Euripides has been described as writing plays that are akin to comedies (Knox 1979a, 250). As we have seen, however, a happy ending is not indicative of genre. Moreover, the fact that plays such as Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion, and Helen feature motifs (ofintrigue, recognition of long-lost kin, rescue, escape) that became staples of New Comedy does not mean that in the fifth or fourth centuries these plays were apprehended as comic, or as falling between the genres. The years of solitude and misery experienced by Iphigenia, Creusa, and Helen alike continue to shape their responses to subsequent events; despite their light moments and happy endings, these are ‘‘plays of suffering, misapprehension, struggle and barely won victory’’ (Whitman 1974, 104).
The issue of genre is closely connected to the issue of humor. Since tragedy concerns serious individuals and is an imitation of a serious action (Poetics 1448a2, 1449b24), humor might seem to possess a destabilizing potential, threatening to turn tragedy into something other than tragedy. Yet humorous episodes are found in all three tragedians; in Aeschylus and Sophocles they feature lower-class characters (the nurse in Libation Bearers, the guard in Antigone), whereas in Euripides they tend to center on old men (lolaus in Children of Heracles, Cadmus in Bacchae). The scholar who has made the most extensive study of comic effects in tragedy maintains that these effects exist in a fruitful tension with their context that enhances the tragic resonance of the whole (Seidensticker 1982, 244). The validity of this interpretation will emerge if we consider one episode as a test case. (For the doubtful humor of isolated Euripidean lines see Gregory 1999-2000.)
An episode widely and rightly regarded as comic is the arming of Iolaus in Euripides’ Children of Heracles. Whereas other versions of the myth associate him with Heracles’ generation, Euripides’ lolaus is the same age as Alcmene. He is therefore well on in years, and his physical debility receives considerable emphasis at the beginning of the play. When Eurystheus’ herald arrives to demand that the Athenians hand back the fugitives, he sneers at the old man’s ‘‘useless strength’’ (58) and reviles him as a ‘‘tomb’’ and a ‘‘nothing’’ (167). After Heracles’ daughter has been led away as a human sacrifice, lolaus collapses (602-3). Weakened by grief and age, he fails to recognize Hyllus’ servant when that familiar figure arrives to report his master’s return at the head of an army (638). Yet this news brings about a decisive shift in lolaus’ mood. He energetically questions the servant about the impending battle between the Athenians and the Argives, then announces that he intends to participate in the fighting (680).
The desire of a superannuated warrior to take up arms is not inherently humorous. Homer uses the motif to set the seal on a victory: at the end of the Odyssey Laertes fights valiantly alongside his son and grandson, and Athena gives him the strength to kill his man (24.496-99, 520-25). Later Vergil uses it to enhance the pathos of a lost cause: on Troy’s last night both Priam and Anchises express the desire (though both are ultimately dissuaded) to meet their deaths fighting against the Greeks ( Aeneid 2.509-25, 645-49).
In Children of Heracles, however, the motif of the superannuated warrior is deployed with unmistakable humor. To the servant’s skeptical questions lolaus returns absurdly over-confident answers. Finally the servant asks the old man (694) how he can function as a warrior when he has no armor, and Iolaus orders him to borrow the dedicatory weapons that have been deposited inside the temple. It is difficult not to detect a deflating, anti-epic wit in this solution: rather than pin his hopes on armor manufactured by Hephaestus, Iolaus devises a practical, low-cost expedient. The servant has scarcely gone inside than the chorus-leader reproves lolaus for his unrealistic attitude, telling him flatly, ‘‘It is impossible for you to get your youth back again’’ (707-8). Alcmene also weighs in to reproach lolaus for abandoning her and the children. When the servant returns with a borrowed panoply the audience is treated to an aborted arming scene whose farcical quality would only be enhanced in performance.
The sequel, however, defies expectations. In a messenger speech the audience and Alcmene are told that a miracle has occurred: Iolaus has been rejuvenated with the help of Zeus, Heracles, and Hebe, the goddess of youth who is Heracles’ divine consort. Regaining his youthful strength for a single day, Iolaus has succeeded in capturing Eurystheus, whom he sends back to Alcmene to punish as she likes.
The miracle demonstrates that the audience, the servant, the chorus-leader, and Alcmene were all mistaken in assuming that Iolaus lacked the strength to be effective in battle, whereas the much-maligned Iolaus was in the right. If rejuvenation was a traditional feature of the Iolaus myth (see Allan 2001b, 27), knowledgeable spectators could guess, even as the arming scene took its humorous course, that Iolaus would be vindicated. But even if Iolaus’ rejuvenation was invented by Euripides, the spectators would not be confused by the scene’s humor. Whether witnessed in the characters or demanded of themselves, the revision of a previous assumption in the light of subsequent events would serve as a generic prompt, for it is nothing other than the late recognition or learning from experience that is a recurrent theme of tragedy (cf. Agamemnon 176-83; Antigone 1270-72; Bacchae 1345; and Silk 1996b, 469). The arming scene becomes the catalyst for a fully tragic response - a response that must be mobilized once more at the end of the play, when Eurystheus proves less and Alcmene more antipathetic than might have been anticipated (for the element of surprise in Children of Heracles see Allan 2001b, 185). The humor of the arming scene thus ultimately enhances rather than subverts the tragic tone of the play.
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