their parabasis. For we find even the comic poets, who had this recognised vehicle, often passing out of the character of the actor into personal relations with the audience. But if such helps existed for the Attic public, they are lost for us. This much is certain, that, like Racine in the seventeenth century,[1] so the Greek dramatists of the Periclean age regarded themselves as essentially moral teachers; nay, almost as a sort of established clergy. It was the recognition of this claim by the Attic public which created Euripides' greatest difficulties when he endeavoured to rise above traditional dogma and conventional morals into speculations on divine philosophy and burning pictures of intense passion.
18. As to the poet's studies and the materials he had before him, we may notice, first, that though deeply learned in epic lore, and familiar with every obscure legend of the Trojan and Theban cycle,[2] he seems (like Sophocles) to have avoided direct contact with Homer in his tragedies, and even in his language there are few
- ↑ Cf. the Preface to his Phèdre: "Au reste, je n'ose encore assurer que cette pièce soit en effet la meilleure de mes tragédies; je laisse aux lecteurs et au temps à décider de son véritable prix. Ce que je puis assurer, c'est que je n'en ai point fait où la vertu soit plus mise en jour que dans celle-ci. Les moindres fautes y sont sévèrement punies: la seule pensée du crime y est regardée avec autant d'horreur que le crime même: les faiblesses de l'amour y passent pour de vraies faiblesses: les passions n'y sont présentées aux yeux que pour montrer tout le désordre dont elles sont cause; et le vice y est peint partout avec des couleurs qui en font connaître et buïr la difformité. C'est là proprement le but que tout homme qui travaille pour le public se doit proposer; et c'est ce que les premiers poètes tragiques avaient en vue sur toute chose." Milton, in his preface to the Samson Agonistes, though he does not go so far, censures the English dramatists for abandoning the classical models, by which he considers that they have lost the countenance of the serious portion of society.
- ↑ Of his eighteen extant plays, eight—Iphigenia in Aulis, [Rhesus], Hecuba, Troades, Helena, Electra, Orestes, Andromache, Iphigenia among the Tauri—are on the Trojan cycle and the fortunes of the houses of Agamemnon and of Priam. Three—Phœnissæ, Supplices, Raging Hercules—are connected with Thebes.
