his house, ever ready to help and to encourage, but in no sense a figure of real importance in the Euripidean drama, though the mutual affection of the friends has made their relation more interesting and suggestive than the characters themselves. There are also national types, such as the kings of Athens—Theseus and Demophon—who are intended to personify all the virtues of the Athenians, and to play the anachronous part of constitutional kings in the heroic age. So also Menelaus is often the embodiment of the Spartan foes, who were devastating the fields and decimating the youth of Athens all through the poet's later life. But it is the treachery and selfishness, not the military prowess of the Spartans, that Euripides paints for his audience.
77. He is, indeed, rich in feeble querulous heroes, apart from the ragged heroes of suffering, whom Aristophanes derides. The Agamemnon of his Iphigenia is a palmary instance. All through the play he is drifting hither and thither, inventing paltry subterfuges, playing the king without policy or firmness, an object of contempt and of pity to his stronger subjects. All this is exceedingly dramatic, but only suited to a secondary character. Very similar is the drawing of Admetus, the hospitable but selfish and weak husband of Alcestis. We feel the protestations that he would join her in death are not in real earnest, or if so they are but momentary resolves, and his lamentations are rather for his own loss than for the sorrows of his noble wife. I have already pointed out (p. 94), how exceedingly dramatic are these very defects in the bereaved husband.
78. We find in the Eteocles of the Phœnissæ a nearer approach to a tragic hero. The conception was due to Æschylus, so that Euripides cannot be credited with originality either in the character or the situation. But the warlike energy of the man, and the boldness with which he derides the idea of surrendering his once acquired power to his brother, even though justice was against him—this was a life portrait of
