Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/162

 144 EURIPIDES. variance with the moral of the Hippolytus^, In general there is very little reason for connecting the two plays. The Cyclops is placed at the same epoch with the Hippolytus, because it seems to have been acted before the expedition to Syracuse 2; but this is a very slender argument. The plot of the Cyclop>s, of which we have given an analysis in a subsequent chapter, is merely a dramatic version of the adventure with Polyphemus in the ninth book of the Odyssey. The Ion is referred^ to about B.C. 427, because it alludes unmis- takably to the porch at Delphi, which the Athenians decorated as a memorial of Phormio's victories'*, and actually mentions Rhium where the trophy stood^; it probably alludes also to the relations between Athens and their colonists on the coast of Asia Minor ^, which had become very critical in the 88th 01. The plot of the Ion is interesting and ingeniously developed. It turns on the recognition by Creusa of her own son by Apollo in the young priest Ion, whom she had endeavoured to poison by the instrumen- tality of a faithful domestic, under the belief that he was the child of her husband Xuthus, and a bastard intruder on the ancient honours of her family. That the Ion was exhibited in the same Tetralogy with the Ino and I/rechtheus, and the satyrical drama Sciron, is in- ferred from considerations more or less precarious^. The date of the Hecuba is fixed to B. c. 424 by two parodies of its language in the Nuhes of Aristophanes®, which show that it must have appeared before B.C. 423, and by a reference in the play itself^ to the sacred rites of Delos, which the Athenians took into their own hands in B.C. 425. So that the play must have fallen between these two years ^^. And it is conjectured^^ that the other plays of the Tetralogy were the Alcmena or Licymnius, Phistlienes or the Pelo- I See Fragments, vi. and vii. ^ Hartung, i. p. 388. '^ By Bockh, de Gr. Trag. Princ. p. 191. ^ Ion, 184 sqq. ^ V. 1592. ^ V. 15S1: ot rCivhe 6' a3 TratSes yevofxevoi. ^vv XP^^V Treirpiofiivcp KVKXddas iiroiKriaovac vrjaalas iroXeis X^pcyovs re irapaXovs 3 adei^os TTj/mrj x^o^^ dldwaiv. 7 Hartung, l. pp. 451 sqq. » 718, 11 65. » 466 sqq. ^*^ It is also supposed that there is an allusion to the Spartan disaster at Pylos in 649: ariveL dk Kal rts d/x(pl rbv eijpoov Evpdorav AaKaiva TrokvdaKpvTOS iv ddfxois Kopa. II Hartung, i. pp. 542, 546.