his terms and make peace with him. A fine melodrama, one would guess, and a move in the direction of realism—a direction which Euripides only followed within certain strict limits. But we find two marks of Euripides the philosopher. The beggar who pleads for reasonable justice towards the national enemy strikes a note which Euripides himself often had to sound afterwards. It was not for nothing that Aristophanes in his Acharnians, thirteen years later, used a parody of this scene in order to plead the dangerous cause of reasonableness towards Sparta. The other mark is a curious tang of sadness at the close. The Greeks demand that Telephus, so brave and resourceful, shall be their ally against Troy. But his wife is a Trojan princess and he refuses. He consents reluctantly to show the army the road to his wife's fatherland and then turns away.
The remaining play of the trilogy performed in 438 strikes a chord that proved more dangerous to Euripides. The Cretan Women told the story of Aëropê, a Cretan princess who secretly loved a squire or young soldier. Her intrigue is discovered, and her father gives her to a Greek sailor to throw into the sea. The sailor spares her life and takes her
