Tragic language distinguishes itself from everyday speech and from literary prose not only by its meter but also by its stylistic elevation: rarified vocabulary, fullness of expression, complex word order, and ornamental figures. Tragic speakers may have different outlooks and preoccupations depending on their age, gender, class, or ethnicity, but by and large all employ the same high-style diction. The language of Euripidean tragedy is not fundamentally different from Aeschylus’ and Sophocles’ (Mastronarde 2002b, 81-82 and 92-96). The existence of a monograph entitled Colloquial Expressions in Euripides (Stevens 1976) might give the impression that the dramatist makes lavish use of the vernacular; in fact the spoken portions of Euripidean tragedy are couched in supple, straightforward but formal Greek with only rare colloquialisms, as Stevens himself makes clear (2-5, 64-5; see also Silk 1996b, 459 with n. 6). Both Euripides and Sophocles show themselves receptive to the new vocabulary, in particular the abstract nouns that are a feature of fifth-century intellectual prose (Long 1968, 73 n. 37 and passim). Although Euripides does not elevate metaphors into leitmotifs in the manner of Aeschylus (see Said, chapter 14 in this volume), he does repeat images for effective emphasis and contrast. Thus the touch of hands is evoked throughout Medea, signifying now a sacred pledge, now tender intimacy, and now death and destruction (Flory 1978). Again, Heracles on his return from the underworld speaks of his children as ‘‘boats in tow’’ (epholkidas, Heracles 631), dependent on him for their protection; at the end of the play, having been humbled by madness, he describes himself trailing after his friend Theseus like ‘‘a wretched boat in tow’’ (panOleis epholkides, 1424).
Euripides’ language can be vividly and succinctly pictorial, as when Medea’s nurse speaks of her mistress’s baleful, ‘‘bull-like gaze’’ (omma tauroumenOn, Medea 92). He has a flair for pithy formulations, often incorporating a paradox. For example, after Phaedra’s nurse has first sworn Hippolytus to secrecy and then revealed Phaedra’s guilty passion, Hippolytus in his first shock threatens to contravene his oath (a threat he will never in fact translate into action), and tells the nurse, ‘‘My tongue swore, but my mind remains unsworn’’ (Hippolytus 612). This statement became proverbial (cf. Aristophanes, Frogs 101-2 and 1471; Plato, Symposium 199a); quoted out of context, it could be mistaken as representing the viewpoint of the poet himself.3
Euripides’ metrical practice is eclectic. His handling of the iambic trimeter grows ever freer over time, and this pattern is of the utmost importance in establishing the relative chronology of his undated plays. His trimeters show a continuous increase in ‘‘resolution’’ from the early plays to the late - that is, an increase in the rate at which two short syllables are substituted for a long syllable in certain positions. The trimeters also display increasing rhythmic variety as they admit differently shaped words. Nine of Euripides’ plays are datable from external indications,4 and the evidence of trimeter resolution can be used to situate the undated plays relative to the dated ones (see the table in Cropp and Fick 1985, 5).
Euripides does not invariably move, however, in the direction of metrical freedom. The trochaic tetrameter, associated by Aristotle with early tragedy (Poetics 1449a21), is increasingly at home in his late plays (Drew-Bear 1968, 386), where it is used to mark the excitement that accompanies quickened dramatic action. Archaizing effects are also on occasion discernible in his lyrics: he uses meters traditionally associated with cult songs in Ion’s paean to Apollo (Ion 112-43) and in the hymn to Dionysus which comprises the parodos of Bacchae. He thus has at his disposal an extraordinary range of metrical associations and effects.
The lyric portions of tragedy are ornate and highly figured. Euripidean lyric is no exception; it abounds in antitheses, oxymoronic expressions, polyptoton (the juxtaposition within the same sentence of different forms of the same word, or of cognate words), and emotional repetition (Breitenbach 1934, 291). Less obscure than Aeschylus’ and less condensed than Sophocles’, Euripides’ lyric passages often feature precise, evocative detail and striking effects of color and light, and display a finely calibrated sense of contrast. Thus the third stasimon of Hecuba describes the fall of
Troy by focusing on a single individual, a Trojan woman who late at night, after the singing, sacrifices, and dancing that celebrated the end of the siege, is preparing for bed and ‘‘gazing into the gleaming depths of a golden mirror’’ (925). It is at this tranquil, reflective moment that she hears the shouts of the victorious Greeks from the citadel.
Euripides’ later lyric style bears the imprint of the musical innovations associated with the name of Timotheus (see Wilson and Battezzato, chapters 12 and 10 in this volume). In Euripidean as (to a lesser extent) in Sophoclean drama the individual singer gains prominence, his virtuosity displayed in free-form monodies and duets. The increase in the actors’ singing roles is reversed, however, in the two plays produced posthumously, Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis (Csapo 1999-2000, 412) - not, presumably, because the playwright suddenly saw the error of his ways, but because at every stage of his career and in all aspects of his art he moved back and forth between new ways and old.
Equally characteristic of Euripides’ later style are elaborate mythical choral odes of the type labeled ‘‘dithyrambic’’ by Kranz (1933, 235-41). The name implies that these choral odes are self-contained and unconnected to the dramatic action, in this resembling the mythic narratives of Bacchylidean dithyramb, but close study often reveals otherwise. Thus the third stasimon of Iphigenia among the Taurians recounts the life and deeds of Apollo. After giving birth to Apollo on Delos, Leto brings him to Delphi. While still an infant Apollo kills the oracle’s resident dragon, expels Themis from the site, and with the help of Zeus defeats Themis’ mother Gaia, who had dispatched dream-apparitions to give mortals a rival version of‘‘events first, after, and to come’’ (1264-65). Not only have misleading dreams and the reliability of Apollo’s oracular directives to Orestes figured in the play thus far, but ‘‘the triumph of Olympian Apollo over Earth and her offspring (dragon, dreams) implies Orestes’ ultimate escape from the Furies and his success in bringing Artemis and Iphigenia from the barbarian to the Hellenic realm’’ (Cropp 2000 on 1234-83).
World History
