III.

Euripides as Dramatist

In contrast to Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides represented the new moral, social, and political movements that were taking place in Athens toward the end of the 5th century bc. It was a period of enormous intellectual discovery, in which wisdom ranked as the highest earthly accomplishment. New truths were being established in all branches of knowledge, and Euripides, reacting to them, brought a new kind of consciousness to the writing of tragedy. His interest lay in the thought and experience of the ordinary individual rather than in the experiences of legendary figures from the epics of Homer.

Although Euripides drew on Greek legends, he treated its characters in a realistic fashion: They were no longer idealized symbols remote from commonplace life, but contemporary Athenians. Euripides shared in the intellectual skepticism of the day, and his plays challenged long-accepted religious and moral dogmas. His attitudes shifted between extremes, sometimes within the boundaries of the same play. He was capable of bitter, realistic observation of human weaknesses and corruption, and yet just as often his work reflected respect for human heroism, dignity, and more tender sentiments.

A.

Dramatic Structure

Although the tragedies of Euripides differ in some remarkable ways from those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, their plays have many common features. The basic structure is much the same: Scenes of spoken dialogue between two or three actors alternate with odes in lyric verse sung by a chorus. The members of the chorus are technically dramatis personae (characters) in the drama, but in effect they are often somewhere between the actors and the audience, especially when they act as witnesses and comment upon the action. Euripides often uses the choral odes to reinforce leading themes rather than to advance the plot of the plays.

Euripides’ plays differ in structure from those of Aeschylus and Sophocles chiefly in their frequent use of prologues and epilogues. These are written in the same verse as the dialogue and are spoken most often by deities who do not appear in the play, though sometimes by human characters who do appear. In the prologue Euripides makes clear to the audience the events that precede the opening of the play and often outlines what will happen during the play. The epilogue tells the remainder of the story, often changing the fate of the characters.

Euripides’ plays were criticized for their structure. His use of the prologue and epilogue came under attack as clumsy and undramatic. Aristophanes ridiculed Euripides for the mechanical and exaggerated use of the explanatory prologue, which was frequently burdened with long histories of the characters. Euripides’ use of the chorus as independent of the chief action of the drama also was unconventional.

Later on Euripides was criticized for the loose structure of his plays. Some of his works contain brilliant detached episodes that do not form coherent units through which the plots gradually develop. He also relied heavily on the deus ex machina, the unexpected introduction of a god to solve the dilemmas of the characters and bring a play to its conclusion.

B.

Euripides’ Thought

Euripides took his plots from the same general source as the other Greek dramatists. The native Greek myths and legends held a strong attraction for him. However, Euripides interpreted and modified the traditional legends so that the heroic figures lose their heroic quality and are driven by often violent emotions. We may or may not sympathize with them, but we cannot admire them. By contrast, Euripides often shows people of lower status in ancient Greece—women, peasants, slaves, and others—as able to rise above the ordinary in courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.

The theme of tragedy is the sufferings and disasters that befall human beings. The ancient dramatists had different views on the cause of such events. For Aeschylus, it was divine punishment for sin. For Sophocles, it lay in the conjunction and clash of human pride and stubbornness with sheer mischance, which was allowed rather than ordered by the gods. For Euripides, the cause was largely human nature. Our own lives and those of others are wrecked by ignorance and foolishness, uncontrolled passions and emotions, and greed, ambition, and cruelty.

Yet the traditional gods and goddesses are always there in Euripides’ plays, at least in the background if not as actual characters. Even if they do not cause the disaster, they fail to prevent it. If the playwright believed in human responsibility, why does he bring them in? One explanation is that they are symbols of natural forces, of the passions and emotions that are only too likely to bring misery. Another explanation is that he presented the traditional deities in a spirit of irony and satire.

C.

Plays of Euripides

Of the many plays Euripides wrote, 18 survive. Seventeen of these are tragedies and one is a satyr play called Cyclops. Satyr plays were comic satires of tragedy, performed at drama festivals following a sequence of three tragedies. In his plays Euripides altered the traditional legends to suit his plots. The same characters may appear in more than one play but have very different natures in each play. Similarly, the plot of one play may be inconsistent with the plot of another play.

The tragedies of Euripides for which we know the date of the first production are Alcestis (438 bc), Medea (431 bc), Hippolytus (428 bc), Trojan Women (415 bc), Helen (412 bc), Orestes (408 bc), and Iphigenia in Aulis and Bacchae (both produced posthumously, 405 bc). Those of uncertain date are Andromache, Children of Heracles, Hecuba, Suppliants, Electra, Madness of Heracles, Iphigenia in Tauris, Ion, and Phoenissae (Phoenician Women).

C.1.

Alcestis

Although tragic in form, Alcestis is a fairy tale with a happy ending, rather than a serious tragedy. In the play Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, is doomed to die unless someone else will die in his place. The only one willing to die to spare his life is his wife Alcestis. She dies and is buried. Soon afterwards Heracles (Hercules) arrives, on his way elsewhere, to spend a night as the guest of his old friend Admetus. Learning the sad news, he goes to the tomb, wrestles with the god of death, and brings back Alcestis who has been restored to life.

C.2.

Medea

Medea is the grim story of a woman’s revenge. The hero Jason brings the princess Medea with him when he returns to Greece in triumph with the Golden Fleece. They settle in Corinth and for many years live happily, though Medea is not Jason’s wife by law. Jason, who is not a heroic figure in the play, then decides to marry a Corinthian princess. He claims that his marriage will mean security for Medea and their children as well as for himself.

Medea, outraged by Jason’s desertion of her, thinks of nothing but revenge. She succeeds in killing the princess by the gift of a poisoned robe. Then, after a long struggle with her feelings of maternal love, she strikes her deadliest blow at Jason by killing their children. Finally, from the security of a winged chariot sent by her grandfather, the sun god Helios, she exults in the horror and misery of Jason, who is denied even the satisfaction of punishing her for her crimes.

C.3.

Hippolytus

Hippolytus is the story of a young man who is the son of the hero Theseus. Devoted to the virgin goddess of the hunt, Artemis, Hippolytus has led a life of chastity. He thus angers the goddess of love, Aphrodite. In revenge Aphrodite causes Hippolytus’s stepmother, Phaedra, to fall desperately in love with him. Rather than reveal her passion, Phaedra is prepared to die of love.

C.4.

Ion

Ion, though a tragedy, ends somewhat happily. In some ways it foreshadows the so-called New Comedy (see Comedy) genre of the 3rd century bc. The Greek playwright Menander, a practitioner of this genre, confessed that he owed much to Euripides.

Creusa, daughter of the king of Athens, secretly gave birth to a son, Ion, after she was raped by the god Apollo. She exposed the baby Ion to the elements, in accordance with Greek custom, and believed him to be dead. By Apollo’s orders, however, Hermes conveyed the child to Delphi, where he was brought up by a priestess of the temple. In adulthood he became guardian of the temple and its treasures. All of this is told in the prologue.

As the play opens Creusa and her husband have come to Delphi. There she and Ion meet, but neither knows the other. In the course of a series of exciting but distressing complications, in which mother and son narrowly escape causing each other’s death, the truth gradually comes to light. In a sense the play ends happily, but with Apollo revealed as a heartless and immoral coward, and his oracle at Delphi as an utterer of falsehoods.

C.5.

Madness of Heracles

Madness of Heracles tells how the great hero Heracles, or Hercules, is driven mad by his implacable enemy, the goddess Hera. Heracles returns to his home in Thebes, after completing his 12 labors, just in time to save his wife and children from death at the hands of Lycus, the usurping ruler of Thebes. He kills Lycus but having been driven mad by Hera, he also kills his wife and children in the belief that they are his enemies. Recovering his senses, he is with difficulty saved from suicide by his friend Theseus, king of Athens.

C.6.

Bacchae

Bacchae (“Women of Bacchus”) tells of the doings in Thebes of the god Bacchus, or Dionysus, who was the son of Zeus and the Theban princess Semele. Dionysus resolved to bring the orgiastic rituals of his cult from Asia into Greece. The people of Thebes deny that he is a god and reject his cult. Dionysus then inspires all the Theban women with a Bacchic frenzy, and they go off to the mountains to perform his wild rites. His female followers, or Bacchae, from Asia form the chorus.

Pentheus, the king of Thebes, vainly attempts to arrest Dionysus, but is himself driven mad and lured to the mountains. There, urged on by Dionysus, the women tear Pentheus to pieces. They are led by Pentheus’s own mother, who believes she is killing a lion. There is much dispute over the meaning of this play; parts of the original play are missing, adding to the difficulty of interpretation.

C.7.

Other Theban Tragedies

In addition to Madness of Heracles and Bacchae, the plots of three other plays by Euripides are from the Theban cycle of legends (Thebes). These plays are Phoenician Women, Suppliant Women, and Children of Heracles.

Phoenician Women tells the story of the Seven Against Thebes, a story also told by Aeschylus in a tragedy of that name. Polynices, one of the sons of Oedipus, leads an expedition against his own city, Thebes, to dispossess his brother, Eteocles, the reigning king. The invaders are defeated, but the brothers kill each other in battle. The Phoenician women, who form the chorus, are merely passing through Thebes on their way to Delphi and play no part in the action.

Suppliant Women is the tale of how the people of Thebes refuse to give up the bodies of the invading chieftains, the Seven Against Thebes, for burial, even though Greek custom calls for them to do so. The Thebans are eventually forced to release the bodies by Theseus, king of Athens, after a battle.

Much of the text of Children of Heracles has been lost, but the main plot is clear. After the death of Heracles, Eurystheus, king of Argos, tries to seize and kill Heracles’ children. They are successfully defended by the Athenians, but only after one of them, the eldest daughter, has been sacrificed to ensure Athenian victory in battle.

D.

Trojan War Tragedies

Eight of the surviving plays of Euripides have plots taken from the legends of the Trojan War. These plays are Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris, Trojan Women, Andromache, Hecuba, Electra, Orestes, and Helen.

Iphigenia at Aulis relates the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the daughter of Mycenaean king Agamemnon. A seer proclaims that her sacrifice is necessary before the gods will permit the Greek fleet, commanded by Agamemnon, to sail for Troy. A story that Iphigenia was miraculously saved and transported to the land of the savage Tauri is used for Iphigenia in Tauris. In this play Iphigenia has become a priestess and narrowly escapes sacrificing her brother Orestes, who has been sent to Tauris by the oracle at Delphi. Mutual recognition saves them.

The scene of Trojan Women and Hecuba is the Greek camp at Troy after the fall of the city. Both plays depict the cruel sufferings of the Trojan female captives. Andromache, the widow of the Trojan hero Hector, is the captive mistress of Neoptolemus, the son of the Greek hero Achilles, in the play named after her. Hermione, the jealous wife of Neoptolemus, seeks to kill Andromache. Hermione is the daughter of the king of Sparta, and Euripides portrays the Spartans, enemies of the Athenians, as unscrupulous scoundrels.

Electra tells of the murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes and her daughter Electra. They commit this murder in revenge for Clytemnestra’s slaying of her husband (their father), Agamemnon, upon his return from the Trojan War. This is also the subject of surviving tragedies by Aeschylus (Agamemnon) and Sophocles (Electra), and it enables us to compare the different methods and outlooks of the three writers.

Orestes shows the brother and sister tried for the murder of their mother, as if in a Greek law court of the time. After they are condemned to death, they attempt to murder others, whom they blame for their difficulties. The chaos and violence are finally halted by the intervention of Apollo.

Helen is a curious play, tragic in form but not in spirit. It follows the story of the abduction of the Greek queen Helen by the Trojan prince Paris—the event that led to the Trojan War. However, it uses a variant of the legend in which Paris took only a phantom to Troy, while the real Helen was transported to Egypt. Helen’s husband, Menelaus, lands in Egypt on his way home following the Greek defeat of Troy. Here he finds Helen and brings her home to Sparta with him.

See Drama and Dramatic Arts; Greek Literature: The Attic Period: Tragedy; and Tragedy: History.