Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/103

Rh But with Euripides his ideals came before his actual surroundings. He loved Athens because Athens meant certain things, and if the real Athens should cease to mean those things he would cast her out of his heart. At least he would try to do so; in point of fact that is always a very difficult thing to do. But if ever Athens should be false, it was pretty certain that Euripides would find hatred mingling with his betrayed love. There were signs of this even in the Medea and the Hecuba.

But before dealing with that subject we must dwell for a few moments upon another fine play, which marks in more than one sense the end of a period. The Heracles, written about the year 423, shows Theseus in the same rôle of Athenian hero. In the Suppliant Women he had helped Adrastus and the Argive mothers and shown them the path of true Hellenism; in the Heracles he comes to the rescue of Heracles in his fall. That hero has been mad and slain his own children; he has recovered and awakes to find himself bound to a pillar, with dead bodies that he cannot recognize round about him. He rages to be set free. He compels those who know to tell him the whole truth. Frantic with