2. Euripides’s Medea, Electra, Orestes

Over three months have passed since the posting of my first Imaginative Literature article at Bob’s Corner. The delay of time is attributable to my age (I’m 85), my spending time each day watching a couple favourite series on television (The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie), and my lack of confidence in discussing fiction. As a result I’ve decided to postpone further consideration of Imaginative Literature selections until after I’ve read and reported on the selections in volume 8-10 of The Great Ideas Program (8. Ethics: The Study of Moral Values; 9. Biology, Psychology, and Medicine; 10. Philosophy) and to forego watching the two television series. Hopefully the result will be my posting an article each month.

Euripides was the most modern of the three great Greek dramatists–Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. All three wrote their dramas for production at the festivals in honour of Dionysius, the god of wine and fertility and derived their themes from Greek mythology (the stories of the gods and heroes, which were known to the audience). In Aristotle’s Poetics he said that tragedy is an imitation of a serious action, presented through words and music, enacted rather than narrated, and arousing emotions of pity and fear in the spectators. For more on Aristotle’s view of tragedy see the sentence below beginning “Section II explains.” Although Aristotle knew that plays are meant to be played, he felt that the mere reading of a play would reveal the tragic theme and produce the tragic effect.

The plays considered here are Medea, in which a woman (Medea) wrecks a terrible revenge when her husband deserts here for another woman in order to better his position in the world, and Electra and Orestes, in which a young man and a young woman (Orestes and Electra) feel bound to murder their mother in revenge for the murder of their father (Electra) and then are brought to account to account for their deeds but struggle against the reckoning (Orestes).

A biography of Euripides and summaries of his plays can be found at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Euripides.
Edward P. Coleridge’s translations of the three plays being considered here appear at http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.html; http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/electra_eur.html; and https://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/orestes.html.

I read the same translations of the three plays in volume 5 of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World (1952) guided by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain in their Imaginative Literature I, volume 6 of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Ideas Program (1961). Their guide contains six sections. Section I tells how Greek drama was an element in public worship and combined choral songs and dramatic episodes. Section II explains why for Aristotle the ideal plot was one in which a person fell from high social position and good fortune and ignominy, the ideal hero was a man somewhat above average in virtue and character but no perfect, and the ideal tragic deed was one that occurred within the bonds of friendship or kinship. Section III considers Medea. Section IV considers Electra. Section V considers Orestes. Section VI poses and discusses seven questions (see the next paragraph).]

The seven questions considered in Section VI are as follows. I’m given my answers to them instead of summarizing Adler and Cain’s responses to them as I did in my article on Homer’s Odyssey.

• Would the staging of these plays add to what you get from a mere reading? I think that the imagination working on the reading is sufficient to communicate the tragic theme and to produce the tragic effect.
• Do these plays conform to Aristotle’s ideas about the tragedy? I think that the happy ending of Orestes detracts from it as a tragedy.
• Do various improbabilities and inconsistencies make these plays unconvincing? I don’t think that the various improbabilities and inconsistencies in these plays detracted from my enjoyment and understanding of them.
• Does the device of divine intervention detract from the tragic effect? I found the intervention of Apollo in Orestes difficult to fit in with its preceding action.
• Does tragedy require sympathetic characters with whom we may identify? I didn’t sympathize with the leading characters in these plays and yet I was moved by their words and deeds.
• Does Euripides give us a psychological interpretation of the Greek myths? I think that he does.
• Do sudden reversals add to or detract from the dramatic effects in these plays? I think that they do.

1. Homer’s The Odyssey

The Odyssey is the story of Ulysses, who fought ten years at Troy and wandered for another ten years before getting back home. The authorship of it and The Iliad, which recounts some of the significant events near the end of the Trojan War, is attributed to Homer, about which nothing else is known. I read Samuel Butler’s translation of The Odyssey in volume 4 of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World (1952) guided by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain in their Imaginative Literature I, volume 6 of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Ideas Program (1961).The same translation of The Odyssey is given at http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html.

The Odyssey consists of twenty-four books, which Adler and Cain observe can divided into two halves–Books I-XII, dealing with events prior to Ulysses’ return to Ithaca and Books XIII-XXIV dealing with events after his return. They also observe that Books I-XII can be divided into three parts–Books I-IV setting the scene before Ulysses enters the story, Books V-VIII telling of Ulysses’ journey from Calypso’s island to the land of the Phaeacians, and Books IX-XIII presenting Ulysses’ story of his adventures from the time that he left Troy to the time he was stranded on Calypso’s island.

Books I-IV open with a council of the gods on Olympus discussing Ulysses’ plight. One of them, Minerva, goes to Ithaca to encourage Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, and to send him in search of his father. In Ithaca a host of suitors for the hand of Penelope, the presumed widow of Ulysses, are eating her and Telemachus out house and home. Minerva, disguised as an old friend of Ulysses, sends Telemachus to the courts of Pylos and Sparta. The king of Sparta, Menelaus, tells Telemachus that Proteus, the old man of the sea, had told him that Ulysses was alive but was being hindered from returning home by the nymph Calypso. Meanwhile in Ithaca the suitors learn that Telemachus had slipped away and plot to kill him on his return.

Books V-VIII also begins with a council of the gods, where Minerva again pleads Ulysses’ cause Jove, ruler of the gods, decrees that Ulysses shall return home by way of the land of the Phaeacians and sends Mercury, messenger of the gods, to advise Calypso of his will. She aids Ulysses in preparing a raft and provisions. After many days he sights the Phaeacian coast, but his old enemy, Neptune, the sea-god, gives him a rough time before he reaches land without his raft. There he gets the king, Alsinous, to prepare a ship and provide a crew for the rest of his trip home. Before Ulysses leaves, there is a feast with ministrelsy and athletic games in his honour. Ulysses is moved to tears by the minstrel’s song about how Troy was taken. Seeing his weeping the king insists that Ulysses tell those gathered about himself. Ulysses’ story of his journey from Troy to Calypso’s island takes up Books IX-XII, which I won’t summarize here.

Books XIII-XXIV tells of Ulysses’ return and revenge. It begins with the return of Ulysses to Ithaca in the Phaeacian ship. Minerva transforms him into a wrinkled old man to conceal his identity and he takes refuge in the hut of his swineherd, Eumaeus. Meanwhile Telemachus comes home from Pylos and Sparta under Minerva’s protection and goes to Eumaeus’ hut. Ulysses questions Telemachus’ inaction to the suitors’ behaviour and then, retransformed by Minerva, reveals himself to Telemachus. Returned to his incognito form Ulysses goes to his house, where he is humiliated by his goatherd and two of the suitors but is recognized by his old nurse, Euryclea, who sees a scar that he got as a boy.

The revenge takes place on the occasion of a shooting contest staged by Penelope. Whichever of the suitors can string the bronze bow of Ulysses and send an arrow through the handle holes of twelve axes, set up in a row, will win her hand. When none of them is able to do this, the old beggar (Ulysses) does it and then reveals his identity to the suitors and announces their doom. Aided by Telemachus, Eumaneus, another loyal servant, and Minerva (who makes the suitors’ spears miss and terrifies them by her appearance), Ulysses slaughters the suitors. Then Ulysses reveals his identity and return to his wife and father. The story ends on a note of reconciliation and peace, Minerva intervening to stop the battle between the suitors’ kin and Ulysses and his men, making “a covenant of peace between the two contending parties.”

Adler and Cain’s guide to The Odyssey contains six sections. Section I comments on Homer, the Homeric Age, and the Trojan War. Section II summarizes Books I-XII of The Odyssey. Section III summarizes its Books XIII-XXIV. Section IV comments on its main characters: Ulysses, Penelope (his wife), and Telemachus (his son). Section V comments on how The Odyssey is told, in particular on it as an epic poem, its being repetitious, its making frequent digressions, and its containing several “recognition” scenes. Section VI poses and discusses five questions (see the next paragraph).

The five questions considered in Section VI are:

• What is the role of the gods in the Odyssey? The gods intervene in the action, with their intervention and human action harmonizing with each other. Adler and Cain observe that the connection of the extraordinary with the supernatural is an ancient tendency. They ask whether the story would be as good as, or even better, without these interventions by the gods. Reflecting on the role of the gods in The Odyssey prompted me to read what writers on the Internet have to say about the relationship between Greek-Roman religion, Judaism, and Christianity and to reread at least one of my books on world religions. I’m now rereading John B. Noss’ Man’s Religions (7th edition updated by his brother, David S. Noss, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1984; the book has now reached a 14th edition).
• Are the suitors the villains of the story? The suitors are clearly hateful to Ulysses and his household. They claim that they are behaving the way they do to force dilatory Penelope to make up her mind which of them to marry. However Adler and Cain observe that it is not made clear why the suitors don’t drop Penelope and marry other women. They ask whether the story would be clearer if Homer didn’t give the suitors some justification and reasonable motivation and made them all black and Penelope all white without a flaw or questionable trait.
• Is Ulysses a proper hero for an epic poem? Adler and Cain answer that is the events are extraordinary and the main character is heroic, as in the Odyssey, the requirements of epic are satisfied. However they add that it may be a problem whether everyday life, which takes up a large part of the Odyssey, is compatible with the high tone required of epic poetry.
• Is Telemachus comparable to Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Adler and Cain compare Hamlet and Telemachus and ask several follow-up questions, including whether Telemachus is ever central to the action in Odyssey as Hamlet is in Hamlet.
• Do the “retarding elements help or hinder your enjoyment of the story? Adler and Cain illustrate how Homer gives detailed treatment to digressions and flashbacks. They ask whether the story would run more smoothly or would lack something if they were omitted or reduced to brief notice.