Who useth the diviner’s art Is foolish. If he heraldeth ill things, He is loathed of those to whom he prophesies. If pitying them that seek to him, he lie, He wrongs the Gods.[178]
In the Iphigenia at Aulis Achilles bitterly asks, “What is a seer?” and answers his own question, “A man who speaks few truths and many lies.”[179] Even prayer is sometimes regarded as of doubtful aid, although naturally Euripides’ characters often appeal to the Gods.
At times, too, the poet is more openly atheistic or agnostic with reference to the popular religion. The most striking illustration is found in the prayer which he puts into the mouth of Hecuba, the Trojan queen:
O Earth’s Upbearer, thou whose throne is Earth, Whoe’er thou be, O past our finding out, Zeus, be thou Nature’s Law, or Mind of Man, To thee I pray; for treading soundless paths, In justice dost thou guide all mortal things.[180]
You will observe that although this prayer rejects all current polytheism, it is far from denying the existence of a divine power—rather it maintains in poetic language the existence of such a principle—the reason of the universe which shows itself in nature as law and in the mind of man as reason. This pantheism finds expression elsewhere in his poetry. In illustration I will quote two fragments. The first identifies divinity with all embracing ether:
Seest thou the boundless ether there on high, That folds the earth around with dewy arms? This deem thou Zeus, this reckon one with God.[181]
The second identifies god with the intelligence which pervades the world:
Thee, self-begotten, who in ether rolled Ceaselessly round, by mystic links dost blend The nature of all things, whom veils enfold Of light, of dark night flecked with gleams of gold, Of star-hosts dancing round thee without end.[182]
The last three passages show how the poet’s mind was filled with the philosophic thought of the day. In identifying divinity with the ether he was apparently giving poetic expression to the views of his contemporary, the philosopher Diogenes of Apollonia, whom he must have known at Athens. Diogenes followed Anaximenes in making “Air” (or the “Ether”) the basic element of the world, but advanced beyond his predecessor in attributing to “Air” intelligence and movement—indeed he held that it could only be conceived as intelligent; and he further said that this intelligent “Air,” which was the cause and, by virtue of its intelligence, the director of all things, seemed to him to be god. In the mind of man therefore the divine principle shows itself as intellect, in nature it is law. But in Hecuba’s prayer there is a higher conception of god than even this—the divine reason is also world-ruling Justice: Justice and God are one. This identification in a sense is as old as Hesiod, but Euripides conceives of Justice not as the daughter of Zeus but as identical with the cosmic reason, immanent in all things, forming and directing all things. When the poet speaks of Justice in ways more natural to the ordinary man, he combats the current notion that Justice dwells in heaven where men’s sins are recorded in a book; rather, he says, she is here on earth with men, unseen but seeing all.[183] Yet he never carried out this idea and reconciled it with the actual moral condition of the world and the undeserved sufferings of mankind. The problem of evil and doubt constantly vexed him; neither faith nor reason gave him rest:
When faith overfloweth my mind, God’s providence all-embracing Banisheth griefs: but when doubt whispereth ‘Ah but to know!’ No clue through the tangle I find of fate and of life for my tracing: There is ever a change and many a change, And the mutable fortune of men evermore sways to and fro Over limitless range.[184]