[129] The Erinyes are spoken of (apparently with real belief) in IT. 79 ff. and elsewhere.
[130] Or. 258 f., not very different, IT. 288–94.
[131] τὸ θηριῶδες τοῦτο καὶ μιαιφόνον, Or. 524. Orestes instead of committing murder himself should have brought his father to justice, Or. 500 f. Agamemnon himself if he could have been asked would not have desired this bloody vengeance, Or. 288 ff. It is only Apollo’s unwise counsel that has led Orestes to the murder of his mother, El. 971 ff., 1296 f.; Or. 276 ff., 416, 591. After the deed Orestes does indeed feel remorse but no religious terrors, El. 1177 (in spite of which there is much about the pursuing Erinyes of his mother). How completely this whole series of ideas, the duty of vengeance, etc., has lost its meaning for the poet, is to be felt more especially in the sophistical frigidity with which the subject is treated in an ἀγών between Tyndareos and Orestes, Or. 491–604, and in the hair-splitting of the speech of Orestes himself, 932 ff.
[132] δοκῶ δὲ τοῖς θανοῦσι διαφέρειν βραχύ, εἰ πλουσίων τις τεύξεται κτερισμάτων· κενὸν δὲ γαύρωμ’ ἐστὶ τῶν ζώντων τόδε, Tro. 1248 ff.
[133] fr. 176.
[134] οὐδὲν ἔσθ’ ὁ κατθανών, Alc. 381. The dead are οἱ οὐκέτ’ ὄντες 322. τοῖς (the dead) μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἄλγος ἄψεταί ποτε, πολλῶν δὲ μόχθων εὐκλεὴς ἐπαύσατο, 937 f. But even fame is nothing to the dead. Admetos says to his father in the scurrilous dialogue θανεῖ γε μέντοι δυσκλεής, ὅταν θάνῃς. To which the old man unconcernedly replies κακῶς ἀκούειν οὐ μέλει θανόντι μοι (725 f.).
[135] It might seem simpler to regard all the utterances of persons in the plays which correspond to conventional beliefs as being merely dramatic expressions of the character’s own (orthodox) view, and in no sense put forward by the poet as his own opinion. And certainly the separate and independently acting persons of the drama can only [459] speak and act in accordance with their own proper conceptions and springs of action—not in accordance with the poet’s. But in the antique drama this complete detachment of the creatures of the dramatic imagination from their creator, the poet of the drama, only holds good in a limited sense. The ancient dramatists exercised their office of judge much more vigorously than the greatest of the moderns. The course of his play showed clearly what acts and characters the poet disapproved of, but also which opinions he sanctioned and which he did not. We have only to remember the attacks of Oedipus and Iokaste upon the judgments of the gods in OT. (or the story of Sen., Ep. 115, 14: Eur. fr. 324). Accordingly we may take it that such utterances of dramatic characters as are not supplied with practical or spoken corrective are among those of which the poet did not disapprove. Euripides so very frequently puts words into the mouth of his characters which can only express his own moods or opinions that we may also assume that when their language harmonizes with traditional belief then, too, the most subjective of the tragedians is for the moment expressing his own view. Thus, for example, we cannot doubt that the strain of piety running through the whole of the Hiketides (subjection of φρόνησις to God’s wisdom, 216 ff., submission to the guidance of the gods, 592 ff., and to Zeus’ government of the world, 734 ff.), and especially the whole-hearted elaboration of the picture of Theseus as a model of εὐσέβεια represent the actual opinion of the poet at that particular period (he clearly speaks of himself, 180–3). At other times, too (apart from the Bacchae), though generally for a short time only, he shows vague aspirations towards orthodoxy.
[136] Alc. 968 ff.; Hipp. 952 ff.—Asceticism of the mystai of Zeus and Zagreus of the Mountain Mother and the Kouretes: Κρῆτες, fr. 472.
[137] Polyid. fr. 638; Phrixos, fr. 833. It is usual (cf. Bergk, Gr. Litt. 3, 475, 33) to see here a reminiscence of Herakleitos. But the latter’s ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (fr. 67 Byw. 62 D.) is clearly intended to express the view that “death” and “life” are purely relative concepts; that death (of the one, i.e. Fire) and life (of the other, i.e, Water or Earth) are simultaneously present in the same object (see also frr. 68, 78 = 36, 88). According to this view it would be strictly true that life on earth is not more life than it is death; but that is certainly not what Eurip. means to say. Philo and Sext. Emp. are mistaken in attributing to Herakl. the Orphic doctrine of the “death” of the soul which takes place when it is enclosed in the σῶμα, as its σῆμα (see above, chap. xi, [n. 19]). But it is precisely this Orphic doctrine that is present to the mind of Eurip. (and Plato, Gorg. 492 E, 493 A, brings it into immediate connexion with the verses of E.). He is speaking of the true “death” of the soul in the life of the body and of its release to a real (and not a merely relative) life after death; and thinks that “life” has no claim to the distinguishing name (cf. ὃ δὴ βίοτον καλέουσι Emped. 117 Mull. = fr. 15 D.).
[138] Palingenesia is alluded to once only and in jest as a desirable reward for the virtuous, HF. 655–68; cf. M. Ant. xii, 5.