What, then, are we to believe of Dionysus? If we refuse him we are liable like Pentheus to be destroyed; if we surrender ourselves, what of Agave? Here is a dilemma which Euripides himself did not foresee. By θεός (“god”) he often means something widely different from the concept of an ordinary Athenian, but he never intends all the associations of our word “God”. For us belief in “God” implies that the universe holds a personal Governor, all-powerful and all-wise, who stands to us in a relation emotional as well as metaphysical. To accept Him is to believe that His purpose embraces the existence and history of the universe and of the humblest creature therein, and because of that belief to merit His love by loving service of our own. These thoughts are to us tremendous commonplaces; they would have bewildered any fifth-century Greek save Æschylus.[752] θεός means a power, usually but not necessarily personal, which is outside ourselves and affects our life in a manner which cannot be affected by any wish or act of ours, save possibly to a small degree by ritual submission. Dionysus, like the other “gods,” is a permanent fact of life personified. We must give him respect, take account of him in our conduct and judgment of others. To ignore him is not so much sin as utter blindness. If we insist on the personality of Dionysus we find him attractive but deadly, a deity who employs his might to entangle the threads of life, crushing hearts better than his own. In so far as he is a person he is unthinkable. But as a fact of life, with no more purpose or will than the force of gravitation, he is neither good nor bad, simply a profound reality, one of the elements we must consider in building our lives. Cadmus expresses this lesson: “If anyone despises the supernatural powers, let him look on the death of this man and believe in the gods”.[753]
Then why does the poet dwell on the personal existence of Dionysus? Even if we refuse to believe the theory outlined already, that this person is a human hierophant, we can still answer the question. Euripides is concerned not merely to tell us the truth about ethics, but to discuss the current theology of his day. The majority of his fellows believed in a personal Zeus, a personal Athena and Dionysus. He wishes to convince them of the falsity, the pernicious falsity, of such a creed. Take this play in its superficial meaning and you find a person who is detestable—a god who does wrong, and who is, therefore, no god at all.[754] Away with him; purify your theology. And when this is done, we find, not that the drama has fallen to pieces, but that now it is coherent and forcible. There is in the human soul an instinct for ecstasy, for a relinquishment of self in order to feel and bathe in the non-human glory of Nature. Trample this instinct ruthlessly down as did Pentheus, and your life is maimed and shrivelled.
Iphigenia at Aulis[755] (Ἰφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Αὐλίδι) was produced soon after the poet’s death in 406 B.C. by his son, together with Alcmæon at Corinth and the Bacchæ.
The scene shows Agamemnon’s tent at Aulis, where the Greeks are encamped ready to sail for Troy, but delayed by contrary winds. Before they can set out Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia must be sacrificed to Artemis. The king has written to his wife bidding her send the maiden—to marry Achilles. We now see him in agony beneath the night-sky and entrusting to an aged slave a letter revoking the first. The chorus (women of Colchis) enter and describe the pastimes of various heroes. Menelaus intercepts the letter and reproaches his brother with treachery. After a vigorous dispute they learn that Clytæmnestra and Iphigenia are approaching. Menelaus relents, but they realize that the sacrifice must proceed. The chorus sing Aphrodite’s power and the judgment of Paris. Agamemnon greets his family with half-concealed distress, and in vain attempts to send his wife back forthwith. A choric ode describes the impending doom of Troy. Achilles, seeking Agamemnon, meets Clytæmnestra, who to his amazement greets him as a son-in-law. In the midst of their embarrassment the old slave comes forward and reveals Agamemnon’s purpose. The queen in agony appeals to Achilles, who promises to defend Iphigenia. The chorus sing the bridals of Peleus and Thetis, Achilles’ parents. Then mother and daughter piteously beg Agamemnon to relent; he is heart-broken but determined. Iphigenia utters a lyric lament, after which Achilles tells how the army maltreated him for championing Iphigenia. He and the queen are excitedly debating, when Iphigenia proclaims her readiness to die for the cause of Greece, and departs, singing her farewell to life. A messenger brings a description of the sacrifice: at the last moment the princess miraculously disappeared, and a hind was substituted for her by the goddess. Agamemnon returns and takes leave of Clytæmnestra.
The text of this drama presents curious features.[756] There are two prologues, and the last fifty or sixty lines of the whole are corrupt. It seems that Euripides died before the work was finished; the gaps were filled by his son Euripides who produced the trilogy (Iphigenia, Alcmæon, Bacchæ) soon after 406 B.C. The original prologue, of the ordinary narrative kind, delivered by Agamemnon in iambic metre, is embedded in the later prologue, which takes the form of a dialogue in anapæsts between the king and his aged retainer. This later work is extremely charming, filled with the quiet beauty of night overhanging the feverish ambition and misery of men. But though the younger Euripides probably wrote an ending also, this has been displaced by extremely bad[757] work of a much later time. It is not easy to understand why such inferior matter was allowed to eject the composition of the younger Euripides. Perhaps the explanation is that the concluding lines were known from the first not to be by the master, that the play was often produced, and that for these two reasons rival endings were very early before the public. They would destroy one another’s prestige, so that in later centuries none survived, and some scribe filled up the gap as best he could.
A noteworthy contrast exists between the Iphigenia and the Bacchæ, though they were no doubt composed at almost the same time. In this play the chorus has practically no concern with the action, whereas the Asiatic women form the soul of the Bacchæ. Instead of the wild loveliness or serene spirituality which thrill us in the lyrics of that drama, we find here nothing more profound than graceful complications of phrase and facile emotion. In compensation, while the Bacchæ is primitive in psychology, its companion is superior to many Greek tragedies in the masterly freedom and subtlety of its character-drawing.
The play is a study of five ordinary characters under the stress of an extraordinary crisis. This common-place quality of the personages conveys the whole purport, giving it a momentous position even among such works as we have been discussing. In this latest tragedy no sincere reader can fail to detect himself under the thin disguise of names. Many men were pointed at as the original of Meredith’s Sir Willoughby Patterne, and for the same good reason most Athenian husbands must have stirred a little on their benches in the presence of this unheroic Agamemnon. There is nothing heroic in any of the persons. Menelaus is an ordinary man—artlessly selfish at one moment, artlessly and uselessly kind-hearted at another, and a master of fluent invective which reveals his own failings. Clytæmnestra is an ordinary woman, showing indeed a queenly dignity in the normal relations of life, but when puzzled or alarmed revealing herself a thorough bourgeoise, and when confronted by the doom which threatens her daughter forgetting all her pride, clutching at even the most pitiful means[758] of gaining a respite, and utterly broken when her hope dies away. Agamemnon is an ordinary man, thrown by circumstances into a position where both generalship and statesmanship are needed, attempting to rule his army by diplomacy and his family by military discipline, with ruin as the result. Fatally open to suggestion, he makes and remakes subterfuges, seeking to spare every one’s feelings until at last he drifts into the necessity of slaying his own child. Even Iphigenia is an ordinary girl. It is precisely because she is a common type that we grieve for her anguish and triumph in her exaltation. Macaria in the Heracleidæ is almost unknown save to professed students of Euripides. She knows no fear or hesitation and lives on the heights; we recognize in ourselves no kinship with her. But Iphigenia we meet every day. She is no heroine, but a child. Her delight at seeing her father again shows all a child’s amiable abandon; her pitiful cries and shrinking at the prospect of death are those of the ordinary happiness-loving girl. When finally the agony of her father, the empty clamour of Achilles, her mother’s undignified tremors, nerve her to trample her own dread under foot, we rejoice precisely because what we witness is the triumph of common human nature. Even Achilles, son of a goddess as story reported him, is a common-place person too. This is not the hero who flames through the Iliad, but a young noble led into the extreme of folly by this very legend that his origin is divine. Perhaps nothing even in the deadly Euripides is quite so fatal to the traditional halo than the incredible speech[759] wherewith Achilles comforts Clytæmnestra. Of vast length, full of spurious, jerky rhetoric and contradictory comments on the situation—which, however frightful, appeals to him mostly as an atmosphere in which he can pose—this oration reveals him as a sham. Fortunately for him, he is never undeceived. This man is not the Achilles of tradition; he is spiritual brother of the mad prince in the Orestes and the ancestor of Mr. Shaw’s Sergius Saranoff.
In his last work, then, Euripides, so far from showing any exhaustion of power, appears on the verge of new developments.[760] He has drawn still nearer to the new comedy of Menander. The suddenness with which, after the quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaus, the crisis is precipitated by the entrance of the messenger announcing Iphigenia’s arrival—the man breaks into the middle of a line[761]—is a remarkable novelty. The altercation itself shows a brilliant freedom of idiom which even this poet has hardly reached hitherto. There is at least one unprecedented license of metre.[762] And the complete change of spirit which comes upon Iphigenia was novel enough to offend Aristotle.[763]
The Cyclops[764] (Κύκλωψ) is the only complete[765] satyric play now extant. No indications of date[766] seem available.
The background is a cave on Mount Etna, wherein dwells the Cyclops, or one-eyed giant, Polyphemus. Silenus tells how he and the satyrs have become the ogre’s slaves. He is sweeping out the cavern when the chorus of satyrs drive in their flocks. Odysseus and his men arrive, seeking provisions, which Silenus eagerly sells for a skin of wine. The conversation is interrupted by Polyphemus who decides to devour the intruders. Odysseus eloquently appeals to him, but receives a brutal and blasphemous reply. The giant drives the Greeks within, and the chorus express their disgust at his cannibalism. Odysseus tells how two of his men have been eaten; he himself has gained favour by the gift of wine, and proposes that they all escape, after blinding Polyphemus with a red-hot stake. The chorus joyfully assent. Polyphemus comes forth drunk and intending to visit his brethren, but Odysseus dissuades him. The Cyclops asks Odysseus his name and is told “Noman”; he promises to eat his benefactor last. The revel proceeds until Polyphemus retires, whereupon Odysseus calls for action, but the chorus all offer ridiculous excuses. The hero goes within to perform the task with his comrades. Soon the giant reappears, blind and bellowing with pain, while the satyrs joke about “Noman,” and give him false directions so that the Greeks escape from the cave. Odysseus reveals himself, and Polyphemus recognizes the fulfilment of an oracle. He threatens to wreck the ship, but the others depart unconcernedly to the beach.