her." Then the Greeks come; and even before she knows who they
really are, the hard shell of her bitterness slowly yields. Her
heart goes out to them; she draws Orestes against his will into
talk; she insists on pitying him, insists on his pitying her; and
eventually determines, come what may, that she will save at least
the one stranger that she has talked with most. Presently comes
the discovery who the strangers are; and she is at once ready to
die with them or for them.

As for the scene in which Iphigenia befools Thoas, my moral
feelings may be obtuse, but I certainly cannot feel the slightest
compunction or shock at the heavy lying. Which of us would not
expect at least as much from his own sister, if it lay with her to
save him from the altars of Benin or Ashanti? I suspect that the
good people who lament over "the low standard of truthfulness
shown by even the most enlightened pagans" have either forgotten
the days when they read stories of adventure, or else have not, in
reading this scene, realised properly the strain of hairbreadth
peril that lies behind the comedy of it. A single slip in
Iphigenia's tissue of desperate improvisations would mean death,
and not to herself alone. One feels rather sorry for Thoas,
certainly, and he is a very fine fellow in his way; but a person
who insists on slaughtering strangers cannot expect those
strangers or their friends to treat him with any approach to
candour.

The two young men come nearer to mere ideal heroes de roman than
any other characters in Euripides. They are surprisingly handsome
and brave and unselfish and everything that they should be; and
they stand out like heroes against the mob of cowardly little