Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/390

368 368 HISTORY OP THE to the faithless Jason ; and, though we cannot regard this denouement without horror, we even consider the murder of her children as a deed necessary under the circumstances. The exasperation of Medea against her husband and those who have deprived her of his love certainly contains nothing grand : but the irresistible strength of this feelin"-, and the resolution with which she casts aside all and every of her own interests, and even rages against her own heart, produces a really great and tragic effect. The scene, which paints the struggle in Medea's breast between her plans of revenge and her love for her children, will always be one of the most touching and impressive ever represented on the stage. The judgment of Aristotle, that Euripides, although he does not manage everything for the best, is neverthe- less the most tragical of the poets,* is particularly true of this piece. Euripides is said to have based his Medea on a play by Neophron, an older or contemporary tragedian, in which Medea was also represented as murdering her own children. t Others, on the contrary, maintain that Euripides was the first who represented Medea as the murderess of her children, whereas the Corinthian tradition attributed their death to the Corinthians, — but certainly he did not make this change in the story because the Corinthians had bribed him to take the imputation of guilt from them, but because it was only in this way that the plot would receive its full tragical significance. § 10. The Hippolytus Crowned,% brought out Olymp. 87. 4. b. c. 4:28, is related to the Medea in several points, but is far behind it in unity of plan and harmony of action. The unconquerable love of Phaedra for her step-son, which, when scorned, is turned into a desire to make him share her own ruin, is a passion of much the same kind as that of Medea. These women, loving and terrible in their love, were new ap- pearances on the Attic stage, and scandalized many a champion of the old morality ; at any rate, Aristophanes often affects to believe that the morals of the Athenian women were corrupted by such representations on the stage. The passion of Phaedra, however, is not so completely the main subject of the whole pluy as Medea's is : the chief character from first to last is the young Hippolytus, the model of continence, the companion and friend of the chaste Artemis, whom Euripides, in con- sequence of his tendency to attribute to the past the customs of his own age, has made an adherent of the ascetic doctrines of the Orphic school ;§ the destruction of this young man through the anger of Aphrodite, whom he has despised, is the general subject of the play, the proper t According to the fragments of Neophron in the Scholia. J As distinguished from an older play, the Veiled Hippolytus, which appeared in an altered and improved form in the Hippolytus Crowned. § Comp. Chap. XVI. § 3.
 * Poet. c. 13.