Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/123

Rh his lead were the same sort of people who would naturally be terrified about the mutilation of a taboo image or an eclipse of the divine moon. What they had, perhaps, acquired from the sophistic movement was a touch of effrontery. Boeotians or Acarnanians might commit crimes, when they needed to, by instinct, without stating their reasons: in Athens you had at least to discuss the principle of the proposed crime and accept it for what it was worth. A cynic or a hypocrite trained in a sophistic school might offer occasional help with the theory.

Perhaps the earliest touch of Euripides' bitterness against his country comes, as we have seen, in the Hecuba (p. 89). But the period we have just reached, soon after the Heracles, is marked by one of the most ironic and enigmatical plays he ever wrote. The Ion is interesting in every line and contains one scene which is sometimes considered the most poignant in all Greek tragedy, yet it leaves every reader unsatisfied. Is it a pious offering to Apollo, the ancestor of the Ionian race? If so, why is Apollo the villain of the piece? Is it a glorification of ancient Athens, her legends and her shrines? If so, why are the shrines polluted by lustful gods, the legends