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exultation of him whose red sword testifies that he falls not unavenged, nor in the defiance which desperately braves a tyrant, but in that triumph of the soul over the weakness of the flesh, which is not kindled by excitement, nor sustained by sympathy, but abides calm and steadfast where an Achilles wails to Gods that seem to abandon him,[1] where a Hector is broken down into suppliance to his conqueror, where an Antigone laments that she must die so young, with life's promise unfulfilled. What Athenian would not be uplifted in spirit, and made capable of giving up his all for Athens, by the noble example of frail girls like Makaria and Iphigeneia? Whose pulses would not leap in response to those last words of Menoikeus in which he announces his purpose of fulfilling the oracle's requirement by self-immolation for the salvation of his country?—
"No forgiveness should be mine
If I betray the city of my birth.
Doubt not but I will go and save the town,
And give my soul to death for this land's sake.
'Twere shame that men no oracles constrain,
Who have not fallen into the net of fate,
Shoulder to shoulder stand, blench not from death,
Fighting before the towers for fatherland,
And I, betraying father, brother, yea,
My city, craven-like flee forth the land—
A dastard manifest, where'er I dwell!
* * * * * * *
I go, to give my country no mean gift,
My life, from ruin so to save the land:
For, if each man would take his all of good,
Lavish it, lay it at his country's feet,
Then fewer evils should the nations prove,
And should through days to come be prosperous."
(Phœnician Maidens, 995—1018).
There is in all Greek literature no finer defence of the