Part 8

It is commonly assumed—and even Verrall tacitly allows this to go unchallenged—that Alcestis ‘is in love with’ Admetus, and Admetus ‘is in love with’ Alcestis. The affection which, happily for us, may usually be expected to exist between husband and wife, is taken for granted in the very different conditions of Euripides’ time.

Now, as we have seen, this is a cardinal error. Mutual affection and esteem did _not_ reign in an ordinary Athenian household. Husband and wife were usually indifferent one to another, and even this indifference was an improvement upon the Ionian relationship when husband and wife were often natural enemies.

That a wife should give up her life out of love for her husband is a state of things so agreeable to the natural man that it is, perhaps, not surprising if the language of the play has never been too closely examined.

_Alcestis’ motive is not love for her husband, but love for her children._ Euripides, following Æschylus, knew that maternal love is a far stronger force than conjugal affection, even when the latter exists. The mother and the children—on them he spends all the resources of his unrivalled pathos—the husband is a mark for his bitterest irony. It is because Alcestis does not wish her children to be left _fatherless_ that she consents to death.

The position of the widow—as indeed, is implied in our language by the form of the word—is definitely worse than that of the widower. The orphan in ancient times was the fatherless child, and the position of the chief’s son whose father died in his childhood was particularly unenviable. It is described in two of the most pathetic passages in Greek literature, by Andromache in the twenty-second book of the Iliad and by Tecmessa, in the most Euripidean of all the plays of Sophocles, the Ajax. Under the old tribal system, a chief’s power depended very largely on personal ascendency, so that old men like Laertes and Pheres found it expedient to retire in favour of their grown-up son. A small boy like Eumelus could not have maintained his father’s position, and his father’s death would probably have meant considerable danger to his life. All this in Euripides’ time was a commonplace and needed no emphasis. He prefers, indeed, to deal with the reverse picture—the sorrows of the motherless children and especially of the motherless girl; for the pathos of the sacrifice is partly this. It is for the sake of the boy and his future position in life, and not so much for the girl, that the mother dies.

Let us now examine the play itself. Admetus, chief of Pheræ, has been told by his medicine man that he is a very bad life: that, indeed, he cannot hope to live much longer—three months, perhaps; six months, say, at the most. But he has been a generous benefactor to the profession, and in particular has rendered some quite exceptional services to the arch-physician, Apollo himself. Accordingly a special provision is made in his case. If he can get some one of his own family to transfer to him their vitality, the operation may be feasible. The problem is, to find the man—or woman—for his family is very small. Admetus goes to his father and his mother, but both, even his mother, refuse; for, as we shall see, Admetus is not a very sympathetic character, or likely to arouse the spirit of self-sacrifice even in a mother’s heart. Finally he asks his young wife, the mother of his two little children, and she consents.

At this point the play opens. Admetus believes what he is told; Alcestis believes what she is told: the sixth month is ending and she is marked out for death. So Death appears, and the burlesque dialogue between Death and the Doctor, Thanatos and Apollo, forms the prologue, where the arch-physician, who can cure all diseases but one, is confronted by that One himself. But the prologue and the entrance of the chorus need not detain us. The first intimate details about Alcestis are given by the servant woman in her long speech to the chorus, and it will be noticed that in the picture of the household which she draws for them the central point is the marriage bed. Twice already has Alcestis risked her life upon that bed, and now another sacrifice has to be made. A childless woman might refuse. Her husband demands her life, and she must give it for the sake of the children whom on that bed she has borne. It is of her children that Alcestis thinks: for them she prays: she has no petition to make on her husband’s behalf. In all the narrative, indeed, the husband scarcely appears. The chorus—_of men_—notice the omission and enquire of him, and this is the answer they get:

‘_Oh, yes he is weeping_ as he holds the woman he loves, his bed-fellow, in both arms. He is begging her not to abandon him: _he wants what he cannot have_.’

The chorus then burst into a lament which is interrupted by the appearance of Alcestis and her husband outside the house. The following scene is an extreme example of that combination of pathos and irony from which Euripides never shrinks. The lamentation of Alcestis, expressed in lyrics of the purest quality, is answered at regular intervals by Admetus in iambic couplets where style and thought alike are cruelly commonplace.

Then Alcestis who has been standing, supported by her women, sinks to the ground and with one last cry _to her children_ thrice repeated seems to faint away. Admetus in the name _of the children_ begs her not to forsake him ‘this is worse _for me_ than any death: on you we all depend—to live or die.’ Alcestis makes her final effort, and for the first time addresses her husband by name, but in the pathetic speech that follows, her last words are for her children, and it is plain that she is terribly afraid that Admetus will marry again and inflict a stepmother upon them. Admetus himself hesitates to give the promise, and it is one of the chorus who answers the dying wife.

With Alcestis disappears the pathos of the play. The rest is ironical, a realistic criticism of the resurrection story and hardly concerns us. But the scene between Pheres and Admetus where the old father—the mother is prudently omitted from the action,—comes to convey his sympathy, is a beautiful illustration of Euripides’ insight into the weakness of the male character.

‘Such are the pair, father and son: behold your ordinary sensual man,’ he seems to say. Dr. Verrall spends some time and pains in showing that Admetus is not a hero, and, doubtless, he is not heroic either to us or to Euripides. But it does not follow that an Athenian audience would share our or the master’s private views. We are unconsciously influenced by centuries of romantic literature in which the relations of the sexes have been idealised. The Athenians treated women much as the baser sort still treat animals. To us Admetus seems almost inconceivably selfish and callous: probably many an Athenian never realised that his conduct was reprehensible.

Even so to-day a vegetarian has considerable difficulty in proving to the ordinary man that it is unjustifiable selfishness to take life for the gratification of appetite. ‘I always have eaten meat,’ such an one will say; ‘I always shall: and so did my father. Animals were created for use.’ The Athenian might have used the same language about his wife.

But in the play itself no one is under any sort of delusion as to Admetus. The servant woman, the attendant, the chorus, Alcestis herself: all know him for what he is, a selfish coward. Very religious certainly he is and very hospitable: in other words, very full of absurd superstitions and very fond of having strangers in the house to divert him from himself. Heracles the ravisher, and Apollo the seducer, appreciate him as an excellent boon companion: his own household do not share their views. They know too well—and there is constant reference to this in the play—that he is ‘foolish’ in the Euripidean sense of the word, the slave of passions which he is unable to control. And so we may leave him: in his character Euripides explodes the fallacy that in all cases and in all circumstances man is the superior animal.

But the wonder of the Alcestis is this: in spite of the irony and cruel satire, in spite of the bitter criticism of the two doctrines, the existence of the supernatural and the superiority of man, there remain so many other threads of interest—realism and romance, pathos and humour—that a well-disposed reader can shut his eyes to the unpleasant, and usually does. What is wanted to bring out the full meaning of Euripides’ plays is a double translation; one version written in prose by a realist with a taste for irony, the other composed by a lyric poet. Neither version will be satisfactory apart, for the spirit of Euripides is a compound of the two: neither will be final, for translations quickly age and Euripides is ever young.

IX.—THE SOCRATIC CIRCLE

Sophocles is almost the last representative of the earlier and happier period of the Athenian Empire, their golden age as it seemed later, when to the complacent imagination of the male citizen all things seemed to be working together in the direction of progress and freedom. Progress indeed there was, and for men freedom of thought, for the intellectual atmosphere of Athens in the middle of the fifth century B.C., with its combination of clear knowledge and bracing speculation, has never been surpassed. But as a society, Athens already contained within herself the seeds of decay and destruction. The wealth of her intellectual achievement barely concealed the poverty of her social morality, and it was only by dint of firmly closing their eyes to the degradation of their women and the misery of their slaves that the Athenians maintained for a time the fond illusion that everything was for the best in the best of all possible cities.

Then came the shock of the Peloponnesian War and the inherent weaknesses of a free State which refuses political freedom to more than half its population were cruelly revealed. For nearly thirty years, with some few breathing spaces, the struggle went on, while Athens tried to force a culture intellectually superior but morally inferior to that of many other of the Greek peoples upon a reluctant world: and in the end she failed and fell.

After the fifth century the political importance of Athens disappears; her intellectual pre-eminence is saved for her by a small group of men who under the hard teaching of war discerned the flaws of her social system and set themselves resolutely to the task of criticism and reform. The nobility of war, the nobility of birth, the nobility of sex: these are some of the prejudged questions that the Socratic Circle ventured to dispute, and their contentions, as we have them recorded in the literature of the late fifth and the early fourth centuries, form perhaps the most valuable legacy that the Greek mind has left us. But, like so much of Greek thought, their ideas require interpretation for a modern reader. Some of the greatest of the Circle, Socrates and Antisthenes, for example, we only know in the writings of other men, and we have to disentangle the master’s ideas from those of his disciples. Plato and Xenophon were drawn away by metaphysics and soldiering, and social problems form only a part of their interests. Euripides and Aristophanes were compelled to conform to the conventions of Attic tragedy and comedy, and we must always discount the influence of the stage; Euripides is often less and Aristophanes more serious than suits our ideas of a tragic and a comic writer. Lastly, for all the group except Xenophon, irony was the favourite weapon of attack, an irony so deftly veiled that it made the bitterest criticism possible, and still often passes undetected.

But even so the critics were not popular and their reforms were not accepted: Socrates was put to death; Plato found a shelter in political obscurity; Euripides, like Æschylus, passed much of his life away from Athens; Xenophon took up his home in the Peloponnese: in their lives they fought against a stubborn majority, and when they were dead the social organisation of Athenian life remained apparently unchanged. But their teaching lived on after them, and on feminist questions it derives almost an additional value from the general hostility of their fellow-countrymen.

In their criticism of the problems that we call feminism Euripides and Socrates were the initiative forces, and a close study of the former’s plays is indispensable for any one who wishes to understand the position of women in Athenian life. But the plays of Euripides throw also a certain light on the position of Socrates himself. Socrates and Euripides we know were close friends: ‘which of the two gathered the sticks and which made the faggot,’ so runs the ancient saying, ‘no man can tell,’ and in many points of family relationship they had the same experience. Euripides’ mother, Cleito ‘the greengrocer,’ Socrates’ wife, Xanthippë ‘the scold,’ are two of the rare women in Athenian history of whom we know even the names. Both men were lovers of women in the nobler sense, and the later misogynists revenged themselves by enlarging upon their marital infelicities. In the case of Euripides there is no real evidence to support these scandals, and even if Xanthippë was a woman of strong temper, both men were well enough satisfied with the married state to take another wife in addition to their first helpmate, when a special law, rendered necessary by the waste of male lives in the great war, gave formal sanction to such a step. Both alike agreed in condemning the misogyny of their day and knew that a man who habitually thinks ill of women has probably no very good reason to think well of himself. Both applied to women as well as to men the great doctrines of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Euripides saw in woman the equal and not the slave of man, Socrates regarded her as his natural friend and not his natural enemy. In Xenophon’s Socratic books, the _Memorabilia_, the _Œconomicus_, and the _Symposium_, we get the best record of the master’s view of the women, for Socrates was himself too cautious ever to commit himself to the written word, and perhaps the most characteristic of the episodes is the visit to the fair hetaira, the one faithful of all the lovers of Alcibiades, described in the _Memorabilia_.

There lived in Athens a fair lady called Theodotë, whose habit it was to give her society to any one who could woo and win her. One of the company made mention of her to Socrates, remarking that the lady’s beauty quite surpassed description. ‘Painters,’ said he, ‘go to her house to paint her portrait, and she displays to them all her perfection!’ ‘Well,’ said Socrates, ‘manifestly, we too must go and see her. It is impossible from mere hearsay to realise something which surpasses description.’ Thereupon his informant: ‘Quick, then, and follow me.’

So off they went at once to Theodotë, and found her at home, posing to a painter. When the painter had finished, ‘Friends,’ said Socrates, ‘ought we to be more grateful to Theodotë for displaying to us her beauty, or she to us for having come to see her? I suppose if this display is going to be more advantageous to her, she ought to be grateful to us. But if it is we who are going to make a profit from the sight, then we ought to be grateful to her.’ ‘Very fairly put,’ said one, and Socrates resumed, ‘The lady is profiting this moment by the praise she receives from us, and when we spread the tale abroad she will gain a further advantage. But, as for ourselves we are beginning to have a desire to touch what we have just now seen: when we are going away we shall feel the smart, and after we have gone we shall still long for her. So we may reasonably say that it is we who are the servitors, and that she accepts our service.’ Thereupon Theodotë: ‘Well, if that is so, it would be only proper for me to thank you for coming to see me.’ Afterwards Socrates noticed that the lady herself was expensively arrayed, and that her mother’s dress (for her mother was in the room) and general appearance was by no means humble. There were a number of comely maidens also in attendance, showing little signs of neglect in their attire, and in all respects the household was luxuriously arranged.

‘Tell me, Theodotë,’ said he, ‘have you any land of your own?’

‘I have not,’ she replied.

‘Well, then, I suppose your household brings you in a good income.’

‘No, I have not a house.’

‘Have you a factory, then?’

‘No, not a factory either.’

‘How then do you get what you need?’

‘When I find a friend, and he is kind enough to help me, then my livelihood is assured.’

‘By our lady, that is a fine thing to have. A flock of friends is far better than a flock of sheep, or goats, or oxen. But do you leave it to chance whether friends are to wing their way towards you like flies, or do you use some mechanical device?’

‘Why, how could I find any device in this matter?’

‘Surely, it would be much more appropriate for you than for spiders. You know how they hunt for their living. They weave gossamer webs, I believe, and anything that comes their way they take for food.’

‘Do you advise me, then, to weave a hunting net?’

‘No, no. You must not suppose that it is such a simple matter to catch that noble animal, a lover. Have you not noticed that even to catch such a humble thing as a hare people use many devices? Knowing that hares are night-feeders, they provide themselves with night-dogs, and use them in the chase. Furthermore, as the creatures run off at daybreak, they get other dogs to scent them out and find which way they go from their feeding ground to their forms. Again, they are swift-footed, so that they can get away in an open race, and a third class of dogs is provided to catch them in their tracks. Lastly, inasmuch as some escape even from the dogs, men set nets in their runs, so that they may fall into the meshes and be caught.’

‘But what sort of contrivance should I use in hunting for lovers?’

‘A man, of course, to take the place of the dog; some one able to track out and discover wealthy amateurs for you; able also to find ways of getting them into your nets.’

‘Nets, forsooth! What sort of nets have I?’

‘One you have certainly, close enfolding and well constructed, your body. And within your body there is your heart, which teaches you the looks that charm and the words that please. It tells you to welcome true friends with a smile, and to lock out overbearing gallants; when your beloved is sick, to tend him with anxious care; when he is prospering, to share his joy; in fine, to surrender all your soul to a devout lover. I am sure you know full well how to love. Love needs a tender heart as well as soft arms. I am sure, too, that you convince your lovers of your affection not by mere phrases, but by acts of love.’

‘Nay, nay, I do not use any artificial devices.’

‘Well, it makes a great difference if you approach a man in the natural and proper way. You will not catch or keep a lover by force. He is a creature who can only be captured and kept constant by kindness and pleasure.’

‘That is true.’

‘You should only ask then of your well-wishers such services as will cost them little to render, and you should requite them with favours of the same sort. Thereby you will secure their fervent and constant love, and they will be your benefactors indeed. You will charm them most if you never surrender except when they are sharp set. You have noticed that the daintiest fare, if served before a man wants it, is apt to seem insipid; while, if he is already sated, it even produces a feeling of nausea. Create a feeling of hunger before you serve your banquet; then even humble food will appear sweet.’

‘How can I create this hunger in my friends?’

‘First, never serve them when they are sated. Never suggest it even. Wait until the feeling of repletion has quite disappeared and they begin again to be sharp set. Even then at first let your suggestions be only of most modest conversation. Seem not to wish to yield. Fly from them—and fly again; until they feel the pinch of hunger. That is your moment. The gift is the same as when a man desired it not; but wondrous different now its value.’

Theodotë: ‘Why do you not join me in the hunt, and help me to catch lovers?’

‘I will, certainly,’ said he, ‘if you can persuade me to come.’

‘Nay, how can I do that?’

‘You must look yourself, and find a way if you want me.’

‘Come to my house, then, often.’

Then Socrates, jesting at his own indifference to business, replied:

‘It is no easy matter for me to take a holiday. I am always kept busy by my private and public work. Moreover, I have my lady friends, who will never let me leave them night or day. They would always be having me teach them love-charms and incantations.’

‘What, do you know that, too?’

‘Why, what else is the reason, think you, that Apollodorus and Antisthenes never leave my side? Why have Cebes and Simmias come all the way from Thebes to stay with me? You may be quite sure that not without love-charms and incantations and magic wheels may this be brought about.’

‘Lend me your wheel, then, that I may use it on you.’

‘Nay, I do not want to be drawn to you. I want you to come to me.’

‘Well, I will come. But be sure and be at home.’

‘I will be at home to you, unless there be some lady with me who is dearer even than yourself.’

It is a significant incident, charmingly related by Xenophon, but not altogether charming in itself, although the humorous irony of Socrates may hide from careless readers all the darker sides of the picture. But Socrates himself is entirely lovable. There is nothing furtive, nothing patronising in the philosopher’s attitude. He behaves to Theodotë as he would behave to every one. He admires her beauty, and, like Goldsmith, recognises that a beautiful woman is a benefactress to mankind. But while he knows the strength of her position, he realises its weakness also, and there is a shade of pity in his admiration.

A similar appreciation of women is shown in many passages of the _Symposium_; for example, when Socrates says, ‘Women need no perfume: they are compounds themselves of fragrance.’ There is that Socratic paradox, also, after the dancing-girl’s performance:

‘This is one proof, among very many, that woman’s nature is in no way inferior to man’s: she has no lack either of judgment or physical strength.’

He continues his argument by advising his friends to _teach_ their wives; and he deals with the weakest point in woman’s life—the ignorance in which they were kept. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he says; ‘teach her all that you would wish your companion to know.’

Thereupon Anthisthenes puts the pertinent question: ‘If that is your idea, Socrates, why do you not try and train Xanthippë, who is, I believe, the most difficult of all wives, present, past, and future?’ To this he gets the following reply:

‘I have noticed,’ says Socrates, ‘that people who wish to become good horsemen get a spirited horse, not a tame, docile animal. They think that if they can manage a fiery steed they will find no difficulty with an ordinary horse. My case is the same. I wanted to be a citizen of the world and to mix with all men. So I took her. I am quite sure that if I can endure her, I shall find no difficulty in ordinary company.’