Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/17

Rh context: the concluding portion, generally the Epode, furnishes the connecting link, or specific application.

Euripides does not stand alone in this widening of the application of the choral ode: both Aeschylus and Sophocles furnish similar instances, e.g., the opening chants in the Agamemnon and the Antigonê.

III.—Plays in which some of the choral odes are relevant to features of the legend of which the action of the drama is an episode. Here the dramatic relevance consists in the fact that the present situation is the outcome of the past event, either by the doom of the Gods or through natural causes.

Under this head fall:

1. The Phoenician Maidens, in which occur one such chant (638–675), and half of another (1019–1043).

2. Iphigeneia at Aulis, which contains one (1036–1079).

3. The Andromachê, which contains two (274–308 and 1009–1046).

4. The Electra, which contains two (432–486, 699–745).

5. The Daughters of Troy, which contains half an ode of this class (795–819).

In these, as in those of II, the connection with the dramatic context is indicated somewhere in the ode.

Sophocles' Trachiniæ (498–532) furnishes a similar example.

IV.—Plays which contain choral odes of which the relevance is not at first sight obvious.

Under this head fall:

1. The Helen, which contains one such chorus (1301–1368).

Here the relevance is twofold, (a) To a great parallel: then a Goddess, the daughter of a Goddess, was lost, and the search of those who loved her was long baffled: now a woman, the daughter of a God, has been long lost, and the search of him who loved her has been long baffled, (b) To