CHAPTER VII.
HEROES, HERALDS, SLAVES.
76. The heroes of Euripides are by no means so prominent or so interesting as his heroines. While he has succeeded, among the latter, in creating immortal types, there is hardly a single hero in his extant plays of whom so much could be asserted. In Ion and in Hippolytus we have indeed charming pictures of youthful freshness and innocence, not without a certain preoccupation which seems like callousness, and shows a want of sympathy with the passions of manhood. And these have lived through in Racine's Joas, and the "Garçon insensible" of other French dramas. The fate of Hippolytus is indeed deeply tragic. Though he feels he has been tricked into an oath, and that in his heart he is unsworn, yet so honourably does he adhere to the once exacted obligation, that he abandons his country and home, and submits to the roost' dreadful imputations, rather than break his faith. Yet withal he is not a really great hero. For the vengeance of Aphrodite, which works his ruin, can hardly be called the natural result or his character and circumstances, and is rather the external interference of a mischievous Providence, which uses him as a toy or plaything. So also Achilles in the Aulid Iphigenia—a perfect gentleman, courteous, chivalrous, and sympathetic—does not play the chief or even a tragic part in the action. Such again is Pylades, always a secondary character, the affectionate friend of Orestes, the devoted supporter of
