Euripides I [antikvár]

GENERAL INTRODUCTIONw. arb told that Euripides, the son of Mnesarchus or Mnesarchi-des, was born at some time between 485 and 480 b.c., presented his first set of tragedies in 455, and won his first victory in 441, won only four victories during his lifetime, left Athens probably in 408 for the court of King Archelaus of Macedon, and died there late in 407 or early in 406. He wrote perhaps eighty-eight plays (twenty-two sets of four); nineteen survive under his name, though Rhesus may not be his.Such seems to be the basic and believable vita (though I suspect that the dates for birth and first presentation are too early).We may ignore the fanciful gossip that passes for additional biography, but consider the critical opinions of the comic poets. The conclusion is that Euripides was only moderately successful in his own lifetime, though famous and influential after death. He won seldom but produced again and again. He was parodied and ridiculed by the comic poets more often and more brutally (and more intelligently, too) than any other literary man in Athens. This fact itself means that he made more of an impression than the now obscure competitors who must have beaten him again and again.Plainly, he wrote shockers, and it is not enough to say that this was because he was an innovator. He was, but so were his predecessors. Aeschylus was more daring, drastic, and original; Sophocles was no serene and static classicist. Perhaps the most significant remark about Euripides and Sophocles is that supposed to have been made by Sophocles, that he himself showed men as they ought to be (or as one ought to show them) but Euripides showed them as they actually were. Whether or not Sophocles ever said this, it is true. Euripides was basically a realist, despite contrary tendencies toward fantasy and romance. The only materials available for his tragedies were the old heroic sagas. He used them as if they told the story not of characters heroic in all dimensions, but of real everyday people. v INTRODUCTION TO ALCESTIS The LegendThe origins of the story as it is told by Euripides are difficult to trace. We hear of Admetus and of Alcestis, "loveliest of all the daughters of Pelias," in the Iliad, but only as parents of Eumelus, one of the Achaeans at Troy. There is an allusion to the story as Euripides tells it in the skolion or drinking catch attributed to the little-known poetess Praxilla:Mark the saying of Admetus, dear friend, and make friends with the brave.Keep away from cowards, knowing that there is little grace in them.We also know that Phrynichus, a dramatic poet of the early fifth century, used what seems to have been essentially the same version as that which Euripides followed. The best conclusion, though it is tentative, is that Euripides did not add any "facts" to the legend as he received it. The originality of the play would rather lie in the way in which he approached a known, though not particularly well-known, story from a new angle and with a new emphasis.The PlayGrant, then, the basic outline of the plot: Alcestis voluntarily dying for her husband when his father and mother would not; Alcestis and Admetus delivered by Admetus' true friend, Heracles, who is guided by the remote hand of Apollo, also a true friend of Admetus. One may emphasize the heroism of Alcestis and the staunchness of Heracles, as against the way in which mother and father fail wretchedly in the crisis. This is as far as our skolion goes, for whether or not "the brave" designates both Alcestis and Heracles or only one, "cowards" means the mother and father, not Admetus himself. Admetus is merely the subject about whom these opera- 2