Euripides

D

Ion

Ion, although a tragedy, ends somewhat happily. In some ways it foreshadows the so-called New Comedy (see Comedy: History of 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 recognises 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.

E

The Madness of Heracles

The 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 labours, 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 saved from suicide by his friend Theseus, king of Athens.

F

The Bacchae

The Bacchae (“The 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 resolves 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 text are missing, adding to the difficulty of interpretation.

G

Other Theban Tragedies

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

The 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.

The 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 The 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’s 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.

H

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, The 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 The 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, on his return from the Trojan War. This is also the subject of surviving tragedies by Aeschylus (Agamemnon) and Sophocles (Electra).

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.