But even Deianira has her human moments, and in one of these she utters that wonderful lament of hers for the joys of her lost maidenhood, and the sorrows of her married life (Trach. 144 seqq.), a passage which may well be compared with one from the Tereus. (Fr. 524, Nauck). Both these dwell sympathetically on the slavery of married life, and almost make one think at first sight that the poet must have felt what a mockery his “ideal wife” really was. But a little further examination will show clearly enough that Sophocles is not expressing his own views in either of these two passages. The protest in the Tereus is merely the direct outcome of the decidedly exceptional circumstances in which Procne finds herself—a woman who has just cooked her only son is hardly likely to have unprejudiced views on matrimony—and as such it is not meant to be more than one of those outcries against irresistible destiny, which one may pity if one likes, or even pardon, but which one cannot pretend to treat seriously. For a girl to complain of having to marry was as reasonable as for a man to complain of having to die.
τί ταῦτα δεῖ
στένειν, ἅπερ δεῖ κατὰ φύσιν διεκπερᾶν;
As for the passage from the Trachiniae, that seems to be simply an echo from Sappho, and Sappho’s views on marriage were naturally different from those of Sophocles.[79]
To suppose from these passages that Sophocles saw anything inappropriate in the existing conditions of married life, or that he would have welcomed any change in them, is an unjustifiable inference.[80]
But the one play of Sophocles which is generally considered to be of supreme importance for this particular subject is the Phaedra. This play, which is supposed to have been the model for the Hippolytus of Euripides, is generally looked upon as the first “love-tragedy” of the Greeks. But was it a “love-tragedy” at all, in any sense in which the words are now understood? To judge by analogy, there is every reason to suppose that it was not.
The fragments unfortunately prove little, for no very important ones are preserved, and the one or two of them that do speak of love, merely speak of it in the regular Sophoclean way, not as a human passion, but as an unavoidable kind of disease, something like measles or distemper.[81]
But in spite of the paucity of the fragments, the main principle on which the legend (of which we have already spoken)[82] was treated, is sufficiently clear; and this principle is such as is, I venture to submit, incompatible with the presence in the play of any real love-element.
Phaedra’s love is not passion but madness, it is not an emotion but a disease. Aphrodite treats her in exactly the same way as Athene treats Ajax. Her love is so entirely outside her control, it is so entirely the result of external influences, that while one can perhaps pity her, one certainly cannot sympathise with her, for the simple reason that her misfortune is entirely outside human experience. She loves Hippolytus, as Oedipus kills Laius, for no earthly reason except that the story said the god made her do so. The Phaedra of Sophocles, like the Clytemnestra of Aeschylus, is made an instrument of divine vengeance for reasons which do not concern her personally in the least; one pities her, not as an unhappy lover, but as the victim of fate. She is no longer a human being influenced by human emotions; she is simply a tool in the hands of a relentless deity. In other words, she is never in love with Hippolytus at all, in any commonly-accepted sense of the term.
And thus it must be sufficiently clear to anyone who is able to get rid of preconceived ideas on the matter, that the Phaedra was in reality no more “romantic” than the Trachiniae or the Antigone. Like the rest of the plays of Sophocles, it merely drew the usual picture of the gods playing shove-halfpenny with human souls; the fact that Aphrodite for once took a hand in the game gave it on this occasion a peculiar character of its own, but of anything in any way resembling a modern love-element there is no more trace here than there is anywhere else.[83]