What greater condemnation of the traditional gods could there be than this!

In the Hercules Hera drives the hero mad and makes him the slayer of his own innocent children, all because of the goddess’s jealousy of Zeus. Small wonder that Hercules cries when the truth is brought home to him:

The hero refuses to find any consolation for his woes in the suggestion that the gods too have sinned and suffered for their wrongs—“if minstrel legends be not false.” Whereat he exclaims:

This play then like the Hippolytus is a condemnation through Hera and Zeus of the whole system of gods.

In these sentiments there is something more than direct defiance of tradition. Euripides does not, like Pindar, refine away the baser elements of legends; or, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, obscure the uglier features of the ancient mythology. On the contrary, constrained by his profession as dramatic poet to draw his themes from the dark tales of gods and heroes in a mythological age—tales whose immorality was wholly hateful to him—he accomplishes his purpose by showing these gods and heroes on his stage engaged in actions and prompted by motives which are so base as to destroy the spectator’s regard for beings of such a sort, and to win the onlooker’s sympathy for the mortal victim against the higher power. To the shameless natures of the gods the poet bluntly gives fitting characterizations: he names them cruel, vengeful, treacherous, licentious.

Euripides is no less iconoclastic in dealing with current religious practices; there is none that escapes his scorn. Sacrifices and votive offerings seem to him unworthy of true gods. The folly of popular wonder at the riches of temples is brought out in a fragment of the lost Philoctetes, in which the hero sarcastically bids his hearers see how even the gods prize gain, and therefore men should not hesitate to get profit and thereby make themselves equal to the gods.[174] That it is not the size of the gift, but piety which secures the favor of just Heaven, is the lesson of another couplet.[175] Temples and statues, and all the sacred privileges attached thereto are treated with equal disregard for tradition; and the sacred institution of blood-vengeance is most emphatically condemned. For the common trust in omens given by dreams and the flight of birds he has only ridicule. So in the Tauric Iphigenia when Iphigenia learns from Orestes that her brother lives, she cries:

To which Orestes answers:

The condemnation of the interpreter of signs given by birds is made the more effective in the Phoenissae by putting it into the mouth of the seer Tirisias:

In the Iphigenia at Aulis Achilles bitterly asks, “What is a seer?” and answers his own question, “A man who speaks few truths and many lies.”[179] Even prayer is sometimes regarded as of doubtful aid, although naturally Euripides’ characters often appeal to the Gods.

At times, too, the poet is more openly atheistic or agnostic with reference to the popular religion. The most striking illustration is found in the prayer which he puts into the mouth of Hecuba, the Trojan queen:

You will observe that although this prayer rejects all current polytheism, it is far from denying the existence of a divine power—rather it maintains in poetic language the existence of such a principle—the reason of the universe which shows itself in nature as law and in the mind of man as reason. This pantheism finds expression elsewhere in his poetry. In illustration I will quote two fragments. The first identifies divinity with all embracing ether:

The second identifies god with the intelligence which pervades the world:

The last three passages show how the poet’s mind was filled with the philosophic thought of the day. In identifying divinity with the ether he was apparently giving poetic expression to the views of his contemporary, the philosopher Diogenes of Apollonia, whom he must have known at Athens. Diogenes followed Anaximenes in making “Air” (or the “Ether”) the basic element of the world, but advanced beyond his predecessor in attributing to “Air” intelligence and movement—indeed he held that it could only be conceived as intelligent; and he further said that this intelligent “Air,” which was the cause and, by virtue of its intelligence, the director of all things, seemed to him to be god. In the mind of man therefore the divine principle shows itself as intellect, in nature it is law. But in Hecuba’s prayer there is a higher conception of god than even this—the divine reason is also world-ruling Justice: Justice and God are one. This identification in a sense is as old as Hesiod, but Euripides conceives of Justice not as the daughter of Zeus but as identical with the cosmic reason, immanent in all things, forming and directing all things. When the poet speaks of Justice in ways more natural to the ordinary man, he combats the current notion that Justice dwells in heaven where men’s sins are recorded in a book; rather, he says, she is here on earth with men, unseen but seeing all.[183] Yet he never carried out this idea and reconciled it with the actual moral condition of the world and the undeserved sufferings of mankind. The problem of evil and doubt constantly vexed him; neither faith nor reason gave him rest:

On death and the possibility of a future life Euripides again gives us no consistent views. He thought that men fear the great transition from inexperience with it; but he found some comfort in the fact that death comes in obedience to nature’s universal law, and therefore should cause no alarm.[185] Still he felt that the possibility of life beyond the grave gave no certainty of joy, for many, like Macaria in the Heraclidae, might say:

Sometimes he expresses or hints at the view that our souls return to the air or ether from which they sprang.[187] Again he uses the Homeric pictures of a cheerless other world. Once he refers to the Orphic doctrine in the cryptic utterance, “Who knows but life be death, and death be reckoned life below?”—verses which Plato and other philosophers were to interpret after him.

If space allowed, we might gladly dwell on Euripides’ sympathy with human poverty and suffering, on the hints he gives that he perceived the common brotherhood of man. In his noble ideals of womanhood he surpasses his contemporaries. Above all these matters it is important for us with our present interest to note that more than once the tragedian seems to wish to inculcate the truth that the standard of morality among men was far superior to that of the traditional pantheon. No other poet of his age sets forth the true nobility of man so perfectly as Euripides.

The last play of the long list he wrote was the Bacchae. Composed in Macedonia, it was first produced at Athens after the poet’s death. As was fitting for a tragedy written in the home of Dionysus, the drama deals with the Dionysiac possession, enthusiasm, the “divine madness,” on which the Greeks ever set high store. No play has so baffled interpretation. Some scholars think it a recantation; others vigorously deny it. Personally I am inclined to hold with Adam that Dionysus in the play “stands for the spirit of enthusiasm in the ancient Greek meaning of the word,” and that the principal lesson of the drama is to be found in the verse, “Not with knowledge is wisdom bought”[188] —that is, reason is not all in man, but there is something greater—enthusiasm, inspiration.[189]

From what we have been considering thus far, it is evident that Euripides’ spirit was primarily iconoclastic; there can be no question that he contributed to the decay of the ancient beliefs and that he helped drive the Olympians from their thrones in the minds of thinking men. For fifty years he openly uttered his criticisms in the theater at the high festival of Dionysus before the quick-witted Athenians. The effect must have been great, for no poet enjoyed more widespread popularity.

On the positive side Euripides offers no system of religion or of morals. Indeed, he seems never to have arrived at any complete unity in his thought. But he is stimulating now, and in his own day unquestionably goaded men to reflection, just because he raises so often fundamental questions—the questions which reflecting men were asking then and have been asking ever since—questions which are never wholly answered, but which always demand an answer. The stimulating character of his dramas makes him indeed one of the great religious poets of the world.