Euripides (Donne)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THE TALE OF TROY: HECUBA—THE TROJAN WOMEN.
"High barrows, without marble, or a name,
A vast untilled and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance, still the same,
And old Scamander (if 'tis he) remain;
The situation seems still formed for fame—
A hundred thousand men might fight again
With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls."
On subjects connected with the Tale of Troy, ten dramas by Euripides, if the "Rhesus" be counted among them, are extant, and these represent a small portion only of the themes he drew from the perennial supply of the Homeric poems. The ancient epic, like the modern novel, although widely differing from tragedy in its form and substance, abounds in dramatic material. Many plays, indeed, by Euripides and other dramatic poets of the time, were derived from the Cyclic poets, who either continued the Iliad, and brought the story down to the fall of Troy, or took episodes in it as the groundwork of their dramas. Whether coming from the main stream or from its branches, the result was the same; and the heroes who espoused the cause of Menelaus were most of them suited for transplantation to the theatre.
Two of the ten plays which have Troy for their subject, directly or indirectly, have been noticed in a previous chapter; another, the "Cyclops," will be examined presently. The "Rhesus," being of uncertain authorship, will be passed over. Of the seven that remain, only a brief sketch can be given. The Two Iphigenias, indeed, might alone suffice to show how well fitted for the genius of their poet was the Lay of Achilles or the Wanderings of Ulysses.
The fire that consumed Priam's capital is still smouldering when the action of the "Hecuba" and the "Trojan Women" begins. The scene of the former of these two tragedies is placed in the Thracian Chersonesus—now the Crimea. The Chorus is composed of Trojan captive women, a few days before the subjects, now the fellow-prisoners, of their queen. In the centre of the stage stands Agamemnon's tent, in a compartment of which Hecuba and her attendants are lodged. The prologue is spoken by her youngest son Polydorus, whom she supposes to be living, but who has been foully murdered by his guardian Polymnestor, the Thracian king. His ghost hovers over the tent, and after informing the audience of the manner of his death, he vanishes just as his aged moth-er enters on the stage. One more woe is soon imparted to Hecuba by the Chorus. The shade of Achilles has appeared in glittering armour on his tomb, and demanded a victim. Again the Greek ships are delayed; again a virgin must be sacrificed before their anchors can be weighed. The young life of Iphigenia was required before the host could leave Aulis; and now the blood of Polyxena, Priam's youngest daughter, must be shed before the Grecian prows can be turned homewards.
The sacrifice of the daughter is over, when the fate of her son is reported to the miserable mother. An old attendant has been sent to fetch water from the sea, with which Hecuba will bathe—"not for the bridal bed, but for the tomb"—the dead body of Polyxena. The corpse of Polydorus is found by the attendant cast on the sea-beach by the wave. The sum of her woes is now complete. Her other sons have fallen in the war; no daughter remains to her except the prophetess Cassandra, who is herself the bondwoman of Agamemnon; and now her last stay is rudely torn from her—her youngest born, her Benjamin, lies dead on the sands. One hope alone remains for her to cherish—the hope of revenge on the murderer of her boy; and it is speedily gratified. The treacherous guardian comes to the Grecian camp, is inveigled by Hecuba into the tent, and thence thrust forth eyeless and with bleeding visage, by the infuriated mother and her attendants. This, "if not victory, is at least revenge."
The merits of this tragedy have been much canvassed. The plot has been pronounced monstrous, overcharged with woe, and, besides, unskilfully split into two unconnected portions. The immolation of Polyxena and the murder of Polydorus have, it is alleged, no necessary connection with, each other. There might have been two plays made out of this single one—the first concluding with the death of the daughter, the second with the vengeance taken for the son. It may be so; but was that the view of the story taken by Euripides? May he not have said to objectors, the continuity of my play lies not where you look for it, but in the character of the person from whom it is named? The double murder of her children is a mere incident in the action; the unity is to be found in her strong will. Old, feeble, and helpless as she is, the mind of the ex-queen of Troy is never clouded. Suffering even lends her new force to act; the deeper her woe the more clearly she perceives that all help is vain if it come not from her own dauntless spirit. It is the tragedy of Hecuba, not of Polyxena or Polydorus.
English readers may find an excuse, if one be needed, of which ancient objectors could not avail themselves. For is not the Hecuba of Euripides near of kin, as a dramatic character, to the Queen Margaret of Shakespeare? Her also accumulated woes strengthen even when they seem to crush. She also is made childless; she, like her Greek prototype, is a widow and discrowned. Yet with what vigour and what disdain does she to the last look down upon her Ulysses, the crafty Duke of Gloucester, and her Agamemnon, the voluptuous Edward! The description of Polyxena's sacrifice is among the most beautiful and pathetic pictures in the Athenian drama. The herald reports to Hecuba how bravely her daughter has met her doom:—
"The assembled host of Greece before the tomb
Stood in full ranks at this sad sacrifice—
Achilles' son, holding the virgin's hand
On the mound's summit: near to him I stood;
Of chosen youths an honourable train
Were ready there her strugglings to restrain."
When silence has been proclaimed through the host, and libations poured to the shade of Achilles, Pyrrhus spoke these words:—
"O son of Peleus, my father,
Accept my offering, soothing to the dead;
Drink this pure crimson stream of virgin-blood,
Loose all our cables, fill our sails, and grant
Swift passage homeward to the Grecian host."
The people joined in the prayer: Pyrrhus drew from its scabbard his golden sword, and
"At his nod
The noble youths stept forth to hold the maiden,
Which she perceiving, with these words addressed them:
'Willing I die; let no hand touch me; boldly
To the uplifted sword I hold my neck.
You give me to the gods, then give me free.'
Loud the applause, then Agamemnon cried:
'Let no man touch her:' and the youths drew back.
Soon as she heard the royal words, she clasped
Her robe, and from her shoulder rent it down,
And bared her snow-white bosom, beauteous
Beyond the deftest sculptor's nicest art.
Then bending to the earth her knee, she said—
Ear never yet has heard more mournful words—
'If 'tis thy will, young man, to strike this breast,
Strike; or my throat dost thou prefer, behold
It stretched to meet thy sword.'"
Even the "rugged Pyrrhus" is touched with pity, pauses, and at last reluctantly,
"Deep in her bosom plunged the shining steel.
Her life-blood gushed in streams: yet e'en in death,
Studious of modesty, her beauteous limbs
She covered with her robe."
THE TROJAN WOMEN.
The action of this play takes place a few days before that of the "Hecuba." It is not, properly speaking, a drama, for it has scarcely any fable. "It is," says Dean Milman, "a series of pathetic speeches and exquisite odes on the fall of Troy. What can be more admirable, in the midst of all these speeches of woe and sorrow, than the wild outburst of Cassandra into a bridal song, instead of, as Shakespeare describes her, 'shrilling her dolours forth'!"
"A light! a light! rise up, be swift:
I seize, I worship, and I lift
The bridal torches' festal rays,
Till all the burning fane's ablaze!
Hymen, Hymenœan king!
Look there! look there! what blessings wait
Upon the bridegroom's nuptial state!
And I, how blest, who proudly ride
Through Argos' streets, a queenly bride!
Go thou, my mother! go!
With many a gushing tear
And frantic shriek of woe.
Wail for thy sire, thy country dear!
I the while, in bridal glee
Lift the glowing, glittering fire.
Hymen! Hymen! all to thee
Flames the torch and rings the lyre.
Bless, Hecatè, the rite;
Send thy soft and holy light
To the virgin's nuptial bed.
Lightly lift the airy tread!
Evan! Evan! dance along.
Holy are the dance and song;
Meetest they to celebrate
My father Priam's blissful fate.
Beauteous-vested maids of Troy,
Sing my song of nuptial joy!
Sing the fated husband led
To my virgin bridal bed."[1]
In another choral song, the rejoicing of Troy, at the very moment when the Greeks, coming out from their ambush in the wooden horse, were stealthily creeping to unbar the gates and admit the host from without, is described:—
"Shouted all the people loud
On the rock-built height that stood—
'Come,' they sang, as on they prest,
'Come, from all our toil released,
Lead the blest image to the shrine
Of her the Jove-born Trojan maid-divine.
******
O'er the toil, the triumph, spread
Silent night her curtained shade,
But Lybian fifes still sweetly rang.
And many a Phrygian air they sang,
And maidens danced with lightsome feet
To the jocund measures sweet,
And every home was blazing bright,
As the glowing festal light
Its rich and ruddy splendour streamed,
Where high and full the mantling wine-cup beamed.
*******
All at once the cry of slaughter,
Through the startled city ran;
The cowering infants on their mother's breasts
Folded their trembling hands within her vests;
Forth stalked the ambushed Mars, and his fell work began."
"Sad," said the aged Manoah in 'Samson Agonistes,'—
"Sad, but thou knowest to Israelites not saddest,
The desolation of a hostile city,' "
and probably Athenians, who had laid waste many cities, were not displeased by a representation of the destruction of Troy. With great skill, indeed, Euripides has shown that the victors are scarcely less deserving of pity than the vanquished. In every Grecian state during the ten years' siege—and what was true of the Trojan was true also of the Peloponnesian war—many had been made widows and orphans. While the Achæan kings and heroes were encamped on the Trojan strand, their wives have been false to them, usurpers have occupied their thrones, or suitors to their queens have been faring sumptuously at their cost. The prophecies of Cassandra point to further calamities. A bloody bath awaits Agamemnon; some, like Idomeneus and Diomedes, must take refuge on alien shores; thwarting winds and stormy seas will keep for many years from their kingdoms Ulysses and Menelaus; the greater Ajax has been struck by mania, and falls by his own hand; and Ajax Teucer will soon be transfixed by a thunderbolt launched by the outraged Minerva. As in several Euripidean tragedies, women play an important part in this one. The daughters of Priam and their attendants are distributed among the black-bearded Achaean captains—Cassandra is allotted to the "king of men;" Andromache to Pyrrhus, the son of him who slew her husband; her son Astyanax, lest he prove a second Hector, and avenge his father's death on Argos or Sparta, is hurled from a tower; and Hecuba is assigned to Ulysses, whose wiles, quite as much as his compeers' weapons, have caused the taking of Troy. As in the "Suppliant Women," fire is employed to render the final scene effective. All of Troy that escaped on the night when it was stormed is now given over to the flames. The tragedy closes with the fall of column and roof, of temple and palace, into a fiery abyss, and by the red light of the conflagration the Trojan women are led off to the Grecian galleys.
Passing over the "Electra," that the Tale of Troy may not weary English readers, and also because what is good and what is bad in it[2] would require comment for which there is not room, the "Orestes" comes next in order in this batch of Euripidean tragedies. "The scenes of this drama," says one who had good right to speak on the subject of Greek Plays,[3] "afford one of the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by Furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from nominal friends." As to the Furies, Longinus says that "the poet himself sees them, and what his imagination conceives, he almost compels his audience to see also." We do not know how the spectators welcomed this tragedy when it was performed; but in later times no one of all the Attic tragedies was so much approved as this one. It is more frequently cited than all the plays of Æschylus and Sophocles put together. The depth of its domestic pathos touched the Grecian world, however it may have affected a Dionysiac audience.
As in the "Libation Bearers" of Æschylus, Orestes has no sooner avenged the most foul and unnatural murder of his father than mania seizes him. When the first scene opens, he is lying haggard, blood-besprent, unshorn, unkempt, and in sordid garments, on a couch, beside which, for six days and six nights, his sister Electra has kept watch. During all that time he has not tasted food: in his lucid intervals he is feeble and fever-stricken; at others he sees in pursuit of him his mother's vengeful Furies. Menelaus, his uncle, has recently returned from Troy, accompanied by his wife, Helen, and their daughter, Hermione. Here for the wretched maniac appears to be a gleam of hope: for surely one so near of kin cannot fail to aid him against the citizens of Argos who are calling for his death, or at least perpetual banishment as a matricide, taken red-handed. Helen and Electra, after some difference on the subject, agree that Hermione shall go with offerings to Clytemnestra's grave. The Chorus, composed of Argive women, sing round the sick man's bed. Their theme is the alternate ravings and rational moods of Orestes, nor do they omit to celebrate the awful power of the Furies. And now Menelaus enters, but it soon appears that his nephew will have little help from him. He discovers that Orestes and Electra are to be tried on the capital charge of murder on that very day, by the assembled Argive people. The unhappy culprit pleads strongly for his sister and himself, and their just claim for the aid and protection of the Spartan king. A new enemy now appears. Old Tyndareus, the father of Helen and Clytemnestra, arrives, and by his arguments against Orestes, decides his wavering son-in-law to remain neuter in the controversy. By craft and shifts alone will Menelaus take the part of the brother and sister. On his part the enraged Tyndareus will do all he can to procure their condemnation, Pylades, their only friend, urges Orestes to present himself to the assembly, plead his own cause, and if possible, by his eloquence, work on the feelings of his judges. He attends, but fails in obtaining a milder sentence than death—the only concession is, that Electra and her brother may put themselves to death, and so avoid the indignity, prince and princess as they are, of dying by the hands of a public executioner or an infuriated mob. The condemned pair take a final farewell, when Pylades suggests a mode of revenge on Menelaus. "Helen," he says, "is now within the palace: slay her, and revenge yourselves on your cold-hearted and selfish kinsman. Fear not her guards; they are only a few cowardly and feeble eunuchs." To this proposal Electra adds a most practical amendment. "Killing Helen will avail little: seize Hermione—she is now returning from Clytemnestra's tomb—and hold her as a hostage. Sooner than have his daughter and only child perish, Menelaus will befriend you." They combine both plans: Helen shall be slain; Hermione shall be seized upon. The former escapes their hands: just as the sword is at her throat she vanishes into thin air, and, being of divine origin, henceforth will share the immortality of her brothers. Castor and Pollux. The palace doors are barred against Menelaus, now returned from the assembly; but he beholds Orestes and Pylades, with Hermione between them, on the roof. Her they will slay, and make the palace itself her and their funeral pyre. This is indeed a dead lock. But Apollo appears with Helen floating in the air. By his mandate the crime of blood is cancelled: all shall live; and the remaining years of Orestes, Electra, and Pylades, pass unclouded by woe.
In the "Andromache" Orestes appears once more, but not as a leading character. He might, indeed, were it not for his relatives Menelaus and Hermione, have been another person so named, since of the hero of so many Greek dramas there is scarcely a trace left, except a disposition to do murder. Most people, after shedding so much human blood as he has done, would be contented with living thenceforward at peace with all men—even his rivals in love. But, on the contrary, this Argive prince contrives in the "Andromache" to put out of his way Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, for no better reason than that of coveting Hermione, the Phthian king's wife, and his own first cousin. We know not whether Apollo grew weary of cleansing of crime; yet to plot and execute a capital offence in the god's own temple at Delphi can hardly have been other than a severe trial of even divine patience.
As this play appears to have obtained the second prize at the time of its representation, besides furnishing the modern stage with more than one tragedy on the subject, it must be credited with a fair amount of interest for spectators. Yet it may be doubted whether it be equally attractive to readers. All that is material to be known of the plot may be gathered from its representatives—the "Andromaque" of Racine, and the "Distrest Mother" of Ambrose Philips. The following scene, the most effective as well as touching in this somewhat complicated drama, may afford a sample—and it is a favourable one—of the original.
The heroine from whom the play takes its title is in the power of her enemies, Hermione, wife of Neoptolemus, and her father Menelaus. Bound with cords, she is being led off to execution, when the aged Peleus, the father of Achilles, and great-grandsire of Andromache's son, the little Molossus, enters and releases her. In the part of Molossus, as in that of the infant Orestes in the "Iphigenia at Aulis," we have a specimen of the manner in which Euripides availed himself of children in his scenes. Peleus says to the guards who are in charge of their prisoner:—
"Stand from her, slaves, that I may know who dares
Oppose me, while I free her hands from chains.
. . . .Come hither, child;
Beneath my arms unbind thy mother's chains;
In Phthia will I nurture thee.
. . . . . . .
Go forward, child, beneath my sheltering arms,
And thou, unhappy dame: the raging storm
Escaped, in harbour thou art now secure."
The "Helen" can scarcely be said to form part of the dramatic Tale of Troy, even although Menelaus and his wife are among its dramatis personæ. It is a kind of offshoot from that world-wide legend. Perhaps Euripides, like the lyric poet Stesichorus, thought that some apology was due from him to "the fairest and most loving wife in Greece." In his "Hecuba" and "Trojan Women" Helen comes in for her full share of hard words. In the "Orestes" she is represented as greedy of gain, and making an inventory of the goods and chattels of Electra and her brother even before they were condemned to death. In the play last surveyed, Menelaus is rated for taking her again to his bosom, instead of cutting her throat. The lovely and liberal matron of the Odyssey, the mistress of all hearts of the Iliad, had hitherto been scurvily treated by our poet. His apology to her memory in the play bearing her name is curious. The purport of it is to show that there had been a fearful mistake made all along by the Greeks. The good-for-nothing Helen, for whom they shed so much blood, was a phantasm, a double, a prank of mischievous deities. The real Helen never went near Ilion,—never injured any one, not even her husband,—but passed the score of years between the visit of Paris to Sparta and the fall of that city in a respectable grass-widowhood under the roof of a pious king and a holy prophetess in Egypt. Here was a delightful discovery! A great capital had been sacked and burnt to the ground; a whole nation removed from its place; Greece nearly ruined; thousands of valiant knights hurried to Hades; hundreds of dainty and delicate women told off, like so many sheep, to new owners; the very gods themselves set together by the ears;—and all for nothing—for a shadow that dislimned into thin air the instant it was no longer wanted for troubling and bewildering mankind!
It has been doubted whether there be a comic element in the "Alcestis;" it is far easier to detect one in the "Helen." Menelaus has lost his ship, and gets to land by clinging to its keel. He knows not on what coast he has been wrecked; but wherever it may be, he is not fit to present himself to any respectable person. He says,—
"I have nor food nor raiment, proof of this
Are these poor coverings; all my former robes
The sea has swallowed."
He is scolded by an old woman, the portress of King Theoclymenus's palace, who, seeing his tattered garments, takes him for a rogue and vagabond, and when told by him that he is a Greek, says, "The worse welcome; I am charged by my master to let none of that race approach his door." The trick by which Helen and himself try to make their escape from the island of Pharos nearly resembles the one we have already met with in the "Iphigenia at Tauri,"—better executed, indeed, and more favoured by wind and wave, for in this play the flight is effected. The Chorus, however, who have been aiding the fugitives in the plot by secrecy, like the Chorus in the "Iphigenia," incur the wrath of the king; and as for his sister, the pious and prophetic Theonoè, she has been the chief abettor, and shall pay for her deceit with her life. Theoclymenus, indeed, is even more wroth than the Iphigenian Thoas on a similar occasion, and perhaps justly; for whereas the Tauric king was only incensed because the image of his goddess was stolen, Theoclymenus is a lover of Helen, whom for years he had been eager to make his wife. This makes a material difference between the two cases. It might have been possible to obtain a new image of Diana, and induce the goddess to consecrate it properly; but in all the world there was only one Helen.
The character of the priestess Theonoè bears some resemblance to that of Ion. Like him, she is truly pure-minded and devout: like him, also, her ministration at the altar is a labour of love. Deeply religious, she is also tender and sympathising with another's woe; and so soon as she is convinced that the beautiful Greek who has so long taken sanctuary at the tomb of Proteus is the lawful wife of the shipwrecked stranger, she favours their escape. She says,—
"To piety my nature and my will
Incline: myself I reverence, nor will stain
My father's glory; neither will I grant
That to my brother which will mark my name
With infamy: for Justice in my heart
Has raised her ample shrine; for Nereus
This I hold, and Menelaus will strive to save."
It has already been observed that the "Ion" displays the sympathy of the poet with virtue and piety in man: the character of Theonoè shows that the supposed misogynist was equally impressed with, as well as able to delineate, purity and piety in woman.