ting
Her treason-lore;
Sing of the outraged maid;
Tell of the wife betrayed
Of him who hath displayed his false heart's core--"

The nature of the characters of Euripides is the most important of all
the testimony of the plays as evidence of the social life of Athens,
since the poet drew them from real life, and consequently his men and
his women are necessarily fair specimens of the men and women to be
found in Athenian society. It is noticeable that the men are, as a rule,
far inferior to the women, both in manners and in nobility of character,
and are not to be compared with the heroes of AEschylus and Sophocles.
Hippolytus is indeed a notable example of youthful purity; Pylades, of
unselfish friendship; Achilles, of courtly chivalry; Ion, of youthful
piety; Theseus, of devoted patriotism; and the peasant husband of
Electra, of knightly regard; but the majority of the male characters are
selfish, quarrelsome, and ordinary. How different do we find the case
when we consider the dramatist's women!

Differing from his countrymen in the conception of the character,
capabilities, and rights of woman, Euripides has in his plays presented
ideals of a womanhood which would give woman something higher to live
for than the drudgery of household duties, and would raise the sex in
the estimation of men. Heroism in everyday life is the lesson he
constantly teaches by the examples of such women as Alcestis, the
devoted wife and mother; as Polyxena, the brave martyr-maiden; as
Andromache, faithful in thraldom to the memory of her valiant husband;
as Macaria and Iphigenia, sacrificing themselves for the sake of a great
cause; and as Electra, the devoted sister. Nowhere can one find a longer
catalogue of noble women, not heroines of prehistoric days living in a
golden age, but women who in character and sentiments were like to those
met with every day in every community. Euripides's heart was burdened by
the sorrows and wrongs of the sex; and he combated the social system
which was at the root of the evil, not by violent assaults upon it, not
by seeking to overturn that which was the product of centuries and was
a natural result of the Greek idea of the city-state, but by showing
women how they could better their condition and by giving men more
exalted ideas of the nature of woman. Says Mr. Arthur S. Way, the
translator and ardent advocate of Euripides, who, of all Greek scholars,
has most profound