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With the first two of these dogmas we are not now concerned. As to the real nature of Euripides' ideas on the third, we shall get the clearest view if we consider first the characters of his theatre, then the general body of his plays, and lastly, those four dramas which are particularly concerned with the relations between men and women.

The two sexes may be sub-divided, according to[90] Greek fashion, into six classes: Old man, man, young man, old woman, woman, young woman; and it must be acknowledged at once that Euripides, like most Greeks, is quite lacking in any reverence for age. His old men are apt to be dotards and are treated with humorous contempt. Amphitryon in the Hercules is a type: he lives in a world of illusion: he sees visions and dreams dreams, but when serious counsel or vigorous action are necessary he is useless. Cadmus and Teiresias in the Bacch are characters of the same sort. They are meant to be humorous, and the scene in which the two old men, wagging their hoary heads, prepare to dance and sing is pure burlesque. Cadmus agrees with Amphitryon in his religious views: he is ready to accept the miraculous, if it is profitable; and he scarcely troubles to make any pretence. As regards the divinity of the new god Dionysus, his sentiments are that, as 'The fellow anyhow is my daughter's son: it is my duty as head of the family to make out that he is a great god'. Cadmus and Amphitryon are at least partly self-deceived; geus is a mere butt. The old gentleman, who believes that his virility can be restored by magic art, is a child in Medea's hands, and the scene between the two is Aristophanic in its outspoken frankness.

Generally speaking, old men in Euripides are impotent: when they are allowed to act, their[91] energies---Tyndareus for example, and the old servant in the Ion---are mischievous. In one case only do old men play a worthy part; when they are resisting the wanton violence of some full-grown man who is attacking women and children. Sometimes, as with Peleus and Iolaus, they succeed; sometimes they fail; but in either case their essential weakness is a foil to the presumptuous strength of their opponent.

Coming now to the second class, that of grown men, we get three main types: there is the mean man, the blusterer, and the simpleton. Jason and Admetus are mean men: mean, selfish and cowardly: capable of asking a woman to save their lives at the risk of her own, but incapable of gratitude. Still they are handsome, good company, and quite unconscious of their own shortcomings. Menelaus is a worse type and one that the poet especially disliked. He adds to meanness the vices of cruelty and treachery and is the slave of passion. In the Orestes he is coldly treacherous, in the Andromache treacherous and cruel, in the other plays where he appears merely despicable. Then come the blusterers: Agamemnon and Heracles, Lycus and Eurystheus. The first two are the ordinary sensual man: brave enough and capable of great deeds, but unfaithful, untruthful and self-indulgent: they seem to be strong, and they are strong in body; but they have[92] no strength of mind. Lycus and Eurystheus are men of a lower type, mere bullies depending solely on force, and Euripides does not attempt to make them interesting. Lastly, there are the simpletons: Xuthus, Thoas and Theoclymenus---an easy prey for the clever women---the Priestess, Iphigenia, Helen who use them as they will. They are the men who with advancing age will be such as geus and Amphitryon. And they almost exhaust the list in our second class. There remain only Theseus, a patriotic abstraction, the male counterpart of Athena; Creon, 'the King'---the name is given to more than one person---an official rather than a living character; and some few persons in the second plan of action: such as the herald Talthybius and the peasant farmer in the Electra. These two latter occupy very subordinate positions, but they are in every way more manly, more generous, more lovable than the great men whom they serve. If we except them, there is not a grown man in the whole theatre of Euripides who can be regarded with sympathy.

When we come to the young men we are in a brighter world. Euripides is essentially the poet of youth, and his younger characters are always lovable. The heroic boy Menceus and the kind lad Ion are figures drawn with a tender hand. But soon the shadows of the prison house draw in,[93] and the slight hardness which is visible even in Ion becomes intensified in Achilles, and still more in Hippolytus. The older the person, the less attractive he becomes. Achilles and Hippolytus are very much like the public school boy of our day; in many spheres of conduct they are thoroughly reliable: truthful, self-denying and courageous: but they are cruelly hampered by the influence of an environment which shuts out the influence of woman at the most impressionable time of a man's life. Hippolytus is something of a prig and into his mouth, in the well-known speech, Euripides puts all the stock invective against women. The words are not the lad's own views: he is too young to have had much experience of women, good or bad: they are literature, the views of other men expressed in books and unconsciously assimilated by the younger generation.

Hippolytus is an ascetic and exaggerates: Achilles is a more manly character. His first impulses are generous, but he does not carry them into effect, for he is too much under the influence of other people's opinion: 'good form' is his guide in life. He has moreover, all a young man's vanity. 'Countless girls are setting traps to catch me as husband' he says; and he is deeply hurt to think that he is not consulted---'I would have agreed to her death, if I had been asked, but I was not; so I will help you.'[94] This is the best champion that Clytemnestra can find to save her daughter.

The remaining five characters, men unmarried, but full-grown, are less interesting. Pentheus is the typical 'self-pleaser': wilful, violent and intolerant. That he happens to be right in his particular case does not make him more sympathetic nor does it alter the justice of his fate. His mode of thought is wrong. Savage repression is not the way to deal with a cause which enlists women as its chief votaries and is kept active by their enthusiasm. The other pairs, Orestes and Pylades, Eteocles and Polynices, require little notice. All four have the curse of Cain upon them: they draw the sword and fall by the sword. They are murderers first and foremost, and chiefly interesting to the criminologist.

So much then for Euripides' men. Let us now contrast them in their monotony of type---impute it to the poet or the sex as you will---with the infinite variety of his women: Phdra, Andromache, Hermion, Cresa, Megara, Helen, Alcestis, Clytemnestra, Medea. There is every shade of conduct here and nearly every form of marital complication, if we remember that none of these wives are in love with their husbands and that romantic affection between husband and wife is impossible. They are all---when they have children---mothers first and wives afterwards; the childless woman---Hermion and,[95] apparently, Cresa---is embittered by her state and her conduct also is abnormal: she is anxious to take life because she has not given life.

The poet is at pains to show the impossibility of married love under Greek conditions. Phdra is married to an old man, who years before had seduced her sister. Andromache has been forcibly taken by the son of the man who slew her first husband. Hermion has been compelled for political reasons to give up her cousin-lover and marry a stranger. Medea after abandoning everything for her husband is deserted by him. Cresa has been seduced as a girl and as a 'pis aller' has married an elderly man. Megara has been abandoned by her roving husband: she and her children are on the point of being killed by a stranger when Heracles returns and murders them himself. Helen runs away from her lord; Clytemnestra has no words bad enough to use of hers.