To these two plays mentioned by Athenaeus must be added a third, the Chrysippus of Euripides, a work which is peculiarly interesting for two reasons—its author and its subject. The Myrmidones and the Niobe, of which we have just spoken, seem, as far as can be judged by the little of them that remains, to have dealt with what may be called simple straightforward love-stories. Men are introduced as in love with other men, and this love is brought to a climax by the most usual of expedients—the death of the loved object. Euripides, on the other hand, was, as we have seen, above all things a student of the emotions in their more complex phases, and a dénouement of so ordinary a kind could not have failed to appear commonplace to a writer who took such an interest in the pathology of the senses, even when he for once abandoned his favourite field of the feminine passions, and undertook the examination of a form of love, the symptoms of which are notoriously more easily capable of diagnosis. And, as a matter of fact, the Chrysippus introduces us to a novel and most interesting side of the question. The story on which the play is founded is, to quote the words of the Argument to the Phoenissae, as follows:
οὗτος (ὁ Λάϊος) ἀφικόμενός ποτε εἰς Ἦλιν καὶ τὸν τοῦ Πέλοπος υἱὸν Χρύσιππον ἰδών, ὃς ἦν ἐξ ἄλλης αὐτῷ γυναικὸς καὶ οὐκ ἐκ τῆς θυγατρὸς Οἰνομάου Ἱπποδαμείας, καὶ ἁλοὺς τούτου κατάκρας τῷ ἔρωτι, ἁρπάσας εἰς Θήβας ἤνεγκεν. καὶ συνῆν αὐτῷ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ πρῶτος ἐν ἀνθρώποις τὴν ἀρρενοφθορίαν εὑρών, καθὼς δὴ καὶ ὁ Ζεὺς ἐν θεοῖς τὸν Γανυμήδην ἁρπάσας. ὁ δὲ Πέλοψ μαθὼν τοῦτο κατηράσατο Λάϊῳ μηδέποτε μὲν παῖδα τεκεῖν, εἰ δ’ ἄρα καὶ συμβαίη, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦτον ἀναιρεθήσεσθαι.
Or, according to a slightly different version found in “Peisander”:
ἱστορεῖ Πείσανδρος, ὅτι κατὰ χόλον τῆς Ἥρας ἐπέμφθη ἡ Σφὶγξ τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων μερῶν τῆς Αἰθιοπίας, ὅτι τὸν Λάϊον ἀσεβήσαντα εἰς τὸν παράνομον ἔρωτα τοῦ Χρυσίππου, ὃν ἥρπασεν ἀπὸ τῆς Πίσης, οὐκ ἐτιμωρήσαντο ... πρῶτος δὲ ὁ Λάϊος τὸν ἀθέμιστον ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἔσχεν. ὁ δὲ Χρύσιππος ὑπὸ αἰσχύνης ἑαυτὸν διεχρήσατο τῷ ξίφει. (Schol. ad Eur. Phoen. 1760.)
The moral of both these stories is obvious. The behaviour of Laius towards Chrysippus was a crime deserving the most exemplary punishment.
Now this fact at once affords us a clue as to the real nature of Laius’ conduct. It seems impossible that the statement that Laius πρῶτος τὸν ἀθέμιστον ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἔσχεν can be taken to mean that he was the founder of love as between man and man in the same way as this is related of, for instance, Orpheus. It seems impossible to believe that any legend should have described the originator of that form of love with which, as we know, the highest thoughts and ideals of the early Greeks were so intimately associated, as a criminal worthy of divine punishment. Euripides himself might not have shrunk from such a course, but it does not seem conceivable that he should have found any existing legend on which to begin to work;[174] and it seems, therefore, unquestionable that the meaning of the story cannot have been this. As a matter of fact, a careful examination of such evidence as we have, affords every reason for believing that its meaning was a very different one.
The true meaning of the legend is this. Laius was the first to violate the universal law that the love between man and man must be pure; and it was this transgression that involved himself, his family, and his country in such universal ruin.
That this meaning is in itself a more likely one than the other, will probably not be disputed by anyone who has formed a true conception of early Greek feeling on the subject; more than this one cannot expect. But while actual proof on the point is impossible, it may not be inapposite to draw attention to the way in which the sensuality and unreasoning animalism of Laius are emphasised at every turn, with the view doubtless, in the first case, of preventing any conceivable misunderstanding of the true purport of the tradition.
In the play itself, the nature of his passion is shown only too clearly by the famous distichs (Fr. 840, 841):
λέληθεν οὐδὲν τῶνδέ μ’ ὧν σὺ νουθετεῖς,