Part 16

At first the man is reticent, fearing to offend the king. But pressed by Heracles, he presently reveals that it is not a stranger who is dead, but the queen herself; and that even now the funeral train is returning from the grave.

Heracles is overwhelmed with sorrow for his friend and contrition for his own untimely revelling. For a few moments he stands heaping reproaches on himself, and on the servants for their silence; but he is not long inactive. The generosity of Admetus fires his own heart; and his thought leaps impetuously to an act of tremendous daring. He will face the power of Death himself, and wrest Alcestis from him. He puts rapid questions to the man concerning the place of burial, calls up every resource of energy and endurance, and nerves himself for his grim task by a determination to requite Admetus worthily.

“_... I must save the woman newly dead, And set Alcestis in this house again, And render to Admetus good for good. I go. The sable-vestured King of Corpses, Death, will I watch for, and shall find, I trow, Drinking the death-draught hard beside the tomb. ... I doubt not I shall lead Alcestis up, and give to mine host’s hands, Who to his halls received, nor drave me thence, Albeit smitten with affliction sore, But did it, like a prince, respecting me._“[29]

As Heracles departs in search of Alcestis’ tomb, the mourners are seen approaching, led by Admetus, alone. A profound change has come upon the king. His ignoble anger has vanished: no word more is heard of the petulant reproach of his parents: nothing of the old arrogant claim on life which had blinded his soul and hardened his heart. Humbled now, and remorseful, he sees that death were infinitely preferable to life at the price that he has paid. Something had given him sight as he stood beside Alcestis’ tomb. He had tried to cast himself down to die beside her; but friends had restrained him, and now as he stands before the home that he dare not enter, he makes a pitiful confession—

“_Friends, I account the fortune of my wife Happier than mine, albeit it seems not so. For nought of grief shall touch her any more, And glorious rest she finds from many toils. But I, unmeet to live, my doom outrun, Shall drag out bitter days: I know it now. How shall I bear to enter this my home?_“[29]

The bystanders try to persuade him to go in, but he lingers through the beautiful choral ode that is raised in praise of Alcestis. They sing of the worship and honour that will be paid at her tomb as at a shrine; and as the long hymn is drawing to a close, Heracles is seen to be returning, leading a woman closely veiled. The king, standing in quiet despair, utters no word of greeting to his guest, and the Chorus wait in silent wonder for an explanation. A strange awe falls upon them; and Heracles, beginning in gentle gravity to reproach the king for want of confidence in him, turns presently to the veiled figure at his side. Will the king take and guard this maid for him, until he shall return from Thrace? She is a prize awarded him for great toil, and Admetus will do well to care for her.

But the king recoils at the thought. How can he receive a young and beautiful woman into his house without pain to himself and shame to her? He protests that it is unthinkable, and begs Heracles to take her elsewhere. She would be a constant reminder of his grief, and an insult to the memory of his wife. Until this moment he has hardly glanced at the silent figure by the hero’s side, except to notice that her rich vestments proclaim her young. But something in her appearance seizes his attention; and he proceeds, rapidly and in great agitation:

“_But, woman, thou, Whoso thou art, know that thy body’s stature Is as Alcestis, and thy form as hers. Ah me!—lead, for the Gods’ sake, from my sight This woman!—Take not my captivity captive. For as I look on her, methinks I see My wife. She stirs my heart with turmoil: fountains Of tears burst from mine eyes. O wretched I! Now taste I first this grief’s full bitterness._“[29]

It is Alcestis’ very self, won back from death as Apollo had promised; but with the awful silence of the tomb still upon her. Heracles places her hand in that of the reluctant and incredulous king, while he draws aside her veil:

“_Yea, guard her. Thou shalt call The child of Zeus one day a noble guest. Look on her, if in aught she seems to thee Like to thy wife. Step forth from grief to bliss._“[29]

Footnote 28:

From _The Life and Death of Jason_, by William Morris (Longmans).

Footnote 29:

From the _Alcestis_ of Euripides, translated by Dr. A. S. Way (Loeb Classical Library: London, Heinemann).

_Euripides: Medea_

Only eighteen dramas are extant of the seventy-five which Euripides is known to have written. And an interesting small fact is that the two earliest of these surviving dramas are the _Alcestis_ and the _Medea_, produced respectively in 438 B.C. and 431 B.C. Each of the two has a woman for the protagonist, and both have love for their central theme. To that extent therefore they are similar, and represent certain clear features of Euripidean drama as a whole.

We have already noted the poet’s interest in womanhood: his keen and careful study of feminine character. He was no less occupied with the influence of love in human life; but on both themes he was clear-eyed and penetrative, aspiring always to the ‘white star of truth.’ Therefore we do not find in his drama a troop of faultless women, moving in an atmosphere of romantic glamour; nor a treatment of love which reveals only the more beautiful aspects of it. He seems to have been content to acknowledge, as for instance in the _Alcestis_ and the lost _Andromeda_, that life’s flowers do sometimes, given the right conditions, come to fair fruition. But he saw how often they are warped and blighted; and though he would not hide the grimmer facts, he was always careful to seek and show the cause of the aberration. Hence, though the truth of his presentation is sometimes merciless, and may have given colour to the contemporary gossip which called him a ‘woman-hater,’ one glance below the surface of his thought shows him to have been inspired by a nobler chivalry than that which is content to veil the facts of life in romantic illusion. So we find that although both the _Alcestis_ and the _Medea_ are preoccupied with the theme of love, there is a vivid contrast in the treatment of the theme, despite certain resemblances between the two dramas. It is true that both of the heroines are pre-eminent in devotion to the men with whom they are mated; and that the hero in each case moves on a plane from which he cannot reach the height of his wife’s spirit. But whilst on the one hand love takes possession of a gentle nature, and favoured by every circumstance of character and environment triumphs over death itself, in the case of Medea a wild soul spends itself recklessly for the object of its love, beats impotently against injustice, loses hold on sanity and sweet human ties, and is transformed into an avenging fury.

The story of Medea belongs to the old Argo legend, which was made into poetry by Apollonius Rhodius in the first century before Christ, and by our own Victorian poet Morris in _The Life and Death of Jason_.

Jason, the exiled heir to the throne of Iolchos, was reared by the centaur Chiron. Arrived at manhood, he determined to claim his right from his usurping uncle Pelias; and travelling to Iolchos on foot, he presented himself before the king minus a sandal. Now Pelias had been warned against a man who should come to him with one foot bare; and, moreover, he had no intention of yielding up the throne to his nephew. He therefore cast about for some means of ridding himself of Jason, and hit upon the plan of sending him on a wild and dangerous quest—to seek and bring the Golden Fleece from the barbarous land of Colchis. Jason gladly undertook the task: gathered the Greek heroes together and sailed with them in the good ship _Argo_.

After a perilous voyage, the heroes arrived at Colchis, and Jason made known their quest to the king Aeêtes. But they soon found that they had no hope of success. Aeêtes was false to them, made impossible conditions, and plotted against their life. Disaster seemed imminent, when there came a deliverance so glorious that it seemed like the interposition of a god. It was the quick wit of a girl, prompted by love. Medea, the young daughter of Aeêtes, had seen and loved the brave Greek prince whom her father now plotted to destroy. She was an ardent and impulsive creature; and she determined to save Jason. By the magic lore that she possessed, she secretly enabled him to overcome the fire-breathing oxen, and the earth-sown army that her father sent against him. Then, realizing too late that she had incurred the unpitying rage of her father, she fled at night from the palace, to take refuge with the Greek heroes.

_She kissed her bed, and her hands on the walls with loving caress Lingered; she kissed the posts of the doors; and one long tress She severed, and left it her bower within, for her mother to be A memorial of maidenhood’s days, and with passionate voice moaned she._[30]

Under cover of the darkness, she led Jason to the forest-precinct where the Fleece was hidden; and by her charms she lulled the sleepless dragon that guarded it. She even betrayed to him her brother Absyrtus, driven by the danger of a horrible death for herself, her lover and his comrades; and then, claiming from Jason a solemn oath of marriage when they should come to Hellas, she sailed with him on the _Argo_. Aeêtes pursued them in fierce wrath; and the gods, offended for the murder of Absyrtus, vexed them with storms. But at length they came to the island of Circe; and she, for the sake of her kinship with Medea, purified them of the murder of Absyrtus and set them on their way again. At Phæacia, where they were driven for harbourage, Aeêtes overtook them, threatening war with King Alcinous if he did not yield up his fugitive daughter. It was then that the great wise queen Arete pleaded for Medea in gentle charity:

“_In madness she sinned at the first, when she gave him the charm that should tame The bulls; and with wrong to amend that wrong,—Ay, oftimes the same In our sinning we do!—she straightway essayed; and shrinking in fear From her proud sire’s tyrannous wrath, she fled. Now the man, as I hear, This Jason, is hound by mighty oaths which his own lips said, When he pledged him to make her, his halls within, his wife true-wed._“[30]

Alcinous yielded to his wife’s entreaties on one condition—that Jason and Medea should be married forthwith; for then he could return answer to Aeêtes that he would not separate husband and wife. Thus the two were hurriedly wedded; and sailed in safety from Phæacia, to encounter many a terrible adventure before they reached Iolchos at last, triumphing in the possession of the Fleece. They gained great glory from their enterprise, but little else. For Pelias would not yield the throne to Jason; and it seemed to Medea that all she had wrought had been in vain. She brooded over Jason’s wrongs, chafing at the restraint imposed on her in her new life, and eager to strike for the kingship on his behalf. At last she evolved a plan by which she thought Pelias might be removed from their path, and the throne secured for Jason. Promising the old king renewed youth by means of her enchantments, she induced him to submit to death at the hands of his daughters. Then, in the storm of indignation which arose against her, she and Jason and their two young children fled to Corinth.

So the legend runs to the point where Euripides takes it up. In crude outline it is savage and incredible; and yet it contains all the elements which in the hands of idealistic poets have made a story of enthralling romantic beauty. In the _Medea_, however, the poet has avoided so far as might be both the barbarity of the legend and its potential charm. He has treated only the final catastrophe—the abandonment of Medea by Jason and her dreadful vengeance upon him. And although he could not escape from the data: although he is compelled to handle some of the most barbarous of them, he has translated them from terms of glimmering wonder and breathless excitement into the language of reality. He has brought Medea out of the region of myth, where she dwelt in eerie and tempestuous beauty, into the stream of human existence. The marvellous and the superhuman drop away, save for a fragment or two in the framework of the Drama; and Medea becomes simply a woman, struggling against her own wild heart and the injustice of her oppressors.

The Drama opens with the monologue of Medea’s old nurse, from which we learn all that is vital to an understanding of the action. Jason has forsaken Medea and is about to marry with Glaucé, the young daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. Medea is sick with misery and is lying in the house prostrate on her bed. Two things the old woman makes quite clear, as she stands talking outside: that the chief cause of Medea’s grief is shame at her betrayal; and that already the storm of passion is tending toward madness. When an attendant comes in, bringing Jason’s children back from their play, there is a clear hint of the catastrophe. The man tells of a rumour that he has heard: Creon has ordered the banishment of their mistress and her boys. The nurse breaks into a wail of commiseration, and then clearly states her fear for the effect of this new wrong upon Medea’s mind. She sends the little ones in before she speaks the dread she has that their mother may lift her hand against their lives; and almost immediately afterward the frenzied voice of Medea is heard, calling bitter curses upon her unfathered children.

There gather gradually the ladies of Corinth who form the Chorus. They are deeply sympathetic; and they give pitying answers to the nurse’s tale; while within the house, at intervals, Medea’s voice is heard, wailing her grief and anger, and the old remorse that has reawakened for her brother’s death.

“_Virgin of Righteousness, Virgin of hallowed Troth, Ye marked me when with an oath I bound him; mark no less That oath’s end. Give me to see Him and his bride, who sought My grief when I wronged her not, Broken in misery, And all her house._“[31]

The scene is one of weird impressiveness. So far, Medea has not appeared; but her cries within the house, the appearance of her children, the indignant fidelity of the old servants, the beautiful lyrics of the Chorus, and, above all, the knowledge we possess that another blow is about to fall on her, produce a cumulative effect which makes the moment of her entrance intensely dramatic. Yet she begins her speech quietly, almost in apology for her former unrestraint. She strives for self-control while she puts her case before the Corinthian women and begs their help. For a moment or two she succeeds, pathetically acknowledging her foreign birth and the flaw it intrudes in the legality of her marriage. But at this thought, emotion sweeps over her again:

“_...I dazzle where I stand, The cup of all life shattered in my hand, Longing to die—O friends! He, even he, Whom to know well was all the world to me, The man I loved, hath proved most evil._“[31]

She pours out her heart to the listeners; and it is not a mere selfish recital of her own sorrow. The brain that had been clear and quick to save her lover in the extremity of danger has not lost its power. She sees the base act of Jason in its broad aspect, as a wrong to womankind; and she rises from the contemplation of her personal suffering to the thought that this, after all, is but one of the many evils that subjection brings upon women. But the greatest evil—the helpless creature goaded to crime by injustice—is present to her at this moment only as a blind craving for revenge. It will seize and carry her on to its culmination as the sweetest thing that life now holds; but it will finally reveal itself, since she cannot but face the truth, as the last and deepest wrong, that has cancelled her humanity. The light of that thought has not yet dawned; and will not until the storm of passion has wrought sheer havoc. All her fervent nature is possessed by the idea of vengeance; and seeing that her friends pity and sympathize, she pledges them not to betray her. Their willing promise is only just in time, for they are interrupted by the arrival of the king, guarded by armed attendants whose very presence is a menace. Creon is old, and has grown hard and tyrannous with age. He has long desired a great match for his only daughter, hoping to see his line established on the throne of Corinth before his death. To him the marriage with the Argonaut hero is not only a prudent step, likely to bring him reflected glory; but a thing perfectly right in itself, because perfectly legal. By the letter of the law, which forbade a Greek to marry a ‘barbarian,’ Medea was not Jason’s wife; and the letter of the law merely was of concern to Creon. To him Medea was an uncivilized creature from outland parts: a being without rights, who might safely be ignored; and having won over Jason, the match was arranged and the preliminary formalities concluded. Not until a rumour reached him that Medea in her wrath had solemnly cursed his child and him, did any thought of her disturb him. Then, fearing that she might indeed do his daughter some injury, or at the least might move public opinion in her favour, he determined upon instant banishment for her and her two young sons. Without a word to soften or explain his action, he stands before Medea now, and curtly orders her to prepare for departure.

The blow is so crushing that for a moment Medea seems to sink under it; she can think of nothing but to ask what crime of hers has merited this punishment. But when Creon cynically replies that there has been no crime, and that the measure is one of precaution merely, to guard himself against her reputation for magic-lore, she rallies her wit and meets him on his own ground. Half ironically, she repudiates the damning possession of brains, and bids him set his mind at rest.

“_’Tis not the first nor second time, O King, That fame hath hurt me.... Come unto fools with knowledge of new things, They deem it vanity, not knowledge.... Ah, I am not so wondrous wise!—And now, To thee, I am terrible! What fearest thou? What dire deed? Do I tread so proud a path— Fear me not thou!—that I should brave the wrath Of princes?_“[31]

Creon sees that she is trying to placate him, and harshly repeats his decree. He even threatens her, when she continues her entreaties, with force from his soldiery; and Medea, shrinking in horror from the thought of personal violence, instantly ceases her petition. She pretends to yield; and in feigned humility, begs on her knees for one day’s respite. Creon, partly deceived, and entirely convinced that she can do no harm in so short a time, reluctantly consents. But he has hardly gone when Medea breaks into a torrent of speech which, in its fierce exultation over Creon, its wild leap to the height of daring and its rallying cry to her own spirit, comes very near to madness. All the shapeless thoughts of vengeance on which she had brooded spring into vivid life as she rapidly cons now this plot, now that, to reach her end. Of the end itself there can be no doubt; she must kill these three—the king, and Jason and his bride—in the few hours left to her. And for this she will need every resource of strategy and courage.

“_Awake thee now, Medea! Whatso plot Thou hast, or cunning, strive and falter not. On to the peril-point! Now comes the strain Of daring. Shall they trample thee again?_“[31]

No wonder that the Chorus sing, as she rushes into the house, of a strange reversal of all the order of nature; of woman made terrible because man has forgotten God. They take up the story of Medea’s broken life: of the wonder and the pity of it: of her distant home: of her surpassing love for Jason, and of her betrayal. In the beauty and grace of the songs the emotional strain is lightened: but they have a further purpose. For while they tell the old story over in tender phrases, Jason himself enters and Medea again comes out of the house. The two stand face to face at last and the crux of the drama is reached. Jason is the first to speak; and one feels all the spirit of the man in his opening words—cold, ambitious, prudent, with ideals faded and every generous emotion dead. He protests that he has acted from motives of policy and considerations of their best interest: for the welfare of Medea and their children as well as for himself. The new marriage was the only way, in a land to which they were strangers, to secure a home for them all, and princely connexions for his sons. But Medea has spoiled everything by her ungovernable anger: and he has come, since nothing else is possible now, to make provision for the children in their exile.

The speech is clear, terse, moderate in tone, and pitilessly logical from Jason’s point of view. From that point, too, it is not unkind: he wishes to do what may be done to soften their lot. But to the woman who loves him his words are a mere blur of sound, the logic meaningless, the untroubled manner a thing of contempt. In tone and look and gesture one fact is certain—that her husband has ceased to love her, and is content to cast her off. It has clamoured in her ears while he spoke, drowning every other sound; and when she replies it is that which prompts her. It inspires her great indictment—the case for the woman against injustice throughout all time—and it evokes a shuddering recoil from baseness which she feels to be literally a pollution.

“_Evil—most Evil ... I will begin with that, ‘twixt me and thee, That first befell. I saved thee. I saved thee— ... And hast thou then Accepted all—O evil yet again!— And cast me off and taken for thy bride Another? And with children at thy side! ... Is sworn faith so low And weak a thing? I understand it not. Are the old gods dead? Are the old laws forgot, And new laws made? ... ... O great God, shall gold withal Bear thy clear mark, to sift the base and fine, And o’er man’s living visage runs no sign To show the lie within, ere all too late?_“[31]