Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/45

ever, the Greeks who saw the rise of the drama really had no other ideals, was it possible for genius to create no others—none which might hold up purity, stainless honour, unflinching patriotism, self-sacrifice, for men's worship and emulation? This, it seems to me, was what Euripides set himself to do; and this he succeeded in doing to a degree unparalleled in the extant dramas of either of his great rivals.

Alcestis, the ideal of a devoted wife and mother; Polyxena, of a brave martyr-maiden; Aithra, of an intercessor for the oppressed; Theseus, of a patriot statesman; Andromache, of queenly courage and love stronger than death; Makaria and Iphigeneia, of heroic self-sacrifice; Helen (in the play of that name), of wifely constancy; Hippolytus, of youthful purity; Ion, of youthful piety; Peleus, of chivalrous old age; Achilles, of chivalrous youth; the Peasant (in Electra), of chivalry in humble life; Pylades (in Orestes and Iph. in Taur.), of self-forgetting friendship; Electra (in Orestes) of sisterly devotion; Menoikeus, of sublime patriotism; Theonoë, of reverence for right overriding claims of kinship and personal safety;—can as many, can half as many such inspiring ideals as these be collected from all the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles—characters which, like these, could strengthen the weak, could confirm the wavering, could kindle self-devotion, could impress upon the hearers that none of them lived unto himself, that they owed their help, their love, their life, to friends and country—that not steadfast endurance, not the unconquerable will, not jealous self-respect, is noblest in a man, but the recognition of Duty as paramount It has been truly said that heroism (εὐψυχία) is with him the supreme virtue; but it must be added that it is the consecrated heroism out of which self is utterly cast, which faces pain and death in the spirit, not of the warrior, but of the martyr, which lives, not in the fierce energy of abounding vitality, nor in the grim