With the first two of these dogmas we are not now concerned. As to the real nature of Euripides’ ideas on the third, we shall get the clearest view if we consider first the characters of his theatre, then the general body of his plays, and lastly, those four dramas which are particularly concerned with the relations between men and women.
The two sexes may be sub-divided, according to Greek fashion, into six classes: Old man, man, young man, old woman, woman, young woman; and it must be acknowledged at once that Euripides, like most Greeks, is quite lacking in any reverence for age. His old men are apt to be dotards and are treated with humorous contempt. Amphitryon in the Hercules is a type: he lives in a world of illusion: he sees visions and dreams dreams, but when serious counsel or vigorous action are necessary he is useless. Cadmus and Teiresias in the Bacchæ are characters of the same sort. They are meant to be humorous, and the scene in which the two old men, wagging their hoary heads, prepare to dance and sing is pure burlesque. Cadmus agrees with Amphitryon in his religious views: he is ready to accept the miraculous, if it is profitable; and he scarcely troubles to make any pretence. As regards the divinity of the new god Dionysus, his sentiments are that, as ‘The fellow anyhow is my daughter’s son: it is my duty as head of the family to make out that he is a great god’. Cadmus and Amphitryon are at least partly self-deceived; Ægeus is a mere butt. The old gentleman, who believes that his virility can be restored by magic art, is a child in Medea’s hands, and the scene between the two is Aristophanic in its outspoken frankness.
Generally speaking, old men in Euripides are impotent: when they are allowed to act, their energies—Tyndareus for example, and the old servant in the Ion—are mischievous. In one case only do old men play a worthy part; when they are resisting the wanton violence of some full-grown man who is attacking women and children. Sometimes, as with Peleus and Iolaus, they succeed; sometimes they fail; but in either case their essential weakness is a foil to the presumptuous strength of their opponent.
Coming now to the second class, that of grown men, we get three main types: there is the mean man, the blusterer, and the simpleton. Jason and Admetus are mean men: mean, selfish and cowardly: capable of asking a woman to save their lives at the risk of her own, but incapable of gratitude. Still they are handsome, good company, and quite unconscious of their own shortcomings. Menelaus is a worse type and one that the poet especially disliked. He adds to meanness the vices of cruelty and treachery and is the slave of passion. In the Orestes he is coldly treacherous, in the Andromache treacherous and cruel, in the other plays where he appears merely despicable. Then come the blusterers: Agamemnon and Heracles, Lycus and Eurystheus. The first two are the ordinary sensual man: brave enough and capable of great deeds, but unfaithful, untruthful and self-indulgent: they seem to be strong, and they are strong in body; but they have no strength of mind. Lycus and Eurystheus are men of a lower type, mere bullies depending solely on force, and Euripides does not attempt to make them interesting. Lastly, there are the simpletons: Xuthus, Thoas and Theoclymenus—an easy prey for the clever women—the Priestess, Iphigenia, Helen who use them as they will. They are the men who with advancing age will be such as Ægeus and Amphitryon. And they almost exhaust the list in our second class. There remain only Theseus, a patriotic abstraction, the male counterpart of Athena; Creon, ‘the King’—the name is given to more than one person—an official rather than a living character; and some few persons in the second plan of action: such as the herald Talthybius and the peasant farmer in the Electra. These two latter occupy very subordinate positions, but they are in every way more manly, more generous, more lovable than the great men whom they serve. If we except them, there is not a grown man in the whole theatre of Euripides who can be regarded with sympathy.