A Greek Theater of Ideas

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Trustees of Boston University through its publication Arion: A Journal of

Humanities and the Classics
A Greek Theater of Ideas
Author(s): William Arrowsmith
Source: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Autumn, 1963), pp. 32-56
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A GREEK
THEATER
OF
IDEAS
Arrowsmith
William
fcta/EVERAL
YEARS
AGO
I MADE
A PLEA
that scholarship and criticism should do their best to recover a

feeling for what I called "turbulence" in Greek tragedy.1 By "tur
bulence" I meant both "the actual disorder of experience as that
experience gets into Greek drama" and "the impact of ideas under
dramatic test." What I want to do here is to take up the turbu
lence of ideas, as I see those ideas expressed by Euripidean drama,
with the purpose of showing that the Greeks possessed a theater
which we should have no difficulty in recognizing as a genuine
"theater
of
ideas."
By
"theater
of
ideas"
I do
not mean,
of course,
a theater of intellectual sententiae or Shavian "talk" or even the

theater of the sophist-poet; Imean a theater of dramatists whose
medium of thought was the stage, who used the whole machinery
of the theater as a way of thinking, critically and constructively,
about
their world.
In such a theater I assume that the emphasis will be upon ideas

rather than character, and that a thesis or problem will normally
take precedence over development
of character or heroism; that
esthetic or formal pleasure will be secondary to intellectual rigor
and
quire
thought;
severe
re
the
of ideas presented
may
complexity
or intricate
dislocations
of emotional
blurrings
and
that
formal
modes and genres once kept artistically distinct. It is also Ukely

that the moral texture of an action will be "difficult," and that
satisfaction
moral
lems may
very well
discomfort
behavior
to be
theater
not
will
come
easily
or
even
at
all;
that
prob
be left unresolved; that is, that the effect of a play may

be discomfort or even pain, and that the purpose of this
will be to influence the social rather than the individual
of the spectator. Beyond this, I would expect such a
concerned
commonly
with
the
and
diagnosis
drama
tization of cultural crisis, and hence that the universe inwhich the
dramatic action takes place would tend to be either irrational or
All
incomprehensible.
of
these
characteristics
are,
of
course,
ab
stracted at random from the historical "theater of ideas" from

Hebbel to the present, but in their ensemble they serve to give at
least a general sense of the kind of "theater of ideas" I have in
mind.
actly
Greek
of
theater,
and
the
1 See
Vol.
theater?so
theater?existed
an article
ideas,
view,
such
That
tional
"The
Ill,
Uke
faith
any
Athenians
and
anti-tradi
"modern"
specifically
ex
I be?eve,
is not,
the Greeks
critics.
To
the
and
be
scholars
sure,
among
use of
made
abundant
other
theater,
great
as entertain
not
the theater,
regarded
among
Criticism
of Greek
Tragedy"
n. 3 (
1959),
p. 31ff.
Spring,
in The
Tulane
Drama
Re
William
as
but
ment,
democratic
the
instrument
supreme
in itself.
complete
paideia
of
Arrowsmith
cultural
instruction,
for
Aeschylus,
33
uses
instance,
stunning boldness, showing in play after play how the

com
great post-Hesiodic world-order could be compellingly and
to
and
his
Athenian
and
society;
prehensively
history
adapted
theater provides not only a great, and new, theodicy, but dra
ideas with
creates
matically
the
idea
evolving
of
as
Athens
the
supreme
achievement of the mind of Zeus and the suffering of mankind.

As for Sophocles, I am not of those who believe that he, like
Henry James, possessed a mind so fine that no idea could violate
it. In Oedipus, for instance, we have Sophocles' image of heroic
confidence in himself and his
man, shorn of his old Aeschylean
world, and relentlessly pursuing the terrible new truth of his, and
human, destiny. Oedipus looks into the abyss that yawns beneath
him?the
frightful knowledge of his nature which fifth-century
man had learned from the war, the
plague and the atrocities, the
and
revolution,
sophistic
the
the
of
collapse
out his eyes at the unbrookable
dashes
we
ocles'
I think
of
aristocratic
Ajax
the old
cumstances
are meant
ethos;
to see
old world-order?and
sight. Similarly
a somewhat
in new
caught
in Soph
earlier
and
symbol
cir
anti-heroic
which
degrade him and make him ludicrous, Ajax

consistently prefers suicide to a life of absurdity in an aUen time.2
But all this is merely to say that Sophocles, like Aeschylus, uses
the perceptions
bolically,
ideas.
of
the
talist,
of cultural
crisis
as
dramatic
framing
ideas
it is to
Clearly
Euripides?the
anti-traditional
"immoraUst"
we must
innovator
and
look for any valid fifth-century
or
sym
sense a theater
not that his theater is in any meaningful
and
experimen
"stage-sophist"?that
theater of ideas.
1
That the second half of the fifth century B.C. was a period of
immense cultural crisis and political convulsion is, fortunately for
my purpose here, beyond any real doubt. The evidence itself
needs only the barest rehearsal, but it should at least be there, the
real though sketchy weather of my argument. Let me therefore
touch it in.
There is, first of all, the breakdown of the old community, the
destruction of that mythical and coherent world
overwhelming
order which Werner Jaeger has described so fully. PoUtical con
vulsion?
was
stasis
nothing
fifth-century
city
against
and
new
scale
city,
out
revolution?broke
among
was
man
the Greek
absolutely
against
everywhere.
civil
city-states,
unprecedented
father
man,
in
against
If civil
war
on
war
the
its
savagery:
son. Under
situation
with
in the
statement
Compare
Ajax'
Thucydides'
Corcy
excursus:
so
"The
ancient
into which
honor
simpUcity
largely
entered was
down and disappeared."
laughed
rean
34
GREEK
THEATER
OF
IDEAS
such conditions the whole kinship structure on which the polis

was theoretically and constitutionally
founded was irretrievably
In
weakened.
the
culture
some
in
ushered
revolution
sophistic
a
thing like transvaluation of morals. In society there was the rise
of a new bourgeoisie provided with new sanctions and new the
ories
In
as well
nature,
restless
innovation
of human
as a
arts
was
the
Hellenic
world?in
a vast
place
Uterature,
debate
whose
thought,
terms
very
conscious
politically
the rule,
and
proletariat.
the
throughout
took
and poUtics?there
the
report
vividly
in
schism
in the great argument between physis

the culture, especially
(nature) and nomos (custom, tradition, and law). Men began to
wonder whether the laws of the state and the state itself, once
thought divinely established, are any longer related to physis at
large or to human physis in particular. Thus the great experience
of the late fifth century is what can be called "the loss of inno
are
and Thucydides
cence." Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes,
in
the
each
his
haunted
of
different
all,
way,
by
disappearance
the old integrated culture and the heroic image of man that had
incarnated that culture. There is a new spirit of divisiveness
in the Hellenic
abroad
tradition, move
war
its attendant
and
man
now
nature
new
startling
How
world;
steadily
wrenching
miseries.
shows
range
and
appearance
apart under
Subjected
in a new
itself
of behavior,
chaotic
that
convulsion
was,
to harsh
"So bloody was
the march
and
hu
necessity,
but
also
extreme
how
in a
cata
and
him
than Thucydides
of the revolution
of
pressure
nakedness,
and uncontrollable.
is told us by no less an authority
strophic,
self:
nature
reaUty,
the destructive
[in Corcyra],
and
as it was
one of
was
it made
which
the greater
impression
the first
to occur.
Hellenic
Later
the
whole
on, one may
say,
. . The
en
was
which
revolution
convulsed.
world
sufferings
as
were
have
the
cities
and
tailed
such
terrible,
many
upon
as the nature
as
occurred
of man
and
will
occur,
always
long
the
kind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and

varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of the
cases.
particular
In peace
and
states
prosperity
and
individuals
have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves

war takes
suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but
away
the
easy
supply
of
daily
wants,
so
and
proves
rough
master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their

thus ran its course from city to city, and
fortunes. Revolution
the places which
it arrived at last, from having heard what
had
been
done
before,
carried
to a still
greater
excess
the
refine
in the cunning of their

of their inventions, as manifested
enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to
was now
change their ordinary meaning and to take that which
ment
given
them.
Reckless
audacity
age of a loyal ally; prudent
came
to be
hesitation,
considered
specious
the
cour
cowardice,
Arrowsmith
William
was held to be a cloak for unmanUness,
moderation
see
all
sides
of
lence became
on
to act
inaptness
of
The
self-defence.
always
trustworthy;
. . Even
blood
became
pected.
the
readiness
of those
superior
abiUty to
Frantic
any.
vio
cautious plotting,
the attribute of manliness;
mean
justifiable
ures was
question
35
a man
his
opponent
a weaker
united
meas
of extreme
advocate
tie
than
the
by
to be
sus
party,
to
latter
from
dare
reserve; for such associations had not in

everything
view the blessings derivable from estabUshed institutions but
were formed by ambition for their overthrow; and the confi
dence of their members in each other rested less on any reUg
without
ious
sanction
than
upon
. .The
in crime.
compUcity
cause
of all
these evils was the hunger for power arising from greed and
ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of
parties once engaged in contention. The leaders in the cities,
each provided with the fairest professions, on the one side with
the cry of political equaUty for the people, on the other of a
moderate
aristocracy,
lic interests which

no means
from
the direct
in
excesses;
in those
for themselves
prizes
sought
to cherish,
they pretended
pub
and, recoiUng
in
for
struggles
ascendancy,
engaged
in their acts of
went
to even
vengeance
they
their
greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the

state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment
their
standard,
only
and
with
invoking
readiness
equal
con
the
demnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong

arm to
glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in
honor with neither party, but the use of fair phrases to arrive at
the moderate
guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile
of
part
the
citizenry
between
perished
joining in the quarrel or because
the
two,
either
not
for
not suffer them to
envy would
escape.
Thus every form of

reason of the troubles.
so largely entered was
ciety became divided
To
fellow.
put
an
evil took root in the Hellenic countries by

The ancient simpUcity into which honor
laughed down and disappeared; and so
into camps in which no man trusted his
end
to
this,
was
there
neither
to be
promise
depended upon, nor oath that could command respect; but all
parties dwelUng rather in their calculation upon the hopeless
ness
of a permanent
defence
wits
were
state
were
of affairs,
than capable of confidence.

most
successful.
more
intent
self
upon
In this contest the blunter
Apprehensive
of
their
own
deficien
cies and of the cleverness of their antagonists, they feared to be

in debate and to be surprised by the combinations
worsted
of their more versatile opponents, and so at once boldly had
recourse
to
action;
while
their
adversaries,
arrogantly
think
ing that they should know in time, and that it was unnecessary
to
secure
their want
by
of
action
what
policy
afforded,
often
fell
victims
to
precaution.
GREEK
36
THEATER
OF
IDEAS
Meanwhile
Corcyra gave the first example of most of the
crimes alluded to; of the reprisals exacted by the governed who
never
had
or indeed
treatment
equitable
anything
their
rulers?when
their hour
of the
came;
experienced
from
outrage
except
iniquitous
customed
resolves of those who
desired
and
coveted
poverty,
ardently
to get rid of their ac

their
man
nature,
always
the
against
rebelling
law
pos
neighbors'
sessions; and lastly, of the savage and pitiless

which men who had begun the struggle, not in
party spirit, were hurried by their ungovernable
the confusion into which Ufe was now thrown in
excesses into
a class but a
passions. In
the cities, hu
and
now
its mas
in passion, above respect

ter, gladly showed itself uncontrolled
for justice, and the enemy of all superiority; since revenge
would not have been set above religion, and gain above justice,
had it not been for the fatal power of envy. Indeed men too
take
often
in the
themselves
upon
of
prosecution
their
revenge
to set the example of doing away with those general laws to

which all alike can look for salvation in their day of adversity,
instead of allowing them to exist against the day of danger
their
when
aid may
be
required."
(III. 82 ff.)
sentence
Every
meditatively,
lest we
late
of
as we
underread,
the
that
account
cultural
greatest
chial and ephemeral
to be
deserves
so often
do with
crisis
the Hellenic
of
the
time of troubles.
the culture
of his
trusted,
he feared
for its survival.
read,
time
had
every word,
shaken
trans
and
classics,
world
into
paro
is to be
If Thucydides
been
and
slowly
given to every phrase,
with due weight
to the
roots,
and
11
How did this convulsion of a whole culture affect the idea of a

theater as we find that idea expressed by Euripides?
The immediate, saUent fact of Euripides' theater is the assump
tion
a universe
of
devoid
of
rational
or of
order,
an
order
incom
to men. And the influence of Aristotle is nowhere

prehensible
more obvious than in the fact that this aspect of Euripides' theater
is the one least often recognized or acted upon by critics. Yet it is
stated both expUcitly and implicitly from play to play throughout
us is a great
Euripides' Ufetime. "The care of god for
thing," says
"if a man beUeve it. . . So I have a
the chorus of Hippolytus,
secret hope of someone, a god, who is wise and plans; / but my
men and their des
hopes grow dim when I see / the actions of
tinies.
ing, /
/ For
fortune
shifting,
cries Talthybius
do we, holding
substantial
always
forever
dreams
veers
changing
and
the
course."
currents
of
life are
"O Zeus,
what
can
shift
I
say?"
in Hecuba. "That you look on men and care? Or

that the gods exist, / deceive ourselves with un
/
and
Ues, while
random
careless
chance
and
William
Arrowsmith
37
change / alone control the world?" Usually desperate, feeble and

skeptical in the first place, it is the fate of these hopes to be de
in action.
In Heracles
the fatal chaos
of
stroyed
a
is
reversal
which
savage
expressed
formally;
the moral
universe
the
expresses
flaw
in the moral universe splits the entire

play into two contrasting
actions connected only
by sequence. Thus the propter hoc struc
ture
required
Aristotelian
by
is in
drama
everywhere
Euripides
annulled by created disorder and formal violence. What we get is

dissonance, disparity, rift, peripeteia; in Euripides a note of firm
tonality is almost always the sign of traditional parody, of the
false,
this
the
or
unreal,
assumption
of
second,
that
ganic;
innocence
lost
is:
is not
character
is a
monest
reaUty)
other.
pertinent.
assumes
or at best
forms.
. . .
/xeV
epyo)
only
81 as
the Greeks
But
put
the
part
tragic
com
(or received
myth
on the one hand, and fact (or

experienced
Aoyo)
What
anguish.
or
is not
form
notions of responsibility,
a
of
variety
clash between
constructed
carefully
that
first,
destiny,
of it is; and third, that Aristotelian

are not
and heroism
flaw,
The
central
dissonance
in
remembered
means
disorder
reality)
it,
on the
constrasting
(or pretence) and

theory (logos) and fact (ergon), appearance
reality, legend and truth. In Alcestis, for instance, Euripides jux
taposes the traditional magnanimous Admetus with the shabby
who
egotist
a "heroic"
when
results
is translated
character
into
realistic fifth century terms. By

making Alcestis take Admetus at
his own estimate, Euripides delays the impact of his central idea
?the
of Admetus'
his
the appear
logos by
ergon?until
son
"realistic"
of his
denunciation
savage
a similar
the "heroic"
Admetus.
exposes
translation,
totally
By
a
becomes
of
Euripides'
Odysseus
demagogue
realpolitik,
Aga
memnon
a
a vul
and ineffectual
and
field-marshal,
pompous
Jason
It was,
of course,
this
of realism,
this
gar adventurer.
technique
and
of traditional
deflation
which
systematic
exposure
heroism,
ance
exposure
of Pheres,
whose
earned Euripides
his reputation
And
stage.
tragic
des' whole
bent
in some
is
clearly
sense
for debasing
the
the dignity
is irrefutable.
charge
anti-traditional
and
realistic;
of the
Euripi
sense
his
of rebelliousness
is expressed beyond doubt by the
consistency
with which he rejects reUgious tradition, by his restless
experi
ments
with
new
forms
and
new
music,
and
his
obvious
and
inno
cent delight in his own

superior psychology and his
virtuosity?his
naturalistic stagecraft. With
justifiable pride he might have seen
himself
as
a dramatic
pioneer,
breaking
new
ground,
and
cour
ageously refusing to write the higher parody of his predecessors

which his world?and
ours?have demanded of him. There must
be, I imagine, very few theaters in the world where the man who
writes of "people as they are" is
automatically
judged inferior to
the man
who
But
it would
writes
be
of
wrong
as
be."
should
"people
they
to assume
was
that reaUsm
story or that Euripides was drawn
the whole
to realism because he knew
it
38
greek
of
theater
ideas
would offend the worthies of his day. For itwas Ufe, not Euripi
des, which had abandoned the traditional forms and the tradi
tional heroism. What Euripides reported, with great clarity and
gulf between reaUty and tradition;
honesty, was the widening
between the operative and the professed values of his culture;
between fact and myth; between nomos and physis; between Ufe
and art. That guff was the greatest and most evident reaUty of
the last half of the fifth century, the dramatic subject par excel
lence, and it ismy beUef that the theater of Euripides, like Thucy
dides' history, is a radical and revolutionary attempt to record,
new view of
analyze and assess that reaUty in relation to the
and
human nature which crisis revealed. To both Thucydides
the crisis in culture meant that the old world order,
Euripides,
with its sense of a great humanity and its assumption of an inte
was irrecoverably gone. The true dimensions
grated human soul,
of the human psyche, newly exposed in the chaos of culture, for
bade any return to the old innocence or heroism. Any theater
founded on the old psyche or the old idea of fate was to that
extent a Ue. The task imposed upon the new theater was not
merely that of being truthful, of reporting the true dimensions and
causes of the crisis, but of coping imaginatively and inteUectuaUy
a
with
change
in man's
very
condition.
It is for this reason that Euripides' theater almost always begins

with a severe critique of tradition, which necessarily means a criti
que
of his
expect
from
predecessors.
any new
Such
theater,
criticism
programmatic
in the
and
case
is what
of Greek
we
theater,
where the dramatist is official didaskalos charged with the paideia

and So
of his people, it was especially appropriate. Aeschylus
phocles
were
not
merely
great
theatrical
predecessors;
they
were
the moral tutors of Athens and their versions of the myths em

bodied, as nothing else, the values of tradition and the old paideia.
Given such authority and power, polemic and criticism were only
to be expected, the only possible response; indeed, were it not for
the fact that Euripides' criticism has generally been construed as
cultural l?se-majest?, the point would hardly be worth making.
When Shakespeare or Ibsen or Shaw or Brecht criticize the theater
of their immediate predecessors, we applaud; this is what we ex
pect,
ripides
classics.
a new
theater
courage
aggressive
somehow
does
it, it becomes
sacrilege,
if at all, with
We
outraged
respond,
the
requires.
a crime
When
Eu
the
against
auto
traditionaUsm,
we seem to re
matically
invoking that double standard which
serve for the classics, that apparent homage which turns out to be
our own prejudices.
nothing but respect for
In Euripides' case, the prejudice is usually justified by the argu
is destructive
ment that Euripides' criticism of his predecessors
and negative; that his attack on the old order is finally nothing
but the niggUng rage for exposure, devoid of constructive order.
If this argument were sound, it would be impressive; but it is
William
Arrowsmith
39
not enough to offer on Euripides' behalf the reply which Morris

Cohen is said to have made to a student who accused him of de
stroying his reUgious beliefs: "Young man, it is recorded of Her
acles that he was required only to clean the Augean stables." Not,
that is, ifwe are serious inmaintaining
that Euripides was a great
dramatist. Negative criticism of dead tradition and inert values is
often of positive therapeutic effect, but no really great dramatist,
it seems
to me,
can
the
escape
for
responsibiUty
order.
imaginative
Actually the charge that Euripides is negative is based upon mis

reading of the plays. For one thing, Euripides did not always
expose myth and tradition; this is his bias, to be sure, but there
are exceptions inwhich the received myth and its values are used
to criticize contemporary reaUty and pubUc po?cy. The obvious
example is the Trojan Women. A more revealing instance is the
Iphigeneia in Tauris, in which the cult of Artemis of Brauron is
re-estabUshed by Athena at the close of the play in order to lay
bare the immense human "blood-sacrifice" of the Peloponnesian
War.
The point here, I beUeve, is both important and neglected. Let

try to restate it. Euripides' favorite technique for demonstrat
ing the new dissonance in Athenian culture, the disparity between
me
values
putative
and
real
is
values,
simple
reaUsm
of
the
pattern
. . . cpyw S?. But it is balanced at times

A?yw p.iv
by the converse
to
criticize
the
the
myth
everyday reality:
technique?allowing
cpyw
pi v
. . .
X?y<?
St. And
these
are
exceptions
important,
since
us that
a matter of simple
Euripides' reaUsm is not
they show
is
but consistent dramatic technique. What
anti-traditionaUsm,
basic is the mutual criticism, the mutual exposure which occurs
when
the
incongruities
of a given
culture?its
actual
behavior
and
its myth?are
juxtaposed in their fullness. That this is everywhere
the purpose of Euripidean drama is clear in the very complaints
critics bring against the plays: their tendency to fall into incon
sistent or opposed parts (Heracles, Andromache);
their apparent
or the frequency of the
(Alcestis, Heracles),
multidimensionality
deus ex machina. This last device is commonly explained by a
hostile
criticism
as
Euripides'
penchant
for
archaism
and
aetiol
it is
ogy, or as his way of salvaging botched plays. Actually
always functional, a part of the very pattern of juxtaposed incon
gruities which I have been describing. Thus the appearance of any
god in a Euripidean play is invariably the sign of logos making
its epiphany, counterpointing
ergon. Most Euripidean gods ap
(or a fellow god),
pear only in order to incriminate themselves
though some?Uke Athena in the Iphigeneia in Tauris?criticize
the action and the reaUty which the action mirrors. But it is a
variable, not a fixed, pattern, whose purpose is the critical coun
saw
terpointing of the elements which Euripides
everywhere
own
in
and
his
culture:
sharply
significantly opposed
myth con
fronted by behavior, tradition exposed by, or exposing, reaUty;
A GREEK
40
THEATER
OF
IDEAS
custom and law in conflict with nature. What

him was less the indictment of tradition?though
essential?than
the
the
confrontation,
chiefly interested
that was clearly
dramatic
of
juxtaposition,
the split in his culture. This was his basic theatrical perception,
his reaUty, a perception which makes him utterly different from
Aeschylus and Sophocles, just as it completely alters the nature
of his theater.
Is that theater merely analytical then, a dramatic description of
a divided culture? I think not. Consider this statement: "As our
our cul
knowledge becomes increasingly divorced from real Ufe,
ture
no
longer
contains
ourselves
an
contains
(or only
insignificant
part of ourselves) and forms a social context in which we are not

'integrated.' The problem thus becomes that of again reconciling
our culture with our Ufe, by
our culture a living culture
making
once
. ."That
more.
own
his
more
theater.
than
The
it could
but
of the nature and purpose of
description
let alone
on Artaud,
Ionesco
reconciUation
theater,
any
to be
happens
just as well be Euripides'
of Ufe
and
single
dramatist,
is, of course,
can
perform;
culture
and it is perhaps enough that the art of a divided culture should

be diagnostic, should describe the new situation in its complexity.
Only by so doing can it redefine man's altered fate. It ismy own
conviction that Euripidean theater is critical and diagnostic; and
that, beyond this, it accepts the old artistic burden of constructive
to
does
not restrict
itself
order,
analysis
me
at the moment
in which
is the way
ceptions
altered
his
First and most

structure
tion
of
is the
the
of
one
Heracles?Euripides'
of
concerns
what
basic
significant after the destruction

disappearance
"fragmentation"
an
or contest
agon
his
theatrical
per
theater.
With
hero.
attempt
is no play which is dominated

Sophocles' Oedipus or Ajax.
to the disappearance
Corresponding
?there
But
alone.
of propter hoc
the
to define
sole
a new
excep
heroism
by the single hero, as in

of the hero
the major
characters.
What
two
divided
between
paired
we
is Euripides'
get
characters
is
typically
(some
times there are three) :Admetus and Alcestis; Jason and Medea;
and Phaedra; Andromache
and Hermione; Pentheus
Hippolytus
and
Dionysus,
etc.
In
such
a theater,
tragic hero is, of course, meaningless.

fragmentation
is not
easy
to assess;
the AristoteUan
search
But the significance

it is not
enough
for a
of the
to say
merely
that Euripides was temperamentally

drawn to such conflicts be
cause they afforded him opportunities for
analysis.
psychological
What is striking about the consistent paired antagonists one finds
in Euripides is, I think, their obsessional nature. They function
like
obsessional
fragments
chastity, Phaedra
now
represented
paired antagonists
the warring modes
of
a whole
human
soul:
as sexuality. The wholeness
divisively,
diffused
over
several
Hippolytus
as
of the old hero is

characters;
the
of the Euripidean
stage thus represent both
of a divided culture and the new incomplete
William
Arrowsmith
41
as in The Bacchae,
ness of the human psyche. Alternatively,
they
Pentheus as nomos,
the
of
ideas;
embody
principles
conflicting
as
Dionysos
physis.
in
This fragmentation is also the sign of a new psychological
terest. That the convulsion of the late fifth century had revealed
new dimensions
in the human psyche is sharply expressed by
and just as sharply by Euripides. Indeed, Euripides'
Thucydides,
in
interest
and mental
abnormaUty
is so marked
derangement
that
critics have usually seen it as the very motive of his drama. This,
I think, is a mistake. The interest in psychology is strong, but it is
always secondary; the real interest lies in the analysis of culture
and the relationship between culture and the individual. If I am
correct in assuming that Euripides' crucial dramatic device is the
juxtaposition and contrast of logos and ergon, then it follows that
the characters of his plays must bear the burden of the cultural
a
disparity involved. I mean: if myth is bodily transplanted from
its native
a different
to
culture
then
one,
the
of
characters
the
myth must bear the burden of the transplantation, and that bur
strain. Consider,
den is psychological
for example, Euripides'
a man
Orestes,
justice
who
already
or
in an
his mother
murders
exists;
the
heroic
Jason
Argos
translated
alien
time
where
into
civil
con
the
text of a fifth century Corinth; or an Odysseus or Hermione or

Electra cut off from the culture in which their actions were once
or moral,
meaningful
and
in an
set
which
immoralizes
or distorts
them. The very strain that Euripides succeeds in im

his characters is the mark of their modernity,
their
upon
posing
in a culture
involvement
its
strain.
similar
to
vulnerability
pre
the discovery
its
circumstance,
it is the
And
range of the human psyche,
viously unsuspected
its powers,
under
of
incompleteness
and its violence, that interest Euripides, not the psychological

process itself. The soliloquy inwhich Medea meditates the murder
of her children ismuch admired; but Euripides' dramatic interest
in
is
eros
the
and
or
collapse
sophia?which
of culture?the
derangement
makes
that murder
both
between
gap
nec
and
possible
essary.
Side by side with cultural strain is the striking loneliness of the

theater.
Euripidean
Loneliness
is, of
course,
feature
of
tradi
tional tragedy, but the difference between Euripides and his pred
ecessors in this respect is marked. In Aeschylus the loneliness of
human fate is effectively annulled by the reconciliation which
closes trilogies and creates a new community in which god and
man become joint partners in civiUzation. In
Sophocles the sense
of loneUness is extremely strong, but it is always the distinguish
ing mark of the hero, the sign of the fate which makes him an
outcast,
own
exiled
sofar
anguish.
as the
ness
is
from
But
in
characters
required.
The
to
the world
Euripides
are
one
the world's
loneliness
fragmented,
thing
they
is the
advantage
common
obsessional,
cannot
normally
their
do
and
his
fate.
In
loneli
is com
GREEK
municate,
and
42
THEATER
OF
even
typically
instance, Heracles' moving

to
certain
almost
IDEAS
such
as occur
communications
destruction
the malevolence
by
of
(for
are Uable
reunion with his children)
fate.
Again
and again Euripides gives us those exquisite painterly groupings

which stress the impassable gulf which separates the old from the
man
young,
from
god,
woman
from man,
even
and
hero
from
hero.
comes when Heracles,

The climax of the Heracles
touched by
Theseus' philia, makes his great decision to Uve; but the under
standing is then immediately and deUberately clouded as Theseus
fails
to understand
ism. The
seems
the
enormous
touch is typically
to close
only
to widen
range
of his
and revealingly
out
new
friend's
hero
The gulf
Euripidean.
again.
From the point of view of traditional tragedy nothing is more

strikingly novel that the Euripidean fusion and contrast of comic
and tragic effects. Thus at any point in a tragedy the comic?or
more
accurately,
the
pathetic
or
ludicrous?can
erupt
with
poig
nant effect, intensifying the tragic or toughening it with parody.

Nor is this a device restricted to Euripides' so-called "romantic"
or his
it occurs even in the most powerful
plays
tragicomedies;
and serious tragedies. Teiresias and Cadmus in Bacchae, for in
are
stance,
seen
simultaneously
as both
tragic
and
comic,
that
is,
directly pathetic and incongruous: two old mummers of ecstasy;

as the god requires, but their
they try to dance for Dionysus
bodies, Uke their minds, are incapable of expressing devotion ex
cept
as
ditional
ludicrous
mimicry.
Aegeus,
in Medea,
has
puzzled
tra
interpretation from Aristotle on, precisely because he is

Euripides' pathetic and ironic embodiment of Athens?that Athens
which the chorus hails later as the place
where Cypris sailed,
and mild sweet breezes breathed along her path,
and on her hair were flung the sweet-smelling garlands
of flowers of roses by the Lovers, the companions
ofWisdom, her escort, the helpers of men
in every kind of arete.
The irony is not, of course, the cutting irony of exposure, but the
gentler irony that comes when logos and ergon of things not too
far apart are juxtaposed: we feel it as a Ught dissonance. Which
ismerely another way of saying that the new element of the comic
in Euripidean tragedy is just one more instance of the dramatist's
insistence upon preserving the multipUcity of possible reaUties in
the texture of his action. In the traditional drama, such dissonance
is rightly avoided as an offense against seriousness and tragic dig
nity; Euripides
significantly sees both tragedy and comedy as
equally vaUd, equally necessary. A drama of truth will contrive to
contain them both; the complex truth requires it.
It is for this same reason that Euripides accentuates what might
be called the multiple moral dimension of his characters. Every
one of them is in some sense an exhibit of the sophistic perception
Arrowsmith
William
43
that human character is altered by suffering or exemption from

suffering; that every human disposition contains the possibiUties
of the species for good or evil. Aristotle objects, for instance, that
Euripides' Iphigeneia changes character without explanation. And
so, in fact, she does, and so does Alcmena in Heracleidae.
They
change in this way because their function is not that of rounded
or
characters
"heroes"
but
of
specifications
the
ideas
shaping
of
the play. Besides, if HeracUtus was right, and character is destiny,

then the complex or even contradictory destiny which Euripidean
assumes
drama
and
mean
must
describes
and
complex
contradic
tory characters. But the one kind of character which Euripides'

theater cannot afford is that splendid integrated self-knowledge
represented by the "old fantastical Duke of dark corners" inMeas
sure for Measure;
Euripides' theater is all Angelos, Lucios, and
Claudios,
average,
irresolute,
maimed,
nature.
human
incomplete
The case of Heracles himself, the most integrated hero Euripides

ever created, is darkened by Euripides'
insistence that we ob
serve,
without
passing
heart.
in his
murder
even
that
judgment,
This
fact
does
the
of
not,
has
culture-hero
course,
compose
called "the indispensable dark

tragic flaw, but what Nietzsche
as Euripides tried to show,
spring" of action. Moral judgment is,
no less precarious and difficult than the comprehensive descrip
tion of reaUty. How could it be otherwise?
This does not mean that Euripides avoids judgment, or that his
plays are attempts to put the problematic in the place of dramatic
insists
resolution. It means merely that his theater everywhere
upon scrupulous and detailed recreation of the complexity of
reality and the difficulty of moral judgment. The truth is con
can be Uttle doubt,
concealed.
There
impenetrably
to end
meant
in a way
that
that
his Medea
Euripides
to
and which
still shocks
shocked
his contemporaries,
not
but
cealed,
for instance,
must
day.
have
His
purpose
the audience
eros,
her
was,
not
of course,
to the recognition
defining
and
merely
that Medea,
human
enabUng
does, and that her action has behind

of
sacred
physis.
There
is no
more
to shock,
passion,
to force
but
hurt in her
mortally
must
act
as
she
it, Uke the sun, the power

savage
moral
oxymoron
in
Greek drama. But if Euripides here speaks up for physis against

a corrupt nomos, he is
capable elsewhere of defending nomos and
insisting that those who prostrate themselves before physis, Uke
are the enemies of humanity. Neces
the old Nurse inHippolytus,
sity
requires
submission,
but
any
necessity
that
requires
of a man
that he sacrifice the morality that makes him human, must be re

life. Better
sisted to the end, even if it cost him?as it will?his
death than the mutilation
of his specifically human skill, that
sophia which in Euripides ismankind's claim to be superior to the
man in this theater makes morality; it is
gods and necessity. Only
this conviction, the bedrock classical conviction, that provides the
one unmistakable and fixed reference-point in Euripides' dramatic
44
GREEK
in endless
another
and
exactness
detailed
this new context of changed
Within
theater
IDEAS
that point all truths are purposely
world. Above
one
OF
THEATER
whole
reaUty, Euripides'
is set.
ideas
of
played off against
of observation.
m
Several
examples.
The
or
mantic
escapist
extremely
sight,
it with
shown
have
the
for
for
is
instance,
than
deft,
But
the
romantic
dissonance
and
with
effect,
by
draws attention to the

faciUty of execution.
no means
absolute;
intrudes into this artificial world
a harsh
of
odd
is
atmosphere
he
Quite
the
reaUty.
remembers
contemporary
and
evokes
and
traits,
generaUzing
the very sUghtness of the characterization

virtuosity of the plot and the remarkable
and again Euripides
and
urbane,
entertainment, Uvely and sophisti

its head. Clearly not tragic, its plot
situation clearly counts for a great
little. None of the leading charac
more
given
critic might
Smooth,
play.
talks
he
recognition-scene?and
a nineteenth-century
"well-made"
good
exciting, the play appears pure

cated but without a thought in
is as improbable as it is skillful;
deal, characterization for very
ters,
"theater
its famous
the enthusiasm
as ro
classified
at first,
or even
second
of ideas."
for
Aristotle,
its elegant finish and its tightness
admired
structure?especially
about
seems
and
melodrama,
remote
from
instance, particularly
of
is a play commonly
in Tauris
Iphigeneia
again
the jarring
deUberately,
real war:
the
vision of the dead and the doomed; the illusion of ambition and
the deceptive hope of empire; the exile's yearning for home; the
bitter image of a Hellas at peace, remembered with longing from
the impossible distance of the present. Logos set against ergon;
form in partial conflict with subject; romantic myth undercut by,
and therefore intensifying in turn, the actual world, as though the
story
were
of Cinderella
as
revealed
suddenly
set
on
the
outskirts
it is melodrama
If this play is melodrama,
of Auschwitz.
subtly
but sensibly tilted toward the experience of national tragedy, and
exploiting that experience symboUcally.
SymboUcally how? It is perhaps easy for moderns to misunder
stand
or over-read.
But
I wonder
what
even
Athenian,
the most
insensitive, could have failed to grasp or respond to the image

which this play sets before him, especially in the Ught of that ex
perience of war which the play so powerfully exploits. A sister
dedicates her brother to death by the sword. It seems perhaps
melodromatic
is
symbolism
science?of
to moderns,
but
addressed
people
which,
for
I am
unless
to
directly
nearly
the
twenty
all the horrors of fratricidal war. The

famiUar,
and
it culminates
naturally
years,
symboUsm
in the
great
that
mistaken,
badly
con
the
experience?and
had
suffered
is available
recognition
and
scene,
Arrowsmith
William
45
Iphigeneia, on the point of butchering her brother Orestes,

scene the whole play
suddenly discovers his true identity. For this
was built, and its quite remarkable power is ultimately based, I
think, upon the explosive liberation of love which reunites a fam
ily or a people, grown hostile, estranged, and unfamiliar. Behind
the recognition of brother and sister in the play lies a people's
when
recognition,
For
kind.
of
recognition
read
Argos,
for
Hellas;
the history of the house of Atreus, the history of Hellas. What is

war but blood-sacrifice? Why,
the play asks, should Greeks kill
Greeks? And to give his argument further point, Euripides intro
duces Athena to establish in Attica the cult of the civilized Arte
mis who will put an end to human sacrifice and, by impUcation,
the needless butchery which is war. The symbolism is, of course,
the more effective for being unobtrusive, but once felt, it drasti
seems
What
the
of the
experience
play.
confrontation
and
becomes
recognition,
alters
cally
tic escape
roman
at first
a
true
tragi
comedy inwhich the tragic shapes the comic or romantic, and the
romantic gives poignancy to the tragic. In short, the kind of play
we might have expected from the dramatist of the Alcestis and
the humanist of The Trojan Women. Admittedly a fresh poUtical
interpretation of its major symboUsm does not transform the
Iphigeneia in Tauris into a true drama of ideas; but the existence
a
of
serious
deeply
as
and
Euripides'
garded
bent
of the dramatist's
In the Orestes,
the
work,
contrast
most
"darker"
for instance. Here,

between
logos
universally
is indicative
play
"entertainment,"
frivolous
in the
in a
intent
critical
and
plays.
if anywhere
in Euripides'
cru
and
is structural
ergon
re
cial. The play falls abruptly into two distinct parts. Ergon is repre
sented by the body of the play proper, a freely invented account
of the events which followed Orestes' matricide; and logos by the
concluding epiphany of Apollo, an archaizing dews ex machina in
which the god foretells the known mythical futures of the char
acters.
These
two
parts
are
with
enjambed
jarring
dissonance,
since the characters as developed

in the play and their mythical
future as announced by Apollo are incompatible. Through this
device the play becomes problematic:
the spectator is hterally
compelled,
and
play
it seems,
Apollo's
to choose
closing
his
between
between
words,
own
ergon
experience
and
of
logos,
the
be
havior and myth. Moreover, the choice is a hard one; for if the
experience of the play proper is of almost unbearable bitterness
and
pessimism,
arrangements
Apollo's
sight
it
might
seem.
But
here,
are
f ooUsh
and
"traditional"
In short, impasse, or so at first
to the point of unacceptabiUty.

as
so often
in
Euripides,
a crux
or
problem or impasse is the dramatist's way of confronting his audi

ence with the necessity of choosing between apparently antitheti
cal realities or positions
(Hippolytus or Phaedra? Pentheus or
or
Cold expedience or passionate eros?
nomos?
Dionysus? Physis
46
GREEK
OF
or Greek? Victim
Barbarian
most
THEATER
without
or oppressor? Logos
these
exception,
IDEAS
or ergon?)3 Al
are
choices
necessary
seemingly
finaUy illusory alternatives, the dramatist's device for stiumulating

his audience and forcing it on to the critical perception which
underUes and comprehends
the alternatives, unifying them in a
single, complex, synthetic judgment?the
judgment which holds
the play together, and for which the plays were written in the first
to arrive
place. That Euripides' critics have so seldom managed
at this final judgment would seem to indicate that his theatrical
strategies were ineffective; but on the other hand, Euripides'
critics have usually assumed that his consistency of
technique ne
cessarily meant a consistent failure to write correct traditional
tragedy in the (imagined) manner of Sophocles.
Certainly the impasse between logos and ergon in the Orestes
is apparent only. What resolves it is a common purpose in both
parts?an
curve
ascending
of exposure,
first
of
the
"heroic"
Orestes
who
killed his mother and tried to kill Helen, and then of the
traditionally "wise" Apollo who drove Orestes to matricide. The
in fact,
are,
exposures
mutual
and
cumulative,
us
compelling
to
see that if Orestes,

by any human standard of moraUty, is mad,
in a god,
Apollo is utterly insane (for madness or incompetence
and a god of radiant reason at that, is a fortiori more dangerous
than
in
mortal).
Logos
and
ergon,
apparently
contradictory,
are in fact complementary:

depraved and immoral human action
in the play proper is mirrored by, sanctioned
by, the callous folly
of heaven and the brutaUty of the myth; Orestes and ApoUo mu
tually
create,
mutually
and god project

havior
in
turn
deserve,
each
each other; myth

shapes
the
myth
other:
murderers
both.
influences behavior,
in a vicious
cycle
Man
and be
of moral
de
terioration. If from this perspective we ask why Euripides freely

invents the story of Orestes instead of recreating the traditional
matricide,
the
answer
is
immediately
clear:
because
he wants
to
demonstrate through the abortive attempt to kill Helen?a

crime
in which Apollo significantly plays no
a
mur
is
Orestes
part?that
derer born, a man who kills not from necessity but in freedom,
out of his sickness and hatred. Having demonstrated
this, Euripi
des can proceed to the complementary exposure of Apollo, a god
made in the image of Orestes.
Produced just half a century after Aeschylus' Oresteia, Euripi
des' Orestes is not only an indictment of the Aeschylean myth, its
values and its hero, but a savage critique of Hellenic
society in
3A
dramatic
adaptation,
rhetorical
of first
technique
I beUeve,
of Protagoras'
antilogoi?the
a thesis,
or
and then defending
attacking
of antithetical
method
set
theses.
of contrasting
Thucydides'
speeches
an historian's
?the
for instance?is
of
debate,
Mytilenean
adaptation
is
the antilogoi
and a way
of indicating,
between
the lines, by what
omitted
and shared by both
the crucial
and unspoken
speakers,
spoken
and ethics.
of poUtics
So too in the case of Euripides.
assumptions
William
is, as
ergon
I claim,
resolved
47
If the impasse between
of the fifth century.
the last decade

and
Arrowsmith
a continuous
by
mutual
logos
expo
sure, the purpose of that exposure is a complex and profoundly

bitter cultural statement. Euripides seems to be saying something
Uke this: A society whose sacred legend is embodied in a god Uke
Apollo and a man Uke Orestes runs the risk that its citizens may
emulate
the
it, in their
revive
myth,
own
poUtical
That
behavior.
is: Athens and Greek society generally are in danger of realizing

their own myths, of at last reconciUng logos and ergon, myth and
in a new
conduct,
of murderous
synthesis
and
brutaUty
insanity
worst myth fused now with the worst behavior. In earUer

plays Euripides critically contrasted myth and behavior with the
aim of letting the better expose the worse; here, in the bitterest
play of all, he shows how bad behavior and bad myth interact for
the defeat of culture and communal life. That this bleak conclu
sion is the purpose of the play is supported by the systematic deso
lation which Euripides visits upon every aspect of moral and
political behavior. Thus there is not a character in the play who
is not defined either by inhuman devotion to sound principle, by
patent treachery, or nightmare loyalty of compUcity or stupidity.
Every moral word is consistently inverted or emptied of its mean
?the
ing,
as
the
on a wave
action
creates
none,
power
poUtics
he
tween health
immorality,
power
est and
to "honorable"
madness
from
proceeds
murder
of sickening "heroic" rhetoric. As for justice, if Orestes

gets
or mob
none
for human
either;
passion,
and
justice
rules
Apollo
here
is
in heaven.
merely
Be
and sickness, heroism and depravity, morality and

every distinction is removed. PoUtics is either brutal
or
demagoguery;
In short,
revenge.
the
only
the world
the Orestes
of
are
motives
honorable
is
self-inter
indistinguish
able from the culture in convulsion described by Thucydides;

confirm each other.
point for point, Euripides and Thucydides
And, presumptuous or not, I am tempted to see in this frightening
play Euripides'
apocalyptic vision of the final destruction of
Athens and Hellas, or that Hellas to which a civiUzed mind could
still give its full commitment. In the house of Atreus we have the
house of Hellas: the great old aristocratic house, cursed by a long
history of fratricidal blood and war, brought down in ruin by its
degenerate
heirs.
Finally, consider the Medea. Traditionally classified as "psycho

logical tragedy," it is better interpreted as a genuine drama of
ideas. Superficially it is a critique of relations between men and
women,
Greeks
and
barbarians,
and
an
ethos
of hard,
prudential
self-interest as against passionate love; at a profounder level it is

a
comprehensive critique of the quaUty and state of contemporary
culture. Like the Bacchae, Euripides' other great critique of cul
ture,
quately
the Medea
translated
is based
"wisdom,"
upon
a central
sophia
is an
key-term,
sophia.
extremely
complex
including not only Jason's cool seff-interest,
the magical
Inade
term,
and erotic
48
THEATER
GREEK
OF
IDEAS
skills of the sorceress Medea,

and
moral
artistic
arete
tinctive
of
but that ideal Athenian

fostered
skills
which,
civilized
the
by
This
polis.
fusion of
creates
eros,
sense
third
of
the
dis
sophia?
nearly synonymous with "civilization" and specifically including

the compassion4 for the suppUant and the oppressed for which
Athens was famous and which Aegeus
significantly shows to
Medea?is
the standard by which the actions of Jason and Medea
are to be judged. Thus the vivid harmony of eros and
sophia
which Athens represents is precisely what Jason and Medea are
not. Jason's calculating, practical sophia is, lacking eros, selfish
and destructive; Medea's consuming eros and psychological sophia
emotional
(an
which
cunning
are, without
compassion,
venge)
both
makes
of
destroyers?destroyers
her
maimed
and
supreme
destructive.
of
themselves,
others,
artist
re
of
are
They
of
sophia,
it is this destructiveness which above all else

and the poto5?and
Euripides wants his audience to observe: the spirit of brutal self
interest and passionate revenge which threatens both Ufe and cul
ture, and which is purposely set in sharp contrast to life-enhancing
Athens where the arts flourish, eros collaborates with sophia, and
creative physis is gentled by just nomoi. Behind Jason and Medea
are
we
meant
clearly
to see
that
spirit
spreading
of expedience
and
revenge which, unchecked by culture or reUgion, finally brought

about the Peloponnesian War and its attendant atrocities. For it
cannot be mere coincidence that a play Uke this was performed in
the first
What
pends
of her de
of Medea herself? Upon our understanding
the final interpretation of the play. Thus those who find in
Medea
a barbarian
woman
and male
courage
revenge,
an women
and
of the war.
year
their
tragedy
arguments.
of
of
the
fear
of
lack
set her
in firm
usually
this
revenge.
Against
one
For
thing,
of
for
self-control,
hunger
to the Corinthi
contrast
of
praise
sophrosun?
as a
play
psychological
are decisive
there
interpretation
to show
takes
that
pains
Euripides
with
chorus,
excess,
whose
their
see
Greek
the
Medea is not at all pure barbarian feminity, but rather a barbarian

woman who has been partially and imperfectly Hellenized. Thus
Medea's
first
appearance
is an
intentionally
striking
one,
domi
nated by her attempt to pass for Greek, to say the right thing: she
talks, in fact, the stock language of Greek women, h?suchia and
4 Cf.
is
Orestes
where
294-6,
Electra,
says: "Compassion
Euripides'
never
are
in men who
in brutal
found
and ignorant men.
And
sophoi,
a
to have
to the
is not without
mind
disadvantage
truly compassionate
sophoi."
5
as Medea
Creon
them
and Jason between
and his
destroy
Just
so Medea,
at
once
in Athens,
wiU
she is domiciled
Glauke,
daughter
so
to murder
desires
the son whom
Theseus,
Aegeus
tempt
passionately
?a
to know
and hold
fact which
Athenians
could be expected
against
to her. Whenever
in view
of Aegeus'
Medea,
generosity
especially
is threatened.
Medea
the polis as represented
goes,
by the ruling
family
Arrowsmith
William
cultural
the
of
throes
sort
the
imitation,
of
a barbarian
thing
woman
expected to do. But the point is important for,

play records the loss of the civilized skills
of passion; and for this reason Euripides first
use of those civilized virtues which,
making
in Corinth might be
if I am right, this
through the conflict
shows us his Medea
in
just as well be
this may be a pose, but it may
sophrosun?. Now
genuine
49
she
passion,
loses,
promptly
to barba
reverting
rism. Euripides' point is not that Medea qua barbarian is different

in nature from Greek women, but that her inhibitions are weaker
and
her
passions
nearer
correspondingly
the
she
Thus
surface.
can very
quickly be reduced to her essential physis, and it is
this nakedness
of physis, shorn of all cultural overlay, that
eros (or
wants
Euripides
displayed. Unimpeded
unimpeded
hatred)
ness
can
be
shown
in Medea
in a Greek
impossible
less passionate,
but
their passions.
If culture
true
becomes
eventually
their
because
a concentration
with
not
woman,
because
culture
self-mastery:
are
women
them
required
is truly effective,
natural
and
Greek
to repress
the control of passion

where
sophrosun?;
culture
is less effective or out of joint (as in the Corinth of this play),

physis is checked only by fear, and reveals itself in resentment of
the punishing authorities and ready sympathy with those who
rebel against them. Hence the profound resentment which the
chorus feels in this play against male domination. And this?and
not mere
easily
convention
theatrical
convince
the chorus
or
necessity?is
to become
Medea
why
her accompUces
can
so
in her
over
and male
Their
their
"crusade"
control
society.
against
Jason
is still
while
than Medea's
passions,
greater
perhaps,
inadequate
arouses
and precarious;
and Medea's
their
fullest
sym
revenge
as war
in an
evokes
the barbarian
civilized
just
imperfectly
pathy,
man.
And
is
this
that
"one
touch
of nature"
point,
Euripides'
we
In Medea's
makes
kin of Hellene
and barbarian.
barbarism
have
terrible
quate
norm
out,
meant,
beUeve.
a concentrated
of
closeness
sophrosun?
of Hellenic,
"No Greek
not
to
of human
image
nature
all human
and her
imperfect
and
physis
to barbarism;
sophia
symbol
in her
of
the
inade
is represented
the
and most
Thus when
cries
human,
society.
Jason
woman
we
are
would
dared
have
this crime,"
to wonder
and doubt,
and
dis
but
argue,
finally
The vaUdity of that doubt and disbelief is immediately con

firmed by the appearance of the golden chariot of the Sun in
which Medea makes her escape to Athens. In this chariot Euripi
des does two related things: he first restates, vividly and un
the triumph of Medea over Jason, and secondly he
mistakably,
provides the whole action with a symboUc and cosmological
framework which forces the private agon of Jason and Medea to
assume a larger public
significance. And by showing Medea,
murderess and infanticide, as rescued by the Sun himself?tradi
tionally regarded as the epitome of purity, the unstained god who
GREEK
50
OF
THEATER
IDEAS
drives home his meaning with the

will not look upon pollution?he
shock of near sacrilege. As for the chariot of the Sun, it is the
blazes through Medea's motives,
visible cosmic force which
which her whole pathos expresses: the blinding force of Ufe
screen;
itself, striped of any mediating moraUty or humanizing
naked,
elemental
unimpeded,
primitive,
pre-moral,
eros;
pre-cultural
intense,
condition
the
cruel;
the world.
and
chaotic,
of man
and
If that force vindicates Medea as against Jason, her ardor as

against his icy self-interest, it is only because her eros is elemental
and therefore invincible. But she is vindicated only vis-?-vis Jason;
and she is not justified at all. Of justification there can be no
not
here,
question
eros
because
only
is, Uke
any
neces
elemental
sity, amoral and therefore unjustifiable, but because Euripides

a tragic defeat for man
clearly believes the loss of sophia to be
and
human
In
the
interest
culture.
of
agon
expel
and Medea,
that agon
Jason
sophia;
and
vengeance,
as we
have
passion,
stands,
and
self
for
seen,
the Peloponnesian War?and

the war which Euripides, Uke Thucy
feared
would
dides,
expel sophia from civilized cities, thereby
and
barbarizing
brutalizing human behavior. At any time, in both
individuals and cities, sophia is a deUcate and precarious virtue;
if anywhere in the Hellenic world, sophia flourished in Athens,
the
but even there it bloomed precariously
(how precariously
plague which overtook the city in the following year proved).
And
in the
come
would
sophia?that
Thucydides'
humanity
coming
the
sophia
to Athens,
of Medea
spirit
whose
phrase,
a new
and
of
vengeance
creation
"the
education
terrible
day
seems
to
imply,
Euripides
and
passion,
endangering
in
made
and
Athens,
growth
and
of Hellas."
For Hellas
dawns
at the
close
of
the Medea.
IV
In sum, the Greeks possessed a recognizable and developed form

of what we should not scruple to call a classical theater of ideas.
And
there,
in substance,
my
rests.
argument
its critical shortcomings may be, its historical basis is,

Whatever
I think, sufficiently secure. If historically the theater of ideas tends
to occur
in times
of
severe
cultural
then
crisis,
we
may
properly
suspect it, if anywhere, in late fifth-century Athens, for of all the

this crisis was by far the most
cultural crises of Hellenism,
profound.
Among
the old mythical

and sanctioned;
on
which
the
its casualties
are
classical
and
tragedy
comedy;
cosmology and the culture which it mirrored

the gods of the polis; the sense of community
polis
was
based,
and
therefore
in
some
sense
the polis itself. In short, the whole cloth of culture, fabric and
to repiece
design together. In the fourth century Plato's attempt
reconcile physis and nomos, myth and be
the old culture?to
William
havior,
but
to reweave
the moral
finally
51
heroic
the
of
community
a
was
Plato
unsuccessful.
Arrowsmith
polis?was
conservative
great
and
was only pre

great revolutionary, but the Hellas he preserved
served by being radically changed, in fact revolutionized. The
old Greek culture?the culture to which Western world most owes
it returns for life and freshness when
its being and to which
threatens to swamp it?died in the fifth cen
Platonic Hellenism
that
tury H.c, and it is this culture in its crisis of disintegration
no
out
the
old
could
hold
records.
If
longer
Euripides
Euripides
heroic image of man, it is because he preferred to base his theater
upon what he actually saw as the prime reaUty of his time: the
new emerging human psyche, tested and defined by crisis, the
apparently uncontrollable chaos of human behavior and therefore
the turbulence which any viable culture must know how to con
tain,
but without
repressing.
Put it this way. The complex knowledge and experience about

so evident inHecuba or Bacchae look forward
poUtics and culture
to Plato
men
and
share
also
Plato's
explain
conviction
the
as
nature,
become
has
ception
new
cultural
in behavior;
restrictive
Plato's
must
order
somehow
was
make
run
on
do
cor
that chaotic
within
controlled
Uberating per
for turbulence,
had
what
to crisis. The Athenian
ceptible
be
Both
have
For
premise.
Euripides
is uncontrollable
contain
what
to allow
the failure
its ethics,
democratize
greed
cannot
crisis,
by
crisis.
for power
of existing culture. But Euripides'
the framework
more
revealed
same
to the
it; both are convinced
rupted culture or deranged

human
response
and
that war
made
the
the failure
than
to
so sus
culture
after Pericles
democracy
aristocratic
old
any
could no
industrial
England
sophrosun?
was
not to
The
however,
solution,
on
aristo
to
and
the
old
operate
society
sophrosun?
reorganize
in terms
to revise
cratic
but
and
of a
ethos,
sophrosun?
sophia
more
It is for this reason
in the
nature.
democratic
view
of human
could
on
that Pentheus' inability to control his inward turmoil is

by his incompetence to control the public situation. He
Bacchae
matched
is an
chivalry.
knightly
of his
emblem
age,
attempting
be,
sophrosun?;
it is not
out
of his
self and his culture to cope with chaos by means

or
aristocratic
corrupted
chaos
Dionysiac
may
for whatever
repression?but
ignorance
of him
of an inadequate
the
solution
to
a more
perhaps
(which is to say, liberated and liberating)

responsibly Dionysiac
society. The new polis may not be quite "polymorphously per
verse," but it will at least be free, disciplined by experience of
inward
and
outward
chaos
to a
larger
self-mastery.
For Plato the ideal polis can only be based upon a coercion that
looks Uke consent. And it is therefore subject to the fate of
Euripides' Pentheus, the terrible revenge which physis takes upon
a nomos
short
pression
which
the
culture
of
the
cannot
enlarge
envisaged
natural?the
itself
to a
Plato
rests
by
natural
true
human
ultimately
in Plato
becomes
order.
upon
the
In
sup
evil?
52
OF
THEATER
GREEK
and is to that degree
profoundly
for
specifications
Euripides'
IDEAS
and anti-Hellenic.
pessimistic
rest
culture
an
upon
real
extremely
istic judgment of human nature and its potentiaUties for disorder;

but because what is chaotic is seen as the thrust of Ufe itself, as
(or beyond),
good or evil, morally neutral,
something below
is
culture
always
project
for
hope,
for
free
for
order,
the
creation
of new institutions in which man's society will not be in conflict

with his nature. The Athens which Euripides had so triumphantly
hailed in the great choral ode of the Medea may have betrayed
what it stood for, but the creative fusion of the passions (erotes)
and the civilized and artistic skills (the large sense of Sophia,
nearly synonymous with "culture") which produced arete?here,
however transient, was a paradigm of ideal social order, the polis
which made man's fulfillment possible.
That Euripides was an innovator is, of course, not an altogether
new idea; Werner Jaeger's word for him is, flatly, revolutionary.
But
those
who
regard
Euripides
as an
or a
innovator
revolutionary
more than a theatrical sophist or the in

rarely see in him much
as I know,
ventor of a reaUstic and psychological
tragedy. So far
am
I
what
has
proposing here?that
seriously proposed
nobody
Euripides' theater is no less revolutionary than his ideas, and that
his ideas are implicitly expressed in the assumptions of his theater
and his dramatic hypotheses. In short, that his theater is his ideas;
that his radical critique of crisis in culture is not just Sophoclean
a wholly new theater,
tragedy turned topical and sophistic, but
and
conventions
the
of the old. That
based
forms
upon
uneasily
is, not tragedy at all, but a critical drama related to Aeschylus
and
least
Sophocles
in
theory,
in much
related
the same way

to Schiller's.6
as Hebbel's
And
theater
was,
very
reason,
this
for
at
I
it will be ob
suppose, the argument will be discounted: Why,
a point like this been somehow missed for twenty-five
has
jected,
hundred years?
To tiiis question it would be possible to make a great many
answers. For one thing, the identification of the 'theater of ideas'
is of
very
recent
date,
even
among
critics
of
the
theater.
For
6A
comparison I owe to Eric Bentley 's The Playwright as Thinker.
his new
it a world
in this way:
"At its every
theater
step there
which
both
and relations,
of views
point
must
the
be carried
and aU of which
forwards,
along;
one another,
of thought
the thread
and destroy
snaps
the very words
in two before
the emotion
it is spun out,
shifts,
gain
the ordinary
and reveal hidden
their independence
meaning,
annulling
on more
the chaff of
than one face. Here
one, for each is a die marked
serve the
to fiber, would
bit to bit and fiber
little
sentences,
adding
in their organic
conditions
of presenting
ill. It is a question
purpose
. . . Unevenness
of
and confusion
of rhythm,
complication
totality.
are elevated
to effective
and indis
in the figures
contradiction
periods,
rhetorical
means...."
pensable
Hebbel
described
around
throngs
and
backwards
cross
life-forces
Arrowsmith
William
classicists
another,
have
been?as
traditionally
53
remain?hos
they
tile or indifferent to Uterary criticism. For this reason they have

very rarely asked the kind of question which might have led them
to a Uterary answer. Instead, that is, of giving the dramatist the
customary benefit of the doubt, they have assumed that a hostile
was
tradition
generally
but
finally
aberration
ing
sound
that
and
too
an
was
Euripides
irreverent
realistic,
and
interest
to
vulgar
fill the bill as a bona fide classic. With deplorable regularity

fate to be an
scholarship has insisted that it was Euripides'
imitator or higher parodist of his predecessors, and then, just as
regularly, has condemned him for bungling the job. I doubt, in
that
fact,
chapter.
the
history
no
Surely
can
of Uterature
dramatist
great
a more
show
the world
of
pathological
ever
received
has
less benefit of the critical doubt or been more consistently patron

ized; a fourth-rate Broadway hack will normally demand, and get,
more courtesy from critics than Euripides has received from six
centuries of scholarship. Even when he is praised by comparison,
the comparison is inevitably patronizing. We do not honor our
if classicists and
greatest classics by asserting their modernity;
critics compare Euripides to Ibsen, this is more to Ibsen's credit
than Euripides'?though
this is not the assumption. We pay no
honor to Shakespeare when we compliment him on his modernity:
we merely reveal the true proportions of our contempt for the
classics. Having said that, I can now say without being misunder
stood: the theater of Brecht and of Sartre, and even the Theater
of the Absurd, are in many ways remarkably like the theater of
Euripides.
In any traditional perspective,
and
on
and
Aeschylus
Euripidean
almost
strange,
uncomfortably
exasperating
Its
Sophocles.
theater
as we
premises,
is complex
to a taste
have
founded
seen,
are
unlike, and almost the inversion of those of the traditional Greek

it likes to conceal the truth beneath strata of
theater. Typically
irony because this is the look of truth: layered and elusive. For the
same
reason
it
the
involves
jurors who
its
typical
in a new
presents
audience
must
resolve
the
actions
relation,
problem
by
as
and
problems
thereby
as
not
but
worshippers
But because
the
decision.
problem is usually incapable of outright resolution, is in fact

"tragic," the audience is compelled to forfeit the only luxury of
a decision?the
luxury of knowing that one has decided
making
wisely.
comfort,
Something?innocence,
complacency?is
always
forfeited?or meant to be forfeited?by

the audience of jurors. And
this suggests that the essential anagnorisis of Euripidean theater
is not
between
one
actor
and
another
but
between
the
audience
and its own experience, as that experience is figured in the plays.

Anagnorisis here is knowing moral choice, exercised on a problem
which aims at mimicking the quandary of a culture. As such, it is
a
pattern
and the
of
hope
in which
the way
of a culture.
the
psyche
is made
whole
again,,
A GREEK
54
THEATER
OF
IDEAS
It is thus a difficult theater, and difficulty in Uterature, as op

posed to textual difficulty or a doubtful MS. reading, has never
the
quickened
pulses
scholarly response
is that
no
classical
of classical
writer
to be immediately
or
complex
at
scholars.
to the suggestion
ever
could
he
contorted,
have
was
commonest
so unclear
been
If he was
transparent.
aU
the
Indeed,
of a complex critical reading

unclear
or
unusually
to
unclassical;
clearly
as not
such
a
criterion of "noble simpUcity" seized
degree has Winckelmann's
the imagination of classical scholars. To those who believe that
Euripides could not possibly have meant more than the Uttle they
are
waning to understand, there is no adequate reply. But if it is
true that critics who interpret great dramatists often seek to
involve themselves in the dramatist's greatness, those who deny
the dramatist any ideas but their own clearly involve the dramatist
in their own dullness. John Finley's words to those who
charge
that more is read into Thucydides'
speechs than the average
Athenian citizen could have understood, are appropriate:
"It might be rephed that the mass of the people could not have
followed speeches of so general a character, but to make such
an
the mind of the fifth century,
objection is to misunderstand
indeed of any great period. The plays of Shakespeare and the
sermons of early Protestantism give
proof enough of the ca
be
an
in
assumed
pacity
could
that
argued
or
audience
ordinary
congregation.
era which
the ordinary
offers
any
vast horizons of opportunity

fresh
demands
and receives
to
proportionate
comprehension
his
fresh
It
man
from him a
self-respect.
Attic tragedy, even the philosophical

and pohtical subjects
treated by Aristophanes,
cannot be explained on any other
assumption."
As for Euripides,
if I am right in assuming that his subject was
nothing less than the Ufe of Greek and Athenian culture, respect
for the intelUgence and good faith of the ordinary audience must
be forthcoming, since it is the premise of culture itself. And if
of his
Euripides for the most part failed to win the understanding
I think he did?the fact does not disprove the intent.
audience?as
It is, I think, not sufficiently recognized that the very scholars who
object that literary criticism means importing modern prejudices
into
an
Utterly
ancient
unconsciously
apologetic
highly
the
confer
them
toward
or
themselves
they
a culture
which
prejudices
and
man,
attitude
are
text,
ancient
the
derives
from
the worst
ours
turn
can also be found in antiquity. The

right
opposite,
i.e.,
to
start
offenders.
aU the cramping
can confer
an uncritical
upon
classicist's
"The
upon
antiquity.
wrote
"is either
world,"
Nietzsche,
our
the notion
that what
age values
Uke
in
usually
take for granted
from
the
perception
is
starting-point
of modern
ab
many
surdity and to look backward from that viewpoint?and
things regarded as offensive in the ancient world will appear as
Arrowsmith
William
must
We
necessities.
profound
make
are acting absurdly when we
that we
to ourselves
it clear
justify or beautify
55
antiquity: who
are we?"
men and critics of Uterature, as

Among Uterary
opposed to
a
it
be
assumed
that
Greek
theater
of
ideas
would
scholars,
might
find favor, if only as a sanction and precedent for the new in
tellectual theater. But I suspect that this is not the case, precisely
because
criticism
contemporary
and
are
literature
so
stubbornly
and unreasonably convinced that the entire Greek theater from

to Euripides is firmly rituaUstic. In saying this, I am
Aeschylus
of the fact that the modern poetic theater, in
first,
thinking,
to
turned significantly
searching for anti-naturaUstic models,
Greek drama. What
in Greek drama
interested contemporaries
was, of course, the beUef that they would find in it those features
?ritual,
styUzation,
a sacramental
gesture,
sense
of
and
life
com
munity?which
promised release from the restrictions of the
naturaUstic theater. They were confirmed in this by the literary
vogue of anthropology, and the apparent success of the so-called
Cambridge school, especially Cornford and Jane Harrison. But the
strongest argument for the ritual view of Greek drama came, I
think, from the inabiUty of the classicists themselves to give any
substantial
to Greek
meaning
drama.
Thus
literary
men,
always
Uttle nervous when confronted with a Greek text and seldom

inclined to quarrel with scholarship, eagerly accepted a scholarly
view of the Greek plays that at least had the merit of making
them mean something and which also suited their own theatrical
programs.
as I have
But
Ritual
tried
because
for
to
them
show
a "find."
was
an
elsewhere,
is "need,"
its basis
ritual
For
Greek
it was,
drama
disaster.
unqualified
interpretation
is
particu
larly insidious. My own objections to it are threefold; first, that

it is a clear case of the genetic fallacy, the belief that developed
tragedy still bears the visible structural and esthetic effects of its
origin; second, that there is so Uttle evidence for it in extant
tragedy that its own originator, Gilbert Murray, recanted it; and
far
third, that it is really Cornford's arugment for comedy?a
sounder
in view
argument
of
comedy's
late
to
the
nationaUzation?that
gives it cogency. My critical objection to it is that it tends to di

minish rather than enhance the literary value of the plays; in short,
that it tends to make priests of tragedians and worshippers
of
audiences.
This
is not,
of course,
deny
religious
importance
of the Greek tragedian or his religious concern. But it is to deny

that his subject was prescribed, his treatment wholly conventional
or
styUzed,
and
his
thought
unimportant
precisely
discursive,
or unadventurous.
What
ever value the ritual

approach may have for Aeschylus or Sopho
cles (and I think the value is small), its appUcation has obscured
even further the nature and
originaUty of the Euripidean theater
of
ideas,
since
it is
plex "dialectic" of Euripidean
critical
thought,
the
com
drama, that rituaUst interpretation
56
THEATER
GREEK
the
essential,
drama
Greek
been,
the
IDEAS
the
Thus
suppresses.
regularly
has
Greek
drama
But
OF
result
only
in my
opinion,
reason
for
crucial,
the
of
a
ritual
criticism
further
of
falsification.
oui'
misunderstanding
in par
theater
Euripidean
men
is one which
ticular
and
alike
share with
literary
modern
And
this is our
cultural
the whole
world.
need
of
special
our own
A tradition
the classics,
crucial
of classical
culture.
myth
it with
the per
is, after
all, Hke
love; we
it, endow
"crystallize"
of
the
it must
fections
And
by
we
view
as
a measure
and
Thomas
which
our modern
To
Aeschylus.
for
our
of
our
justify
some
time
need
Mann
reserved
a cultural
Thus
needful
for
to
Eden
innocence.
wonder
Goethe?that
the Greeks
and
presence
the
play
image of a great humanity.

the pure
love.
in relation
age felt for the age of
Euripides'
lost power;
lost wholeness;
our culture
has
lost.
our
and
stood
own
dissonance,
the abiding
of old tonality,
reality
to
has
soul?and
Nietzsche
integrated
our
in order
culture
chaos,
we measure
our fall from
and
grace
the Greeks
with
envious
and
the same
which
that
have
culture
and
general
classicists
Greek
classical
modern
in
They
role
are
of
certainty
Against a need like this and a myth like this, argument may be
futile. But we should not, I think, be allowed to mythologize
unawares.
lence
If we
in order
first
to make
deprive
ourselves
classical
a
myth
true
culture
of
its
of what
we
have
turbu
lost,
and
then hedge that myth with false ritual, we are depriving ourselves
of that community of interest and danger that makes the twentieth
century
access
we
want.
true
kin
to what
And
to
the
the Greeks.
past
that
is a
can
We
teach
cultural
ourselves,
deprive
us in order
to take
loss
of
the
first
in short,
of
what
only
magnitude.

A Greek Theater of Ideas

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A Greek Theater of Ideas

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Trustees of Boston University

Trustees of Boston University through its publication Arion: A Journal of

that scholarship and criticism should do their best to recover a

a theater of intellectual sententiae or Shavian "talk" or even the

In such a theater I assume that the emphasis will be upon ideas

modes and genres once kept artistically distinct. It is also Ukely

be left unresolved; that is, that the effect of a play may

stracted at random from the historical "theater of ideas" from

stunning boldness, showing in play after play how the

achievement of the mind of Zeus and the suffering of mankind.

out his eyes at the unbrookable

degrade him and make him ludicrous, Ajax

look for any valid fifth-century

not that his theater is in any meaningful

such conditions the whole kinship structure on which the polis

in the great argument between physis

"So bloody was

is told us by no less an authority

kind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and

have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves

master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their

in the cunning of their

age of a loyal ally; prudent

was held to be a cloak for unmanUness,

the attribute of manliness;

reserve; for such associations had not in

lic interests which

greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the

demnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong

joining in the quarrel or because

not suffer them to

Thus every form of

evil took root in the Hellenic countries by

than capable of confidence.

In this contest the blunter

cies and of the cleverness of their antagonists, they feared to be

resolves of those who

to get rid of their ac

sessions; and lastly, of the savage and pitiless

in passion, above respect

to set the example of doing away with those general laws to

chial and ephemeral

given to every phrase,

with due weight

How did this convulsion of a whole culture affect the idea of a

to men. And the influence of Aristotle is nowhere

in Hecuba. "That you look on men and care? Or

change / alone control the world?" Usually desperate, feeble and

in the moral universe splits the entire

annulled by created disorder and formal violence. What we get is

on the one hand, and fact (or

of it is; and third, that Aristotelian

(or pretence) and

realistic fifth century terms. By

cent delight in his own

ageously refusing to write the higher parody of his predecessors

story or that Euripides was drawn

to realism because he knew

It is for this reason that Euripides' theater almost always begins

where the dramatist is official didaskalos charged with the paideia

the moral tutors of Athens and their versions of the myths em

not enough to offer on Euripides' behalf the reply which Morris

Actually the charge that Euripides is negative is based upon mis

The point here, I beUeve, is both important and neglected. Let