies themselves, there is majesty and terror; nor even when they dispute do they cease to be terrible and majestic. But look at this :

 Apollo. Go take her! For I doubt persuading thee…

Death. To kill the doomed one? What my function else?

Apollo. No, rather to despatch the true mature.

Death. Truly I take thy meaning, see thy drift.

Apollo. Is there a way then she may reach old age?

Death. No way! I glad me in my honours too!

Apollo. But young or old, thou tak'st one life, no more.

Death. Younger they die, greater my praise redounds!

Apollo. If she die old—the sumptuous funeral!

Death. Thou layest down a law the rich would like.

A very legitimate translation, though wanting a little, as it needs must want, of the facility which is the signet of Euripides. But who is awed? Who feels any thrill of fear, any movement of respect? Who can fancy that he is listening to the King of Terrors, or that there is any affinity between this punctilious usurer and the demon described by Balaustion?

Like some dread heapy blackness, ruffled wing,

Convulsed and cowering head that is all eye,