THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
"This is my breast, O youth, if here the blow
Must fall; or if thou choose my neck,
Strike; it is ready."
And Achilles' son,
Willing and willing not, for very ruth.
Cleft with his iron blade the slender throat,
And let the life out there. And this is true.
That even in death she kept her maiden shame.
And falling drew her robe against men's eyes.
These pathetic scenes, we should remember, were enacted before the people of Athens at a time when the lust of empire and the greed of expanding commerce had thrown Greece into a war which was to leave the land distracted and impoverished of its men, to be a prey to the ambitions of Alexander and the armies of Rome. What deep and poignant emotions Euripides stirred in the breasts of the spectators those can guess who have seen his Iphigena and Trojan Women acted in English in these similar days of trial. And the catharsis, or tragic purgation, was the same then as now, only more perfect, no doubt, and purer. By these echoes of cruel deeds, ancient even in the years of the Peloponnesian war, the mind is turned from immediate calamities and apprehensions to reflecting on the fatality of sin and madness that rests on mankind, not now alone but at all times. With the tears shed for strange, far-off things, some part of the bitterness of our personal grief is carried away; the constriction of resentment, as if somehow Fate were our special enemy, is loosened, and the hatred of cruel men that clutches the heart is relaxed in pity for the everlasting tragedy of human life. Instead of rebellion we learn resignation. When at last Iphigenia surrenders herself to be a victim for the host, the chorus commend her act and draw this moral:
Noble and well, it is with thee, O child;
The will of fortune and the god is sick.
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