Euripides is said to have written 92 dramas, including 8 satyr-plays. The best critics of antiquity allowed 75 as genuine. Nauck has collected 1117 Euripidean fragments. Among these, numbers 1092-1117 are doubtful or spurious; numbers Works. 842-1091 are from plays of uncertain title; numbers 1-841 represent fifty-five lost pieces, among which some of the best known are the Andromeda, Antiope,[1] Bellerophon, Cresphontes, Erechtheus, Oedipus, Phaëthon, and Telephus.
1. The Alcestis, as the didascaliae tell us, was brought out in Ol. 85. 2, i.e. at the Dionysia in the spring of 438 B.C., as the fourth play of a tetralogy comprising the Cretan Women, the Alcmaeon at Psophis, and the Telephus. The Alcestis is altogether removed from the character, essentially grotesque, of a mere satyric drama. On the other hand, it has features which distinctly separate it from a Greek tragedy of the normal type. First, the subject belongs to none of the great cycles, but to a byway of mythology, and involves such strange elements as the servitude of Apollo in a mortal household, the decree of the fates that Admetus must die on a fixed day, and the restoration of the dead Alcestis to life. Secondly, the treatment of the subject is romantic and even fantastic,—strikingly so in the passage where Apollo is directly confronted with the daemonic figure of Thanatos. Lastly, the boisterous, remorseful, and generous Heracles makes, not, indeed, a satyric drama, but a distinctly satyric scene—a scene which, in the frank original, hardly bears the subtle interpretation which in Balaustion is hinted by the genius of Browning, that Heracles got drunk in order to keep up other people’s spirits. When the happy ending is taken into account, it is not surprising that some should have called the Alcestis a tragi-comedy. But we cannot so regard it. The slight and purely incidental strain of comedy is but a moment of relief between the tragic sorrow and terror of the opening and the joy, no less solemn, of the conclusion. In this respect the Alcestis might more truly be compared to such a drama as the Winter’s Tale; the loss and recovery of Hermione by Leontes do not form a tragi-comedy because we are amused between-whiles by Autolycus and the clown. It does not seem improbable that the Alcestis—the earliest of the extant plays—may represent an attempt to substitute for the old satyric drama an after-piece of a kind which, while preserving a satyric element, should stand nearer to tragedy. The taste and manners of the day were perhaps tiring of the merely grotesque entertainment that old usage appended to the tragedies; just as, in the sphere of comedy, we know from Aristophanes that they were tiring of broad buffoonery. An original dramatist may have seen an opportunity here. However that may be, the Alcestis has a peculiar interest for the history of the drama. It marks in the most signal manner, and perhaps at the earliest moment, that great movement which began with Euripides,—the movement of transition from the purely Hellenic drama to the romantic.
2. The Medea was brought out in 431 B.C. with the Philoctetes, the Dictys, and a lost satyr-play called the Reapers (Theristae). Euripides gained the third prize, the first falling to Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, and the second to Sophocles. If it is true that Euripides modelled his Medea on the work of an obscure predecessor, Neophron, at least he made the subject thoroughly his own. Hardly any play was more popular in antiquity with readers and spectators, with actors, or with sculptors. Ennius is said to have translated and adopted it. We do not know how far it may have been used by Ovid in his lost tragedy of the same name; but it certainly inspired the rhetorical performance of Seneca, which may be regarded as bridging the interval between Euripides and modern adaptations. We may grant at once that the Medea of Euripides is not a faultless play; that the dialogue between the heroine and Aegeus is not happily conceived; that the murder of the children lacks an adequate dramatic motive; that there is something of a moral anti-climax in the arrangements of Medea, before the deed, for her personal safety. But the Medea remains a tragedy of first-rate power. It is admirable for the splendid force with which the character of the strange and strong-hearted woman, a barbarian friendless among Hellenes, is thrown out against the background of Hellenic life in Corinth.
3. The extant Hippolytus (429 B.C.)—sometimes called Stephanephoros, the “wreath-bearer,” from the garland of flowers which, in the opening scene, the hero offers to Artemis—was not the first drama of Euripides on this theme. In an earlier play of the same name, we are told, he had shocked both the moral and the aesthetic sense of Athens. In this earlier Hippolytus, Phaedra herself had confessed her love to her step-son, and, when repulsed, had falsely accused him to Theseus, who doomed him to death; at the sight of the corpse, she had been moved to confess her crime, and had atoned for it by a voluntary death. This first Hippolytus is cited as Hippolytus the Veiled (καλυπτόμενος), either, as Toup and Welcker thought, from Hippolytus covering his face in horror, or, as Bentley with more likelihood suggested, because the youth’s shrouded corpse was brought upon the scene. It can scarcely be doubted that the chief dramatic defect of our Hippolytus is connected with the unfavourable reception of its predecessor. Euripides had been warned that limits must be observed in the dramatic portrayal of a morally repulsive theme. In the later play, accordingly, the whole action is made to turn on the jealous feud between Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Artemis, the goddess of chastity. Phaedra not only shrinks from breathing her secret to Hippolytus, but destroys herself when she learns that she is rejected. But the natural agency of human passion is now replaced by a supernatural machinery; the slain son and the bereaved father are no longer the martyrs of sin, the tragic witnesses of an inexorable law; rather they and Phaedra are alike the puppets of a divine caprice, the scapegoats of an Olympian quarrel in which they have no concern. But if the dramatic effect of the whole is thus weakened, the character of Phaedra is a fine psychological study; and, as regards form, the play is one of the most brilliant. Boeckh (De tragoediae Graecae principiis, p. 180 f.) is perhaps too ingenious in finding an allusion to the plague at Athens (430 B.C.) in the ὦ κακὰ θνητῶν στυγεραί τε νόσοι of v. 177, and in v. 209 f.; but it can scarcely be doubted that he is right in suggesting that the closing words of Theseus (v. 1460)
ὦ κλείν᾽ Ἀθηνῶν Παλλάδος θ᾽ ὁρίσματα, οἵου στερήσεσθ᾽ ἀνδρός,
and the reply of the chorus, κοινὁν τόδ᾽ ἄχος, &c., contain a reference to the recent death of Pericles (429 B.C.).
4. The Hecuba may be placed about 425 B.C. Thucydides (iii. 104) notices the purification of Delos by the Athenians, and the restoration of the Panionic festival there, in 426 B.C.—an event to which the choral passage, v. 462 f., probably refers. It appears more hazardous to take v. 650 f. as an allusion to the Spartan mishap at Pylos. The subject of the play is the revenge of Hecuba, the widowed queen of Priam, on Polymestor, king of Thrace, who had murdered her youngest son Polydorus, after her daughter Polyzena had already been sacrificed by the Greeks to the shade of Achilles. The two calamities which befall Hecuba have no direct connexion with each other. In this sense the play lacks unity of design. On the other hand, both events serve the same end—viz. to heighten the tragic pathos with which the poet seeks to surround the central figure of Hecuba. The drama illustrates the skill with which Euripides, while failing to satisfy the requirements of artistic drama, could sustain interest by an ingeniously woven plot. It is a representative Intriguenstück, and well exemplifies the peculiar power which recommended Euripides to the poets of the New Comedy.
5. The Andromache, according to a notice in the scholia Veneta (446), was not acted at Athens, at least in the author’s life-time; though some take the words in the Greek argument (τὸ δρᾶμα τῶν δευτέρων) to mean that it was among those which gained a second prize. The invective on the Spartan character which is put into the mouth of Andromache contains the words, ἀδίκως εὐτυχεῖτ᾽ ἀν᾽ Ἑλλάδα, and this, with other indications, points to the Peloponnesian successes of the years 424-422 B.C. Andromache, the widow of Hector, has become the captive and concubine of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. During his absence, her son Molossus is taken from her, with the aid of Menelaus, by her jealous rival Hermione. Mother and son are rescued from death by Peleus; but meanwhile Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi through the intrigues of Orestes. The goddess Thetis now appears, ordains that Andromache shall marry Helenus, and declares that Molossus shall found a line of Epirote kings, while Peleus shall become immortal among the gods of the sea. The Andromache is a poor play. The contrasts, though striking, are harsh and coarse, and the compensations dealt out by the deus ex machina leave the moral sense wholly unsatisfied. Technically the piece is noteworthy as bringing on the scene four characters at once—Andromache, Molossus, Peleus and Menelaus (v. 545 f.).
6. The Ion is an admirable drama, the finest of those plays which deal with legends specially illustrating the traditional glories of Attica. It is also the most perfect example of the poet’s skill in the structure of dramatic intrigue. For its place in the chronological order there are no data except those of style and metre. Judging by these, Hermann would place it “neither after Ol. 89, nor much before”—i.e. somewhere between 424 and 421 B.C.; and this may be taken as approximately correct. The scene is laid throughout at the temple of Delphi. The young Ion is a priest in the temple of Delphi when Xuthus and his wife Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, come to inquire of the god concerning their childlessness; and it is discovered that Ion is the son of Creusa by the god Apollo. Athena herself appears, and commands that Ion shall be placed on the throne of Athens, foretelling that from him shall spring the four Attic tribes, the Teleontes (priests), Hopletes (fighting-men), Argadeis (husbandmen) and Aigikoreis (herdsmen). The play must have been peculiarly effective on the Athenian stage, not only by its situations, but through its appeal to Attic sympathies.
7. The Suppliants who give their name to the play are Argive women, the mothers of Argive warriors slain before the walls of Thebes, who, led by Adrastus, king of Argos, come as suppliants to the altar of Demeter at Eleusis. Creon, king of Thebes, has refused burial to their dead sons. The Athenian king Theseus demands of Creon that he shall grant the funeral rites; the refusal is followed by a battle in which the Thebans are vanquished, and the bodies of the Argive dead are then brought to Eleusis. At the close the goddess Athena appears, and ordains that a close alliance shall be formed between Athens and Argos. Some refer the play to 417 B.C., when the democratic party at Athens rose against the oligarchs. But a more probable date is 420 B.C., when, through the agency of Alcibiades, Athens and Argos concluded a defensive alliance. The play has a strongly marked rhetorical character, and is, in fact, a panegyric, with an immediate political aim, on Athens as the champion of humanity against Thebes.