THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
By Professor E M Blaiklock MA
That villain has fallen in his sin, and his country with him Sopi Eyyŋvikŵ.
And inevitably the subject of the woman is round again:
I come to hale the accursed—loth am I
To name her wife who in days past was mine.
(Troades 869-870)
So Way, reading ráħaivvav . Dramatically Aåkaivav is better.’I come,” to take the Spartan woman — I do not like to say the name of her who was my wife? He is avoiding the magic name, subject of ill-omened puns, which had shaken him by its very mention a moment ago. He snatches in his pain the very term of insult which had been current in the army these ten long years of war.
He steps petulantly towards the huts along the beach, for in these houses of captivity she has been numbered among the other women of Troy, for those who toiled for her with the spear have given her to me (clenching his teeth) to kill-or should I wish (stammering) not to kill, to take back with me to the Argive land' (11. 871-875).
As Professor Grubels says,
'we can almost hear the jeering tone of his friends behind the words as he reports them?' Not for nothing does Euripides slip in the middle verb áyeóøai. It was aßwv in 1. 871-the prisoner at the halter's end! Two lines below he recollects himself, affects the language of decision, and banishes the intimacy from the verb.
&Hoi ổ EÔOSE TÒN MÈN ẺV Tpoía uópov
'EAnviE Eis vn Ker EKEi Bova Krdve.
(Troades 876-878 Translation please.)
He pauses at 1. 875 and utters these words quickly. Perhaps he is in some confusion as he becomes aware of Hecuba's ironical contemplation. 'My decision is (the aorist refers back to the momentary pause in which he surrendered to this weakness to forego her doom in Troy, but take her back to Greece and there give her to death, requital for all my friends who died in Ilium.' (II. 876-879). He proceeds with hollow brutality: 'Go fetch her, henchmen, drag her by the hair!
Kopiter' airทุ, รns muadorwrarns
KÓUnS ETIOTOaVTES•
(Troades 880-882)
Hecuba's brief words (Il. 890-894) interpret the whole speech.
I praise thee, Menelaus, if thou slay thy wife, but seeing her beware lest she ensnare thee with desire':
She snareth men's eyes, she destroyeth towns, She burneth homes, such her enchantments are
I and thou know her—all who have suffered know.
(Troades 892-894. Way)
There follows the debate on Helen's moral responsibility.
Its opening is full of Euripides astonishing understanding of human nature. A lesser dramatist might have melted Menelaus before Helen's tearful entry. Euripides hardens him. Helen in imagination, through the music of her name, Helen remembered as she was at home, in some such scene as Telemachus admired, could shake and soften him. Helen in the flesh, hurried in by resentful guards, squalid from captivity, with the marks of the night of horror still upon her, has her victory still to win. The king, livid and tight-lipped, controls himself.
He can bring himself to speak only six lines in the conversation.
Twice in the midst of such Laconic brevity he tells the stricken woman that she is to die:
H. That you do hate me I know well enough
Yet I would ask to what decision you
And all the Greeks have come about my life.
M. There is no clear decision. The whole host Gave you to me, the man you wronged, to kill.
(Troades 898-902. Grube)
The words, of course, as Grube says, 'betray him. At any rate, first Helen, then Hecuba, states her case. It is an unreal
situation but appropriate enough in the conventions of the drama. The old queen appears twice in Euripides, and on both occasions she is shown as a woman of exceptional vigour of mind. She addresses herself to all that is more stable and reasonable in Menelaus. She plays on all the arguments he must have told over to himself during the long nights in his hut by the beached ships. She stirs all the memories and resentments of the ten weary years, and she convinces him.
The cold dash of her logic has quenched for the moment the heat of the passion which was like to warp his judgment.
He cries bitterly:
Herein is thy conclusion one with mine,
That willingly she went forth from my halls
For a strange couch; and Cypris for vain show
Fills out her plea. Thou to the stoners, hence!
(Troades 1036-1039. Way)
We will continue from page 84 to find out what happens to Helen of Troy next time!
Thanks for listening to me read “The Male Characters of Euripides”