Euripides (Donne)/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
ION.—HIPPOLYTUS.
"'Sweet is the holiness of youth'—so felt
Time-honoured Chaucer, when he framed that lay
By which the Prioress beguiled the way,
And many a Pilgrim's rugged heart did melt."
—Wordsworth.
So long as the Athenians were a second-rate power in Greece they were content with a military adventurer for the founder of the Ionian race. In a war between Athens and Eubœa, one Xuthus had done them good service; his recompense for it was the hand of the Erectheid princess Creusa, and the issue of the marriage was Ion, from whom the Athenians claimed, remotely, to descend. But when, after the decline of Argos, they had risen to a level with Corinth and Sparta, they aspired to the honour of a divine ancestry on the spear-side, as well as that of a royal one on the spindle. A wandering soldier no longer sufficed; the son of Creusa must not be born in mortal wedlock, but derive his origin from a god. And what deity—in this matter the virgin Pallas Athene was out of the question—was so fitted by his various gifts to be the forefather of so accomplished a people as the patron of music, poetry, medicine, and prophecy? To set before his fellow-citizens, as well as the strangers and allies who sat in the Dionysiac theatre, the pedigree of the Ionians, and consequently of the Athenians also, Euripides probably composed his "Ion."
Creusa is the daughter of Erectheus, an old autochthonic king of Athens. She has borne a son to Apollo, but through fear of her parents was compelled to leave him, immediately after his birth, in a cave under the Acropolis. The divine father, however, does not abandon the infant, but employs Mercury to transport him to Delphi, and to deposit him on the steps of the temple, where he knows the babe will be cared for. One of the vestals—apparently even then middle-aged, since she is old in the play—finds Ion, and fulfils his sire's expectations. She has, indeed, her own thoughts on the matter, but keeps them to herself until a convenient season comes for disclosing them. In the Delphian temple the foundling receives an education resembling that of the infant Samuel. He thus describes his functions:—
"My task, which from my early infancy
Hath been my charge, is with these laurel boughs
And sacred wreaths to cleanse the vestibule
Of Phœbus, on the pavements moistening dews
To rain, and with my bow to chase the birds
Which would defile the hallowed ornaments.
A mother's fondness and a father's care
I never knew; the temple of the god
Claims then my service, for it nurtured me."
He receives the strangers who come to consult the oracle or to see the wonders of the shrine, and shows himself, by turns, an expert ritualist or a polite cicerone. Centuries later, Ion would have had his place among the youthful ascetics who, by the beauty of their lives, and sometimes of their persons also, adorned the church and edified or rebuked the world. But this early Basil or Gregory of Delphi had other work destined for him than serving at the altar or waiting on pilgrims. He will have to go out of "religion" into the haunts of men: the privilege of celibacy is denied him; his ephod he must exchange for a breastplate, his laurel wreath for a plumed helmet. The name of Ion is due to an illustrious race.
Of all extant Greek dramas, this beautiful one, though easy for readers to understand, is the most complex in its action, and possibly may have kept the original spectators of it, in spite of the information given by Mercury in the prologue, in suspense up to its very last scene. In fact, the principal characters are all at cross-purposes. Creusa has come to Delphi on the pretext that a friend of hers is anxious to learn what has become of a son whom she has borne to Apollo—her own, story transferred to another. Her husband Xuthus is there to ask advice from the neighbouring oracle of Trophonius by what means Creusa and himself may cease to be childless. While he goes on his errand, his wife encounters Ion in the fore-court of the temple, and their conversation begins with the following words:—
"Ion. Lady, whoe'er thou art, that liberal air
Speaks an exalted mind: there is a grace,
A dignity in those of noble birth,
That marks their high rank. Yet I marvel much
That from thy closèd lids the trickling tear
"Watered thy beauteous cheeks, soon as thine eye
Beheld this chaste oracular seat of Phœbus.
What brings this sorrow, lady? All besides,
Viewing the temple of the god, are struck
With joy; thy melting eye o'erflows with tears.
Creusa. Not without reason, stranger, art thou seized
With wonder at my tears; this sacred dome
Wakens the sad remembrance of things past."
In a long dialogue she communicates to her unknown son part of her own story, and by casting some reflections on the god for his conduct to her supposed friend, incurs a rebuke from the fair young acolyte. The Chorus remarks that mankind are very unlucky—they rarely get what they wish for:—
"One single blessing
By any one through life is scarcely found."
And Creusa, not at all abashed by Ion's remonstrance, proceeds to complain of Apollo's conduct towards herself and their son.
Xuthus now returns from the Trophonian crypt with good news for his wife and himself. Trophonius, indeed, being a very subordinate deity, "held it unmeet to forestall the answer of a superior one;" "but," says Xuthus,—
"One thing he told me,
That childless I should not return, nor thou,
Home from the oracle."
and then goes into the adytum to learn his fortune.
Ion again expresses his surprise at the strange lady's shrewish, and indeed as he thinks it, rather impious, language; but says, "What is the daughter of Erectheus to me? let me to my task." He admits, however (infected apparently by Creusa's boldness), that his patron has acted unhandsomely to some virgin or other:
"Becoming thus
By stealth a father, leaving then his children
To die, regardless of them."
Xuthus reappears, with this command from the Pythoness: "The first male stranger whom you meet, address as your son." Of course the stranger is Ion; but being greeted with the words, "Health to my son!" by one whom he has never before set eyes on, he is far more offended than pleased by this unlooked-for salutation; and, not at all unreasonably, all things considered, he recoils, when Xuthus proceeds to embrace him, and asks—
"Art thou, stranger,
Well in thy wits; or hath the god's displeasure
Bereft thee of thy reason?"
He, a minister of the temple, objects to being thus claimed as so near of kin by a man whose business there he has yet to learn: he says, "Hands off, friend—they'll mar the garlands of the god;" and adds, "If you keep not your distance, you shall have my arrow in your heart:"—
"I am not fond of curing wayward strangers
And mad men."
"If you kill me," replies Xuthus, "you will kill your father." "You my father!" cries Ion; "how so? It makes me laugh to hear you." A strict examination of the father by the son ensues; and at last, neither of the disputants being very critical, and both very devout, the sudden relationship is accepted with full faith by both, and they tenderly embrace each other. Xuthus then imparts to Ion his purpose of taking him to Athens, but of concealing their position for a while. His wife, he argues, may not be greatly pleased at being so suddenly provided with a ready-made son and heir. She comes of a royal house, and so is particular on the score of "blue blood." The youngster, if adopted, will inherit her property. The discovery of him may be all very well for her husband, who, having once been a wanderer, may, for all she knows, have a son in many towns, Greek or barbaric. But how will this treasure-trove remove from herself the reproach of barrenness? There is, too, such a thing as pre-nuptial as well as post-nuptial jealousy; and though so comely, gracious, and religious a youth cannot fail, after a time, to ingratiate himself even with a stepmother, there may be much domestic controversy before so desirable a consummation is possible. Xuthus then informs Ion that he intends to celebrate this joyful event by a sacrifice to Apollo, and by a general feast to the Delphians:—
"At my table
Will I receive thee as a welcome guest,
And cheer thee with the banquet, then conduct thee
To Athens with me as a visitant."
On leaving the stage he tells the Chorus, who, of course, have heard the real story, to keep what they know to themselves. If they let his wife into the secret they shall surely die; and, inasmuch as they are Athenian women, Xuthus has the right to threaten, as well as the means to keep his promise. For one who has seen so much of the world, it argues much simplicity in Xuthus to have imagined that even the fear of death will insure silence in some people. Creusa is very soon made aware by her female attendants of her husband's scheme for deceiving her, and she behaves exactly as he had foreseen she would. She re-enters, accompanied by an aged servant of her house: when the Chorus enlighten her on every point except one—the name of Ion's mother; and "the venerable man" is exactly the instrument needed by an indignant woman, for
"It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves that take their humours for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life." [1]
"We," says the prompter of evil, "by thy husband are betrayed." This comes of unequal marriages. Of him we know as little as of his new-found bantling:—
"Xuthus
Came to the city and thy royal house,
And wedded thee, all thy inheritance
Receiving. By some other woman now
Discovered to have children privately—
How privately I'll tell thee—when he saw
Thou hadst no child, it pleased him not to bear
A fate like thine; but by some favourite slave,
His paramour by stealth, he hath a son.
Him to some Delphian gave he, distant far,
To educate, who, to this sacred house
Consigned, as secret here, received his nurture.
He, knowing this, and that his son advanced
To manhood was, urged thee to come hither,
Pleading thy barrenness. 'Twas not the god,
But Xuthus, who deceived thee, and long since
Devised this wily plan to rear his son.
Failing, he could on Phœbus fix the blame,
Succeeding, would adroitly choose the time
To make him ruler of thy rightful land."
The servant—loyal to his mistress as Evan dhu Maccombich was to Fergus MacIvor, equally ready to die for her, or to do murder to avenge her imagined wrongs—devises a plot that would have been quite successful had not Apollo been on the watch. Creusa is in possession of a deadly poison—"two drops of blood that from the Gorgon fell"—given to her father Erectheus by Pallas. One heals disease, the other works certain and swift death. The princess proposes to poison her stepson when he is beneath her roof. "I like not that," says the servant. "There you will be the first to be suspected; a stepdame's hate is proverbial." To this Creusa agrees, and, anticipating the old vassal's thought, she herself prescribes the mode of destroying the son of Xuthus:—
"This shalt thou do: this little golden casket
Take from my hand. Bear it beneath thy vest.
Then, supper ended, when they 'gin to pour
Libations to the gods, do thou infuse
The drop in the youth's goblet. Take good heed
That none observe thee. Drug his cup alone
Who thinks to lord it o'er my house. If once
It pass his lips, his foot shall never reach
Athens' fair city; death awaits him here."
After a choral ode has been sung, a breathless attendant rushes in and demands where Creusa is. The plot has failed; the old man has been arrested; he has confessed the deed; and the rulers of Delphi are in hot pursuit of his accomplice, that she may die overwhelmed with stones. "How were our dark devices brought to light?" the Chorus inquires. Then, as usual on the Greek stage, and also in the French classical drama, a long narrative instructs the spectators of what has taken place. Up to a certain point all went well. Ion's chalice was drugged furtively. The destined victim poured his libation, and was just about to drink, when some one chanced to utter a word of ill omen, and so Ion poured his wine on the floor, and bade the other guests do the like. The cups are now replenished; but in the pause that ensued between the first and second filling of them, a troop of doves, such as haunt the dome of the temple, came fluttering in, and drank from the wine-pools on the ground. The spilt wine was harmless to all save one. That one drank of the deadly draught poured out by Ion:—
"Straight, convulsive shiverings seized
Her beauteous plumes, around in giddy rings
She whirled, and in a strange and mournful note
Seemed to lament: amazement seized the guests,
Seeing the poor bird's pangs: her breast heaved thick,
And, stretching out her scarlet legs, she died."
Creusa now hurries in: she has been doomed to death by the Pythian Council, and her executioner is to be Ion himself; she clasps the altar of Apollo, but that sanctuary will not avail her, for has she not attempted the life of one of the god's ministers? In reply to her appeals for life, Ion says:—
"The good,
Oppressed by wrongs, should at those hallowed seats
Find refuge: ill becomes it that th' unjust
And just alike should seek protection there."
But now the old prophetess, who had years "before preserved the infant Ion, having learnt that he is soon to leave the Delphian shrine, produces the swaddling-clothes, the ornaments, and the basket, in which his mother had clad and laid him in the cave under the Acropolis. They may help him, she thinks, some day, to discover the secret of his birth. While her son is examining these tokens, Creusa sees them too, and claims them as the work of her own hands. As Ion unfolds, one by one, the tiny robes, she names, without first seeing them, the subjects which were embroidered on each of them. The recognition is complete. Creusa embraces her long-lost son, and now hesitates not to acknowledge that Apollo is his father. If any doubt remained even on the part of Xuthus, who indeed is not an eyewitness of the discovery, it is dispersed by the speech of Minerva. She explains the reasons for concealment hitherto, and the cause for disclosure now: bids Creusa take her son to the land of Cecrops, and there seat him on the throne of his grandsire Erectheus. She concludes with a prediction of the fortunes of the Ionian race, and of the Dorians, who are to descend from Dorus, a son she is to bear to Xuthus. And thus Apollo is absolved from wrong, and Creusa rejoices in the prospect of becoming the mother of two Greek nations, and these the rival leaders of the Hellenic world.
Should this exquisitely beautiful play be ranked among tragedies or comedies? Neither title exactly suits it. Rather is it a melodrama. And but for a few ceremonies inherent in or necessary to the Greek stage, might it not be almost accounted the work of a modern poet? The complexity of the fable, the rapid transitions in the action, the picturesque beauty of the scenes, and the domestic nature of the emotions it excites, have a far less classic than romantic stamp. For the long speech of the attendant who describes the manner in which the plot against the life of the hero is baffled, substitute a representation on the stage of the banquet—cancel the prologue spoken by Mercury, and the winding-up scene in which Minerva appears—and then, even without omitting the Chorus, there will remain a mixed drama which neither Calderon nor Shakespeare might have disdained to own. Perhaps the modern air that we attribute to it may have been among the reasons for the comparative neglect of the "Ion" by the ancient critics—nay even, it might seem, by those who witnessed the performance of it. But neither the date of its production nor the trilogy of which, it formed a part is known. It may be, as regards "its general composition, more pleasing than powerful." We agree, however, entirely with Mr Paley, when he says: "none of his plays so clearly show the fine mind of Euripides, or impress us with a more favourable idea of his virtuous and human character."
HIPPOLYTUS.
The play which has just been surveyed is of a religious character, and the "Hippolytus" is coupled with it, because, although dealing with human passion far more than the "Ion," the principal character in it is also that of a devotee. However philosophical or sceptical Euripides may have been in his theological opinions, no one of the Greek dramatic poets surpassed him in the delineation of piety and reverence for the gods; and he seems to have delighted especially in portraying the effect of such feelings upon pure and youthful minds. If, indeed, fear rather than love of the gods be essential to devotion, then Æschylus must be accounted a far more pious writer than Euripides. The Calvinists of criticism will naturally prefer gloom and terror, inexorable Fates and all-powerful Furies, to the humane, benign, and rational sentiments which consist with the attributes of mercy and justice. We neither expect nor desire to reconcile these opposite factions further than may be necessary for a statement of the claims of the younger poet to a fair hearing.
"Ion" and "Hippolytus" are each of them examples of youthful virtue: the latter has, or at least displays, the more enthusiastic temperament, which, however, is drawn out from him by the greater severity of his lot. Yet we can easily conceive the votary of the chaste Diana passing through life quite as contentedly in her service as Ion would have passed his days as a minister of Apollo. It was the hard destiny of the son of Theseus to have incurred the heavy displeasure of one goddess through his earnest devotion to another. The life-battle he has to fight is indeed really a contest between two rival divinities; and were second titles possible in Greek plays, this affecting and noble tragedy might be entitled "Hippolytus, or the Contest between Venus and Diana."
As the plot of the "Hippolytus" is, through the "Phédre" of Racine, probably better known to English readers than the more complicated fable of the "Ion," it may be sufficient to state it briefly, and to direct attention rather to the characters than the story. The hero is the son of Theseus, king of Athens, by the Amazonian Hippolyta, whom Shakespeare has sketched in his "Midsummer Night's Dream." His boyish years have been passed at Troezen with his grandfather, the pure-minded Pittheus. While under his roof, Hippolytus devotes himself to the worship of Diana: like her he delights in the chase; like her also he shuns the snares of love or the chains of wedlock. Excelling in all manly exercises, and adorned with every virtue, he unhappily not merely neglects Venus, but irritates her by open expressions of contempt for herself and her rites: and he owes to this pride or exclusive zeal the hideous ruin which engulfs him. The offended goddess sets forth in the prologue her determination to destroy Diana's favourite, and gives her reasons for it. She says:—
"Those that reverence my powers I favour,
But I confound all who think scorn of me.
For even divinity is fashioned thus—
It joys in mortal honours."
"He may consort with the huntress, he may follow his swift dogs, he may shun fellowship with men, as much as he likes—of his tastes I reck not: what I cannot overlook is his personally offensive conduct to myself, 'a goddess not inglorious,' and accounted by mortals generally as not the least potent of Olympians. The means of revenge are not far to seek. Phædra, his young and beauteous stepmother, is pining for love of him, and through her unhappy passion he shall be struck: "with her I have no quarrel," says the goddess—
"Yet let her perish:
I have not for her life that tenderness
As not to wreak just vengeance on my foes."
The prologue ended, Venus disappears, and Hippolytus and his retinue of huntsmen enter, singing a hymn to Diana. When it is finished, he thus addresses the goddess—an invocation which has been thus beautifully paraphrased:—
"Thou maid of maids, Diana, the goddess whom he fears,
Unto thee Hippolytus this flowery chaplet bears;
From meadows where no shepherd his flock a-field e'er drove,
From where no woodman's hatchet hath woke the echoing grove,
Where o'er the unshorn meadow the wild bee passes free,
Where by her river-haunts dwells virgin Modesty;
Where he who knoweth nothing of the wisdom of the schools
Beareth in a virgin heart the fairest of all rules;
To him 'tis given all freely to cull those self-sown flowers,
But evil men must touch not pure Nature's sacred bowers.
This to his virgin mistress a virgin hand doth bear—
A wreath of unsoiled flowers to deck her golden hair.
For such alone of mortals can unto her draw nigh,
And with that guardian Goddess hold solemn converse high.
He ever hears the voice of his own virgin Queen,
He hears what others hear not, and sees her though unseen;
He holds his virgin purpose in freedom unbeguiled,
To age and death advancing in innocence a child."[2]
—(Isaac Williams.)
Hippolytus is warned by his henchmnan that he is incurring danger by his total neglect of Venus; but he replies only by a rather contumelious remark that "I salute her from afar;" "some with this god and some with that have dealings;" and then the master and his men depart to a banquet. We pass onward to Phædra's entrance, which is announced by her ancient nurse, much such an accommodating personage as the nurse in "Romeo and Juliet," although far more mischievous. She describes the strange malady of her mistress, and her own weary watching by the sufferer's couch. Pha3dra breaks out into frenzied song:—
"Lift up my body,
Straighten my head,
Hold up the hands
And arms of the dead;
The joints of my limbs are loosened,
The veil on my brow is like lead.
Take it off, take it off, let the clustering curls
On my shoulders be spread."
She pants for cooling streams and the whispering sound of shadowing poplars, and longs to stretch her limbs in repose on the verdurous meadow. Next comes an access of fever, and she breaks forth into wilder strains:—
"Send me, send me to the mountain: I will wander to the wood,
Where the dogs amid the pine-copse track and tear the wild beast's brood;
I will hang upon his traces where the dappled roebuck bounds;
I yearn, by all the gods, I yearn to halloo to the hounds,
To poise the lance of Thessaly above my yellow hair,
And to loose my hand and lightly launch the barbed point through air."
After more wild song and as wild speeches to the nurse, her secret is at length drawn from her; and that faithful but unscrupulous attendant reveals it. under an oath of secrecy, to Hippolytus. Diana's worshipper, shocked at the disclosure, discourses on the profligacy of women in general, and determines to absent himself for a while until Theseus returns to Troezen, with the intention, as Phædra and her nurse believe, of disclosing to his father his wife's infidelity. Overwhelmed by shame and despair, Phædra hangs herself, but suspends from her neck a letter in which she accuses Hippolytus of making dishonourable proposals to her. Theseus, on his return from an oracle he had been consulting, finds his wife a lifeless corpse, and believes in his son's guilt. Him he curses as a base hypocrite, who, affecting to worship the chaste goddess, has attempted to commit a crime that even Venus would scarcely sanction. His supposed father Neptune, in an evil moment, had once given Theseus three fatal curses, one of which he now hurls at his innocent son. Hippolytus now turns his back for ever on his father's house: weeping, and attended by his weeping friends, he drives slowly and sadly along the sea-beach. The curse comes upon him in the form of a monster sent by Neptune. A messenger brings the tidings to Theseus. "There came," he says, "when we had passed the frontier of this realm of Troezen,—
"A sound, as if some bolt from Zeus
Made thunder from the bowels of the earth—
A heavy hollow boom, hideous to hear.
A sudden fear fell on our youthful hearts
Whence came this awful voice: till with fixed gaze
Watching the sea-beat ridges, we beheld
A mighty billow lifted to the skies;
And with the billow, at the third great sweep
Of mountain surge, the sea gave up a bull,
Monster of aspect fierce, whose bellowings
Filled all the earth, that echoed back the roar
In tones that made us shudder."
The terrified horses become unmanageable; and though
"Our lord, in all their ways long conversant,
Grasped at their reins, and, throwing back his weight,
Pulled hard, as pulls a sailor at the oar;
They, with set jaws gripping the tempered bits,
Whirl along heedless of the master's hand,"—
until Hippolytus is dragged and dashed against the rocks, and lies a broken and bleeding body from which the spirit is rapidly fleeting. He is borne into his father's presence, torn, mangled, and bleeding, to die. But Theseus, still crediting Phædra's false letter, rejoices in his son's fate, although he alone believes him guilty. The messenger, indeed, bluntly tells the king that he is deceived:—
"Yet to one thing I never will give credence,
That this thy son has done a deed of baseness,—
Not should the whole of womankind go hang,
And score the pines of Ida with their letters,
Because I know—I know that he is noble."
Diana, it may seem to the reader, is far from being a help to her devoted friend and worshipper in his time of trouble. The cause she assigns for her inability to save him gives a curious insight into the comity of the ancient gods. She tells Theseus that his sin is rank, yet not quite unpardonable:—
"For Cypris willed that these things should be so
To glut her rage; and this with gods is law,
That none against another's will resists
Or offers hindrance, but we stand aloof.
Else be assured, had not the fear of Zeus
Deterred me, I had not so sunk in shame
As to let die the dearest unto me
Of mortal men."
She then shows to Theseus how widely he has erred. Next follows a most affecting scene of reconciliation between the distracted father and his dying son. Diana soothes the last moments of Hippolytus by a promise that he shall be worshipped with highest honours at Troezen:—
"For girls unwed, before their marriage-day,
Shall offer their shorn tresses at thy shrine,
And dower thee through long ages with rich tears;
And many a maid shall raise the tuneful hymn
In praise of thee, and ne'er shall Phædra's love
Perish in silence and be left unsung."
The "Hippolytus" was produced in B.C. 428. In the previous year Pericles died of the plague, which for some months longer continued to rage in Athens. To the pestilence and the death of the greatest of Attic statesmen there are palpable allusions in this tragedy, which to contemporary spectators cannot fail to have been deeply affecting. The nurse of Phædra bewails her lot as an attendant on a suffering mistress:—
"Alas for mortal woes!
Alas for fell disease!
Better be sick than be the sick one's nurse;
Sickness is sickness, nothing worse;
Nursing is sorrow in double kind,
Sorrow of toiling hands, sorrow of troubled mind.
Our troubles know no healing."
And the final stave of the choral song unmistakably refers to Pericles:—
"Upon all in the city alike
This sudden sorrow will strike.
There will be much shedding of tears.
When evil assails the great
Many bewail his fate;
Grief for him grows with the years."