Euripides (Way 1929) v2/Introduction

The life of Euripides coincides with the most strenuous and most triumphant period of Athenian history, strenuous and triumphant not only in action, but in thought, a period of daring enterprise, alike in material conquest and development, and in art, poetry, and philosophic speculation. He was born in 480 B.C. the year of Thermopylae and Salamis. Athens was at the height of her glory and power, and was year by year becoming more and more the City Beautiful, when his genius was in its first flush of creation. He had been writing for more than forty years before the tragedy of the Sicilian Expedition was enacted; and, felix opportunitate mortis, he was spared the knowledge of the shameful sequel of Arginusae, the miserable disaster of Aegospotami, the last lingering agony of famished Athens. He died more than a year before these calamities befell.

​His father was named Mnesarchides, his mother Kleito. They must have been wealthy, for their son possessed not only considerable property (he had at least once to discharge a “liturgy,”^[1] and was “proxenus,” or consul, for Magnesia, costly duties both), but also, what was especially rare then, a valuable library. His family must have been well-born, for it is on record that he took part as a boy in certain festivals of Apollo, for which any one of mean birth would have been ineligible.

He appeared in the dramatic arena at a time when it was thronged with competitors, and when it must have been most difficult for a new writer to achieve a position. Aeschylus had just died, after being before the public for 45 years: Sophocles had been for ten years in the front rank, and was to write for fifty years longer, while there were others, forgotten now, but good enough to wrest the victory from these at half the annual dramatic competitions at least. Moreover, the new poet was not content to achieve excellence along the lines laid down by his predecessors and already marked with the stamp of public approval. His genius was original, and he ​followed it fearlessly, and so became an innovator in his handling of the religious and ethical problems presented by the old legends, in the literary setting he gave to these, and even in the technicalities of stage-presentation. As originality makes conquest of the official judges of literature last, and as his work ran counter to a host of prejudices, honest and otherwise,^[2] it is hardly surprising that his plays gained the first prize only five times in fifty years.

But the number of these official recognitions is no index of his real popularity, of his hold on the hearts, not only of his countrymen, but of all who spoke his mother-tongue. It is told how on two occasions the bitterest enemies of Athens so far yielded to his spell, that for his sake they spared to his conquered countrymen, to captured Athens, the last horrors of war, the last humiliation of the vanquished. After death he became, and remained, so long as Greek was a living language, the most popular and the most influential of the three great masters of the drama. His nineteenth-century eclipse has been followed by a reaction in which he is recognised as ​presenting one of the most interesting studies in all literature.

In his seventy-third year he left Athens and his clamorous enemies, to be an honoured guest at the court of the king of Macedon. There, unharassed by the malicious vexations, the political unrest, and the now imminent perils of Athens, he wrote with a freedom, a rapidity, a depth and fervour of thought, and a splendour of diction, which even he had scarcely attained before.

He died in 406 B.C., and, in a revulsion of repentant admiration and love, all Athens, following Sophocles’ example, put on mourning for him. Four plays, which were part of the fruits of his Macedonian leisure, were represented at Athens shortly after his death, and were crowned by acclamation with the first prize, in spite of the attempt of Aristophanes, in his comedy of The Frogs, a few months before, to belittle his genius.

His characteristics, as compared with those of his two great brother-dramatists, may be concisely stated thus:—

Aeschylus sets forth the operation of great principles, especially of the certainty of divine retribution, and of the persistence of sin as an ineradicable plague-​taint. He believes and trembles. Sophocles depicts great characters: he ignores the malevolence of destiny and the persistent power of evil: to him “man is man, and master of his fate.” He believes with unquestioning faith. Euripides propounds great moral problems: he analyses human nature, its instincts, its passions, its motives; he voices the cry of the human soul against the tyranny of the supernatural, the selfishness and cruelty of man, the crushing weight of environment. He questions: “he will not make his judgment blind.”

Of more than 90 plays which Euripides wrote, the names of 81 have been preserved, of which 19 are extant—18 tragedies, and one satyric drama, the Cyclops. His first play, The Daughters of Pelias (lost) was represented in 455 B.C. The extant plays may be arranged, according to the latest authorities, in the following chronological order of representation, the dates in brackets being conjectural: (1) Rhesus (probably the earliest); (2) Cyclops; (3) Alcestis, 438; (4) Medea, 431; (5) Children of Hercules, (429–427); (6) Hippolytus, 428; (7) Andromache, (430–424); (8) Hecuba, (425); (9) Suppliants, (421); (10) Madness of Hercules, (423–420); (11) Ion, (419–416); (12) Daughters of Troy, 415; (13) Electra, (413); ​(14) Iphigeneia in Taurica, (414–412); (15) Helen, 412; (16) Phoenician Maidens, (411–409); (17) Orestes, 408; (18) Bacchanals, 405; (19) Iphigeneta in Aulis, 405.

In this edition the plays are arranged in three main groups, based on their connexion with (1) the Story of the Trojan War, (2) the Legends of Thebes, (3) the Legends of Athens. The Alcestis is a story of old Thessaly. The reader must, however, be prepared to find that the Trojan War series does not present a continuously connected story, nor, in some details, a consistent one. These plays, produced at times widely apart, and not in the order of the story, sometimes present situations (as in Hecuba, Daughters of Troy, and Helen) mutually exclusive, the poet not having followed the same legend throughout the series.

The Greek text of this edition may be called eclectic, being based upon what appeared, after careful consideration, to be the soundest conclusions of previous editors and critics. In only a few instances, and for special reasons, have foot-notes on readings been admitted. Nauck’s arrangement of the choruses has been followed, with few exceptions.

The translation (first published 1894–1898) has been revised throughout, with two especial aims, ​closer fidelity to the original, and greater lucidity in expression. It is hoped that the many hundreds of corrections will be found to bring it nearer to the attainment of these objects. The version of the Cyclops, which was not included in the author’s translation of the Tragedies, has been made for this edition. This play has been generally neglected by English translators, the only existing renderings in verse being those of Shelley (1819), and Wodhull (1782).