PREFACE
make-believe. He would not elude the horror of this story by simply not mentioning it, like Homer, or by pretending that an evil act was a good one, like Sophocles. He faces the horror; realizes it; and tries to surmount it on the sweep of a great wave of religious emotion. The mother-murder, even if done by a god's command, is a sin; a sin to be expiated by unfathomable suffering. Yet, since the god cannot have commanded evil, it is a duty also. It is a sin that must be committed." The crucial difference is that the Choëphoroe is not self-contained, while the other plays are. They are concerned with a particular story; it is part of a trilogy dealing with the great problem which lies at the centre of Greek religion—Hubris, Dike, Soteria or Crime, Punishment and Deliverance. (I may refer the reader to my introductions to the Agamemnon and to Euripides' Electra.)
Thus, though to the Greek student this is perhaps, of all extant tragedies, the most obscure in detail of language, to the English reader it is not hard to understand. The atmosphere indeed is very ancient: it demands imaginative effort: but the sympathy goes as we would wish it to go and the story tells itself Only two points call for special comment.
The first is the name of the play.[1] The other two plays are called Electra, after the chief character: this is called Choëphoroe, or Libation-Bearers, after the Chorus. For in truth the subjects are not,
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