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In its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: MACURDY, GRACE ET TITLE: HE CHRON YOF NT PLAYS OF... M, M-^jTm %^,^y MLji • LANCASTE ,PA DATE 19 "•*f # Restrictions on Use: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT t BIBL IOGRAPHIC MTrnp FORM TAUnVT Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 88EF I t!13 lO — r "f^" f 370.7CX0 Cop 2 1.113 Macurdy, Grace Harriet, 1865 or 6-1946. \ The cluonology of the extant plays of Eurimdeq Lancaster, Pa., The Xew era imnaug^comp^y,S " y, 128 p. 23i"". Thesis (ni. D.)-Columbia university. Life. -^ "A list of the principal works and articles referred to": p. iii-v. D88EF M25~ • 1. Euripides. Copy in Classics Title from Columbia Univ. ) GStlliU A 11-968 Printed by L. 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J V ■ .>J .r r i» t ' » « i* I K\^P ^>' i \ nw 1 is 1 Jt V 7~ f THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE S EXTANT PLAYS OF EURIPIDES BT GRACE HARRIET MACURDY Associate Professor of Greek in Vassar College A DISSERTATIONT Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements FOR THE Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Columbia University Putts or Tie New Era PRiiTiae Commit Larcastei, fK 1905 .f M '3 i i ft >♦.. [| it A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS AND ARTICLES REFERRED TO IN THIS DISSERTATION. Arnold, R. Die chorische Technik des Euripides. Halle, 1888. Bates, W. N. The Dating of the Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides. (Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1901.) Beck, E. A. The Heraclidse of Euripides. Cambridge, 1881. Beloch, J. Die attische Politik seit Pericles. Leipzig, 1884. Griechische Geschichte. : Strassburg, 1893-^1897. Berlage, J. Commentatio de Euripide Philosopho. Leyden, 1888. Bernhardy, G. Grundriss dergriechischen Litteratur. Halle, 1892. Boeckh, A. Graecas tragoediae principum Aeschyli, Sophoclis, Euri- pidis, num ea quae supersunt et genuina omnia sunt et forma primi- tiva servata, an eorum familiis aliquid debeat ex iis tribui. Heidel- berg, 1808. Bruhn, E. Iphigenia auf Tauris. Berlin, 1894. Croiset, A. and M. Histoire de la litterature Grecque. Paris, 1887-1899. Decharme, P. Euripide et I'esprit de son theatre. Paris, 1893. Dieterich, A. Schlafscenen auf der attischen Biihne. (Rheinisches Museum, 1891.) Dindorf, W. Scholia Grajca in Euripidis tragcedias ex codicibus aucta et emendata. Oxonii, 1863. Earle, M. L. The Alcestis of Euripides. London and New York, 1894, Studies in Sophocles's Trachinians. (Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1902.) Elmsley, P. Heraclidffi, 1815. Medea, 1818. Flagg, I. Iphigenia among the Taurians. Boston, 1891. Firnhaber, C. G. Die Verdiichtigungen Euripideischer Verse. Leip- zig, 1840. De tempore quo Heraclidas et composuisse et docuisse Eurii)ides videatur. (Wiesbaden, 1846.) Ueber Euripides' Herakliden. (Philologus, 1846.) Fix, Th. Euripidis FabuliB. Paris, 1843. iii V ^ O » O / J IV Fraccaroli, J. De Euripidis scribendi artificiis. Augustse Taiiri- norum, 1885. Frazer, J. G. Pausanias's Description of Greece. London, 1898. Giles, P. Political Allusions in the Supplices of Euripides. (Classi- cal Review, 1890.) Haigh, A. E. The Tragic Drama of the Greeks. Oxford, 1896. Hardin, J. Dissertation sur Andromaque. (Histoire de 1' Academic, 1733.) Hartung, J. A. Euripides Restitutus. Hamburg, 1840. van Herwerden, H. Helena, Lugduni Batavoruni, 1895. Hermann, G. Euripidis Fabulse. Leipzig, 1831-1841. Opuscula, 1827-1846. Hoeveler, J. De Heraclidis Euripidis. Monasterii, 1868. Jebb, R. C. Sophocles : Plays and Fragments. Cambridge, 1887- 1900. Jevons, F. History of Greek Literature. New York, 1886. Kaibel, G. Kratinos' Vdvoafjc und Euripidis KiTcAwi/^. (Hermes, IS 95.) Elektra. Leipzig, 1896. Keene, C. H. Euripides,; Electra. London, 1S93. Kirchhoff, A. Ueber die Entstehungszeit der herodotischen Ge- schichtswerkes. Berlin, 1872. Koehler, U. Doeumente zur Geschichte des athenischen Theaters. (Mittheilungen des deutschen archaeologischen Instituts, 1878.) I'Ugge, G. Quomodo Euripides in Supplicibus tenipora sua re- spexerit. Guestfalia, 1887. Mahaffy, J. History of Greek Literature. 1880. Maass, E. Zur Hekabe des Euripides. (Hermes, 1889.) Masqueray, P. Theorie des formes lyriqucs de la tragedie grecque. Paris, 1895. Matthiae, A. Euripidis Tragopdia; et Fragmenta. Lipsite, 1813. Meinecke, A. Aristoi)hanis Coma^dise. Leipzig, 1860. Miiller, K. 0., and Donaldson, J. W. History of the Literature of Ancient Greece. London, 1858. Nauck, A. Euripidis Traganliie. Lipsia?, 1889. Tragicorum Gnecorum Fragmenta. Li|)siiu, 1889. Tragicie Dictionis Index. Petropoli, 1872. V Paley, F. A. Euripides. London, 1872. Patin, H. Etudes sur Euripide. Paris, 1894. Patterson, J. Cyclops of Euripides. Boston, 1901. Pflugk, I. E., and Klotz, R. Euripidis tragoedise. Bditio tertia. Lipsiai, 1867. Pierron, A. Histoire de la litterature grecque. Paris, 1894. Potthast, H. De Euripidis Heraclidis. Monasterii, 1872. Von Premerstein. Ueber den Mythos in Euripides' Helena. Philo- logus, 1896. Rassow, J. Zur Hekabe des Euripides. Hermes, 1887. Ribbeck, 0. Zu Sophokles' und Euripides' Elektra. (Leipziger Studien, 1885.) Roschcr, W. Leben, Werk, und Zeitalter des Thukydides. Got- tingen, 1842. Rutherford, W. G. Scholia Aristophanica. London and New- York, 1896. Sandys, J. E. The Bacchae of Euripides. Cambridge, 1885. Schmidt, W. Qua ratione Euripides res sua setate gestas adhibuerit in Heraclidis. Halle, 1881. Schenkl, K. Die politischen Anschauungen des Euripides. Wien, 1862. Steiger, H. Warum schrieb Euripides seine Elektra ? (Philologus, 1897.) Walz, C. Rhetores Grieci. Londoni et Lutetiai, 1834. Wedd, N. Orestes, Cambridge, 1895. Weil, H. Sept Tragedies d'Euripide. Paris, 1877. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. Analecta Euripidea. 1875. Heracles, Berlin, 1895. Der M litter. Bittgang, Berlin, 1899. Die beiden P^lektren. (Hermes, 1883.) Zielinski, Th. Die Gliederung der altattischen Komodie. Leipzig, 1885. Zirndorfer, H. De Chronologia Fabularum Euripidearum. Mar- l)urg, 1839. \ THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EXTANT PLAYS OF EURIPIDES *. i Of the eighteen extant plays of Euripides eight are securely dated by ancient testimony. These are the Alcestis (438), the Medea (431), the Hippolytus (428), the Troades (415), the Helen (412), the Orestes (408), and, for all practical purposes, the Bacchants,^ and the Aulid Iphigenia. Still another, the Phoenissse, may be placed within certain narrow limits on the strength of statements ancient but— unfortunately — incomplete. The criteria which serve in determining the date of the re- maining dramas are of various kinds : parodies in the comedies of Aristophanes w^hich afford termini ante quos, allusions to past and contemporaneous political events, the attitude of the poet toward politics and religion, and the character of the play itself. The extant dramas which are exactly dated range from 438 B. C. to the year of the poet's death. They are sufficient in number to show a development of technique and a growth of mannerism which are important factors in determining the dates of the remaining dramas. Indeed three groups of plays, sepa- rated by stylistic differences, are easily discernible among the surviving plays, in spite of the fact that the earliest of them, the Alcestis, was composed when Euripides was already more than forty years old. The points of technique which distinguish the groups are, both metrical and linguistic. In the metre the increasing num- ber of resolutions in the iambic trimeter, the use of trochaic tetrameters, the revival of w^hich was a phenomenon attending the increasing freedom of the trimeter, the extension of the use of mixed dochmiacs, and the greater range of variety in the ^ Produced after the death of Euripides. \ "\ 2 metres employed are points indicative of an advance on the part of the poet along certain lines which are of value in assigning a play to certain years, or rather to certain periods. Further considerations are the metrical constitution of the choruses in the matter of responsions, the growing lack of symmetry in the threnodies, the extended use of monodies and a/ioL/Salaj the alternate songs of actors. Another test of the period to which a play belongs is the relative relevancy of the songs sung by the chorus to the situation in which the singers find themselves. It is recognized that irrelevancy to the plot and situation on the part of the chorus is more and more marked in Euripides's later dramas. The verbal style increasingly lacks restraint as the lyrical parts expand. Eepetitions of musical words and the subjection of sense to sound in the lyric portions mark even the finest of the later dramas, and the gradual growth of this man- nerism gives an indication which is of use in assigning a play to the group to which it belongs. Another important considera- tion is the inter-relation of the plays in point of l)orrowed plirase, motive, or situation. This borrowing or repetition may be of such a nature as to be absolutely inconclusive, or there may be so plain an indication of an advance in technique, or at any rate of an adaptation of material, as to settle the question of priority. The relation of the art of Sophocles to the art of Euripides is another question which forces itself upon us in discussing certain plays of Euripides with reference to chronology. The two poets inevitably affected one anotlier's work, contemporaries and rivals as they were, contesting for the same prizes, and each treating subjects which had been liandhMl by the other. There is the plainest evidence of their mutual influence in tlie work of both poets. And thus a play of Sophocles may aftbrd a terminus post or ante quern for a play of Euripides. The problems which are to be solved by some or all of these means according to the individual play have been essayed by various scholars of the last two centuries. Several chronologies of the plays have been published either separately or in con- s' V \ w K ^ nection with the editions of Euripides, and some of the plays have been made the subjects of a number of individual discus- sions. Universally satisfying results have not been reached, and not only the popular hand-books, but the critical works of scholars as well, contain statements to which exception must be taken. The lack of unanimity in dating the plays is apparent on a comparison of the various opinions of critics. The Hera- clida^ has been assigned to years ranging from 445 B. C. to 418. The Andromache has been variously dated 430-424, 424-418, and 413-412. The Ion is counted now among the poet's early extant work, and now among his latest. The Heracles is de- clared by some to have preceded Sophocles's Trachinians, by others to have been suggested by that play. The same ques- tion of priority, with notable scholars on either side of it, exists about the Electra of Sophocles and the Electra of Euripides. Roscher and others place the Tauric Iphigenia as early as 425 B. C Others place it in 414, and yet others make it follow the Helen and give it a place among the latest plays. The Supplices is dated both before and after the Peace of Nicias. In his Analecta Euri})idea Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellen- dorff says of the drama — ^^ Post Xicise pacem in commendationem foederis Argivi scriptam esse fabula se ipse testatur". In the in- troduction to " Der Mutter Bittgang " he argues that the play must have been composed either in 422 or, possibly, 421, before the peace and with the view of creating feeling for it. Other critics are divided between these two opinions. The Phcenissae is variously dated between the limits 411 and 407. With regard to the Hecuba there is little dispute, and the Cyclops has not had frequent treatment. The chronology of the plays has been taken up in a separate treatise by Zirndorfer and by Fix in the preface to the Didot edition, 1843. Hartung gives a chronological table in his Euripides Restitutus sive Scriptorum Euripidis Ingeniique Cen- sura, and has discussed the dates of some of the plays in con- nection with their analyses. Musgrave has a general chrono- <»< M\ 'I logia scenicay Hermann, Pflugk, and other editors usually consider the problems connected with the date of the individ- ual play in the preface to the same. Jebb discusses the date of the extant plays in the Encyclopredia Britannica. Xauck expressly avoids the subject : '' de chronologia tragoediaruni Euripidearum adeo rara sunt et manca testimonia ut plerarum- que setas nobis ignota sit, neque in animo est coniecturas ea de re periclitari utique lubricas".^ A chronology of the plays with comment is given by von AVilamowitz-Moellendorff in Analecta Euripidea, pp. 147-1 57. Berlage in his Commentatio de Euripide Philosopho" has an introductory general discussion of the order of the dramas, and Murray in his recent critical edition of Euripides gives a list of the plays ^^ secundum ordinem temporum quibus act» esse videntur''. Separate plays have been examined for the purpose of determining their respective dates by Hardion, Boeckh, Firnhaber, Bergk, von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Yahlen, Bruhn, Kaibel, and others. I subjoin a chronological table of the extant plays in which I have dated them according to the vears which a studv of the plays and an examination of the literature of the subject appears to me to warrant or to render possible. I then take up the question of the date of each play, following in the dis- cussion the order of my chronological table. Cyclops Alcestis Medea Heraclidse Hippolytus B. C. Date unknown ; probably before the Al- cestis ; certainly before the Hecuba. 438. 431. 430, after the first Spartan invasion, and after the Theban attack on Plat«a. 428. ^ Nauck, Euripides, I, xxvii, 2Leyden, 1888. K *» 1» Hecuba Suppliants Heracles Andromache Ion A Troades Iphigenia among the Taurians Electra •^ Helen Phoenissse > Orestes Bacchants Iphigenia at Aulis / / 425-423. 420, after the treaty with Argos. 420-418. 417, after the battle of Mantinea. 416-414. 415. 414-413. 413. 412. 410-409. 408. 407. 407. The Rhesus I have not taken into account, regarding it as fully established that this play is not the work of Euripides and belongs to the following century.^ The Cyclops There is no traditional evidence for the date of the Cyclops ; there are no allusions in the play to aid in determining its period, and the usual tests of metrical technique and verbal style cannot be applied with certainty, owing to the fact that this play is the sole example of its kind that has come down to us. The nature of the satyric drama will account for the large percentage of resolutions in the iambic trimeter, and the com- bination of several resolved feet in the same line. It is of sig- nificance, however, that several of the later tragedies go beyond the Cyclops in freedom in this respect." The shortness of the iRolfe, J. C, The Tragedy Rhesus, 1893. (Harvard Studies in Class. Phil., IV.) 2 Rumpel, Philologus, 23, Die Auflosuagen im Trimeter des Euripides. Statistics given by Humphreys, M. W., A. J. P., I. pp. 187 ff. \ Vh )^'^^ H^ n -. i iv IJ^ % u ^ lyrical parts is noted by Bergk, who, however, rec^anls th(^ play as one which by no means ^^ zai den iilteren Arbeiten des Eluri- pides gehort'\ The shortness of the play per se might lead us to place it early, but we have no knowledge of the compar- ative length of satyr-dramas, and it would be reasonable to infer that a short play of this type would be given after the tragic trilogy.^ The vocabulary of the Cyclops is essentially tragic, although the subject-matter naturally introduces many words from pastoral and vulgar parlance. This character was evidently common to the vocabulary of the satyr-dramas in gen- eral. Compare Horace Ars Poetica, vv. 234 if. Non ego inornata et dorninantia noniina solum verbaque, Pisones, Satyrorum scriptor amabo. Metrically and stylistically, then, there is nothing distinctly in favor of a late date for this drama, while some evidences of comparative restraint and conservatism in technique and vocabu- lary, considering the nature of the plot, may be taken, though with due reservation in view of our ignorance of the constitu- tion of other satyr-dramas, as pointing to an early date. A terminus ad quern has been discovered for the play in the Hecuba, which Kaibel has shown to have derived a motive from the Cyclops.^ This is the blinding of Polymestor, the Thracian king, which is, as Kaibel proves, suggested by the blinding of Polyphemos. The passages in (question are the closing scene of the Cyclops (lines 663 to end), and the last act of the Hecuba (lines 1035 to the end). There are notable likenesses in situation and expression. Both victims receive the punishment of blinding for inhuman deeds. Dramatic sympathy is in both cases against them. The Cyclops in his cave cries out in anguish : ^ Croiset, Histoire de la litt^rature grecque, 3, Chap. ix. 2 Kaibel, Hermes, 30 (1895), Kratinos' 'Odvaafiq and Euripides Ki^kau^, pp. 82 ff. 3v. 663. V ^ while the chorus of satyrs wait exulting outside, and respond : Ka\o9 7' 6 Traidv' fxe\iTe ijlol tovS' au, KvK\o)yjr. Likewise Polymestor cries : "n ^OL TV(f)\oviJLaL (^67709 ofXfxdTWv ToXa^^ and his words are overheard with joy by the chorus of waiting Trojan women. The threatenings of both blinded ones are couched in similar terms : aXX' ovTL fX7] (j)vyT]T€ rrjaS' e^o) Trer^a? yaipovre'^^ ovSev 6Vt69 • iv TrvXatat yap araOeU (jicipayyo^ ralah' ivapfioao) %epa9. aW OVTL /IT) (f)vyr)T€ Xai-^ripQ) TroBr fidWcov yap oyKoav rcovS' avapprj^o) fivxov^i' l3ov, ffapeia^ %et/309 oppLarai fieXo^.^ Further both victims take vengeance, such as is left them, by citing oracles of ill-omen for Odysseus and Hecuba respec- tively. The latter both reply in a defiant spirit. And finally both pieces end with the weighing of the anchor and the voy- age back to Greece. Kaibel, after indicating the resemblances, points out that the scene in the Cyclops is borrowed directly from Homer, whereas that in the Hecuba is an invention of Euripides even to the name of the Thracian tyrant. This, on the whole convincing, argument of Kaibel assigns to the Cyclops as terminus ante quern 425 B. C, the probable date of the Hecuba, or at any rate 424 B. C, the latest possible date for that play. Kaibel further argues that dramas with such great mutual resemblances could not have been composed except with a considerable interval betw^een them, ^^da ein ordentlicher Dichter nicht leicht innerhalb so kurzer Zeit sich 1 V. 1035. 2 Cyclops, 6G6-668. ' Hecuba, 1039-1041. Kaibel here follows the inferior authorities which assign line 1041 to Polymestor, and so obtains lines equal in number in the respective speeches of "the Cyclops and Polymestor. The sense, however, as well as the preponderance of traditional evidence is against this. !ii *l 8 selbst wiederholen wird'\ This arcrimient fails, however, if applied to such plays as the Tauric Iphigenia and the llcleu, which, for all their likeness, appear to have been composed within two years of each other. A stronger argument for pushing the date of the Cyclops back before 430 and earlier still is found in the comparison which Kaibel makes between the Cyclops and the Alcestis. In comparing Cyclops, 420-426 : rjaOevra h^avrov &>? eirrjaOofir^v iyoj k. t. X. with the scene in the Alcestis 756-764, where Admetus's ser- vant describes the conduct of Heracles in the house of mourn- ing, Kaibel says : ^^ Mir scheint die Aehnlichkeit der Situation so wohl wie der Ausnutzung auf der Hand zu liegen, und ich personlich kann mir nicht denken, dass, wer einmal eiu so schones Bild gezeichnet hatte wie das in der Alkestis, den gleichen Gegenstand bei spiiterer Gelegenheit so geringschfitzig und fast seiner selbst vergessend hatte wieder aufnehmen sollen. Ich glaube daher dass der Kyklops alter ist als die Alkestis vom Jahre 438 ". He continues with the argument : ^' Und je iilter das Satyr- drama wird, desto wcniger wird der so armlich gerathene Acron zwischen Odysseus und Polyphem (283) anstossig sein '\ He concludes with the expression of the opinion that the rhetoric of Odysseus in this scene is so weak and incomplete that it can only be explained on the ground of the unpractised hand of tlie poet, who could produce such different effects rhetorically in 438, when he represents the strife between Admetus and Pheres. Kaibel, therefore, puts the Cyclops before the Alcestis and among Euripides's earliest extant efforts. In a recent edition of the Cyclops,^ the editor, Mr. Patterson questions the priority of the Cyclops to the Alcestis for the reason that he finds frequent parodies of the Cyclops in the Acharnians of Aristophanes and but one parody of the Alcestis in that play. He therefore argues that the Alcestis was less ^Cyclops, Patterson, J., Boston, 1901. # »!• % fi» ii !♦ t tiJ^, 9 distinctly in mind with Aristophanes when be composed the Acharnians than the Cyclops, and so is earlier. But here, as in other cases, " muss weniger gezahlt als gew^ogen werden ^' . The argument cited above is in itself trivial, for the dramas of Euripides, early or late, are ridiculed by Aristoph- anes, without regard to chronology, according as he finds them effective for his purpose. The Alcestis was always clearly enough before the mind of Aristophanes. Witness the many parodies upon it from the Acharnians down to the Frogs. Further the well-known parody of the Alcestis in line 893 of the Acharnians is absolutely unmistakable, a shameful travesty of a pathetic verse of Euripides (Alcestis, 367), whereas the parodies on lines from the Cyclops which Mr. Patterson cites from the Acharnians are without exception mere accidental verbal coincidences in ordinary colloquial expressions, which were such common property that no reminiscence could possibly be suggested by their use in the play of Aristophanes. It appears then that, though the data for determining the time of the play are very meagre, Kaibel has discovered for it a terminus ante quein in the Hecuba, and is probably right in placing it before the Alcestis. The metre and style of the play are not against this theory, and in all probability the Cyclops is the earliest extant play of Euripides. The Alcestis The Alcestis is exactly dated by the hypothesis emanating from Aristophanes of Byzantium. He says : iScSdxOr) iirl VXavKLvov dpxovTo<;. The words that follow have been restored by Dindorf : oXv/jLTTLciSo^; ire erei Sevrepo), since that was the year of the archonship of Glaucinus. The play was evidently fourth in a tetralogy, as the hypothesis states : tt^wto? tjv So^o/cX?)?, Sevrepo^; EvpiTrtSTj^; Kpijaaai^, 'AXKfjLecovc tq) Bed '^a)(/)t8o9, T7]X€ 9 11 IT/3WT0? Ev(f)opLm; Sevrepo^ So^o/cX?}?, rptro^; EvpcTriSr]^ Mi^Seia, lll 1 * A A^ one of the years immediately preceding. Those who believe that the play is anti-Spartan rather than anti-Argive place it at or just before the inception of the war, or in its very early years. Fix stands alone in placing the drama before the Pelopon- nesian war. His ^ arguments are — first, the metrical construc- tion which puts the play among the earliest extant dramas of Euripides ; second, the tone of the play, w^hich he says indicates that at the time of its composition Athens w^as in a peaceful and flourishing state with the ancestral piety yet preserved to the degree that I]uripides himself, the later free-thinker, here respects the established religion and its institutions ; third, the veiled character of the attack on Sparta, which he regards as evidence that the play was written before the beginning of the Peloponnesian war ; fourth, the lines of the play, 1026 ff., which he regards as an " ex eventu rel j)^'cediciio ", referring to the expedition of Plistoanax in the third year of the eighty- third Olympiad. No importance is any longer attached to this opinion of Fix's, whose arguments for the most part show an inadequate conception of the play and have been easily met. It has been shown that the note of discontent and scepticism is not wanting in this play^, and the inaptness of the oracle for the campaign of Plistoanax has been noted, as w^ell as the pointlessness of an attempt to arouse anti-Spartan sentiment at a time when the Athenians were making the thirty years' peace with Sparta.** Fix's dating may therefore be disregarded. He has found no followers. The opinion of Bieckh^ deserves and has received more atten- tion. It is the following : '^Postremo etiam Ilcraclidcc ad res publicas pertinet : ex conviciis in Argivos ibi iactis apparet doctam esse, (pium bellum Argivi pararent ad versus Athenienses : ^Fix, Th., Euripidis Fabiila', 1843, Prsefatio, Chronologia Fabularura. 2 Pottharst, H., De Euripidis Heraclidis, Monasterii, 1872, p. 14. 3 n(i'veler, J., De Her. Eur., Monasterii, 1868, pp. 46-47. *Bcjeckh, A., Trag. Graec. Princ, Heidelberg, 1808, p. 190. 1'^ 16 quod longiiis foret, si vellem singillatim persequi : unus suffi- ciat locus vs. 285. ^Oeipov TO aov yap "Apyo? ov SeSoiK eyco^ etc. Cf. praecipue vss. 354 sqq. 759 sqq. etc. Ttaqiie coniicio actam tragoediam 01. xc, 3. qiiimi rupto foedcre Argivi pacem cum Lacouibus facerent, Atlieuienses autem helium inferrent, efficientibus optimatibus (Thucyd. V, 76 sq.), qui ipsi in Hera- clidis Euripidis iniuriam faciunt : auno tamen proximo, resti- tuto Argis populari imperio, cum Atheniensibus in gratiara redeunt (Thuc. V, 82. coll. Dodwell. Annal. Thucyd. p. 687) unde calculus noster fit etiam firmior." The play, then, according to this concej^tion of it, must have been composed in the months between the beginning of the winter of 418 B. C, and the summer of 417 B. C. At the beginning of the winter the party in Argos that was opposed to democracy and favorable to Sparta succeeded in getting its way in consequence of the disaster at Mantinea. Argos came to terms with Sparta and took up a position of hostility toward Athens. In the spring the Spartans and the Thousand Argives (ol x^Xlol Xoydhe^) who had fouglit so efficiently at Mantinea overthrew the Argive democracy, kol 6\tyap')(^La eTriTrjheLa roU AaKeSat/iovLOi^ KaTearrf} This oligar- chy was itself overthrown in the summer, friendly relations with Athens were resumed, and, with the help of Athenian carpenters and masons, the Argives, men and women alike, started to build a long wall down to the sea, that in case of a land attack pro- visions might be brought in by sea in Athenian ships. It is clear from the narration of Thucydides that the short-lived alliance with Sparta w^as the work of ol oXiyot, whose govern- ment was legally established irpcx; eap and overthrown roO emyLyvofjievov 6epov<;. The disaffection toward Athens was only temporary and partial. The state of feeling at Argos nmst have been well understood in Athens from the time of the passing ^ Thuc. V. 81. » iA >w »^. J >J'f% u ( «' <# ^ „.-^^^ 17 of the vote to make terms w^ith Sparta {kol yevopLev-q^ ttoWj)^ avTiXoyia's' erux^ yap kuI 6 ' xS^XKL/StdSr}^ irapoyv) to the time when Athenian workmen came to help the Argives build the walls of defense. There is nothing in the Heraclidae that gives the slightest suggestion of this situation. The play breathes general defiance and hatred of a dramatic Argos, a literal interpretation of which is surely inappropriate at a time when the sister democ- racy had been forced by a disastrous defeat and by the machi- nation of an aristocratic clique working in Sparta's interests to adopt a course of action at variance wath her traditions and desire, a course speedily repudiated. That the Heraclidte is a '' Gelegenheitsstlick " is absolutely evident. If written at this juncture (418 B. C), it would seem merely to give utterance to a blind and ill-considered rage against Argos, imputing to the hrjp.0^ of that hitherto friendly state the sins of the oXryot, whom the Argive people with good cause hated. It is clear that the interests of the Argive ^/^/xo? and those of Athens were at this moment identical, and a general attack on the w^hole city because of the temporary policy of the minority is hardly to be thought of as emanating from Euripides at this time. With regard to the inferences draw^n from the dramatic use of Argos, Roscher ^ well says that the " Jungfrau von Or- leans " gives quite as much reason for the inference that it was l>rought before the public during an alliance with France and a war w^ith England. The case is quite different with the references to Sparta in the Andromache and to Thebes in the Suppliants. There the use of the names is no longer dramatic and vicarious, but cor- responds to the facts. But besides the political consideration there is an absolute proof that the Heraclidse was composed before 422 B. C. in the fact that a line of the Heraclid^ is par- odied in a line of the Wasps of Aristophanes, brought out in that iRoscher, W., Leben und Zeitalter des Thukydides, Gottingen, 1842, pp. 543-544. 1 .Ml 18 year. There can be no doubt that the line in question (Wasps 1160) exOpuiv Trap avhpoiv hvafiev?] Karrv/jLara is a caricature of ixOpov Xeoi/To? Sva/iev?] (Stephanus for codd. Svayeurj) ^Xaarrj- tiara ; for not only is the cadence of the two lines the same, but two strikingly Euripidean mannerisms are parodieel, namely his love for the word Svcr/jLevrj^; and his use of the plural of abstract nouns in -/la — a characteristic of his style often ridi- culed by Aristophanes. Cf. Ach. 426, ireTrXajfiara : 432, paKwp^ara : Frogs, 1315, Tn^viafiara : Thesm., 1116, voarjfiara.^ This line of Aristophanes then is sufficient to show that the play cannot be anti-Argive, since it must have been com- posed before 422 B. C, before any unfriendliness had arisen between Athens and Argos. We may therefore turn our atten- tion to the theories of the critics who have fixed upon a date at or near the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, noting first one other opinion, that of Zirndorfer, who holds that the play was composed in 425-424 B. C.^ His position is entirely untenable, but deserves mention as an cxemjjlum in terrorem of subjective theorizing without regard to facts. He makes a division of Euripides's plays into three periods, those of the first being characterized by few metrical resolutions, a single action, and a tragic outcome: those of the third by many metrical resolutions, a double action and a happy ending ; those of the second intermediate in all these respects — in point of metre, in hovering between a double and a single action, and in having an ending neither decidedly hap})y nor decidedly unhappy. He cites four dramas that support his theory, the Medea, the Hippolytus, the Helena, and the Orestes.'^ He finds that in ^Eschylus only tragic endings (sic) are usual and sees in this a degeneration in the development of Euripides's dramatic genius. In the second of these arbitrary classes he puts the Heraclidie. This period extends from 428 to 408. The Heraclidio he ^Cf. Fraccaroli, p. 31, 2 Zirndorfer, H., l)e Chron. Fab. Eur., Marburg, 1837. 3 See Koscher, op. cit., p. 554. i) ♦►/ i' '1% •-'' I * ^ V^*^ 19 holds was produced in 425 B. C, and the purpose of the play was to urge peace with Sparta. The Heraclidse typify the Spartans. Roscher's comment on this theory is eminently to the point : * " 1st es moglich flacher und unbegriindlicher zu rasonniren ? Der ganze Vorgang der im Stiicke gesehildert wird, hat mit dem Friedensgesuche von Sphakteria doch auch nicht die min- deste Aehnlichkeit : und ich zweifle sehr, dass doch irgend ein Athener solche Anspielung wurde verstanden haben." Roscher^ believes that the play was composed in 432 B. C, at the time when the envoys of Corcyra and Corinth were in Athens urging their respective causes. He compares with the action of the play the account of the alliance with Corcyra given in the first book of Thucydides and sees in the Heraclid^ persecuted by their kinsfolk the Corcyrseans persecuted by their mother-city Corinth. He finds in the fact that the Pelopon- nesian states sided with Corinth a likeness between the situa- tion of Corinth, destitute of Peloponnesian allies, and the Heraclida3, 7rd(T7j<; Se x^P^"^ 'EXXdBo^ ryrcofiepoc (v. 31). He sees in Copreus, the herald of Eurystheus, the Corinthian ambassadors, and he believes that the Corinthians threatened, while the Corcyrieans appealed chiefly to the independence and honor of Athens. But the attitude of the Corcyrseans as seen in their speech given in Thuc. I, 32 ff. is by no means that of " Schutzfle- hende ". They offer an alliance the solid advantages of which they do not scruple fully to set forth'^: Kal aKeyfraaOe ti\ evirpa^ia ajravLcoTepa rj ti<; toU TroXe/jLiOL^; XvTTTjporepa el yp vp,el<; av vrpo ttoXXcjp ;^/07;/LtaTa)z^ /cal xapcro^ eTLfM7]aaaOe hvvap.Lv vp.lv TrpoayeveaOac aini] irdpeaTLV avTeTrdy- ^ Reseller, op. cit., p. 554. 2 Koscher, W., o]). cit., Ueber die Auffuhrungszeit der Her. ' riiuc. I, 32, Cf. schol., 7/ Tov KepKvpaiov d?^/x7jyopLa fxd/2ov to avfi 20 yeXro^ avev klvSvvcop Kal irpoaeji (f)epnvcra et^ fxh' tov<; ttoWou? apeTt']Vj oh ^e eirajjivvelre ^dptv^ vfxlv Se avroh la^^vv. Compare the tone of the whole passage. Considering the spirit here shown, it woukl seem to have re- quired quite as much mental agility on the part of the Athen- ians to see Corcyr?eans in the Heraclida* as to see in them the Lacedsemonians of Zirndorfer's theory. ^loreover in the speech of the Corinthians as reported by Thucydides there is quite as much of ap])eal to Athenian honor, as in that of the Corcy- raeans, who indeed, as the scholiast remarks, base their argument chiefly on the advantage to l)e gained by alliance with them. Koscher thinks that the appearance of the supj)liant Hera- clida) on the stage must have been most etfective in the })res- ence of the Corcyncan ambassadors ; but, considering the atti- tude of both embassies, it must have been difficult for the audi- ence to decide just wdiich side the Heraclid^e symbolized, and their renowned 6^vTr]<; must have had special demands made on it, if, as Koscher will have it, the clue to the significance of the Heraclidse is given in line 84 by the assertion of lolaus, ov pr]aLa)Tr]p, c5 ^evoi, Tpi0(O 0iov, '^ denn die Inselbewohner lagen jedermann im Sinne". This 'Mucus a non lucendo " sort of information could have been clear to the audience, if would seem, only if we assume that Euripides's allusions were always to be taken in a Pickwick- ian sense. Roscher has not succeeded in showing the analogy between the condition of the Heraclidic and that of the Corcyra?ans. Firnhaber^ puts the play in 432-1, before the outbreak of the war. His opinion is : " Euripides igitur Heraclidas excog- itavit, composuit, docuit postquam ultimi legati Peloponne- siorum Athenis commorati Spartam redierunt, scripsitque ea mente ut summi Periclis, cuius dum vivebat partes sequebatur, ^ Firnhaber, De tempore quo Ileraclida? et composuisise el docuisse Eurip- ides videatur, Wiesbaden, 1846. ^t ft * '#t w !• 11) I* *>•> 21 consilia quae essent e re publica persuaderet, quam iniusta pos- tularent Laceda^monii ingrati ostenderet, quaecumque et populo et magistratibus molienda iam essent doceret, et feliciter Atheuas ex instanti bello exituras esse pra^diceret." He believes the prophecy at the end of the play to be not a prophecy ex eventu, but a true prophecy based on an earlier invasion of Attica. He also finds certain resemblances between the expressions of the play and those used by Pericles in the speech recorded by Thucydides in T, 140-144, and believes that Euripides had the desire to remind the Athenians of the w^ords of Pericles. And further : " Euripides id quod Pericles non fecerat nee facere potuerat ut de se ipse tuendo in ilia oratione loqueretur in se quodam modo recepit, et ita perfecit ut neque respublica a se civis animum neque Pericles amicum desideraret.'' In representing Euripides as the friend and advocate of Pericles he is not consistent and assigns to the poet the difficult role of essaying to strengthen Pericles with the people and at the same time castigating him for the faults of his private life. He says in reference to verses 299-301, 09 Be VLKTjOeU IT 66m KaKa)Te<; i^iepai, ol Be TLve^ ovtc ewi^re?, and the verses quoted above. Theis as well as Firnhaber has put a double-edged weapon into the hand of Euripides, for he understands that in verses 423 ff., '' Euripides Periclem vituperare videtur'\ He believes that here Euripides wishes to rebuke Pericles, because, accord- ing to Thuc. II, 22, he allowed no assemblies to be held. This he says Thucydides, with his aristocratic political sentiments, seems to approve of. According to Theis Euripides, ^^potes- tatis popularis amicus '', criticises this as unworthy of Athens and its ruler. But edv dBrfKov adXiny^ (fxovrjv 5a), T19 irapaa- Kevdaerai ek vroXefMov ; The position of Pericles before the people would hardly be strengthened by a play, which, accord- ing to the interpretation of Firnhaber and Theis, now praised him and now joined with his enemies in bitter attacks on his morals or his policy. In his further argument Theis well compares the narrative of Thucydides U, 10, 12, 18, with Heraclidse 276-279, fJLVpiOi Be /i€ fxevovaiv adincTTrjpe^ EvpvcrOeis B' dva^ KapaBoKOiv TCLvdevBe repiiaac fievet, and with Heraclidse 393-397, TTcSta fiev ovv 77)9 €69 rdB^ ovk i(j>r)K€ ttq) (TTparov, Xerraiav 8' 6(f)pVTjv fcaOrjfjievo^ cKOTTel^ BoKTjaiv Bf) ToB' dv XeyoijJLL aoL, TTOia irpoad^ei arpaToireBov r dvev Bopo^ ev da(f)aXec re rrjaB^ IBpvaeTai ')(6ov6<^, 1 Grote, History of Greece, VI, p. 132, foot-note. 24 Of these passages he says, ^'facile credas accommodatara esse hanc descriptionem ad veram Lacodoemonioriim irniptioncrn : qiiare inde etiam conicias haud multo post helhiin exortiiin scriptam esse fabulam '\ He further makes very probable cou- jeetures in referring to v. 257, (TV h' i^opL^e, fcar e/ceWeu a^o/iep, to TO airo Tacvcipov ayo^ related in Thiic. I, 128, and in see- ing an allusion to the affiiir at riata\T in 431 B. C. and the Athenian message in verse 966, ovx ov Tiv av ye ^mvO^ eXwaiv iv fidxr]. He makes the point with regard to the prophecy of verses 1032-36 that it would have been a dangerous matter to make a prophecy of this sort before the event, which could so easily have belied the poet's words. He goes on to point out that the oracle could not have been invented by Euripides in the sad years that followed, with the plague, the consequent social degenera- tion, the accusation against Pericles, and his death. This, he says, would have been no time for a joyful prophecy. Finally he refers to the sparing of the Tetrapolis by the Spartans as related by Diodorus Siculus (XII, 45) and by the scholiast on Oedipus Coloneus, v. 701, and argues that because of this action on the part of the Spartans Euripides invented the oracle. He con- cludes : ^^Huic vero fictioni nullum tempus magis oppor- tunum esse potuit quam 01. 87, 2". The next to discuss the subject is Professor von Wilamowitz- Moellendorf in his Analecta Euripidea. He says :^ ^^\t certius eam definit vaticinium Eurysthei 1027 sqq. inrupturos esse olim Heraclidas i. e. Spartanos in Atticam : et invaserunt 431, 430, 428, 427, 425. si ultra Pallenen prodire voluisseut, fore, ut vincerentur. at anno 427 omnes Atticie partes, etiam quibus antea pej^ercerunt, impune devastarunt. pepercerant autem, ceteris vastatis anno 430, (Thuc. II. 57) tetrapoli Diodor. ^Op. cit. p. 152. •"i ■l^ .- > -4* *f » '^' # l# «it,-, ^ 25 XII. 45. 1. ita(]ue post 430 ante 427 (aestatem) Heraclidse docta est : nam certissima lex est, vaticiniorum ea qure rata fuerint post eventum data esse, ea quae data essent fefellisse. hgec, satis obvia profecto, nemodum palam protulisse videtur.'' This argument is accepted by Decharme as absolutely deci- sive for the date of the play.^ But it is only by dint of misquoting Euripides and misapplying Diodorus that Wilamo- witz has arrived at this "obvious" conclusion. In the lines 1030ff., Oavovra yap fie Ody^raO' ov rb fiopac/jLov 8ia^ irdpOLOe irapOevov IIa\\r)Pi8o<;^ Kal (Tol fiev evvov^ fcal TroXet cro)T7]pto<; fieroLKo^ alel Keiaofiac Kara ^(dovo^^ Toh TMvSe 8' iyyovoLat 7ro\€fXL(t)TaTo<; orav /jLoXcoac Bevpo avv iroWrj Yept, there is only the prophecy that the Spartans shall one day invade Attica and find a bitter enemy in Eurystheus, who will be an ally of the Athenians. Nothing is said of a defeat of the Spartans in case they advance beyond Pallene, although Wila- mowitz puts this in his text in such wise as to imply that it is contained in the prophecy. The account given by Diodorus (XII, 45) is this : fiera TleXoTTovpijaLcop Kal tcop dWoyp av/jifidxcov ive/SaXop et? rrjv Attlktjp to Sevrepop. iirLiropevofiepoi he rrjp x^P^^ eSepBporo/jLovv Kal Ta? eiravXeL^ epeirvpL^op Kal iraaap crxeBop ttjp yrjp eXvpir)- vapTO irXrjP rf;? KaXov fiepi]^ TerpaTroXeco^- ravrr]^ 3' aTreaxero Sea TO Tov<; Trpoyopov; eprauOa KarayKrjKepac Kal top F^vpvaOea vePLKriKepat ttjp oppLrjp eK TavT7]<; iroLi^aapLepov^' hUatop yap rjyovpTO Tol^; evrjpyeTrjKoai tou? irpoyopov^ Trapa tojp eKyopcop Ta<; TTpoaTjKovaa^ evepyeaia^ diroXaixjBdpetP, So the scholiast on Soph. CEd. Col., 701 : AaKeSaLfioPLOc TT]P XoLTTijp yrjp Sr]ovPTe^ T?}9 pLep TeTpairoXeos aireaxoPTO Sia Tovs 'HpaKX€LBa<;. ^ Decharme, Euripide et T esprit de son theatre, 1893, p. 195. / / / X 26 27 "I Here as elsewhere, witli the exception of the play of Euripides, there is no mention of any mythical alliance between Eurvstheus and the Athenians. On the other hand it is evident that the Athenians regarded their hostility to him and their victory over him as a reason for Spartan gratitude toward them. Cf Herodotus, IX, 27, and Isocrates, Panegyricus, 5G-60. The scruples which led the Spartans to spare the ])laces where their ancestors had been befriended would be intelligible to all the Greeks, and Herodotus in his ninth book,^ which he wrote in the early years of the Peloponnesian war,- recounts similar proceedings with regard to Decelea, because of Decelean aid afforded the Tyndaridse at the time of the rape of Helen by Theseus. And before the first Spartan invasion, Pericles, fearing that prejudice might be aroused against him by a sparing of his lands by his friend king Archidamus, explained the situation in the assembly and presented his lands and buildings to the state.^ It is not reasonable to suppose that Euripides would offer in explanation of the Lacedaemonian sparing of special places, the motive for which was clear to all and rested on a KOLvb<^ '^\\r)V(i)v vofio^, the vengeance of the dead Eurystheus, so sud- denly converted to an Athenian alliance. Another symbolism is to be sought here. An argument brought forward by Hoeveler,^ and Schmidt^ against Wilamowitz's theory is a strong one : " Exiguam pro- fecto civibus suis Athenieusibus Eurystheus gratiam habuis- set, si toti Tetrapoli ab hostibus parci voluisset, reliquam autem Atticam impune devastandam lis permisisset."^ Eurystheus promises that he will be TroXe/iicoTaTo? to the Spartans.' This >Hdt., IX, 73. 2 Kirchhoff, Ueber die Entstehungszeit des herodotischen Geschichtwerkes, Berlin, 1872. 'Thuc, II, 13. *Hoeveler, J., Dc Heraclidis Euripidis, Monasterii, 1878, p. 48. 5 Schmidt, W., Qua ratione Eur. res sua tetate adhibueril in Her., Halis Saxonum, 1881, p. 34. ^ Hoeveler, cited also by Schmidt. 'Her., V. 1034. f > #f » 't) '#» i^ promise, if referred, as it is by Wilamowitz, to the campaign down to 427, was most ineffectually fulfilled. Eurystheus was then content to protect his owm tomb and its immediate sur- roundings—a selfish policy. The Athenians had the right, from his promise, to expect better things of him. For in the second invasion, to w^hich Wilaraowitz refers this promise ex eventUy the whole country was ravaged by the Spartans (except the Tetrapolis, according to Diodorus), and they re- mained about forty days, which was the longest stay they made before the fortifying of Decelea. The distress caused by this cam})aign was the greatest of any, for even the campaign of 427, the terminus ad quem of Wilaraowitz's dating, in which the Spartans were no longer w^ithheld from ravaging by relig- ious scruples, is said by Thucydides to have been ;3^aX€7r&)TaT7? ToZ? WOrjvaiot^; ^era ttjv hevrepav} AVilamowitz's reasoning, then, is not sound. He has read into the oracle the part of the prophecy on which his argument turns and has assigned too special an interpretation to the gen- eral terms in which Eurystheus expresses himself. He has laid too much stress on the sparing of certain places, which in the general devastation and horror of the war would have counted for little with the Athenians. Such an oracle as Wilamowitz takes this to be w^ould surely have seemed trivial and absurd to the Athenians in the years between 430 and 427. It is precisely in those years that such an oracle could not have been invented. One more discussion of the date of the play remains to be considered, that of Hoeveler.^ He agrees with Theis in placing the composition of the play between the first invasion of the Spartans in 431 and the second in 430. His argument turns on the applicability of the prophecy of Eurystheus to the first Spartan invasion and its inapplicability to the second. He sees in the fruitless attack on Oenoe, in the fact that the Spartans did ^Thuc, III, 26. * Hoeveler, De Heraclidis Euripidis, 1878. n^ 28 not venture to descend to the plain, and in the not greatly dis- astrous cavalry skirmish, a fulfilment of pAirystheus's promise. He argues that such a cheerful oracle could not have been in- vented in the time of which Thucydides writes tolovtco ^ev irdOet ol W.6rivaloL TreptTreaovre^ eTTLe^ovro, avOpoyirMv re evhov Ovr}(JK6vT(jdv KUL jy)'^ e^o) Sr]oviJL€uri<;J He holds, then, that the play was brought before the public either at the Lena^a or at the Great Dionvsiac festival in the year 430 B. C. I concur with Theis and Hoeveler in the belief that the play can be definitely dated in the year 431-430, after the first in- vasion of the Spartans in 431 and l)efore the second invasion in 430. I cannot, however, agree with them in their main arguments. Theis follows in the steps of Firnhal)er in forcing allusions to Pericles, which at least cannot be proved and are often inconsistent, while both Theis and Hoeveler have, with all the other critics, attached too much weight in my opinion to the importance of the prophecy at the end as a factor in determining the date. I find that the following points in the arguments of Theis and Hoeveler are strong : the com- parison made by Theis between the details of the first S])artan invasion and those of the Argive invasion in the Heraclida*, and the point made by Hoeveler that the promise of help from Eurystheus was not appropriate in the wretched years 430-427. Besides this the play appears to me to reflect to a remarkable degree what we know from other sources of the first year of the Peloponnesian war. I do not believe that it is at all possible to write a key to the Heraclida3 by which all the characters and situations may be elucidated as having definite references. But I hold that, in a general way, one may see mirrored to a strik- ing degree in this play the Athenian feeling and Athenian conditions in the time just following the first Spartan invasion. The play is, no less than the Suppliants, an iyKw/iiou 'AOj]vcov. Its tone is not that which suits a city that had suffered what Athens suffered in the years after 430. The awful plague, re- ^Thuc, II., 54. *. -1 It ^/ ») 29 fleeted so powerfully in the Oedipus Tyrannus,^ the universal misery and corruption that ensued, the death of Pericles to which such touching reference is made at the end of the Hip- polytus — none of these tragic events finds an echo in the heroics of the Heraclida}. It is a political play wTitten in the first year of the war, before the horrors of the war had been realized, and 60 it does not bear the impress of that bitter thirst for revenge and keen anguish for losses suffered that give the Sup- pliants and even the Andromache, ^' Gelegenheitsstiicke " though they are, a deeper pathos and a more lasting worth. The 7)0o^ of the play is defiance and self-assertion on the part of Athens. The motives of the play are contained in such lines as (1 ) (f)6eipov' TO aov yap ''Apyo's ov SeSocK eyco, ivOepSe S' ovK e/ieXXe? ala')(yvm i/xe ci^etp (31(1 Tova8\ ov yap Wpyeicov ttoXlv vTn'jKoov Tr]vS' aXX' eXevOepav e^w.^ (2) ael TToO^ ySe yala roU a/ir)'^dvoL<; (7VV T(p SiKaio) SovXerat 7rpoaa)(f)eX€LV. Tocydp TTOvov^ hrj /jLvpLOVi virep (piXcop TjveyKe Kal vvv rovh^ ciyoyv opo) TrcXa?*^ (3) VLKOffievT) yap UaXXd^ ov/c dve^erat* The tone is that of a people stung to anger, who have not as yet received any overwhelming reverse, who have a boundless j^ride in their city and take the position of protectors of the oppressed and helpless. There are plenty of passages in the second book of Thucydides to indicate that these were the feel- ings prevailing in Athens in the first year of the war, notably passages in the Funeral Oration. I am very far from feeling with Firnhaber that Euripides 10. T., vv. 150-215. MIeracl. vv. 284 ff. 'Heracl., vv. 329 ff. MIeracl., v. 352. f I ) 30 was the dramatic mouth-piece of Pericles, and I find of no moment the parallels which Firuhaber draws between the first speech of Pericles and the Heraclidte. A far greater similarity exists between the Funeral Oration and the Heraclidre, both in tone and phrase, and I think it by no means beyond the range of probability that the speaker who alone of the speakers of his day TO KevTpov iyKareXtTre rol^ afcpow^evoi^^ whose marvellous speech delivered on the threshold of the war remains to-day the classic of such speeches, should have inspired by his elo- quence to such an effort as that made in the Heraclidie the {)oet in whose work eloquent speeches play so large a part. It does not seem altogether flmciful to think that the speech of Pericles lingered, perhaps unconsciously, in the memory of Eurij^ides, and that it is here and there reproduced — quam longo inters vcdlo ! — in the Heraclidie. The eXevOepia of Athens is one of the recurring notes in the Heraclidte. Cf. lines 113, 198, 287. This is also among the earliest motives of the Funeral Oration. Cf rrjv yap x^P^^ aei 01 avTol otKOvure^ SLaSo^rj to)v eTTLyLyvo/ievcop P^^XP'- '^^G^e ekevOepav hC aperrjv irapehoaav. . . . Ka\ rr/p ttoXlv toI<; iraai Tra peer /cevacra /16V Kal €? iroXe/iov kul e? elpTjprjv avTapKeardrriv} Add also II, 43, 4 to iXevOepov k. t. X, Again the Athen- ian democracy is described in the speech of Pericles : Kal ovo^xa fih 8ia TO firj eV 0X1701/9 aXX €9 irXelova^ oUdv Sij/jLo/cpaTta K€KX7]TaC fC. T. X." In similar wise Demophon : 01; yap Tvpavvlh' cocTTe l3apf3dpcop €X(*>y dXX' Tjv Si/caia 8pu)^ SUaia Treiaofiai} In the same chapter Pericles speaks of the laws which are ordained for the protection of the innocent, es{)ecially the un- iThuc, II, 36. 2Thuc., II, 37. 'HeracL, vv. 424 ff. a V l» 'J' 1» H •J 81 written laws, oaoi re eV ax^eXta tmv aSiKovpLepcov KelvTat Kal ocroL dypa(^OL oWc? alaxyi'V^ op^oXoyovp^eprfv cjiepovai. To these unwritten laws, the kolpoI '^XXr]V(Dv po/jloc^ there is frequent appeal in the Heraclida} ; c. g.^ v. 131, tcl 8' epya /3ap/3dpov X€po<; TaSe; vv. 236-245; v. 254; v. 1010, Tolacv 'EXXrjvcop p6/jlol^ ; vv. 961, 964, 966, et j^ciss. Again in commemorating the fallen, Pericles says : Kal iv avTo) TO d/jLvpeaOat Kal TraOelp pidXXop r/yijadfiepoL rj to ephoPTe^ crcp^eaOai^ to pep alcrxpop tov Xoyov €(j)vyop, to epyov tm awp^aTi, vTrep^eLPap. This is comparable to lines 199 ff. of the Heraclidse : aXX Old eyct)^ to TOiPCe Xi)pLa Kai (pv(TLP OprjaKeiP OeXijaova ' rj yap alcrxvprj irdpo^ TOV ^rjp Trap' iaOXoU dpBpdacp popLL^eTat. Immediately thereafter stands, ttoXlp pep dpKel' Kal yap ovv eiric^Oovov Xiap eTratpetP iaTL. The same thought occurs in the prologue of the funeral speech II, 35, 2 : pe'xpt yap Tov8e dpeKTol 01 eiraLPOL elat irepl eTepcop Xey6p.epoL e? ooroi^ dp Kal avT6<; eKaaTO^ olrjTaL LKap6<; elvac Spdaai Ti wp ^jKOvae- TO) S' VTrepjSdXXoPTi avTCOP (f)popovPT€€' poPTO^ /idXXop XoyiapLfp t) ttj^; eXevOepia^ tcL inaTco dheoi^ Tiva co(f)eXovp.ePj is the course scoffed at by the Argive herald in lines 176 ff., p.r}S^ OTrep (f)LXeLT€ 8pdp, irdOrj^ (TV toOto, tov^ dp^etpopa^i irapop (f)iXov<; iXeaOaCj tov<; KaKLOPa^ Xd/3m^ and praised by the chorus in lines 329 ff. aei TToO'' ijSe yala T0I9 a/X7;i^ai^ot9 k. t. X. I 82 33 The seiitiiiieiit of II, 43, 6 : aXyetvorepa yap avSpi ye (f)p6i>ri/j.a €)(^ovti /; /jLera tov /xaXafci- aOrivac KciKcoai^ i) 6 fieTci pco/jLr] «»•— •? £• >)i I-* .^■~l Another occurrence of these years seems to me to be reflected in this play — the opening act in the drama of the war.^ The Thebans had treacherously seized Plataese, the Plataeans stand- ing by the Athenian alliance had resisted them and finally made prisoners of the invaders, whom they killed, contrary to agreement, after the main body of the Theban army had with- drawn from Plattean territory and the Plataeans had got their property in from the country. The Platseans sent the news of their victory to Athens, whence the message came to spare the Theban prisoners. This was, of course, too late. Then an Athenian army came to Plata^a^, got in the harvest for them, and conveyed to Athens the helpless among the Plataeans, old men, women and children. In his note on Time. II, 40, 4, ov yap 7rdaxovT€<; eS, dWd SpMine^ /cTco/jLeOa tou? (f)L\oving the weak, to the utilitarian side of which expression is given by Alcibiades in the speech delivered in reply to Nicias in the final discussion of the Syracusan expedition : ' t7]v re apxh^ ouTft)? ifcrrjadfieOa Kal vfieU /cal oaoi 3/; ciWoc ijp^av^ Trapayiypo- fievoL zpo6v/jLa)(; roU ael rj /3ap/3dpOL^ rj '^E\Xi]aip eirLKaXovpLevoL^, To point this motive of P^uripides's phiy there was an ex- ample for the Athenians in the presence of men, wonu'u, and children from Platiese, which in the citv would vivilV many a reference in the play to the homeless and defenceless and to tiie duty of protecting such. I hold, therefore, that Euripides wrote his Heraclidie in the first year of the Peloponnesiau war, after the affair at IMatieie, to which I see undoubted reference in the play, after the first invasion of the Spartans under Archidamus, which is repro- duced in the Argive invasion in the HeraclidcT, and ]U'obal)ly after the funeral oration pronounced by Pericles in the winter of 431. The play is most truly a " Gelegenlieitsstiick". In the discussion of the date of the Heraclidjc the argument turns chiefly on the interpretation of the political character and allusions of the play, in which point even those who agree sub- stantially or entirely in the dating of the play are led to their conclusions by different and often opposing inferences. #^> *> *% 4 iThuc II, 9. 2Thuc. VI., 18, 2. *-!» 37 It should be noted, however, that those who, like Boeckh, put the play in the second decade of the Peloponnesiau war entirely ignore the changes in Euripides's technique, whether we call them development or degeneration, which can be traced with absolute certainty in the extant plays. To quote Wilamowitz's statement of the case : ^ "eine anzahl von dramen des Euripides weisen sich durch einen gemeinsamen altertiim- licheren und strengeren stil als verwandt aus ; es sind Alkestis, Medeia Hippolytos Andromache Herakleiden. sie fallen alle teils nach urkundlichen angaben, teils nach sicheren geschicht- lichen ansi)ielungen vor 425". Although, in my opinion, the Andromache is to be taken from this group and placed in the second decade of the war, there can be no doubt about the older fashioned and austerer style in language and metre of the other four mentioned here by Wilamowitz. The comparative shortness of the play as it stands cannot be urged, it may be said, because of the probable fact that there Avas originally after line G29 a /co/i/>to9, which is now wanting. ^ But even with the addition of a proportionate /co/jl/xo^^ besides a messenger's narrative, the play would still stand with the older dramas in this regard. In the matter of resolutions in the iambic trimeter it is on a level with the Alcestis, the Medea, and the IIip])olytus. Cf. Rumpel : " Noch viel weniger (/. .4' *1 % #!• t' > 39 Pericles was still more highly appreciated in Athens after his death than daring his life.^ w KKeiv 'A67]p6t)p TlaWdSo's 6^ optafiara, oltou arepyjaead^ avBpo^. m tXtiijlcov ijo). KOLVov To8' a^09 iraat TroXtVat? r)\6ev deXiTTco'^' TToWcov haKpvcov earat TriryXo?* ro)v yap fieydXcov d^LOTrevOel^ (f)7]IJLaL /jiaXXov Karexovatv.^ The technique of the play is of the strict type of the Medea, yet there are some indications of the tendencies which became so marked in the later plays. The resolved feet in the tri- meter are few in spite of the metrical quantity of the name Hippolytus, the " Hauptperson ".^ In the responsions of syl- lables in the stasima, how^ever, there is a trace of the laxness that prevailed with Euripides later. Cf Masqueray, Theorie des formes lyriques de la tragedie grecque, Paris, 1895, p. 96 : ^^ II faut, comme il est juste, tenir compte de V ordre chronologique de ses pieces. JJAlceste et la Medee^ en effet, sont versifiees avec beaucoup de soin, et je n'ai trouve dans leur Stasima aucune de ces incorrectious. U Hippolytc en contient deja une que tout le monde admet : ovK€TL yap KaOapav (^pev 6;)^ft) ra Trap' eXTriSa Xevaawv . . . ovKeri av^vyiav ttwXcov 'Kverdv eirt^dae . . . Stas. Ill, B. B'. 1120-1131". Again* ^' Le premier Solo libre se lit aujourd'hui dans VHipp()hjie^\ Moreover the epodes which are found in the majority of his later tragedies appear in the Hippolytus first 1 Thuc, II, 65, 5. 2vv. 1457 ff. ' Rumpel, op. cit. ; cf. Wilamowitz, Herakles, II, p. 144, note. * Masqueraj, op. cit., p. 269. 40 41 of Euripides's extant tragedies.^ On the other hand the KOfx^ioi are of the regular symmetric type (Masquerav, pp. 1G7-8), and there is no notable expansion of the lyrical ])arts. In contrast with the late dramas the songs of the chorus are well motived by the situation, and the chorus has a close interest in all that goes on on the stage.^ There are many more repetitions of single words in the play than are fotmd in the Medea and the Heraclldjo. Excludincr repeated interjections, of which there are a dozen or more cases, I iind ten instances of eViteuf i?, and these chiefly in lyric pas- sages as in the later dramas. The style of the play agrees well with its date. Tt Is the last of the oldest group of extant dramas and yet contains in- dications of the characteristics and mannerisms whicli mark tlie plays of the next dozen years and, In a heightened and exag- gerated degree, those of the last ten years of Euripides's life. The Hecuba To judge from the extant dramas, the Hecuba marks a turn- ing-point in the technique of Euripides. Although it is one of the earlier plays and preserves a degree of strictness in the iambic trimeter, nevertheless most of the exaggerations cari- catured by Aristophanes in the well-known j)assage in the Erogs are seen in some measure in this play. Aristophanes seized upon the play early for ridicule. The lines in the Clouds 71 7 ff., (f)povSa ra j(py]iJLaTa, (f)povSi] %/oofa, (f)pov8i] yjrvxth (ppovSij 3' efj./Sck, KUL 7r/309 TOVTOi<^ eTi Tolai fcaKo2<^ (f)povpa<^ (iScop oXiyov (ppovSo^i yeyeu7]/jLaL, point to Hecuba, IGl ff.,^ (bpovSo^ TTpeafSv^^ (f)pov8oL Traldei 1 Decharme, Eurlpide et 1' esprit de son tli^atre, Paris, 1893, p. 476. ^Arnoldt, op. cit., pp. 59-60. ^Cf. however Fraccaroli, pp. 34-35. and Hecuba, 171 tf., w TefCVOV^ w TTol "> <) *\% */ ft' i# <»/:> SvaTavoTciTO^ /jLarepo^, e^eXO' e^eXO'' ocKcop — die fxarepo^ avSdv, is echoed in the Clouds, 116 if., CO TtKvov, CO vrai, e^eXu olkoov^ die crov Trarpo?. The Clouds was produced in 423 B. C. This is then the terminus ante quein for the Hecuba. Some scholars place it immediately before the Clouds, that is in the year 424 E. C.^ A contemporary reference, however, which is tolerably certain, would put it back perhaps to 425. It is inferred that the reference to Delos, 458 ff., €vOa TTpcoToyopo^ re (f)olvt^ hdx^va 0" iepov<; dveaj^e \ iTTopOov^ Xarol c^/Xa, o}8li'0^ dyaXfia Am?, was suggested by the recent purification of Delos and the estab- lishing of the Deliau games, related by Thucydides, III, 104. This took place in 42(3 B. C. It is not, of course, absolutely necessary that the play should have been written in the year immediately following the purification of Delos, though this is not lacking in probability. In any case the date 425 has met with pretty general acceptance. Kassow "■^' has endeavored to show that the Hecuba as we now have it is an " Ueberarbeitung,'' and that the passage which refers to Delos in the first stasimon is the work of the reviser. As the imtenabllity of this position has been clearly demon- strated by Maass in answer to Rassow,^ I will not take up Ras- sow's discussion, but only give two striking examples of his method. He sees the reviser in the following passage : nVeil, 11., Sept tra^^dies d'Euripide. 2Kassow, Hermes, XXII, 1887. 3 Maass, E., Hermes, XXIV, 1889. 7 1^) 42 43 TA. iTOv T7]v avaaaav St; ttot' ovaav 'IXtbv, 'Ekci^tjv^ av i^evpoL^L, TpwaSe? KOpaL ; XO. avTT) TreXa? aov vwr e')(^ovor' iirl )(^dovLy TaXOv/Sie, Kelrai ^vyKeKXyfievT] vreTrXoi?. TA. a> Zev, TV Xefw ; irorepa a avdpoyTrov<; opav 7) Bo^av aWco^ TrjvBe KefcrrjaOai fidjijVy Tv^qv he iravra rav ^poroU iTrcaKOTrdv : ^^X V^^ avaaaa tcov 7ro\v')(^pvcr(Ov ^pvycoVy ovx V^€ UpLcifiov Tov fiey' oX^iov Sdfiap; ^ Of lines 492-3 Rassow says : " Diese erstaunte Frage [sic] kann Talthybios unmoglich thun, nachdem er unraittelbar vorher von dem Chor darauf aufmerksam gemacht worden ist, dass die neben ihm liegende Person Hecuba sei". It would seem almost intentional perversity instead of lack of imagina- tion that could reason thus. " Rhetorical questions '', familiar to the proverbial school-boy, would seem to be unknown to the discoverer of the revision of this part of the Hecuba. Rassow also finds that the first stasimon, 11. 444 ff., avpay irovTta^ avpa k, t. X., must be ascribed to the reviser, because it is illogical that the Trojan women should here ask in song whither in the Greek lands fate was going to bring them, seeing that they had already been distributed among the Greek chiefs. The natural answer to this, given by Maass, is that one can very well imagine the Trojan women to be still in ignorance of the details of their fate, even though the lots have been drawn. In any case the song is dramatically in keeping with their situation, and one could, if forced to it, pardon Euripides a slight dXoyov here rather than deny him the writing of this beautiful lyric. It is in the stasimon, of course, that the reference to Delos comes which is generally accepted as an indication of the date of the play. 1 Hecuba, vv. 484 ff. fZ> «. *-,-> 4 9% ^' i» ff* In the passage in the Frogs to w^iich I have frequently referred iEschylus sings a lyric designed to show top tmv fiovoySicov TpoTTov in the dramas of Euripides. The monody is full of Euripidean epithets, and of his characteristic epizeuxis, and is a melange of metres, such as is found increasingly in the later w^ork of Euripides. The extant tragedies of Euripides without monodies are the Medea, the Heraclidse, the Heracles, the Helen, the Iphigenia among the Taurians, and the Bacchae. Monodies do not appear for the first time in the Hecuba, but in that drama there are two, whereas the preceding plays, the Alcestis, the Medea, the Heraclidse, and the Hippolytus, have but one each, and the Medea and the Heraclidae none. Fur- thermore in the construction of the monody a notable innova- tion is evident in the Hecuba. Though the early monodies of Euripides are antistrophic, neither of the two monodies in the Hecuba responds strophically. The lyric expansion so evident in Euripides is also seen in his dfioc^ala — to use Masqueray's term^ for the alternation of song or of song and speech on the part of the actors. In Euri- pides's earliest extant dramas such songs occur only in the Alcestis, which from its "satyric" nature is not in all points typical for the early tragedy. JEschylus has but one example of these songs, and Sophocles but two. These are antistrophic. That in the Hecuba, lines 154-215, is entirely lyrical and irre- gular in its responsion. In the Ko/jLfx6<; likewise the Hecuba marks a departure. "Le throne lyrique lui-meme, sorte de dialogue chante a toutes les ^poques par la sc^ne et Porchestre, commence des 425 a briser le moule c'troit dans lequel il avait ete jusque-la renferme. C'est a partir de cette date que le genre libre, apr^s quelques essais de conciliation, commence a prendre decid^ment le pas sur son predecesseur." ^ In the "alloeostrophic'^ type the ko/jl/jlo^ in the Hecuba ^Masqueray, op. cit., p. 220. Masqueray, op. cit., p. 218. i •» po 44 comes first in point of time. The others of this sort are found in the Suppliants, the Heracles, the Ion, the Troades, the Tauric Iphigenia, the Phoenissae, and the Bacchants.^ "Or, dans le genre libre, la construction epirrhematique se rencontre pour la premiere fois en 425 ou 424, avec VHecube, et les thrones enti^rement chant^s apparaissent quelques annees plus tard, dans VHeracUs, et surtout a partir de 412." The repetitions which become so plentiful in the late plays and are employed to absurdity in the monody of the Phrygian in the Orestes begin to be abundant in the Hecuba. There are sixteen cases. These repetitions, as Masqueray points out," are an indication of the predominance of music over poetry, and he well says that they are no more necessary to the sense than the repeated eleLeLei-Xiaaovaa of lines 1348 and 1314 of the Frogs. As has already been noted, the earlier dramas of Euripides show relatively few instances besides interjections. The Alcestis has ten, the Medea six, the Heraclida? two, and the Hippolytus ten. The number in the Alcestis is ex- plained by the nature of that play — " o-arvpL/ccoTepoVy on et? X^P^^ '^^^ V^ovTjV KaTa(TTpe(f>€L irapa to rpayiKov^^ In the Heraclidse both instances occur in the iambic trimeter and have consequently nothing to do with the musical composition. The same is true of five out of the six cases in the Medea. In the Hippolytus begins that free use of repetitions in the lyric portion with the responsion of the repeated words, as in lines 526 : *'E/3&)9,"E/3&)9, 535 : aWw?, aX\&)9, which is carried to such a hys- terical point in the Phrygian scene in the Orestes. Of the six- teen cases in the Hecuba two occur in the iambic trimeter line 689, airiar aincna Kaiva Kaiva SepKOfiau In the matter of relevancy the choruses in the Hecuba stand between those of the severer early type and the later ones. Ubid., p. 214. 2 Op. cit., p. 267. f z> ^) ff§ i^r^ 4 I f 45 The songs, though well-motived, correspond only to the general situation, and the chorus has been criticised by Hermann ^ and others for lamenting its own fate rather than showing sym- pathy with the sufferings of the heroine. This shows the be- ginning of that detachment of the chorus from the interest of the actors which reaches its height in such plays as the Helen and the Phoenissse. In most of the points of metre and style here discussed the Hippolytus is distinctly of the type of the Medea and the Hera- clidae. The Hecuba shows divergences enough from this type to give color to the assumption that it was composed a few years later than the Hippolytus. The parodies of Aristo- phanes already cited sufficiently establish 424 as the latest pos- sible date for the Hecuba. It is, therefore, unnecessary to dwell on the fact that the Andromache (418-17) owes much to the Hecuba, and that echoes of it are found in lyric passages of the Troades (415) and the Helen (412). It is of interest to note how the chorus of Thessalian women in the Andromache, after the altercation between Andromache and Helen, burst into an entirely unmotived song about the judgment of Paris and the fall of Troy at verse 274 — a song which is an expansion of the choral song of the captive Trojan woman (vv. 639 ff. of the Hecuba) there, entirely appropriate to the condition of that chorus. Among other passages the chorus in the Troades, beginning with line 511, and Helen's lament in the Helen, lines 239 ff., owe much to the choruses cited above from the Hecuba. The dependence of various passages in the Andromache on the Hecuba, though it does not affect the absolute date of the latter, is of importance in view of the ancient theory, which still finds eminent defenders, that the Andromache was com- posed in the early years of the Peloponnesian war and so ante- dates the Hecuba. This point will be taken up again in the discussion of the date of the Andromache. ^Prsefatio ad Hec, p. xvi. f / ) 46 47 The result of the present consideration of the date of the Hecuba is to confirm the usually accepted dating 425-424, which is established by the parodies of Aristophanes in the Clouds, by the reference to Delos in line 462 taken in connec- tion' with Thuc. Ill, 104, and by the position the Hecuba holci.^ in its technique, having points of contact with the older dramas and showing the later tendencies in metre and style. The Suppliants A terminus post quern for the Suppliants is not far to seek. One of the most notable occurrences of the early Peloponnesian war was the refusal of the Boeotians to surrender the dead sol- diers of Athens after the battle of Delium, 424 B. C.^ That Euripides should have written in the early years of the war an ijKWfXLov 'A6r)va)Vj the plot of which turned on the refusal of a king of Thebes to surrender the fallen Argives for burial, and that this play should have preceded the action of the Boeotians after Delium, is beyond the bounds of likelihood. With refer- ence to this argument, as well as on other grounds, the several critics have united in dating the play after 424 B. C. Boeckh and Hermann assign the play to the year 420 B. C, at the time of the treaty made with Argos. Hermann believes that it may have been acted in the presence of the Argive am- bassadors. Wilamowitz hesitates between 422 and 421, in his latest expression of opinion ^ inclining toward the former year, " wo der Hass gegen den lebenden Kleon angemessen, der Schmerz iiber den Verlust von Delion noch frisch, die Mahnung wirklich von Bedeutung war".^ Of the date 420 he says : " Die von Bockh und Hermann beliebte Datirung der Hiketiden auf 420 ist aus vielen Griinden ganz undenkbar, und den Erechtheus, der von ihnen nicht wohl getrennt werden kann, erwahnt unsere iiberlieferung schon 421'\ Barnes and Markland see in 1 Thuc. IV, 93-96. 2 Euripides, Der Mutter Bittgang, Berlin, 1899, p. 26. » Herakles, Berlin, 1895, I, p. 134 note. I) ^i h # *; t f^ i the play a note of reproach for Argos and place it in the year 418-17, when the Argive oligarchy made a treaty with Sparta. Giles ^ finds that Hermann^s date for the play is strongly sup- ported by the characterizations of the fallen chiefs, in whom he discerns Nicias, Lamachus, Demosthenes, Alcibiades, Laches, all of whom had sworn to the treaty of Nicias in the preceding year,^ and who were '' indisputably the best known personages among the Athenian deputies who were present on the occasion". The play is as markedly as were the Heraclidse and the Andromache a " Gelegenheitstiick ", and the political views of Euripides find expression in it. The two later plays are variously interpreted to show that Euripides was an adherent of Nicias, of Cleon, or of Alcibiades, so that he is regarded as belonging to all the three parties which he designates in the well-known lines in the Suppliants, 238 fP., T/3€t? jdp TToXlTCOV /JLEpL^e^ K. T. X. Wilamowitz holds that in this play Argos is treated with " ausgesuchter Nichtachtung", and that, far from demanding a treaty with Argos, Athens only puts an obligation on that city to refrain from invading Attica and to help her in case Athenian territory is invaded. He believes that Euripides is here advocating peace with Sparta and is on the side of Nicias. Bergk^ holds that Euripides was of an excitable nature, blown to and fro with every wind of political doctrine, so that he could be an advocate of Cleon, and was so in the Andromache in 423-2 (according to Bergk's conception of the play), and could also the next year write the choral song that made so largely for peace, as Plutarch relates : * KeCaOco 86pv /JLOL jxirov a/jLut in the first year of the war, and the words of this song imply a long waiting for peace. In this play, too, there is certainly high commendation of peace. Cf vv. 484 ff. el B yv Trap* ofXfxa Odvaro^ ev yp'7](f)ov cfyopd^ ovK dv TToQ' 'EXXa? BopLfiapj]<; d7rd)XXvT0, haw re TroXe/xov Kpelaaop elprjprj /SporoUj rf TTpMTa fieu /lovaaLai 7rpoa(f)LX€aTdTri ^ ydoiai 8' e^Opd^ TepTrerat B' evTraiBiaj X^^ii^'p^t Be TrXouTO) k. t. X." Peaceable settlement of disputes and compromise are praised by Adrastus in lines 739 ff., and general denunciation of war may be found passim. The fact remains, however, that the two motives of the play which sautent aux yeax are the Theban refusal to surrender the dead and the aid of and alliance with ' Time. V, 14 ff. 2( f. Ar., Peace, vv. 520 fT. 50 Argos, whereas Sparta is broiiglit in quite gratuitously for de- nunciation : ^Trdprr) fiev w/jlj] Kal TreTTOiKiXTai t/oottoi;?.' Here Spartans cruelty and crooked dealings are openly denounced, as in the later Andromache and often in the history of Thucydides. The Argive alliance was exclusively the affair of Alcibiades, as the tifth book of Thucvdides abundantly testi- lies. He saw that Argos must attach herself to either Athens or Sparta, and that Sparta was ready to renounce Athens for such a profitable alliance, which would protect her at home, while she prosecuted war outside of the Peloponnesus." Xicias, the constant friend of Sparta, urged against a treaty with Argos without considtation with her and prevailed on the Athen- ians to send an embassy, on which he himself went, to beg the Spartans to deal fairly in accordance witli the terms of the peace.^ A play celebrating an Argive alliance and denouncing Sparta, as does the Suppliants, would not be written by a close adherent of Nicias. The fact that Euripides in all his political plays, and so in this play, praises peace does not in itself prove that his sympathies were with Nicias or that he approved of the terms of the Peace of Nicias, which carried with it active alliance with Sparta. What the terms of a ^^ Peace of Alci- biades " would have been it is idle to guess, but Thucydides states that, besides the fact that he was piqued because of tiie Spartan slighting of his claims to negotiate the peace, Alcibiades had Argive leanings which led him in 420 to advocate that alliance with sincerity. Now it seems practically certain tliat Euripides was interested in Alcibiades in the beginning of his political career. Phitarch in his life of Alcibiades certainly attributes to Euripides the writing of the ode which celebrated the famous victories of Alcibiades at Olympia, which most probably occurred in the » V. 187. 2 Time. V, 36. 3Thuc. V, 40. I,'-'' 4 >^# 51 year 420 ; and though in his life of Demosthenes Plutarch's reference to the matter expresses some doubt about the author- ship of the ode, he nevertheless states that it is the common opinion that P^uripides wrote it. This connection between the two men is usually regarded as an established fact. Cf. AVilamowitz, Der Mutter Bittgang, p. 27: " Er hat sich in den niichsten Jahren dem Alkibiades genahert, der 420 zuerst hervortrat ". And there is certainly a resemblance which I have not seen noticed, but which, I think, must have been com- mented upon, since it seems striking, between the polity com- mended by Euri])ides in the Suppliants, lines 244-45, rpcMp Se fxoipMv rj'v fxeao) awl^ei iroXei^ Koafxov (pvXdaaova ovtlv dv rd^y ttoXl^j and the political creed set forth as his own bv Alcibiades at Sparta, Thuc. VI, 89. He too is against ol rvpawot and also against the oxXo^. Moreover he says: t)}? Be vTrapxovar]^ aKoXaala^ eireLpoifieda ^eTpLcorepoti^ rd rroXiTiKd ehat, i)iJiel^ Serov ^vfiTravTo^ Trpoeo-TTjfiep, hiKatovvTe^ iv m axv/jiaTL fjieyiari] i) iroXt^ irvyxave Kal iXevOepcordrT] ovaa Kal oirep iSe^aro Ti?, tovto ^vvSiaaM^etv. Here the same constitutional views are expressed as in the Euripidean lines. Later plays of Euripides, such as the Andromache and the Phoenissa?, suggest like political views to those of Alcibiades, or at least an interest in him. It seems, then, that the inter- pretation of the play which makes Euripides the adherent of Alcibiades rather than of Nicias is more in accord with other facts and indications. Wilamowitz ' argues for 422 rather than 421, the date earlier advocated by him in his Analecta Euripidea, on the ground that in the former year the loss of the ba+tle of Delium was still fresh in the minds of the Athenians. This argument is in itself good, but there were occurrences in the year 420, which would renew the bitterness over Delium, if it were flagging, * Wihmiowitz, Der Mutter Bittgang, p. 20. 0^ 52 and which brought Boeotians and Argives together before the Athenian public. It is to this juxtaposition of Ba^otia and Argos and the subsequent treaty with Argus that I attribute the phiy. The events in question are those recounted by Thucydides, V, 36, 37, 38, 40. Two of the Spartan ephors in the winter of 421 entered into negotiations with tlie Bceotians ^ which cer- tainly bear out the charge, eXiKTo. KovSev vjce^y aWa irav irepL^ (f)pOVOUPT€<;.^ Their suggestion was that the Boeotians, to escape tlie liated Athenian alliance, should enter the Argive alliance and then win over the Argives to the side of Sparta. The Spartans would break faith with Athens for the price of tlie Argive friendship, for which they had always longed, that they might wdth easy minds fight outside tlie Peloponnesus. These schemes were met half way by some Argive magistrates, but the accom- plishment failed by reason of some delay on the Boeotian side. During the same winter the Spartans, for the sake of gettiug Panactum for Athens and Pylus for themselves, concluded a sep- arate alliance with the Boeotians in defiance of the terms of the treaty with Athens. The Argives, in trouble over all this, fearing it meant a union of Athens, Sparta and B(eotia, felt that, unless they would be left isolated, they would do better to make alli- ance with Sparta. This accordingly they set about. The Spar- tan envoys arrived in Athens with the Athenian prisoners from Panactum, but w^ith the unwelcome news of the demolition of the place and of their private alliance with Breotia against the terms of the treaty. Here were ttolkiXoi rpoiroL which so aroused the Athenians' anger that they dismissed the envoys with an un- gentle answer. Forthwith Alcial)iades sent a message to his Argive friends that here was their opportunity, promising them his aid. The Argives did not hesitate to throw over the affair ^ Thuc. V, 36. 2 Andromache, v. 447. r .^ % i # ^r > 1 1 » tp i 0, )i' ^•- .^ 53 with Pxeotia and S])arta or fail to appreciate the advantages of an alliance with their old friend Athens, a democracy like themselves, possessing a navy which would be w^orth much to them in war. Their envoys hastened to Athens. Spartan en- voys came too, who failed of an honest hearing by the famous trickery of Alcibiades, of whom, however, it must be said that he was no more dishonest than his Spartan dupes. Xicias, in liis zeal for peace and Sparta, w^nt to Lacedsemon to make Athenian demands. The Spartans refused to give up their pri- vate alliance with the Boeotians, and the Athenians, smarting under a sense of injustice done them, made their treaty with AriTos and her allies. The Peace of Nicias and the alliance of Athens with Sparta was not renounced by either side in conse- quence of this. This Boeoto-Argive complication, and the in- dignation aroused by it in Athens, when its details became known, can easily have suggested the thought from which the Suppliants grew. I believe that the play, then, must be dated in 420, the date of Boeckh and Hermann, which Wilamowitz pronounces im- possible. The play must have been written, however, after the treaty with Argos was made. It would be a more dramatic conception to believe, wath Hermann, that the play was per- formed in the presence of the Argive envoys, but that sup- position attributes to Euripides either a supernatural gift of foresight, or a miraculous speed of composition. The play is not one of hurried or slighted workmanship. Wilamowitz finds that Argos is treated with contempt throughout the play. This is far too strong a statement, though it cannot be denied that Theseus's manner toward Adrastus is strongly " von oben herab ^\ But I take this to be only a bit of heroic manners and their different standards which allows the king of Athens to say to his suppliant guest, aty Ao paar , e^^ arofxa KoX /jLTj WiirpoaOe tmv i^MV rov^ aois Xuyov<;^ 'Vv. 514-515.. 54 But it is not improbable that Athens, choosing, as she did, between Spartan and Argive overtures, did assume in making the alliance the attitude of the conferrer of the favor. That was at least in all likelihood the sentiment in Athens, where a feel- ing of confidence and superiority had prevailed ever since the victory of Sphacteria. Wilamowitz notes that the compact at the end of the play demands nothing from Athens and lays on Argos all duty of assistance against foes. This, he says, is very ditlerent from the actual treaty of 420. But it must be observed that Athena's appearance is quite idle, unless some significance is attached to her words. Theseus has already enjoined grate- ful remembrance upon the Argives, and Adrastus has promised it for them. There is no knot left for the deus ex macluna to loose. Athena now appears, demanding that the Argives be not allowed to go without a solemn pledge to be allies of Athens in danger. A generation earlier ^Eschylus in his Eiini('nid(\s ' had commemorated, in a similar passage, an alliance of Athens and Argos. The passage in the Suppliants with all its details suggests inevitably a real treaty, and its terms correspond in part to the actual treaty preserved in Thuc. Y, 47. That the treaty given by Euripides is one-sided is in accordance with the motive of the play, and as the ])lay was written for an Athenian rather than an Argive audience, that emphasis was placed on Argive aid rather than on Athenian sacrifice would not displease the popular feeling. The reference to sacrificial victims seems to be a trait taken from the actual treatv. It tiappens that in this treaty alone among those pres '^ I f .» e > ' • •^ -■■< i 55 it was composed after Delium and before Mantinea. In this period I hold that the most probable date is the year 420-419, immediately after the Athenian treaty with Argos. The play cannot precede the Peace of Nicias, as Wilamowitz main- tains, and cannot be intended, as he conceives, to create feel- ing for the ])eace ; for it emphasizes hatred towards Sparta and B], doit etre placee vers 420.'^ 2 The figurative language of the play is rich and beautiful, even the prologue, which so often with P:uripides is merely me- chanical and without beauty, containing a poetic touch (lines 30-32). One peculiarly Euripidean figure, that of iiriXev^i^, is conspicuously absent. I have noted only (f^epco, (f^epco (line 1123), with the antistrophic Tra-Tral, iraTral. This is a curious fact, when we consider that the play belongs to a group which is marked by the increasing use of this figure and that there are plenty of situations in the play where we might, after the analogy of the other plays, expect it. Other assonance figures, such as anaphora, polyptoton and alliteration, occur with nota- ble frequency in this play. The Date of the Heracles. There have been few attempts to date the Heracles exactly,^ though there is a general agreement that this drama belongs to the middle group of extant plays. Cf. von A\^ilamo\vitz- 1 Rumpel, op. cit., p. 409. ^Masqueray, op. cit., p. 274. 'See Wilamowitz, Herakles, pp. 132-147. # I i t^r J »it i I ^ f P# 57 Moellendorff, Herakles (Berlin, 1895), p. 135: " dass der Herakles zwischen Hiketiden und Troerinnen gedichtet ist, kann mit ziemlich starker zuversicht behauptet werden ^\ The personal note in the chorus on old age (lines 638-700) makes it evident that the poet was in his own feeling ^epoiv aoih6<^ when he wrote this play, and this w^ould correspond to the limits suggested in the citation from Wilamowitz. The play contains indubitable political references to con- temporaneous events, but, with our insuflRcient knowledge of the times, none of these is intelligible enough to fix the date with any degree of certainty. The most evident of these references is contained in lines 588 If . : TToXXou? 7r€V7]Ta(;^ oX^lov^ Se tw Xojo) SoKovvra^ elvat, avfi/jLci^^ov^ ava^ ^X^^f o'c araaiv edrjKav koX SiayXeaav ttoXlv i(f)' dpTrayalat rcov ireXa^, ra S' ev 86/jiOL^ oairdvaLai cppovSa, Sta(f)uy6v0^ vir apyia<;. These verses Hartung ^ referred to Theban politics at the time of the controversy over Delium. Wilamowitz expunges them, because of their utter lack of connection with the passage in which they are set, with the comment, " verse, die mit dem drama inhaltlich nicht verbunden sind, sind auch an dem platze, wo sic iiberliefert sind, nach beiden seiten un verbunden. das spricht fur die unechtheit'\ This procedure, however, is to be fi)llowed with caution ; for Euripides has the habit of in- troducing gratuitous political allusions. In any case the lines offer nothing useful for determining the date of the play, although they are evidently directed against political intrigues, most probably Athenian. Eix conjectured that the \jr6yo<; to^otov and eiraivo^ to^otov between Lycus, vv. 159 tf., and Amphitryo vv. 188 ff., involved a contrast of Athenian and Spartan methods of fighting. This ^Hartung, Euripides Kestitutus. # 1» 58 point is developed by Wilamowitz and a[)plled to the success of the light infantry over the Spartan hoplites at Sphacteria and to the defeat suffered by Athens at Deliuni with no liu:ht infantry to protect the retreat. He adds that the verses in question were of a sort to call forth unbounded applause from the partisans of the brilliant Demosthenes, the tbreruiiner of Iphicrates in the development of the liij^ht infantry. This very probable argument gives 424 B. C. as the earliest terminus post quern for the play, and the style and metre of tlie play are in favor of this. Rumpel's investigation of the reso- lutions in the trimeter of Euripides places the Heracles after the Supplices and before the Troades. jVIasqueray, in his dis- cussion of the lyric forms of Greek tragedy, shows that the KOjjLfxoi of the Heracles exhibit those changes which appear in this part of the Greek tragedy from 425 B. C. '' Si Ton reflechit au developpement que suivit le Coramos tragiquej usque vers 425, on voit qu'il tend de plus en plus, sinon a rejeter toute symetrie, du moins a la dissimuler.'' ^ In the asymmetric class of /cofifioi here discussed by Masqueray are the KOfi^oi in the Hecuba, Heracles (lines 887 ff.). Ion, Suppliants, Troades, Iphigenia among the Taurians, and Ijacchants. In these one person sings the lyric verses with no recitation. There are epirrhemata, generally by the coryplueus. The strophes and epirrhemata are alike unequal. In this asymmetric class are also the entirely lyrical ko/jl/jlol of the Heracles (lines 1042- 1085), Helen, Iphigenia in Aulis, and Bacchants. The earliest of these plays is the Hecuba, which by general consent is dated in 425 B. C. Moreover, those of the entirely lyrical asymmetric class, besides the Heracles, belong to the latest group of plays. From metrical considerations it is evident that 424 is none too late a terminus post quern. Another met- rical indication of relatively late composition are the trochaic tetrameters of lines 855-874.- Six of the nine Euripidean ^Masqueray, op. cit., p. 203. 2 Wilamowitz, Herakles, I, 145. 4) i^"3 ^ 4}f I C ^) I* 59 dramas in which this metre occurs are known to be of late date, and the presumption is strongly in favor of their all having been composed after 420. Wilamowitz further calls attention to the great extent to which the "enoplic'', or mixed, dochmiacs are used in this play, otherwise found in the later plays, Andromache (though Wilamowitz counts this a member of the earliest group), Troades, Ion, Helen, Iphigenia among the Taurians, rha}uiss8e, Orestes, Bacchantes. In the treatment of the chorus this play show^s the charac- teristics of the relatively early extant plays. As in the four earliest, Alcestis, Medea, Heraclidae and Hippolytus, and the succeeding dramas, Hecuba and Suppliants, the chorus bears an intimate relation to the action, and its songs are on the whole adapted to the situation. The language and style are comparatively free from the man- nerisms which mark so strongly Euripides's later work. Cf. Wilamowitz: ^^der sprache nach mochte man ihn trotz einer anzahl barocker wendungen den iilteren dramen anreihen. Das scheint sich zu wiedersprechen, aber alle einzelnen erscheinungen erkl-iren sich, sobald man nur anerkennt, dass der dichter sich mit diesem drama besonders viel muhe gegeben hat".' In the matter of repeated words the Heracles stands with the dramas of the middle group. Of these repetitions I note thirteen. Wilamowitz sees a change in the ^^ Weltanschauung " of Euripides between the Suppliants and the Heracles, because he says in the Suppliants, line 180, the poet must have joy in his heart in order to create anything that will give joy, and this is the direct opposite of the mood in w^hich he composed the Heracles and all later dramas. The passage in the Suppli- ants is, however, of doubtful authenticity and is generally bracketed. Wilamowitz is inclined to make Alcibiades, " dieser diemonisch geniale Mann", responsible for the embittering of Euripides and his work. 'Op. cit., p. 147 f. 4) 60 61 Dieterich, on the other haiul, finds that the Heracles and the Suppliants are closely related and feels that they cannot be divided by the bitter experiences which have left their impres- sion on tiie later plays, notably the Trojan trilogy. In the Heracles Euripides still takes an active interest in politics. Dieterich suggests that the Heracles, the Suppliants, and the Erechtheus were given togetlier. '' Theseus, der den Herakles aus Theben nach Athen fiihrt, dass er dort ganz genese, der die Leichen der Argiven von den gottlosen Thebanern erfordert, wie die Athener nach der Schlacht von Delion es gethan, am Schluss aus Gottermund die Mahnung an Aihvu und Argos sich zu verlmnden — in beiden Stiicken ganz dieselbe Aniniositiit gegen Theben : Erechtheus, der den feindlichen Einfall sieg- reich zuriickweist, seines Kindes Blut hochherzig \"nv< Vater- land hingibt — und darin das herrliche Eriedenslied, das man in Athen auf alien Gassen sang — drei Stucke, ein grosses ijKw^tov 'Ad7]vo)v ini Jahre des Nikiasfriedens." ^ AVilamowitz^ dissents from such a close dating of the plays : "der gedanke, den Herakles selbst zwischen Erechtheus und Hiketiden zu riicken, hiitte niclit ausgesprochen werden soUen, ganz abgesehen von dem gegensatze der stimmung in beiden werken, denn selbst wenn man die beiden Theseus neben tinan- der ertragen woUte : der kunig Kreon in den Hik(^tiden und der konig Kreon im Herakles vertragen sich nicht ". Dieterich is wrong, in my opinion, in placing the Sui)i)liants in the year of the peace of Nicias. "Dass sie 421 aufgefiihrt sind, is't wohl sicher", he says; but his argument for tlie closer relation of the Supplices and the Heracles is, to my thinking, good, although I do not believe that they formed part of the same trilogy. Between the Suppliants and the Andromache came the battle of Mantinea with its rehabilitation of Spartan prestige and its depreciation of Athenian glory. The Andromache is stamped with the bitterness of defeat. The Hecuba and the Sup- pliants know a proud Athens that is a refuge for men in distress. iQp. cit, p. 42. 2 Herakles, I, 134, Aiim. 27. •Sr i »^t My feeling is that the Dorian hero was celebrated by Euri- pides after the Peace of Nicias and before the battle of Mantinea. My termini would be 420 and 418. Hermann ^ notes a general resemblance of composition between the Heracles and the Andromache. Andromache \vith her son, ^Folossus, victims of Hermione and IVIenelaus, correspond to IVIegara and her children, victims of Lyons. They are defended from harm in the one play by Peleus, in the other by Heracles. The defenders are in both cases stricken wath misfortune, and the plavs are ended in the one case by the intervention of Thetis as dt'iis ex machina, in the other by that of Theseus. It is, of course, a priori possible that the Andromache was a " fore-study " for the greater Heracles ; but a comparison of the two plays leaves the impression that the great w^ork " on which " Euripides " expended so much toil and love, to which he gave life with his own hearts blood 'V preceded in time the artificial Andromache, the political piece, with its lack of unity external and internal, contrasting with the deep meaning of the super- ficially ununified Heracles. This may be regarded as a purely subjective argument, but the point made by Dieterich is cer- tainly strong, that the Heracles is separated in feeling from the Euripidean dramas of 415 and later by its pride in the strength of Athens. There is the same difference apparent between it and the bitter Andromache, w^ritten, as I hope to prove, after Mantinea. A discussion of the date of the Heracles of Euripides cannot ignore the relation between that play and the Trachinians of Sophocles, although, as the date of the latter play is unknown, a settlement of the question of priority between the two dramas could give no precise data for determining the time of compo- sition of the Heracles. The date of the Trachinians is still sub iudice, some critics putting it among the earliest extant plays of Sophocles, and 1 Pnefatio ad Supplices, 1837. * Wilaniowitz, Herakles I., p. 132. 62 others among his latest. Zielinski ^ regards it as very probably the oldest extant Sophoclean play : ^' die Tracliinierinnon sind vielleicht das iilteste der iins erhaltenen Stiicke des Sophocles, sicher nicht viel jiinger als die Antigone". Wilaniowitz, on the other hand, believes that the Heracles of EurljMdos directly suggested to Sophocles the subject of the Trachinians. Tliere are resemblances casual and superficial and also those which cannot be the result of chance between the Trachinians and the work of Euripides in several of his dramas. Some of these resemblances are weighed by Zielinski and decided ac- cording to various criteria. By these he determines that in each case Sophocles has been the original and Euripides the borrower. He thus maintains that the Trachinians preceded tlie Alccstis and the Medea. Professor Earle " has refuted his argument and has established the priority of the Alcestis and the Medea. He shows this notably for the Alcestis by pointing out the sources of Sophocles's motive of the waiting, silent woman, lole in Trach. 325 ff., SuKpvppoel hvajy^vo^ k. t. \. It is to be found in the insignificant scene of the waiting lian(hnaid, Ale. \'M) ff., where the verbal coincidences show that the verses were in Sophocles's mind when he composed his own more ambitious scene, and the famous scene, Ale. 1200 ff., of tlie silent Alcestis. That there is a conflation of these two passages in the Sophoclean passage is beyond a doubt, when once the scenes have been compared. In the case of the ^Fedea, also by a comparison of the various tragic motives of the Trachinians and the Medea, Professor Earle shows that '' in writing the Trachinians Sophocles had the ^Nledea before him, and tiiat in the case of this play, too, he paid Euripides the compliment of imitation ". In Zielinski^s argument, '^ der Arzt^' Sophocles plays a large part, and he contrasts the realistic description of the effect of the poison in the Trachinians with the theatrical narration in ' Philologus, 1896. ^Studies in Sopliocles's Tiachinians, Trans. Am. Phil. Assoc, 33, pp. 1 »» rr 3 t^yf t ») i fj 4>) |€ sqq. f;T> 63 the Medea. He admits, however, that it would be impossible to find any one cause that would produce all the varied symp- toms of the Sophoclean scene. He thinks that Sopliocles's vocabulary would show on examination a large number of tech- nical medical terms. It is my strong impression that the vocal)ulary of Euripides would be found to contain far more words of this nature tlian that of Sophocles. I have noted in reading a considerable number of terms which Euripides has in common with tlie medical writers, which do not appear in the other tragedians. Some of the notable instances of such expres- sions are (/)Xei|r kolXi], Ion, 1011: Hippocrates, e344, 30 ; ipvOrjfia, Phfen., 1488 : Hippocr. Aph., 1260 ; iXKocOj Hecuba, 405 ; €\k- a>8?;9, IlipjK)!., 1359: Hippocr. Epid. 3, 1085; a(\>aKe\La pLo^ , Frag. 751: Hippocr. Art. 799; Scholiast on Hippocr. 6 8e Ba/^^eto? oSvvrjp /cal dXyrjpa kuI (f)\€ypovr]p (j)7]cnv elvat rov a(j)afceXicrp,ov, 7rapa6epievo<^ KvpiTrlSov Xe^eci etc TijpLevov. SvaOd- z/aTo? Ion, 1051 : Hippocrates, 71 F : acfypLja), Audrom., 190 ; Supphants, 478; Hippocr., 618,47; 684, 13. Zielinski finds that Andromache 222 flf. was borrowed from Trachinians 460-462 and 485. It is true that, at first sight, Andromache's self-abasement might seem an artificial and gro- tesque exaggeration of Deianira's words, but a comparison of the two dramas as wholes shows that it is the Trachinians that has borrowed from the Andromache rather than the reverse. The prologue of the Trachinians has a marked resemblance to that of the Andromache, more marked than to any other Euripidean prologue. This passage is strongly contested between those who aifirm and those who deny the Euripidean influence. For example Haigh says : " The opening speech of Deianira, as Avas long since pointed otit, is not a mere repro- duction of the Euripidean prologue : it is spoken in conversa- tion with tlie nurse instead of being addressed to the spectators, and the desultory narrative which it contains is natural and appropriate under the circumstances " ^ See also Zielinski, ^ Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 189 ; Cf. Patin, Sophocle, p. 66. ft\ 64 65 wlio, however \ considers the proh)triie not to be luhh'cssed to the nurse, but to be a " Spinnelied ", like that of Gretchen in Faust, "Meine Ruh ist hin". Compare on the other hand Croiset" : ^^ Au debut, un prologue narratif fiiit songer a la maniere d'Euripide et semble denoter son Influence ; a la lin la monodie d'Heracles accentue encore la ressemblance ". The prologue of the Andromache is typically Euri|)idcan. No trace of any alien influence is apparent in it. The prologue of the Trachinians is pr 17110 facie strikingly un-Sophoclean. It is much longer than the introductory speeches of the extant dramas. It is not addressed to any one, as are all the other extant introductory speeches. It contains a narration of the speaker's antecedents and a description of the preliminary plot entirely in the Eurlpidean manner. Yet it has beaut it'ul So- phoclean touches that redeem it from the artiticiality and tlieatri- cality of Euripides. Euripides, then, in the prologue of his Andromache shows no trace of Sophoclean manner. Sophocles in the prologue of the Trachinians shows traits acknowledged by all critics from Aristophanes down to i)e Euri})idean. And the two prologues are similarly constructed. The prelude of the first few lines is not the same, but it leads up to the same statement of wretchedness. Trach., 5 : e^oiS' exovaa Svarvxy} t6 Kal /3apvv, Androm., 6 : vvu, em? aXXi], hvo-Tv^eaTdrri ^vvr]. The beginning of the narratives immediately following is cast in the same form. Trach., G : ??Ti? Trarpo? ixev, Androm., 8 : /;t^9 iroaLV fiev. Then follows the recitation of the w^oes of the two women in their, for different reasons, unhappy unions, and the expres- sions of their fears. Trach., 37 : rap^rjcra^ ex^^- Androm., 42 : Sei/j^arovfievr] iyo). 1 Philologus, 1896, pp. 521 ff. 2 Croiset, III, 239. a i • fe; 3 ^li ))) i )f; ») rr> Finally Neoptolemus and Heracles alike are absent, and their absence is fraught with terror for Andromache and Deianira. To the monologue of each a servant replies : Trach., 49 : heairotva A-pdvetpa. Androm., 56 : heairoiv — There is a certain likeness between the character of Deianira and that of Andromache; each is the type of the model wife as conceived by the poet of each. Deianira is a conception so much more beautiful than Andromache that the merit of origi- nality might seem to belong to Sophocles on this score. But Euripides has derived his Andromache from the Andromache of the Iliad, where she is the good and loving wife, as Helen is the iaithless one, while there is nothing in the myth to indicate that Deianira was any other type than the jealous wife. That is far from being her character in Sophocles's fine portrayal. Euripides's Andromache is the noble conception of the Iliad ruined by the mawkish sentimentality, the rhetorical bombast, and the shameful altercations with her foes with which Euripi- des sets her forth. One cannot think that Euripides had much joy in this creation. She is a mouth-piece of his bitterness. Xevertheless, it is more likely that the type which she is meant to represent here and in the Troades (43 tf.), where she gives a didactic catalogue of her own virtues, influenced Sophocles, than that his beautiful and womanly Deianira suggested anything for the character of Andromache. Sophoclean as Deianira is in her nobility, hers is a character not paralleled elsewhere in his plays. The epo)aa yvvrj is Euripides's province and not Sopho- cles's.^ I conclude then that Zlelinski is wrong in placing the Tra- chinians before the Andromache, since the prologue of the former has Eurlpidean touches which can be traced to the prologue of the Andromache; and, further, the portrayal of the faithful wife wholly devoted to her husband may have been suggested by Euripides's play. ^ Aristoph., Frogs, v. 1044. m t 66 To come to the Heracles itself, Zieliiiski has not been at all more successful in his attempt to show it.> dependence on the Trachinians than in his similar attempts with other Euripidean plays. The Heracles and the Trachinians have many verl)al resemblances and resemblances of style and motive. The verbal resemblances, many and strikinii: though they are, are not deci-. sive enough to form in themselves an absolutely convincing argument. It is in the use of various motives and characters of the Euripidean play that the imitation on the part of Sophocles becomes evident. Dieterich has shown in the Ivhcinisches Museum for 1892^ in his article on '' Schlafscenen auf der Attischen Biihne " that Sophocles has introduced his sleeping Heracles, whose sleep by no means follows naturally \\\)ou the fierv anguish of the poisoned robe, because of the famous scene in the Heracles, where the sleep of the hero is fully, though supernaturally, motived. He makes the j)()int, which Wilamowitz further elaborates", that the old man who attends Heracles in the Trachinians is merely a double of Amplii- trvon. Wilamowitz shows that Sophocles has reprcsenttd his Heracles as in the play of Euripides, overcome with madness at a sacrifice, committing a deed of madness, which, however, in the Trachinians is so perfunctory that no one pays any attention to it, and finally asleep on the stage attended by an old man w^ho does not appear elsewdiere in the Trachinians. The orig- inality of all the motives in the Heracles is clear. Zielinski, to maintain his thesis, is driven to calling the old man Heraeles's physician. Even if this far-fetched idea could be substantiated, the derivation of the scene and character from Euripides would yet be undeniable. In its verbal style the Trachinians displays some traits that are Euripidean. The use of Xe^^o? and Xe/crpop is noted by Fraccaroli : '* In Trachiniis, quae Sophoclis fabula maximum numerum habet, septies invenias'\^ 1 Rh. M. 46, pp. 25-46. ^ Wilamowitz-MoellendorfF, Heracles (1895), T, p. 153. 3 Fraccaroli, J., De Euripidis scribendi artifjciis, AiigubtieTaurinorum, 1885. . ^»f I'. -\ 67 The words apriKoWo^, apTi7rov<;, apTi)(^pi(TTO(; form a group of compounds appearing in this play alone of Sophocles's extant plays. Euripides has a liking for this compound. Cf apriSa- fcpv^y Med. 903 ; aprt/jLaOrj^;, Hec. 687 ; apriTrXovro^, Suppl. 742; apTi(f)pm>, Med. 295, I. T. 877; a pr tO av?]^, Ak\ 600. The compound KaWifSoa^;, Trach. 640, seems to be of great significance in view of the fact that Sophocles has but two com- pounds of fcaXXi-, the other also in a late play (O. C. 682), while Euri])ides has no less than twenty compounds of this W(M'd. Moreover, the fcaWi^oa^; avXo^; is modelled on the KaXXi(f)Ooyyoi> KtOdpav of Heracles 350. This characteristically Euripidean compound is found also in Ion 169 and I. T. 222. The repetitions so frequent in Euripides appear in this play, as in the Philoctetes and the CEdipus Coloneus, in considerable number. There are ten in this play, fifteen in the Philoctetes and thirteen in the CEdipus Coloneus. In the earlier plays of Sophocles, with the exception of the Ajax, there are notably few, the Antigone liaving but three, the (Edipus Tyrannus four. In metre Soj)hoeles has been plainly infiuenced in this play by Euripides. The only ko/jl/jl6^ of Sophocles which is not anti- strophic is found in the Trachinians, vv. 879-895. Euripides employed such irregular fcofi/ioi largely in the last ten years of his life, and the lyric ko/jl/jloi without responsion begin with the Heracles. They are found besides in the Helen, the Bacchants and the Iphigenia at Aulis, and in the Trachinians of Sophocles. As Euripides was the great innovator in the ko/jl/xo^; there can be no doubt that Sophocles was in this case too the imitator. The case for the priority of the Heracles stands thus. In the Trachinians Sophocles is indebted to other plays of Euripides, notably, as Professor Earle has pointed out ^, to the Alcestis and the Medea, for scenes, motives and phraseology, to the Andromache, as well as to the Medea (see Professor Earless discussion of the Medea, op. cit., pp. 15-17), for the construc- tion of the prologue; and perhaps also (as I think) the character •Trans. Am. Phil. Ass. 33, 1. c. m 68 of Andromache, as well as that of Alcestis, suggested the out- line of the devoted wife Deiauira, althougli the delicate and beautiful coloring of that figure in the So[)hoclean play owes nothing to Euripides. The metre of the play shows markedly the influence of the late Euripidean style. These points indi- cate a late date for the Trachinians. Its dependence on the Heracles itself is most apparent in the motive of the sleeping- scene, introduced without sufficient dramatic justification and containing a character of no use or meaning in the development of the plot, one whose appearance is perfunctory and due merely to the corresponding character in the Eurij)idean original. The rest of the play, if analyzed in the light of this fact, will be seen to have derived much from the Heracles and to justify Wilamowitz^s statement that the ])lay of Euripides prompted Sophocles to compose his Trachinians. The Andromache. The Andromache has been perha})s more variously dated and more the subject of dispute than any other play of Euripides with the exception of the Heraclidce. This is due to its pointed political allusions, which must have been perfectly transparent to its audiences, which, however, have been interpretenl by critics of a later day in quite opposing fashions and as pointing to various times of composition. The information given l)y the scholia is as follows : TavTci r]aLP KvptiriSTj^; XoiSopov/JLevo^i toI<; ^irapTLciTaL'^ Sici tov eveoTTMTa iroXe/jLOP, Kal yap 5?; Kal 7rape(T7r()vSj]Keaav et? 'XOij- vaLOvr]vaL (j^rfac t^ TpaycpSia Ai^fXOKpa.T'qv. Modern critics have assigned the play to various years of the Peloponnesian war. Hardion puts it as late as 412-411, Her- mann and Welcker assign it to 421-420, Midler and Pflugk to 420-418, Boeckh, Petit, and Hartung to 419-418, Fix to 422-421, Zirndorfer to 423-422, and Firnhaber to 431-430. Wllamowitz counts the play w^ith the oldest group, Alcestis, Medea, Heraclidic and Hippolytus, and maintains the accu- racy of the statement of the Vatican scholion that the play was WTitten ev ap^rj tov YleXo'TTovvT)cnaKov TroXe/xov. Murray in his recent edition puts the Andromache between the Hippolytus and the Hecuba. Bergk has given much at- tention to the dating of this play. His earlier opinion ^ was that the Andromache was brought out at Argos in the early part of the nineteenth Olympiad, before the battle of Mantinea, by the Argive Democrates or Timocrates, a musician who was a friend of Euripides, and that Euripides's intimacy with Alcibiades and his interest in the political aims of the latter led to the choice of Argos for the representation of the play. He afterward ^ came to the conclusion that the play was written for and performed before an Athenian audience in the second year of the eighty-ninth Olympiad, that it w^as brought out In the name of Menecrates of Argos, w^hose influence is shown in the conservative character of the melic parts. This theorv rests on the remark of the scholiast 6 Se KaXXi/jLa'x^o<; einypa(^r)vai (j)T]ai Trj Tpay(pBia ArjfjLOKpciTrjv and on an inscrip- tion discovered In Athens, and published in 1878,^ according to which . . . veKpciTTj^ won the first prize in tragedy eV 'AXKatov. 1 will first consider the opinion of Firnhaber ^, who definitely puts the composition of the play in the year 431 B. C, before *Ber^k, Griech. Lit., III., pp. 544 ff. 2 Hermes, 13, pp. 487 f?. 3Mitth. d. deutsch. Arch. Inst., IIT, 108. ♦ Firnliaber, Philologub, 3, pp. 408 if. '0 the death of Pericles. He finds an allusion to the faithless- ness, cruelty, and covetousness shown by Sparta at the begin- nmg of the Peloponnesian war in lines 445 H'. : (X) iraaiv avOpoiiroiaLv €')(6LaT0L j3porMP ^Trdprrj^ epoL/coi, SoXia jSovXevrr^pia, yjrevScop avaxre^, /jL7]-)(^avoppd(f)OL Kafco)i>, eXiKTCi KovSep vyih, ciWd irdv irepi^ (f>popouvTe<^ , dBiKCty; evTV^elr dv KWdha. Ti S" ovfc €v v/jlIp iarcp : ov TrXelaroi (f)ovoi ; ovK ala-^^^pofcepBeU ; ov Xt'yopTe<; dXXa fxev yXd)aar], (^povovvre'^ 3' dXX' icpevpiaKnaO dei ; 6Xoia6\ He sees in lines 471 ff., ovhe yap iv TroXeat Sitttvxol TvpavinheepoPTa Bifcaia). The lines 471 ff., where Euripides dilates upon the evils of Bltttvxol rvpappiBe^;, evi- dently have an entirely local Athenian reference. This refer- ence would have no point during the life of Pericles, who ruled Athens without a rival in spite of murmurs against him and attacks on liim (Thuc. II, 65). Firnhaber's interpretation of the passage as an exaltation of the Athenian government over the Spartan constitution is trivial. The theory that I^uripides is defending the relation of Pericles and Aspasia in his treatment of the characters of Andromache and Molossus is in contra- diction of the chorus, lines 465 if . : ovBe iTore BiBvfia XeKrp^ eiraLPeGco fSpojoiP OvB' d^(j)LfJLdTOpa^ KOpOV^' iThuc, II, 80. 4 i mm iwif m m M ^:^mi^s:^'mi^^-'-^^,^.^ ^^ :.^ 72 epiOa^ OLfccov Svcr fievelf; T€ Xv7ra<;. fxiav /jloc aTepyerco iroai^ yd/ioi^ aKOLVwvrjTov avSp6<; evvdv. If this play was written before the death of Pericles, it is much more likely that these Hues would have called to mind the criticisms on his private life that were rife in Athens than that lines 713-714: aW' ec TO Kelvrj^ SvaTV)(6l iraiEcoi^ irepi^ airaiha^ ijpLu^ hu KaraajyjpaL t^kvcoVj should have suggested the loss of Pericles's legitimate sons and his desire to legitimize his son Pericles. Firnhaher's argument is at its weakest in his attempt to explain lines 733 tf. in a way to make the passage refer to the early years of the war. In his desire to have the ttoXl^ in question mean Platfese he distorts the natural syntax of the lines and ignores the logical connection of thought. ^Nlenelaus says : '^ I will go home; for there is, not far from Sparta, a oitv wliloh once was friendly, but now is making unfriendly demonstra- tions *\ Firnhaber understands the lines to mean, " I will uq home ; for there is, not far (from this country), a city which was once a friend of Sparta, etc/'. According to this rendering Firnhaber must supply rfycr^e t/}? ^eov6<^ after ov irpoao) and take ^Trdprr]^ which follows immediately with cpiXf) at the vud of the verse. Thus yap has no sense after ciTrei/x' i<; olkov^, and nothing could have suggested such an interpretation of the sentence except the necessity of finding here a reference which would suit the theory of the early dating of the plav. The references to the Molossians at the end of the play have doubtless a political meaning, but Firnhaber is certainly not justified in arguing that they must have been composed before 429 B. C, because the Molossians in that vear joined the Spartans in hostility to Athens '. Friendly relations t-xistcd ' See Bergk, Hermes, XVIII, p. 506. t J ,^ •S 73 later between Athens and the Molossians, and no argument for the date of the play can properly be based on Euripides's allu- sions to contemporary events of which we have absolutely no knowledge. In line 1044, voaov 'EWa? erXa, vocrov^ it is possible that the force of voaov, used here, as often, in a figurative sense, may have been intensified by the recollections of the horrors of the plague ; but even so it is not a necessary deduction that the verse was written in the time " wo die pest bereits ein jahr gewiithet '\ Firnhaber's arguments to prove the early date of the Andromache from the political allusions contained in it must be condemned as ineflPectual. He is fanciful in his inter- pretation and entirely unsatisfactory iij his explanation of the two striking passages, lines 733-736 and 471-473, which offer the most tangible suggestions for dating the play by references to contemjK)rary history. The dating of Hardion is interesting as one of the earliest of modern attempts to date the play from its political illusions. His inter})retation is dramatic ; but to state his theory is almost to refute it. He says:^ "Plus j'examine cette Tragedie, & plus je persiste a croire, que dans le caractere d'Andromaque & de Pelee, Euripide a voulu donner un tableau de la ville d'Athenes dans Pestat defoiblesseoii elle se trouvaapres le combat d'Orope; elle n'avoit ni troupes, ni vaisseaux ni argent ; la plus grande partie de ses alliez I'avoient abandonnee ; & il ne restoit de res- source aux Atheniens, pour se garantir de leur ruine totale, que dans leur courage & leur fermete. And later p. 271 : " il n'est pas vraysemblable qu'F]uripide eiU parle, comme il a fait, de la pro- sperity iS^ de la puissance des Lacedemoniens avant la vingtieme annee de la guerre du Peloponnese : on qu'il les etit apostrophez si durement ])endant que la treve subsistoit entre I'un & Pautre peuple ". Of verses 471 if., he says (p. 272) : " Ce passage petit, ce me semble, s'appliquer tres-heureusement a I'admiration du Conseil des 400. dont le peuple temoigna beaucoup de mecontente- * Dissertation sur 1' Audromaque : Memoires de I'Academie, Vol. 8 (1733), p. 269 sq. 74 ment, je ne vois auciine autre circonstance de I'histoire d'Atlieiies pendant la vie d'Eiiripide, a laquelle il piiisse couvenir ". Euripides would hardly have presented to his audience an Athens symbolized by the 0cip/3apo^ Andromache and the old man Peleus. The Electra might afterwards call to tlie minds of Greeks xVthens fallen from her glory, but she was Wya/jLe- fjLvovo^ Kovpa, a Greek princess. It is pushing aUegorizing (juite too far to see in all unhappy heroines a type of sorrowing Athens. Further, Sltttvxol jvpavviZe^ is a phrase which suits very ill the situation in 411. The words naturally refer to two men who would be rvpavvoi at the same time, not to the struggle between oligarchy and democracy. Again it is evident from Thucydides that S])arta recovered her prestige by the battle of Mantinea, and tliat it would be quite reasonable for a poet to speak as Euripides does of the prosperity and power of the hated Lacedtemon long before the twentieth year of the war. None of Hardion's positions are tenable, and no one lias acce})ted his dating. Two of the most recent expressions of opinion about the date of the play are those of von Wilamowitz-^NIoellendorff and of Bergk. Both in the Analecta Euripidea (1875) and in his edition of the Heracles M'ilamowitz upholds the opinion given in the scholia on line 44G. He says (Anal. Eur., he, cit.): '^tempus rectius quam plerique recentiores definivit vetus grammaticus ; nam numeri fabulam annis 4.'>0- 1'2 I adtribuunt, neque historia obstat". Again (Herakles, I. 143): '^ Eine anzahl von dramen des Euripides weisen sich durch einen gemein-amen altertiimlicheren und strengeren stil als verwandt aus ; es sind Alkestis Medeia Hippolytus Andromache Herakleiden. sie fallen alle teils nach urkundlichen angaben, teils nach sichereu geschichtlichen anspielungen vor 425''. "Von der Andro- mache hat das richtig schon Aristophanes von Byzanz erschlos- sen schol. 445. die entgegengesetzten ausfiihrungen von ])ergk sind nur dafiir lehrreich, wie dieser ebenso wunderbar gelehrte ♦ '> il m^ fc (, 76 wie scharfsinnige mann scharfsinn und gelehrsamkeit dazu zu gebrauchen ]^flegt, die zeugnisse erst zu zerstoren, damit er sie fiir seine eignen einfiille benutzen konne" (ibid., footnote 49). It appears from these citations that Wilamowitz's grounds for placing the Andromache among the earliest extant dramas are metrical and stylistic. But in these respects the Andro- mache shows very great divergences from the Alcestis, Medea, Heraclidfe and Hippolytus, and coincides with the middle group. To take up the points in detail : Rumpel's investigations of the resolutions in the trimeter show a wide divergence between the Andromache and the earlier group, the Andromache having an average of a resolution to every six lines, the four early plays one to every sixteen and a half lines. Further the Andromache has one line (which Wilamowitz rejects) with three resolutions, line 338 : MeveXae, (f)epe St] ScaTrepdvco/jLev \6yov<;. This com- bination of anapaest, tribrach, and dactyl appears only in the later dramas, and' there are but ten instances of it. The play contains also a line with two tribrachs and one with two dactyls (lines 40, 1157), cases of which, as Rumpel says, appear almost exclusively in the later plays. "Wilamowitz notes the use of " enoplic dochmiacs " in the Heracles as one proof of its composition after 424. He men- tions the fact that these are found only in the Andromache, Troades, Ion, Iphigenia Taur., Helen, Phoenissai, Orestes and Ikcchfe. Here, then, is another metrical point of coincidence between the Andromache and the later dramas. The Andro- mache contains two duets, or a/Ltot/3ata, of which the Medea, Heraclidie, and Hij)i)olytus offer no examples, and two monodies. Another mark of later composition is the irrelevancy of the chorus songs to the situation and the wandering and vague interest of the chorus in the fate of the principal actors. Of the first stasimon Friederich savs : " Est autem carmen ex eo genere quae ipsa rerum condicione neglecta quae antecedunt epicorum more narrant et ab ovo quasi Ledae, ut aiunt, exordium mm'^ %■ .^.^^ 76 faciunt'\ This criticism is deserved by the other choral songs as well, the burden of all of which is foreign to the dramatic situation. It is instructive in this connection to compare the choral songs in the Hecuba, lines 629-656, and in the An- dromache, lines 274-308 : i/iiol XP^]^ irrjixovav yeveadaiy 'ISaiav ore irpcorou v\av /c. r, \} T) fieydXayv ax^cov dp v7rP]p^ePy 6t^ 'ISaiau €9 vdirav ijXO' 6 Ma/a? re Kal Atoproaching the freedom of the latest plays. 1 Hecuba, vv. 627 fT. ' Andromache, vv. 274 ff. § f y 1) %\ I ^ ^ 1^ ■'• Wi f' w ^ 77 It appears, then, that Wilamowitz is not justified in his vague statement that the Andromache belongs stylistically with the older plays, since in freedom of trimeter resolutions, ex- pansion of the lyric parts, irrelevancy of the choral songs, and frequency of the repetition of w^ords, it has the stamp of later composition. Bergk's exact dating of the play in 422 rests, as I have said, upon an inscription discovered at Athens and published in the jNlittheilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts for 1878. He identifies the . . . i^e/c/aar?;? of this inscription with the Democrates of the scholiast, and regards him as a virohthda- KaXo^ for Euripides. He had previously also noted the proba- bility of the identity of Democrates with the Argive Timocrates of the biography. Bergk thinks it improbable that a poet whose name is not mentioned elsewhere than in this inscription should have gained the first tragic prize in 423-422, " da Sophokles und Euripides damals die Biihne beherrschten und die fjieXrj des einen wie die iirvWca des andern als der hochste Gewinn des grossen Festfeiers betrachtet werden, s. Aristoph. Frieden, 531 ". Euripides, however, gained the first prize but four times in his life and we are very far from having a complete list of the tragedians who gained first prizes in the years when the first prize did not fall to either Sophocles or Euripides. In our dearth of information, then, it seems hardly safe to date / the Andromache, as Bergk does, on the strength of this inscrip- tion and against the tradition that the play was not given in Athens. To gain further evidence for his date, Bergk emends the scholion Kal yap Btj Kal irapecnTOvh-qKeaav eh ^ KOrjvaiov^ to KaL yap McV^7;i^ Kal ^klojpijv cnrocTTrjaavTe^ TTapeairovZrjKeaav. This of course seems to give him valuable historical facts for the dating of the play, but it is palpably a manufacturing of evidence and merits the severe judgment of Wilamowitz already cited. Unlike Wilamow^itz, who believes that Euripides, how- ever much detested by Aristophanes on other grounds, never- ^^f J ^^) ^ ct in the matter of resolutions iu the trimeter the Andromache stands between the Hecuba and the Heracles. He puts the Hecuba in the last year of the eighty-eighth Olympiad, the Heracles iu the third of the eighty-ninth, thus leaving for the Andromache Olympiad 89.1 or 89.2. It is of course impossi- ble to date a play definitely in this fashion. The number of resolutions in the trimeter is an important general indication of the period in which a play was composed, but neither consciously nor unconsciously could Euripides well have used a fixed arith- metical progression in the number of resolutions which he per- mitted himself in writing his dramas. Zirndorfer and Bergk both refer the general political " Ten- denz " of the play to the embitterment felt in Athens against Sparta because of the defection of Scione and Mende immedi- atdy after the truce. (Cf. Thuc, lY, 122-123.) There w^re, however, other occasions in the course of the Peloponnesian war when the Athenians were greatly embittered against the Spartans, accusing them of bad faith, and Zirndorfer and J^ergk fail to show that this occasion fits the allusions in the play more inevitably than several others. Moreover the date which they advocate is entirely inconsistent with the refe- rences to the })rosperity of Sparta. They tell of a Sparta hated for her selfishness, cruelty, and treachery, but still preeminently successful and renowned for soldiery. Cf. V. 449, vv. 724-726, a^LKO)<; €VTV)^eLT^ av 'EWaSa, and el ctTTrjv Sopo<^ Tol Kal €9 TT]P ciXXi]!^ afSovXiap re Kal fSpaSurrjTa kvl epyo) TOVTM aTreXvaavTO^ '^^XV l-^^^'i ^^ iSoKOvv, KaKL^o/xeuoL, jvaofjurj Be OL avTol €TL ovje^. The phrase tvxd M^^ KaKi^o/jLevoi contrasts with the Euripidean evrvxclT av 'EXXdSa. Again, in relating the Argive hopes of supremacy in the Peloponnesus, Thucy- dides ^ says : Kara yap top ')(^p6vov tovtov tj re AaKeSaificov fxdXiaTa Srj KaKO)^ i]KOvae Kal V7repa)(f)6rj Sid Td<; ^vpL(^opd^^ OL re WpyeloL dptara ea^ou rot? irdatv^ ov ^vvapdfxevoL rod ^Attckou TToXefMov. This also fiiils to accord with the evrv- ;]^etTe and the Sopo^ So^a and p-dxy]^ dyd)v of the Andromache. The Andromache must, then, have followed the battle of Mantinea. The tone of it is exactly in accord with the Athe- nian feeling toward Sparta after that battle. And there are other points in the play which confirm that dating of it. There is a passage in the Andromache which gives so definite a poli- tical reference that the right interpretation of it gives a clearly approximate date for the play. This reference Bergk, in my opinion, interpreted correctly in his earlier discussion, though he gave up his interpretation later. The passage is the speech of Menelaus, lines 733-737 : 1 ■> arreiix €9 olkov^' ecrn yap tl<^ ov irpoao) ^7rdpTr]<; ttoXc^ Tt? ?; irpb rod /xep i]v (ptXrjy vvv 5' e'^Opd TTOLel k. t. X. Of this he rightly says : ^ " Eine unverkennbare llindcutung auf Mantinea findet sich 733 ". In liis later discussion, how- ever, he says : " Man muss an Argos fest halten, denn die Po- lltik der Athener hatte von aller Zeit her das benachbarte aber ebendeshalb verfeindete Argos in den Kreis ihrer Beziehungen gezogen ". 1 Thuc. V, 28. ^Griech. Litt., ill, p. 544. ^ ^ J k\ C P ^>l I ^ll # ^;I # 1 I believe that Bergk in his earlier reference of this passage to Mantinea had discovered the right application of TroXt? ti9, and he alone, so far as I know, has understood this correctly. With this interpretation, however, he makes the wrong infe- rence for the date of the play, putting it in 420, to which year its tone is obviously unsuited, and referring this passage to the events related in Thucvdides, V. 38. " Eben in diese Zeit, 01. 90.1, Oder das niichste Jahr wird die Aufluhrung der Tragodie fallen, die jedenfalls vor der Schlacht bei Mantinea, welche die politischen Yerhiiltnisse wesentlich nmgestaltete, gedichtet sein muss . That the reference in these lines must be to Mantinea rather than to Argos, as has been generally assumed, and as Bergk himself later believed, is clear to one that considers the rela- tions between Sparta and these two cities. Fix pointed out that Menelaus's words : TToXf? Ti9 ?) TTpO TOV fJLeV 7]V (^IXrjy do not suit Argos, a city of which Thucydides says that it was the constant enemy of Sparta, AaKaSat/xovLOL^ alel hid(\>opov} The Mantineans, on the contrary, fought on the Spartan side against Demosthenes in Acarnania in 426 and seceded from the Spartan alliance in 421 ^ In mv discussion of the date of the Suppliants, which cele- brates the alliance made in 420 with Argos, I spoke of the evidence for a ])ersonal relation of friendship between Euripides and Alcibiades. I should not say wdth Bergk that Alcibiades found Euripides a "gefiigiges Werkzeug fur seine Plane und Riinke ", but there are, I believe, strong grounds for holding that P:uripides was impressed by the magnificent personality of Alcibiades, and that he admired and sympathized with his great kinsman Pericles. In the fifth book of Thucydides there is plenty of evidence of the activity of Alci))iades in the Pelopon- » Thuc. V, 29. Thuc. Ill, 107-109. v\ t 82 nesus against Sparta, and in the sixth book Aleihiades l)()asts of his achievement in bringing about the battle of Mantinea : AaKehaifiovLOv if n 85 scripta hiec fabula nee post 01. 89 nee multo pritis.'' ' He sees in the adoption of Ion a reflection on Athenian conditions in 424 when many citizens were disfranchised for dubious ]>arentage. Dindorf- places the Ion among the intermediate plays, and gives it the range of Ol. 88-91. Yon Wilamowitz- Moellendorff^ sets the limits 420-412 for the play. Masque- ray, who cites him as putting the date before 420, appears to have misunderstood his earliest statement of his opinion in the Analecta Euripidea, which he has further modified in his later utterances/ Zirndorfer on metrical grounds puts the play in 410. Enthoven^ for metrical reasons, because of a supposed caricature of the Ion in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes, and because of coincidences in phrase with the Helen, puts it in 412. Haigh ' i)uts it in the period immediately following the Sicilian expedition, giving as his reasons for preferring this date the character of the versification and the hostility shown in the play toward the Delphic oracle. Fix held that the i)lay was com- posed about 420, when " mortuo iam Cleone, Hyperbolus tan- tarn auctoritatem apud populum consecutus est, ut fere solus regnare videretur ". The arguments for the early dating, 428-424, are not in themselves conclusive, and this dating is inconsistent with the internal character of the play, which in all its stylistic qualities diverges so greatly from the severity of the Hippolytus and even from die Hecuba, which is in some respects the forerunner of the poet's later work. It is by no means necessary that a men- tion of the l)attle of Khium should imply that a play was written within but a few years of that event. It is evident that the Athen- ians regarded that battle as a notable victory, as their ofiering at Delphi shows. The inscription is still to be seen : 'A^7/mtot niermann, Prrefatio ad lonera, p. xxxii. 2SchoL At., Wasps, 1, 416. 8 Anal. Eurip., p. 154; Herakles, 1, p. 144. Mlermes, 18, p. 242. ^ 5 Entlioven, Liidovicus, De lone Fab. Eur. Quaestiones selecta^ Bonna^, 1888. 6 Haigh, op. cit., p. 304. Vt •^> I § 86 aveOeaav ri^, arokv Kal ra 07r\p. -The Athenians dedicated tlie colonnade and the arms and the figure-heads which they took from their enemies/^ Pausanias's dating of the stoa is (luestioned on epigraphical grounds by Haussoullier, Hicks, Dittenber- ger, and Kohler, while others defend his .statement because of the architectural evidence \ But in any case his statement about the inscription which mentioned the name of Phormio, the successful general, and about the sacritice of thanksgiv- ing at lihium in honor of the victory, is in all likelihood cor- rect and shows the importance attached to the victory to have been great enough to warrant a reference to that coast even iu later years of the war as 7r)hic and the other entirely without responsion. The alternate songs of the actors, lines 1439-1509, are of the later asynnnetric tvpe, con- structed like the similar passages in the Iphigenia amou'ir the Taurians and the Helen, all three of them l)eing recognition- scenes. Further there is an extended use of the trochai'^c tetra- meter, the old metre used in but two extant ])lays bv /Eschylus and in one by Sophocles, revived by Euripides* its \vvival* co- inciding with increasing license in the iambic trimeter. It is found in this play in three long passages and in dialogue, whereas in the Heracles, probably the earliest extant play of Euripides in which it is used, it occurs but once and in the pas- sage where Madness appears, sent by Hera. All but two lines here belong to her. So in the Troades it is tli(> maddened CVas- ^Frazer, Pausanias, V, pp. 282 ff. ^^ ^ *\ % 1 1 :; 'V J- 87 Sandra who uses it and In but one passage. In the later plays it is used more freely, chiefly of course for excited utterance. Re[>etitions are frequent in the play in its lyrical portions, and this, as has often been noted already, is a mannerism which grows more apparent in the later plays. I find fifteen cases of eV/fef^t?. These stylistic considerations, as has already been argued, tell against the assumption of a date as early as that which Boeckh and Hermann would establish. The late dating of Haigh, who puts the play immediately after the Sicilian expedition, appears to me to be also untenable. This dating j)uts it certainly after the Helen and, in all prob- ability, after the Tauric Iphigenia, to which plays it has many likenesses. Its priority to the Helen appears evident to me in one passage, although the argument may appear to rest on sub- jective and aesthetic grounds. I mean the " purpureus pan- nus", Helen, 248 ff., where Hermes carries away Helen ^Xoepa hpeiTOfievav eaw ireTrXoov^ w4iich is a reminiscence of the ex(piisite lines in the Ion, 887 ff.: 7fX0e=; fJLOL '^^pvao) ')(^aLTav fiap/jiaipoyv, evr e? koXttov^ Kpofcea TreraXa (j)dpeaLV eSpeirov ap6iXovTa )(pvaavyrj. Of this passage Masijueray well says : ^^ Point de details inutiles, une precision lumineuse, Feffet est saisissant". The situation in the Ion is a beautiful and complete picture, in the Helen it is entirely unconvincing. An argument for the priority of the Ion to the Iphigenia and the Helen may be found, I believe, in the recognition scenes. The avayvwpto-t^; in the Ion is similar to that in the Iphigenia ])oth in metre and method. The recognition-scene in the Helen closely resembles that of the Iphigenia. Mas- queray })oints out ' that these three sets of afiot^ala are unique ^ Masqueray, op. cit., 257. >^# 88 in their construction. Of them he says : ^^ On a vu comment Euripide apres de longs tatonnements arriva enfin a la perfec- tions dans les trois chants de reconnaissance qui sont une des beautes de PHelene '\ The duet in the Helen Mas^iuerav calls '^ le plus remarquable de tons ceux (pii existent dans le theatre des Grecs ". This he regards as the climax of Euri- pides's efforts in this direction, and the inference is tliat the Helen follows the other two dramas in time of composition. Between the I])higenia and the Ion it is not easy to decide the question of priority. The two plays are reco-n it ion-dramas with many points in common. Part of the avayvc^^picjL^ in each play is the ^aa^ia, the sampler worked by the hands of Creiisa and Iphigenia respectively. This is evidently one of the stock means of recognition such as are criticized by Aristotle in the sixteenth chapter of his Poetics : elhy^ 6e avayvcop{aem^ Trpconj fih varexPOTciTij Kal fj -rrXdaTrj xp^vrai dt' airoplav, /; ha t^v ai)p,dayv. The tokens in the Ion are of the class condemned l)y Aristotle as inartistic, and the description of the tokens in the Iphigenia is expressly mentioned by Aristotle as being only less bad than the use of tokens — 6?;}^ ^^hp tiv eina kch e.eyKelv. The recognition of Orestes by Iphigenia on the other hand is commended by Aristotle as the model type of recognitions, where ^^the startling discovery is made by natural means '\ ^'Such recognition alone", he continues, '^lispenses with the artificial aid of tokens and necklaces". The recognition in the Helen, too, is Si' dK6rwv in that it is intimately connected with the plot itself Monclaus reco-nizes Helen as his real wife when the news of the disappearance of the phantom is brought to him. Granted the existence of the phantom Helen, which is an essential part of the plot of the play, the recognition of the true Helen is brought about not by sign or tokens but by natural means. Does this mean a progres- sion in the art of avayvaypio-L^; on the part of I^uripid^s ? In the Ion the we find conventional cradle, swaddling-l)ands, necklace, bracelets, which are condemned by Aristotle; in the Iphigenia I. 4\ If 89 the descrijHion of the sampler, the spear and the lock of hair, which is characterized by Aristotle as coming next in the scale of artistic propriety, but this combined wdth a recognition St cIkotcop, which wins the special approbation of Aristotle ; last the Helen with its perfectly natural and artistic recognition, con- sistent with and brought about by the exigencies of the super- natural plot. The Electra testifies that Euripides was grow- ing critical in the matter of avayvchpLac^ ; for he condemns in that })lay without exception the tokens used by ^Eschylus in the Choepliori, although it must be said that the means he himself adopts in the Electra also come under Aristotle's criti- cism. It seems to me entirely probable that there is a working out of the technique of the recognition-scene in its motiving in these three plays. Ion, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Helen, similar to that which Masqueray has pointed out in the metrical form of these same scenes. 1 therefore place the Ion before the Iphigenia, which I believe to have preceded the Helen. Vv. 1582 sq(i. apj)ear to me to contain an irrefragable argu- ment against Ilaigh's dating. How could Athena be repre- sented in the years just following the Sicilian Expedition as speaking of the islands and the sea-coast Ionian cities as "giv- ing strength to this my land " ? Considering the falling away of Chios, Miletus, Erythrre, Lebedos, Erse, Clazomense, ^Myti- lene, and Euboea \ it would seem impossible that the empire which was so ra])idly dissolving could have been spoken of with such security and pride. It is not the political tone of Aristo- phanes's drama of 411, the Lysistrata. I have not found the significance which I attach to these lines mentioned by any one, but Wilamowitz makes a similar inference, w^hich appears to me not so well founded, from lines 1590 ff., " Denn die Prophezeiung Athenas, welche die lonier als Xachkommen Ions, Dorer und Achaeer als niedere Race behandelt, ist nach dem Winter 413-12 einfach undenkbar"^ I do not see that iTlmc. VIII, 5fl: 2 Hermes, XVIU, p. 242. ') # 90 the two latter stocks are treated in any way as iuicrior in their ascription to Xuthos and Creiisa, and I think tliis passage (juite as possible after the year 412 as before it. But f,,r The rea- son given above I agree with Wihimowitz in making ^^ der Zusammenbruch des Reiches " the termlnm ante ijunn for the play. Enthoven's argnnient directed toward ])lacing tlie Ion and the Helen together in 412 is not valuable and, as W'ila- mowitz remarks of a part of it, '' richtet sich selbst" \ ^Vilamowitz considers that 421 is the terminus post oi^ iirvpcl^rayv rhv deov el iroXefxovaiv a^ecvov ^ Hermes, XVIII, p. 242. ^ 4\ r. «t:/ t9 *%<'/ ^ 91 earat. o 8e avelXev avroU, w? Xeyerai, /cara Kpdro^ TroXefiovcrt VLKi]v ecreaOat, Kal avTo • v^ I c > 93 sagen, Elektra, Oedipus, Orestes, eine haufung alter motive zu einem grossen schauergemiilde, Phoenissen. mitten zwischen sol- cheu scenen eine verherrlichung des OeaipriTLKo^ ^io<^, Antiope, endlich die Bakchen, eine darstellung der wilden geister, die ihn in dem rasenden taumel hielten, und von denen er sich in der ueueu umgebung los zu machen suchte, indem er sie verkor- perte^'. It is fair to remember that we have a larger proportion of extant plays of Euripides belonging to the years from 415 down to tlie year of his death than to any other period of his literary activity. Other periods might present as many contra- dictions as this, were they as fully represented. Further, the more romantic character of the work of Euripides in this period is due to the " Zeitgeist '' which is so apparent in all aspects of the end of the fifth century, the forerunner of the humanistic fourth century, which is indeed, as compared with the fifth, an embodiment of the Oeayp^Ttfcb^ /3to9. In this period in which Wilamowitz says that Euripides could have had no joy in his work, the latter composed the Tauric Iphigenia. This, it ap- pears to me, is sufficient answer to the statement of Wil- amowitz about this period : '' der innere friede war fiir den dichter verloren : er hat auch kein werk mehr hervorgebracht, da< uns auch nur in dem masse befreidigen konnte, wie es selbst der Herakles noch kann ". The juxtaposition of the Trojan trilogy and the year fraught with potential disaster in which the Atht^niaus sailed for Sicily is temptingly suggestive, but an exam- ination of the remnant of the trilogy really affords little support for the hy])othesis that in these plays Euripides spoke from the gloom with which his soul was filled, or that in them he renounced his country. His interest in the w^elfare of Athens revived speedily in the latter case. Cf. inter alia the closing lines of the Electra. In the Troades itself there is nothing that could be pressed to give an allusion to the situation of Athens in 416-15. In that year its outward circumstances were far from being ana- logous to those of Troy. Athens was prosperous and strong, its i*5» 94 95 treasury being replenished as a result of the years without campaigning and its army full of young strenirtli that lind grown up since the disastrous early years of the war. No dominating motive can be observed in the Troades, and its sit- uations and language are largely dependent on the Hecul)a and the Andromache. The fragments of the Alexander and the sketch given by Hyginus do not yield much for the theory that this triloiry voices Euripides's deep despair. The plot involves onlv the recognition of the young Paris by Cassandra's gift of prophecy, by ^vhich means he is saved from death at tlie hands of his brother Deiphobus. The fragments of the play are chiefly sen- tentious utterances about the uncertainties of liiV, the wisdom of moderation in grief, qualities of slavery, an encomium of evyeveta, disparagement of wealth, and like topics. The fragments of the Pahunedes have more character \ There are some lines in the style of Prometheus on his benefits to the human race by the invention of writing, some striking and much quoted verses in the lament for Palamedes : ifcciper, eKcipere rap 7rdpao(f)OPj o) Aavaoi, rav ovhev aXyvvovaav aj]S(wa /jLovadi'-. There are also lines which doubtless had their own meaning to the audience of the time, those quoted by Aristophanes in the Frogs, 1446 ff. : €C TCOP TToXlTMP olat VVP 7rLITT€V0fJi€P, TovTOi^ a7rL(TT7J(7ai/jLep, oh 3' ov xP^/^^^ci, TOVTOiat XP'n^cLifxeaO\ caa)^ acoOel/xep dp\ It IS impossible for us, however, not knowing the exact cir- 1 Aristophanes, however, calls the Palamedes i>vxp6c. Thesm. 848. ^Xaiick, Fragm., 588. ^Nauck, Fragm., 582. I ■>) U S « < 1.1 1^ I cumstances in which they were written, to see the point of the verses, and Aristophanes himself seems to use them in ridicule of their ambiguous, oracular character. I hold, then, that the date of the Trojan trilogy is not of sig- nificance in the jK)int of reflecting changes of '^ Weltanschauung" on the part of Euripides or in connection wdth the political events of that year. The Iphigenia among the Taurians. The style of the Tauric Iphigenia places it indisputably among the ])hiys of Euripides's last period ^ i. e., '^ Helena, beide Iphigenien, Phcenissen, Orestes, Bakchen, zu welchen von verlornen aber geniigend kenntlichen Andromeda, Antiope, Hypsi])yle, Bakchen treten, fiir sie alle mit ausnahme der taur- ischen I])higenia ist die eutstehung im letzen jahrzehnt des dichters urkundlich bezeugt". The resolutions in the trimeter give it a place between the Troades and the Helen". The trochaic tetrameters, 1204-1283, are evidence of a compara- tively late composition, occurring as they do in nine plays of which six are known and the rest are believed to be of late date. Further the extended use of dochmiacs mixed with other metres, particularly the ^' enoplics ", is emphasized by Wilamowitz as a characteristic of the later plays I " Der Her- akles hat nur die eno])lischen dochmien in sehr breiter aus- dehung angewandt, die drei letzten gesangnummern gehoren ihnen ganz an, ausserdem finden sie sich in Andromache (S25- 65), Troerinnen (241-91), Ion (762-811 : 1445-1509), Helena (628-77), Iphig. Taur. (827-99), Phcenissen (103-192), Orestes (166-208, 1246-1310, 1353-65), Bakchen (1017-23 ; 1 153-99)." That the verbal style of the play does not show the exaggerated mannerisms that are in evidence in most of the 1 p, ? Rriihn, K., Iphigenie auf Tauris, 1874, p. 16; Wilamowitz, Herakles, 1895, I, pp. 143 fT. 2 Kumjiel, op. cit., p. 467. 2 Wilamowitz, Herakles, I, p. 147. 41 96 later plays is due to the care which the poet has taken in its composition. Repetitions are used with moderation. The richness of poetical vocabulary, especially in the nature epithets, is characteristic of the later style. In Frogs, 1232 if., there is a quotation from the play: Eur. UeXoyjr 6 TaprciXeios ek Utaav /loXcov Ooalaiv iTTTTOc^ — .Esch. Xj^kvOlov uTroyXeaeu. Eoscher finds an early termlmis ante quern for the Tphic;enia in lines 46 ff. of the Acharnians, on which the schoh'ast says : KeXeov yap fcal TpLrrroXeixov, ravra 8e Xeyet iv TraiSui, aKcoiTTcov TOP Evpt7ri8r]v, ael ySem airayyeXXovra ra yeuj] iv aXXoL^ re Kal Kar ap'^a<; rf;? iu Tavpoi^ 'Icfyiyeveia^. Roscher says ' : " Die taurische Iphigenia, die 280 [Auflos- ungen] zahlt und desshalb von Zirndorfer in das Jahr 414 gesetzt wird, muss doch schon im Jahre 425 bekannt gewesen sein, da in den Acharnern Ansj)ielungen darauf vorkommen. (Arist. Acharn., 47 Schol.)". There is certainly a close re- semblance between the speech of Amphitheos, Ach. lines 44-50, and the beginning of the prologue of the Tauric Iphigenia : aXX aOdvaro'^. 6 yap W/xcfyiOeo^ Ar/injrpo^ 7]v Kal TptTTToXe/jLov TovTOv Se KeXeo9 ytyverat, yafiel Se KeXeo? aLvapeT7]v, ti^Otjv ifjL7]v, i^ ^9 AvkIpo<; iyever- eK tovtov 8' iyw aOd avaro^ el/i'.^ Compare the beginning of the Iphigenia : UeXoxjr 6 TavTciXeio^ e? Ulaav fioXwv DOalcTiv 'lttitol^ Olpofidov ya/iel Kopyv, ef ^9 '\Tp€v<; efSXaarev 'Arpeco^ Be Trak MepeXao^ 'Ayafxe/uLrcop re- rod 8' ecjyvp iyoj. ^Roscher, op. cit., p. 534. 2Ar. Ach., 47. f 3 fi>V % ] (121^5)^'. He points out that in Theoclvmenus there is an cxac'-ireration of the type found in Thoas. He compares the irony, or double meaning, used by Iphigenia in her words in deceiving Thoas with that of Helen as she deceives Theoclymenus and shows the greater elaboration of that employed by Helen. Furtlier he shows that in the fco/jifi6<; [sic] of the Helen there is a much greater elaboration in the matter of repetitions ridiculed by Aristophanes, and argues that Euripides in composing the scene in the Helen was striving to outdo the corresponding pas- sage of the Iphigenia. In a paper by Professor W. N. Bates, published in the Proceedings of the American Philological Association for 1901, pp. cxxii ff, the priority of the Iphigenia is advocated with substantially the same arguments as those of Schroeder and Bruhn. A list of parallel passages from two of ^ Wil., An. Eur., p. 153. c^ l« v^iri> hlO %d0 99 the plays is there given. Bruhn's statement of the case for the priority of the Iphigenia is excellent, but it appears to me th;it it can be carried further, and that the unmistakable de- pendence of the Helen on the other play for much that is new and striking in its plot can be demonstrated. The prologue of the Iphigenia contains two motives belong- ing to the Iphigenia myth, in all probability introduced by Euripides gratuitously into his Helen, and suggested by his use of them in the I})higenia. The first of these is the cloud-motive in the Iphigenia, lines 27-30, the Helen, lines 44-45 : I. T. aXX' i^eKXeyfrev e\a(f)ov livTihovad /jlov "ApT€fxt<; A;)^aiot9, Sia Se Xaynrpov aWepa TrejjLyjraaa jx eh rr'jvb^ coKLnev Tavpcov ')(66va. Helen. Xa^cov S' ji 'EpfjLrj^ ev TrTV')(^alaLv alOepo^ v6(f)eX7j KaXv-yjra^; tc. r, X. This trait undoubtedlv belonged to the story of the substitu- tion of the hind for Iphigenia and her carrying away by Artemis, a story which Euripides found ready to his hand. It is true that the cloud is not expressly mentioned in the one account taken from an earlier source which w^e possess, namely the resume of the story as told in the Cypria, found in Proclus -} "A/JTe/ii? 8e avrrjv i^apirdcraaa et? Tavpov^ ^eraKOfMiXei teal aOdv- arov TTOLel' eXac^ov he dvrl tt}? Koprj^ irapLaTTjcn ro) ^(O/jlo). There can be no doubt, however, that Iphigenia w^as snatched aw^ay in a cloud which made her invisible, as a cloud is a regular concomit- ant of such situations. Cf. Od. VII, 40 ff., .En., I, 411 ff. It does not appear that there was any such episode in the story of the phantom Helen. According to some authorities Stesichorus in his famous palinode had Helen remain all the while in Sparta : Kal top /lev '^rrjaiyopov ev ry vcrTepov mSt] ^ Proclus Grarariiaticus, 445, in Horaeri Carmina et Cycli Epici Reliquiae, Didot, Paris, 1844. li> 100 Xeyetv on to Trapdirav ovSe irXevaetev rj 'EXevrj {ovSa/xoaeK Or if Herodotus follows Stesiclionis in his account, the latter repre- sents her as having been carried off by Paris, but driven by storms to Egypt : ' KXe^avhpov apirdaavTa 'EXevrjp etc ^Trdprr]^ airoirXeeiv e? rr^v eavrov Koi fXLV w? iyevero ev rep Alyaup i^Marai avefMOi eK^dWovai e? ro AlyvTrrLOv ireXayo^- ivOevrer Se — ov yap ctvUi rd rrvevfiaTa — dirLKveeTaL eV Xlyvinov k. t. X.^. It would seem that Euripides in order to tnins{)()rt Helen innocently to Egypt has woven into the plot of his HekMi an incident that was an integral part of the material of his earlier play. It is true that von Premerstein maintains that Euripides derived this episode from Stesiehorus himself. Ci\ p. <;}i;.^ " Nach der Palinodie des Stesiehorus hat Alexandros nicht die Helene, sondern ein tiiuschendes Trugbild (dScoXov) nach Troia entfiihrt (ausdriickliche Zeugnisse S. 649 : Apollodor S. 642 : vgl. aueh Lycophron S. 64o). Die wirkliche Helena wird von Hermes (Apollodor, ebenso Euripides, vgl. 8. 6:^') ff.), auf Zeus' Rathschluss heimlich entriickt'^, etc. The citation from Apollodorus, however, by no means points conclusively to Stesiehorus. The use of emot and Kard Tiva<; in this passage shows a discrimination in the use of autliorities which von Premerstein appears to overlook.' emoi Se (fyao-iv EX€VT]p p.ev vTrd'Ep/jLov Kara /3ovX7]aiv Alo^ KO/JLiaOfjpai KXairelaav et? Kh/vrTTOv Kal SoOelaav Tipcorel tm /SaacXel tmp XlyvTrricov (f)vXaTTeLv, AXe^avSpov 5e irapayevecrOai ek Tpoiap TreTToiijfievov ifc ve(^m> eiScoXov exovra, Mez^eXao? irevTe vav^ rd^ oXa<; exo)u p.eO^ eavTOv TroXXd^ X^P^^ -rrapa/jLeiylra^ iroXXd avi'aOpoi^ei xp^h fxaTU Kal Kard Ttva^ evpiafcerat irapd llpcoTel rep twv WLyuirricop /SacTiXel 'EXeV/;, fiexpt rore €i8coXop e/c ve(f)MP eaxyjfcoro^ tov MeveXdov oktco Se TrXavrjOeU erj] KaTerrXevaev et? Mu/cr/t^a? (sic) ''. ' Dion Chrysostoiii, XI, 162 A. 2Hdt. II, il2. 3 Von Premerstein, A., Ueber der Mythosin Euripides's Helen, Philologus, 1896, pp. 684 f!. *Mythographi gr., ed. Wagner, I, p. 188. 5 Epitome Vaticana, pp. 226 ff. '> 7J Wy \)0 •>Ld» 101 With the exception of the number of the ships everything that is told here without the restriction of evioi or Kard rtva^ goes back to the fourth book of the Odyssey. The rest can be referred to Euripides as well as to Stesiehorus. In view of the almost universal ascription in antiquity of the invention of the dBcoXov of Helen to Stesiehorus, it seems not improbable in the absence of any countervailing evidence that the ultimate source of Herodotus's account of Helenas stay in Egypt was Stesieho- rus. If that is the case — and none of the passages adduced by von Premerstein disproves it — the invention of the episode of the carrying away of Helen by Hermes is due to Euripides, and it was then evidently suggested by the similar motive in his Iphigenia. This first point admits of dispute, in view of the question how far Euripides invented and how far he followed Stesiehorus in his treatment of the phantom Helen. The second point, however, is indisputable. The originality of the Iphigenia is absolutely clear. This is the similarity of I. T., vv. 37-40 : Ovo) yap oVto? tov vopov Kal irpiv rroXet 09 dv KareXdrj Ti]vhe yr]v "EXXrjv dvjjp, and Helen, line 154 : KTeivet yap ^EXXijU ovtlv dv XdjBr) ^evov, and Helen, lines 441-442 : i) KajOavrj "EXX?;!' 7r€(f)VKd)<; , olaiv ovk iincrTpocfiaL This is a part of the story of the Iphigenia imported into the Helen. For the originality of the Iphigenia, see Herodotus, IV, 103 : Ovovat pep tt) irapOepM tov^ T€ vavayov^ Kal rois dv Xdl3o)aip"EXX/]pa)p rpoircp roicpSe^ k, t. X. That this likeness should exist between two plays so alike throughout and not have come from one to the other is un- thinkable, (an anv doubt remain which contained the mo- I /«'** 102 tive first, when that motive is seen to be part of the myth in one play and a gratuitous invention in the other? There is much in the workmanshij) of the Helen which shows " Flickarbeit ", the source of which may be traced to the Iphigenia. In the first scene of the Helen immediatelv follow- ing the prologue Helen questions Teucer about Troy and the fate of the Greek heroes in a strain similar to that of I. T., lines 517 ff., w^here Iphigenia, in the words of Orestes, voarov r W^^aiMv k. t. A,. The parallelism between the two passages is clear. The Iphigenia is evidently the original, inasmuch as the conversa- tion is the natural development of the situation, advancing the action toward the TrepLireTeia and carried on between the prin- cipal personages of the drama. In the Helen the scene is in- troduced merely to give Helen the preliminary information which she requires as material for her laments to the chorus. It is by no means essential to the development of the plot, and Teucer is a perfunctory character wdio disappears com[)letely from the play at the end of this scene. The character of Theonoe again is as perfunctory as that of Teucer. She is not necessary to the plot, and is merely a j)art of the machinery of the play. Helen goes off the stage to con- sult her about the safety of Menelaus and so leaves the stage free for Menelaus's oncoming. That the fate of Helen and Menelaus rests partly with her gives occasion for two long argumentative speeches on the part of Helen and Menelaus, but does not advance the plot or add to it. On the contrary she delays the real TrepiTrereta, which comes from Helen^=; suc- cessful tricking of Theoclymenus. She is not a convincing character, and one feels that she could have warned her brother of ^lenelaus's coming, had her gift of prophecy been what it should have been. She is indeed a faint reflex of the priestess Iphigenia in the other play. It is this influence that has so ' . J « "I I V-' : •ll^ fP t, • 103 transformed her charming prototype, the daughter of Proteus, Eidothoe, of the Odyssey. The recognition scenes, as has often been noted, are parallel. The scene in the Helen reads like a travesty of the noble pas- sages in the Iphigenia. In the one Iphigenia is sceptical : feV, ov 8LKaia)<; ti)^ Oeov ttjv irpoaTroXov XpaLPet^ clOUtol^ TrepiffaXcov TrerrXoi^ X^P^' in the other Menelaus : TTom? hdp.apTO^ ; p^7) Oiyy^ ifMcbv TrhrXoiv. Bruhn has pointed out the exaggeration of the succeeding scene in the Helen compai^ed with that in the Iphigenia, while the reseml)lance is undoubted. The device l)y which escape is effected is much simpler and more natural in the Iphigenia than in the Helen. That the image of the goddess defiled by the touch of impure hands should be cleansed by a holy lustration in the sea is reasonable, and the tale w^ould inevitably command the respect of Tlioas, ^vho — with Tauric limitations — is god-fearing. It is a much wilder flight of fancy to suppose that the jealous and suspicious Theoclymenus, in spite of his fear and hatred of Greeks, would be so guileless as to allow one of the feared and hated race to take Helen out of sight of land, in a swift-sailing Phamician ship, with all the equipment necessary for defense and for a vovage, in order to perform the evdXia KTeplafxaja of Menelaus. The procedure in the Iphigenia is plausible ; it is forced and overdone in the Helen. The Iphigenia is admirable in all its technique, and even the much maligned deus ex machina at the end is perfectly well-motived. Athena is by no means superfluous : she has much to do. She must show to Thoas that the hand of the gods is in all that has passed, she must rescue the captured Greek maidens, and before all, in this Attic play, she must ordain the manner and place of the new ceremonies of Artemis /i/>m 104 at Halae and Braurou. The play, which owes its inception to Attic legend and religious customs, would have been incomplete without this message of Athena. In the Helen iheie is noth- ing for the Dioscuri to do, since Menelaus and FTclon have already effected their escape, except to defend the sliadowy Theonoe from lier brother's wrath. Tiieir speech ck)selv re- sembles that of Athena and is plainly modelled on it. Helen is to be a goddess at the island Helene as IplnV^Miia is to be a priestess at Brauron. Menelaus is provided for as is Orestes, but in neither case in the Helen was any further word abniit its characters necessary. Their later fate is mentioned - nia is in point here - : ^^ A deas ex machina for the sake^of Thoas and the chorus would have seemed hiuhly crude and forced '\ lu the Helen it is to save Theonoe, who'has so slight a share in the interest of the play, that they intervene. To recapitulate, then, the Helen has borrowed from the Iphigenia most probal)ly the cloud-motive, certainly that of the putting to death of Greeks who land on the hostUe shore, ^Van TIerwerden, Helena, 1875. ^Flagg, I., Iphigenia among the Taurians, Boston, 1891, Introd., p. 29. J %>' 105 and the trick by which the barbarian king is led to let his captives escape in the belief that they are performing sacred rites. Theonoe, the Oeamwho^ Koprjj is an unnecessary character par- tially suggested by Iphigenia. Teucer is another character that is introduced merely to help out the mechanism of the play in a scene modelled on a notable scene of the Iphigenia. The- oclymenus, as Bruhn has noted, is an exaggerated Thoas. The recognition-scene in the Helen is almost a travesty of the noble scene in the Iphigenia. The close of the Helen is itself motive- less, and the Dioscuri would never have appeared but for the well-motived appearance of Athena in the Iphigenia. A comparison of these themes of the two plays answers, in my judgment, the question which Klagg puts : ^^ We should really be glad to know whether the Iphigenia came before or after the Helen. Did a happy inspiration and successful spon- taneous effort lead to an inferior attempt on the same lines? Or was Euripides able, after giving himself free rein in the semi-comic Helen, to find in it a model for such restraint and single-mindedness as were needed to produce a Tauric Iphi- genia?'''. The Tauric Iphigenia surely preceded the Helen. We may take the a])pearance of that play then as our terminus ante quern for the Iphigenia. A terminus post quern is not so easily found. Bergk finds it in the Electra, which he places immediately after the Troades. His argument is this : ^ ^^ Wenn nun in der Elektra, deren Auffiihrung w^ir 01. 91, 2 ansetzten, am Schlusse auf die Ereisprechung von Orestes vor dem Gerichte des Areopags und seine Ansiedelung in Arkadien hingewiesen wird, ohne der weiteren Verfolgung der Erinnyen und der Fahrt des Orestes zu den Tauren zu gedenken, so muss die Iphigenia spiiter gedichtet sein ". But the Orestes likewise has no Tauric episode and, as Bruhn points out, is not consistent in the closing prophecy of Apollo with the abid., Introd., p. 40. ^Griechische Litteratur-Geschichte, iii, p. 552. MM ^1^ 106 iindoubtedlj earlier plays, the Electra and the Andromache \ Neither Sophocles nor Euripides bound himself to one form of myth to be followed absolutely in all the plays dealing with the same characters. The divergence in the myth would, however, make it out of the question to assume that the Iphigenia was brought out in same trilogy as the Electra. That play in all probability was brought out in the spring of 413. The very great similarity between the Iphigenia and of the Helen bring these plays near together in point of date. But this very similarity, as Bergk remarks % would prevent their belonging to the same set of dramas. The Electra must lie between them. Orestes had been introduced by Euripides into his Androm- ache of the year 417, but only as " Nebenfigur " ^ That a '' HauptroUe " is assigned to him in the Iphigenia, as well as in the Electra and the Orestes, points to a later date than 417 for the Iphigenia. The question of the date of the Ion enters into the question of a terminus post quern for the Ij)higenia. The Ion has also 412 for its terminus ante quern. I i)elieve that in the two romantic pieces, which evidently beh)ng to the same period, an advance in technique in the avaypd)pLai<; is evident in the Iphigenia, marking it as later in com|X)sition. The Andromache, the Ion, and the Tauric Iphigenia arc characterized by an extreme bitterness toward the I>el])hic oracle, which suggests tiiat they belong to the same time. The Andromache I place without hesitation in the year 417; the Ion may have come the next year; next came the Trojan trilogy, and the year 414 is left for the Iphigenia. Here Zirndorfer places it for metrical reasons, which of course can- not date minutely, but are valuable, when due care is exer- cised, in indicating the period of composition. On the other hand, von Premerstein ^ finds in the Ion, as 1 Bruhn, Einleitung, p. 16. 2 P. 552. 3 See also Bergk, pp. 552 fT. * Pbilologus, 55, p. 653. J ^5* % %iii 9i m 107 well as in the Helen, ^^ ein Musterbeispiel eines romantischen Intriguenstiickes'' and holds that the Iphigenia, earlier than these two, '' treads the less intricate paths of the older trag- edy ". It may be said, however, that some practice in the making of romantic plots is implied in the perfection of the Tauric Iphigenia, and its comparative lack of intricacy involves fewer dXoya and evinces more careful workmanship. The Ion ap])ears to be the earliest of the romantic plays of Euripides wliich we ])Ossess ; the Iphigenia among the Taurians shows an advance in technique which brings it near perfection ^ ; the Electra is an attempt to cast in the new romantic and human- istic form the old and familiar myth already treated by iEs- chylus and Sophocles ; the Helen with a romantic plot closely similar to that of the Iphigenia shows in some respects an ad- vance in workmanship^, although as a whole it is a mechanically constructed play in which the sutures are evident. The most probable year for the Iphigenia, which evidently belongs to this group of plays, appears to be 414. The Electra. The Electra has been variously dated from 425 to 410. But bv far the trreater number of recent critics hold that the play was brought out in the spring of 413. An argument for the year 425 is given by Zielinski as fol- lows ^ : ^' Nun war es im Friihjahr 425, als unter Sophocles und Eurymedon 40 Schiife nach Sicilien abgingen, unterdessen hatten die Syrakusaner durch Verrat sich Messanas bemach- tigt, das bis dahin [sic] den Athenern freundlich gesinnt war. Bel keiner zweiten Gelegenheit kounten die Verse der Dios- kuren El. 1347 if., PO) 6' eVl TTOPTOV ^LKekoV (TTTOvZrjy *Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, xvi. «Cf. Masqiieray, pp. 252 fi'. 3 Zielinski, Th., (rliederung der attischen Komodie, Leipzig, 1885, pp. 106-7. V M 108 ihrer Wirkung gewisser sein. Ich m()clite dalior die Tetralogie Elektra, Melaiiippe II, Andromeda, uiid Helena ini Jalire 425, die Kalligenia des Aristaphanes in die grossen Dionysien 424 datieren '\ The language of the Dioscuri, however, is much more in point, if their words be referred to the expedition of 413. In line 1350 : TOL<; (lev fxvaapoh ovk e7rapr]yo/jL€v^ the expression fxvaapol^, ^Mefded'^ impur is, could hardly he applied to the Syracusans for the entirely defensible piece of strategy by which they gained Messene, which, as Zielinski fails to mention, had had its friendly sentiments toward Athens forced upon it (at the sword's point) in the Athenian attack on it in the summer of 426 '. These had, therefore, been of short duration. As for the Helen and the Andromeda, which also Zielinski places in this year, their dates are established by trustworthy tradition ; and, as Wilamowitz says in another con- nection, "an urkundlichen Daten riittelt nur die AVillkur'\ Haupt's arguments - for the year 425 are no more convinc- ing. He sees parodies of the Electra in the Clouds and the Birds. These, however, are very far from being cogent and cannot ^veigh at all against the strong reasons for putting the Electra much later. The lines in question are : El. 175 if. : ovfc iw ayXaiai^, (f)i\aL, Ov^ov ovS^ eVi ;^/)i;o-eoi9 opp.OL I r > V . > (k> J 7\ -:^J i 114 115 Steiger ^ gives many other parallel passages where there is more or less open criticism of Sophocles in the Eiiripidean verses. Vahlen- has shown with great detail the likenesses in the I scenes between Clytaemnestra and Electra and demonstrates thereby the priority of the Sophoclean drama, pointing out the dependence of the scene in the Euripidean Electra on the \ other and the better motiving of its arguments. Kaibel ^ com- pares striking passages throughout the plays which show a de- velopment and expansion of Sophoclean thoughts by Euripides. " Bei Soph.'', he says, " geht Elektra schlecht gekleidet und schlecht genahrt einher (191), bei Eur. hat sie einen schlichten Bauern heirathen miissen und fiihrt darum in barter Arbeit ein kiimmerlich iirmliches Leben ; so mangelt ihr schone Kleidung und gute Nahrung von selbst. ^schylus hat dergleichen Kleinmalerei nicht ; hat Soph, sie erfunden oder Euripides ? Die Keime fur die breitere und zugleich grobere Malerei des Eur. finden sich alle schon bei Sophokles ; er kann der entleh- nende nicht sein." Sophocles's Electra, lines 267-274, is compared by Kaibel with Euripides's Electra, lines 314-331, as evidence of the way in which Euripides endeavors to outdo Sophocles with the latter's own material. He well cites the o)? Xeyovaiv as showing the dependence of Euripides upon Sophocles. Euripides is not "drawing the thing as he sees it ", but " von Horensagen '', as Kaibel says. Again he cites Soph., El., 341 and 364, comparing Eur., EL, 932-935, with the remark," Dasist bei Soph, ganz individuell auf Chrysothemis zugeschnitten, wahrend bei Eurip. der Ge- ".' danke eigentlich in der Luft schwebt ". It seems hardly worth while to multiply examples. Others are given by Kaibel, and still more may be found passim throughout the plays. The Euripidean prologue furnishes many illustrations of his expansion of Sophoclean themes. From 1 Ibid., vv, 893 c, op. cit., pp. 596 ff. * Vahlen, Hermes, 37. 3 Kaibel, Elektra, 1896, p. 57. 7> iN — \ Electra's song at the beginning of the play Euripides ^ has •, evidently freely borrowed and enlarged. Cf. Soph., EL, 97 with Eur., 60; Soph., 99, and Eur., 160; Soph. 102, Eur., 124; Soph., 107, with the expanded simile Eur., 151 ff . ; Soph., 191 with Eur., 184-5. The evidence is cumulative and it should need only a care- ful reading of the two plays to convince one of the priority of Sophocles's Electra. The critics who have made this com- parison in detail are, with the exception of Wilamowitz, of the opinion that Euripides wrote his Electra after that of Sophocles ^ Wilamowitz says ; " Lediglich aus dem Inhalt, aus der Poesie, heraus habe ich das Altersverhaltniss der Elekr tren bestimmt " ^. He goes on, however, to make a search- ing examination of the metres of the Sophoclean Electra, which fully establishes the fact that that play is among the later works of Sophocles and shows Euripidean influence, as do all his later plays in the lyrical parts. This indicates not that the play is subsequent to that of Euripides, but that it did not precede it by many years. And from the polemic spirit of the Euripi- dean play one is inclined to conjecture that the offending Sopho- clean drama, which is the reason for the existence of the other, did not long antedate it. The Helen. The exact dating of the play depends upon the following scholia : Aristophanes, Frogs, 53 : Trjv ^AvSpofiSav : Bca tl fxr} dWo tl to)v irpo oXijov ScBa- xOevTOJv Kal KaXcbv, 'Ti/rtTruXT/i/, Ootz^tWa?, ^Aimoirijv; rj Be ^AvBpofieSa 07800) €T€L TTporjXOev. Thesmophoriazusse, 1011 :* a-TjfieLOv vTreSrjXcoG-e Uepa-eis k, t. X. Trtdavck' (TwheBihaKTaL yap T^ ^FtXevTj. ^Soph., EL, vv, 86 ff. 2Wil., Hermes, 18, p. 242. 3 Hermes, 18, pp. 242 ff. ♦Kutherford, Schol. Ar., I, p. 289. ^i^ 116 The date of the Frogs is given in the hypothesis to the play : ihthaxOr) iirl KaWtov rov ficTa 'Airnyevrjj i, e., 01. 93.3, 405 B. C. The Helen, then, together with the Andromeda was brought out in the spring of 412. The parodies on these two plays in the Thesmophoriazusse of 411 are also of importance in fixing the date. That play, unlike the Lysistrata of the same year, which is entirely politi- cal, is a satire on the literary tendencies of the time \ It is evident from the play that the Helen and the Andromeda must have achieved great popularity ; for much of the play is given up to parodies of the two. Mnesilochus (v. 850) says that to bring Euripides to his rescue he will use one of his dramas : iywSa' T7JV Kacvrjv ^^Xevrjv fiL/JLTJcrofJiai, The term kulptjv has been variously interpreted, and in all likelihood it refers both to the recent production of the play and to the innovations in its plot. In line 1012 Mnesilochus says that in making his escape Euripides in the character of Perseus has indicated to him that he must assume the character of Andromeda. It is on this line that the scholiast says that this is very reasonable, because that play was brought out with the Helen. I do not see why Rutherford here assumes a lacuna ^ and calls this " a fragment of a note, which may perhaps justify the inference that the Andromeda and the Helen were both exhibited in 412 B. C". The note appears to me complete, and the inference inevitable. The criticism in the Thesmophoriazusse is not so fine as that in the Frogs, being here for the most part merely caricature and suggesting no principle of aesthetic criticism. In one passage Aristophanes ridicules the mannerisms and characteristics of Euripides, which appear markedly in the scene in the Helen which he is caricaturing ; see Thesm., lines 915 f . : (f)€pe ere Kvaco^ airaye yH airay airay airayi fie, ^Meineke, Aristoph. Comoedise, I, Commentatio, p. xliii. 2 Op. cit., I, p. 4-9. A -> 'V 117 He achieved a greater success than this seven years later in the celebrated song of Glance in the Frogs. The fate of the flower-woman who can no longer earn her living, because Euripides has spoiled the market for her gar- lands by persuading men that there are no gods, vvv 8' ovTO<; iv Talaiv Tpaj(pBLat<; ttolwv Toiff; dvBpa^ avairerreLKev ovk elvai Oeov^ ^, refers to the tone of the plays from the Andromache down the to the Helen (417-412) in their bitterness against oracles and popular religious conceptions. Besides the indications in the play of Aristophanes, there is a passage in the Electra of Euripides which may be interpreted in the light of facts as an announcement of the forthcoming Helen. This is in lines 1280 ff. : 'EXeV?; T€ Od^ei' Upcoreo)^ yap eK S6/xcov TficeL XiTTOva AtyvTrroVy ovS^ rjXOev ^pvya^^ Zeis S\ ft)? e/3t9 yevoLTO koI <^6vo^ ^poroiv, elh(oXov 'KXevrjf; i^eTre/iyjr^ ek "IXtov, This is usually understood as pointing forward to the Helen, though some have taken it as a reference to a play already published, such a reference as that in the Orestes to the plot of the Andromache, and that in the Ion to the plot of the Erechtheus. Since everything else points to 413 for the Electra and since we have good tradition for the date 412 for the Helen, this passage must refer to the yet unpublished play, which evidently was at least outlined in Euripides's mind, if not composed, when he wrote these lines in the Electra. The question of the relation of the Helen and the Tauric Iphigenia has been discussed already. The Helen has evi- dently drawn upon that play for its plot and shows in some respects an advance in technique on it and the Ion in the recognition-scenes, in respect both of probability and of metre ^. 1 Thesm., vv. 450 fif. ^Masqueray, op. cit., p. 252. 118 119 In metrical and verbal style the Helen is characteristic of its period. It is very long, the lyric parts are expanded, the presence of the chorus is unmotived (cf. Bergk, op. cit.. Ill, p. 551 : " Wie die Anwesenheit hellenischer Frauen am Nilstrom zu rechtfertigen sei, hat der Dichter, der es mit dem Motiviren nicht so genau nimmt, verschwiegen "), and their songs are often irrelevant. The iambic trimeter is marked by frequent resolutions, the play coming between the Ion and the Phoenissse in this respect, and the frequent concomitant of this laxity of the trimeter, the trochaic tetrameter, appears in an excited dialogue between Theoclymenus and the chorus. The duet between Menelaus and Helen, as well as the /co/Lt/io9, is of the unsymmetric type. Masqueray comments thus : " Tout le lyrisme de VH^lene, a part la chante de reconnaissance, est d'ailleurs d'une banality qui sent la decadence " ^ The parodos illustrates that subordination of the chorus which so character- izes the later work of Euripides. Definite references to politi- cal events of the day do not appear in the play. In compos- ing the choral passages in vv. 1107 ff. the poet must have had in mind the suffering and losses occasioned by the Syracusan war, though his theme is the Trojan. The Phceniss^. The ancient testimonies which we possess concerning the date of the Phoenissae do not fix it exactly, but assign it with sufficient clearness to Euripides^s last years. This dating is borne out by internal evidence. The statements which refer to the time of its appearance are found in scholia on the Birds and Frogs of Aristophanes and in an hypothesis of the play emanating from Aristophanes of Byzantium. According to the well-known scholion of the Ravenna manuscript on verse 53 of the Frogs the Andromeda appeared in 412, and the Thesmophoriazusse of the following year, which is so largely given up to parodies on Euripides, contains a parody of a ild.jib., p. 212. ^ 'f f line from the Andromeda. Cf. the scholion on Thesm. 1015 ^ €p6fi€va irapa rov avrov x^P^^- Another scholion on verse 424 of the Birds ^ speaks of the verse as ifc tcov /xrjBerrco hiBaxOetatav ^olvl(T(T(ov. The hypothe- sis of Aristophanes of Byzantium assigns the play to the archonship of the unknown Nausicrates, believed by Dindorf to be " suffectus ", and by Bergk to have been an vTroStBdaKaXo^.^ The terminus post quern for the play is evidently 412 B. C. It has been argued by Jahn, Wilamowitz, and Wecklein that, as Euripides spent the last year of his life in Macedonia, the range of possible dates for bringing out the play is narrowed to 411- 408. Zirndorfer* prefers 410 on the ground that the dialogue between Jocasta and Polynices on the sorrows of exile refers to the speech which Alcibiades made at Samos in 411-410 ^ in an assembly of the soldiers in which he lamented the misfor- tunes of his own exile. Wecklein ^ points out that this would suit the year 409 or 408 as well as 410, since the question of the return of Alcibiades was one that filled the minds of the Athenians down to the very day when he returned to Athens and was received with open arms by the people in spite of the omen of the veiled Athena \ The speeches of the 6x'>^o^ from Athens and Pirseus, who flocked down to welcome him in 407 ^, treat Alcibiades's exile as greatly undeserved and himself as one whose action against his native country was justified by the treatment which he had received at the hands of his enemies. There is certainly a striking parallel in the conception of Polynices, the ill-treated younger brother, which Euripides pre- 1 Rutherford, op. cit., II, p. 500. 'Dindorf, Adnot. ad Aristoph., Ill, II, p. 602. » Bergk, Griech. Litt, II, 561. *Zirndorfer, cited by Fix, Paley, Wecklein, etc. sThuc. VIII, 81. 6 Wecklein, Phoenissae, Leipzig, 1894, pp. 20-21. 'Xen. Hell., I, 11 ff. *Xen. op. cit., I, 13, 17. 120 sents in the Phoenissae. One line, in my opinion, may have a special significance with reference to the exile of Alcibiades. Plutarch, in speaking of the versatility of Alcibiades, tells of the fame that came to him in Sparta because of his conformity to Spartan ways. " When they saw him ", he says, " with his uncut hair, his cold baths, his coarse bread and black broth, they could hardly believe that such a man ever kept a cook, or saw a perfumer, or brought himself to touch a robe of Milesian purple '' \ Plutarch continues : ^v yap m irdac fiia Seivorrj^ avrrj rayv TToXXwv iv avTo, Kai MX^^V ^VP^^ avOpaiTrcov avve^ofioiovaOaL fcal orvvofMOTraOelv toU iTrtTrjBevfjLaat Kal TaU hiaiTat^ o^vrepa^ rpeirofievo) rpoTrd^ rov x^H'aiXeovTO^;. ttXtjv eKelvo^ p,ev 0)9 Xeyerat irpo^ ev i^aSvvarel ^/ow/tia to XevKov a€pvrj 8e tw aarpaTrrj avvcov xnrepe- ^aXev oyKQ) Kal zoXvTeXeia ttjv UepaLKrjv fieyaXo-rrpeTreLav, ovx eavTov e'l^o-ra? ovtco pa8{co<; eh eWepov ef hepov Tpoirov ov8e irdaav Sexofievo^ TO) rjOet fieTal3oXr)v k. t. X, To this notable adaptability on the part of Alcibiades, which Plutarch distinctly says was not to his pleasure, but was the result of policy, may be referred lines 371-375 of the Phoe- nissae : Ho. ev p.ev fieyiaTOv, ovk exec irappriaiav. \o, BovXov ToB' etTTa? /jltj Xeyetv d tl^ (f)povel. Uo. Ttt? Tcov KpaTovvTCDv a/xaOia^ (f>epeLV XP^^^' \o. Kal TovTo XvirpoVj avvaaoc^elv toI<; jxt) (TO(f)ol<;, Uo. aW €t9 TO K€p8o<; irapa (f)vaLV SovXevreov. * Plat. Ale, I, 23, 5. ^.a/cwv/^wv uad' opuvrac h XfJ(f' Kovpiijvra Kal fvxpoXov- Tovvra Kal fza^y awovra Kal ^(Jfiu uelavi xp^f^^vov hmarelv Kal dtanopelv nizort liayzipov eirl rfjq ohiag ovrog 6 dv^p iax^v ;) npoai^?^efe fivpexpdv v mimaq fjveax^To diyelv x>^avt6og. A I 121 There may be here a thrust at Spartan d/xaOia and rudeness, which Alcibiades adopted ek to /ce/sSo?, unpleasant as he may have found the enforced society of Spartans, longing as he did for Athens. Cf his speech at Sparta, Thuc. VI, 92, 3~4, though this is of course colored by Thucydidean afterthought. Klotz suggests a reference to Alcibiades in ^ iroOeivo^ <\>iXoL<; in line 320, and Zirndorfer refers to him lines 358-360 ^ : firJTepy (f>pov(OV ev kov (j>povcov d ov x^lXeaLV afi(f)iXd\oi^ heivov eTTLfSpe/JLeTaL ^pytcla ;)^eXt8a)i/ eVl l3dpl3apov e^ofievij ireraXoVj ^schin., TI, 76 : KXeo(f)(xiv Se 6 Xvpo7roi6<;, ov ttoXXoI BeSe/xevov ev irehat^ ip^vrj- povevov, Trapeyypacjyek alcrxpo!)^ TroXiVr;? Kal 8L€