Smitten down, blind in his pride, for a sign and a terror to
mortals.


But he ought to have, he must have, to be true to his name of
Hero, justice, self-restraint, and [Greek text]--that highest form
of modesty, for which we have, alas! no name in the English
tongue; that perfect respect for the feelings of others which
springs out of perfect self-respect. And he must have too--if he
were to be a hero of the highest type--the instinct of
helpfulness; the instinct that, if he were a kinsman of the gods,
he must fight on their side, through toil and danger, against all
that was unlike them, and therefore hateful to them. Who loves
not the old legends, unsurpassed for beauty in the literature of
any race, in which the hero stands out as the deliverer, the
destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and
delivering it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be
devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon, and rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-beast; Heracles with his twelve famous
labours against giants and monsters; and all the rest -


Who dared, in the god-given might of their manhood,
Greatly to do and to suffer, and far in the fens and the forests
Smite the devourers of men, heaven-hated brood of the giants;
Transformed, strange, without like, who obey not the golden-haired
rulers.


These are figures whose divine moral beauty has sunk into the