We have already noted that the Greek theater had no facilities for the direct representation of interior scenes (see pp. 237-42, above). Of the many subterfuges there mentioned as available for or utilized by the ancient playwrights it is now in place to elaborate upon one. I refer to the eccyclema, one of the strangest and most conventional pieces of machinery that any theater has ever seen.

If it were desired to disclose to the audience the corpse of someone who has just been done to death behind the scenes, perhaps with the murderers still gloating over their crime, or to set any similar interior view before the faithful eyes of the spectators, the simplest device was to fling open the appropriate door of the scene-building and thus to display the desired objects or persons close behind the opening. Whatever may be said for such a method under other conditions, in the Greek theater it ran afoul of certain practical considerations. For example, the wings of the auditorium extended around so far (Fig. 22) that spectators seated there could have obtained no satisfactory view through the opened doors of the scene-building. Nevertheless, during the last quarter-century not a few scholars have maintained that this was the sole means which the Greek playwrights employed for such a purpose. But the ancient commentators often speak of a contrivance which was used to bring a supposedly interior scene out of the opened doors and more fully into the view of the audience. This device is sometimes described as “turning” or “revolving” (στρέφειν)[355] and sometimes as being “rolled out” (ἐκ, “out” + κυκλεῖν, to “wheel”). And though eccyclema (ἐκκύκλημα) was used as the generic term I am persuaded that there were in fact two types of machine corresponding to different conditions in the Athenian theater.

When the first scene-building was erected, about 465 B.C., it must have been simple and unpretentious, having neither parascenia nor proscenium. Probably it consisted also of but a single story, though in Fig. 74[356] I have given it a low clerestory with small windows for the admission of light into the scene-building. The roof would thus have been better suited for the occasional appearance of actors upon the housetop, as in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (458 B.C.). In addition to the usual doors in the front of the scene-building (A, C, and E in Fig. 74), I believe that a butterfly valve, to the base of which a semicircular platform was attached, was used to close one or more other openings. In Fig. 74 one of these is shown closed and not in use at B and another open and in action at D. The size of the semicircular platform would be limited only by the depth of the scene-building and the space between the front doors, and there would be ample room for several persons upon the eccyclema at a time. Therefore when a deed of violence had been committed indoors it was possible, by revolving one of the valves after a tableau had been posed upon its platform, to place a quasi-interior scene before the spectators. This is Mr. Exon’s theory of the eccyclema, and it admirably fits the conditions in the Athenian theater at an early date.

Thus, Aeschylus’ Eumenides, which belongs to this period (458 B.C.), opens with a monologue of the Pythian priestess (see p. 305, below). At vs. 33 she enters the temple, but immediately returns, so shaken by the sight within that she cannot walk, but crawls. She has seen a blood-stained man (Orestes) at the omphalus and before him a sleeping band of hideous Furies (vss. 34-63). At vs. 64 we must suppose that the eccyclema revolves with Apollo, Hermes, and Orestes mounted upon it. The first named bids the matricide to leave Delphi and speed to Athens and Hermes to guard him on his journey. Whereupon the two step from the platform and flee through one of the parodi, and the eccyclema, with Apollo still upon it, is revolved back into its original position (vs. 93). Here we may note a curious incongruity; the platform of the eccyclema is actually out of doors; nominally it is indoors. If the latter fact were kept steadfastly in mind, a character could not step directly from the eccyclema into the orchestra (as Orestes does here) but could only pass out through one of the doors after the eccyclema had been closed again. It is of a piece with this that the characters are not only spoken of as being indoors but sometimes as being out of doors. At vs. 94 the ghost of Clytemnestra appears in the orchestra (or perhaps is merely heard from within the scene-building) calling upon the Furies to waken and pursue their escaping prey. Beginning at vs. 117 their cries and ejaculations are heard at intervals, and at vs. 143 they burst into the orchestra for their entrance song (the parodus). At its conclusion (vs. 178) Apollo comes out and drives them from his precinct.

Sometimes the opening and shutting of the back scene is distinctly referred to. Thus in Sophocles’ Ajax,[357] vs. 344, the coryphaeus cries to the attendants: “Open there; perhaps even by looking upon me he may acquire a more sober mood”; and as Tecmessa replies “Lo! I open,” the door of the hero’s tent is opened and Ajax is seen amid the slaughtered cattle, the victims of his misdirected vengeance. After playing a prominent lyrical and speaking part in the scene which follows, Ajax orders the door to be closed with all speed and disappears from view (vs. 593).

But the eccyclema was also described as a low, trundle platform,[358] large enough to accommodate several persons and narrow enough to be pushed through the doors of the scene-building, and this type would be more suitable for the conditions which obtained in the Athenian theater from about 430 B.C. (see pp. 235 and 292). At this period the scene-building was raised to a second story and embellished with wooden proscenium and parascenia, a crane came into use, etc. Under these conditions the earlier type of eccyclema could no longer be so large nor so easily seen, being hampered in both particulars by the proscenium. On the other hand the new type could be made as long as the scene-building was deep and could be pushed forward as far as might be necessary.[359] Thus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (425 B.C.), Dicaeopolis appears before the house of Euripides, who is lounging within doors. In response to the former’s knock and summons “to be wheeled out” Euripides says “I will be wheeled out,” and is pushed upon the stage (ἐκκυκλήθητι ... ἐκκυκλήσομαι, vs. 408). The conversation which ensues between Dicaeopolis outdoors and Euripides supposedly indoors does not conclude until vs. 479, when the latter exclaims: “The fellow is insolent; shut the doors.” Perhaps in this instance, for parodic effect, a trundle couch itself is shoved through the door instead of a stationary couch upon a trundle platform.[360] Very similar is the scene in Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria (about 411 B.C.), where Agathon is wheeled out before Euripides and Mnesilochus. Here again the verbs ἐκκυκλούμενος in vs. 96 and εἰσκυκλησάτω at the conclusion of the scene in vs. 265 do not permit me to doubt that the eccyclema, or a comic substitute, was employed. It is probably no accident that Euripides figures in both of these scenes. He is “hoist with his own petar” as having invented, or been a frequent user of, this mechanism.

The passage of tragedy in which most authorities concede the employment of the eccyclema is Euripides’ The Madness of Heracles (vss. 1029-1402). Chronologically this play falls somewhere between the Acharnians and the Women at the Thesmophoria. In his madness Heracles has slain his wife and three children within the palace and at last has fallen into a dazed torpor; whereupon his friends have bound him to a broken column. As the chorus chant “Alas! Behold the doors of the stately palace fall asunder” (vss. 1029 f.), the hero bound to a pillar amid the slain is pushed forward on the eccyclema. At vs. 1089 he recovers consciousness and begins to speak; at vs. 1123 Amphitryon loosens him; and at vs. 1163 Theseus enters and finally (vs. 1402) persuades him to descend into the orchestra.

Still another theatrical contrivance was called the μηχανή (“machine”), which about 430 B.C. came to be used to bring divinities before the ancient audiences. This was a crane and pulley arrangement, mounted in one of the side wings (parascenia), whereby persons or objects could be brought from behind the second story (the episcenium) and held suspended in the air or let down upon the roof of the scene-building or into the orchestra, or could be lifted in an opposite direction. This development is of interest also from the structural standpoint as indicating that whatever the situation may have been earlier, at least from this time on the scene-building was provided with an episcenium (see pp. 67 f., above).

Before considering the use of the machina further, it will be worth while to trace briefly how gods played their parts in the Greek theater. Prior to the erection of a scene-building, about 465 B.C., the scene was perforce laid in the open countryside (see p. 226, above) and the playwrights had no option but to place divinities and mortals in immediate juxtaposition, after the Homeric fashion, in the orchestra. For the same reason, however these characters might be thought of as traveling before they entered the theater, they rested under the prosaic necessity, as soon as they were seen by the spectators, of moving upon the solid earth. Thus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, Oceanus enters at vs. 284 with the words:

As a preliminary to his departure at vs. 397, he says:

It will be noted that there is nothing here which requires or implies flight through the air within sight of the audience. Evidently Oceanus rides upon a fantastic creature which is rolled along by hidden power or which walks on disguised human legs. A similar interpretation must be set upon the lines which refer to the chorus’ mode of entrance in the same play. At vs. 124 Prometheus cries out:

To which the Oceanides, as they come into view, reply:

They remain upon their winged car until the Titan invites them, at vs. 272, to step upon the earth. They accept in the following language:

Here again there is no need of supposing that the choral car does not rest solidly upon the ground. Its aërial motion is entirely off-scene.

Even at a later period, when more sophisticated devices were available, the gods still continued on occasion to use strictly terrestrial means of locomotion and to stand in the orchestra on a level with purely human characters. For example, in Sophocles’ Ajax, Athena appears before the tent of that hero and converses first with Odysseus and then with Ajax. In Euripides’ posthumous Bacchanals, Dionysus is seen in propria persona before the house of Pentheus and afterward (in disguise) enters and departs from its portals. Still again, in the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus, which is usually regarded as a fourth-century production, Athena comes before Hector’s tent to advise and encourage Odysseus and then to deceive Paris (cf. especially vss. 627 f.). On the contrary, the words of the chorus in vss. 885 f. of this play show that the Muse appears above their heads. Thus it is an error to think that the more primitive methods of presenting divinities were entirely superseded by later ones; the different methods existed side by side and might even be used in the same play.

After the erection of a scene-building, about 465 B.C., it became possible to employ the roof as a higher stage for certain scenes. At the beginning of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon the guard is found posted upon the palace roof, on watch for the last in the series of beacon lights from Troy. In Euripides’ Phoenician Maids, Antigone and an old servant appear on top of the royal palace in order to view the hostile army (cf. vss. 88 ff.). In these and other instances the roof of the scene-building (or at a later period the top of the proscenium) was pressed into service. Moreover, although this spot was of course not the exclusive place of speaking, yet, since it was never used for dancing but only for speaking, it came to be called the logium (λογεῖον) or “speaking-place” par excellence (see p. 59, above). This arrangement was especially useful when a scene was to be thought of as taking place in heaven. So in Aeschylus’ lost play entitled The Weighing of Souls, Zeus was represented as placing the fates of Achilles and Memnon into the scales, while Thetis and Eos prayed for their sons. The same meaning is assigned the logium also in Aristophanes’ Peace, in which Trygaeus on the back of his beetle mounts from earth to heaven, i.e., from the orchestra to the top of the proscenium. The dramatists were not slow to perceive that no other part of the theater was so well adapted for the awe-compelling theophanies with which the Greeks were so fond of terminating their tragedies. There is no doubt that this method of introducing divinities was employed in several of our extant plays, but the absence of stage directions makes it difficult to differentiate the instances sharply.

Finally about 430 B.C. the machine (μηχανή) came into use. Possibly this is employed in Euripides’ Medea (431 B.C.) in order to carry away that heroine and the bodies of her children in the chariot of the sun-god, but the situation is doubtful. It is almost certainly a mistake, however, to attribute the machine, as some do, to the time of Aeschylus. Whether Euripides was its inventor or not, he was extraordinarily fond of using it. Indeed it has been remarked that “in almost every play of Euripides something flies through the air.” At any rate the earliest sure instance of the machine occurs in Euripides’ lost Bellerophon, which was brought out some time before 425 B.C. By its means the hero in this play was enabled to mount from earth to heaven, i.e., from the orchestra to the top of the proscenium, upon the winged steed, Pegasus. This scene is parodied in Aristophanes’ Peace (421 B.C.), in which Trygaeus makes a similar flight on the back of a beetle. Somewhat later the same device enabled Perseus in Euripides’ lost Andromeda to fly to the rocks upon which that heroine had been bound. In Aristophanes’ Clouds (423 B.C.) it was employed to suspend Socrates in a basket, whence he could look down upon the troubles of mortals and survey the heavenly bodies. Especially important is the situation in Euripides’ Orestes (408 B.C.). Orestes and Pylades have fled to the palace roof, dragging Hermione with them. Menelaus is outside the bolted door below. Suddenly Apollo appears (vs. 1625) with Helen at his side. The divinity begins to speak as follows:

The italicized words show that Apollo and Helen stand above all the other actors in the drama, who are themselves standing on two different levels; and it is evident that the machine was utilized for this purpose.

The last example is typical of a large class of instances in which a divinity appears as a splendid climax to the events of the play. It is plain that in all or practically all of these the god is raised above the other performers, as would be only appropriate for an effective close; but whether the deity merely came forward upon the logium or was brought into view by means of a machine is not always an easy matter to determine. By a natural extension of meaning, however, such an apparition at the close of a play came to be called a “god from the machine” (θεὸς ἀπὸ μηχανῆς; deus ex machina) regardless of the method used for his appearance. By a further extension of meaning μηχανή was used to designate any mechanical artifice, such as the “long arm of coincidence,” for example. Thus Aristotle criticized the μηχανή in Euripides’ Medea, but from another passage it becomes clear that he was referring, not to the use of an actual machine at the dénouement, but only to the improbability involved in the appearance of King Aegeus in the course of the play.[361]

There are several ancient notices which refer to the use that inexpert playwrights made of the deus ex machina in order to extricate their characters when the plot had become complicated beyond the possibility of disentanglement by purely natural means. It would seem that in the hands of second-rate poets the deus was frequently so employed. In particular it has often been charged that Euripides was guilty of this practice, but in my opinion without due warrant. It is true that he concluded fully half of his eighteen extant plays in this manner, besides several other instances in the plays now lost; but with only one exception his principal motive was never to relieve himself of the embarrassment into which the confusion of his plot had involved him. The truth of this statement appears most clearly in the Iphigenia among the Taurians (see pp. 201 f., above). At vs. 1392 all the immediate requirements of the drama have been met: Orestes, Iphigenia, and Pylades have made good their escape, bearing the image of Artemis. The poet could have stopped here without requiring the aid of a divinity. Instead he preferred to plunge himself into such a plight as only a deity could rescue him from, for in the succeeding verses a messenger reports that contrary wind and wave are driving the refugees back to land. King Thoas just has time to issue quick commands when Athena appears (vs. 1435) and bids him cease his efforts. Surely the playwright’s difficulties here are self-imposed and must be regarded as having furnished the excuse rather than the reason for the use of the deus ex machina. What other objects might he have had in mind? It has already been suggested (p. 202, above) that this device enabled him to bring the melodramatic course of the action to a more dignified and truly tragic close. Also he thus found it possible to rescue the chorus, who had been promised a safe return to Greece but had been left behind. But the fact that the chorus in the same poet’s Helen is irremediably left in the lurch after the same fashion (see pp. 160 f., above) implies that this was a lesser consideration. Again, toward the close of Euripides’ Suppliants, Adrastus has vowed the eternal gratitude of Argos to Athens for having secured the return of her slain. But the appearance of Athena at vs. 1183 makes her a witness to this, and her demand that Adrastus’ promise be ratified by an oath converts it into a sacred obligation.

But after all these are only occasional motives, while a more important result is obtained again and again. In the Iphigenia, Euripides took advantage of Athena’s presence to have her foretell the heroine’s later career and final decease in Attica. It is unnecessary to point out that the presence of a divinity was highly serviceable and appropriate for such a purpose. We have already seen (p. 259, above) that exactly the same situation obtains in the Andromache. In this way the poet was enabled to burst through the restricting influences which caused the normal observance of the unities of time and place and to include other days and other places within the purview of his play. Frequently there is included in this an aetiological explanation of rites which were observed in the dramatist’s own day. Thus in Euripides’ Hippolytus (vss. 1423 ff.), Artemis promises that the maidens of Troezen will perform certain ceremonies in honor of the hero’s sufferings, and in the Iphigenia among the Taurians (vss. 1446 ff.), Athena enjoins upon Orestes to establish the temple and worship of Artemis Tauropolos at Brauron in Attica.

It would take too long to examine here every instance of the deus ex machina in Euripides. For that I must refer the reader to Professor Decharme’s interesting discussion.[362] Suffice it to state that in every case the element of prediction is brought into play. This appears even in the Orestes, the only piece in which the theophany is frankly and undisguisedly employed to provide Euripides with a dénouement. Orestes and Electra stand condemned to death for having murdered their mother. Being disappointed in the hope of receiving succor from their uncle, Menelaus, they determine to punish him for his recreancy by slaying Helen and to hold his daughter Hermione as a hostage in order to force him to secure the recall of the decree against them. Helen has now supposedly been slain, Menelaus stands angry and baffled before the bolted doors, Orestes with his sword at Hermione’s throat taunts him from the palace roof. If any regard is to be paid to verisimilitude or human psychology, no reconciliation between these conflicting elements is possible; but at this moment Apollo appears, and his fiat (see p. 293) resolves every feud. The god goes beyond this, however, and in typical fashion predicts (or ordains) the later career of each character.

It is but fair to Euripides to state that even Sophocles, that master of dramatic writing, found the deus ex machina as indispensable in his Philoctetes as did the former in his Orestes. Philoctetes had come into possession of the bow of Heracles, and having been abandoned on the island of Lemnos by the leaders of the Greek expedition against Troy he cherished an implacable hatred against his former associates. But now the Greeks have received an oracle to the effect that the person and weapons of Philoctetes are necessary for the capture of Ilium. In Sophocles’ play the task of meeting these conditions has been laid upon the wily Odysseus and the noble Neoptolemus. By a trick they succeed in gaining possession of the bow and by another trick are in a fair way of enticing the inexorable hero on board a ship bound for Troy, when the generous son of Achilles refuses to proceed further with so infamous a scheme and finally returns his weapons to Philoctetes. This development was inevitable if the character of Neoptolemus is to be maintained consistently; but it leaves the characters in a hopeless deadlock. At this juncture (vs. 1408) the deified Heracles appears to reveal the purposes of Zeus, and Philoctetes abandons his resentment. Here again the element of prophecy is associated with the deus ex machina, Heracles foretelling the healing of Philoctetes’ wound and his future career of glory at Troy and elsewhere.

Much nonsense has been indulged in by modern authorities in ridiculing this contrivance of the Greek theater. This has sprung partly from a misapprehension of the real situation and partly from a failure to realize that devices fully as forced and artificial have been employed by the supreme masters of dramatic art in modern times. Of course I do not mean that an actual μηχανή has often been brought to view in modern theaters or that divinities have frequently trod the stage. Nevertheless a close equivalent of the deus ex machina, in the broader sense, has not rarely been resorted to. For example, at the close of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline the king declares, as the result of an oracle:

Again, in As You Like It everything has been satisfactorily settled except one point: the spectators would hardly rest content to think of the characters as spending the remainder of their lives in the Forest of Arden. This detail is adjusted by means of a messenger, who reports that the usurping duke had addressed a mighty power with which to capture his brother and put him to the sword:

Finally, not to extend this list unduly, in Molière’s Tartuffe by the time that Orgon has at length unmasked the hypocrite he had played into his hand to such an extent, by deeding him his property and by intrusting him with incriminating papers, that it is impossible to conceive how he can be extricated. But at this crisis an officer of police in the name of the French king (almost a divine figure in those days) rescues him from his troubles:

Who, with such examples of artificial and mechanical dénouements before him, will cast the first stone at the deus ex machina of the Greeks?[363]

In a technical sense “prologue” came to denote the histrionic passage before the entrance song of the chorus (the parodus) (see p. 192, above). Such prologues are not found in Aeschylus’ Suppliants and Persians, which begin with the choral parodus. The earliest prologue of which we have knowledge occurred in Phrynichus’ lost play, the Phoenician Women (476 B.C.), in which a eunuch opens the action by spreading places in the orchestra for the counselors of the Persian empire and at the same time announcing the defeat of Xerxes in Greece. On the other hand, according to a late authority, prologues were the invention of Thespis.[364] In my opinion this contradiction is to be explained as a confusion between the technical and non-technical uses of the term. There is every reason for believing that prologues in the technical sense just mentioned did not go back to the time of Thespis. But the fully developed prologue was naturally employed as a vehicle for the exposition, and the task of acquainting his audience with data preliminary to the action and necessary for comprehending the plot of course confronted Thespis no less than later playwrights. Now it is evident that he could accomplish this in any one of three ways: (1) He could utilize the choral parodus for this purpose, as Aeschylus partially did in his Agamemnon. Though this play has a prologue, the parodus is employed to rehearse the story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice and other pertinent events. Somewhat similar is the parodus of Aeschylus’ Persians, which in the absence of a regular prologue opens the play. Accordingly, the ancient argument to this play remarks: “A chorus of elders ‘speaks the prologue’” (προλογίζει), using the word in a popular sense. (2) The drama might begin with a dialogue or duet between the chorus and an actor, somewhat in the manner of the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus. It is perhaps unlikely that this technique was employed as early as Thespis. (3) The exposition might be intrusted to the character who speaks first after the choral parodus. Since the drama was then in the one-actor stage, such a “prologue” would necessarily be monologic. Some justification for this nomenclature may be found in the ancient argument to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, where it is stated that Oedipus προλογίζει. Since Antigone and a stranger take part in this prologue as well as Oedipus, the verb must here mean that Oedipus “makes the first speech.” Now whatever may be true about Thespis having employed (1) or (2), he certainly must have employed the third type of exposition, and a “prologue” of this non-technical sort he can truthfully be said to have invented.

It is a peculiarity of Euripides that he oftentimes combined startling innovations with a reversion to archaic, or at least much earlier, technique. Therefore, it is not surprising that he preferred prologues which smack somewhat of this primitive type. Of course this statement is not to be taken so literally as to imply that he placed his prologues after the parodus. It means that instead of retailing the essential antecedents of the action piecemeal in the manner of Sophocles and Ibsen, he regularly set the whole body of data before the spectators at once in an opening soliloquy. This is normally succeeded by a dialogue with which the dramatic action really begins. In other words there is a prologue within a prologue: the histrionic passage before the choral parodus (the prologue in the technical sense) opens with a sharply differentiated monologue (a prologue in the old, nontechnical sense). In my opinion the latter must be regarded as consciously harking back to Thespian practice. An excellent example of this technique is afforded by the Alcestis. Here Apollo apostrophizes the palace of Admetus, thus revealing the location of the scene (see p. 206). He then proceeds to relate in detail how he had been forced to serve in the house of a mortal, how considerately Admetus had treated him, how in gratitude he had tricked the Fates into permitting Admetus to present a voluntary substitute when premature death threatened him, how Queen Alcestis is the only one found willing to die for the king, that this is the day appointed for her vicarious act, etc. It is noticeable that scant regard is here paid to dramatic illusion: Apollo tells what the spectators need to know and because they need to know it. He explains his leaving the palace on the ground of the pollution which the death of Alcestis would bring upon all indoors at the time (vs. 22). But no excuse is provided for his long soliloquy. We have seen that the apostrophe to the palace served another purpose; and in any case, since (unlike the elements) houses were never regarded by the Greeks as either divine or even animate, it would be no adequate motivation for the monologue. The prologue concludes and the action proper is set in motion by a quarrel between Apollo and Death, who is now seen approaching.

This prologue is one of Euripides’ best. They are often interminable and marred by long genealogies and other jejune matter. Some of them are not undeserving of the strictures which critics, both ancient and modern, have heaped upon them. Yet they served many useful purposes, too, and there is no warrant for utterly condemning the type as a whole. We have already seen (p. 258, above) that such a device enabled a dramatist to circumvent the conditions which caused the conventional observance of the unities of time and place and to bring earlier events more explicitly within the scope of his play. The fact that Euripides more often chose different themes for the plays in each group instead of writing trilogies or tetralogies made brevity of exposition a desideratum. Again, a desire for novelty and the fact that Aeschylus and Sophocles had anticipated him in so many of his subjects caused him to depart widely from the traditional accounts. Unless some warning of this were given, it would sometimes be almost impossible for the ordinary spectator to comprehend the action, and no other place was so appropriate for such an explanation as the prologue. For example, in the Helen, Euripides abandoned the account given by Homer and most others in favor of the version invented by Stesichorus. The audience had to comprehend not only that Helen had been the chaste and loyal wife of Menelaus throughout but also that there were two Helens—one the true Helen who spent the years of the Trojan War in Egypt, and the other a cloud-image Helen who eloped with Paris and was recovered by Menelaus at the capture of the city. Surely a very clear statement was required to render such a revamping of the legend clear to everyone. Even the genealogical table was not without its utility in this prologue, for the Egyptian king Theoclymenus and his sister would mean nothing to most spectators until their lineage was traced to the familiar names of Proteus and Nereus.

Quite apart from these considerations, however, there is still something to be said for the Euripidean type of prologue. Knowing that the spectators had no playbill, whatever the dramatist wished to tell them concerning the antecedents of the dramatic action he had to tell them in the play itself. And though the plots of most tragedies were based upon oft-told myths, yet we have the authority of Aristotle[365] for the statement that even the best-known tales were known to but a few. Furthermore, the Greek practice of attacking the series of dramatic incidents, not at the beginning or in the middle, but only at the end, of excluding everything but the culmination or fifth act (see pp. 266 f., above), prevented the earlier events from actually being represented upon the stage. There was, therefore, a considerable body of facts which the poet had either to relate frankly and succinctly in a mass at the beginning or to attempt to weave into the play and disclose gradually as they were needed. Euripides preferred the former method, which he employed in all of his extant plays except possibly the Iphigenia at Aulis. It was borrowed by Sophocles in his Maidens of Trachis, was extensively imitated by Aristophanes despite his caustic criticisms, and was exceedingly popular among the writers of New Comedy. Even in modern times, notwithstanding all that has been said against it both by ancients and moderns, there have always been playwrights to whom this manner of approach has made the stronger appeal. The principle involved is well stated by a contemporaneous student of dramatic technique:[366] “It may not unreasonably be contended, I think, that, when an exposition cannot be thoroughly dramatized—that is, wrung out, in the stress of the action, from the characters primarily concerned—it may best be dismissed, rapidly and even conventionally, by any not too improbable device.”

Frequently the opening soliloquy of the prologue was spoken by a divinity, and in Euripides’ Hecabe it is spoken by a ghost! Their prophetic powers enabled such personages to predict the course of the action. Thus in Euripides’ Hippolytus (vss. 42 ff.), Aphrodite declares that Phaedra’s love for her stepson will be made known to his father, whose curses will bring Hippolytus to destruction, and that Phaedra herself will die, though with name untarnished; and these things actually come to pass in the play. Indeed, an outstanding difference between ancient and modern tragedy, doubtless arising from the fact that the former dealt with traditional material whose outlines were fairly well known to at least some and could be modified only within certain limits, consists in this, that the Greek tragedians usually made little or no attempt to keep their audiences in the dark as to the outcome. It is true that there are occasional exceptions. For example, in Euripides’ Ion, Hermes explains in the prologue that Apollo is Ion’s father by a secret union, but expressly states that the Delphian deity will bring the youth into his just deserts without letting his own misdeed become known. Consequently when Ion’s very life seems to depend upon his parentage transpiring, the hearts of the spectators are harried with fear for his safety until Athena appears in her brother’s stead as deus ex machina and unexpectedly reveals his secret after all. Euripides’ Orestes provides another instance of an attempt to baffle the spectators. The contrast of a few such cases, however, serve only to call attention to the more usual procedure. Here again the Greek practice has not lacked defenders. Lessing wrote:[367] “I am far removed from believing with the majority of those who have written on the dramatic art that the dénouement should be hid from the spectator. I rather think it would not exceed my powers to rouse the very strongest interest in the spectator even if I resolved to make a work where the dénouement was revealed in the first scene. Everything must be clear for the spectator, he is the confidant of each person, he knows everything that occurs, everything that has occurred, and there are hundreds of instances when we cannot do better than to tell him straight out what is going to occur.” A somewhat different point of view is presented by Professor Murray:[368] “But why does the prologue let out the secret of what is coming? Why does it spoil the excitement beforehand? Because, we must answer, there is no secret, and the poet does not aim at that sort of excitement. A certain amount of plot-interest there certainly is: we are never told exactly what will happen but only what sort of thing; or we are told what will happen but not how it will happen. But the enjoyment which the poet aims at is not the enjoyment of reading a detective story for the first time; it is that of reading Hamlet or Paradise Lost for the second or fifth or tenth.”

But the prologue was not always spoken by a divinity; oftentimes a mortal appeared in this capacity. Sometimes this mortal took no further part in the dramatic action, and sometimes he did. In the latter case he occasionally displayed as prologist a greater knowledge of the situation and of what was going to happen than he afterward seemed to possess as an acting character. This difficulty occurs in Plautus’ Braggart Captain. At vss. 145 ff. (in the prologue) Palaestrio boasts how he will cause his fellow-slave “not to see what he has seen” and even explains the trick which will be used for this purpose. But in the scene following the prologue, when he must make good his braggadocio, he seems as perplexed and confounded as would one who had not foreseen this emergency.

In later times the soliloquy of the prologist was sometimes deferred until after an introductory scene or two. Such “internal” prologues occur in the Casket and the Braggart Captain of Plautus. The meager beginnings of this system can be traced in Aristophanes and Euripides, but there is no evidence for its full development prior to the time of Alexis, a poet of Middle Comedy. His nephew, Menander, who belonged to the New Comedy, employed it in his Hero and Girl with Shorn Locks. In Plautus’ Amphitruo, Mercury speaks an opening prologue (vss. 1-152), then engages in a dialogue with Sosia (vss. 153-462), after which he continues the prologue for some thirty additional verses!

The six comedies of Terence all begin with “dissociated” prologues. These give the name and Greek authorship of the Latin play and bespeak the friendly consideration of the audience. They devote no attention, however, to the dramatic situation in the comedy or to future complications therein, but are employed for polemical purposes against the poet’s detractors. It used to be supposed that this was an absolutely new departure on Terence’s part, but it is now found to be only the last in a series of developments which began in Greek comedy.[369]

Of course monologues were not the invention of the playwrights, being found as early as Homer. Yet true soliloquies, as seen in Shakespeare, are a late development in Greek drama. The epic hero, when alone, may appeal to some divinity or the elements, or he may address his own soul; he never simply thinks his thoughts out loud. So long as the tragedies began with a parodus the choreutae would nearly always be present; and a character who was otherwise alone could address his remarks to them. Consequently no monologues occur in either the Suppliants or the Persians of Aeschylus. But with the introduction of a prologue the way was opened up. It would be interesting to know how the words of the eunuch at the beginning of Phrynichus’ Phoenician Women were motivated, but no evidence is available. In the extant plays of Aeschylus only three soliloquies are found—in the Prometheus Bound (vss. 88 ff.), Agamemnon (vss. 1 ff.), and Eumenides (vss. 1 ff.). The first is addressed to the elements (ether, breezes, rivers, ocean, earth, and sun) and the other two begin with prayer. There are also some other speeches which are delivered in the presence of the chorus or of another character but with little or no reference thereto. If completely detached, however, they are addressed to divinities as before. It must be added that though monologues in Aeschylus and other tragedians may be thus motivated at the beginning, they frequently trail off into expressions which are not strictly appropriate. It is noticeable, then, that of the two types of motivation found in Homer only the first occurs in Aeschylus. In Sophocles the situation is practically the same.

But already in the oldest of Euripides’ extant tragedies, the Alcestis, a development may be detected. Apollo’s monologue at the beginning of this play has just been discussed. It is apparent that when a divinity utters a soliloquy he would rarely address his words to some absent deity or to the elements, as mortal personages did in Aeschylus and Sophocles. This factor helps to account for the fact that dramatic illusion suffers here. For all practical purposes Apollo might just as well have frankly addressed himself to the spectators, as the comic poets sometimes allowed their characters to do. Such prologizing deities are careful to explain the reason for their presence in the place where we find them; but they are absolved from the necessity of accounting for their soliloquizing. Their speeches sometimes degenerate into business-like notices which are almost brusque in their abruptness. For example, Posidon begins Euripides’ Trojan Women: