The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1927-12-15
- THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION --
The Greeks LOued to Hate Eu7ibideS
: Written for The Times by VIII Duramt

lust as modern novels begin
- where respectable novels used to
end with marriages. Euripides
begins where simpler poets would
have closed-after the victory.
1t is not the triumphant Greeks
we see, but the vanquished men of
Troy, and again not so much the
men as their women, snatched of
as concubines for the conquerors.
One after another they pass be-
fore us-Cassandra, Andronlache,
Helen, Hecuha; there is no action,
only feeling; it is as if hearts and
not bodies were put upon the stage.
The pageant Of victory ends with
solitary old woman holding a dead
child in her arms, and summing up
in herself all the sorrows of
humanity.
At the outset roseidon, god of the
sea, strikes the note of the play:
How are We blind,
Ye treaderS down of cities, We
that cast
Temples to desolation, and lay
waste
TombS, the untrodden sanctuaries
where lie
The ancient dead; yourselves so
soon to die"
eve are using the translations of
Gilbert Murray. through whose
genius Euripides has become our
contemporary
None the less Talthybius comes to
take Andromache, the widow of
Hector, and his sister, the proud
virgin prophecies CasSandra, to
their new masters among the
Greeks.
Even Hecuba, queen of fallen
Troy, and white haired mother of
Hector, must pass to the Greeks as
slave. She mournS also insanely:
BEAT, beat the crownleSs head,
Rend the cheek till the tears run
red!
A lying man and a pitiless
Shall be lord of me.....
Oh, I will think of things gone
long ago,
And weave them to a song. ....
o thou whose wound was deepest,
Thou that my children keepeSt,
Prian, Prian1, o age-worn king,
Gather me where thou sleepest."
Andromache tries to comfort her
with the thought Of suicide:
Hecuba reproyeS her; let her, in
stead of seeking death, take her in
FAINT son, Astyanax, into Greece, and
rear him, in the hope that he may
some day restore his fallen city.
But at that moment Talthybius
returns to say that the Council Of
the Greeks, for the security of Hell
las, has decided that Astyanax must
die.
TITS their will
Thy son >. from this crested
wall
OF Troy be dashed, and die"
And Andromache, holding the
child in her arms, bids him fare
well.
At that moment Menelaus comes,
looking for Helen
"Ho,
We soldiers; Up into the cham
bers where
She crouchethI Grip the long
blood-reeking hair
And drag her to mine eyes"
Hecuba, sensing murder in his
angry tones, rejoices with the fierce
ness of woman at bay, and thanks
her vague Euripidean god for the
vengeance which seems at hand
Thou deep Base Of the World,
and thou high Throne
Above the world, whoe'er thou art,
unknown.
And hard to surnise, Chain OF
Things that be.
Or Reason of our Reason; God,
to thee.
lift my praise, seeing the silent
road
That bringeth justice ere the end
be trod
To all that breatheS and dies
1 bless thee, Menelaus, bless thee
If thou will stay her! Only fear
to see.
Her visage, lest she share thee and
thou fall"
Helen enters, proud, unafraid, dia
gunaikon-goddess among women
Hecuba rails at her.
"And contest thou now
Forth, and hast decked thy bosom
and thy brow,
And breathest with thy lord the
same blue air,
| Thou evil heart? Low, low, with
ravaged hairs