preceded the Alexandrians. The _Andromeda_ of Euripides, he
declares (23), "became in his hands one of the most brilliant examples
of chivalrous love." This, however, is a pure assumption on his part,
not warranted by the few fragments of this play that have been
preserved. Benecke has devoted a special "Excursus" to this play
(203-205), in which he justly remarks that readers of Greek literature
"need hardly be reminded of how utterly foreign to the Greek of
Euripides's day is the conception of the '_galante Ritter_' setting
out in search of ladies that want rescuing." He might have brought out
the humor of the matter by quoting the characteristically Greek
version of the Perseus story given by Apollodorus, who relates dryly
(II., chap. 4) that Cepheus, in obedience to an oracle, bound his
daughter to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster. "Perseus saw her,
fell in love with her, and promised Cepheus to slaughter the monster
_if he would promise to give him the rescued daughter to marry_. The
contract was made and Perseus undertook the adventure, killed the
monster and rescued Andromeda." Nothing could more strikingly reveal
the difference between Hellenic and modern ideas regarding lovers than
the fact that to the Greek mind there was nothing disgraceful in this
selfish, ungallant bargain made by Perseus as a condition of his
rescuing the poor girl from a horrible death. A mediaeval knight, or a
modern gentleman, not to speak of a modern lover, would have saved her
at the risk of his own life, reward or no reward. The difference is
further emphasized by the attitude of the girl, who exclaims to her
deliverer, "Take me, O stranger, for thine handmaiden, or wife, or
slave." Professor Murray, who cites this line in his _History of Greek
Literature_, remarks with comic naivete: "The love-note in this pure
and happy sense Euripides had never struck before." But what is there
so remarkably "pure and happy" in a girl's offering herself as a slave
to a man who has saved her life? Were not Greek women always expected
to assume that attitude of inferiority, submission, and
self-sacrifice? Was not _Alcestis_ written to enforce that principle
of conduct? And does not that very exclamation of Andromeda show how
utterly antipodal the situation and the whole drama of Euripides were
to modern ideas of chivalrous love?

Having just mentioned Benecke, I may as well add here that his own
theory regarding the first appearance of the ro