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126 tragedy of the wronged woman and the charming carelessness of the foundling's life. We should remember that an attack on the god of Delphi was not particularly objectionable in Athens. For that god, by the mouth of his official prophets, at the beginning of the war, had assured the Spartans that if they fought well they would conquer and that He, the God, would be fighting for them. The best that a pious Athenian could do for such a god as that was to suppose that the official prophets were liars. Still Euripides attacks much more than Delphi. If his thoughts ever strike home, it is not merely Delphi that will fall, it is the whole structure of Greek ritual and mythology. It is against the gods and against Athens that his irony cuts sharpest.

Irony is the mood of one who has some strong emotion within but will not quite trust himself on the flood of it. And romance is largely the mood of one turning away from realities that disgust him. In the year 416 B.C. Euripides, in his relation to Athens, was shaken for the first time out of any thought of either romance or irony. During the summer and winter of that year there occurred an event of very small military importance and no direct political consequences, to which nevertheless