The Innovative Euripides

Euripides is much more than just an ancient Athenian playwright. He is very innovative and moves away from the traditional way of looking at Greek mythology and Greek tragedy. In this essay, I will be looking at how Euripides's plays differ from those before him. I will do so by specifically looking at his play “Electra” and how it differs from Aeschylus’s play “The Libation Bearers.” I will specifically look at how Euripides chose to depict his characters, what effect this had on his plays, what different types of characters he chose to put into his play, and why and possible reasons why he decided to depict them as he did. I will also look at how Euripides's plays are different from the Homeric tradition and possible reasons why this is the case.

 

Why does Euripides choose to move away from the traditional way of doing things?
W. Geoffrey Arnott provides us with an answer to this question in his article Double the Vision: A Reading of Euripides' 'Electra':

The Homeric poems, clearly relevant in the context of eighth-century society, but equally clearly an obsolete impediment to the effective working of democracy in Athens towards the end of the fifth century. (W. Geoffrey Arnott, 1981)

 

What W. Geoffrey is talking about here is the concept of  ἀρετή (Arete). Arete is all the qualities that an ancient Greek man thought needed to be considered excellent. These qualities are wealth, nobility of birth, strength, courage, and skill at making war. W. Geoffrey says that these qualities would have been very useful in a leader during the Greek Dark Ages, seeing that Greece was occupied by some aristocratic chiefdoms trying to increase their own states and decrease that of his neighbors. In this system, people were more likely to accept a leader with these qualities, but the concept of Arete became redundant in the Athenian democracy of the fifth century BC when wealth and nobility of berth gave no advantage in elections. In fact, it may have been problematic seeing as Arete did not include a man’s moral qualities. Euripides wants to break away from this idea of Arete. He wants morality to be the virtue by which a man is judged. That is why he writes his plays in the way he does.

 

Greek mythology does not only tell us stories about gods but also tells us stories about exceptional mortals with exceptional qualities and exceptional Arete. To the extent that they are much to good to be true. Euripides takes these myths and these heroes and makes them more every day, more relatable to an Athenian audience. There are a couple of ways in which he does this. One of which is by changing the play's setting. Instead of setting the play in a grand setting, such as Agamemnon’s, palace Euripides chooses to set his play somewhere more ordinary. Hence, he chose to set his play somewhere in the countryside outside the city of Argos. Not only has his setting changed, but his characters have changed as well. The main characters (Electra, Orestes, and Clytemnestra) are still there, but their personalities and their motives have been altered. With these alterations a drove of new characters out of everyday Greek life have entered the play.

 

Although Electra and Orestes are characters that were born of a noble and a wealthy family they are not good people. This is not how things were presented in previous Greek plays:

Aeschylus and Sophocles the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are shown to be justified, at least from one point of view, while in Euripides, it is said, the murders are brutal and unnecessary. (Michael Lloyd, 1986)

 

In “The Libation Bearers” Clytemnestra is presented as vial and evil, but in “Electra” she does have some redeeming qualities. She seems to regret having killed Agamemnon:

I am not very pleased, my child, at what I have done. Ah, how I have for what I plotted. I pushed my anger against my husband further than I should have. in? Euripadese,Electra 108-111

Not only does Euripides’s Clytemnestra have some redeeming characteristics, but the motivations for killing her are exceptionally selfish. We especially can see this in the in the Character Electra. In “The Libation Bearers she is one can argue that she wants her mother to be killed not only for personal revenge but also for the greater good. In “The Libation Bearers” Electra wants revenge on Clytemnestra, because of the murder of her father, but in “Electra” it would seem that she is more concerned with her own suffering than she is with the death of her father. In fact, Electra deliberately makes her condition worse than it actually is. For example, she has cut her hair (The symbol of slavery in ancient Greece). There was no for her to do so and she in reality is far from being an actual slave, her husband allows her much more freedom than is expected of him in ancient Greek culture. On a number of occasions, other characters in the play have offered to lighten her burden for her. Her husband has offered to carry the water from the stream for her and the chorus has offered to lend her clothes and jewelry so that she could go to a festival with them, but she has declined them all. It is clear that she is in a state of “bitter, self-pitying” (2).

 

James W. Halporn says: “Euripides presents the effect of the murders on the psychological states of his characters.” In his article The Skeptical Electra. This more or less sums up why Euripides is different from previous Greek tragic writers: his characters are believable. Unlike in “The Libation Bearers” the characters in “Electra” do not always behave or think rationally. In “Electra” we for instance see Electra saying that she wants to kill Clytemnestra with the same axe that Clytemnestra has used to kill Agamemnon. This is an incredibly unpractical thing to do. This also shows us how fanatic Electra has become about getting revenge for her father. Another thing of note is that in “Electra”, Electra insisted on taking part in Clytemnestra’s murder, although she did not have to take part in her murder nor was it expected of her to do so. In “The Libation Bearers” she did not even consider taking part in Clytemnestra’s murder. The Electra in Euripides’ play really takes her revenge to the extreme.

 

Nether Electra not Orestes seems to have realized what the consequences of their actions would have been in “Electra”. It is only moments before Orestes is faced with killing Clytemnestra that he suddenly realizes that he is going to have to kill his mother and it does not take much from Electra to persuade him that she should be killed. After they had killed Clytemnestra they both immediately regret doing so and only then realize that they had done something terrible. It is an entirely different matter in “The Libation Bearers”. In this play, Orestes realizes that what he is about to do is something terrible, but he realizes that he has no way of getting out of it seeing as the god Apollo ordered him to kill his mother and in this play, it takes Electra and the chorus quite a while to convince him that there is no way out of his predicament. The characters in “The Libation Bearers” are much more rational than the characters in “Electra”. For this reason, the characters in Euripides’ play feel less like the perfect people from mythology and more like everyday people, who sometimes don’t behave rationally in times of crisis.

 

Not only Electra but also Orestes is not a particularly noble character in “Electra”. In fact, they are depicted as being unheroic and cowardly. We can clearly see this in the way in which he kills Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Orestes stabs Aegisthus in the back as he is about to make a sacrifice. As for Clytemnestra’s murder, they convinced her that Electra had a child and that Clytemnestra should make a sacrifice for the child. Both these murders were underhanded and vile. In “The Libation Bearers” we see Aegisthus and Clytemnestra acting in a manner other than what is expected of a respectable Greek. We see them refusing to allow a guest to enter their home (thus breaking the rules of Xenia). In “Electra we see them behaving in a manner interlay befitting of respectable Greeks and yet we know that they still committed such an atrocity as the murder of Clytemnestra’s husband. Even though these Characters are not the best of people, Electra and Orestes still depend on the fact that they would act like good Greeks for their plans to work. They depended on Aegisthus to be a good host and on Clytemnestra to be a good mother. The fact that they used these underhanded tactics to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus further highlights how cowardly Orestes and Electra are in Euripides’ version of the myth.

 

In contrast to the nobility in “Electra,” there also are a couple of characters representing the commoners in Greek society. These commoners are not in any way like Electra or Orestes. If we take for example the farmer in “Electra”. He is an extremely good person. Almost to the extent that it is too good to be true. He treats Electra extremely well. As mentioned before he offered to make her make her plight lighter, by offering to carry the water for her. Not only that, but he would not make her do anything that she does not want to do. He also says that he has allowed “Electra to remain a virgin seeing as he considers the poverty in which he lives to be too good for a royal prince. He proves himself to be a much better person according to Greek social standards than Electra. When he invites Orestes into his house (and thus adhering to the rules of Xenia), but Electra objects to this because of the poverty of their home:

You thoughtless, man, you know the poverty of your house and these guests are your betters. Why have you invited them in? Euripadese,Electra 406-408

 

We see that Electra would rather break the rules of Xenia than be humiliated by the impoverished conditions in which she lives. Early on in the play, we learn that the farmer was in fact born a nobleman. Although we see that he takes his impoverished conditions with much more grace than Electra does. When we see Electra contrasted with the farmer it makes her seem that much worse seeing as both of them suffer the same conditions and both of them take it in entirely different ways. We learn that he is a nobleman and we know that he is in fact a good person, by Greek social standards, but we also know that he could not be seen as possessing Arete seeing as he does not have wealth. This man’s condition problematizes the concept of Artete.

 

The farmer is not the only commoner with aspects of Arete in this play. We also see this in the old man. Within the old man, we see cunning and strategy. He recognized Orestes where Electra failed to do so. This is a clear indication of his cunning We also see Orestes asking the old man for help in how to murder his mother, which is another indication of the man’s cunning. We could expect Orestes to come up with the plan himself seeing as he is the one that is supposed to possess Arete seeing as he comes from a family of wealthy noblemen. This once again problematizes the idea of Arete.

In conclusion: although Euripides used the traditional Greek mythological stories for his plays he changed them so that they said something about social problems within Greek society. He particularly highlighted the problems with the concept of Arete and he problematizes the idea that only wealthy noblemen can possess Arete. He also creates the idea that wealthy noblemen do not always necessarily possess Arete.

 

References.

W. Geoffrey Arnott, “Double the Vision: A Reading of Euripides' 'Electra'”, Greece & Rome 28, (1981), 179-192

Michael Lloyd, “Realism and Character”, Phoenix 40, (1986), 1-19

James W. Halporn, “The sceptical Electra”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 87 (1983), 101-118