Contemporary with Sophocles was Euripides, born in 480 B.C., the last of the three great masters of the drama—the three being embraced within the limits of a single century. Under Sophocles the principal changes effected in the outward form of the drama were the introduction of a third actor, and a consequent limitation of the functions of the chorus. Euripides, however, changed the mode of handling tragedy. Unlike Sophocles, who only limited the activity of the chorus, he disconnected it from the tragic interest of the drama by giving but little attention to the character of its songs. He also made some other changes; and, as one writer expresses it, his innovations "disintegrated the drama by destroying its artistic unity." But although perhaps inferior, in all artistic point of view, to his predecessors, the genius of Euripides supplied a want that they did not meet. Although his plays are all connected with the history and mythology of Greece, in them rhetoric is more prominent than in the plays of either Æschylus or Sophocles; the legendary characters assume more the garb of humanity; the tender sentiments—love, pity, compassion—are invoked to a greater degree, and an air of exquisite delicacy and refinement embellishes the whole. These were the qualities in the plays of Euripides that endeared him to the Greeks of succeeding ages, and that gave to his works such an influence on the Roman and modern drama.
Of Euripides MR. SYMONDS remarks: "His lasting title to fame consists in his having dealt with the deeper problems of life in a spirit which became permanent among the Greeks, so that his poems never lost their value as expressions of current philosophy. Nothing strikes the student of later Greek literature more strongly than this prolongation of the Euripidean tone of thought and feeling. In the decline of tragic poetry the literary sceptre was transferred to comedy; and the comic playwrights may be described as the true successors of Euripides. The dialectic method, which he affected, was indeed dropped, and a more harmonious form of art than the Euripidean was created for comedy by Menan'der, when the Athenians, after passing through their disputatious period, had settled down into a tranquil acceptation of the facts of life. Yet this return to harmony of form and purity of perception did not abate the influence of Euripides. Here and there throughout his tragedies he had said, and well said, what the Greeks were bound to think and feel upon important matters; and his sensitive, susceptible temperament repeated itself over and over again among his literary successors. The exclamation of Phile'mon that, if he could believe in immortality, he would hang himself to see Euripides, is characteristic not only of Philemon, but also of the whole Macedonian period of Greek literature." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." Second Series, p. 300.]
Euripides wrote about seventy-five plays, of which eighteen have come down to us. The Me-de'a, which is thought to be his best piece, is occupied with the circumstances of the vengeance taken by Medea on the ungrateful Jason, the hero of the Argonautic expedition, for whom she had sacrificed all, and who, after his return, abandoned her for a royal Corinthian bride. [Footnote: See Argonautic Expedition, p. 81.] But the most touching of the plays of Euripides is the Alces'tis, founded on the fable of Alcestis dying for her husband, Adme'tus. MILTON thus alludes to the story, in his sonnet on his deceased wife:
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
The substance of the story is as follows:
Admetus, King of Phe'ræ, in Thessaly, married Alcestis, who became noted for her conjugal virtues. Apollo, when banished from heaven, received so kind treatment from Admetus that he induced the Fates to prolong the latter's life beyond the ordinary limit, on condition that one of his own family should die in his stead. Alcestis at once consented to die for her husband, and when the appointed time came she heroically and composedly gave herself to death. Soon after her departure, however, the hero Hercules visited Admetus, and, pained with the profound grief of the household, he rescued Alcestis from the grim tyrant Death and restored her to her family. The whole play abounds in touching scenes and descriptions; and the best modern critics concede that there is no female character in either Æschylus or Sophocles, not even excepting Antig'one, that is so great and noble, and at the same time so purely tender and womanly, as Alcestis. "Where has either Greek or modern literature," says MAHAFFY, "produced a nobler ideal than the Alcestis of Euripides? Devoted to her husband and children, beloved and happy in her palace, she sacrifices her life calmly and resignedly—a life which is not encompassed with afflictions, but of all the worth that life can be, and of all the usefulness which makes it precious to noble natures." [Footnote: "Social Life in Greece, p. 189.] We give the following short extract from the poet's account of the preparations made by Alcestis for her approaching end:
Alcestis Preparing for Death.
When she knew
The destined day was come, in fountain water
She bathed her lily-tinctured limbs, then took
From her rich chests, of odorous cedar formed,
A splendid robe, and her most radiant dress.
Thus gorgeously arrayed, she stood before
The hallowed flames, and thus addressed her prayer:
"O queen, I go to the infernal shades;
Yet, ere I go, with reverence let me breathe
My last request: protect my orphan children;
Make my son happy with the wife he loves,
And wed my daughter to a noble husband;
Nor let them, like their mother, to the tomb
Untimely sink, but in their native land
Be blessed through lengthened life to honored age."
Then to each altar in the royal house
She went, and crowned it, and addressed her vows,
Plucking the myrtle bough: nor tear, nor sigh
Came from her; neither did the approaching ill
Change the fresh beauties of her vermeil cheek.
Her chamber then she visits, and her bed;
There her tears flowed, and thus she spoke: "O bed
To which my wedded lord, for whom I die,
Led me a virgin bride, farewell! to thee
No blame do I impute, for me alone
Hast thou destroyed: disdaining to betray
Thee, and my lord, I die: to thee shall come
Some other woman, not more chaste, perchance
More happy." As she lay she kissed the couch,
And bathed it with a flood of tears: that passed,
She left her chamber, then returned, and oft
She left it, oft returned, and on the couch
Fondly, each time she entered, cast herself.
Her children, as they hung upon her robes,
Weeping, she raised, and clasped them to her breast
Each after each, as now about to die.
—Trans. by POTTER.
Euripides died in the year 406 B.C., in Macedon, to which country he had been compelled to go on account of domestic troubles; and the then king, Archela'us honored his remains with a sumptuous funeral, and erected a monument over them.