The Male Characters of Euripides by
Professor EM Blaiklock
THE AMAZON'S SON
49
It is the way of human jealousy to unseat high profession and to find the hypocrite behind the robe of every aspirant to goodness, but we have seen Hippolytus and know there is justice, if of other sort than he imagines, in Theseus' scorn:
Dost thou with Gods—O thou no common man!-Consort? Art thou the chaste, the stainless one?
Now vaunt, ay now!-set out thy paltry wares
Of lifeless food: take Orpheus for thy king:
Rave, worship vapourings of many a scroll:
For ah, thou'rt caught! I warn all men to shun Such hypocrites as this; for they hunt souls
With canting words, the while they plot foul sin.
(Hipp. 948, 9; 952-957. Way)
A passage of Plato (27) suggests that these words may have had reference to a brand of Pharisaism among the Orphics of Euripides' day. They are oddly paralleled by a passage in Matthew's Gospel(28) against another sect, once spiritual in life and doctrine, whose good had turned sour. If the tragedian is speaking topically, by the same token Hippolytus must be a character of his immediate observation and experience, and the play a document of the history of religion and mysticism to be set beside the Bacchae. For the purposes of characterisation, however, Theseus' words, passionate in anger, and full of the scorn of the more earthy for the loftier spirituality which has stumbled, are apt and accurately placed. The speech ends, curiously, with a sentence of banishment. J. A. Spranger explains Theseus' shift of ground by a theory of conflation with an earlier play (29) It is not impossible to explain the apparent contradiction by characterisation. Has Theseus called on Heaven, as men will in the hour of passion and now, self-possessed, taken vengeance into his own hands? It is clear that he did not expect Poseidon to fulfil his promise.(30)
The sentence
(27) Rep. II, 364.
(28) Ch. 23.
(29) C.Q. XXI, p. 18.
(30) This rationalistic trait appears again when Hippolytus begs for the test of augury.
Says Theseus:
This tablet tho’ it bear no prophet's sign, Accuseth thee, nor lieth: but the birds
That roam o'erhead—I wave them long farewell.
(Hipp. I057-1059. Way)
TóN' eyù xaipew déywthe (Translation needed here) very words of Hippolytus' gesture before Aphrodite's statue.
THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
Continuing from page 49
The sentence of banishment, too, may mark the first returning fear. The son himself notes the fact and says:
Nay but I marvel, father, at this in thee;-
For, if my son thou wert and I thy sire,
I had slain thee: exile should not be thy mulct.
(Hipp. I04I-1043. Way)
To return, however, to Hippolytus' answer to Theseus' long speech. It is notable that the boy has won control of his emotions, and bases his reply on calm consciousness of right, and with a certain nobility disregards the less relevant of his father's s attacks. Indeed its copynoia (translation needed) excites Theseus' anger, and the logic of the words denies him, to his chagrin, the possibility of reply:
os riv eunu memouder cuoproia (Translated to)
Juggler with words and trickster is he not,
Who thinks by his unruffled calm to outface
My mood, when his own father he has shamed.
(Hipp. 1038-1040. Way)
The third person is a subtle touch. Theseus feels inadequate, and appeals to the Chorus for moral aid. Hippolytus is, indeed, exasperating. He urges his innocence with conviction and perfect justice, but calls on Heaven in the process to witness his perfect purity of word and thought and deed.
See'st thou yon sun
And earth?—within their compass is no man—
Though you deny it-chaster souled than I.
(Hipp. 993-995. Way)
The word he uses in tragic irony is owpovéarepos. That is the pity of his fate. His fault is so unconscious. Is he not ayvós, set religiously apart? His very last phrase after the touching prayer to Artemis and the farewell to Athens (Il. 1090-1101) clings pathetically to the same word. His friends shall never “chatter man.” Alas he sighed in 1. 1078, фей,
We will continue with page 51 tomorrow.