the Greek despot. Nevertheless his strong patriotism and his valour enlist our sympathy for him against his feebler and more inconsistent brother. I have already noted above (p. 80), how in smaller touches Euripides has contrasted the brothers. Polynices, the gentler and weaker of the two, plays the part of the ruthless invader of his native land; the stern Eteocles is its patriotic defender, nevertheless our sympathies are with the exile, though he attempt what the Greeks would call parricide against his country.
79. Far more dramatic, but not more interesting, is the Pentheus of the Bacchæ, who may be compared in some respects with Sophocles' Œdipus, inasmuch as his headstrong obstinacy urges him into a hopeless snare. But Œdipus is stricken with a family curse, from which nothing could relieve him; he is personally respectable and interesting, whereas Pentheus is painted as a hot-headed and self-sufficient youth, who in spite of advice and warning determines to crush the new Bacchic cult, and perishes tragically in the attempt. He is therefore altogether a hero of circumstance and not of character.
80. The same may be said of Orestes in two of the plays in which lie appears (the Orestes and Electra),[1] as the agent of Apollo to avenge his father's murder upon his mother, and suffers in consequence from the dreadful madness of remorse. This famous conception—the Greek Hamlet—was again due to Æschylus, and as we might expect, Euripides rehandled it rather in the direction of adding character than pathos to the hero.
It is very interesting, but would require a separate essay to compare the Greek conception of this situation with that of Shakspere. Of course the Greeks looked upon the father as much more important than the mother; and any hesitation in slaying the criminal Ægisthus would have been to them quite unnatural. But while Sophocles, at the close of his Electra
- ↑ His part in the Andromache is not worth noticing here.
