sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of
the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of
humanity his scepticism rises in protest.

It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the
various theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths.
The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities
stand for the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods and
goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summer
and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that the
personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. The
Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baals
of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations of
the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbol
of the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and protean
characteristics of water. It is very natural that this should be so, and
every one who has ever felt the power of the sun in the East will
sympathise with Turner's dying words, "The sun, he is God."

As a key to mythology this theory was especially associated with the
name of Plutarch among ancient writers, and it has been accepted more or
less completely by a vast number of moderns. In the late Sir George
Cox's fascinating stories it was run to utter absurdity. The story is
beautifully told in every case, and when we have enjoyed it and felt
something of the exquisiteness of the conception and of the variety and
range of thought exhibited in the fertile minds of those who had first
told it, Sir George Cox draws us back sharply to the assertion that all
we have been hearing really meant another phase of sunset or sunrise,
until we absolutely rebel and protest that the effect is unaccountable
upon so meagre a cause. It is an easy method of dealing with folk-lore.