Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/395

373 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 373 § 16. We have assigned the two last pieces to this epoch not from any external grounds, but on the evidence of their contents. Other pieces, the date of which may be definitely assigned, show still more clearly the form which the tragedy of Euripides assumed from after Olymp. 90. b. c. 420. It became more and more his object to repre- sent the wayward and confused impulses of human passion, in which, by sudden and surprising changes, now the. one side, now the other, gains the mastery ; the plans of the wicked fa 1, but even the just surfer adversity and affliction, without our being able to perceive any solid foundation on which those varied destinies of the individual actors are based. This is particularly applicable to the Andromache, in which, at first, the helpless wife of Hector, who is represented in the play as the slave of Neoptolemus, is persecuted to the uttermost by his wife Hermione and her father Menelaus; then, by the opportune intervention of Peleus, Andromache is set free, Menelaus compelled to retire, and Hermione plunged into the most desperate sorrow; upon this Orestes appears, carries off Hermione, who was betrothed to him before, and contrives plans for the destruction of her husband, Neoptolemus ; the news soon arrives that Neoptolemus has been slain at Delphi in conse- quence of the intrigues of Orestes; and Thetis, who comes forward as the deus ex machina, brings consolation and tranquillity, not from the past, but from the future, by promising to the descendants of Andro- mache the sovereignty of the Molossi, and to Peleus immortality among the deities of the sea. If we must seek in this play for a sub- ject which goes all through the piece, it is the mischief which a bad wife may, in many ways, direct and indirect, bring upon a family. Hermione causes mischief in the family of Neoptolemus, as well by the jealous cruelty which she exercises in the house as by faithlessly leaving her husband for a stranger. The political references bear a very pro- minent part in the piece. The bad characters are throughout Pelopon- nesians, and especially Spartans ; and Euripides embraces, with a de- light which cannot be mistaken, this opportunity of giving vent to all the ill-will that he felt towards the cruel and crafty men and the disso- lute women of Sparta. The want of honour and sincerity with which he charges the Spartans* appears to refer particularly to the transac- tions of the year 420, Olymp. 89. 4.f so that the play seems to have been brought out in the course of the 90th Olympiad. § 17. The Troades, or Trojan Women, of which we know with t When Alcibiades, by his intrigues, had got the Spartan ambassadors to say before the people something different from what they had intended and wished to speak — a deceit uhtcfi no one saw through at the tune. — 'lhucyd. v. 45.
 * See V. 445 full., especially the words iyovri; aXXa /Av yu<r<rri, (Pgovovvrts S'aXXa.