described the work of Euripides as the dawn of a romantic poetry haunted by dim yearnings and forebodings. Goethe—who, according to Bernhardy, knew Euripides only “at a great distance”—certainly admired him highly, and left an interesting memorial of Euripidean study in his attempted reconstruction of the lost Phaëthon. There are some passages in Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann which form effective quotations against the Greek poet’s real or supposed detractors. “To feel and respect a great personality, one must be something oneself. All those who denied the sublime to Euripides were either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity or shameless charlatans who, in their presumption, wished to make more of themselves than they were.” “A poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Alexander admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death, must certainly have been some one. If a modern man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his knees” (J. A. Symonds, Greek Poets, i. 230). We yield to no one in admiration of Goethe; but we cannot think that these rather bullying utterances are favourable examples of his method in aesthetic discussion; nor have they any logical force except as against those—if there be any such—who deny that Euripides is a great poet. One of the most striking of modern criticisms on Euripides is the sketch by Mommsen in his history of Rome (bk. iii. ch. 14). It is, in our opinion, less than just to Euripides as an artist. But it indicates, with true historical insight, his place in the development of his art, the operation of those external conditions which made him what he was, and the nature of his influence on succeeding ages.
The manuscript tradition of Euripides has a very curious and instructive history. It throws a suggestive light on the capricious nature of the process by which some of the greatest literary treasures have been saved or lost. Nine plays of Euripides were selected, probably in early Byzantine Manuscript tradition of Euripides.times, for popular and educational use. These were—These were—Alcestis, Andromache, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Medea, Orestes, Phoenissae, Rhesus, Troades. This list includes at least two plays, the Andromache and the Troades, which, even in the small number of the extant dramas, are universally allowed to be of very inferior merit—to say nothing of the Rhesus, which is generally allowed to be spurious. On the other hand, the list omits at least three plays of first-rate beauty and excellence, the very flower, indeed, of the extant collection—the Ion, the Iphigenia in Tauris, and the Bacchae—the last certainly, in its own kind, by far the most splendid work of Euripides that we possess. Had these three plays been lost, it is not too much to say that the modern estimate of Euripides must have been decidedly lower. But all the ten plays not included in the select list had a narrow escape of being lost, and, as it is, have come to us in a much less satisfactory condition.
A. Kirchhoff was the first, in his editions, thoroughly to investigate the history and the affinities of the Euripidean manuscripts.[1] All our MSS. are, he thinks, derived from a lost archetype of the 9th or 10th century, which contained the nineteen plays (counting the Rhesus) now extant. From this archetype a copy, also lost, was made about A.D. 1100, containing only the nine select plays. This copy became the source of all our best MSS. for those plays. They are—(1) Marcianus 471, in the library of St Mark at Venice (12th century): Andromache, Hecuba, Hippolytus (to v. 1234), Orestes, Phoenissae; (2) Vaticanus 909, 12th century, nine plays; (3) Parisinus 2712, 13th century, 7 plays (all but Troades and Rhesus). Of the same stock, but inferior, are (4) Marcianus 468, 13th century: Hecuba, Orestes, Medea (v. 1-42), Orestes, Phoenissae; (5) Havniensis (from Hafnia, Copenhagen, according to Paley), a late transcript from a MS. resembling Vat. 909, nine plays. A second family of MSS. for the nine plays, sprung from the same copy, but modified by a Byzantine recension of the 13th century, is greatly inferior.
The other ten plays have come to us only through the preservation of two MSS., both of the 14th century, and both ultimately derived, as Kirchhoff thinks, from the archetype of the 9th or 10th century. These are (1) Palatinus 287, Kirchhoff’s B, usually called Rom. C., thirteen plays, viz. six of the select plays (Androm., Med., Rhes., Hipp., Alc., Troad.), and seven others—Bacchae, Cyclops, Heracleidae, Supplices, Ion, Iphigenia in Aulide, Iphigenia in Tauris; and (2) Flor. 2, Elmsley’s C., eighteen plays, viz. all but the Troades. This MS. is thus the only one for the Helena, the Electra, and the Hercules Furens. By far the greatest number of Euripidean MSS. contain only three plays,—the Hecuba, Orestes and Phoenissae,—these having been chosen out of the select nine for school use—probably in the 14th century.
It is to be remembered that, as a selection, the nine chosen plays of Euripides correspond to those seven of Aeschylus and those seven of Sophocles which alone remain to us. If, then, these nine did not include the Iphigenia in Tauris, the Ion or the Bacchae, may we not fairly infer that the lost plays of the other two dramatists comprised works at least equal to any that have been preserved? May we not even reasonably doubt whether we have received those masterpieces by which their highest excellence should have been judged?
The extant scholia on Euripides are for the nine select plays only. The first edition of the scholia on seven of these plays (all but the Troades and Rhesus) was published by Arsenius—a Cretan whom the Venetians had named as bishop of Monemvasia, but whom the Greeks had refused to recognize—at Scholia.Venice in 1534. The scholia on the Troades and Rhesus were first published by L. Dindorf, from Vat. 909, in 1821. The best complete edition is that of W. Dindorf (1863).[2] The collection, though loaded with rubbish—including worthless analyses of the lyric metres by Demetrius Triclinius—includes some invaluable comments derived from the Alexandrian critics and their followers.
Editiones Principes.—1496. J. Lascaris (Florence), Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Andromache. 1503. M. Musurus (Aldus, Venice), Eur. Tragg. XVII., to which in vol. ii. the Hercules Furens was added as an 18th; i.e. this edition contained all the extant plays except the Electra, which was first given to the world by P. Victorius from Florentinus C. in 1545. The Aldine edition was reprinted at Basel in 1537.
The complete edition of Joshua Barnes (1694) is no longer of any critical value. The first thorough work done on Euripides was by L. C. Valcknaer in his edition of the Phoenissae (1755), and his Diatribe in Eur. perditorum dramatum relliquias (1767), in which he argued against the authenticity of the Rhesus.
Principal Editions of Selected Plays.—J. Markland (1763–1771), Supplices, Iphigenia A., Iphigenia T.; Ph. Brunck (1779–1780), Andromache, Medea, Orestes, Hecuba; R. Porson (1797–1801), Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, Medea; H. Monk (1811–1818), Hippolytus, Alcestis, Iphigenia A., Iphigenia T.; P. Elmsley (1813–1821), Medea, Bacchae, Heraclidae, Supplices; G. Hermann (1831–1841), Hecuba (animadv. ad R. Porsoni notas, first in 1800), Orestes, Alcestis, Iphigenia A., Iphigenia T., Helena, Ion, Hercules Furens; C. Badham (1851–1853), Iphigenia T., Helena, Ion; H. Weil, Hipp., Medea, Hec., Iph. in T., Iph. in A., Electra, Orestes (2nd ed., 1890). It is impossible to give a list of the English and foreign editions of single plays, but mention may be made of the Bacchae, by J. E. Sandys (4th ed., 1900) and R. Y. Tyrrell (1892); Medea, by A. W. Verrall (1883); Hippolytus, by J. P. Mahaffy (1881); and of the Hercules Furens, by Wilamowitz-Möllendorff (2nd ed., 1895), with a comprehensive introduction on the literature of Euripides. A selected list (up to 1896) will be found in J. B. Mayor’s Guide to the Choice of Classical Books; see also N. Wecklein in C. Bursian’s Jahresbericht, xxviii. (1897), and for the earlier literature W. Engelmann, Scriptores Graeci (1881). The little volumes on Euripides by J. P. Mahaffy (1879) and W. B. Donne in Blackwood’s “Ancient Classics for English Readers” will be found generally useful; see also P. Decharme, Euripide et l’esprit de son théâtre (1893); A. W. Verrall, Euripides the Rationalist (1895), and Essays on Four Plays of Euripides (1905); N. J. Patin, Étude sur Euripide (1872); O. Ribbeck, Euripides und seine Zeit; and (for the life of the poet) Wilamowitz’s ed. of the Hercules Furens (i. 1-42); P. Masqueray, Euripide et ses idées (1908).
Modern Complete Editions.—W. Dindorf (1870, in Poët. Scenici, ed. 5); A. Kirchhoff (1855, ed. min. 1867); F. A. Paley (2nd ed., 1872–1880), with commentary; A. Nauck (1880–1887, Teubner series); G. G. Murray in Oxford Scriptorum Classicorum bibliotheca (1902, foll.).
English Translations.—Among these may be noted the complete verse translation by A. S. Way (1894–1898); that in prose by E. P. Coleridge (1896); and G. G. Murray’s verse translations (1902–1906). A literary interest attaches to Robert Browning’s “Transcript” of the Alcestis in his Balaustion, and to Goethe’s reconstruction of Euripides’ lost Phaëthon in the 1840 edition of his works, vol. xxxiii. pp. 22-43. (R. C. J.; X.)
EUROCLYDON (Gr. εὖρος, east wind; κλύδων, wave), a stormy wind from the N.E. or N.N.E. in the eastern Mediterranean. Where the Authorized Version of the Bible (Acts xxvii. 14) mentions euroclydon, the Revised Version, taking the reading εὐρακύλων, has euraquilo, or north-easter. The word is sometimes used for the Bora (q.v.).
EUROPA (or rather, Europe), in Greek mythology, according to Homer (Iliad, xiv. 321), the daughter of Phoenix or, in a later story, of Agenor, king of Phoenicia. The beauty of Europa fired the love of Zeus, who approached her in the form of a white bull and carried her away from her native Phoenicia to Crete, where
