The latter was born in the first year of the seventy-fifth Olympiad, at Salamis, whither his father Mnesarchus and mother Clito had retired when Xerxes was preparing for his great expedition against Greece. He applied himself at first to philosophy, and, amongst others, had the celebrated Anaxagoras for his master. But the danger incurred by that great man, who was very near being made the victim of his philosophical tenets, inclined him to the study of poetry. He discovered in himself a genius for the drama, unknown to him at first; and employed it with such success, that he entered the lists with the great masters of whom we have been speaking. His works[185] sufficiently denote his profound application to philosophy. They abound with excellent maxims of morality; and it is in that view that Socrates in his time, and Cicero long after him,[186] set so high a value upon Euripides.
One cannot sufficiently admire the extreme delicacy expressed by the Athenian audience on certain occasions, and their solicitude to preserve the reverence due to morality, virtue, decency, and justice. It is surprising to observe the warmth with which they unanimously reproved whatever seemed inconsistent with them, and called the poet to an account for it, notwithstanding his having a well-founded excuse, as he had given such sentiments only to persons notoriously vicious, and actuated by the most unjust passions.
Euripides had put into the mouth of Bellerophon a pompous panegyric upon riches, which concluded with this thought: “Riches are the supreme good of the human race, and with reason excite the admiration of the gods and men.” The whole theatre cried out against these expressions; and he would have been banished directly, if he had not desired the sentence to [pg lxxxiv] be respited till the conclusion of the piece, in which the advocate for riches perished miserably.
He was in danger of incurring serious inconveniences from an answer he puts into the mouth of Hippolytus. Phædra's nurse represented to him, that he had engaged himself under an inviolable oath to keep her secret. “My tongue, it is true, pronounced that oath,” replied he, “but my heart gave no consent to it.” This frivolous distinction appeared to the whole people, as an express contempt of the religion and sanctity of an oath, that tended to banish all sincerity and good faith from society and the intercourse of life.
Another maxim[187] advanced by Eteocles in the tragedy called the Phœnicians, and which Cæsar had always in his mouth, is no less pernicious: “If justice may be violated at all, it is when a throne is in question; in other respects, let it be duly revered.” It is highly criminal in Eteocles, or rather in Euripides, says Cicero, to make an exception in that very point, wherein such violation is the highest crime that can be committed. Eteocles is a tyrant, and speaks like a tyrant, who vindicates his unjust conduct by a false maxim; and it is not strange that Cæsar, who was a tyrant by nature, and equally unjust, should lay great stress upon the sentiments of a prince whom he so much resembled. But what is remarkable in Cicero, is his falling upon the poet himself, and imputing to him as a crime the having advanced so pernicious a principle upon the stage.
Lycurgus, the orator,[188] who lived in the time of Philip and Alexander the Great, to reanimate the spirit of the tragic poets, caused three statues of brass to be erected, in the name of the people, to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and having ordered their works to be transcribed, he appointed them to be carefully preserved amongst the public archives, from whence they were taken from time to time to be read; the players not being permitted to represent them on the stage.
The reader expects, no doubt, after what has been said relating to the three poets, who invented, improved, and carried [pg lxxxv] tragedy to its perfection, that I should point out the peculiar excellencies of their style and character. For that I must refer to father Brumoi, who will do it much better than it is in my power. After having laid down, as an undoubted principle, that the epic poem, that is to say Homer, pointed out the way for the tragic poets; and having demonstrated, by reflections drawn from human nature, upon what principles and by what degrees this happy imitation was conducted to its end, he goes on to describe the three poets above mentioned, in the most lively and brilliant colours.
Tragedy took at first from Æschylus its inventor, a much more lofty style than the Iliad; that is, the magnum loqui mentioned by Horace. Perhaps Æschylus, who had a full conception of the grandeur of the language of tragedy, carried it too high. It is not Homer's trumpet, but something more. His pompous, swelling, gigantic diction, resembles rather the beating of drums and the shouts of battle, than the noble harmony of the trumpets. The elevation and grandeur of his genius would not permit him to speak the language of other men, so that his Muse seemed rather to walk in stilts, than in the buskins of his own invention.
Sophocles understood much better the true excellence of the dramatic style: he therefore copies Homer more closely, and blends in his diction that honeyed sweetness, from whence he was denominated “the Bee,” with a gravity that gives his tragedy the modest air of a matron, compelled to appear in public with dignity, as Horace expresses it.
The style of Euripides, though noble, is less removed from the familiar; and he seems to have affected rather the pathetic and the elegant, than the nervous and the lofty.