Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/168

 150 EURIPIDES. down to us, not without considerable mutilations, may be reckoned among the happiest dramatic efforts of Euripides. In the Ipliigenia, Euripides excites our interest and touches our feelings by a very lively picture of the circumstances attending the sacrifice of the princess. Agamemnon's vain attempts to save his daughter, the knightly courage of Achilles, who is willing to fight the whole army on her behalf, the indignation of Clyta^mnestra, and the self- devotion of Iphigenia, who, after pleading in the prettiest and most pathetic speech for her life, at last solves all the difficulties by offer- ing herself as a voluntary sacrifice, form a dramatic development, which is found in few of the poet's earlier plays, and which has made this Tragedy a model both for Ennius, and for Eacine and Schiller. The text unfortunately is not only mutilated but deformed by taste- less interpolations. The prologue, as it stands, is in a great state of confusion. It begins with a dialogue in anapaests (vv. 1 — 48), then follows a monologue of the usual Euripidean style (vv. 49 — 114), after which the dialogue in anapgests is resumed until the entrance of the chorus (v. 164) ^ On the other hand, it appears, from a quotation by ^lian^, that we have lost the epilogue, in which Artemis appeared and promised to make the sacrifice of Iphigenia illusory, and it has long been held that the concluding scene, as we have it, is an interpolations. There are besides many corruptions in detail"^. With the exception of some lacunae in the last scene, the Bacchce is in a much better state of preservation than the sister Tragedy. It details the miserable end of Pentheus, who stands alone in obstinate resistance to the worship of Bacchus, when all ^ Hartung, in his edition of this play, Erlang. 1837, begins the first scene with Agamemnon's speech (v. 47), omitting the five concluding lines. ^ De Animal. VII. 29 : 6 S^ 'Evpiiribrf^ ev ry 'Ifpiyeveiq,' iXa^ov 5' 'Axatwi' x^P'^^'-^ ipOrjcro} (piXais [1. d6pq,'] Kepovaaav, tjv acpd^ovTes avxrjcrovcrL arjv cr(pd^€i.v duydrepa. From the use of the futures hdrjao) and avxv<^ovcn it has been supposed by some critics that these words must have been part of the prologue ; but (rrju must refer to ClytiBmnestra, who could not have been so addressed till the conclusion of the play. ^ Porson, Prcef. Hec. p. xxi, [18], speaking of the two readings of Iph. Aid. 1579, says : " si me rogas, utra harum vera sit lectio, respondeo, neutra. Nee quicquam mea refert; quippe qui persuasus sim, totam earn scenam abusque versu 1541 spuriam esse, at a recentiore quodam, nescio quando, certe post yEliani tempora, suppositam." ^ See Bbckh, Gr. Tr. Princ. c. xvii. ; the editions of Hermann, Lips. 1831 ; Har- tung, Erlang. 1837; Monk, Cantabr. 1840; also W. Dindorf, Zeitsch. f. d. Alter- thumswiss. Nov. 1839; Seyffert, de dupl. rec. Iph. A., Hal. 1831 ; Bartsch, de Eur. Iph. A. Vrat. 1837; Zirndorfer, Diss, de Iph. A. Marburg, 1838.