Let me say forthwith that this is a book which I shall read with deep interest, but to which I contribute reluctantly. There is gloom enough in the air, and I see no profit in adding the scruples and doubts of my troubled mind to the general sum. For I can find little reason for hope in the evils that have fallen upon the world; and where are the signs of the wisdom that is to be born of these calamitous times? When all is over and in the hush of desolation we have leisure to reckon up the cost of our madness, will it appear that we have learned the meaning of the sentimental shirking of realities? Or shall we continue, as we have done for a century and more, to place sympathy above justice, and to forget the responsibility of the individual in our insistence on the obligations of society; inflaming the passions of men by rebellious outcries against the unequal dealings of Fate, relaxing the immediate bonds of duty by vague dreams of the brotherhood of man, weakening character by reluctance to pursue crime with punishment, preparing the way for outbursts of hatred by fostering the emotions at the expense of reason; and then, in alarm at our effeminacy, rushing to the opposite glorification of sheer force and efficiency? One naturally hesitates to add this note of discouragement to a book in which others of clearer vision will no doubt record the signs of returning balance and sanity among men.
Meanwhile, I have found, if not hope, at least moments of tragic purgation in another sort of reading. By chance I have been going through some of the plays of Euripides this summer, particularly those that deal with the disasters of Troy and Troy’s besiegers, and the pathos of these scenes has blended strangely with the news that reaches me once a day from the city. Inevitably the imagination turns to comparisons between the present and the remote past. So, for instance, the very day that brought me the request to contribute to the Belgian relief I was reading the story of Iphigenia, sacrificed in order that the Greek army might sail from Aulis and reach its destination:
O father! were the tongue of Orpheus mine,
To charm the stones with song to follow me,
And throw the spell of words on whom I would,
So should I speak. But now, as I am wise
In tears, and only tears, I speak through these.
This body which my mother bore to thee,
Low at thy knees I lay, imploring thus
To spare my unripe youth. Sweet is the light
To human eyes; oh! force me not to see
Those dark things under earth! I first of all
Called thee by name of “father”; heard “my child”;
I first here on thy knees gave and received
The little, dear, caressing joys of love.
And I recall thy words: “O girl,” thou saidst,
“Shall ever I behold thee in thy home
Happy and prosperous as becomes thy sire?”
And my words too, while then my tiny hand
Clung to thy beard, as now I cling: “And I,
Some day when thou art old, within my halls,
Dearer for this, shall I receive thee, father;
And with such love repay thy fostering care?”
These words still in my memory lodge; but thou
Must have forgotten, willing now my death.
By Pelops and thy father Atreus, oh,
And by my mother, who a second time
Must travail for my life, oh, hear my prayer!
Why should the wrongs of Helen fall on me,
Or why came Paris for my evil fate?
Yet turn thine eyes upon me, look and kiss,
That dying I at least may have of thee
This pledge of memory, if my prayer is vain.
O brother, little and of little aid,
Yet add thy tears to mine, and with them plead
To save thy sister. For in children still
Some sense of coming evil moves the heart.
See, father, how he pleads who cannot speak;
Thou wilt have mercy and regard my youth.
From this passage, which furnished Landor with the theme of one of the most beautiful, in some respects the most classical, of modern poems, it is natural to turn to the still more exquisite account of the death of Polyxena, the youngest daughter of Hecuba, slain as a peace-offering to the shade of Achilles. The brave words and self-surrender of the girl are related to the stricken mother by the herald Talthybius:
“O Argives, ye have brought my city low,
And I will die; yet, for I bare my throat,
Myself unflinching, touch me not at all.
As ye would please your gods, let me die free
Who have lived free; and slay me as ye will.
For I am queenly born, and would not go
As a slave goes to be among the dead.”
Then all the people shouted, and the king
Called to the youths to set the maiden free;
And at the sheer command the young men heard,
And drew their hands away, and touched her not.
And she too heard the cry and the command;
Then straightway grasped her mantle at the knot,
And rent it downwards to the middle waist,
So standing like a statue, with her breast
And bosom bared, most beautiful, a moment;
Then kneeling spoke her last heroic words:
“This is my breast, O youth, if here the blow
Must fall; or if thou choose my neck,
Strike; it is ready.”
And Achilles’ son,
Willing and willing not, for very ruth,
Cleft with his iron blade the slender throat,
And let the life out there. And this is true,
That even in death she kept her maiden shame,
And falling drew her robe against men’s eyes.
These pathetic scenes, we should remember, were enacted before the people of Athens at a time when the lust of empire and the greed of expanding commerce had thrown Greece into a war which was to leave the land distracted and impoverished of its men, to be a prey to the ambitions of Alexander and the armies of Rome. What deep and poignant emotions Euripides stirred in the breasts of the spectators those can guess who have seen his Iphigenia and Trojan Women acted in English in these similar days of trial. And the catharsis, or tragic purgation, was the same then as now, only more perfect, no doubt, and purer. By these echoes of cruel deeds, ancient even in the years of the Peloponnesian war, the mind is turned from immediate calamities and apprehensions to reflecting on the fatality of sin and madness that rests on mankind, not now alone but at all times. With the tears shed for strange, far-off things, some part of the bitterness of our personal grief is carried away; the constriction of resentment, as if somehow Fate were our special enemy, is loosened, and the hatred of cruel men that clutches the heart is relaxed in pity for the everlasting tragedy of human life. Instead of rebellion we learn resignation. When at last Iphigenia surrenders herself to be a victim for the host, the chorus commend her act and draw this moral:
Noble and well, it is with thee, O child;
The will of fortune and the god is sick.
In later times Lucretius was to take up this thought, and in repeating the story of Iphigenia was to denounce the very notion of divine interference in perhaps the most terrible line that ever poet wrote:
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
That is one way of regarding the evils of human destiny, as if they were the work of blind chance, but not the wise way; for at the end of such atheism only madness lies. The truer counsel is in that humility which faces the facts, yet acknowledges the impotence of man’s reason to act as judge in these high matters. Christianity and paganism come close together in the lesson taught by Euripides: