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The Epileptic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

E. M. Blaiklock
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Extract

‘When we come to Euripides’, writes Pearson, in his introduction to the Phoenissae, ‘we are let down to earth…. If our notions of ancient art are shaped on the ideal pattern, we experience a feeling as of a sudden jar or shock when brought face to face with the realistic aspect of a Euripidean play; there is what seems at first sight a blending of the ancient point of view with the modern, an acquiescence in the ugliness of certain features of suffering which we are apt to think more appropriate to the twentieth century…. With every fresh disaster we are forced to utter the question—why should such things be? And at the same time we are driven to admit that, though we cannot explain them, they are none the less true.’ This is pre-eminently true of the Hercules Furens.

The Hercules Furens rivals the Bacchae in the strangeness of its theme, and if it can be demonstrated that these two plays were built out of the stuff of real life, an important point has been made in support of the contention that Euripides’ prime interest was the character of men and women, and that his dramatic presentation of humanity is marked by psychological insight of the highest order, and based upon a notable acuteness of observation. What, we may ask, led Euripides to choose as a subject of tragedy the strange tale of the madness of Heracles? The Attic associations of the myth, which were his main concern in the Heracleidae, cannot have been his chief motive in this case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 14 , Issue 41-42 , June 1945 , pp. 48 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1945

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References

page 48 note 1 pp. xxv-xxvi.

page 48 note 2 Gray and Hutchinson's edition (Introd., p. viii) suggests a late date for the play, giving among other reasons the presence of common elements in the theme of these two dramas.

page 48 note 3 Gray and Hutchinson, Introd., p. vii.

page 49 note 1 Four Plays of Euripides, pp. 134 sqq.

page 49 note 2 Verrall, op. cit., p. 179. The paragraph continues: ‘… but a normal man, of the normal human pattern, neither above nor below’. This can hardly be said of a madman of any description. It is certainly not true of Heracles.

page 49 note 3 De R. N. v, init.

page 49 note 4 ‘The profound problems of Lear are problems of psychology rather than history…. When he (Shakespeare) had compared and pieced together the varying versions of this legend, he found Lear's conduct as described therein difficult to account for…. He came to the conclusion that only a man in whose mind the seeds of insanity were already beginning to germinate could have acted so strangely. Therefore his Lear went mad' (Branson, J. S. H., The Tragedy of King Lear, p. 85).Google Scholar

page 50 note 1 Greek Tragedy, p. 236.

page 50 note 2 Op. cit., p. 244 footnote. ‘We must no doubt be prepared to hear medical testimony that madness can come and go like this, but medicine is not drama.’

page 50 note 3 ‘Insane Characters in Fiction and Drama’, Professor Cesare Lombroso, in Popular Science Monthly, vol. lv, pp. 53–62.

page 50 note 4 Lombroso, sup. cit., p. 61.

page 51 note 1 ‘It is desirable’, writes Dr. Joseph Collins, ‘that we should become saner both as individuals and as nations…. We get the Laocoon grasp on disease when we know whence and how it comes. We await this information with regard to insanity. Meanwhile it only throws sand in the gear-box of the available machinery for finding out about it, to create literature in which the established facts are misrepresented. If we are going to have insanity in fiction let us have the real thing’ (North American Review, ccxviii). Euripides might have agreed.

page 51 note 2 Caus. M. Diut. 1. 4; Hipp. Desac. mor. 1–4.

page 51 note 3 I am grateful to Buchanan, Dr. H. M. of the Auckland Mental Hospital for this diagnosis.Google Scholar

page 51 note 4 Mental Diseases, Clouston, , p. 438Google Scholar; Mind and Its Disorders, Stoddart, , pp. 6 and 7.Google Scholar

page 52 note 1 Nervous and Mental Diseases, White, and Jelliffe, , p. 215.Google Scholar

page 52 note 2 Mind and Its Disorders, Stoddart, , pp. 290, 291Google Scholar; Mental Diseases, Clouston, , p. 438.Google Scholar

page 52 note 3 Swinburne's opinion is quoted by Verrall (op. cit., p. 136): ‘a grotesque abortion, a monster, a chaos in which incommunicable parts are joined or mixed without disguise and without attempt at reconciliation’. The absurd description will apply to no surviving play of Euripides.

page 52 note 4 Greek Tragedy, p. 238.

page 52 note 5 Heracles was ‘reacting’ from two emotional experiences. Cf. Case 53, Text-book of Psychiatry, Henderson, and Gillespie, , p. 425.Google Scholar

page 52 note 6 Greek Tragedy, p. 238.

page 53 note 1 ‘The epileptic may be suspicious with delusions of persecution or elated with delusions of grandeur’ (Insanity, Savage, G. H., p. 384).Google Scholar ‘The patient is dominated by a feeling that his surroundings are hostile’ (A Text-book of Psychiatry, Henderson, and Gillespie, , p. 291).Google Scholar

page 53 note 2 Mind and Its Disorders, Stoddart, , p. 286.Google Scholar

page 54 note 1 A Text-book of Psychiatry, Henderson, and Gillespie, , p. 423.Google Scholar

page 54 note 2 Op. cit., p. 157.

page 56 note 1 Epilepsy, Muskens, , p. 301. (Λ σσα μαρμαρωπòς, 1. 884.)Google Scholar

page 56 note 2 Henderson, and Gillespie, , op. cit., p. 424.Google Scholar

page 56 note 3 Mind and Its Disorders, Stoddart, , p. 286. (The premonitary symptoms are known as the ‘aura’. Galen had a patient who had a feeling of wind (aura) passing from the extremities to the head before a fit. Such a sensation is very rare, but the term ‘aura’ persists for all prodromes.)Google Scholar

page 56 note 4 Stoddart, , op. cit., pp. 286, 291, 292.Google Scholar

page 56 note 5 Ib., p. 283.

page 56 note 6 Muskens, , op. cit., pp. 300, 301Google Scholar; Savage, , op. cit., pp. 384, 385.Google Scholar

page 57 note 1 Muskens, , op. cit., p. 251.Google Scholar

page 57 note 2 Ib., p. 244.

page 58 note 1 Op. cit., p. 301.

page 58 note 2 Stoddart, , op. cit., pp. 290, 291.Google Scholar

page 58 note 3 ἱππε εi. Heracles is still in his chariot.

page 60 note 1 See also 1. 1425 below.

page 60 note 2 Henderson, and Gillespie, , op. cit., p. 425.Google Scholar

page 60 note 3 Stoddart, , op. cit., p. 390.Google Scholar

page 60 note 4 Savage, , op. cit., pp. 384, 385.Google Scholar

page 60 note 5 Muskens, , op. cit., p. 301.Google Scholar

page 60 note 6 Muskens, , op. cit., pp. 255, 306Google Scholar. See below, I. 1394, ‘I cannot: lo, my limbs are frozen.’

page 60 note 7 Henderson, and Gillespie, , op. cit., p. 424. The patient is ‘less irritable and may even be unusually affable and pleasant for a time in comparison with his behaviour before the paroxysm’.Google Scholar

page 61 note 1 Thomson, , Aeschylus and Athens, p. 365: ‘As a rationalist, he boldly declared... that, in the absence of moral responsibility, the pollution of homicide was merely physical.’ ‘There’, says Theseus in I. 1324, ‘I will cleanse thy hands from taint of blood.’Google Scholar

page 62 note 1 ‘It is hard to believe’, writes Sheppard, J. T.Google Scholar (C.Q. x. 72), ‘that the Athenian audience was composed of subtle critics, endowed with Verrall's ingenuity and acumen.’ It must, of course, be stated in justice that Verrall made no such statement. An élite was all he required.

page 63 note 1 On this theme Sheppard, J. T. bases his conception of the unity of the play. See his paper ‘The Formal Beauty of the Hercules Furens’, C.Q. x. 72–9.Google Scholar