, 118) relates the story of
Darius permitting the wife of Intophernes to save one of her relatives
from death and who chooses her brother, for reasons like those
advanced by Antigone. It has been shown (_Zeitschrift f. d.
Oesterreich Gymn_., 1898; see also _Frankfurter Zeitung_, July 22, 24,
27, 1899; _Hermes_, XXVIII.) that this idea occurs in old tales and
poems of India, Persia, China, as well as among the Slavs,
Scandinavians, etc. If Sophocles did introduce this notion into his
tragedy (and there is no reason for doubting it except the unwarranted
assumption that he was too great a genius to make such a blunder), he
did it in a bungling way, for inasmuch as Antigone's brother is dead
she cannot benefit her family by favoring him at the expense of her
betrothed; and moreover, her act of sacrificing herself in order to
secure the rest of a dear one's soul--which alone might have partly
excused her heartless and unromantic ignoring and desertion of her
lover--is bereft of all its nobility by her equally heartless
declaration that she would not have thus given her life for a husband
or a child. These Greek poets knew so little of true femininity that
they could not draw a female character without spoiling it.

[304] The unduly extolled [Greek: Epos] chorus in the _Antigone_
expresses nothing more than the universal power of love in the Greek
conception of the term.

[305] In Mueller's book on the Doric race we read (310) that the love
of the Corinthian Philolaus and Diocles "lasted until death," and even
their graves were turned toward one another, in token of their
affection. Lovers in Athens carved the beloved's names on walls, and
innumerable poems were addressed by the leading bards to their
favorites.

[306] Compare Ramdohr, III., 191 and 124.

[307] I have before me a dictonary which defines Platonic love as it
is now universally, and incorrectly, understood, as "a pure spiritual
affection subsisting between the sexes, unmixed with carnal desires, a
species of love for which Plato was a warm advocate." In reality
Platonic (i.e. Socratic) love has nothing whatever to do with women,
but is a fantastic and probably hypocritical idealization of a species
of infatuation which in our day is treated neither in poems nor in
dialogues, nor discussed in text-books of psychology or physiology,
but relegated to treatises on mental diseases and abnormalities. In
fact, the whole philosophy of Greek love may be summed up i