old sagas pretend? There is here again the touch of mysticism.
But however it be about Helen, or even about the above explanation in detail of the last scene of the Orestes, it is clear that both the most characteristic plays of the so-called period of gloom end with a strong, almost a mystically strong, note of peace and reconciliation. This note occurs, though with less intensity, at the end of other late plays, such as the Iphigenîa in Tauris and the Helena; and, though without a god, in the Phoenissae. It does not occur at all in the early plays. The Medea and Hecuba end in pure hate; the Hippolytus ends in wonderful beauty and a reconciliation between the hero and his father, who are natural friends, but it keeps up the feud of Aphrodite and Artemis and contains a strange threat of vengeance (v. 1420 ff.) The lovely Thetis of the Andromache brings comfort and rest but preaches no forgiveness; on the contrary the body of Pyrrhus is to be buried at Delphi as an eternal reproach. Euripides all through his life was occupied with the study of revenge. It was a time, as Thucydides tells us, when "men tried to surpass all the record of previous times in the ingenuity of their enterprises and the enormity
