But wise withal. Love in my soul too well
Hath mined his way. Urge sin thus winningly
And passion sweeps my fears into the gulf.[498]
But the nurse will not forbear, and the comforting promise of a charm which shall “still this disease,”[499] as Phædra perhaps half-suspects,[500] is an undertaking to win Hippolytus. The dread strain of illness, passion, and shame have turned the woman for a moment into a nervous child.[501] Thus it comes about that without disgrace, without forfeiture of her conscience, Phædra moves towards the dread moment[502] at which she hears the outcry of Hippolytus. Then after all the anguish, she listens to his intolerable endless speech! Such is the situation in which murder is conceived. In this way Hippolytus’ σωφροσύνη has certainly been his undoing.[503]
We are told[504] that this play is a second version of the theme, and that it was called The Crowned Hippolytus (from the lovely address to Artemis) to distinguish it from the first, called The Veiled Hippolytus. This version (now lost) is said to have contained “improprieties” which the poet afterwards removed. This refers to the attitude of Phædra, who showed less reserve in her passion than in the later play. She invoked the moon-goddess, perhaps to aid her in winning Hippolytus, and boldly pointed to the infidelities of Theseus as an excuse for her own passion.[505] The reproaches[506] which Aristophanes lays upon Phædra refer perhaps only to this earlier version, but his most famous gibe[507] is upon a line[508] of our text,
ἡ γλῶσσ’ ὀμώμοχ’, ἡ δὲ φρὴν ἀνώμοτος,
“My tongue hath sworn; my soul abides unsworn.” This seems to give us the measure of the comic poet’s criticism; he blames Euripides for this sentiment, and yet Hippolytus even in his most desperate trouble will not clear himself by breaking his oath. One cannot, however, refrain from pointing out that even if he had broken it, Theseus would not have believed him,[509] and that Hippolytus realizes this.[510]
The Hecuba (Ἑκάβη) is the next play in order of date; it was performed about 425 B.C.[511] This tragedy was enormously popular throughout antiquity, as the great volume of the scholia proves. It was one of the three plays—the others were Phœnissæ and Orestes—used as an Euripidean reading-book in the Byzantine schools.
The scene is laid in Thrace, where the Greeks are encamped after the fall of Troy; the background is a tent wherein captive Trojan women are quartered. The ghost of Polydorus, Priam’s youngest son, tells how he has been murdered by the Thracian king, Polymestor; he has appeared in a dream to his mother Hecuba. On his departure, Hecuba enters, and soon learns that her daughter Polyxena is to be sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles. Odysseus comes to fetch the maiden, who welcomes death as a relief from slavery. Soon Talthybius enters, summoning Hecuba to bury Polyxena, whose noble death has filled the Greeks with admiration. Hecuba sends a woman to fetch sea-water for the obsequies, and this messenger returns with the body of Polydorus. Hecuba exclaims that the murderer is Polymestor: her dream has told her. Agamemnon enters, and she induces him to connive at her taking vengeance upon the Thracian, his ally. Next she sends for Polymestor and his children, and (after a beautiful ode on the last hours of Troy), they arrive. Polymestor is induced to go with his little sons within the tent, where they are slaughtered and he himself blinded. His cries bring back Agamemnon, who rejects the pleas of Polymestor. The Thracian, in his despair, prophesies the strange end both of Agamemnon and of Hecuba. He is dragged away, and the drama ends with preparations for the voyage to Greece.
This tragedy, let it be said plainly, is on the whole poor and uninteresting.[512] It has been frequently noted, for example, that the plot is “episodic,” that it falls into two divisions, the story of Polyxena and the vengeance upon Polymestor, which are really two small dramas with no genuine connexion. To this it has been replied that the spiritual history of Hecuba supplies unity to the whole; that these episodes bring out her development from a victim into a fiend.[513] But this is scarcely satisfactory. For the two parts are developed so completely along their several lines, they have so little dependence upon one another, that they could stand apart; and that is the real test. Further, the poet himself is uneasy. He is anxious to make some sort of connexion, but it is curiously adventitious. His device, that the corpse of Polydorus is discovered by the woman sent for water wherewith to bathe the body of Polyxena, has won too high praise. An attempt to strengthen it, or rather to draw attention to its neatness, is supplied in the conversation between Hecuba and Agamemnon:[514] “How did he die?” “By the hands of his Thracian host.” ... “Who brought his body hither?” ... “This woman. She found it upon the sea-shore.” “Was she looking for it, or busied with some other task?” The last question is absurd; Agamemnon has no reason to ask it. Other little hooks,[515] less obtrusive than this, are provided here and there to connect the two parts. If the play were an unity they would not be needed.