at least two great religions.

Pity is a rebel passion. Its hand is against the strong, against the
organised force of society, against conventional sanctions and accepted
Gods. It is the Kingdom of Heaven within us fighting against the brute
powers of the world; and it is apt to have those qualities of unreason,
of contempt for the counting of costs and the balancing of sacrifices,
of recklessness, and even, in the last resort, of ruthlessness, which so
often mark the paths of heavenly things and the doings of the children
of light. It brings not peace, but a sword.

So it was with Euripides. The _Troädes_ itself has indeed almost no
fierceness and singularly little thought of revenge. It is only the
crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into music, as it
were, and made beautiful by "the most tragic of the poets." But its
author lived ever after in a deepening atmosphere of strife and even of
hatred, down to the day when, "because almost all in Athens rejoiced at
his suffering," he took his way to the remote valleys of Macedon to
write the _Bacchae_ and to die.

G. M.




THE TROJAN WOMEN


CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY