[12] See Balaustion's Adventure. Since this chapter was first published, Mr. Browning has still further enforced his advocacy of Euripides by Aristophanes' Apology, and a version of the Hercules Furens, while the great tragic poet has found a stanch defender from the carping criticasters of the Schlegel school in Mr. Mahaffy. That excellent scholar and accomplished student of antiquity has recently published a little book on Euripides (Classical Writers, edited by J. R. Green, "Euripides." Macmillan. 1879).
CHAPTER XV.
THE FRAGMENTS OF ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, AND EURIPIDES.
Alexandrian and Byzantine Anthologies.—Titles of the Lost Plays of Æschylus.—The Lycurgeia.—The Trilogy on the Story of Achilles.—The Geography of the Prometheus Unbound.—Gnomic Character of the Sophoclean Fragments.—Providence, Wealth, Love, Marriage, Mourning.—What is True of the Sophoclean is still more True of the Euripidean Fragments.—Mutilated Plays.—Phaëthon, Erechtheus, Antiope, Danaë.—Goethe's Restitution of the Phaëthon.—Passage on Greek Athletes in the Autolycus.—Love, Women, Marriage, Domestic Affection, Children.—Death.—Stoical Endurance.—Justice and the Punishment of Sin.—Wealth.—Noble Birth.—Heroism.—Miscellaneous Gnomic Fragments.—The Popularity of Euripides.
It is difficult to treat the fragments of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides otherwise than as a golden treasury of saws and maxims compiled by Alexandrian and Byzantine Greeks, for whom poetic beauty was of less value than sententious wisdom. The tragic scope and the æsthetic handling of the fables of their lost plays can scarcely be conjectured from such slight hints as we possess. Yet some light may be cast upon the Æschylean method by observing the titles of his dramas. We have, for example, the names of a complete tetralogy upon the legend of Lycurgus. The Edonians, the Bassarids, and the Young Men constituted a connected series of plays—a Lycurgeia, with Lycurgus for the satyric supplement. Remembering that Æschylus called his own tragedies morsels picked up from the great Homeric banquet-table, we may conclude that this tetralogy set forth the Dionysian fable told by Diomede to Glaucus in the Iliad (vi. 131):
No, for not Dryas' son, Lycurgus strong,
Who the divine ones fought, on earth lived long.
He the nurse-nymphs of Dionysus scared
Down the Nyseïan steep, and the wild throng
Their ritual things cast off, and maddening fared,
Torn with his goad, like kine; so vast a crime he dared.
Yea, Dionysus, such a sight was there,
Himself in fear sank down beneath the seas.
And Thetis in her breast him quailing bare,
At the man's cry such trembling shook his knees.
Then angered were the gods who live at ease,
And Zeus smote blind Lycurgus, and he fell
Loathed ere his day.[13]
It appears that the titles of the three dramas composing the trilogy were taken from the Chorus. In the first play the Edonian Thracians, subjects of Lycurgus, formed the Chorus; in the second, the Bassarids, or nurse-nymphs of Dionysus; in the third, the youths whom the wine-god had persuaded to adopt his worship. The subject of the first play was, therefore, the advent of Dionysus and his following in Thrace, and the victory of Lycurgus over the new cult. The second set forth the captivity of the Bacchantes or Bassarids, together with the madness sent upon Lycurgus as a punishment for his resistance, whereby he was driven, according to post-Homeric versions of his legend, to the murder of his own son Dryas in a fit of fury. The third play carried on the subject by exhibiting the submission of Lycurgus to the god whom he had disowned and dishonored, and his death, at the hands of his own subjects, upon Mount Pangæus. Thus the first Chorus was hostile to Dionysus; the second was sympathetic, though captive and impotent; the third was triumphant in his cause. The artistic sequence of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis which the trilogy required, was developed through three moments in the life-drama of Lycurgus, and was typified in the changes of the choric sympathy, according to the law whereby Æschylus varied the form of his triple dramas and, at the same time, immediately connected the Chorus with the passion of each piece. The tragic interest centred in the conflict of Lycurgus and the god, and the final solution was afforded by the submission, though too late, of the protagonist's will to destiny. It is probable that the satyric play of Lycurgus represented the divine honors paid, after his death, to the old enemy, now become the satellite and subject of Dionysus, by pastoral folk and dwellers in the woodlands. The unification of obstinate antagonistic wills in the higher will of Zeus or Fate seems in all cases to have supplied Æschylus with the Versöhnung tragedy required, and to have suggested the religious κάθαρσις without which the Greek drama would have failed to point its lesson. Seen in this light, the Lycurgeia must have been a masterpiece only less sublime, and even more full, perhaps, of picturesque incidents, than the Promethean trilogy. The emotional complexion, if that phrase may be permitted, of each member of the trilogy was determined by the Chorus; wherein we trace a signal instance of the Æschylean method.
More even to be regretted than the Lycurgeia is a colossal lost trilogy to which the name of Tragic Iliad has been given. That Æschylus should have frequently handled the subject-matter of the Iliad was natural; and many titles of tragedies, quoted singly, point to his preoccupation with the mythus of Achilles. It has, therefore, been conjectured, with fair show of reason, that the Myrmidons, the Nereids, and the Phrygians formed a triple drama. The first described the withdrawal of Achilles from the war, the arming of Patroclus, and the grief which the son of Peleus felt for his friend's death. No Greek tragedy, had it been preserved, would have been more precious than this. The second showed how Thetis comforted her child, and procured fresh armor for him from Hephæstus, and how Achilles slew Hector. In the third, Priam recovered the dead body of his son and buried it. Supposing the trilogy to have been constructed upon these outlines, it must have resembled a gigantic history-play, in which, as in the Iliad itself, the character of Achilles was sufficient to form the groundwork of a complicated poem. The theme, in other words, would have resembled those of the modern and romantic drama, rather than such as the elder Greek poets were in the habit of choosing. The Achilleis did not in any direct way illustrate the doctrine of Nemesis, or afford a tragic conflict between the human will and fate. It owed its lustre to the radiant beauty of the hero, to the pathos of his love for Patroclus, to the sudden blazing forth of irresistible energy when sorrow for the dead had driven him to revenge, and to the tranquillity succeeding tempest that dignified his generous compliance with the prayers of Priam. The trilogy composed upon it must, therefore, like a Shakespearian play, have been a drama of character. The fragments of the Myrmidones have already been pieced together in the essay on the Homeric Achilles.[14] From the Nereides nothing has survived except what may be gathered from the meagre remnants of the Latin version made of it by Attius. The Phrygians, also called Ἕκτορος λύτρα, contained a speech of pleading addressed by Priam to the hero in his tent, of which the following is a relic: