Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/167

 EURIPIDES. 149 were the Antiope and the Hypsipyle^, In the Phoenissce we have the same subject as that of the Seven against Thebes exhibited in the Euripidean style. At the same time, there are unmistakable indications of the writer's acquaintance with the (Edipus Coloneus. The introduction of Polyneices, the expulsion of QEdipus, and An- tigone's resolve to accompany her father, were perhaps suggested by Sophocles ; the determination to bury Polyneices comes from ^'Eschylus. But Euripides has involved himself in a contradiction by making the expulsion of Qildipus subsequent to the mutual fratricide, so that one hardly sees how Antigone can perform the double part, which Sophocles has arranged for her without any such inconsistency. There are some fine scenes in the play. The altercation between the two brothers is spirited. The view of the besieging host from the roof of the palace is well conceived. And the death of Menoeceus would be affecting, if it were not a mere repetition of the self-sacrifice of Macaria in the Heradeidce. There is hardly any real Tragedy in the Orestes. The crazy matricide, about to be freed by the Argives and deserted by Menelaus on whom he had placed his reliance, seeks to avenge himself on Helen ; and when she vanishes to heaven, he takes her daughter Hermione as a substitute, and is about to slay her, when the Dioscuri appear and command him to marry the damsel. The cowardice of the Phrygian slave is positively ludicrous, and was perhaps intended to excite the mirth of the audience. After the death of Euripides in B.C. 406, the plays, which he wrote for representation in Macedonia — the Iphigenia at Aulis, the Alcmceon at Corinth, the Bacchce, and the Archelaus — were pro- duced as new Tragedies at Athens by the younger Emipides, who Avas probably the nephew of the great Tragedian-. It is not im- probable that they had been already performed at Pella, for the Bacchce is full of allusions to Macedonian scenery^, and the Ip?ii- genia may have been suggested to him during his stay in Magnesia on his route to the north ^. These two plays, which have come ^ Scbol. Arist. Ran. 53 : Sto, ri jxt] aWo ti tQu 5t' 6X1701; didaxd^vruv Kal koXuv, 'Tl/nrvT]s, ^oivt-crauiv, ' A^rtoTTT/s ; iTreidrj ov avKocpavTrjTa t]v to. roLavra. 2 Schol. Arist. Han. 67, where the younger Euripides is called the son of his name- sake. The 'AK/xaiuv 8ia Kopivdov is so called to distinguish it from the 'AK/J.aiuv dta ^(jjcpidos acted together with the Alcestis, ^ Cf. vv. 400 where read UeWav. 565 sqq. ^ Vit. cod. Medial, coll. Ainbi'a<i. Hartung, II. p. 510.