Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/389

367 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 387 and later plays of this poet; in the following remarks en some of the separate plays we shall endeavour to make this distinction still clearer and more definite. The first, in point of time, of the extant plays of Euripides is, as it happens, not adapted to serve as a striking example of the style of his tragedies at that time. The same authority* that has made known to us the year in which the Alcestis was brought out (Olymp. S5. 2. b. c. 438), also informs us that this drama was the last of four pieces, conse- quently, that it was added instead of a satyric drama to a trilogy of tragedies. This one notice places us at once on the right footing with regard to it, and sets us free from a number of difficulties which would otherwise interfere with our forming a right judgment of the piece. When we consider all the singularities of this play — its hero, Admetus, allowing his wife to die for him, and reproaching his father with not having made this sacrifice ; the toper Hercules making a most unmusical uproar in the house of mourning as he feasts like a glutton and drinks potations pottle-deep; and especially the farcical concluding scene, in which Admetus, the sorrowing widower, strives long not to be obliged to receive Alcestis, who has been won back from death and is intro- duced to him as a stranger, because he is afraid for his continence — we must admit that this piece deserves the name of a tragi-comedy rather than that of a tragedy proper. We cannot get rid of the comicality of these situations by an excuse derived from the rude naivete of the ancient poetry. The shortness of the drama, in comparison with the other plays of this poet, and the simplicity of the plan, which requires only two actors,t all this convinces us that we must not include this play in the list of the regular tragedies of Euripides. As it is, however, it perfectly fulfils its destination of furnishing a cheerful conclusion to a series of real tragedies, and thus relieving the mind from the stress of tragic feeling which they had occasioned. § 9. The Medea, on the contrary, which was brought out Olymp. 87. 1. b. c. 431, is unquestionably a model of the tragedies of Euripides, a great and impressive picture of human passion. In this piece Euri- pides takes on himself the risk, and it was certainly no slight risk in those days, of representing in all her fearfulness a divorced and slighted wife : he has done this in the character of Medea with such vigour, that all our feelings are enlisted on the side of the incensed wife, and we follow with the most eager sympathy her crafty plan for obtaining, by dissimulation, time and opportunity for the destruction of all that is dear Edition of 1834. f For Alcestis, when she returns to the stage as delivered from the power of death, is represented by a mute. The part of Eumelus is a parachoregemn, as it was called. See above, § '2 note.
 * A didascalia of the Alcestis, e cod. Vaticano, published by Diiidorf in the Oxford