tempted to enquire further, and signifying nothing, except that the dramatist and his dramatis personae have agreed to drop the subject. Strange and inexplicable, to begin with, is the behaviour of Heracles in evading without cause alleged the natural and blameless desire of Admetus to learn the manner of this astounding achievement. Why—to put the point in a practical way—should so admirable a narrator as Euripides defraud himself and the audience of this fine opportunity? What is his motive, and what is that of his hero? 'Heracles', thinks Balaustion, 'said little but enough'. Little it is; but enough it apparently is not, when it leaves so many readers to exclaim, with Dr Munk, "That the poet should expect us to accept things so obscure and improbable to the imagination is too much!" Surely it is, if he does expect us to accept them; surely it was his especial business, in that case, to make them probable to the imagination by his skill in the telling, which, we may add, none, if he had chosen, could have done better. But Heracles, instead of relating what has happened, or explaining why he should not relate it, gives a reply which is not so much mysterious as unintelligible. 'How didst thou bring her from beneath to this light?''By fighting the power with whom the matter lay[1]'. But who is this power or deity? Admetus guesses Death, and the interpretation is coldly accepted. But what has become of Heracles' tongue, which before the enterprise was so eloquent and assured?
I will go lie in wait for Death, black-stoled
King of the corpses! I shall find him, sure,
Drinking beside the tomb o' the sacrifice; . . . .
and so on. Why cannot he speak so now, and what does he mean?
Strange in itself is the reticence of Heracles, and stranger the acquiescence of the rest.
- ↑ μάχην ξυνάψας δαιμόνων τῷ κυρίῳ, the certain reading. The variant κοιράνῳ is a mere guess made (like οἰκεῖος in v. 811) to get rid of a difficulty. The guesser probably meant his δαιμόνων τῷ κοιράνῳ to signify the lord of spirits, which measures his competence to emend Euripides. Modern scholars, while hazarding this version, do not omit (see Paley) to point out that it will not pass: δαιμόνων κοίρανῳ would mean, if any one, Zeus; and δαιμόνων τῷ κοιράνῳ is not good Euripidean Greek for anything here admissible.
