February 28 - Saint Euripides, Humanist and Playwright

Of all the sparkling pantheon, Thanatos thought Hera was the best.  Sure, he knew of the attributes of the other divinites¾Aphrodite’s raw sexuality, Aries’ brutish slaughters, Artemis’ cold virginity, Hades’ near and distant domination.  But it was Hera who turned him on¾not simply her regal posture and exquisite beauty, the things that made Zeus hot for her¾it was her fidelity to her husband he admired.  Everyone knew that grand zenith of wisdom couldn’t keep his hands to himself¾each new configuration of smoldering beauty he saw¾bang¾he had the girl pegged to the earth and was going at her as if he had never done it before.  Who cared about the consequences for the kid¾the divine right was being manifest and the Olympian seed might take root and sprout something interesting.  Yet Hera did nothing but stay true to her principles.  It wasn’t as if she had no opportunities¾any man worth his sex tried to seduce her as soon as he glimpsed those perfect breasts, her ripe and swelling buttocks.  But she was Zeus’ wife and that meant loyalty.

So Thanatos didn’t have the usual problems when he discovered that his new bride, Alethea, was secretly sleeping with another man.  He immediately appealed to the higher truth that he admired, and was even pleased that he had the chance to prove himself to his favorite goddess.  His caresses stayed sweet and urgent, his tongue still lolled when his wife crawled onto the couch of his mind and shamelessly spread herself.  He didn’t complain¾some people were born to run around and others to stay put and if there was any definition of a fool, it was a person who didn’t know what he was.  Even after a few years and, as far as he could tell, five or six men, he remained loyal.  Character is more important than pleasure, he told himself.  Plus¾he had the pleasure of knowing Hera would be pleased.

But as their marital bliss evolved and her lovers kept accumulating like dust in an untended corner of a suburban bungalow, when he came home from work one day and discovered her in bed with a priest from the temple at Samos, doubts began oozing through his brain like maggots.  The neighbors’ laughter¾maybe it was right.  The moans his wife gave him¾they must be borrowed.   He was a mortal, not a god¾eternal longsuffering was unreasonable to expect.  And Hera’s silence!  He had always thought it was her way of bestowing blessing, but now …

Once he decided, it didn’t take long.  While he wasn’t white with youth’s bottomless lechery, he was far from geriatric incapacity.  Women still looked admiringly at his textured thighs and chiseled chest.  You might think that all that betrayal would have sucked the life out of his eyes, but no … it animated them.  Once he gave himself over to lust’s buffet, his groin burned with such intensity that he even looked at the dog with zeal.

He found her by the docks, where he stuffed himself up her sex and clawed at the endless night that forms all things.  30 minutes of fun wouldn’t be adequate compensation for years of infidelity for most¾but for Thanatos, it was sufficient.  He returned to Alethea’s familiar embrace like a bull that’s been imprisoned for years, finally released to heave its apocalyptic savagery on some grazing cow.  Even she momentarily wondered if only he might satisfy her.  Afterwards, they fell asleep with limbs tangled and steam still fizzing from their groins.

But sex, despite its mad caprices and cosmic claims, is subject to the same rules as everything else¾it lifts us up, throws us down, according to designs even the gods can’t see.  Two days later, Thanatos was retching green bile and clawing at bugs that feasted on his brain.  Three days later he was dead.  Some infernal virus bubbling in his dock companion’s lovepit had put him in the ground.

But Alethea lived¾she must have built up immunity from all her travels, or maybe she was simply blessed by the gods.  Who knows why one falls and another stands?  All we can really do is watch and write about it.

On the thirteenth day of mourning, Alethea wept quietly as the sun fell into night’s black bath.  She had truly loved her husband.  Zeus, who had been strolling in the Hesperides’ garden plucking apples and chuckling to himself, happened to look down and see the widow there, clothed in black and tears.  He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so lustful¾suffering had always turned him on.  His mind leapt to action and he formed a plan to get her underneath him as soon as possible.  No one can accuse Zeus of being someone who waffles or gets caught in the ridiculous mind games humans seem to revel in, depriving themselves of thousands of sweaty romps.  No.  Seconds later, Alethea startled when a tree suddenly appeared beside her.  But its shade relaxed her and she leaned against it and its soft branches caressed her lightly in the wind.  Her crying stopped and she sighed as a leaf dropped down her dress.

Everyone knows divine and human time are different.  So while Zeus enjoyed her for days, tossing her around so he could delight in her body from every imaginable angle, she sat up minutes later, bruised, her mourning clothes in rags beside her, not really knowing what had happened.   Nine months later, on February 28 480 BCE, St. Euripides was born in Athens.  Alethea died in childbirth … that’s what divinity does to you.

St. Euripides grew up to be the most tragic of the Greek tragedians, the saddest of the Attic poets, the most humane in his social philosophy and the most skillful in psychological insight.  He used betrayal from wife, friends and land not as grounds for revenge, but as a catalyst to develop new dramatic forms¾intrigue, the love-drama and the tragicomic, all with contemporary, human characters.  His society of words is one in which order and reason are constantly thwarted by absurdity and passion, where meaningless suffering and tragedy are the foundation and canopy of human life.

Thanatos was given leave by Hades to ascend to earth with a pack of bassarids, who tore the old playwright apart.  He put St. Euripides’ pulpy dismembered body in a wheelbarrow and brought him down to the land of shadows on September 1 406, from where he haunts us now with songs of brute perception and despair.  The Council of I elevated him to sainthood on December 25 in 4 BCE.  Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.