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The particular flaws in the male character with[114] which Euripides deals in the four plays are these---meanness, cowardice, selfishness, and treachery. They are not the faults, it will be noticed, that are especially appropriate to a ruling class. Man is not indicted on the score of haughtiness, pride or cruelty: his weaknesses are of a less 'manly' sort. It is his position as the natural lord of creation that is questioned and put to the test of dramatic action.

If Jason, Admetus, Apollo and Menelaus are impossible characters, then Euripides fails altogether in his lesson: if their actions, though possible, are improbable, then again he fails in an artistic sense. Some may think that no one could be quite so mean as Jason, quite so cowardly and selfish as Apollo and Admetus, quite so treacherous as Menelaus; but if we apply the test of experience, the cruel facts of life will justify the poet. None of the four are 'tragedies,' in the sense in which we use the word. They are as good examples as we are ever likely to see of 'la haute comdie'; the Ion and Andromache, perhaps, a little melodramatic, the Alcestis and the Medea in places almost farcical; but all depending eventually on a subtle study of psychology and social relationships.

It is probable that they were not originally composed for public representation in the great theatre of Dionysus. They are intimate studies of humanity[115] and can quite easily be divested of the official chorus, prologue and epilogue, which are independent of the dramatic action of the play. What is left is Euripides' own teaching, put as plainly as the ironical spirit will allow. The frequency of translation must not blind us to the fact that in essentials Euripides is untranslatable. He is one of the greatest masters of irony and there is nothing that is so apt to vanish in translation, or create confusion in the English mind.

All four plays are concerned with problems of motherhood and children, especially male children. In three, child-actors are required and play an important part in the action: the fourth play, the Ion, has for its hero a lad, just emerging from the 'awkward age' of boyhood.

Between the Ion and the Andromache there is a curious resemblance of plot. The case was probably not uncommon in the circumstances of race-degeneration that prevailed at Athens during the fifth century. In both plays a husband has a childless wife, but a son by an irregular union. There are two women to one man, and in each case there is another man in the background, Apollo who has seduced Cresa, and Orestes who has been the affianced lover to Hermion. The husbands, Xuthus and Pyrrhus, are the least important figures in the action; indeed, Pyrrhus does not appear in person[116] at all. They are represented as colourless characters; men of position and personal courage, dangerous, perhaps, when roused, but generally negligible. Their young wives, Hermion and Cresa, regard them with a mixture of contemptuous fear and jealous affection.

The interest is concentrated on the women, and the plays are studies of wifely jealousy---'Why should my husband have a child, while I am childless?'---and maternal love.

Euripides knows well that motherhood is a woman's natural sphere: a childless woman is for him an abnormal woman, and behaves in an abnormal and anti-social fashion. Both wives attribute their barrenness, probably the natural result of their past history, to supernatural causes. Hermion believes that the foreign concubine Andromache has bewitched her: Cresa, that she has incurred the anger of a god. Hermion accordingly proposes to break the spell by killing the witch; Cresa goes to Delphi to propitiate the divinity and seek his aid.

Both women, also, in their jealous hate are anxious to kill their husband's bastard. Hermion uses her father's help and nearly succeeds in murdering the boy Molossus. Cresa employs her father's old slave as her agent, and all but poisons the boy Ion. In neither case is the crime accomplished,[117] for the plays are not 'tragedies'; but the criminal purpose is there. The women have been injured in the past and they are childless. They are embittered against life and ready to requite evil for evil. On the other hand, the unwedded mothers in both plays are ready to sacrifice themselves for their children. Andromache offers her life to save her son---'What pleasure have I in life?' she cries, 'In him all my hopes centre: it would be a disgrace for me not to die on behalf of the child I bore. Children, indeed, are life: those who in ignorance disparage them, may feel less pain than we do, but they are miserable in their happiness.'

In the Ion Pythia consents to an even harder sacrifice: she hands over her child to another woman, saves him thereby from the guilt of murder and makes him prince of Athens. Andromache and the Priestess have been injured in the past, but they are saved by their children: the maternal, not the marital, is the holy state.

But in both plays the feminist interest is complicated by other motives, political and religious. In the Andromache a bitter attack is made upon the Spartan system in the person of Menelaus. 'You a man?' old Peleus cries, 'You dastard son of dastard parents. What claim have you to be counted among men? A fine man it was, a Phrygian, that robbed you of your wife. You left your hearth and home[118] without a lock, without a servant to guard, as though, forsooth, you had a virtuous wife within doors, she who was the worst of all women. Why, even if she wished, none of your Spartan girls could be virtuous. They leave the shelter of home and go about with young men; their legs bare, their dresses open; and run and wrestle like men. It all seems to be abominable. We need not be surprised that your system of education does not produce virtuous women.'

In the Ion the system of Delphi and the oracle is assailed, and a vein of bitter irony runs through the play. So ironical is the poet's method that, if we take the prologue seriously and confine ourselves to the statements there made, we are apt to get a somewhat misleading idea of the play's purpose. Dr. Way, for example, who gives the traditional interpretation with the greatest clearness, supplies the following summary of the action.

'In the days when Erechtheus ruled over Athens, Apollo wrought violence to the king's young daughter Cresa. And she, having borne a son, left him, by reason of her fear and shame, in the cave wherein the God had humbled her. But Apollo cared for him, and caused the babe to be brought to Delphi, even to his temple. Therein was the child nurtured, and ministered in the courts of the God's house. And in process of time Erechtheus died, and left[119] no son nor daughter save Cresa, and evil days came upon Athens, that she was hard bestead in war. Then Xuthus, a chief of the Achan folk, fought for her and prevailed against her Euban enemies, and for guerdon of victory received the princess Cresa to wife, and so became king-consort in Athens. But to these twain was no child born; so, after many years, they journeyed to Delphi to inquire of the oracle of Apollo touching issue. And there the God ordered all things so that the lost was found, and an heir was given to the royal house of Athens. Yet, through the blind haste of mortals, and their little faith, was the son well-nigh slain by the mother, and the mother by the son.'

This summary quite faithfully represents the statements of the divine Hermes; but Euripides knows as well as we do that gods do not walk the earth and that children are not miraculously wafted through the air. The prologue satisfies convention: the play itself is realistic and one of the chief characters is a woman of whom the prologue tells us nothing. The real plot, as opposed to the idealistic version, is as follows:---the facts are put down crudely instead of being conveyed by subtle hints and innuendo as they are in the Greek.