Andromeda; they move among far seas and strange adventures and they have happy endings. Next there are the true tragedies, close to life, ruthlessly probing the depths of human nature; not more acutely bitter than such earlier works as the Medea and Hecuba, but with a bitterness more profound because it is comparatively free from indignation. The glory has fallen away and the burning anger with it. The poor miserable heroes and heroines . . . what else can you expect of them? Rage is no good; punishment worse than useless. The road to healing lies elsewhere.
A good key to the first of these types of play is to be seen in Aristophanes' comedy, The Birds. The gayest, sweetest and most irresponsible of all his plays, it was written just after the news of the final disaster in Sicily, when ruin stared Athens in the face. And the two heroes of it, disgusted with the ways of man, depart to live among the birds and build, with their help, a splendid Cloud City. In much the same spirit Euripides must have written his Andromeda. He produced it in 412, the same year in which he was invited by the anti-war government which came into power after the news of the great
