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    The Rhesus of Euripides
    The Rhesus of Euripides
    The Rhesus of Euripides
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    The Rhesus of Euripides

    By Gilbert Murray and Euripides

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1999
    The Rhesus of Euripides

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      Book preview

      The Rhesus of Euripides - Gilbert Murray

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rhesus of Euripedes, by Euripedes

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Rhesus of Euripedes

      Author: Euripedes

      Translator: Gilbert Murray

      Release Date: February 4, 2011 [EBook #35170]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RHESUS OF EURIPEDES ***

      Produced by Barbara Watson and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

      ((This file was produced from images generously made

      available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries))

      RHESUS

      THE ATHENIAN DRAMA

      FOR ENGLISH READERS

      A Series of Verse Translations of the Greek

      Dramatic Poets, with Commentaries and

      Explanatory Notes.

      Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 7s. 6d. each net.

      Each Volume Illustrated from ancient

      Sculptures and Vase-Painting.

      AESCHYLUS: The Orestean Trilogy. By Prof. G. C. Warr. With an Introduction on The Rise of Greek Tragedy, and 13 Illustrations.

      SOPHOCLES: Œdipus Tyrannus and Coloneus, and Antigone. By Prof. J. S. Phillimore. With an Introduction on Sophocles and his Treatment of Tragedy, and 16 Illustrations.

      EURIPIDES: Hippolytus; Bacchae; Aristophanes' 'Frogs.' By Prof. Gilbert Murray. With an Appendix on The Lost Tragedies of Euripides, and an Introduction on The Significance of the Bacchae in Athenian History, and 12 Illustrations. [ Fifth Edition.

      ALSO UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE

      THE HOMERIC HYMNS. A New Prose Rendering by Andrew Lang, with Essays Critical and Explanatory, and 14 Illustrations.

      THE PLAYS OF EURIPIDES

      Translated into English Rhyming Verse, with Explanatory Notes, by Prof. Gilbert Murray.

      THE

      RHESUS

      OF

      EURIPIDES

      TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE

      WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

      GILBERT MURRAY

      LL.D., D. Litt., F.B.A.

      REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

      LONDON

      GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD.

      44 & 45 RATHBONE PLACE

      1913

      [All rights reserved]

      Printed by

      Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.

      At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

      INTRODUCTION

      This short play needs rather a long introduction. It has had the bad fortune to become a literary problem, and almost all its few readers are so much occupied with the question whether it can be the work of Euripides—and if not his, whose?—that they seldom allow themselves to take it on its merits as a stirring and adventurous piece, not particularly profound or subtle, but always full of movement and life and possessing at least one or two scenes of great and penetrating beauty.

      The outlines of the Rhesus Question are these.—The Rhesus appears in the MSS. of Euripides; we know from the Athenian Didascaliae, or Records of Performances, that Euripides wrote a play of the name; some passages in it are quoted by early Alexandrian writers as from "the Rhesus of Euripides; no passage is quoted under any other name. This seems about as strong as external evidence need be. Yet the ancient introduction to the play mentions that some think the play spurious, and expresses the odd opinion that it suggests rather the Sophoclean style. Further, it tells us that, besides the present opening scene, there were extant two different prologues, one of which was quite prosy and perhaps concocted by the actors. This seems to show that the Alexandrian scholars who tried for the first time to collect the complete works of Euripides, some two centuries after his death, found this play current as Euripides' Rhesus," but that it was credited with three different openings and that its style was felt to be somehow peculiar.

      The peculiarity of style is incontestable. It does not to our judgment suggest Sophocles. It suggests a young man imitating Aeschylus, and it has a great number of Euripidean expressions. Hermann, who collected what he took to be imitations of early poets in the Rhesus, noted only 25 of Sophocles, 38 of Aeschylus, and 84 of Euripides.

      Is it, then, the work of a somewhat imitative fourth-century poet, naturally influenced by his great forerunners? Hardly: because, with a few exceptions, the verse and diction of the Rhesus, are markedly early in character, the verse severe and smooth, the diction direct and rather grandiose, the choral lyrics strictly relevant. In Euripides' later years Drama was moving rapidly away from all these things and, as far as we can judge, continued so moving after his death. If the Rhesus is a post-classical play it can hardly be honest fourth-century work: it must be deliberately archaistic, a product of the Alexandrian spirit if not actually of the Alexandrian age. This is what Hermann believed. But unfortunately it is not a bit more like our fragments of Alexandrian tragedy than it is like the Medea; and, further, if it is an Alexandrian pseudo-classic tragedy, how did it succeed in deceiving the Alexandrian critics, detectives specially trained for this kind of work?

      Let us try quite a different hypothesis, and begin by accepting the external evidence as true. The famous critic, Crates, of the second century B.C., happens to mention—in excuse of what he took to be a slip in the poet's astronomy—that the Rhesus of Euripides was a youthful work. Now the earliest dated tragedy of Euripides that

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