EURIPIDES IN A HYMN.
"Yes, dear Van! that is how you should behave. Imply things."
George Meredith.
It has been the object of the foregoing essay to show that the Iphigenia in Taurica rests, like the works of the poet in general, upon a hypothesis, in relation to the Olympian anthropomorphic religion, purely 'atheistic', that no such person as Apollo is required or admissible as an agent in the story which the dramatist presents. The dramatis personae are believers in Apollo, to their sorrow and confusion; the dramatist does not pretend, or barely pretends, to believe in him at all. We are not however bound to infer from this that the poet must hold himself altogether unconcerned in the variations (if we may say so) of orthodoxy, in the disputes which had arisen or were liable to rise between different worshippers of Apollo. On the contrary, nothing could suit his purpose better than to bring such divisions into light. It was one of the chief difficulties, by which polytheistic paganism was embarrassed, so soon as the spread of intellectual training created a demand for system and regularity in belief (for a 'creed' in short, to use the familiar term) that the existing traditions, having been designed in separate pieces to suit the interests of separate religious centres unconnected one with the other, insubordinate, and even sharply antagonistic, could scarcely be fitted into a harmonious whole without sleight or violence not easy to be practised under the eyes of the enemy. What paganism wanted, but naturally never could get, was an oecumenical council, or a supreme court of theological appeal. Aeschylus no doubt would gladly have given such a function to the Areopagus, nor is it inconceivable that half Hellas might
