1/ Another blasphemous play from Euripides.
This is how the play starts: amidst the chaos in Thebes, Lycus attacks the town, kills King Creon, and seizes the crown; as Creon’s daughter Megara is married to Heracles but Heracles has gone to the underworld for the final labour, perhaps to never return, Lycus decides to kill them all—Megara, their 3 sons, and Heracles’s father Amphitryon.
“CHORUS […] My voice full of grief and mourning,
Like the sad chant of an aged swan;
A ghost of a man, voice with no substance.
Like a figure seen in a dream…”
(translated by Philip Vellacott)
About half of the play is Amphitryon, Megara, and the Theban elders (the chorus) lamenting their fate and praying for rescue from Heracles or the gods. Amphitryon begs Lycus to spare them, but Megara doesn’t do so.
“MEGARA […] I love my children – naturally;
I gave them birth, and care from childhood; and to me
Dying is fearful. Yet I count it foolishness
To struggle with the inevitable. Since we must die,
Let us not die shrivelled in fire, a mockery
To our enemies, which to me is a worse thing than death.
We owe a debt of honour to our royal house.
[…] When the gods spread misfortune like a net, to try
To struggle out is folly more than bravery.
For what will be will be; no one can alter it.”
She accepts it with poise and dignity. Reminds me of Shakespeare’s Hermione.
There are lots of good passages in this play:
“MEGARA […] You weep,
My pretty flowers! Then, like a brown-winged honey-bee,
From all your weeping I’ll distil one precious tear,
And shed it for you…”
It is moving.
“AMPHITRYON […] Time as he flies has no care to preserve our hopes;
He’s bent on his own business. Look at me: I once
Was great in action, drew all eyes upon me; now
In one day Fortune has snatched from me everything,
As the wind blows a feather to the sky; all lost.
Wealth, reputation – who holds them with certainty?”
Euripides gets us to care about Megara and the children, and builds it up so that we all hope for Heracles to return in time and thwart Lycus’s plan to kill the family. And Heracles does return in time! He then kills Lycus. But no, the story takes a different turn as Isis, under the command of Hera, gives him a fit of madness and makes him kill his own wife and children in a frenzy, only because Hera is Zeus’s wife and has always hated Heracles for being Zeus’s son. It is horrific. The play reminds me of Aias (also known as Ajax) by Sophocles (which I think is a more perfect play), but what Hera does to Heracles is so much worse than what Athena does to Aias: Heracles kills his own wife and children!
“HERACLES […] She has achieved her heart’s desire,
Toppling to earth, pedestal and all, the foremost man
Of Hellas. Who could pray to such a god? For spite
Towards Zeus, for jealousy of a woman’s bed, she hurls
To ruin his country’s saviour, innocent of wrong!”
What kinds of gods are these? But it’s not only Hera—Euripides doesn’t seem particularly fond of Zeus either.
“AMPHITRYON Zeus! I once thought you were my powerful friend. You shared
My marriage, shared my fatherhood of Heracles.
All this meant nothing; for you proved less powerful
Than you had seemed; and I, a man, put you, a god,
To shame. I’ve not betrayed the sons of Heracles.
You knew the way to steal into my bed, where none
Invited you, and lie with someone else’s wife;
But those bound to you by every tie you cannot save.
This is strange ignorance in a god; or else, maybe,
Your very nature lacks a sense of right and wrong.”
Zeus never appears. Never intervenes. He’s even worse than Apollo in Ion.
Amphitryon and Heracles are not the only ones chastising the gods either:
“MEGARA […] How dark and devious are the ways of gods to men!”
Euripides goes further:
“HERACLES Divinity’s impervious
To human feeling. I defy divinity.”
2/ The good thing about living in London is that when I’m fascinated by a period, such as ancient Greece at the moment, I can just go to the British Museum and look at the artworks and artefacts from that period.
This is me with a vase depicting characters from the Oresteia:
This is part of the collection about the Labours of Heracles:
“You mention Hermione, but I think the parallel with The Winter’s Tale goes further. Heracles destroys his family in a fit of madness: the madness cones from the gods, but no reason is given. Similarly, there is no reason given for the madness of Leontes, who also destroys his family. And both Leontes and Heracles must live not only with the loss, but also with the guilt.
Shakespeare knew Heracles. He must have done.”
