Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/48

they regarded as equals or companions of their husbands. In consequence probably of the influence of oriental example on Greek life,^[1] they lived in almost harem-like seclusion, their liberty to go abroad being well-nigh limited to occasions of religious festivals, and their daily companions being the female slaves of their households. Such conditions reacted, as they were sure to do, on female character, fostering frivolity, pettiness, intrigue and scandal-mongering. Men became contemptuous and jealous of their wives, and were ceasing to look for capacities of better things in them, while the women were forgetting that they could be anything nobler than drudges or dolls. Aeschylus and Sophocles never touch upon this problem. There is no indication that the former was conscious that a change was passing over social life: the latter gives no hint that he regarded this as other than the best of all possible worlds in that respect. But Euripides, to whom the sorrows and wrongs and perils of humanity were a burden too heavy to bear, who palpitated with indignation, and yearned with sympathy over the evils wrought by human selfishness and blindness, set himself to find the remedy. He did not assail the social system which had perhaps originated, had certainly aggravated, the evil. It may be that he did not clearly understand its history: it is often no easy matter to distinguish between the mischief done by institutions in the midst of which we live from that which has its roots deeper in our propensities, our prejudices, and our habits. Certainly his instinct was right in this abstention: the sudden removal of the pressure of a social or political injustice by no means involves the immediate elevation of those who have been already degraded by it; rather, the first effect often is to accentuate the evil, by removing restraints before self-control has been learnt, or