support. Admetus (it is said), though we may give up as insufficiently 'amiable' his attitude as a husband and as a son, is redeemed by his generosity as a host. The hospitality, which in the midst of his grief he extends to Heracles, must be set off against his demerits, and leaves an adequate balance in his favour. We will postpone for the present this plea of 'confession and avoidance' and consider those answers which directly traverse the indictment.
I mention only to put aside as here irrelevant all excuses offered not for the dramatis personae but for the author, as for instance that since the play, it appears, stood last among the four exhibited together in the same year, it was designed to replace the ordinary 'satyric drama', which accounts for the prevalence of elements unsuitable to tragedy. Manifestly this is only the accusation itself in another form. If the author wanted something in a light style, it was his business to select a theme suitable for it[1]. Or again (this appears in Paley as above cited), that the unamiable characters are foils for Alcestis. In that case, since Alcestis takes part in only one scene, the work is composed mainly of 'foil'; and indeed we are forbidden by the author himself, as we shall see hereafter, to suppose that the character of 'the heroine' is meant to be the dominant interest. Nor again would it affect our present question, if we were to admit, what according to Paley we must in fairness admit, "that the faults are those inherent in the subject itself rather than in the poet's manner of treating it". Admit it however we neither must nor can; for it is refuted by Paley himself when he says (after Hermann) that "the dispute between Admetus and Pheres was very probably designed to please a contentious and law-loving audience". Whatever be the value of this excuse (if it is meant for an excuse and not an aggravation, for this is not very clear), it assumes, what is surely certain, that the dramatist
- ↑ Such as the legend of Death and Sisyphus, on which a 'satyric drama' was composed by Aeschylus, and which seems to have been exactly suited for treatment as a grotesque. Whether the legend of Alcestis could be so treated satisfactorily appears to me more than doubtful, nor does it matter, since Euripides at all events has made no attempt to treat it so. His picture is purely realistic (to the utmost extent which the Greek stage permitted) and must be defensible as realism or not at all.
