Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/26

xxii brought about by the intervention of deities, of Hermes and Athena respectively. What the modern girds at as the chronique scandaleuse of Olympus, bore a very different aspect to the average Greek. Instead of degrading the Gods, it elevated man. They thought of their ancestors, the founders of cities and institutions, as sons of God, and of themselves as of one family with the Heavenly Ones. It was, therefore, natural that the Gods should intervene in crises of the fate of the nation or its founders. Had not ancient heroes of the blood of Gods fought for them at Marathon? Had not Pan himself been the herald of that victory? Had not Athena's presence and voice kindled the onset at Salamis? The age of miracles was, for the average Greek, in no sense past, and it did him good to be reminded of this. Homer was his "Shorter Catechism," and when the boy at school learnt from the Odyssey how

his master did not explain to him that this was but an old-world fable. And that a dramatist who may himself have held higher and worthier views of the Deity should here have conformed to popular conceptions, is evidence, not of inconsistency, but of wisdom. "He fed them with milk, and not with strong meat." To help men to be honest and true, to be haters of injustice and jealous for the right, the old faith was better than the new scepticism.

2. His second object may well have been to make men better patriots, by recalling to the spectators' minds the divine origin of their race, their city, their religious institutions, and their national policy. In seven out of the nine