“Wherefore, then, did ye suffer him to be killed?” thou wilt ask me, and indeed I ask myself. If I were to answer thee in the way Jesus was wont to answer us, I would say, “Why did ye Hellenes condemn Socrates to the hemlock?” For he was as much the Ideal of the Hellenes as Jesus of the Jews. Every Hellene would be eloquent and reasonable, and that was Socrates. Every Jew would be wise and good and pious, and that was Jesus. Yet each of these men, if I read their lives aright, died the death of a criminal, because he cared not for that which his fellow‐countrymen cared for most. Socrates died because he would force his countrymen to examine by their reason the ideas and ideals which they all accepted. Jesus died for the same reason, but also for another—for that he cared naught for our national hopes. We were all panting for national freedom; he would have naught of it. Whether it was that he felt in some sort to be not of our nation, I know not; but in all his teaching he dealt with us as men, not as Jews. It is this, I can see, that has attracted thee to his doctrine, whereas thou wert always scornful of our Jewish pretensions, as thou calledst them. Yet herein again was he at one with the best thoughts of our Sages. Our God is the God of all, and his Law shall be one day the Law of all. If we yearn for the universal realm of the Messiah, it is as much for the sake of the world as for ourselves. But methinks I see in the thoughts of this Jesus an idea quite other than ours as to what the Anointed One shall be and shall do. We hope for him as a Deliverer and a Conqueror with force of arms by God’s aid. Now, Jesus seemed not to think of the Anointed One in any way like this. His mind seemed to be filled rather with the picture of the Servant of God as drawn by the Prophet Esaias. Thou knowest the passage, Aglaophonos; I remember thy laughter when first I read it thee, that men could look forward to contempt and hatred as a good. Truly the idea is far different from the saying of the barbarian, “Woe to the conquered!” And surely to us all, Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, the greatest of joys is this—to worst an equal foe in fair fight. But to Esaias the prophet, and to Jesus the Nazarene after him, the higher victory is with him that is worsted in the battle of life. That will come as good tidings to nine out of every ten of men. Therefore, if Jesus thought of himself as the Anointed One, it was as being anointed with the woes of the vanquished, with the sweat and the blood of the lowly and despised. Now I know why he seemed so sad when he was greeted at Jerusalem as a victor. He had spent his life in trying to impress a new ideal upon his people, and they had welcomed him only as the fulfilment of the old ideal which he desired to replace. None of thy poets have given a drama with more of _eironeia_ in it than this.