The “theological background” then being merely theatrical gauze and canvas, what of the human action? Though it forms an extraordinarily brilliant, powerful, fascinating spectacle, is it a tragedy?—the story ends with the appearance at any rate of joy and contentment. Yet tragedy is found not only in the death of the body but in the death of ideals; and the destruction of Ion’s faith in his all-knowing unerring father is a fate from which, when we remember his happy carolling upon the dawn-lit temple-steps, we could wish to see him saved even by the Gorgon’s venom. Any out-cry wherewith he might have challenged Creusa’s is checked by the cold disgust which fills him at the sound of Athena’s bland periods; but one knows the kind of man Athens will receive to-morrow—one who will agree with Xuthus that “these things don’t happen,”[591] who will be an admirable connoisseur of party politics,[592] but who has lost his vision. This, then, is spiritually, though not technically, a tragedy. Further, it is technically a melodrama. That is, the external form and texture is calculated to produce not as in tragedy simple, profound, and enduring exaltation, but more superficial, violent, and transitory emotion. The Pædagogus is pure melodrama, witness his change from senile helplessness[593] to ruthless vigour,[594] the wildness of his suggestions—“burn down the temple” ... “murder your husband”; the utter absence of remorse and secondary interests, characteristic of villainous subordinates in melodrama; his complete breakdown when it is demanded by the plot.[595] Such also is the confrontation of Ion and Creusa with the terrified women and scowling Delphians as a background. But the finest thrill, and the touch least justified by any standards save those of melodrama, occurs in the speech of Ion as he stands with the fateful basket in his arms and determines not to open it but to dedicate it to Apollo. The next moment he reflects that he must carry out the god’s will and discover his origin. The genuine plot halts so as to cause theatrical sensation.