Dark comedy.(Euripides. Vol. 5: Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes)(Euripides. Vol. 6: The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus)(Book Review)

David Kovacs, editor Euripides. Vol. 5: Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes. 605 pages, $21.50. Vol. 6: The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus. 480 pages, $21.50. Loeb Classical Library/ Harvard University Press

What Thucydides says about the total tergiversation of the Greek ethos in the course of the Peloponnesian War remains the best introduction to the late, bleak, crazy plays of Euripides:

 
   Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real 
   man, and to plot against an enemy behind 
   his back was perfectly legitimate self-defense. 
   Anyone who held violent opinions could always 
   be trusted, and anyone who objected to 
   them became a suspect. To plot successfully 
   was a sign of intelligence, but it was still 
   cleverer to see that a plot was hatching.... 
   Revenge was more important than self-preservation.... 
   Love of power, operating 
   through greed and through personal ambition, 
   was the cause of all these evils. To this 
   must be added the violent fanaticism which 
   came into play once the struggle had broken 
   out.... [T]here was a general deterioration 
   of character through the Greek world. The 
   simple way of looking at things, which is so 
   much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded 
   as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to 
   exist. 

David Kovacs has done a splendid job editing all six volumes of the new Loeb Euripides. The final two volumes contain Helen, Phoenician Women, and Orestes (volume 5); The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, and Rhesus (volume 6). Kovacs has provided for each play a crisp introduction, a learned text, a clear translation, and a useful bibliography. All his volumes have a spacious, airy feel. In this, as in much else, they differ from Arthur S. Way's cramped four volumes (1904), which were full of locutions like "Thou hast done--what? Thou thrillest me with fear" and breathed the chipper spirit of Edwardian certainty. Neverthless, although Kovacs has given us the best text, the best translations--lively, bold, and spirited--continue to be in the Chicago version, especially those of William Arrowsmith, which include those late masterworks, Orestes (408 B.C.) and The Bacchae (407)--plays that I will look at here after a brief survey.

In his early years the facile young dramatist used myth to investigate the psyches of women; he called them Alcestis, Medea, and Phaedra. Such plays were to earn Euripides the comic scrutiny of Aristophanes--a mockery that could not hide a likeness, a fondness for extreme situations that both men shared. The comic writer Cratinus noticed this in his coinage, euripidaristophanizein, to write in the style of both men.

Around 412, toward the end of both his career and the war, came two plays--Iphigenia among the Taurians and Helen--that consciously sought to offer an alternate, a differing, a happy version of the most familiar Greek stories. (The Ion of 414 is similarly euphoric.) Iphigenia, secreted off in Eurasia, and Helen, hidden down in Africa, offer Orestes and Menelaus, respectively, joyful rescue from a nasty world. It is difficult not to see in these plays the vocabulary of tragedy used as a dreamlike, fantasy escape from what was now an increasingly somber world.

The Orestes has not been appreciated for ...