Page:Books and men.djvu/178

 168 Sophocles says uncompromisingly that man's happiest fate is not to be born at all; and that, failing this good fortune, the next best thing is to die as quickly as possible. Menander expresses the same thought more sweetly:—

and Euripides, the most reverent soul ever saddened by the barrenness of paganism, forces into one bitter line all the bleak hopelessness of which the Greek tragedy alone is capable:—

Even as isolated sentiments, these ever-recurring reflections diminish perceptibly the sum of a nation's gayety, and, if we receive the drama as the mouthpiece of the people, we are inclined to wonder now and then how they ever could have been cheerful at all. It is easy, on the other hand, to point to Admetos and Antigone as two standing examples of the great value the Greeks placed upon life; for the sacrifice of Alkestis was not in their eyes the sordid bargain it appears in ours, and the daughter of Œdipus goes to her death with a