Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/160

 142 EUEIPIDES. serious objections to its genuineness^; but Euripides certainly wrote a play called the Rhesus, which Attius imitated in his Nyctegersis'^^ and it is expressly stated that tliis was one of his earliest efforts^. That the present play was this juvenile production has been warmly maintained by two of the admirers of Euripides^, and it has been referred to the year B. c. 466 ^. The undoubtedly genuine Drama, which bears the name of Alcestis, was acted as the after-piece to the Trilogy of the Cressce, the Alcmceon in Psophide and the Telephus^ in B.C. 438^. Though the main incident, the voluntary death of Alcestis as a vicarious substitute for her husband Admetus, is eminently pathetic and tragical, the character of Hercules is conceived in the spirit of comedy, and the rescue of Alcestis from the grave nullifies all the emotions excited by the first part of the play. The Heracleidce is referred to the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war B. c. 434, and is supposed to allude in many pas- sages to the divine assistance on which the Athenians could rely, and to the probable discomfiture of any presumptuous invaders^. It is conjecturally placed in the same Tetralogy with the Peleus and u3l^geusj and the satyrical drama Eurystheus^, The subject of the play is the generous protection which the Athenians accorded to the Heracleidge, and the incident of the sacrifice of Macaria is introduced to give some special pathos to a piece which is otherwise somewhat tame and common-place. It is known that the Medea was acted in the archonship of Pythodorus B.C. 431, and that it was the first play of a Tetralogy which included the Philoctetes, Dictys, and the satyrical drama of "the Reapers" {^epLaraiy. The Medea is the most faultless of the dramas of Euripides, and has really many excellences. Its object is to depict the jealousy of a divorced and outraged wife, and the dreadful vengeance which she exacts on the rival who has 1 Valckenaer, Diatribe, 9, lo; Hermann, Opusc. III. pp. 262 sqq. 2 Hartung, i. p. 15. '^ Crates, aj^. Schol. Rhes. 575: Kpar?;s ayvoelv (prjal rbv 'Eiupiwidrju ttjv irepl to. fxeriupa dewpiav Sid rb viov ^tl elvat, 6Ve rbv ' Ftjo-qv e5iSao"/ce. ^ Hartung, I. p. 8. ^ See the didascalia in Cod. Vatic, quoted above, p. 75, note 3. ' Hartung, I. pp. 288 sqq. Miiller, Hist. Gi Lit. I. p. 488 (new ed.), refers it to the time of the battle of Deli um, B.C. 421. s Hartung, p. 289. ^ Argnm. Med,
 * Vater, Vindicue Ehesi, and Hartung.