This kind of theme was not in itself likely to please an audience; but what always galls the average theatre-goer most in a new work of genius is not the subject but the treatment. Euripides' treatment of his subject was calculated to irritate the plain man in two ways. First it was enigmatic. He did not label half his characters bad and half good; he let both sides state their case and seemed to enjoy leaving the hearer bewildered. And further, he made a point of studying closely and sympathetically many regions of thought and character which the plain man preferred not to think of at all. When Jason had to defend an obviously shabby case, no gentleman cared to hear him; but Euripides insisted on his speaking. He enjoyed tracking out the lines of thought and feeling which really actuate men, even fine men like Jason, in Jason's position. When Medea was revealed as obviously a wicked woman the plain man thought that such women should simply be thrashed, not listened to. But Euripides loved to trace all her complicated sense of injustice to its origins, and was determined to understand and to explain rather than to condemn. The plain man had a kind of justification for saying that Euripides actually seemed to like these traitors and wicked women; for such thorough understanding as this involves always a good deal of sympathy. This charge could with even more reason be brought against another masterpiece of drama, which followed three years after the Medea. The _Hippolytus_ (428 B.C.) did indeed win the first prize from the official judges, besides establishing itself in the admiration of after ages and inspiring Seneca and Racine to their finest work. But it profoundly shocked public opinion at the same time. The plot is a variant of a very old theme found in ancient Egypt and in the Pentateuch. Theseus, not here the ideal democrat on the Athenian throne, but the stormy and adventurous hero of the poets, had early in life conquered the Amazons and ravished their virgin Queen. She died, leaving a son like herself, Hippolytus. Theseus some twenty years after married Phaedra, the young daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and she by the evil will of Aphrodite fell in love with Hippolytus. She told no one her love, and was trying to starve herself to death, when her old Nurse contrived to worm the secret from her and treacherously, under an oath of secrecy, told it to Hippolytus. Phaedra, furious with the Nurse and with Hippolytus, in a blind rage of self-defence, writes a false accusation against Hippolytus and hangs herself. Hippolytus, charged by Theseus with the crime, will not break his oath and goes out to exile under his father's curse. The gods, in fulfilment of the curse, send death to him, but before he actually dies reveal his innocence. The story which might so easily be made ugly or sensual is treated by Euripides with a delicate and austere purity. In construction, too, and general beauty of workmanship, though