CHAPTER V

EURIPIDES AND VASE PAINTING

§ 1. INTRODUCTION.

It has already been made clear that Euripides enjoyed an enormous popularity among Greek and Italian artists, and that he was the chief inspiration for works of art based on tragedy. This latter feature assumes a new interest when studied with the Greek vases. The great majority of these paintings, as has been pointed out, is to be placed within the fourth cent. B.C., and through them one approaches very near to the poet’s own time. They are to be valued, therefore, as most direct and reliable testimony concerning Greek tragedy and the place it occupied in the life of Lower Italy. Not a few of the paintings published in the following pages may have been seen by people who had known the Athenian society in which Euripides himself had moved. This proximity of the vases to the poet’s own day is an important point, and should be thoroughly comprehended in order to bring the true value of the paintings before one. The text of a classical Greek author, exposed to the emendatory zeal of the ancient grammarians and the ignorance and carelessness of scribes, had a precarious sort of existence before it was microscopically dissected and violently revised by modern philologists. Our oldest manuscript hardly goes back more than one-third of the way to the original. Between 1000 A.D. and 340 B.C., when the archetype of the three tragedians was ordered by Lykurgos, how long was the line of copies! It is vastly different with the edition of the _Medeia_, for example, on the amphora, p. 145. The vase relates the tragedy at first hand, and furnishes the student with an exhibition of the play that is more than twenty-two hundred years old. The original work and no copy carries one into the century succeeding the first production of the play. Such facts impress one with the importance of this class of monuments.

Before taking up the discussion of the vase paintings that are under the influence of Euripides, it may be well to examine for a moment the ancient testimony touching the poet. It is well known that he did not follow the orthodox form of tragic composition established by Aischylos and adhered to by Sophokles. He was less religious than either of the other two and, in the same degree, more a man of the world. He was interested in politics, rhetoric, and philosophy, and these elements accordingly found room in his plays. For introducing the common, ordinary affairs of daily life he was stoutly condemned by Aristophanes. His policy continued the same in spite of the virulent attacks of his enemies, and the individual appealed to him more strongly than the body politic; where the former poets had preached ἦθος and directed their messages to the world καθ’ ὅλον, Euripides disclosed for the first time the power of πάθος, and that of itself was specific and applied to the community καθ’ ἕκαστον. Herein lay Aristotle’s unfavourable criticism. The philosopher admired Homer, Aischylos, and Sophokles more than Euripides simply because he considered ἦθος to be a more potent factor than πάθος, and so he complains that none of the younger poets have the former[155]. By νέοι he evidently meant post-Euripidean writers, and yet there is no trace of the Aristotelian conception of ἦθος in Euripides. We may imagine that the great thinker looked for something more stable than πάθος. But this was all cold, calculating criticism, and Aristotle appears, for the most part, alone in placing Euripides below Aischylos and Sophokles. The Alexandrian grammarians were his chief followers. Plato found in Euripides an authority of great pre-eminence[156]. The immediate success that he enjoyed in his own time is well illustrated by the anecdote related in Plutarch’s _Life of Nikias_[157]. The fugitives from the Athenian army in the Sicilian expedition are said to have maintained themselves by reciting from Euripides’ works, and captives were able to gain their freedom by teaching their masters new selections from the Euripidean plays. The element of truth in this remarkable story enables one to understand something of the place held by this poet in the West. It is related of Alexander that he was particularly fond of Euripides, and that he performed the feat of reciting a whole scene from the _Andromeda_ at his fatal banquet[158]. A certain Axionikos wrote a comedy called the ‘Lover of Euripides,’ in which he represented the people as suffering from the Euripides-fad to such an extent that they counted all other poetry worthless[159]. A fitting _finale_ to all this is reached in the story told in the _vita_ of Euripides to the effect that Philemon would have been willing to hang himself if thereby he might have seen Euripides. That he was always in men’s mouths is attested by the large number of fragments from the lost plays. It is instructive to see that he was quoted in the Hellenistic period to the exclusion of Aischylos and Sophokles. Wisdom and state-craft were found in Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Euripides[160]. One is not surprised, therefore, to learn that his tragedies were the only ones produced at certain Dionysia[161]. This was the period in which most of the vase paintings in the following pages belong, and it is only these numerous traditions of the unparalleled popularity of this poet, east and west, north and south, that makes it possible to appreciate his wide-spread influence over art. The vases have to be studied in this light, and only then does their importance as a Euripidean commentary become sufficiently clear.

A glance at the conditions in Magna Graecia is necessary before leaving this topic. The theatre-going propensities of the Tarentines has been mentioned above, and one has now to ask himself who their favourite poet was. There can be but one answer. Here, as in Africa, Asia Minor, and Sicily, the public was sure to find the greatest satisfaction in a Euripidean _répertoire_. The travelling troops of actors performed in all the towns of Apulia, Campania, and Lucania, and the tragic forms of the myths were widely published. Euripides was, in short, more than ever the people’s poet, and he became later, with the rise of Latin tragedy, the poet of the Republic. Roman tragedy was Greek in everything but the language. The 166 years between the death of Euripides and the production of Livius Andronicus’ first play in Rome were a seed-time for the works of the Greek poet. The titles of Livius’ ten tragedies include two from Euripides—the _Andromeda_ and the _Danaë_—and the father of Latin poetry was a native of Tarentum. Ennius, born in Rudiae, which Strabo calls a πόλις Ἑλληνίς[162], was educated at Tarentum, and became the first national poet of the Romans. Among his twenty-two plays the following are either translations of Euripides or adaptations from him: _Alexandrus_, _Andromacha_, _Andromeda_, _Erechtheus_, _Medea_, _Medea exul_, _Melanippa_, _Phoenix_, _Telephus_, and perhaps _Alcumena_. Pacuvius, a nephew of Ennius, and the third one of the Latin tragedians, also followed Euripides more than Aischylos or Sophokles. He was born in Brundusium 268 B.C. and died in Tarentum 140 B.C. These three poets who come first in the history of Latin literature are peculiarly indebted to Euripides and likewise have a special relation to Magna Graecia and Tarentum. More than half of the whole number of works produced by them would appear to have been Euripidean. Whether it was the rhetorical or pathetic element that appealed to the Romans more strongly, the fact that Euripides was the primary force in Latin tragedy is very important.

In this attempt to indicate the wider influence of the Attic drama upon the Latins I have been carried beyond the time of the vase industry, but the Latin literature of the third and second century B.C. was the legitimate product of the conditions that had prevailed in the preceding period. The Greek literary and artistic genius blossomed into an Italian flower and flourished in the soil that had been fertilized by centuries of Hellenic influences. It is to a small section of this wonderful life in Magna Graecia that the present work is devoted. The vase paintings that follow can best tell their own story of the wide-spread Hellenization of Lower Italy in the fourth century and of the place held by Euripides in the onward march of Hellenism.

§ 2. ANDROMACHE.

It does not appear that in the pre-Euripidean literature Orestes played any part in the death of Neoptolemos. Pindar at least did not know anything of the Menelaos-Orestes conspiracy against the son of Achilles[163] but Menelaos’ relation to Sparta afforded a rare opportunity for a political polemic. The latter could be painted as a much more despicable character, as could also the Lakedaimonians in general, provided Orestes were involved in the unholy murder. The anti-Spartan feeling in Athens was sufficient to guarantee a hearty reception to any drama depicting the crookedness and treachery of the Spartan character. Such a play was certain to meet the demands of a campaign document.

The _Andromache_ has, however, little of the merit which one can usually discover in Euripides; it was classed even by the ancients among his second-rate works[164]. There is but one effective situation in the whole tragedy, and that is the speech of the messenger, vs. 1085–1165, which gives the account of Neoptolemos’ murder at Delphi. The beginning is remarkably simple and unaffected, but when once the poet gets under way the action increases rapidly in violence, becoming at every step more and more intense until at last the whole temple of Apollo resounds with the roar of the unholy tumult. Orestes’ party is, of course, victorious over the single-handed descendant of Peleus. This manœuvring inside the temple is unique, and intensely dramatic and picturesque. The pictorial importance of the scene is attested by a painting on a large amphora found in Ruvo[165].

In the centre is the sanctuary of Apollo denoted by two tripods, the laurel tree, the omphalos covered with a netting, and the altar. To the latter, already dashed with blood, Neoptolemos, ΝΕΟΠΤΟΛΕΜΟΣ, has fled. He holds a drawn sword in his right hand and whirls his chlamys about his left. He wears a petasos and has a sword-cut in his left side from which blood is oozing. His face is turned towards the omphalos behind which Orestes, ΟΡΕΣΤΑΣ, appears to be dodging. He has a chlamys and a pilos; in his left hand the sheath of a sword, the latter being in his right. On the left, behind the altar, is another youth, nude except the chlamys on the left arm. He holds a spear in the right hand as though about to cast it at Neoptolemos. The centre of the upper section is filled out with an Ionic temple, the doors of which are open. On the left, the half-figure of a woman, recognizable by the key as the temple priestess (κλῃδοῦχος)[166], appears in great alarm. Apollo, ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ, with his bow, occupies a seat on the right of the temple[167].

In order to understand the painting it is necessary to bear in mind what preceded the speech of the messenger. Andromache, the wife of Hektor, had fallen to the lot of Neoptolemos on the division of the Trojan spoils and had been taken by him to Phthia. As his captive she had raised him a son, Molossos, while his lawful wife Hermione, daughter of Menelaos and cousin of Orestes, continued barren. Hermione, being suspicious that it was through some drugs of Andromache that she had been rendered thus unhappy, determined upon the latter’s death, and while Neoptolemos was absent at Delphi to atone for certain family wrongs the desperate Hermione proceeded to carry out her resolve to destroy both the mother and the young Molossos. This spiteful work of the injured wife occupies the first part of the tragedy. The two are finally saved by the intervention of the aged Peleus, and Hermione thereupon resolves to kill herself. At this point, Orestes, who is on his way to consult the oracle at Dodona, enters. On learning of the insults and injuries that had been heaped upon Hermione, once promised him for a bride, he at once undertakes to relieve her of any reason for dreading the return of Neoptolemos and the attendant disclosure of her wicked plans.

He leaves accordingly for Delphi. The messenger comes in after a song by the chorus and relates what has taken place. Orestes had gone round putting the Delphians on their guard against this Neoptolemos whose plan was to sack the temple. Credence was at once given to the fabrication, and the inhabitants determined upon a bold step. When Neoptolemos was at the altar addressing the god, the band of armed Delphians who were lying in wait for him behind the sacred laurel tree sprang out and fell upon him.

This furnishes the setting for our painting, and we may turn for a little to a closer examination of the account given by the poet. It will be noticed that the artist, while in some respects keeping close to the latter, has in the main done his work rather independently. Common to both are the δάφνη (v. 1115) and the βωμός (vs. 1123 and 1138). The attacking party in the painting includes Orestes, thus emphasizing the point which Euripides really had in mind. In this particular the artist has gone ahead of the poet. It appears, indeed, as though Orestes had just made the slash in Neoptolemos’ side. The moment represented is, therefore, that when the fight was on. The Delphians appear to have but one representative, who is certainly creating far less annoyance for Neoptolemos than does the company in Euripides, where they hurl rocks and fill the air with dust and din. The setting of the scene in the painting is magnificent. Everything points to the great shrine; both the exterior and interior of the temple are visible. As for the Ionic order it should be remembered that this has nought to do with the historic facts in the case. An examination of the buildings on the vases of Lower Italy reveals a decided preference on the part of the artists for this order of architecture[168]. The painting is an excellent example of the influence of the poet over the artist. This is, however, no mere illustration, a fact to be remembered in dealing with all the paintings of this class; the spirit and not the letter is what one can trace most readily in works of art based upon the tragedians. The agreement between the literary source and the picture is more apparent here than in most instances, and this is largely due to the fact that the _Andromache_ is particularly Euripidean. This turn does not occur in any other author. A parallel case will be observed in the chapter dealing with _Iphigeneia among the Taurians_. It is this alteration and extension of old myths which characterizes Euripides’ work. These new features were popular and attracted the public, and here one gets the key to the unparalleled influence which this poet exercised upon artists.

§ 3. BAKCHAI.

Euripides’ _Bakchai_ is our chief authority concerning the fate of Pentheus[169], yet this writer did not by any means establish the details of the story. This was done long before Thespis may have assayed to dramatize the tragic episode[170] and before Aischylos wrote his _Pentheus_[171]. It is not probable that Euripides materially altered the accepted form of the myth, and there may be in his play a mixture of the traditional and Aischylean versions. Pentheus’ death, like the madness of the Thracian king Lykurgos, was inseparably connected with the advent of the Dionysiac worship. The series of victories won by the orgiastic god from the wild North was not bloodless; his coming was attended with opposition. In the end, however, his foes were annihilated or ruined, and the new joy brought in by the foreign god captivated a nation and made it his devout worshipper. Euripides could say little or nothing new touching the triumph of Dionysos over the king of Thebes, yet this tragedy, one of the most brilliant pieces of Greek literature, paints in glorious colours the history of the victory.

The events, as told by Euripides, are briefly as follows. Dionysos has arrived in Thebes from Lydia and the East, where he had already established his choirs of Bacchanals. Thebes was the first city to which he came, and here, where he least expected opposition, scepticism met him. The sisters of his mother Semele circulated the report that he was no god but an impostor. He forthwith drove the Kadmeian women maddened from their homes to wander in the mountains attired in the Dionysiac dress; the Bacchic craze spread further, and seized even the seer Teiresias and Kadmos, who with thyrsoi and fawn-skins joined the orgies. Pentheus, on hearing of these strange doings, appears and chides them both, and threatens to hunt the women from the mountains and punish the stranger who has made his family drunk with frenzy. At v. 434 Dionysos, bewitchingly beautiful, is led a prisoner before Pentheus, who orders him to be bound and cast into the royal stable. Soon afterward the walls are heard to crash in and flames burst forth in every direction (v. 593 ff.). The god, to be sure, is safe, and Pentheus is mocked and wild with anger, while the former bids him be quiet and subdue his anger. At this point a messenger arrives to recount the strange sights that had met his eyes on the mountains. Three bands of women, led by Autonoë, Agave, and Ino, had rushed upon his herd of cattle and torn them limb from limb, and afterward they washed the blood from their hands in a fountain made to flow by the god. In the face of these wonders he urges Pentheus to honour the latter, but the king will not brook this Bacchic insolence and threatens to sacrifice a hekatomb of women on Kithairon rather than propitiate the unwelcome visitor. Dionysos advises him not to kick against the pricks (v. 795); in a moment Pentheus’ attitude is seen to change; the secret power of the god is working on him; he will see the strange actions himself, and would rather forfeit a thousand-weight in gold than forgo the opportunity (v. 812). The linen chiton is at once provided, and Dionysos, who is to lead the way, directs the arrangement of the dress so that Pentheus shall not be mistaken for a man. After some scruples as to the figure he may make before his citizens he is anxious to be off. Once in the mountains giddiness comes upon him. He sees two suns, and a double Thebes, and twice seven gates; he declares that the god himself has taken on a bull’s form with horns (v. 918 ff.). Immediately thereafter he obtains the first glimpse of the women. There are Ino and his mother Agave. Then he worries lest he may not hold his thyrsos correctly. This shows his sad predicament too plainly. Dionysos has done his work; his vengeance on the recalcitrant Pentheus is at hand. At first the latter feels himself able to overturn the whole mountain and asks the advice of the god as to the best means of annihilating the troop. When violence is not recommended he suggests that he had best hide in a pine-tree to view the sight (v. 954). Nothing further is ever heard from the king’s own lips except in his death-cry reported by the messenger who had accompanied him. When they had reached the band in the glen, shadowed by pines (πεύκη, v. 1052), the thicket was so dense that Pentheus requested that he might be allowed to ascend the bank or climb a tree (v. 1061) in order to command the field. Dionysos bent a tree to the ground, placed the king upon the boughs and allowed it to rise again, and, turning to his devotees, pointed to their prey. Stones and darts are directed at Pentheus, and finally the tree is pulled up by main force and he falls an easy victim to the maddened women. Agave, heeding none of his cries, tears out a shoulder; Ino, Autonoë, and the rest help in dismembering the king. His mother fixed his head upon a thyrsos and led the troop on a wild dance over Kithairon, finally coming to the palace. Gradually freed from the insanity, she realized the enormity of her crime. Dionysos’ godhead was, however, established, and the house of Kadmos remained a terrible witness of his power. These are the harrowing details of the murder, and one cannot wonder that there are numerous vase paintings based on the tragedy.

There is a long list of vases that can for the most part be passed over with a mere reference. They are all, with perhaps one exception, later than 500 B.C. This means that the impetus for the tragedy in art was given largely by the tragic drama. The oldest painting is older than the _Pentheus_ of Aischylos and cannot, therefore, be connected with his play. There may have been an earlier dramatization, such as that recorded of Thespis, which figured in this monument[172]. All the remaining paintings belong to the latter part of the fifth century B.C. and the fourth century B.C., and are, with one exception, of too general a character to be used as evidence for one of the tragedies[173]. On the Munich hydria it seems to me there are clear traces of the _Bakchai_, and this widely-known work is given here in fig. 11[174].

Pentheus, wearing chlamys, pilos, and boots, crouches, with a drawn sword in his right hand, in a thicket denoted by two trees. A maenad who appears to have just discovered him rushes into the hiding-place with a torch in her right hand[175]; she is dressed in a plain, Doric peplos. Another maenad, similarly dressed but having a fawn-skin over the left hand and a sword in the right, does not seem to have sighted Pentheus. A third, dressed like the first one, holding a tympanon in the left hand and a thyrsos in the right, approaches wholly unconcerned with the discovery of her companions. On the right is another group of three maenads all dressed alike and all in rapid motion. The first holds in either hand the quarters of a kid or roe. The second shoulders the thyrsos with her left hand and makes an ecstatic gesture with her right. The third one, in even more violent motion, swings her veil about her and rushes on towards the left.

It should be noted, to begin with, that the vase is a Lower Italy fabric of the fourth century B.C., and that there is therefore no chronological difficulty in placing it under the influence of the _Bakchai_. The troop of maenads is arranged symmetrically, an equal number being on each side of the central scene, and this suggests the chorus in the play. The striking feature is the introduction of the landscape; there is no doubt as to where the catastrophe occurs. The artist did not allow himself the licence of placing Pentheus in the tree, for this had been too grotesque a sight for the fourth-century painter. The frequent references to the thicket[176] and the protection it was or the inconvenience it caused, is happily brought out in the picture, but the poet has not been followed in details. Pentheus does not appear with the thyrsos, talaric chiton, and dishevelled hair, for the simple reason that he would have been indistinguishable from the maenads. As he appears in the painting the contrast is striking and the eye at once grasps the situation. The torch held by the foremost maenad lights the way to the retreat of Pentheus, suggesting the words—

καὶ πρὸς οὐρανὸν καὶ γαῖαν ἐστήριζε φῶς σεμνοῦ πυρός. v. 1082 f.

That one is armed with a sword while the others have no weapon finds also a parallel in Euripides, who says one time that they used nought but their hands—

χειρὸς ἀσιδήρου μέτα. v. 736.

and again that the sword shall do its work—

ἴτω ξιφηφόρος. vs. 992, 1012.

The wild revelry of the whole is instructive when studied with the poet. The Bacchanal who flaunts the quarters of her victim reminds one at once of the words—

ἀγρεύων | αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὠμοφάγον χάριν. v. 138 f.

In conclusion, reference should be made again to the newly discovered wall painting in Pompeii. It is so remarkably preserved and so thoroughly in the spirit of Euripides that there can be little doubt as to the influence of the _Bakchai_[177]. The only Pentheus painting recorded in classical literature was that in the Dionysos temple in Athens, which may also have been inspired by Euripides[178]. Is the Pompeian painting an echo of the celebrated one in Athens?

§ 4. HEKABE.

The _Hekabe_ is one of those plays which, like the _Andromache_, embraces a series of events loosely associated. There are in fact two distinct parts to this tragedy, having no other connexion than one would observe between two separate works where the same heroine appeared. Two heavy blows which the Fates dealt Hekabe after the fall of Troy constitute the subject of the action.

The first of these new calamities was the death of Polyxena. The Greeks are encamped on the Chersonesos side of the Hellespont. Among the captives are the former queen of Troy and her daughter. Achilles, who is among the shades, demands of the Greeks that Polyxena be sacrificed to him. The request cannot be ignored, and Odysseus and others are commissioned to secure her from her mother. The parting scene between Hekabe and the daughter is heartrending, but the courage and self-control exhibited by the latter are remarkable. Talthybios, the faithful herald of Agamemnon, afterwards reports to Hekabe the details of the sacrifice, and this description of the fair and innocent Polyxena is one of the gems of Greek literature. The lines in particular which describe her actions immediately before the fatal moment are famous for their beauty.

Although the offering of Polyxena was known in Greek art and letters before Euripides’ time[179], the subject must have been far more popular after the production of this tragedy. It appears to me a mere accident that no vase painting representing the scene has so far come to light. There is, however, on a so-called ‘Megarian Bowl’ a relief decoration, probably dating from the third century B.C., which doubtless owes its existence to Euripides[180]. It has seemed to me desirable to include this here, even though it carries us beyond the limits prescribed to the present work. The cup, found in Thebes, is in the Berlin Antiquarium[181]. The middle of the composition represents the tumulus of Achilles, above which is raised a stele with akroteria and a fillet. On the left, Polyxena, with exposed bosom and flowing hair, kneels with extended arms. Approaching her is Neoptolemos wearing a chlamys and holding his sword ready for the fatal stroke; behind the latter is a figure in a short undergarment, mantle and pilos. The cap distinguishes the person as Odysseus. Agamemnon sits with back to the beholder upon the extreme left, and lifts his left hand (not his right hand as Robert says), evidently astonished at the remarkable composure of the victim. On the right of the tomb are three warriors, who are more or less closely connected with the others. The first one appears to raise his hand in wonder at the fortitude of Polyxena; the second, who does not seem to be armed, has the appearance of one weeping; the third is apparently little interested in the tragedy. It is not necessary to name these three persons, evidently representatives of the Achaeans. The first one may perhaps be Talthybios, since he says he was present (v. 524). The dolphins upon the vase are meant no doubt to characterize the sea-shore where the sacrifice took place.

The essential part of the composition is, however, the tumulus and the figures on the left. Everything here illustrates Euripides. One reads in