الوظيفة الدارمية لابتکار يوريبيديس في أسطورة مسرحية اليکترا

Abstract

This paper deals with the inventions of Euripides in myth of his tragedy “Electra”. The Electra is not acted in front of the palace of the Atreidae, as in the tragedies of Aeschylus (the Choephori) and Sophocles (Electra), but in the prologue there emerges from a miserable peasant hut the humble man to whom Clytaemnestra has given the king’s daughter as his wife. Thus there are two inventions in this play: the first is the peasant cottage which breaks with the traditional beginning scene of the greek tragedy, which was beginning with palace or temple; the second is the marriage of Electra with a poor farmer; marriage by name only. These two inventions, in Electra, serve the dramatic goals of Euripides. on one hand, the peasant hut is regarded as a symbol of the poverty which is one of the basic criterions of Electra to take revenge from her mother and her lover. on the other hand, the prudent character of farmer and his noble behaviors with his wife, gives to Euripides the chance for criticizing the social and economic predispositions in the 5th cent. B.C. Euripides, with the farmer’s character, criticizes the contemporary energies for the value of the wealth, which began in Theogenes’ age, whence one poor man of noble birth takes a girl of humble birth in marriage for her wealth, and one rich man of humble birth takes a girl of noble birth in marriage for her nobility, and thus the wealth has thrown lineage into confusion. Euripides aims from these inventions to introduce the cooperative moral values, as self-control, prudence, gallantry and justice, which are useful to the state and make it possible for democracy to achieve its goals. These cooperative moral values are represented by the poor farmer to prove that the traditional criterions of human’s virtue (αρετη), which are regarded as a competitive values, as birth, social and economic status, don’t take effect in Euripides’ age; the noble soul of the poor farmer proves that the true criterions of human’s worth are the character (ηθος) and the behaviors (ομιλια).