THE MALE CHARACTERS OF BURIPIDES
by E M Blaiklock MA
From page 73
The suicide of Evadne and the coming of Iphis have likewise a spiritual relevance to Euripides' theme. He is preparing the way, not without subtlety, for the chilling ending of the play.
Indeed he has now no other preoccupation. The praise of Athens is over. Theseus has done his duty, and maintained at no small cost the cause of civilisation. The death of Evadne has been worked out with sustained horror and suspense, and Iphis has made his heart-broken speech:
Lead me, with speed O lead me to mine home, And hide in darkness, there to make an end
Of this old frame, by fasting pined away.
(Supp. 1104-1107. Way)
He goes, broken like Lear, as desolate as Ocdipus tottering to Colonus. Such is old age in a world where men must fight and slay their fellows. It is the theme which Euripides was to work out more fully in the Phoenissae.
The stage, therefore, is now set for the singular beauty of the final scene. The sons of the dead chiefs slowly march in bearing the ashes of their-sires in funeral urns. They chant:
I bear, Oh I bear
Sad mother, the limbs of my sire from the burning
A burden not light, for the weight of my sorrow is there,—
All that I love in this little vial inurning .
(Supp. 1123-1126. Way)
A passage from another drama (Aeschylus Adam, 445-451, (Headlam) would flash through many a mind.
Euripides has only one remaining task. Argos needs a word.
The incarnation of Athens' excellence appropriately utters it:
Adrastus, and ye dames of Argive race,
Ye see these children bearing in their hands The dust of gallant sires whom I redeemed:
That dust do I and Athens give to these.
But ye must guard the memory of this grace, Keeping my boon for age before your eyes;
And on these boys I lay the self same charge,
To honour Athens and from son to son
To pass on like a watchword this our boon.
(Supp. II6S-1173. Way)
One might imagine this an appropriate ending for the play, and condemn the appearance of Athena, and her insistence upon an oath taken with due ritual of sacrifice from the Argives, as an unnecessary and clumsy addition to the play.
It is worth bearing in mind before making assumptions of this sort, that Euripides was a great dramatist. He had a reason, and an artistic reason for most of the scenes he constructed.
He has a reason here. Unexpectedly, when the play seems over, he adds a trait to Athens' character, as Theseus represents it. Athens' high-souled Hellenism, he seems to say, lives in a world which gives it scant appreciation. Too ready to assume that the memory of benefits received would be treated in Argos as it would have been treated in Athens, Theseus confidently dismissed the grateful Adrastus. He needed a worldlier wisdom. Stern bondage of oath, sealed with the red blood of sacrifice, is more likely to hold such lesser breeds outside the Attic law. This wisdom Athena gives. Such a gift, Euripides suggests, Theseus' descendants need, if their enlightenment is to survive in a more barbaric world.
Thanks for hearing me this far - tomorrow we will continue to chapter 5 and
HELEN’S HUSBAND.