Great art has no limits of locality or time. Its tidings are timeless,
and its messages are universal. _The Trojan Women_ was first performed
in 415 B.C., from a story of the siege of Troy which even then was
ancient history. But the pathos of it is as modern to us as it was to
the Athenians. The terrors of war have not changed in three thousand
years. Euripides had that to say of war which we have to say of it
to-day, and had learned that which we are even now learning, that when
most triumphant it brings as much wretchedness to the victors as to the
vanquished. In this play the great conquest "seems to be a great joy and
is in truth a great misery." The tragedy of war has in no essential
altered. The god Poseidon mourns over Troy as he might over the cities
of to-day, when he cries:


"How are ye blind,
Ye treaders down of cities, ye that cast
Temples to desolation, and lay waste
Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie
The ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die!"


To the cities of this present day might the prophetess Cassandra speak
her message:


"Would ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war!
Yet if war come, there is a crown in death
For her that striveth well and perisheth
Unstained: to die in evil were the stain!"