EURIPIDES
terial has been ordered to effect, rather than obviate, this dis-
location of structure.
Old tradition told of Hera's persecution of Heracles because
of her jealousy of Zeus' amour with Heracles' mother, Alc-
mene. It also told how Heracles, driven mad by Hera, slew his
sons and would also have killed his father, Amphitryon, had
not Athene intervened and knocked the raging hero uncon-
scious with a stone. For the most part Euripides has retained
these traditions, but with this great difference: whereas in the
common tradition the great labors of Heracles were under-
taken in penance for the murder of the children, Euripides has
transposed the murders to the time just after the completion
of the labors, the height of Heracles' career. Because Heracles
at the very moment of his fall is at his greatest, the hideous-
ness of Hera's revenge is sharply underscored and its abrupt,
tragic senselessness stressed. The dramatist, that is, has ordered
his material in such a way as to achieve precisely that disloca-
tion which the play's structure exhibits. Nor is this all. Because
Euripides has transposed the labors and the murders, he has
been forced to invent a new motive for the labors. This is the
motive of filial piety: Heracles undertook his labors in order
to win back the country from which Amphitryon had been
exiled for the murder of Electryon. Thus at the same time that
Euripides freely invents in order to fill the gap caused by the
original transposition, he also subtly humanizes his hero in
preparation for the conversion which is the heart of the second
action.
Tradition also told of Heracles' suicide on Mt. Oeta (cf.
Sophocles' Trachmiae) and how after death the hero was trans-
lated to heaven and given everlasting youth in the person of
Hebe. This entire saga is suppressed in the Euripidean version,
but the very fact of its suppression informs the Heracles
throughout, pointing up the direction of the action against
what has been excluded. Thus Heracles, far from being deified
in Euripides, is humanized 4 as the condition of his heroism.
4. In the humanization of Heracles, Euripides returns to the old-
est of all extant Heracles traditions, the Homeric, in which Heracles
too had to die. Cf. Iliad xvm. 115 ft.; "Not even the great Heracle?
294