EURIPIDES

Text
The basis of this translation is the Oxford text of Gilbert
Murray, though it has often been supplemented by others,1
chiefly the brilliant edition of Leon Parmentier in the Bude*
series.2 Upon a few occasions I have also adopted the emenda-
tions proposed by Wilamowitz. The notes on the translation
are not designed to indicate all departures from the Murray
text (nor even to mark the numerous occasions on which I
preferred the reading of the manuscripts over modern emenda-
tions),3 but to amplify variations or emendations whose use
1. L. 496: cf. D. S. Robertson, "Euripides, H.F. 497 ff.," C.R.
LII (1938), 50-51.
2. L. 1241: 4<Then where it touches heaven, I shall strike." I
adopt here the emendation of Parrnentier and read kai thenein for
katthanein. Since Theseus at 1. 1246 asks Heracles what he will do
and where his passion sweeps him, and Heracles replies in the follow-
ing line that he will die, it seems plausible that katthanein here is a
simple copyist's mistake for the less familiar kai thenein. And, as
Parmentier remarks, the line as emended pivots on a play with the
word haptei in the preceding line (1. 1240). It is also more likely that
Theseus in 1. 1242 would take thenein as a threat against the gods
than he would the precise self-directed katthanein. See L. Parmentier,
Revue de philologie, XLIV (1920), 161.
3. L. 1351: Enkartereso thanaton ("I shall prevail against death").
Thanaton is here the reading of the manuscripts and, to some degree,
it is supported by the identical phrase at Andromache L 262 (though
in each case the contextual meaning is different). Murray, following
Wecklein and Wilamowitz, however, has altered thanaton to bioton
(life).
So far as the quality of affirmation is concerned here, however,
there is little difference between thanaton and bioton. Both imply
the affirmative decision to bear necessity by living; clarity is un-
affected by either reading. Though to prevail against life (in the sense
of "persevering") may be more forceful than to prevail against death
(in the sense of resisting the temptation to die), it seems to me that
the imagery of the play is decisive for thanaton. In Heracles' words
here, that is, we have the metaphorical (but also realistic) equivalent
of the mythical descent to Hades and the conquest of death it signi-
fies. Heracles has in his sufferings been to Hades and at death's door;
he now wrestles with his death as myth once imagined him as wres-
tling for Cerberus. And just as the chorus once (11. 655 ff.) hoped that
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