O daughter, God is strange and all his ways
Past finding out. So for his own good will
He turns the fortunes of mankind about,
And hither thither moves.
That is the element of religious purgation which Euripides brought to the people of Athens when their whole horizon was darkened by war. But this is not all. Indeed, were this all, we should reject such consolation indignantly, as being akin to that form of humanitarianism which has been disintegrating modern society by throwing the responsibility for crime anywhere except on the individual delinquent. Euripides may have found alleviation in the universal mystery of evil, but neither he, in his better moments, nor any other of the true Greeks turned consolation into license, or doubted that a sure nemesis followed the infractions of justice, or the insolence of pride, or the errors of guilty ignorance:
Strong are the gods, and stronger yet the law
That sways them; even as by the law we know
The gods exist, and in our life divide
The bounds of right and wrong.
The madness of Troy and the Achaean army may have been the work of heaven, but no small part of Greek tragedy, from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus to the Hecuba of Euripides, is taken up with the tale of retribution that came to this man and that for his arrogance or folly. So are consolation and admonition bound together. If their union in ancient ethics seems paradoxical, or even contradictory, it is nevertheless confirmed by the teaching of Christianity: For evil must come into the world, but woe unto him through whom it comes.
It is a curious and disquieting fact that the poet who was able to compress the moral of Greek tragedy into a single memorable stanza, belongs to the people who, if there is any truth in that moral, must shortly reckon with the nemesis appointed for sins of presumption and cruelty.
Ihr zieht ins Leben uns hinein;
Ihr lasst den armen schuldig werden;
Dann überlasst ihr ihn der Pein;
Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.
Paul Elmer More
JACQUES-ÉMILE BLANCHE
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE MOORE
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING