This cynical clearness is a guide in studying the exceptional passage above mentioned: in the last scene orthodox piety is upheld by the apparition of Athena. Does then the _Iphigenia_ in the end refute the rationalism impressed on it almost everywhere? We can take our choice, accepting Athena, Apollo’s divinity, and all the other traditional garnishments, but stultifying many passages, and the tone of nine-tenths of the play; or we can accept the latter as a thrilling and pathetic study in human superstition and intrepidity, but reject Athena as a conventional phantom. In this latter case we shall, with Dr. Verrall, consider that the play, for all artistic and intelligible purposes, ends at v. 1434, leaving Thoas to capture and destroy the Greeks. Many will find such a choice difficult. The _Iphigenia_ is certainly not as clear a case as the _Orestes_, to say nothing of the _Ion_. But it is difficult to believe that here he has composed a magnificent play to bolster up theology which elsewhere he strenuously attacks. Nevertheless, the speech of Athena is not in itself contradictory or ludicrous. The mental pathology—it can hardly be called the character—of Orestes, deserves close study. He provides an admirable instance of that skill in portraying madness for which Euripides was famed.[630] A man of strong simple instincts, he is shaken terribly by the murderous events of his childhood. His brain is overthrown by the sway of the hierarchy and by the deeds to which he was impelled. From this overthrow he never quite recovered, as the dramatist himself carefully indicates.[631] Throughout the _Iphigenia_ we discern, drawn with extraordinary skill and tact, the struggle between the old obsession and an intellect originally clear and acute. The prologue, when he explores the ground with Pylades, shows him (in spite of a ghastly brilliance of thought fit only for frenzy or the nightmare[632]) possessed of shrewdness which, if consistently applied, would have saved him from the expedition altogether. Later he is seen hurled by the excitement of his quest into complete, though temporary, insanity[633]—a fit which throws back strange light upon his “trial” at Athens and provides a comment upon the later scene,[634] where, though at the moment sane, he yet believes in the delusive experience. Everywhere we find this superstructure of sanity on an insane foundation. Though he can see through the “oracle” as clearly as any man with regard to its past deceptions, he is pathetically enthusiastic for the latest nostrum.[635] The long account[636] of his sorrows which he gives his sister is full of such sinister meaning. He essays to describe the origin of the court which tried him: “There is a holy ... _vote_,[637] which long ago Zeus founded for Ares owing to some blood-guiltiness, whatever it was....” He has forgotten half the facts, and bungles the rest. This speech, full of obscurity, irrelevancy, and disconnected thought, is