poet has chosen iambics and not agitated lyric measures, for this immortal scene. I attribute this either to its early date among his plays, when he had not developed his fancy for lyrical monodies, or perhaps better to the nature of the scene, which requires frequent and long pauses in the acting.
We actually hear of six Greek Medeas, besides the early play of Neophron, not to speak of comic parodies, so powerfully did the subject lay hold of the Attic public. Ennius imitated the play in a free Latin version, and both Cicero and Brutus are said to have been reading or citing it, in their last moments—no mean distinction for any tragedy. Horace often alludes to it, and Ovid's earliest work was a Medea, also a free version, which was acted on the Roman stage with applause, when its author was pining in exile, and which is praised by Tacitus and Quintilian. There remains to us, however, a tragedy of this name under the title of Seneca. Anyone who will consult this piece will see how completely the taste of the Roman poet had altered and depraved the great conception of Euripides. The gloomy horrors of Medea's witchcraft are the great feature in this bombastic production.
49. The Hippolytus, a second and improved edition, we are told, of the poet's former treatment of the same subject,[1] which obtained the first prize in 428 B.C., is of greater merit and interest. For here the passion of Phædra is brought into contrast with the perfect purity and steel-cold passionlessness of Hippolytus—a sort of princely and conscious Ion. Nothing can be more unfair than the estimate of Phædra's character by adverse ancient and admiring modern critics; for we must remember that her fatal
- ↑ In Seneca's version, and in the French copies, Phædra is made to confess her passion to Hippolytus in person, and Racine has, moreover, other variations which I need not here discuss. It has been assumed without sufficient evidence by modern critics that this personal declaration was the offensive feature omitted in his second edition by Euripides. This may have been so, but is very rash to assert it.
