Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

Epiphanies in Euripides 351
drawn. But it can hardly be disputed that in a surprising number
of Aeschylus' tragedies we have found signs of either a definite
epiphany of a god or the resurrection of a dead hero, or lastly the
direct worship of a Year-daimon. We cannot be certain, but we
may surmise that some such epiphany or resurrection was quite as
common in Aeschylus as in Euripides.
I will leave out the question of such Epiphanies in the
fragments of Sophocles : the evidence would take very long to
state. His extant plays will be briefly treated below. In general the
result is that in this, as in so many other particulars, Sophocles is
influenced more by the Ionian Epic and less by the Attic Sacer
Ludus than the other two tragedians. It is just the same with the
other Forms. Sophocles deliberately blurs his outlines and breaks
up his Agon and Messenger and Prologue into what we may almost
call continuous dramatic conversation ; Euripides returns to an
extreme clarity and articu lateness and stiffness of form in all
three. The discussion of Euripides' technique is of course another
story, but so much will, I think, hardly be denied either by his
friends or his enemies.
Passing on, then, to Euripides, what is it that he did about his
epiphanies ? In especial, why is he ridiculed by comedy for his
use of the Deus ex machina, if Aeschylus really used such
epiphanies as much or more ?
The answer, I think, is not that he invented the introduction
of gods : he clearly did not : but that, more suo, he introduced
them in a sharply defined manner, always at the end of the play,
and, it would seem, with some particularly smooth and effective
machinery. (Perhaps an invention made about the year 428, see
Bethe, Prolegomena, pp. 130— 141.) The general purpose for which
he used them—(1) to console griefs and reconcile enmities and
justify tant bien que mat the ways of the gods, and (2) to expound
the Aition of the play, and the future fates of the characters—was,
I believe, part of the tradition. In these respects his gods play
exactly the parts of Athena in the Eumenides or Aphrodite in the
Danaides, probably even of Zeus in the Prometheus Unbound.
The Theophanies in the extant plays of Euripides are as follows
Hippolytus: Artemis appears, (1) comforts and reconciles Theseus and
Hippolytus, and (2) founds the ritual of Hippolytus at Trozen.
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