Euripides (Mahaffy)/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
SURVEY OF HIS WORKS.
25. The ancients possessed, under the name of Euripides, ninety-two dramas, a few obviously spurious letters, and some poetical trifles, such as epigrams, of doubtful authority. Even of the dramas only seventy-five were recognised as genuine, and among them eight satyric dramas, one of which, the Cyclops, is fortunately preserved. Only seventeen of the tragedies are now extant, if we exclude the Rhesus, which is probably a later composition substituted for the lost genuine play on this subject. But of many of the remainder there have survived considerable fragments, and we know the titles in all of sixty-eight.
26. When we compare this inheritance with that left us by Æschylus or Sophocles, its relative greatness makes us forget its actual poverty; for we only possess one-fifth part of Euripides' poetry, and even in quality it is not richer than in quantity. There is no reason to think that the selection preserved was by any means chosen on the grounds of excellence. The allusions of contemporary literature rather suggest to us that many of the lost plays—the Andromeda, the Antiope, the Erechtheus, and others—were the most popular, while several of the poorest and least successful were, by some accident, handed down to us in a single MS., of which we have two imperfect copies (the Vatican P and the Florentine C as they are commonly designated), both MSS. of the fourteenth century.
27. This curious preservation of his inferior dramas has told greatly against the reputation of the poet as compared with that of his rivals. While the immediately succeeding public was almost unanimous upon his greater brilliancy and philosophic depth, moderns are always disparaging him as contrasted with either Æschylus or Sophocles, from whom we have but a very few plays, and these almost all their very best. Had half-a-dozen Æschylean plays of the rank of the Supplices, or Sophoclean of the rank of the Trachiniæ survived, the German and English censors might have been saved their comparisons. But it is always a dangerous thing to expose a large front to criticism, for the censor who finds a weak point anywhere, parades it to the general detriment of the author in the public mind; there being no class more unfair and even bigoted in their judgments than philologists, who differ only in degree from the public, and exhibit the same weaknesses often exaggerated in intensity.
I will add that as a larger survival of the rival Greek plays might have benefited Euripides, so also a more complete loss of them would certainly have had the same effect. If we suppose all our plays lost, and nothing extant but the fragments of the three poets, there would be no hesitation in declaring Euripides by far the greatest of the tragic poets; and learned men would doubtless have set themselves to explain away most satisfactorily those judgments of old art-critics which are now quoted to prove the superiority of his rivals. For there are no fragments in Greek literature more striking in thought or felicitous in diction, than those culled by moralists and philosophers, by orators and antiquarians, from his lost works.
28. Looking at the extant plays from a chronological point of view, as affording us evidence of the development of the poet's mind, we have been likewise fortunate in some respects, unfortunate in others. His earliest play, the Peliades, brought out in Ol. 81.2 (455 B.C.) would have been very valuable in showing us the starting-point of his career. But neither this, nor apparently any of his juvenile work, survives, our first play being probably the Alcestis, which did not appear till 438 B.C., and which was therefore composed in his full maturity. On the other hand, his latest plays, the Bacchæ and the Iphigenia in Aulis, remain, the latter not even finished by the masters hand; and their survival has with difficulty saved the poet from the hands of the German critics, who would willingly show, from the Helena, the Orestes, and other such plays, that in advanced age he had lowered himself in tone and dignity, had condescended to careless writing, having become a foolish reflection of that ochlocracy which figures so largely in their imaginary pictures of Athens at the close of the fifth century. But his latest plays which gained the first prize in spite of, perhaps on account of, Aristophanes' venomous attack in the Frogs (405 B.C.), show him in the very zenith of his power, none of his works being more perfect either in plot or in execution than the Bacchæ and the finished portions of the Iphigenia.
29. Thus the favourite German theory, that we can determine the advancing dates of literary works by the advancing weakness or diffuseness of the style, is happily upset by the benevolent fate which has preserved to us these parting gifts of the aged Euripides to the human race. Their greater perfection is probably to be assigned to his Macedonian leisure, and to the relief from the pressure of competition at Athens, where, as we know, the tragic poets composed with amazing rapidity, to suit the popular temper of the season, so that possibly parts of the plays may not have been written until the poet had secured the State sanction by obtaining the grant of a chorus. It is this hurried production—a feature common to the great dramatists, indeed, the great artists, of all ages—which will best account for uneven workmanship, and for the undue prominence, in some of the plays, of the political sympathies or antipathies of the hour.
30. The following are the extant plays which can be dated from distinct notices:
| B.C. 438. | Ol. 85.3, | Alcestis | B.C. 413. | Ol. 91.4, | Helena. | |
| B.C.„ 431. | Ol.„ 87.1, | Medea. | B.C.„ 408. | Ol.„ 92.4, | Orestes. | |
| B.C.„ 428. | Ol.„ 87.4, | Hippolytus. | B.C.„ 407. | Ol.„ 93.2, | Phœnissæ. | |
| B.C.„ 416. | Ol.„ 91.1, | Troades. |
Some others can be approximately fixed from allusions in Aristophanes, when they were recent, viz. the Heraclidæ and Hecuba about Ol. 88; and the posthumous Bacchæ and Iphigenia in Aulis, in Ol. 93, the third year of which was the last of the poet's life. The remainder, to whose date we have no clue except inferences from style, are the Raging Heracles, Andromache, Ion, Tauric Iphigenia, Supplices, Electra, and the satyric Cyclops.
The fixing of the undated plays from internal evidence is of course a favourite occupation with the learned, partly on metrical grounds, such as those of Dindorf, who thinks a preference for dactylico-trochaic metres indicates early, and for glyconic metres late dates in the poet's life; partly, again, on æsthetic grounds, such as the irrelevance of the chorus or the prominence of monodies. But all these arguments can be refuted by the very same evidence, and there is no possibility either of placing the plays in their chronological order, or, if we did, of learning aught from it concerning the mental history of this many-sided and ever-changing dramatist, who is perfectly mature in our earliest work, the Alcestis, and has lost nothing in power and beauty when he reached the end of his labours. Had he indeed lived to perfect the Iphigenia in Aulis, it would certainly have been the finest of all his extant plays.
I shall therefore discard the order of time, and seek to group together the plays according to their artistic resemblances, so that we may first inquire into the broad features of Euripides' plots, and then proceed to consider his characters.
31. Before proceeding to discuss the plots, I may premise that though the poet generally, perhaps always, contended with four plays at a time, and though the titles of these quaternions are frequently preserved, we possess nothing but isolated pieces from different groups. This in a poet like Æschylus, whose dramas were bound together into a larger unity, would offer a capital difficulty in discussing the merits and defects of any single play; but there is good reason to think that with Sophocles the fashion came in of contending with disconnected plays, and that Euripides' tetralogies or quaternions were only connected by the accident of their performance. Not even the ingenuity of the Germans has been able to imagine any proper link between the Bacchæ and Iphigenia, which were brought out together; and the same seems the case—as far as titles can warrant—with the groups brought out by the poet himself.
We are indeed at a loss to know how the judges decided, and it seems to me, from the prominence and the preservation of isolated plays, that each poet pitted the best of his four against the best of his rival's four, leaving to the judges the selection. Thus the Hippolytus would be declared the winner in its group and attain special popularity, the others being only recorded in the didascaliæ,[1] and read by students. If this was the principle of the competition, it would account for the dropping out of fashion of the satyric dramas, eight of which only were composed by Euripides, and the substitution of such melodramas as the Alcestis in their place, which were of sufficient importance to count in the competition, and perhaps to determine the prize. But this is only one more conjecture upon the meaning of the notice, that Sophocles introduced the fashion of contending δρᾶμα πρὸς δρᾶμα, play against play—a statement simple enough, had not Euripides so constantly contended with tetralogies.
32. It will be observed that in the following chapters there is little reference to the fragments, which I have already mentioned as of great number and importance. This is to be justified by the consideration that, though vital in considering Euripides as a poet and a philosopher, these fragments are too short and detached to help us in our estimate of his dramatic genius, to which we must now confine ourselves. The remains of the Phaethon are indeed considerable, but give us no idea of the plot of the play, and though part of the plot of the Philoctetes is preserved, it is only a prose paraphrase, which conceals from us the poet's treatment of his subject. The fragments are, in fact, beautiful isolated thoughts, or even famous speeches, or verses of choral songs, and as such are delightful reading. They have occupied many poets and critics. Hartung in his large work on Euripides, Valckenaer in his celebrated Diatribe, and many English poets in stray moments have turned their attention to this rich collection of scattered wisdom. A pleasant chapter in Mr. Symonds' Greek Poets is devoted to these and other fragments of the tragic poets. Now, too, they are accessible in a collected form either in Dindorf's Poetæ Scenici, in Nauck's edition, the older praiseworthy attempts being very incomplete. Woodhull translated all those known in his day (1787) in the appendix to his complete Euripides. But in the present work I have only used them as materials for the estimate of the poet in the second chapter, all detailed discussion of single beauties or stray thoughts in his works being out of the question.
- ↑ The didascaliæ were collections of notes giving the victorious plays, as well as the unsuccessful, with their authors and dates. They were taken from authentic contemporary inscriptions, chiefly on the monuments commemorating victories, of which some remains are still to be seen at Athens.