It has been a busy decade. Approximately a hundred essays on Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Nonnus, from Plautus to Claudian, a monograph on Euripides, thematic issues on Ancient Pastoral and Virgil's Georgics, work informed by a vigorous — and one hopes invigorating — sense of the humane value of classical literature and its analysis, but exhibiting in discussion of the ancient texts themselves considerable diversity of approach, emphasis, method. It would be obvious to the most casual reader that Ramus has eschewed the sterile path of the construction of its own methodological orthodoxy. The formal parameters for inclusion have been far more demanding — and important — than methodological consonance: substantiality of subject-matter and treatment; stringency, relevancy and coherence of argumentation; centrality and concentration of critical focus; significant and significantly original illumination of text; soundness of philological and historical scholarship; judiciousness of critical eye. The issue of critical focus, that is to say, of discrimination, merits emphasis. It is a truism to say that relegation of the peripheral to the peripheral, of the ancillary to the ancillary, are necessary conditions for the elucidation of any literary work. But it is a truism often ignored.

Enkarterēsō bioton (‘I shall endure life’). So speaks Euripides' Heracles in a moment of crucial decision when he rejects the idea of suicide in spite of the horror he has been through and the subsequent shame he must live with. This moment expresses more than patient resignation; it is a calculated and positive decision to live on, a hard-made decision and perhaps a surprising one. Was Euripides here thinking of that other great hero depicted by Sophocles, Ajax, who had been through a similar experience of madness and had chosen the opposite course in consequence of it, namely to take his own life? Sophocles' Ajax was probably produced in the 440's, Euripides' Heracles about 418. It is scarcely credible that Euripides was not familiar with this great work of Sophocles. There were doubtless other plays on the theme of madness in between but Ajax would surely be particularly memorable as a well-known cult figure in Athens and elsewhere.

The similarities between the two tragedies are considerable. I want first to explore them, then show how the difference in treatment of similar themes, particularly those of aretē, madness and tukhē, make up the unique character of each play. Such a comparison starting from common focal points should serve to set in relief the distinguishing characteristics of each author's treatment.

It is not at all unusual for even the staunchest admirers of Plautus to feel that his plays lack genuine seriousness. His skill, his wit, his robust gaiety, above all his showmanship are recognized for their excellence. They always hit the mark. And yet he is characterized as an entertainer only, a classical George S. Kaufman.

Even Erich Segal in his illuminating study, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, for all his enthusiastic admiration of Plautus, seems uneasy about judging his achievement as anything more than masterful popular entertainment. Plautus deserves our attention, he writes, because he ‘was the most successful comic poet in the ancient world …. And yet few scholars of the last century have been willing to examine Plautus for what he undeniably was — a theatrical phenomenon’; and he concludes, ‘His art does not give rise to “thoughtful laughter” …. For True Comedy should banish all thought — of mortality and morality’. Segal willingly compares Plautus with Aristophanes and Molière (he mentions Shakespeare only to dismiss the possibility of comparison as unreasonable), and surely no one would write of either as only theatrical phenomena, banishing all thought.

I start with four quotations: (1) ‘That all European poetry has come out of the Provençal poetry written in the twelfth century by the troubadours of Languedoc is now accepted on every side.’ [The writer is talking of love poetry.] (2) The passion and sorrow of love were an emotional discovery of the French troubadours and their successors.’ (3) ‘French poets in the eleventh century discovered or invented, or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth.’ (4) ‘The conception of romantic love which has dominated the literature, art, music, and to some extent the morality of modern Europe and America for many centuries is a medieval creation.’ Those words come from a Frenchman, a German, and Englishman and a Scot — namely Denis de Rougemont, E. R. Curtius, C. S. Lewis, and Gilbert Highet — a distinguished quartet, not lacking in knowledge or influence. The view they represent has met with little opposition and is, in fact, so widely held that it may be regarded as orthodox. The layman finds it all the easier to accept in that ‘romantic love’ is readily connected with the first definition of ‘romance’ given by the Oxford English Dictionary, namely The vernacular language of France as opposed to Latin’.

Modern critics have done much interpretive work on the Oresteia, ranging from specific studies of particular motifs (for example, of wind, music, nature, sacrifice) to the more synthetic studies of E. T. Owen, Anne Lebeck, and most recently, Michael Gagarin. The latter group has taken note of what may be called a superstructure in the plays, a moral framework which parallels the action of the trilogy. They have, of course, different visions of this structure. Thus, for example, Owen sees the subject of the plays as the creation of a ‘new spiritual order,’ while Lebeck describes the pattern as ‘movement from enigmatic utterance to clear statement, from riddle to solution.’

While these treatments are valuable to the student of the plays, the overriding question is still, ‘Why this structure and why these particular images?’ Owen and Lebeck, while undeniably correct in their analyses, are too general. It is possible to go further still, for the structure is more specific than a movement ‘from riddle to solution.’ Structure and image both, in fact, have their roots in the creation myth. Just as many rituals re-enact cosmogony to restore an interrupted order, Aeschylus, in order to achieve a sense of stability, builds on the religious response that a presentation of the myth evokes. It is no accident, then, that the patterns of light, wind, and nature imagery, all studied by separate scholars, are important in the creation myth; we can only fully understand these patterns when we uncover these roots.