The minor characters are, in their degree, excellently drawn—Creon above all. His short scene is unforgettable; it is that familiar sight—a weak man encouraging himself to firmness by exaggerating his own severity. His delicious little grumble, “my chivalrous instincts have got me into trouble more often than I like to think of,”[436] stamps him as the peer of Dogberry and Justice Shallow.
As a piece of Greek, the Medea is perhaps the finest work of Euripides. The iambics have a simple brilliance and flexible ease which had been unknown hitherto, and which indeed were never rivalled afterwards. Such things as
σὺ γὰρ τί μ’ ἠδίκηκας; ἐξέδου κόρην
ὅτῳ σε θυμὸς ἦγεν,[437]
in Medea’s appeal to Creon, or Jason’s rebuke to her:
πᾶν κέρδος ἡγοῦ ζημιουμένη φυγῇ,[438]
or the expression of her “melting mood”:
ἔτικτον αὐτούς· ζῆν δ’ ὅτ’ ἐξηύχου τέκνα,
εἰσῆλθέ μ’ οἶκτος εἰ γενήσεται τάδε,[439]
are in their unobtrusive way masterpieces of language. But it is in vain to quote specimens; the whole work is as novel and as great in linguistic skill as in dramatic art. In particular the speeches of the nurse at the opening, of Medea when rebuking and again when conciliating Jason—above all, her fearful soliloquy and address to her children, touch the summit of dramatic eloquence. The lyric passages are on the whole less remarkable, but the mystic loveliness of the ode[440] celebrating the glories of Attica, and the anapæsts[441] which give so haunting an expression to a parent’s yearning over his children, are among the most precious things this tender as well as terrible poet has bequeathed to us.