The Male Characters of Euripides

The Male Characters of Euripides by
E M Blaiklock

KING OF MEN

All this is to prepare the way for a statement that there are occasions when he is not prepared to obey the sons of Atreus. This is one of them. Agamemnon shall not slay Iphigenia. His, Achilles, reputation is at stake. And this, look you, is for no ulterior motive. He is not thinking of marrying he princess.
the pringss. housands of ols pursue me for my hand. (l. 960)
No. Agamemnon has insulted him and used his name without permission. He might have granted permission, had he been asked, for the fate of the expedition was at stake, but the liberty taken is unpardonable. It is a question entirely of reputation. Iphigenia must not die.
Hecuba found she could secure no help from the captains of hosts in the name and for the sake of abstract justice. Cly-temnestra, bowed in pain before this inept and tactless tirade, learns the same bitter lesson. "There is none righteous, no not one.' The proud queen, taught to command and expect the aid of men, has waited silently while this priggish Galahad exalts himself and insults her daughter. Motherhood can teach humility, and there is no word of resentful pride in her speech as she replies with gratitude and supplication. Achilles would not catch the undertone in one sad line. 'My pain is mine,' she says, 'mine anguish wrings not thee' (l. 982). Nevertheless, like Hecuba, she must have aid—on any terms. With a prudence which hardly fits the pompous heroism of a few lines before, Achilles suggests a last appeal to Agamemnon. All may come well without his aid!
There follows the justly famous scene of Clytemnestra's and Iphigenia's appeal. Agamemnon answers both in twenty lines.
Mark ye, he says, ‘yon countless hosts with galleys with galleys fenced”.
That, indeed, was the vision which filled his eyes. He could not look beyond it. The sheen of the spears dazzled him, and the thousand high, black poops hid a wider landscape and the shape of truth. Agamemnon has convinced himself. Like Odysseus in the Hecuba he is full of the common good. The host must sail, and no more wives be snatched from Hellas. He has forgotten what he said of Helen to her husband that same morning. Drunk now with words and false emotion, he has constructed the impasse for which his whole mind has been striving:

Awful it is, my wife, to dare this deed,
Yet awful to forbear. I must do this!
(I. in A. 1257-1258. Way)

So stood he, perhaps, like Admetus, 'not insincere'. His not very acute mind was self-deceived, and no salutary shock came to save him. That, as Euripides saw it, was one of the tragedies of the human mind.
Achilles is to appear in one more scene. He arrives after a lovely song has revealed the pathos of Iphigenia's fate. His entrance might bear a comic interpretation. The Greeks have thrown stones at him. Even his own Myrmidons will not listen to reason. He will fight nevertheless. Achilles is not without elements of bravery. Euripides was too keen a student of humanity to commit the error of making his character wholly ridiculous, and some virtue must be granted the dishevelled young soldier of this scene. Iphigenia, however, has come to a conclusion, and announces her willingness to die for Greece.
We have already suggested that her motives are something of a puzzle. Had she, suddenly mature, like Antigone at the climax of the Phoenissae, seen the truth? Did she realise the hopelessness of it all, and Achilles' helplessness, and decide in the bitterness of resignation that death alone was welcome? Was she convinced by Agamemnon' stalse patriotism? She quotes his words.
Or does she in a sudden surge of girlish love for Achilles decide to die that he may be safe, and cover, like her father, an inner motive, with words of patriotic sacrifice? Or were all these motives in the moment of her bewilderment, a tangled skein? Such pathos would be very like Euripides.