Hippolytus/The Bacchae

Hippolytus/The Bacchae

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Title: Hippolytus/The Bacchae
Author: Euripides
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NINE GREEK DRAMAS
By AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES and ARISTOPHANES
Translations by E.D.A. MORSHEAD E.H. PLUMPTRE GILBERT
MURRAY and B.B. ROGERS

HIPPOLYTUS
and
THE BACCHAE
of
EURIPIDES
Translated by GILBERT MURRAY

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Euripides, the youngest of the trio of great Greek tragedians was born
at Salamis in 480 B.C., on the day when the Greeks won their
momentous naval victory there over the fleet of the Persians. The
precise social status of his parents is not clear but he received a good
education, was early distinguished as an athlete, and showed talent in
painting and oratory. He was a fellow student of Pericles, and his
dramas show the influence of the philosophical ideas of Anaxagoras
and of Socrates, with whom he was personally intimate. Like Socrates,
he was accused of impiety, and this, along with domestic infelicity, has
been supposed to afford a motive for his withdrawal from Athens, first
to Magnesia and later to the court of Anchelaüs in Macedonia where he
died in 406 B.C.
The first tragedy of Euripides was produced when he was about
twenty-five, and he was several times a victor in the tragic contests. In

spite of the antagonisms which he aroused and the criticisms which
were hurled upon him in, for example, the comedies of Aristophanes,
he attained a very great popularity; and Plutarch tells that those
Athenians who were taken captive in the disastrous Sicilian expedition
of 413 B.C. were offered freedom by their captors if they could recite
from the works of Euripides. Of the hundred and twenty dramas
ascribed to Euripides, there have come down to us complete eighteen
tragedies and one satyric drama, "Cyclops," beside numerous
fragments.
The works of Euripides are generally regarded as showing the
beginning of the decline of Greek tragedy. The idea of Fate hitherto
dominant in the plays of his predecessors, tends to be degraded by him
into mere chance; the characters lose much of their ideal quality; and
even gods and heroes are represented as moved by the petty motives of
ordinary humanity. The chorus is often quite detached from the action;
the poetry is florid; and the action is frequently tinged with
sensationalism. In spite of all this, Euripides remains a great poet; and
his picturesqueness and tendencies to what are now called realism and
romanticism, while marking his inferiority to the chaste classicism of
Sophocles, bring him more easily within the sympathetic interest of the
modern reader.

HIPPOLYTUS
OF EURIPIDES
DRAMATIS PERSONAE THE GODDESS APHRODITE THESEUS,
_King of Athens and Trozên_ PHAEDRA, _daughter of Minos, King
of Crete, wife to Theseus_ HIPPOLYTUS, bastard son of Theseus and
the Amazon Hippolyte THE NURSE OF PHAEDRA A HENCHMAN
OF HIPPOLYTUS THE GODDESS ARTEMIS AN OLD
HUNTSMAN A CHORUS OF HUNTSMEN ATTENDANTS ON
THE THREE ROYAL PERSONS A CHORUS OF TROZENIAN
WOMEN, WITH THEIR LEADER
_The scene is laid in Trozên. The play was first acted when Epameinon
was Archon, Olympiad 87, year 4 (B.C. 429). Euripides was first,
Iophon second, Ion third._
APHRODITE Great among men, and not unnamed am I, The Cyprian,
in God's inmost halls on high. And wheresoe'er from Pontus to the far

Red West men dwell, and see the glad day-star, And worship Me, the
pious heart I bless, And wreck that life that lives in stubbornness. For
that there is, even in a great God's mind, That hungereth for the praise
of human kind.
So runs my word; and soon the very deed Shall follow. For this Prince
of Theseus' seed,