Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/261

TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENÆJE with extraneous incident. In Iphigeneia in Aulis and Iphigeneia in Tauris he discovered a field and heroine of his own, and, especially in the former play, earns his right to be called "Euripides, the Human," and justifies the lines of Browning:

Without looking beyond the epic and dramatic poets, it is seen that the story of the woes of the House of Atreus assumes the foremost position as a theme for the daring efforts of the great masters of antique song. It also has been more deeply wrought into the heart and structure of general literature than any other tale of olden time. It has been cited and utilized by sages, historians, romancers, throughout the centuries even to the present day. The killing of Agamemnon became the ideal murder of imaginative literature, the standard from which all others take their measure; more truly so than that of Abel by Cain, because it involves a larger association of human motives, revenges, expiations. It has been treated in a hundred modes, from the primitive and serious chronicle of Homer to the charade enacted by Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley (the latter "quite killing in the part") before the noble guests of my lord, the Marquis of Steyne. [247]