Euripides' Hecuba aria Medea. Cambridge Texts, with Notes. By F.
A. Paley. (Deighton, Bell, and Co., Cambridge.)—We have here- two of Euripides' most familiar plays, edited, with brief notes, for-settee} - use by Mr. Paley. The Hecuba and Medea are capital specimens of Euripides, and as every scholar knows, their text, which, on the whole( is free from serious corruptions, was settled in Porson's famous critical edition. In both plays we may be said to read the "the story of_ woman's revenge." Both may be described as sensational, and are full of horrors. Priam and Hecuba, as Mr. Paley observes, were the typical. woebearers of antiquity, as " Priam's history was to the Greeks what that of Job was to the Jews." The Medea is certainly one of Euripdes' very_ best plays. The mother's feelings in conflict with her settled purpose of revenge are brought before us with wonderful power and pathos. Mi. fierceness and resolution remind us of Lady Macbeth. Jason represents., time-serving expediency, but his sophistical arguments are, as Ms.• Paley says, quite "demolished by the impassioned earnestness of Medea." It is perhaps rather a more difficult play than the Hecuba- There is one particularly perplexing passage (v. 214-219), of whiob Dr. Kennedy's reading is given, but for most students it requires, we-, think, a little more explanation. In v. 224 we might as well hev,e_haelj a note on ,cithetie, which there denotes that " want of culture " which unfits a man for new conditions of -society. In v. 378 of the HP-4-4a . we hardly needed a note to explain to us the meaning of Ti Vir /A, ,cars. The rather puzzling phrase' arie,etwer el,y2es, in v.926 of the same play, which Liddell and Scott render "the mirror's countless rays," is taken by Mr. Paley to mean the "ever-retreating bright image in the mirror." This is a rather ingenious suggestion, but it is perhaps• en, attempt to fix too definite a meaning on the words, which may perhaps- be merely intended to convey a notion of the mirror's dazzling surfeoe,, with its infinite capacities of reflection. It is hard to say what the pre- cise idea is, and Mr. Paley's view, which, we believe, is not original, may possibly fairly represent what was in the poet's mind. Ilia ads*: will be found useful by the young students for whom they aro wrttten, and the only fault such students will find with them, will probably ha: that they are too brief.
Previous page
