Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/161

Rh Another note is also struck, that of pity for the suffering of humanity. Orestes and Electra, condemned to part, break, as they bid one another farewell, into a great cry, and the gods, hearing it, are shaken:

Alas! what would ye? For that cry Ourselves and all the sons of heaven Have pity; yea, our peace is riven By the strange pain of these that die. But hark! The far Sicilian sea Calls, and a noise of men and ships That labour sunken to the lips In bitter billows; forth go we With saving.

They speak such words of comfort and groping wisdom as they can find—no one has ever claimed that they are omniscient—and depart upon their own eternal task, which is not to punish but to save.

The appearance of the gods in the Electra is so beautiful that no critics have yet tried to explain it away as nonsense; and the lesson of it so clear that its meaning is seldom denied. But I find just the same lesson in the final scene of the Orestes, which is commonly taken as the very worst instance of Euripides' habit of closing with a "God from the machine."