are the in his Tragedies, a total absence of that wild enthusiasm which breaks down the barriers of common sense, manifestations of this rest of mind: his spirit was, Like a breath of air, Such as is sometimes seen, and hardly seen, To brush the still breast of a crystal lake1. He lived, as it were, in the strong hold of his own unruffled mind, and unmoved heard the pattering storm without. His very burial created peace out of war, and the tomb closed upon one loved by all Athens, admired by all Greece, and to be remembered by all the civilized world. 1. Wordsworth, (Excursion, p. 90.) 2. He says himself, in a fragment of the Tympanistæ, that it is the greatest of delights ὑπό τω στέγῃ πυκνῇς ἀκοῦσαι ψεκάδος εὐδούσῃ φρενί. CHAPTER V. SECTION IV. EURIPIDES. Like as many substances in nature, which are solid, do putrify and corrupt into worms; so it is the property of good and sound knowledge, to putrify and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, as I may term them, vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness, and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality.—BACON. EURIPIDES, the son of Mnesarchus, was born in the island of Salamis, on the day of the glorious sea-fight. (B. C. 480.)' His mother, Clito, had been sent over to Salamis with the other Athenian women when Attica was given up to the invading army of Xerxes; and the name of the poet, which is formed like a patronymic from the Euripus, the scene of the first successful resistance to the Persian navy, shews that the minds of his parents were full of the stirring events of that momentous crisis. His father was certainly a man of property, else how could his son have been a pupil of the 1. Diog. Laert. ii. 45. ἡμέρᾳ καθ ̓ ἣν οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐναυμάχουν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι. Plutarch. Sympos. vii. 1. ἐτέχθη καθ' ἂν ἡμέραν οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐτρέψαντο τοὺς Пépoas. Suid. The Parian marble places his birth five years earlier, and we shall see in the passage of Aulus Gellius quoted below, that his age was not known with certainty while he was yet alive. 2. He belonged properly to the deme Phlyæ of the Cecropid tribe, but he perhaps had some land in Salamis, and sometimes resided there. "Philochorus refert," says Aulus Gellius, “in insulâ Salamine speluncam esse tetram et horridam, quam nos vidimus, in quâ Euripides tragedias scriptitarit."- Noct. Att. xv. 20. (Whenever we have quoted no other authority, it will be presumed that we refer either to the life of Euripides by Thomas Magister, or to the anonymous life published by Elmsley, from the Ambrosian MS., and printed at the end of his edition of the Bacchæ.) extravagant1 Prodicus? It would appear that he was also born of a good family. But this is no argument, as Philochorus supposes3, against the implications of Aristophanes', and the direct statement of Theopompus, that his mother was a seller of herbs; for it is quite possible that his father may have made a marriage of disparagement. Like Sophocles he was well educated. He attended the lectures of Anaxagoras, Prodicus, and Protagoras; and was so well versed in the gymnastic exercises of the day, that he gained two victories in the Eleusinian and Thesean athletic games when only seventeen years old. Mnesarchus had intended that he should enter the lists of Olympia among the younger combatants, but some objection was raised against him on the score of age, and he was excluded from the contest®. To his other accomplishments he added a taste for painting, which he cultivated with some success; a few specimens of his talents in this respect were preserved for many years at Megara. He brought out his first Tragedy, the Peliades, in (B. c.) 4557, consequently at an earlier age than either of his predecessors. He was third on this occasion, but gained the first prize fourteen years after, and also in 428 B. C., when the Hippolytus was 1. See Rhein. Mus. for 1832. p. 22. fol. 2. Athenæus, x. p. 424. 4. 3. Apud Suid. Eupin. Προπηλακιζομένας ὁρῶσ ̓ ὑμᾶς ὑπὸ Ευριπίδου, τοῦ τῆς λαχανοπωλητρίας.Thesmoph. 386. Again, speaking of Euripides, the female orator says Ἄγρια γὰρ ἡμᾶς, ὦ γυναῖκες, δρᾷ κακά, Ἄτ' ἐν ἀγρίοισι τοῖς λαχάνοις αὐτὸς τραφείς. 455. Dicæopolis, in the Acharnians, among his other requests, says to EuripidesΣκάνδικά μοι δός, μητρόθεν δεδεγμένος. 454. The same insinuation is more obscurely conveyed in the Equites Εἴποιμ ̓ ἂν αὐτὸ δῆτα κομψευριπικώς; Αἰσχ. Ἄληθες, ὦ παὶ τῆς ἀρουραίας θεοῦ ; 839. 5. Euripidis poetæ matrem Theopompus agrestia olera vendentem victum quæsisse dicit. Noct. Att. xv. 20. 6. Mnesarchus, roborato exercitatoque filii sui corpore, Olympiam certaturum inter athletas pueros deduxit. Ac primo quidem in certamen per ambiguam ætatem receptus non est. Post Eleusinio et Thesæo certamine pugnavit et coronatus est.-Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. xv. 20. 7. Arund. Marble, no. 61. dramatic composition before this. 8. Arundel Marble. 61. It appears, however, that he had applied himself to represented', though he does not appear to have been often so successful. His reputation, however, spread far and wide, and if we may believe Plutarch, some of the Athenians who had survived the disastrous termination of the Syracusan expedition, obtained their liberty or a livelihood by reciting and teaching such passages from the poems of Euripides as they happened to recollect. We shall shew by and by that Euripides was one of the advocates for that expedition; we are told that he wrote a funeral poem on the Athenian soldiers who fell in Sicily. Late in life he retired to Magnesia, and from thence proceeded to Macedonia, where his popularity procured him the protection and friendship of King Archelaus. It is not known what induced him to quit Athens, though many causes might be assigned. The infidelity of his two wives, Melito and Chœrila, which is supposed to have occasioned the misogynism for which he was notorious, may perhaps have made him desirous of escaping from the scenes of his domestic discomforts, especially as his misfortunes were continually recalled to his remembrance by the taunts and jeers of his merciless political enemy, Aristophanes'. Besides, he appears to have been very intimate with Socrates and Alcibiades, the former of whom is said to have assisted him in the composition of his tragedies, and when Alci 1. Argument to the Hippol. εδιδάχθη ἐπὶ Ἀμείνονος ἄρχοντος ὀλυμπιάδι πζ' ἔτει τετάρτῳ πρῶτος Ευριπίδης· δεύτερος Ἰοφῶν· τρίτος Ἴων. 2. Suidas says he gained only five victories, one of which was with a posthumous play. 3. Ενιοι δὲ καὶ δι' Ευριπίδην ἐσώθησαν. Μάλιστα γαρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τῶν ἐντὸς Ἑλλήνων ἐπόθησαν αὐτοῦ τὴν μοῦσαν οἱ περὶ Σικελίαν· καὶ μικρὰ τῶν ἀφικνουμένων ἑκάστοτε δείγματα καὶ γεύματα κομιζόντων ἐκμανθάνοντες, ἀγαπητῶς μετεδίδοσαν ἀλλήλοις. Τότε γοῦν φασι τῶν σωθέντων οἴκαδε συχνοὺς ἀσπάσασθαι τὸν Εὐριπίδην φιλοφρόνως, καὶ διηγεῖσθαι τοὺς μὲν, ὅτι δουλεύοντες ἀφείθησαν, ἐκδιδάξαντες, ὅσα τῶν ἐκείνου ποιημάτων εμέμνηντο, τοὺς δ ̓, ὅτι πλανώμενοι μετὰ τὴν μάχην, τροφῆς καὶ ὕδατος μετέλαβον τῶν μελῶν ἄσαντες. Οὐ δεῖ δὴ θαυμάζειν, ὅτι τοὺς Καυνίους φασί, πλοίου προσφερομένου τοις λιμέσιν, ὑπὸ ληστρίδων διωκομένου, μὴ δέχεσθαι τὸ πρῶτον, ἀλλ ̓ ἀπείργειν· εἶτα μέντοι διαπυνθανομένους, εἰ γινώσκουσιν ἀσματα των Ευριπίδου, φησάντων ἐκείνων, οὕτω παρεῖναι καταγαγεῖν τὸ πλοῖον. Plutarch Nicias, cxxix. μηδέ γ' ἐπείη ἀλλ ̓ ἐπὶ σοί τοι καὶ τοῖς σοῖσιν πολλὴ πολλοῦ ἐπικαθήτο. Bacchus. νὴ τὸν Δία τοῦτό γε τοι δή ἃ γὰρ ἐς τὰς ἀλλοτρίας ἐποίεις, αὐτός τούτοισιν ἐπλήγης. 5. "Laërtius (in Socrat.) has preserved a couplet which punningly brings this charge. Φρύγες, ἐστὶ καινὸν ὁρᾶμα τοῦτ' Ευριπίδου, Ὧι καὶ τὰ φρύγαν ̓ ὑποτίθησι Σωκράτης. Allusion biades won the chariot race at Olympia, Euripides wrote a song in honor of his victory1. That Socrates was even at this time very unpopular is exceedingly likely2; and Alcibiades was a condemned exile. Perhaps, then, Euripides only followed the dictates of prudence in withdrawing from a country where his philosophical as well as his political sentiments exposed him to continual danger. At the court of Archelaus, on the contrary, he was treated with the greatest distinction, and was even admitted to the private counsels of the king. He wrote some plays in Macedonia, in one of which (the Baccha) he seems to have been inspired by the wild scenery of the country in which he was residing; and the story, according to which he is torn to pieces by dogs just as his hero Pantheus is rent asunder by the infuriated Bacchanals, arose perhaps from a confusion between the poet and the last subject on which he wrote. It is clearly a fabrication; for Aristophanes in the Frogs would certainly have alluded to the manner of his death had there been anything remarkable in it. He died B. c. 406, on the same day on which Dionysius assumed the tyranny. He was buried at Pella, contrary to the wishes of his countrymen, who requested Archelaus to send his remains to Athens, where however a cenotaph was erected to his memory with this inscription: Allusion is made to the same imputation in a line of Antiphanes (Athen. iv. 134.) Ὁ τὰ κεφάλαια συγγράφων Εὐριπίδη, where kepaλata are the sententious sayings which Socrates was reputed to have furnished. Elian (Var. Hist. ii. 13.) states that Socrates seldom went to the theatre, except to see some new tragedy of Euripides performed. This philosophising in his dramas gave Euripides the name of the stage philosopher ; Euripides, auditor Anaxagoræ, quem philosophum Athenienses scenicum appellaverunt. Vitruv. viii. in præf."- Former Editor. See Dindorf in Poet. Scen. p. 574. 1. Plutarch. Alcibiad. c. xi. Λέγει δ' ὁ Εὐριπίδης ἐν τῷ ᾆσματι ταῦτα Σὲ δ' ἀείσομαι ὦ Κλεινίου παῖ. Καλὸν ὁ νίκα κάλλιστον δ' ὅ μηδεὶς ἄλλος Ελλάνων ἅρματι πρῶτα δραμεῖν καὶ δεύτερα καὶ τρίτα βῆναι δ ̓ ἀπονητὶ, τρὶς στεφθέντ ̓ ἐλαίᾳ κάρυκι βοᾷν παραδοῦναι. 2. Archelaus invited Socrates also to his court. Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23. 3. Aristot. Rhet. iii. 15. 4. See Elmsley on the argument, p. 4. 5. Hermesianax Colophonius (Athen. xiii. 598). Ovid, Ibis, 595. Aul. Gell. Noct. Attic. xv. 20. Val. Max. ix. 12.-Pausanias (i. p. 3) seems to doubt the truth of the common account. Dionysius Byzantius expressly denies it (Anthol. iii. 36). 6. See Clinton, F. H. II. p. 81. |
