The Male Characters of Euripides by
Professor E M Blaiklock MA
Peleus is typical of Euripides’ dynamic old men, irascible
and impatient. With a mortal body whose failing vigour lags behind the spirit's strength. He is in no mood for appeals to Trojan triumphs, or to Menelaus arguments for Communism (Il. 583, 585). Andromache is not his, nor the land she lives in.
Indeed, with the stick in his hand, he will "blood his head" rather than hear such arguments:
Thou, thou a man?Coward of cowards bred!
What part or lot hast thou amongst true men?
Thou by a Phrygian from thy wife divorced,
Who leftest hearth and home unbarred, unwarded,
As who kept in his halls a virtuous wife,—
And she the vilest!
(Andr. 590-595- Way
The speech from that point becomes a Euripidean and topic diatribe on Spartan womanhood (Il. 595-601).
Then the ol man turns to the Trojan war, a sore subject for Achilles' father. Alone unwounded Menelaus came from Troy, and the crowning injury, forgetful of Agamemnon and his de daughter, he exacted no vengeance on the guilty one. It wou be hard to find more vigorous Greek than those three lines
(11. 629-63I):
фіти єбʼєш, проботи акла» кла,
noowr TepuKes Kirpoos, @ Kaxiore di.
(Translation please?)
Menelaus' answer is deliciously in character. He pours contempt on the relics of Troy, and harks back to his obsession with Hermione's rights. Helen then begins to re-echo in accents again. It was not Helen's fault this strife at llium. It the will of Heaven, and Helen a sad puppet in Almighty Hands. Then, doubtless speaking Spartan doctrine, he become ancient Treitschke. War, he maintains, is a fountain of health to peoples, their schoolmaster, indeed márrov Sporoio yiy бебакало? (1. 684 Translation please)
Old Peleus counters with some trenchant words about the lads who carried the kopje and cannot be known.' As for the bemedalled commanders,
(Andr. 699, 700)
Then, with an insulting phrase for Hermione, the old hero bids the villain quit and teaching a Spartan brevity of speech proceeds to loose his victim. Menelaus, his bluff thus called, suddenly remembers an enemy near Sparta. He must away to march against him, and bow him 'neath his hand (l. 736).
As for Peleus let him wait. With which he is gone. This was a new Menclaus for Athens. It is difficult in an age accustomed to the realistic, and even to the satiric reconstruction of romantic characters, to 'debunking' in a word, to appreciate the effect of such caricature upon the ancient stage.
There was no such figure in myth and literature as this which Euripides made out of the colours of his own mind and epoch.
Menelaus bursts into the Third Book of the Iliad swinging sword and spear like any warrior, and dragging Paris most Homerically by the helmet plume. In the Seventh Book he is prepared to fight Hector himself in single combat. Smiting Peisandros down he passes heroically in the rout of battle which fills the Thirteenth Book. In the Seventeenth Book he is fighting manfully over the body of Patroklos. In this context, in a splendidly vivid figure, he is twice likened to a lion slowly giving ground to a pack of barking curs and yelling churls.
There is only one more appearance in the Iliad, and that is in the story of the quarrel at the Funeral Games in the Twenty-Third Book. Menelaus is justly aggrieved at young Antilochus unfairness in the race. He makes a dignified protest, receives a frank apology, and closes the incident with marked and manly generosity. There is no suggestion of anything petty or ludicrous in his attitude. If we turn on to the Odyssey we find Menelaus at home in Lacedaemon. It is one of the finest pictures in that vivid story. He is a sensitive and splendid gentleman, master in his noble home, and mindful of old friendships. Sophocles has respected the Homeric picture in the main. Menelaus makes a brief appearance in the Ajax. He is a harsh Spartan, with what Norwood° describes as a certain brilliant vulgarity, something of a Creon, preoccupied with his rightful authority, and a fırm believer in the mailed fist. He expounds such views in vigorous clear-cut speech. His proportions are distinctly heroic. Euripides' malicious characterisation was all his own.
And it was consistent. The Spartan's next appearance, much more brief, is in the Troades. On the historical setting of this play there is general agreement. The dreadful Melian affair had shocked the tragedian into something like hatred of the conflict which had once stirred his patriotism. In the Troades Euripides is out to tear the false glory from war. The purpose is as clear as that of the Lysistrata, and much more grim.
Circumstances, therefore, and an ulterior dramatic purpose, vera dietin may and part ided rio, the line of the
problem of his victory with unselfish resolution, would have denied Euripides his end. War, in Euripides' mood at that moment, had nothing to commend it. It was sordid in all respects. It ruined victor and vanquished alike, and a noble Menelaus might have saved for the conflict some of its epic dignity. The moral weakling who steps on to the scene has a special part to play. The question he is to prompt is simply this—was it all for this piece of rather base humanity, for him and for his wanton wife, that men lay out on the windy plain, and women suffered the uttermost of misery? The year 4I5 B.C., as Euripides saw it, was no climate for a Homeric king. The stress of war had made him too well aware of the weakness of humanity for him to believe in the godlikeness of any fair-haired monarch who went to Troy. The contemplation of another long-drawn out conflict had left him too cynical ever to imagine that ultimate justice was done on the woman whose face had launched the thousand ships.
It is necessary at the outset to insist that Menelaus is quite clearly characterised. It may be true, as H. D. F. Kittors remarks, that it is the collective character of the Greeks, marred by victory and foredoomed to chastisement, that is the main conception of the play. Nevertheless, grant though we may that Menelaus' prime function in the tragedy is to make his contribution to this end, the character is clear cut in its form, and startlingly distinct. His first and longest speech requires full analysis. He enters loud with words. 'Öh glorious day, he blusters, 'when I shall lay hands on my wife-on Helen' (11. 860-863). The name seems hard to say, and moves him visibly. He must think of his labours or be shaken. He is Menclaus, he reminds himself, spent with many toils-'and the Achaean host', he adds, aware suddenly of his selfishness, and betrayed by his embarrassment into an anacoluthon:
o yap on Toll poronoas eye (Interpretation please).
(Troades 861, 862)
"Sc. où cuoi cuóx noe, say the editors dutifully. Perhaps. But Euripides is tilting at the ways of kings. He has old Peleus' theme in mind. The men who fight their wars are unrelated subjects without verbs. It costs Menelaus three more lines to explain that no woman brought him to Troy, but white honour which brooked no insult from a man who could deceive his host:
Nor so much came I, as men deem, to Troy For her, but to avenge me on the man, The traitor guest who stole my wife from me.
(Troades 864-866. Way)