EURIPIDES
was basically a realist, despite contrary tendencies toward fan-
tasy and romance. The only materials available for his trage-
dies were the old heroic sagas. He used them as if they told
the story not of characters heroic in all dimensions, but of real
everyday people. From the high legends of Jason and Heracles
he chose to enact the moments of the heroes' decay and dis-
integration. What, he asks, does it feel like to have your wife
die for you, and what kind of man will let her do it? What
does it feel like to have murdered your mother? His Admetus
fights hard to deceive himself, but we all see that he is a cow-
ard; his Orestes is a bad mental case with fits and seizures.
Creusa, brutally violated by Apollo and then robbed of the
baby she had guiltily borne, does not dance decorously out
of the story like Pindar's Evadne in similar circumstances; the
shame sticks with her, as if she were a real girl with a real ex-
perience; and Apollo, while managing that all comes well in
the end, hides behind his temple and lets his sister speak for
him.
Though the judges of Dionysus disapproved, there cannot
be much doubt that the audience was fascinated even when
it was not pleased. Was this enough, though? Thejiense of
defeat and disagpointaen^i^^
It niakerJifrrTiring to the fore those who are weak or op-
pressed, the despised and misunderstood: women, children,
slaves,-"Captives, strangers, barbarians. Women as chief char-
acters outnumber men, and most of his choruses are female.
It is not that he is "for" them or "against" them; he merely tries
to present action from their point of view, and they fascinate
him. So do children, but here his realism fails: obviously, he
knew little about them. His'servanrs- areTJue to life, while his
heroes who deliver the oppressed are wooden.
Euripides is sometimes perhaps more pathetic than tragic.
The hero (or heroine) in Sophocles is prepared to fight stub-
bornly to the last; his Teucer, alone against an army full of
warriors who could beat him singlehanded, acts as if he were
the champion with an army at his back. Many_characters of
Euripides spend all their time trying to run away fromTonfe-
thing. Ion and Hippolytus are blissfully happy only while they
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