EURIPIDES

less nature of its operations, stands the order which society
and a god-informed world impose upon the individual. What
the law requires the gods require too, and so the Aristotelian
play portrays, like an image of human life, the individual torn
and suffering between his nature and an objective world-order.
In Euripides it is otherwise; here the suffering of the individ-
ual under his necessity may have no such Tightness, or even
none at all, as in the Heracles. The world-order of the gods as
reflected in "things as they are said to be" is either incredible
or an indictment of that order, and if it imposes necessities
unjustly upon a man, the very courage with which he endures
makes him tragic and gives him the moral victory over his own
fate. Similarly with society: for society may be no less corrupt
than the "gods" and as unjust in the necessities it imposes.
Euripides, that is, preserves the disorder of actual experience,
measuring its horror against the unrequited illusion of order
which sustains human beings. His image of tragic humanity is
earned less in the conflict between the individual's nature and
the necessities imposed by a higher order than in the conflict
between the individual and his own internalized necessities.
In the Heracles, at least, it is the very innocence of the hero
which condemns the "gods" who make him mad; but because
the gods are first rendered incredible and then transformed
into a collective symbol for all the random, senseless opera-
tions of necessity in human life, the courage with which the
hero meets his fate and asserts a moral order beyond his own
experience is just as tragic and just as significant as that of
Oedipus.

Date and Circumstances
The Heracles is undated, and no attempt to date the play
to any one year can be regarded as wholly successful. The most
favored date is one close to 424-423. It has been held that
the heavy emphasis throughout the play upon old age in con-
nection with military service, particularly the bitter first
strophe of the second stasmion (11. 637 ff.), represents a direct
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