Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/50

them Polyxena, the most pathetic figure of all, sustained by no proud consciousness of salvation wrought from suffering, but only welcoming death as an angel of deliverance from shame and long regrets, who stood on the grave-mound arrayed in spotless innocence, with modest lips that calmly made in the name of honour their last request, and so gave her throat to the sword, while the fierce men who but now had clamoured for her blood acclaimed her of all maidens noblest of soul.

He brought before them women in all the relations of life, everywhere surpassing the men in goodness, in constancy, in wisdom in counsel. They watched the ministering angel who sat by a brother's bed, and wiped the dew of agony from his brow and the foam of madness from his lips: they held their breath while a gentle-hearted priestess bemoaned to her unknown brother the cruel destiny which even then drew her to the verge of fratricide. They saw the wife who hailed a death of fire to be re-united to her slain lord, and the wife who devoted herself to save, or to die with, her husband. They heard one mother plead the cause of honour and right against cold statecraft: they listened as another besought her doomed sons to be reconciled. They thrilled beholding the princess-slave whose love was stronger than death, and whose high-born spirit flashed defiance to a treacherous foe; and that other who, remembering her hero-husband, would not suffer the imminent death to make herself or her children play a craven part, but mingled proud scorn of the murderous usurper with regrets for hopes foregone. In the noble words of Professor Mahaffy, "These are the women who have so raised the ideal of the sex, that in looking upon them the world has passed from neglect to courtesy, from courtesy to veneration: these are they, who across many centuries, first of frivolity and sensuality, then of rudeness and barbarism, join hands with the ideals of our religion and our