theatre demands freshness; old stories demand intellectual versatility. But a passionate coherence and a passionate
understanding of life underlie Medea.
The Lphigenia In Tauris By Euripides. Scene from a vase made in Campania, about 330-320B.C. The stage
building is shown with projecting wings, architecturally elaborated. The one at the left serves as the temple of
Artemis, in which her statue is seen; the one at the right, the house of the priestess Iphigenia who emerges to speak
to her brother Orestes and his companion Pylades who have come to steal the statue.
In 415, the year of the expedition against Syracuse, the high tide of Athenian power-hunger and also a time of
increasing superstitious fear, Euripides produced three tragedies on the Trojan war. The first showed the youth of
Paris and the seed of destruction, the second dealt with Palamedes, the inventive Greek, but we know little of its
plot. The third is the Trojan Women, a succession of tragic episodes under the walls of fallen Troy. In verse that
differs with brilliant technical effect from one episode to another, Euripides delivers a series of hammer blows.
They are linked only by black lamentation, with a faint spark of human compassion from the Greek herald, and a
few strangely nostalgic lines about the holy land of Greece. Sometimes the magnificence of language puts fire and
brimstone into the air, sometimes the formal clang of verses lends a sharpness, sometimes rhetorical patterns
overspill like waterfalls.