Of characterization, therefore, little is to be found. Cassandra, though her pathos is less deep and wide than that of her namesake in the _Agamemnon_, is yet valuable, as aiding in that perspective which is given mainly by the prologue. Talthybius and Andromache are ably sketched, but Menelaus and Helen are introduced merely for the sake of the elaborate dispute between Hecuba and Helen. It is upon Hecuba that the whole poem hangs—not upon her action or even her character, but upon her capacity for suffering. With the progress of the play she changes from the Queen of Troy to a figure summing up in herself all the sorrows of humanity. As each woe is faced, lamented, and at last assimilated into an ennobling experience, another disaster flings her back into the primitive outcry to begin once more the task of resignation. She is a pagan _mater dolorosa_. As each billow of grief descends upon her, leaving her still sentient, nay, filled with eager sympathy for others, the Greeks who oppress her become strangely puny and unreal like the legionaries in some mediæval picture of martyrdom. Even when she confesses to complete despair she yet the next moment begins to fashion within the abyss a tiny abode for hope: Astyanax may grow to manhood, “so that—if chance is kind—sons of thy blood may dwell again in Ilium, and there might yet be a city”.[609] Next moment the child is torn away to be flung from the battlements. Even so, Hecuba recovers her balance in the end and can deliver, as she stands over the little body, the stinging reproach[610] of a “barbarian” revolted by the crimes of “civilization”.[611] It is to this endless capacity for facing sorrow and transmuting it into rich experience that we owe one of the most beautiful and definite philosophic _dicta_ to be found in Euripides:— ὦ γῆς ὄχημα, κἀπὶ γῆς ἔχων ἕδραν ὅστις ποτ’ εἶ σύ, δυστόπαστος εἰδέναι, Ζεύς, εἴτ’ ἀνάγκη φύσεος, εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν, προσηυξάμην σε· πάντα γὰρ δι’ ἀψόφου βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ’ ἄγεις.[612] “O Throne of earth, by earth upheld, whosoe’er Thou art, beyond conjecture of our knowledge—Zeus, or the law of Nature, or the mind of Man, to Thee do I address my prayer; for moving along Thy soundless path Thou dost guide all mortal life with justice.” As for the Olympian gods, they are scarcely attacked; there is little more than a jaded recognition that belief in them is no help or inspiration.[613] To this plaintive agnosticism there is here no alternative but fierce pessimism, as when in the frightful eloquence of Hecuba we are told that Fate is “a capering idiot”.[614]