Page:Euripides the Rationalist.djvu/27

Rh himself invented the scene in question. Neither this, nor the intoxication of Heracles, is "inherent in the subject". Both incidents must have been chosen, if not engrafted, by the poet, and he is directly responsible for the effect. At any rate all these are defences for the author, not for the personae, and therefore are not now in view.

Coming then directly to the point, and taking first the case of Admetus—is it the fact that the son of Pheres and husband of Alcestis, as presented by Euripides, appears as a selfish, unattractive, and rather contemptible person; and may we assume—for this of course is material—that such would be the view of the Athenians in the time of the author? The first part of the question, about which there has been little dispute, has perhaps been set at rest by Browning in Balaustion's Adventure. Browning, for reasons which will present themselves later, was or conceived himself more free than most readers have felt to express, without abating his respect for the play or the author, the sentiments excited in modern minds by the behaviour of Admetus, not only in the encounter with Pheres but also at the death-bed of Alcestis. To us at least it appears 'childish' (the word is Browning's) in a man, who has deliberately accepted the sacrifice of another life for his own, to spend the moments of parting in beseeching his substitute 'not to abandon him' and 'asking for impossibilities'. And it is worth notice, as bearing on the probable opinion of the Greeks, that this shrewd comment, 'asking for impossibilities', is furnished by Euripides himself. To us it appears that one who in such a position blusters about the inconceivable things that he 'would have done, had they been possible', to rescue his substitute from death, must be stupefied by 'passionate egoism' (the phrase is George Eliot's), if he cannot perceive that he is making the worst of his delicate case, like the coward who pretends to dignify retreat by muttering about 'another time'. And as between him and his father we hold that, whatever might be said in decent privacy for the view that the elder man 'has had his time' and ought, for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, to have accepted death in the place of his son, the son must be wanting in sense, stupefied as before by