Euripides Rhesus 728-998

Gilbert Murray (Translator)

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Rhesus. Euripides. Gilbert Murray (Translator). London. 1913.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Current edition Perseus

Rhesus (English) (Euripides. The Rhesus of Euripides. Murray, Gilbert, translator. London: George Allen and Company, Ltd., 1913.)

Editions (1)
Ῥῆσος Perseus (Euripides. Euripidis Fabulae, Vol. III. Murray, Gilbert, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913. (Reprinted 1920-1978)) — 728-996 focus
Translations (2)
Rhesus Perseus (Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906. (Modernized by Perseus.)) — 728-995 focus
Rhesus (OCR draft) Experimental (Rhesus. Robert Potter's English verse translation, first published in 1781–1783; text from the 1808 Oxford printing.)

No corresponding passage available

Notes on the current edition

Rhesus

1. P. 42, 1. 728, Voice of the wounded man outside.]— The puzzled and discouraged talk of the Guards round the fire, the groaning in the darkness without, the quick alarm among the men who had been careless before, and the slow realisation of disaster that follows—all these seem to me to be wonderfully indicated, though the severe poetic convention excludes any approach to what we, by modern prose standards, would call effective realism.
2. numeration out of sync: 753 omitted
3. P. 44, ll. 756-803. This fine vivid speech has something of the famous Euripidean Messenger-Speeches in it; though they are apt to be much longer and also are practically never spoken by a principal in the action, always by a subordinate or an onlooker. Cf. the speech of the Messenger-Shepherd above, p. 17 f. An extreme sharpness of articulation is characteristic of Euripides’ later work: each speech, each scene, each effect is isolated and made complete in itself. The Messenger prepares his message, relates his message and goes, not mixing himself up in the further fortunes of the drama. But this extreme pursuit of lucidity and clear outlines is not nearly so marked in the early plays: in the Cyclops the Messenger’s speech is actually spoken by Odysseus, 11. 382-436, and the Serving Man and Serving Maid in the Alcestis are not mere abstract Messengers.
4. P. 46, 11. 810-830. Hector and the Guard.]—There is intentional colour here—the impulsive half-barbaric rage of Hector, the oriental grovelling of the Guard, and of course the quick return to courteous self-mastery with which Hector receives the taunts of the wounded man.
5. P. 46, 1. 819. The Guard seems to think that the spies got past him when he came to Hector’s tent at the beginning of the play. It was really later, when he made his men leave their post to wake the Lycians. Perhaps he is lying.
6. numeration out of sync: 822 omitted
7. numeration out of sync: 824 omitted
8. P. 48, 1. 876, Justice knows.]—It is a clever touch to leave the Thracian still only half-convinced and grumbling.
9. P. 49, 1. 882, Appearance of the Muse.]—A beautiful scene. It has been thought to come abruptly and, as it were, unskilfully on top of the familiar dialogue between Hector and the Thracian. But the movements, first of soldiers lifting and carrying the wounded man, and then of messengers taking word to Priam for burial of the men slain, make the transition much easier.
10. P. 50,1. 895 ff. and 1. 906 ff., A dirge of the Thracian mountains.]—Such dirges must have struck the Greeks as the fragments of Ossian struck the Lowlanders among us. I have found that the dirge here goes naturally into a sort of Ossianic rhythm.
11.
P. 51, 1. 915. The speech of the Muse seems like the writing of a poet who is, for the moment, tired of mere drama, and wishes to get back into his own element. Such passages are characteristic of Euripides.—The death of Rhesus seems to the Muse like an act of vengeance from the dead Thamyris, the Thracian bard who had blasphemied the Muses and challenged them to a contest of song. They conquered him and left him blind, but still a poet. The story in Homer is more terrible, though more civilised: They in wrath made him a maimed man, they took away his heavenly song and made him forget his harping.
Thamyris, the bard who defied Heaven; Orpheus, the bard, saint, lover, whose severed head still cried for his lost Eurydice; Musaeus, the bard of mystic wisdom and initiations—are the three great legendary figures of this Northern mountain minstrelsy.
12. P. 52, l. 950. These short speeches between Hector and the Leader of the Guard make a jarring note in the midst of the Muse’s lament. Perhaps it would not be so if we knew how the play was produced, but at present this seems like one of several marks of comparative crudity in technique which mark the play, amid all its daring and inventiveness.
13.
P. 52, 1. 962 ff., My son shall not be laid in any grave.]—Like other Northern barbaric princes, such as Orpheus (1. 972 below) and Zalmoxis (Herodotus, iv. 95) and Holgar the Dane , Rhesus lies in a hidden chamber beneath the earth, watching, apparently, for the day of uttermost need when he must rise to help his people. There is no other passage in Greek tragedy where such a fate is attributed to a hero, though the position of Darius in the Persae and Agamemnon in the Choephori or the Electra is in some ways analogous.
The last lines of the Muse have a very Euripidean ring: cf. Medea, l. 1090 (p. 61, My thoughts have roamed a cloudy land), Alcestis, 1. 882.
14. P. 54, 11. 983-end. This curious and moving end—not in death or peace but in a girding of tired men to greater toil—reminds one of the last words of The Trojan Women: Forth to the long Greek ships And the sea’s foaming, and the last words of the Chanson de Roland there quoted. The Trojans evidently go forth under the shadow of disaster, though with firmness and courage. The stage direction is of course purely conjectural. If Diomedes left some sign of Dolon’s death for Hector to see, as he probably must have done, then Hector must at some time or other see it. If so, this seems to be the place.