daughters to the six sons of Æolus is of Homeric origin, and stands now, though briefly stated, in the Odyssey: but the incestuous passion of Macareus and Canacê, embodied by Euripidês[1] in the lost tragedy called Æolus, drew upon him severe censure. Moreover, he often disconnected the horrors of the old legends with those religious agencies by which they had been originally forced on, prefacing them by motives of a more refined character, which carried no sense of awful compulsion: thus the considerations by which the Euripidean Alkmæôn was reduced to the necessity of killing his mother appeared to Aristotle ridiculous.[2] After the time of this great poet, his successors seem to have followed him in breathing into their characters the spirit of common life, but the names and plot were still borrowed from the stricken mythical families of Tantalus, Kadmus, etc.: and the heroic exaltation of all the individual personages introduced, as contrasted with the purely human character of the Chorus, is
- ↑ Aristoph. Ran. 849, 1041,1080; Thesmophor. 547 ; Nubes, 1354. Grauert, De Mediâ Grsecorum Comœdiâ in Rheinisch. Museum, 2nd Jahrs. 1 Heft, p. 51. It suited the plan of the drama of Æolus, as composed by Euripidês, to place in the mouth of Macareus a formal recommendation of incestuous marriages : probably this contributed much to offend the Athenian public. See Dionys. Hal. Rhetor, ix. p. 355.
About the liberty of intermarriage among relatives, indicated in Homer, parents and children being alone excepted, see Terpstra, Antiquitas Homericat cap. xiii. p. 104.
Ovid, whose poetical tendencies led him chiefly to copy Euripidês, observes (Trist. ii. 1,380)—
"Omne genus scripti gravitate Tragcedia vincit,
Hæc quoque materiam semper amoris habet.
Nam quid in Hippolyto nisi creese flamma novercæ?
Nobilis est Canace fratris amore sui."This is the reverse of the truth in regard to Æschylus and Sophoklês, and only very partially true in respect to Euripidês.
- ↑ Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8. καὶ γὺρ τὺν Εὐριπίδον Άλκμαίωνα γελοῖα φαίνεται τὺ ὐναγκύσαντα μητροκρονῆσαι(In the lost tragedy called Άλκμίων ό διὰ Υωφῖδος).
worst elements of the ancient mythes : the implacable hatred of Hêrê towards Hêraklês is pushed so far as to deprive him of his reason (by sending down Iris and the unwilling Λύσσα), and thus intentionally to drive him to slay hit wife and children with his own hands.
