Euripides

V

Plots

Euripides took his plots from the same general sources 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 often driven by violent emotions. We may 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 by displaying qualities of courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.

The ancient dramatists had different views on the causes of the suffering and disasters that befall human beings. 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. Lives are tragically blighted by ignorance and foolishness, uncontrolled passions and emotions, and greed, ambition, and cruelty.

Yet the traditional gods and goddesses are always a presence in Euripides’s 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, the question arises as to why he felt it necessary to include the gods. 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.

VI

Plays of Euripides

Of the many plays by Euripides, only 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 context. Similarly, the plot of one play may be inconsistent with that of another.

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

A

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.

B

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, although 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

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. To save Phaedra’s life, her nurse reveals Phaedra’s secret to Hippolytus. He receives the news with horror and disgust. Phaedra hangs herself from shame, but her resentment at his scorn leads her to leave a note in which she accuses her stepson of making advances to her. Theseus finds the note and believes it. He expels his son with a curse that has the power to cause death. After Hippolytus is brought back dying, Artemis appears and discloses the full truth, but too late to save him.