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cornell library

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measuring euripides 3 1924 026 667 950 measuring euripides by lynn thorndike ph d associate professor of history western reserve university issued by the college for women section chapter alpha of ohio phi beta kappa t

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3^7 -f r before the college for an address given section women chapter alpha of ohio phi 10 1916 beta kappa at the annual meeting june i c

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measuring euripides convinced that a greek letter fraternity like this should at least occasionally be regaled with a classical theme i have chosen measuring euripides as my subject besides greek is now becoming so rare an accomplishment that anyone who has ever is studied it has a feeling of aristocratic distinction and while he of course careful not to cast his pearls before barbarians still he likes to air his esoteric and exclusive knowledge upon occasion and this is surely an appropriate occasion for the members of this society are by no means to be classed as barbarians this address will not however be delivered in the greek language nor even interlarded with quotations from the original years ago as an undergraduate i did learn by heart a few passages in both greek and latin which i might innocently introduce in answering examination questions or quote with great effect in literary and debating societies but at least a dozen years have passed since i last heard anyone read greek verse aloud moreover this talk will not be a literary appreciation of euripides in my opinion he must be readjn_rtie.originall.qr that mr carl becker it is true tias recently stated in the dial that both shakespeare and euripides are improved by being translated into german but aslhavecompared^vari^us english translations oi euripides^with thetji^eek text i havt^ouns that those whtch -make any-lttetary pretense usually add to his words and detract from hig,thdto^tfc his wofdrng is far f rsh flowery and he uses a few adjectives over and over again but his si mple and sever £_diction is something like those elgin marbles from the frieze of the parthenon which achieve perfection with few chiselled lines and despite bare surfaces where the sculptor seems scarcely to have touched the stone therefore a literal english translation seems barren awkward and halting while a literary 6r poetical translation remirtds ofie of minervav-h-elmet replaced by modern millinery the fact is tha t we rhust divest ourselves of ^er do^ars accinriulation of vocabulary tdea:s ~and expehence before wetry to translate euripides really to appfeoate his eighteen extant plays and numerous fragments we must see them like some cluster o£dori£coluhiiis~that still stands amid^he ruins of an ancient temple agai nsf tlteif own cloudless attic sky the de§t.jkctant critic of euripides is his contemporary the coins_poelai^topfiabet besides mssiy iks sf euripw tvt w otherfarces aristc^tianes in the frogs represents him as disputing with aeschylus in hades the respective merits of their

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tragedies when all other methods failed to give satisfaction or to end their dispute a balance was brought in and they were ordered each to place specimen verses in the opposite scales and see which weighed the most this ancient precedent i propose to imitate but instead of weighing euripides verses i shall tryto measure his ideas there are four great guides that lead us to the past ^his probably all of the present tory philosophy art and liter a ture initiates into this learned society have had courses in history proper and in the history of at least english literature but i am afraid that a majority of them will graduate from this institution without having studied either the history of philosophy or the history of art yet the one of them represents the supreme product of the h uman hand and the other the s upreme product of the ieunian i553i t think that it is a matter deeply to be regretted that in this college for women so few courses are offered in the history of philosophy and in the history of art and that those which are offered are not elected by a much greater perecentage of the students between three of these investigation this afternoon lies in the borderland fields history philosophy and literature if the scope of those subjects is broadly interpreted it will come under all three of them but if history is narrowly interpreted as nothing but past politics and a chronology of events if philosophy is limited to the systematic reasoning of a few great thinkers if literature is read only for amusement or studied chiefly for its form and for its general aesthetic effects then my subject lies outside all three now my as on e reads or thinks about any past period or bygone counti^72 5atuxallyayotsers7tiow am^tjteanen ^amd women of that time look and dress but .above -all what were their real thoughts and feelings behind their wars and conquests their statutes and their political revolutions behind all that outward activity that is often the expression more of the ambition of a few leaders than of the spirit of an entire people ^behind too the systems of_3 few leading philosophers systems srfeover wwdirtiave often been constructed for them by mo3em53mcel s what was the real chaos of public opinion we were transported suddenly back into the midst of that time and if we were endowed with the ability to speak and understand their language and if we found ourselves if would we by some magic change dressed other external details would we fall easily into their ways and notions and standards or would our impulses and our different reactions to situations and our modern ideas cause them to regard us as barbarians or heretics or madmen it would be comparatively easy to adapt ourselves to the absence of many modem like them and resembling them in

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material comforts and conveniences to dispense for instance with automobiles and moving picture shows and typewriters and running hot water and newspapers these things we manage to get along without when we go camping in the woods in the summer vacation though the absence of matches and watches and tea and coffee and soap might prove rather embarrassing but would we be able to rough it so successfully in the realm of thought would we be able to divest ourselves of that complex cast of thought which such things as science and history sociology and statistics and machinery and a long series of philosophers and inventors and writers and radicals have woven for us could we lay aside this intellectual clothing as readily as we change from our city clothes to the easy and unconventional costume of the woods or shore could we go back to the simpler stock of ideas and to the more primitive psychology and ethics of a distant past the city dweller who for the first time tries life in the woods or upon the farm is forced to admit his inferiority in some respects to the guide and the native and to learn lessons from them so if we wish to study the past we must borrow the eyes and the ideas of the men of the past the student of history must have a native guide and he too will sometimes be forced to admit his inferiority in some respects to the men of the past and to learn lessons from them there has been put up recently from several quarters a most deplorable howl to this effect why do not writers of historical text-books and teachers of history confine and limit their instruction to those facts of the past which serve to explain the present why burden the memory of the young with the dead facts and fancies with bygone pictures and ideas that do not diin rectly bear upon our modem problems and conditions other words why have boys and girls learn anything that they do not know already or will not learn in the course of daily life why have them read about anything that lies outside of their own experience or that cannot at least be explained and understood in terms of their own experience why broaden their sympathies and understanding by taking them outside this busy crowded city of modern civilization back to the glades and groves of past centuries and to times and places that they would never otherwise visit and to thoughts and fancies that could never otherwise conae to them why increase their knowledge why add anything to their pleasure such is the deplorable contention of certain present day educators and historians and it expresses an attitude with which as you have probably already gathered i am by no means in complete accord all in selecting euripides for consideration however i am after going a long way toward pleasing those people who wish to s

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study only those things and men of the past that have a connection with the present for he always has been recognized as the most modern in spirit of the three great greek tragedians and in my opinion he has made contributions to our modern thought exceeded among extant greek writers only by those of a few thinkers like plato and aristotle come down eighteen out of perhaps a hundred plays by euripides have to us as against seven each for his predecessor aeschylus and his contemporary sophocles the fragments that have been preserved from his lost plays fill 260 pages in nauck s edition as against 180 pages occupied by the fragments of sophocles and only 98 taken up by those of aeschylus these statistics indicate that euripides was more prized by posterity than his two fellows and the greater bulk of his extant writings gives us a better notion of the range and character of his art and thought at the same time the recurrence of the same thoughts in the different plays and again in the fragments convinces us that what we do possess of his writings is enough from which to form a pretty correct idea of his writings as a whole his fragments i perhaps should say have been preserved for us chiefly in the anthologies or florilegia of byzantine writers and in citations and quotations by authors of the roman period like cicero and plutarch or by the early church fathers i shall not consider t^tirrp,ide,s j^aj^s as artistic wholes but shall tear them to pieces and classify the ideas that i find in them for they are fullof sententious utterances and of pithy sentences expressing opinions or conclusions concerning various problems of human life and interests of mankind they give us easure of the number and_mn,d^of ideas an3 niental t hen sorne querie tfia4-i gr-eek mind harbered 23qo>j»ear£ ago some picture of the psychology of a hellene and for pur iurgose it does not much matter what euripides oot^nvictions er wheth er he agreed with this utterajice of pne of his characters or ^did,apt approve of that even if he is sarcastic it must be at the expense_of _sonieone thought en if he be insincere the concep m tion state3 ts nohe the less clearly in existence what we want to discover is what anybody and what everybody was thinking about then what their social and moral standards were what their prejudices and errors and superstitions were too thus the advantage in making a dramatist the basis of our investigation becomes obvious for we listen not to one past poet or philosopher but to a stageful of different personalities thus we may hope to learn varied views and obtain something approaching a consensus of opinion we must^of c ourse bear in mind that there were g reat_differencestefweentke gredcj^rjumajmd^odern^glays a^greek tragedy was a soit of cross between a pertormagcfl of qcanc opera a tnedievarl miracle play and a modern church service,

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whose sermonandprayer intermingledv^ajm anthem arrg~scnpturarj5smil i;esemh|£the choral o destthe^r ep-ular dialog of alternate lin es -betweentwo actors or one principal and the chorus^jand thejqnger sefs^ectas of a eufipt3eairtra^3yr nrftjkr?ek^rama originate3 as stfeaof popular teligious festivals and it retained this reltgibtls irlratgrtct i h eunpides day and his plays are full of prayers to thr-gt53s and of?ermontztnf r mtlgicpdaricing and elaborateness ot^costume and scenic .eltect were impoijfrije features however mrereas the acting and especially character acting was comparatively unimportant since only two or three speaking characters were ever on the stage at the same time all the parts were taken by a few men who filled more than one role each the three great greek tragedians although masters in their own way were mere tyros and novices in many matters of stagecraft and psychological finesse they made their characters say things of themselves that would better be said about them or were guilty of anachronisms and other incongruities and improbabilities these however are minor flaws which do not seriously affect our investigation moreover the particular circumstances imder which each play was written while they may account for this or that particular utterance need not be taken into account in our rough general measurement of the contents of euripides plays as a whole in z^lj lj^iililis^lj sx cajinot b ittjl with any approach to certamty so fnatrttr^gekss to speculate a s tu ll re pailini1:trsit tlsion prevailing when each was composed -what is certain is that euripides plays as a whote were affected by the age iri which he lived and that they doubtless reflect mariy tiire -stttc features .tm we should remember therefore that he wrote his tragedies during the last half or third of the fifth century before our era he wrote as the age of pericles was closing while socrates and the sophists were teaching in the streets of athens and during the bitter trials and experiences of the peloponnesian war among the chief influences to which he must have been subject were first the litera£yjtraditions_frani on and especially those of the earlier tragedians here would be a danger that he might copy the past instead of conforming his contents to the present second he was bound by the religious teaching of the past by the holy atmosphere of the festivals at wfiich his plays were produced and by the old stories or myths which he had to use as plots just as preachers today have to take their texts from the bible third he lived in a greek city state and had been brought up under its peculiar political social and intellectual conditions fourth he could not but have felt the effects of the disastrous peloponnesian war which marked the e nd of ath er and commercial supremacy but fifth and tinallyttie seems to have been more powerfully influenced by the great development that went on at this time in rhetoric and public speakpolitical 7

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^by what has been collectively the other four forces that charac^mzed^as the new have been mentioned were perhaps more outside influences working upon him but in this last movement he took a leading part its new spirit of free inquiry discussion and argument fairly bubbled up within him and overflows in every one of his extant play^even in the grotesque and humorous satyr play the ing in philosophy and editcation learning cyflops it · was some years ago during a summer vacation at the seawhen shore vacation you see keeps running through my mind i had no other books at hand to study that i began the analysis and classification of euripides contents which i present to you this afternoon at that time i did not quite finish all the eighteen plays and did not tabulate the 1091 fragments at all this i have do since i was asked to deliver this address there are however still a number of loose odds and ends and i also should need to revise the method and check up again the results of my notes of several years ago before i could venture to present any detailed and accurate statistics concerning euripides but such specific figures would bore you anyway and to ideas go into every detail of his thought would take far more time than we have now at our disposal i shall therefore simply give you some general notion of my results in their present rough approximate shape with a few illustrative passages that are typical and tried to a little more detail on one or two topics in which you may be especially interested in the almost innumerable references of euripides to the gods and religion we find represented every shade of opinion and feeling from simple unquestioning faith and humble acquiescence in divine providence to the sharpest criticism of the gods and their management of the world and to utter scepticism as to the existence of any divinity at one time the old polytheism with its myths and rites is portrayed without criticism and the ancient customs and sacred notions such as oaths sacrifices blood-pollution and the right of sanctuary and of suppliants are unquestioningly accepted at another time the conduct of the gods as told in old legend is attacked as immoral and disbelief is expressed in regard to improbable myths sometimes men and women attribute their misfortunes and mistakes to some god but in other passages we are told that most ills of mortals are of their own seeking often different gods and goddesses are represented as hostile to each other or as animated towards human beings by feelings of revenge offended dignity and other unworthy motives again the gods are depicted as benevolent and compassionate we muslno longer believe in the gods says orestes in electra if the wrong is stronger than the right and someone in beuerophon remarks t want to say to yoti that the gods are no gods if they do anything disgraceful other passages proclaim that the gods work in a mysterious and inscrutable way that they bring to pass the unexpected and that

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their justice is slow but sure there are moments of exalted religious experience as in the lines golden wings are on back and i am shod with the winged sandals of the sirens and i going aloft into the far ether to meet zeus but euripides characters not only with isaiah mount up on wings like eagles they also walk and not faint this is the life free from evil my am sings the chorus in the bacchanals if a man limit his thoughts to as is his mortal nature making no pretense in heavenly things i envy not deep subtleties i joy rather in pursuing the great clear eternal truths that a man live his life by day and night in purity and holiness striving toward a noble goal and that he honor the gods by casting from him all evil principles human themes there are also however moments of doubt and bewilderment as when helen wonders who can define god amid this mortal whirl or melanippe says zeus whoever zeus is for i know him only by name or when talthybius exclaims in hecuba oh zeus what shall i say that you watch over men or that this is a false opinion accepted without reason namely that there is a race of gods whereas chance rules the afifairs of men indeed chance fortune fate and necessity are so often mentioned by euripides that his writings give considerable ground for the reproax:h of the fathers of the christian church that tyche or fortune was really the chief d^y of paganism but we also note in a large number of passages a close association of nature and religio n and of springs glens groves peaks waves oak and pine olive and ivy sun moon and stars with myth and with cult there are also moments of spiritual consolation as when the chorus in hippolytus finds thiiikirigl>f tht gods comforting despite the chaos of human affairs there are moments of confident waiting for divine help as in the line from the children of heracles zeus is my ally i shall not fear there are moments of r eligious conformity as when even the aged tiresias joins the dance of the bacchic revellers there are moments of submission to the divine will as in the advice of dionvsius to pentheu s i would sacrifice to him rather than in a rage kick against the pricks thou a mortal he a god there are moments of su preme self confidence as in the famous fragment preserved for us both by cicero and plutarch by the roman emperors marcus aurelius and julian by the mystics lamblichus and hermes trismegistus the mind in each of us is a god but against this may be set another fragment much quoted in antiquity do you see this lofty unexperienced ether encircling earth in its moist embrace this consider zeus call this g,od this apparently materialistic view of god however is not necessarily inconsistent with the other passage for euripides more than once speaks of the human mind as after death losing its individuality and rejoining the immortal ether when the dying man breathes forth the

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eternal his body returns to the earth from which it came but his breath or spirit likewise rejoins its native ether if we seek for euripides own belief amid the extensive and varied picture which he gives of the religious life and thought of his times perhaps we may detect it in an utterance put into the mouth of old hecuba in the trojan women 2.n utterance which elicits from menelaus the exclamation what s that a strange prayer you make to the gods hecuba had prayed oh thou who dost support the earth and who restest thereupon whosoe er thou art a riddle beyond our ken be thou zeus or force of nature or mind of man to thee i pray for thou goest everywhere with noiseless tread ruling the affairs of men with justice passages have already been or will later be quoted from euripides suggestive in thought and wording of the new testament some other examples are in a prayer to zeus in helen if you but touch us with the tip of your finger we shall reach our desired goal the notion found twice in euripides and once before him in aeschylus that on a great occasion a house or walls would cry out or could hear what was said a passage in the suppliants to the effect that the wild beast has the rocks as a refuge and the slave the altar of the gods but that human happiness is always uncertain a line in one of the fragments a healer of others himself swollen with sores such passages while not exactly corresponding in phraseology to verses of the bible are sufficiently similar to suggest that the writers of some of the books of the new testament were considerably influenced by euripides either directly or indirectly possibly jesus himself was thus influenced in the first epistle to the corinthians fifteenth chapter thirty-third verse the words translated in the king james version as evil communications corrupt good manners are an exact quotation of one of euripides fragments although it might better be translated evil company corrupts good morals euripides characters frequently express scepticism as to the divination of the future which often enters into his plots but magic philtres and incantations are frequently mentioned in a matter-of-fact sort of way astrology seems almost unkncmsm^o euripides /because of the religious origin and character of the greek drania we expect to find in euripides many passages concerning the gods and their dealings with men and the duties of men towards the deities since his plays are tragedies we also find many reflections concerning man s woes ^nd sufferings and the transitoriness of human happiness and that death which regularly terminates the careers of the chief actors in a

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tragedy although euripides is not so merciless a slaughterer of kis cast as were the elizabethan dramatists but we are not prepared for so many allusions to politics to family life to social classes and problems especially concerning ^men and to intellectual interests as we find in his tragedies these four categories of political domestic social and intellectual life are then those to which after religion and ethics euripides gives most space and attention but it is very remarkable that of economic matters he says little or nothing business and industry pass practically unnoticed in all his eighteen plays and 1091 genuine fragments life in the family he has something to say of ordinary daily sages considering slavery from the social ludes occasionally to the fine arts and to athletics once directly attacking athletes in a passage twenty-eight lines long and he refers still more frequently to medicine and music but of the production distribution and consumption of wealth in his time of the dififerent occupations and means of livelihood he says very little even incidentally yet he lived and wrote in the richest and busiest city the greatest commercial and naval power of the mediterranean it is true that several allusions to men who sail the sea in an insatiate desire for wealth and a number of metaphors drawn from maritime life show that familarity with and love of the sea which runs through greek literature frorn the odyssey down but such allusions to ships and sea trade make up most of his at all specific allusions to business pursuits in two of his tragedies he speaks of the gods having caused wars between men to relieve over-population but even this distant approach to assigning an economic cause for wars is introduced as if a rather novel idea and illustrates the fact that men of the past attributed many things to divine interference which we trace to economic or natural causes many passtandpoint he alhas he twice artisans are scarcely mentioned by him only once or is there an allusion to a carpenter or some such work man nor is agricultural economy really discussed though peasant and pastoral life occasionally appear in the background there are it is true numerous passages about wealth but all these discuss it from the moral not the economic standpoint arguing concerning the uses and limitations of riches asking whether money is essential to happiness and whether poverty or the possession of wealth is more conducive to the development of moral character wealth is often extolled sometimes however cynically while in many other passages it is scorned in comparison with other moral and social values it can scarcely be argued that of the tragic stage it was regard for the dignity which restrained euripides from portraying

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economic conditions and discussing economic problems he is for notorious for his disregard of all the old fashioned notions he brought stage ctf the trigiitff and ptoprietle it down to the earth and hunianized it brought in kings in he made the passion tatters ^and nurses talking philosophy of love the central theme in several of his tragedies whereas aeschylus is represented in the prvgs of aristophanes as affirming proudly that he had never put a woman in love into any of his^lays on tbe contrary the boast vs hich aristophanes puts mto euripides mouth is/tn murra£ s jfta i put things on the stage that life came from daily and business could catch me if i tripped could with dizziness y to things they knew and judge my art so euripides would seem just the manionntroduce economic matters on the stage if they really were of itnpbrtance in his day and of interest to his audience and had tfi ey really been tee 3aity lif e ind business referred to by aristophanes indeed we have evidence that euripides weiit farther in extolling wealth than his hearers wished seneca in one of his letters tells us that when one of the characters in euripides lost tragedy danae expressed the following sentiment o gold best neither has motherhood pledge of friendship to mortals such joys nor are children nor a father dear such a bqon to men as you and those who have you in their houses when the love-goddess sees such men no wonder she nourishes a myriad loves when they heard this the entire audience rose en masse from their seats and rushed angrily towards the stage to cast the actor out of the theater and break up the performance euripides had to throw himself into their midst and implore them to wait and see the fate which would overtake this devqtefi of gold before the end of the plajr listen · where men the chief reason then why euripides discusses economic subjects so little must be that there was so little to discuss in the economic civilization of his time and so little interest taken in it by his contemporaries whereas they were keenly interested in wars and government in oratory and education it will not even do to hold that the economic life of the city was largely in the hands of slaves and of resident foreigners who were not citizens and that the athenians proper were left free from such considerations to devote themselves to politics and culture for we know that many athenian citizens had to earn their own living nor can we areue that such citizens were too busy to attend the theatre and that euripides plays were written for and cover the interests of only a more aristocratic and intellectual audience for his plays are full of passages concerning even slaves but even slavery he discusses from the social rather than the economic standpoint.

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may in fact go so far as to say that the writings of euripides give no evidence of any essential advance in economic civilization over that of the homeric age as portrayed in the but euripides tragedies do show a iliad and in the odyssey great advance in political and religious thought in moral and social standards in intellectual life over the earlier literature had there therefore been any great economic revolution or any steady economic advance they should have portrayed it too we eunpide£pohtic^j^a pqlitics^into tenth century myth dkgy and treats iihe athens of2x i|jij rfiepes of o -and-the sparta of mene21p!us j^£|jl2^s^xe-the d trwtrday the intense love or the greek for the soil of his native t5wn and the pangs and woe of exile are eloquently portrayed mothers sacrifice their daughters as well as their sons for their country s good and duty to the state is often urged sometimes in terms however which imply that many were derelict in their duty athens in particular is glorified in many places sparta is censured more than once and heralds or the envoys of other cities are several times represented in an unfavorable light several passages about generalship suggest that there was considof the pel6p6nef^he-dfe^tisfac^ro at5a§afretts:i» ith ft nesiart^wafr tyranny and liberty running for office the city fiopalace and its traits freedom of speech the power of debate arid oratory in the raw courts.and in politics,7deinag6gs and the requisites of gaojicitizenship are other topics treated anc!enr;g lhbes wkkk ing he injects fifjth century city state but euripides view at times broadens beyond the individual and he several times speaks of devotion to hellas as a whole and of the common law of the hellenes or a sort of this is international law between the various greek cities partly in opposition to the barbarians who are almost always mentioned unfavorably they are cowards in war are slaves politically compared to the greeks have immoral customs which hellas does not tolerate and in general have strange ways and dress they are even made to speak of themselves as barbarians the supremely complacent self-satisfaction of the hellene with himself as compared with the barbarians and his absolute conviction that he is immeasurably superior to them a conviction even surpassing that of the english traveler on the continent sometimes is expressed in such absurd terms that it seems possiiphigenia about to ble that euripides is slyly poking fun at it escape from colchis at the eastern end of the black sea and return to greece beseeches the goddess artemis whose shrine she has been tending among the tauri graciously abandon this barbarian land for athens for it does not become you to dwell here when so fine a city may be thine and jason who had repaid medea for saving his life and aiding him to steal the i

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