The Male Characters of Euripides

The Male Characters of Euripides by Professor EM Blaiklock MA

(Continued from P 38)

It is perfectly obvious that Hippolytus' attitude towards sex was religious in its inspiration. Asceticism is not a product of Christianity only. Self-control as a virtue was not the invention of the Christian faith, and where the virtue exists its exaggeration is also found. Men 'buffeted the body' long before the heritage of Israel was translated into Greek, and the whole gamut of spiritual experience which became the possession of the new faith was known to the devotees of the mysteries. Angus in “The Mystery Religion and Christianity” has shown that the mystery cults were the real rivals of Christianity for this very reason, and that Christianity gained a hard-won victory only by its one unique doctrine of an historic Christ. The phenomena of conversion and dedicated living are as old as the aspirations of man after God and goodness. Alcibiades in the Symposium (Plato, Symposium 216) is witness enough to that. There is no doubt at all that the Mysteries of Eleusis, to mention only one of the religious cults, had a profound influence. Their symbolism of the grain of wheat and the life that dies and is born again is, after all, astonishingly Christian, (see John 12:24) and the records of spiritual experience are full enough of examples of the potency of such doctrine to change and stabilise character.
It is quite easy to see how just such a character as that shown in Hippolytus might have appeared as the fruit of some profound religious experience, such as many must have had at their initiation at Eleusis. The sexual maladjustment of the age has already been stressed. It is most difficult, in the unsympathetic atmosphere of another century, to adjust the mind to the fact that love in Plato is homosexuality, and one writer has suggested that Hippolytus represents primarily that psychologically perverted type which is ill-adjusted to the normal relationships of sex. He was, moreover, an athlete, and ath-letes, the psychologists assert, are 'poor lovers'. Superimpose upon this type a deep religious experience, relate such 'sublimation' as Plato himself preaches in the Phaedrus to the symbolism of a mystery cult, and the Hippolytus of the opening scene of the drama stands full-length.
Euripides passes no judgment on the young man. He takes him from life, it might have been from a group of boys gathered about Socrates, or a band of lithe youths on procession to Eleusis, and he sets him down in one of the tragic situations of life. Hippolytus' dilemma has exercised the pens of all nations. The story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and the Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers, are older examples of the theme. The dramatist presents us with a set of circumstances.
In the common course of human life such things have happened in the past. They are as likely to happen in the future, while nature follows its ancient ways. There appears a youth, alien by thought and practice to such temptation. 'Watch', says the tragedian, 'in this cruel world, his victory bring him ruin.' Who was to blame for the catastrophe or what Hippolytus should have done to avert it, is no part of the story. It has no moral. It is, unfortunately, life. We are invited to contemplate its tragedy.
That is why Euripides expends some care on Hippolytus' first appearance. His whole character is presented to us before the background of the plot, the wild passion of the over-sexed woman for her husband's son, is developed. Hippolytus comes in from the chase. His attendants chant a hymn to Artemis, which prepares the way for the young huntsman's act of worship and his prayer. Its wording is worth consideration.
It runs thus:

For thee this woven garland from a mead Unsullied have I twined, O Queen, and bring.
There never shepherd dares to feed his flock, Nor steel of sickle came: only the bee
Roveth the springtime mead undesecrate:
And Reverence watereth it with river dews.
They which have heritage of self control In all things, purity inborn, untaught,
These, these may gather flowers, but none impure.
Now Queen, dear Queen, receive this anadem From reverent hand to deck thy golden hair!
For to me, sole of men this grace is given,
That I be with thee, converse hold with thee, Hearing thy voice yet seeing not thy face.
And may I end life's race as I began.
(Hipp. 73-87. Way)

From beginning to end it is the language of mysticism and,
shall we say, of '
"sublimation'. The Madonna might have been worshipped thus by an enthusiastic neophyte, ecstatic in his consciousness of victory over evil and rebellious flesh. And a wise confessor might have shown that same ardent neophyte the pride and arrogance behind his words. For all the poetry, Hippolytus speaks the language of fanaticism. His is not the calm and natural purity (ev Tộ ơe 1. 79) to which he lays claim. He betrays the tautness of repression, a contempt for the frailty of men, and a pride in his virtue which are not the marks of natural strength and serenity of spirit. There is uncleanness for him in the touch of natural things. It is e§ åknpátou leyuûvos (translation needed) that his garland comes. Such an 'unsullied meadow' is his heart. The reverence, the alows, to which he lays claim, might dictate a deeper humility. The virtue, as Phaedra says in another connection at 1. 385, is 'of two sorts', and one is ruinous. Its object must be right. (E.R. Dodd, C.R. XXXIX, p 103)
And is Euripides suggesting that Hippolytus is unhealthily preoccupied with the very objects of his contempt? Such a spiritual state might produce on the one hand the disaster of a sudden breaking of the will, or on the other the fanaticism of too conscious a self-control, and the wild hatred of weakness, born of fear of it, whose language drove the erring Phaedra to suicide. To this extent Grene is wrong in his statement (loc. sup. cit.) that Hippolytus disaster 'does not arise from any action of his within the play's scope which can be regarded as typical of his ascetic regime.' It was fear of his ascetiscism, and shame before it, which drove Phaedra to suicide. The rest followed.
The strange little Socratic dialogue which follows suggests as much. The servant of Hippolytus has watched with some cynicism the passion of his master's worship of Artemis. Is he prepared to hear what wisdom says?
Why not then greet a goddess worshipful?
(Hipp. 99)
He is neglecting Aphrodite, whose statue stands dishonoured by the door. The neglect is dangerous. Each makes his choice, says Hippolytus. And now, with abrupt dismissal, let them all to meat, and then to exercise the team. So Euripides underlines the young man's bounding physical vigour. And as for thy Cypris—my love to her'—ironically:
Alone on the stage the servant bows to the Goddess of Love.
'Forgive him Aphrodite, he murmurs, like Job praying for his children. “It may be that my sons have sinned “ Job 1:5
It beseems thee to forgive,
If one that bears through youth a vehement heart Speak folly. Be as though thou heardest not
For wiser Gods should be than mortal men.
(Hipp. 117-120. Way)

'A vehement heart' (orláyyvov Evrovov),—the strained and over-wrought nature of Hippolytus is in the phrase. (Murray’s reading of oéuvos (interpret please) The servant appears to suggest that a less rigid virtue might bring a greater safety, but Euripides is offering no comment.
Psychology not ethics is the theme. He has introduced Hippolytus. 14"The situation of the Prologue was not tragic, it was sinister; but by the time this dialogue is over there is full-blooded tragedy astir .•.. we have been given that knowledge of Hippolytus whereby he ceases to be in our eyes a victim, and has become a tragic hero.' L. E. Matthaei, Studies in Greek Tragedy, p. 87.
There is another love, which in the balance of Christian sanity might add grace to the virtue of such a character, and make it a less brittle, a less stressful thing. It would be imagining too much to advance that Euripides put such a doctrine into Hypolytus’ mouth. He has introduced, we repeat, the figure of his tragedy.
the figure of his tragedy. He has also allowed the voice of wordly 'common sense' to speak. The nurse said as much to
Phaedra, and the advice was obviously ruinous.
A glance at the imitations of Seneca and Racine emphasises the uniqueness of Euripides' conception of Hippolytus. There are recognisable Roman traits in Seneca's hero, but, as might beexpected, he is stiff, unnatural and remote from humanity.
The passionate prayer to Artemis which reveals so much in the Greek tragedy, becomes a business-like supplication to Diana:
Tua si gratus numina cultor tulit in saltus, retia vinctas tenuere feras, nulli laqueum rupere pedes....
En, diva, faves: signum arguti misere canes. Vocor in silvas.
(Translation Nero)((,Seneca, Hipp. 78-82)
So Euripides' Hippolytus might have bidden a hasty and preoccupied farewell to Aphrodite-but not to Artemis. The touch of mysticism has gone from the Latin play. Seneca's characterisation is the same throughout. The nurse is made, for instance, to protest against his manner of living, and quite unconscious of any purpose behind her words, the hero fills a scene with a long Tibullan elegy on the joys of country life, of hunting and the greenwood. Seneca makes him conclude incongruously with an historical exposition of the evil women have caused—all wars, in short, all misery. It is a feeble attempt to be Euripidean:
Sed dux malorum femina; haec scelerum artifex obsedit animos, huius incestis stupris fumant tot urbes, bella tot gentes gerunt et versa ab imo regna tot populos premunt. (Translation please)
(Seneca, Hipp. 558-562)