THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
Chapter Four
THE Heraceidae and the Supplices may be conveniently
dealt with together. the The two plays are obviously companion pieces. The Supplices, says an ancient argument, is 'an encomium of Athens'. That description, in fact, applies more accurately to the Heracleidae, for there are passages in the other play which are quite frankly critical of Athens, and her mode of government. The disillusionments of the war had not yet done their work when Euripides wrote the Heracleidae.
The play is visibly closer to the days of unclouded love for fatherland which put the noble chorus into the Medea.
There are marks still of that exaltation with which free peoples go to war for a cause they believe in:
“But were death full in view when votes were cast
Never war-frenzied Greece would rush on ruin.”
(Supp. 484, 485. Way)
Neither death nor ruin was in full view when the Heracleidae was being written. The war had known its disasters, but no one could imagine the length of the road ahead. Nerves were not yet at breaking point, nor decadence as visible as the Plague in Athens' streets. That is why the Heracleidae is more
simple in its patriotism than the Supplices.
This is not denying that the play has its difficulties. The choice of Athens' boasted championship of the children of Heracles as a patriotic theme was a natural one, as natural indeed as the choice of the theme of the Argive suppliants. Herodotus links the two in the speech he attributes to the Athenians at Plataea. Her., IX. 27: TOÛTO MÈV .... TOÛTO SÈ....but what, as Pearson asks,
"is the unity which the artist is trying to
express to us through his creation? The plot is as follows.
The young sons of the great Heracles are revealed before the temple of Zeus at Marathon. In these precincts, redolent of Athenian memories, they sit as suppliants with lolaus their dead father's friend. Almena and the daughters of Heracles are within. The pathetic band has sought refuge in Attica from the continued enmity of Eurystheus of Argos. Copreus, a herald from Argos, is for dragging the suppliants impiously away from their place of refuge, when Demophon, king of Athens, confronts him. The Athenian monarch is quite clear as to his duty. At the risk of war with Argos, Iolaus must have the protection for which he has appealed. At this the Chorus, which is composed, oddly enough, of aged Athenian men, sings an ode of loud defiance.
Adyw- ci Toter ทรes,
(Heracl. 371-374 interpretation needed)
One can catch the echo of the popular songs of the early months of a war. 'We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do.. Odes on the mailed fist that 'we've got too', and the washing on the Siegfried Line, seldom survive the casualty lists. We shall return later to these old men. To continue.
Page 55 to be continued tomorrow.